Freedom Center founder and the flamboyant provocateur expose the Left's 'Dark Agenda.'

On April 7, 2019 at the Freedom Center's West Coast Retreat at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, David Horowitz and flamboyant provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos sat down together to discuss the subject of Horowitz's new book, Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America. Check out the fascinating conversation in the video and transcript below and click here to order the book.

Transcript:

DAVID HOROWITZ: Milo Yiannopoulos is one of the heroes of our movement, not -- (applause) -- not given his due by the conservative masses.

When Milo came on the scene, I had been speaking on college campuses -- about 300 of them -- for 20 years, and it was very predictable. If a conservative came to campus, he or she would be speaking to a rather small conservative audience, and the reason is that these communist professors, which is what they are, organized boycotts of conservative speakers. They would tell their students not to attend conservative events, and they would reward -- If a leftist came -- Billy Ayers came through, they would give you credits, school credits to attend.

So that meant …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Taken away for coming to see me.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Yeah.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: [There are people that didn't] graduate for coming to see me.

(Laughter)

DAVID HOROWITZ: So that meant that only activists really were present.

And then Milo came on the scene, and suddenly he was speaking to a thousand students. And what struck me most, if you watch the videos, was that these [weren't] fraternity kids. These were the kids who kind of were sort of turned off -- whatever's going on at the school, it's not athletics or fun. And so he was reaching the real core for the first time.

And the reason he could do it is two. One, Milo is a brilliant intellectual. If you haven't read his book, Dangerous, this is the best book and just wipes out the so-called politically-correct culture, which political correctness is the Communist Party line. That's what it is. It's just a brilliant book. But he's also a brilliant performance artist.

So they set out -- The left is very clear, any -- Let's see, the Soviets used to have a saying, "The sunflower that grows the tallest gets its head lopped off first." So they go after -- Any one of our people that has an impact they set out to destroy. And so they set out to destroy Milo.

And, unfortunately, we don't have yet, we're nowhere near having a sense of solidarity in the battle. Doesn't mean you -- you know -- you have to cover up every blemish or whatever sin that our people commit, but you'll notice that the Democrats, they have no compunction. They've got a racist, pro-terrorist, Jew-hating Congresswoman. They all rally around her.

Whereas, Republicans, what they -- I mean, Steve King was taken down totally, completely wiped out on the basis of something The New York Times said he said. Just think about that for a second.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: It would be nice if all media defended us against things that aren't true. Let's just start with that. You know? How about you [defend us against] …

DAVID HOROWITZ: Well, the first instinct …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: … (inaudible) that aren't true? Just that. Just only that.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Well, let …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Just to start with.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Well, let the first instinct be to close ranks, and then you can look once you close the ranks.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that before we begin.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Thank you, David.

I think there's a sense of social propriety and manners which obviously I don't really understand -- (laughter) -- in any context, which I think cripples Republicans in this country. They don't sort of want to make a fuss or be gauche. I'm quite happy to make a fuss and be gauche.

I think that Americans sometimes -- My experience of this continent is Americans sometimes struggle with people who have style and substance. So if you are funny, they assume you must be an intellectual lightweight. And if you're really smart, then, "Oh, well, he must be ugly and uninteresting." Not so. (Laughter)

So it can be difficult (inaudible), you know, like you've got Bill Maher on the left. That's like there, that, but on the right, "Oh," and it's like you've unlocked a gateway to a magical kingdom in people's heads and it's like we've been telling ourselves on this side for so long that we're useless we start to believe it.

Anyway, thank you so much for that instruction.

I myself have been on a journey recently becoming closer to my faith, and this book is a great whistle-stop tour through how the left excised Christianity from public life, and some of why it matters. So I know that you're all going to end up with copies of this and read it. So I wanted to ask questions that aren't in the book today, give you some added value, rather than just repeating sections from -- that you're going to read anyway.

So, first of all, David, I wanted to ask you to take it as granted that the war on Christianity doesn't come from some place of principled atheism, but rather simply a desire to weaken the West, what is it that makes Christianity so powerful versus capitalism or democracy itself? Why does it seem to be that Christianity was always the number one target? It was always the thing they wanted to take out the most and first, which is why they have and did. What is it that Christianity gives to Christian societies that's so valuable to the West and so poisonous to the …

DAVID HOROWITZ: A moral perspective. The left isn't very good at economics or analyzing the real world or they're so distant from the real world, so everything they do is a moral indictment, and Christianity is kryptonite to their indictments.

We can get right into the theology. This book tries to explain, first of all, that the attack on Christianity, it's not a parochial issue. It's not just about one community. It's about our community. Whether we're Jews or whatever we are, atheists, if we believe in the American founding and its principles, then we are committed to what are essentially Christian ideas. They came from Protestant Christians. Ninety-eight percent of the people who settled this country and created it were Protestant Christians. America is a product, direct product of the Protestant Reformation.

I'll just give you one image of that. Before the Reformation, the only way you could get to heaven was through the Catholic Church and its priesthood, which was the true church, and -- Milo, (inaudible).

(Laughter)

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Thank you.

DAVID HOROWITZ: But the promise the reformers understood was that church is a human institution, and, therefore, it's subject to the corruptions. And Milo actually has written a really brilliant book called Diabolical about the corruptions of the Catholic Church.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: I did write a book proving your point for you, yes -- (laughter) -- that what a mess the Catholic Church …

DAVID HOROWITZ: It's like my late friend, you know, maybe the only entertaining atheist, Christopher Hitchens, he got it exactly upside down, the way the left always does. The title of his book is God is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything. It's actually human beings who poison religion, and this is the fundamental divide between the left and the right and why Christians -- and I use -- You know, I couldn't have used Jews. It's basically the same long text. The Judeo-Christian tradition, because, for me, the wisest insights into our predicament are in the first chapters of Genesis, which was written -- which is part of the Old Testament, obviously.

The flaw in human beings is why Utopian schemes are monstrous. People who think they can remake the world by manipulating and then forcing and killing everybody who stands in their way, that delusion is the most deadly delusion in the history of mankind, that there can be something called social justice, that there can be -- or communism or socialism. They're all the same, the same idea.

The sanctity of human life, you just start with that. That's a Judeo-Christian idea. I never thought I'd live to see the day when the Democratic Party would pass laws about legalizing the murder of born children. I mean, it's some kind of figment you can argue before the child is born. I mean, it's getting flimsier and flimsier with the advances of our technology.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: It's now 11 minutes in New York, in case you're wondering [before] birth, it's still okay -- (laughter).

DAVID HOROWITZ: Anyway. But it's this fundamental vision of the flawed nature of human beings, and that's -- You know, why do we have checks and balances? Why do we have an Electoral College? Because the Founders did not believe in democracy, because they didn't -- I mean, they were actually quite brilliant. They created the people as sovereigns, the people in America. It's we, the people are sovereigns. But then they put all these checks and balances on them to prevent them from doing their stupid things that they have a tendency to do.

We're getting it in spades these days. You can just turn on YouTube every day and see an idiot from New York show you why you don't want one person, one vote.

And the fact that Elizabeth Warren, who's supposed to be a professor -- I mean, should have no respect for professors if they're in the humanities, social science fields -- is completely ignorant of what the Constitution is about, not to mention Cory Booker. This is irrelevant, but what the hell -- This guy went to Oxford and Yale. I mean, Yale is a disgrace. Why it's tax exempt is beyond me. It's not an educational institution. I mean, of course, its departments, medical departments, they're fine.

Cory Booker said we have to get rid of the bigotries in the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't mention race. The words black and white don't appear in it. I mean, this guy's a moron, and he's also a very treacherous, terrible person, and Betsy DeVos made him, and they attacked her as a racist for …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: When you have to keep your sexuality hidden for all of your adult life …

DAVID HOROWITZ: Oh, is …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: … creates …

DAVID HOROWITZ: I knew Milo would have an insight there. (Laughter)

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Why doesn't he just come out? (Laughter) Not only can I say it, but I can say it [as a] (inaudible) authority.

Let's talk about one of the reasons this has happened. As a lifelong activist, you have insight into this that perhaps very few other people and perhaps nobody really does. One of the things that's made Christianity easy to excise from public life and one of the reasons it's not hugely attractive to try to work it back in is because the version of Christianity we have in America isn't particularly great, some of the Southern Christian Protestant -- this meandering pause that America has taken in Christianity.

In the Middle Ages, when Christianity was first taking off, it was the ultimate anecdote to racism, and it was Christianity that first invented these principles of colorblindness because people didn't care in the Middle Ages if you were black or white, merely if you were Christian or not. And that's where the idea of respect for the individual, as well as, you know, the king having to pray alongside commoners, that sort of equality before the law. All these principles are rooted in Judeo-Christian theology.

And, at the time, it was very radical to say that the king and this peasant were in any way at all the same, especially when it came to being in church, and also consensual marriage. I mean, there are all kinds of things that you have no idea come from Christianity. You know, David is right. It's basically everything. Consensual marriage, before Christianity, women didn't have to say, "Yeah. Okay." (Laughter) Chivalry and codes of treating women nicely didn't really exist before Christianity, and still don't where you don't have Christianity.

That Middle Ages version of Christianity was full of something that I think perhaps today's Christians in America sometimes lack: Joy. Everywhere you look on medieval cathedrals, you've got those ugly gargoyles, and they're all out there fiddling with themselves or pulling faces. I mean, on these very grand buildings you look a little bit closer and the gargoyle -- "He's doing -- What was he doing?" (Laughter)

And then the next time you walk past a Gothic cathedral, like actually look at what the gargoyles are doing. (Laughter) It was full of mischief. Christians in the Middle Ages were always about to break into song or about to dance or about to smile or laugh, and it was joy as a sort of soft power of Christianity, making people feel good and happy without merely sinking into Schadenfreude, which seems to be the only source of pleasure for the left.

That's one of the things that I think perhaps modern Christianity, having lost many of the best things about its own tradition, could do with rediscovering, to make it more attractive again. Have you noticed, though, among some of the younger activists, particularly the people you would imagine to be the most relentlessly atheist, a lot of young conservative activists have started talking about God more recently? Have you noticed that, in the last two years?

DAVID HOROWITZ: Yeah. I think this abortion issue is part of what's inspiring that.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Well, it's sort of a gateway drug, the abortion debate, isn't it? I mean, Republicans have seen abortion as a handicap, as a millstone, you know, as a sort of like, "Oh, yeah, yeah. No, look, we're great, honestly, except for the abortion thing." Actually, it's a gateway drug into Christianity, which is -- Well, let me ask you this …

DAVID HOROWITZ: No, it's about life, and it's about individual soul. It's about -- I mean, the left is collectivist. The Democratic Party is a communist party now. It ranks you according to your race, your gender. That comes up first in everything …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Well, Marxism has to refute Christianity (inaudible) …

DAVID HOROWITZ: And they're collectivists and if you're Christian or Jewish, you're focused on the individual and his or her internal life. It's …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: This is where individual liberty ultimately comes from.

DAVID HOROWITZ: And, you know, part of what I explain in this book is really Roe v. Wade created the Religious Right. Until Roe v. Wade, the Evangelicals were very skeptical about getting involved in politics, but the Supreme Court is actually liberal, and I think this guy is actually technically a liberal like Dershowitz. Wrote a book calling it the most dangerous branch, and I think I said this the other day, but, you know, if you think of the Supreme Court, it's nine lawyers appointed for life by politicians. Now, how could that go wrong?

And they have no obvious regard or principles or consistency. They embrace hypocrisy as a way of life, so they invented this right to privacy. That's Planned Parenthood lawyers who came up with this bogus idea as the foundation for Roe v. Wade. Well, as Rehnquist pointed out in his dissent, there's nothing private about an abortion. It's, you know, a woman, a doctor and the unspoken, unborn child.

So when they did that -- When the Supreme Court -- I mean, I really think there should be some kind of reform of the court. I'm not a legal scholar, so I don't know what John Marshall did to make it a judicial review (inaudible) could school me on this, I'm sure, but it's got to be stopped, because what the Supreme Court did it circumvents the whole democratic process. Instead of debating abortion in legislatures across the country, these nine appointed-for-life lawyers made a decision, and it changed the fundamental law of the nation overnight in every community.

This was a direct assault upon the Bible Belt, and all these religious communities, all the big Religious Right organizations, the political ones, were formed in the five or six years after Roe v. Wade. And this political coalition that was created -- I want to put the Moral Majority at four million members -- first, they elected Ronald Reagan, then they elected Donald Trump.

That's what the war is. If you focus on what's happening to Christians now, you get a direct insight into where the war is in this -- over this country and over all your freedoms. If you don't have freedom of conscience and freedom of speech, you don't have any freedoms. You can't defend them.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: It's funny, ordinary, church-going Christians are a lot smarter, in many cases, than their own bishops and priests. We know this from our own world in politics, where the -- you know, the conservative base versus the Republican Party establishment, people know -- voters out there know that when you vote for a president you're not voting for Jesus. It's a Marxist thing expecting to have heaven on earth. Trying to create Utopia in human civilization is a Marxist project. So you don't vote for a man who is the paragon of virtue because you're not voting for a Christ-like figure in office. You're voting for a politician, which is why you can overlook some of Donald Trump's personal habits and characteristics and whatever else he gets up to, and to know that he's going to do the job that you've elected him to do without requiring him to be the perfect vision of a moral man.

Most Christians in the conservative press couldn't understand and couldn't cope with Trump because he wasn't a paragon of virtue, but [voters] understood that he didn't need to be, because they're actually Christian. [That made the] difference.

So all of the things that you will have sort of intuitively picked up on, in politics, it all starts in the same -- It all starts in the same place. It starts with Christianity.

I'm going to ask you a theological question. There are some think tanks who do great work in this area. The Baylor Institute, for instance. They come up with all of these amazing studies that show how basically Christians are just nicer to each other, and if you want to build a society, you'd be much better off if all your citizens are Christian, cause they don't steal from each other. They give to charity. They're just generally nicer to one another.

Does it matter to you whether Christianity is literally true? Do you -- I mean, do you -- Do you Do you -- Do you …

DAVID HOROWITZ: I'm glad you asked me that.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Do you mind? Do you care? Because if you want to build a free, happy, generous society, the best way is to make it Christian.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Up to a point, because people will abuse the religion and use it as a weapon.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Right.

DAVID HOROWITZ: [Have all the] hellfire and damnation preachers.

When I came out of the left, when I saw the left was a destructive, evil force -- It's just anti- -- It just hates America. That's its motivation. There never was an anti- -- Of course, I was part of the '60s generation, and the big thing was the anti-war movement. It wasn't an anti-war movement. It was an anti-American movement, and you know that because they forced the United States to betray its allies in Vietnam. And when America left, the communists proceeded to slaughter 2-1/2 million people. There wasn't a single protest. They don't give a fig about the Vietnamese. They don't care about blacks. They don't care about minorities. They just consumed -- It's a party of hate is what it is.

Anyway, when I saw that, I spent -- Those of you who know my biography know that the kind of turning point was a murder by the Black Panthers of a woman that I had recruited. I spent seven years kind of rethinking everything, and I wanted to understand America. I saw the difference that America -- When America did things that were bad, it was an agonizing reappraisal. It was whole mechanisms for trying to prevent it from ever happening again. Whereas, the left just -- it doesn't miss a beat.

They're proud. The leadership of the Democratic Party is proud that it got 2-1/2 million Indo-Chinese killed by the communists. There isn't a leader of the Democratic Party who wouldn't be proud of being part of that terrible, terrible movement.

So when you look at it -- You just look at the founding. We're endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now, radical stuff, that's what they think is part of their social justice -- life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. But it can't be inalienable. That is, it can't be inalienable. It can't not take it away unless there's a god, who gave it. If government gives it, government can snatch it away, and they'll do it in a heartbeat. I love that phrase, "teaching moment." We've had two years of a teaching moment of how completely untrustworthy, devious and dangerous so-called liberals are. Anyway, so that's an easy idea to see, but not so easy for an agnostic, which is what I am. Just means I don't know to embrace.

And then I realized you have to either have a god or you have to have respect for the belief in God and respect for the people who believe in God in order to defend your freedoms, if you enjoy your American freedoms. That's very basic.

So, to me, it doesn't really matter. I mean, I think that one would be happier -- I mean, I've written about this in my books. I mean, when Mozart was 35, he knew the purpose of life was -- the goal was death, and he was -- got up every morning and was creative because he had the comfort of having a creator who was watching over him. And I said, you know, I really wish -- I can see the benefits of that, but it's not essential, since atheism is a faith and religion is a faith. If you have the faith, good. I mean, I think it's very beneficial, but if you don't, it doesn't make a difference, cause nobody knows.

I think it was Novak who wrote to me once and said nobody gets to see God, just we see through a glass darkly, and only then face to face.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: I think if you are struggling with whether or not you believe in something, you can try to look at some of the indicators of what might make for a good belief system. So Feuerbach, the German philosopher, talked about -- He was an atheist, but he said you can tell what a civilization holds most dear from its religion. Christianity, self-sacrifice and love. Those are the two enduring principles at the heart of Christianity. They are the Crucifixion. They are Christ and the Resurrection, self-sacrifice and love. Perhaps joy as a close third.

Look at Islamic societies. Obedience, the ability to follow the rules.

What a religion most prizes is the key to unlocking what is the soul of that civilization. So if you want to make people nice to one another, it might be nice to pick a religion that holds love and self-sacrifice as the highest virtues, as the highest principles

So should we teach prayer in school?

DAVID HOROWITZ: Well, you know, this is the way they -- Of course, when the left talks -- The left is very conscious of the fact that if it told you where it was going, you'd string them up …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: (Inaudible.)

DAVID HOROWITZ: … from the nearest lamppost. So they lie. I mean, to be a leftist is to be committed to lying about your political agendas.

So in 1962, there was a -- the founder of the New York ACLU, that evil organization, brought -- it was five people, none of whom were especially religious, brought a suit and got it to the Supreme Court. And they were rejected in three appeals courts because it was a frivolous suit against a non-denominational prayer in the schools. It was just completely innocuous. Something like, "Almighty God, thank you for protecting me, my parents and our country. Amen." Something like that. And that Supreme Court decided that that violated the establishment clause. The establishment clause of the Constitution, this is the --

Let me just back up one thing about this Protestant Revolution that created America. As I said, before the Protestant Reformation you can only get to heaven through the Catholic Church and its priesthood. And there were two central doctrines of the Protestant Reformation. One was salvation by grace. And what that means is that we're all sinners. None of us deserves to get into heaven. So the only way you get there is by a divine grace, and that's why we have the checks and balances in everything and why we should be distrustful of all Utopians.

The second idea was called the Priesthood of All Believers. Think of that for a second. The idea is that each individual confronts his or her maker one on one without the intermediary of a priesthood or a state, [very important], because, as you know -- Well, just to [pick England] because it's kind of our parent country, you know, when Henry VIII got tired of beheading his wives, he just changed the religion of England overnight, established it, and then persecuted -- proceeded to persecute the other religions.

So we were founded by all these Protestant sects that were fleeing persecution. That's why we have a secular state, because they don't want to establish a religion. And, actually, if you're a Protestant, nobody can tell you what it means to -- I mean, they can tell you what it means to be a Christian, but they don't have an authority from God to say what a Christian is.

It's an incredibly revolutionary idea. It's equality. It says if you're a black slave, you're a child of God, and, therefore, you're on an equal plane in the priesthood of all believers. You're dealing one on one with your maker, for whatever reason He created you and whatever reason that you're in this situation. Incredibly revolutionary idea. And this is what's under assault by the left, the collectivists of the left in this country.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Well, there's many points of theological difference that we will skip over there between the two of us, but -- (laughter) …

DAVID HOROWITZ: You're a Catholic.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Certainly we can agree that the roots of individual liberty, having respect for the bodily integrity and the personal autonomy of the individual starts with Christianity, and we have it, too. Thank you. But, certainly, Protestants took it to the next level by sweeping the church out.

DAVID HOROWITZ: So they banned prayer -- I thought they banned -- the Supreme Court bans prayer in the schools. The idea that that one 23-word prayer establishes a religion is idiotic. Doesn't matter. It's the Supreme Court.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: They'd probably be okay with the Shahada, though.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Oh, no question. No question. But what they did was they took that -- As I said, the left is always lying. So it's never -- I mean, this woman, Cortez, is wonderful, because she blurts out the end, which is a big mistake.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: (Laughter) She tells too much …

DAVID HOROWITZ: Without thinking about -- I don't think she's capable, actually, of thinking.

But so what they did was they took that, and through a series of other decisions -- the next suit or a subsequent suit was brought by Madalyn Murray O'Hair. How many people know that name? She was the founder of Atheists of America. She was a lunatic. I mean that literally.

She tried to defect to the Soviet Union with her family. She was a communist. Right before she launched this campaign, she blamed Christians for killing her father. Whereas, what actually happened was she hated her father and they always had these bloody fights, and the morning -- one morning, while a Supreme Court decision was actually pending, she said to him, she said, "I hope you die, and I'll put your body in the trash" -- this was breakfast talk -- and stormed out. And this poor old guy -- although having raised a daughter like that, there's some [dessert] there I think -- goes to the A&P and at the cash register has a heart attack. She blamed Christians for his death. She invented persecution by Christians.

When she went to defect to the Soviet Union, the Kremlin wouldn't let her in because they knew she was a lunatic.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: (Laughter)

DAVID HOROWITZ: But the Supreme Court treated this like it's a serious case, and it eliminated Bible reading in the school. So, now, you can't mention -- You can, of course mention Islam. You can, of course, mention that Hopi Indians pray to Mother Earth. Can't mention that Christians pray to Jesus, and you can't teach public school children that the Pilgrims were Christians or that the First Thanksgiving was a Thanksgiving to God. They've wiped out religion in the public square, basically.

And, unfortunately, conservatives have this reflex always, you know, that we're going to home school our kids. We're going to -- I mean, Kennedy, when they passed this decision ending prayer in the schools, he said, "We'll pray at home." That's a retreat. This is a war.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: So that was the Protestant way.

DAVID HOROWITZ: All right.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: [What do you need churches for?}

DAVID HOROWITZ: We're not going to bring up your Pope.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: (Laughter)

DAVID HOROWITZ: [Go ahead, Milo.]

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: One of the many benefits of having an organized religion and church hierarchy is that it embeds itself as an institution in the fabric of the nation in a way that Protestant churches can't and don't.

DAVID HOROWITZ: This is true.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: And (inaudible) …

DAVID HOROWITZ: But if you're a Democrat, I mean, if you're an American, you value -- I mean, it is, of course, it leads to a kind of anarchy.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Well, it …

DAVID HOROWITZ: But, you know, [it's not like it's] simple. I'm in a state now where the sheriffs -- the communists who are in the governor's house, and they took over the legislature, want to confiscate guns, and the sheriffs have declared their districts sanctuaries for guns. So, I mean, you can see how quickly it all goes to anarchy, but I kind of like this little twist.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: We're in this sort of chaotic late-decadent phase of America -- aren't we? -- just before it plunges off the -- you know -- off the edge of the cliff.

DAVID HOROWITZ: (Inaudible.)

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: [And it's all quite exciting], you know, that sort of vertigo as you look over the abyss, you know, into total chaos and complete societal failure, sort of what Rome felt like before the Visigoths sacked the city, you know.

All right. So the verdict was you're sort of comfortable with prayer in schools maybe, but definitely with prayer …

DAVID HOROWITZ: Me?

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Yeah.

DAVID HOROWITZ: I loved it.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: But teaching it to -- What about teaching Christianity (inaudible)?

DAVID HOROWITZ: We used to do it, and I was there, you know, before they banned it, and we used to say the Lord's Prayer, which is a Christian prayer actually. My mother was -- Even though my mother was a communist and an atheist, she was upset about this, but I kind of liked the words in elementary school, "Lead us not into temptation, for Thine is the power, the kingdom and the glory …"

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: I don't think there's any shame as a Jew in borrowing things from Christianity. After all, we gave -- No, the whole of psychotherapy is a reinvention of the confessional booth. This is one of many ways in which we cross pollinate, you know?

So let's talk about sex, because when I think about you, the first thought that always goes through my head is what a hunk.

(Laughter)

DAVID HOROWITZ: Is my wife here?

(Laughter)

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: No, you know, your brain gets a bit muddled when you're a homosexual -- sodomite, as Ilhan would say. And you end up sort of -- It's like you jump tracks and some of your brain works a bit like a woman and some of your brain works a bit like a man. And David's level of sort of tirelessness and bravery is very attractive. It's -- (applause) -- [a very remarkable thing]. I switch on my woman brain, I'm like, yeah, totally would.

But -- (laughter) -- let's talk about sex, the Sexual Revolution, in particular. You have a chapter on it in the book.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Yeah.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: It's almost like they're trying to make everyone gay, in the sense of -- [I mean that seriously.] When you take away the restraining influence of women from men and you just leave men to have sex with men, [we go] crazy, you know. Too much of it, all kinds of weird and wonderful things.

It's almost as though that restraining influence, the things that Christianity, again, invented, whether it was chivalry, codes of courtship, you know -- Christianity actually elevated women in a way they had never been considered in Western civilization before by giving them equal status with men. They had to say, "I do," as well, in a marriage, which prior to that had not been the case. And they had to be treated nicely. They had to be treated respectfully, because they were mothers and because they were homemakers and because they were building the home that, after all, you were going out to work to build in the first place. Christianity put women in their right and proper place, as objects of veneration and love and respect, a position they hadn't occupied before that.

Seems like the Sexual Revolution is determined to make women as grubby and dreadful as men are when it comes to sex, removal of those polite codes of obligation, all of those things that made social and sexual relationships healthy, good for society and good for the individuals concerned and replace all of society's sexual ethics with a bathhouse.

DAVID HOROWITZ: [Yeah. Yeah.] Romance is on the run. Milo's referring -- There's a chapter in this book -- Peter Collier and I actually did one of the first articles on AIDS at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and, of course, the left -- Well, part of that Garden of Eden story, you remember what the serpent says to Adam and Eve. It's better than social justice, Eden. It's better than communism. You don't die. There's no pain and, you know, you know all the things. Child birth. But the condition is you cannot eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You can't want to know evil.

And the way the serpent seduces Adam and Eve, says, if you eat of that tree, you shall be as God. This is why these people are so dangerous and so evil. They think of themselves as gods. They think -- You notice when Cortez talks about her plan, her model is a military mobilization. It's all top down. It's to force people into the program. They're just -- They're totalitarians.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Even calls herself, "The Boss" [on Twitter].

DAVID HOROWITZ: They have no humility. They have no respect for other people.

In the '80s -- and the gay left -- This is a chapter about how gay leftists killed 200,000, 300,000 young gay men, healthy. They defied the -- I mean, they don't believe in the laws of nature to begin with, and I debated them at the time. I know the mentality really well, but they destroyed the public health system.

I once interviewed the guy from the CDC, Center for Disease Control, who was in charge of fighting the epidemic, and I asked him about testing, for example. I don't know if you remember this, but there was [no gays that -- testing] was homophobic, not to gays. This was the gay left, the leaders. I said, you know, "Why do you need tests?" He said, "Well, if it's like smallpox and it appears immediately on the surface, you don't really need to test. You can see who -- " I mean, the whole way you fight an epidemic is you take the carriers and you separate them from potential targets, pretty simple and elementary.

He said, "But with AIDS --" the latency period was almost 10 years, before any signs appeared. So testing was absolutely crucial to fighting this epidemic, and there was no testing. And that's partly because Republicans quit the field, and why should they, you know, get carved up and called names? And …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Trying to save people's lives.

DAVID HOROWITZ: And the Democrats -- Well, I understand. And the Democrats were completely in bed with the gay Marxists is what they were.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: And to give you a window into what happens when Republicans leave the field -- sorry to interrupt you …

DAVID HOROWITZ: Yeah.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: … now that Republicans have given up worrying about gay issues, because every time they try to do some good or express themselves they get yelled out of it, now, there are posters on public transportation trying to destigmatize HIV, telling gay people, "Oh, you can have sex with people with HIV now. It's fine." They fall into the aesthetic of the body positivity posters and sort of [take you to] something horrific like AIDS [or] obesity and trying to make it a desirable or even an aspirational lifestyle choice.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Yeah.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: That's how it's now being presented, with a handsome man -- of course, Spanish -- and encouraging you -- I'm going to find the poster and give you the wording in a minute while you're carrying on -- encouraging you not to worry if he has HIV.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Yeah …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: And that's what happens when Republicans quit the field. They find new and even more horrendous ways to kill people.

DAVID HOROWITZ: I [quote] a courageous gay who died in the epidemic, but when he was very young, he came -- he'd come out of the, you know, the middle of the country, and into these urban disease pots, and he said he was persuaded by the radial leadership of the gay movement. He said, "Every time I get the clap, I'm striking a blow for the revolution." That's a quote.

You know, they're doing it again. I mean, they're now -- they're promoting -- Well, I don't get into the drug epidemics, but it's amazing how the left enables this, how they don't want to recognize any of the limits that we have as human beings, which is another thing that, you know, Christians, believers, people who've read Genesis understand, that there are limits. There's an angel with a flaming sword at the gates of Eden to prevent our return. The only way you can redeem this world is divine grace.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: You sound like a believer to me.

I found this poster, by the way.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Well, I don't know. I mean, I know that that's true. I don't know that there is the divine grace. We'll see.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Well, Aristotle would say a lifetime of good habits builds good character and good morals.

DAVID HOROWITZ: He was very sensible, wasn't he?

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Perhaps you should start going to church, and one day you'll wake up and realize -- (applause) -- One day you'll wake up and you'll realize, "Oh, my goodness, I'm Christian." (Laughter)

I'll take you to (inaudible) [to a real church].

DAVID HOROWITZ: I get a lot of emails. I get a lot of those emails.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: (Inaudible) emails, yeah. Most of them are from me. (Laughter)

And what a state your life has to be in to get moral advice from Milo Yiannopoulos. (Laughter)

This is the poster which is on New York Transit. You can't see him, but there's a man. His name is Hernando, which you know because it has it in cursive script. It says, "I won't transmit HIV to anyone." It's crossed out, and it says, "I can't transmit HIV to anyone. Medication makes my HIV undetectable. There's not enough virus to expose my partner. Undetectable.org." Basically encouraging gay men to have unprotected sex with people who may have or do have HIV.

Can anybody guess which community suffers the most from stuff like this? Anyone guess? Not gays, I mean, but which …

DAVID HOROWITZ: It would be blacks and …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Exactly. One in two gay black Americans will come into contact with HIV, meaning get it, in their lives.

[AUDIENCE MEMBER]: (Inaudible.)

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: No, no. No, no, no. Only so much cancer you can, you know, embrace in a day. You know, actually, I didn't, and I will, but what they basically say is if the guy's in this certain sort of treatment and it's caught early enough, there's -- Well, the science only says that there's little risk, but the State of New York is telling you there's no risk.

Yes. So half of all gay, black Americans will get HIV, partly because of stuff like this. Thanks, the left. As some of you may know, that has a particularly horrible effect on me.

Okay. So freedom of religion. Seems like we have freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, but if you're a Christian, you're on your own, meaning if you are Muslim, you'll get all kinds of dispensations and niceties and favors and sort of special pleadings. But if you're a Christian, you're kind of, you know, "Oh, oh, no. I'm sorry. Separation of church and state."

You can get a clue as to what these laws are really about and what people are trying to do from the way they're implemented, and the asymmetry between how different religions are treated.

I know the answer to my question, but you're going to give a better version of it than I could. What is it about Islam that the left loves so much?

DAVID HOROWITZ: They hate America.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Right. But that's Muslims. What is it about Islam?

DAVID HOROWITZ: You know, I'm actually puzzled. It takes maybe 10 minutes to see what a diseased religion Islam is. You just go up on the internet and -- It's beyond me how they don't actually see it, and I can only think it's because Islam has declared war on America and that's their allies.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: They must see [and they must like].

DAVID HOROWITZ: Something I wrote actually in 2004 a book on all the alliance.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Yes …

DAVID HOROWITZ: The enemy of my …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: … (inaudible) a book on this subject.

DAVID HOROWITZ: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: I think also perhaps they see …

DAVID HOROWITZ: And they hate Christians, and so do Muslims.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: They have a lot of the same enemies. Perhaps also is this sort of character to Islam. There's a sort of character of disingenuousness. It's that [takia], you know, the sort of two-facedness of Islam.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Yeah.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Which I think you find …

DAVID HOROWITZ: They've made a religious obligation out of lying.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Right. Right. I mean, to the strict letter of the faith, you know, Catholics are sort of like, you know, torn up about what little white lies, you know. Christians, in general, induced not to lie, if they can possibly avoid it. And if you go to church, sometimes the priests will have a sort of Rolodex of strategies, so you can avoid lying to the milkman. You know, it's like don't (inaudible) not true, but you can tell him something that suggests something that's not true, but you don't actually -- You know, Christians are like agonized by this stuff. This is confessional. This is why we have psychotherapy.

But sort of the false consciousness, the two-facedness, the takia, the disingenuousness seems to be a feature of Islam, seems to be baked in. Perhaps the left sees in that totalitarian system some of the same characteristics that it recognizes from home [from himself] and sees an ally in the war on freedom.

Let's talk about practical matters. You might say, well, this is all well and good, and that's sad, but wasn't this battle lost now decades ago?

Obviously, if you want to save America, you have to save Christianity, and I think most of us on the frontlines of the culture wars recognize this. Some of us have come to this realization in the last couple of years. Some of us have known it for a long time. If you want to save America, you must save Christianity as well, because the two are inseparable, existing in intricate symbiosis.

And books have been written about how capitalism is impossible without the Protestant Work Ethic, which I think is slightly overstated, but there's something in there about how these two systems grew up together in harmony. So this book is a great tour through all of that.

But what do we do now?

DAVID HOROWITZ: Well, I think -- It's true for both Christians and just, you know, political conservatives. They've been somewhat complacent about the way the world is going. The left has had a free reign. I mean, they've destroyed our school system, taken complete control of it from kindergarten through graduate school. They're teaching kindergarten is about gender fluidity, that they can be anything they want. I mean, this is the thing. They're like -- I don't know -- out-of-control children leftists. They don't want any hampering of their …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: There are all these …

DAVID HOROWITZ: But with the Christians, as I said, very skeptical about this world and fighting in this world, and it's really big, and the left has totally infiltrated the Evangelical Movement.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: My answer to this question was going to be …

DAVID HOROWITZ: One minute?

FEMALE SPEAKER: Yes.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: (Inaudible) question was going to be [learn from] your enemies.

DAVID HOROWITZ: So, yeah, well …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: (Inaudible …)

DAVID HOROWITZ: … I've always said the left is terrific at political war.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Right.

DAVID HOROWITZ: They have no substance, no intellectual substance, no morality, but they're really good at taking you down. And, you know, I've always used this line that sometimes I think I was sent as a former radical to teach conservatives and Christians bad manners. But I think it's like 10 percent.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: You were successful. [I learned them.]

I was put in a moral quandary recently when I saw -- and this is happening all the time in Europe now -- a report in Birmingham that children were being removed from LGBT awareness lessons in schools. I thought, "Oh, good. [Less] indoctrination, bit less, you know, seven-year-olds being taught about sodomy. Great."

And then it dawned on me, "Wait. Birmingham. They're Muslim. The Muslim parents are pulling their kids out of the left LGBT equality lessons because they are incompatible with our beliefs."

DAVID HOROWITZ: Correct.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: And they say -- get this -- "The LGBT equality classes are discriminatory against Muslims." We have a word for this. It is hutzpah, and -- (laughter). This is the sort of thing that Christians should do with a straight face. Isn't it?

DAVID HOROWITZ: Yeah …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: And just start demanding the same privileges that are afforded to other (inaudible).

DAVID HOROWITZ: Yeah.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: And just say, "No, this isn't happening. My children won't be attending this," period.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Yes. Take a leaf out of the left's playbook …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: [It's quite a dilemma], isn't it? You know, it's sort of like, "Oh, it's good, but it's Muslims doing it for the wrong reasons." (Laughter)

DAVID HOROWITZ: My image is the son of a bitch Schiff saying that Donald Trump is deeply unpatriotic. This from a traitor. This guy is a traitor. This guy has spent two years sabotaging an elected president of the United States and damaging this country.

If I hear Republicans talking or conservatives, they're so nice to these guys. They would never say anything like that.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: You and Roger Stone are the only people I hear talk as bluntly …

DAVID HOROWITZ: Well, we're not …

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: … (inaudible) Schiff.

DAVID HOROWITZ: I mean, Schiff, he's the head of the Intelligence Committee. I want to see somebody in that kind of position calling them out for their treason.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Yeah. But it's that hutzpah, you know, that's required.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Well, you can imagine the firestorm if somebody said any -- or just calling them racists, which is what they are.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: [Somebody pointed something out to me] -- I guess we should wrap up. Recently, that …

DAVID HOROWITZ: We have to wrap up because it's way over a minute.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Okay. I'll do it quickly.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Anyway.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: I'll do it quickly. I'll do (inaudible). I'll do it quickly, cause you're going to find this useful. When somebody calls you a racist, this is far worse than somebody who casually drops the N word, cause when you call somebody that name, the only person who looks bad is you.

Whereas, when you call somebody a racist, you are creating a set of obligations for them to defend themselves, which will, whatever they do, indelibly associate their name with that crime. Way worse. Those kinds of things, bearing those in mind, (inaudible) those little strategies and bravery -- We can all only hope to imitate some small sliver of David's greatness, but baby steps.

Thank you very much, everybody …

(Applause)