Ep. 110 - More Guns, Less Crime ft. Ramesh Ponnuru
CNN and mean girl Jake Tapper last night pimped out traumatized kids to hurl vile and dishonest insults at Republicans and supporters of the U.S. Constitution for a fact-free hour on national television. Meanwhile, Republicans and conservatives resort to their evil facts and data and logic to point out that there is no gun homicide crisis in America. Those monsters. We will discuss the current state of gun demagoguery with senior editor of National Review Ramesh Ponnuru. Then, the Mailbag!
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CNN and mean girl Jake Tapper last night pimped out traumatized kids to hurl vile and dishonest insults at Republicans and supporters of the U.S. Constitution during a fact-free hour on national television.
Meanwhile, Republicans and conservatives resort to their evil facts and data and logic to point out that there is no gun homicide crisis in America.
Those monsters, those sick, it's so awful.
Enough is enough.
We will discuss the current state of gun demagoguery with senior editor of National Review, Ramesh Panuru.
Then, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
We have to get a little bit better at scheduling our interviews, because I just finished talking to Ramesh.
We didn't pre-tape him a couple days ago or anything like that.
We pre-taped him like 15 minutes ago.
So we'll get right ahead and bring him on.
This was really awful.
If you didn't see the CNN show last night, I'm not even going to play it.
It was so despicable.
It was just mean girl Jake Tapper sitting there doing that frowny Jake Tapper I'm a fake journalist face and letting these kids, these poor exploited kids, be used as human shields to compare Marco Rubio to mass murderers and to hurl untruth after untruth on national television knowing that nobody can criticize young kids who have just been traumatized.
So to talk about it, we will now bring on and talk to Ramesh Panuru for an interview that we did about 45 seconds ago.
Ramesh, thank you for being here.
Thanks for having me on.
So, Ramesh, Democrats are insisting that we do something that's in all caps and with several exclamation marks afterward, because enough is enough, also in all caps, also with a lot of exclamation points.
They're proposing all sorts of laws right up to the repeal of the Second Amendment, and actually that last one was proposed by an erstwhile Republican.
I've been asking one question whenever I see these things pop up on Twitter or in discussions, and this is the question I'll ask you now.
Which new law could we enact that would have prevented this shooting?
Well, I think you could make an argument that something like the red flag law, or that is to say the gun violence restraining orders, might have been able to make a difference.
But there are no guarantees, and a lot of the suggestions that are being made are either sort of Do you find...
One thing I love about your writing is that you're like a normal person when you write, and it isn't this hyperbolic and these crazy things.
And so you had a piece out today, I think, a case for small steps to fix a big gun problem.
What are some of those small steps?
Well, the red flag idea is one of them.
I've always thought there is some merit to the idea of establishing some good Samaritan laws on the same model as we've had various reporting requirements for people who suspect child abuse.
It would be a reporting requirement if you suspect that somebody poses an imminent threat of harm to somebody else, or if you are providing a law against providing access to guns or bombs to somebody who you think is dangerous.
That's the sort of thing that you probably wouldn't actually be prosecuting people for it very often, as people are not prosecuted under those child abuse statutes.
But I think it would help change some norms, and if you had had those norms in place, some of these mass murder incidents, for example, the Connecticut Sandy Hook slaughter, could have been prevented.
Well, this is interesting because most of these proposals you hear seem to me either they would be such an infringement of civil liberties that they would be politically impractical and probably not desired either, or they wouldn't prevent these shootings.
And in the case of Sandy Hook and in the case of this shooting in Florida, there were so many red flags from the beginning.
His mother called the police to talk to him because he was such a nut.
He was torturing and killing animals when he was younger.
Adam Lanza at the Sandy Hook shooting was clearly mentally insane and just stole a gun from his mother.
Now, whenever these debates happen, the left tries to take all of our guns and the right points out that we need mental health reform in this country.
We close down all of the insane asylums and it's virtually impossible to commit people against their will.
Do you think that there's any political practicality To locking away lunatics, people like the shooter at Sandy Hook or people like we see in Florida where there are so many red flags that if they're a danger to society, we might just lock them up and not have to worry about them?
Look, I think involuntary commitment in some cases of severe and dangerous mental illness ought to be on the table.
It may be politically impractical, but if so, it is only slightly more politically impractical than banning assault weapons.
I mean, recall that in 2013, when Democrats held the Senate, they were only able to muster 40 votes for banning assault weapons.
So that's a pretty uphill climb, too.
And the last time we had an assault weapons ban on the books, its impact on American crime was indetectable.
So I think we have to really not just confine ourselves to restrictions on guns as the only possible way to make progress on these issues.
And, you know, you bring up the assault weapons ban, because this is just another example of language being so twisted, of euphemisms being used to obscure reality.
I sent out a tweet the other day with, you know, that little clapping emoji, and it said, assault rifles are already banned.
The AR-15 is not an assault rifle.
The reason we don't let Democrats write our gun laws is they don't know anything about firearms.
But the media breathlessly use these euphemisms.
They breathlessly mislead.
And, you know, you saw this last night, CNN's hour-long anti-gun hate fest.
And one question that they allowed last night was from one of these kids to Senator Rubio.
He said, Senator Rubio, it's hard to look at you and not look down the barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nicholas Cruz, but you're here.
This line comparing Senator Rubio to a mass murderer.
Adults around him, of course, they're the ones really responsible.
This kid is traumatized, and they're exploiting this traumatized kid to hurl vile accusations at Republicans and supporters of the U.S. Constitution.
One student now is accusing CNN of trying to get him to read a scripted question.
And all the meanwhile, Jake Tapper is sitting there doing nothing with that classic Jake Tapper look on his face, allowing this calumny after calumny to be hurled at people like Rubio.
Do you think CNN... Is guilty of journalistic malpractice for the stunts that it has been pulling since this shooting?
Well, I think, first of all, your question points out the truth, which is it's not just this town hall.
My next column for Bloomberg, which we'll be posting this afternoon, is about the way CNN has just become a full-fledged advocacy network throughout all of the media that it commands, the network, its Twitter feed, its website.
They've all been all in for gun control.
What they did in this town hall is give supporters of gun rights an impossible choice.
Either they stay away, like Governor Rick Scott, Republican governor of Florida, and everyone calls him a coward, or they show up and get called a murderer, and they get called a murderer by kids who, just by the logic of the situation, you can't really respond to.
So whatever value that town hall served, it was not journalistic value.
That's a great point.
I suppose we can't accuse them of journalistic malpractice because they aren't journalists anymore.
They're a communication wing of the Democrat Party.
And it appears to me, this might sound hyperbolic, but I'm happy to do it in this climate where CNN is exploiting these kids.
They're using them like human shields.
Because one cannot criticize a traumatized child.
So they hold them up there.
They push their incoherent gun control suggestions, suggestions which they're proposing that would have in no way stopped these attacks and these massacres.
And then they hold the kids up there because we can't possibly shoot at them.
Now, there have been some reform proposals from the right.
President Trump has proposed allowing teachers who wish to carry firearms to carry firearms.
Here he is doing just that.
It only works where you have people very adept at using firearms, of which you have many.
And it would be teachers and coaches.
If the coach had a firearm in his locker when he ran at this guy, that coach was very brave.
Saved a lot of lives, I suspect.
But if he had a firearm, he wouldn't have had a run.
He would have shot, and that would have been the end of it.
And this would only be, obviously, for people that are very adept at handling a gun.
And it would be, it's called concealed carry, where a teacher would have a concealed gun on them.
They'd go for special training and they would be there and you would no longer have a gun-free zone.
Gun-free zone to a maniac because they're all cowards.
A gun-free zone is let's go in and let's attack.
Now, the Crime Prevention Research Center is accusing Mike Bloomberg's group, Everytown, of cooking up false gun statistics, which isn't terribly surprising.
Mike Bloomberg has a group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the most ridiculously named organization in the country, as if there were a group, Mayors for Illegal Guns.
Mayors for illegal, mayors for breaking the law.
But they have concluded, the Crime Prevention Research Center has concluded that 98% of all mass shootings occur in gun-free zones.
Why would anyone oppose President Trump's proposal?
So, I think that there are people who have concerns that they'll just make the situation worse.
They'll be, you know, free fire.
You'll have a disgruntled teacher who starts shooting people up, that kind of thing.
I think it's a reasonable proposal, myself.
I think that if you're talking about teachers who have concealed carry permits in their state, take those to school and modifying the Gunfree's own laws to make that possible.
It doesn't seem crazy to me.
But, you know, it's another one of those things where we should debate it without hysteria.
And we also shouldn't have an expectation, well, this is going to finally solve everything any more than we should have the expectation that getting rid of the assault weapon, you know, banning assault weapons is going to be this huge game changer in American life.
Of course.
And, you know, the imagination of man's heart is evil from the beginning.
So you obviously see these utopian quests to say, not one more, not one more of these shootings.
I hate to break it to you.
It's a sad fact of reality.
There will be one more.
There will be more than one more.
Now, getting back to one of your suggestions in the column today, the gun violence restraining order.
There have been some versions of this legislation enacted in California and Washington, as Reason.com pointed out yesterday.
And there are some real worries here, I think, about civil liberties being infringed upon.
Could you explain a little bit the gun violence restraining order and maybe respond to some of the concerns that just about anybody who wants to deprive you of a civil right could do so because...
Right.
is terribly respected, be it on campus or at the workplace or anywhere else.
So I think you're probably referring to Jacob Sollum's article on Reason, where he is pointing out some of the drawbacks of some of the existing laws here.
He thinks they don't sufficiently protect due process.
And that may be right.
I mean, and so I think the answer there is to try to craft a law that is respectful of due process.
The basic idea is for relatives or people who are close to others who they believe and have reason to believe pose a danger that they could get some kind of temporary restraining order.
to keep them from having access to weapons.
Now, one of the points that Jacob makes in response, if I'm remembering correctly, You read so many things over the course of a day, sometimes you don't have the greatest memory of even things from yesterday.
But he thought that, you know, once you've established a temporary restraining order, it can just be extended.
It can be renewed in some of these states, yeah.
And I gather from other articles I've read that just as an empirical matter, that's not what happens, that they don't tend to get automatically rubber stamp renewed, but that they are typically temporary.
Well, so I do have a couple more questions on this, and even the nature of the debate, how the debate is even being framed, this crisis that we have.
We have to do something.
We're in the middle of a crisis, and conservatives need to give in a little bit on this question.
But before we do that, before we get to that important thing, we have got to talk about Blue Apron.
This is much more important than any national public policy debate.
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Now, of course, look, you know that Ben hasn't paid me a single penny since I won the Donald Trump election bet.
That was the last time I was able to wring any money out of Ben.
One of the benefits of doing this show, of course, is that occasionally they'll give me food so I don't wither away and die.
Although, of course, I do need to start shedding for the wedding.
Blue Apron is wonderful for this.
I kind of assumed...
You know, you'd get the same old meals every so often, and I'd have to yell at sweet little Elisa to cook them and everything, but that isn't the case.
At least the first part's not the case, because they change up their recipes all the time.
So whether, you know, you're not just having burgers for dinner every night.
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You know, I'm a millennial.
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It is the number one fresh ingredient recipe delivery service in the country.
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Blue Apron achieves this by supporting a more sustainable food system.
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Because whenever there's food in my apartment, I just devour it.
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So it needs to be a little bit more sustainable.
You can get three different plans.
The two-person meal plan, that's enough for me, so maybe bump it up a little bit.
Meals that serve two people, they choose from eight new recipes per week with the choice to receive either two or three recipes any week.
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For a gavone, maybe you're going to want a little bit more.
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Choose from four new recipes per week with the choice to receive either two, three, or four recipes any week.
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I read some articles somewhere that wine is really, really healthy for you.
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All right.
Back to that, Ramesh.
And I'm happy to give you that promo code afterward in case you're a little hungry over there on the East Coast.
Getting back to the issue at hand, the much less fun issue than cheddar burgers and pan-seared steak and things like that.
The gun homicide rate sounds great.
It is really good.
I'm glad they're taking over the food stamps program.
Oh my gosh.
Ramesh, we'll have to bring you on sometime to talk about reform conservatism, because there's this great movement on the right called reform conservatism, which the whole premise of which is it isn't the 1980s anymore, and we have to actually propose public policies now that we're in another era.
And that looks like number one on the list that we have to propose to El Presidente, blue apron, to take over the food stamps program.
On this particular issue, gun homicide rate is down 50% since 1993, which was a peak year, but it's down a lot.
And even back over decades, it's down significantly.
Why are we pretending there's a crisis?
CNN is exploiting children every 15 minutes on national television.
But is there any rational reason to view gun homicide as a particular crisis now?
Or to hurry to ban AR-15s, which as we know are involved in just a small fraction of gun deaths each year compared to handguns, which are involved in several multiples more.
Is there any crisis to solve now?
Gun homicides have been declining for years.
We shouldn't be complacent about the gun homicide rate.
But we shouldn't be having a sense of panic either.
It does appear as though the frequency of these mass shooting incidents is picking up.
At least they may be picking up.
The time in between these mass shooting incidents does seem to be declining.
But it's absolutely right.
I do think that people do not sufficiently appreciate how much safer we are than we were just a couple of decades ago.
And it's difficult, too, because the definition of a mass shooting keeps changing.
So a mass shooting could be, according to the DOJ, more than three people killed.
But I think when we hear the term mass shooting, we picture that awful event in Nevada where hundreds of people are being riddled with bullets.
As a matter of political optics, as a matter of publicity campaigns for one particular side of the aisle, these shootings are easily exploited.
They're easily ginned up and used to raise money and try to pass laws.
Is there...
Is there any case in which we should, as everyone is feeling traumatized, as everyone is feeling emotional, as these kids have just seen their classmates be killed, is there any argument that that is the time we should be passing policy?
Or should we always, on both sides of the aisle, take a little breather after these incidents and then write our policy when we've calmed down?
Well, I think one of the reasons the political process that we have in the U.S., Has so much sort of process to it is precisely to force that kind of deliberation and that cooling down.
You know, typically you've got to go through two chambers of a legislature, then you've got to get an executive to sign off.
And all of that gives you more time and more opportunities to reconsider things.
So, yeah, I mean, I think that the danger you're pointing to is real.
And it's one of the reasons we've got this kind of Madisonian system that we do.
I do love that point because sometimes we'll talk about the Federalist, you know, people will write in and ask about the Federalist, and they'll say, what's the point of Congress?
And I always think Congress, as described in the Federalist, is the place to put all of the sociopaths in the country who can fight one another and not try to take over the entire land and take a little while to affect things.
So often, particularly on the left, but I suppose occasionally on the right too, we hear people complaining about congressional obstruction.
We're not getting anything done.
It's taking too long.
It's not fast.
But isn't that the point of the system?
Well, yeah.
I mean, Congress is the first branch of the federal government in the Constitution.
The presidency is only number two, and the judiciary is only number three.
And I think that that does tell you about where the founders thought governing action would be taking place.
That's right.
That's a great point.
That is a great point.
These things are to begin in a deliberative way.
People who are most directly accountable to the people, the representatives who are most directly accountable, and take a little time and go from there and let cooler heads prevail.
Excellent.
Speaking of cooler heads prevailing, how cool is Ramesh?
I really do.
It is the signature of your writing.
You've somehow made it through a fair bit of time in politics and political journalism and not just gone completely off the deep end and get emotional.
At every issue, which is really an excellent part of your writing.
So Ramesh, thank you for being here, Ramesh Panuru.
You can read him at Bloomberg and the National Review and everywhere else on the internet.
Thanks for being here.
We have got to get very quickly to the mailbag.
You're welcome.
Isn't he great?
I love that guy.
We were down in Palm Beach together at that thing I did a week or two ago.
And yeah, he's one of the few people in politics who just keeps emotion completely out of it and always appears to take things pretty coolly and pretty rationally.
So we'll have to bring him back and talk about the many other things because I do get a little riled up when I look at how CNN is exploiting these kids.
You look now, somehow overnight, all of these kids that have been trotted out on television have a gazillion followers on Twitter and little blue check marks, and they're being used by the political left to push an agenda that has nothing to do, that demonstrably would not reduce gun homicide in America.
It's really, really sad to see.
And the adults in their life, everyone from their parents to the heads of CNN, should feel deep and profound shame that they're letting this happen.
It's really, really awful.
And if they can stop it, I think it would not only help American political discourse, but it would really help these kids.
This isn't going to age well.
And these kids are not going to look back on this in 10 or 20 years and say, Oh, gee, thanks, Mom, after I just saw my classmates get mowed down.
Thanks for trotting me out on national television.
Thanks, CNN. Thanks for using me as a pawn in your sick war against Donald Trump.
Thanks so much.
That was really nice of you to use a 16- or 17-year-old kid that way.
Really awful.
I hope there's a moment of introspection for them.
But knowing CNN, there won't be.
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Can we get into the mailbag now?
Can we do that?
Alright, good.
So the first question comes from Jeff.
Question.
I see the eternal truth in that.
But did I miss something here?
Sincerest regards, Jeff.
No, you got it.
That's right.
You got it pretty much.
For those of you who haven't read Genesis recently, Genesis 16 is when Sarai tells her husband Abram, because Sarai can't bear a child, she tells her husband Abram to take her maid in and get a little frisky with her, and then he can have a child through her.
So Abram goes and does that, and then Sarai starts yelling at him and saying, And this is very bad.
You say, well, I just did exactly what you told me to do.
Why are you getting so angry?
This is a tale as old as time.
And this gets to a bigger point in Genesis.
You see this all the time now on the left on college campuses among the lightly educated who are smarter than your average knucklehead but not much.
And they'll say, oh, you don't believe those fairy tales in Genesis.
You don't believe those ridiculous fables.
That can't explain anything about our background and our history.
And I think, well, what's a better explanation?
You show me a better one.
You show me a text that better describes the human condition more honestly, more brutally, more predictably than Genesis.
There's a good commentary on Genesis by Leon Cass, the humanist out of UChicago, that came out a little while ago called The Beginning of Wisdom.
And it's a really readable way of getting into Genesis.
If you're not terribly religious and don't think about these things all the time, and even if you are, it's a really good philosophical way to get in and realize how profound Genesis is.
How when you're dealing with Genesis, you're dealing with probably the greatest text ever composed by humans.
A really, really good...
This issue of evolution and things like that, they say, well, you don't really believe we came from Adam and Eve, do we?
And I was interviewed last week.
Someone asked me about this.
And they said, do you believe in evolution or Adam and Eve or this or that?
And I said, well, I don't know.
I suppose some version of evolution could be true.
But what I do know...
And I do know that the Bible isn't literal, because the word literal can't describe it, right?
The word literal means not symbolic, but literally refers to letters, which are symbols, so you get into a little trouble there.
Nobody thinks that Job is literal.
We don't think that it's journalism, that someone's writing down a conversation between God and Satan.
We don't think that...
The Song of Solomon is a history or some journalistic account.
We certainly know that.
So obviously there are genres in the Bible.
We know that Christ himself doesn't always speak literally as much as we can use that word because he speaks parabolically.
Many times he uses parables.
So we know that already exists in the Bible.
One thing I do know, though, is that the accounting of human nature in Genesis...
is the best accounting of human nature.
Whatever that means, what we can glean from our origins, the account in Genesis, is much more profound and much more accurate than any new anthropological account that someone will dig up and that will be revised in a few years.
I think that's a really good way of looking at it.
But yeah, if you see something predicted in Genesis, if you see something described in Genesis, know that it is part of the eternal human nature.
And that can be pretty terrifying.
Okay, do we have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube?
Do we have to do it?
Oh, we got some good mailbag questions today, and we're running a little late on time.
So, okay, I'm sorry.
If you are on YouTube, you're a liar.
You're being censored.
If you're on Facebook, make sure to go to dailywire.com right now.
Why?
Well, you'll get me.
You get the Andrew Klavan show.
You get the Ben Shapiro show.
You will get the conversation next time with Ben if he survives in the swamp.
He's at CPAC right now, so if he makes it back here, he'll do the conversation.
Otherwise, I'm going to have to strip down to my skimmies and put on a smoking jacket again.
Don't let that happen.
But the real thing you get is the leftist here's Tumblr.
And I've got to tell you, I don't think CNN has been exploiting these kids.
It isn't a good look not only for them.
It's not a good look for the left.
They're not going to come out looking nice in this.
I think the majority of people in this country think it's so reckless and irresponsible and despicable what is being done to those kids.
It isn't going to help them try to push their gun-grabbing laws.
When that becomes clear, you're going to need this.
You're going to need to keep your Second Amendment rights in this hand.
You're going to need to keep your leftist years tumbler in this hand.
They go together like love and marriage, like a horse and carriage.
You're going to want to make sure you have both.
You can only get that at dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
Next question from Andy.
Hey, MK, how do I come out of the Trump closet to my friends and family?
Are you in Trump's closet?
Let him, let him out of here, President.
He, no, I understand what you're saying.
I had to do it too.
As Peter Thiel said, it was harder for him to come out as a Trump supporter than gay.
My dad is a massive liberal and is pretty far left, and my mom is a neocon cuck-servative.
And everyone I know, bar a few friends, thinks Trump is a sexist, racist, etc.
What do you propose I do?
Thanks.
First of all, excellent use of language.
It was really good.
This ties into another question that we got on.
I think, yeah, it's the next question.
We got another one from Noah.
He said, Michael, I've been losing more and more relationships because I've been more vocal about my conservative views.
I'm not going to lie, it's pretty heartbreaking.
How do I deal with this?
Thanks, Noah.
Tough questions.
To the first question, the one from Andy, you have to do it boldly.
If you're going to come out and say, this is how I view the world and this is what I think about politics, do it boldly.
Don't be mealy-mouthed about it like those cuck-servatives to use your language.
Don't be mealy-mouthed about it because you have nothing to apologize for.
If you have something to apologize for, if you think there's something shameful about supporting one politician over another, then maybe you shouldn't support that politician.
I think it's shameful if there's something to apologize for.
But I don't think there's anything to apologize for.
I don't think that supporting Donald Trump makes one racist or sexist or yada, yada, yada, yada at all.
I think it's much better.
I think it's not supporting President Trump at this point.
You have a lot more explaining and a lot more apologizing to do.
And so if that's your rule, just do it boldly.
Come what may, you have to say, look, this is what I think.
This is how I view the world.
I'm not going to pretend I view it some other way.
And if you are going to be so offended by my stating how I view the world, and you're going to become emotional about it, maybe it's you who doesn't have the right view of things.
You don't have to go out there and start screaming and yelling and try to get people to...
To beat people into submission and agreeing with how you see the world.
But I find if you just state your opinion clearly and are a normal person and a rational person about it, you're going to come off much better than the people who are screaming and yelling and accusing you of all sorts of calumny.
So that's the first part.
Second part is you're going to lose friends.
You are going to lose friends for it.
And that's rough.
I mean, as...
Who wrote that second one?
Noah wrote that.
Look, I've seen this.
I remember...
At various points in my life, when I've been relatively more quiet on politics, I'm more broadly liked.
That just goes without saying.
Dick Cheney was asked, it was upsetting to him that people called him Darth Vader.
And he said, if I wanted to be loved, I'd be a movie star.
But sometimes it's more important to be effective than to be loved.
And that's very true.
In politics, especially at a time like this, you're going to be reviled by at least a quarter of the population.
I don't think it's fully half, but at least a quarter of the population.
If you live in a place like mine, you're committing the heresy of voting for any Republican.
In these days, we'll make you reviled, possibly by a majority of people.
You just have to deal with that.
You have to ask yourself, what's more important to you?
If it's more important for you to be loved, not really for who you are and what you think, but if some artificial version of yourself and your views that you're putting out there, if it's more important for that to be loved, then you should be a movie star and you should keep your mouth shut about politics.
If you think it's more important to be effective and to deal in reality and to state your views authentically and honestly and keep your integrity in that way, clearly I'm leading you toward one answer or the other.
Then you have to be prepared to take bullets for that.
You have to be prepared to take the hits that are going to come in public discourse.
But I don't know.
I think that's fine.
It gives you a thick skin, first of all, which is important.
And it will make you intellectually stronger because when you are up against people who so disagree with you and are constantly throwing out statistics and insults at you all day, you'll either change your views a little bit, depending on if those...
Points are correct, or you'll at the very least know how to respond to them and learn more about what you think and be able to convince more people.
That's really what I recommend, but know that there's a cost.
It doesn't come free.
We like to get free things these days.
There's no such thing as a free lunch unless you watch this show and subscribe to Blue Apron.
But other than that, in real life, beyond this show, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and you've got to be willing to take that and be aware of that.
And by the way, this view of reality, where we have to take some things that we're uncomfortable with, not things that we are morally opposed to, but things that we don't love it, we're a little uncomfortable, that's how the world works.
And I think there are arguments on the right.
There are a lot of people who are much more comfortable swilling Chardonnay and saying, oh yes, isn't Trump just so awful?
I mean, I love the tax reform and the deregulation and our increased stature on a national stage and moving the Israel embassy to Jerusalem and all of the wonderful proposals that are on the docket right now, Oh, I like the idea that maybe we'll have an infrastructure bill.
If we have to have one, it won't be wild, reckless spending like under the Obama administration.
I like the idea that we might have entitlement reform.
I like all these things.
But I just hate Trump.
Oh, he's just so yucky.
And the tweets, right?
You can't have that.
All value is enfleshed.
The only times that values can make any difference in the world is when people do them and people affect them.
And so you've got to take the hits for that too.
That's just the way the world works.
We live in time and space and reality is not a bad thing.
Reality is all right.
Just, you know, don't be afraid of it.
From Christopher.
Dear Holy Roman Emperor Knowles.
Finally, finally someone understands.
They see the real me.
King of trolls and master of lulls.
Leftists control practically everything.
Based on your understanding of the near-Soviet level of subversion the previous administration was willing to use against political rivals and the building rage of those who still control our organs of communication and technology, do you think ordinary Americans ought to be in prep mode for a major leftist media tech war in the near future?
P.S. Learning Esperanto to troll a Soros wedding?
Savage.
Thanks.
It is already happening.
The tech war is already happening.
It's been happening slowly for years and in a really concerted way by the giants for a few months.
I mean, it is happening now.
I don't know.
I make a little joke at the end of the show when I sign off from Facebook because I say, "You're not watching on YouTube.
They're censoring us." They really are censoring us.
I can't tell you what is happening.
I did an interview with The Guardian last week or two weeks ago about Peter Thiel moving down here.
Peter Thiel is leaving Silicon Valley because it's a one-party town, and they are waging war on conservatives right now.
They are censoring us on Google.
They are censoring us on YouTube.
They are subsidizing left-wing channels.
They are privileging left-wing channels and dinging us for the same things that they let them get away with.
It is happening.
It's too bad we don't have a conservative YouTube.
The real issue now is they won't come out and be honest and say we're targeting conservatives.
So instead, all they do, there are many people that work at these organizations, and their whole job is just to string us along and obfuscate and say, oh, we don't know what's, oh, I wonder why that happened.
Oh, yeah, I don't know.
Let's do another call in three weeks or something like that.
It is happening.
And if they came out and they said we're not going to allow conservatives on, then we would have grounds to build our own platform And we could maybe convince some more people to do it.
But look, Facebook is the largest publisher in the history of the world and yet it's not regulated at all as a publisher.
And now they say we're just a social network.
They're not a social network.
They control what's in your news feed.
They have algorithms that determines what you see.
It isn't just an open platform.
And so conservatives should be wary of government regulations, of course, but never say never.
That's a very simplistic view of the world.
And we at least need a level playing field.
So if these places are going to be the largest publishers in the history of the world, if they are going to have practical monopolies over their spaces, we at least need to regulate these publishers as we regulate other publishers, We at least need an even playing field.
And conservatives should get behind that.
Prager University is suing Google right now because they're censoring Dennis Prager talking about the Ten Commandments.
That is absolutely fine.
And we need to flex our muscle a little bit in this country or they're going to run us over.
They have declared war and if we pretend that it's not happening, we're just going to get run over.
Okay.
Next question from Anthony Melillo.
Hey, King Knowles, I'm a big fan.
I recently got into an argument with my brother about whether or not creationism and evolution can coexist.
Do you believe these two ideas work?
If so, how?
As St.
Augustine pointed out, Scripture tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.
I certainly think they can work perfectly well.
There are obviously, this was pointed out during the Scopes Monkey trial, there are some issues with saying that, with referring to days before the creation of the sun.
Because obviously the way that we measure a day is by the circling of the Earth around the sun.
So clearly this is being written in many levels of metaphor.
There is a wonderful argument made by the analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga, which says that if evolution is true, if natural selection is true, then naturalism can't be true.
That the material world without God can't be true.
And it's a really clever argument.
You should go and read it.
But one reason that these two things can go together is...
C.S. Lewis said that two things can go together.
G.K. Chesterton said that two things can go together.
Is that...
We must have faculties of reason.
So if everything is just totally material, if there are no ideas, no forms, there's no metaphysical world, then we can't rely on our faculties of reason to tell us the truth.
We can rely on our faculties of reason to tell us things that will be advantageous to us and help us out of situations.
But we can't rely on them to tell us the truth, including our own thoughts about natural selection and about the creation of the world.
So I would always urge caution on these things.
I don't think that they're in conflict at all.
And the church never thought they were in conflict until very recently, until the left started telling us they were in conflict.
I wouldn't get too carried away on either aspect of it, either on the evolution side, because evolutionary science is constantly changing, or on the theological side, because, as I said, Augustine said it very well, Scripture tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.
From James Lawler.
From James Salutan Knowles, great knower of things.
Whenever I hear someone is being accused of being racist now, or some view is racist, or talk about institutional racism, I'm feeling more like that word no longer means what it should.
It used to be that being called a racist was a fairly damning indictment of someone's character.
However, I'm now reminded of the boy who cried wolf whenever I hear this.
Not being content with eroding the meaning of the word truth, has the left completely eroded the meaning and impact of terms like racist now?
Thank you, James.
Yeah, they have.
Don't worry at all.
When they call you a racist, it doesn't matter.
It means you won the argument, is what it means when a lefty calls you a racist.
That said, racism is a thing.
Racism, just because they portray everyone as being racist, doesn't mean that we should...
Pretend that racism doesn't exist and racial discrimination doesn't exist and we should just ignore that.
It is a thing.
Racism is usually based on a tenuous biological musing or musings made up by atheists who are obsessed with pop psychology.
You see this on the godless right.
all of the guys like Richard Spencer or Jared Taylor who pretend to defend Western civilization but don't actually embody what has animated Western civilization.
Whenever you see people talking about pop psychology or evolutionary psychology or talking about racial differences and their implications for public policy, take it with a grain of salt.
I think people cherry picking evidence and not really thinking that deeply, people who aren't geneticists, people who aren't biologists, trying to draw conclusions because it's fun and they read some pop science article somewhere.
If we're going to demand serious contemplation of things, we should demand it across the board.
And don't forget, the thing that animates the West is the God in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free nor male nor female for all to one in Christ Jesus.
That's what makes up Christendom.
And if you're going to try to take the Christ out of Christendom, you're going to end up with a hellish, decadent husk of a civilization.
Maybe that's where we are.
Do we have time for one more?
Yep.
Okay, we have time.
Man, we have so many more to get to today.
Sorry, guys.
You're going to have to save them for the conversation.
Oh, gosh.
Okay, I'm going to do two more.
I don't even care what you say.
So, this next one comes from Brett.
Michael, what are a few of your favorite comedy movies?
The greatest comedy movie of all time is Me, Myself, and Irene.
That's it.
That's enough.
Airplane's also good, too.
I love The Jerk with Steve Martin.
But that's it.
Those are phenomenal movies.
And me, myself, and Irene is deeply underrated.
We'll have to close on this one, even though we have so many more good questions.
This is very frustrating.
From Emily.
Dear Captain Kofefe, you mentioned that donating to political campaigns is an extension of free speech.
Well, I think you should be able to do what you want with your own money.
I don't see it as an extension of free speech.
I don't understand the problem with limiting campaign spending, so long as everyone is limited to the same amount.
Can you explain your views on this a little bit more?
Thanks.
Love the show.
Yeah, you bet.
If I want to make a sign that says, vote for Johnny for city council, that costs money to do that.
It isn't free.
You have to buy the materials to do that.
You have to put them up somewhere.
Any use of my political speech in a campaign will involve some kind of money.
And if I really think, if good old Johnny is running for city council against wicked Mr.
Nazi...
I don't want to be limited.
I don't think that Wicked Mr.
Nazi and Good Boy Johnny should receive the same amount of money to run their campaigns.
I think there will be a clear expression of enthusiasm by who donates to these things.
And plus, we also know that money doesn't decide elections.
Donald Trump was outspent two to one.
He still won an electoral landslide.
There was an important case that was filed by James Buckley, the United States Senator.
From the Conservative Party and also the brother of Bill Buckley.
That helped to determine this.
But it wasn't just Bill Buckley who luckily won one of these first cases for free expression and political speech, which ultimately culminated in Citizens United.
But it was signed onto by the 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Libertarian Party, and numerous other plaintiffs.
The only people who oppose this sort of thing is Hillary Clinton.
So when you've got the American Civil Liberties Union, or rather the New York Civil Liberties Union, Eugene McCarthy, the Democrat, James Buckley, a conservative, the conservative union, the Peace and Freedom Party, we have all of them agreeing that we need more political speech, and then you've got Hillary Clinton disagreeing.
It's a good case, and it's a good bet that the former is going to be right, because we live in space and time, and because in order to do things that requires money, you shouldn't be limiting that.
Whenever you say you can only donate 50 bucks, then that means you can only have this ad run for this candidate.
And it unfairly will create certain parodies when Johnny Goodboy running for city council should probably have some more enthusiasm than Mr.
Nazi Man running for city council.
Okay, we have so much more to get to, but we don't have time.
Sorry, guys, we're going to talk about Christianity, Catholicism, Mormonism, and what type of hair product I use, but we'll just have to save that for next week.
That is the show Try to Survive the Weekend.
I am Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
I'll see you on Monday.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.
