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July 5, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
49:17
Ep. 179 - The Third American Revolution

Crazy ladies climbing the Statue of Liberty, Facebook categorizing the Declaration of Independence as “hate speech,” and a record-low in American pride. Some say we’re on the verge of a second civil war. In reality, it's the third American Revolution. St. Theresa of Calcutta weighs in. Then, the rest of my interview with North Korean defector Ji Seong-Ho. Finally, the Mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Crazy ladies climbing the Statue of Liberty, Facebook categorizing the Declaration of Independence as hate speech, Democrats decrying the Fourth of July, and a record low in American pride.
Some catastrophizers say we're on the verge of a second Civil War.
In reality, we're on the precipice of a third American Revolution, and the court is the key.
St.
Teresa of Calcutta will weigh in.
Then, the final part of my interview with North Korean defector and all-around hero Ji Sung-ho.
Finally, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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So, how was your 4th of July?
Was it good?
I had a very good 4th of July.
Obviously, I was playing It's a Grand Old Flag, marching around my apartment with sweet little Elisa.
And then, you know, I saw some fireworks.
I don't know, hung out with some pals.
Ate some Omaha Steak Burgers.
That was delicious.
Went over, you know, had a couple drinks, saw some fireworks.
I suspect you had a similar 4th of July.
How did the left spend the 4th of July?
We actually have video.
*BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* For those of you who don't subscribe, this is why you have to subscribe.
There was a video of a high school kid running into doorways and banging his head against the wall.
Plus, obviously, that wonderful girl dubbed by the internet as trickly puff screaming.
That is how the left spent their Fourth of July.
I mean, it was really, really insane.
They lost their minds.
Crazy ladies climbing up the Statue of Liberty.
Even the Democrat Party issuing this crazy announcement.
All of this does have you realize at least half the country is unhinged.
They are really starting to lose it.
And you hear all this talk about, is there going to be a civil war?
Is there going to be a civil war?
I don't think so, but I do think we're on the verge of the third American revolution.
We'll get into that a little bit more later on.
So let's start with the crazy lady who climbed the Statue of Liberty.
So this is the new campaign slogan for Democrats.
She wore a t-shirt and it said, Abolish ICE. Abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
This is their new slogan going into 2018.
It's not just the crazies who climbed the Statue of Liberty.
It's even U.S. senators who are stating this.
So she goes up, she climbs the Statue of Liberty.
They have to evacuate Liberty Island.
You know, she's up there for like two hours.
You know, by the way, that this woman is not a New Yorker because New Yorkers never go to the Statue of Liberty.
I lived in New York like all of my life, never once went to the Statue of Liberty.
So she, I don't know, they bust them in just like the progressives always do.
They bust in some activists, shut it down for everybody who was trying to have a nice 4th of July.
And climbing, waits two hours all day screaming about how we're separating families at the border.
Or, you know, that old Obama, that old Clinton policy of, you know, you have to detain the criminals and you can't throw children in jail.
So she's screaming a whole hullabaloo about this.
Then, meanwhile, in San Antonio, a grown man went up to a kid who was just wearing his MAGA hat, his Make America Great Again hat.
He so objected to that phrase, Make America Great Again, he goes up, rips the hat off the kid, and actually, like, pulled off some hair with it, too, starts screaming in his face, steals his hat.
I think we have a video of that.
Here is this crazy guy in San Antonio.
Right now, police are looking for that man who was caught on tape, on camera, throwing a drink at a teenager in that video, the man in the red hat, and walks off with the teenager's hat, pulled it off so aggressively, he also pulled out some hair with it.
I didn't think it was going to generate that amount, like, the amount of, like, what people were doing.
Like, I was looking at the comments and some people were like, oh yeah, like, this is uncalled for, and then people were like, you know, just mixed opinions, but I didn't think it would blow up to what it is right now.
By the way, listen, this kid is great.
He's wearing an American flag bandana.
You know, he's got braces.
He's in high school, I assume.
And he says, well, when I posted that video to try to find the guy who threw a drink in my face, ripped off, stole my hat, all this.
When I posted it, you know, a lot of people were supportive.
And then there were some...
Mixed reactions.
Mixed reactions are those lefties who are like, yeah, that's good.
He should have ripped your head off.
It's all that craziness and all that calls for violence coming out of the left.
The left has been calling for violence now pretty explicitly for several weeks.
And look at the juxtaposition.
You've got this kid smiling, braces, American flag, bandana, just an all-around high school kid.
And then this crazy adult leftist This probably unshowered, you know, hairy leftist throwing drinks in his face, ripping it off his head, stealing his property.
Those are the two sides that you get to look at right now.
It's the right with the American flag bandana and the left ripping off property, screaming, vandalizing property, climbing up the Statue of Liberty like a crazy person.
Now, you would think in the midst of all this, Democrats would be freaking out.
They'd say, oh gosh, we're in an election year.
We need to offer an aspirational statement.
We need to offer something instead of just this angry craziness.
And the calls for lawlessness and open borders.
That doesn't seem to play well in Peoria.
So what do they do?
The exact opposite.
That's what they do.
Democrats issued this Fourth of July statement.
This is from the DNC. They said, quote,"...nearly two and a half centuries ago, a band of patriots gathered in Philadelphia to declare that all men are created equal.
Our nation has changed dramatically since those words were first written on parchment." Generations of brave Americans have fought to expand the promise of equality for more Americans, move our country forward in its march toward a more perfect union.
As we celebrate our nation's independence we recognize America's founding promise remains out of reach for too many families.
Too many members of our society are still struggling to find a good paying job.
Not true, by the way.
We have record low unemployment.
There are more jobs open than people who are willing to fill those jobs.
Or the health care that they need.
Not true.
Barack Obama stole health care from Americans who wanted to keep their doctor.
And now we've reversed that, let Americans have their own health care choice.
They go on.
Sorry.
Sorry to interrupt, Democrats.
Too many women, LGBTQ Americans, and by the way, I'm very offended on behalf of the I-L-A-P-Q-L-M-N-O-P-Z-Y-X Americans who were not named by the Democrats, you divisive, exclusive monsters.
They go on.
People of color, people with disabilities still face inequality and injustice across our society.
What's your evidence for that?
No evidence, of course, but hey, they're Democrats.
Who needs evidence?
Everywhere we look, our most fundamental values are under attack.
What values?
Liberty?
Great.
More liberty than ever.
Economic prosperity?
Good.
More prosperity than ever.
I know that one Democrat value, I think, is booing God like they did at their national convention.
But now we've got more religious liberty in this land, so you are free to boo God if you want, and like good people and Christians, are free to worship God.
Thousands of Americans have been separated from their parents at our southern border.
Thousands of children have been separated from their parents.
Now, this isn't quite true.
I mean, this is a policy that's gone on for a long time now.
But notice the sleight of hand here.
It's not American children that are being taken from their parents.
It's illegal aliens invading the country.
So the American dream isn't being pulled out of reach for Americans.
Americans are allowed to define their borders, to have borders, to say who gets to come into the country, who gets to access welfare systems, who gets to participate in labor markets, who gets to come in when there are perhaps higher risks of crime.
Total sleight of hand to conflate.
This is what the Democrats do, by the way.
It's why they changed illegal alien to illegal immigrant.
To undocumented immigrant?
Even illegal immigrant is ridiculous.
There's no illegal immigrant.
To be an immigrant, you have to be accepted by the country.
Illegal alien is the term.
They say, oh, you know, it's really an illegal immigrant.
And there are all sorts of immigrants.
There are Italian immigrants.
There are Irish immigrants.
There are illegal immigrants.
You know, they're all just immigrants, aren't they?
No.
They go on, though.
At our highest court, workers' rights are being taken away.
Not so.
Workers are being given rights because now the workers have a right to decide if they want to join that union or not join that union.
Workers are being given way more rights.
Total lie.
Voting rights are under assault.
Not so at all.
They're referring to voter ID because Democrats usually rely on the dead and the felonious to win elections.
And now we're suggesting perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to do that.
Muslim Americans are being discriminated against for their faith.
Don't see a whole lot of evidence for that.
And by the way, the A huge number of hate crimes in the United States are against Jews.
They don't seem to talk about Jews.
It's always because the Democrats have taken this very strong stance against Israel and in favor of the alleged religion of peace.
A woman's right to choose is under threat like never before.
A woman's right to choose to kill her baby is, of course, what they're suggesting.
And this gets to the heart of what lies before the third American Revolution.
We'll get to that in a bit.
The Democratic Party believes that all people are created equal, no matter who they are, where they come from, who they love, or how they pray.
As we, unless they're Christians, in which case they can't do anything and they have to bake the cakes and they have to arrange the flower arrangements and they need to shut up and stop praying in schools.
As we celebrate our nation's independence, Democrats reaffirm our commitment to fighting for the values of inclusion and opportunity for everyone except for patriotic Maybe that part was implied at the end.
So, they issue this very angry, negative statement.
Everything's terrible.
The world's going to hell in a handbasket.
And they're focusing on issues that the American people don't want to focus on.
We know that the vast majority of Americans don't want amnesty, don't want open borders.
Even for DREAMers, by the way.
And this is true even among Democrats.
The majority of Democrats don't want amnesty even for DREAMers.
They don't think that should be a priority for Congress.
And yet the Democrats are doubling down on this.
They're doubling down on their radicalism.
In part, it's because Trump has trolled them into doing this.
They can't help but take the bait that he puts out there, usually on Twitter.
But it's a really weird and losing strategy.
And the one day that we're supposed to all be united, the 4th of July, American independents go out and shoot some fireworks and stop complaining.
What do they do?
They complain.
Why do they complain on the 4th of July?
Because they don't like America.
They don't like it.
They're showing their hand.
They used to say things like, You know, dissent is patriotic.
So when they would say anti-American things, they would pretend at least that we're patriotic.
They're not even doing that anymore.
They're not even pretending.
Their anti-Americanism is really right out in front.
They say, we don't want any borders.
No, you know, America is stolen land.
You have the head of the Democrat Party, one of the heads of the Democrat Party, smiling with protesters who say that America is stolen land.
You know, that's the radicalism that we're seeing.
And that radicalism, I do understand why some people think we're headed toward another civil war.
They seem to think, you know, we're so divided now.
Both sides are so angry, or at least the left is so angry, that inevitably we're going toward civil war.
CNN, Brian Stelter, one of the best characters from CNN. You know, he looks...
I'm not going to make fun of his looks.
But one could.
You know, one certainly could.
He was giving a talk at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and he's there, and he says, we have a national emergency.
Right now, the Trump presidency is a national emergency.
Never mind, of course, that since President Trump was inaugurated, the Dow is up 5,000 points.
Never mind that unemployment is at record lows right now, 3.8% unemployment.
For all those Americans who are seeing their wealth increase, their freedoms increase, and their employment prospects increase, it doesn't seem like a national emergency, but there's Brian Stelter to remind them that it is, at least in his own fantasy world.
And then to round all of that off, according to new polling, a record low percentage of Americans are extremely proud to be an American.
There is a little caveat here.
47% of Americans are still extremely proud to be American.
Which is pretty good.
You know, you have the word extremely in there.
But look, America is a country that really believes in itself.
It's a country that was founded as a project.
So enthusiasm reigns.
You know, you can have cynicism or kind of lethargy or apathy in a place like France.
You expect that, right?
A friend like, well, qu'est-ce qu'on peut dire?
Qu'est-ce qu'on peut faire?
Rien, rien.
Right, but not in America.
In America, you have this enthusiasm.
You say, yeah, damn right, America...
Yeah, you know, like the song.
I mean, it's really put a shove a boot in different places and, you know, proud to be an American.
It's a very enthusiastic place.
And 47% are still extremely proud.
I wonder what that breakdown is on party lines, by the way.
I wonder, do you think it's just 100, a full 100% of those people who say they're extremely proud are Republicans?
I might suspect so, because the Democrats have taken such...
An explicit anti-American turn.
That number, 47%, is way down.
That number was 70% in 2003.
Now, in part of that, there was this real rallying of the American spirit after the attacks of 9-11.
And George W. Bush had great moral leadership right after that terrorist attack.
It unified the country.
That number dropped.
That number stabilized shortly after 9-11, or after 2003 rather.
And it stabilized and it was pretty stable until 2013.
And then it really started this decline and it's been declining ever since.
Percentage of Americans who say that they're extremely proud to be an American.
What changed?
I think in the immediate timeline...
We can blame Barack Obama for this.
I like to blame Barack Obama for just about anything.
But this I think he's really culpable for.
It's that second Obama term was just so awful.
Usually presidents in their second term moderate a little bit.
They try to unify the country.
They try to have a nice legacy that can buoy them among all segments of the American people.
And Obama didn't do that.
Fox.com even admits this.
Fox ran a thing.
He said the ingenious Obama second term.
Most presidents moderate.
He didn't.
He doubled down on the first term.
So you had these things like foreign policy.
In foreign policy, he didn't try to moderate.
He surrendered to Iran.
He surrendered to Korea.
He gave them, he flew over planes full of, you know, cases of cash and gave them a ton of American assets.
He bowed down.
They captured American sailors in the Persian Gulf.
He said, oh, well, please don't do that again.
Don't do that again.
And in Cuba, after a 50-year, 60-year embargo policy and not having normal relations with Cuba, he said, okay, well, we'll open an embassy and we'll give you everything you want.
And in return, you give us nothing.
Just do it.
Just do it because we hate ourselves.
And then, of course, in 2015, after the Obergefell decision that redefined marriage to include same-sex monogamous unions but not same-sex polygamous unions for some reason because Anthony Kennedy thinks very highly of himself and believes he's a romantic poet, after that decision...
what did Barack Obama do?
Did he try to unite the country?
No.
He painted the White House in rainbow lights.
It was a huge middle finger to half of the country.
To people who didn't want the central institution of society to be radically redefined by a court based on nothing, based on Anthony Kennedy's romantic poetry and the alleged right to intimacy that Kennedy found.
And Scalia said, clearly there isn't a right to intimacy, and even if there were, marriage would not expand that.
Ask the nearest hippie.
He just rubbed It was such a radicalism.
And the real problem with that, by the way, isn't even the question of what one thinks about gay unions or what to call gay unions or how they should be interpreted by law.
The real problem was flouting the rule of law.
Of saying it doesn't matter what the rule of law is.
Yeah, they're going to look at us with a straight face, the Democrats, and say, yeah, I think all the founding fathers and the framers of the Constitution, they thought the Constitution protected monogamous gay unions and defined marriage that way.
That's what they thought.
You say, you couldn't possibly think that.
no, yeah, that's what they thought.
Tell me I'm wrong.
And that flouting the rule of law is the real issue.
Think of like the psychology of lines.
When you're standing online at a store and you're waiting to check out or something, and when people are online, there have been a lot of studies about this, they don't really mind if the line is long, they don't really mind if the line is not moving, so long as the line is fair.
The minute someone cuts in line, people lose their mind because they've broken the rules and now there is chaos.
People are, you think, I can't rely on these rules anymore, so what's going to happen?
People get very agitated, people get very anxious, and people get very tense.
The situation becomes very tense.
That's what's happening by flouting the rule of law.
This is why when the Democrats say abolish ICE, what they're saying is abolish law enforcement.
They've been talking about this with cops forever, you know, abolish police departments, right?
They want to abolish the rule of law, and it makes everybody very anxious because when you don't have a rule of law, you have the rule of men, and men can do whatever they want.
And if the guy that doesn't like you is in charge, then things probably aren't going to work out very well for you unless he's bound by the rule of law.
This goes back to the Third American Revolution.
Not the Civil War.
We're very lazy for a civil war, and there aren't equally strong sides here.
But there have been two American revolutions so far.
The first was the one in 1776 that began yesterday, over two centuries ago.
Then the second one was the Civil War.
This was another American revolution.
This was finishing the work of the American Revolution.
That first revolution was based on natural rights.
It was based on the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The second American Revolution was based on just that.
The Founding Fathers, John Adams, predicted that there would be another American Revolution, that they would have to fight another great war over the question of slavery, because the premise of the United States was not borne out with the institution of slavery in place.
The founding fathers suspected this.
The framers knew that this would happen.
Eventually it happened.
That same issue is playing out on the question of abortion.
And the question of abortion is twofold.
There's Roe v.
Wade.
There's the question of actually the right to an abortion and actually killing babies.
And then there's the question of who can define that right.
Is the court able to just pretend that there's some right to an abortion in the Constitution?
Or, if there is to be a right to an abortion, do the legislatures have to enact that as a law because we're a republic and we have representatives to make laws for us?
What is the question?
And this question of abortion is so essential.
The Democrats are all losing their mind on this court...
And over Merrick Garland and over Neil Gorsuch because Roe v.
Wade is a ridiculous decision that obviously was wrongly decided.
Everybody knows this.
The left knows this.
They're basically admitting it now.
And they know that if an originalist or a constitutionalist or textualist or whatever you want to call it is nominated to the court, Roe v.
Wade might be imperiled.
And that's the question.
They're saying this is all about this one decision.
But the decision isn't just awful for itself.
It's awful also for what it says about American law and that anxiety that it brought to American law.
Here is Mother Teresa, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, explaining the merits of it itself, the question of abortion itself.
Then we'll get to it in the American system.
Here's Saint Teresa.
But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion.
Because Jesus said, if you receive a little child, you receive me.
So every abortion is the denial of receiving Jesus, is the neglect of receiving Jesus.
It is really a war against the child and direct killing of the innocent child Murder by the mother herself and If we accept that the mother can kill even her own child How can we tell other people not to kill one another?
child.
How can we tell other people not to kill one another?
By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems.
And by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child.
He has brought into the world that, so that father is like you put other women into the same trouble.
So abortion just leads to more abortion.
Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love one another, but to use any violence to get what they want.
This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.
So true.
And she said this.
St.
Teresa said this in 1994 at the National Prayer Breakfast.
This was major international headlines.
Mother Teresa says the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.
It seems like such a minor thing.
It's such a small little being that you're snuffing out.
Oh, it's a privacy issue.
But it operates on twofold.
Abortion begets more abortion.
And the awful, the perverse jurisprudence that led to the Roe v.
Wade decision begets more perverse jurisprudence that threatens the liberty of the United States.
What paved the way for the Roe v.
Wade decision was Griswold v.
Connecticut in 1965, where Justice William O. Douglas found, quote,"...the foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras." Formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.
Now, to translate that into English, I'll tell you what he actually said.
He said...
That's what he said.
It's absurd.
Penumbra is like a shade, you know, a sort of shaded area, a shadow that goes out.
And emanations coming from those guarantees.
So he's saying, yes, there's no right to an abortion in the...
But, you know, I like certain parts of the Constitution, and I like abortion, and you know, they're probably connected somehow, so let's say that there's a right to abortion.
And now that case, by the way, Griswold v.
Connecticut, was not about abortion.
It was about contraception, whether laws can ban the use of contraceptives.
And they found this generalized right to privacy, which does not exist anywhere in the Constitution.
And the fact that that decision, Roe v.
Wade, remains on the book, such a monumental, such a consequential decision, such an absurd, illogical, nonsense decision, it has led to further crazy jurisprudence.
And we have to respect it by story decisis, some say, but some decisions are so egregious that they have to be overturned.
The abortion begets more abortion.
And perversity and perverse jurisprudence begets more perverse jurisprudence.
You know, by 2015, support for the Supreme Court hit an all-time low in the United States.
Trust in the Supreme Court as an institution.
Why did it hit an all-time low?
Because with those sorts of decisions, it became clear that the Supreme Court was not interpreting the law.
The Supreme Court was writing law and writing law.
Consequential law and pretty horrific law.
Revolutions happen because of natural rights in the United States.
That's what they're about.
Thomas Jefferson said frequently, he said, from time to time the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It's a pretty graphic image, pretty vivid image.
And that certainly was the case in the first American Revolution.
It was certainly the case in the second American Revolution.
We can hope that in this third American Revolution, that I hope we embark upon...
That there will not be more blood spilled, but that the blood that has been spilled since the Roe v.
Wade decision will cease to be spilled.
That that will act as enough spilled blood for that revolution because we're on the cusp of it.
And we can either turn away from it.
If President Trump nominates some squish in the model of Justice Kennedy, we'll continue down the path of perverse jurisprudence and the erosion of liberty and the erosion of life.
And if he nominates an originalist who is going to read the text and tell us what it means, then we might be able to recapture some of that liberty.
We might be able to protect life.
We can only hope that.
The Democrats are losing their mind because of this.
They're losing their mind because this tyranny is possibly going to come to an end.
There was tyranny before the first revolution.
There was tyranny before the second.
And there has been a tyranny of...
Of men.
Since this awful jurisprudence has gone into effect, we've become much more a nation of men.
Congress has abdicated its responsibility.
The president leads by executive fiat.
This was most noted under Barack Obama.
Congress has abdicated its responsibility.
The court rules by fiat.
The court has abandoned its loyalty to the Constitution, so it would rule as the rule of men.
There's a tyranny that's coming to an end.
It's brought around a lot of leftist policy prerogatives that might be coming to an end.
They're losing their minds.
It might look It looked pretty bad now, but it looked pretty bad in the early days of the American Revolution and the Civil War, too.
It looked pretty bad.
And so you say, oh, we're divisive.
We hate each other.
Well, let's just all calm down.
Maybe calm down, or maybe we should try to do something here.
And maybe, you know, those people who say, calm down.
President Trump, just appoint some squishy guy.
Then people, no, don't pacify them.
Don't pacify them.
Do the right thing.
Do the right thing, and we might have a chance to keep up American liberty and American life, because it seems that we're at a turning point.
I ran a little bit late.
Now I've got to bring you, speaking of life and liberty, the final part of my interview with Ji Sung Ho, the defector, and the director of the film that is now, the documentary film that is covering Ji Sung Ho's life and journey.
Without further ado, Ji Sung Ho.
Hawk, thank you for coming on.
Hawk Jensen, you've been a filmmaker for 19 years, journalist, writer, producer.
You've been around Hollywood.
You've been around the industry, journeyman.
What led you to this story, other than that it's the most inspiring story, certainly in my lifetime?
What led you to it?
How did you get involved?
And tell us a little bit about the project.
Sure.
Well, I mean, this specific episode we've been filming, this short-form documentary for Witness Project, where we've been shooting with Ji Xiangho, is the next round of episodes we're doing for the series called Witness Project, which is an original series put out by Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
I'm familiar with them, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
Yeah.
You always hear about victims of...
Nazism or victims of this, but for some reason victims of communism, even though we can see these unbelievable stories of hell on earth to getting out and getting to freedom, for some reason that doesn't get a lot of play in the media.
Yeah, and I got the call.
So, I mean, I started a documentary film company about six years ago because I was working mainstream here and I was just kind of tired of the vacuous aspect of the storytelling and sort of the one-sided aspect of the storytelling.
I just had a I've always had independent opinion on matters.
By the way, for those watching, that means conservative.
You know, when you say independent in Hollywood, they're like, you know.
Or it's just like the difference of opinion.
I mean, there is a main way of thinking in the L.A. film industry.
And if you think differently, conservative or otherwise, you are otherized.
And it is something that you have to overcome as a filmmaker and as an artist, as someone who's expressing themselves.
And so I got a phone call a number of years ago saying, like, hey, we've got these stories.
They're building effectively a museum, kind of a Holocaust-style museum for the victims of communism.
And, you know, the Cold War ended, and there was this whole propensity to just leave those stories, like, who wants to remember the past?
Who wants to think about this?
And then enough time's gone by, you know, 20, 30 years, where I started seeing that those oral stories were starting to die out, weren't being captured, weren't being...
It's brought to the sort of historically significant level of being known to sort of the cultural literacy.
And it just really struck me that it was an important, underserved part of storytelling.
And so I took on the project, Witness Project, and it was really looking at the first-person, primary source people who experience these things.
I mean, there's more than one type of evil in the world.
And these stories are important to capture, and you have to go to the source.
And so I actually really looked at it and thought about it as the journey of the dissident.
I mean, everything in this town is based off of the hero's journey, right?
I mean, every feature film is the ordinary world, the call to adventure, the rejection of the call, the meeting of the mentor, the acceptance of the call.
You know, then you have the ordeal, the belly of the beast, the reward, the road home.
That's every feature film.
Every feature film, right?
And we have to know that, Pat, when you make films in this town.
And so I took it and looked at it as the journey of the dissident, where you live in a collective, closed society.
And your individuality has been crushed.
There's a journey of that awakening within.
Well before the external 6,000 miles dragging yourself through the jungle, there's this sort of, you're mapping the world, you're being fed propaganda, and there's only one God, the dear leader.
And then there's this sort of, you start to learn, you start to map the world out for your own mind, and there's cognitive dissonance.
There's what you've been told and what you You have realized, and that's the first threshold of coming out as a dissident, coming out as an activist.
You're like, huh, things are different.
And the entire communist system is designed to try and stop you from thinking at that moment.
And so I thought, well, how do we show that threshold?
How do we show that internal awakening?
That happens before.
The first step's taken when you cross the border to, like in Jiashong Ho's case, cross the border to China and start that step-by-step process.
And then the second, much like the meeting of the mentor, the first time you decide to say something out loud, the first time you decide to express yourself, that's life or death.
You think, hmm, this doesn't seem to compute.
They don't seem to be the total leader.
You say it to them.
You say it to your parents, you say it to your brother, you say it to your sister, whoever, your friend.
If you happen to choose incorrectly, that could mean death, that could mean re-education, that could be loss of reputation, could be loss of ability to support yourself.
I mean, it's a very profound journey that happens internally.
So I look at the internal and the external as sort of a two-part aspect of my storytelling.
Of course, yeah.
I think Song Ho was talking about that too, the spiritual aspect, this kind of internal aspect, and then obviously the external horrors.
When can we see this?
Obviously, we've gotten to hear a little bit about this story.
When can we see this, and how are we going to make sure that the American people can see this historically important matter that for so long hasn't really been talked about?
Yeah, well, we just wrapped a great series of production days filming this, and we're going to be working on post-production for a number of months.
And so probably in the next six months, we'll come up with this episode, maybe less.
And we're working on distribution for it right now in terms of worldwide distribution.
But right now, it's currently available.
Victims of Communism has a website.
You know, slash witness, smock media, we also have portals to the same aspect, and we're just sort of building our cultural base and understanding of that world, of close societies, of communist, collectivist societies, and the oppression.
So it's a great space to kind of start learning how oppression works on the left side of the spectrum.
Well, Hawk, it is so wonderful that you are using the tools of Hollywood to convey important stories that aren't being told and to bring about a lot of good by uncovering a lot of evil.
I mean, it is so wonderful.
I've been out here for a little while, and that isn't what Hollywood does.
Hollywood just never does that.
So that's really wonderful.
I can't wait to see it.
And Song Ho, you are doing God's work, man.
It is a singular privilege of my life to get to meet you.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Thank you both.
Pretty cool to talk to those guys and great to see some good stuff coming out of Hollywood, too, as they're making this documentary about it.
You saw probably on the 4th of July, James Woods, outspoken Hollywood conservative, James Woods' agent, dropped him.
He said, it's the 4th of July and I don't want to represent you anymore.
Right?
That's Hollywood for you.
So it's good to see some good stuff coming out of Hollywood.
And, you know, I guess it's kind of, it's too bad for the movie industry because James Woods is such a good actor.
But at least now he'll have more time to be on Twitter.
And he's a very good tweeter, too, so that'll be enjoyable.
Breaking news now, the EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, has resigned.
President Trump has accepted his resignation.
Democrats have been gunning for this guy forever because he was a strong deregulator.
He was really undoing a lot of the insane and tyrannical Obama administration agenda of using the EPA in particular, but the executive agencies to basically regulate all of Americans' lives, to in effect pass laws that run Americans' lives.
And he did a great job.
I'm sorry to see him go.
Andy Wheeler, the deputy EPA chief, will take over in his place.
And I hope he's related to Liz Wheeler.
I don't know, maybe.
That'd be kind of cool, wouldn't it?
A good, sturdy Texas constitution.
Anyway, it's too bad to see him go.
He did a great job, and they smeared him, and he withstood the smearing for a while.
But these guys who are trying to regain some American liberty, they're sacrificing a lot because their lives basically get ruined by the left.
So good on you, Scott.
Good job for what you did.
We've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Go to dailywire.com right now.
It is $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 is coming up.
We've got a solid 10 minutes left where we can talk about that, but none of that matters.
Mmm.
Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.
Mmm, mmm, mmm.
Oh, that tastes like Justice Amy Coney Barrett, doesn't it?
It tastes like the news headline, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and then the deluge that comes down from all the lefties.
Those leftist tears.
Deluge.
Very good.
We can only hope.
Go to dailywire.com, get your leftist tears.
Here's Tumblr.
We'll be right back with the mailbag.
I'm running late, so let's get right into it with the mailbag.
From Alex.
Dear St.
Michael of the Silent Word, bringer of all leftist tears, I implore you, I've become acquainted with a QT 3.14.
Anybody get that?
With a cutie pie bearer of two X allosomes, chromosomes, allosomes, I don't know, by means of my church choir, and I must say that she tickles my fancy.
What with her devotion to the risen Christ and her many gifts from God, let's say.
Well put.
I feel as though I ought to make a move on this woman, but am hindered by my adherence to the notion that the church is supposed to be a place of devotion to our Lord, our God, I feel as though if I were to attempt to form a relationship with a woman who I've come to know through church events, I'd be in a sense degrading the institution.
But then again, if not through Catholic-related events, how on God's green earth am I supposed to find and marry a Catholic woman?
Please help me solve this dilemma.
I'm happy to help you solve this.
I'll read Genesis chapter 1, verse 28.
And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that man moves on the earth.
You know, it's not good for man to be alone alone.
Man needs a mate.
And that's why God gave Adam a mate and seems to have maybe given you one.
Now, here's the important thing.
Because I understand you're worried about being inappropriate in the church or being irreverent.
Some things are inappropriate in the church.
Acoustic guitars, that song about the eagle's wings, applause, those things are inappropriate in the church.
Marrying a woman and just populating it with lots of little Catholic babies, very appropriate to begin that in a church.
So now I will get, there's one caveat here, which is if you're in this choir with her and you really, obviously you don't want to be like too distracted during the, during the mass, buddy, you know, try to keep your eyes on the prize, but afterward or at the little coffee afterward or whatever you're going to do, it's good to think about other things and, you know, how to, uh, how to follow God's it's good to think about other things and, you know, how to, uh, how Uh, because you're in this choir with her and it's, you know, you're focused on God.
You just got to be kind of cool about it.
Like, don't be weird about it.
You know, you don't want, you want to go up and ask her out and be confident and maybe that'll go well.
And if she is really not interested, then you, you know, unfortunately you got to let But there is nothing in...
I've read the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
I've read the Bible.
I've read some of the Church Fathers.
There is nothing that says that you cannot pick up a cute lady and populate God's green earth.
Quite the opposite, pal.
Go forward in Genesis 128.
Let me know how it goes.
From Cameron.
To the Daily Wire's homegrown gavon.
A week ago, you made a distinction between a conservative and a constitutional Supreme Court justice.
And while I agree with you in principle, I'm having some trouble getting my mind around the example you used.
You said that a conservative justice would ban abortion outright, but a constitutional or textualist or originalist justice would simply overturn Roe v. Wade and kick the lawmaking to the states.
I'm not a constitutional scholar, but it seems to me that if you accept the premise that abortion is the killing of unborn children, as I think I've heard you say on the show, then states don't have the right to allow it.
Again, I'm no expert, but it seems crazy to me.
That the Constitution leaves space for the states to legalize the killing of any subject of its population.
Arguments about the death penalty set aside for the sake of the question.
What am I missing here?
Thanks, Cameron.
You're missing federalism.
Most murders are state crimes.
They're not federal crimes.
That's why we have a federal system in the Constitution.
So not everything hateful and odious is covered by some provision of the Constitution.
Now, find me a state that doesn't consider murder a crime.
Good luck.
You probably won't.
But that's not a matter for the federal government to decide.
That's regulated by the states.
With some exceptions.
There are some murders that are federal crimes.
But when they're not, you leave it to the states.
And if you believe in federalism, then you'll suspect that most states will come to see the light and come to a reasonable conclusion.
But that's why.
As Scalia once told me, the late Great Justice Scalia, not everything hateful and odious is covered by some provision of the Constitution.
And you've got to Be okay with that because that's the central liberty premise in the Constitution.
And if you don't like that, then you really just become the flip side of the lefty people who want to twist the Constitution.
Now, that's probably better.
I'd rather have a conservative twist the Constitution than a lefty twist the Constitution.
But what I really want is for the document to speak for itself and for the document to be interpreted with the original meaning that it had, the original public meaning at the time that it was ratified.
From Haley.
I'll have a little bit more time.
Who do you think should be chosen for the Supreme Court?
Amy Coney Barrett.
That's who.
I think she's terrific.
I think there are a lot of good options out there, and it looks like the shortlist is down to three.
The other people seem okay.
She seems to be the most rock-ribbed.
She seems to be the most sure thing on a personal level, and optics do matter.
The Personality does matter, because they will be going through a confirmation process.
This will play out on a political stage.
She's just, it appears, unimpeachable and terrific.
She raised seven children while becoming a federal judge.
She takes her religion seriously.
Dianne Feinstein said that the...
What is it?
The dogma lives loudly within her.
Works for me.
And she's been through this vetting process very recently, this same process.
So I think it'd be good, and I think it'd be nice to have someone that we can rely upon to be an originalist on the court, and she seems pretty rock-ribbed.
This isn't to say that the others are awful, but she's got my support.
From Keegan...
Hi, pretty boy Knowles.
Hey, Keegan.
Me and my friend are having a small argument over Israel and Palestine.
He keeps saying that the Israelis want to invade and claim the Palestinians' lands, which is complete assininity.
What would be some simple points to point out to him over this matter?
Okay, well, you're right.
It's completely ridiculous.
The Israelis couldn't invade Palestinians' land because there's no such thing as Palestinians' land.
There's no such country as Palestine.
It's to the left of Wakanda and to the east of Narnia.
It's utter nonsense.
The great leader of Palestine, Yasser Arafat, was born in Egypt.
He's an Egyptian.
There's no such thing.
It's a contrived crisis created by Arabs who oppose the existence of Israel.
It's really sad that other Arab nations have allowed some people who now call themselves the Palestinian people to live in squalor as a cudgel to try to attack the state of Israel.
The Islamic religion has no claim on Jerusalem whatsoever, and the Palestinian dilemma will only be resolved when the Arab states around it want peace, and the Arab states around it appear not to want peace.
It's utterly contrived, and we shouldn't mistake the crocodile tears of Islamic tyrannical nations around them as anything but what they are, which is uncompassionate and a cudgel against a legitimate, flourishing democratic state in the region.
From Ryan.
Hi, Michael.
In the Catholic faith, it is of the utmost importance to be open to having children when getting married.
Would Catholicism be more in favor of a homosexual couple getting married with plans to have children or a heterosexual couple getting married with no plans to have children?
Most of that question is nonsense by the light of the Catholic Church, and this is because the debate over whether to have gay marriage or not is not whether gay people should have the right to get married, but what marriage means.
And the definition of marriage that has existed for all of human history is that sexual difference adheres in marriage.
And so if you don't have sexual difference, then you don't have marriage.
You have something else, but it isn't marriage.
So to the first part, that couldn't happen.
For the heterosexual couple, the sexually different couple who are getting married and have no plans to have children, You have to be open to children for that to be a sacrament.
If you're not open to children, then you aren't getting married in the light of the Catholic Church.
And they are a very hard line about this.
I mean, this is a hard line rule.
If somebody is incapable of having children, not that perhaps it won't work out or it seems that they're barren or something like that, but if it is like they're missing half of their body, they're only a torso up to a head, You can't get married.
That isn't a legitimate marriage in the eyes of the Catholic Church.
You have to be open to it.
Now, what does that mean?
Some people say, oh, I don't know that I want to have kids.
And then like five seconds later, they start their brood.
I've got some friends who are like that.
I don't think I want to have kids until now.
And now I'm going to have like 10 of them.
So things can change like that.
But you must be open to the possibility of life.
And if you're not...
Then it's not marriage.
Now, if you're, let's say, two people get married and one is post-menopause and, I don't know, one, it isn't looking, some doctor said you're probably not going to have kids.
That doesn't take out the logical possibility of life.
That doesn't, you know, that is still, that could still be a legitimate marriage.
But when it's not logically possible, it's not a marriage.
Can I take one more?
Do I have time for one more?
One more you say, okay, I'll do it.
This is enough.
From Sean.
Is it true that the only thing that flat earthers have to fear is the sphere itself?
Great question.
This is why you tune into this show, for real important bits of insight like that.
That might well be true.
I do want to mention something about the flat earthers, though, because this irks me all the time.
You always hear lefties compare conservatives to flat earthers.
They say, oh, you know, in the old times, the people thought the earth was flat.
And what's great is that the real flat earthers, meaning people who denied basic realities of the world, the real flat earthers are the people who promote the flat earther myth.
In the old timey days, nobody thought the earth was flat.
People have known that the earth is spherical since the 6th century before Christ.
And Aristotle, that was Pythagoras who suggested that, Aristotle has provided evidence that the earth is spherical since the 4th century before Christ.
There's this myth that people in the old-timey days, like in the Middle Ages, thought the Earth was flat.
This was put forward by John William Draper, who's a scientist, Andrew Dixon White, who was an educator, and Washington Irving, whom I love, good essayist and biographer, but dead wrong about this.
It's one of these tools that the lefties use to try to make it seem like we moderns.
We moderns have iPhones, so clearly we're much smarter and more educated than those crazy Middle Ages people.
Not true.
The people in the Middle Ages, medieval philosophers, are much smarter than you and I. Thomas Aquinas is much smarter than you and I. And it's just a total lie.
So whenever they say that, say, you know, you are using that phrase to call people from the past idiots, and you are using it to demonstrate that you yourself are an idiot.
On that note, we have so many more questions.
We're not going to get to them.
Have a good weekend.
I hope you enjoy the 4th of July.
It's a nice abbreviated week.
I'm going to get back to my solid 72 hours of loafing around and not doing anything.
And I'll see you on Monday.
I hope you have a good weekend.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knoll Show.
The Michael Knoll Show is produced by Semia 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.
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