Ep. 98 - Feminism Ruined Women (And Everything Else) ft. Faith Moore
There’s a lot in the news today, and we’re not going to talk about any of it. Because who cares? Something about a memo, lying Democrats, same story different day. Instead, we will analyze feminism right now to its cold, frigid, bra-burning core with PJ Media columnist and Disney princess enthusiast Faith Moore. Our question: which is the greater fiction, Snow White or feminism? Then, the Mailbag!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
There's a lot in the news today, and we are not going to talk about any of it, because who cares?
It's something about a memo, lying Democrats, same story, different day.
Instead, we will analyze feminism right down to its cold, frigid, bra-burning core with PJ Media columnist and Disney princess enthusiast Faith Moore.
One question, which is the greater fiction, Snow White or feminism?
Then, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
I am so excited to get to this today.
We actually dug deep into the Daily Wire archives.
We found some incredible historical footage of what women were like before feminism and then also, obviously, what women are like after feminism.
We have to talk about all of it.
We have a wonderful thinker and writer on the show today.
Before we get to any of that, though, we have to talk about shaving.
This is something, you know, maybe I'll read a book or I'll think about some important idea once a week, once every seven weeks, something like that.
But I shave every single day.
So, you've heard me talk of the amazing shave I get from my Dollar Shave Club razor, especially when I use it with their Dr.
Carver Shave Butter.
Well, I am here to tell you that I'm never giving up my membership.
In fact, I'm adding even more DSC products to my daily routine.
Dollar Shave Club makes products for your hair, face, skin, shower, It's everything you need.
It is the best razor I've ever used, and I actually buy nice razors.
This is so good.
They have me looking and feeling great.
It's all of their own original stuff.
They use only the finest premium ingredients, and they deliver it to you.
So it's just like with all of the razors.
They started out with razors, and instead of having to go to the pharmacy and up and down the aisle, and then, you know, you go into that aisle that men aren't supposed to go into, and you feel very weird and creepy, and you look around.
No one saw me, and you get out of there.
You don't forget about any of that stuff.
You can be like a normal person in the 21st century, and you can order this online.
It'll come right to your door.
It's very inexpensive.
There are no more annoying trips to the store.
I use Dollar Shave Club for almost everything.
Razors, body cleanser, hair gels.
They even have this new product, which...
Oh, guys.
So in Europe, you know...
Europeans are very interested in being clean everywhere, not just like we rugged Americans who are clean most places.
So they have an invention called a bidet, and it allows you to clean where the sun don't shine.
Well, in America, if you don't want to have a giant bidet installed in your house, that's a very expensive sort of thing.
You probably have to go to the store for that and pick it out.
You can just use wipes for your derriere that come to you from Dollar Shave Club.
They're very effective.
So I'm told.
Now it is a great time to give Dollar Shave Club a try.
You can get your first month of their best razor, and it's a really, really good razor, along with travel-sized versions of shaved butter, body cleanser, and yes, even that derriere cleaner for just $5.
This is basically free.
If you have ever bought an even sort of nice razor, if you even bought a bag of those terrible little disposable ones, it's more than $5.
So just get this.
It's basically free.
After that, replacement cartridges ship for just a few bucks a month.
It is the DSC starter kit.
Get yours for just $5 exclusively at dollarshaveclub.com slash covfefe.
That is dollarshaveclub.com slash covfefe.
What is it, Marshall?
DollarShaveClub.com slash covfefe.
DollarShaveClub.com slash covfefe.
Okay, excellent.
Now, we talk about history a lot on this show.
You know that.
So consider this a mini This Day in History segment because the archivists at The Daily Wire have dug up incredible footage showing what women used to look like before feminism.
Let's see it.
I won't hurt you.
I'm awfully sorry.
I didn't mean to frighten you.
But you don't know what I've been through.
And all because I was afraid.
I'm so ashamed of the fuss I've made.
What do you do when things go wrong?
Oh!
Nothing is done!
*sad music*
Ah, chirp, chirp, chirp.
That was so nice.
That was like watching a cartoon, Sweet Little Elisa.
Sweet Little Elisa is very fair-skinned.
It was just like, what a...
It was so beautiful.
Now, also, I'm sorry.
I've got to come out of it.
Now, let's take a look at what feminism has turned women into.
That is not what a penis looks like, okay?
It's a group of cells in 12 weeks.
I don't know what it looks like.
It does not look like that!
No hands are shown for that time.
It's just a white friend with racist male that doesn't stand for women's rights.
I didn't get that camera out of my face either.
What?
I am the feminist who is out to ruin your life.
I am the feminist who is ruining your perfectly respectful marriage by suggesting Audre Lorde to the book club that your wife attends.
And yes, I am the one who convinced her to get that shorter haircut that you pretend to like but don't really like.
I am the feminist who is pushing your daughter down the slippery slope of sluthood by giving her a high five when she says she keeps her own supply of condoms.
And incidentally, I've tried to turn her bisexual gay by recommending some dental dams.
Yes!
That's progress.
There it is.
There's the progress, everybody.
What an advancement.
How enlightened now we are.
What wonderful things feminism has brought to the world.
We have to bring on now Faith Moore, a wonderful writer about all things feminist, and more importantly, a Disney princess addict.
Faith, thank you for coming on.
Hi, thanks for having me.
It's great to be here.
So, Faith, my first question, which is more of a fantasy, Disney or feminism?
Feminism.
Absolutely.
Feminism.
Yeah.
No, feminism is based on a lie.
It's based on the lie that men and women are the same, that gender is a social contract.
That's a lie.
Disney tells the truth about women.
And what's so strange about it, too, is that is the central line.
Men and women are the same.
They're indistinguishable.
And yet, it's called feminism.
They always say, well, it just means men and women, they deserve the same rights or whatever.
But then why is it called feminism?
We have a philosophy for that, which is called egalitarianism.
So it seems on the one hand, it says men and women are exactly the same.
And on the other hand, women are this totally separate categorical entity.
And we need to give them everything and let them yell at us and kick our signs down.
Well, not only that, it also ends up saying that men are actually better than women.
Because if you say that gender is a social construct, and men and women are exactly the same, but everything that is feminine is because of the oppression of men, so women have to act more like men, that means men are better than women.
Everything within the category of woman is lesser and worse and terrible.
Right.
And it's funny because given the premise, if men and women really are no different, then there are no women, right?
Then there isn't a categorical distinction between men and women.
It's just men and men with long hair who look nicer.
Now, Faith, you love Disney princesses.
You have a pretty big Facebook page about this.
You write about this frequently.
Why do you love them?
So...
I love Disney princesses.
Well, all girls love Disney princesses.
I mean, little girls love Disney princesses.
That's the most controversial statement that has ever been uttered on my program.
Yeah, I'm here to just really shake things up with my Disney princess conversation.
No, I mean, it doesn't matter how much feminists try to convince us that little girls don't love princesses.
They do.
They love princesses.
And the thing about Disney princesses is that they're actually a great, they're great role models for modern girls because they're brave and passionate and outspoken.
And they have goals and they follow their dreams and all these things, but they do it without compromising their femininity, their kindness, their nurturing nature, they want love, they want to start a family, all of these things.
But somewhere along the line, feminists got a hold of the narrative about Disney princesses, and they did to the princesses what they do to women, which is that because they act like women, they've decided that they're just these victim, damsels in distress, husband hunters, And we believe them.
So the general public sort of believes them.
So anyone who tells you that they love Disney princesses apologizes first.
They say, like, I know, I know, they're really...
I'm sorry, it's so not modern.
I'm sorry, but I just really love them.
And moms, like, they ban them from their houses, and they're not allowed to, like, their daughters aren't allowed to watch them and these things.
But really...
I think in our current culture, in our current situation about gender, these are some really great stories for little girls to be looking at to figure out how to become women.
And you make the point on damsels in distress.
That's how a lot of people think of them.
That's how they're portrayed, that they're just waiting for the man to come around.
But you say they're not damsels in distress, just like women before feminism weren't just helpless damsels in distress.
What do these people get wrong?
So...
I mean, you just play that whole thing about Snow White.
And in fact, in that clip that you played, she says, I'm so, what does she say?
I'm so ashamed of the fuss I've made.
And so when you think about that, right, this is a person who, I mean, in that scene, she's just been like, someone threatened to kill her, essentially, and then she ran away and she can never come home.
So that's bad.
But she's so ashamed of the fuss that she's made, right?
And the next thing that she does is she goes to a house, finds that it would be a really good place to hide out, and decides to make a deal with the people who live there.
She is going to cook and clean for them because she knows how to do that, and they'll let her stay.
So, I mean, if feminists want her to be a freeloader and just get the men in the house to take care of her, Then that would be fine, I guess.
But really what she does is she actually shows up with a plan.
That's right.
She's not just offering her body or something.
She says, I have these skills and I'm going to make a deal and strike out on my own and not have to become some fake man in order to do it.
Right.
Exactly.
And I think they're almost all like that until you get to the princesses that are The more recent ones that are supposed to be more modern.
And then you get these princesses who are sort of infantilized and objectified in their own story.
Except those are the finest ones because they write.
And that's the new fiction.
It's not that we're seeing this throughout all of these Disney movies and more largely throughout all of the folk tales and fables that come to us through the tradition.
This is a modern advancement that the women are oppressed.
This is an ideological vision that's being imposed even on these stories, even on these Disney stories.
How long until we see a transgender Disney princess?
Oh, it's coming.
It's probably in development right now.
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, we had the first boy princess, but it was in a cartoon on television.
So I guess it doesn't officially count.
But yeah, I mean, there was a boy who was dressing up as a girl in order to do something or other.
And, you know, so he was sort of lauded as Disney's first.
Oh my gosh, I actually don't follow, you'll be shocked to hear this, I don't follow Disney very closely.
So they're already testing into what will become inevitably the transgender Disney princess, also known as the end of Disney princesses.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably going to happen.
I mean, there's already a call for Elsa from Frozen to be a lesbian since...
You know, she didn't have a love interest and all of this stuff.
So, I mean, all of that is coming, and I think you're just gonna lose the girls, you know?
Right, but this is what happens in the culture generally.
They insist on adding this ideological vision, and then they lose their audience because it's no longer entertaining.
It no longer corresponds to reality as we know reality is, as we see ourselves and as we see other people in the world.
And they lose all the audience, but they still win all of the awards because it's so important, man.
Isn't it so important and powerful?
Right.
Right, exactly.
And now we're essentially telling...
My least favorite Disney princess movie of all time is Brave.
And Brave is a story about not growing up.
Because they can't have her find a husband.
They can't have her life.
Basically, she goes out on the whole quest that a Disney princess goes out on and then ends up right back home where she started and we have no idea what's going to happen to her.
So that's essentially...
What's happening is they're infantilizing women by making it so that they can't leave home because there's nothing for them out there.
That's right.
You know, there is Peter Pan, but Peter Pan is a sad tale.
It's a sad thing that Peter can't grow up and doesn't move on with his life.
And I think this is sort of a-- - You're being the jerk. - Right, exactly.
I think this is kind of a rationalist, this is what happens with ideology, is ideology Ideology forgets that we live in time and we live in space.
And so they say, this is it.
This is the frozen moment.
But I don't know.
I really liked college.
College was a lot of fun.
I don't wish that I were still in college because that's in the past.
It was fun to be a child, but I don't wish that I were still a child.
And they lose that.
And conservatives, I like to think, look at reality as it is, and they understand that we live in time, we live in a space, and you can't stay in Neverland forever.
Lefties tell us, they tell us all the time, that gender is a social construct.
But I'm looking at you, Faith.
You look very much like a lady.
You seem objectively prettier than I am.
Your voice is higher pitched than mine is.
Is there evidence...
That gender is a social construct?
No.
In fact, I think there's evidence that it is not a social construct, that it is inherent in men to be men and women to be women.
And there are even, there are studies that sort of, you know, the most recent one I saw was about sort of toy preference.
And they kind of, they've, they weeded out all of these things, like, you know, whether the mom and dad were there and all of this stuff.
And it was like, the girls pick the girl, twist the boy.
I mean, no, it's ridiculous, you know?
And I think that when When you try to prove that gender is a social construct, you end up just sort of talking yourself in circles.
And when the feminists do it, they end up talking themselves into victimhood, essentially.
Well, of course.
Ironically, something that's supposed to empower them ends up making them like little children.
And I love that you brought up the scientific studies.
Because I've seen these, too.
Studies that show that regardless of socialization, regardless of The awful patriarchal culture, boys want to play with boy toys and girls want to play with girl toys.
And then in fake studies, in like gender studies, one of my hobbies a few years ago, a buddy of mine and I, we did this on Tumblr.
We created a blog called Gender Studies Department.
That was all it was.
I think it's still up there, genderstudiesdepartment-blog.tumblr.com.
And we would just post quotes from actual peer-reviewed published gender studies papers that absolutely meant nothing.
They were just random words.
So one quote says, and this might be the most rational quote of all of them.
It says, at the root of ecofeminism is the understanding that the many systems of oppression are mutually reinforcing, building on the socialist feminist insight that racism, classism, and sexism are interconnected.
Ecofeminists, whatever that is, recognized additional similarities between those forms of human oppression and the oppressive structures of speciesism and naturism and ismism and ismismism.
I notice all of these other lefty ideas, socialism, environmentalism, they keep creeping into discussions about feminism.
Can there be a conservative feminism?
I sometimes hear some of my conservative or my conservative-ish female friends say things like, you know, a woman with a gun, yeah, with a gun, that's real feminism, or a woman CEO raising children and going to work every day, that's feminism, or whatever they say.
Is there a conservative feminism?
Or are isms and ideologies like feminism just incompatible with conservative thought?
Well, I think that at the heart of feminism, or I guess at the beginning of feminism, I think it began with a notion that we can all agree with, which is that men and women are equally valuable to society.
That you need men and women.
And that women...
should be allowed to do the same kinds of things as men if they want to do them.
And so I think that if that were still true about feminism, then maybe we could get behind it more than we can now.
But that isn't actually what the feminists now are saying.
They're not saying that men and women are equally valuable to society.
They're saying that they're the same and that certain traits Be they male or female, are positive or negative.
I mean, the thing is, men have inherently male traits and women have inherently female traits, and there's no moral judgment about that.
It just is.
So when you start to put moral judgment on the inherent traits, that's when you get lost.
And I think that feminism has gotten lost.
So I don't know what the word would be for someone who thinks rationally.
A Christian is the word.
I guess there are some other versions too.
Rational people.
Yeah, I don't know.
You know, that's absolutely right.
The complementarity of the sexes poses equal value.
In Christianity and Judaism, Eve is plucked out of Adam's rib, not out of his head.
She's not higher than Adam, not out of his foot.
She's not lower than Adam.
Right out of his rib.
In the beginning, God created man, both male and female.
He created them.
They have equal dignity, but they're clearly not the same.
I hope they're not the same.
The blogger, speaking of the complementarity of the sexes, we're going to get a little saucy here.
The blogger, Samara, over at Scary Mommy, wrote a piece called Sometimes I Want to Be Held by a Man Naked Without Having Sex.
Is that okay?
The answer is no, by the way.
She says that women need intimacy in their lives and therefore they should be able to expect it from randos that they hook up with.
What is wrong with that?
Can't women have it all?
No, actually.
Women can't have it all, even when they say, when they're referring to the other thing, which is like working and raising kids, they can't have it all in that area either.
But, no, that is a ridiculous request.
Because...
And the reason it's a ridiculous request is because you don't actually know that person, and therefore you can't have intimacy with him.
You can have an intimate act, but you can't have intimacy.
You can get intimate, as in like, get it on, as in like, you know, whatever you want to call that.
But you can't have intimacy with that person because you just met them like an hour ago.
Now you're upstairs in their apartment naked.
And I think if you get naked in front of someone that you just met, I think you're basically sending the message that you would like to have sex.
You're not really sending the message that you'd like to just kind of lie there.
That's always the message I'm trying to send.
I don't know if people are misinterpreting what I'm...
That's the message, you know.
One time I went on a date with Aziz Ansari, and he and I just had...
Well, I'll save it for another time, but we just had very different views of what was happening, you know.
Well, if you'd like to tell me, I can publish it and I'll keep your name anonymous.
Good.
Keep it anonymous.
Not a lot of people watch the show, so I don't think it'll really get out, you know?
Yes, that is so right.
Because you wrote beautifully on this topic about how women do long for these things in a way that men don't.
I don't want to tell any tales out of school here, folks, but it turns out that men are more comfortable with casual sex and desire it more than women do, broadly speaking.
Now, you think that Me Too, speaking of, is awful.
Me Too.
Some center-right writers have jumped on board, though.
They say, yes, these awful men, they've harassed Me Too.
What is wrong with this slacktivist hashtag du jour?
Yeah, Me Too has sort of devolved into this I mean, something really interesting, I think, is happening about Me Too, which is that, you know, initially it arose, I guess, because of all of the really horrible things that were going on, like Harvey Weinstein and all of those other people, and people were saying, you know, I was really, really, truly violated.
But it was very...
It very quickly devolved into, yes, you know, me too because somebody catcalled me on the street.
Or, you know, me too because I saw a man one time.
Me too just because of the way Michael Knowles looks.
He's just kind of laying out an Italian.
He's got a gold chain.
I mean, like that guy on the subway looked like he was going to ask for my number and didn't.
Me too.
So, you know, it's kind of that really delegitimizes The victims of actual sexual crimes, right?
Like lumping all of those things together is really a terrible thing to do to people that have actually experienced something horrific.
But especially these days, there's great currency in victimhood.
This whole my mother washed more floors for less money thing.
And so you see rape hoaxes.
You see a spike in rape hoaxes on campus, both before college and obviously on college campuses.
We've had major...
The vast majority, if not all of the major headline-grabbing rape cases at universities in the last five years have come out to be hoaxes, beginning with Duke La Crosse, but all the way up to the UVA scandal that Rolling Stone breathlessly reported on without any evidence.
There's a lot of currency in that victimhood.
It seems to say something about the culture that we're so proud to be victims.
It seems that something is unhealthy in the culture.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think I think that it's all sort of a product of this, you know, we're so oppressed, you know, gender social construct kind of mentality.
Because if women are supposed to behave like men when it comes to sex, and they're supposed to want to have the kinds of meaningless sex and, you know, like, swipe in whatever direction on Tinder they're supposed to be swiping, you know, then Then it's always the fault of the man if they feel violated or they feel uncomfortable in some way because that wasn't actually what they wanted to do.
What they wanted to do was meet a nice guy and fall in love and get married and have children.
But it allows you to maintain the lie.
By saying that you're the victim.
You were victimized.
Something went wrong.
This isn't normally how this progresses.
This regret is so out of character.
This is how I'm supposed to behave.
I'm supposed to want this.
So you did something wrong and I'm the victim and now we can maintain the lie.
Right.
That's absolutely right.
You are happily married, so you haven't fallen victim to this awful trap.
You're a stay-at-home mother, and you're married in the old-fashioned way.
You're married in the very old-school way, where you find another person and then join with them together.
But that's because you're not hip enough for sologamy.
You've heard of sologamy.
In 2006, Alexandra Gill married herself.
She had a ceremony for herself.
An Italian woman last year, Laura Mazzi, invited 70 guests to a farmhouse in Vimercate to marry herself.
A 38-year-old British woman named Sophie Tanner in 2015 married herself after her father gave her away.
And she actually cheated on herself.
And she cheated on herself, yeah.
And that was after her father had given her away to herself.
So sad.
The wedding party at hers, by the way, then danced to Kendrick Lamar's I Love Myself.
Sex and the City mentioned it in 2003.
A lead character on Glee in 2010 enjoyed a silogamous ceremony.
Is this the most depressing thing ever, or is this a farce?
Is this the perfectly logical conclusion of feminism?
Yeah.
I mean, it's both really depressing and a farce, I think.
I mean...
They certainly don't think it's a farce.
They believe everything that they're saying.
I don't even know what that means to marry yourself.
Aren't you already married to yourself?
Can you separate from yourself?
Because if you can't separate from yourself, then you can't marry yourself either.
I don't think you can even procreate with yourself, try as I have.
I don't think it's possible.
It seems like it's slapping lipstick on a pig, to use a phrase, because these people are alone, and it's sad that they're alone, and it would be nice probably if they found somebody, and probably they could find somebody, but rather than say, gosh, I'm alone, and maybe I should change that, or I should do something to change that, instead what they do is they say, it's good to feel alone.
Yeah, I don't feel terrible.
I feel great about it.
And it's really sad.
A kind of related question, I guess, as we're talking about these traditionalism versus modernism.
Should women stay home to raise their children?
Did you make the right decision?
I definitely made the right decision for me.
I mean, there is nothing I could imagine doing other than this.
And I think that more women...
Probably should do it then and do now, but I I really I hesitate to say every woman should do something because then I start to sound like the feminist you know, so I think What I definitely think is that you this this thing you can have it all you know You can work and you can have your kid.
That's not true right if you if you go to work then you're making a decision to parent less and And to work less, right?
There has to be a give and take everywhere.
So it's a decision that you're making, but you have to know that that's the decision that you're making, not, hooray, I'm going to be a stay-at-home mom at the same time as being at the office All decisions close off other opportunities.
To make one decision is to say no to many other ones.
You know, speaking of decision making, Chesterton said that heresy isn't the promotion of vice over virtue, it's the promotion of one virtue to the exclusion of all of the others.
That today seems to be consent.
You know, most bars and nightclubs now employ a notary public so they can stamp your physical contact consent forms in every single drunken encounter after, I think, light hand stuff.
I think that's the point at which you have to go to the notary, he will stamp it, then you can walk out together.
I haven't read the statutes in a while.
Why has our culture elevated consent to be more important than anything else?
Because we've elevated sex to be more important than anything else.
So when you know well the person that you are about to engage in sexual activity with, it's ridiculous to assume that you should have written consent because that's a person who knows you, that you know them.
If something is happening that one of you doesn't like, you can just say so.
I mean, that's fine.
I mean, you probably should have written consent if you decide to have sex with someone you just met at a bar.
I mean, who knows who this person is and what they're into.
I mean, you don't know anything.
It could be Marshall for goodness sakes.
You don't know who you're going to meet.
You've only talked to the person for an hour.
You just don't know.
Exactly.
I hear a little voice.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I think that's the problem, right?
We've said that the sex is more important than the connection or the intimacy or, you know, love.
And so then we don't actually know what we're getting.
It's ironic, too.
It's ironic in the sense that sex is, we're told that sex is meaningless, it's casual, you can do it whenever you want, it's just like shaking a hand, but also it's the most important thing ever.
So if it's just casual, if sex doesn't carry any moral weight, then sexual assault is no worse than slapping somebody in the face, right?
Because the sexual part doesn't make it any worse or more grave or more serious.
But of course we know that isn't That isn't true.
And on this, as we're going back in time, we go to Chesterton, we can go back to Burke.
Burke wrote about the age of ideology, post-revolution France, proto-feminism.
He said, he's so prescient in every way, he wrote, now all is to be changed.
All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life and which by a bland assimilation incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. which harmonized the different shades of life and which by All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off.
All the super added ideas furnished from a wardrobe of a moral imagination which the heart owns and the understanding ratifies as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation are to be exploded as a ridiculous object absurd, and antiquated fashion.
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman, a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order.
And all homage paid to the sex in general as such and without distinct views is to be regarded as romance and folly.
Regicide and parasite and sacrilege are but the fictions of superstition corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its simplicity.
Does feminism ultimately mean that a woman is but an animal and an animal not of the highest order?
Gosh, well I lost you a little bit in the feed so I didn't hear the beginning of what you just said.
But I heard the end of it.
I don't know how to answer that.
I feel like feminism makes...
It certainly makes women into something that they're not.
And I think, you know, an animal, I don't know.
Please don't record me saying that.
Oh, it's okay.
We'll turn the recorder off.
Keep it rolling.
Keep...
I'm sorry.
Yes.
Okay.
Well, now I can tell you.
But I definitely think it makes women...
Well, it makes them unhappy.
It makes them unhappy because they can't get what they want, which is love and intimacy and someone to care for them and protect them.
That's what we want.
That's right.
And I don't think it turns them into brutes like cows or something.
It doesn't turn them into angry bulls.
Although, but looking at that first video, perhaps it's an open question.
But it doesn't...
I don't think he means that.
I think he means it takes away all of the things that elevate us above our animal nature.
Does it to men, too, actually.
Turns us into just brutes who have no sense of chivalry because they also don't see any femininity in front of them.
Nothing to elevate men out of our maybe knuckle-dragging, beast-like nature.
But Faith, you're enough to do that to us.
You're enough to elevate this whole show.
Have we ever had a more elevated show than this?
Usually it's just like me and Fleckus Talks or something.
It's absolutely in the gutter.
Faith, thank you for being here.
We have to move on to the mailbag.
So nice to see you.
You are so lovely and nice and articulate.
You would never know that you're Andrew Klavan's daughter.
You would never.
It's unbelievable.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you for saying so.
You tell me everything I know.
Let's move on to the mailbag.
Oh my gosh, Marshall, you monster!
Alright, fine.
We have to talk first.
Oh, we get to talk about Upside.
This is pretty good.
How are your things to do in 2018 coming along?
Mine is a work in progress, and you can read that as I've abandoned all of them.
But there's one thing that should...
Maybe there are a couple I'm still keeping around.
One thing that you should know, if you travel for business, I travel a bit for business.
You know business travel is awful.
To book it, it's awful.
If you have to change your flight or this or that, it becomes a huge headache and becomes very expensive and you frequently don't get great accommodations and great travel.
Book your next business trip on Upside.com.
When you do, you will get the better business travel experience you deserve and a free pair of Bose SoundLink wireless headphones.
More on that in a second.
First, here's why you love Upside.
It has great customer service specialists who will look out for you every step of the trip.
They will handle any problem that might pop up.
Usually I'll just call sweet little Elisa and weeping and have her talk to the credit card company and the flight and this and that.
Spare your friends and loved ones and co-workers all of that headache.
Just use Upside.
The team is hard at work 24-7 to make sure your flight, hotel, and rental car all go off without a hitch.
They're available on demand by chat, phone, and email whenever you need them.
Only Upside monitors your business trip around the clock, proactively keeping you posted on everything from the weather in the city you're going to to changing your flight home so you can just adjust your meeting schedule.
I kid you not, one time I was in the UK and my airline just decided that my return ticket wasn't valid anymore and they didn't tell me about this.
I didn't hear about this until 15 hours before my flight back across the world direct to Los Angeles.
And that was a very frustrating and expensive experience.
So don't let that happen to you.
Plus, Upside has great prices for flights, hotels, and rental cars.
Now, to get your free pair of Bose SoundLink wireless headphones, just book your first business trip with Upside by going to upside.com/covfefe.
C-O-V-F-E-F-E.
That is upside.com/covfefe to claim your Bose SoundLink wireless headphones.
Upside.com.
You deserve a better business trip.
Headphones are available while supplies last.
Must be first upside purchase.
$600 minimum purchase required.
Seaside for complete details.
The lawyers make you say that kind of thing.
But go to upside.com slash C-O-V-F-E-F-E. Okay, let's get into the mailbag.
We're running late.
We've got to hurry.
Oh, Marshall, stop it, man.
Why don't you let these people get one mailbag question in?
Okay, I'm sorry.
We have got to sign off.
If you're on Facebook and YouTube, you have to go to dailywire.com.
You're probably not on YouTube because they keep censoring us because they're colluding with CNN. So whenever we use a feed from C-SPAN, which is owned by the government...
You and I pay for it in our tax dollars.
CNN will come in and issue a copyright claim because they want to shut us down because our live stream had five times as many viewers as CNN's ridiculous fake news live stream.
And YouTube was happy to accommodate and they shut down our channel.
So, you know, probably you're not watching on YouTube.
If you're watching on Facebook, go over to dailywire.com.
What do you get?
You get me, The Andrew Klavan Show, The Ben Shapiro Show, The Conversation, and I'm the next one up, baby.
It's going to be the day before Valentine's Day, so ask me all of your love questions.
But forget all that.
None of that matters.
What really matters is the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
Listen, we have just watched all of those screaming, shrieking feminists at the beginning of the show.
You're going to need this, otherwise you're going to be, not only will your ears be blown out by their awful mawing screams, but also you will drown in their lefty tears.
So make sure you go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
Let's get right into it.
First question from Ashton.
The answer is yes.
The answer is yes to that question.
Second, do you enjoy smoking a pipe as you do cigars?
I often find that pipe smoking allows you to taste the tobacco a bit more clearly than cigar smoking.
Keep living the cultured life.
I much prefer cigars.
I have nine pipes.
I have some wonderful vintage pipes, these Dunhills from the 60s.
I have a nice Dunhill Meerschaum pipe that I'll occasionally smoke.
But one, it's very frustrating.
You got to tamp it and pack it and all that stuff.
You can get very high quality tobacco, but the tobacco isn't of the same quality because it's not long-leaf filler as cigars are.
It's much less expensive, so I like that part of it.
But I do prefer cigars.
Cigars, you just clip it, you light it up, you smoke it.
I also once read that the three kinds of smoking tobacco correspond to the tripartite soul.
So the cigarettes are the pathos, the appetite, because they're kind of addictive and you just want to feed an urge.
And the cigars are the ethos, the spirited part, and they go outwards and they're big and you think Winston Churchill, things like that.
And then the pipe is the logos, the logical part.
It's both the stem and the bowl, male and female, and it's the philosopher sitting and contemplating by himself.
So I'm more into the spirited part.
Give me the cigars and the ethos.
Good question.
From Nathan.
Michael, can you answer this question correctly?
Nathan.
Buffalo, Buffalo.
Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo.
Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo.
I hope that helps.
From James.
Dear Michael, what is your view on churches giving to political candidates?
It's the same view I have of personally giving to political candidates, which is I don't.
Put not your trust in princes.
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." So I don't think the churches should be donating to it.
I think churches have better things to do with their money.
That said, we should certainly repeal the Johnson Amendment, which since 1954 has prevented churches from endorsing or opposing political candidates, theoretically.
Because it's actually only stopped Christian churches and Jews and Muslims from endorsing candidates.
And even that's not quite true.
It really only stops conservative religious groups from endorsing candidates.
In 2016, fully 28% of respondents...
To a Pew Research poll of people who attended black Protestant churches heard their pastor support Hillary Clinton.
Over a quarter...
Absolutely no consequences whatsoever.
Just 9% of people who attended religious services generally heard clergy speak about a particular political candidate.
But well over a quarter of black Protestant churches were preaching the anti-gospel of Hillary.
And that had no effect.
The reason that they can't do it is because of their tax-exempt status.
So the government says you don't have to pay taxes on your donations, which of course they shouldn't pay taxes on their donations, period.
But they said you don't have to do that, but you can't talk about politics.
You know, this really just affects the conservative churches.
One time I accidentally attended what's called an independent Catholic church.
I think they're not in communion with the Vatican.
They're very right-wing, more than the Society of St.
Pius X. I think it was excommunicated.
But anyway, I just went there because they did a Latin mass and I wasn't aware.
And because they're not tax-exempt, I heard the guy at the podium, he said, in the homily, the quasi-priest, I guess, he said...
Okay, the dance will be on Thursday and the picnic will be on Wednesday.
And don't forget that Tuesday is your last chance to stop the Abomination administration on their path of utter destruction.
And I really want my church to be able to get down to brass tacks like that and tell us to stop voting for people who want to make nuns pay for abortions and who want to kill more babies and want to raise my taxes, all of which are terrible.
I won't rank them.
So, you know, left-wing churches get to endorse candidates, but forget about that.
The true church of the left, which is Hollywood and the mainstream media, they constantly shill for Democrats.
So the only people stripped of our First Amendment rights are religious conservatives.
It's time to do away with the Johnson Amendment.
I hope Trump does it pronto.
President Trump has been excellent on these issues, so he very well might.
It's a totally unfair and un-American advantage to the left, and it has significantly hastened the decline in our culture.
Next question from Patrick.
Dear Knowles et al., after watching your This Day in History on King George III and remarking on his character and general light-handedness on the colonies, I had to wonder, how justified was the American Revolution?
If the levied taxes were to pay for a war defending Britain's colonies and the king was generally a good guy, was the U.S. right to break away?
Why or why not?
Thanks and love the show.
Patrick.
I do have certain Tory sensibilities, but no, it was perfectly justified.
It was quite justified because unlike the French Revolution, it was a conservative revolution in America.
George III was a decent guy.
He was generally more lenient than his government on the colonies, but he would not assent to representation in parliament.
I'm slightly biased here because two of my forebears fought in the revolution.
One of them died, John and Simon Knowles.
John died at Bunker Hill.
Simon also fought at Bunker Hill.
He was young to enlist, though.
I think he was 16 or even younger.
And he was with Washington at Valley Forge and White Plains.
So I take some family pride in that and wouldn't want to make them frown from heaven.
I think it was totally justified because you have highly educated Englishmen in America with an ever-separating culture, half a world away, being taxed without representation.
Or very much respect from their imperial government.
It's not that the taxes were unfair.
It's that they didn't have a voice in parliament and George wasn't going to give it to them.
These colonists were not backwater primitives who had no sense of self-government.
They weren't colonials who didn't understand republics or democracy or Christianity or the culture that gave birth to self-government.
They were Englishmen of equal political resources and tradition with their quasi-countrymen across the pond.
Had George assented to representation in parliament, the revolution likely would not have come.
But he didn't, and so it came.
Luckily, it was a conservative revolution.
It preserved tradition rather than like the French tearing apart all of the foundations of society, banning Christianity, cults of reason, killing priests, beheadings, regicide, etc.
Ours, because it was British and not French, was far more orderly.
And it's a good thing that it happened because it gave the U.S. the requisite independence and distance to remain outside conversations of peace with Hitler or getting bogged down early in war efforts so that we could swoop in and save the old world twice.
Back-to-back world war champions.
Very good thing.
From Seamus, do you think the act of writing can be seen as inherently narcissistic?
Not the way I do it.
Definitely not the way I do it.
It depends on what you're writing about.
If you're writing an empty celebrity tell-all memoir, yeah, maybe.
It's narcissistic.
But if you're writing about something that matters, certainly not.
But beyond narcissism, maybe what you're getting at too is that there's a certain arrogance to writing or confidence in stating your opinion and holding opinion, in telling others what to think about the world.
As former president of Yale, Richard Levin, a lefty, but, you know, Richard Levin was a lefty, but he's right about a lot of things.
He observed in a speech one time that the truth is arrogant.
The truth is arrogant.
So we have this new culture that would say, that's your opinion, man.
Don't yuck my yum.
Don't tell me what to think.
That's how arrogant of you.
The truth is arrogant.
It's arrogant to say that 2 plus 2 is 4 because you're saying that 2 plus 2 isn't 3.
And if someone says that 2 plus 2 is 3, then you're saying that they're wrong and that they are less learned or less thoughtful or less intelligent.
The truth is arrogant.
That's okay.
It's all right as long as it's the truth.
The truth above all things.
From Marley...
Michael, on your program you have reiterated the importance of majoring in an academically solid field like history or literature rather than social science.
I'm a music history major and throughout my studies the history especially of early music is highly politicized whenever the origin is in any way based in Christian theology or is a resultant from a church musician discovering a new notation technique.
There's a near gut reaction to turn every early musical innovation or work into some analogy for extramarital erotica or some anti-religious propaganda.
How did you combat the politicization of studying something like history that should be factual and concrete but has become more subjective over time?
Thanks, Marley.
The one thing Yale does very well is the history department, actually.
And that doesn't mean they don't have insane history teachers there that teach nonsense.
But there's a lot of freedom.
So they teach everything.
And so you'll get Donald Kagan or you'll get John Gaddis or Charles Hill.
You'll get good teachers there.
In the field of history who can learn you something and then you can avoid the classes that are bad.
This does happen a lot with history.
History can become highly politicized.
What you have to do is analyze the historical techniques and make sure that you're not learning history through some historicist, ridiculous lens.
And you have to look for the good professors.
Always study the professors.
Who cares what the course subject is?
All that matters when you're studying an undergraduate is the professor.
It's probably true of graduate school as well.
You will learn, even if it's teaching something that you're not necessarily the most interested in, go to the good professor who views the world in a normal and rational and thoughtful way.
You will learn much, much more from that person, even if it's not in your precise interest.
From Lisa.
Hi, my name is Lisa.
I know, I just said that.
I'm a new subscriber.
Thank you.
And would you, I would like to know what your kingdom series is that you mentioned at the end of an episode.
You're absolutely fabulous.
Thank you.
And my grandparents came from Italy and Spain, and I loved how you knew the Italian word for cuckold and what it means.
Cornuto, cornuto.
Yeah, I heard that one a lot.
Yeah, I heard that one a lot.
So that's Another Kingdom, a shameless plug.
So that's Another Kingdom, a shameless plug.
Another Kingdom is the podcast that Andrew Klavan wrote that I performed.
Another Kingdom is the podcast that Andrew Klavan wrote that I performed.
It's now all out, so you can binge it.
Just search for Andrew Klavan's Another Kingdom, wherever fine narrative podcasts are sold.
And it's 13 episodes, pretty long, but the first season is out there.
So go check it out.
It's a lot of fun, and people are binging it.
And please leave a five-star review.
It helps us to pitch it to Hollywood and poke an eye in them when they want to blacklist conservatives.
From Michael, Mr. Knowles, I am hoping you can rebut a few liberal points I've heard this week concerning the economy.
Word is that members on the left should not shy away from debating the so-called booming economy as it may not be as great as the right makes it out to be.
Their proof is the assertion of points that the stock market grew faster under Obama's first year, wages haven't grown much, and growth was higher in the three years preceding Trump.
Also, the bonuses being given out are from tax cuts and they're being undercut by large swaths of employees being laid off.
Interesting to hear your thoughts.
Thanks.
It's not that our friends on the left are wrong.
They just know so much that isn't so.
To begin, yes, Barack Obama came out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, as he was so fond of telling us, and he had a terrible recovery.
It was a recovery that never really happened, but nevertheless, it had to go somewhere.
So, yes, the economy did grow under Barack Obama.
It couldn't really have fallen any further than it Did.
Certain aspects of the economy we can attribute to Donald Trump.
We were told by all of the lefty predictors that the market would tank and never recover.
That's what Paul Krugman said.
If Trump were elected, not true.
It did tank a little bit and then it shot right back up.
We were told that...
We would never hit 3% economic growth.
We've blown past that, something that Barack Obama never could do.
Donald Trump did it in his first year.
Consumer confidence is high.
The IMF, the International Monetary Fund, no fan of Donald Trump, said tax cuts, tax reform will help the global economy.
As for the massive layoffs, that's just total nonsense.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
So if some company lays people off, okay, but as a matter of the US economy, the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits in January fell by 1,000 to 230,000.
Which keeps initial U.S. jobless claims near a 45-year low, a half-century low in unemployment.
Economists polled by MarketWatch had a forecast of 240,000 in the seven days before we beat it.
This is the tightest jobs market in decades.
This is the best time for jobs in decades.
It's finally causing wages to rise, which they haven't done in eight and a half years.
Hmm, what happened for the last eight and a half years?
I wonder what...
What does that eight-and-a-half-year period correspond with?
I don't know.
It comes out of my head.
Wages for private sector employees have risen 2.8% in the last year, the biggest year-over-year gain since 2008.
Huh, what happened in 2008?
I can't think.
That's so strange.
Unemployment is at a 17-year low by other measures.
The economy added 185,000 jobs.
The market is at record highs.
But, of course, look, the market is going to correct at some point.
The markets don't track...
Day to day with the presidency.
And markets go through periods of boom and periods of bust.
Periods of bullish markets and bearish markets.
And so that'll correct soon.
I kind of wish President Trump weren't tying his success to the stock market so much.
Because it's going to correct.
It has to.
And then Democrats are going to lambast him for it.
But neither the huge booms are owing to Donald Trump and neither are the busts.
From Neal.
Hi, Michael.
The Irish Conservative government, Fina Gael, pronounced Fina Gael, after years of mounting pressure in Ireland, has announced a vote on repealing Article 8 of our Constitution.
This article pertains to the equal right to life to both the mother and the unborn child.
Could you please shout out to fellow Irish listeners like myself that they can visit?
Check the register.ie and take steps to ensure they are on the register.
If you have an Irish passport, you're eligible to vote.
This also applies to Irish abroad and scattered across the world like myself.
If you have a passport, you can fly home to vote to preserve the sanctity of life in the Republic of Ireland.
Every vote counts.
Coutts, thanks a million.
Thanks a million.
It would be a damn shame if Ireland allows widespread abortion.
That would be awful.
So go check it out.
I'm happy to read that.
From Nick, Almighty Knowles, what is your favorite moment in the history of the USA?
Probably have to end on this one, guys.
What is your favorite moment in the history of the USA?
Also, what brand of smoking jacket were you wearing on Tuesday night during the State of the Union?
My favorite moment in the history of the United States is the landing at Plymouth.
That's my favorite one.
Because it wasn't supposed to happen.
Everything conspired against it.
The government of Holland conspired against it.
The English crown conspired against it.
The weather conspired against it.
They were blown way off course.
They were blown hundreds of miles off course.
They were supposed to go to Manhattan.
But they didn't even hit the nice harbor, Boston Harbor, that's right above them.
They landed at this random place in Plymouth and out walks basically the only guy, the two only people on the continent who spoke English.
And really, Squanto.
Squanto was the one who really spoke English, who had bizarrely lived in London and lived in Spain.
And it's just an example of providence, of divine love.
Washington's intervention in the founding of America is undeniable.
If one looks at the fact of it, that is the best explanation.
And it's unsurprising because they are pilgrims.
It's like almost too on the nose.
If you pitch this to Hollywood, Hollywood would say, nah, it's too on the nose.
That's ridiculous.
No one's going to believe that.
And that's followed by the Battle of Long Island is another one.
The Revolutionary War should have ended.
The Brits should have wiped them out in New York.
They should never have been able to evacuate.
And then the weather changed and Washington was able to get basically everybody out without any casualties.
Just totally, it should not have happened.
And yet it had to happen because...
To me seems an evidence of providence, and there are countless other examples throughout our history.
And in answer to the most important question, that is a Paul Stewart double-clasp, double-breasted smoking jacket with, I think they're called, are they turtle clasps or something?
They don't make it anymore.
That was given to me by my godmother, who is very, very nice.
She was ridiculous.
It's probably the nicest article of clothing I'll ever own.
And she gave it to me and then they stopped making it a year or two later because it turns out that the 18th century, 19th century dandy population has starkly declined in recent years.
So not a lot of people are wearing smoking jackets.
If you can get your hands on one or a vintage one or something, do it.
They actually work.
They keep the smoke off of a lot of your clothing and they look very foppish and ridiculous.
That's our week.
We will be back.
We have a special show to announce coming next week, but I'll leave you wondering about it.
I hope you can survive the weekend.
Check out Another Kingdom if you want to binge that over the weekend, too.
