The Megyn Kelly Show - Speaking Your Mind, Markle's "Diva" Moment, and the Importance of Dads, with Spencer Klavan | Ep. 382

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Spencer Klavan, host of "Young Heretics," to talk about the need to speak up and speak your mind, our cultural trend of wallowing in victimhood and glamorizing suffering, the misery hierarchy, the inherent smallness and sorrow of identity politics, Trump remaining at the center of the political universe for both parties, manipulating the establishment systems, the dangerous politicization of the military, the DOJ, and the FBI, what happens when young men don't have faith in their society, the role of women in today's culture, Meghan Markle's "diva" moment, Lizzo "clapping back" at her critics, the focus on credentials and the reality of higher education, the importance of fathers, his relationship with his dad Andrew Klavan, what drew him to his husband Josh, the real definition of "freedom," and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today's full show is with a young man on a mission to defend and save the West by teaching all of us about its rich and complicated, fascinating history. Spencer Clavin is a conservative, a Christian, and an incredibly deep thinker who not only graduated from the University of Oxford, but also taught there. In 2020, he launched a podcast called The Young Heretics. That is where he talks about classical literature in the hopes of igniting

a fire in those of us who want to understand it but don't know where to begin. He is only 31 years old. He can also dish out some brutal and hilarious and far too intellectual takedowns of far-left progressives. Sometimes you're holding on by your fingernails, but you're like, I couldn't repeat it, but I love it. Not everyone can go from talking about the classics to writing about how the left now sees anyone who tries to stay physically fit as a potential Unabomber. But that's Spencer Clavin's gift. So let's just say this is going to be a fascinating, fascinating two hours. Spencer is also associate editor at the Claremont Institute. He joins me now.

And of course, we haven't listed the thing that most of our audience will know about you from our interview last week of your dad, which is you are the son of the great Andrew Clavin, which already explains a lot about you, wouldn't you say? Absolutely. In fact, I always, I mean, we like to joke that there's no relation between us because he doesn't want to be associated with me, but I certainly want to be associated with him. I'm very proud to have him as my father, and I'm really glad to be here. So I'm so happy to have you. I started listening to The Young Heretics, pretty much, I think, shortly after you launched it. And I'm somebody who knows very little to nothing about the classics, but I'm learning.

I'm learning. I'm holding on. I find the way you talk about them very entertaining. I love your love for them. It's contagious. And it is something I'm not going to say you dumb them down because you don't. But it is sort of classics for regular people. So you tell the story, not assuming we know anything about the stories. And I have to say, I really appreciate that.

As you get deeper in, you assume that we've been with you for a while. But anyway, I've learned a lot. So first of all, I want to start with this because you are brilliant and your father is brilliant. So what was it like growing up in your household when it comes to books, when it comes to lessons about life, philosophy? Were those the kind of conversations you were having with your dad and maybe mom too your whole life long? Absolutely. And I think it speaks to something you mentioned about the show, about Young Heretics. And that is that I was very, very lucky to grow up in houses filled with books, wall to wall. And that's still something, anytime I walk into somebody's home, even if they've just got one little bookshelf, that's what I gravitate toward immediately,

because I started to learn that this is not just a collector's item or something that looks pretty on the wall, but this is a little window into somebody's soul. What kind of furniture do they have in their mind, as Sherlock Holmes was fond of saying? And part of that gift, I think, was the unpretentious way in which my folks engaged with this stuff. I mean, my dad, you know, my dad, he loves his, you know, pulpy adventure novels just as much as he loves his Shakespeare and his romantic poets. And, you know, I had a kind of innate desire to know what these big fancy books were on the wall. But another thing that really stunned me when I kind of, you know, got educated enough to read some of this stuff, and especially when I started learning the ancient languages and kind of, you know, got educated enough to read some of this stuff. And especially when

I started learning the ancient languages and kind of digging into classics is that, you know, you think of these things as kind of talismans, Plato, Aristotle, the greats, you know, Shakespeare, you name these names. And a lot of times I think we name them in order to scare people, in order to, you know, build ourselves up and to suggest that this is something that regular people don't have access to. So you need me, the expert, to come in and kind of gatekeep and tell you that either this is something you should or shouldn't read. And that's part of how the left gets away with scaring people off of these books is they say, well, they're very complicated and you probably wouldn't understand them, but just trust us that they're racist and evil and they

have all sorts of prejudices. I mean, to burn them. And in fact, what you discover as you kind of, you know, climb your way into these books is that the reason they're great, the reason they have endured is because underneath all of the detritus of time and all of the, you know, language difficulties and whatever you have to struggle with, what you're really dealing with is a face-to-face encounter with a human being, one of the greatest minds of the past. I mean, books are one of the greatest technologies we've ever invented to capture in amber the real-life communication between people, actual humans like Aristotle, who's sitting around and thinking, what does it mean to be good at being human? And you and I wake up every day and we have thoughts that amount to that. Even if we don't think that way, we say, what am I going to do today? What am I going to buy? How am I going to eat?

How am I going to feed my kids? What school am I going to send them to? And from those little decisions all the way on up to who am I going to marry? What do I believe? Who do I vote for? We're always asking, how do I be a good human? And one of the things that's so tragic to me about this kind of gatekeeping that goes on is that people think that there are these great answers. They kind of know that very smart people have thought about these questions, but they don't think that they

have thought about them in a way that they could grab onto. And so part of, you know, my mission in life is just for, you know, I hear from people who listen to the show, they're on their tractor, they're farming, or they're, you know, the police officer at the gym comes up to me and says, I listened to your show. And that's when I feel like I'm really firing on all cylinders, because, you know, these guys have something to say to you. And that's why they're there. This is your dad was on last week, and we were talking about his piece, his speech, saying that you've been failed by the establishment, capital T, capital E. And he didn't mean that in terms of the Republican establishment, which is a term we've been banning about about 10 years or so. He means your elders, your teachers,

your philosophers, your parents, in some cases, who aren't teaching you a moral code anymore, you know, who are sort of letting you think in the way that the progressives do that maybe there's no truth, maybe there's not parameters within which we're supposed to live. And that the good news is you still have these teachers out there in the form of these books and poetry and not great literature, yes, but great art as well. All of these teachers are still out there for the taking. And I asked him, you know, how should we start and all that stuff. But like, it's so clear that you guys are both so committed to that. So before we get into it in depth and your beliefs and what you've learned, and that would take years, but I just want to spend some

time on little Spencer, because I'm curious, you know, like I look at my kids now, they play flag football, they play basketball, they play tennis, they run around, they wrestle with each other. What was little Spencer Claven doing? And was it I know you and your dad played video games and so but like, was it like every night you'd sit down and you'd read together and he'd like slip in a little C.S. Lewis in addition to like, I don't Grimm's fairy tales. Like how did it, how did your love of reading, uh, come about? Oh, absolutely. Well, I, you know, I, I think of my relationship with my father and I think we both kind of talked about it this way to each other and to others. Um, you know, every son has, uh, an important relationship with his father, even if his father is absent. There's no escaping that.

It's built into your soul. And many sons have wonderful relationships with their fathers. Their fathers are mentors. Their fathers are guides. But I think my dad and I are very, very lucky. And I don't think it's a guarantee that my father and I are also friends. And he's one of my best friends. And I think of friendship in terms that Lewis and Aristotle both talk about, that you find your union in love of some common good, some third thing. And obviously when I was little, Spencer, that meant that I was kind of taking these – I was always interested in books. And dad and I would go on hikes or you know, or he would read to me at bedtime and he would quiz me about stuff, right? You know, like who said this or what do you who do you think said, you know, this line from, say, Rudyard Kipling's If, you know, and we'd have to

talk about it. And, you know, the older you get, the more of your own sense of the world you acquire that those hikes started to become arguments and conversations and, you know, profound, you know, approaches to, you know, the political questions of the day. But always, I think, you know, we had that gift, which is a really underrated gift of the intellectual life. People think of the intellectual life as so solitary. But Plato in his symposium talks about the intellectual life as a life of love and of shared friendship love between people who can produce things in between one another, that between these two people there comes into being some love of the true and the good. I had that in my father,

and I think that a lot of what I say and do now, we have a hard time really remembering where one person's thought ends and another's begins, you know, that's, it's, it's been that close. Uh, so, you know, it's, it's a real blessing. So I know that you recently got married. Uh, you married Josh who I love that he's the general counsel at the daily wire. Hello. I didn't realize that. I assume you met him because your dad, you know, works for a time at the Daily Wire. He's doing his podcast through them. Oh, no, actually. No, no, no. We met through the Log Cabin Republicans, which is a, you know, of course, I know group. Yeah, you know about them. And actually, he was not that daily. the daily wires general counsel.

So the connection kind of goes the other way around. Okay. So as a lawyer myself recovering, um, most lawyers I know are very, are linear thinkers are very good at logical reasoning at sort of thought organization at arguing. They don't tend to have a ton of extra time on their hands for deep reading of the kind Spencer Clavin does. So this is genuinely something I'm curious about. Is he the kind of intellectual that you are? Do you guys sit there at night and talk the way you and your dad do? Or is it more, is there something else that drew you together? Because I mean, maybe if you have two huge brains, like double Spencers, you drive each other nuts.

Maybe you need somebody who's more of like a beer guzzler who just wants to talk about sports. I don't know. I'm curious. Well, you know, Ben Shapiro tweeted out a cease and desist letter that Josh wrote recently. And it ended with I'm sure you'll be familiar with this. The last line of it was be governed accordingly. And so everybody was tweeting at me like, does Josh tell you take out the trash, be governed accordingly? And, you know, I think there's a real complementarity here between me and Josh. He was also lucky to have a kind of, I would say, a humanist education. He went to Calvin College, which is one of the places that

I think you can still go to get that breadth of learning that... I'm a big believer, as you know, in even if you're going to go off and be writing cease and desist letters, you ought to read a couple of plays by Shakespeare. And I think he kind of had that background. So he doesn't look at what I'm doing and say, huh, like, what the hell is that about? But but I do think that he's, you know, he brings me down to earth in a lot of ways. He's a very practical guy. And, you know, many of the things that we share are kind of like in the middle of the practical stuff and the theoretical stuff. Like we love, you know, movies. We love watching movies together and we'll go to a Marvel movie and he'll come away being like, wow, the studio did this and that. And I'll come away saying like, gosh, this idea of the multiverse, it's, you know, it's everywhere. And it's and but I think that, you know, we have we have a lot to learn from each other in that way, including the fact that like, you know, I live in a house and not a hovel or a box like somewhere on the side of the road because I haven't paid attention to paying the bills. But right, that that works, right? Because you don't you don't want a carbon

copy of yourself. You want somebody who, like you say, can be complimentary, who can further enhance your world and give you new perspectives that you're not immersed in all day. I always laugh with my husband, Doug, because he's very well educated and he's a deep thinker and a big reader. And on his birthday, you know, year after year, he would probably rather sit reading an Ernest Hemingway novel. And I put on every year on my birthday, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. No knocking Willy Wonka. I'm into it. No. And I think that there is something where people get so invested in their identity as like, you know, lovers of great ideas that they fail to pay attention to this stuff. Conservatives can be guilty of this, I think, in a big way. You know,

you start to talk about, well, what exactly is going on in like, you know, why is Lizzo such a big deal? You know, why is this kind of unappealing, unattractive woman rocketing to the top of the charts? And maybe you don't like it, but what's the, you know, what's to be gleaned from it? What's to be learned? And I think, you know, a lot of people kind of miss that because they have a certain disdain for, for pop art, especially in times like ours, when so much of it is so bad. That's interesting. You should mention her. So she's in the news just today because Lizzo, for those of you who don't know, is a very successful singer. And she's somebody who's extremely she's morbidly obese. And the instead of, you know, it's one thing not to make fun of obese people.

I don't think anybody's advocating for that, you know, constant cheap teasing. But it's quite another to be celebrating it as quote healthy which is what's done by today's magazines they really want us to believe that a 300 pound woman on a five foot six frame is quote healthy which is not true it's just not factual so she was mocked by i think it was another singer uh who came out it was by a comedian okay what's his name my team's giving aries aries spears aries spears okay so aries spears is out there i have it here and had some things to say on lizzo hold on i will tell the audience what he said oh we've got you know i don't have to tell you listen here he is stand by she's got a very face, but she keeps showing her body off like, come on, man.

Come on, yo. But a woman that's built like a plate of mashed potatoes is in trouble. You know what kills me about women is the hypocrisy and the contradiction. Yes, queen. Slay queen. Yes, queen. Slay. Yeah, girl.

Your confidence. Fuck diabetes. Fuck heart problems. Fuck heart problems. Fuck heart disease, cholesterol. Y'all claim womanhood and about sisterhood and support for your sister when it come to that

ridiculous shit, but if you really gave a fuck, why wouldn't you go black girl? We love you. We love your confidence, boo-boo but this ain't it y'all will jump on me for making jokes but y'all won't fucking be real and go sister put the eclair down this ain't it it's treadmill time okay so wait this is part two. Lizzo, appearing at the VMAs, appeared to be responding to him when she said the following. Listen. And now, to the bitches that got something to say about me in the press. You know what? I'm not going to say nothing. They'd be like, Lizzo, why don't you clap back? Why don't you clap back? Because, bitch, I'm winning, hoe.

This bitch is winning, hoe! That's what bitches show people, bitch! Sour! Classy. Yeah. Wow. What do you make of that whole exchange? You know, it's really interesting to me. This is somebody that's making untold millions, I assume, of dollars for, in her own words, right, twerking and making

smoothies. Like that's a real lyric. It's called healing, Megan. And this is not somebody that is in any way oppressed or suffering in the grand scheme of human life. This is somebody that's on the top of the totem pole. And but yet her whole brand is based on this idea of her being beaten down somehow by people telling her to put down the eclair. She's the victim, you know, and it speaks, I think, to I mean, here's you've got you've got Lizzo. You've got I think we may talk at another point about Meghan Markle, you know, the princess and the pop star. Both of them building their brands out of suffering, out of the idea that being miserable is what makes them virtuous, this constructed misery. And I wonder about that because I think, you know, the thing about leftism and the thing about, you know, feminism of the second wave, which is really what a lot of this is based on,

is that it does make people miserable. I mean, nobody's saying that women shouldn't have careers. Nobody's saying that women shouldn't, you know, go out and do whatever they want to do. But this Gloria Steinem thing, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle or, you know, just, you know, eat a pile of mashed potatoes and be happy. It's inherently, you know, anti-happiness. It's not like somebody wrote a rule or is oppressing Lizzo by making her, you know, so scream into the into the microphone. She's acting that way because she's pursuing courses of action that make you miserable. And so we now have this kind of widespread trend in our pop culture, which, again, you know, this is what looking at these sorts of things can reveal to us. We have

this hugely widespread trend of glamorizing suffering because that's the only way they can sell this to people. More and more young people are waking up every day and saying, you know what? This doesn't fit. I'm wandering around. I'm lonely. My dating life is a mess. And everything that I'm being told to do in the media or even by my college professors, let's say, is making me more and more unhappy. Just keep doing more and more of it. And that's supposed to be the solution. Makes me more and more unhappy. Well, how do you get around that? How do you keep selling that bill of goods? You have to buy into this idea that your misery is somehow virtue, that suffering is what makes you... And this is a weird little perversion of an actual true idea, which is that suffering can be

ennobling, can shape the soul. But you look at these people and you realize they're actually having to invent their suffering in order to stay order to, you know, stay on top of the of the misery hierarchy. It's incredibly perverse, but it's it's deeply rooted in our culture at the moment. But it's one thing that reminds me again of something that your dad said, which was it's one thing to have these whiners who want to glom on to victimhood and put themselves at the top of, you know, the oppression Olympics. But it's another to have all of society sit back and as Aries Spears said, say, yes, queen, you know, that that's where we're really falling down as a society. You know, it's not that all of us should look at Lizzo and say, tsk, tsk, get on the scale more often and get to the gym, though, that wouldn't be a bad idea if she wants to have a nice, long, healthy lifestyle. Life in general.

Forget style. Life. It's just that society would never before have snapped for somebody who's celebrating her 300 pound status. Nor for that matter, the fact that she's a girl who now on Tuesday after Monday being a girl says she's a boy. And now we have to snap that as though this is a positive development that we all, you know, so his point in,

to paraphrase was basically where, where is the established, where, where are the grownups? Where's the culture to not tip or gore band stuff, but at least set moral standards within the bounds of reason within we, within which we all understand it's well and good to live? Absolutely. Well, I think that the sort of inherent disgust for authority,

for age, right? We have this really deep-seated cultural reaction against anybody who comes out and says, as my father was suggesting, like, you know, I actually am older and wiser. I know a little bit. Maybe I have some wisdom that I've gleaned from the study of the classics. Right. And it was very purposefully put out into the culture that this was and this was the root of all evil, that these kind of voices of moral authority were the root of all evil. And especially, I think, in the 60s and 70s, people really went along with this. They really said,' Clouds, which is a comedy, a famous play from ancient Athens, which is about the university system in so many words, right? It's about sending your kid to a school system where he will be taught to hate you and to hate your values and

to hate where it comes from. And we actually have exactly that system currently alive and well in our country. It's being subsidized by debt forgiveness and student loans and propped up with all of these incredibly morally questionable as well as legally questionable measures. And so you have to ask yourself, why? Why is it that we are throwing money at a system that takes kids out of the home and teaches them that inherently, because their parents are their parents, because their elders are their elders, because something comes from the past, it's therefore outdated and bad and wrong. It's this very kind of Woodrow Wilson progressive idea. Why would we be funding it?

Well, one thing you have to, I think, acknowledge is, you know, publicly funded education is a means of state control. It was a means of state control back in the days of Plato and Aristotle, when they were talking about, you know, the perfect state and what they would teach the kids. It was a means of state control in Prussia in the 18th and 19th century, when we in America were kind of cribbing from it to build our own public education system. And, you know, it's not inherently bad for the government to have an interest in what kids learn and to be shaping that toward the good. But you always have to look at it and say, well, what are the state priorities that this reflects? What are the government priorities

that this education system reflects? And it reflects an infantilizing and kind of, you know, a system that makes people helpless, that creates kind of helplessness, victimhood, dependence upon the state. So it's like, you know, Biden writes off $10,000 of student loan debt, and we're all very upset about that, of course. But we also have to pull back the camera and say, well, okay, so why is he doing that? And what is the state funding here? It's funding Lizzo culture, because Lizzo culture is good for the state. It creates people that are helpless and need the state to come in and fix their lives. I mean, it's a very good point. But while you're talking about it, I'm thinking to myself, you went to Yale and double Oxford for your master's and PhD, and you went off and Spencer and I talked about how he was not always a Republican. I'm sorry, Andrew and I did. And

I wonder, how did you like, were you always conservative? And how did you fight back on the obvious leftward tilt of those organizations? Or were you somehow not as exposed to it because you were in the classics departments, I'm always railing about these university systems, and I'm absolutely a product of them, you know, in many ways, as you point out. And I usually feel like I have to stipulate that I had a wonderful education. I really had excellent mentors and teachers. But I did have to chart my way through it. And one of the things that we miss sometimes in the culture wars, when we're talking about this stuff, as we talk about institutions writ large as kind of big monoliths. And that's because in fact, they are being captured at an administrative level. But there are still lots of people who stay and fight the good fight or who just teach the great works, even under the assault that they've been under since the 80s and even before. And so I was able – there's a scene in the Iliad where one of the heroes kind of walks from ship to ship because he's so huge and he is able to transmit himself from the prow to the next prow. And that's kind of what I – it was sort of like that except the ships were sinking in the background.

And as each ship that I got off sort of proceeded to sink. And I wonder whether I should have stayed and fought more. Basically, the policy that I adopted, and this is something I tell people when they're now in the higher education system, but they're more conservative leaning is, there's a Solzhenitsyn speech, you know, the great Soviet dissident, who he said, live not by lies. And if you can't, you know, stand up right now in your class and argue with your professor, at least never be forced to consent to a lie. And I flatter myself that I did a little bit more than that. You know, I was sort of I became more and more conservative as I went through the education system. And there's still reasons to do that. But, you know, how is that possible?

You're the one. No. Well, I mean, I actually this is a really good point, Megan, is I don't think I am the one, the lone person that's having this experience. I think that I'm probably because I come from such a supportive family and because I had experienced conservatives around me before, I was maybe a little bit more outspoken or ready to say what I thought. But I was just talking to a professor at Harvard, actually, one of the lone conservative professors at Harvard, Harvey Mansfield. And he was saying he has a student who came up through the, you know, the secondary education system and was so resentful of the way that these leftist views

had been drilled into her at the expense of everything else. You know, she said, I feel like I come out, I know, I know nothing except which pieties I need to mouth. And I think that there is a fair amount of resentment among kind of the undecideds who just feel like they have to go along to get along. It's a very demoralizing situation to be in, to feel like you have to say something you don't believe in order just to get your grade or to get your degree. And, you know, that in itself has a certain degree of promise for conservatives, but it's not enough, right? I mean, we've relied on that resentment, the silent majority for so long. I really think that we need to be telling people that, you know,

there's no substitute for courage wherever you are. It doesn't matter if you're, you know, an undergraduate in a leftist university course, or you're at a job that's telling you you need to do something, say something you don't believe. The actual antidote to that situation where, let's say, 10% of the radicals are mouthing the struggle session pieties. And then there's a good chunk, maybe 80% that just feel like they have to go along. Only antidote to that is for that other 10% that disagrees to stand up and have the courage to speak for their lines. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And forgive me for just repeating my interview with your dad with you, but I love these points. And one of the things I mentioned him, I'd love to get your take on it. And I think I know what it's going to be, is I had just come from this event where going off to one was going to some junior Ivy League, you know, sort of the next step behind Harvard, Yale. And then one was going into the military, one of the military institutions. And they said they're very worried about espousing their conservative values. They want to get ahead. You know, they're competitive. This is how they got into these institutions. And we don't really know what to tell them. You know, like, do we keep your head down, you know, say what they

want you to say just to get ahead and get out and then you can be who you are? Or do you fight? And of course, I mean, I actually believe that you go to the people you go to for advice because you kind of know what you want to hear. You know, you choose the people who are going to advise you consciously or not consciously for a reason. And of course, I said, I believe you have to fight. I believe the answer is to fight even at that age. And if they downgrade your child because he doesn't go along with their dogma, then ideally he could make a record of it. Be wonderfully if he had a recording.

But but even without that, he should wear his see like a badge of honor when he's out there applying for jobs. And that will help him align with a place that he's actually supposed to be. But what do you make of that? Yeah, you know, I think what I would say to a kid going into that situation or to parents is it's never going to get any easier. You're not going to reach some point where you have enough credentials or enough, you know, or you have tenure or you have whatever that milestone is where in your head, you're not going to lose anything by speaking up. That's a fantasy that that doesn't exist. So it's not that you, you can't sometimes, you know, sometimes you have to go and get a credential in order to work in the field that you want

to work in. And I completely understand that that might mean, you know, not just pounding your fist on the table on Twitter all the time, like I've been known to do, you know, this is why the Solzhenitsyn principle is so important. Live not by lies. It's not that you need to always go out and, you know, make it your personal crusade to refute every dishonest thing in every situation. But you, all a man has, all a human being has is his word. And the minute you say something, affirm something that you don't believe, you've given over a little piece of yourself to that lie. And you're not going to just get it back when you get the credential. There's not going to be some point where it's all easy. So practice now when it's at the easiest it will ever be. It's the easiest it

will ever be for you to speak your mind. You will lose some things by it. This is part of why, you know, we worship a God who dies on the cross, who is truth, who is killed, right? I mean, that is just the way of the world. You will lose some things, but you will gain life, life in abundance. That's what you get out of speaking the truth, right? And so, you know, the Bible also says be wise as serpents and gentle as doves. There is a time and place for all things. You know, we're not all called every moment to be culture warriors. Sometimes we might contribute to the salvation of the West by getting a degree of, you know, of all people, know that that's a thing. But it's never going to get easier to speak the truth than it is for you right now as you go through the system. I can't imagine what it was like for you, such a big thinker, so well

read, so immersed in the classics and the writings of people like Aristotle and Socrates, engaged in the business of ideas, big ideas, you know, philosophical ideas and thoughts about religion, about God, about the universe, about our souls, about moral principles to be bogged down day after day with this nonstop messaging about identity, about skin color, about gender. I mean, I've heard you say on your show, just please just forget all this. Not forget this nonsense about how the classics are racist and just enjoy, immerse yourself and enjoy and take what they have to. But it must have been such an irritation to

you, like a like the mosquitoes at the delightful picnic, like the gnat ruining your beautiful summer view, right? To having to deal with that. Well, you're very kind. I mean, there's a way in which I suppose that that could be true. But just constitutionally, I've always been a very happy warrior. And I kind of take it for granted that in this life, you will have troubles. And this happens to be the fight unto which we were born. Like, who knows?

But this was the moment unto which we were born. I mean, it is kind of laughable. And this is one great antidote that I always recommend to people is do find things funny. You know, just because they're threatening to haul you off to the gulags doesn't mean they're not also ridiculous. And when you hear people talk about things like a whiteness in Herodotus, which as you say, that's like a real thing that people will talk about. And you say, whiteness is a uniquely American modern obsession. Herodotus would have no idea what you meant by whiteness. Or you say like, oh, I've scoured these Viking texts and I found that there were black people in Viking culture because they talk about Eric the Black. you know, and it's like,

well, right, because he had black hair. And some of these things are just so absurd that the only thing you can do is laugh at them. And then, and this is the crucial thing, right, don't let them into your thought world for a second. Why would it, you know,

what does it profit you to even hesitate before you then immediately shrug off this nonsensical critique of, oh, the racism of, you know, ancient times or whatever, and actually look at the text? We get this wrong on both sides. It's part of why I started the show. We fight and fight over whether it's okay to read Homer and the left says it's wrong and evil and the right says it's good and we should do it. But while we're fighting, and this is one of the left's best tactics, we're so wrapped up in that argument that we're not actually reading Homer, right? We've suddenly been distracted away from this storehouse, this treasure house of great literature and art that comes down to us that is still available. You know, even with all the problems of digital technology, it's also newly available online. And one of the tricks, if you're working out, if you're starting a new diet,

if you're trying to make a life change, is to focus on the positive. Don't say, I'm not going to drink. Say, look how much clearer my head is when I wake up in the morning. And for all that we get wrapped up in these absolutely idiotic political struggles, and we certainly do, they are like gnats, as you said, compared to this just mountain of excellence that comes down to us. How lucky are we that we get to be inheritors of this civilization? And I think we are always losing out. We're always making ourselves smaller than we could be when we engage with identity politics on its own terms. No, Shakespeare people online can't hold a candle to him. Like pick up your copy of Julius Caesar. I beg you, your life will be improved.

Is it was it C.S. Lewis who said something to the effect of defend truth, but also enjoy it. There has to be time to enjoy it. Exactly. That's exactly right. And, you know, Lewis was such a companion to me at Oxford. I remember walking along the river with his books and having that feeling similar to what I was describing to you with my dad. And Lewis actually writes about this in The Four Loves, that experience of, oh, you too? I thought I was the only one, right? That's friendship. That's when you have made this kind of communion with another mind. And I do, you know, another part of my experience in the media and, you know, in our current political moment is a lot of sorrow when I see people, you know, whatever, twerking on the Capitol steps or screaming into a microphone about how it's great that they're fat. It's not that those people are on the opposite side from me politically, although they are. It's just a deep sense of loss that these are human souls endowed with the capacity for reason and able to make that kind of connection.

Maybe it wouldn't be with C.S. Lewis. Maybe it would be with Du Bois or maybe it would be with Machiavelli or who knows, but to live your whole life, never even engaging at that level because you've been taught by people that you trusted that this is evil and wrong to look back into the past. Young people have been done a terrible, terrible disservice. And the more of them come to understand that, the more of them start to say, well, I don't know what I can do to move forward in 2022, but this ain't it, which is kind of hopeful. I love that. Make communion with another mind. That's what we're doing hopefully right now between our audience and Spencer Clavin. Much, much more with Spencer right after this quick

break. Don't go away. I want to do a little bit more news of the day because there's a couple of interesting headlines out there. First of all, we've got Joe Biden, who about, I don't know, two hours from now is expected to speak in Pennsylvania. He is going to focus on crime and gun violence. He now thinks crime is a winning issue for the Democrats in advance of the midterm elections. And I believe that Karine Jean-Pierre, his press secretary, gave us a little preview of how he's going to spin that. Listen here. We are going to hear from the president about about the importance of making sure that we protect our communities. You know, the president has been really clear that congressional Republicans, that extreme MAGA agenda that you heard him talk about

last week is a threat to the rule of law. We will say that he will say that you can't propose defunding the FBI or defund the mob that stormed the Capitol and attacked and assaulted police officers on January 6th and pre and be pro police. And that's what you're going to hear from the president. Wow. So it's all about the FBI and January 6th. And that's what he's going to use, say Republicans are anti-cop and pro-crime. So how do you like his chances of persuading folks of that? Well, first of all, Megan, thank you so much for bringing a little more Karine Jean-Pierre into my life. I thought that Jen Psaki had maxed me out on comedy in the news, but then I was given the gift of Kareem and she never fails to deliver.

I mean, so bad at her job. She's so my gosh, it's just like it's almost as if when you promote people on the basis of race and sexual orientation, you don't get the best candidates. I'm sorry. That's she knows she's not up to the job. It's very clear. And even the Democrats know it and they don't seem to care. They're just going to, I guess. And then they brought out the white guy from the Pentagon, Kirby. And she's like, what are you doing here? It's like, well, you know, it's not the fact that he's white. He's a guy, but he actually does know what he's talking about. And they even they see that she needs a lifeline. I know. Imagine if you were just qualified on the basis of nothing to do with this race. Anyway, you know, you're also giving me a little bit of L.A. trauma. I, you know, you're resurrecting old wounds because I'm living in Nashville now. We moved

out and Josh got the job at Daily Wire. But, you know, we saw where things were headed with the George Floyd riots and the encouragement of lawlessness, not just the permission of it, but the act of kind of cheering on of this stuff. And you're looking now at a Los Angeles that has, you know, kind of roving gangs shutting down streets for, you know, to do donuts with their cars and to grab stuff out of 7-Elevens. And who's the victim of this? Well, of course, the victim is the actual upstanding minority business owner. You know, this always presented in terms of BLM and, oh, we're so compassionate toward these impoverished communities. But those impoverished communities

are where you now can't walk outside as you're trying to open your store because for fear of roving bans of criminals. So, you know, this is it's almost impossible for me to imagine that this is a winning issue. If Republicans can be smart enough to stick to the message, the message is you're hurting exactly the people that you claim to be helping while lowering quality of life for everybody else. I mean, if they get wrapped up and entangled in this, you know, January 6th show trial, if they let the Democrats run circles around them with that, then, you know, who knows? But if Republicans have a mnemonic move sense, this should be a slam dunk for them. They should be able to knock out of the park. You know, Ben Shapiro, a mutual friend, and he, of course, owns and runs the Daily Wire. He was making the point the other day that the Republicans, I mean, honestly, they're so dumb. They just they walk into these traps that the Democrats set so blindly as like they're so stupid. Why are they so stupid in terms of strategy? Most of these guys like the Democrats are like Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. And the Republicans,

as Ben pointed out, instead of being like, no crime in Afghanistan and covid and inflation and the economy and overreach, they're like, yes, Trump, let's do this thing. And now now they're behind. I know. Well, this is I mean, it's our job. It's our job to be the stupid party. So at least we're, you know, serving our role in the republic. No, I mean, I think that the Trump thing is so frustrating to me, not because of, you know, my personal feelings about Trump. You know, he's not my preferred 2024 candidate, but that's not really why it's frustrating. It's because it's actually out of touch to be fixating on this particular man. Now, it is absolutely appalling that the Justice Department, the FBI is raiding this guy's private residence. This is somebody that may well run for

president in future. He called it unprecedented. It is completely unprecedented. I grant all of that. But when you have this incredibly polarizing figure and an election that does not in any way need to be a referendum on him, it's a complete own goal, a complete self-owned to turn this into a referendum on Trump. As you say, it's what the Democrats want when even the things that are happening to Trump are signs of a much larger problem that we have, which is the capture of our security state and even, you know, foreign affairs. All of this is, you know, has been a disaster in the Biden administration.

And it's actually not a question of how loyal you are to Trump or whatever. It's just about who are you trying to win over? You're trying to win over undecided voters whose lives are being made progressively worse by every move that this administration makes. Why wouldn't you focus on that? I just don't get it. Mm hmm. Today, the last night, I should say, on his social media platform, Donald Trump was tweeting out this news about how the FBI went to Facebook, among others, I assume, and warned them that disinformation would be coming from the Russians shortly before

the Hunter Biden laptop story dropped. And Mark Zuckerberg admitted to Joe Rogan. But as we pointed out on our show yesterday, he had admitted it two years earlier in congressional testimony that, in fact, Facebook did suppress the circulation of the Hunter Biden story, you know, right before the election because of that FBI warning. They weren't ordered to do it. They were just given the warning and then behaved accordingly. Now, Trump tweets out last night in part about the FBI. He's mad that they did this. And he says, OK, we've never seen this kind of massive fraud and election interference remedy. Declare the rightful winner. Like who? Who would declare declare the rightful winner or and this would be the minimal solution.

Declare the 2020 election irreparably compromised and have a new election immediately. So that's not a thing. That's not a thing. Mr. Former president, there is no doing that. And look, this will this is grist for the mill. The left wing media will dine on this for the next four days. It's another news cycle sucked up by the Trump energy that where they're not talking about the economy and so on. And so now I don't know about you, but I'm really getting to the point where I'm starting to think I don't think the Republicans will lose the House. I think I think they will win the House still. But it's far less certain than it's been in a year. And as we saw with Georgia, President Trump is not helping. No, I mean, I've had since 2016, I've kind of had like a no predictions rule. I've just done. It's not my it's not my game. I'm not good at it. So I can't I can't call this election. I think a lot of what you say is, you know,

I think it's Bill Barr in his memoir says recounts a story that Trump says something to the effect of like the key to a good tweet is just crazy enough. Right? It's just crazy enough. And to me, the like, let's let's declare the 2020 election void. That's like over the crazy line. That's more crazy than I want in the stamp. Yeah. Well, I want to ask you, because I know you've written a lot about this. You've talked a lot about this. You know, why? Why did we choose Trump? And I I've defended a lot of Trump's policies. I the election isn't an immediate deal breaker for half the country. And these are very good reasons. And there are historical precedents, if you look back at these well-known figures throughout time, that might help us understand. And more importantly, might help us understand how this ends. Spencer is actually an expert on people like Julius Caesar, on people like Machiavelli, not to say Trump's a Machiavelli. I'm just saying, but like he he can walk us through what happens, what gives rise to a Trump and ring. That's where we're going to pick it up after this break. Spencer Clavin is with us for the whole show today.

Thrilled to have him. And don't forget, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. And you can find the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. We're trying to get to 100, 500,000 subscribers, followers, and we're trying to get to 100 500 000 uh subscribers followers and we're almost there let's get there a couple thousand would love that if you would do it how many languages do you speak spencer and what are they well it's always kind of a running tab because i forget some and then I learn others. But I can read, I think, maybe six languages. Let's see.

Greek, Latin, French, Hebrew, English, kind of. Italian. And that's six, right? I've dabbled in classical Arabic. I'm currently learning Japanese, which I love. Oh, my God. I think that's it for now. Did you always have, like when you had to take French or Spanish in seventh grade,

did you immediately have a knack for it? You know, I have one, I actually only have one superpower. Everything else is just, you know, sort of a charm and BS. But no, my one superpower is that I have a really good memory. I've always been able to remember things, memorize poetry and stuff like that. So that helps with languages a lot. Yes. And that is something, yeah. Oh, I'm envious. I have the opposite.

I'm nowhere close to you when it comes to that. I don't know. You and my dad are on the same page there. He's always quoting. It's very hard. Montaigne, the great French essayist, had a terrible memory. And my dad is always consoling himself with that. I said to my husband about you, I said, it's almost as if you're

speaking, and I don't mean this in a critical way, to a computer because you have so much knowledge in you. Like when I listened to your podcast, your references, you're so well-read, but you remember it all. And my husband was lamenting saying, you know, he's read a lot too. He's very well-read, but he can't remember it all. He said, I feel like I remember 10% of it. And I said, no, he remembers all of it. And he's not trying to impress you. He just does these casual references to this guy or that guy or this book or that book. And you know, he's got it at the ready. It's probably something he read 10 years ago, but he's got, that's, it's extraordinary.

I have to, I have to correct you there, Megan. I actually am trying to impress you, but only you, just, just Megan Kelly. Consider it done. Well done. Okay, so one of the gifts that the rest of us have in having someone like you who's done all this amazing reading and studying and so on, and then also is interested in current events and follows the news, is you can relate the two. You can be the bridge that takes us back in time and explains nothing is new. Old patterns get repeated over and over, especially when it comes to governments and leaders and outcomes. And I heard you,

I don't remember which podcast it was, but you were talking about Machiavelli and class warfare, like how he came up and the importance of class warfare. And I can't remember whether you drew the line to Trump, but I was like, well, there it is. I mean, I see it. So can you talk about it? Oh, sure. Yeah. This is so important. And it's a good example of why, you know, my book that's coming out in February is called How to Save the West. I want to write another one called We've Been Through This or We've Been Over This, because there is, I think, a real sense that, you know, part of the miseducation of American kids and elites is that we think that we are the first people ever to come up with, like, oh, I have a good

idea. Let's share all property in common. Nobody's ever thought of that before. Well, that's the Ecclesiastes by Aristophanes. So these sorts of things can be helpful sort of orient ourselves and to maybe think about what our options might be. And yeah, class warfare is, in classical political philosophy, is the death of a republic. This is something that, you know, people don't necessarily understand why we have the kind of constitution that we have, but it's the labor, the long labor of many centuries dealing with this thing that the Greeks called anacyclosis, which just translates to the cycle of regimes. And it's natural decay. The idea is that we live in this world where things are always changing and passing away.

And even if you have the best king ever, let's say you start out with a great monarchy, well, his sons and his sons' sons are eventually going to deteriorate into tyranny and self-regard and self-dealing. And then you get an oppressive king. And so the nobles rise up. And for a while you have an aristocracy, right? And the aristocracy decays and you get an oligarchy. And then the people rise up and you have a democracy, but democracy is inherently unstable. So you get mob rule. And then, of course, mob rule, as we saw at Chaz Chop, right, is the perfect opportunity for a strongman to stride in and exert his power. You've got monarchy again. And so our republic, the republic, is a perpetual motion machine. It's designed to play these different kinds of rule off of one another. We call this the checks and balances, separation of powers, but it goes much, much deeper than that. It was supposed to be the kind of grand solution. The Spartans kind of played around with it. The Romans were the ones that really made it famous. And one of the things that Machiavelli is doing in his commentaries on Livy, this is this, you know, famous for his

sort of ruthless politics, this guy, but actually a really great reader of ancient texts. He looks back and says, well, okay, so this was supposed to be the perpetual motion machine. What the hell happened, right? It falls apart. It becomes an empire. And one of the things he concludes kind of drawing on Plato, who says, you know, when you have extreme inequality, extreme disparities of wealth and power and kind of hardened class hierarchies, then you get two cities in one. You have the kind of powerful, the elites, and then you have the people. And Machiavelli's kind of going, the elites, and then you have the people. And Machiavelli's kind of going back and forth, well, which of these are more dangerous to a

republic? And finally, finally, what he says is it's the elites who really do the damage, because once they have that power, their whole life becomes about keeping it. And they destroy the systems that got them there by misusing them and abusing them. And so when you see somebody like Dr. Fauci, when you see the CDC, which is supposed to be this apolitical body or the DOJ, Merrick Garland, whatever, you know, supposedly these kind of just machinery of our system, it's not supposed to be in the control of any one faction. When you see them weaponized in this way, the people start to lose faith.

One of the saddest things about, you know, the Trump era has been the sense among conservatives who are the law and order folks who love America, who love this country as founded to see them, the kind of regular folks lose faith in the system and see that it's being manipulated by people who consider them beneath representation, who don't think that they're deplorables. They're not part of the system. And so this brings us all back to the FBI, right, where, you know, again, it's very upsetting to see Trump's home raided. But to me, it's infinitely more upsetting to hear the FBI say about the Zuckerberg interview, right? You know, oh, we told Zuckerberg to watch out for misinformation. And, you know, this was during the time that the Hunter Biden laptop story. And as you pointed out, the FBI had a grand jury subpoena open, had a grand jury open on that very inquiry. They knew they knew very well that it was legit. And they had a laptop in hand while

they went to Mark Zuckerberg. Exactly. And the brazenness of it, as you pointed out, that this has been kind of in the public knowledge, even if it's been kind of under wraps or really slipped under the radar. The next thing the FBI said was, oh, don't worry, we routinely do this. It's OK. We do it all the time. Right. This is their statement on the side. It's like they actually literally don't understand that that's the problem. I mean, they think that they're reassuring us because they're the neutral guys in charge and they don't understand that they are so abstracted away from the actual divisions in the country that they're destroying the legitimacy of the institutions. class warfare and everything that's happening right now. But this reminds me of something else I heard you say. And I was like, oh, my God, I just got it. Thanks to you. It finally dawned on me why this moment in the news cycle was so upsetting and so damaging. And it has to do, you mentioned Fauci, you mentioned the FBI, and I've heard you on your show mention General Milley. Yeah.

And what he did and why it was such a breach, why it was so bad. Even if you hate Trump, you have to see what he has been doing as genuinely dangerous. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned Caesar, right? And that's, of course, the famous Rubicon moment, where the Roman Republic, even if, you know, still nominally a republic, even if Augustus was the first official emperor, that moment was the moment when it all broke down. Why? Because it had to do with politicization of the military, right? The military is just the force of the state. And to be honest, you know, the left and progressives have been making this kind of noise for a while and you hear it. We don't we

take this for granted. But when they say things like, oh, you think you need guns, the right to guns to fight against the state, the state has nukes. Right. And so it's like, what's the implication of that? It's like, we'll nuke you. We'll we will use the power of our nuclear arsenal to prevent you from exercising the liberties that were given you by God and guaranteed to you in the Constitution, right? That's essentially what's being said there. And so, yeah, to politicize the military, to get up there and start talking about white rage, right, which is an inherently divisive concept, deeper than Democrat, Republican, that's actually at a

core level of, you know, race and identity, that yet you are, you know, part of the stain on this country simply by being white, by inheriting the DNA level stain of our history, right? Now you are an object of the military's concern, right? If you can't trust in the depoliticization of the military, that is that it is the weapon of the state rather than of any one political party or faction. And if you're a citizen, right, then the state ought to be working for you, not trying to rub you out, not trying to eradicate you like some kind of blot upon the nation's moral purity. I mean, that was the Caesar concern was that he kind of allied the soldiers to himself and was kind of making them weapons of his own grievances and his own personal vengeance. And that was, you know, where the beginning of the end came.

And so people compare Trump to Caesar, you know, they talk about, oh, so Trump is this, is he our, you know, strong man? Is he our Mussolini or of course our Hitler or what have you? But he's really much closer to a kind of a Gracchus, a Tiberius Gracchus figure, also an ambiguous figure in Roman history. But- All right, now wait, don't test me, but I feel like Gracchus, we're talking like 100 BC. Am I generally right? Well, you get a gold star. Yes, that's a 133 BC. The first Gracchus brother is killed. And that is another kind of beginning of the end moment. This is

pre-Caesar. But when you're talking about, you're asking this question, like, why Trump? Why now? Why this person that is so unhinged and, you know, put so many people off? It's because we're living in this sort of the state of our republic is such that a large portion of the electorate doesn't feel that they can be heard in any other way than to elect this human wrecking ball. And the people that they're trying to communicate to literally don't hear themselves. They don't understand that everything they say to reassure you is actually part of the problem. So, yeah, I mean, we, I think, are still hanging on by a thread to our constitutional order. I'm not sounding that alarm yet. But once you understand the classical theory of regimes and how, you know, a republic is supposed to work, then you can absolutely see why Trump is the man of the moment. It's because we're in a class warfare. You look around the big picture zooming out and

you've got, you know, basket of deplorables by Hillary Clinton. You got bitter clingers from Barack Obama. You've got John Kerry on his private jet telling us to wear sweaters and not eat red meat, not to mention what ABC's messaging is. Let's not forget Rick Wilson and masturbating to anime. That was one of my personal favorites. Oh, my God. what ABC's messaging is. Let's not forget Rick Wilson and masturbating to anime. That was one of my personal favorites. Oh my God, that one CNN clip with Rick Wilson and Wajahat Ali, turning up their noses with Don Lemon on all of America. They would get the messages about how if you voted for Trump, you're a racist.

And then on top of all that, you've got elite capture, leftist capture of media, of Hollywood, of sports, now of corporate America. And at the same time, you've got messaging coming from the state governments. I talked about it yesterday, Kathy Hochul in New York basically saying, get out of New York if you're a Trump lover. Charlie Crist running against DeSantis in Florida saying, I don't want your vote if you supported DeSantis. You've got hate in your heart. Right. So all all of these folks are feeling like everyone from their local politicians to the media they tune in on the small screen to to the big screen Hollywood folks who they see at the movie theaters to the corporations who employ them.

And now now the FBI, the DOJ and the U.S. military all hate them. That's what's happening. That's how people are feeling. And it's not made up. There are really good pieces of evidence here. It's not like General Milley is a nobody, right? It's not like Merrick Garland is a nobody, no name lawyer within the DOJ. So this is how people are feeling. And this is how they were feeling even before Trump. It's only gotten worse. But it explains why they hired the wrecking ball. They hired the wrecking ball because they want it wrecked. Of course. And you know what else it explains? I'm sorry to say is all this QAnon stuff. I mean, again, factually false in every possible way. So why are people continually glomming onto this or onto the microchips in the vaccine or whatever? It's because they sense two things. They feel that their lives are being run

by people who disdain them and hate them, and that all the relevant decisions are being made outside their sphere of knowledge and control, that the press is against them, that the FBI is against. And so, of course, there are people that are falling into this trap of of conspiracy theory because the actual conspiracy is sort of out in the open and they don't know how to express that or or explain it. And again, you know, it's like I'm no I'm no fan of of Q, but it's like, how do you get there? How do you get Trump? How do you get these, you know, incredible, you know, these tense moments in our politics? You get them when there is a class of people who not only believe, but also say pretty openly that they consider themselves not only to be above the law, but to embody the law. We are the law. We get to say what is and isn't true. This is why after January 6th, I said publicly on my show and elsewhere that

all the media is so quick to condemn the January 6th protesters. And I get that 100 percent, but need to take a moment to do a little navel gazing and figure out what role they had in driving people to these sites, to Reddit, to these deep Internet rabbit holes where they started to believe that Trump magically would become president, even though he had lost and so on. Right. Like what role? Why did they not take two minutes to stop and say to themselves, what role might I have played in this belief by all of these people?

It wasn't three people. Right. It was hundreds, thousands of people who believed it or showed up there. Of course, there's been zero self-reflection. Let me ask you this, because I've also heard you talk about the dangers historically and present day when good, strong men don't have something they can believe in. They don't have a government they can believe in. They don't have a military they can believe in, you know, are having, seeing trouble in the recruiting ranks of the military now, um, disaffectation where I just, I worry what all these people who otherwise would have joined the Marines who, I don't know, might've run for office, um, might've tried to

become a captain of industry, but now see no path forward because they happen to have white skin or be a guy, God forbid both. But what happens to those guys? Yeah. Well, I mean, we've been talking a little about Gracchus and Caesar and some of these guys that are main players in the end of the Roman Republic. And there's an episode in Plutarch's life of Caesar before he really rose to prominence of Caesar weeping at the grave of Alexander, Alexander the Great, right up to 323 BC when he dies, he's conquering the whole known world. Nobody's ever seen anything like him. And he's weeping because of all that Alexander accomplished before and before he was even Caesar's age and now Caesar is feels inadequate.

Right. He's he's got a kind of like FOMO or whatever. He's looking at Alexander. He's looking at Alexander's Instagram page and thinking, this guy's got the life I want. And and that's, you know, that's Plutarch's way of of saying this is a man of surpassing ambition. And, you know, the kind of Italian word that Machiavelli uses for some of this energy is virtu, which literally means manliness, right? Vir, man. And Plato would have called it thumos, the heart, the courage, the spirit. And this is a kind of a morally neutral energy can be used for good and evil, but it exists, right? It's no matter how many gender studies seminars you take, no matter how many gender snow people you teach in your public schools, no matter what you drill into people, you know, boys and young men are born with this kind of drive and society's stand

or fall on their ability to channel that drive and have a direction they can point it in. And as you say, when all those directions are foreclosed, when military endeavor becomes kind of a snafu or worse, when industry is captured by kind of anti-human ideologies, when all of these avenues of innovation and adventure and exploration are cut off, and on top of that, you're telling people that Thumos and Virtu and manly energy are inherently evil, right? Are themselves signs of failure and moral stain that people need to look in at themselves and stamp it out in themselves. You're going to create an entire generation of young men who are at war with themselves

and have nowhere to turn those destructive energies except inward upon themselves and upon their countrymen. And this is why the crusade against masculinity is so sick. It's not because, you know, we're wagging our fingers and everybody needs to be, you know, exactly the kind of man or woman that you would see in a 1950s ad catalog. Like that's not it at all.

It's an inherently anti-natural, anti-human way of looking at the world and teaching people to regard themselves. And why do you think when Elon Musk comes along, for all of his many, many questionable traits and aspirations and characteristics, everybody is so eager to see this guy go to Mars? Because of course, it's something to do.

It's a frontier. And it's something to do. It's a frontier and it's a positive vision of who we could be, what we could do with ourselves, where we could take our regime and our future. We need a lot more of that on the right. We need to be offering that I think with a lot less apology and a lot less pessimism about of course technology has its dangers, the future has its dangers. But if you don't have some kind of outlet for people to charge riskily and boldly into the future, then you're really in trouble. Let's talk about what's happening in the other lane,

right? We spend a minute on men. Let's talk about women. And in 2022, and I know you and your dad have both said what I believe too, which is like, well, we've gotten to this weird place, this dangerous place where we demonize homemakers, where they're, you know, maybe a little less so now the right is starting to put pushback on that or has been for some time. But still, I mean, in Democratic circles, a lot of them that I know, women who stay at home feel embarrassed about it. It's ridiculous. I remember being at a I've told a story before, but I was at my daughter's school. We were having a mom's meeting and it was an all-girls school. And one of the moms was saying that whenever she leaves the house, she's a stay-at-home mom. She says to her daughter, mommy's going to a meeting. I have a meeting. And she wants the daughter to think that because

she thinks it makes her sound more important. And I was like, what are you doing that for? Like, who cares? You tell her like mom's a stay-at-home mom, because I love you. And I want to be there for you. And it doesn't mean if you're a working mom, like I am doesn't that you don't love your kid, but there's absolutely no reason to make excuses for your choice. And by the way, even if you don't have a kid, even if you decide to be an Upper East Side, stay at home housewife, good on you. If that's what you want, go for it, sister. Do it and do it without embarrassment. Like be a great wife, lean into your friendships. What a lovely way to go through your existence if that's if that's what you want go for it sister do it and do it without embarrassment like be a great wife lean into your friendships what a lovely way to go through your existence if that's if that works for you but you have to do it unapologetically now we're at this place where every girl school and i have a i have two boys and a girl my daughter's 11 every single girl school and we've

you know we've only done girl schools during her 11 years it It's like STEM, STEM, you will be a scientist. With no pausing, no thought for like, what if she winds up really loving literature? Like, is that too girly? Is that too female for you? So she's got like hardcore science being shoved down her throat on the one hand, which I don't know that she's going to want at all. And then on the other hand, you've got every other input she gets, which is pretty much the opposite of STEM. It's the Lizzo's, it's the Kim Kardashian's, it's the Meghan Markle's. And the message is basically narcissism. Yes. Well, it's both of those things are things you would say to women if you hated them. I mean, that is really the point of that comedy a lot of feminism, basically since the feminine mystique. This is Betty Friedan's kind of inaugural text of second wave feminism. We were talking about Gloria Steinem earlier, these new left folks who come along and look with eyes of disgust upon homemakers in the suburbs.

And, you know, they're drawing upon a lot of discontents that were certainly there. I think everybody was feeling a certain spiritual malaise at that point in time. But the caricature of womanhood that you get when you go back to that book, you know, you find her saying things like, it's really, it's like being in a concentration camp. Seriously. I mean, I'm not making this up. This is like, you know, it's the comfortable concentration camp where you lose your identity and your soul. And you see this now when you get articles in the New York Times, right, about if you calculated the amount of money that you would have to pay a homemaker for her labor, you

would pay her a billion dollars or whatever number they've come up with. But of course, it's preposterous precisely because the work of a homemaker exists outside of dollars and cents. That's the whole point. It's inestimable. A billion dollars would be an insult to a mother that stays home to raise her child because she gets paid back in love. And this is something that, again, I come back to this thing about caricaturing the great works, telling people not to read the great works by just pretending that they are something entirely other than they are. They depend upon your never having actually cracked the books that would tell you otherwise.

So you go all the way back to Proverbs 31, right? People go out and they say, you know, Proverbs 31, right? People go out and they say, I want a Proverbs 31 wife. And this is the description of a good woman who can find. And when people say that, you sometimes think they mean like, oh, I want a nice little angel in the house. But it's like, you go back, the Proverbs 31 woman, she has strong forearms because she's constantly like needing her own bread. She goes out early in the morning and she buys a field. I mean, she's this woman that her children rise up and call her blessed. And this has been, you know, the feminist line on homemaking has been that it's devalued, that it's, you know, that it's infantilizing,

that it turns women into these sort of meaningless appendages in society. But of course, they are society. Women homemakers are society. And more and more girls, women that I talk to will tell me like, I hate the girl boss life. I hate this thing. I hate being on a treadmill. I have to go out and work for some drudge boss when I could be home making banana bread for my children, you know, and these sorts of things. Again, nobody ever said or needs to say that women should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen all the time. You just have to acknowledge that this is a different kind of person than a man with

50% of the world to make with a real role that is distinct from the man's world. And this is, you know, if you if you listen to the way feminists talk about womanhood as weak, as as, you know, as ignorant as infantilized, then it's absolutely no surprise that the skyrocketing gender dysphoria, which we're coming up against in this gruesome, disgusting attempt to mutilate children, is almost all among teenage girls who are going through puberty and coming into womanhood and have no positive model for it. It's something, again, that the right could be much better about, you know, loving homemakers. They are really the center of the

world. And I think we're starting to get better about this, which is overdue. I think about, you know, when I grew up back in the dark ages of the 1970s and, you know, women weren't as present in the workforce. They were more present at home and they were being told back then you have to do it all like you do it all simultaneously. You can. Good luck. I mean, that was the worst era, I think, for mothers because there was pressure to work full time and be full time moms. And this is before society was set up for that, where they even had, you know, support systems in place for moms who needed childcare and so on and so forth, putting aside whether that's the right choice. But I will say, what do we have in terms of images? Well, we had models on the cover of Glamour and Vogue and Seventeen. Yes, they were too skinny. Like that was about as much of damage as they were doing

to the young girls. Like you have to be skinny to be attractive okay that's america okay now it's like you have got to be a disgusting classless whore that's really that's the future for you you've got a i mean forgive me i i hate to pick on kim kardashian because she actually seems like a nice gal but i'm saying like break the internet with her enormous bottom and her exposed and we're supposed to celebrate her and kanye talking about how they do it all night long. And then the Super Bowl where I've seen Shakira's vag and J-Lo's. Why did I need to? I was trying to show my six-year-old the Super Bowl and football. Nobody's vagina.

Like, what the hell? And it doesn't make me a prude to object to that, right? I don't need to see anybody's pubic hair at the Super Bowl. And then you've got, right now, Meghan Markle. We talked about her yesterday and I mentioned her. We mentioned her earlier. She's got this podcast, $25 million she got paid from Spotify to do this podcast. And so her second first podcast was Serena Williams, where Meghan talked about what a victim she's been her whole life. She's a princess, but she's a victim. Second episode is with Mariah Carey. And Mariah Carey actually in a great moment, Spencer, kind of turned the tables on Meghan and called her a diva, which she is. And let me bring

it to you what happened. But I just feel like this is all hashtag part of the problem. Meghan Markle, hashtag part of the problem. Here's soundbite one in which Mariah turns the table. And I think that's really important for people to remember that there might be this persona. And yes, the diva thing we can play into. I mean, it's not something that I connect to. But for you, it's been a huge part of your... You give us diva moments sometimes, Megan. What kind of diva moments do I give you?

Don't act like you. It's also the visual. It's the visual. A lot of it's the visual. See, that's the thing. I associate it differently. Well, I know. But let's pretend that you weren't so beautiful

and didn't have the whole thing and didn't often have gorgeous ensembles. You wouldn't maybe get as much diva stuff. I don't care. I'm like, when I can, I'm going to give you diva. Okay. That was during the exchange because Megan's whole thing in this podcast to make it about herself. And then she comes back in her own closing remarks on her own podcast, Megan Markle, having mused about the diva assertion and says the following. It was all going swimmingly. I mean, really well until that moment happened, which I don't know about you, but it stopped me in my tracks. When she called me a diva,

you couldn't see me obviously, but I, i started to sweat a little bit i started squirming in my chair in this quiet revolt like wait what no what but how could you that's not true that's not why would you say that my mind genuinely was just spinning with what nonsense she must have read or clicked on to make her say that i just kept thinking in that moment, was my girl crush coming to a quick demise? Does she actually not see me? So she must have felt my nervous laughter. And you all would have heard it too. And she jumped right in to make that I dress, the posture of the clothing, the quote unquote fabulousness as she sees it. Oh my God, Spencer. I'm gagging on the narcissism. Yesterday she compared herself to Nelson Mandela. And now today we have to deal with this. She can't understand why anybody would think she's a diva. I mean, let me count the ways as, you know, during the Queen's Jubilee, she's making sure to put the window down so everyone can get her photograph right as she's always got to be wearing princess diana's jewelry as she's got to have just the right angle and

photographer and she'll only deal with this certain stenographer press guy scoby whatever his name is she won't do she sues every magazine or write something negative about her she pulls the meanest comment about herself tries to blow it up into what a victim she's been because she's only used to the good things being said about her i mean the fact that she didn't want to live in the in the royal cottage and the frogmore it wasn't good enough for her they had to redo it on the taxpayer dime she didn't all of it could keep going. And now to be like, oh, the indignation. Thank God it was just about my appearance. Yeah, thank God that I understand. Look at me. This is the act of a person who would sit in Windsor Castle with Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth, a woman who once broke bread with Winston Churchill and complain about her mental health. I mean, it's like, it's, it's not a day spa. It's one of the most ancient monarchies

in Europe. Like it's, I mean, look, you know, I, I will say this when, uh, John Adams, when, when Abigail Adams died and, uh, John Adams was left, uh, survived her. And when people would compliment him on the success of his son, John Quincy, he reportedly had something that he would always say in response. People would say, oh, your son is so great. You must be so proud. And he would say, my son had a mother. And when I first read that, I actually teared up a little bit. I mean, we've talked on this show about my dad and the close relationship that I have with him. And, you know, I like to joke, but it's not really a joke. Like, my mom is the best Claven. She's like Claven deluxe. And she's the only one of us who never

does any media. So you all just have to take my word for it. But I, you know, when I hear people talking about womanhood in these ways or offering these role models to young girls, telling them they have to be like Meghan Markle or like Lizzo, I always think, I too had a mother. And it incenses me on those terms. My mom stayed home with us. She had a thriving career on either side of that. She was a successful writer before we were born. She continued to write a little bit, but basically stayed home. And then when we were grown, she took up her career. And you talked very eloquently about the kind of you can have it all mentality, this narrative that you can do it all at once. And I've seen that too, I think. I think there's

still a little bit of it going around. But the irony is, of course, that if you'll just let go of these, you know, confected narratives, these absolutely artificial narratives that were not designed by people who have your best interests at heart, that were not cooked up so that you could thrive and flourish, but so that somebody else could make money off of you. Just let go of that. You actually can have an entire rich, full life as a woman who raises children and has a career. That's a very real thing. It's just not in any way, it doesn't look anything like this confection that they're serving you. And that's why it gets me know, gets me is to think about my own mother whom I do rise up and call blessed as, as in, as in Proverbs, you know, and,

and to kind of, uh, I, again, I feel sorrowful for, for the girls who are being offered this just really, uh, unhelpful image. No, I think, I think back to myself when I was deciding whether to stay at Fox or leave. And it's funny because some people online seem to believe that I was fired from Fox. To the contrary, I was offered. Not putting aside the toxic lifestyle that comes with being in the prime time of cable news, which I think is readily apparent to most people. I was not seeing my children. I wasn't raising my own children and they were still very young. I hadn't missed it all. They were seven, five and three. So I could still be very present for most of their childhood. And that's why I went to NBC because they offered me a show at nine in the morning where I thought, OK, I'll be able to be at home for and fans of mine, urged me not to go, urged me not to go. And it didn't have to do with politics. It had to do with leaving what they perceived as a very powerful post for one that was less powerful, which was clear,

even though it would allow me to raise my kids. That was not, and they had made different choices and they are both moms. And I couldn't, I couldn't explain to them, you know, it's like, if you don't understand why this is a priority for me and I, and I, it's, it's fine if it's not for you, you know, I mean, there, there are plenty of kids who are raised by working moms who turn out great, but I knew in my family, I needed more. I needed to be with them. So now I found a way to do it all right now. I actually am doing it all because I get to work from home. I'm I found a way to do it all right now. I actually

am doing it all because I get to work from home. It's in the middle of the day when they're at school. And now what I get Spencer is tons of people saying like, when are you going to get back on TV? When are you going to get back on TV? And I tell them the truth, which is I have no desire to do that. I love my life right now. And it's not like I didn't get here without some bumps and bruises. But, you know, if you know what to prioritize, what's important to you, you just keep trying and trying and trying again until for you, you nail it. For me right now, I'm nailing it. And it's in large part because I see my children. Well, that reminds me in a weird sort of way, it reminds me of this amazing moment in an essay

by Wendell Berry, who's not really a man of the right at all. He's more of an environmentalist, you know, essayist who kind of wrote about his life on a farm and so on and so forth. But one of his essays, he recounts telling his I think it was his grad school professor, somebody, some mentor in New York, the big city. He's starting to make it as a writer and he comes to this guy and he says, I think I need to go back to Kentucky. I guess it was. And I feel a call to the land. I feel a call to some more authentic engagement.

And he recounts it as if he's speaking Swahili to this guy, because this is a person that can't imagine that any writer would ever want to be anywhere but New York. How could you possibly... What reality is there for you to invest yourself in? And of course, this was the making of him. This was Wendell Berry's whole career was then to go back and his engagement with the earth and with farming, that was everything he would write about. But we do have, I think, largely among the laptop class, this vision of life that is purely commercial and incredibly provincial, highly urbane, right? Just you live in the cities,

you maximize your career ambitions, and everything else is just weakness or failure or inadequacy. And that story you tell, right, is anything but any of those things, right? Obviously, this is a journey for you toward fullness and self-actualization. And that, you know, the family would be central to that, I think is like very foreign to a lot of our elite classes. And it's almost like people were sort of advising me, you'll be weaker, right? You're weakening yourself. When exactly the opposite was true. I was at my lowest.

I was empty. I couldn't have cared less that I had a powerful post and a bunch of dough. It's not like NBC didn't pay me well. But I'm just saying that wasn't my driving motivation at all. I was empty. And not like that was a great experience at my next organization. But now, now being with them, raising my own children, having all this great time with them, not to mention my husband, I'm full again. I'm great.

I'm not going to make a stupid mistake with this full tank of gas and going back into that mess. Right. People like, do it. We're talking about cable. Come back to Fox. I'm like, sister, I'm good. All right. Listen, pause because we need another hour. This is when I'm sad I don't have another hour. So much more with Spencer Cleveland just ahead as we go into our last block. Don't miss it. So Spencer, my team found you on a podcast. Forgive me, I don't have the woman's name in front of me, but it was actually a really interesting exchange you had with this gal who seemed to be into the classics as well. And you on this podcast were talking about the concept of freedom that humans should

strive for. And you were making the point that most people think about freedom as freedom from something like big government, the thumb, the boot, or freedom to do something, whatever you want. But you had a different notion of freedom and the way people should be thinking about it. And I'd never heard it described in this way. Do you remember? You remember what that was? Yeah, yeah. And I actually remember the name of the podcaster whom I'll shout out because she's really a wonderful her name is Alex Kashutauta and the podcast is called Subversive. And she does a really awesome job living up to that title. So, yeah, so she was asking me about, you know, there's all this debate on the right right now about do we have too much freedom or, you know, is Drag Queen Story Hour a natural result of our American idea of liberty?

Because you just let everybody do what they want. Eventually, they're going to do depraved and harmful things. And my take on this is a little bit different, as you indicate, and it goes back in part to book nine of Plato's Republic, which we just recorded an episode about this on Young Heretics. So it's fresh in my mind. And Plato says something kind of one of those mind blowing insights that you carry with you, which is that the tyrant, the man who rules over a city is actually the most enslaved man alive. And you think of him as the guy that can do absolutely anything. He snaps his fingers and one man is beheaded and he snaps his fingers again and he has a feast in front of him.

And this whole idea of the tyrant is that he has freedom according to the ways of the world. But says Plato, in fact, the tyrant is the man who is completely enslaved to his desires, to his appetites. And the whole idea of the Republic is that your soul has these different conflicting parts in it. It has its, you know, appetites and its hungers, but also you have reason and you have courage and you can use these things in the right way, which is to orient them toward the reason, or you can use them in the wrong way, which is to just follow the commands of your desires. And you see this a lot now. People will say, oh, well, my desire, you my desire is just that it self-justifies, right? Like Andrea Long Chew, one of the famous transgender writers, wrote in the New York Times that desire shouldn't be measured by happiness. I should just be able to follow, right? Nobody can tell me what to do. Nobody can tell me, the government can't tell me what's right and wrong. And if you go all the way down

the road of freedom from, then you have freedom from the moral universe itself, which you're getting now too, right? Freedom from biology, freedom from absolute truth, whatever I say is the truth for me. And that's obviously not the highest good. That's obviously not the way we're supposed to live our lives. But that's why the tyrant is enslaved, because you ultimately become just the puppet of your own momentary desires. Whatever our sex, whatever food, whatever anything I want in this moment, that's where I'm going and I have no control over myself. And that's where you get to freedom too, because to really have freedom to do good things, to strive and to work and to triumph, you need to dominate your desires. You need to have control over. It doesn't mean you never indulge yourself. It doesn't mean you

don't have to take pleasure in things. It just means that you need to be in the driver's seat. Your logos, your reason, your mind needs to be the one pointing the way toward the good. And this was very live for the founders. The founders knew that this was something that was necessary for our republic to work, was a strong religious and virtuous people who gained freedom mastery over their desire so that they could have freedom to do all the great things and build civilization. And we've taken our political idea, which is freedom from, right, that the government can't infringe upon your God-given rights and made that into our entire idea of freedom. It's my freedom just to debase myself. And it's like, structurally,

formally speaking, you do have that freedom, but in truth, that's actually not freedom. That's slavery, slavery to your desires. And so what we ought to be doing is calling people to full freedom out of their baser instincts and toward what we all know we are, which is embodied souls, souls oriented toward the good who do best when we let our reason guide us rather than our lower passions. How much does your own Christianity play into that belief of yours? it would probably take the hour. But I would say this, you know, there's an ancient debate in the West about Athens versus Jerusalem. And in some ways, the West just is, when we talk about the West, we're talking about the cultural inheritance of Athens and Jerusalem, these two great centers of thought and belief and striving. And Jerusalem, obviously, the holy city where God's temple is and where the Messiah comes and where crucifixion. So Judaism and Christianity, basically,

and the thought that comes out of those traditions. And then Athens, the pagan side of things, right? The great Athenian philosophers and all of the Greek tragedies and everything that we cherish from that side of the ancient world. And Tertullian, one of the great Christian polemicists of the early church says famously, what hath Athens to do with Jerusalem? Meaning everything true is in the Bible. And if it's true in Aristotle, you don't need Aristotle to tell you, you can get it from, from revelation. And my approach to this is a little bit different. I think, you know, I hope and strive for my Christianity to inform all that I do and to be the last word on everything.

And, you know, people can quibble with me about how I live that out, but I'm sincere in my desires to do that in my effort to think seriously about that. But that doesn't mean that there's nothing to be gained from the pagan world. In fact, in Revelation, it says, he who is sitting on the throne makes all things new. And when on the road to Emmaus, Christ opens the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures, and shows how it was all always pointing to him. I think that applies to everything good and true in the world. It's obvious to me that there's wisdom and truth in pagan literature. But to me, what it looks like is that there's this kind of Christ shaped hole in it, that they're like almost tapping on the glass of what would be revealed at Calvary. And Thomas Aquinas is somebody that I often read to discover this because they call

him the baptizer of Aristotle, that he basically consummated the truths of the ancient pagan world by Christianizing them. John says, through him, all things were made and not one thing was made that was not made through him. That means anything true, whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good report come ultimately from God and can be best understood through that lens, even if they come from elsewhere. Hmm. I asked your dad, what's a great place to start for people who want to start getting into classics. I don't have to ask you that because I do know young heretics is a great place to start. Spencer, he talks like this on his podcast. You'll get some of the references. You won't get all of them if you're like me and newbie to it, but you'll follow enough to learn.

And he makes it entertaining. And it's quite dazzling, to be honest with you, just listening to you talk like this and inspirational to make the rest of us crack open these wonderful books. Thank you so much for what you do every day and for what you've done today and to be continued, I hope. You're so kind, Megan. As you know, I'm a longtime fan, longtime listener, first time caller, and I hope it will be the first of many. Thank you for a really lovely time. Same. Thank you all so much for joining us today. I feel enriched. Do you feel enriched? I hope you feel enriched. Tomorrow, you're going to feel good too, because we have an exclusive interview with Richie McGinnis.

He testified in the Kyle Rittenhouse case. He was on scene that night for the first time since the trial. He's ready to talk. He was also smeared by The New York Times when he was on site on January 6th as a reporter. We'll get into that as well. Fascinating guest. You don't want to miss him. Download the show.

Follow us on YouTube. Help us get to 500,000. Thanks for listening. See you000. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.