News and Commentary

KLAVAN: What Makes Us Different Is What We Hold Dear

   DailyWire.com

On Monday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” host Andrew Klavan explains how the Left is trying to craft a world where it is illegal to disagree with them. Video and partial transcript below.

Do you remember “Toy Story 3”? “Toy Story 3,” I think, is one of the best movies of the last 30 years. It really is a terrific film. I commented on how, I think in the L.A. Times, I wrote a piece about how conservative it was. The director wrote me an angry letter saying, “keep your politics out of my movie.” But it’s so obvious. It is such an obvious free enterprise, un-woke freedom story. You remember the toys have been … their owner, Andy, has gone to college and they feel deserted and they feel abandoned and he gives them away. So, they are sent to this place I think is called “Sunnyside.” Is that what it is? I think it’s called the “Sunnyside Daycare.” Where the daycare kids can come and play with the toys.

This grandfatherly bear comes out and says it’s great because nobody owns you here. There’s no ownership. There’s a rainbow on the wall and one of the dumber toys says, “Oh look it’s a rainbow, everything must be great here.” And that’s the way you’re supposed to feel about the rainbow. It’s supposed to be about inclusion. But the thing about inclusion is if inclusion is your only value, if the only value is that everyone should be included — and I’m in favor of inclusion. I think if you include people, but you include them under the aegis of an idea and that idea is not inclusion, it’s not just inclusion, it’s freedom.

The idea is freedom, liberty, to make choices, to seek virtue, to seek happiness which comes through virtue. So, if the only value is inclusion, then the only bad thing is criticizing people. Saying something is wrong. Saying you do something wrong or I don’t like this or this … I don’t like you. I don’t like who you are. Whatever it is you want to say. But those are the things that define us.

If you have a world that is free of values, right? … If you have a world where values are illegal, then you are illegal, people are illegal. Because people are defined by their values and by their ideas and by the things they think about the world and how the world is guided. You know it’s funny, I was just talking about this the other day. In the movie business, I was asked a lot of times to write ghost stories and to write scary stories. I always used to judge a story by whether or not you were rooting for the girl to get away from the guy with the knife or whether you were rooting for the guy with the knife because you thought it would be exciting to watch a girl get butchered.

I never wanted to write those stories because I thought they were wrong. I thought they were immoral, it’s an immoral story and it’s a false story. It’s not in keeping with the true moral universe as that moral universe stands whether you like it or not. Even if everybody agrees that it’s fun to watch a girl get butchered, it’s wrong. Those are the stories I didn’t want to write.

Now, you know we were talking about censorship on the Backstage with Dave Rubin. I was saying during the Backstage what a joy it is to me to disagree with people and argue with people of goodwill and smoke and drink while you do it. Then maybe change your mind or maybe change their mind. However, it turns out, or at least have something new to think about. That’s one of the great joys of life.

When we’re talking about all the censorship that’s going on, all the knocking people off Twitter and social media and calling people hateful and defining any idea that disagrees with the left as hateful and then saying, “Well, hate speech needs to be banned. So, therefore, any idea that disagrees with the left needs to be banned.”

I said to Dave after the show, I said: “What world exactly do they want?” What does that world look like to them? You know what do they say, what do they think is going to happen when they’ve won? Because I know what the world I want looks like. It looks like a world of communities. Communities with different values. Some communities I might not want to live in because I don’t like their values. People with different values, some people I might not want to know because I don’t like their values. Or some people I know even though I don’t like their values. Whatever it is, it’s a world of freedom. It’s a world of individuality. It is a world of true difference. Because, really, you’re not that different from me if your skin happens to be brown or yellow. It doesn’t really make you any different from me.

What makes you different from me are the things that you hold dear and the things that you believe. And so that’s the world I want, a world of difference. But I was saying to Dave like ultimately, this world in which everybody who disagrees with me is hateful is a world of eternal oppression.

Watch more of The Andrew Klavan Show here.

Listen to more of The Andrew Klavan Show on iTunes here.

Got a tip worth investigating?

Your information could be the missing piece to an important story. Submit your tip today and make a difference.

Submit Tip
The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  KLAVAN: What Makes Us Different Is What We Hold Dear