Jeremy Boreing (4:55)

As Dr. Peterson says, episode one of the Gospel is absolutely free to watch, but new episodes will be premiering every Sunday@DailyWire+.com I think we're still running our Cyber Monday sale as well, so head over there tonight and you'll still get 50% off. Biggest sell of the year. At Daily Wire. Plus, members get to watch not only Dr. Peterson's body of work that he's done with us, including the Gospels and the Exodus series, but also hit films like Am I Racist? From Matt Walsh and one of these Days, something from Andrew Clayton. A fella can dream. So I want to talk for a minute about this series, the Gospels. You know, we usually in our December episode talk about things about which Ben knows very little. And so I said, why not make this December backstage in keeping with our holiday tradition. But actually, you know, your views of the Gospels wouldn't be more heterodox than some of the bizarre people in the show, not the people in the show. That's actually what's interesting about what Jordan does is he approaches the text with seriousness and with rigorous and with even reverence. But he doesn't approach it in a sort of traditional. From a traditional religious point of view. And people seem to be hungry for that kind of perspective on this text. What do you think that's about?

Michael Knowles (6:14)

You know, it's funny, I asked Jordan about this many years ago in an interview, and, you know, basically he was teasing him, saying, when are you going to plunk? You know, faith is a virtue. And he said, then I think people get a benefit from watching me struggle with this because they're struggling with it. And I really do believe that church attendance doesn't bother me. The fallen church attendance doesn't bother me. But I don't think we know how far we've fallen from simply approaching the Gospels as an authoritative wisdom text. Years ago, I was on this panel for Wedgwood, which does these things about the arts, and they said, if you could have one wish that what the arts would accomplish, what would it be? And I said, well, at this point, I'd be happy if we could just convince people there's such a thing as truth. And the guy next to me who was a religious, wrote religious young adult books, started screaming at me on the stage. You know, you intellectuals, you know, you don't understand that's Jesus is the only. Jesus is the only truth. And I said, hey, you know, I agree with you, but you don't realize how far we are from understanding that there even is such a thing as the truth that we can find. And so I guess this is important. I think this is important. As you say, this is a heterodox group. I laugh to see my friend Greg Horowitz, who is a very fine thriller writer. He's a colleague, you know, and we've known each other for a long time. He introduced me to Jordan. He's the guy who got me to interview Jordan. But, you know, he wouldn't know Jesus if he died to save mankind, you know, and he's a brilliant guy, and I'm always happy to hear his thoughts. But I think that people need to hear this. They need to hear just the fact that people are coming to a text and getting wisdom out of it instead of imposing their worldview on it is revolutionary. And I also think that's important.

Matt Walsh (7:53)

I think that one of the reasons people like, to hear what Jordan has to say about something like the Gospels and Scripture generally is that he has a real. He's really fascinated by the text. And I think sometimes if you grew up Christian and you went to church every Sunday, you can tend to take the Bible for granted and take the Gospels for granted, and you lose sight of just how it's like. The book itself is extraordinary. The fact that we have these writings after 2000 years is extraordinary. The story behind how these things were written, how they came to us, how they were transcribed by manuscripts, and then pieces of manuscripts were recovered and found over, it's miraculous that we even have the books at all. And then when you dive into the text, as they do in the Gospel series, discover, like, what each Gospel writer is, they're actually trying to do different things with how they tell the story, what parts of the story they tell. And so I think sometimes people gravitate to people like Jordan because along with the insight, he's just very fascinated. He's kind of blown away by it. And sometimes if you go, like I said, you go to church every day or every week and you hear people talk about it, kind of taking it for granted, not, not. Not approaching it with the. Not just the reverence, but the fascination that I think these books.

Andrew Klavan (9:09)

There also is this problem we have in modernity, which is we clearly took a wrong exit at some point, and you see that all around us. But if you take a wrong exit and you go 500 miles down the road, you don't just get to teleport back. Barring some miracle, it's very difficult to teleport back. You have to take another exit. You have to drive all that way back. And so when you see the problems that have come up in Western philosophy and especially theology and religion and ecclesiology for the past, I don't know, 500 years, 700 years, thousand years, whatever. What I love about the way Jordan speaks about this and a lot of these other guys here too, by the way, in the Gospels, is they give you a bridge back. So I was an atheist for 10 years. When I returned to religion, I did not jump headfirst into Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine. I started, I read a little C.S. lewis, a little Chesterton, a little Alistair McIntyre to find out that virtue even exists. And I became convinced that, okay, God in principle could exist. Okay. Then I read the Gospels for the first time, really seriously, and I thought, okay, Jesus, I think, is who he says he is. And then I read some of the early church writings I thought, okay, I think the church is kind of what she says she is. And that was a process of years and years and years. So if you have this culture now where people aren't going to church, they don't even believe that truth exists. You need to give them a bridge. You need to give them a way to get back to reality. I think Jordan does it very well.

Ben Shapiro (10:38)

Yeah, I mean, I think that is the relevant point. And that's exactly the language that I would have used, is the bridge language. I think that whether he took a wrong exit as a whole civilization or not, I think the one thing that has happened is that there used to be in the West a cohesive view that your secular life and your religious life were one. That to be a religious human being, this is mostly how religious people still live. Whether you're a religious Christian or a religious Jew, it infuses your whole existence. Everything that you do is infused with that value system. And somewhere along the line, that was bifurcated. That was bifurcated into sort of the secular side of you and then the religious side of you. And you're religious at church, and you're secular when you're not at church. And as people stopped going to church as much, there was a link that was now missing, this sort of bridge from one to the other that went missing. And when people hear a priest or a pastor or a rabbi talk to them about religion, they feel like they have a vested interest. My goal is to get you back in the pew. My goal is to get you back in the church or the synagogue or whatever. And so they're likely not to trust it, because after all, somebody. They do have a vested interest. I mean, it's not like a hidden secret or anything. And meanwhile, no one in the secular world is talking about these values at all. So when Jordan comes at it from an angle where he says, let's talk about the importance of these things, right? Jordan's angle, so far as I've heard, unless he changed it in the Gospels in one of the future episodes that I haven't yet seen, I don't think he talks about much of the historicity or about his own personal belief in the absolute sort of historical veracity of what the Gospels are saying as much as it is about the deep abiding importance of the Gospels. And that's always the first step to why somebody embraces religion. The reason that people embrace religion is because religion is important, and then they embrace it because they think that it's true. But first they have to think that it's important because it matters at all. Yes, because. Because there are lots of things in the world that are true, but you don't invest your entire existence in the true thing. You invest your entire existence in the important thing. And very often those important things that you invest your existence in are things that are very hard to prove. I mean, I, you know, you invest your entire life in your marriage. How do you prove that you love your wife?

Michael Knowles (12:37)

Right?

Ben Shapiro (12:37)

I mean, how. What is, how do you even define love? A few kids, doesn't hurt for sure. Listen, that's a very. The Judaic perspective is of course, exactly that. That the way that you define love is all the things that you do for your spouse in the context of a marriage. And it's very action defined. But the point that I'm making is that that's not a truth, like two plus two equals four. That's something that you invest in because it's important to you and it's important to your life. And that's what Jordan is constantly talking about. He'll talk about the importance of these stories. And even as a Jew, I'll agree that these stories are incredibly important. That's what Dennis says also, right? That you can look at these stories, you can say Western civilization was founded on these stories. And some people are gonna take that even further. I hope Christians do take that further. I hope that people who are, you know, who are Christian or who used to be Christian may have fallen away. They take the importance, because I think that most people, when they discard religion, they don't discard it because they think that it's false. They discard it because they think that it's not important, because they discard it.

Michael Knowles (13:25)

Because they think that it's inhibiting, it's unspeakable. You know, therapists today, one of the things I really like about this is everybody sitting at the table is very, very bright. They're very bright intellectual people with intellectual lives. Therapists today won't use the word love in public because it's unscientific. And I think that is at the heart of the problem that we face. And a lot of therapists are women, and they won't use it because the men will tell them that it's unscientific, because men think that objectivity is a thing. And so just to have people use the word God, it drives me nuts when people. I was just reading a book about the poets and how they're connecting to the cosmos, and the guy said, connecting to something that I would call God. And I was saying this to Spencer, and he said, apparently not. Apparently he wouldn't call God, or he would have just said.

Jeremy Boreing (14:10)

Or you would have said God.

Michael Knowles (14:12)

And I think that just bringing that language back into intellectual life is huge. It's hugely important.

Andrew Klavan (14:17)

You know, there's also something very important that Jordan does. He does it at the beginning of the series of episode one, which is he draws the parallel between Exodus, which he says is the most important story of the Old Testament, and the Gospels. And this is a very traditional and orthodox exegesis, the notion that the Exodus is actually the typology of history. All of history is contained in the story of the Exodus and is fulfilled. Christians believe in the person of Christ. What's so interesting about Jordan reading the Gospels is that the Gospels are not exactly poetry. They're not exactly philosophy. They're not our Lord is not a philosopher. He is the truth Christians believe. And so the Gospels are journalism. They're accounts that differ from certain perspectives. But, you know, they agree. You know, I totally agree with you. And so, you know, this is why CS Lewis calls Christianity the Gospels. The true myth that for people who are watching this, who may be agnostic or atheistic even, they will be lured in by just the myth, by the story, by the metaphor. And the other thing that I think Jordan is very, very good at is part of the atheism of our age comes from people's hubris and scientism. They think that religion is for dumb people, and atheism is for smart people. And Jordan and everyone on that stage with him, they are smart people. And if this happened to me in my atheism, I was a little punk who thought he was smarter than he was. And so I returned. I returned in a different way than other people do.

Michael Knowles (15:47)

He says he was a little punk.

Andrew Klavan (15:49)

Now I'm the real thing. I with my cigar at the time, I needed permission to believe that smart people could be religious.

Jeremy Boreing (15:59)

I think there's one other piece of this which we've kind of hit around but deserves exploration, and that's that Gen X and the millennials are coming into their own right. Gen X, in many ways responsible for Donald Trump winning the election a month ago. Our audience at Daily Wire is not the traditional conservative audience. When you tell people you work for the Daily Wire, they go. Your audience is. They're all boomers and they're in red states. That's really not true with the Daily Wire. Our audience is predominantly made up of Gen X and millennials. And it's predominantly urban and predominantly coastal. And so that group of people, which it shocks people when you say it, because they think those people don't exist. This election proved that they exist, and the existence of the Daily Wire for the last decade had already proven that they exist. Gen X is defined by a belief that the greatest crime you can commit is to sell out. The millennials are defined by a belief that the highest virtue is authenticity. You can see then that both of those groups of people will despise partisans. That's one thing that distinguishes Gen X and Millennial conservatives, for example, from baby Boomer conservatives. Baby Boomer conservatives are far more likely to find appeal to partisan thinkers, partisan hosts, which Gen X and millennials don't. Genetics and millennials want to listen to shows like yours, which feel more personal, they feel more perhaps honest, because you will say what you believe, even if it goes against sort of the party line. That's why you're far more likely to find conservatives disagreeing with Republican talking points on the Internet than you are on cable news, because you're speaking to a completely different group of people with a different set of values. Part of what, as a Gen Xer, part of what I believe, is that ideology is important so far as it goes, and doctrine is important so far as it goes, but they can also both be used to obscure things that are true.

Michael Knowles (18:01)

Right?

Andrew Klavan (18:02)

Yeah.

Jeremy Boreing (18:02)

And so what I love about watching the Exodus series, I thought the Exodus series was the best thing we'd ever put out as a country. And I think I've seen the first episode of the Gospels and am already in love with it. What I love about Jordan's approach and the other panelists is that they're not approaching the text as doctrinaires. They're not approaching the text as partisans. It's good that they are outsiders. They're not just telling you talking points about the text that they learned in Sunday. It kind of goes to your point a minute ago, Matt. They're not just telling you the things that they learned in Sunday school that are sort of wrote and that we perhaps take for granted or that sound familiar to the point that they don't sound like anything at all. Jordan says the name of his book, which is number one on the New York Times bestseller list right now, is we who wrestle with God, obviously, allusion to Jacob. To Jacob. They wrestle with the text. They're approaching the text as people who are earnest about it, inspired by it, but haven't grown up in a tradition with. Some of them have, but most of them have not grown up in a tradition. And so you hear ideas that perhaps contain truth that you might not get to through simple doctrine. In the same way that in politics, there are things that are true that we don't get to just through ideology. And I think that that's important to this new audience to whom we speak, to whom Jordan speaks, because you have.

Andrew Klavan (19:22)

To build the intellectual scaffolding that will permit you to pursue truth even further. You don't want to just have it downloaded to your head.

Jeremy Boreing (19:30)

That's right.

Andrew Klavan (19:30)

And so once you build that scaffolding, especially with religion, it's not enough just to know the true things when it comes to virtue. It's not enough to know virtuous things. You actually have to do it and put it into your body. And that means if you want to be holy, you have to pray. Which is why I'm so happy to tell you about Hallow. As Christmas approaches, there is a season that people don't talk about anymore, but it's a beautiful season known as adventure. We need to make America great again, make America healthy again, and make Advent solemn again. You need to put God at the center of this season with Hallow, the number one prayer app. They're launching a special Advent prayer challenge called For God so Loved the World that promises a marvelous lineup of guides and wonderful prayers to help you in your spiritual life. This challenge features an incredible lineup of people like survivalist Bear Grylls. It includes Jonathan Roumie from the Chosen and they will lead you through a severe mercy, a powerful story of faith and divine love. You will join Pastor Francis Chen and Jeff Cavins for profound scripture reflections, while actor Kevin James explores the spiritual classic Divine Intimacy. The experience is enriched with beautiful Advent music. Yes, there is Advent music, believe it or not. It's not all just Mariah Carey and Jingle Bells from award winning artists including Gwen Stefani, Lauren Daigle and Matt Marr. Drew, I believe you use Hallow.

Michael Knowles (20:52)

I do use Hallow. I use it to meditate on scripture, guided meditation through the scripture. I use it. I've started to use it for rosaries, which I've been experimenting with, and it's great. And you know, Liam Neeson is in it, so I'm afraid if I don't use it, he'll kill me.

Andrew Klavan (21:07)

That's a good inducement. It's more than just daily prayer. It's an invitation to experience God's love, mercy and healing in a deeper way at a very important time of the liturgical year. Do not wait. Get three months of Hallow for free at hallow.com dailywire. Make this a time of putting God at the center of your life and experience the good that comes from it. Go to hello.com dailywire for three months free.

Jeremy Boreing (21:30)

So one of the things that. As we were talking this morning about how to approach conversations about the Gospels, our producer Mathis brought me a sort of series of topics. And one of them really stood out to me. And it's in a world where doctrine isn't everyone's path to beginning to wrestle with the text of Scripture, we're sort of forced to reflect on what you might call cultural Christianity or cultural. The presence of these sort of religious traditions in our culture, but detached from necessarily faith in them. And because there are pretty pronounced distinctions between the theology of the five of us, I actually thought it'd be kind of an interesting thing to explore for a minute.

Andrew Klavan (22:12)

This reminds me of the Chesterton line that we open our minds for the same reason that we open our mouths, namely to close it on something solid. That skepticism has utility only when it leads to conviction. So this is what I love about the Gospel series and really everything that Jordan has done on religion, which is that it gives people an opening, it gives them an entree, and then they need to figure out what they're going to do with that. And so, you know, it seems to me that if God exists, it's important to know that that seems like a big question. And if God exists, then we want to know something about him and how we relate to Him.

Michael Knowles (22:49)

Well, this is. Yeah, to me, this is everything.

Andrew Klavan (22:51)

If God exists and he wants us to know something about him and how to relate to him, then we might want to come to some conclusions about that. We might want to live that out in our lives. And that will lead us to doctrine, and that will lead us to sacraments, and it will lead us to. To inform everything in our lives. And you ignore that question at your peril and to your unhappiness.

Michael Knowles (23:10)

I read the Bible from the age of, seriously, from the age of 15 on, and read it many, many times before I became a believer in any kind of God whatsoever. And the only time that I finally understood the Bible was when I started to believe there was a God. And I thought, and it came to me that I should be baptized. And I was shocked. I was shocked that this is the voice that was in my head, you should be baptized. And so I thought, I'm just gonna go back and read it as if it were true and read it as if it were history. And I've come to a lot of radical and eccentric conclusions about that. Because I think that if a man landed from outer space in the year zero and people wrote that down, certain things would happen. There wouldn't be this magical thing where every single word could be detached from every other word and phrases pulled out. It would just be a report. And there would be discrepancies between two people's reports. But they would all have truth if you gathered them together rightly. And to me, this is the reason to believe in God, and for me it's the reason to believe in Christ, is because it all happened, it's all real, and otherwise, you lose me. If you're just going for the meaning, if you're just going back to the fact that it's foundational. I think what you said about this being journalism, that's the thing that sings for me when I pick up the Bible. I am reading journalism. And that means that sometimes I'll hear a guy say something and think, that's not what I would have thought if I had seen what you saw. But that's okay.

Andrew Klavan (24:27)

I wasn't there.

Michael Knowles (24:28)

Yeah, I wasn't there. And still. And this thing that you were talking about, about going to this literature for wisdom, I can't tell you as a person who reads a lot of literary criticism, which most people don't read, I can't tell you how radical that is in this time. Current literary criticism, when I say current for the last 50 years, has been essentially to call writers into the dock for why they haven't lived up to your virtue. So you read Jane Austen to see how she was polluted by being part of the imperial British Empire, you know, and that' that's the kind of Edward Said idea that this is polluted by imperialism and colonialism and all this stuff. Whereas my attitude toward literature is no, these people are people of brilliance who are coming to me through time to speak eternal verities that are captured in their moment. And so I'm taking wisdom from them. I'm not giving my wisdom to them. And that, to me, is what's great about this. And it's also what's good. I think about going to church and having a tradition of possibly thousands of years of people doing that to relate to. You know, you're going to the past for wisdom. Not to scold it, not to impose your superior views on it, but to get the things that are always true and are forever true. I think there's a God.

Matt Walsh (25:46)

Another reason why maybe the Bible is becoming popular again in our society is there's the wisdom. There's also just maybe one thing we're missing is people live now in a. In a culture where nothing is permanent and we're just surrounded. You know, we got this constant stream of content on our phone, and not everything lasts for two seconds, and nothing matters for more than two seconds. And so there's a permanence to the Bible that I think is appealing to people. The fact that it has existed and persisted for more than 2,000 years, something permanent and deep and beautiful, something that feels, I think, people are just longing and hungry for. That's one of the reasons why the Latin Mass is growing at a rate much, much larger than these kind of more liberal parishes.

Andrew Klavan (26:36)

Well, you know, Shia LaBeouf.

Matt Walsh (26:37)

Because of that. Because of that. The sacredness.

Andrew Klavan (26:39)

And when Shia LaBeouf convert agents. Yeah, right. Yeah. It's true. There are a lot of federal agents, but that's all going to end when Trump gets into office. When Shia LaBeouf converted to your points, when you were talking about, you know, the vested interest of prelates trying to sell things, one of the reasons Shia LaBeouf said he loved the Latin Mass, and he told Bishop Barron, who's one of the stars of the Gospels, is he said, I didn't feel like they were trying to sell me anything. And that's very attractive to a lot of people.

Ben Shapiro (27:06)

I mean, the biggest factor in all this is something that you mentioned briefly, Michael, which is that we're in a time when people are very hungry. So the thing that they're hungry for is one element, and then the fact that everybody is deeply hungry is the other big element. So I made the mistake recently of going back and watching some Woody Allen films, and there is one. I'm sure Drew probably likes Woody Allen films better than I do.

Michael Knowles (27:26)

No, I'm not a Woody Allen fan. I like his early writing.

Ben Shapiro (27:30)

So I think that his best film is a film that he made. I believe it was 91, called crimes and Misdemeanors. Yeah. And this film, for those who haven't seen it, is no longer available on streaming. You basically have to bootleg it or buy it on DVD or something. And the film is about a character, Martin Landau, who is married, and he's having an affair with some woman, and the woman starts bothering him. She wants to come tell his wife she wants him to break up with his wife and all of this kind of stuff. And so he goes to his brother, and his brother is kind of an underworld criminal. And the question is, is he gonna have his brother kill the girl? And, you know, spoiler alert, he ends up having his brother kill the girl. And he goes through this whole spiritual crisis afterward in which he. In which he thinks about, well, if there's a God, God's gonna be very angry with me for having done this. I looked into her eyes. I saw that something isn't there that used to be there. And you think that maybe Woody Allen, for the first time in his life, is actually gonna go in kind of a religious direction. And instead he takes this wild left turn near the end where they fast forward about a year. And the end of the film is Martin Landau is now hanging out with Woody Allen. They haven't met the entire film. And Martin Landau is telling the story of what happened to him. And Woody Allen says, so what ended up happening? He said everything was fine. He said, because it turns out that I thought there wasn't a God. And if there wasn't a God, then what does it really matter what I did? And I thought that is actually a baldly brave take on what it means for there not to be a God. Like, good for Woody Allen for actually just saying the quiet part out loud, which is that without God, this is.

Matt Walsh (28:52)

The answer to Crime and Punishment.

Jeremy Boreing (28:54)

Right?

Ben Shapiro (28:54)

Exactly. I mean, that's Crimes and Misdemeanors, right? Crime and Punishment is the idea that you are going to repent because there's a loving God waiting for you to repent, and you can still be a useful person after having done something truly evil. But evil does exist, and you have to repent of that evil.

Michael Knowles (29:07)

But he makes a spectacular mistake because this film and Match Point are both his war with crime and Punishment. Match Point has the wonderful joke that he uses Crime and Punishment as the murder. As his murder strategy. That's. He gets the idea for his murder from Crime and Punishment. It's a great joke, but it ends Crimes and Misdemeanor with the Jewish philosopher, I think, saying there's no fairness or goodness in life. Is that one? Yeah, I think it is that one.

Ben Shapiro (29:34)

Yeah.

Michael Knowles (29:34)

He says, no fairness or goodness. Life. So we have to bring in creation. Creation left out the goodness and the love. So we have to bring it as.

Ben Shapiro (29:41)

If we weren't part of creation. But I think the point is that he even undercuts his own points. The philosopher kills himself.

Michael Knowles (29:47)

Yes.

Ben Shapiro (29:48)

Right.

Michael Knowles (29:49)

No, everything goes wrong in that film.

Ben Shapiro (29:50)

Right, Right. No, but I think the point is that it's the best explication of nihilism that I think has ever been put on film. And it's that nihilism that we're watching played out in real time throughout the west right now. I mean, I don't think that it's a coincidence that the same civilization that wants to engage with Jordan is the civilization that's determining that it's time to greenlight euthanasia in the uk or that it's decided that abortion is not just something that should be sad, but should be legal and rare. It's actually something that you ought to cheer for when you're a civilization that has basically sold out your birthright for a mass of pottage. And you've decided that what you're going to do instead is engage in essentially sex consequence free, and that the meaning of life is your hedonistic pursuit of pleasure within it that opens up this massive gap. For somebody who says, wait a second, that's not what a meaningful life looks like. I mean, this is how Jordan became famous. He's talking about a meaningful life. Well, it turns out that in the west, the key element of a meaningful life is engagement with this tradition. And so I think that that's why there's been this hunger for the Bible, because if you. Everyone tends to compare themselves to their parents, this is what we all do. And particularly in an unhappy age, you compare yourself to your parents. Well, the reality is that there are a lot of kids today who are not as happy as their parents or certainly as their grandparents. And so looking back even beyond, they're looking at their grandparents and saying, you know, what did they have that I don't have? I have better technology, I have cooler stuff, I have more access to all of the forbidden fruits that my grandparents weren't supposed to engage in. And yet here I am, miserable. What were they engaged with that maybe I'm not? Maybe I ought to reengage with the things that they were telling me when I was a kid. And so I think that you're seeing a lot of that in what's happening.

Andrew Klavan (31:26)

And this is really the important point that Drew, you touched on earlier, which is you just mentioned, Ben, that the euthanasia bill, so called a good death, it's the worst kind of death imaginable, it's suicide. And the UK just voted to kill off vulnerable people and Canada's done it, and the whole west is going that direction. And Adrian Vermeule at Harvard made a very good point, which is that it is insufficient to argue against assisted suicide on the basis that there's a slippery slope and hard cases and some People might actually have violations in their will and their consent as they're killed. He said, that's not going to cut it. Because if you accept the premise that life is fundamentally one's own and we have full autonomy over it and death is just a matter of our own individual will and the whole point of life is to just seek hedonistic pleasure, then you've given away the whole game. You actually have to offer something different. So when we talk, I love the introduction to say, why do these stories captivate us? Why do they maybe have meaning? Why have they maybe helped us live in civilization for millennia before? You have to keep following that line of thought? You have to say, why does it seem that they have meaning? Is it possible that they're actually meaningful? Is it possible that there actually is a truth there that is correct in principle, not just as a matter of utilitarian convenience.

Michael Knowles (32:46)

What does it even mean for story to have meaning? It means that somebody's telling it. You know, if a story just appears, you know, something just appears out of nowhere, it has no meaning by definition. But if I tell you a story, you know, I'm telling you something. I'm telling you about some thought that I have, some vision that I have. And I think when you read, when you look at life and you start to see that it is a story, it does have meaning, you realize it's being told. I mean, you realize you're not. You're not the subject. You're not the object of life. You're the subject of life.

Jeremy Boreing (33:10)

So here's a challenging thought that I've been wrestling with the last few weeks. And. And last night I had this opportunity to go to a Presbyterian church here in Nashville. I'm not Presbyterian, but I love this time of year. Some call it the most wonderful time of the year.

Michael Knowles (33:27)

Thanks. A natural.

Jeremy Boreing (33:28)

Yeah. And I was looking for. I was looking for things around Middle Tennessee to do sort of in the spirit of the Christmas season. And one of the most beautiful church campuses I've seen anywhere, but certainly in middle Tennessee, is this First Presbyterian Church here in Nashville. Beautiful, beautiful campus. And they were having this K. Lee, which is a Scottish tree lighting ceremony. And I thought, well, that'd be a wonderful thing to go to. I want to go and took my family, took some friends, our business partner Caleb, and his family went with us, and it was wonderful. They had the. I won't get the name right, but the pipes and drums of Middle Tennessee, this bagpipe and snare drum group who play, you know, they wear tartans and do traditional Scottish music. And they had the Highland dancers of middle Tennessee who came out and did traditional Scottish Highland dancing. And they played traditional songs, but then also Christmas carols on the bagpipes. It was a wonderful family sort of event. And at one point, Caleb and I were talking about keeping the old ways alive because here we're many thousands of miles from Scotland and many centuries removed from the time when the Highland dance was a real thing or the pipe and drums were a real thing. Right. But there are people who maintain those traditions even in a place like Tennessee, so far away. Obviously in British military, there are people who still play the bagpipes and do the dance. But you would never find something like this in. It would be very unlikely to find something like this in a Baptist church happening as a form of a Christmas celebration. But here in the Presbyterian Church, you would experience it. And that led me to a further thought, which is I'm going to go to some lessons in carols, which is the great Anglican way of approaching Christmas. They have the nine lessons.

Michael Knowles (35:24)

Yeah, it's lovely.

Jeremy Boreing (35:24)

Yeah, it's one of my very favorite things to do. I love it so much that I almost flew to Britain just to go to one this year and decided, well, I found some in middle Tennessee. So I'm going to this probably just as good. Yeah, I'm going to this Episcopal church next week that has one here in middle Tennessee. And it's all. It's very musical and there's these wonderful choirs. And then a week later I'm going to another Presbyterian church that also has one, a different Presbyterian church. And what I realized is all of these churches are keeping these old traditions alive, even the idea of the sort of choir. And you know, it's not that churches don't have choirs, but not many churches anymore have choirs. And I thought, well, isn't it interesting that the more liberal denominations are more likely to be keeping the old traditions alive? And so the most liturgical, with the exception of Catholicism, in some ways, although not a full exception, but I will grant that with the exception of at least the trads. With the exception of the trads, the older high church liturgical churches are the most left wing, most liberal theologically churches in the country. And yet they are keeping the old traditions alive the most of any of the. And in some ways, isn't that a rebuke of something? There is something about the conservative. I know all these words. We can argue about the meaning of all of these words. But it's interesting that conservatives are less likely to engage in Highland dance.

Andrew Klavan (36:57)

Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Boreing (36:58)

Well, conservative conservatives are less like. But not just Highland dance because you say, well, it's fruity. They dance on their tippy toes. Well, okay. I mean, better men, far better men than you engaged in Highland dance and.

Andrew Klavan (37:09)

Wore skirts while doing it.

Jeremy Boreing (37:10)

And wore skirts while doing it. But conservatives are far less likely to keep the old religious traditions like the lessons. Carol's alive. What is. You would think by. You would think in a sort of definitional way that we would. The conservatives would want to conserve those old.

Andrew Klavan (37:27)

No, I'll tell you the difference.

Jeremy Boreing (37:28)

That's not what happens.

Matt Walsh (37:29)

I'm not sure the. I don't know about the premise.

Michael Knowles (37:31)

I don't know if that's.

Andrew Klavan (37:32)

I can clarify the premise. I think the word you're looking for, which is often synonymous with conservatives, is the fundamentalists. People who are fundamentalists are the ones who don't want the Highland dance. And they don't want. Because they say, no, I want to go back to the original. I'm so conservative, I want to go back to the original. But there is paradoxically something very conservative about accepting that time goes on and.

Michael Knowles (37:54)

No, but I think. Go ahead, because I think you're gonna say something.

Matt Walsh (37:57)

Well, I'm not sure about the premise because I think one of the defining things about liberals as Christians and also just in the culture generally is that they don't value tradition. So they may keep some traditions alive, but they empty them of meaning, typically. But the idea that liberals are more likely to maintain a tradition, I just.

Michael Knowles (38:21)

Yeah, I went to. I think leftists infiltrated some of these churches and were wise enough to keep the traditions there while they ate the meaning out of it.

Matt Walsh (38:30)

Right, Exactly. They keep the form of it, maybe in some cases.

Jeremy Boreing (38:34)

But I think that it's fair to.

Matt Walsh (38:35)

Say cultural Christianity point from earlier that nobody ever answered, but I think that's kind of the same idea. Cultural Christianity, so called, is keeping some of the forms of these things, putting up the Christmas tree, et cetera, but emptying of all of its spiritual and also historical meaning.

Jeremy Boreing (38:53)

But at least in America, the answer to it seems to be, again, with the exception of the trad Catholics, that the people who are most likely to say that they are religious conservatives, the people who are the most likely to say that they believe that the Bible is literally true. And we can argue about what literally true even means. That's not exactly the conversation I'm trying to have here. Those people are the least likely not only to engage in the Highland dance, but the least likely to engage in liturgy, the least likely to know what Advent is, the least likely to have a choir in their church, and yet they are the most likely to actually believe in the religion.

Michael Knowles (39:28)

Well, because part of that is because they're Protestants, though, and they decided that all the things that the Catholics were doing were bad and got rid of them all.

Matt Walsh (39:35)

And that's why, I guess, because some of the Protestants would. And I totally disagree, but they would argue that, well, they're going to reject some of that stuff because it's not traditional enough. And that stuff was invented later. And so they want to go back to the Bible.

Ben Shapiro (39:46)

There's no stare decisis. In other words, basically, they're just saying, like, if you go back to the gospel, there's no Highland Dads in the gospel. There's no reason we should be doing that. And so I certainly hear that argument. I think there's also a tendency.

Jeremy Boreing (39:59)

But there's also no ESUS 4 in the 1st century church either, and it's in every Protestant.

Andrew Klavan (40:06)

Do you listen to the Psalms of David, though? Are you certain?

Ben Shapiro (40:10)

There may be a broader point here, which is that in a culture that, as Matt says, has been infiltrated in so many ways, where these sort of old rituals and old things have been worn around like Hannibal Lecter's face mask, they've been emptied of meaning and then worn around. But what you've seen, this is true in politics also, is there's a tendency on the right to say, well, to hell with the whole thing. We're just gonna blow up this thing entirely. That's not salvageable anymore. It's not that we're gonna seize it back or we're gonna re. Enter. We're gonna kind of reinfuse it with meaning. We just have to blow the whole thing up. And you get the tendency, I mean, you understand it if you think, for example, that Christmas has been so commercialized that a Christmas tree literally means nothing. It has no bearing on Christmas anymore. You can see somebody saying, okay, well, there's no Christmas tree in our house, because, after all, all it means is commercialism at Macy's or something. You can see why somebody would say that, whether you agree with it or disagree with it.

Michael Knowles (40:58)

Yeah, I mean, I went to a very liturgical church in la, and my joke was it was the bottom of the hill where I lived. I said, if a Muslim place was at the bottom of the hill, I'd gone there just to stay out of traffic. But it was deeply liturgical, deeply good choir. All the things you're talking About. But I had to leave because the guy would then get up and give these sermons that were absolutely corrupt. They were corrupt religiously, they were corrupt logically, they were corrupt spiritually. And finally, I just thought, I love this liturgy. I love everything that's going on until this guy opens his mouth. And then I just.

Jeremy Boreing (41:31)

I do want to be clear that I'm not suggesting anything about the First Presbyterian Church of Nashville. I didn't go to one of their sermons. I'm only generally saying that the Presbyterian Church or the Episcopal Church, broadly speaking, tend to be more progressive.

Andrew Klavan (41:46)

This is why cultural Christianity is a doomed and offensive project. And I appreciate the desire. At least the desire for beauty and tradition might lead one in a good direction, but it's just so hopeless and despairing, and it will lead you nowhere. It's just so sad because it has to be real. And this gets to your point, Jeremy, on the distinction that I would put as being one between conserving and tradition and fundamentalism, which is fundamentally revolutionary, because you're saying, forget about 2,000 years. I want to go back to my image of what the first century was. It has to be real. If the religion is real, as I believe it is, if our Lord really is who he says he is, as I believe he is, then that is lived. That's not just written on the pages of a book. That is lived in the lives of men for 2,000 years, more than 2,000 years, going back many, many thousands of years ago, that's gotta be real and lived. If it's just like, nice buildings or something, I don't know. Yale and Harvard, actually, I don't know.

Ben Shapiro (42:39)

I'm not arguing with you that I think cultural Christianity is really important, but not as a final goal.

Andrew Klavan (42:43)

Yes, Right.

Ben Shapiro (42:44)

As a stepping stone.

Jeremy Boreing (42:45)

Right.

Ben Shapiro (42:45)

As a stepping stone it is. Because, again, you do need that bridge. And I think that the fact that there are people. Because again, these sort of Laplace arguments in Napoleon has been the winning argument for the last couple hundred years, even though it's a really crappy argument.

Michael Knowles (42:56)

Right.

Ben Shapiro (42:56)

There's this famous story that Napoleon is talking to Laplace. He's a mathematician, and he says, where's God and your theories? And the plot says, he's unnecessary. He's unnecessary to the theory. And that's been sort of the scientific take on religion for a very long time. And so the cultural Christian, you know, take Richard Dawkins, who's a fundamentalist atheist, right. He really does not believe in God, thinks the Bible is kind of bad, and all the Rest of this stuff. When he says, but I'm gonna acknowledge the civilization is built on this thing, that is the first step toward the thing. I agree with you. As an end point, it doesn't do anything. It remains a cut flower in a vase. Right. It needs to be reconnected with its roots. But is it actually a step back?

Michael Knowles (43:31)

I was just thinking.

Ben Shapiro (43:34)

I think the answer for a secularist is yes. Again, that goes back to the importance point. Once you say that, it's. Once you say, in a way, you're.

Jeremy Boreing (43:41)

Saying cultural Christianity might be bad in a nation full of Christians, but cultural Christianity might be good and culturally correct.

Ben Shapiro (43:47)

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's a way station. It's either a way station out or a way station in. Because we're in a fundamentally secular age. I think it's more of a waystation in than a waystation out. I think there are very few Christians who are looking at cultural Christianity going, hey, this is cool. I can just say it's important, but not do anything Christianity says. But there are a lot of secularists who are looking at cultural Christianity going, hey, I never thought about Christianity as something even important in my life. I mean, frankly, it's an argument that I've used myself a lot with regard to religion. I say to people that when people say they believe in God, I don't think that people believe in God the way they think they believe in God. Meaning it's not. Maybe for Michael, you know, he approached it from an intellectual point of view. I don't think most people, when they say they believe in God, it's because they're going through the ontological argument. It's not an intellectual engagement with God that makes you believe in God. You believe in God because you live in God, because all the fundamental premises in your life are godly premises, and you live in those premises. And the truth is, a bunch of secular people also live in those premises. And when you make clear to them they live in those premises, then maybe it's worthwhile for them to start investigating the sources.

Matt Walsh (44:45)

But cultural Christianity, I agree, it's a way station in and out. I think it's a good way of putting it. But for us right now, we're in the way station out phase, I would argue. So that's why I would say cultivation.

Ben Shapiro (44:56)

I'm more pessimistic than you, as usual. I think that's an ongoing argument, as.

Michael Knowles (45:03)

Usual, Maybe wrong, is that we were.

Matt Walsh (45:06)

A Christian nation and then we way stationed out to cultural Christian and then became secular and now we're coming back this way.

Ben Shapiro (45:11)

Yes.

Matt Walsh (45:12)

So that's. No, that's not more pessimistic. I have the. More pessimistic.

Andrew Klavan (45:15)

No, no, I kind of agree.

Ben Shapiro (45:17)

Well, okay, so you're more pessimistic about the future and I'm more pessimistic about the status quo. Mean, I think that there are so many people who are outside the religion that you need a way station back in. Whereas you're saying there are a lot of religious people who are looking for way stations.

Michael Knowles (45:29)

Think how anti intellectual Richard Dawkins is. And I like Richard Dawkins as a science writer, actually, but he never thinks through anything that he says. And when you say, gee, I want to keep some of this cultural Christianity alive, as Dawkins now does in his waning years, and don't think the next step that. Why do I want to do that? You know, Mary Harrington, this brilliant kind of former left, far left wing feminist, Oxford student, she has conversations with my son Spencer. I do not understand what either of them are saying. They're so far away in this intellectual world. She had a baby and she said, I like this baby. I like taking care of this baby. And it changed. She had the intellectual integrity to follow that thought into a new way of thinking. And Dawkins never does that. And it drives me crazy about it. It just seems like so much of the cultural Christianity is a Christmas tree, which is lots of fun and presents.

Jeremy Boreing (46:24)

Maybe.

Ben Shapiro (46:24)

But I wonder if maybe you should have more grace for Dawkins, not in the sense that you are wrong to ask him to go all the way. I mean, I think that if you're a Christian, you want people to go all the way. But I think that the point is that the fundamental assertion by him of the importance of even Christianity to his project is going to lead some of his followers to say, hey, wait a second, maybe I should take a look at this thing.

Michael Knowles (46:47)

That's pretty optimistic.

Ben Shapiro (46:50)

Having that conversation with him and Jordan is encouraging people. Okay, well, then maybe you should maybe, like. Because the next logical step that you could say to him if you're having that conversation is, I totally agree with you that Christianity lies at the heart of our civilization. But the thing that you're celebrating, which is a beautiful building in the middle of Paris, if you're looking at Notre Dame, means nothing if there's not anybody in there worshiping Christ. Right? I mean, it's just a big building and then that's the end of the building. And, you know, a thousand Years from now it'll probably be knocked down. And if it's not, it'll just be empty. But it's still empty. It'll have as much meaning as the panther.

Michael Knowles (47:20)

But it's still a practical thing that Rome. Right.

Ben Shapiro (47:22)

I mean, it won't, won't mean anything. It'll just. Nobody's worshiping at the Roman gods in that building. It's just a really nice building. And so does that have any sort of interior meaning to the civilization? Not really.

Jeremy Boreing (47:32)

Yeah. You know, it's funny you bring up Notre Dame because part of what I've been thinking about as I've been wrestling with this question of the liberal denominations tending to keep certain kinds of tradition alive, and I'm interested in your idea about fundamentalism versus conservatism. I'll spend time on that in my thinking. But I thought about Notre Dame because they rebuilt the building after the fire and to everyone's surprise, they seem to have really honored the building that was. Instead of trying to reimagine it as a building that could be.

Ben Shapiro (48:03)

They didn't put a pool on top.

Andrew Klavan (48:04)

Right.

Jeremy Boreing (48:04)

They didn't put a. Yeah, but even that it did occur to me is only good in a post Christian Europe. And even. And I mentioned to Mathis that I may bring this up and I said Michael will disagree with me, but I think if he thinks about this for a minute, he may not disagree with me, which is we romanticize the cathedrals of Europe. I romanticize the cathedrals of Europe. I'm to a point now where, listen, I go to a lovely Baptist church here in middle Tennessee filled with wonderful people. I love the pastor. He has a real vision for his fellowship. I don't agree completely with Baptist theology, but it's a very good place for me to have my family right now. And I enjoy the church, but every time I'm there, and it's a beautiful building, every time I'm there, my heart sort of longs to be in the uk. I want to be at St. Albans or I want to be at St. Paul's I want to be in one of these thousand year old cathedrals. But I've begun to realize that even my view of those thousand year old cathedrals, I'm seeing it through the flattening. You know, when we look at history, we tend to flatten it and we'll say things like, imagine starting a work that your great grandchild would have to finish. Which is what people often say about the cathedrals. And I think, well, first of all, you misunderstand time completely. Because they didn't start a work that their great grandchildren would finish. They started a work that their great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great great grandchildren would finish. These buildings were started as wood structures, replaced by stone structures that then burned down because the roof was thatched, replaced by another stone structure that then fell over because they weren't very good at building stone structures. And then they built a third stone structure, and that one stayed, and then they expanded it and then they tore the roof down. And by the 1200. What do you call the arches that?

Ben Shapiro (50:01)

The flying buttresses.

Jeremy Boreing (50:02)

Yeah, the flying buttresses, yes. And then they spires and then stained glass. And this goes on and on and on and on until the Victorian era. And then they were just all done. And we now think of them as done, but they were never intended to be done.

Andrew Klavan (50:18)

Oh, they're just Sagrada Familia.

Jeremy Boreing (50:19)

That's the one. That's right. Which is still not done.

Andrew Klavan (50:22)

Yeah.

Jeremy Boreing (50:23)

But there is this idea that when the guy started it, his great grandchild would finish it. Not only did you leave out a bunch of greats, but you misunderstood the premise. He started it thinking it would never be complete. The tragedy is, we look at them now, 100 years or more past their completion, and the thing that we long for isn't. I actually think.

Andrew Klavan (50:44)

I agree with this, Tom.

Jeremy Boreing (50:45)

But here's the funny thing. At every stage, the traditionalists hated what they did. No. No flying buttresses. It's been a thatch roof for 200 years. We should maintain what was old, but the religion was alive. The truth is, when we look at the beautiful cathedrals at Europe, we are looking at proof that the religion died 120 years ago.

Andrew Klavan (51:06)

I would go further than that. I agree with basically every point you've made. Traditionalism as an ideology is pretty recent, and it's a reaction to modernity and it's a reaction to the cracking up of the faith.

Jeremy Boreing (51:18)

Right. But the truth is, if Christianity in Europe hadn't died, those cathedrals would have modernist components to it because they would have kept building them.

Michael Knowles (51:29)

Modernism, yeah, Is a problem right there.

Jeremy Boreing (51:33)

But they would not look like they look. There would be 120 years of modernity added.

Michael Knowles (51:38)

It's just that the buildings that modernism and its children produce are so hideous because the faith died.

Matt Walsh (51:46)

The modern churches are built. I mean, the fundamental problem is they're built like they're embarrassed to be church. They don't want anyone to know that God's being worshiped inside, as if we're Back in the catacombs and we have to hide. But of course, that's not the case at all. And that's the problem with those churches. But I agree with your basic point.

Jeremy Boreing (52:04)

What we're actually longing for, we're not longing for that moment. We're longing for the time before time stopped.

Andrew Klavan (52:12)

There was a great moment.

Jeremy Boreing (52:13)

We're longing for the time when the faith.

Michael Knowles (52:15)

We're longing for the time when. When Bach could sit down and write a song, like a minute, you know, a song. At the same time, it would take you to make up a limerick, basically, that was explosively beautiful, like beyond beauty, because that was what was in him, you know, And I think that that's the problem if that's missing.

Jeremy Boreing (52:32)

But America was never a part of that tradition. True, America has always been. It's, yes, utilitarian, disposable. In America, you start a church in a cafeteria at an elementary school that's closed, and then you buy a small church that's been abandoned and then you build a church and then 20 years later you build a bigger church. And I'm not even knocking that, because at least that's not European. It doesn't result in these beautiful buildings, but it is still alive. Christianity has still been alive here. And that's how. We don't have family country homes like they do in England either, where your family lives in the same house for a thousand years. We have a disposable approach to this, an innovative approach to it.

Ben Shapiro (53:11)

I think people also like to be involved in the building. Yeah, really. I mean, if you're a part of a community, people like being involved in the building.

Jeremy Boreing (53:17)

Like we're dedicating, contributing to it.

Ben Shapiro (53:19)

Yeah, exactly. Adding onto it, like adding new rooms, changing the structure of it and growing the footprint of it. And the minute that it stops growing, it's dying. Then it just becomes a bunch of 70 year olds who are in a fading church. That's beautiful. But it was finished 30 years ago and there's no young blood in there to actually make it, you know.

Jeremy Boreing (53:34)

But this is. I think this is also why I love Christmas music this time of year. I know Michael won't listen to Christmas.

Andrew Klavan (53:39)

Music for three more weeks till 12:01am on Christmas.

Michael Knowles (53:43)

No, it's. The Thanksgiving Day parade is over.

Jeremy Boreing (53:45)

That's right. But when I say I love Christmas, what I mean in particular is I love the Christmas music from the Great American Songbook era.

Andrew Klavan (53:53)

Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Boreing (53:53)

Because I knew that was something I liked about showing. Because that's when America was still Alive.

Andrew Klavan (53:59)

Well, yes.

Michael Knowles (54:00)

That's what gives us beautiful, wistful.

Jeremy Boreing (54:02)

No, no, no. We've talked about that before. We've talked about this before. I'm talking about something different that is Christmas music because that is when America was culturally still alive.

Andrew Klavan (54:11)

Yeah, it's a good point.

Jeremy Boreing (54:13)

I listen to Taylor Swift, and I'm not a Taylor Swift hater. I think she's a genuine talent.

Ben Shapiro (54:20)

Nash just talks, but go ahead.

Jeremy Boreing (54:21)

But I listened to her Christmas song today, and then I listened to a Christmas song by Ed Sheeran and Elton John. I think Ed Sheeran's incredibly talented, but they're beyond. The culture is gone. They're very talented people who live after the culture.

Matt Walsh (54:33)

They don't feel like Christmas songs. That's right.

Jeremy Boreing (54:34)

And they don't feel like Christmas.

Matt Walsh (54:35)

No. Paul McCartney killed Christmas songs. He murdered.

Andrew Klavan (54:40)

We cut to commercials.

Michael Knowles (54:41)

He tortured them today.

Matt Walsh (54:42)

They've died after Balancar.

Andrew Klavan (54:43)

This man is not having a wonderful Christmas, nor a wonderful actor.

Michael Knowles (54:47)

The war is over.

Jeremy Boreing (54:49)

We're gonna hear more from our sponsor, Halo right now. Halo. Halo. Halo. Hallo. Oh, my God.

Andrew Klavan (54:54)

Halo's video game.

Jeremy Boreing (54:56)

I told them never let me read any apps, but they just put it right there. We're going to hear from our wonderful sponsor, Hallo. While I eat this cracker, fight with Matt about, well, everything but Paul McCartney in particular. And then we'll be right back.

Michael Knowles (55:10)

Hey. Hey.

Ben Shapiro (55:16)

It can be so easy to get.

Andrew Klavan (55:17)

Busy and distracted during the holidays. Easy to lose focus, easy to lose sight of what this season is really about.

Michael Knowles (55:30)

For God so loved the world that he gave us his only son.

Andrew Klavan (55:35)

Don't lose sight this Advent. Pray every day on.

Jeremy Boreing (55:38)

Hello. So my premise in conclusion, we actually.

Ben Shapiro (55:45)

Were arguing about public argument.

Jeremy Boreing (55:46)

Well, my premise in conclusion is that the things that we long for are actually civilizations that are thriving or civilizations in which the faith was thriving to maybe make it central to what we've been talking about the whole time. And I think it's even true for my friends, the Jews, too, because when you see Orthodox Jews who are wearing.

Ben Shapiro (56:06)

Whenever anyone uses my friends, the Jews.

Jeremy Boreing (56:09)

Just before they kill you.

Andrew Klavan (56:10)

Right. Hold on.

Jeremy Boreing (56:11)

In fairness, I've only got two. But when you see Jewish people, traditional Jewish people, wearing the black hat and the black suit, and you think, oh, man, they're the most traditionalist Jewish guys around, and then you go, well, no, they have a 3,500-year-old religion and they're wearing a 100-year-old costume, but they're doing the exact same thing as me, wanting to be in a cathedral from The Victorian era. They're going back to the time when Judaism in Poland was thriving.

Ben Shapiro (56:38)

Right.

Jeremy Boreing (56:39)

And they're. And they're longing. They're not actually longing for their ancestral religion, they're longing for their religion being alive in the culture.

Ben Shapiro (56:46)

That's right. They're locking in amber, a particular way of life, because that's exactly the time when the Enlightenment started. They're doing the same thing. The Enlightenment started. And they said, okay, well, you know what. What we've got right now, we got to protect that time to bubble it off, and that's what we're gonna do. But there are, you know, obviously thriving wings of Judaism in the Orthodox community that are very different and have evolved in a very different way. Of course. And you can see it when you go to Israel. You can see all the different modes of dress, and you can see by actual yarmulke type, you can identify exactly the ideology of the person who's wearing the yarmulke. You really can't. Like it's an actual thing. Like, if they're wearing a velvet yarmulke, they're probably of the ultra Orthodox haredi black hat sect. If they're wearing what's called the kippahs rugal, like a woven kippah, which is what I wear, then they would be what's known as dati lumi, which is sort of, you know, Zionist, modern Orthodox. If they're.

Jeremy Boreing (57:32)

I like the. I like the one that looks like a piece of matzah. It's very whimsical. I call it the Encino Reform.

Ben Shapiro (57:42)

Usually it's not a woman. Yeah, exactly. But it is interesting how these things develop. But I think that one of the things that's interesting about the Christmas music of the 50s and the 40s is that there's a wistfulness about it, because I think even then they can sense that there's something happening in the culture, like the kind of the glimmerings of something not so great happening. And even they're being nostalgic. They're nostalgic about, like, being home.

Michael Knowles (58:03)

Right.

Ben Shapiro (58:04)

They're long for a white Christmas.

Michael Knowles (58:05)

Part of it is because of the war.

Ben Shapiro (58:06)

Yeah, yeah. Some of it's because of war, but a lot of it is also just because there's something they feel is calling them away from sort of those ancestral roots. And so they're feeling like they're sort of almost on the outside looking in. And I think that's why those things are perennial. I mean, you can listen to that stuff now, and it still hits.

Jeremy Boreing (58:21)

And there's no irony. There's no irony.

Ben Shapiro (58:23)

What you're saying you want an authentic period. It's so funny. We're such a. Our site is dumb because we're obsessed with authenticity, but then we're ironic about the actual authentic people. It turns out people in 30s, 40s, and 50s were actually pretty unironic.

Michael Knowles (58:35)

But what you're getting at is when Jesus said, the thing that comes out of your mouth is important because that's what's in your heart. That's what we're really talking about. If the heart is empty, it doesn't matter what building you build. And if your heart is full of God, you'll build a beautiful building.

Andrew Klavan (58:48)

Ultimately, there is a strange thing in that. I really, really love cathedrals about it as much as you do, I think. But you really love cathedrals too. And I really love them. And I want to be. I love high liturgy. And I think it's not only beautiful, but important. And I think God wants to be worshiped in reverent, serious ways. And maybe the most thriving parish I've ever been in. The mass takes place in a tiny little room in the parish hall because the church was wrecked by a tornado. And it takes place in this tiny little room, and everyone's packed in, and there's a thousand kids, and they're all sitting on top of each other and they're crying and screaming, and there's a small little altar up there. And it is as unornamented as a church can be. But it's all real.

Ben Shapiro (59:27)

This is right.

Andrew Klavan (59:27)

And everyone thinks it's real.

Ben Shapiro (59:29)

The people inside a place of worship make it a place of worship or not. I just came back from Israel, and one of the places that we were in was a place where it's called a hester Yeshiva. So this is like a place where kids study, like 18, 19 years old. But in this particular place where they study, it's a joint program with the army, so they study. And they also all serve in the army. So it's not like when you think of yeshiva, you think of kids who are, like, avoiding the army. In Israel, there's like a whole segment. And so these people come in on Friday night, and, you know, they're all gonna be in Lebanon, like, the next morning. And they're all praying to God and they're doing. And they're singing these songs, and it's like, this is probably 400 kids. And it's amazing. I mean, the word in Hebrew is kavana, which means to it means intent. But it really is, it comes from Tzvakis to like cling to God. So it's about clinging to God. When you feel that anywhere you are, that's going to be the mark of the religion. This place, I mean, the yeshiva itself wasn't anything special to look at. It was basically a cafeteria of learning.

Andrew Klavan (60:19)

But I bet people, I'm thinking of two. One parish I was in in New York, one parish here. It doesn't matter if it's unornamented or, you know, you're in circumstance. But I have noticed people do naturally want, then ornament it with themselves, with their art, with their, you know, it just, it comes. Don't worry if you get the essentials correct and the interior life of the people correct, the cathedral will build itself.

Michael Knowles (60:46)

That's it. That's it. You know, I just have this strange thought which I present to you without having thought it through. But, you know, people are always accusing Ben of having dual loyalty, accusing Jews, but Ben as being king of the Jews.

Jeremy Boreing (61:01)

Lowercase k. It occurs to me.

Michael Knowles (61:04)

That we should all have a dual loyalty to Israel because it is the place that God hallowed with his presence. And it is like still the living presence is there. If you've ever been there, you know it is. And it's like even St. Paul says that God is not done with the Jews. God is not done with the Jews.

Andrew Klavan (61:20)

At least we should have dual loyalty to the Papal State. Do those still exist? Are those still around?

Jeremy Boreing (61:26)

A minute ago you ruined my brain.

Michael Knowles (61:28)

Thought, but I don't mind.

Jeremy Boreing (61:30)

A minute ago I referred to my friends, the Jews and said there were only two. One of them is Ben and the other is our pal Dennis Prager. And we can't talk about Jordan Peterson's Gospel series, which is available at Daily Wire plus, without talking about our friend Dennis. The last time we, the five of us sat here was one month ago, the day after the election of Donald Trump to be our 47th president, or 48th, depending on how the next 55 days go for old show. But Dennis was right here with us, and as people at home probably are aware, only a few days later, after returning to his home in la, Dennis had a terrible accident and has been in the hospital since that time. Dennis is one of the major voices in this Gospels series, and during his time shooting it, I got to have dinner with he and his wife Sue. And Dennis talked about the making of this with Jordan and what he thought his role was as sort of an outsider among outsiders. I mean, if no One involved in this? Well, not no one. But if many of the panelists here are sort of heterodox in their thinking, Jordan's not Christian at all. I mean, he's one of the most famous Jewish figures probably in the world, certainly in the country. And what Dennis told me is that he thought certainly he had things to offer about Christianity's role in the world as an outsider, kind of like the writers of the Christmas songs. He had ideas about the connection of the text back to things like Exodus, which he thought were really valuable. But he also thought that part of what he brought to it was levity. He said, you've got these great minds and Dennis is no slouch. Dennis is a brilliant guy. But Dennis has this real charm, which is that he's still very connected to the human in a way that sometimes intellectuals are not. And Dennis, as you watch this series, it's so wonderful to see him sort of grab these big thinkers and pull them back to the human. Because obviously if the church isn't filled with people of faith, then it's a meaningless body. And if your theology isn't ultimately in service of. I mean, it's because God so loved the world that he sent his son, which is what the Gospels is all about. And so here's a clip of Dennis on the first episode of the Gospels, which I think just sort of perfectly captures his contribution to the work. Here's Dennis.

Dennis Prager (64:00)

The death of Christianity frightens me. It is my nightmare. And I ask people all the time, name me one ideology that has supplanted Christianity, that has done good for humanity and nobody can come up with an answer. There is a quote attributed to G.K. chesterton, though it's not verifiable that he actually said it. But it's brilliant when people stop believing in God and they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything. And as I point out on my radio show each day, I probably say this once a week. Only secular people say men give birth. Not all secular people say that, but only secular people say that. We have entered a post Christian or really post Judeo Christian world of the absurd. I see Christianity as a divinely ordained vehicle to bring the world to the Torah. So I have a very pro Christian, Jewish based view. It hasn't always been done right, but Christians are human and human nature is awful, or at least not particularly good. So people can screw up anything but when done properly, and I think America and Britain have been particularly good. It was Christians who abolished slavery. It's also Christians who made the Inquisition. I'm well aware. I wrote a book on antisemitism. And I pray that Christians come forth now and speak out against a raging antisemitism that I did not think I would see in my lifetime. But nevertheless, this Jew, this Westerner, is very frightened of a post Christian society.

Jeremy Boreing (66:09)

That's our friend Dennis Prager in Jordan Peterson's new series the Gospels at Daily Wire Plus. And for those of you who have been following along with Dennis ordeal and praying for Dennis, we thank you for that. Obviously, such a good friend to all of us on the panel and to Ben and I these last many years in particular. And, you know, Dennis situation is quite serious, but there is great hope. And he has shown a lot of progress in the weeks since his accident. And I know that, you know, it must be, what an amazing thing, Dennis worldview. Central to his worldview is the idea that happiness is a moral obligation. And here he is in this very difficult moment. And he's certainly sad, but he isn't depressed. His worldview is being tested and he's standing up to the test, which is a beautiful thing, even in a really tragic, a really tragic moment. And I can't help but wonder what it must feel like to be him and know that millions of people are praying for you.

Michael Knowles (67:06)

Amazing.

Jeremy Boreing (67:06)

What a powerful thing to experience.

Michael Knowles (67:08)

You know, my daughter got very ill when she had her second child and her life was under threat. And my wife was sitting there and she said she could feel the people outside praying for her. She knew they were, and she felt it come into the room. And my wife is not particularly a mystic or anything like that, but she said it was there. And I know Dennis has said this, too, that the people who have spoken to him says he feels it, too.

Andrew Klavan (67:32)

Yeah. I said, when we heard that Dennis had this accident, I said to Elisa that night, I said, you know, Dennis had this very serious accident. And her reaction was a very human reaction. It was basically my reaction when you came to tell me in my studio, which is, she said, no, no, no. But we were just with him four days ago, and he was so vivacious. And he said on air, he said, this is the best day. This is the best day of my life. Get me a glass of alcohol for the first time in 75 years. That's a very human reaction because you say, no, no, no. Whenever anything bad happens to any of your friends, you say, no, no, no, that can't possibly be true because yesterday it wasn't true. But you know, ain't that just how it goes, yes. And Dennis is well aware of that. You know, Dennis is a wise guy. He's not. He's quite, quite clear on these things.

Ben Shapiro (68:20)

Dennis is a magnificent human being, as we all know. And I think that one of the things that has to be of a special comfort to his family is that so many of the people who are praying for him are people who didn't used to pray and then started listening to his show and started listening to Dennis, and now are people who actually believe in God and pray. So many of the people who are now calling out to God on his behalf are people he brought to God in the first place. Yeah.

Jeremy Boreing (68:44)

I have heard Dennis talk about many times being the interesting position that he occupies, which is that his sort of mission in life has been to lead people back to Judaism, lead Jews who have fallen away from Judaism, back to Judaism. And yet along the way, he's probably led more Christians back to Christianity than most pastors ever have. Because of the thing that is so special about Dennis, which is that he really does remember the human. Dennis would rather talk to you about music than about the ultimate issues. One of the most wonderful things about Dennis is that when you are in mixed company with Dennis, he wants to talk about disposable diapers with the women at the table. Whatever the most human thing that could be discussed. That's. That's the thing that fascinates him the most. And for that reason, he's reached a lot of those humans that he cares so much about and God willing, will continue to in the future and certainly does in this gospel series. I think that we're going to take a few questions from our Daily Wire plus members who make it possible for us to be here. If you're not a member, head over to Daily Wire Plus. We're offering 50% off our cyber Monday sale. Best sell of the year. And if you are a subscriber, we thank you and we'll take some questions from you right now. Question number one for the group speaking of biblical texts, do you believe the New Testament teachings outweigh the teachings of the Old Testament?

Ben Shapiro (70:07)

I mean, you will go first. No.

Matt Walsh (70:10)

That is the correct answer. Outweigh would certainly not be the way to phrase it. The New Testament, if you're a Christian, you believe the New Testament is a fulfillment of the Old Testament, but it's not like the two are in competition and one wins out.

Andrew Klavan (70:23)

And in fact, they can't be in competition.

Dennis Prager (70:24)

Right.

Matt Walsh (70:25)

They can't be in competition.

Ben Shapiro (70:26)

Heresy.

Andrew Klavan (70:26)

Right, Right.

Matt Walsh (70:28)

So there aren't things in the Old Testament Testament that are now, like, negated or abolished or they don't count anymore.

Andrew Klavan (70:32)

Not a jot or tittle.

Michael Knowles (70:33)

Right.

Matt Walsh (70:34)

Which is an important point when you get into even public policy things, issues like, for example, the death penalty. And some Christians believe that. Well, because of what the New Testament says, we can't believe in the Old Testament. Well, in the Old Testament, God commands the death penalty. So we know that it can't be an inherently evil act. And the Old Testament has not been outweighed.

Michael Knowles (70:56)

No, that's it.

Andrew Klavan (70:57)

St. Paul also defends the death penalty explicitly in the epistles.

Michael Knowles (71:00)

But it's one book. It's one book. It doesn't make any sense any other way. And the beauty. The beauty of the echoing themes in the New Testament that run through the Old Testament could not have been conceived by any mind. Maybe Shakespeare could have come up with something. Maybe he could have come up with something that intricately interwoven, but you can't. Pulling them apart is like pulling the bones out of a fish. You just can't do it.

Andrew Klavan (71:27)

It's also, not to belabor the point, the New Testament is inexplicable. It is not possible to understand it except through the lens of the Old Testament. And the Christian believes the Old Testament is inexplicable outside the lens of the New Testament. So they are. To your point, Drew, it is one cohesive whole.

Jeremy Boreing (71:43)

Another interesting thing about that is that even when Christ was walking among men, as recounted in the Gospels, the connection between the Old Testament and the theology of Christ still wasn't obvious. So much so that we're told the resurrected Christ had to open the eyes of the apostles to the intricate connections between the old and the new.

Andrew Klavan (72:09)

And what does the resurrected Christ do on the road to Emmaus? He opens the scriptures.

Michael Knowles (72:14)

You know, one of the funniest things you ever said, you probably don't even remember it was in your. In your home church. You once said if you took people back on a tour to show them Jesus, they would all say, where is he? Is he behind that Jewish guy over there?

Jeremy Boreing (72:31)

That sounds like something I might have said.

Michael Knowles (72:33)

You did say it.

Jeremy Boreing (72:34)

Another question from a Daily Wire plus member. Are we on the brink of a spiritual awakening? What will be said about our current time in 50 or 100 years?

Michael Knowles (72:42)

Yes, we are. We know this because I have been predicting it for about 15 years. So I guess.

Andrew Klavan (72:47)

And you were a prophet. Well, you at least lived at the time of the prophet somebody.

Michael Knowles (72:50)

Yeah, so I did live somebody. A game we were playing Over Thanksgiving was. We went around the table and asked what our superpower is. And I said, my superpower is knowing what's going to happen five years too soon. But no, there's absolutely. I mean, look, we could go down the drain, but I don't think we are. I think this is the moment when this will catch fire in the hearts of men. You know, God's not gonna let his church die and we can reject God. You know, he gives us that absolute option. So it's all contingent on what we do. But I just feel already it's happening already. People of real thought, real intellection are finding this. It's going to be like the new Oxford movement. My prediction has always been that it's going to come down from above. It's not going to be. It'll become a street thing. It's not going to be like old awakenings where people get out in tents. It's going to be in the universities where people go like, ah, the comparison.

Andrew Klavan (73:43)

With the Oxford movement. That's a very apt comparison.

Ben Shapiro (73:45)

Yes. I will say that just on a general level, it does feel weirdly as though God is pulling away a lot of ales in the last 10 years.

Michael Knowles (73:52)

Yes. Doesn't that like.

Ben Shapiro (73:53)

It just feels like, you know, there's my favorite section of the Old Testament in the book of Exodus, there's part where Moses is talking to God and he says to God, I want to see your face. And God says, you can't see my face and live, but I'll let you see my back. And he puts him in the crevice in the rock. And then God, it says, God walks past him and he sees God's back. And so what does that mean? There are all sorts of commentaries in the Jewish tradition on what exactly that means. My favorite commentary, which I had actually posited and then found that obviously, always there's a wiser mind than you who said it 500 years ago. But the basic idea is that you can't see God when he's staring you right in the face, when it's happening in your life, when the immediate is happening, because you're too involved in the immediate. You can only see God through the rearview mirror. You can only see God as he walks away. So you can see God as he's walking through history. And that's why when you look back at your life, you can see all these terrible things that happened in your life and how one thing led to another, and all that wove the tapestry of your life. And that's True throughout civilizations as well. It feels like God's writing has been incredibly obvious the last 10 years or so. I mean, the amount of things that are happening right now that are just of almost biblical proportions. Scary is truly kind of an astonishing thing.

Matt Walsh (74:58)

I do want to say, though, that. And this kind of goes back to Jeremy's point about the timeframe building cathedrals happened over. It's your great, great, great, great grandchild would finish it. And so I think when we get. Anytime we get these questions of are we in the middle of a spiritual awakening? Are things changing for the better? My answer is always very unsatisfying because my answer is always, well, I don't actually know the answer to that. And I think that maybe my kids will know and hopefully my grandchildren will know the answer, because this is. If there is a spiritual awakening, that's a generational. It's going to happen over the course of generations. And so if the question is, what will they say about the spiritual awakening 50 years from now? Well, hopefully, if it's happening, they're gonna be in the middle of it for 50 years from now. Yes. And so one thing for sure is if we want there to be a spiritual awakening, we have to be spiritual and religious and have our children have children and raise them up in the faith. And so we can get the ball rolling that way. But we're not gonna live to see sort of the awakening complete.

Jeremy Boreing (75:56)

I'm glad you said that.

Michael Knowles (75:57)

Not be afraid to talk about it as if it were real. That's the thing.

Jeremy Boreing (76:00)

But I was going to say something similar, but from a slightly different angle, which is I don't believe in the Rapture. Nor do I. Yeah, Catholics tend to not believe in the Rapture, but I don't much care because if I'm wrong, I'll grab Drew's ankles. What I know is that someone. God comes for someone every day. And spiritual awakenings, I think you have to approach it the same, I don't know, on a sort of global level or societal level what's happening. Maybe it is. I hope so. I'm hopeful. But today is someone's spiritual awakening, and may it be yours. Like you can interact with God right now, today, if you have not interacted with God before. I remember all the way back in the long time agoy day, when I was a fan of Andrew Clavin, because I didn't know it.

Michael Knowles (76:58)

The two things that you're hearing that happens in many such cases.

Jeremy Boreing (77:01)

And Drew put out a video, a whimsical but serious video. About how if you were wrestling with God, the thing that you should try doing is praying. And he essentially said, you should pray for 10 minutes a day. And he said, it doesn't matter if you believe in God or not. Just assume you believe in God for a minute and talk to him. Spend 10 minutes every day praying. He said, and I pray, and I can't remember. It was kind of a sales pitch. It was a very funny video. And I guarantee in 60 days money back guarantee or whatever that you'll find that you do believe in God. If you start and.

Michael Knowles (77:35)

His lines are open, that was.

Jeremy Boreing (77:37)

Yeah, his lines are always open.

Ben Shapiro (77:38)

That's right.

Jeremy Boreing (77:39)

And I see it that way. It's like the rapture's coming for somebody today. And spiritual awakening can also. The other side of that can also come for you today. And to your point, there is no global spiritual awakening without a whole series of individual spiritual awakenings. So to whatever degree we play a part in that, now is a good time to do it. For Drew. I don't know why. For Drew. Do you see the Gospels as four different news outlets or authors covering the same story or biography? Inasmuch as each reporter interviews different witnesses and has a slightly different take on the same news story?

Michael Knowles (78:13)

If you were a cop and you interviewed four people and they all told you the exact same thing about what they saw, you would know that they had conspired and lied. So I think what you have is four different people from four different points of view. And it's meant to be this way. Obviously, it wasn't an accident giving you their take on the story. This is why I never worry, for instance, if somebody says, well, this doesn't fit in with that. That if it did all fit in, if it all just absolutely fit in, I would think, no, this is a conspiracy. But these are people who each saw the same thing in a different way. And I think that that, to me, is part of the evidence of its truth.

Jeremy Boreing (78:48)

Man, I'm glad they made that one for you.

Matt Walsh (78:51)

I know it wasn't for me, but I do want to add one thing that I think this. And you said earlier, it's kind of like journalism, reading the Gospels. I think that's true of the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I think John's doing something different. And I think that John's actually not journaling. There's something. It's more of a spiritual biography of Christ.

Michael Knowles (79:15)

That's who he is.

Matt Walsh (79:16)

Yeah, right, right.

Jeremy Boreing (79:18)

There's another question in the teleprompter. Only seconds ago, and it was for Matt. It was really good. But I think it's gone.

Michael Knowles (79:24)

Matt. And the thing's gone.

Jeremy Boreing (79:25)

Yeah. Ah, here it is. Matt, I just wanted to say thank you for speaking. Oh, wait, hold on. Everybody else got a question. And he gets praised.

Matt Walsh (79:33)

This is a great one.

Jeremy Boreing (79:34)

I just. Oh, man. I just wanted to say thank you for speaking out about the new sexual abuse in schools. I'm interested in looking into doing a documentary about sexual abuse in the schools. As a documentary king. Do you have any suggestions?

Matt Walsh (79:49)

Just do it. Just start doing it.

Ben Shapiro (79:53)

And we dress up as we think going to school.

Matt Walsh (79:58)

I'd stop short, I guess, for that. I'd stop short of some of our amiracist methods. But I certainly hope that somebody makes that documentary because this is a major crisis epidemic like nobody talks about, and it's crazy.

Jeremy Boreing (80:14)

What, if anything, can actually be done about the Hunter issue? Is there any legal way to overturn a presidential policy? Presidential policies, yes. This is a presidential pardon, which is somewhat unique. And it brings us to the political section of the show. We've been lost in the sublime and now we have to get down into.

Michael Knowles (80:30)

The ridiculous, the dirty.

Jeremy Boreing (80:33)

Yeah, Obviously the big news story of the weekend, President Biden pardoned his son Hunter of any crime that he may or may not have committed.

Michael Knowles (80:46)

Or may yet commit.

Jeremy Boreing (80:47)

Or may yet commit.

Ben Shapiro (80:48)

The best thing about that pardon was that it came down and it went all the way until midnight last night. So there was like a four hour period where Hunter could have done anything, wanted legitimately, anything, as long as it was federal crime and not a state level crime.

Michael Knowles (80:59)

Probably do that, could have done anything.

Ben Shapiro (81:02)

Like cross interstate lines with prostitutes, like anything that he wanted. Just really enjoyed himself for like four hours right there. Had been totally clean. It is the most sweeping pardon in modern presidential history because it didn't pardon him just for the offenses that he was convicted for or pled guilty to. It pardoned him for everything and anything that he was. Like a note from the Three Musketeers. The bearer of this note has done what has been done. It began. It began unshockingly, January 1, 2014. He joined the board of Burisma April of 2014, which is why it was dated this particular way. They didn't make a boo boo here. I will say, if the goal here was to immunize Joe, which is more than likely at least part of the goal, they were afraid that Hunter was going to be flipped, that essentially the new Trump DOJ was gonna come in. They were gonna start looking through Hunter's Finances. They were gonna find there were checks to the big guy, and then they're gonna try to flip Hunter on Joe. Well, there is one problem. He always could have pled the Fifth Amendment. He can't do that anymore. Once you've been pardoned, the Fifth Amendment goes away, legally speaking, because it's a right against self incrimination. You can't incriminate yourself for a crime that you're not gonna be convicted of and that you can't be convicted of. So theoretically, they could drag him before Congress or before a jury or in a subpoena and they could say, you can't plead the Fifth. And so you'll just get a bunch of. I don't remember, as I'm sure.

Jeremy Boreing (82:16)

So the president has very broad pardoning authority for federal crime other than the Nixon pardon. Are there examples of pardons for things you haven't been.

Andrew Klavan (82:27)

Jimmy Carter pardoned the draft dodgers, didn't he?

Ben Shapiro (82:30)

Yes, he did.

Matt Walsh (82:30)

Yeah.

Andrew Klavan (82:31)

And that was also quite broad, this one.

Ben Shapiro (82:34)

Yeah, that is broad.

Jeremy Boreing (82:35)

But it is for one particular thing.

Andrew Klavan (82:37)

Yeah, it's for a ton of people, but for one particular thing.

Jeremy Boreing (82:40)

Right.

Ben Shapiro (82:40)

But no, I'm not sure I know about a part in this, like, for any and all unspecified crimes during this gigantic.

Jeremy Boreing (82:46)

That may or may not have been committed for 11.

Ben Shapiro (82:47)

It's actually hilarious in so many ways.

Michael Knowles (82:50)

It's hilarious he has committed to searching the rest of his life for the Big Guy. That's.

Ben Shapiro (82:53)

I think it's also hilarious to watch as the entire narrative that they'd constructed. Joe Biden is the president of norms and he's normality, and Donald Trump is a threat to the system.

Andrew Klavan (83:04)

That's what I kind of like about.

Ben Shapiro (83:05)

It is that completely exploded.

Andrew Klavan (83:07)

I had a very unpopular take on this that I disagreed on X with our esteemed colleague Mr. Walsh here, but really it began with. I was shocked that people were shocked.

Ben Shapiro (83:18)

Yeah.

Andrew Klavan (83:18)

Were there seriously people who believed that.

Michael Knowles (83:21)

This would not happen? I got this wonderful, wonderful email from a conservative friend in Hollywood. So he's obviously undercover, who had dinner with a liberal friend and before this happened, and he said, obviously. My friend said, obviously, Biden's gonna pardon his son. And the guy said, never happened. Never happened. So they bet a million. I said, I'll bet you a million dollars. And they shook on it. And now the guy said, well, it was a joke, of course, but I think it's incredibly touching to me that people really did believe that Joe Biden, who was a weathervane, who is one of the most routinely corrupt politicians of our lifetime was a man of honor who was going to abide by his word. But they did. They did believe. It's kind of touching.

Andrew Klavan (84:04)

It's crazy to me. I mean, in part it's a testament to human gullibility. To Ben's point, was he trying to protect himself? Yeah, probably. Does Joe ever do anything as a selfless matter? No. But I don't think Joe is a completely meaning. I think Joe really loves his kid. I think that. I think most people in that position, if their kid were not just 18 years old and you're gonna let him sleep a crime off in jail, but you know a kid is looking at serious jail time. You're on the brink of death, he's your last living kid. I think most people probably would pardon their kid or at least commute their kid's sentence unless he were actually liable for lots of other crimes that are more serious.

Jeremy Boreing (84:41)

I think that if he had commuted Hunter's sentence, but he'd still be liable for the known crime for the crimes for which he was actually convicted.

Andrew Klavan (84:47)

But he wasn't prosecuted for the serious crimes. He was prosecuted for this.

Matt Walsh (84:50)

Yeah, but that's the point. That's why this to me is the interesting question with the. And it's probably irrelevant because he did do it for his own sake. But just pretending that's not the case for a second, the interesting question is like, would you do this for your own kid? And my answer is, hell no, I would not do this for my own kids. No. Here's what I would do if my kids were convicted of some tax crime or a gun charge. Absolutely. I would pardon everyone ever convicted of a tax crime or a gun or probably a gun crime.

Ben Shapiro (85:18)

Thank you.

Jeremy Boreing (85:18)

Pardon for the draft.

Matt Walsh (85:20)

But what I would not do is if I had a 54 year old, drug addled loser of a son who's been an absolute loser his whole life, I would not give him a blanket get out of jail free card for any crime he may have committed. Up to things like sex trafficking, federal crime for a period of 10 years. Okay, let me ask you because, hold on a second. Your number one duty as a parent, and you know this, is to lead your child to virtue and then to heaven.

Andrew Klavan (85:46)

Ultimately, this is Plato's argument in Gorgias, right?

Matt Walsh (85:48)

So by giving him that get out of jail free card, you have impeded his ability to develop.

Ben Shapiro (85:55)

This comes down to the selfishness of Joe Biden, though. The thing that nobody has pointed out about his relationship with Hunter for years is that he enabled this. He Did. I mean, he enabled it.

Michael Knowles (86:05)

He profited off of it.

Ben Shapiro (86:06)

He profited off of it. He knew his son was a drug addled mess. Everyone knew his son was a drug addled mess. He, he knew his son was trafficking with prostitutes and smoking meth. He knew all that stuff. And he sent him to get million dollar jobs at Burisma so he could bring home the bacon. You know what you don't do with a kid who's in serious drug trouble? Give him free access to large quantities of untraceable cash. That is a thing that you don't do with a kid who has serious drug problems.

Andrew Klavan (86:28)

So then let me ask you, take.

Ben Shapiro (86:30)

That kid and you put him in rehab and you dry him out and you chain him up so that he can't make bad decisions, at least until the time where he's capable of making good decisions. Instead, he decided he was going to trot him out as a bag man for the Biden family business for full on a decade.

Andrew Klavan (86:41)

That's the point, though. And so this is the question for the table and especially for Mr. Walsh here, you say you would not, and I think this is a good point, you would not just give a blanket pardon to your kid if he had all these serious drug problems because you'd actually want to help him and dry him out and all the rest. Now, let's say instead you were not Matt Walsh, but Joe Biden and you had profited allegedly to the tune of allegedly lots and lots of money over many decades and maybe even sent your kid out to Ben's point to raise all that money. In that instance, if you were a deeply corrupt president who had ordered a kid to do this stuff, would you pardon him?

Ben Shapiro (87:14)

I mean, you're asking Matt if he's a different human.

Michael Knowles (87:16)

Yeah, yeah.

Ben Shapiro (87:17)

I'm just saying.

Matt Walsh (87:18)

I mean, I get your point, but I refuse to agree with you. But yeah, I mean, if it's a guilt thing where he's like, well, this is actually all my fault, he did it for my sake, I'm not gonna let him take the fall. Of course, then the real courageous thing would be, and the real honorable thing would be for Biden to admit all this, which he would never do. But in that case, I guess I could see an argument.

Ben Shapiro (87:41)

The level of corruption here is truly astonishing, but it's really bad for the country. And I have to say that now, when you go back and you look at American history, you have to admit the Clinton presidency broke the country, truly broke the country. I mean, between the corruption and the pardons in Lewinsky and the basic idea that virtue no longer mattered in public life like that, followed by the Iraq war, by the mishandling of COVID by all this stuff. Like every institution is broken. And so now what you have is people who are sinning more than the last guy sinned in the projection that the future guy will sin more than they have. Right. That's exactly what Joe Biden said.

Jeremy Boreing (88:13)

Well, that is the part of this that's interesting to me is in the past, this pardon would have been unnecessary. And even when Biden was swearing he wouldn't do it, he probably thought it wouldn't be necessary because had Kamala won the presidency, there'd be no need for the pardon. And if Donald Trump weren't essentially promising to go back and punish people from the previous administration, it also wouldn't be necessary because generally speaking, we've had a don't look back, you can never look back approach to presidential politics where, you know, we survived the Carter administration, then we just never talk about it again. But because Donald Trump isn't doing that, he's basically run on the promise that he is going to do something about this. I'm not saying that, by the way.

Ben Shapiro (89:00)

The only reason he's doing that is because Joe Biden did it to him.

Jeremy Boreing (89:02)

Did it to him. Yeah. Right.

Ben Shapiro (89:04)

You remember the Joe that Donald Trump ran in 2016 pledging to lock up Hillary. And you know, it's the thing he didn't do. He didn't lock up Hillary. But you know who actually tried to lock up the other guy? Joe Biden tried to lock that guy up 100%.

Jeremy Boreing (89:14)

So things have changed.

Ben Shapiro (89:15)

Yes.

Jeremy Boreing (89:15)

To even make this a thing that one.

Ben Shapiro (89:18)

Somehow our politics have gotten even worse because now the way that it's going to work is legitimately you are going to have to part. Every president's going to have to do this now. You're going to have to pardon yourself of all blanket crimes on the last day of your term. You're gonna have to, because the next guy's gonna come in and find some excuse to prosecute the last guy.

Michael Knowles (89:34)

So my question, before you ask, I have one response to what you say, though. If Joe Biden had come out and said, I'm sorry, I know, I promise not to do this. I'm broken. I cannot let my son do time. I may be wrong, but this is the way it is. He's my son. I love him. I can't do it. He wouldn't. He wouldn't have damaged the country. He would have seen it as his personal weakness. We all would have sympathized with it. But that's not what he did. He lied. Even in pardoning him. Like I say, he was targeted. He was targeted with.

Andrew Klavan (90:00)

Well, he was. He was treated by a different standard, a much more lenient standard than anyone.

Ben Shapiro (90:05)

Else did, you see. And then today, Karine Jean Pierre is out there attempting to explain why Joe Biden suggesting that the DoJ was corruptly targeting his son was different than Donald Trump. DOJ was corruptly targeting Donald Trump. Again, this is the thing that really imply. This is a point that Nate Silver was. He was saying that it's not that people are getting the normality argument wrong. Things are not normal right now. But the point is that Democrats were not normal either. And they have been normal for a super long time. And this was the reason why Donald Trump won the election. It wasn't because people love January 2nd deeply. It's because they don't believe that the other side is any better. They believe the other side is exactly.

Jeremy Boreing (90:42)

The Harvard Law School. It's actually. Go ahead, go ahead.

Andrew Klavan (90:43)

My only question for the Harvard lawyer, because what do I know? I don't have a law school education. But to your point, Jeremy, does this pardon hold? Is this legit? Yes, it is. There's no question.

Ben Shapiro (90:54)

There are no restrictions on the pardon power in the Constitution itself. It's very difficult to see a situation in which the Supreme Court overrules a presidential pardon. A presidential pardon.

Jeremy Boreing (91:03)

The only interesting thing about it to me is that it's not for any specific crimes.

Ben Shapiro (91:08)

Right.

Jeremy Boreing (91:08)

Which does create now the precedent of blanket pardons.

Ben Shapiro (91:14)

I mean, do that. If ever I'm elected, guys, get ready. Y'all get blanket pardons forever.

Andrew Klavan (91:18)

I was about to say it's like the purge.

Ben Shapiro (91:19)

It's awesome.

Jeremy Boreing (91:20)

I was about to say, I don't think. Why would Biden stop here? Why wouldn't he, between now and leaving office, pardon all of the most high ranking members of his administration?

Ben Shapiro (91:27)

I want to see if people can.

Michael Knowles (91:28)

Start getting done something.

Ben Shapiro (91:30)

I really want prospects.

Jeremy Boreing (91:30)

He doesn't have to admit that they've.

Ben Shapiro (91:31)

Let's go all the way. Like that's the thing about the five years of activity, right? Like, not just like stopping today. Like you can do anything you want until 2041.

Andrew Klavan (91:39)

Let's go.

Ben Shapiro (91:39)

Right. Like, that's amazing.

Michael Knowles (91:40)

Like, if he did that, the Democratic Party would cease to exist.

Jeremy Boreing (91:43)

Do you think so?

Michael Knowles (91:44)

Yes, because this is because of the father son thing. You know, this has this kind of shroud of sympathy and all this. But if he pardoned, like, Christopher Wray, you know, like. I don't think.

Andrew Klavan (91:54)

Don't you think this. To your point, Drew, wasn't this pardon also a little bit of a shiv to the Democrats who overthrew him? A little bit of a. Yeah, I lied. I said I wasn't gonna do it, but I'm not gonna pay anything. You might in the midterms for my lies, but who care? I don't care about you guys anymore.

Jeremy Boreing (92:10)

I mean, certainly now, nothing Trump does with the pardon vis a vis, say, the January Sixers or maybe even pardoning himself. Yeah, I think if I were Joe Biden and I were going to do the wrong thing, because I think he did the wrong thing. Obviously, I may have commuted Hunter's sentence, but the blanket pardon's too much. But if you were going to do it, what I would have said is, I am pardoning my son, Hunter Biden, and I am pardoning Donald Trump for all the allegations related to classified documents and the federal charges against. The era of political persecution of your political enemies ends now.

Ben Shapiro (92:44)

By the way, I thought that Joe Biden should have done that.

Jeremy Boreing (92:45)

I think he would have gotten away with that.

Ben Shapiro (92:47)

I think that he should have done that during the race. I always thought that what would have been smart of him during the race would have been to say, listen, he may have committed crimes, Donald Trump, but you know what? We're a bigger country than that. And pardon Trump, it would piss Trump off something fierce. Right. Because he pardoned him for crimes that Trump said he didn't commit. And it also would have been seen by the American public as something magnanimous. But, yeah, now it's a little bit late. It is a wild story, though, and again, goes to just the complete decrepitude of our politics. It's also the reason why Donald Trump is selecting people like Cash Patel to clean out these institutions. These institutions are really, really corrupt, and he's appointing people to clean out an enormous amount of deadwood inside these institutions. Now, I may quibble with some of the strategery here just because he's gonna lose an awful lot of steam trying to ram through some of the more controversial picks. And I think there probably were people. Not probably. I know there are people in positions who would have done exactly the same thing, but without a lot of the controversy. And I think that if it were me, and I were trying to do the same thing again. I like a lot of his picks, but I think there are some of his picks where you could have gotten 99% of the juice with 0% the squeeze. And that's going to be a problem. There's going to be some resistance to Cash Patel. There will probably be some resistance to Tulsi Gabbard. Again, I'm.

Jeremy Boreing (93:54)

Will the Speaker. Will the speaker allow him to adjourn Congress so that he can push through?

Andrew Klavan (94:00)

No. No. You don't think the Senate would push back? You don't think, though, that Mike Johnson would put pressure from the House?

Michael Knowles (94:09)

No, I think even some of his supporters, like me, would be very unhappy with that.

Ben Shapiro (94:15)

The Senate exists for a reason. It's an advising consent mechanism. I tend to believe that you should be able to find people who 50 of your 53 senators can agree on. And that's why most of these people are going to get through, including, I think, some of the more controversial picks. I think Pete Hegsheth is going to get through, for example, in SecDef.

Michael Knowles (94:30)

Yeah, Patel is going to get through.

Ben Shapiro (94:31)

Actually, I think Patel will probably get through as well. I think that right now the two most controversial nominees are probably Gabbard and RFK at hhs.

Michael Knowles (94:39)

You know, those children's illustrated books that have like trucks with eyes. You know, like, that's who I would promote at this point. I would vote for like a bulldozer with eyes and just destroy every.

Andrew Klavan (94:50)

I think Tulsi gets through. Because you gotta remember with Tulsi, some Republican senators might not. Like she's a Democrat. She disagrees with them on certain things. Trump did not hide the ball on Tulsi Gabbard or Bobby Kennedy for that matter. He campaigned with them ceaselessly. At the end of that campaign, the American people did vote for that. And I think the Republican senators, I.

Ben Shapiro (95:08)

Mean, the question is going to be the math, right? So if you look at, for example, Tulsi or RFK Jr. You're looking at a drop off of three immediately, probably, right? You're talking Collins, Murkowski and McConnell. So those are the three likely to drop out because McConnell is done after this term. And so he's figuring, who do I want to vote for? What do I care? I'm just going to do what I want to do. And so all you have to do at that point is peel off one more. And so when it comes to RFK Jr. He's going to have to make some commitments. And I think he should make some commitments, by the way, to, for example, reinstate the Mexico City policy. His pro choice bona fide are going to definitely be on the table in these hearings. And they should be on the table. And that's why I think it's good to have confirmation hearings and just not let the President roughshod over the recess.

Jeremy Boreing (95:48)

So I don't think that the president. I'm against the receipt appointment thing. We have a Senate for a reason. I understand the argument that the department heads aren't part of the checks and balances system. And as long as you're not talking about violations of the Constitution, that's probably true. But the Senate decidedly is an independent branch of government and is supposed to hold the President in check. It is part of the checks and balances. I think that it is a broken system, however, and has been for my entire adult life. You know, by the time 911 happened, George W. Bush hadn't seated most of his cabinet. It took two years to seat most of Donald Trump's cabinet in the first administration. The advice and consent was never met. If you had told the founders a president could get halfway through his term and not have a cabinet, they would have told you absolutely. That's not what this means. But I also believe that the advice and consent clause as pertains to executive of department heads. I would let Barack Obama appoint almost anyone he wants if I was in the Senate. That's how it was for most of the history of the country. I despise many of Trump's picks. I'm against putting left wing Democrats in a Republican Cabinet. I think it's wrong. But the President absolutely has the right to do that. So I would. Do I think Tulsi Gabbard should be in the Cabinet? No. Do I think RFK Jr should be in the Cabinet? No. But if I were a senator, I would vote to confirm them because I think the President has the right. I feel a little bit differently about judicial nominations. I think that that's different.

Ben Shapiro (97:14)

They have like an actual nonpartisan job as opposed to working for the President. You can fire them at any time.

Jeremy Boreing (97:19)

I'm against many of Trump's appointments. I think it's kind of hilarious that as I've been saying for the last eight years, everyone who tries to build an intellectual framework around Trumpism is lying to themselves and others. Michael Anton gets basically booted. The whole Claremont Trumpism is meaningless. Not a single member of their sphere is ascending. The NAT cons. Who are the NAT conscinding? No one. Here's two complete intellectual schools.

Andrew Klavan (97:44)

J.D. vance.

Jeremy Boreing (97:45)

Maybe here's whatever J.D. vance is is yet to be seen, but whatever is. And also the Vice President doesn't do anything here's two intellectual frameworks invented to assure us what Trumpism is all about. They got nothing. They didn't ascend a single person. There are more Democrats being ascended than Nat Cons or Claremont Cons in the Trump administration. The only one who I would have voted against though, as a senator is Matt Gaetz.

Michael Knowles (98:07)

Yeah.

Jeremy Boreing (98:08)

Because I think that's what the advice and consent clause is actually about. It's not about for partisan reasons. Do I approve of this person? I don't approve of. I think RFK Jr. Is a great, by all accounts, a great guy. I think he has some kind of fun ideas. I'm a Republican. I don't want Democrats in office, but I would still vote for him because I don't.

Michael Knowles (98:26)

I think that's a special case because clearly there was stuff. Stuff that hasn't been released yet.

Jeremy Boreing (98:30)

That's right.

Michael Knowles (98:30)

That was really bad. I don't think there's sex or drugs either.

Ben Shapiro (98:34)

There's also, I mean, with Gates, not just that dude practiced a lot for less time than I did. I mean, really, he was a lawyer for like two years. And then they were like, what if we just make you Attorney General? I was like, well, I mean, again, that was one where it's like, I understand what I think Trump was trying to do there, but.

Jeremy Boreing (98:48)

Yeah.

Andrew Klavan (98:49)

Don't you think that was part of the point? No, it was just. No, I think you say brazen.

Ben Shapiro (98:53)

No, it wasn't. The fact that it wasn't. You're so.

Jeremy Boreing (98:55)

Neither do you.

Ben Shapiro (98:56)

Neither do you.

Jeremy Boreing (98:56)

You've literally told me off camera that you don't think it was strategic.

Andrew Klavan (98:59)

I think there was no such as strategy.

Ben Shapiro (99:01)

That's not a thing.

Jeremy Boreing (99:02)

Unbelievable.

Andrew Klavan (99:03)

So I have heard that it was not strategic, however.

Ben Shapiro (99:08)

From whom? A high ranking source, shall we say.

Andrew Klavan (99:10)

A high ranking someone ranking. A high ranking source told me that it was not strategic. However, again, to your point on building intellectual strategies and to your point, Drew Trump, I don't think, consciously writes out long white papers or anything. Like, I think he moves by his gut. And I do think that there was a gut move with someone like Matt Gaetz. The fact that he is a pugilist and not a long practice, 100% is the point.

Jeremy Boreing (99:34)

This is why I've been so mad at you and Drew for eight years. Me? Yes. Trying to tell me what did I do? Henry Olson says that what Donald Trump's really doing. Screw you. There is no intellectual framework that you can put around Trumpism. The only thing that's true of Trump, and it's definitely represented in these pics is that Trumpism is an attitude.

Ben Shapiro (99:50)

Yes.

Jeremy Boreing (99:51)

That I can completely agree with.

Michael Knowles (99:53)

I've never said he had an intellectual. I've agreed with you about the intellectual structures. The people trying to do what National Review did for Reagan have failed utterly because he's a gut politician. I agree with that.

Andrew Klavan (100:03)

But gut politicians, I mean, you can.

Michael Knowles (100:05)

Hate me for a little bit.

Jeremy Boreing (100:05)

I mean, I've been mad at you for eight years.

Andrew Klavan (100:08)

I guess my only point is gut politicians have a gut, you know, and the gut has a kind of argument.

Ben Shapiro (100:15)

Sure. His gut is doing one wonderful things.

Michael Knowles (100:18)

Yeah.

Ben Shapiro (100:18)

I mean, honestly, that's great.

Jeremy Boreing (100:20)

He wants to disrupt the system.

Andrew Klavan (100:21)

Yeah. And so you think, look, by the.

Ben Shapiro (100:23)

Way, I do want to call out. Jeremy has a proposal that I think we should air right now. I have mentioned this to people in very high places in power, and I think it's a good proposal and we should get some momentum behind it. So Democrats right now have decided they once again love the filibuster. Right. So they hated the filibuster into the last 30 seconds.

Jeremy Boreing (100:36)

Yeah.

Michael Knowles (100:36)

I thought this.

Ben Shapiro (100:37)

And now they love the filibuster again. So Jeremy has a proposal, and it's a very good proposal that I urgently recommend that the Republicans in the Senate take. And that is constitutional amendment to enshrine the filibuster in the Constitution of the United States. Must be done within the next 18 months or Donald Trump nukes it. Because the.

Jeremy Boreing (100:53)

By the way, I would do it. I would do it with the nine justices on the court, too.

Andrew Klavan (100:56)

Yeah.

Michael Knowles (100:56)

Yes.

Jeremy Boreing (100:57)

Fix the Supreme Court at nine Justice. We're all against court packing now.

Michael Knowles (101:00)

Right.

Jeremy Boreing (101:00)

So let's put it in the Constitution. And if you don't get it done within the next 18 months, I'm packing the court.

Michael Knowles (101:04)

Excellent ideas.

Jeremy Boreing (101:05)

I'm not just going to wait for you to do it.

Andrew Klavan (101:07)

Excellent.

Jeremy Boreing (101:07)

We can either all agree not to do it.

Michael Knowles (101:08)

Yep.

Ben Shapiro (101:09)

Because we're all. The trust is gone at this point.

Jeremy Boreing (101:10)

The trust is gone.

Ben Shapiro (101:10)

I totally agree with Jeremy's point on this. It's a great idea. So I think we should publicly air it and get behind it.

Jeremy Boreing (101:14)

Well, on that note, I think we can go home. I just got agreed with by Ben Shapiro. Thank you for hanging out with us tonight at Daily Wire backstage. We still have a little bit of time left on our Cyber Monday deal. 50% off of daily Wire plus membership, and you can get Jordan Peterson's great new series, the Gospels will be releasing new episodes every Sunday. I think this is the last time we're all together. Until Christmas. So I'd like to wish all of you a merry Christmas. And, Ben, whatever you guys do, whatever.

Ben Shapiro (101:38)

You guys wanza, you know.

Jeremy Boreing (101:42)

Night, everybody.