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March 27, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show

43:12

Ep. 128 - Don’t Bring A Knife To Leftists’ Gun Fight

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has called for the repeal of the Second Amendment, and conservatives keep defending their Second Amendment rights on the Left’s terms. But even a cursory review of the numbers show America does not have a gun problem. Then, on this day in history in 1973, Marlon Brando ruins Hollywood Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has called for the repeal of the Second Amendment.
	The only problem is there is no gun problem in America.
	Conservatives keep defending their Second Amendment rights on the left's terms, but even a cursory look at the numbers shows America does not have a gun problem.
	We will analyze.
	Then, on this day in history, in 1973, Marlon Brando ruins Hollywood.
	I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
	A lot to get to today.
	A lot to talk about.
	And I'll start out on a nice note.
	At least they're honest.
	At least they're honest.
	At least John Paul Stevens, former justice of the Supreme Court, is finally being honest and not saying, we need to ban this sort of accessory to rifles.
	And we need to ban this random kind of rifle, but not the other kinds.
	At least he's being honest.
	And that's what the debate is really about.
	Repealing the Second Amendment.
	So we will analyze and we will take a look.
	Should we repeal the Second Amendment?
	What would happen if we did?
	What are the forces urging us to do that right now?
	But before we do that, we've got to make a little bit of money.
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	Okay, let's get into this.
	Let's get into the guns.
	We're talking about guns.
	We're talking about money.
	All very important things to the American dream.
	So, John Paul Stevens has called to repeal the Second Amendment.
	A few observations right off the bat.
	John Paul Stevens is a Republican.
	This isn't some lefty judge.
	I mean, I guess, obviously, he is a lefty judge, but he's a Republican.
	He was nominated for the Supreme Court by President Gerald Ford.
	He was nominated for the appellate court by Richard Nixon.
	He isn't a Democrat.
	He's a Republican, but obviously he's not a conservative.
	He's not an originalist, certainly to say.
	There's a big difference here between Republicans and conservatives.
	Not all Republicans are conservatives or originalists or defend our Constitution.
	This calls to mind a second thing.
	This op-ed alone That he published in the New York Times calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment should remind us all, thank God Donald Trump won the presidency instead of Hillary Clinton.
	Thank God.
	I know we're all very upset about this budget.
	It's a terrible budget.
	We say he's not a conservative anymore.
	Hillary Clinton was running, she was campaigning on gutting the Second Amendment.
	And the thing they all used to do, they would say, look, I defend the Second Amendment.
	I don't want to repeal the Second Amendment.
	I just want to, but I just want to...
	It's very clear they're laying their cards on the table.
	Other people have called for this too.
	The so-called conservative commentator, Brett Stevens has called to repeal the second amendment.
	Many other people have as well.
	It is a very good thing that Donald Trump won that election because this would be on the chopping block.
	Hillary would have appointed left-wing justices or apparently even moderate Republican justices and they would have gutted this thing.
	There is a call among the political class.
	Not among the people.
	The American people oppose gun control.
	But among the political class, there is a call to gut this very basic constitutionally protected civil right.
	Here's what Stevens wrote in the New York Times.
	These demonstrations demand our respect.
	They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of school children and others in our society.
	I don't know where to begin.
	Just about everything he just said is not true.
	It is unreal.
	Rarely in my lifetime have I seen this type of civic engagement.
	Schoolchildren have demonstrated.
	Maybe that should tell you something.
	Maybe it should tell you something that this entire movement is being led by 11-year-olds.
	They're literally 11-year-olds giving speeches.
	What are 11-year-olds known for?
	Are they known for their vast knowledge?
	Is that something?
	No.
	They're students because they have to learn.
	They don't know anything.
	That's fine.
	We were all students once, but they don't know anything.
	Perhaps they shouldn't be leading this movement.
	Then he says, these demonstrations demand our respect.
	No, they don't.
	They don't demand our respect.
	This whole thing was organized out of Hollywood.
	It was, I believe, Justin Bieber's manager, I forget his name, and George Clooney funded this thing to the hilt.
	That producer and manager's wife was the one running it and collecting donations and managing the whole thing.
	These don't just happen.
	When there are massive nationwide protests and big PSAs and campaigns and a lot of money flowing in, usually you can tell that's not coming from 16-year-olds.
	16-year-olds don't have a lot of clout for money, but Twitter is verifying them.
	This is true collusion.
	This is collusion among the activist forces of the left to use these school kids like little puppets.
	There was that meme going around of David Hogg as a little puppet on the hand of CNN. And CNN says, so, David, should we repeal the Second Amendment?
	Yes, we should repeal the Second Amendment.
	Okay.
	That is what's going on.
	And by the way, this is an important message for everybody.
	Follow the memes.
	This came to me last night when I was giving the talk at Yeshiva.
	There are all these memes just making fun of David Hogg.
	Follow the memes.
	It shows you what's really happening in the culture, the undercurrents of the culture.
	Not the things that are on the TV or on the news or in movies, but the undercurrents of what's happening in the actual popular culture.
	The American people do not support this.
	And they certainly don't demand our respect.
	They're trying to rob us of our constitutionally protected civil rights.
	They are not passionate, wonderful believers in the American dream.
	They are dismantlers of the American dream.
	They're arrogant, ignorant dismantlers of the We shouldn't give them any praise.
	He then goes on.
	And says these demonstrations reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.
	This has two major errors here.
	First of all, what he's implying is gun control.
	What he's really saying is broad public support to get rid of guns, ultimately to repeal the Second Amendment.
	That does not exist.
	every time there's a very public and reported on shooting event, then support for gun control jumps up.
	And then shortly thereafter, it drops right back down.
	Majority of Americans broadly do not support gun control.
	But then look at how he phrases it.
	He says legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of school children as though someone opposes that.
	Who opposes legislation to minimize the risk of slaughtering school children?
	Nobody does.
	But as Marco Rubio pointed out a few years ago, There isn't any legislation that has been proposed that would have prevented these shootings.
	There isn't one piece.
	There are tens of thousands of gun control laws on the books.
	The federal government has failed to enforce those laws and has failed to do its job many times.
	So we should give it more power?
	Is that the idea?
	Gun confiscation does not work.
	People don't give away their guns.
	Didn't happen in Connecticut.
	Didn't happen in Australia.
	So much wrong about what he's saying.
	Now, ultimately, he is putting forth this idea that forget all of the gun control.
	You're right.
	You're right about the gun control.
	That won't work, which is why we need to repeal the Second Amendment.
	This is how he goes on in the column.
	That support...
	Is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semi-automatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms.
	But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform.
	They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.
	To that I say, I mean, he's making a lot of suppositions that aren't true, such as the broad American support for gun control that doesn't exist.
	But to this I say, at least he's honest.
	At least John Paul Stevens is being honest.
	The left used to hide this.
	They used to be buttheads.
	They were the buttheads.
	I support the Second Amendment.
	But, but, you know, oh, no, I support free speech.
	Look, I support free speech.
	But, and then whatever they say just contradicts what they previously said, because buts negate sentences.
	Oh, no, I support the Second Amendment.
	I just want to gut the Second Amendment.
	Here is Hillary Clinton exemplifying this tactic.
	When he's gotten a tough question from a reporter, when he's challenged in a debate, when he sees a protester at a rally...
	Imagine, if you dare imagine, imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis.
	A man you can't bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.
	It's a lot of Hillary.
	It's long, long Hillary.
	Look, I don't want to take away your Second Amendment.
	That's what she says.
	I don't want to take away your Second Amendment, but I don't want people to do this.
	She did the same thing with abortion.
	We have to get to that in one second.
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	Okay, Hillary did this same tactic, the butt tactic.
	I don't want to take away your Second Amendment.
	I just, you know, I just...
	She did the same thing with abortion.
	She said that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.
	And this never made any sense, of course.
	If abortion is morally similar to murder, then it shouldn't be legal.
	And if abortion is just...
	A procedure, it's just like removing a zit or something, a clump of cells, then it shouldn't be rare.
	Why should it be rare?
	Either it has moral weight or it doesn't have moral weight, but you can have it both ways.
	That is what the left has tried to do on guns for years and years and years.
	They've said, look, I totally support the individual right to keep and bear weapons that can blow people's heads off.
	I respect that constitutional right, but you shouldn't.
	But you shouldn't.
	That's what they say.
	Because you can't have it both ways.
	Either you believe that this is a right that people ought to have and that ought to be recognized, or it makes no sense.
	If you don't believe that ultimately a free people needs the right to arm themselves against a government that could turn tyrannical, as liberal democratic governments have done...
	Many, many times over the last two centuries.
	Either you believe that they need that right, or it is insane to let people have guns.
	If you don't think that that's the point, then you're going to allow people to have these killing machines just to go duck hunting or something?
	Of course not.
	It is a right.
	You have to deal honestly with it and with some philosophical clarity.
	Finally, it seems people are doing that.
	The alleged comedian, Michael Ian Black, he's not a butthead.
	He's not playing this just-to-just game.
	He just called to repeal the Second Amendment.
	He tweeted, quote, I'll say it.
	Assault weapons aren't the problem.
	Handguns are the problem.
	By all means, ban AR-15s and the like, but handguns kill far more people.
	The solution is to repeal and replace the Second Amendment.
	Make gun ownership a privilege, not a right.
	Yes, having the ready ability to take someone's life is dominion over that person.
	Gun ownership should be viewed as slavery by another name.
	At least he's honest.
	He's completely wrong, but at least he's honest.
	It is true.
	Handguns are involved in many more deaths than assault weapons or whatever made-up scare name the left comes up with.
	They are involved in many more.
	Now, of course, two-thirds of the time those are suicides of middle-aged men.
	And for the remainder in major cities, 80% are involved in gang crime, inter-gang crime.
	But he makes a good point.
	Banning the AR-15 won't do anything.
	Here is David Hogg at the March for Our Lives over the weekend.
	I'm going to start off by putting this price tag right here as a reminder for you guys to know how much Marco Rubio took for every student's life in Florida.
	One dollar and five cents.
	Okay.
	The cold grasp of corruption shackles the District of Columbia.
	The winter is over.
	Change is here.
	The sun shines on a new day, and the day is ours.
	Inaction is no longer safe.
	And to that we say, no more.
	96 people...
	96 people die every day from guns in our country, yet most representatives have no public stance on guns.
	And to that we say, no more!
	To David Hogg, I say, no more.
	I agree with you, David Hogg.
	No more.
	I can't take it anymore.
	That is like the cringiest thing ever.
	When he gets up there, he thinks he's Martin Luther King.
	He says, oh, this is going to be my phrase.
	Okay, no more.
	Yes, to that I say.
	Listen, I didn't know Martin Luther King.
	You are no Martin Luther King.
	Here's the big difference.
	Martin Luther King wanted to defend American civil rights, and David Hogg wants to deny American civil rights.
	That's the subtle difference.
	There are other differences, too.
	I've been to the mountaintop, Martin Luther King.
	Well, we say no more, no more.
	You can't have your rights anymore.
	I was asked a question last night during the Q&A at Yeshiva University.
	And this was a conservative guy who, I take it, watches the show.
	And he asked a question that I think a lot of young conservatives are wondering, and they kind of get sucked into this.
	They say, don't we have to do something?
	We have to do something.
	We see these images of dead children on TV. Oh, we have to do something.
	There's a problem, I can see it with my own eyes, and we have to do something.
	Can't we just compromise?
	Isn't it a crisis?
	And there's this anxiety that builds, that the media has constructed, that the media have constructed.
	This anxiety of, oh gosh, do we defend the status quo?
	The end of his question, he said, or do you think the status quo is just fine?
	I don't think the status quo is just fine.
	fine.
	I think the status quo is not very good.
	I think the problem with the status quo is we have too many gun control laws on the books.
	We have far too many gun, tens of thousands of gun control laws on the books.
	There are other problems as well, which influence these killings and these The problem with the status quo is not that there are not enough gun control laws in the books.
	The problem is that there are too many.
	Because the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
	And it's infringed on a lot.
	Conservatives should not bring a knife to leftists' gunfights.
	Actually, probably they should bring a knife, because statistically speaking, knives are much more likely to kill you than assault weapons or rifles of any kind.
	So maybe we should bring those assault knives.
	But we shouldn't bring a knife, broadly speaking, we shouldn't bring a knife to the leftists' fight over guns.
	There is no gun problem in America.
	Their premise, rather, is that there is a major gun problem right now.
	It is escalating.
	It is reaching a fever pitch.
	Their premise is total BS. It is not true.
	There is less of a gun problem now than there has ever been in American history.
	There are many other problems.
	There are problems of criminality.
	There are problems of not punishing people in a certain way.
	There are problems of not having the facilities to deal with deranged people and with lunatics.
	There are plenty of those problems.
	There's a hollowing out of the culture.
	There are problems of despair.
	There are problems of suicide.
	There are problems of irreligiosity, which contributes to all of that.
	There is not a gun problem in America and we shouldn't compromise on anything.
	Why should we compromise?
	They used to be like screaming little children on this issue.
	Now they actually are screaming children.
	We talk a lot on this show about the difference between the signifier and the signified, the metaphysical and the physical.
	They have become the metaphor.
	They are actually just screaming 11-year-olds and David Hogg and shrieking at you without knowing anything.
	Why would we compromise on that?
	Say, well, look, they want this, and we want to defend our civil rights.
	They want to take away all of our civil rights, and we want to defend our civil rights, so let's only take away some of our civil rights.
	No.
	No.
	Why would we do that?
	Especially when all of their premises, all of the statistics they're citing, aren't true.
	Let's just go through some of the numbers here to explain how there is not a gun problem in America.
	In 1980, there were 10.8 willful killings per 100,000 people.
	Within 13 years, that number dropped to 7 homicides by firearm for every 100,000 Americans.
	By 2013, that figure dropped again by 50%.
	Violent crime has decreased by 49% since 1991.
	There was a high mark in 1980.
	It's been declining for decades since.
	The overall homicide rate is way down since 1980.
	In 1980, 10.2 people were murdered per 100,000 Americans.
	By 2014, that number would fall into 4.5 people per 100,000 Americans.
	Wherever you look, some statistics, they vary a little bit.
	You can see 10.8, you can see 10.2, but they do agree on this major trend that has gone down.
	And here's what the lefties are going to say.
	Well, we had a federal assault weapons ban.
	That's what did it.
	And I'm going to explain to you why that is absolute bunk and nonsense.
	Plus, we also have to explain how Marlon Brando destroyed Hollywood, single-handedly destroyed Hollywood on this day in history, and actually destroyed acting.
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	We'll be right back.
	So we see this trend broadly.
	By your count, anywhere from 10.2 to 10.8 willful killings per 100,000 people in 1980.
	Number way, way down.
	Drops by 50% just from 93 to 2013, just within those 20 years.
	Violent crime, way down since 1991.
	The overall homicide rate, way, way down.
	By 2014, we're looking at 4.5 people per 100,000 Americans.
	So lefties might say, well, there was the federal assault weapons ban.
	They just made up that term.
	I don't know what's an assault weapon.
	I think all weapons are assault weapons, aren't they?
	But it has dropped.
	That's true.
	They make a good point.
	However, let's look a little more carefully, because it seems so clear, doesn't it?
	But all shallows are clear.
	Federal assault weapons ban expired 14 years ago.
	Nevertheless, the trend continued.
	It was enacted in 1994.
	A decade later, it was expired.
	It wasn't renewed.
	But the trend in the dropping crime continued to drop.
	So there is no evidence that the so-called assault weapons ban has had any effect whatsoever on murder or crime rates.
	Even the Washington Post admits this, by the way.
	So even the Washington Post, where democracy dies in darkness, admits on the Wonk blog and a piece in 2015, we've had a massive decline in gun violence in the U.S.
	Here's why.
	Now, some of their explanations are more compelling than others.
	For one, they note the increase in cops that we've hired.
	There are more police officers on the beat.
	Gun violence, murder, crime, they all start to decline around the time of the assault weapons ban.
	But the so-called assault weapons ban, the so-called assault weapons crimes didn't really change.
	I think the reason that people see that coincidence is that also at this same time in 1994, President Clinton signed sweeping crime bills.
	And there were other crime bills all throughout the United States and major cities, New York in particular, that funded law enforcement agencies nationally, added 100,000 officers nationally at a time when law enforcement agencies were already expanding.
	Economist Stephen Levitt estimates larger police forces reduced crime by 5 to 6 percent.
	Gun violence declined with crime generally at this point.
	Now, I will say, I take social science with a grain of salt.
	It's a dismal science and it can be easily manipulated.
	I will cite it when it suits my purposes.
	As now, but you do have to take it with a grain of salt.
	Nevertheless, it seems pretty compelling.
	The Washington Post also points to the adoption of computers as helping this trend.
	So computer modeling, particularly New York's CompStat, the Comparative Statistics System, allowed police departments to identify neighborhoods that needed more policing than other neighborhoods, and it made them much more effective.
	The Brennan Center for Justice ran a study that says that this reduced homicide by 11%.
	Again, take it with a grain of salt, but it seems compelling.
	Then the Washington Post gets a little wonky.
	A third answer they suggest is less booze.
	American alcohol consumption declined 21% from 1980 to 2000.
	That number has since increased, presumably because of my 21st birthday.
	That has started to go back up again.
	Booze does get people rowdier and more aggressive.
	If you've ever been to college or at a bar after 2 a.m., you have witnessed this.
	Perhaps you've participated in this yourself.
	The Brennan Center for Justice gives this credit for 5% to 10% drop in crime.
	Who knows?
	That's obviously a little bit less hard to track.
	When you're looking at cops actually arresting more people, it's a little bit easier.
	There was that famous line from the New York Times, Fox Butterfield, who said, prisons fill despite dropping, no, crime continues to drop despite prisons filling.
	You say, well, maybe there's a, maybe something has to do with each other.
	Maybe the one, oh, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I'm not a statistician.
	Another suggestion that the Washington Post makes is that there's less lead And this is actually a widely held hypothesis.
	It's total nonsense.
	But the idea is that lead makes humans more aggressive.
	If you are exposed to lead, you know, in lead paint or whatever, as a child, it will affect your brain and make you more aggressive.
	So they thank the Clean Air Act for reducing lead in the environment.
	It's mostly just that they want to talk up environmental regulations and the Clean Air Act.
	Jessica Reyes, an economist from Amherst College, estimates that the reduction of lead in the environment has led to a 56% reduction in violent crime.
	This is absolute nonsense.
	Phil Cook, an economist and sociologist from Duke, points out the hole in this theory, which is that it assumes that the kids in the 80s were worse than the kids in the 90s, right?
	right?
	They were worse when there was more lead in the environment than when there was not as much lead in the environment.
	But that doesn't correlate with the crime statistics.
	So you would have to see a generational shift.
	But actually, when the crime dropped in the 90s, even just a brief glance at the data showed that it was not associated with one particular cohort of people over another.
	It was across the board.
	It happened simultaneously.
	The drop has that same pattern.
	So you can't blame it on the lead.
	It's a ridiculous theory, but kind of funny.
	Then they get to their final suggestion, which is the better economy.
	There was a great economy for the 90s, and the Brennan Center says that a better economy is responsible for a 5-10% reduction in violent crime.
	This also is BS, I think, because economic trends can explain property crime, but they can't really explain violent crime.
	When economies don't do as well, you see things like theft and burglary tick up, but not really murders and assaults and things like that.
	Even the Washington Post admits this.
	The left always has to push this because they love to pretend that crime is caused by money.
	They think that people are just animals.
	They think that we're just only motivated by physical things.
	Winston Churchill and later Ronald Reagan said, when great forces are on the move in the world, we learn that we're spirits, not animals.
	That there's a moral framework and we aspire to virtue, not just property.
	The left doesn't believe this.
	They have a materialist framework and moral framework in view of the world.
	And so they say, oh, poverty causes crime.
	Poverty coincides with crime.
	Criminal behavior certainly causes poverty, but you can't blame it on poverty.
	It basically is a way of looking at people who are impoverished or who are committing crime and reducing blame and saying they can't be held accountable for their immoral actions.
	They can't be held accountable for their free will.
	Their poverty made them do it, or their brain made them do it.
	There's really no evidence of that.
	Now, here's a story that will illustrate just how made up this whole thing is, this whole March for Our Lives gun control movement, the grassroots movement.
	Al Sharpton's brother, the Reverend Kenneth Glasgow, was just charged in the drive-by shooting of a woman...
	One day after he participated in the March for Our Lives anti-gun crime protest, he goes on Saturday, he goes, yeah, we need to stop guns.
	The next day he does a drive-by shooting.
	Now, it's unclear if he pulled the trigger.
	He probably didn't pull the trigger.
	Either way, he's culpable of murder because he aided and abetted murder.
	This is the Reverend.
	The Reverend Kenneth Glasgow.
	I'd expect no less of somebody affiliated with Al Sharpton.
	That charlatan.
	But it shows all of this for what it is.
	I think I pointed this out on the show yesterday that all of these protests, the Women's March and the March for Our Lives and the This March and the Immigrant March, they're not about the issue that they say they're about.
	They're not about women.
	They're not about guns.
	I mean, Al Sharpton's brother shows this pretty well.
	I don't think Al Sharpton's brother wants to reduce gun ownership in America.
	He probably just wants to reduce legal gun ownership so that criminals can go and shoot people in cars.
	But it isn't about that.
	It's just about Trump.
	It's just about hitting Republicans.
	They're throwing spaghetti at the wall.
	The guns and the immigrants and Russia and Stormy Daniels and the porn stars.
	It's just because they don't like Trump.
	It isn't earnest.
	There isn't an earnest national outcry.
	That kid David Hogg, you know, the next Martin Luther King.
	David Hogg is now moving on to voter suppression.
	For some reason, that's his new issue because he knows his 15 minutes are up on this, so he's got to move on to something new.
	It's just the same old anti-Republican nonsense.
	Now, Looking at where we are here, the gun problem in America, which does not exist, if anything we should be counting our lucky stars for our success in fighting gun violence in America.
	We have solutions that we know work.
	Policing, locking up criminals, giving law enforcement better technology and better money.
	More money and locking up crazy people who shouldn't be allowed into society.
	The left hates the solution of giving law enforcement more power because they don't like cops.
	The whole thing is that these crazy, awful, racist cops are gunning down innocent black men.
	So they should be the only ones with guns.
	That's the idea.
	They don't like that solution.
	They can't resolve the cognitive dissonance on those two issues.
	And then they also don't want to lock up crazy people because it feels icky.
	You don't want to do that.
	Civil libertarians don't like that either.
	But there is nothing compassionate.
	There's nothing dignified or nothing really pertaining to liberty by allowing crazy people and lunatics to live in squalor on the street and propose a threat to themselves and to society.
	One other thing to notice is that only 20% of homicides each year occur during someone committing another crime.
	So the rest of those are interpersonal.
	They're much more likely to be committed by people who know one another.
	And guess what?
	They're going to happen whether the guns exist or not.
	Which is actually why so many...
	Violent deaths involve hands and feet and knives and hammers and baseball bats, because if you want to kill somebody, you're just going to do it.
	If you want to kill yourself, two-thirds of gun deaths each year are suicides, you're going to do it.
	You can just walk off a ledge.
	Dorothy Parker summed it up well.
	If somewhat callously.
	Razors pain you, rivers are damp.
	Acids stain you and drugs cause cramp.
	Guns aren't lawful, nooses give.
	Gas smells awful, you might as well live.
	There are a lot of options, as she outlines in that poem, Resume.
	And the problem isn't the guns.
	The problem are underlying issues, such as depression, leading people to suicide, gang crime.
	We know how to solve some of these.
	There is this cultural issue of despair.
	One hopes that there is a cultural resurgence that will take care of that.
	Public policy probably will not be very effective to do it.
	For issues of criminality, lock 'em up.
	Just lock them up.
	It worked in the '80s, it worked in the '90s.
	Now that we've gotten all those successes, this is what the left always does.
	They get all of these successes because of conservative policy, and then they say, oh, but we don't need to do the policies anymore.
	We want the effect.
	We don't want the cause.
	Crazy.
	Lock them up.
	Okay.
	We have a little bit of time left.
	It is time for This Day in History.
	This Day in History.
	This is a good one.
	On this day in history, in 1973, Marlon Brando destroyed Hollywood.
	He ruined it.
	He really ruined the film industry.
	I'm not being hyperbolic here.
	He refused his Oscar for the first time for The Godfather.
	He did it for political reasons.
	Now, Brando had been nominated for an Oscar in 1951 for Streetcar Named Desire.
	Following year, he was nominated for Viva Zapata.
	Following year for Julius Caesar.
	Following year for On the Waterfront.
	I could have been somebody.
	I could have been a contender.
	I could have had plans.
	That movie, he actually won for that movie.
	Then his career totally flopped.
	In the 1960s, he had a bunch of bad movies, a bunch of flops.
	He had one, I actually kind of like the movie, Mutiny on the Bounty.
	It was critically panned.
	It was unpopular.
	Francis Ford Coppola, when he cast Marlon Brando in The Godfather, really had to fight for him to get him cast.
	No one wanted to work with him.
	He was known to be difficult to work with, and he hadn't had a great previous decade.
	1973, this is Brando's comeback.
	He's given the performance of a lifetime.
	Just an un...
	Imaginably good performance in The Godfather.
	And he refuses the Oscar and sends an American Indian in his place.
	Here's what happened.
	Marlon Brando in The Godfather.
	Accepting the award for Marlon Brando and the Godfather, Miss Jachim Dizzlefeather.
	Hello.
	My name is Sachin Littlefeather.
	I'm Apache, and I am president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee.
	I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening, and he has asked me to tell you in a very long speech, which I cannot share with you presently because of time, but I will be glad to share with the press afterwards, that he very regretfully cannot accept This very generous award.
	And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry, excuse me, First, interesting to hear the boos.
	That's how when Brando injected politics, you hear boos.
	Even later on, in 1978, Vanessa Redgrave gave a speech attacking Israel.
	You got some boos there, too.
	Now, if someone has a political speech to give at the Oscars, you'd get cheers.
	I think if you just give a gracious speech, that's when they boo you now.
	In the old days, if you brought politics in, it was thought really below the stature and below the glamour of that occasion.
	Now, that's the whole show.
	I mean, that is what the entire show is.
	At the time that Brando did this, the only other guy to decline an Oscar was George C. Scott for Patton.
	And that wasn't political.
	It's because he thought the whole thing was frivolous and he's a real actor's actor and he didn't want to take part in that silly pageantry.
	Fair enough.
	That's actually fine by me.
	But Brando injected politics into the whole thing.
	So you had Vanessa Redgrave in 78.
	In 93, you had Richard Gere using his speech to attack China for abuses in Tibet.
	That same year, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins attacked the US for not allowing HIV-infected Haitians to come into America quickly enough.
	I don't know where they pick these issues.
	I think there's a dartboard in Hollywood, and they say, well, I guess I don't have anything to do to fill my time.
	I'll just, okay, yep, I'm going to do that one now.
	HIV-infected would-be immigrants from Haiti.
	That's going to be my new issue.
	And they just pick these sort of at random.
	In 2003, Michael Moore ranted about how much he doesn't like George W. Bush.
	In 2009, Dustin Lance Black lauded the martyred pederast Harvey Milk.
	During his acceptance speech, it was all political.
	2013, Michelle Obama, who was never proud of her country until it elected her husband, she showed up for some reason.
	In 2015, Patricia Arquette went on stage and complained that she should make even more millions of dollars to pretend as she accepted her golden statuette.
	Now this happens every single year.
	It just happens on and on and on.
	And it's interesting, in the case of 2009, you saw this shift of the movies getting way more lefty, way more on the nose with their politics.
	I mean, you had a movie about martyred pederast Harvey Milk.
	You had a whole movie lionizing him as some sort of saint.
	That, I think, has fed into it, too.
	The whole ethos of Hollywood, even the business of Hollywood, has become much more left-wing.
	But Brando started this, and it's very frustrating.
	Brando is the great actor of his age.
	He was truly an amazing actor.
	He ruined acting, too.
	This is the point I'll leave us on.
	This is not frequently noted.
	He ruined acting.
	Because before Marlon Brando, you had this kind of Laurence Olivier, excellent diction, and what would be called in modern acting, rubber stamping, some representational acting.
	There was good stuff, too.
	But it wasn't organic, as is the term now.
	So what Brando did is he mumbled a little bit.
	And his acting came out of the American schools of acting of Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasberg, which actually previously had come from Russia, from Stanislavski.
	And this really all begins with Freud.
	Freud is the beginning of modern acting because Freud writes of the subconscious.
	And all of modern acting is about creating an inner life So that subconsciously, this will affect your behavior and you don't need to plan out, okay, I'm going to put my hand here at this time.
	It happens organically.
	You're like a sponge.
	You fill up and it comes all out.
	One effect of this is mumbling.
	So you don't talk with perfect diction like you would doing Shakespeare or something.
	You kind of say, Stella, I want to see my girl.
	Stella, I could have been somebody.
	But...
	Brando did it perfectly because he's Marlon Brando.
	Every other modern actor is infuriating because you're watching the show and you can't understand a word they're saying.
	They think they're Marlon Brando and they talk like they have marbles in their mouths, but it's really awful because they're not Marlon Brando.
	So we've got to hit them for that too.
	He ruined the film industry and he ruined acting, even though he himself was very good at it.
	Both of these things, the takeaway from both of these, is they characterize something that is essential about our age, and that is informality.
	We are allergic to formality.
	I'm seeing this now as I get ready for my wedding.
	Styles of dress have changed dramatically.
	Rarely, people don't even really wear tuxedos in the evening anymore at formal events.
	Or they think, no, I'll wear this kind of suit or this thing or that.
	We're allergic to it.
	We think it's icky.
	It's not authentic.
	It's not organic.
	Brando did this at the Oscars.
	The Oscars are a nice, elevated, glamorous event.
	You receive a gold statue.
	You're very gracious.
	Maybe you tear up.
	I want to thank my mother and God and all this, whatever.
	And he said, no, I'm going to lower it.
	I'm going to degrade it.
	No, it's just an opportunity.
	I don't like it.
	Same thing with the acting, right?
	He said, no, it's going to be more pedestrian.
	It's going to be more common.
	And That's not to knock it entirely.
	There's quite a lot that comes out of that sort of art, art that is common, focuses on the common man.
	But our culture has lost the sense of formality.
	And it's really bad.
	It really debases our civil discourse, I think, because we have all of those manners that you were supposed to learn when you were growing up.
	People just don't have them anymore.
	They don't have manners.
	And manners are important because manners allow us all to live in nice, polite, civilized society.
	So maybe we can get more of that.
	I hope we can reverse that trend, that trend that began on this day in history in 1973.
	Okay, that's our show.
	Get your mailbag questions in.
	I'll be back again.
	We've got a good guest for tomorrow, but I can't tell you yet.
	I don't want to ruin the surprise.
	And then I'm heading up to Ithaca tomorrow, too.
	So if you happen to be in the area, I know it's a thriving metropolis up there in upstate New York, but if you do happen to be there, I'll be giving a speech on Give Me That Old Time Religion, America's Christian Foundation.
	Until tomorrow, I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	See you then.
	The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.
	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.

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