Andrew Klavan - Sexual Follies, The sexual revolution and Shelley's death and destruction — Transcript

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1. 0:00sexual follies
2. 0:02[Music]
3. 0:05[Applause]
4. 0:09so
5. 0:10ross duthot who is the
6. 0:13kind of conservative columnist on
7. 0:14knucklehead row at the new york times
8. 0:16and he's a catholic and that's what
9. 0:18makes him so there's there's
10. 0:19conservatism there uh is talk talked
11. 0:21about the 70s after the harvey weinstein
12. 0:24thing came out and he was talking about
13. 0:27how during the 70s
14. 0:29you know
15. 0:30it was really the height of the sexual
16. 0:32revolution and he says you can look at
17. 0:35it through the statistics there were
18. 0:36never so many divorces in the 70s never
19. 0:38so many abortions as in the 70s a much
20. 0:41higher rate of rape and std crisis that
21. 0:44culminated in the aids echo
22. 0:47the aids epidemic and he says you know
23. 0:51you can see um
24. 0:53that you can see in the exploitation
25. 0:56just in in terms of
26. 0:59narrative in terms of stories about the
27. 1:0070s the drug-enabled exploitation of
28. 1:03kids a grimly horrifying scale he says
29. 1:06much of rock and roll's groupie culture
30. 1:08was a spree of statutory rape with the
31. 1:10gods of rock and roll as cereal the
32. 1:13flowers of girls who were really young
33. 1:15in the same era any of anything goes
34. 1:17hollywood's roman polanski had good
35. 1:19reason to regard sodomizing a 13 year
36. 1:21old as what they let you do when you're
37. 1:23a star and you remember harvey weinstein
38. 1:25put out this statement when he was
39. 1:26talking about why he was raping women
40. 1:28and cornering them and you know
41. 1:31uh touching himself in front of them and
42. 1:32asking him to give him massages and
43. 1:34watch them showers well i came of age in
44. 1:36the 70s that was
45. 1:38his excuse you know and do thought says
46. 1:41you know things have gotten better
47. 1:43you know people as we just heard from dr
48. 1:45twenge people you know young people
49. 1:46having sex less all this stuff
50. 1:49but he says but let us not congratulate
51. 1:50ourselves too quickly there are ways in
52. 1:52which we have passed from arrows to
53. 1:54thanatos to death from the chaos of
54. 1:56unrestrained desire to the stability of
55. 1:58senescence our era is less overtly
56. 2:01sexually destructive in part because
57. 2:03we're giving up on sex itself retreating
58. 2:05into pornography and other virtual
59. 2:07consolations in the 1970s people left
60. 2:09their marriages because they believed
61. 2:11some higher fulfillment awaited in the
62. 2:132010s they marry less have less sex once
63. 2:15married and have fewer children opting
64. 2:18out of promiscuity and procreation both
65. 2:20abortion rates are down but suicide
66. 2:22rates are up
67. 2:24really interesting and
68. 2:26i want to talk i'm going to go a little
69. 2:28a little long here um i'm reading a
70. 2:31biography of the poet shelley it's a
71. 2:33huge book i've been reading it for weeks
72. 2:35and weeks and weeks
73. 2:37and i always like to read about the
74. 2:39romantic era because it was very much
75. 2:41like our era and you know it was it was
76. 2:44there was an era of revolution it was
77. 2:46the french revolution came first then
78. 2:48that revolution failed as our 60s
79. 2:50revolution kind of failed and in england
80. 2:52especially there was a reaction of
81. 2:54conservatism as we had ronald reagan we
82. 2:56had the reagan years but as that
83. 2:59you know that that held off the
84. 3:00revolution but the liberalism and the
85. 3:02leftism came in slowly
86. 3:05you know over time and as shelley was
87. 3:08when shelley was a poet the english were
88. 3:09very trying very hard to stamp out the
89. 3:12revolutionary impulse by censoring
90. 3:13people by putting people in jail if they
91. 3:15wrote anything that seemed revolutionary
92. 3:17and shelley was a radical i've i've
93. 3:19always disliked him as a human being
94. 3:21because of his radicalism and because of
95. 3:23his uh sexual promiscuity which caused
96. 3:25so much death and destruction all around
97. 3:27him he was a genius poet i mean he would
98. 3:30have i mean some of these poets if they
99. 3:31only lived for like the five days in
100. 3:34which they wrote their great poems
101. 3:35because they would jot them down oh yes
102. 3:37i saw the west wind blowing i wrote down
103. 3:39this poem and it'll be owed to the west
104. 3:40wind one of the most beautiful poems in
105. 3:42all of literature
106. 3:44shelley believed in equality between the
107. 3:47sexes and in free sex and as a result of
108. 3:50this he constantly was getting people
109. 3:52pregnant not just mary shelley or
110. 3:54frankenstein he left his wife for mary
111. 3:56shelley and she committed suicide
112. 3:58because he abandoned her with their
113. 4:00children
114. 4:01mary shelley's children would die
115. 4:03shelley would impregnate uh her half
116. 4:06sister and that child would die
117. 4:07impregnated a maid and she would die
118. 4:09and the
119. 4:10that child would die
120. 4:12he left a
121. 4:14swath of destruction
122. 4:17you know
123. 4:19i'm very opposed to abortion i simply
124. 4:21believe it's killing i think there's
125. 4:22just no getting around it but i
126. 4:24understand i do understand
127. 4:27that there is something in the impulse
128. 4:29to make women and men
129. 4:31equal to make their lives equal to make
130. 4:33their sexual lives free this has been in
131. 4:35people's minds since adam and eve to be
132. 4:38free sexually to be equal sexually to be
133. 4:41the same and the the thing that gets in
134. 4:44the way are these darn babies you know
135. 4:46they get in the way because when you
136. 4:48have sex with women they do this weird
137. 4:50thing where they start to reproduce you
138. 4:53know
139. 4:54and that that is you know this this
140. 4:58unavoidable
141. 4:59uh unavoidable consequence even with
142. 5:01birth control it still happens and so
143. 5:03the impulse toward abortion is not an
144. 5:06evil impulse in itself it is just so
145. 5:08desperate to get to this freedom to get
146. 5:10to the sexual freedom to get to the
147. 5:11sexual equality
148. 5:13that it basically resorts to killing
149. 5:15killing the most innocent the weakest
150. 5:17the most helpless person one person in
151. 5:20the room who can't protest the one
152. 5:21person in the room who has no vote who
153. 5:23can't go before congress and tell his or
154. 5:26her sad story the mother who says oh if
155. 5:28i had only had an abortion my life would
156. 5:30have been better can go and tell her sad
157. 5:32story on the news and make you cry but
158. 5:34the baby whose life has been snuffed out
159. 5:36he can't do that he's been silenced he's
160. 5:38never had a voice
161. 5:40so
162. 5:40so all i want to say is this idea that
163. 5:43creativity and
164. 5:46rampant sexuality are connected may be
165. 5:48true there may be something to it
166. 5:50but the rampant sexuality has this moral
167. 5:53problem it has like the speed of light
168. 5:55it has a place beyond which it cannot go
169. 6:00and unless we talk about that instead of
170. 6:02using these stupid terms like women's
171. 6:05reproductive choice women's sexual
172. 6:07health all these stupid terms they use
173. 6:09to stop from using the term abortion to
174. 6:11keep from using the term killing unless
175. 6:13we can talk about to each other to
176. 6:15people who are pro-life and people who
177. 6:16are pro-abortion what it is we're
178. 6:18talking about we're talking about
179. 6:19freedom and the price of freedom and
180. 6:21when that price becomes too much to pay
181. 6:23it would be a real change to hear that
182. 6:26conversation to hear a conversation
183. 6:27about the basics and until we do we'll
184. 6:29just remain stupid about sex as we have
185. 6:32been since the garden of eden
186. 6:34all right the conversation is coming up
187. 6:36at two o'clock here let me i'll give you
188. 6:38one more read through here the
189. 6:40conversation is on the daily wire
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201. 7:05questions i'm andrew clavin this is the
202. 7:07andrew clavin show and we will see you
203. 7:09at 2pm
204. 7:12[Music]
205. 7:16oh
206. 7:18[Music]
207. 7:31you