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How to Know if You Are Being Brave or Living a Lie | Andrew Klavan | POLITICS | Rubin Report — Transcript

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0:00- You've gotta speak up.
0:01This thing about dropping our voice,
0:03you know, I used to go into movie studios for meetings
0:05and I'd be sitting out in the waiting room,
0:07you know, you sit for a few minutes before they call you in,
0:09and almost every time,
0:11somebody would come up to me and drop his voice and say,
0:13"Oi, I saw you on 'Hannity.'
0:15I saw you on 'Beck.'"
0:16And I would always say the same thing.
0:17"Why are you whispering?
0:19(Dave laughs) We're in the right."
0:20And like, (laughs)
0:21and I understand the fear- - Right, right.
0:23- and I understand,
0:24you know, we famously had this
0:26supposedly secret organization,
0:27the Friends of Abe out in Hollywood.
0:31And I kept saying to the leaders, you know,
0:32"We've gotta go public."
0:34And they wouldn't do it
0:36'cause they didn't want the working guys to get caught.
0:37The gaffers and the guys who were not movie stars
0:40and all this.
0:41But I just thought if you don't,
0:42if you act in secret, then you look like you're ashamed.
0:45And if you act in secret, you look like you're afraid.
0:47(dramatic music)
0:54- I'm Dave Rubin, and joining me today
0:56is a prolific screenwriter, a host at The Daily Wire,
1:01a multi-time author, and author of the brand new book,
1:04"When Christmas Comes."
1:06Andrew Klavan, welcome back to "The Rubin Report."
1:08- Good to see you, Dave, how are you?
1:10- I am just fine.
1:11I feel that we have to just get some stuff out of the way,
1:14right up top though
1:15because last I saw you was here at my house.
1:19I had a dinner party right before you made your exitus
1:22and left California, left Los Angeles,
1:26and it was a wonderful evening, Michael Knowles,
1:29several other, you know, far-right figures.
1:31And we were going around the table and you wanted whiskey.
1:36And I said, "No, no, I want you to try this tequila."
1:39And you said, "No, no, I like whiskey."
1:41And I demanded that you try the tequila.
1:44And then an hour later, you admitted to me
1:45you just didn't like the tequila.
1:47And I've been sitting on this for like six months.
1:49I feel bad about this, you know what I mean?
1:51It was you're going away thing.
1:52Sure, you abandoned me here,
1:54but I made you drink tequila and I feel bad.
1:56You're a whiskey guy.
1:58- You know, I'm a creature of habit.
2:00What can I tell you?
2:01I discovered Macallan 12 many years ago
2:04and the guy at the store, I lived in England,
2:06and every week, I'd go in and the guy say,
2:07"You have to try something else."
2:09And I try something else.
2:10I think, "Yeah, I really liked that Macallan 12."
2:12And I go back the next week, he say,
2:14"You gotta try something else."
2:15That went on for about three months and finally, I said,
2:17"You know, Macallan 12 is the best."
2:19And the guy said, "Yeah, you're right."
2:20(Dave laughs)
2:22I thought if I like it, I stick with it.
2:25- You conservatives, you love whiskey.
2:27Now, I know I'm the new guy here.
2:28I would consider myself
2:30sort of a new school conservative,
2:31but I bring tequila in, it freaks people out.
2:33You guys, it's all about whiskey for you people.
2:36- Yeah, the tequila is just a little edgy for us, you know?
2:39I mean, whiskey, we know where we're going with whiskey.
2:41We're going straight down the tubes. (laughs)
2:44Great time.
2:46And it goes well with steak, which we're also very big on.
2:48Steak and cigars and whiskey are really perfect.
2:51- Yes, you are all men, it's very obvious.
2:53You're men and you're- - Yeah, yeah.
2:55That's it. - doing your thing.
2:57All right, so you did leave me here.
2:58You've been gone for what?
2:59About six months now.
3:01Life is good for you. - Yup.
3:02- You're happy.
3:02You've left.
3:04Nothing good is happening here, fair to say.
3:07- Fair to say.
3:09I turned Virginia, I single-handedly turned Virginia red.
3:10(Dave laughs)
3:11(Andrew laughs)
3:13I moved, when I moved to Virginia
3:14and because it's kind of between The Daily Wire
3:16and my publishing life in New York and,
3:20you know, within months, I just managed to,
3:22I'm Spartacus.
3:23I just said, you know, "All right, follow me everybody.
3:25We're gonna turn this state."
3:27And they rushed into the voting booth
3:29and now, we're a red state.
3:30- So for real, what was it like for those couple of weeks
3:33before the election?
3:34And then that night, I mean, it was really,
3:36I think, a huge moment if we're gonna get any wins.
3:38I think that was the one that we needed.
3:40I had been saying it for weeks.
3:42That's the one- - Yup.
3:44keep an eye on this one, and it actually happened.
3:45And I think a lot of people have hope now.
3:48- Well, you know, it's interesting.
3:49When I got to Virginia, I live in Northern Virginia,
3:52which is the liberal, the blue part of Virginia.
3:55And several people have said to me,
3:56"Oh, boy, this is a really liberal place.
3:58This is really left wing."
4:00And I was looking around and having come from Los Angeles,
4:02I was thinking, "You know, not really so much.
4:05It's not the same thing."
4:06There are a lot of military people,
4:08a lot of people who are Democrats
4:10in the old kind of sense of the word
4:11that yes, they want a welfare state or some kind of,
4:14you know, normal thing that two people might argue about
4:18around the 50-yard line as they used to say,
4:20but it was not that crazy LA thing
4:24where any idea that comes out, "Oh yeah, men are women now."
4:27Okay, that's good.
4:29You know, everybody, we're racist.
4:32Everyone's racist.
4:33Oh, so we gotta teach children to be racist.
4:35Yeah, good idea.
4:36This is like a normal American state
4:38with Democrats and Republicans in it.
4:40And when they found out,
4:41"Oh, you know, we're teaching your children
4:43that it's okay to be a pedophile
4:46or actually the object of pedophilia.
4:49- Yeah. - It's okay to hate people
4:50'cause they're White or they're Black people.
4:52We're like, "I'm sorry, what?"
4:54You know, where did that come from?
4:55We're in LA, people just go like lemmings off the cliff.
4:59In Virginia, not so much.
5:00It was very tense.
5:02I thought it should have been 80% to 20%.
5:04It was only two or three percentage points.
5:07And to be honest with you,
5:08I was worried about the kind of Trump contingent.
5:11You know, I'm good friends with Sebastian Gorka
5:14who just loves Donald Trump,
5:15and he was picking on Youngkin.
5:16I was saying to him, "You know, it's a purple state.
5:19You know, we're not gonna get everything we want."
5:21But Youngkin was a talented guy
5:23and because of Trump, I think,
5:25because of Trump, he understood
5:27that he had to fight the culture war.
5:29That you don't fight the culture where you can't win.
5:32You don't fight over abortion,
5:33you don't fight over marriage.
5:35You fight, but to fight teaching racism in school.
5:38Yeah, you can do that.
5:40And so I think that Donald Trump taught him something,
5:43but he managed to excite the Trump contingent
5:46without linking himself to Donald Trump.
5:49And in fact, there was one hilarious story
5:51that when Trump, troll that he is,
5:53said he was coming to Virginia,
5:55Youngkin's people called him up and said,
5:56"No, no, don't come to Virginia." (laughs)
5:59So he really found the right note as we didn't
6:03in the recall in California. - Yup.
6:05- And that's exciting because it means,
6:07you know, Ronald Reagan said, basically,
6:10and this is a paraphrase, but he said, "Republicans fail
6:13when they turn out not to be who they said they were.
6:17Democrats fail when they turn out to be
6:19who they say they are."
6:20And then they go too far all the time.
6:22And so right this minute,
6:24when Democrats are being everything they say,
6:26and they're ruining everything,
6:27everything they touch goes bad.
6:30This is a good moment.
6:31It's a good moment to remind people
6:32that a little bit of common sense,
6:34a little bit of good business,
6:35a little bit of family life,
6:36you know, it's not such a bad thing.
6:38And you can build a very nice country
6:40and a very nice life off that.
6:42- Wait, are you saying that the people on MSNBC
6:45who told me that it was all because of those middle America
6:48white supremacist women?
6:50That's what they were saying.
6:51It's all the women
6:52who are always voting in white supremacists.
6:54Are you saying that joy Reid is not telling me the truth?
6:59(Andrew laughs)
7:01- We got this lieutenant governor
7:02who's a gun-toting black lady who was in the Marines
7:05and it's like, and everybody, this is the thing,
7:07everybody loves her.
7:09And they're telling us,
7:10"Oh yeah, but she is white supremacy.
7:12This is the mark of white supremacy
7:14when you vote for a black person who doesn't agree with us."
7:17- Yeah. - And so at some point,
7:19you just gotta hope that there's enough common sense
7:22and courage in the American people
7:24where they stand up to that
7:25because it's not just common sense.
7:26A lot of people I know,
7:27including Democrats are saying to me,
7:29"You know, this woke stuff is bad.
7:31There's something wrong with this."
7:32But you also have to have courage
7:34because they will throw you off Twitter.
7:36They will throw you off Facebook.
7:37They might get you fired from your job,
7:39they might get you canceled.
7:41So you gotta have the courage to say,
7:43you know, out loud, "We don't want this."
7:45And what they did in Virginia
7:46was they attacked people's kids.
7:48And that will turn a lot of moms and a lot of dads
7:51into very brave people.
7:53You know, you get the mama and papa bears
7:55will just rip your head off
7:56before they let you ruin their kids.
7:58- So as a guy that spent,
7:59I think you spent a couple decades here in crazy LA, right?
8:01- Yup, yup. - How long were you here for?
8:03- Well, I was only in LA for seven years, but I was in,
8:06before that, I was in Santa Barbara for 15 years.
8:08So all in all,
8:09I got the California experience for two decades.
8:11- So as a guy that was around that,
8:13and also was around Hollywood and doing movies,
8:16and Clint Eastwood, although he's one of the few sane ones
8:18we've got- - Yeah.
8:19- but you've been around the machine.
8:21What is it?
8:22Have you been able to really unpack
8:24maybe now that you've stepped away from it?
8:26Like what is it that causes that group
8:29think amongst these people,
8:31who so often seemingly vote against their own interests?
8:34They cannot be happy that the homeless people
8:36are now climbing up the Hollywood Hills
8:38like we're in "Walking Dead."
8:40- No, it is absolutely true, but there's certain things,
8:44there certainly breaks walls between them.
8:46For instance, in San Francisco,
8:48the rich people are living in Silicon Valley.
8:50You know, the rich people are not living in the places
8:52that they let go down the drain.
8:54There is, you know, it's a funny thing because in a way,
8:58in a way, it's a point that Marx,
9:00Karl Marx himself might've made.
9:02You know, Karl Marx basically believed
9:04that your wages had not got, you hadn't become richer
9:07if there was now a bigger divide between you
9:10and the really rich people.
9:12He believed that it was all relative, you know?
9:13So even though you were doing better,
9:15if the next guy was doing 10 times better,
9:17you were gonna be unhappy.
9:19And there's a lot of human truth to that.
9:20I mean, that's, it's envy, it's covetousness.
9:23Those are just human traits.
9:25And so we have got a moment now
9:27when some of these wealthy people are so wealthy,
9:31and so detached,
9:32and so surrounded by other people like themselves,
9:35and so disdainful of the ordinary men and women
9:40who just wanna do their jobs and have some fun
9:43and get married and have kids.
9:45They're so distasteful of that life
9:46that they really have no idea what people are talking about.
9:49Some of these people who are accusing,
9:51look, I've lived out of the country for seven years.
9:54This is the least racist country on Earth.
9:57It is the least racist country on Earth.
9:59And when they talk about systemic racism,
10:01it's the least systemic racist country on Earth.
10:04'Cause obviously, there are always gonna be racist people,
10:07but they don't know it.
10:09They don't know it.
10:10When they talk about,
10:11"Oh yeah, these people are just racist."
10:12They believe it because they never see them.
10:14They never meet them, they never talk to them,
10:15they never listen to them.
10:17Some of the stuff that you and I talk about
10:19on what is now called conservative media,
10:23they've never heard.
10:24They have never heard it.
10:25And when they discover it, they're absolutely shocked.
10:28I mean, Russell Brand, the comedian,
10:30- Yeah, yeah. - He was a very bright guy,
10:32but he is kind of left to center.
10:34When he found out that the Russian collusion thing
10:37was a hoax, he went on the air and he said,
10:39"I'm gobsmacked, I'm flabbergasted. Who knew?"
10:41Well, we knew.
10:43You know, we knew and we said it all the time,
10:44and a lot of stuff that we know
10:46ultimately becomes mainstream, but they never stop and say,
10:49"Oh gee, the right-wingers were telling the truth,
10:52and the New York Times and CNN and NBC were all lying."
10:55They just never say that.
10:57Think of all the people that they made into idols,
10:59Andrew Cuomo, you know,
11:03what was the other guy's, Michael Avenatti.
11:04- You know. - Yup.
11:06- Was that his name, yeah? - Yup, yup.
11:07- And now, Dr. Fauci, torturing dogs,
11:10having eating the faces of dogs. (laughs)
11:12- Literally, like you cannot make this stuff up.
11:15Eating the faces of dogs (Andrew laughs)
11:16that they don't let their paws go to,
11:18I mean, it's just insane.
11:21- And these are their heroes.
11:22And, you know, you'd think at some point they would say,
11:25"Hmm, maybe we're not that good a judge of character.
11:27You know, maybe we ought to take another look at it.
11:29At Ted Cruz, maybe he's not a bad guy.
11:31You know, maybe picking on Mike Pence
11:33for being true to his wife
11:34isn't really a great look for us."
11:37They never do, they never listen to us,
11:39they're so separated.
11:40They're so sequestered by their wealth
11:43and their cultural power more than anything else.
11:45Their cultural power has sequestered them
11:48that they do not know what they do not know
11:50and that's basically the kind of stuff that the rest of us
11:53are talking about.
11:54You and I don't agree on everything.
11:56Me and Ben Shapiro don't agree and Michael Knowles.
11:57We all have these big arguments.
11:58We have a range of opinions on the right.
12:01They've just got this one opinion,
12:03but they hear it again and again and again
12:04and they think everything else is evil.
12:06- So what's the trick?
12:07I mean, you know, when I do my weekly Q and A's on Thursday,
12:09there's always like 10 questions of the same variety
12:12which is what are the tricks to wake up my friend?
12:15How can I bring them back?
12:16I can't get them to sit down and watch a PragerU video
12:19or Dave, now you're too scary for them.
12:22So I assume you're on the scary list too, Andrew.
12:24Like what are the tricks?
12:26You got any tricks?
12:27I mean, you were around a lot of these people.
12:29- Yeah, two things, very important.
12:32One is you've gotta speak up.
12:35This thing about dropping our voice.
12:36You know, I used to go into movie studios for meetings
12:40and I'd be sitting out in the waiting room,
12:41you sit for a few minutes before they call you in,
12:43and almost every time,
12:45somebody would come up to me and drop his voice and say,
12:47"Oi, I saw you on 'Hannity.'
12:49I saw you on 'Beck.'"
12:50And I would always say the same thing.
12:52"Why are you whispering? (Dave laughs)
12:53We're in the right." (laughs)
12:55And like- - Right.
12:56- And I understand the fear, and I understand,
12:58you know, we famously had this
13:00supposedly secret organization,
13:02The Friends of Abe out in Hollywood.
13:05And I kept saying to the leaders,
13:06"You know, we've gotta go public."
13:08And they wouldn't do it
13:10'cause they didn't want the working guys to get caught.
13:11The gaffers and the guys who were not movie stars
13:13and all this.
13:15But I just thought, if you don't,
13:16if you act in secret, then you look like you're ashamed.
13:19And if you act in secret, you look like you're afraid.
13:21And so all of us, because all of us,
13:23you know, it's not just artists who are part of the culture,
13:25it's not just media people.
13:27Everybody is part of the culture.
13:29Everybody has a little piece of it
13:30like a candle in their hand.
13:32You have got to speak up,
13:34You've got to.
13:35You gotta say it politely,
13:36you don't have to scream at people,
13:37you don't have to get in their faces,
13:38you don't have to be Donald Trump.
13:40You just politely say, "You know, I disagree."
13:43And if we don't start doing that,
13:45if we let them cowl us and silence us,
13:47we have no choice, chance.
13:49And the other side of it also is (chuckles)
13:53right when you just think that the truth is so important,
13:56the facts are so important
13:58that you don't have to be nice about them,
13:59that you can scream an ugly truth in someone's face.
14:02And Paul Simon said,
14:03"You know, I don't want you to lie to me,
14:05but I want some tenderness beneath your honesty."
14:07And right-wingers got to learn that trick
14:09because the left are ugly.
14:12They're mean, they call people names,
14:14they're disgusting, they cancel people, they bully them.
14:18If we don't have a sort of civilized attitude,
14:22when I say civilized,
14:23that doesn't mean keeping your mouth shut.
14:25It means speaking bravely and clearly in a polite way,
14:30then we're just the same as them.
14:31We get lost in the crowd.
14:33So if we don't develop some communication skills
14:36and some courage, we'll be lost.
14:39We'll be swept away 'cause they own the media.
14:41- You know, it's so funny
14:42because I obviously agree with the sentiment,
14:44and then there's this part of me as someone
14:46that's sort of new to this thing on the right, let's say,
14:49that when you see them lie and lie and lie again,
14:53and know they're lying, and we know they're lying,
14:55and everyone knows salt units in quote,
14:56and they just keep going,
14:58I can somehow see how decent right wing people
15:02that are moderates, really,
15:04start sounding like crazy, angry kooks
15:07because the years go by, you try to rationalize,
15:10you try to be open, you try to have conversations,
15:12they keep lying, things keep getting worse,
15:15they're dragging you to hell with them,
15:16next thing you know, you're screaming on the radio
15:19for four hours a day about whatever it might be.
15:22So I'm sympathetic to, even though I get your point,
15:25I am sympathetic to the people
15:26that it sort of sound like they're nuts at some level.
15:29- Me too, and they also gaslight you.
15:32So for 30 years, they call you racist,
15:35they call you sexist, your god stinks,
15:37your country stinks, your history stinks,
15:39everything about you stinks.
15:40Then Rush Limbaugh comes on the air and he says,
15:42"Well, these feminazis," and everybody goes,
15:44"Where is the civility? - Yeah.
15:47What has happened to the civility in this country?"
15:49So they gaslight you, but if you listen,
15:51one of the things that happened to me
15:53when I came back from England, where I was living,
15:55I started listening to Rush
15:56just to hear what the fuss was about,
15:59and he was so happy and so funny
16:01and so, kind of sweet-natured.
16:03With all the stuff that he said that I thought,
16:06"No, wait a minute.
16:07All the stuff I heard is untrue
16:08and I wanna listen to what this guy has to say."
16:11They called him uncivil
16:12and he could sometimes go off, obviously,
16:15but he was actually a happy warrior.
16:17And he was a wonderfully funny and warm person.
16:20When you, the one time I talked to him in person,
16:22he was kind of shy and sweet-natured and all that.
16:25It was kind of a shock.
16:26But still, he had a knack for that.
16:28So you're absolutely right.
16:30I have total sympathy for why people do it.
16:32I know why they supported Donald Trump.
16:33I told people who were appalled by Donald Trump,
16:36"You know, think of them as the voice of people
16:39who have been just insulted for 50 years."
16:42- Mm-hmm. - You know, that's what he is.
16:43That's why they came up with him and he had his flaws.
16:47I think they really hurt him in the end,
16:49but they also helped them get where he was,
16:51and they made people love him 'cause he spoke for them.
16:53But I think we need,
16:54you know, the thing I liked about this guy in Virginia,
16:56Glenn Youngkin, is he is civilized,
16:59he's direct, but he says what he has to say.
17:02And I think that that's really the trick.
17:03I think it's the trick for all of us.
17:05Because if ordinary people aren't speaking,
17:07we seem like we're afraid and we seem like we're ashamed.
17:10- Yeah. And since you brought up Trump, I will credit you.
17:12I've credited you many times for this,
17:14but on election night 2016 and I was not voting for Trump,
17:17I voted for Gary Johnson,
17:18but I was with you, Daily Wire guys,
17:20everyone drinking whiskey, and the results came in,
17:23everybody was shocked,
17:24but you said something to me that really,
17:27I think lit a fire under me about the state of the world
17:30which was that, "Look what just happened in America."
17:33The thing that nobody said- - Yup.
17:35was gonna happen, that everyone said couldn't happen,
17:39it just happened.
17:40And that is the true beauty of America.
17:42That's what we sort of seem to be forgetting at the moment.
17:45- You know, it's one of, I have this conversation,
17:47especially with conservatives.
17:48Conservatives have a knack.
17:50It's a natural thing,
17:51and it's one of the reasons they are conservative
17:53is they can trace any change to disaster.
17:55(Dave laughs)
17:56So whatever changes, it's like,
17:58"Oh yeah, well, this is gonna knock over that domino,
18:00and then the wall fall down.
18:02And once the wall falls down,
18:03the savages come in and we're all dead."
18:04You know, (laughs) we do this all the time,
18:07but just because having been around so long,
18:09I've seen a lot of stuff.
18:10So I saw New York when it was a cesspit,
18:13like it's becoming again today.
18:14- Yup. - And I thought,
18:16"This is the end of New York."
18:18And no, Giuliani came in.
18:19One man came in.
18:20They called him racist
18:22every single day of his administration,
18:24and he turned it into the most beautiful city in the world,
18:27the best city in the world for about 20 years
18:29with the help of Bloomberg, who kept it that way.
18:33And now, they've just driven it back into the ground.
18:35The same was true with the country.
18:37The country in the '70s and '80s was in a terrible state.
18:40I mean, people were just so unhappy
18:43and they gas lines to get gasoline,
18:46just like it is today with the inflation and all this stuff,
18:49all coming back.
18:50And Ronald Reagan came in and said, "You know what?
18:52I'm gonna cut taxes, we're gonna change that,
18:54and we're gonna end,
18:55by the way, we're gonna win the cold war."
18:56And people today say, "Well, it wasn't Reagan.
18:59You know, it was this, it was that."
19:02He was the only person who said that.
19:04I mean, everybody else, all the intellectuals were like,
19:07"What do you mean?"
19:08And Reagan said, "I mean we win, they lose."
19:11And so all of these things can change in a heartbeat,
19:14but they don't change if people hide.
19:17They do not change if people will not make that change.
19:22I mean my parents,
19:23lifelong Democrats 'til the day they died,
19:26they voted for Giuliani the second time-
19:28- Hah. - because they said,
19:29"You know, oh, the city was terrible, and now it's nice."
19:32You know? (laughs)
19:33And if we don't have at least that much common sense,
19:35it's hard to make those change.
19:36But it's true.
19:38As long as we still have an operational democracy
19:40and we can get the word out in Facebook, in Twitter,
19:43and all these people are not censoring us completely,
19:47you'd be shocked at what can happen.
19:49- So I wanna talk to you a little bit
19:51about where faith falls into this
19:53'cause you have a really interesting,
19:55we've discussed it a couple of times publicly,
19:57a really interesting journey of faith for yourself,
19:59personally,
20:00but I think it also does frame a lot of your politics.
20:03And I've sort of come to the conclusion that in many ways,
20:06my frustration with the last sort of sane liberals
20:10is that they've disconnected everything from faith.
20:13Thus, they end up in this constant political fight,
20:17trying to find meaning in something
20:18that can offer no meaning.
20:20And I do find that very different than conservatives
20:23who don't find their salvation in politics.
20:26I don't think that politics is everything
20:29or that the culture war is everything
20:30or that the here and now is everything.
20:32And I think that the sort of last libs, they kind of do.
20:36I think Jordan Peterson was really trying to
20:39move that for them.
20:40And I don't know that it quite got there yet.
20:43- Yeah. - Take that away.
20:44There's the statement, run.
20:46- I mean, I love Jordan, I know you love Jordan.
20:48I think he gets caught sometimes in
20:51what I call the reason trap, you know?
20:53The reason is a wonderful thing.
20:55It is a wonderful way of figuring out
20:56the reasonable part of the world,
20:58but there is a part of the world
21:00that's extraordinarily important and goes beyond that,
21:02which is the inner human experience.
21:04The inner experience of just being here, which is reason,
21:08emotion, love, all the things that make life worthwhile.
21:11You know, that actually work.
21:14And it's in that place
21:15where you start to sense after a while that,
21:16"Oh, you know, it's not that I can prove."
21:21Here's the leap of faith for me.
21:23I can't prove that it's better to give a beggar bread
21:27than to torture a child to death for fun.
21:29I can't prove that, you can't prove it.
21:31There's no place of reason where you can say,
21:33"Gee, if you enjoy torturing a child to death,
21:36why not do it?
21:37But you know, you know, the same way that you know
21:40that your father should be just,
21:42the same way that you know
21:43that your mother should be tender,
21:45you know that it is better to do one thing
21:47than it is to do another.
21:48That is already supernatural in the sense that
21:51physical actions, natural actions
21:54have a meaning above themselves.
21:55That's a supernatural thing.
21:57Literally, when I say supernatural,
21:59I mean literally above nature. - Yup, yup, I got it.
22:00- And if there is something
22:03that is better than something else,
22:05then there is something toward which attends.
22:07There is an ultimate good,
22:10you know, something that is the measure of all good,
22:12a sovereign good.
22:13And if there's a sovereign good,
22:15it has to be a consciousness because only conscious,
22:18free consciousness can choose good.
22:19A hurricane is neither good or evil.
22:21It may do bad things,
22:23but it's not doing them for moral reasons.
22:25So it makes sense.
22:28If we believe, if we take, it's not even a leap of faith,
22:30it's kind of a little hop of faith, you know?
22:32Where you just say,
22:34"If we believe that some things are good
22:35and some things are not as good,
22:38we have to invest in that."
22:39And once you do,
22:40once you do, the whole thing starts to make sense.
22:43Suddenly, you say like,
22:44"Oh, I just had to affirm what I believe,
22:48what I knew was true."
22:49And I always tell people,
22:50"Don't believe what you don't believe."
22:51So if somebody says to me,
22:54you know, "Well, Rachel Levine is really a woman."
22:56I think like, "Yeah, you don't believe that.
22:58I don't believe that."
23:00You know, Ben Shapiro can put on a cowboy hat,
23:01he's not a cowboy. (Dave and Andrew laughs)
23:04- We've seen him with a cowboy hat.
23:05He's not a cowboy.
23:07- He's not a cowboy.
23:08The only difference is Ben will tell you that.
23:09- Yeah. - But,
23:11so you know Rachel Levine is not a woman, so why say it?
23:14What is the benefit you're getting
23:16from believing something you don't believe?
23:18No one believes.
23:19No one believes that morality is relative.
23:23No one believes it.
23:24You believe it until somebody punches your kid.
23:27Then you know that no,
23:29you know, there are certain things that are moral.
23:31And once you have a worldview that makes sense,
23:35you kind of relax into the fact
23:37that there is something beyond yourself
23:39and something beyond this petty fight that we're in,
23:41and it makes it easier
23:43to kind of love your neighbor a little bit, you know?
23:44And the joy that comes with that is intense.
23:47It is an amazing thing simply to make sense,
23:51simply to live in life and say like,
23:53"Yeah, that makes sense, and this doesn't make sense,"
23:55'cause you have a standard by which to judge it.
23:59For me, it became Christianity at first
24:05because I thought all my values are coming out of this book.
24:07But now, I sort of see that Christianity is the,
24:11it's the faith of the word that what we are,
24:15that what you and I are, is we are of kind of language.
24:19It's not like we're a body with a soul inside
24:21like Casper, the friendly ghost,
24:22just floating around and inside,
24:24you know, inside Dave, there's the real Dave,
24:25this invisible Dave is.
24:27It's not that at all.
24:28It's that you are a word that speaks, Dave.
24:31And that, that Dave is an idea in the mind of God
24:33as it were, you know?
24:34And so, and that, once you understand that,
24:37then everything that you do becomes kind of beautiful.
24:40It all becomes a work of art.
24:41If I give a beggar bread,
24:42I'm not just giving a beggar bread,
24:45I'm actually doing something good,
24:47you know, in this supernatural realm.
24:49It's incredibly liberating.
24:50It is an incredibly liberating, joyful way to live.
24:54And when I say joy,
24:55I don't mean you walk around happy all the time.
24:56That would be crazy.
24:57But I mean, as you live life with a new gusto
24:59because just like when you watch a movie
25:02and there's a sad scene in the movie and you're crying,
25:04you still love the movie, you know?
25:06And life kind of becomes like that.
25:07You start,
25:09because you start to see it has a meaning beyond itself.
25:10And so even when you're tense and things are going badly,
25:13and even when you're grieving,
25:15you understand that there is this beauty to it.
25:17This beauty of creation that's going on all the time.
25:19And it's the creation of you.
25:20It's creation of your soul
25:22becoming more and more of what it's supposed to be.
25:23So yes, to go back to what you said,
25:27I just totally agree that when I see these guys
25:30telling me that, "Oh, you know,
25:32if only everybody will agree I'm a woman when I'm a man,
25:35if only everybody will agree that
25:39you're only hating me because I'm Black
25:41even though I'm holding you up with a gun.
25:43You know, if only everybody will agree
25:44to support the lie that gives me self-respect,
25:48that lie will become the truth."
25:50You know, you're sad for them,
25:52but you're not even tempted to pretend to agree
25:55and that's just liberating.
25:57It's free.
25:58- So how do we connect
25:59some of what you just said right there to politics?
26:02'Cause as you were saying it, I was thinking,
26:04"Man, you know?"
26:05And I've thought this many times
26:06when I was on tour with Jordan that that rough message
26:09basically is what we have to get across to people
26:12to live more flourishing lives,
26:13and yet we're arguing about 3.5 trillion equals zero
26:17in boys or girls and all of those things,
26:19like we're not even doing like a semi good job
26:22of connecting, like meaning to politics.
26:25And that seems to me- - Yeah.
26:27- to be the biggest problem right now.
26:29- Man, I could not agree with you more.
26:31And I think the left does do this.
26:34They just do it for bad ideas.
26:36You know, the left does make a moral,
26:38we're always sitting around with a pointer saying,
26:40"You'll make much more money."
26:41And this Ayn Rand mentality
26:44where we think money is everything is so untrue
26:47and it's left are, the people who wanna follow us empty
26:50and wandering,
26:51and the left comes along and says, "No, it's right.
26:54It's good to believe these stupid things
26:56that we're telling you."
26:58To me, the connection with politics,
27:01and there's no, I don't believe there's Christian politics.
27:04I believe that a Christian person can be
27:05in a range of politics as long as he's not oppressive
27:08and dishonest and evil.
27:11He can have a range of politics.
27:13But to me, at the core of Christianity
27:15is something I call the great speculation.
27:18And the great speculation is this;
27:20that your inner life is as important to you
27:22as mine is to me.
27:24That's the great speculation.
27:25And that's true whether you're a garbage man,
27:27whether you're a homemaker, whether you're a dancer, singer,
27:30whatever you are, the speculation is that
27:33your inner life is as important to you
27:35and as real to you and as urgent to you as mine is to me.
27:39And once you come to that, once you take that guess,
27:43first of all, you begin to see that it's true.
27:45You begin to realize
27:46that people have a right to be left alone.
27:48They have a right to live out the meaning of their lives,
27:51you know?
27:52And when they do that, when you commit to that,
27:56then you want them to be free.
27:57And when you want them to be free, you start to think,
27:59"Well, what are the conditions of freedom?"
28:01You know, obviously, some of the conditions of freedom are,
28:04you know, have to do with morality.
28:05You can't murder people.
28:06You can't steal from people.
28:08You can't defraud them.
28:10You can't lie about them.
28:11Those are the 10 commandments.
28:12That's where they come in.
28:13You know, these are things that,
28:15these are rules that are not made so you'll be a nice guy.
28:18You know, like don't do that or we'll punish you.
28:20That's not why they're made.
28:21They're made to liberate you so that you can be free.
28:24Every one of the founders, John Adams said it best,
28:27but every one of the founders said,
28:28"This is a constitution for a moral and religious people."
28:31Not just moral, but a moral and religious people.
28:34And the reason for that is you start to understand
28:36that the other guy's freedom is as important to him,
28:39you know, as yours is.
28:41Sometimes I hear people talking and they'll say,
28:44"Well..."
28:45You know, for instance, Black Lives Matter.
28:48Black Lives Matter has cost thousands of Black lives.
28:50It's gotten thousands of Black people killed.
28:52Their attacks on the police
28:54have made the Black neighborhoods more unsafe.
28:56Children are being shot by random gunmen.
28:58It's a nightmare what they've done.
29:00And yet they continue to do it
29:02because they have an idea that it's good.
29:06If for a moment it occurred to them
29:08that these actual Black lives
29:11that they are ending with their policies
29:13are just as important to the people who have them
29:16as their life is to them,
29:17maybe their policies would start to seem
29:20less important to them.
29:22And without religion, without that great speculation,
29:25which is a religious idea,
29:26the idea that your neighbors is worthy of love as you are,
29:30without that speculation,
29:32it's so easy to get involved in your ideas and the goodness,
29:37you know, "Oh yes, we must bring justice.
29:39And therefore, we're gonna kill who gets in our way."
29:43Which is part of, that's another part of Karl Marx.
29:45He basically said, "Yes, terror and killing is fine
29:48as long as you get to the place you have to get."
29:50- So do you think then, to that end,
29:51that people are believers, whether they believe it or not?
29:55I think that's an idea
29:56that Jordan's been talking a lot about lately
29:58and I've sort of come to that conclusion
29:59that you end up saying, "No, no, I'm purely secular.
30:02I just believe in this
30:03and we can just order society this way."
30:05But that in and of itself is a type of belief
30:08that's then driving your decisions.
30:11- Right, because this is the power of narrative.
30:13This is another thing the left knows about more than us.
30:15You know, it's like we live in a time
30:18when it's uncouth to say,
30:23"Well, you know, let's see what God's, let's consult God.
30:26Let's see what God's will is.
30:28Let's see if this is a demonic path we're saying."
30:30We don't say those things anymore.
30:32And there's a good reason for it,
30:35but that good reason has become outdated.
30:37The good reason is science.
30:38You know, when lightning used to strike,
30:41they used to think that demons were sending the lightening
30:43so they would ring the church bells
30:45to chase the lightning away.
30:47That meant the monk had to climb up (laughs)
30:49to the highest part of the church and ring the bell.
30:51And of course, he'd be hit by lightning and killed, right?
30:53And when Benjamin Franklin put a lightning rod
30:56on top of the steeple, it was much safer,
30:59but it also was kind of a symbol
31:01of a materialistic philosophy
31:03that was going to replace the spiritual philosophy.
31:05And now, it's actually called the science.
31:07That's a different word to the Wizard of Oz.
31:09You know, it's like-
31:10- Yeah. - 'cause they come and worship
31:11the science.
31:13For a while, it made sense for people to say,
31:16"Oh, all of our speculations about demons,
31:20and about supernatural,
31:21and all these words that we don't like to use anymore,
31:23we're all wrong."
31:24But that's not true anymore.
31:26Science has now progressed to a point
31:27where we see it's not actually as mechanical
31:29as we thought it's gonna be.
31:30It's kind of weird.
31:31And it shouldn't be here.
31:33It looks, by logic, like life shouldn't be here,
31:36creation shouldn't be here,
31:38we shouldn't be able to understand creation,
31:40and all those things are true.
31:42And so it's time we stopped doing that
31:44because you're, I think you're absolutely right.
31:46People believe whether they wanna believe or not.
31:49And it's one of the reasons
31:50that when you let go of that belief,
31:51people become evil, you know?
31:53They start to teach children
31:55to be willing victims of pedophilia,
31:59they start to teach you about race.
32:00Those are wicked things to do.
32:02As you know, those are wicked things to do
32:04because they've let go of that sovereign good
32:06that is the living God.
32:08And in a way, if you listen to the way we talk,
32:13we don't even say, "I was happy" anymore.
32:15We say, "I had an adrenaline rush."
32:17We use these materialist terms all the time.
32:20We don't say, "Oh, that's right,"
32:22because it's obviously right.
32:26We always have these kind of evolutionary explanations,
32:28and we ask what is somebody's game theory also,
32:31none of which makes any sense by the way,
32:32but leave that, be that as it may,
32:34we eat, we're all materialists.
32:36And so,
32:38and yet we know we don't live in a materialist world.
32:40We sense it, we feel it,
32:42we're born with the knowledge of it.
32:44Like I said, there's no evolutionary reason
32:46why we should know our fathers should be just, you know?
32:49But why do we expect our fathers to be just?
32:52And yet when they are not just,
32:53we know they have failed at some essential task.
32:57So we all know it,
32:59but we have gotten caught up in this narrative,
33:01this materialist narrative that I think is out of date.
33:04I just think,
33:06I think people who are living in the 20th century
33:07to really, and in the 21st century,
33:10a lot of scientific paths have shown
33:13that they can't explain this
33:15without a consciousness coming first.
33:17The only thing they have to admit
33:19is that consciousness comes before matter,
33:21and I think that's an obvious truth.
33:23- You're saying I shouldn't light my Anthony Fauci candle
33:26every night before bed? (Andrew laughs)
33:28Is that what you're telling me?
33:29He's not some sort of saint, that man?
33:31The highest paid person
33:33in the federal government? - If you just want to watch it
33:34burn and melt,
33:34(Andrew laughs)
33:36I can understand why you might wanna just watch it melt,
33:38you know, it's like that's for the dogs. (laughs)
33:40- But what does it also, what does that tell you though
33:42about the psychological makeup, I suppose,
33:45of groups where it's like we see these people
33:48that get so much wrong consistently,
33:52and now, we have the video footage to prove it.
33:55Fauci saying one thing about masks publicly,
33:57another thing to his friend about,
33:59"Oh no, you can go on vacation and don't worry about masks
34:01'cause you'll touch your face more,"
34:03or the vaccines mean we're gonna open up.
34:05Now, they don't really work and you still can transmit.
34:07Everybody knows the million examples that I can use here,
34:10but a certain percentage of people keep going to it.
34:14They keep going, "Oh, well I forgot it."
34:16I don't like it. Is it a memory issue?
34:18Is it like, what is it?
34:19What is it about humans?
34:22- You know, there's a line in (mumbles)
34:23and I can't quote it from memory,
34:26but the line is something like,
34:28"When you make people free, when you set people free,
34:31their first order of business
34:33is to find something to bow down to." (laughs)
34:36- Right. - I think,
34:37you know, we're made to love God.
34:38We are made to bow down to God.
34:39And I think that, you know,
34:42after a while, after you live the religious life a while,
34:45you start to realize that all your attachments to things
34:49and to people are pathways to God.
34:53You know, they're not, they're symbolic of the love of God.
34:57Your love for your father is love of God.
34:58Your love for your mother
35:00is the love of the feminine side of God.
35:01All these things that you're looking for,
35:02that people fail you in, are because they cannot be
35:06the perfect thing you're looking for beyond them.
35:09And once you attach yourself
35:10to that perfect thing beyond them,
35:11it becomes so much easier to love
35:13the imperfect people with their flaws
35:15and forgive them for the ways they can't be
35:18with they can never be.
35:20And so, you know, guys like Fauci are there
35:23because people are just desperate for that thing,
35:25and no one will give it to, and by the way,
35:27when I talk about this, when I talk about being religious,
35:30I think our churches have failed us utterly.
35:33You know, almost all of our churches have failed us utterly.
35:36So don't think that I'm saying,
35:37"Oh yeah, you gotta go down and follow that priest."
35:38I mean, personally, I think we should,
35:40I'm lucky I found a great new church that I love.
35:44But personally, I think a lot of people
35:45should just start to gather together in their homes
35:48and start from the beginning
35:49because our churches have really abandoned the plot.
35:52- So linking some of this stuff together,
35:54I just spoke a couple of weeks ago
35:55at the National Conservatism Conference
35:57and Thiel spoke- - Yeah.
35:58and Ted Cruz and J.D. Vance.
36:00It was a really great, sort of powerhouse event.
36:03And what they were really trying to do there is figure out
36:06how conservatism, in many ways,
36:09can link back to all the stuff we're talking about here
36:11and link back to belief,
36:13but then will there be room for the outsiders,
36:16for the people that are not religious or for the gay people?
36:19And there was a very, I think the panel of the entire thing
36:22was me and Douglas Murray, we both happened to be gay,
36:25speaking with Sohrab Ahmari,
36:27who of course, I'm sure you know,
36:28Catholic thinker and author- - Yeah.
36:31- and Yoram Hazony, Orthodox Jew,
36:34trying to figure out, can this thing fit?
36:36Can we fit this thing together?
36:38Now, I'm curious because you're talking about faith
36:39and all of this stuff, your son, Spencer,
36:41who's a good friend of mine,
36:42who I think is like one of the all-stars
36:44of like the future conservative movement-
36:46- Absolutely. - he happens to be gay,
36:49it does not matter to me,
36:51but as you're talking about this,
36:53as a father and then as a political communicator,
36:56how do you piece all of this stuff together?
36:59I know you guys have discussed it publicly once or twice-
37:01- Yeah, yeah, no, and my opinion of this has never changed.
37:05(Andrew laughs)
37:06My father explained this to me once
37:08when we went to a party when I was a little kid
37:10and I saw a gay couple and he explained it to me
37:12and in those days,
37:13saying that this was a psychological disorder
37:15was the liberal point of view.
37:17That was the accepting point of view.
37:18And that's what he said to me.
37:19And I remember shrugging, saying,
37:21"They're not hurting anybody."
37:22(Dave and Andrew laughs)
37:23And I still feel that way, but I actually,
37:27I feel that God is a lot more hilarious
37:31and creative than we think he is.
37:33And a lot of the kind of pinched, mean,
37:37you know, like you have to do what I tell you to do,
37:39is not really in the gospels.
37:42And I know people get so ticked at me when I say this,
37:45but it really isn't.
37:46And there's a much greater sense of like abundance of beauty
37:50and abundance of creation.
37:52I think we need, it is,
37:54it helps political people to talk about a vertical
37:59world of good and evil.
38:01But in fact, there is good and evil.
38:03There is such a thing as good and evil,
38:05and there is that vertical axis.
38:06But there's also a horizontal axis
38:08of centrality and outwardness.
38:12And I, for instance, I'm an artist.
38:14I've lived my life as a novelist and artist.
38:17I'm not at the center.
38:18You know, if your a garbage man disappeared,
38:20you would miss him
38:21way, way, way (Dave laughs)
38:22before you missed me.
38:23I'm here to serve him.
38:25I'm here to entertain him, to beautify his life,
38:26to beautify the life of ordinary people
38:29or central people, I should call them,
38:31'cause they're not ordinary, but central people.
38:34And I feel this way about sexuality too.
38:36I think the center of human life
38:37is a man and a woman having children.
38:39I think if without that, you know, forgive me,
38:41but without that, you don't have a world.
38:44You don't have that central kind of polarity.
38:48- Yeah, I get it.
38:49I don't disagree. - That human beings, yeah.
38:50- I don't disagree. - Right.
38:52But just because something is not at that center,
38:53doesn't mean it's not beautiful.
38:55And it doesn't mean it's not part of creation.
38:56And this is one of the things, I mean, you look around.
38:58One of the things about Spencer's,
39:00I knew when he was three years old, I started to think,
39:02"Ah, this kid could very well be gay,
39:04and I'm going to teach him to be a man
39:08because I think he should be a man."
39:10And I hope I did,
39:11and I think I actually believe he's a wonderful man.
39:13He's a terrific man, but that was who he was,
39:16and that was clearly who he had been born to be.
39:19And so I think that like a little bit of just,
39:21you know, I really do believe
39:23that Jesus wants us to blow the hinges
39:25off the doors of our hearts.
39:27You know, just like, okay, are you hurting anybody?
39:30Are you preaching evil? Are you're polluting us?
39:32Are you corrupting us?
39:33Or are you living in love and going forward with whatever,
39:36you know, you have problems, I have problems,
39:39all God's children got problems.
39:40You know, that's really the thing that unites us.
39:43And so I think if we could remember as conservatives
39:46that there is this horizontal axis
39:49and we have a right to prioritize
39:53mommy and daddy families, we have a right to say,
39:56"Yes, that's what's at the center, we need them,"
39:57just like we have a right to prioritize working people,
40:00people who do certain things, doctors,
40:03people who do certain things that are essential
40:05to human life.
40:06But that does not mean we should not live in love
40:08and appreciate the beauty of other kinds of things
40:11that are not central, like art.
40:14Again, you know, if the great violinist disappears,
40:18you're gonna miss your carpenter.
40:21You're gonna miss the lady who was cleaning your house
40:23before you miss the great violinist.
40:25He's not at the center of things, but he's beautiful.
40:27He makes life worth living, you know?
40:29And I just, that is the attitude that I really do have.
40:33That's not a put on attitude, it's not a philosophy.
40:36That's the way I actually feel.
40:37You know, I feel that life is a lot more beautiful
40:40when you live that way, and it makes evil putrid, you know?
40:46When you see how beautiful most people are, really,
40:48and most relationships are.
40:49And then when somebody comes along and says,
40:51"Oh, you should judge that person by the color of his skin."
40:54It is like a rank smell. (laughs)
40:57And so we need to,
40:59I think conservatives need to live a little bit.
41:01And you know what the funny thing is, Dave?
41:03You know, as Spencer is engaged to Josh, this wonderful guy,
41:06and he had a house party. - Yup, yup.
41:08- So I go to the house party and there's,
41:11you know, crazy gay people coming in.
41:13There's, Josh's relatives
41:14were all these kind of down-home Americans from the Midwest,
41:17and then there's all The Daily Wire guys were all these,
41:19you know, kind of some cigar-smoking guy,
41:22and they're all right-wing Republicans.
41:24Every one of them- - No, they can't.
41:25- is like a right-wing Republican.
41:26And I just thought, "You know, we live like this.
41:28Why shouldn't we think like this?"
41:30They don't believe what you don't believe.
41:32If we love, some of these people who were there
41:35believe in a philosophical conversation
41:38that gay marriage is the end of Western civilization
41:40as we know it, but they were there.
41:42Why? Because they love Spencer.
41:43They love Josh.
41:44They want them to be happy.
41:46I think like, "Well, why not make that your philosophy?"
41:49You know, why not make the love,
41:51put the love at the center of your philosophy
41:53and stop sitting around in your head with ideas that,
41:56you know, may sound good and may fit together,
41:58but actually, you're not expressing
41:59that other part of yourself.
42:01- Well, that's the funny part
42:02because it's always the anonymous
42:03Twitter and YouTube commentators
42:05telling me how much you scary conservatives hate me.
42:08Meanwhile, we're breaking bread together
42:10and having a hell of a time. (Andrew laughs)
42:12And they're the ones in the name of tolerance and diversity,
42:15telling me how much you hate me.
42:16It's quite extraordinary. - It's amazing.
42:18- You kind of gotta get a credit, you know?
42:19(Andrew laughs)
42:22- Yes, they're very good at what they do.
42:24And to be fair, they own so much communication territory.
42:28It's a little easier for them than it is for us.
42:30We're always kind of struggling to get our voices heard.
42:32- Yeah, so as long as we're talking about art,
42:35I've got your new book here.
42:37And, you know, people in our world, in the political world,
42:40I don't think everyone knows
42:41that you've been a novelist for decades at this point.
42:43(Andrew laughs)
42:44How many books have you written?
42:46- It's over 30.
42:48Yeah, I've lost track.
42:50- I mean, that's, as someone that just finished my second,
42:52I don't know how you've possibly written 30.
42:54(Andrew laughs) It's pretty extreme.
42:55And you're writing novels also.
42:56So I mean like- - Yes.
42:57- this is heavy-duty stuff.
42:59You write a lot of mysteries.
43:02How did you get interested in all of this?
43:04And to some of the stuff,
43:06that stuff that you bring to the novels,
43:08does that move into the way you approach politics
43:10and culture and all that?
43:12- Yeah, I mean, a novel comes out of you.
43:15It's a vision, you know?
43:16And I loved,
43:18you know, when I was a kid,
43:20I didn't really have any male role models
43:21and I was desperate to find them.
43:24And I found them in writers
43:25and most of them were tough guy writers,
43:27guys like Ernest Hemingway.
43:29But essentially, the ones I really loved
43:32were the mystery, the tough guy mystery writer.
43:33So Dashiell Hammett, and especially Raymond Chandler
43:36with his kind of knight-like hero who,
43:40he sat down these mean streets,
43:42a man must go who is not himself mean.
43:45And that's where we get the phrase, down these mean streets.
43:47And I just loved that idea that the world was corrupt,
43:50but you were gonna walk through it just like this.
43:52You know, just with your eyes on the right.
43:54And you were gonna do that right.
43:55As a little kid, I just thought that's who I wanna be.
43:57And so those were the books that kind of inspired me.
43:59And as I became a writer,
44:01I kind of lost the track for a while in my troubled youth.
44:05But when I straightened my head out,
44:07I kind of came back to that
44:08and I consider myself as good as any mystery writer alive,
44:14and if I may plug the book- - Yeah.
44:17- Buy this book. - We'll both hold the book
44:19at the exact same time. - Yes. Yes.
44:21Because I will tell you, I had this book in my mind for,
44:25I have the last scene of this book in my mind for 25 years.
44:28- Wow. - And I could not
44:30build the story to get to that last scene.
44:33And I love Christmas,
44:35and I always wanted to write a Christmas story,
44:37and I always thought
44:39the problem with most Christmas stories are bad.
44:40You know, really only "A Christmas Carol"
44:42and it is a wonderful life or good Christmas stories.
44:44And the reason most of them are bad
44:46is they're about you finding something that you want.
44:48Finding love, or finding a home,
44:50or finding mom and dad or whatever.
44:52But Christmas is actually about sacrifice and about change.
44:56It's about what the Bible, they call metanoia,
44:59which is turning around and giving something away.
45:02You know, giving something that you love away
45:04in order to be free.
45:05And so I wanted to write that story
45:07and I had the scene in my mind, and I couldn't build a story
45:10that got honestly to that scene.
45:12So my friend Otto Penzler who is the great,
45:16he is the greatest American mystery editor.
45:19And we were in the pandemic
45:20and he was locked down in the middle of nowhere.
45:23He's like down in Connecticut,
45:24and he called me up and we were having these conversations,
45:27you know, I was kind of keeping him company.
45:28And he said, "When are you gonna write a Christmas book?"
45:33And I said, "Yeah."
45:34I said, "Would you publish it?"
45:36And he said, "Oh yeah, I'll publish a Christmas book."
45:38So I thought I gotta figure this book out.
45:41And I took two long walks.
45:43And at the end of the long walk, this little bell went off,
45:46and I thought, "That's the story."
45:48And it came out, I'm so happy with the way it came out.
45:51It's been, it was number 12 on Audible,
45:55and it was number 30 on Amazon.
45:57And the reviews have just been ecstatic.
45:59I mean, people are just like on the site,
46:02not people I know, they're just raving about it.
46:05And I have to say.
46:07I don't wanna oversell it, but I have to say this.
46:08(Dave laughs)
46:09We need, we need quality art-
46:12- Yes, we need stories. - On our side, you know?
46:14- Yeah. - Yes.
46:15Because we have so much right-wing can't
46:18and so much kind of foundering political propaganda
46:24and not enough, like just good stories
46:26that are imbued with our view of life,
46:29which is the kind of view of life
46:31that you and I have just been talking about
46:32through this whole interview.
46:34And I will stand by this book.
46:36I do not believe anyone is gonna read this book and say,
46:39"Wow, I got ripped off."
46:40I think you're gonna read this book
46:42and it just is a really good Christmas story.
46:44- Well, here's my commitment to you.
46:46I only got the book yesterday, so I have not read it yet,
46:49but I'm hopping on a plane tomorrow,
46:51tomorrow, two days to go to Nashville,
46:53and I'm gonna have dinner with your son,
46:54and I do most of my reading
46:55on the plane- - Excellent.
46:56- so I will start the book.
46:58I'm curious, you know, as someone that's only written
47:00or has only written two nonfiction books,
47:04when you're writing a mystery,
47:05do you have a freaking big whiteboard in front of you,
47:08really plotting all the twists and turns?
47:11Or are you just kind of figure it,
47:12you like know where you're going at the end
47:13and you just figure it out as you go?
47:16- No, there are some writers who actually,
47:20Ruth Rendell was one of them
47:21who actually right off the top of their heads.
47:23I outline everything.
47:24And sometimes the outline changes along the way.
47:26You know, when I see that a character won't do
47:29what I wanted him to do,
47:31I have to change the plot to accommodate the character.
47:33But if I know where I'm going,
47:36then I get the joy of writing.
47:37I hate outlining by the way, and it takes me weeks to do it,
47:39and it's just dull.
47:41It's the only part of my job I really find dull,
47:44but then I'm free to just write the book and create it,
47:47and that's what I really wanna be doing.
47:48So it's much easier that way.
47:50It always amazed me,
47:51but one of the thing about writers who don't outline,
47:53is they tend to write the same two or three books
47:55over and over again.
47:56And Ruth Rendell is a wonderful writer,
47:58but after you've read, I don't know, five of her books,
48:01you've kind of read her books, and like,
48:04I don't mean to knock her 'cause she is,
48:06some of her books are just wonderful,
48:07especially her Barbara Vine books,
48:08but I find if I outline, I can say,
48:11"Oh, I've done this before,"
48:12and throw it away and do something fresh and new, you know?
48:15And that's really been helpful to me
48:16and I like doing it that way.
48:18If you read this, if you do read it on the plane,
48:20you know, I trust you, I believe you.
48:21(Dave drowns out Andrew) - I will, I will.
48:23- But I hope you will say something online if you like it.
48:26(Dave laughs)
48:27- I will. (Andrew laughs)
48:28- I promise you, you will get,
48:30if it's good, you will get the Dave Rubin comment somewhere-
48:34- 'Cause for some reason- - on Amazon.
48:35- for some reason, people believe what you say. (laughs)
48:38- I'm wondering about it myself.
48:42Listen, before I let you go, anything else on your mind?
48:44I kind of didn't wanna do
48:45too much of the day-to-day politics.
48:46This is exactly- - Yeah.
48:47- what I wanted to do with you,
48:49because I feel like everyone's just going nuts with politics
48:51and COVID and everything else. - Yup.
48:53- Is there anything else that's just sort of been thinking,
48:55you know, you moved, life seems pretty good,
48:57you got a new book out, you seem happy, anything else?
49:01- It's a wonderful time for me,
49:03and I'm very grateful to have come this far
49:05and actually be doing what I'm doing
49:07and loving the people around me
49:09and loving the things that I'm doing is really,
49:11it really is great.
49:12And yeah, the only thing I would say is,
49:14I would just reiterate what I said before, you know?
49:16That like we must, we cannot be afraid.
49:20Almost everything the left does
49:21is geared toward making us afraid.
49:23You know, wear a mask, get a vaccine, wear two masks,
49:26wear six masks, you know?
49:27Put a mask on your children, give your children a vaccine.
49:30Everything is about being afraid.
49:31And not only that, but they've made fear a virtue.
49:35What do you mean you're not afraid of climate change?
49:37Are you a denier? You must be a denier.
49:39You know, everything is about fear.
49:41And the reason for that,
49:43you know, C.S. Lewis, the great Christian apologist,
49:45he wrote about this.
49:46He said that the devil wants you to be afraid because fear,
49:49courage is the centerpiece of all virtue.
49:52You cannot be virtuous without courage.
49:55And this is a moment,
49:56I won't lie, this is one of the worst moments
49:59in American culture I have ever seen.
50:01Our art stinks, our music stinks,
50:02our movie stinks, our TV stinks,
50:04most, except for mine, many of our novel stink. (laughs)
50:07But, and I think the reason for that
50:09is we have gutted our belief system
50:11of everything worthwhile, and so people can't create art.
50:15If we are not afraid,
50:18we will pass through this into a better time.
50:20There is simply no question.
50:22If we're afraid, and if we surrender,
50:23and if we say yes or no, okay, I won't say anything.
50:27Please don't call me racist.
50:29If we keep apologizing,
50:30like so much of these canceled fools,
50:32they cancel you for something and they say,
50:34"Oh, I'm so sorry, I wanna be a better person."
50:36And then they just devour you, you know?
50:38It's like blood in the water.
50:39I am actually very hopeful.
50:41I think we have come to the end of something.
50:43And it's the end of the post-war era,
50:45it's the end of a post-war order.
50:47We need new ideas,
50:49and I think there are people out there who are coming,
50:50Spencer, one of them coming along with new ideas,
50:53new ways of thinking about things.
50:55And I'm actually very hopeful,
50:57but we have to start with the courage
50:59of all those people I was talking about, who are central.
51:02They have to have courage.
51:03It can't just be the outline heroes,
51:05it's gotta be the people at the center who starts to say,
51:07"You know what? We're gonna speak the truth.
51:09Even if you torment us."
51:12- Klavan you finish an interview
51:14like you know where it's going,
51:16just like a fine novelist would.
51:19I look forward to you having whiskey
51:22and me having tequila in person, one of these days,
51:26probably not in this town. - You got it.
51:28(Andrew laughs)
51:29You gotta get out of there and I can't wait to see you.
51:32I always, one thing I hate about the media
51:34is I only see my friends on camera.
51:36(Andrew laughs)
51:38- The book is "When Christmas Comes."
51:40I'm gonna read it.
51:41And I, you know what I'm gonna do?
51:42I'm gonna read it.
51:43And whether I love it or hate it, or somewhere in between,
51:46I will send you my comment before I post it,
51:49so that you can make- - All right.
51:50- your argument.
51:51If I don't like it, you can push back.
51:53If I like it too much,
51:55I know you wouldn't want people to think
51:56that I'm like doing you a favor here,
51:58so we'll figure it out.
52:00(Andrew laughs)
52:01- I know you'll tell the truth.
52:03- Good seeing you, my friend.
52:05- It's great to see you, Dave.
52:06- If you're looking for more honest
52:07and thoughtful conversations about politics
52:09instead of nonstop yelling, check out our politics playlist.
52:12And if you wanna watch full interviews
52:14on a variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist,
52:17all right over here.
52:19And to get notified of all future videos,
52:20be sure to subscribe and click the notification bell.

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