Ep. 121 - Democrats Encourage Students To Cut Class
Students across the country are cutting class today, and the mainstream media couldn’t be happier! We will discuss the national student walkout to infringe on our civil rights in the broader context of the ignoble legacy of student activism in America. Then the most important takeaways from the special election last night in Pennsylvania and why I’m happy the Democrat won. Finally, I defend United Airlines after a puppy died on one of their flights.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Students across the country are cutting class today and the mainstream media couldn't be happier.
Finally, finally, students are cutting class.
This is big.
We will discuss the National Student Walkout to infringe on our civil rights in the broader context of the awful legacy of student activism in America.
Then, the most important takeaways from the special election last night in Pennsylvania, and why, basically, I'm happy the Democrat won.
Finally, I will defend United Airlines after a puppy died on one of their flights.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
That is a lot for one show.
This is going to be a big show.
Going after cute kids, applauding a Democrat victory, and defending dead puppies.
That is a lot even for me.
But we have to do it.
What can we do?
First, before we do that, I have to talk about something.
Because, you know, we work out our brains on this show.
We work it out.
We catch a lot of cultural news and political news, but you've got to work out your body too.
Our founding fathers knew this.
Jefferson wrote about this all the time.
The ancient Greeks knew this.
The wisest people in history knew you need to have a strong body.
Even our Lord himself was a carpenter, a strong guy, because you can't just work out your You've got to work out your body.
This is a lesson that I occasionally forget, but I'll try to remember it because we have a wonderful sponsor, which is Beachbody On Demand.
They help us keep the lights on.
That's a good in and of itself.
But also, they are an excellent new company that will help you work out, and it's a very 2018 way to do it.
I don't like to do a lot of old-fashioned things like get up or go to the store or join a gym.
I don't do that.
I am a millennial.
I like to sit in my chair and that's it.
And if I'm going to work out, it better be close to my chair or my couch.
Beachbody On Demand does all of this.
It is an online fitness streaming service that gives you unlimited access to a wide variety of highly effective, world-class workouts personalized to meet your needs.
So you know every year, I mean, we're now in March, so there's no way you're doing any of your New Year's resolutions.
But every year you join a gym and then you pay whatever it is, 50 bucks a month or something, and then you don't go.
You go like twice and...
If you join Equinox, I think it's like $1,000 a day or something.
But no one actually goes.
They stop going after a while.
You've got to make a workout convenient, and then you can keep up with it.
Beachbody On Demand does exactly that.
Beachbody On Demand also includes extensive nutritional content, all proven to help people achieve their health and fitness goals.
I went through a period one time in my life where I did work out a fair bit, and I had to beef up for a movie that never even shot.
But one thing I learned from that is if you don't do the nutritional aspect, you might as well not work out.
You've got the two go hand in hand.
You're not going to see results.
Luckily, Beachbody On Demand has all of them.
It's the total package to help you become the total package this year.
I'm partial to P90X, really, just because Paul Ryan did that, and if he had won the vice presidency in 2012, he would have been VP90X. So that's a great one.
There are a lot of really good ones, though, and some take a little less time, some take more time, some need more equipment, some you can do it just on your own.
It's really tailored to whatever you want to do.
Beachbody On Demand is super convenient.
It's accessible on your computer, your web-enabled TV, tablet, smartphone, or any other web-enabled device.
You don't need to go to a gym or schedule a class.
Some people do workout classes.
Come on, guys.
It's 2018.
You do you, man.
If you're traveling, you can do the workouts in your hotel room.
If you don't have any time, some of the workouts are 10 minutes.
Some of them are up to an hour.
Some of them are 10 minutes.
Take a guess at which one I do.
Beachbody On Demand has programs for any fitness level, so you don't need to be a beefcake like little old me.
You can also be kind of new to all of this.
They have cardio, weight training, yoga, low impact, even dance.
Even that's the one I'm good at.
There are over 600 different workouts you can sort by type of workout or your favorite trainer.
It has all of that nutritional help.
Abs are made in the kitchen, as I think we all know.
Abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym, so you can do that.
And it's unbelievably affordable.
Don't say I never did nothing for you.
You can try this amazing program.
All 600 workouts and the nutritional information, how much?
How much would you pay for that?
Like a million dollars?
Try for free.
You can do it for free.
Don't be a dummy.
Take advantage of this and help me keep the lights on.
Plus your annual subscription is cheaper than a gym membership.
You need to give it a try.
Right now, my listeners will get a free trial membership, but you can't go to a website.
You've got to do this kind of the cool way, which is you text MKS to 303030.
It's easy to remember.
Text MKS to 303030.
You'll get full access to the entire platform for free.
All the workouts and nutritional information for free.
MKS to 303030.
Okay, today is a national day.
It is a national day, a big day.
It's not just Pi Day.
It's also Pi Day, 3.14.
But it's a big national activist national day.
How do I know that?
Because the mainstream media told me.
Ahead of a planned student walkout on Wednesday.
A nationwide student walkout is planned later this week for stricter gun laws.
Schools around the country are bracing for a series of student walkouts to protest gun violence.
A student walkout is scheduled for 10 a.m.
on Wednesday across the country.
Schools in all 50 states bracing for protests.
Not more silence and gun violence!
Did you hear that, students?
Did you catch that?
10 a.m.
on Wednesday.
And it's in all 50 states, so don't worry, we're going to repeat this on every news program all day until you realize and actually go out there and cut class.
The mainstream media always do this.
The mainstream media stoke the flames of these protests to such a degree, they basically create them.
They didn't even just say there's, you know, on Facebook they're talking about a walkout.
They actually said it's going to be at this time, and don't worry if you're in Mississippi or New York, it's going to be all over this time, you've got to do it.
You know, there's another kid in all of this.
There's another one of these teenagers, a friend of the show.
We brought him on to talk about, not to talk about guns, but to talk about the media, Kyle Kashov.
And he has, I gotta say, I'm not for high school kids going around and being used as political pawns or anything, but Kyle, much more than any of his classmates, has really comported himself respectfully.
He's been respectful to his elders, to elected people.
He's been kind of serious.
He hasn't been just relentlessly attacking one politician or another politician.
There were a lot of photos.
I guess he had meetings with everybody, Chuck Schumer, President Trump in the Oval Office.
That is actually something really spectacular.
We've never seen that with student activism recently, and that doesn't get covered.
That's not what gets covered on TV, because it doesn't push the agenda.
The mainstream media have to publicize this left-wing administration, so really they effectively create it.
Notice, too, they publicize it as a national event.
So what happens?
It becomes a national event.
If they publicized it as a New York event, it'd be a New York event.
But if they publicized it as a national event, then they have to sell it, though.
So they turn up the emotion and they conflate lots of different, unconnected stories of trauma to push their entirely unconnected gun-grabbing legislation.
Here it is.
Teachers say some even had personal stories to tell about the toll of gun violence.
Every year, somebody's cousin, somebody's dad, somebody's aunt.
And Trump, you need to do something about this because we lost so many people from 2017 and 18.
Because without guns, there ain't gonna be no more killing and stuff like that.
But with guns, there's gonna be a lot more killing because people don't know how to control themselves with guns and they act foolish with them.
Students also discussed ways to frame their message during the planned walkout on Wednesday to have the strongest impact on the gun control debate.
To frame their message.
I don't know if you saw in that video, there's a teacher hovering over the kid, making sure the kid writes the correct thing on the construction paper, you know, anti-Trump, we need more gun control or whatever.
But did you catch even the words that they had these kids say?
At the beginning, that student said, you know, somebody's aunt got killed, somebody's father gets killed from guns.
I don't think they got killed at schools.
I don't think that's about school shootings anymore.
I think you're talking about bad neighborhoods and criminals killing people.
That has nothing to do with keeping schools safe.
That has nothing to do with school shootings.
So they're trying to lump this into all guns, all gun crime.
But of course, school shootings have been on the decline for 25 years, 30 years.
We know that mass shootings have been on the decline for 25 or 30 years.
We know that most gun deaths, gun crime, are suicides by middle-aged men.
Then you see that other student say, Trump, you need to do something.
What does Trump need to do?
How is Donald Trump responsible for these shootings?
We know that the shooting in Florida was caused in no small part because that county led the nation in pushing a left-wing policy for student discipline.
In fact, the Obama administration adopted the policy that was pioneered by that school district, by Broward County.
And that district was less discipline.
Don't put the kid in touch with the cops.
Don't just ignore.
Brush it under the rug.
That's actually a policy that Donald Trump opposes.
So really, we should have been seeing this with, Barack Obama, do something.
Barack Obama, you need to do something.
But of course we don't see that.
That doesn't feed the narrative.
It's not like there weren't school shootings during the Obama administration, but that doesn't match the narrative.
Now Trump is president, so now we need, Trump, you need to do something.
Then the final statement from that student said, without guns there won't be more killing.
Guns are a relatively new invention in world history.
They haven't been around forever.
Right now I'm reading the book of Joshua and the Bible.
I'm doing the Bible in a year.
I'm no expert.
I'm not a credentialed historian.
I think there was killing before guns.
I think the imagination of man's heart is evil from the beginning.
I suspect that.
So that isn't true.
And places where these gun bans have been tried, by the way, that hasn't necessarily reduced homicides and it hasn't necessarily reduced crime, certainly.
And also, gun bans are basically impossible.
Even in Australia, where they had the most sweeping gun ban, two-thirds of people kept their guns.
In America, there are more guns than people in the United States.
So...
To say without guns there won't be more killing, that's ridiculous.
Also, these rifles that people are trying to ban account for virtually no deaths each year, particularly compared to knives, particularly compared to hands and feet, and certainly compared to handguns.
So if we're talking about blanket ban of all guns, that's one thing.
But notice how we're getting conflated.
Everything is getting conflated here.
Stop school shootings, ban AR-15s for some reason.
It's Donald Trump's fault.
We need to ban all guns, no guns.
It's so blurry, but that's what the media want.
What is the endgame here for the media?
Because they have all these different purported goals.
What do the media really want out of all of this?
Michael, take it away.
There's going to be a massive...
Student walkout Friday afternoon.
Tomorrow in Indiana, 20,000 people you mentioned there.
Hopefully more at the state capitol.
This has to continue day after day after day.
And these governors are going to have to step down.
They're going to be recalled.
They're going to be impeached.
They've broken the law.
There's no way they can get away with this.
How does it make a difference for people to protest?
How does it make a difference that student walkout tonight in Madison?
How does it translate into making a difference?
It's already made a difference.
Look at the change.
Just in the polls you cited.
Just in one month, the public opinion of the governor of Wisconsin, of the legislature, of our support for unions and their rights, everything has turned in favor of the working people.
And it's been because the people in Madison, the people of Wisconsin, have stood up and have been there every single day.
And they've helped to turn people around on this.
The American people have woken up I gotta tell you, this is going to be another aspect of the show.
I'll compliment Michael Moore and Rachel Maddow.
At least they're honest.
At least Moore and Maddow are honest here.
And you notice this with a few of them.
Moore predicted that Trump would win, and he kind of saw why.
And Rachel Maddow, compared to her colleagues at MSNBC, is pretty upfront about her views and is pretty honest about what she wants.
This is all about electing Democrats and hurting Republicans.
That's what it's about.
That's what the national student cutting class is about.
That's what all of the media coverage is about.
This is why none of these things happened during the Obama administration.
This is about electing Democrats and hurting Republicans.
It's not about kids.
It's not about crime statistics.
It's not about murders.
It's not even about guns.
It's about pushing their political agenda, of which guns play only a small role.
Oh, there's so much more to talk about.
You know, before we talk about that, I get so overwhelmed with all these bad things like electing Democrats and hurting Republicans.
I forget.
Sometimes we've got to talk about good things.
And one of the good things we need to talk about is Thrive Market.
I really like Thrive Market, and I use their products all the time.
It's because Thrive Market makes it so, so easy to save money, get excellent quality groceries, and not have to leave your couch when you do it.
Do the math.
You buy your family $500 worth of organic groceries in one month, and then you can pay only $200 for them.
Imagine that.
What's the secret weapon?
Thrivemarket.com, the largest online store in the country, selling exclusively non-GMO organic groceries at guaranteed savings, up to 50% off retail prices.
Excuse me.
In my bachelor days, before finding sweet little Elisa, I was only eating GMOs.
I'd see a big pile of GMOs.
I'd just dip my face into it, just rummage around like a pig in muck.
But now, I try to treat myself a little better, work out a little bit, try to eat better food, and...
The Thrive Market is a wonderful way to do it.
Instead of paying $16 for your favorite almond butter at the store, you can pay only $11 on Thrive Market.
Instead of $25 for extra virgin olive oil.
Being Italian, I always make sure to spend on extra virgin olive oil.
I don't want any of that yellow stuff that's gross and doesn't go well with pasta.
Instead of that, you can pay only $15 for it on Thrive Market.
You get much lower rates.
How is that?
They have all the organic brands you love and many you can't find in stores, plus non-toxic home goods, cleaning supplies, all-natural bath and beauty products.
If you ever want to pamper yourself, get a nice little bath product.
Orders shipped within two days and delivered to your door.
They cut out the middleman, they sell it right to you.
Get started today, and oh man, I'm like Santa Claus today.
You get 25% off your first purchase at thrivemarket.com slash michael.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's what all of these protests are about, electing Democrats over Republicans.
This is exactly the same thing as amnesty for illegal aliens.
I promise you, if illegal aliens were coming across the border right now and they were identifying three times to 8.75 times Republican over Democrat, there would be deportation trains being commandeered by Democrats.
They would be the engineers saying, choo-choo, sending them right back across.
How do I know that?
Because they do that with Cubans.
Cuban refugees tend to vote for Republicans over Democrats because they see what socialism does and their lives have been ruined by it and their families have been killed and tortured and oppressed by it.
So they tend to vote for Republicans.
And what did Barack Obama do?
He repealed the wet foot, dry foot policy.
There was a policy in the United States whereby if Cuban refugees came over and made it to the United States shores, they would be legal here.
They wouldn't be deported.
Obama got rid of that.
Why?
Well, because it comes, why is a Cuban worth less than a Honduran?
Why does a Cuban national have to be deported back immediately, but a Honduran national gets to stay and is a dreamer and needs a path to citizenship and all of that?
It's because of a very cynical political calculation.
It's sad, but it's true.
If this situation were reversed, you would see opposite feelings on this.
But that's the Democrat.
They have their electoral strategy.
They actually released it in a memo.
They said amnesty is necessary for our electoral viability.
It is always a cynical calculation when it comes to these big national events.
This is the reason we don't let 16-year-olds vote.
It's this whole thing about, we gotta listen to the kids out of the mouth of babes, we gotta listen to kids.
No, no, we don't.
The kids don't know anything.
That's why we don't let them vote.
They don't know anything.
They're students.
They're students because they don't know things, and then hopefully by the end of being students, they will know things.
They learn things.
That isn't necessarily the case in our current educational system, even at some of the best schools in the country, but that is the idea.
They don't know anything.
Democrats want to lower the voting age because they thrive on ignorance and Democrat candidates thrive on ignorance.
Last March, California Democrats proposed ACA 10 to lower the voting age to 17.
Why is that?
Democrat Assemblyman Evan Lowe said, young people are our future.
All right, I guess.
Young people are young.
Young people are young.
That's really profound.
And so we need to let them vote because they vote for Democrats.
If they voted for Republicans, they'd be trying to raise the voting age to 65, which I'm kind of trying to do.
George Soros is backing this measure through his Open Society Foundation and the Fair Vote Group.
Also, they're pushing for pre-registration starting at 16.
They want 16-year-olds to be able to pre-register to vote.
By the way, that already exists in 20 states and in the District of Columbia.
This sort of activism is so shallow and it's so tawdry and it's so modern.
The trend today on Twitter, I couldn't have written it better.
A short story author couldn't have written it better.
The trend was students stand up.
Hashtag students stand up.
They stand.
They don't learn.
They stand.
They don't read books.
They stand.
They don't go to class.
They stand.
Michael Oakeshott writes about this in Rationalism and Politics.
He writes that the rationalist, he's always standing for something.
He's never moving.
He's never doing anything.
He's not bettering himself.
He's just kind of standing.
Just standing there.
You know, I'm just occupying Wall Street.
Just doo-doo-doo.
Hey, what are you doing?
Nothing.
Just standing.
Just occupying.
This is part and parcel of student activism in the United States and its dreadful history here.
Student activism, from the beginning of it to the end, is riddled with ignorance and kids being used as useful idiots for nefarious American foes.
It began really as a national phenomenon in the 1930s when communists founded the American Youth Congress.
And I'm not talking about small C communists, like your little Marxist professor, really.
I mean, big C communists, like the American Youth Congress received its orders from the Communist Party USA and Comintern, the international communist organization founded and controlled by the Soviet Union.
It had a direct line from Moscow.
The American Youth Congress was among Comintern's most successful front groups, especially in the United States.
The American Youth Congress even attracted the support of Eleanor Roosevelt, unsurprising perhaps to some of us.
The counterculture of the 1960s and 70s was driven by student activism.
The major student activist group at that time was SDS, the Students for a Democratic Society.
It finally disbanded, thankfully, because it blew a lot of stuff up.
But it actually was refounded in 2006, which shows you it's a sign of the times, and there's a new Students for a Democratic Society.
God help us.
The representative group of the new left was the Students for a Democratic Society.
This was really radical and another group of useful idiots for the Soviet Union, This was the beginning of the end for Democrats as a serious, mature political party, by the way.
Because Democrats, you know, there was a kind of liberal consensus.
Democrats and Republicans, they were different, but they were both pro-America.
They both supported Americans.
They both supported American victory in war.
That changed with the new left.
I'm not being hyperbolic here.
The new left actually existed to change that.
So the new left existed to undermine American war efforts.
To diminish American power around the world, to try to hollow out America from within.
That's the new left.
That's when you saw, you know, people talk about the parties switching.
They say, oh, well, you know, the Republicans used to be the good guys and the Democrats used to be the bad guys.
And then one day, around all the time that our parents became of age, then they just switched.
Then they'll just switch.
They say, okay, you'll be a Republican.
I'll be a Democrat.
Now we're going to switch.
But part of that realignment, there was a realignment geographically, too.
A lot of that is because of the new left.
It's where you saw blue dog Democrats break off and say, I'm a Democrat, but I like America.
And this party is so anti-American.
It's so shrill, especially on issues of life.
It's so fanatically in favor of abortion.
I can't be a Democrat anymore.
So you saw people who were a little more socially conservative and people who liked their country and were more patriotic went to the Republican Party.
That's part of the big shift.
It happened in large part because of student activism.
The SDS then gave rise to the Weather Underground, a domestic terror group that tried to overthrow the U.S. government by bombing and murdering a bunch of people in the 70s.
I should be careful with my words here when I say that they murdered a bunch of people.
The group was founded by Barack Obama's mentor, Bill Ayers.
They had a close relationship in Chicago.
Bill Ayers, also a violent communist.
When I say they murdered a bunch of people, I don't mean that they murdered their targets or their adversaries.
Fortunately, the left in the Weather Underground were so incompetent that they ended up just killing their own members.
Because they didn't know how to set off bombs when they were trying to destroy buildings and overthrow the government.
We have to always thank the ignorance and incompetence of the left, because they did blow themselves up a few times.
Not enough, but a few times.
SDS helped lead the Willard Strait Hall takeover at Cornell University in 1969.
This was when armed students came in with guns and just took over Cornell University.
Notice a theme here.
All of the student protests involve walking out or staying out or all in all just putting a stop to learning.
No more learning.
No, we have to destroy buildings.
We have to break down university buildings.
We need to stop people from going to class.
In Cornell, you saw people walking down the hall.
They said, hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.
Hey, hey.
And it's a double entendre.
On the one hand, it's we need to stop teaching people Western civilization.
We need to start teaching them God knows what, communist nonsense.
But on the other, critical theory or something.
On the other hand, it's also saying because we're going to stop teaching it to them, hopefully we can end Western civilization itself.
We can hollow out Western civilization itself and move on to some other utopian dream, some other utopian fantasy.
Coincidentally, a professor of mine in college was at Cornell at the time, Donald Kagan, and he just kept teaching during all the mayhem.
That was his protest.
That's a real protest.
On the National Student Walkout Day, the real protest is to stay in class and listen and learn something and do what you're supposed to do and don't act like a little bratty child.
We've seen other student activism in recent years.
Obviously, we saw the shrieking girl at Yale.
You all remember her.
I can't play that clip again.
It's so devastating.
Like, on the one hand, it's very funny.
On the other hand, it makes me so sad and weep for that institution.
You saw Kony 2012, obviously a really important activist moment.
The Darfur protests, they didn't result in anything, did it?
But students walked out and they, I don't know, they smoked pot in Central Park.
I remember this when I was in high school.
Walkouts over the Iraq war.
I was in middle school during the Iraq war, and I remember there's a walkout of all these middle school students, or a sit-in, or whatever.
These are like 12-year-old kids, 11-year-old kids.
Why did they walk out?
Because they want to cut class.
Kids always want to cut class.
Dummies, what are you doing?
But a 12-year-old doesn't understand war, doesn't understand much of anything.
That's why they're in school, to learn.
But what the left tries to do is just turn up that arrogance, turn up that hubris, turn up that pride, turn down the humility.
And when you do that, it prevents them from learning and it makes you an easier pawn.
If you're ignorant, you're more of a pawn.
They always involve walkouts.
They always involve a stop to learning.
We have so much news to talk about.
You're telling me I've got to sign off first.
That is, oh no.
Today, we've got some really good stuff.
I've got to tell you why I'm basically happy the Democrat won and I have to defend dead puppies.
And you're going to miss all that if you're not at DailyWire.com.
I'm sorry, guys.
This is what happens.
If you're on YouTube...
No, you're not.
If you're on Facebook, go to DailyWire.com right now.
What you can do then is you'll get me, you'll get the Andrew Klavan Show, you get the Ben Shapiro Show, you get to ask questions during the conversation.
It's an hour-long conversation between either Drew or me or Ben, and you can ask questions.
Everybody can watch.
Only subscribers can ask questions.
Same with the mailbag.
Many are called, but few are chosen.
We're going to have the mailbag tomorrow.
I can answer all of your very important questions, but only if you subscribe.
None of that matters.
I know you don't care about that.
what you care about is this, because we're not going to pass gun control.
We're not going to take away people's constitutionally protected civil rights.
Americans are going to remain free.
Sorry, lefties.
They're going to remain free.
And then they're going to sob.
They're going to cry so, so much.
And you're going to need this or you're going to drown.
Look, I know you want to protect your civil rights.
I know you want to be able to defend yourself.
That's an important thing.
But it's not just the guns, guys.
Sometimes the best offense is a good defense, you know.
Is that how the saying goes?
I don't know.
Get the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
It's the only FDA-approved vessel to store your salty and delicious Leftist Tears.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
All right, we've got to talk about Pennsylvania.
The race isn't over.
Obviously, it came down to like four votes or something, so it's probably going to trigger a recount.
It's probably going to go to court.
They've got to count absentee ballots, which usually don't matter.
This time it looks like they will.
Blah, blah, blah.
Democrats tend to win these things when it comes down to these little minute, I don't know, something about those crafty little Democrats in government.
They usually eke it out in the end.
That's fine.
I'm going to look on the bright side of all this.
If a Democrat had to win one of these elections, they were predicting in Florida, or in Texas, rather, we're going to turn Texas blue.
This is going to be it.
Then they didn't turn Texas blue and kind of shut up about it, you noticed.
If they had to win one of these things, I'm glad it was this one.
I'm glad it was this one.
This election means nothing, practically.
It Practically, it means nothing.
It's a warning, which I like, but it's practically meaningless.
The gerrymandered district, PA-18, will not exist in November.
There's going to be another election in November.
Just a few months from now, it's being broken up.
Conor Lamb, who probably won this election, will run in a new district, likely Pennsylvania 17, where he lives in November, at which point 80% of the district will be new to him.
So incumbency does help candidates generally, but it doesn't help candidates if you're 80% in a new district.
So I'll give a few excuses for Republicans probably losing this race by seven votes or whatever.
Despite the last few years of Republicans winning here, Democrats still hold a registration advantage, a major registration advantage.
It's probably all those dead people and like 13-year-old aliens from Mars or something.
But still, they hold a major registration advantage.
Also, Conor Lamb was a better candidate.
He was a better candidate than the Republican Rick Sacone.
Lamb outraised him five to one.
He's better looking.
He's more articulate.
He's more exciting.
And, most important of all, Lam ran as a fairly moderate, even slightly Republican candidate.
The left is now saying, those are excuses.
It is an excuse, but it's also an explanation.
You can't deny he ran as a moderate and kind of Republican candidate, particularly relative to the far-left movements of the Democrats.
So, he wouldn't endorse Obamacare.
He said that he would work with either party on health care.
He supported tax cuts.
But he said he opposed Trump's tax cuts.
But he supports tax cuts.
But not that one, though.
So I don't like that one for whatever reason.
He ran against gun control.
Good.
I mean, Democrats don't do that, especially now.
But he did because he knew that he had to be more Republican to win.
He supported Trump's actions on the steel and aluminum tariffs.
And on abortion, he pulled the Mario Cuomo.
The classic Cuomo.
He says, I'm personally against abortion, but I believe it should be a right.
Which is just another way of saying, I would never kill my precious babies, but all of those poor people and all of those minorities, they should kill their babies.
But I would never kill, mine are precious and valuable, but all of your, all those other people, they don't know, let's kill them.
That's what he said.
But, you know, whatever, I guess it works electorally among some constituencies.
Given that that race doesn't matter whatsoever, this is why I'm kind of glad the Republican lost.
I mean, look, Seccone could run again in November.
There's a chance that they're both in Congress next year.
What it is reminding us is that we have to vote in November.
It underscores the Buckley rule.
The Buckley rule, which is that you should always vote for the most right, viable candidate.
And this should serve as a lesson.
A final lesson, I hope.
I know it won't be, but I wish it were.
To Republicans who don't vote for Republicans because they would have preferred a better candidate.
They'd prefer a better candidate.
Listen to that rule.
Most right, viable candidate.
Look, if someone is running who is utterly unacceptable, meaning he isn't really right-wing, he's just lying, or he's like an evil person, he's just like a truly depraved, satanic figure, I guess, you know, if we ran Joseph Goebbels or something, I guess you don't want to elect him and probably vote for the Democrat and let the kiddies get extra health care.
But short of that, and there's a lot of political hyperbole, but that's not what we're seeing.
We're not seeing that from congressional candidates.
We're not seeing that from presidential candidates.
Vote for the most right viable candidate.
You hear this empty slogan sometimes.
They say people, especially who oppose Trump, but who oppose other Republicans too.
You hear it every election cycle.
They've been doing this since Goldwater.
They say, I'm a lifelong Republican, but I just couldn't vote for Mitt Romney forever.
I don't know.
I don't know.
will better the country, that it's better for the country.
If you think that the other party's vision and platform is better for the country, that doesn't mean you're choosing country over party.
It means you're switching parties.
It means you're in a different party now.
That's all it means.
There isn't logically a difference between the country and the party if you're in the party.
You can criticize your own party, and you can criticize your own country.
Neither of those things are perfect, but it's a totally empty slogan, and what it really means is, I don't like this candidate, and I'm taking my ball and going home.
Wah, wah, wah.
Well, don't do that.
We need to win.
Things are more important than, you know, your feelings about some candidate in Pennsylvania or whatever.
There are more important things on the line.
Economic growth, status on the world stage, the world order, lives of the unborn.
Cultural issues.
The executive agencies taking too much power and controlling your lives.
Unfunded liabilities.
On and on and on and on and on.
Those things matter.
Your feel like, oh, I don't like that guy.
I don't like his haircut.
Well, get over it.
Now, we have to talk about United Airlines.
We have a little bit of time.
I know this is an unpopular opinion.
I don't care.
United Airlines is under fire again, this time for informing a passenger that she couldn't block the aisle with a crate carrying her 10-month-old puppy.
So the stewardess informed her that she would have to put the dog in a box in the overhead bin, where sadly it died.
It's not a good idea to do that.
The dog was a French bulldog, which is sad because I really like those dogs.
Its name was Coquito.
The reason I'm bringing up that it's a French bulldog It's that bulldogs and pugs and other flat-nosed dogs have difficulty breathing to begin with, and this problem is exacerbated when they're stuffed in overhead bins.
It's also exacerbated when they're just at really high altitudes.
It's hard for dogs to breathe on the street in New York, much less at 30,000 feet.
This is entirely the dog owner's fault.
Entirely the dog owner's fault.
Loathe as I am to defend United Airlines.
People, stop bringing your dogs everywhere.
Stop it.
They don't belong on airplanes.
They don't belong in restaurants.
Fifi will survive for an hour or two without you.
If you are not blind, leave the dog at home.
Some people need service animals.
They need them, like blind people, for instance.
Good.
Bring that dog wherever you want.
It can be wherever.
That's good.
People abuse this privilege all the time, especially in LA. I see it everywhere.
These little actress girls bring their dogs, bring Fifi onto airplanes and into restaurants as emotional support animals.
Emotional support.
I know a lot of actresses.
They all need a lot of emotional support.
I'm not denying that.
Fifi ain't gonna suffice.
I promise you.
This owner was incredibly irresponsible and incredibly rude.
To begin, don't bring your dog on a flight.
Don't bring your dog on a flight.
If you are going away for a week, put it in a kennel or leave it with a friend.
If you're going away for months and months and you insist on bringing your dog on vacation to your vacation house, fly private.
If you have all these vacation houses, fly private.
You can afford it.
My sleep on the LA to New York red eye is so much more important than Fifi's vacation.
It boggles the mind.
Do not bring your dog on the flight and certainly don't bring it in the main cabin.
In the old days, they would go to cargo.
In the glory days before like five minutes ago, you'd put the dog in cargo and then sometimes the dog would die and that was sad.
So now they bring them into the main cabin.
Beyond that, if you insist, so if you, I know times change, culture decays, if you insist on bringing Fifi on the flight, buy Fifi a seat.
Don't just pay the $3 bump-up fee so that you can bring the dog in a crate, but if the crate's too big and you've got to put it in the aisle and then it can't be in the aisle, so you've got to put it in the thing and then it dies.
Buy Fifi a seat.
I know, air travel is expensive.
That's why air travel has traditionally been reserved for people rather than animals, because animals don't make a lot of money.
People make money.
Paying the extra fee doesn't mean you get to put it in the aisle.
You do not get to block the aisle with your dog crate.
If, God forbid, anything happens on that flight, I am not going to have Fifi be the reason that I do not make it to the raft.
More importantly, the aisle is not for puppy crates.
The aisle is for drink carts.
My access to overpriced mediocre scotch on those cylindrical ice cubes with the little hole in them that are very delicious, that is much, much more important than Fifi's vacation.
Also, if you are going to violate every rule of polite society and bring a non-service dog on an airplane...
Why would you bring a 10-month-old puppy who can barely breathe to begin with on the flight?
10-month-old puppies are very fragile, especially when they can barely breathe, and you're supposed to be careful with them.
And why would you bring it on United Airlines?
Did you see what United Airlines did to that doctor?
Hey!
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Come on.
Hey!
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Oh my god!
No!
Guys!
My god!
What are you doing?
No!
This is wrong!
Oh my god!
Look at what you did to him!
Oh my god!
I have to go home.
Are you kidding me?
Come on.
Just kill me.
Just kill me.
Kill me.
Just kill me, just kill me, just kill me, just kill me.
That's how United Airlines treats a human doctor.
Not just a dog, not even just a human, a doctor.
That's what they do to a doctor.
Just kill me, just kill me.
Dragging him, clubbing him on the head.
Did this owner really think that they were going to allow a 10-month-old puppy in a crate to block the aisle on the airplane?
Now, who cares about all this?
It's a sad story.
It makes some points.
It drives me insane when dogs bark on my flights.
I really, really don't like that.
But who cares about all of this generally?
It's because we live in a culture that values animals more than people.
Just look at PETA and Planned Parenthood, two of the most important non-profit organizations that raise a ton of money.
They have a ton of members.
The two most important non-profits on the left exist to save animals and kill humans.
That's what they do.
That's because we don't have a coherent moral framework anymore.
We don't have a coherent moral framework.
We don't know what we're here for, the difference between humans and animals and different animals and what the purpose is.
If it feels good, do it, and we're all going to become warm food, and that's basically it, right?
Since it's Lent, I get questions about what books...
I'm reading and what books other people should be reading to kind of think, put yourself in the Lenten penitential spirit to get ready before Easter.
Walk with our Lord 40 days before Easter.
So I'll just recommend a few.
First, the book that we're all reading here and rereading here at The Daily Wire is After Virtue by Alistair McIntyre.
I think Drew's talked about it a little bit on the show.
I think Ben has referenced it.
I have.
We're all kind of reading and rereading it right now.
Check it out.
It's called After Virtue by Alistair McIntyre, and then we can all tweet about it, and it'll be fun.
A few more books for Lent.
If you're agnostic or in a period of spiritual doubt, read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.
It doesn't get much better than that.
Also, what's great after that...
Also by C.S. Lewis are The Abolition of Man and The Weight of Glory.
If you've already gone through Lewis, it's time to move on to Chesterton.
Everlasting Man is good, but Orthodoxy is better.
Chesterton is just like a fatter, boozier, smokier, more Catholic C.S. Lewis.
And C.S. Lewis talks about how he...
It takes quite a lot from Chesterton, too.
Finally, you can join me in reading Hilaire Belloc's The Great Heresies, which I have just begun, wherein Belloc takes on the Aryan heresy, the great and enduring heresy of Muhammad, the Albigensian attack.
What was the Reformation and the modern phase?
Belloc is an inimitable writer.
He's like even more Chesterton than Chesterton, so that's a great one, too.
Okay, I think we've covered it.
The kids, the Democrats, the dead puppies...
And the great and enduring heresies.
That's our show for today.
If you get your mailbag questions in, do it now so that we can answer them for tomorrow.
And I will see you then.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.
