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1:16
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
1:21
All right, guys, today we have a very special guest for you on the podcast. His name is Dan
1:26
Crenshaw. Yes, the one and only Dan Crenshaw. And for like the four of you that don't know who that
1:31
guy is, he is a retired Navy SEAL. He currently serves as a U.S. congressman for Texas' second
1:36
congressional district. And he is the best-selling author of the book Fortitude, American Resilience
1:41
in the Era of Outrage. So his name should be very, very familiar to most of you. If not all of you
1:46
that listen to this show, he's been on the Joe Rogan experience a couple of times. He's really
1:50
one of the future bright stars for the Republican Party and a current bright star, frankly. And so
1:55
we're so happy that we got to spend some time with him today. And we talked about a lot of different
1:59
issues. You know, we certainly talked about the book because we did name it as our 2020 book of
2:03
the year. And we added it to our book list, the 100 books that every modern Christian man should
2:08
read. But this guy has insight on a lot of different topics. So we certainly talked about kind of the
2:12
current state of the Republican Party. We talked about the Biden administration, what to expect,
2:16
some existential threats that are actually going to be levied against the United States in the
2:21
coming terms and in the coming years. And so we got into so many different areas. And guys,
2:26
this was such a fun interview to do. And I don't want to delay this anymore. So without further ado,
2:31
let's get into it. Dan Crenshaw, welcome to Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
2:37
Hey, good to be with you for having me. And we're so happy to have you, especially with all the
2:42
craziness going on in our two states, we were covered in ice and snow, which is not normal for
2:46
us. But I think we will make it just fine. I think the very first thing that we'll go into today is
2:50
obviously you're a representative of the Republican Party and up and come or in the Republican Party.
2:54
But there's quite a bit of pessimism right now with the Republicans and with the future of the
2:58
Republican Party. You know, certainly the House is still not in Republican control. The Senate
3:03
was lost even after two very winnable races, seemingly in the state of Georgia. And then we
3:08
lost the White House as well. But from your perspective, do Republicans have some things to be optimistic
3:14
about here in kind of the immediate near term? Well, let's talk a long term. There's no elect,
3:22
but there's no elections in the near term. So I see no reason to, you know, you just on defense
3:27
right now. But I do think we win the next set of elections. If we're smart, if we can come together
3:33
and and be very clear about the differences and what we're offering as far as policies go.
3:40
And in the long term, we should be somewhat optimistic. Look, we have a lot more influential
3:47
voices that I think can speak to a more moderate audience than we then we have in a long time.
3:53
You know, if I ask somebody who the who was the conservative thought leader and 20 years ago,
4:00
and you might feel like, I don't know, Fox News, maybe some Rush Limbaugh, right? You know, that's
4:06
fine. But these aren't these aren't people that are speaking to the next generation by any stretch.
4:12
You know, it's a very specific audience. It's an angry is an angrier audience. You know, I think
4:20
we have to disavow the sort of outrage culture of the right, which is just gotten more and more
4:27
prevalent. And it's not helpful. And nobody is persuaded by you when you're angry, right? I don't
4:33
know how many times I'd say that. And you got to be a happy warrior. But the good news is, look,
4:40
if I asked you who the conservative thought leaders were these days, you'd have a lot of names.
4:44
You'd have Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire, and all those guys, Daily Wire, you'd have
4:52
they're doing speeches on college campuses constantly. You could talk about Candace Owens and Charlie
4:58
Kirk and Dennis Praker. And you could point to politicians, I hope like me, that are persuading
5:06
people. Now, and there's a lot more to that list, too. So there's people who are out there
5:14
getting the message out, using different platforms to do so. And just one person at a time,
5:22
getting people to our side. So we're behind the power curve, especially when it comes to these
5:26
culture wars. But you've got a much larger and I think more educated and dedicated and effective
5:37
group of personalities that are fighting these battles. Are we doing it perfectly? No, I think
5:42
the last few months have been an absolute disaster. But we can recover, and we can be optimistic and
5:48
and win from now on. But just as long as we remember that winning means persuading people.
5:53
Absolutely. And I think you made a great point saying you're persuading people one at a time.
5:56
And so when you're losing the culture war, when you don't have the reins of the mainstream media or
6:00
of Hollywood, you kind of have to do a little bit more of a grassroots approach, which obviously
6:04
the Republican Party can do. One thing that that also speaks to as well is what we see in certain
6:10
states. So obviously a lot has been made about the state that you represent the state of Texas,
6:14
about how you're getting a lot of refugees from California or New York or Oregon or any of these
6:17
other places. They're coming to Texas and kind of a common refrain is don't California, my Texas.
6:22
But I think that refrain comes from, we've seen states like maybe Virginia that skipped the
6:27
purple phase entirely, right? They went straight from red to blue. People are assuming that that
6:32
may have happened with Georgia and Arizona with the elections that came at the end of last year.
6:37
But obviously, you know, a lot of people think that the constitutional republic we live under
6:42
is in serious threat of not being there anymore if Texas somehow go solidly blue. So from your
6:47
perspective, being in the state, talking to Texans on a daily basis, a lot of them that
6:51
listened to this show, what are your thoughts on this big influx of a lot of people from
6:56
blue states into very, very blue areas of Texas, namely, you know, Houston, Dallas,
7:01
San Antonio, Austin? You know, I think it's a lot more. I think that those blue, blueberry
7:07
of Austin is a lot more homegrown than people want to admit. It's coming from our young people.
7:13
And yeah, it's transplants to an extent. But look, for the most part, in the aggregate,
7:18
the transplants understand why they left and they vote accordingly. So the Californians are
7:25
necessarily the problem. What you're getting from California is generally middle class,
7:32
probably Republican voters who can no longer afford to live in California or just sick of it.
7:40
You know, Joe Rogan's a good example. He's very Californian in every sense.
7:44
He's not some like traditional conservative, but he's very open about the fact that he's like,
7:50
I think I'll probably vote for what brought me here, as opposed to vote for what I left.
7:56
You know, and so I think that represents a lot of people. I think our focus is in the wrong
8:03
place. Our focus needs to be on schools and universities where these bad ideas are gaining
8:08
more ground. And that's harder. And that's harder to hear. But that's where the battle is. It's in
8:18
our youth. When I would agree with that, and one quick follow up to the point that you made about
8:22
someone like Joe Rogan, who moves from California and comes to Texas, I feel like a lot of voters,
8:27
and you would probably agree with this, they vote with their gut and they vote with their heart,
8:31
not always with their brains. And so most people, even if they say that they're fiscally conservative
8:36
now, you know, you see someone say, Oh, I'm fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
8:40
The problem is, is the issues that are in the social realm, like LGBTQ issues and abortion and
8:46
some other issues like that, those are the issues that people are having a hard time checking the
8:50
red box on because they just feel like, Oh man, I, you know, I want women to have women to have
8:55
the right to choose. I want someone to feel like they can express their gender in whatever way they
8:58
want. So do you feel like people are going to continue to vote actually in whether thinking
9:04
about taxation or, you know, some of these free market principles, or are they going to go with
9:09
their hearts? Yeah, it's very frustrating phenomenon. And it's exactly right. It's especially popular
9:15
amongst millennials to say, well, I'm fiscally conservative, but I'm socially liberal. And they
9:20
say this to like, because they want to, they want to sound smart. Exactly. They want to sound like,
9:24
you know, they're, that they're nuanced and they're complex, and they have different opinions, but
9:29
they're, they only vote one way. And I've talked to people about this. Now that's changing. I mean,
9:35
like, I have one person in mind is a great, great, I don't want to say who he is or how he's related
9:40
to me, but it's, but it's, it's just one person who lives in California, who's, I think a true
9:47
centrist, but always voted Democrat until recently, still can't vote for somebody like Donald Trump.
9:54
They just can't. But down the ballot, they're like, you know, California's getting so bad,
9:59
right, that I just have to vote down ballot just for something else, even though, and this is
10:06
somebody who I think is actually being true to themselves when they say fiscally conservative,
10:10
socially liberal. And then I would ask them, well, then why do you keep voting Democrat? I mean,
10:15
like, do you really think that if Republicans are totally in charge that all these rights are
10:19
going to be taken away from LGBTQ people? I mean, what do you think is going to happen?
10:24
Right. Honestly, because it's not like there's states, I mean, there's plenty of states where
10:28
that's the case where Republicans are in charge of everything. And guess what? Those states have
10:32
thriving gay neighborhoods. Like, I don't understand what the, like, we are not against the LGBT community.
10:37
We're just not. We just don't think that they should have extra rights that go beyond what
10:42
other people have. That's actually the, that is the simplest way to put my position on this.
10:47
Everybody should have equal rights. And that doesn't mean special favors. So like, nothing's
10:52
going to happen anyway, but they don't believe you. And they're like, I just got to vote that way.
10:55
Okay, fine. Well, but, but, but, you know, asking about taxation, they're like, no,
10:59
I really do think government should do less. Like, I mean, they're, so they're a little bit
11:02
more libertarian. I mean, if somebody's being honest about that statement of the conservative,
11:06
physically conservative, socially liberal, that kind of means you're a libertarian.
11:10
But if you're a libertarian, you should really be voting for Republicans, not for,
11:15
for Democrats. But anyway, they do what they do. So you've just got to convince people that, like,
11:21
we're, we're, we're, we're not as crazy as, as the left has built the narrative about us.
11:26
Right. That's, we're just not. And now in our site has to stop taking the bait because, like,
11:32
I think that the case of Virginia might be interesting and some other states are like this too.
11:38
Like, as soon as that threat starts to happen, the, the local party and the local GOP seems to,
11:46
like, lose their minds. Right. And just, and just become as crazy as, as the left says they are.
11:53
And then it, it, it, like pushes that purpling. It, it, it quickens the purpling to an extraordinary
12:00
degree. You know, I mean, it's, it's nuts. You know, and you're seeing, and this, this kind of
12:05
always happens in party politics. And like, you're seeing all these GOP parties across the country,
12:10
like, censor their senator, their congressman, if they vote, didn't vote the way. And it's like,
12:14
just stop. I mean, just just stop. You're being ridiculous. You know, and, and that, that's
12:19
unfortunately what happens at the party level. And that quickens the, the purpling.
12:23
When you can't allow the other side to try to compare you to your caricature,
12:28
you need them to be able to evaluate you on your actual merits. And so I think that's kind of the
12:32
thing is whenever you can caricature the other side and point to it, it makes things a lot easier,
12:36
even though it's not necessarily accurate. One thing I wanted to get into as well is obviously
12:41
everyone knows you for your military career. You spent a long time in the Navy. But the majority
12:45
of your military career was under the Obama administration. So if I got my facts straight,
12:49
I think you complete, you got your trident right towards the end of the W Bush years. And then you
12:54
maybe didn't officially get out of the Navy until Trump was in office. But the majority of it was
12:58
spent with Obama at the helm. And you know, when you talk to people that are active duty military
13:02
or were active duty military during that time, it's kind of dubious, the amount of support that
13:07
they were getting from the Obama administration. And they didn't really get a lot of the, the warm
13:10
fuzzies. So the question I have for you is we're so early in the Biden administration who's essentially
13:15
Obama light. But what can the military expect from Joe Biden in terms of his administration going
13:21
forward? I don't think we know yet. Look, I, you know, I'm not so sure that I felt that way in the
13:30
military. You're kind of detached from from the president. I have a hard time making that
13:39
argument that that we were that we were not taking that we were ignored that we were not taking
13:43
care of. It's a bit of a talking point. I mean, it's true in the sense of funding. But you know,
13:52
that's a complex set of reasoning there. It's the funding was always going up. Let's be honest.
14:00
And it's, it's, it's, it's more complicated than that. So I don't, I don't think any president has a,
14:09
has a disdain for the military or wants the military to fail. I think there's honest and
14:14
different opinions on like how much the military should be doing and how much they should be getting
14:18
funded to do it and where that funding should go. That's always going to be a complex set of
14:22
debates. I think Trump was wrong on some things, you know, with, I, and I think there was some
14:27
contradictions. They're like, there's this sort of mythology out there that like Trump didn't,
14:31
didn't, you know, was like the first president to like bring the troops home as if there's some like
14:35
moral, some kind of moral and virtuous sentiment attached to that. But I'm like, is there,
14:42
you know, because I could also make a moral argument that troops should be out there protecting
14:48
American interests and making sure that the terrorists don't have the time and space to plan
14:52
another 9/11 attack. So don't moralize over me about that, bring the troops home stuff, you know,
14:57
and, and I'm not really clear, to be honest, I'm not really clear where Biden is going
15:01
with, with some of this. But I do know that Trump, like Trump was not some like dovish foreign policy
15:07
guy, you know, it's, it's, it's like a myth that's actually told by his own supporters. And it's
15:12
kind of weird, you know, it really is. No, the, the thing that I was going to point out is that's
15:17
kind of where you and someone like Tulsi Gabbard would differ. And I really liked, I think it was
15:21
that the last time you're on the Joe Rogan podcast, where you were talking about, you know, this,
15:24
I don't know, this weight that we give to the bring our troops home thing to where it's like,
15:28
well, why were they there to begin with? And whenever you pull your finger out of the dam,
15:32
what happens? And so I think that that's an important thing to consider as well. And it is a very
15:36
complex issue. But one thing that we have seen about Joe Biden really certainly early in his
15:41
tenure as president is he's apparently going to be the executive order president. So he set a record
15:46
for first day executive orders for first week executive orders for first month executive orders.
15:51
He's kind of going to be doing this. And even though he has the legislature,
15:55
he doesn't seem that he's using them at least early. And we don't have a lot of time to get into
15:59
the exact orders and how damaging they might be on the ground. But what do you think the long-term
16:05
impact is of some of the executive orders that we've seen from Joe Biden so far?
16:09
Well, I mean, it depends on which one. Some of these are just, you know, statements, right? And like,
16:15
so you got to take each executive order on its own. Some are totally meaningless and shouldn't
16:20
be, we shouldn't raise our hands over them. You know, like, for instance, I mean, some are like,
16:25
hey, we're going to have, we want people to be nicer and more equitable in our federal government.
16:30
You know, that's an executive order like, okay, whatever. What is that even mean? But others
16:36
actually have consequences like, hey, we're going to cancel the Keystone pipeline. Or we're
16:41
going to stop leasing oil and gas leases on federal land. Like, now you're now you're really
16:47
screwed with people's livelihoods. And so the long-term effects are devastating to the energy
16:52
sector. That's what's really happening with executive orders right now so far. All the other ones are,
16:58
I fail to see the impacts. I don't think they're going to have huge impacts. I think overall,
17:06
you're going to see a general unfriendliness to business. So that will have long-term impacts.
17:12
And it's always going to be very hard to quantify. And it's going to be frustrating. Because the
17:17
left likes to play in these sort of gray areas, right? Where they do things that are, you know,
17:22
they kind of weaponize the regulatory system against business and, you know, and then make
17:27
up other stories as to why we don't have enough growth. And they use that as a reason to spend
17:32
more money and to, you know, to stimulate the economy more. So you'll see those kind of disingenuous
17:37
arguments that are difficult to fight against because it's difficult for me to quantify what
17:42
their slow rolling of permitting is doing in the aggregate and how it's affecting your life right
17:48
now. And I can, I just kind of can go blue in the face trying to tell that story. But it is true.
17:53
So, but the energy stuff is long-term consequences, you know, hundreds of thousands of jobs in the
18:00
long run are at risk. And our electricity prices are at risk. One of the reasons we're having
18:07
blackouts in Texas right now is because we don't have enough natural gas plants to make up for that
18:13
base load energy when our wind turbine is freeze over. And now the left might say, well, that's
18:18
why we need to invest in battery storage. Well, you can't. I mean, it's just, there's not enough
18:24
batteries. Right. And where are you going to build all these batteries? Now, expensive is that
18:27
going to be? And how much carbon emissions does it take to build all those batteries and mine them?
18:31
I mean, or you could just build a small natural gas plant. Right. That doesn't, they bit that much
18:37
carbon or build a nuclear plant, you know, like it's invest that much instead of investing 250
18:43
times more in subsidies on solar and wind than we do in nuclear. Why don't we invest in nuclear? I
18:47
mean, yeah, it's expensive. It's not the economics aren't great right now, but you can make them
18:52
better. You can make the permitting less insane. You can, you can use smaller modularized next
18:59
generation nuclear. You can, I mean, you know, there's there's smarter ways to do business guys.
19:03
When when the entire state freezes over, you know, this is this is when it's kind of thrown in our
19:11
face that renewable sometimes aren't the answer because people are freezing.
19:15
Well, and I think a lot of that comes to what you actually considered to be the real
19:20
existential threats to United States. So some of these things are more posturing,
19:24
but a lot of people on the left would say the existential threats are, you know, what bathrooms
19:29
people are allowed to use or what pronouns are, you know, that the world is going to end within
19:32
12 years or something like that. But from your perspective, and this isn't representative
19:37
necessarily conservatism, I want to, you know, just Dan Crenshaw's perspective, what is your
19:40
opinion on the real existential threats to the United States? The real existential threat is
19:49
is pushing away basic principles that founded Western civilization.
19:55
It's it's internal, right? We'll never be taken over. America will never be dominated.
20:02
But we can internally dominate ourselves and sort of purposefully implode,
20:07
which the radical very clearly wants to do. Just listen to them, right? Just listen to what Antifa
20:16
says. So that if you call that the radical left tonight, and I think that's about as radical as
20:20
you can get, it really is nihilistic. It's tarot all down anarchy, anarchy to build a utopia.
20:28
And their utopia ends up looking a lot like Chaz or whatever other autonomous zone they build.
20:33
And so I hope people are realizing how stupid that is, but people also have to realize and
20:38
obviously most people don't support that, you know, so most Democrats don't support. They think
20:42
it's nuts. But what Democrats don't realize is that their own well-intentioned liberal values
20:48
are leading to that. And it's it should be quite obvious. You know, and we really need to
20:55
build a build some distinctions between intentions and outcomes. And no matter how well-intentioned
21:05
your policy is, if the outcome isn't working, it's time to realize that. And I think that
21:11
overwhelmingly is the case with progressive policies, especially as it comes to when it comes to
21:16
like socioeconomic policies. And as it comes to the gender stuff and the bathroom, you know,
21:20
yeah, I mean, this is this is what happens when life is too good. You start to start to create
21:27
problems where there are none. I think it speaks to a deep psychological need for many people to
21:33
fight for some kind of injustice, right? They're always looking for cause. This is a very human
21:37
thing to do. And, you know, it is what it is. But it's getting dangerous because it's affecting
21:46
people's lives. Absolutely. And you really go into a lot of those types of things. And this is
21:50
probably a good segue into your book because in addition to being a retired Navy SEAL and a current
21:55
U.S. Congressman, you added another title to the list in 2020. And that was best-selling author.
22:00
Congrats on that. But you wrote the book Fortitude American resilience in the era of outrage.
22:04
We actually named that as our book of the year for 2020. And we added it to our 100 books that
22:12
every modern Christian man should read list. So that's in the culture and politics section. But
22:17
there's one quote from the introduction of your book that I feel like sums up the general tone
22:22
and tenor of that. And so I'll read it here. Quote, outrage is weakness. It is the muting of rational
22:27
thinking and the triumph of emotion. Despite what you've been hearing and seeing as of late,
22:32
it is not a virtue. It is not something to be celebrated nor praised nor aspire to.
22:36
It is a deeply human emotion, even understandable at times. But rarely is it productive, virtuous,
22:42
or useful. It is an emotion to overcome, not accept. And overcoming it requires mental strength.
22:47
This book is about acquiring that necessary mental fortitude. So do you feel like that
22:53
really summarizes the book and does that kind of really give everyone a prime rest to what they
22:58
would get in those pages if they were to pick it up? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's a, it's a
23:03
solutions oriented book. There's a lot of books that talk about the problem. And those end up just
23:10
being a long litany of complaints. And they're, look, they're well articulated complaints. And
23:16
they're complaints that need to be aired. But it's been done. And I reference a lot of those works
23:22
that do a good job of, I think, articulating what the problem is. And so I want to offer people
23:27
sort of a solution. So it's a bit of a self-help book. And it just turned out to be,
23:31
unfortunately turned out to be far more relevant for the year 2020 than I would have anticipated.
23:37
Yeah. And I think a lot of people don't really understand what types of, well,
23:41
we talked about existential threats as well. But these ideas are incredibly damaging. Because
23:46
if you look at it, ideas in the 20th century led to tens of millions of people being murdered.
23:51
Because people believed in certain ideas and those ideas led to actions. But also,
23:55
how it affects young people. You've mentioned how we need to fight at the university level.
23:59
And again, don't even buy like at me. I don't say fight like actual fisticuffs. You've talked
24:05
about that at length. I mean, fight in the verbal sense and kind of the verbal sparring sense.
24:09
But you had another quote from chapter two year book. And it's called Who is your hero? That's the
24:13
name of the chapter. But it's this. Now, I wonder how a generation shaped by the comforts of victimhood
24:18
culture, unaccustomed to adversity and allergic to sacrifice, with less and less desire to preserve
24:24
our values and way of life, will react when we are faced with the next great war, or depression,
24:29
or civil conflict. And so as a new father myself, I've got a nine month old son,
24:34
I'm thinking a lot about these types of things, like making sure that this is a resilient,
24:38
tough child, and that he doesn't look at victimhood as a positive thing. But from your perspective,
24:44
when you look in kind of survey, the younger generations coming up, does that concern you at all?
24:48
Yeah, I mean, it concerns us a great deal, it should. I mean, I made a mistake early on
24:54
the pandemic thinking, well, you know what, at least now our young kids will have gone through
25:00
some kind of trial and tribulation and probably won't, probably won't be, probably wants to come
25:05
to the foolishness of talking about microaggressions and safe spaces and such. And I mean, I could not
25:11
have been more wrong. It's almost like it made us more sensitive and more politically correct,
25:16
and almost exacerbated cancel culture tendencies in America. And so it just shows how deep the
25:23
corruption has ceased, how deep the pathology is of this kind of cancel culture. It's all the
25:30
more reason to just take a real big step back. And gain some perspective, again, the lessons of
25:38
this book are self-explanatory. You know, it's more important than ever. And I think it is the
25:48
fundamental problem in America right now, the sort of overly emotional reaction to literally
25:53
everything. And I was kind of looking at the left when I wrote the book. I mean, I definitely
25:59
pointed out both sides throughout the book, because I do want liberals to be able to read it and
26:04
feel like, hey, you know, this is this is a fair book. But I'll be honest, if I were to write another
26:12
edition right now and add more examples to back up the sort of principles and problems that I'm
26:18
articulating, I don't have a lot of, I don't have a lot more examples from the right, right? Because
26:24
unfortunately, I'm acting a lot like the left lately. And it's, I'm acting weak and angry and
26:30
outraged and cancel culture. It's all just bubbling up. And these stop, stop being a victim. You're
26:38
not a victim. Nobody's going to save you. And just because, you know, like, stop taking your ball
26:45
and going home, like, which everybody wants to do, this is the conversation in Georgia, like,
26:49
my vote doesn't matter. I'm not doing it anymore. And it's like, well, you know, what your vote was
26:54
always one of millions. And whoever you choose was never your dictator, was never your king,
27:00
was never your Messiah. You got to fix your own problems. That, you know, it may be just some
27:05
honesty for once. And you know what I love to hear from politicians more is, look, I can't fix
27:11
everything in your life. And not everything in your life is a crisis, the way most politicians tell
27:17
you. But if you vote for me, it'll be slightly better than if you vote for the other guys. So
27:21
that's why I want your vote, right? Setting that expectation, I think would be pretty healthy
27:26
with in American politics. Like, I just, we're just going to be a little bit better than them.
27:30
And there is nobody who could ever be in power that will be perfect for you, maybe for you.
27:36
But you are not the people, the people, because everybody says that, right? I hear it all the time,
27:42
like, we the people are mad at you. You know, buddy, like, you are, you're mad. And maybe you have,
27:49
maybe you have a thousand people that agree with you, like right there, right? Just right at that
27:52
moment. I don't care. There's 330 million people in the country. So, and if you go and talk to your
27:58
neighbors, they all disagree. I mean, everybody disagrees. Like, this is life. This is democracy.
28:03
It's messy. And there are no dictators. And that's a good thing. And so stop pretending that like,
28:09
you're, you know, your vote was supposed to fix everything. It wasn't. Your vote was a shot in the
28:16
win. You got to do it. Because in the aggregate, it matters. But we got to set better expectations
28:22
and more realistic expectations for people because that's what's causing a lot of this anger is
28:27
mismanaged expectations. Well, and it's people that are looking externally to solve their problems.
28:31
Like, again, they're looking to a political candidate to solve their personal problems.
28:34
And I think that really likens to my favorite chapter of your book, which is do something hard
28:39
that's chapter eight. But in that chapter, you talk a lot about how people need to occasionally
28:44
self impose suffering because, you know, at a core level, they feel like they become too soft.
28:49
Do you feel like the softness that people have allowed themselves to kind of overwhelm who they
28:54
are as a person kind of leads to some of this victimhood as well? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean,
28:59
it's like it's like anything. It's a if you become physically weak, it's because you didn't go to
29:05
the gym, because because going to the gym is hard and involves lifting up things that break down
29:11
your muscles and then rebuild them. So, you know, I mean, it's exercising is a good way to fulfill
29:17
this, this basic, this basic rule. And, you know, obviously you should go beyond that. And,
29:25
but like, it's a number of things. Yeah, mismanaged expectations, just the comfort,
29:32
you know, we've we've become obsessed with comfort and sort of sought it out as if it's a virtue
29:37
in and of itself, but it is not. The suffering is actually a virtue in and of itself, or you should
29:42
embrace it. It is part of life. And we've we sort of try to convince ourselves that it is not a part
29:49
of life and that it shouldn't be. And that any suffering is because of an injustice. And that
29:55
there's somebody else to blame for that. And that I think that's just a falsehood. That's an
30:00
untruth that and it needs to be snirt. It's just not getting told because it's making people very
30:05
unhappy and very weak. Absolutely. And speaking of weakness, and you brought this up, so this
30:10
is going to be a great place for us to end the interview. But it's the last and probably the most
30:14
important question of the day, what is your max deadlift? Uh, well, ever, you're one of the only
30:23
guys in Congress that I think that even does the exercise of deadlift. So yeah, we'll go max ever.
30:28
Well, what was your max ever? Uh, max ever about five 50. Um, you know, realistically now I could
30:36
probably do 400. Hey, that's more than most people in Congress. Yeah, yeah, probably everybody.
30:43
I think Mark Mark Wayne is the only other guy in Congress who's who's legitimately in good shape.
30:48
Mark Wade Mullen from Oklahoma. Um, who else is legitimately and really gets there might be
30:53
some new members who are pretty good. Yeah, there's a few. Hey, well, Mark represents the great
30:58
state of Oklahoma, which is where I currently reside. So that is good to know. But Dan, you've
31:02
been very gracious with your time. We really appreciate you letting us talk about all these
31:04
different subjects. But that is all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
31:08
No, I'm all good. Hey, appreciate you having me on. And, uh, appreciate, uh, hey, appreciate
31:13
choosing the buck for this year's book. All right, Dan Crenshaw. Thanks for coming on
31:18
Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. All right, guys, there you go. I hope you enjoyed listening to
31:27
the podcast. I'm so glad we got as much time with him as we did. So shout out to Justin over at his
31:31
office. He did a great job of getting this all scheduled up. We had it moved around a bunch because
31:35
the congressional voting was moved around and then we had some different committees that were
31:39
moved here and then there was the power outages because of ice and snow in Houston of all places.
31:44
So his team was great getting him on the podcast. Guys, before we let you go, we are going to do a
31:49
quick resilience boost at Undaunted Life. Our mission is cultivating mainly resilience. And
31:54
specifically we do that by providing you content like this podcast that helps you forge spiritual
31:59
mental and physical toughness. So here are the resources for today. The very first thing is you
32:02
got to be listening to Dan Crenshaw's podcast. So I'm not going to put every link to every podcast
32:06
place on here, but you need to look for his podcast is called hold these truths with Dan Crenshaw. So
32:11
where every listen to podcast, make sure you get that. I've also got a bunch of links. We got Dan
32:15
Crenshaw's us house website. We have his Crenshaw for Congress website. Also, I've got an Amazon
32:20
link to the book four to two American resilience in an era of outrage. I've also got a link to his
32:25
daily wire article. So if you don't know, he is doing op eds for the daily wire. So I've got a link
32:29
that kind of takes you to those articles. I think you do have to have a subscription to the daily
32:33
wire, which we highly recommend in order to read those. And then I've got all his different social
32:37
medias and he's got multiple different social medias because ones like kind of personal ones
32:41
like for Congress anyway. So I've got both of his Twitter accounts, both of his Facebooks,
32:45
and then his Instagram. All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to the podcast. I really
32:48
do appreciate it. If you would, please subscribe on Apple podcast, iTunes, Spotify, Google podcast,
32:52
or Sitcher, and refer your friends to listen and share this on social media. Guys, if we
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deserve a five star review, go ahead and leave us five stars wherever you're listening to this.
32:59
And a few sentences letting us know why you like the content. I'm currently booking speaking
33:03
engagements for the rest of 2021. So if you want me to come speak on your podcast at your men's
33:06
event, at your team, at your business, whatever, hit me up info at undaunted.life. The email is
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I N F O at undaunted.life. The website is www dot undaunted.life. You can follow us on Instagram
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devotionals on the you version Bible app just search undaunted life under plans. And as always,
33:26
we want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their entire music library
33:30
for our content. The intro outro track on this podcast is our song defender, which is off their
33:34
latest record entitled guardians. The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
33:39
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual mental and physical toughness,
33:46
keep seeking the lion of Judah.
34:16
[Music]