Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

July 3, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show

50:30

Ep. 178 - Freedom’s Heroes ft. Ji Seong-Ho

On a special, Independence Day episode, we will be joined by North Korean defector Ji Seong-Ho to discuss his six-thousand-mile journey on crutches to freedom. Then, the rise of socialism in America. Finally, in a new segment called “This Is America,” we discuss some of the most incredible heroes and stories of the Revolutionary War. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	On a special Independence Day episode, we will be joined by North Korean defector Ji Song-ho to discuss his 6,000-mile journey on crutches from North Korea to freedom.
	Then, we'll talk about the rise of socialism in America, particularly among millennials.
	Finally, in a new segment called This Is America, just like that stupid song, but, like, good, we discuss some of the most incredible heroes and stories of the Revolutionary War that you probably haven't heard of.
	I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
	Such a show today.
	Such a show to get to.
	Before we get to it, we've got to make a little money, honey.
	We've got to talk about one of my favorite things that I look forward to when I come home.
	Blue Apron.
	Blue Apron is so good.
	I'm not just a client.
	I'm a customer.
	I eat this almost every night.
	Blue Apron.
	And by the way, I've been eating Blue Apron now for however long we've been doing this ad read.
	I eat it, first of all, almost every night.
	We've never repeated a recipe.
	They get new recipes all the time.
	Your Blue Apron subscription does not come with a sweet little Elisa to cook it for you.
	That is sold separately.
	But it's so good.
	They deliver farm-fresh ingredients and step-by-step recipes to your door.
	Blue Apron's mission is to make incredible home cooking accessible to everyone.
	You know about this.
	All your cool friends do it.
	You should do it too.
	Blue Apron sends really fresh, excellent, really high quality ingredients to your door.
	Then you can cook them.
	It's got all the recipes, new recipes all the time.
	And it's not like you're just getting, you know, hamburgers or something.
	You get short rib burgers.
	You're getting different sort of salmon dishes.
	And all of the quality is really, really high end.
	You can get the two-person meal plan that serves two people or one gavone.
	Choose from eight recipes per week with the choice to receive either two or three recipes any week.
	You can get the family meal plan that serves four people or one gavone.
	Choose from four new recipes per week with the choice to receive either two, three, or four recipes any week.
	And you can get the wine plans.
	That is six bottles of wine from renowned winemakers delivered monthly.
	That should get a normal person through a month or, again, for a Gavone One breakfast.
	A lot of really good meals.
	I, you know, I couldn't name them all.
	But what's cool about it, too, is you get the meals and then sweet little Elisa makes it.
	And then you keep the recipe so then you can make it on your own because Blue Apron is constantly changing up their recipes.
	You're going to try something new from them later on.
	I can't recommend it enough.
	Don't say I never did nothing for you.
	Get this week's menu and your first three meals for free at blueapron.com slash covfefe.
	The food is so good.
	It is free food.
	Go there right now.
	I will wait.
	I'll wait.
	Go right now.
	Check it out.
	Free food.
	You know you're hungry.
	Delicious salmon and things like that.
	Blueapron.com slash covefe.
	Get your first three meals free.
	Blue Apron, a better way to cook.
	Okay.
	This guest does not need any introduction, but just to warm you up a little bit, in case you missed it, here's a clip from the State of the Union, President Trump talking about probably the most heroic person I'm ever going to meet, Ji Song Ho.
	We are joined by one more witness to the ominous nature of this regime.
	His name is Mr.
	Ji Sung Ho.
	In 1996, Sung Ho was a starving boy in North Korea.
	One day he tried to steal coal from a railroad car to barter for a few scraps of food, which were very hard to get.
	In the process, he passed out on the train tracks, exhausted from hunger.
	He woke up as a train ran over his limbs.
	He then endured multiple amputations without anything to dull the pain or the hurt.
	His brother and sister gave what little food they had to help him recover and ate dirt themselves.
	Permanently stunting their own growth.
	Later, he was tortured by North Korean authorities after returning from a brief visit to China.
	His tormentors wanted to know if he'd met any Christians.
	He had, and he resolved after that to be free.
	Sung Ho traveled thousands of miles on crutches all across China and Southeast Asia to freedom.
	Most of his family followed.
	His father was caught trying to escape and was tortured to death.
	Today he lives in Seoul where he rescues other defectors and broadcasts into North Korea what the regime fears Most the truth.
	Today he has a new leg, but Sung Ho, I understand you still keep those old crutches as a reminder of how far you've come.
	Your great sacrifice is an inspiration to us all.
	Please, thank you.
	It's an unbelievable moment.
	Obviously, it's the most memorable part of that entire State of the Union.
	I sat down for 40 minutes or an hour with Ji Sung-ho.
	We're going to air this interview in two parts.
	I must say, too, when we were doing the interview, I had a live translation going on in my ear.
	Only after we redid the translation and re-recorded it later did I realize that I was just hearing a paraphrasing of what was going on.
	The actual details are far more horrifying than And you'll see that even the reactions alone are pretty telling.
	But actually what was being said that I couldn't hear is even that much more horrifying.
	This is the real, true story, first person account of what goes on in North Korea and in communist governments throughout history and around the world.
	Without any more introduction, how do you beat an introduction from the President of the United States?
	Here is my interview with Ji Sung-ho.
	Sung-ho, thank you so much for being here.
	Nice to meet you.
	You are the most heroic person I've ever met.
	You're probably the most heroic person I'll ever meet in my life.
	I want to talk about your personal story in a second, but it first occurs to me.
	The Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago.
	People who are alive today don't have really an experience of communism.
	Communism is fading from people's memory.
	You have this very, very vivid experience of it.
	How would you describe communism to people who are living in the West, in free countries?
	I think that communism is a horrible idea that brainwashes its citizens.
	They talk about the happiness of living together in harmony by preaching about equality.
	In reality, however, I believe that communism is where the royalty and the higher-ups live in extravagance by exploiting the people.
	It's hard for people to see now because you have prosthetics and everything.
	But you were grievously injured as a young teenager.
	You lost your hand, you lost your leg.
	North Korea is not known for its good treatment of people with disabilities.
	How did you get those injuries and how did you survive in North Korea when you had them?
	As you may know, I do not have my left hand or my left leg.
	But I was not born this way.
	I became disabled when I lived in North Korea.
	because in North Korea, people could not eat and had to scavenge and do anything in order to feed themselves.
	Even though I should have been in school, I would steal coals from the supply chain so that I had money to buy corn or other supplies.
	I continued to do this until I was 14 years old.
	One day I fell from a running train while I was stealing coals.
	My left arm and my left leg were crushed under the 60-ton train.
	I later had to cut both off.
	I was forced to go into operation in the hospital without any proper anesthetics.
	In addition, I had to endure the immeasurable amount of pain for seven months within that hospital.
	I consequently became disabled.
	However, in North Korea, disabled people are expected to live quietly.
	They do not want the disabled people to go outside and show that they are miserable.
	They did not want the outside world to know that they have problems with the human rights of their citizens.
	They wanted the disabled to die off.
	Therefore, I was in the center of discrimination, where the North Koreans wanted me to die quietly.
	North Korea is known for this.
	From what I've read, they put people with Down syndrome away, they don't give treatment to people with disabilities, and you, of course, sustained your injuries because you were too hungry.
	You fainted as you were trying to get little scraps of food for you and for your family.
	Was it this injury that convinced you that you had to flee North Korea, or was it something else?
	What convinced you that you finally had to get out, you and as much of your family as could get out?
	I know you grew up during the famines of the 1990s.
	What motivated you and said, I've got to get to freedom?
	I realized that I had to escape after I became disabled.
	I realized that North Korea is not a land of happiness and equality.
	Even though the disabled people need societal protection and the special provision from the government, North Korea did not provide any of this.
	I realized that living in North Korea as a disabled person is nearly impossible.
	At one point, I thought about ending my own life rather than living under such harsh conditions and discrimination.
	I kept thinking about this until, in the year 2000, I went to China to beg for food.
	The Chinese police officers assaulted me and said that retards like me should die off and stop embarrassing the nation.
	During all the torments and the beatings by the police, I was saddened because this is not how humans should treat one another.
	There exist many more free nations out there.
	So I decided I would escape this hellhole.
	I decided I would escape North Korea for good.
	I read somewhere, because I know that you're Christian, and I know that you, I believe you said that the Lord's Prayer, the Our Father, sustained you during some of this torture from the North Korean regime.
	How did you encounter Christianity?
	What role did it play in your decision to flee, in your thousands of miles long journey fleeing on those famous crutches with this disability, and in the work that you're doing now?
	If you are a Christian in North Korea, you are either publicly executed or sent to political internment camps.
	There are no official churches in North Korea.
	And when asked about who is God in North Korea, Kim Jong-il should be the God of North Korea.
	Christianity is absolutely forbidden there.
	When I escaped to China, however, I was exposed to the existence of Christianity.
	I then realized that there is a higher being other than Kim Jong-il and prayed daily in North Korea in midst of the torment.
	I prayed that if there is a true God, I believe that He would be the one to help poor people like me to escape.
	Even though it seemed impossible due to me not having one hand and a leg, I prayed to God to help me escape this land.
	Six years later, I found an opportunity for me to escape.
	However, the Tumen River was overflowing and made it impossible to cross the river.
	So I prayed.
	I prayed, God, please let me cross this river.
	Even though I nearly drowned, I was able to safely cross the Tumen River.
	And whenever I was about to fall in despair while I was crossing China, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand, I prayed to God that if He gives me strength to go to the free nation, I will help out other North Koreans to live in free, democratic nations and strive for the North Korea where the disabled people like me won't have to escape the nation to escape discrimination.
	God seemed to answer my prayers, and I was able to survive my journey and safely get across.
	Of course, when you think of Christianity 2,000 years ago, it was the last political revolution that offered freedom to people.
	And that's why rulers from 2,000 years back all the way up to the Kim dictatorship has been so fearful of it and attacked it.
	I've got to say, when I read your life story...
	It's hard not to tear up at parts of your journey, and I know that the rest of the country, when they saw you at the State of the Union as a guest of President Trump, raised your crutches up and heard what he said recounting your life, I don't think there was a dry eye in the house from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
	Those crutches have become world famous.
	One, how did you do it?
	How did you cross thousands of miles on those crutches?
	Where did you get those crutches from?
	Why do you keep them around?
	The crutch that I held up during President Trump's State of the Union speech was a commemoration by my father, who personally made the crutches for me.
	My father is no longer alive.
	He died in 2006 under heavy torment by the North Korean regime.
	I had to cross the Tumen River while I was on the crutch.
	Because the river was overflowing at the time, and I did not know much about the Holy Spirit, I knew the miracle of the Red Sea.
	I prayed to God that even though he can't make this river disappear, please spare me like you did in the Red Sea.
	When I was crossing the river with my younger brother, I was nearly drowning, but my brother was able to pick me up from the violent currents and saved me.
	I could have easily died in the river, but thanks to my brother and because God protected me, I was safely able to cross the river.
	When I was traveling in crutches, and because I did not have my left hand, I had to tie my hand to the crutch.
	When you are caught by the Chinese police in China, you are sent back to North Korea, and you are executed as an enemy of the state.
	I prayed more so that I would not be caught and be killed.
	And when I could no longer walk and fell down, I prayed to God that even though I am not as healthy as other people, please make me at least live another day in a free nation.
	Also, I was able to cross because there were many helping hands.
	Wow.
	It's not as though the...
	The Kim regime didn't give you the crutches, or I believe they didn't even give you anesthetic when you were being operated on for your injuries as a young man.
	I believe that North Korea is bad, or more precisely, that communism is bad.
	The reason why is because it lies to the whole world about the nature of the organization.
	Even though they have human rights abuses, they boast about the flawlessness of their human rights.
	That is why I believe it is bad.
	When I was in North Korea, there were anesthetics, but they were only reserved for the higher-ups when they go through a medical operation.
	Poor people like me, however, are told we are equal, even though we are not, and are not given anesthetics during surgeries.
	Therefore, I was forced to endure tremendous pain for three hours during my operation.
	I was only 14 at the time.
	What gave me the most pain was that the doctors had to cut away my skin and saw my bone off without any anesthetics.
	The pain was so severe that I lost consciousness here and there.
	When I woke up, my wrist was cut off and I remembered how painful my operation was.
	I believe that if hell actually exists on earth, there is no harsher hell than there.
	That pain still lingers as a form of trauma for me, even today.
	Of course.
	I'm sort of sorry to even have you relive it as you tell about this, but of course it's such an important thing to show, the hell of communism.
	And you've explained two...
	There's struggles you've undergone, which is really the same struggle.
	There's the physical struggle of these horrific things you've experienced from a young man all the way through your escape.
	And then the spiritual struggle of being told, you should just die.
	We don't want you.
	You're not worth protecting.
	Even the spiritual struggle of living every day as a sort of robot for this communist regime.
	Which is harder, and which do you think is harder for people in North Korea broadly?
	In terms of pain, physical pain is undoubtedly one of the harsher difficulties out there.
	I said that it is like hell, but I believe the fact that you have to live there forever, without anyone trying to change the living system and conditions, is the real challenge.
	When I was young, the fact that I had to get my legs cut off in the surgery was a painful experience for me.
	But the fact that I had to live in North Korea was more painful for me.
	In reality, North Korea enslaved its citizens.
	The reason why I say this is because I believe that it is universally agreeable that when you work, you should be rewarded for the value of your labor.
	In North Korea, however, citizens were not fed for their labor, and when they ask for food, they are sent to prison.
	If they cannot find any more options and they go to China or other places, they are sent back to North Korea as a prisoner.
	Even if you just think differently from the other North Koreans, you are sent to a political internment camp.
	In a sense, North Koreans cannot breathe in those conditions.
	Moreover, the fact that I was disabled in North Korea was so painful that my only option was to separate myself from these pains by escaping.
	And even though I knew my disability would hinder my chances of escape, so that I would have only a 10% chance of escaping, I still attempted to escape.
	knowing that my descendants in the future would be proud of this journey. - The image that, I mean, this makes perfect sense because there's no hope in communism of material betterment or of a political betterment.
	There's just stasis and the hell that you describe.
	And then the anti-Christianity, the anti-Christian persecution, say there cannot even be a spiritual hope.
	It's just despair and hopelessness, as you describe.
	In the West, we're told that people in North Korea are brainwashed to love the Kims, and they love the Kims.
	And we saw when Kim Jong-il died...
	Videos and photos from North Korean propaganda of people crying hysterically.
	Are those tears real?
	Are people really brainwashed to love the Kims?
	Or do the North Korean people, are they very aware of their own misery and desirous of regime change and freedom?
	When Kim Il-sung died, I believe that there were many who actually shed tears during his funeral.
	Until that time, there were many who believed that North Korea's political system was the right choice.
	However, I believe that the tears shed when Kim Jong-il died were only from a small number of people.
	If you do not cry during the funeral, you will be executed.
	In North Korea, during the filming of the funeral, when there are many including the politicians watching, the fact that you are not crying is the sign that you are not loyal enough to the great leader and God.
	You are then either exiled from Pyongyang or sent to internment camps.
	That is why people at least have to act like they are crying in those situations.
	In a sense, the North Koreans are required by the regime to act against their will like a bunch of fools in a circus freak show.
	That is why many North Koreans have to shed tears during the funeral.
	There are not many people who actually believe that their nation is the best nation.
	When I lived in North Korea, I knew that it was not the best place to live.
	That is why I had to flee from North Korea.
	And many other people want to flee from North Korea, but they cannot because they will be publicly executed.
	In a sense, the level of loyalty in the past and the level of loyalty today in North Korea has changed and has become an issue for the North Koreans.
	Well, you're doing God's work.
	It is a singular inspiration to talk to you and to meet you and to hear your story.
	I really wish American millennials and college professors and armchair socialists and communists could talk to that guy.
	Because when you sit down across from Ji Sung Ho, the gravity and the enormity of communism It hits you in the face.
	It's all fun and games until you see the reality, the physical injuries, the amputations, and the psychological trauma that this causes.
	To this guy who got out, who made it out somehow with some of his family.
	Some of his other family, obviously, was tortured to death before they could leave or starve to death.
	And an entire country is left behind that wall, enslaved by the Kim family.
	So, it reminds me, when you talk to people in college, you know, like freshman year, you're talking to those little armchair socialists, and they say, well, you know, you know, socialism, it's really never been tried.
	Oh, real, true socialism, not that fake socialism, true socialism, true communism has never been tried.
	It's been tried.
	It's been tried many, many times over the last 100, 150 years.
	This is what happens.
	This is the end of the road for socialism and communism.
	And even, you know, one thing that irks me almost more are those know-nothing, moderate types, independent types, a lot of millennials who say, you know, communism, it's a good idea in theory.
	It's beautiful in theory.
	It's beautiful on paper.
	It's just terrible in practice.
	It's not beautiful on paper.
	It's terrible on paper.
	It's awful.
	It's inhuman on paper.
	It's miserable and evil and wicked and antithetical to everything beautiful and true and human and divine on paper.
	It's just awful.
	There's no excuse for it.
	And I really wish that those people who defend communism and socialism could look that guy in the eye and tell him how great communism is.
	And how great socialism is.
	Because this is a scary trend in America.
	I opened up that interview by observing that it's been 30 years now since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
	Almost 30 years at this point.
	And people forget.
	They don't remember.
	They didn't live during communism.
	My entire generation did not live during communism.
	I basically was born as the Berlin Wall was falling.
	So they don't know, they don't remember the horrors of it.
	Right now, according to some polls, more than half of American millennials support socialism, identify as socialists.
	And it's so insidious.
	It's because of this weak, light education that they've had where they hear, well, there's capitalism over here, and that's bad because my teacher told me and Hollywood told me that's bad because in all the movies the business guy is really bad.
	Okay, so that's bad.
	And communism, that's probably bad, I guess.
	So let's go in the middle of socialism.
	That's fine.
	Socialism's good, isn't it?
	That's what they think.
	They don't remember the stories from the Soviet Union, from all the countries that were oppressed by the Soviet Union, from all the failures of socialism all around the world.
	They don't even read the news.
	I mean, this isn't being reported very much right now that Venezuela is running out of water.
	Venezuela, a country that was doing basically fine as well as any Latin American country, you know, which you get kind of ebb and flow in matters of prosperity.
	And then they elected Hugo Chavez about 18 years ago.
	Open socialist, essentially made himself a dictator.
	What did he do?
	He stole private businesses.
	He stole industries.
	That's called nationalizing.
	That's socialist talk.
	You say when you want to steal people's property, you say we're going to nationalize it.
	We're going to give this to the nation.
	And what happened?
	Just misery.
	Endless misery ever since.
	You've got people eating rats, if they're lucky, in the street to get a little bit of food.
	Rampant famines.
	And now they're out of water.
	They've run out of water.
	And this isn't the first time they've run out of water.
	They ran out of water in 2016, too.
	That's socialism.
	More than half of American millennials saying this, that's a scary thing.
	You had a socialist...
	A self-described socialist win in that Queens District nomination for that, a Democrat nomination for that Congress seat.
	She pretended that she was from the Bronx.
	She pretended that she knew what poverty was.
	She doesn't know what poverty is.
	She grew up a town over from me, in a wealthier town than me, in northern Westchester.
	That's where she grew up, but she's pretending to be otherwise.
	And a lot of these people who talk about how great communism is on paper, how great socialism is in practice, they grew up in luxury and wealth and prosperity.
	They don't know.
	It's very easy to think about those things.
	When you watch your grandmother starve like Ji Song-ho did, or you watch your family being killed, then it isn't so nice, is it?
	And that's why it's so important.
	We've got another part of this interview that we're going to air either later this week or early next week.
	It's so important that people see the reality of it.
	I don't even blame millennials for their ignorance because they've been utterly failed by their educational systems and they think because they have a cell phone that they know everything.
	I remember hearing this in high school.
	They'd say, you know, you know more than Socrates knew.
	You know more than Aristotle because you have all this information at the tip of your fingers, right?
	But you have to read it to know more.
	You have to have a context to know, but you don't.
	You just think, okay, well, I've got all the information here.
	I don't have to learn anything, do I?
	And so I don't really blame millennials for their ignorance, but you've got to put it in front of them.
	Images are very powerful.
	President Trump knows this.
	Good politicians know this.
	You have to see the image.
	And the image that you have to look at is look in the face of Ji Sung Ho.
	You'll see what communism does.
	And you'll see why some people run away to freedom.
	You know, 14% of American teens as of 2011 thought that Independence Day is when the United States declared independence from France.
	You know, huge pluralities of the United States don't know that America declared independence on the 4th of July.
	I bet Ji Sung Ho knows that.
	I went down to Cuba, another communist slave island, back when they opened up American Relations a year or so ago.
	I wanted to see really what it was like.
	People all the time, they say, and I like smoking cigars, but I did really want to see what it was like.
	These people say, oh, it's so quaint.
	Oh, it's so nice.
	They don't need air conditioning there.
	They just don't need it.
	Not that they don't need it.
	It's very hot in Cuba.
	It's that they can't have it.
	The government doesn't let them have it.
	They keep them in dire poverty.
	The average income is $25 a month.
	And I gotta tell you, they don't wear Che Guevara t-shirts down there.
	I looked around.
	I was there for three days.
	I just really wanted to see it.
	And they wear American flags sewn onto their jeans, on their bicycles, if they can have a bicycle.
	The American flags are all over the place.
	That's the subversion.
	And that's the symbol of what they hope for.
	It's American useful idiots who wear those Che Guevara t-shirts here.
	I saw liberals, met these couple of lefty kids at the Havana airport.
	They said, oh wow, you know, don't believe those Cubans.
	They're really rich.
	They really, they have money.
	They're just pretending.
	Because they couldn't, they couldn't, they had this cognitive dissonance.
	They couldn't believe that the ideas that they advocate would lead to such human misery.
	So they had to lie.
	To resolve that cognitive dissonance, they can either stop being socialists or pretend that these slave islands are other than they are.
	But the reality is undeniable.
	You can hear it from a guy like Ji Sung Ho.
	So we're going to have the rest of that interview next week.
	To round out today, I guess I have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
	To round out today, I want to start out a new segment called This Is America.
	And because, but not like that song.
	Ba-ba-da-ba-ba-da, this is America.
	You know the one that Donald Glover stole from that other guy?
	Yeah, well, we're going to have a segment, This Is America, to talk about these stories that are quintessentially American, that are utterly forgotten, and that really tell you a lot about the American character.
	So today, I figure Ji Song Ho, the most heroic freedom lover I've ever met, probably will ever meet, is a good time to do it, and because we have the 4th of July tomorrow.
	So, we're going to talk about Samuel Whittemore and a few other of the great American Revolution guys.
	Before we get to that, I'm sorry if you're on Facebook and YouTube.
	I've got to say goodbye to you.
	You have to go to dailywire.com.
	You pay $10 a month, $100 for an annual membership.
	You get me.
	You get the Andrew Klavan show.
	You get the Ben Shapiro show.
	You get to ask questions in the mailbag, which get your questions in because I'll be answering them on Thursday.
	None of that matters.
	This is what matters.
	The leftist tears.
	Because when you show them that everything that they believe is a lie that leads to human misery, they cry.
	They cry.
	Usually they'll laugh at you first, and then you show them the reality of it, and then they start to cry because of the wickedness of their ideas.
	So make sure that you can fill up your Tumblr.
	Because also, guys, look, we all know that for the left, every single day is tax day, April 15th.
	Depends on the year, I guess.
	And for the right, every single day is the 4th of July.
	You're going to need this tomorrow, folks.
	They're going to be saying, why we can't collect taxes from everybody today?
	Because today's Independence Day.
	Just as good as ever.
	Maybe this might be the best day to drink them all year long, July 4th.
	So make sure you go to dailywire.com.
	We'll be right back.
	This is America.
	We've got to get a better intro than that, I guess.
	Can we just, like, superimpose my face on Donald's lover?
	So, the first guy we're going to talk about...
	I really wanted to mention this on our Daily Wire backstage yesterday, but it didn't come up because we started talking about hierarchies of values with Jordan Peterson, and, you know, that'll take you two hours.
	So...
	Samuel Whittemore, one of the unsung heroes of the American Revolution, one of the biggest badasses in American history.
	Pardon my French.
	I know I did a whole show on profanity yesterday.
	This guy...
	Born in England in 1695, he comes over to America as a captain to fight the French in 1745.
	Already love him.
	He's fighting the French, an American hobby as old as time.
	While he's fighting the French in 1745, he captures a French officer's sword.
	Now, he takes the sword.
	This is now going to be Samuel Whittemore's sword.
	When he left in notes, they asked, how did you get that sword?
	He said, oh, well, the owner of the sword died suddenly.
	How did he die, Samuel Whittemore?
	He just died suddenly, and now I have his sword.
	Okay, so after the war, he doesn't go back to England.
	He stays in America.
	He buys a farm.
	He lives in Massachusetts.
	Very nice.
	Some years go by.
	1758 rolls around.
	This is the French and Indian War is going on.
	He joins up again because he didn't kill enough French the first time.
	Now, he's 64 years old at this point.
	This is not a young man anymore.
	64 years old, he says, no, I got to...
	I gotta go kill some more French.
	I got the bloodlust up in America.
	So he joins up and he destroys, he's in the company that destroys Fort Louisbourg.
	Then, after that, he says, I haven't killed enough French yet.
	So he joins General James Wolfe in a successful assault on Quebec.
	So he says, okay, he goes up there.
	He says, we're going to invade Canada, which we should have done.
	I mean, it is, you know, we tried to convince Jordan Peterson of this yesterday.
	This is America's hat.
	Washington's biggest mistake.
	It could have had twice the country right now.
	So he goes up, and it is a successful assault on Quebec.
	Then, 1763 rolls around.
	So at this point, what is he, pushing 70?
	He leaves his entire family, his wife, his children, his grandchildren, because now he's killed enough French, he wants to go kill some more Indians on behalf of America.
	Joins to fight the Indian Wars against Ottawa chief Pontiac.
	So he goes over there.
	He's just, you know, starts slaughtering all these Indians and defending his country.
	And he comes back from that war.
	And all of a sudden, he doesn't just have a sword.
	He has two dueling pistols.
	His family says, Samuel, where'd you get those dueling pistols?
	He said, oh, the owner died suddenly.
	Died suddenly, huh?
	How did he die suddenly?
	I don't know.
	He just died suddenly.
	So, now the American Revolution rolls around.
	This guy is 80 years old.
	He becomes an instant adopter of American independence.
	He says, I'm sick of this distant king telling us what to do.
	I'm going to support the patriot cause.
	They say, Samuel, you're a little old on account of you're 80 and you should have died years ago.
	So now I'm going to sign up anyway.
	The Battle of Lexington and Concord happens.
	He sees 700 Brits coming down the street.
	He says, this can't be good.
	Then he sees 1,400 Brits.
	says, uh-oh, not a good sign if the British are calling for backup, if they're calling for reinforcements.
	So the British start burning down people's homes.
	This is when Whittemore goes to war.
	He grabs his musket.
	He grabs his sword that he took from the guy he killed.
	He takes the two dueling pistols that he had from the guy he killed.
	He's waiting, right?
	He's laying in wait.
	Some other people are shooting at the British.
	He waits until they get pretty, pretty close.
	He fires a shot from his musket, instantly kills a British soldier.
	He then drops the musket, pulls out his dueling pistols, almost point-blank range, shoots one, kills him dead.
	Shoots another one, mortally wounds him, leaves him for dead.
	Now he's out of bullets.
	They are coming right up on him.
	So he rips out his sword and starts sword fighting them as they're trying to bayonet him.
	A British soldier loads his gun, shoots him directly in the face.
	Samuel Whittemore is now blasted through the face.
	He gets knocked on the head with the butt of a musket, and he's bayoneted 13 times, left for dead.
	In a pool of his own blood.
	Okay, the British go away.
	Now some of the colonials see the last stand of Samuel Whittemore.
	They say, okay, we should go up and get his body.
	They go up to him lying in a pool of his own blood.
	But he isn't lying dead.
	He's lying there struggling to reload his musket to go shoot more British.
	They carry him down on a door, a makeshift gurney.
	They carry him to Cooper Tavern, which was acting as a hospital.
	They say, look, this guy is so beyond dead.
	He's lost all of this blood.
	His face is totally mangled from getting shot in it.
	And the family says, please treat his wounds.
	They say there's no point in treating his wounds.
	He's dead.
	He's 80 years old and he's blown up in the face and bayoneted 13 times.
	They say, please just treat his wounds.
	They say, okay, out of respect for Samuel Whittemore, we'll treat his wounds.
	And then he lives another 18 years.
	He lives another.
	He went on, made a full recovery.
	He still was disfigured in his face.
	And he loved that.
	He relished the wound and said he was proud to show the wounds that he gave for his country.
	And he lived another 18 years.
	He died of natural causes on February 3rd, 1793.
	What a man.
	What an American.
	We've got a few others.
	Now, a lot of the revolutionary war stories that we don't hear about, we hear about the words that come from them.
	So there are certain famous speeches that come, you know, my only regret is I have but one life to give for my country or whatever.
	So the men from which those phrases come lived incredible lives.
	The Battle of Bunker Hill occurred after Lexington and Concord a couple months after, June 17, 1775.
	Here enters John Stark.
	John Stark, also not a young man.
	Not a 16-year-old.
	He's a 46-year-old farmer from New Hampshire.
	John Stark hears about the Battle of Lexington and Concord, where Samuel Whittemore is busy getting shot in the face and just slaughtering the British.
	He instantly, the day he hears about it, he recruits 400 men from New Hampshire to go to Boston and to stop the British.
	Now, coincidentally, my ancestors, John and Simon Knowles, were living in New Hampshire, I believe.
	New Hampshire or Maine.
	And they also went down to the Battle of Bunker Hill.
	After the news of Lexington and Concord.
	John Knowles was killed there, or died of his wounds from the battle, and Simon Knowles fought there, I think he was 16 or something, and went on to serve in Washington's army at Valley Forge, and Rye, White Plains, went all around.
	Stark is 46, much older than Simon Knowles at this point.
	Goes down, gets to Bunker Hill, and sees one of the early and important battles in the war.
	Sees a gap in the Patriots' defense.
	There's a gap there.
	The British can sneak up behind it, squash the Patriots, possibly end this early momentum in the war.
	So Stark comes in and is widely credited with saving the day.
	Stark's militia that he just made up himself on a day's notice hearing about Lexington and Concord.
	Stark's militia then also later stopped the momentum of a British advance that was coming down from Canada at the Battle of Bennington.
	And a great hero of the war, in the 1809 reunion for the veterans of that battle, he couldn't make it.
	He was too old.
	He felt he couldn't go down there anymore.
	So he sent his regrets.
	And the words he gave to send his regrets, live free or die.
	That's what he told his old veteran pals at the reunion.
	Live free or die then, 140 or so years later, was adopted as the New Hampshire state motto.
	It comes from that guy who helped save the war because he jumped on his country and saw a gap and made a really strategic play to help keep the momentum in the Patriots' favor.
	This brings us to Nathan Hale, a personal favorite of mine.
	You know, Ben went to college at like 16 or something.
	Nathan Hale went to Yale at age 14, although in these days you would go a little younger.
	He graduated from Yale at 18 with first class honors and he became a teacher in Connecticut.
	So he was just living a nice life, going to become a teacher, a nice, you know, English boy.
	But George Washington needed a spy.
	Washington personally needed a spy.
	They needed a spy to figure out when the British were going to invade Manhattan.
	The Patriots knew that the British were going to come down and invade Manhattan.
	They needed someone to go behind British lines and figure out when that was.
	Washington asked for volunteers.
	There was one volunteer.
	Nathan Hale.
	At this point, he would have been, what, 20 years old, 21 years old, I believe.
	So he goes behind, he's going to spy to figure out when they're going to invade and quash American independence and keep oppressing the United States, the future of the United States.
	There are two stories on how Nathan Hale was discovered.
	One story is that Major Robert Rogers, British major, saw Hale in a tavern.
	Hale was wearing some sort of disguise, and through his own trickery, Rogers was able to get Hale to expose himself.
	The other story is that Nathan Hale's loyalist cousin, Samuel Hale, just gave him away.
	Because the Revolutionary War split families.
	Families would be loyalists, some part loyalists, part patriot.
	And Hale's cousin may have given him away.
	So he gets arrested, and before he's about to be hanged, because hanging was the punishment for spies, they believe that being a spy is being an illegal combatant in war, you're hanged immediately for it.
	The night before that, he was being held at General William Howes, the British general's A mansion, the Beekman House, one of the British headquarters in New York.
	He's being held at the greenhouse there.
	Nathan Hale, the night before, he requests a Bible.
	He says, all right, I'm going to die.
	Can I at least have a Bible?
	British say, no.
	Denies his request.
	He says, can I have a clergyman?
	Denies his request.
	Absolutely not.
	He's brought to the gallows, September 22nd, 1776.
	The kid is 21 years old.
	He goes up there and he gives some of the famous words.
	Coincidentally, actually, the guy who hanged him is this guy, Bill Richmond, who's a 13-year-old former slave who was a loyalist, 13 years old, and became a famous boxer in Europe later on.
	He was the hangman.
	Nathan Hale goes up and everybody says he gave a good speech.
	He said, I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.
	Now, some historians have questioned this.
	They say, oh, that's too beautiful.
	Did he really say that?
	I don't know.
	It's well attested to by a ton of people, A, who were there, and historians who give different lines too.
	He didn't just say that one sentence.
	He said other variations on this and acquitted himself.
	And a lot of people say he handled himself very well and explained that he would do it again.
	He had no regrets and, you know, he loved his country.
	That line also comes from Joseph Addison's play Cato.
	The total line is, How beautiful is death when earned by virtue?
	Who would not be that youth?
	What pity is it that we can die but once to serve our country?
	So there's a thought that Nathan Hale was sort of paraphrasing that play.
	But it's a beautiful sentiment, a beautiful line, very true.
	Also, you hear the kind of classic maxim, Dolce et decorum est pro patria mori.
	It's sweet and seemly to die for your country.
	And you see the reality of it.
	These weren't just lines.
	This wasn't just some little poetry.
	This is a 21-year-old kid full of promise who gave his life for his country and had no regrets, faced it down in courage.
	If he'd faced it down like a coward or tried to trade or cried at the gallows, history either would not remember him or would treat him badly.
	But he went there, faced his fate straight on, and he's an American hero.
	Finally, this brings us to John Paul Jones.
	John Paul Jones, father of the Navy, rarely talked about.
	This guy grew up in Scotland.
	He was a sailor, and he was a sailor on British merchant ships.
	He comes to Virginia at some point in the 1770s.
	Unclear why.
	Little bit of a hothead.
	He may have killed a member of his crew on a British merchant ship.
	It's unclear why he came.
	He certainly likes the Patriot cause.
	Moves to Virginia in the 1770s.
	He's commissioned to the Continental Navy December 1775.
	The guy's 28 years old at this point.
	So he is a first lieutenant in the Continental Navy, and he's the first guy to hoist the Grand Union flag, which I think I have.
	Got one right here, let's see.
	That is this flag.
	So this is the first flag used by the Continental military, and he hoisted that.
	So he commanded the Ranger, and he was sailing for France.
	France is helping us out in the war.
	He's commanding the Ranger.
	In Quilberon Bay in France on Valentine's Day, 1778...
	This is important.
	It seems unimportant, but it's very important because this is the first time the Stars and Stripes were recognized by a foreign country.
	France is saying, you are a country, now we're going to recognize you at sea.
	So in 1779, the French king gave Jones this very old ship, the East Indian man, Duc de Dura.
	And Jones named that Bonhomme Richard, which was after his patron and pal Benjamin Franklin.
	So, like, poor Richard's almanac.
	He names it after Franklin.
	He then immediately sails from France to raid English shipping.
	The British consider this guy a pirate, because he didn't just go and start, you know, shooting boats off the coast of America.
	He was a little smarter than that.
	He said, we're just going to...
	So he goes from France.
	He captures 17 merchant ships and 500 British prisoners.
	Then comes his finest moment, one of the great moments of the Revolutionary War.
	September 23rd, 1779, he engages the HMS Serapis off the coast of England.
	So, this, you know, beautiful royal ship, and immediately, Jones gets blasted.
	He, you know, the cannons hit him, he loses a ton of his firepower, he loses a lot of his gunners.
	There are sharpshooters shooting at him, you know, and the HMS Serapis calls out, they say, will you surrender?
	We've just blown up your old ship, basically, and you're sinking.
	Will you surrender now?
	And Jones, and this is attested to by multiple people, calls out, he says, I have not yet begun to fight.
	I have not yet begun, which is true.
	He hadn't begun to fight.
	It's already sinking, and he hadn't begun to fight.
	So his ship is sinking down.
	Total American, just like, screw you, man.
	I'm not going down, right?
	He's being gunned down by sharpshooters, and he's still fighting.
	He had a second famous line from this episode.
	He said, I may sink, but I'll be damned if I strike.
	To strike his colors.
	To surrender, right?
	So he says, I may sink, but I'll be damned if I strike.
	The boat is going down.
	The ship is going down.
	From the beginning, he's already losing.
	He says, I haven't begun to fight.
	And what happens at the end of that battle?
	The Serapis surrenders.
	The Brits surrender.
	By the way, a day later, the Richard is totally sunk.
	Jones is then transferred to take control of the Serapis.
	Absolutely shocking.
	No one could have called this for him at the beginning of the fight.
	After that, He had a long career as a sailor.
	He ends up sailing for the Empress Catherine of Russia.
	He's returned to France afterward, and he dies there.
	Just to get a dig in at the revolutionary French, because, look, the aristocratic French, the French monarchy, helped us get our independence.
	Love those guys.
	Those guys were great.
	Then a bunch of jerk French came in and chopped off all of their heads.
	The revolutionaries, the lefties, the Which is why when we criticize France, we're criticizing those guys.
	I like the aristocrats, but those guys were awful.
	They come in and they start selling cemeteries, taking over churches, knocking them down, selling cemeteries.
	So we had no idea where Jones was buried, this amazing hero.
	Finally, we were able to track it down and claim his body.
	But because of those...
	Damn lefty revolutionary French.
	We lost it for a long time.
	That's our show.
	We're obviously running late.
	Before we go, I mentioned this on the Cigar Show yesterday on the Daily Wire backstage, but one of my favorite memories, one of my earliest patriotic memories is my grandfather, who was a veteran from World War II. He was a B-24 navigator.
	He played me, it's a grand old flag, the George M. Cohan song, and at like two years old I would march around his dining room and sing that song.
	So I want to leave you with that clip because I really love the flag.
	You can tell I have a lot of flags on my desk.
	I love all of the American flags.
	It's a wonderful symbol of the country.
	It's important to respect the flag.
	It is important not to rub the flag on the ground or kneel and protest the flag.
	And so to leave you with a little good old American patriotic entertainment.
	Before we go today, here is George M. Cohan's It's a Grand Old Flag.
	You're a grand old flag, you're a high-flying flag, and forever in peace and a flag.
	You're the emblem of the land I love, the home of the free and the brave.
	Every heart beats you, wonder, red, white, and blue, and there's never a boast or brag.
	Once you're old and famous people drop, keep your eye on the grand old flag.
	Oh, Lord, we're good to go.
	with your love, the grand more.
	The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
	And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Jim Nickel.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
	The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

▲