Shakespeare and the Poet's Vision

This summer, Fanool is the best place to bet on goals. Including equalizers. Uhh Foies? Y, Pters. Every goal is worth more on fandool. So let there be goals. You customers get three hundred fiftyteen bonus bets guaranteed when you bet five dollars for seven days. twenty one plus in present and select dates. First online real money wager only minimum five dollar wager required for seven consecutive days, five dollarars first deposit required. Bonus issued as n withdrawable bonus bets, which expiireres seven days after receipt restrictions applies, see full terms at fan dou dot com slash sportsbook Gambling problem, call one eight hundred gambler or one eight hundred My reset This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a fifty page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online makes sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responssees set upp required compatibility and availability varies eighteen plus It now seems certain that the war in Iran is either coming to an end or going on forever, or won or lost, or a disaster or a major triumph. Despite the fog of war, it is becoming clear that either we've accomplished our goals or failed to and have made the situation better or worse and have a lot to look forward to or so much to fear that we should hide in the cornfields, hoping the aliens come back and take us someplace safe One thing at least is obvious, and that is that the Iranian regime has been destroyed or strengthened, and that the oppressive anti American thugs who have terrified the Middle East for so long have been wiped out or have completely defeated us and are now running the United States or at least the Democrat Party Major news outlets that run the gamut from the left to the far left, to the so far left that you just sit there thinking, what the hell is wrong with these people are now reporting with complete assurance that the Trump administration is in serious negotiations, either with Iran's latest suupreme leader or just some guy selling falafels from a hand truck in Tran The major outlets say these negotiations are certain to result in a deal that is a complete disaster for the United States, according to a highly placed military source who wishes to remain anonymous but looks suspiciously like Coreory Booker, dressed up in an army hat and eaulettes and some leather underpants with Spartacus embroidered on the crotch. On right leaning outlets, analysts and commentators and analysts analyzing commentators commenting on analysts thoughtfully think that President Trump should make a good deal instead of a bad deal, but that he should not risk renewing hostilities unless he launches an invasion, in which case he should avoid putting boots on the ground because you can't really accomplish much with a bunch of boots lying around on the ground Other right wing commentators commenting on those analysts analyzing commentators talking to their analysts say President Trump must bring down gas prices by showing the Iranians the scary frowny face he has. Otherwise the midterms will be such a disaster that there won't be enough Republicans left in the Senate to stand around waiting for John Thoune to do something Even if it's just spit a pumpkin seed shell in a spatoon, so they know he's still alive Now, obviously, if you watch the news on TV, you can see there are many questions still unanswered and many answers that should be questions that are still unanswered because no one knows the answers and even the questions. And they're mostly just filling time until the next advertisement for some new medicine that will clear up your skin Popon ill To be fair, it can be very difficult in a situation like this for journalists to get the facts, especially if the journalists are gormless imbeciiles who wouldn't know a fact if it bit them on the ass and left teeth marks on their buttocks that spell the word fact, which let's face it, describes ninety eight percent of the journalists in the country, while the other two percent are both Brett Bare However Here at the Daily Wire Our journalists have been able to obtain some of the secret communications concerning the war. In a conciliatory letter written in the Blood of Innocence, the Iranians have explained their grievances to President Trump, saying, quote Why can't you be more like that wimpy black guy? We liked him. He gave us lots of money and left us alone to build nuclear weapons so we could kill everyone in accordance with the demands of our religion. if you would just act like that Oama or banana or whatever his name was, the whole war thing would be over, and Americans could go back to watching cat videos until we wipe their country off the face of the earth The Trump administration reacted angrily to the Iranian demands until they realized the letter had come from an assisted living facility in Delaware and was signed by Autopan Love Joe Ter. I'm Andrew Clleavven, and this is the Andrew Claven S showow All right, we are back laughing our way through the fall of the Republic. I don't even know why you're watching this when you could be watching the new Clavens on the culture, which is just out. It came out yesterday. This is my show with Spencer Claven. So it's two and a half times better than this one. And it' this time, I will be defending my claim that video games have lousy stories, almost all of them and video games and good stories don't actually go together and we'll be debating such games as Claire Obscure Expedition thirty three, which we both loved. It's a very cool discussion. You should turn it on after you watch the show. And it's the fourth of the six that we're contracted for. So if you like it, tell your friends, watch it yourself a hundred times So that they'll renew it and we'll do another six if we can. Also, my new Cameron Winter mystery novel, F Me Nowhere. Find Me Nowhere is now available for pre order. Cameron Winter is trying to get his life together. He's fallen in love, he's enjoying his work and he's coming to the end of his therapy. and then suddenly his old boss, the recruiter, shows up and has a job for him in a dying Pennsylvania town where everyone wants them dead. It's called findind me nowhere, preordder yourour copy at dailywire. com slash Caven. Sign copies are also available only at the Dailywire shop. go to dailywire. com slash Caven today If you have a comment, We want to hear it, not really, but we'll pretend we want to hear it. Leave it wherever you are. If you're watching on Daily Wire plus as you should be or on YouTube or just lying in the gutter, you know dreaming that you're watching it, leeave a comment in the gutter because we're there all the time. So we will pick it up there and read it on the show if it is sufficiently despicable. T Today's comment comes from Matilda Ray One day my kids saw a picture of a bald guy with glasses and one of them askasksed, Is that a picture of the news guy you watch who laughs at his own jokes I aspire, then Matilda says, I aspire to someday say something funny enough to crack myself up. Yeah, actually, there are very few people who can make me laugh as hard as that, but I just happen to be one of them. so your kid is a smart kid and tell him you know send them to his room or something like that. All right, let's get to today's episode, Can God B This is an episode about has a lot to do with the popeess encyclical. We on the right, including me, believe a lot of our problems stem from a loss of faith in God But reading the new Pope's first Ecyclical on AI made me wonder about that. you know I had very complicated feelings about it. I didn't hate it, but I had a lot of things to say about it. So we'll think that over and we'll talk about the fact that mankind is dying, which ought to be the big news story every single day. And we're going to turn to Shakespeare for some of the most shocking and brilliant insights on race, culture and religion that you're not allowed to say but that are entirely true One of the strange things about getting older is realizing how much of adulthood is just quietly carrying responsibility for other people. When you're young, you think mostly about your own future, Then suddenly you've got a wife, you got kids, people depending on you and you start understanding that your life isn't entirely your own anymore I mean, this is something I remember bringing home my first job, my daughter and thinking, oh my God, nobody feeds this kid unless I feed this kid. Now nobody likes thinking about worst case scenarios. I certainly don't. But one of the more loving things you can do is make sure your family is going to eat even if something happens to you. That's why so many people are getting life insurance through ethos. Ethhos makes getting life insurance fast and easy, one hundred percent online. You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes and get same day coverage. There's no medical exam You just answer a few simple health questions online. You can get up to three million dollars in coverage and some policies are as low as thirty dollars a month Because the truth is, when you care about people, you plan for the future. Even the parts of the future you hope won't happen. Take ten minutes to get covered today with life insurance through ethos. G your free quote at ethos d. com slash Caven. That's e th os d. com slash claven. Application times may vary, rates may vary, but there'll always be only one way to spell Claven. It's KLA AM Chapter one Popular Popeliio fourte, he put out an encyclical, which is an important papal letter, but it's not part of his speaking from the magisterium, so even Catholics don't regard it as infallible. And as you know, I don't consider any human being infallible about anything. We have a very smart letter about that on Claven Klapbacks about what that means for reading scripture, and we'll get to that at the end of the show. But let me set this up to begin with. If you listen to the show that I believe that many of our troubles have to do with the slow loss of Christian faith since the fifteen hundreds, which is now basically Almost bottomed out. I agree with the madman, the famous madman in Nietzsche who says God is dead and points out that once you kill God, the whole framework of Western civilization collapses and human beings have to become like go's deciding good and evil. And Nietzsche is not he's down with that. He's not a believer and he just thinks that this superman has to come forward and set up a new morality instead of the old sl what he called the slave morality of Christianity. But I am a believer and I think it's a civilization ending disaster. and it reenacts, essentially the first sin. It reenacts the sin of the Garden Eaten where they tried to be like God knowing good and evil. And so I think it says every time it happens, it just causes civilizations to fall The reason I think it's the source of so many of our political problems is that all things the false things that the left says, men can become women or the government should seize your money and redistribute it and we willll do it better. Gay marriage and straight marriage are equal kinds of marriages. All that is potentially true if there is no God, but there is a God. so it's all false and it causes all this problem. It's proably false. Socialism fails everywhere it goes and people can't change sex and so on It's not wrong to think, hey, if we could restore Christian faith see a lot clearer and our reason would be back on track and we wouldn't destroy ourselves as we're doing since people aren't having babies and mankind is dying out, and we do a lot better But now I read the Pope's encyclical. It's called Magnifica Humanitas, mankind in all its glory. And the first thing I have to say about it is it's forty thousand words, it's more than forty thousand words, which is a small it's like a novella. It's not a small novella. It's actually half a book So like everyone else, I had to speedread it, which I can do, but I'm sure I missed stuff. and I'm pretty sure most of the other people commenting on it didn't read it at all after even speed reading it, it seems to me they hadn't read it. The Ecyclical starts out on this long explanation of Catholic social teaching And it's really encouraging. I'm reading this part and I'm going like, go Leo, this is really good. It refers back to the encyclical of the last Leo, the thirteenth, which was called Rim Novarum, the New thingsings. And it was very clear on where the church stood on things like socialism. This is what the last Leo said. He said socialists Working on the poor man's envy of the rich are striving to do away with private property and contend that individual possession should become the common property of all to be administered by the state or by municipal bodies. But if their contention were carried into effect, the working man himself would be among the first to suffer, and they are moreover emphatically unjust where they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the state, and create utter confusion in the community. So there is the Vatican channeling Benhapiro. I mean, that's basically what we believe. And this Leo Lo the Fe speaks with great love for that encyclical. and he confirms the church's policy ofarity subsidiarity his definition the principle according to which the role of individuals, families, and local communities and intermediary organizations should not be supplanted by higher level authorities. I think that that is what every conservative American believes. I think it's what most Americans believe. And he says a lot of other things that remind us how much wisdom there is in Catholic thought. because one of the great things about Catholic thought in the middle Ages is they They observed reality and they've subtly changed things theseese Catholics think they've never changed their opinions. It's just not true. They've subtly changed things to fit with reality so that they weren't just saying stuff out of the top of their heads. And he points out that the state and the church have their separate spheres of action. and he also points out things that conservatives too often forget that efficiency and profit are not the only way to judge addvances, we also have to think about our humanity, preserving our humanity and taking care of the poor. I mean this is why you know I can't stand Ain Rand and that kind of I don't know, overbearing capitalism that thinks the market is everything. you know, I'm reading this and I'm thinking, yes This is what I'm talking about. This is why believing in God brings you back on track. It brings you nuanced thought and not the kind of stupid Ain Ran thought where you the successful people are all the good guys and the bad guys are all the government and all this stuff is kind of nonsense. And you know it's stuff that libertarians and super capitalists don't say But also socialists don't say it all. So right through the introductory stuff that's just a kind of explanation of Catholic social teaching, I'm thinking, this confirms me in all my thinking about how we need God Then he gets down to specifics about AI and the air just comes out of the balloon And the thought that went through my head, you know, I'm a fan of this Wall Street journal writer Barton Swain. and he said the exact same thing in his Thursday column, but it went through my head too. I thought of Luke six hundred twenty six where Jesus says, Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets. Now I wouldn't know what it's like to have all men speaking well That would be an entirely different life for me. but if you think about the most powerful, the richest, the most unreligious, the backroom dealing influencers who kind of want to run the world, the George Soros global elite who want guaranteed income socialism for the poor with endless wealth for the rich. that's so they wontriot against the rich who have all the money They want no borders and totally free trade and international agencies to govern us replacing nation states. They would love what the Pope said. I mean, everything he said was with them. The New York Times who thinks abortion should be a sacrament and homosexuality should replace all that nasty male, female stuff, which is just too icky. suuddenly they read this and they became Catholic Oh for all its sweeping moral force, this is the New York Times. For all its sweeping moral force, Magnifica Humanitas is a practical document showing how Leo is focused on pastoral care for the church's hundreds of millions of families. Now, I read that in the New York Times. If I'm Pope Leo IX, I'm going like,uh. Maybe I made a mistake here. know, whyy do they feel that way? Because he calls for government regulation of AI before AI gets started, slow it down. dial it back, make sure no one gets fired, like make sure they get trained in all this stuff. And he calls for the United Nations to be involved. This was the part. He said this is a quote. He says international organizations, particularly the United Nations, are essential instruments for promoting a civilization of love. And I thought like, dude Sorry, get out of the Vatican more often and walk around because that just is not true. And he does a lot of this stuff that I hate in all religion and all religion has it, these vague pieties, you know, of the essential worth of every human being. Well, yeah, of course, every human being is essentially wor worthy in terms of being made in the image of God, but some human beings suck and have to be killed so that better human beings can live, you know? someome societies you know, societies have to vet incoming strangers. The Bible says, welcome the stranger. It doesn't say open your border. Leo says AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess economic resources, expertise and access to data, That's true of every advance, every advance amplifies the power and the wealth of the people who bring the advance, but ultimately, if it truly is an advance, it raises all ships. I mean, I think you know The poorest person in America today is eating as well as the pharaohs. I mean that you know that when I say the poorest person, I mean, the poorest working person or the poorest sane person is you know you can walk into a seven and eleven and get better food than Pharaoh ate. thingsings do Capitalism and advances do lift all boats eventually. Pope goes on, while AI promises to boost productivity byy taking over mundane tasks, it frequently forces workers to adapt to the speed and machine demands of robots more than ever. in the age of AI and robotics, It is no longer possible to rely solely on the invisible hand et Well, you know this is wrong in so many different ways. First of all, we don't rely on the market. We have all kinds of regulations. most of them make things worse, even the ones that are intended to make things better. And the invisible hand of the market is pretty good about value. But yes, there do have to be regulations, protecting workers, protecting the weak, protecting the poor, all for it. But the way you do that is you wait and find out what's going to go wrong The Pope does is he just accepts all of the panicked you know, looking forward of experts looking for clicks, you know, saying, oh, AI, it's going to replace human beings. It's, you know, there won't be any work and all this stuff. I'm not so sure. Even Peter Thial, who's very, very smart when it comes to talking about business, you know, he He says this is a tool and it's only going to work if people use it. And I agree with that. I don't think it's going to be as much so far it's already not as much as they keep telling it's going to be. But who knows? I mean, I just think that You wait and you find out what the problems are going to be and then you regulate against those problems if you need to. The thing is all of this stuff, the idea that we are going to step back and not develop this powerful thing that China is going to develop. They say that China and America are going to start negotiating ways of controlling AI. But I don't trust China as far as I can throw them. And I just think eventually we are going to have to keep up with our enemies. And you know, here's the thing about the world on an international level Bad ideas are more imperialist than good ideas. okay? The Soviets were more imperialist than the United States ever was, even when we were expanding over this continent through manifest destiny. we were never as imperialist as the Soviets were who wanted to take over the world you know Transgender people are more violent than ordinary people The left is more violent than the right, The far right is more violent than the center right, because if your ideas don't work, you can't keep arguing in favor of them. You have to force everybody to pretend to agree. And that's why they conquer more people. That's why they kill more people. That's why they silence more people. Bad ideas are aggressively on the march. So good ideas have to be on the march as well in different ways, in less aggressive, less violent ways, but you have to argue for them, you have to make sure they're not shut down, you have to make sure they're not conquered. We are going to have to use AI in war to defend ourselves against China who is willing to use it in war because they have a bad idea that they want to impose on the entire world. and we just want to stay free. So instead of hysterical predictions, you know you have to wait again until Problems pop up and then and then start to regulate as it comes up and in the most realistic way, dealing with the way people are. That's the path of free men, let industry rise and then deal with problems as they rise with the lightest regulation possible. So I'm reading this document And really I'm trying to wonder, is God as much of an impediment to thought as all these other stupid things like, you know, socialism and transgenderism? And it seems to me religion allows people to say unrealistic things under the guise of piety. And this guy James Telor Rico, who's running for Senate. He's a really sinister character and you know, people watching this. he could win, you know, I mean, I don't I don't think he will, but you have to keep an eye on them because You know Texas is a state with a lot of new people who've moved there and we don't yet know how they vote. They don't have to register according to party in Texas. So we don't really know how they're going to vote. So Taler Rico is a genu end danger. And here just as an example, here he is rationalizing heavenly consent for the destruction of unborn children before God comes over Mary and we have the incarnation God asks for Mary's consent which is remarkable. I mean, go back and read this in Luke. I mean, The angel comes down and asks Mary If this is something she wants to do, and she says, if it is God's will, let it be done. let it be Let it happen So to me, that is an affirmation and one of our most central stories that Creation has to be done with consent You cannot force someone to create. Creation is one of the most sacred acts that that we engage in as human beings But that has to be done with consent, It has to be done with freedom and And to me, that is absolutely consistent with the ministry and life and death of Jesus. And so he that's his argument for abortion. Now, first of all, everything he said was untrue God doesn't ask for Mary's consent. God by basically informs her that she's won the lottery of heaven. She comes and says, this is what is going to happen to you. And she consents, she consents to it, which is, I guess an argument against rape. I mean, you, that it might be, but it's certainly not an argument for killing a baby once it is alive. And the reason I bring this up because on a much less horrifying level, much less horrifying, The Pope does something kind of similar. He starts off this encyclical by saying humanity created by God in all its grandnder, That's the title of the thing is today facing a pivotal choice either to construct a new tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. And when he's talking about that, what he means is as opposed to Babel, which is trying to replace God, trying to build a tower to heaven. He's talking about rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile after the Jews were carried off to Babylon, finally King Cyrus lets them come back and a small remnant comes back and they start to rebuild the city. and he's saying they did that in kind of a collaborative way. But he leaves something out of that is that very shortly after that wall was built, The Jews, first of all, they reestablished the law by reading the Holy books again. I think I'm not sure if it was Deuteronomy, they were Lviticus, they were reing theoly books again. So they re established the law that made them the Jews. And then after the laall was built forced everybody who had married foreign wives while they were in Babylon and had foreign children and Gentile children. They forced them to divorce them and get rid of them, to send the children and the wives away. was It was quite brutal, you know, quite a brutal thing to do, but they wanted to purify the race again. and the culture, and they didn't want them to be like Solomon who had a thousand wives and was corrupted by his foreign wives. So that's a very harsh thing to do, but very realistic. If you're going to be the Jews, you've got to be the Jews, right? And if you're going to be America, you've got to be America. We have a sufficiently open system where You don't have to be a certain race to be America. You don't be American. You don't even have to be a certain religion, but you have to buy in to the things that we are doing and you have to buy into our Cstitution and our decclaration, especially, I think the Dlaration, if you are going to be America. So it's like, you know peopleeople who built it rebuilt Jerusalem may have worked in tandem together, but not in tandem with the world. And they were not talking about, o, everybody's worthwhile. No, they was saying get rid of the wives, get rid of the foreign children. you know we're doing this on our own. know, I've said before that Christianity is not a governing theory. We have to care for the poor, but you can't care for the poor by taking other people's money. Nowhere in the gospels or anywhere else does it say care you know He says, give all your money. Jesus says to one man, give all your money to the poor, but he doesn't say give all everybody else's money to the poor. You can go to the cross for his principles, but he can't send others to the cross for his principles, which is what a president would have to do if he were behaving in the way that the Pope is talking about. What I guess I'm seeing here is that Christianity And remember, Catholic Christianity was for fifteen hundred years was basically Christianity It changes the soul of the society for the good We now have values that didn't exist before, especially values about the rights of women, but also values about loving the weak and loving your enemies and all of these things that we strive toward that we look toward In any given instance, you have to check with reality before you make surere doing that's how you make sure you're doing it right. And I'll talk about that more in a little bit, you know Jesus says many will come in my name and say, I am the Christ and will deceive many. And so think People start talking about God and I don't care what hat they're wearing. 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When you use discount code Caven, and you're thinking, o, great, but how do I spell Caven? You fool. It's KLAVAN No ease in Caand Chapter two, Where are the Chren For all this, it still seems to me Faith faith in God that there is a God is essential to running a good free government for the simple reason that God exists. and if you don't know he's there, you're not dealing with reality, right? So know I want the people who make policies to be true believers Here's my example of why I think this. A woman named Alex Cooper runs a popular podcast women called Caller Daddy. And I've never heard it and I don't know anything about it, so I'm not commenting on it, but apparently she recommends that women sleep around a lot in their youth before and men are trash and you have to use them before you use them and then ghost them. And She gives kind of this shallow advice for shallow lives. H Here's just a little sample of Alex Cooper on Caller Daddy talking affairs, brief affairs that women have when they're traveling cut to. I want to kind of break down The vacation romance. Back when I was single, which feels like ages ago, I personally loved a vacation hookup. okay? Maybe they're a local who knows all the good spots or they're a foreigner with some like sexy accent. Maybe they're like a surf instructor with six pack or maybe it's just like a random guy that you match with on Tinder who's staying at your same hotel Reardless I feel like these whirlwind vacation flings can feel so special and hot and magical. But here is what I want you all to understand. They are only hot special and magical because they're temporary. Okay, so obviously a shallow advice for shallow life. suuddenly, she announces that having become a multimillionaire and having been married she's been married for two years, she's having a baby. And some people feel that they were hard done by, that she was hypocritical. Some people on the right were saying, oh look, you know, she was telling people to live the dream by sleeping around She was actually living the real dream that women secretly have, which is to have a husband, a home and a family. A woman named Cara Kennedy wrote what I thought was also a shallow piece of the free press where she says, no, this is, you know, she got married at twenty nine. She got pregnant in thirty one. She'll have more kids before she's forty. And you know, this is the way things are, know says Wh haters can keep preaching a purity that nobody actually practices, the reality of modern romance is already written Bessed of the boy crazy, for the slut shall inherit the earth. So I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, you know, I don't know. this is not what I observe with my eyes. And I talk to people and I especially observe young women who seem to be the most miserable generation of women I have ever met in my life, and I've seen a couple of generations Amanda Presta Giacamo, who I love, but I can never pronounce her name. I'm glad she's back writing in the Daily Wire. and she writes about an only fans girl named Athena Paris who found out you know they doing what only fan girls do to show off their body. And then she started reading the Bible. and here's what Athena Parris had to say she found out about herself, cup three. One thing that I've been experiencing reading the Bible is healing my inner child. That is the fear of going back first. And I have to have this understanding and rewire my mind to heal my inner child. and that's what I've been doing with the Bible And when I finally heal that inner child, that's when I'm going have the courage to walk away from this situation. Okay, so now that by the way is really wise. I mean I don't go for that inner child, you know jargon But that is what The Bible is about. It is about moving forward into the world and leaving your past behind because you've been forgiven, findinding forgiveness and going forward. And getting rid of your trauma is not living into your traumas like people do when you see people in gay pride parades, walking around in leather whipping each other. That's living into some trauma that happened to you in the past and keeping it going. yes, Jesus is telling you, unload it. let the dead barrier dead and leave everything behind. But here's what she says. She wants now, obviously, to move into a new kind of life, but she says The darkness that you open yourself up to when you do something like this, like O fans, it comes in depression and anxiety and isolation. Every high value man that I have ever met, he has told me that he will never claim me, by which she means marry her. They will hook up with you, they will never claim you. They will never bring you home to their parents. I do agree that high value men will look low on women do only fans, it makes you believe that you are an extremely low value person and that you are not capable of loving because of the career choice that you have made. It's one thing for you to leave your past behind. It's another for a guy to leave your past behind. He doesn't have to do that. He's not obligated to do it. And a lot of high value guys are going to be reluctant to do that All of this has to do with what I think is the biggest news story every day, which is the fact that humankind is dying. People are not having more children than people who are dying. So that means that humankind will die. And this is everywhere except subub Sahara Africa and in the developed world Israel. and Israel's the only place where they are having enough babies to place themselves. So this week I wrote an essay about this for my sububstack with Spencer, the New Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem. sububstack. com. I think it's a really good essay. I hope you'll go and read it. But I just want to sum up a little bit of it about this story, which is that There were two excellent columns on baby on the birth Dirth as they call it. One is by the lovely Louise Perry and the Free press. and she says Her piece is called Falling birth rates are a mystery, and that's basically what it says. The data on fertility rates tend to function as a Rorschk test. Conservatives blame the collapse of marriage rates and the rise of feminism. Progressives blame a lack of affordable childcare and fathers failing to do enough housework. Housing advocates blame property prices, environmentalists blame the climate crisis. Everyone has an explanation that supports a preree existing political agenda. I've noticed this too And it's true. The other great column on this was by my sister, my sister in law, Caitlyn Flanagan, who now is also working for the Free press, which I'm glad to hear. She got out of Atlantic, which has just gotten worse and worse. But she was too good for him. She's writing for the free press. And she wrote a thing about motherhood where she says she knows a lot of women who are not having babies because she says they know that having a baby would unmore them from many things they cherish, the freedom to do whatever they want. They have hopes and dreams about their futures and they want their earnings to go toward fulfilling them, not toward parenthood. Most of all, they know that babies are a lot of work and that women do most of it. And she says, I want to correct each and every one of these bonkers assertions How, not only are these young women right, they don't know the half of it. And then she goes on to talk about the travails of raising children, two nephews of mine. And she says she talks about how hard it is and the letting go and the sadness and the trouble. And then she says, who cares about the miserable moments? They were my sons, and what in the world could be better than having those two little boys around I knew having children would be the best part of my life and it was the best part of my life. If those boys were on rotten tomatoes, I would give them a one hundred No notes. So in other words, in other words, the drawbacks An enterprise, a sacrificial enterprise like mothering children and raising children is obvious on paper, so you can see it before it happens. But the glory of doing it, the love that it brings into your life, the way it informs your life, to me, having children turn the world from two dimensions into three dimensions. So I suddenly thought, oh, I wasn't really actually fully alive before this at all This is the thing about every spiritual enterprise. You can always see the drawbacks of it. It's only when you live it that you see the glory of it So You're Michael Knowles, you know, obviously an evil person in himself, but he gave me a rosary. and he gave it to me for completely Michael Knowles like reasons because Matt Frad had given me a rosary, and he didn't want Matt Frat to get credit in case I became a papist. So he gave me an even nicer rosary. I've been saying it, I've been using it. And when you pray the Rosary on certain days, you're supposed to meditate on the joyful mysteries And the joyful mysteries are the ennunciation that Talar Rico mangled, the visitation where Mary goes to see the mother of John, her cousin, and the nativity and the presentation of the baby to the temple and the finding of Jesus in the temple when he wanders off and starts questioning the rabbis. And so I was meditating on these joyful mysteries and I suddenly realized Except for their connection with God, they're just ordinary events. Every woman, every expectant mother, not everyone, but most expectant mothers go through these things. You find out you're expecting. You meet with other expectant women, you become unified with them, you welcome your baby into your tribe and your neighborhood and into your society, and you discover after a while, like finding Jesus in the temple that your child is growing up in his own person and has to go on and live his life And the only thing that makes these things mysteries and glorious is their perceived connection to God because Jesus is the incarnation of the living God, right? And so that is what makes them that thing that is in your mind that links these events to something greater than themselves, you know that understands that there is a spiritual realm and these are spiritual things that you're doing. Th are the things that make having babies atter that makes the sacrifice matter that helps you see in advance that there is glory in the sacrifice. And so while I agree with Louise that you know you do tend to attach your obsessions to the reasons for this thing, I just think from living experience that without God or some kind of spiritual idea supplying meaning for the difficult things that we do in life that are so worthwhile and so enriching and so essential to a truly joyful life without those things Life and love childhood and children and mothering, they're just not worth it. And that's not the reason people have stopped having babies. I'd like to know why the only developed country where they are having babies is Israel where just as God planned Bible is written into their skin. They can't get rid of it, evenven though it's not a particularly religious country, they cannot get rid of that book that taught them How to be the race that would bring Jesus into the world Chapter three God's pololitics very intelligent column in the Wall Street Journal Houses of wororsship column by a filmmaker named Robert Orlando. It' called The Gospel accccording to Marx. and he says Communism offers redemption and moral intensity without the restraint of religion as the traditional Christian story of history unfolds in a recognizable pattern, creation, fall, and eventual restoration in heaven. human life is marked by injustice and suffering but the ultimate resolution of history arrives through divine action M says Marx absorbed this narrative while rejecting its theological foundations. Capitalism was akin to the fall. Class struggles became the engine of history and revolution, the moment of redemption. The proletariat, the working class was elevated into the historical agion of liberation. In this way, Marx transformed a theological drama into a secular narrative of historical inevitability. discover this, this is something I've talked about before, but it's still very intelligent observation. This was essentially the project of intellectuals in the second half of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, which was to take the truths of Christianity You know, because Nietzsche said, once you get rid of them, the whole system will collapse, but to demystify them and to give them their source inside us instead of heaven, right? So in other words, everything was in the human mind. Freud did this. He turned father, son, and Holy Ghost into super ego and Iid the parts of the consciousness in his philosophy. God was just the projection of your own father into heaven. Everything emanated from us. and this accounts for the powerful of these philosophies because we know without God that we're missing something You know, but we don't know what it is. so we try to reassemble these things out of material. So with Marx, it was economics and economic engine and work and with Freud, it was sex and sexuality and desire, all kinds of desires. And in the early twentieth century, that's when this stuff caught on. This was when, you know people In America, intellectuals in America were looking at the Soviet Union and saying, o boy, this is the future. And everybody was talking in Freudian terms and everything was about, you know your subconscious and your edible complex stuff that has largely been disproved, not the subconscious. We do have unconscious impulses, but still most of Freud's theies have been shown to be unccious ue And on top of all this, every time we live by these creeds, life becomes a disaster. Socialism destroys everything it touches, and Freudianism You know, therapy, I think can be helpful to people if you find a loving and good therapist whom you connect with, but it's really the love that as somebody whose life was saved by therapy, it's the love that saves you. It's not the actual philosophy of the therapist So I think that nothing can replace God, you know, obviously, nothing can replace God. But turning to God is not a license to ignore material reality. You know it's funny, I gave a talk once at a Peter Thial event about the romantic poets trying to find Christian truth in nature, which is why CS Lewis said if you start with Wordsworth, you'll eventually come to God They were trying It was a last gasp attempt to find a truth outside of the human mind, to find it in nature. And Tial himself sort of dismissed this saying, well, nature is not really a Christian concept. But that actually misses the point. The question is whether nature is just nature or is it creation? And I think that that's what Wordsworth was groping toward Here's a quote from Saint Augustine, who is one of the founding geniuses of the Christian faith, as we know it. He says, someome people in order to discover God, read books. but there is a great book very appearance of created things. look above you. below you noted Read it God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead, he set before your eyes the things that he had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that? Why heaven and earth shout to you, God has made me. And of course, that's right out of the Bible. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork, day unto day utters speech and night unto night shows knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard, the voice of heaven the voice of earth. So Marxism and Freudianism try to materialize spiritual truths, but Christianity has to be in dialogue with material reality. It is a spiritual belief that has to be in dialogue with material reality. And this is why I dismiss piety, why I dismiss holiness, why I dismiss outrage, why I'm not interested in your outrage, You know about oh you got this wrong. spiritual truths to be in a dialogue with reality. You can say, for instance, as Catholics do say, that all birth control is evil ortion is evil, which I agree with, but you have to address the fact that human beings will have sex and sex will create children and some people can't afford to have that many children. Again, it's one thing if your philosophy leads you to the cross, it's another if it drags your entire country to the cross or other people to the cross. And this is what I require of my faith that it's not just you know pie in the sky, that it has to do with the way people live and the way I live, even if I make sacrifices, but that I don't impose those sacrifices on others. And that's why I want to turn to wisdom to the wisest writer of all time, William Shakespeare This episode is brought to you by Starbucks. That is fire. Whoa, that's good. This might be the drink of the summer. Okay, I like this one too. I'm not with you. Okay? Try it for yourself. Starbucks refreshherers concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours. fininal chapter, the Book of Shakespeare The greatest start like the greatest religion. takes reality as it is but acknowledges and establishes the connection between creation And the world of the creator, the upper world of the creator. In a midsummer's night ream Shakespeare describes a poet, one of Shakespeare's characters, describes a poet. He says The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling doth glance from heaven earth, from earth to heaven, and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shapes and gives to Airy nothing a local habitation and a name. Essentially, he looks to heaven, he looks to earth, He understands that there are invisible truths in heaven and visible truths on earth, and he gives these airy nothing, these invisible truths, a local habitation and a name, namely the characters that he's in, the story that he tells, the practical things. This is why Jesus spoke in parables because he was telling you it's not just the meaning of the parables, it's the fact that the parables have meaning. The parables express the fact that life, events in life have meaning beyond themselves. We all know this because we all know that stories can be interpreted and have meaning. When we talk about stories, we know it. When we talk about human life, we forget it So looks the poet looks to heaven and to earth and then gives Airry nothing the spiritual truths, a local habitation and name Shakespeare did that better than any other poet because he was the greatest poet in the English language, posossibly in any language, although I'm not sure I would be. I would know if that were true U So I want to talk about a portrayal he gives of Christianity. The Merchant of Venice is his famous play in which an evil Jew, Shylock loans money to Antonio makes a deal with him that he can't pay back in money. if he doesn't pay back the money, Shylock gets to carve a pound of flesh off his body, which would kill him, right? And if you want to see a great version of this, watch the Al Paccino film. It's absolutely terrific. Best I've ever seen, I think. And here's the thing, Shylock is a villain. You know, sometimes because they don't like the antiemitism implied by the play, people try to I saw Dustin Hoffman do a production where they try to make make Shyock seretly the hero, He's not. He's a villain. He's responsible for himself. He has no philosophy of forgiveness and grace, which is a stereotype of a Jew. Shakespeare was dealing with stereotypes. He didn't know any Jews because they'd been expelled from England So Just before he makes the famous speech where he says, hisiss not a Jew eyes,' not a hands. You know, he's saying basically, I'm a human being too. somebody says to him, Why would you cut off Antonio's flesh? What can you do with that? And he says, It will feed my revenge. And this is what he says about Antonio. This is cut five. He hath disgraced me and handed me half a million Lughed at my losses, Mck at my gains, score under my nation Thwarted my bargains, calledooled my friends, heated myine enemies, and what's his reason? I am a Jke. So he's after revenge. and he basically has been treated And at one point he says, You treat me like a dog, now beware my fangs. In other words, you turned me into this. And bigotry does that. There is absolutely no question about it. I'll talk more about that in the member block peopleeople do have these traits, but bigigotry turns them into the worst of those traits. that's almost its purpose. Now in the end they go to court and Shylock wins the case and he's going to kill Antonio's going to cut the blood off, but a lawyer steps forward And the lawyer is the heroine of the piece, Porsia, dressed up as a man. And she makes the she says, you have the right to kill him, but I want you to be merciful. And Chhalk says, why should I be merciful? And this is what Porsia says, cut six Qality of mercy is not streamed gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes Tis mightiest in the mighty It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown H sceceptter shows the force of temporal power, the attribute to awe and majesty Wherein d us sit the dread and fear of kings But mercy He's above this seeped sway It is enthroned in the heart of kings. This is I think her name is Lynn Collins, that actress. Brilliant piece of writing, but forget for what she's saying and think of what is happening. This is a woman ress a man Why? Because I think Shakespeare iss acknowledging that Christianity is a blend of feminine mommy values like love and mercy and masculine daddy values like law and logic. And what she is doing is she's a woman dressed as a man, making a logical argument for why the law should not be applied, which is a lot of what Christianity does logical arguments, why you are forgiven, why the law is not going to be applied to you, in which case you would go to hell, but you're not going because you're going to hide under Jesus' skirt and sneak through the gates of heaven. It's just brilliant. And he says But what he's showing you is he shows you vividly the cruelty with which Shylock has been treated bigry with which he's been treated, the reason that he has become the villain that he is. He's not a good person. He's responsible for himself. It's no excuse to say I'm just a Jew is just as good as any other man if you're living into the things that people are saying about you. And that's what's happening in the play is that as Porsia is making this argument for mercy No one has shown mercy to Shylock And this is, as always with Shakespeare, an incredibly complex and brilliant depiction of the way things work. What he's telling you is that this idea of mercy is so beautiful that it transforms even kings into something better than themselves. It transforms the law into something the law has no power in itself to be. And it is incredibly beautiful and it is an ideal that has permeated the society and in society was a horrible place in a lot of ways, permeated this society so that everybody knows that Shylock should be merciful to Antonio in a way that Antonio was not merciful to him. So what Christianity has not done is it has not turned individuals into better people. It has changed the society which has produced better ideals, which, you hope will produce better people. But many people were going to say, Lord Lord, who are not going to heaven because they did not become what Jesus wanted you to be. know Jesus, I've said this again and again. I do not think there is going to be a short answer quiz at the gates of heaven. I think it's going to be all about who you are and who you have come and who youve become. When AI comes into our lives, for instance, when anything comes intoo our lives, we want true men True Christian men to address the problems it creates when they come up. We want them to say, you know what? just like during the Industrial Revolution where they started to put children into factories eventually, you know, because people are bad, you know, they'll make money. If they can make money putting an eight year old in a factory, they'll do it. And you know the law had to come along and regulate them. If we were angels, we wouldn't need a government. we're not angels. We need government to say And guuess what? You can't put children to work in a factory, notot happening. Don't do it. That's the law. You have to have them say that because people will do it. And Christianity sets those goals that make us see that we should not be doing that. that make us see know that there shouldn't be slaves. I mean, that is why there was a civil war in this country because the south convicted, as the Christians like to say, was convicted when Lincoln said, you know, I'm not going to take your slaves away. I'm just going to keep slavery from spreading. And that was saying essentially slavery is wrong, and they couldn't face that because it was the truth And that's why the South fired first. I believe, that is why the South fired first in that war because They were accused by Lincoln. They weren't stripped of their slaves by Lincoln, but they were accused. becausecause all those Democrats were holding slaves. But the thing is But the thing is that debt we owe to reality because reality is creation, that debt we owe to nature because nature is creation. That's why I don't when I hear the Catholic integralists know shrugging off the inquisition, say, Well, it only happened here, it only happened there, whatever. You know, you put a guy on the rack, you are responsible for that You set a guy on fire because he did a translation of the Bible you didn't like. you are responsible for that. And you know just like and the sex scandal in the church, same way and the sex scandal in any church, same way. you are responsible for that and you have to answer for that because you are not just dealing with heaven, you are dealing with earth. When you go to church and you sing hymns, you are singing along heavenly body that you can't see, but is also worshiping God with you. And that is that's what the Catholics call the communion of saints. but it's also a communion with something greater than yourself in an entire world of spirituality that we can't see but is really there. You know, I think that that without God It's like cutting the ladder. It's like cutting Jacob's ladder. You rememember in the Bible, Jacob's ladder, the angels go up and down the ladder. It's like breaking that ladder if you lose your faith. If our society loses our faith, and it's close. It is close to you know basically installing faithlessness as the default setting, certainly the left wants to do it. That is cutting the ladder and life loses its meaning. and people will stop having babies. And sacrifice will become something that makes no sense because you can see it's going to make things worse for you because it'll be sacrificed and you don't understand the glory. So all of these things are responsible for both sides of the metaphor. It's not just me standing here, so you have to treat me well. it is also You know, the image of God standing here. so you have to treat me as if I have rights, as if I have desserts that you know I may not have earned, as if there is some reason why you should take care of the least of us. So listen, you know I know I'm talking about the Pope because he's the one who put out this encyclical. And by the way, when I knock the Pope, you have to remember, I live through the two greatest popes in human history, I believe Benedict not the only two, but two of the greatest popes in human history. Benedict Xteent of Stt John Paul I second When there's a drop off in quality, you know, I'm not going to pretend it's not there because it is there. So I'm not picking on Catholics.s just I just happen to be reacting to my experience of reading this encyclical. And I don't care if you're Protestant, Catholic, Jew, whatever you do or say, it has to be measured in human misery and joy because Christ said he came so hisis joy could be in us and our joy could be complete Llavin Klapaxs No did the beast with too bad for that comely white maid and didst not anyone speakaking against him? He's straight piming A, Shakespeare Cavven cllapbacks at dailywire dot comot Claven withith a K, clapbacks withith aK at dailywire dot comot I'd love to hear from you and I read a lot of these letters, but I can't read that many of them on the air. I just don't have time. This one's from Jason Lord Clavven, Most Eless and Heirless. I have a question about Catholicism. One of your reasons you give most often for not being Catholic Is the doctrine of papal infallibility, you say something along the lines of I don't believe a man could faithfully relay God's words to a church if an angel were whispering them in his ear. I have said something very close to that. He says, wouldouldn't this make you a skeptic of all of holy scripture? I'm sure you've thought of this, so I'm curious how you resolve that tension. Thanks, Jason, PS. I can't wait for the next camera in winter He and you convinced me to buy a big book of English romantic poetry. So there it is. I've done some good in the world U Yes, I've definitely thought about this. I have you know Yeah, Eccentric people have eccentric views of religion and I have a very specific view of the Bible. I believe that the Bible is God wants us to have about Hself. And I therefore believe that it is all true, but it is not all true in the way some people think that like every word of it is literally the case, that every word is true in the same way. Everybody believes this, but nobody wants to say it out loud because they want that certainty that comes with saying silly things like I believe every word of this For instance, if the Bible says the Lord is my shepherd, nobody believes the Lord is a shepherd and you are a sheep. You don't believe you are actually a sheep and he is actually a shepherd. It's a metaphor. When Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son, nobody says who were the two sons? What was the father's name? Where did they live? They know he's telling a story that has meaning and there are stories like that And I believe it was written down by people. And so if there are contradictions, for instance, in the timelines of the gospels, there's a lot of work that's been done over two thousand years trying to reconcile the timeline. I don't even bother about it. If I were a cop, if any cop who brought in four different witnesses, if they all told them the same things with the same facts and the same timeline, he'd know they were lying I think human beings saw things, they saw things differently. It was found good that these things should be put together even though there are conflicts, some conflicts and some timeline discrepancies. It's a human thing. It's a human book that brings us what God wants us to know. And so yes, I discount all human infallibility, even in Shakespeare. and I think that I can live with uncertainty and I think uncertainty is the place where your mind is freed. And that's why I think for instance, God doesn't prove Himself. Why does God leave us without proof? Because He wants us to be free. He wants our minds to be free. He wants us to find Him in that way that is write for the image of God in us as individuals. From Covington, deear Mr. Clavven, I'm near the end of your book, The Kingdom of Caine, where you walk the reader through the undamaged museum and have multiple in depth analyses of different paintings and sculptures One of the best things I ever wrote, by the way. An example being from page two hundred twenty three, when describing Madonna of the Magnificot by Botticelli. Her blue mantle opens on a pink chemise as if exposing her belly. and in that rose triangle, the Christ child sits as if emerging from her. says reading this description while looking at the painting reveals a whole new layer of appreciation for someone like me who only sees what's right in front of it My question is, is this a learned ability of yours by working in the arts with other artists? O do you unconsciously see these things in the world and explain to us, your audience what you see sincerely Coington? This, I have to say, is a question that genuinely gave me pause. and I thought like, I'm not sure. think An storyteller will learn over time How to control any good storyteller great storyteller. Let's just be blunt. Any great storyteller will learn over time as he's writing the story, He may not know what the story means when he begins, but as he's writing the story, he starts to get a sense that this story has a theme, that is connected to certain invisible truths, and he starts to play into that. and perhaps that has trained my mind to see things in the arts Anybody can train their minds to do that. You can study these things. The problem right now is because of the leftist takeover of criticism They will only tell you that it means socialism, that it means feminism. And if it doesn't mean those things, it is to be condemned And that was what we did at that interview last week with the pens and poisons lady who talked about that that's what she was being taught at Columbia University and it made her turn away from academia. But if your mind is free, if your mind is open, and you listen to the author or the story, you don't listen to the author, you listen to the story, the story will speak to you and you start to learn how stories work. So I think it is something that I was probably born with to some degree think that learning about it, you can teach yourself that because there are people who understand the arts and they communicate it to you. like the book that you're reading, you probably will know next time you look at painting that there is something more there than just what you're seeing. on the campus. And so that's the best answer I can give you to that because it is hard. Clven Clapax at dailywire. com and ome a member because otherwise you will be plunged into clavenlessness before anybody else and all the members will be clinging like drriftwood, they'll be clinging to the drriftwood Well. you'll be sinking down and down and down into the clavelless darkness. Become a member today. go to dailywire dot com slash suubbscribe and use code Caven at checkout for two months free on all Annual plans. We're going to be talking more Shakespeare and meber of Block. comeome on over