Ep. 102 - Nancy Pelosi and Democrat Yammering Through The Ages
Nancy Pelosi has yammered on about nothing in order to subvert our laws and undermine the constitutional order for about 37 years, most recently speaking for 8 hours and 7 minutes, setting a record for bloviating in the House of Representatives. Then, Liz Wheeler and Erielle Davidson join the Panel of Deplorables to discuss Trump’s making the National Prayer Breakfast great again, Russia's bribing Hillary, and the MSM's breathless reporting on fringe Republicans while ignoring racist Dems. Finally, the Mailbag!
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Nancy Pelosi has yammered on about nothing in order to subvert our laws and undermine the constitutional order for about 37 years.
Most recently speaking for eight hours and seven minutes, setting a record for bloviating in the House of Representatives.
We will analyze her accomplishment.
Then, Liz Wheeler and Ariel Davidson join the panel of deplorables to discuss Donald Trump's making the National Prayer Breakfast great again, the FBI informant who says Russia paid millions to bribe then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the Uranium One deal, and the mainstream media's breathless reporting on some fringe racist running as a Republican for Congress in the D-plus-6 district he's guaranteed to lose and in which no serious candidate would ever waste his time and money running.
Do you see?
Do you see Republicans are evil?
Do you see?
Finally, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
So before we get to this, there was a lot going on before.
Before we talk about this ridiculous display that people are completely getting wrong, they don't really understand at all what the historical context is for Nancy Pelosi running her mouth, which she's been doing for decades and decades, but she did for eight hours yesterday.
Before we do that, we need to thrive.
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Okay, we got a lot to get to, so let's get right into it.
Nancy Pelosi spent all day yesterday yammering away.
Not exactly a man-bites-dog story, but she set a record for the longest speech in the chamber's history.
What was she talking about?
Well, it must have had something to do with the topics Americans really care about, right?
The economy, government corruption after all those damning FBI texts from the Obama administration, the evidence that Russia paid off Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.
Maybe it was about health care reform, law and order, terrorism, right?
Something like that?
No, take it away, Nancy.
As members of Congress, we have a moral responsibility to act now to protect DREAMers who are the pride of our nation and are American in every way but on paper.
Our young people are our future, and these DREAMers are part of that.
No, of course, that's what it was about.
On the contrary to anything that matters, despite nearly 70% of Americans, according to a morning consult Politico poll, saying amnesty for illegal aliens should not be a priority for Congress, despite even the majority of Democrats saying that amnesty for illegal aliens should not be a priority, Nancy spoke for over eight hours about how we need to subvert the rule of law and give amnesty to between 1.8 million and 3.6 million people.
According to Pelosi, illegal aliens brought here under 18, some of whom are 40 years old now, they are the pride of our nation, she says.
Half of them don't speak English, a quarter of them can't read, but they're American in every way except on paper and except all the other ways.
She is right when she says that these illegal aliens who were brought here under 18 are our future.
But we've got to be careful of the word our.
By our, she doesn't mean Americans.
We think she means Americans, she doesn't.
By our, she means Democrats.
Few research indicates that 75 to 90 percent of the so-called dreamers, if given amnesty, would vote for Democrats.
What a dream indeed.
1.8 million people on the low end, 3.6 million on the high end.
That's what this is all about.
That's why Nancy Pelosi is so impassioned.
She won't get impassioned about people losing their health insurance.
She won't get impassioned about people losing their jobs.
She doesn't care less about that.
She gets impassioned about getting millions of new voters.
That's what this is all about.
Destroying the Republican Party forever.
She's so passionate about that, she broke a 109-year record and spoke for a full workday to see it through.
Let us thank and acknowledge the Dreamers for their courage, their optimism, their hope, their inspiration to make America more American.
Make America more American.
Half of the group doesn't speak English in a court or can't read.
Amnesty would make America more Latin American.
It would make America more left-wing.
It would make America less free by subverting democratically enacted immigration law and telling a free people that they have no right to run their own country, that they have no right to expect law and order, the rule of law in their country.
Now, unsurprisingly, the wind-blowing record she broke belonged to another Democrat, a man named Champ Clark, 1909.
Although, back then, the Republicans had the good sense to interrupt this sort of nonsense, so given that, it's unclear if his speech actually held any record.
In true Democrat fashion, he was speaking against tax reform, a tariff overhaul that gained steam the year earlier.
And he wasn't all that bad, actually.
I looked into Champ a little bit.
Apparently, Champ fought Woodrow Wilson for the Democrat nomination of 1912.
He opposed the Federal Reserve, and he wanted to annex Canada, saying, quote, I look forward to the time when the American flag will fly over every square foot of British North America up to the North Pole.
So, yeah, pretty good, actually.
A mixed bag, not altogether a bad guy.
I'm sorry that his record got broken.
There's another aspect to this.
Isn't it a little bit strange that we don't have great records for these House speeches?
You know, we think Pelosi's is the longest since 1909.
We're not really quite sure.
We don't see these hours-long speeches very much in the House.
That's because they don't serve any purpose.
I know it seems like they serve purpose.
We see things like this in the Senate, but they don't serve a purpose.
They call attention to some issue, maybe, but there's no practical purpose.
The Senate has a filibuster.
The House does not.
Even if the House did have a filibuster, Pelosi did it wrong.
The filibuster is a tactic wherein a politician indulges his favorite melody, the sound of his own voice, for long periods of time to delay or entirely prevent a decision to be made on a given proposal.
So you'll remember Ted Cruz did this in 2013.
Ted Cruz's 2013 filibuster was to delay the decision to fund Obamacare.
The House actually did have a filibuster until 1842, at which point a permanent rule limiting the duration of debate was created.
This is because the House got too large.
So the original size of the House of Representatives was just 65 people.
Today there are 435 representatives in the House.
If the filibuster were allowed in the House, nothing would ever get done, even less than is now.
But this is what we get out of a shallow and superficial culture.
We don't get a real filibuster about a real issue that affects real Americans.
Instead, we get a fake filibuster about a glib euphemism like dreamers that only pertains to non-Americans.
We get the appearance of serious governance without any actual seriousness.
She didn't even do the filibuster right.
What she should want is not to delay a vote.
She'd want to vote right now.
She didn't even do it right.
All of this we got to benefit Democrat politicians and foreign nationals.
Is it any wonder that Make America Great Again resounded with voters?
Absolutely not.
We've got to bring on our panel to talk about the news.
And we've got OAN's Liz Wheeler here.
We've got Ariel Davidson.
And before we get to that, though...
I do have to acknowledge this.
You might see this.
This is on my desk.
I got some nice, beautiful flowers here.
I didn't know who they were from.
I assumed they were from Sweet Little Elisa.
Absolutely not.
Not a chance.
And I saw I got a card from Drew.
And it was a little card.
Drew sent me these flowers, obviously.
To apologize for every single weekend for the last two to three years, he has ruined my weekend every time.
He made me watch Barry, the Barack Obama movie.
He made me watch South Side with you.
I've had to go to women's marches.
Being a cultural correspondent on his show has been really, really tough.
It's that one moment of solace, you know, the weekend.
He's just destroyed every time.
So I want to thank Drew for the lovely roses.
It's very sweet of you.
You know, a girl always likes to get roses.
And these came from 1-800-Flowers.
So, living dangerously can be a thrill, but waiting until the last minute to purchase a Valentine's gift, that is playing with fire.
That's why Drew knows to get these early, earlier than I have.
I have to get some now, too, for sweet little Elisa.
So don't delay.
Go to 1-800-Flowers.com.
That's 1-800-Flowers.
It always has your back in these tough situations.
Right now you can get 18 enchanted roses.
I am enchanted.
Drew has enchanted me with these roses for only $29.99.
That is a really good deal.
I send flowers around a fair bit.
I have family all over the country and I'll send flowers sometimes.
That is a great deal.
18 Enchanted Roses for only $29.99.
Go to 1-800-Flowers.com.
And I guess you've got to use the code KLAVAN, K-L-A-V-A-N. He gave me the flowers, so you should use his promo code.
Keep the lights on in there.
1-800-Flowers.com, promo code KLAVAN. Order it today.
Alright, thank you, Drew.
That was very, very sweet of you.
Excellent.
Ladies, thank you very much for being here.
This is really nice.
You know, after a bald man from the next room gave me my Valentine's flowers, it's nice to see your face.
This is balancing things out a little bit.
Thank you for being here.
Today is the National Prayer Breakfast.
Trump's comments at the prayer breakfast, President Trump's comments include, We can all be heroes to everybody and they can be heroes to us as long as we open our hearts to God's grace.
America will be free, the land of the free, the home of the brave, and the light to all nations.
America is a nation of believers and together we are strengthened by the power of prayer.
Our rights are not given to us by men.
Our rights are given to us from our creator.
No matter what, no earthly force can take those rights away.
Compare those comments with Nancy Pelosi a few years ago.
13, 15, and 17, we know that this message, this command of love, is not confined to the New Testament.
The same message stands at the center of the Torah and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, too.
From the Torah, it says, Love your neighbor as yourself.
And from Muhammad, none of you has faith until he loves for his brother or his neighbor what he loves for himself.
Do you ever notice these Democrats, they always call Muhammad the prophet Muhammad?
But I don't think he's the prophet.
Most people on earth don't think he's the prophet.
They don't refer to the Messiah, Jesus, do they?
How about after that, Barack Obama's obtuse and historically ignorant babbling at the prayer breakfast himself?
And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.
So, we'll get to that in a bit, because also nonsense.
Liz, so many on the religious right have held Donald Trump at arm's length because he joked with Billy Bush about things that he likes to grab, and he's lived sort of a tabloid lifestyle.
Should Christians in America embrace President Covfefe?
Okay, a couple of things.
First of all, I did some research, and I hope we're allowed to disagree with you on this show.
No, never once.
I don't know if evangelicals actually have held President Trump at arm's length here.
If you look at Pew Research, they did a survey of evangelical voters.
This was mid-year last year, about six months into the Trump presidency.
They found that over 75% of evangelical voters supported President Trump.
Now, you might remember hearing on the mainstream media that evangelical voters were starting to distance themselves from the president, that they weren't as supportive as they were when they cast their vote for him.
That was propagated by Newsweek magazine, who did a survey in which they used, in my opinion, very biased wording for their questions.
They didn't ask about the policies that Trump was They ask if voters, if these evangelicals would support President Trump no matter what.
Of course they got a response that said only 30% would support the president no matter what.
It's a great question though.
Should Christians, should we as Christians, I'm not saying you're telling other Christians what to do.
I am telling them what to do, but I'm sorry.
No, I'm about to.
I'm just gearing up for it.
Yes, I think Christians should support President Trump because all we have to do is look at The policies that he's implemented, we just have to look at the comparison.
Which party right now in our country is offering protection for unborn babies?
Offering to treat unborn babies like the people that they are?
And which party is saying, no, look, you have a right to, and we should celebrate that right, to rip these babies limb from limb?
And sell their limbs and sell their organs.
Don't forget that part.
There is a market incentive to it.
Right, but it's not just abortion.
We can look at any of our rights, our God-given rights that President Trump was talking about, and we can ask ourselves, which party, which president has protected that?
Well, our First Amendment right to free speech, President Trump's protected that.
Our First Amendment right to practice our religion the way that we deem best, not the way the government deems best.
President Trump has already put protections into place.
The Hobby Lobby ruling, appointing Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, ruling back the contraceptive mandate, our right to protect ourselves, our Second Amendment rights, our families, to bear arms.
President Trump has protected that.
Everything that he's done has been a protection, or just about everything he's done, has been a protection for our God-given rights.
So, of course, no excuses for his character or his bad behavior, but yeah, as a Christian, I support President Trump.
That sounds right to me, Liz.
And, you know, I do notice in the Bible, with the exception of one man, just about everybody that God uses for good purposes is maybe a little flawed, maybe even more flawed than the sort of fella who jokes around with Billy Bush.
And a lot of good things came out of that, too.
That is absolutely right.
And you're right.
Evangelical Christians, despite ridiculous fake polling, have supported President Trump, much more so than Catholics and mainline Protestants.
So that is certainly a point in their corner.
Ariel...
American politicians have for decades extolled the alleged virtues of Islam and multiculturalism while they flagellate Christians for a defensive war that took place 800 years ago about which they know absolutely nothing.
Should American politicians be less multiculty and more vocally Christian?
Well, I have two points to make on that.
So I want to backtrack a bit to Obama's comments.
I actually didn't have a huge problem with Pelosi's comments, but Obama's comments at the 2015 prayer breakfast really got to me in the sense that, you know, this is a long, this follows a long thread of sort of putting down the idea of American exceptionalism or sort of shifting blame onto America. this follows a long thread of sort of putting down
And so baked into the left's idea of multiculturalism is at the same time juxtaposed with putting down America in some way and putting down sort of, you know, majority Christian nation.
And that to me is what's wrong.
What I would appreciate seeing is actually along the lines of what Pelosi was trying to say, I think, was celebrating religious freedom in America, which has always been.
The crux of religious liberty in America is celebrating the idea that you can practice your religion freely, whatever your religion may be.
And I don't think that needs to be—in fact, I think we should be celebrating the idea that we're united by this devotion to protecting religious freedom.
That should be what unites us.
I think that—and that message got very, very polluted and lost, particularly By Obama when he made a mission to show that, you know, American exceptionalism...
America is not as exceptional as you think it is.
No, I think America is wonderfully exceptional.
I think, and what makes us exceptional is that we do give everyone the right to practice their religion freely as long as they're not harming others in the process.
And so, for me, I actually...
I took greater issue with Obama's comments because if we go back further into his speech, his response was actually directly related to trying to equalize radical Islamic terror by saying, wait a minute, the Inquisitions and the Crusades were done in the name of Christ.
I think that's just completely inappropriate.
It's the wrong setting to be doing that.
And the reality is that radical Islamic terror is what we are facing right now as a nation, and I would argue the greatest national security threat that we are facing as a whole.
It's not only tone deaf.
He also just misunderstands what he's talking about.
I don't think the man knows anything about the Crusades.
I don't think he knows anything about the Inquisition.
I think he's heard these buzzwords, and our country at the moment is very lightly educated.
Absolutely.
I think at some point I'll have to do a show on the Crusades and on the Inquisition because if you read like one book about this, I think you know more than 99.99% of people in the world.
It's very frustrating and tone deaf.
And of course, President Obama would constantly...
Gloss over the issues of Islam, a religion that has inspired attack against the West for 1400 years, and he would glide over those, and he would harp on any evil that was ever done by someone who called himself a Christian.
Totally tone deaf, and it's a really nice shift that I've seen.
All right, ladies, we've got to keep flying through this.
An FBI informant named Douglas Campbell has informed three congressional committees that Russia paid millions of dollars to a U.S. lobbying firm to bribe then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by helping her husband's foundation during the Obama administration.
Liz we have Barack Obama on a hot mic saying that he will give Russia leeway after his election, that he just had to lie to voters to pretend to take a strong stance on Russia We have Hillary Clinton apparently being bribed by Russia while Secretary of State...
And Democrats have spent a year and change accusing Donald Trump of being a Manchurian candidate for Vladimir Putin because some Russian ran a Facebook ad or something.
Are Democrats accusing Republicans of colluding with Russia explicitly to cover up their own collusion with Russia?
Well, of course they are.
That's Saul Alinsky's.
That's one of his principles.
You accuse your opponent of doing what you were doing in order to create confusion.
It's like little kids.
If they get into a fight, the one little kid's going to run to his mother and be like, Mom, he hit me.
Well, the other kid's going to be like, Nuh-uh, he hit me.
The first person's accusation is going to carry more credibility.
The second one sounds like a copycat, even if that person is lying.
The funny thing to me here, too, is that Barack Obama was the one who...
Was condescending and skeptical.
He made fun of Mitt Romney in 2012 for saying that Russia was our number one geopolitical foe.
Well, who's laughing last now?
I mean, we can see this case.
But this story is funny to me, too, because we already knew that this was happening.
We already knew that the Russians had tried to infiltrate Hillary and Bill Clinton, their organization, Hillary at the State Department, that they had corrupted nuclear entities in the United States, including that nuclear trucking company, that they had bribed and given kickbacks to nuclear entities in that they had bribed and given kickbacks to nuclear entities in the United States in order to try to infiltrate and get our nuclear secrets to try to influence that, which led, as convoluted as it sounds, to the Uranium One
So I don't know why we're acting so surprised that the Russians are trying to steal things from us.
And I definitely don't know why we're acting surprised that Hillary Clinton is somewhere in the middle of this.
Of course.
Of course.
And Ariel, this leads to the inevitable question, should anybody in that Clinton orbit go to jail?
And I don't think it's as simple as it seems.
On the one hand, of course they should.
On the other hand, do we really want to set the precedent of seeing failed presidential candidates and their cronies go to the clink, even if they deserve it?
I think it's sort of irrelevant if they're presidential candidates or not because I think as soon as you start subverting the law in order to keep the peace, I think that sort of is counterintuitive and I actually think it achieves the opposite result because it shows that if you are powerful enough, if you are even a failed presidential candidate, No matter what your past transgressions are, you can sort of be sure that you can evade prosecution.
I don't think that's a good precedent to set at all.
I think irrespective of whether you're an everyday citizen who is not in the public sector or if you are someone with tremendous clout in the public sector, I think we shall be treated equally in the eyes of the law.
So in my mind, it really doesn't make a difference if you are somebody who has the political clout of the Clintons.
And I think that You should uphold your duty as an American citizen to obey the law.
Ariel, you've made me feel so much better.
I was second-guessing myself.
I thought, do I need to advocate that we don't send Hillary to prison?
And then you've opened my eyes and my heart again.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Ladies, we have more news to talk about, but we're just running up against the time today.
So unfortunately, I have to say goodbye to you.
If it were up to me, I would never say goodbye to you.
I would have you on for the whole show.
I would never have flowers from Andrew Klavan, but that's the way it goes.
Thank you both for being here.
Liz Wheeler from OAN and Ariel Davidson.
Ladies, I will see you next time.
Happy Valentine's Day.
Maybe I'll see you before then.
Okay, we've got to get to the mailbag.
But before we get to the mailbag, sorry folks, if you're on Facebook or YouTube, you've got to go to dailywire.com.
I know.
Well, you're probably not on YouTube because they censor everything we do, but you might be on Facebook.
If you go to dailywire.com, what do you get?
You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the conversation.
We released a saucy promo for that today.
You might want to have some eye bleach on hand, depending on how you're watching it.
And...
So you get that.
You get the conversation.
You get to ask questions in the mailbag.
You get to ask questions in the conversation.
Many can watch, but few can ask questions.
Many are cold, but few are chosen.
You can do all of that.
Your love meters are about to spike because this Valentine's Day on Wednesday, February 14th at 5 p.m.
Eastern, 2 p.m.
Pacific, we will be doing a very romantic episode of The Conversation featuring the swarthiest love doctor at the Daily Wire Critical Care Unit.
And that is me.
But, unfortunately for you all, We're good to go.
Wah, wah, you're not going to give amnesty to three million people who are all going to vote for my party.
Wah, you're not going to destroy the Republican Party forever.
Wah, wah, wah.
Collect them.
They're going to be a valuable vintage someday.
So be sure to get the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
A lot of good ones today, so let's get right into it.
The first question is from Eleanor.
Hi, Michael.
I've recently found out a years-long friendship won't survive the tax cut, or at least won't survive Trump.
I could use some advice on dealing with the fallout is right now my only option.
To save it is apparently to apologize for my political beliefs, and that's not going to happen.
Thanks.
Good.
Don't apologize for your political beliefs.
If they're right, they're right.
Don't pretend that something isn't true to appease some apparent friend who doesn't seem to care that much about real friendship.
Friendship is misunderstood these days.
Aristotle writes about it in the Nicomachean Ethics, and he says there are three kinds of friendship.
There's a friendship of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of the good.
So friendship of utility is you can get something from somebody, you know, like politics, right?
You become political.
Friends, oh, my good friend.
Oh, yes, my great friend, Mitt Romney.
Oh, yes, my great whatever, right?
That's a friendship of utility.
A friendship of pleasure is one where it's convenient, you know.
There's some nice, you enjoy one little thing together or whatever.
You have some little thing in common.
Maybe it's a college friend.
You both like going to parties or something, but you don't have much there afterward.
And then there's a friendship of the good, right?
No greater love hath a man than to die for his friends.
It's based on willing the good of the friend and he of you.
It is based on having good will.
So, you know, a good image of this is the people who stand side by side one another and they're looking at the same thing.
It's a mutual appreciation of virtues that the other party is holding dear.
You might not have the same opinions about the thing, but you will have the same good will.
The perfect form of friendship We're good to go.
Hence, the friendship of these lasts as long as they continue to be good, and virtue is a permanent quality.
Such friendships are, of course, rare because such men are few.
It seems, if your friend is going to cut you out because you like tax reform or something, it doesn't sound like much of a friend to begin with.
You don't need to cut somebody out, but you certainly should never compromise yourself or your integrity or your view of the truth and your own view of the good just to appease somebody who won't like you if you have a differing opinion.
From John.
Another Catholic question for you all.
I've heard a few of these.
I'm having trouble finding solace in Catholic teachings.
My wife and I are in our late 30s and we're blessed with three wonderful kids.
However, we're in the middle of our second miscarriage in two years.
We'd love to have another child, but it is so painful losing a child midway through.
I don't know what's in the cards if we get pregnant again, and I'm too scared to want to try again.
Is it even fair to the future child to try again?
The church teaches away from both non-natural pregnancies and contraception, so what are we to do?
Keep saying goodbye to children we will never know in this world.
Enter a period of chastity until we're too old to conceive.
Count our blessings with our three healthy kids.
Get snipped and go to reconciliation.
Pay big money for IVF is not in the cards for us, so that is one option off the list.
For future children, I'm open to adoption, but that still leaves unaddressed the future sexual relationship with my wife and the fear of losing another child.
I'm sorry to hear of your trouble the past couple years.
The Catholic teaching on this, as you know, is that you cannot close yourself off utterly from the possibility of children within marriage.
But having children is not the only purpose of sex.
Fifty million Frenchmen can be wrong, but on this they're not wrong.
The church teaches that there are two purposes of sex within marriage, unitive and reproductive.
So the dilemma is that some combination of your faith and your wallet precludes condoms, IVF, abstinence, getting snipped, all of those things.
Presumably more than just your faith and wallet preclude sex.
That last one, that abstinence.
So you're clearly open to more children, but you're justifiably afraid of another miscarriage and another loss.
The method approved and encouraged by the church, natural family planning, might be your best bet.
People mock this NFP as pull and pray, they say.
They say you're going to definitely have kids if you do it.
But actually, when followed, it's up to 99% effective at avoiding pregnancy.
Now, that still leaves open the possibility of children, the logical possibility of children.
As the church and her bridegroom require, be fruitful and multiply, that sort of thing.
But there's nothing intervening artificially to prevent children, and yet, given the likelihood of pregnancy at your age and the effectiveness of NFP, that may be your solution, and you won't lose the unitive effects of that very, very enjoyable act.
Best of luck, and I hope you don't have to go through that again.
From Ian, dear Michael, I finished the newsroom a little while ago and a couple things I took away from it were, one, that the media has left its main job of informing the electorate in favor of this new clickbait form of news.
The other is how this generation has moved away from the need for information.
We take everything on authority.
How do I move back into the realm of facts so that I can grow intellectually?
Question everything.
Question everything.
Right now, there's this prevailing idea that if you are skeptical of some claim, that you're an idiot.
If you're skeptical of the global warming, catastrophic global warming, you're an idiot.
There's nothing stupid about being skeptical.
Question everything, particularly the use of language.
See how language is morphed and twisted and perverted to push a political agenda.
You see this?
Dreamers is the great example.
Dreamers is now the word we use to refer to a subset of illegal aliens who are 40 years old or younger and brought here under certain circumstances.
Dreaming has nothing to do with the essence of this political problem, but they use it as a euphemism to make us look like jerks if we don't want to give the dreamers amnesty and the Democratic Party a permanent majority.
So be very careful about that and watch all of the language.
From Marcus.
Michael, I own a small business that serves a politically mixed clientele.
Michael Jordan once, when asked his political views, famously said, Republicans buy sneakers too.
How can I support conservative values while still attracting customers across the spectrum?
I think owning a small business is a conservative value, isn't it?
Isn't that like in the list of them?
It is a conservative value.
You don't need to shove your politics down their throat.
You're running a business.
Now it's very fashionable among millennials to say, what's the purpose of our business, man?
What's the vision?
What's the social good we're all going to do in this?
The purpose of the business is to make money and offer a service to the marketplace or a good to the marketplace that will improve people's lives.
So just do that.
If you do that and you don't have to pay for abortions or something along the way, you will be acting perfectly in accordance with conservative values.
St.
Francis of Assisi said, preach the gospel and if you must speak, I think that might apply politically if you're doing business.
The business of the American people is business.
From Jake.
This is a long one, so I've shortened it a little.
This might have to be the last one.
Michael, I'm a big fan, a subscriber, and I consider this important.
What exactly are you thinking with this idiotic discussion on gays?
First of all, your discussion with Father Michael Schmitz wasn't about gay marriage.
It was about how gay people should find strength in Jesus to stay chaste.
Now, I don't know how much understanding of what the conservative movement has been through on this, but I was fighting for gay rights in the GOP when you were in middle school.
From a purely political point of view, quite literally no decision by the GOP has been more damaging to conservatives than the decision to be hateful and discriminatory to gays.
And make no mistake, that is what they were.
Hateful, discriminatory, unsympathetic.
The massive tide in favor of gay rights did not take place because we all decided to feel instead of think genius.
It took place because gay people finally felt safe to begin coming out and naming themselves by the millions.
For decades, even centuries, most people didn't think they knew a gay person.
Suddenly, they were shown that they did, and it's a lot harder to be hateful to a group if you find out that your brother, best friend, or boss, or favorite employee is a member So the tide turned.
Listening to Father Schmitz, I felt like I was back in the 90s or early 2000s.
All those ancient days in the 2000s.
Talking to someone about this subject.
Idiotic statements like chastity can be fun, and friendships are great.
Coming out of the mouth of a person who chooses to be chaste for God and somehow manages to think that calling falls on people like me.
Well, Mr.
Knowles, I suggest you do some more research.
If you would like to understand more about a sane person, I'm a conservative libertarian, Gen Xer, openly gay, and begging you not to go down this road.
Every new argument about how it's not hateful to keep gays from being married and how you love the sinner but hate the sin is not new.
It's all been tried before, and it nearly destroyed conservatism and will again if you insist on beating this dead horse.
I'm a big fan and would be happy to debate this over email or phone.
It's too important to be left alone.
I agree that it is...
He goes on and says more mean things about Father Schmitz, and he calls me hun.
I do agree that this is too important to be left alone.
That's why I'm talking about it.
I must say I disagree with basically everything you've just said, but I'll explain why.
I think you've missed the basis of the argument, of the disagreement here, where the conflict of visions really lies.
To begin, you say that the discussion with Father Schmitz was not about gay marriage.
It was explicitly about gay marriage.
In particular, one question...
What is marriage?
Not who can get married, not who should have the right to get married, not who has the right to get married.
Those questions come later.
The crux of the conversation is around one question.
What is marriage?
Then subsequent questions follow.
Does sexual difference have anything to do with marriage, maybe?
Is there a categorical difference between men and women?
Or are those differences just trivial and meaningless and gender doesn't mean anything and men and women are all exactly the same?
And if there are real differences between men and women...
Perhaps might those differences play some role in marriage?
Does marriage have something to do with the logical possibility of procreation?
What is marriage?
That's the question.
It's the question that many people angrily do not want to answer.
They want to skip right ahead to the rights question.
But you have to answer the definition question first, but that's the hard one, and I think that's why advocates of redefining marriage try to skip it.
You say that for decades and centuries most people didn't think they knew a gay person.
This seems to me an example of a modern prejudice, modern pride.
There's this modern prejudice to think that our generation discovered everything, including homosexuality, but we didn't.
Ancient medieval modern literature is replete with references to gay sex and relationships.
The phrase il modo italiano, the Italian way, was used to mean sodomy itself in the 16th century.
Maybe still today.
Italians are very...
It's imaginative and creative.
Homosexuality has been around a long time, and all ages have known about it and written about it.
But the crux of our conversation really is not about homosexuality at all, and I think that's where people are missing this point.
It really isn't about the moral questions or the practical questions of homosexuality, which mostly I don't care about.
It was the nature of marriage, which is a question I do care about because it's quite a political question.
You used the phrase, keep gays from being married.
The question of our conversation is what is marriage?
Is it logically possible to keep someone from being married?
The question has nothing to do with the morality per se.
Whether you think that gay sex is a grave moral sin or you think that it is the best thing since sliced bread...
Neither has anything to do with that question.
Does sexual difference, sexual complementarity, the logical possibility of procreation, do those concepts have anything to do with what is marriage?
You're of course right that people should never be hateful or discriminatory or mean or whatever toward gay people.
That also has nothing to do with the question.
That's a distraction and a diversion to avoid answering a simple question that might have an inconvenient answer.
What is marriage?
Proponents of redefining marriage or of undefining marriage, they find it convenient to skip that.
They jump right ahead.
We have to define our terms.
If so, elemental a question as what is marriage can only be met with anger and accusations of bigotry.
A question that was easily answered until about five minutes ago.
As Justice Kennedy now says, the only reason to oppose radically redefining or undefining marriage is irrational hatred of gays, irrational animus.
If that's your immediate response, one must wonder...
Whether the arguments for redefining or undefining marriage are really on sound logical footing or if this is a matter of emotion running away with us and highlighting our unwillingness to answer and deal with simple but difficult.
Simple in their clarity but difficult in their effect on society and on culture questions that we have to deal with first before we can talk about rights.
From Garrett.
Dr.
Knowles, I often hear people sit back and do nothing to influence their future because God has a plan.
However, after studying a good bit of theology, especially Catholic theology, I find this to be a misdirected belief.
I can find few passages from Scripture with the word plan, but many with God's will.
It seems to me and my priest that God does not plan out your entire life like the Calvinists might say, but he does have a will for your life.
Instead of betting on God's plan to hit you in the face, it's your job to transform your mind, body, and soul to find God's will for your life.
We are both interested in your thoughts on our premise, and if you agree, thank you.
This is really good advice.
You're absolutely right.
Andrew Klavan gave me this advice once, which is that God can't drive a parked car.
You might have a will for your life, but you can't drive a parked car.
I'm out here in Hollywood.
I'm having trouble as an actor, especially as a conservative actor.
I will say the minute that I did anything, which was nothing, I did nothing.
When I published a blank book, I did the physical equivalent of nothing.
A lot of wonderful things followed.
It was at least almost doing...
If you involve your will, only then can you match God's will.
You have free will, too.
God has a will, and he gave you a will.
Dante, referring to God in heaven, in his comedy, uses the phrase, Dove si puote ciò che si vuole.
Where will and desire are united.
Where one can do what one wishes.
Where he is up there who can do what he wills.
This is the important juncture of grace and liberty.
You can turn away from God or you can turn toward God.
You know, we have a lot more questions to go through.
We had some really good ones, unfortunately.
Someone called me an American heartthrob.
But do we have time, Rob?
Do we have time to do one more?
We can do one more.
All right, let's just do one more question.
I can't, because there are going to be all these questions in the conversation.
Let's do this.
This is the one from Chris, and he called me an American heartthrob.
American heartthrob, Knowles.
You know, if it had said something else, we wouldn't be doing it.
It may come as a shock, but I have a question about Catholicism, do you know?
Particularly the concept of papal infallibility.
How are we supposed to know when the Pope is infallible?
Does he tell us?
Do we just know it?
Or is it something that only God knows and we just have to guess?
You are here clearly confusing papal infallibility with the related but different doctrine of Michael infallibility, and the former is when the Pope speaks authoritatively ex cathedra, and the latter is every single day on this show when I speak infallibly ex cofefe.
Vatican II teaches infallibility this way.
It says, "Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they can nevertheless proclaim Christ's doctrine infallibly.
This is so even when they are dispersed around the world, provided that while maintaining the bond of unity among themselves and with Peter's successor, and while teaching authentically on a matter of faith or morals, they concur in a single viewpoint as the one which must be held conclusively." This authority is even more clearly verified when gathered together in an ecumenical council.
They are teachers and judges of faith and morals for the universal church.
Their definitions must then be adhered to with the submission of faith.
So, if that didn't clear it up for you...
The doctrine comes from scripture.
Christ says to Peter, in John, feed my sheep.
In Luke, he says, I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.
In Matthew, he says, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Sometimes non-Catholics point out that Paul says that Peter did something wrong.
You see here this evidence that the Pope isn't infallible.
But...
He didn't say that Peter is pronouncing wrong things and is preaching heresy.
He very clearly says he's not acting in accordance with what he's preaching.
So you hear that a lot.
And Peter many times doesn't act in accordance with what he's preaching.
That's, I think, a very important aspect of why he's chosen and handed the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.
An infallible pronouncement comes only when some doctrine has been called into question.
Most doctrines have never been doubted by the majority of Catholics.
Now, infallibility is not impeccability.
The charism to speak infallibly on matters of doctrine is not the same as not sinning, not being able to sin.
On that point, though, it is worth pointing out how impressive it is that the popes have been so holy throughout history.
We always hear about the bad popes, but the only reason we hear about them is they're so rare.
If they were common, you know, we wouldn't talk about Boniface VIII, whom Dante puts in hell.
We wouldn't talk about the handful of bad ones.
We would say they're all bad, right?
But they're clearly not.
It's generally understood that the Pope has spoken ex cathedra infallibly, only twice.
That was Pope Pius IX and Pope Pius XII, defining aspects of Mary, the Immaculate Conception, and the Assumption.
In this case, this isn't defining something new.
The Church already believed this for millennia.
In the face of modernity, it defined the dogma.
The Pope can also speak infallibly in the ordinary magisterium, not ex cathedra, as when Pope St.
John Paul II defined the Church's prohibition against murder, for instance, which included euthanasia and abortion.
But this isn't exactly controversial.
The Church has never supported murder.
They say, okay, the old guy supported murder, but now we don't support murder.
It is generally a rule with metaphysics that shallows are clear and profound things are murky.
So the vast majority of infallible teachings we already know and agree with.
As for ex-cathedral pronouncements, definitions of questioned doctrine, the Pope will make it clear, as they did in the 20th century.
I know that doesn't fit into a soundbite, but I hope that clears up a little bit of infallibility.
And I promise you, I was speaking infallibly ex-cofefe, so you can take that to the bank, man.
Everybody have a good weekend.
You can still binge Another Kingdom, Andrew Claven's Another Kingdom, on anything.
Any app.
It'll get you ready for Valentine's Day.
Some of it gets a little saucy.
Otherwise, I'll see you on Monday.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you then.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.
