Tucker Carlson Show: w/ Terry Schilling on Family and Fatherhood (Transcript)

I know a lot about pizza. It’s one of my passions.

TUCKER CARLSON: Interesting. I’ve eaten a lot of pizza, more than my share, but I don’t know as much. So I need to bone up. But your family owned a pizza place.

TERRY SCHILLING: Yeah. And that was where all of us kids started working. I started working at 10. 1996 is when we opened. I was the head dishwasher.

TUCKER CARLSON: What was it called?

St. Giuseppe’s Heavenly Pizza and a Father’s Struggle

TERRY SCHILLING: St. Giuseppe’s Heavenly Pizza. And there’s an interesting story about my dad in this. It’s called St. Giuseppe’s Heavenly Pizza. Giuseppe is Joseph in Italian, and St. Joseph is the patron saint of our family. He’s the foster father of Jesus, right? So he’s the patron saint of fathers. He’s the patron saint of workers. He’s an amazing— he’s the greatest non-divine figure that ever existed, I would say, besides Virgin Mary, obviously.

But my dad started this pizza place to make more money, to provide for the family. I think they had just had number 5 at the time, which, when you become a father, you really feel the economic pressures and the stress. But before he opened the pizza restaurant, he was an insurance salesman and he worked at Prudential Insurance.

In the ’80s, his parents got divorced. He was a senior in high school and he became a party guy. His dad was a bartender. His mom also worked at bars. They got divorced and it really adversely impacted his life.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

TERRY SCHILLING: And he experienced terrible things. I don’t want to get into that stuff because it’s actually kind of painful, but he got way off track. And this is during the ’80s at the height of the crack epidemic.

He was leaving a liquor store— this is when you could buy alcohol at 18— and the crack dealer said, “Hey, you guys smoke weed?” And they’re like, “Yeah,” thinking he’s going to sell them weed. He goes, “You want something better?” And he gave him crack. And crack is obviously one of the worst substances you can get addicted to. People ruin their lives over it. Only 5% of people that get addicted to crack end up ever getting clean.

So my dad developed a crack addiction at the height of the crack epidemic, and he was able to keep it at bay, or at least keep it under control.

A Mother’s Perspective and a Turning Point

As part of the filming of this, I sat down with my mom to talk about her experience as the wife of a crack addict. And one thing that blew me away that I didn’t remember from my childhood— I knew he had a drug addiction when I was a kid, and I knew it was a problem, I knew he got clean— she told me that there were days where he would go 3 days without ever coming home. He would go to work, they’d go out drinking afterwards, and then they’d go smoke crack and do drugs, and they’d stay out all night. And then he knew he was in trouble, so he wouldn’t go home, and he’d go right into work, and he’d work.

By the way, he was very successful at selling insurance. I think he was ranked 225 out of 5,000 Prudential agents nationwide. So he’s very effective, very productive, but he’d keep going out and drinking and he wouldn’t come home until the third night.

It really made me think about how these corporations in America— my mom noticed when he wasn’t home for 3 nights, but Prudential Insurance didn’t care. Why would they care? He’s selling their product, he’s producing value for them, and they probably were okay with him smoking crack because it probably made him more effective. Efficient. He could get back on the job.

Work, Life, and the False Balance

And so I’ve had this revelation over the last few years, that the government’s bad now, it’s corrupted, but also the industries are bad. The industries will chew you up and spit you out. And the irony is that there’s this false notion of a work-life balance. It’s total garbage. It’s a total lie. And it’s meant— the entire framing of the work-life balance is meant to go to war with life, right?

It is a false dichotomy set up by industries and corporations so that you have to make a choice between your work and your private life. “We’ll let you take more vacation time. We’ll let you have some paternity leave, but you got to come back to work and produce value for the company. Otherwise you’re of no value to us.” And it is a way that they have monopolized our actual lives.

And in my opinion, based on the experience with my dad, his life turned around when he integrated his work in his life. When the pizza shop came around, he was working with his sons. He was working with his wife. That was the center of our life, was the pizza shop. And my dad absolutely got clean. I want to be very clear about that.

The breaking point was when my mom was pregnant with number 4. Joseph— he’s the one that runs the pizza restaurants now— she filed for divorce when she was pregnant with number 4 after another 3-day bender. And there was something really beautiful in all this that happened, which is if you go back, I mentioned I quit drinking during my wife’s 4th pregnancy.

Transformation Through Fatherhood

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, that is— I think that’s when God’s like, “All right, now.”

TERRY SCHILLING: There’s something transformational about becoming a father.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, especially for the fourth time. That’s, yeah.

TERRY SCHILLING: Then you’re like, “I really got to grow up.”

TUCKER CARLSON: The slower among us take a few kids to figure it out. Yeah. But that’s amazing.

Breaking the Cycle: A Father’s Redemption

TERRY SCHILLING: She filed for divorce. He didn’t know where to go, so he went to his mom’s house. His mom had divorced his dad, so he thought, you know, that’s where he should go and get advice. She finds, my grandmother finds out that my mom’s divorcing him. She calls my mom and confronts her, which is interesting, right? Because this is a woman who absolutely participated in the no-fault divorce culture.

But she said, “Why are you divorcing my son?” And my mom said, her name was Pat. And she said, “Pat, he’s not getting clean. He doesn’t want to be married to me. He doesn’t want a family.” And Grandma Pat hung up the phone. She said, “I’ll handle this.” And she sat down with my dad and said, “I just want you to know, I’ll always love you. I’ll always support you, but I never would have divorced your father if he asked me not to.”

And that was the moment where my dad called my mom and said, “I don’t want to get divorced. I want to get clean.” And I think at a deep level, he knew that his problems weren’t just because he was a wild and crazy guy. He was filling a major hole in his heart from his parents’ divorce. And so I’m actually grateful that he developed that crack addiction. Because it made him a better person.

TUCKER CARLSON: I totally agree with that.

TERRY SCHILLING: And he chose us. He chose us over the crack addiction. He chose to break the cycle and the dysfunction and the chaos that result from breaking up families. He didn’t want that to happen.

TUCKER CARLSON: You can trust a man who’s had to face that about himself. He’s not lying to himself.

TERRY SCHILLING: It’s so humiliating. It’s humbling. You have to admit, when you go through these Narcotics Anonymous programs or any anonymous programs, you have to say, “I’m helpless against this. I rely on a power greater than myself.” You have to accuse yourself. You have to go and apologize to everyone that you caused damage to. It’s such a beautiful program. And the people that really take it seriously and go through it end up absolutely transforming their lives.

Humiliation as a Path to Strength

TUCKER CARLSON: Humiliating a man can break him or make him. I mean, Jesus humiliates Peter right at the end. He’s like, “I’ll never leave you.” “Yeah, you’re going to deny me 3 times.” He humiliates him. And then builds the church on him because he’s been humiliated. I mean, those are the people I trust, don’t you?

TERRY SCHILLING: People who face that, the people that reflect on their own behavior, their activity — those are the best people in the world. I totally agree. Rather than the people that blame everyone else for their problems.

I think a major problem in our world is that there’s obviously narcissism and people obsessed with themselves. There’s narcissism, but they blame everyone else for their problems. And the reality is you have no control over — oh, this is an interesting — you have no control over what other people do.

A lot of people don’t know this unless you’ve been in these anonymous programs. My dad was in Narcotics Anonymous. My mom — so there’s a whole support system for the families of these people. It’s called Al-Anon. And my mom told this story about how her first meeting, she comes in and there’s all these experienced women that have been dealing with alcoholic husbands or drug-addicted husbands. She comes in, they go around the room. It’s just like an anonymous meeting. And she’s like, “I just want to get my husband clean. I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to get him clean.”

And they kind of patted her on the head. “Oh, that’s very cute that you think you can change your husband. You can’t. He’s not going to get clean unless he wants to get clean.” And that was when I learned that from my mom. It was a major life lesson that you’re better off doing self-reflection about where you come short. And if you really want to change things and make the world a better place, you have to start with yourself.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think it’s all you can do — is take the plank out of your own eye. I totally agree with that. What’s interesting, though, is that for a man with 4 kids to admit that he’s addicted to crack, I do think for most men, that kind of breaks them at that point. It’s too much. They can’t sort of pick up the mantle of father, head of household again. But your dad goes on to be successful and have 6 more kids.

A Life Transformed: Congress, Cancer, and a Happy Death

TERRY SCHILLING: 6 more kids and served a term in Congress. It’s like unbelievable. Well, and there was something really beautiful about my dad’s life. He got cancer in 2020. He was 56 when he was diagnosed. He passed away the next year when he was 57. And it was advanced stage intestinal cancer. And they wouldn’t have been able to pick it up, even if they did colonoscopies or endoscopies or anything like that, because it was on the outside of his intestines.

But the thing that was beautiful about it was I went out — I have a great organization, great chairman and a great president at the time, and they let me go take care of him in the last month and a half. So I’m out there and I’m with all my siblings. You know, you just want to get out of the house and clear your head from everything that’s going on. So I took them all to Target and we’re just getting snacks and stuff. And I tell them, “You guys should just be really grateful that he’s even alive now because he had a real bad drug addiction.”

And my younger siblings — and these are numbers 5, 6, 7, and 8 — they’re like, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Well, dad was addicted to crack.” They had no clue because he had transformed his life so much. And the thing is, he was a public figure. He’s a member of Congress. I started speaking about his crack addiction as a way to bring people over, and he gave me permission on his deathbed to talk about it at the funeral. And the political reporters from back home were astounded. There’s actually a really interesting article where they’re trying to call BS on me saying that he had a crack addiction because they had never heard of anything like this about him.

But that’s how much fatherhood and faith transformed his life. My siblings didn’t even know about it. I mean, I knew — there would be times I have very vague memories of my mom when I’m 3, putting me in the back of the car and going and driving to the different bars in our area to try and find him. But it’s very vague. My siblings have no recollection.

TUCKER CARLSON: Where are you in birth order?

TERRY SCHILLING: I’m the oldest.

TUCKER CARLSON: How old’s your youngest?

TERRY SCHILLING: My youngest sibling just turned 16. My mom was pregnant as she walked down the aisle with me at my wife and I’s wedding. Yes. It’s very beautiful. I love it. I absolutely love it. Two of my — well, my oldest daughter, Grace, who just got engaged, it’s wonderful. She is older than the youngest two siblings of mine. That’s amazing.

TUCKER CARLSON: So the nightmare, I think, for any child, and maybe especially the oldest son, is his father’s death. I think it’s something in the back of your head. You always worry about it, or I always did.

“I Just Want My Family and I Want Jesus”

TERRY SCHILLING: How do you view it now, your father’s death? Well, it’s always going to be painful, but there was this moment when he’s literally taking his last breaths. Let me go back, actually. Earlier in the day, you could tell — when someone’s about to die that day, there’s always like a big shift in them. They actually kind of get anxious. They want to get up and move around. I don’t know what it is, but he started doing that and we got him back into bed. He was in a lot of pain.

And my mom asked him, “What can we do? What can we do to help?” And he said, “I just want my family and I want Jesus.” And that was his call to us to say, “I want last rites.” And he wanted to receive communion. And so we got that and we got the whole family in there. And Tucker, I look back on that day and he died with all 10 of us at his side.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s incredible.

TERRY SCHILLING: Praying for him, thanking God for Bobby. And that is a beautiful life, and it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t gotten clean. If he had stayed a crack addict and allowed the divorce to go on, he would have maxed out at 4 kids. Maybe he had some other woman on the side or whatever, but he died with all 10 of us grateful to God for his existence and for what he did in our life. It was a beautiful death.

And I mentioned earlier that St. Joseph is the patron saint of fathers and workers. He’s also the patron saint of a happy death. And the story is that he’s the first guy to have a happy death because he died in the arms of Jesus and Mary. And I can’t help but get that image out of my head.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t think the concept of happy death even exists in the West at this point. Hopefully we’ll bring it back, but I feel like what you’re describing, so unfortunately, is not even comprehensible to a lot of people. They don’t even know what that means.

TERRY SCHILLING: They’re very fearful of death. And it’s because we’ve lost faith, I think, in our society. I think that we rely on ourselves a lot.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because we’re so capable. That’s the irony.

Elites, Corporate America, and the War on Family

TERRY SCHILLING: So capable. Human beings are so flawed. And you’ve basically got a really corrupt system in America. On the left, you have people that just want anarchy. They want to give kids sex changes. They want the government to pay for it. They want to put you in prison for having the wrong political beliefs. They want you canceled. But then on the right, you have some of that stuff, actually. But even worse, they’re slaves to corporate America. They’re slaves to the industries and the institutions. And it needs to change.

One thing I wanted to share with you — I was a 2021 Lincoln Fellow at Claremont with Charlie Kirk, and I got to know him a little bit. It’s like 12 people total. It’s 10 days. We were in Las Vegas. Charlie didn’t gamble or drink and I lost all my money on the first day. So I got to talk to him quite a bit.

There was a fascinating discussion where he was debating with another woman named Robbie Smith, who’s one of the best people I’ve ever met. They were arguing about the lack of marriage and family formation in America. Who was to blame, men or women? And Robbie was saying, “It’s obviously the men. They’re smoking pot, they’re watching porn, they’re all distracted, they don’t want to get married. I have all these good girlfriends that want to get married, they can’t find a guy.” Charlie said, “No, no, it’s the girl bosses, it’s the women wanting to get college degrees and putting off getting married. They don’t want to get married.”

And Charlie turns to me and he says, “Terry, you’re a guy that works on family policy. What do you think?” And I had a bad answer, and I hate the answer I gave him, but I said, “I think it’s the men because, biblically, men are the head of the household. So it’s our job to win women over and to form our households.”

But the reality, Tucker, is that who’s to blame in our society is our elites. It’s all of them. It’s the elites in corporate America that set the HR policies. After Dobbs, the decision came down, corporate America was tripping over itself for abortion tourism. “We’ll pay for your flights and your accommodations to go to California and secure an abortion. We’ll freeze your eggs.”

What is that? Well, I’ll tell you what it is. It is corporate America saying, “If these women have babies, they’ll leave the workforce and there will be fewer people. We’ll have to pay people more money because there are fewer workers in the workforce. Because if these women have babies, they’ll become moms and then they’ll maybe have another one. They’ll have less time to be efficient and effective.” And it’s so depressing. It’s so sad. But I do feel like capitalism —

The Cost of Two Incomes and the Collapse of the Family

TUCKER CARLSON: By the way, if women leave the workforce, then men will once again make more than women, and then people will get married, and the cycle will harden. Because when women make more than men, they don’t get married because women don’t want to marry men who make less than they do. Sorry, that’s not an attack on women. That’s what women self-report. Yes. In survey after survey after survey. So when women make more than men, the marriage rate collapses. Duh. That’s what happened to Black America. Now it’s happened to rural white America, but it’s the same thing.

TERRY SCHILLING: Well, there’s this interesting thing where you look at communist China, right? In the 1950s, they institute the one-child policy and a bunch of different programs that incentivize sterilization. Their birth rate in 1960, I think, was 4.45 per woman. By 1997, they got it down to 1.53, after coercive and harsh tyrannical policies that really hurt and killed a lot of people. When the Brits gave up control of Hong Kong in 1997, the same year, their fertility rate under the loving, gazing eyes of the Western world — Hong Kong’s birth rate was at 1.13 with all the prosperity, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s even lower.

TERRY SCHILLING: Right. And over that time, we have increased efficiency by 90% across our industries. We’re almost double as effective and efficient as we are, as we were back in 1960. But more of our money goes towards the existential stuff. It was 50% of your income in the 1960s went to your mortgage, your car, your insurance, all the things you need to live. Today it’s 80%. So we’re more efficient. We’re producing way more goods than we’ve ever produced ever. But we’re making less money.

We need two incomes to make it in America today. And people are buying homes with two incomes. So when you lose your job, you go into foreclosure. This is all industry driven. Why is it? Why do we allow people to buy homes with two incomes? Why are you allowed to get a mortgage with two incomes? All that’s done is it’s jacked up the price of housing and the good school district because there’s only a few good school districts in the country. And if the incomes have doubled, you’re in a bidding war now. And we have sacrificed our lives for business, for industry, for efficiency. And we’re more miserable than ever.

TUCKER CARLSON: But they love us back, don’t you think? We were talking about this in the car. How committed is Apple to you and your family?

TERRY SCHILLING: Oh, they hate you. First of all, oh my gosh, the iPhone should be free. The iPhone should absolutely — they need the iPhone to deliver all of their ads and their propaganda to you and to subvert everything you believe in. Why do we have to pay $2,000 for an iPhone? That doesn’t make any sense to me.

TUCKER CARLSON: To humiliate us, maybe? I’m just guessing. Yes. Yes. Is that what it costs?

TERRY SCHILLING: That’s $1,500, $1,600 or something. For an iPhone? For the highest level one. Yeah, I think so. I don’t know. Wow. I don’t buy them.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t either. They send them to me. I didn’t know that. My office — wow. Is that really what they cost? I’m so out of it. Gosh, I wish I didn’t have one. So you’re one of 10. You now are the father of 8. So I think you’re in a pretty good spot to describe what makes a good father.

What Makes a Good Father

TERRY SCHILLING: I think if you boil what becoming a father is and what it means, it’s self-sacrifice. Which is love. Right. Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables, he said that you can give without loving, but you can’t love without giving. Right. And I think the ultimate example of what a man is, is Christ on the cross. Right. Here’s a guy that is literally giving up everything. And if you actually read The Passion, he’s fighting all the way up until the final moment, right? These people are kicking him. He’s falling. He’s been beaten and scourged. He’s bleeding profusely. I saw the episode where you were talking about that and it was way more impactful than The Passion, I’ll tell you that.

But you look at The Passion of Christ, he was fighting and struggling to get to Calvary the whole time. It was a submission to God’s will, but he had to work for it. He had to push himself. To get up every time, and he did it for us. That is what we’re called to be as fathers. Self-sacrificial.

I also think that fathers are merciful, but they’re just right. Someone described this to me — Pat Fagan, an amazing guy who does a lot of pro-family policy. He told me the difference between the devil and Jesus, which is amazing. He said, the devil always deviates from the law, but he shows no mercy when you break the law. Christ never deviates from the law, but shows infinite mercy when you apologize. And I think that’s the rule of a father, is to not stray from the law, not stray from the rules, but be merciful to your children.

I think if you’re really doing it right, you’re spending a lot of one-on-one time with each of your kids. Believe it or not, even though I have 8 kids, I make time for each one of them individually. And it doesn’t have to be hours at a time. You can do a 5, 10-minute trip to 7-Eleven, get some snacks. Your kids will open up to you. You have to have that one-on-one time with your kids. But I would say that if you were to boil it all down, it’s sacrificing yourself for your children and your wife. It is being merciful and it’s also making sure your kids know the rules and don’t make these mistakes. Discipline, right? These are the things that are the most important thing when it comes to being a father.

Fatherhood and the Decline of the West

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, you often hear people compare the West — America, Europe — to Rome. Clearly Western civilization is in decline. And at the same time, you hear another set of people tell you that masculinity is the problem, toxic masculinity. And young people hear both of these things, and a lot of them become consumed by despair.

Men are not irredeemable. Men can be stronger, but you got to fix one thing before that happens, and that’s fatherhood. No society without fathers can continue. Strong fathers build strong families, and strong families build strong nations, which amount to a strong civilization.

How do you keep fathers from not breaking? I’ve seen it many, many times where a father loses his job, he feels like a loser, and then he starts behaving like a loser. And then his wife and children are unimpressed, and so he becomes even less impressive and just cycles out of life, either literally or just falls apart with booze or other assorted self-destructive activities.

TERRY SCHILLING: Well, I think we’re seeing more and more of that today. At an embarrassing level, actually. But the point of a system is what it produces. Not what it says it produces. And our system today is attacking men. I work all the time in D.C. All we do is pass laws and get people elected to help protect the family. That’s what we do. And you talk to people on Capitol Hill, you can’t bring up all of the attacks on young boys in schools. You can’t bring up the attacks on young men and how difficult it is because women have it worse.

TUCKER CARLSON: Still, they say that.

TERRY SCHILLING: Well, it’s starting to change. But you really can’t. There’s no — the irony is that there’s a huge constituency with the American people on this. But when you go to Washington, D.C., the politicians don’t want to hear about it. They definitely don’t want to talk about it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is that true? Even now? Name 5 politicians that are leading on this. Well, they used to say that women were discriminated —

TERRY SCHILLING: Girls are discriminated against in schools.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, of course, women dominate schools completely from top to bottom. They graduate at a far higher rate at every level than boys do. They used to say, well, women are paid a percentage of the male wage. Well, women make more than men now, nationally adjusted, as you know. And so the data are in. This is not an argument we have to have. Boys are falling behind, not girls. And I just am amazed that people in DC won’t admit that.

TERRY SCHILLING: It’s one of the last acceptable bigotries is against men. And it’s because the news, politicians, everywhere in our culture, the movies — we just saw Paul Ehrlich just died, right? I was actually in the delivery room.

TUCKER CARLSON: It was a lot of fun. Oh, actually, I was in the delivery room with the 8th child.

TERRY SCHILLING: When I found out —

TUCKER CARLSON: Giving the finger to Paul Ehrlich when he passed? Yeah. Can you explain who Paul Ehrlich was for those who don’t know?

Paul Ehrlich and the Population Bomb

TERRY SCHILLING: So Paul Ehrlich wrote this book in 1968 called The Population Bomb. And he basically said that the whole world was going to collapse if we didn’t stop people from having kids. He was incredibly evil. China’s one-child policies — he didn’t go over and advise them, but they read his books. They used his course. He wanted to sterilize people forcibly. He wanted to have paid tax incentives for people that did sterilize themselves. He wanted to have limits on how many kids. He supported forcing people to get licenses before they could have children, right? These are crazy ideas that I don’t know why they took off.

But the irony about Paul Ehrlich is that he made all these predictions about devastation and chaos in the world if we didn’t address the population bomb. None of them came true. Literally none of his ideas came true. The only one that got close to coming true actually was he predicted that in the year 2000, the UK would fall. That’s like the closest he’s gotten. The UK is falling, by the way.

TUCKER CARLSON: But not because Britons are having too many kids.

TERRY SCHILLING: No, it’s the opposite. Right. Of course. But Paul Ehrlich was an atrocious man. But one of the things that he was very passionate about was his guidance for television and movies. If you depict a family, they should be small. No big families in movies.

TUCKER CARLSON: How did Paul Ehrlich have the right to advise filmmakers and TV producers on what their art should be?

TERRY SCHILLING: Everyone was scared to death. They really bought it hook, line, and sinker. It’s not new, Tucker. It’s all so old. The idea that people are pollution is so old, it’s kind of boring if you look throughout history.

TUCKER CARLSON: Sacrifice your children to the gods in order to become happy and prosperous.

TERRY SCHILLING: That’s a pretty old concept. Well, there’s one group. I actually have a joke for you. I’ll try it out anyway. Two priests walk into a bar. One’s a Jesuit, the other’s a Dominican. They’re debating about who the best order is in terms of Catholic priests. And the Jesuit says, well, we were founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and we’re the most academic, we’re the smartest, and we were founded to combat the Protestants. And the Dominican priest says, well, I think we have you beat. We were founded by Saint Dominic, who founded us to destroy the Albigensians. Who are the Albigensians? You know, when’s the last time you heard of an Albigensian?

TUCKER CARLSON: And they’re like the Houthis. They’ve never personally threatened me.

The Albigensians and Anti-Human Ideologies

TERRY SCHILLING: Well, you would think so because you haven’t heard of them, but their ideas are everywhere. The Albigensians were a 12th century heretical cult of Christianity. They basically believed that the soul was perfect and pure, but that the body and the physical world were corrupted. And so they started punishing people for getting married. They started encouraging people not to have children. Anything pleasurable — if you enjoyed good food, that was a sin for the Albigensians. If you had sex with your wife, having a baby was like the biggest sin you could commit for the Albigensians.

TUCKER CARLSON: I bet they were against Marlboros and SUVs too. I’m just guessing. I’m just guessing. I know these people. They’re worried about climate. Yes.

TERRY SCHILLING: Yes. But the worst thing you could do is trap a pure soul into a corrupted body. Like, you’re actually doing this. Those ideas are still here. I see Albigensians everywhere in our society. Their ideas have not died out. They’ve just taken different shapes.

It’s why these corporations are promoting abortion and egg freezing. It’s why states like California will take children from their parents if the parents don’t affirm their gender identity. The family precedes the state. The family is the original community. It’s the original society. There is no right to take children away from their parents unless there’s actual serious abuse.

But we see these ideas everywhere and they’ve taken hold. And you’ve got obviously Thomas Malthus, who believed that people were pollution. Paul Ehrlich — these guys, their policies have been failures. They’ve caused misery and chaos and suffering, but they’ve taken hold. All of our elite institutions have been pushing these policies on us.

Anti-Human Ideas and Artificial Intelligence

TUCKER CARLSON: All these ideas shapeshift. This is my read. All these anti-human, anti-God ideas manifest as some slightly different ideology depending on the period, whether it’s the Albigensians or the Marxists or the Green Party. All of those look antique now, especially even the climate people. We sort of gave up on that in exchange for building data centers. Data centers are incompatible with green politics because they’re such a massive energy draw. So you need all forms of electrical generation in order to power these data centers.

But what’s the point of the data centers? It’s to create something called artificial intelligence, which I’m beginning to wonder — I’m not against all AI, I guess, but I’m beginning to wonder if the agenda there is very different. It does seem like replacing thinking with the judgment of a machine. How is that different from what you’re describing?

TERRY SCHILLING: I think it’s very similar. At the heart of the entire AI industry is the belief that human beings need AI, that they need some type of overlord above that is way smarter and can process data. Tucker, I think that’s the worst thing.

Francis Bacon was another guy that we’ve discovered. He basically believed he was the father of modern science, but he basically believed that human beings could solve anything, that nature was actually meant for us to completely alter and mess with. I think you’re with me. I think nature exists. I think it should be respected. There are rules. You shouldn’t have sex outside of marriage. You should be open to life. You shouldn’t steal. You shouldn’t cheat. You shouldn’t lie. But these guys want to change.

TUCKER CARLSON: You can’t kill the innocent.

TERRY SCHILLING: You can’t kill the innocent. You can’t sterilize the innocent. They believe that they are their own gods.

Technology, Nature, and the Garden of Eden

TERRY SCHILLING: I had a Dominican priest — I had to go back to the Dominicans. When the whole sex changes for kids thing took off, I went to a very dark place. I just couldn’t believe that it was happening and I kept seeing these pictures and these stories, all horrific. So I called my friend Tim from Franciscan University. He’s a Dominican priest now and I’m lamenting all this. I can’t believe they’re sterilizing kids and they’re mutilating their bodies.

And he broke it down. He said what we’re dealing with right now with this issue is two things. One, it’s very, very old. And two, it’s very, very new. The old is the Garden of Eden. It is us trying to become our own gods and shape everything about us, even reject the biological sex that God assigned to you, that God gave you. But he said that the new is the technology. Previous societies did not even understand hormone levels. So we have these new technologies, and that is the Francis Bacon effect — the new technologies and conquering nature and reshaping it to something darker, something that they can control and manipulate.

I don’t think you can beat nature. Can you? No, nature always wins. That’s because God is real. There was a designer for our universe and for our world and for humanity, and he made these rules. And if you reject them, you’re going to have a bad time.

The Eternal Standard of Fatherhood

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. That’s why I like bad weather, because it reminds you of that. Really? Yes. It sort of doesn’t matter what your ideology is. If you go out naked in a snowstorm, you’re going to die, because nature is more powerful than you. That’s just a fact. And you can change your sex, I guess, but you can’t change the need to be at 98.6 at all times before you die. It’s such a great reminder.

I wonder, though, as it relates to fatherhood — the description of a good father, because fatherhood is part of nature, can’t be that different from era to era. No matter what we in the moment we’re living in describe as a good father, there is a kind of absolute standard for good fatherhood. There has to be, because there is in the natural world.

TERRY SCHILLING: Yeah. And it hasn’t changed. There are eternal truths. A good father has always provided for his family. He’s always protected them, and he’s procreated. That’s like a —

TUCKER CARLSON: You have to procreate to actually become a father.

TERRY SCHILLING: Procreate and discipline and teach rules, be merciful, teach your kids. There are a lot of new studies that have been coming out over the last 10 years about fatherhood and how it impacts and shapes the individual and how it impacts and shapes the kids.

One thing that was very interesting to me was — I think it was in Reason magazine of all places — they wrote about how fathers are actually the ones that instill empathy in their children. The way they explained it was that fathers and men are naturally concerned about themselves. We’re kind of in our own heads and we’re always thinking about what we need to do for our lives. So when your kid breaks your $400 drill, you’re going down and lecturing them and saying, “You know how hard I had to work for that $400 drill? I can’t believe you used it without my permission. You know you’re not supposed to do this.” We get kids to think about other people, whereas moms are always going to be like, “Oh, don’t worry about it. Your dad will just get another one. Don’t feel that bad.”

Now, moms build self-esteem. Moms still play a pivotal role. There’s a use to teaching your kids not to be suicidal over breaking a drill. But dads are the ones that instill empathy.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s so obvious women are more empathetic, of course, or we think of them that way. But societies in which there are very few fathers — matriarchal societies — are far less empathetic than patriarchal societies. And you know that because there are massively high crime rates in all societies run by women. Those are way less empathetic societies.

The Lies Told to Women About Career and Motherhood

TERRY SCHILLING: That’s the proof. Yes. And I have a friend that we lament women because they’re hard to understand, they’re complicated. And he tells this funny joke. He said, “You know what the difference between complex and complicated is?” A jet engine is complex. There are all these intricate parts that all logically make sense and work together, but it’s complex. A Rube Goldberg machine is complex.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, yes.

TERRY SCHILLING: Women are complicated.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, that’s right.

TERRY SCHILLING: They’re hard to understand, especially if you’re a guy. But there’s a whole nature to that. And I think one of the ways that our elites have really screwed us over is convincing women that having a career, having a good job, is the basis of a good life. And not becoming a mother.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do women believe that, do you think?

TERRY SCHILLING: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: And actually, just, you know, people who believe that, I do.

TERRY SCHILLING: Yes. Oh, I mean, ask any woman who actually believes that, who thinks that a career is the most important thing for a good life. Yes, 100%. They don’t —

TUCKER CARLSON: Young people, a woman who believes that, who believes a career working at the bank — well, they’ll at least say the startup, they’ll at least say it’s actually preferable to having a husband who loves you, takes care of you, and provides you children. I don’t think there’s a woman alive who actually believes that.

TERRY SCHILLING: Well, there are a lot of lies in our society and people —

TUCKER CARLSON: The lies we tell ourselves are the most powerful, aren’t they?

TERRY SCHILLING: Right. And women today, I think they all know deep down they really would do better with a husband. They really would be happier with a kid. I think, biologically, obviously, with a husband that could provide. Why do you want to go help Jeff Bezos make more money? Why do you want to go help Bill Gates make more money? Why do you want to help all these super wealthy white billionaires make more money?

TUCKER CARLSON: So you can be, quote, “independent” as you become totally dependent on a company that has no regard for you at all as a person.

TERRY SCHILLING: Yes, exactly. I’m so independent.

TUCKER CARLSON: I work at JP Morgan.

TERRY SCHILLING: I’m so independent. Yes, but Tucker, the thing is, it’s so sad because these women are missing out.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, I don’t know why I’m laughing. I’m laughing at the irony because everything is irony. But yeah, no, it’s the tragedy of America, really.

TERRY SCHILLING: And the egg freezing and the abortion tourism, it’s so evil because these women — my dad died with 10 of us surrounding him. That’s beautiful. You’re going to have a lonely death. And how things are —

TUCKER CARLSON: They tell you that at your orientation in investment banking, though, do they? No. I don’t think there’s any encouragement to think through to the end. How does this end exactly? Myself, in an assisted living community where there’s some foreign-born nurse who doesn’t know my name. That is the end, actually, for a lot of people. And we should tell them that at the start. Like, how do you want this to end? That’s a totally fair question, whether you’re talking about war or your own life. What does this look like in the final stage?

Work, Meaning, and the Illusion of a Life Without Purpose

TERRY SCHILLING: Well, I think if you go back to the AI situation, there’s a lot of speculation that AI is going to eliminate every single job and we’ll all be prosperous. That’s the lie they’re telling us. We won’t need to make money. We won’t need to work. Machines will run our lives. Okay, fine, whatever. But —

TUCKER CARLSON: Won’t need to work. Oh, that sounds fun.

TERRY SCHILLING: But let’s imagine that scenario though, where you don’t have to work, where you are living in heaven. You’re going to have a family. You’re going to have children. That is the ideal. If you don’t have all this noise around you —

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I don’t have to imagine how it works because I grew up in trust fund world. So I know exactly how it works. And it works where you become an alcoholic, sleep with the au pair, you’re reviled by your children, then you shoot yourself. That’s what a life of no working looks like.

And then on the bottom end, the welfare world, which is the mirror image of the trust fund world, it’s the same. It’s true despair, because a man needs work for meaning in his life. He protects and provides. That’s where his sense of himself comes. That’s his duty. And if he doesn’t achieve it, he hates himself. So a world without work is hell.

The Family as the “Why”: Work, Purpose, and Legacy

TERRY SCHILLING: It’s not advisable. I’ve seen it. But the people that put their careers first, and that are going along with this lie — look, they might not believe it, but they’re doing it and they’re living it. And what they’re missing out on — the work is the what, right? It’s what you do. The family is the why.

You get a job and you work hard at it so that you can provide for your family. The idea that you have a job so that you can build a legacy for yourself is not right, not correct. It’s not going to happen. No one will remember you, especially the company you work for. The company that you work for — if you’re a woman that is planning to never get married — the day you die, the day you leave the company, they are going to immediately start preparing to replace you. Your children can’t do that. Your children won’t do that, unless you’re a bad mom or a bad dad.

But you’re missing out on the eternal. You’re missing out on the why. When you say, “I need to get a college degree, an advanced college degree,” or “I need to get a job, I need to put everything in my life ahead of my family” — family’s not even advisable. It’s a disaster. It’s an absolute disaster.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. I mean, first of all, you work so your wife will be proud of you. Just to put it in one. “Your father works so hard.” That’s right. That’s why I say grace at the table, because I work so hard. No, I mean, this is actually nature. And I just feel like the program that we have sold to young people in our country is so unnatural and bizarre, and would make no sense to any so-called backward country. They’d look at this and be like, “What?” And I spent a lot of time in backward countries and they do look at it like, “What?” It can’t persist. I mean, we’re fighting gravity here, kind of. This is not the natural order at all. So it’s doomed.

TERRY SCHILLING: Well, I don’t think it’s doomed. I don’t think anything’s ever doomed.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, but I mean, the lies that we’re telling ourselves currently — “Men and women are exactly the same, they occupy no unique role in the universe, they just can sort of choose it,” “Working for Microsoft is more meaningful than having five children” — these are such obvious lies. Don’t they have to just crumble at some point?

TERRY SCHILLING: And I do think they’re going to be crumbling here soon. It can’t go on much longer.

TUCKER CARLSON: It feels like it now. Even that you’re saying this out loud — if you said this 10 years ago, right?

The Family Formation Crisis and the Decline of Public Spaces for Children

TERRY SCHILLING: Yeah. Well, I don’t think the crisis was as big of a deal, or it wasn’t as apparent how urgent the family formation crisis was, or that we were prioritizing putting women in the workforce over family. I mean, I was in high school from 2001 to 2005, and family was the center of everyone’s life. And maybe it was the part of the country I grew up in. Maybe the Quad Cities is just better than all these major cities or East Coast or West Coast stuff. But family was very much the center of everyone’s life. You learn that from talking to people at the pizza shop.

But one big change that I’ve noticed in our society is public parks. Public parks are interesting because they’re in major cities, and space is finite. So when you decide to put an area up as a public park, you’re basically telling people what your priorities are. In the ’50s and ’60s, when we had the massive expansion of parks throughout our country over the last century, up until recently, they were all kids’ parks. When you say, “I’m going to go to the park,” you immediately envision playgrounds and swings and merry-go-rounds, all of that.

But today, if you go to the inner cities, dog parks are outranking kid parks. The kid parks are empty. I went to a dog park and I talked to some of the people there. One girl — I asked her how many dogs she has. She had two, but she’s a dog walker. I love dogs, by the way. I don’t want to attack dogs. But I talked to another guy. I asked him if he was ever planning on getting married and having kids. He said, “Well, I’ve got all these international weddings I have to go to.” And that’s not the main point. We’re directing all of these resources to dog runs and dog parks, and not kid parks.

In Hong Kong, it’s actually a bit worse. The parks are actually for senior citizens — low-impact exercise machines like hip twisters and all that. They don’t have children. Their birth rate is like under 1. I think it’s like 1.09 or something. It’s devastating. But these people either direct the money and the resources towards dogs or the elderly.

If you look at federal spending on welfare and entitlements, it’s 5 to 1 welfare benefits going to people 65 and up. We need to start reversing that back to young people and families to get them a more stable life. We are telling the world and our citizens what our priorities are every time we build a dog park.

The Boomer Generation and Its Impact on America

TUCKER CARLSON: I got to think — your breakdown of federal spending, I do think it’s an indictment of a specific generation. I’m not going to name them boomers, but I think that generation — and the last year it was 1964, the year after the Kennedy assassination — they’re on their way out. The youngest are 62, the oldest are 80. Once that generation, which has completely destroyed America — not all of them, but most — don’t you think there will be change?

TERRY SCHILLING: I think there will be a lot of change. These boomers have really screwed up our country, and they really hurt young people. The boomers are the most selfish generation ever.

TUCKER CARLSON: World War II is such a massive success. How did it give rise to that generation? They came back from the war and had those people. I’m not against — I’m totally very anti-Nazi, want to be clear. But if that’s the founding myth of our country, that winning that war was such a win, then how did they produce the baby boomers?

TERRY SCHILLING: Well, there’s probably a lot of reasons for it.

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s a lot of reasons, but there’s something really heavy going on there. How could you wreck it all with one generation?

TERRY SCHILLING: I think the greatest generation — the World War II generation — they went through the Depression, they went through a world war, some of them went through two world wars. I think they were ready for prosperity. And I think that they kind of spoiled their children. I sat down with Bishop Robert Barron, and he told the story of King David and one of his sons. So Absalom —

TUCKER CARLSON: Who killed his brother. He killed his brother.

TERRY SCHILLING: He tried to overthrow King David as the king. He rose up — and that’s what we’re seeing. And then he got killed. He got killed by God, basically. But this is what we’re experiencing with the boomers — they’re Absalom. They weren’t disciplined. They didn’t have to go without.

My great-grandmother — it helps being from a big family because, as the eldest, I got to know my great-grandmother. She was 64 when I was born. She lived another 31 years. And the stories I would hear from her — I was always grateful. I think the greatest generation, at least for me, instilled gratitude. And I don’t know why it didn’t translate to their children, because their children are only entitled. And you said it earlier, there’s a lot of good ones out there, but the majority I think are very self-centered. They were the generation that gave us all of this nonsense.

They’re sitting on all the wealth, they’re sitting on multiple homes. And let’s go back to this — in the big beautiful bill, I liked most of it. They give $6,000 checks to senior citizens. They don’t need money. They have all the money. They have all the homes. They’re not selling them. It costs $750,000 to get a townhome in DC. Families can’t afford it. Townhomes are for families — they’re for new families, actually. They’re supposed to be affordable, but now they’re $750,000 because the boomers aren’t selling their multiple homes.

In California, there’s this interesting dynamic where there was a lawsuit challenging whether or not you could do property tax freezes for senior citizens. The people challenging it were saying, “This is age discrimination. You can’t allow them a different set of rules than the rest of us.” And the courts obviously ruled in favor of the boomers, because the judges are all boomers. But it’s insane that we are freezing property taxes for these boomers who got their homes for practically nothing, and have had so much appreciation — the value of their properties has skyrocketed. Why do they get tax relief when the burden and the tax burden and the onus is all on young families? We need to start reversing this. If we don’t start reversing this, young people are not going to get married.

Radical Youth Politics and the Consequences of Neglecting Young People

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, they’re also going to get really, really dark politics. And I interviewed Nick Fuentes — who I disagree with on a lot — earlier this year and was attacked for it, whatever. But one of the main reasons I wanted to talk to him was, “This guy’s super popular. What is he saying? What is this?” This is a totally different kind of politics, completely different kind of politics than anything I’ve covered at 56. I’m just interested.

And one of the things I learned from the experience was younger people have totally different politics. And by my standards as a middle-aged person, they’re pretty radical. And how did that happen? Well, it happened by taking away all their opportunity and then ignoring them when they complained about it. So of course they have. And by the way, my sense is that Nick Fuentes will be considered pretty moderate very soon. So if you want a stable, moderate country, you have to take care of people and give them opportunity, right? There are massive consequences for behaving this way.

TERRY SCHILLING: I think you want more fathers. You want more families. If you want moderation in politics, you want people that are serious about solutions to problems, that are actually willing to address problems. You want more fathers. You want more mothers. You want more children and families. Because when you become a father and when you become a husband, you’re thinking long term. You’re no longer thinking about today.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the ballast in a ship. It keeps it steady. Like, I’m a dad, I’ve got kids — can’t get too crazy because I’ve got children. I mean, that’s just like a baseline impulse, don’t you think, in fathers?

Divorce Culture and the Devaluation of Marriage

TERRY SCHILLING: Yes. These kids are being radicalized because most of them are products of the divorce generation. So you have compounding dysfunction there. Not only did their parents divorce, but their parents’ parents divorced. And so I went into my marriage under the belief that this is the most sacred of all the agreements I’m ever going to sign in my life, right? I can sign contracts with corporations, I can sign business deals, but this is the one I can never break. It has to come before everything else. But this whole no-fault divorce situation basically said, “No, your marriage is actually the least important of all the agreements.”

TUCKER CARLSON: The only agreement you can’t break in modern America is paying your credit card interest. And I suggest — because I’m totally for not paying your credit card interest — I think you should stiff Citibank. That’s my personal view. And I’ve suggested that before to conservatives and they’re like, “What?” And I was like, “No, these people are evil. Just — I don’t put the bank out of business. Just, how about don’t pay?” And they looked at me like I was a freak, which — and that may be freaky. I’m not actually in real life suggesting that. Though I kind of am.

But the same people are like, “Yeah, well, it didn’t work out. They got divorced.” So that just tells you where the priorities are. It’s immoral to stiff a bank, but it’s okay to stiff your wife. Like, how does that work?

The Commodification of the Human Person

TERRY SCHILLING: What are those values? Well, it’s obviously predatory. It’s obviously not treating the human person as a child of God, right? They’re treating us like cogs in a machine. That’s what the elites and all the industries view us as, is pieces to play on the field that can make our products and do our services. They don’t look at you as a dad. They don’t look at you as a husband. They want you back in the workforce for maximum efficiency.

And by the way, you’re reading all about these artificial wombs and egg freezing and IVF and all of that stuff. I don’t judge or attack anyone that’s gone through IVF except, you know, if you buy a baby as like a gay couple or something. I think that’s really messed up.

TUCKER CARLSON: But I think that makes you a conservative leader if you do that. It makes you, yeah, you get a podcast, you get to yell at other people, talk about conservatism, the Trump coalition. Yeah, but the— no, those are—

TERRY SCHILLING: No, I know, it’s— sorry, sorry, sorry, but it’s the commodification of the human person, and that is ultimately, you know— I love your actual— I kind of love it. I’m not endorsing it specifically, I need to do more research into it, but not paying your credit cards sounds like a great way to get these credit card companies to stop preying on—

Credit Cards, Usury, and Corporate Exploitation

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, how about my idea was like, let’s have a “hey, let’s not pay our credit card” party where that’s the only bullet point on the agenda — we all agree not to pay our credit. And just to negotiate terms, like, because Trump was always bragging about how, well, if you take a big enough loan from a bank, they have to negotiate with you. Like, you’re in charge because they’re exposed because it’s just too much money. Which I get, I’m not criticizing it, but like, why not create a union to do the same for the entire public?

Like, stop sending credit card solicitations to kids. Stop charging 20% interest. Like, that should be illegal. That’s ridiculous. Usury. That’s ridiculous. The mafia used to go to jail under RICO for that, but it’s okay for Citibank. That’s all I said. And it was like, what? What? I was like, oh, I found the tender spot.

TERRY SCHILLING: Well, this is what really annoys me about Republicans. They’re so corporate-centered. They’re so free market-centered. When Trump mandated that credit card companies couldn’t go over 10%, all these libertarian right-wing think tanks started criticizing him as an enemy of the free market. If that’s an enemy of the free market, then consider me one, right? Because they’re taking advantage of poor people. Rich people don’t really use credit cards. They pay them off every month. Of course. But the poor people are the ones that pay the interest. And that’s why we still have payday loans, dude.

TUCKER CARLSON: I know. And the only kind of capitalism they seem to really endorse is like sending tax dollars to weapons companies. And I’m like, I’m a wuss or something if I’m not for that, or a peacenik, which I’m not, obviously. I’m like, yeah, anyway, yeah, don’t even get me going, Terry.

Lessons from His Father

Okay, so let me end on this on a more positive note, and it’s about your dad. Because you clearly consider him a great father and you’ve become a father of 8, which is just amazing. God bless you. Thank you. What did you— trite question, but I think you probably have a real answer. What did you learn from him? Like, as you go about the business of raising 8 children, when do you think about your dad?

TERRY SCHILLING: Oh, that’s a great question. I think about him a lot. I think about him every time I hold a new baby. You know, my dad— this is actually advice for anyone that becomes a father or is going to have another kid. If you’re the dad, you got to be in the delivery room and you got to look, right? You got to watch that kid come out.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wild experience.

TERRY SCHILLING: Oh, it is, it is incredible. It is so euphoric. But you’re the first guy that gets to see that kid’s face. And your wife’s going through all this hell, like pushing this kid out or getting her stomach ripped open. The least you can do to participate is to see your child come out, right? He advised me on the first one, and I haven’t ever looked away since. And it’s such a special experience.

But I think working hard, my goodness, sacrificing yourself, accusing yourself — you know, my dad, and accusing your kids. I think it’s okay to accuse your kids. And my dad, because of his addiction, he always was paranoid that one of us kids was a drug addict. And it’s good to be paranoid. He one time — you know, we work in the pizza restaurant, you get tips when you clean out the tables and all that. Well, my brother, it’s just weird, and he keeps his dollar bills like rolled up. I’ll never forget my dad was topping it down to see if there’s any coke in it. And it’s like, “Dad, I’m not doing coke.” But that was actually him loving us because he was thinking, well, I did crack, so it’s not impossible.

TUCKER CARLSON: I found a rolled up bill in one of my kids’ pockets. That would be the first thing I would think.

TERRY SCHILLING: Yeah, obviously. And at the time, you’re offended. Like, “How could you ever possibly believe I would do coke?” Kids are so offended. But he was a crack addict. And I think one of the benefits of having a crack addict as a father — like, people hear that and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, that must have been so terrible.” I’m grateful for it. And it prepared me for the world we live in today, which is like Gen Zers are all being raised by these women on amphetamines and SSRIs and Xanax and all of that. So it helps me relate to them and actually connect with them, to know what they’re going through. And it helps me speak to them.

A Generation Medicated Into Compliance

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think they have a sense that their parents are on drugs? Prescription drugs?

TERRY SCHILLING: I don’t think the parents hide it. I mean, it’s hard to hide these women. It’s like a whole thing. They compete, they brag about the drugs that they’re on, the pharmaceuticals. And, you know, Tucker, I just want to say that the industries have monopolized our time so much and taken over our lives that these poor women and men at this point have to take Adderall to have the energy to do their job every day. But then they have to take the anti-anxiety medication to combat that. And then they’re taking all these other pills. You take a pill, then you have to take pills to combat the side effects of it all. That is what these industries have done through this fake concept known as the work-life balance — they’ve monopolized our lives and taken over where we need pharmaceutical drugs just to exist and be happy.

Do you feel like change is coming? Some type of change. I don’t know if it’s going to be good, but it seems pretty dark. It seems very dark right now. You know, 40% of Gen Zers say they don’t want to get married, 43% say they don’t want to have kids. That’s insane. That is not a sign for hope.

Now, I do think, you know, they have those other charts where I think there is some hope, which show that liberals and progressives and these types, they’re not having kids, but the Christians are. I think that’s a very good sign for our country. I just don’t know if it’s in time. I hope it is.

I think if times are going to get bad though, you want to have kids. I think one thing that we’ve really got wrong, man — and team, that’s it. That’s what matters. Christianity is what we’re here for, right? If God actually exists, then he’s the full story. If you actually believe in God, you can’t not believe that he’s the main character. He is the main character and we live by his rules.

But if times are going to get bad, you want to have kids. The Bible’s very clear. “Children are a blessing from the Lord.” Right? They’re a blessing from the Lord. “Blessed is the man whose quiver is full. He will not be left in shame as his enemy is at the gates.” We need more kids.

So I mean, we’re going to keep going. We’re open to whatever God sends us. Because I don’t think I have a right to tell God no, right? If my wife gets pregnant, I think there was a divine hand in that. And he’s saying we need — you know, there’s an old proverb, I forget who said it, but it’s, “Every new baby born is a sign from God that he wants the world to continue.” He’s sending us helpers. He’s sending us people that have different skill sets, different dispositions. And so we’re going to keep taking them.

The Deep Joy of Fatherhood

TUCKER CARLSON: Who wouldn’t want that? Who wouldn’t want to, like, sit at the head of a big table and be the patriarch? I don’t understand that. That seems like the most basic desire of the male heart. I thought that’s what men did want. Well, I’ve always wanted that my whole life. I think dogs running around, little conversations going on at the end of the table. It’s the best, dude. It’s the best. I mean, like, what else is there?

No amount of room service or Carnival cruises or weekends in St. Barts could approach the deep joy and satisfaction of sitting at the head of a table of your descendants. It’s like the greatest thing that’s ever been. Doesn’t— I thought everybody thought that.

TERRY SCHILLING: Well, I think the issue is the single life, the unmarried life, the childless life. It’s very comfortable. It is fun. You can do whatever you want. It’s innocuous. It’s like weed, right? Weed seems to be like it’s not a threat, like it’s not a big deal. But people will go 40, 50 years smoking pot every day, and then by the time that time is over, they look back at their life, they can’t remember anything. They don’t know what happened in their life.

TUCKER CARLSON: Think about it. I’ve smoked a lot of weed in my life. No, I hate drugs. Agree. But I have done it a lot. And talk about aiming low. Yes. Like, that’s what you want? To not remember or something? Like, why wouldn’t you want to sit at a table with your descendants? I mean, that’s just like—

TERRY SCHILLING: Well, the single life is just as innocuous. It is. It doesn’t seem threatening. It actually seems— you’re told by every corner of our society, by the elites, that being single and childfree is actually prosperity, is actually human flourishing. So these people, these poor people have been lied to. They’ve been manipulated into serving the state and their corporate masters.

TUCKER CARLSON: Man, that’s the lamest thing to ever want. It is. Ever. It is. Terry Schilling, thank you for this. Congratulations on child number 8. It’s incredible. I know that when people — I’m sure that they say catty things to you when you got on airplanes, but deep down they’re envious.

TERRY SCHILLING: Thank you, Tucker. It’s true. Thank you.

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