Ep. 185 - Those Who Don’t Read Bad Philosophy Are Doomed To Repeat It
Democrats want to nominate a fresh face for president in 2020 as the party veers sharply to the left, which is great for wild-eyed socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Lisa DePasquale stops by to discuss The SWJ Handbook. Then, because all nature is but art unknown to thee, an underestimated POTUS meets with a Russian dictator on This Day In History. Finally, a British baby sentenced to death in the UK lives because This Is America.
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Three-quarters of Democrats want to nominate a fresh face for president in 2020, as public opinion polls show the party veering sharply to the left.
All of this is bad news, of course, for the reanimated corpse of former future President Hillary Clinton.
But it's great news for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the wild-eyed, fresh-faced socialist fraud with wind between her ears.
Then...
Lisa DePasquale will stop by to discuss these youths in her new book, The Social Justice Warrior Handbook, a practical survival guide for snowflakes, millennials, and Generation Z. Because all of nature is but art unknown to thee, an underestimated, straight-shooting American president meets with a Russian dictator on this day in history.
Finally, a British baby sentenced to death in the United Kingdom is alive today because this is America.
This is America.
Do-do-do-do-do-do.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
In the spirit of communism and socialism and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I'm not going to do any ads today because money's bad, man.
I don't want to make any money.
Money's terrible.
I don't want to keep the lights on.
Wouldn't it be cool if we could all just hang out and write poetry?
So no ads today.
That's my mark for socialism.
Because there's really scary statistics going around about how millennials have embraced socialism and apparently...
Like, eschewing all education whatsoever, and this is the wave of the future.
This is the wave of the Democratic Party future.
A major difference between leftists and conservatives is that leftists read Karl Marx, and conservatives understand Karl Marx.
Nowhere is this more evident than this girl, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, she went on the public affairs show on PBS, Firing Line.
It's the reboot of the Bill Buckley show, and this one is hosted by Margaret Hoover.
And she just spewed She kind of laughed about how ignorant she is.
It's blithe ignorance.
And she's an unrepentant radical socialist.
The numbers of that are going way, way up.
It's really scary.
On this question, you know, leftists read Marx, conservatives understand Marx.
Here enters Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talking about unemployment.
Do you think that capitalism has failed to deliver for working class Americans or is no longer the best vehicle for working class Americans?
Well, I think the numbers that you just talked about is part of the problem, right?
Because we look at these figures and we say, oh, unemployment is low.
Everything is fine, right?
Well, unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs.
Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their kids.
And so I do think that right now when we have this no-holds-barred, Wild West hyper-capitalism, what that means is profit at any cost.
Capitalism has not always existed in the world and it will not always exist in the world.
Where do I begin with that?
By the way, I've got to tell you, this lady is probably the Democrats' best shot at messaging in November.
Because right now, everything is going so, so well in every area of public policy, foreign affairs, domestic affairs, but especially the economy.
And that's the undeniable part.
Right now, the economy is booming.
We're basically the strongest economy we've ever had.
The Federal Reserve is seeing more growth.
They're observing more growth, projecting more growth.
The International Monetary Fund is crediting Donald Trump's policies with global economic growth, not just American economic growth.
The tax cuts, people are seeing that in their paychecks.
Unfortunately, about 80% of Americans use direct deposit.
So they're not necessarily seeing the benefits of tax reform in every single paycheck, but they are seeing it when April rolls around.
They're also seeing it because the corporate tax rate was slashed.
So we're seeing just the economy is just roaring right now.
It's doing pretty well.
Also, for the first time in over a decade, wages are rising.
Wages have not been rising.
And there are a number of reasons for that.
A lot of economic reasons, some reasons with regard to migration and immigration.
But we're seeing wages rising pretty significantly for the first time in a long time.
So everything's going so well.
And what is the Democrat answer?
The socialist answer is, don't believe your lion eyes.
Good economies are bad.
Up is down.
War is peace.
That's what they're saying.
How Orwellian.
This is the new speak.
And she's saying, oh yeah, low unemployment, it's really, really bad because that means people are working.
And working is terrible.
I hate working.
Look, I've done a lot in my life to avoid working.
The only book I've ever written doesn't have any words.
But I've got to tell you, working is a good thing.
People feel better when they're working.
God in the Garden of Eden doesn't just say, hey Adam, loaf around all day.
He says you have to cultivate the garden.
Before the fall, he says, you have to cultivate the garden, you have to name the beasts, you have to, you know, tend to this world that I've given you.
You have dominion over it and you have to cultivate it.
Working is good.
When people retire, they just, like, wither away and die.
Not all the time.
People can enjoy retirement, but they have to be doing something.
If you're, you know, you can, look, if you retire, you can, you know, join a non-profit, you can volunteer at the church, you can see your family a lot and sort of spend a lot of time with them.
If you sit on a couch and watch TV, you're not going to last very long.
People are meant to work.
And this happened during the Obamacare debates.
The Democrats' Nancy Pelosi said, look, one of the reasons that people stay in their jobs is to keep their health care.
But we don't want that.
We don't want people to feel like they have to work.
We want them to be able to quit their jobs and they'll have more time to write poetry and walk through the woods and, you know, just do...
No, that's bad.
People don't like that.
Idle hands are the devil's playground.
You do have to work.
And it's the only answer they have.
By the way, the reason unemployment is low right now is not because people have two jobs.
That doesn't make any sense, right?
Like...
She's pulling that out of thin air because the people are really, really overworked.
Right now, look, the evidence is that wages are going up.
There are more jobs than people to fill them.
So this is good.
This is a great time to be an American worker.
Best time in a very long time.
Imagine how removed she is from the real economic circumstances of people on the ground.
Leftists, socialists, communists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they're ideologues who say, who cares if the economy is working in practice?
Does it work in theory?
Does it work in theory?
How removed?
She's trying to portray herself as this You know, downtrodden, hard worker from the Bronx, you know, who grew up in dire poverty and had no opportunities.
That's not true.
She grew up a town away from where I did in Westchester County.
She grew up in a more affluent town in one of the most affluent counties in the country.
And she had all of those opportunities.
Her candidacy is premised on this idea.
She says, people like me aren't supposed to run for office.
What, affluent people who went to expensive private colleges and got extraordinarily good public education?
They're not supposed to go to...
Who's supposed to be a politician then?
People like me aren't really rich, privileged people.
Are you kidding me?
Even if you grew up without a lot of money in your family in Westchester County going to those schools...
Like I did, too.
We have basically parallel stories.
You still are so far, I mean, you were at the crux of privilege in the United States, which means, and if you're just born in the United States, you're at the height of privilege in the world.
So it's this totally disingenuous thing.
And her answer is no, money's bad.
That's basically her answer, right?
She's saying, no, it's bad for people.
They shouldn't work.
They should get everything for free.
But then here comes the best part of her interview on this program, the Margaret Hoover Show, because it really highlights what these young lefty millennials are like.
Here she is talking about Israel-Palestine.
I also think that what people are starting to see, at least in the occupation of Palestine, is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition.
You use the term the occupation of Palestine?
I think what I meant is like the settlements, places where Where Palestinians are experiencing difficulty.
Do you think you can expand on that?
I am not the expert on geopolitics on this issue.
This girl has a degree from an expensive private university in international relations.
She says, I'm not an expert on a basic question of foreign policy.
She's running for Congress.
She's almost certainly going to win that seat for Congress.
But that was her degree.
She's got to call up BU and get a refund.
Apparently, Yorktown High School isn't as good as we all thought it was.
Unbelievable.
And it really, by the way, I don't mean to just pick on her.
I actually kind of feel bad for this girl because she is so...
So profoundly ignorant and sort of blithely ignorant and proudly ignorant.
But, you know, this is a real problem of education because she knows the slogans.
Democrats know the slogans.
They know the talking points.
She refers to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Can you tell us more about that?
It's not like Margaret Hoover was trying to get her.
Can you tell us more is not a gotcha question.
She says, could you expand on that?
And Ocasio-Cortez goes, no.
No, I can't.
I don't know anything.
Next question, pass.
Excuse me?
Yeah, I'll pass.
I think I'll pass on that question.
Just moves right along.
This is a trouble of millennial education.
First of all, there's no country called Palestine.
There's never been a country called Palestine.
As I mentioned on Fox this morning, it's the country to the east of Narnia and the west of Wakanda.
It's not a country.
It's just an ideological talking point.
But the way that millennials were educated...
And I can really speak to this.
I went to high school in the town over from where she went to high school at the same time.
We're the same age.
I know a lady doesn't tell her age, but she and I are the same age.
And the way that we were educated...
I don't blame the teachers.
I've had wonderful teachers.
The curricula all across the country, and especially in New York, focus on not having students learn names, dates, facts, details.
What they focus on is broad themes.
You don't need to know the facts.
Look, you have an iPhone.
You can always look up the facts.
Just know the broad themes.
Just know our ideological position.
And don't look too closely into those details because that might contradict the position.
It's a real fear.
It's a trouble in education more broadly over the last few decades, which is that people don't read the original texts.
They read Howard Zinn talking about the framers and the founders of the United States.
They read these left-wing ideologues.
And so they just get This sort of glib talking points.
They don't know the facts.
And then the moment that someone says, oh, tell me more about that opinion.
She goes, oh, well, I'm not an expert.
And by the way, she finishes that clip.
She goes, oh, I'm not an expert on this.
But I firmly believe.
And this is like one of the most bothersome things that millennials do.
They say, oh, I didn't read that book, but here's what I think about it.
I didn't see the movie, but here's what I think about it.
You know, they're frequently wrong but never in doubt.
They have opinions on things that they don't know anything about.
I say that Ocasio-Cortez is proudly ignorant because she doesn't have humility.
What a person who had any humility would say is, first of all, someone running for office should know about Israel-Palestine.
They should know about problems in the Middle East.
This is a sort of basic aspect of international relations.
And someone who has a degree in international relations certainly should know about that.
But I don't really blame her for being ignorant.
People are ignorant all the time.
It's the pride of it.
She says, you know, if you had humility, you would say, I don't know about this.
And so I'm going to have to do some research.
And I'll get back to you when I've thought about this more.
She says, well, I don't know anything about this, but I'm pretty sure that I'm right.
Let me tell you, you should believe what I think that I think, even though I don't know anything.
That is a real problem, and it's a crux of millennials, and it is part of the reason, by the way, why socialism is creeping in in such huge numbers.
You know, she says these things.
This woman is a communist.
She's a member of the Democrat Socialists of America.
She says that capitalism won't be around forever.
She doesn't know what capitalism is.
Capitalism is a word that was invented in the 1820s and really popularized later in the 19th century by Marx and Engels.
And it's to refer to economic freedom.
I don't even usually use the word capitalism because I think it's a contrivance of socialists.
It was invented by socialists to criticize them.
Capitalism means economic freedom.
I use economic freedom.
Do you think people should be able to use their money how they want to use their money, buy what they want, have freedom, have choice?
Well, then you're a capitalist.
If you don't like that, then you're anti-capitalist.
She's anti-capitalist.
It's true, capitalism hasn't always existed.
Freedom of enterprise hasn't always existed.
That's a bad thing.
It just means that certain governments have abridged liberty and certain governments have allowed liberty.
And she says, we need less liberty.
I hope we have less liberty.
She uses these sort of communist talking points of late-stage capitalism.
Democrats have always done this.
In the Bush years, they would say, we need no war for oil.
You say, when did we have a war for oil?
Bush!
Did we get any oil?
How much oil did we get?
I don't know.
Oh, none.
We didn't get any oil.
We probably should have gotten some oil and we didn't get any oil.
They say, Bush lied, people died.
You say, Bush lied, huh?
Yeah.
What do you lie about?
The weapons.
And what was the lie?
First of all, Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction.
Second of all, all of the intelligence communities around the world said that the weapons existed.
It's not a lie.
Even if there weren't, which there were, by the way, but even if there weren't weapons, it isn't a lie.
To lie, you have to intentionally not tell the truth.
Oh, Trump colluded with Russia!
What's your evidence that Trump colluded with Russia?
They just know.
Right now, among these millennials, millennials broadly, not just Democrats, half of millennials identify as socialist, according to some new polls.
That is horrifying.
The Democratic Socialists of America, which had just 5,000 members less than two years ago.
2016, they had 5,000 members.
2018, fast forward two years, that number has gone up eightfold to 40,000 members.
That is a terrifying statistic.
It's gone up eight times in just two years.
That momentum isn't going to stop.
Part of it is that millennials don't remember communism.
They were born as Cortez and I were, both as the Berlin Wall was falling down, and because they're uneducated.
They think history begins when they were born.
Even the ones who have studied history haven't really studied history broadly.
They've studied people, polemicists, writing about history like Howard Zinn.
And the Democrats have moved very far to the left here.
We're going to get to Lisa DePasquale in a second because she's the expert on these millennial SJWs.
But just some scary statistics.
The Democrats have moved far to the left.
According to Pew, a study that came out of Pew Research last year, the parties have moved apart from one another.
But most of that movement, the vast majority of that movement, is Democrats moving to the left.
The GOP hasn't moved that much further to the right.
It's the Democrats moving to the left.
71% of Democrats right now believe that we should go into debt to increase welfare spending.
Spend money that we don't have, borrow money from China, to just dole it out to the poor and redistribute wealth.
That's up 17 percentage points in just six years.
The GOP has moved just one percentage point on this issue.
It's dropped down just 1%.
Democrats have moved 17 percentage points to the left.
In 1994, the question was asked by Pew, do immigrants strengthen the country overall, or are they a boon to the country?
The parties basically were in agreement.
Democrats said 32% yes.
GOP said 30% yes.
Now, the GOP has actually moved in that direction to 42%.
Democrats have way more than doubled.
It's up one and a half times on that question.
84% of Democrats say, yes, immigrants are a spoon to the country.
That's a huge divergence.
On the question, is racial discrimination the main reason that blacks can't get ahead?
The main reason.
Not that it doesn't exist at all, not are there isolated instances.
Is racial discrimination the main reason that some black people can't get ahead?
That number, when Democrats were asked that question in 2010, not that long ago, 28% said yes.
Now, today, 64% say yes.
The question, basic questions of political philosophy, is religion required for morality?
The Democrat no answer is up 13 percentage points just since 2011.
These numbers are moving way, way faster than anyone would expect.
This is a bad sign, and it's having some negative consequences because they're appointing these sort of witless people who haven't ever studied the things that they're talking about.
They don't know anything that they're talking about.
They're radical leftists.
And some people are trying to pump the brakes now.
You know, leading Democrats are realizing this.
Here's Barack Obama, just today or yesterday, trying to pump the brakes on all of this.
But democracy demands that we're able also to get inside the reality of people who are different than us, so we can understand their point of view.
Maybe we can change their minds, but maybe they'll change ours.
And you can't do this if you just out of hand disregard what your opponents have to say from the start.
And you can't do it if you insist that those who aren't like you, because they're white or because they're male, that somehow there's no way they can understand what I'm feeling.
That somehow they lack standing to speak on certain matters.
Who is that guy?
Can anyone recognize that guy?
Because he looks like Barack Obama, but he sounds like the opposite of Barack Obama.
This is being reported.
He just gave this speech about Nelson Mandela, and it's being reported.
Obama issues stern rebuke to Trump.
No, Obama issues a stern rebuke to Obama.
He's criticizing his own, the tone that he set in the White House for the past eight years, or for the eight years that he was president.
He's talking about the politics of fear, resentment, retrenchment.
This is the guy who said, I'm going to fundamentally transform America.
I'm going to get rid of all those bitter clingers, those rubes who cling to their guns and religion.
He painted the White House rainbow colors as a rebuke to people who...
Support the Constitution in a traditional view of marriage.
He said that those in power seek to undermine every institution.
That gives democracy meaning.
This is the guy undermining institutions.
He went up and gave the State of the Union, and he insulted the Supreme Court right to their faces when they couldn't respond to it.
He was...
Utterly undermining the Supreme Court.
His surrogate said that Republican congressmen are terrorists.
He said he's going to roll over Congress because he has a pen and a phone.
This is the guy undermining institutions.
It's outrageous.
This is the guy politicizing the IRS to attack his political opponents.
Politicizing, it appears, the FBI to attack and investigate his political opponents.
Where was this Barack Obama?
In 2012, this guy's vice president.
Not just running mate, sitting vice president, said that the Republican nominee was trying to put black people back in chains.
That's what he said.
He said that Trayvon Martin, a guy who was killed in a sort of cloud of mystery, but whom we know was viciously beating the guy who killed him, beating his head against the pavement.
We saw photos of the injuries.
He said, oh, he could have been my son.
What do you mean he could have been your son?
Because he's black?
Barack Obama's saying all black people look alike, basically?
It's outrageous.
He wouldn't have been Barack Obama's son.
He doesn't look like him either.
You know, who attacked the Cambridge police because of a local affair.
You know, this is the guy.
It's too little too late, man.
You let this loose.
You opened up Pandora's box and now you're reaping the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's because of it.
You know, the Democratic Party is now in the grip of these guys.
And this is why we've got to get to the expert.
You know, they're in the grip of these aggrieved, social justice warrior, entitled, lightly educated millennials.
And the expert of this, the author to help us understand, of the social justice warrior handbook is Elisa De Pasquale, a practical survival guide for snowflakes, millennials, and Generation Z. Elisa, thank you for being here.
Hi there.
Thanks for having me.
I'm so glad to now only be one degree away from Tom Arnold.
I'm really the far degraded Kevin Bacon pivot point here, you know, just bringing us all.
Tom has been tweeting me a lot today because of the apparent evidence that President Trump is now a Russian asset.
Do you think it's an open and shut case, isn't it, that Trump is a Russian asset?
Yeah, I mean, we knew that in October 2016, right?
You know, it's funny because Tom tweeted me today.
He said, see, are you finally going to apologize and admit that Trump's a Russian asset?
I said, you know, the fact that he took that soccer ball and threw it off the stage like a hot potato, that's how I know that President Trump is a red-blooded American.
But I am worried about the future of the country.
And one, because I look at people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and also because I read your book.
Before we begin, I have to say...
I'm seeing a little bit of plagiarism in here, Lisa, from another important book.
There's almost a whole chapter I took word for word from your book.
At least you abridged it, though.
It's only about 10 or 15 pages in there of absolute blankness.
But I think it's just as complete as your book, which I didn't read, but I am an expert on.
Well, it's the one book where you cannot read it and be an expert.
You know, my first question, because I really did enjoy the book, and I encourage people to go out there and buy it and read it.
It's really funny.
What is it with these guys?
What is it with this generation?
We beat up on millennials all the time, and I want to do it some more.
What's their problem?
I think part of it is actually kind of a lack of culture.
I mean, I'm Generation X. I know I look super young, but I'm 41.
You know, a lady doesn't tell her age, as I always pointed out that I'm Alexandria's age, too.
Yeah, I mean, I don't mind saying it because I'd rather be called Gen X than a millennial.
Fair point.
I'm going to be trans-ageist.
I'm going to be 41, too.
Yeah, identify as a Gen Xer.
But I think part of it is looking for some sort of culture of their own.
And they do that, I think, by separating themselves and by creating their own rules.
You know, for instance, appropriation, things like that.
I mean, I'm appropriating Mexican culture, I guess.
And just sort of setting up their own rules.
I mean, you can go into a hot topic and you don't see their own bands.
You see, you know, 70s and 80s, 60s, 70s and 80s bands.
And there's just sort of a generation lost because as far as their knowledge, like you said, history begins the day they were born.
Yeah.
As culture, I don't think they really have it.
I mean, they don't have the stuff that we identify so much.
And part of that is because there are so many niches.
You know, the one TV show that they all sat down and watched as kids, like we did.
Right.
Which was Nick at Night, and that's why I identify as a 75-year-old at this point.
I think you've hit on it, because it isn't just that they're poorly educated.
And I think there is a real problem of education for the millennial generation.
But people can always read books.
You can always try to ameliorate that.
The issue is the lack of culture.
And those are different things.
A couple generations ago, you could play people excerpts of classical music, you could reference certain great books or novels, you could reference certain movies, and people would get it.
There was a sense of cultural idioms that I think now just don't exist.
Why is that, and is there any way to get that back?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, I think that's why things like Blazing Saddles were okay.
Because people didn't separate themselves so badly that they didn't know what their Black friends or Hispanic friends or other friends would think if they were caught watching it.
They were already part of a big group and they didn't have to feel like they were being judged or that people didn't know who they were.
Based on telling jokes or telling lines from a movie.
And now, part of it is also just that they're so willing to put so much of their lives out there on Twitter, on Instagram, or whatever the kids are using, Snapchat.
I use MySpace, yeah.
LiveJournal.
MySpace, yeah.
Facebook.
That...
It's the culture, I think, pushing back.
But, you know, what's interesting is you had mentioned the poll before about socialism, but when you ask them individual issues, like, well, do you think that you should be able to use apps like Uber and Rover and things like that?
On individual issues, they're more, you know, capitalists or economic, they support economic freedom.
But in general, they say they support socialism.
And so I don't know what the...
The overlap is, but on the individual issues, they do support economic freedom, but that's where you go back to the education in that they don't know that they don't support socialism.
They just think it sounds good.
They have a younger voice telling them that it does.
The issue is the blithe in the blithe ignorance, you know, this sort of carefreeness, this cavalier ignorance.
And I blame, I guess, in part, not just the education and the lack of culture, but the self-esteem movement, too, because they've always been told they're so, so special and everything they do is great and they can do whatever they want to do and they're going to be wonderful.
And that, you know, just on a very basic level, that isn't true.
You know, that just isn't the case.
I played Little League baseball for eight years, and I leaned into pitches, like Don Baylor.
I mean, I was pretty good at getting on base, but I couldn't hit that ball.
And I have eight trophies from it.
I have eight participation trophies.
And what we were always told...
Is that when the millennials get into the real world, the real world is going to hit them like a freight train and they're going to grow up.
But when you look around, I don't see that happening.
I see people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez going on TV and saying, oh yeah, I guess I don't know that very important issue.
Ha ha ha, posh posh posh, I'm just going to go right to Congress.
Are they just going to be able to be...
kids forever.
I mean, so many of them are living with their parents.
So many of them are not paying bills.
Every millennial is on their parents' cell phone plan.
I mean, they're going to have like grandchildren before they get off their parents' cell phone plan.
A lot of them don't even pay.
That's, I think, the workaround that they found.
And that's like a big topic in the Social Justice Warrior Handbook is the workaround of living with their parents.
And then now they have like adult day camps or summer camps.
They have The term that I can't stand is adulting.
I can't adult today.
They use it as a verb.
Yeah, I have to adult today because I have to pay my bills.
I don't even think about it as a behavior that's optional.
To me, it was never optional whether or not to have cell phone plans.
Part of it might be because Because when I moved out of the house at 18, cell phones were barely a thing.
So it wasn't that big of a deal.
I don't even think they had family plans.
But I think they found a way, and that's to prolong this adolescence as long as possible.
You know, it used to be...
I mean, kind of the cutoff was 26 when you started with the healthcare plan, right?
And then now it's like 30, and then there's kind of no age on cell phones.
And then they're creating all this adult type of behavior, like where you can go places and have nap time.
You can go to a summer camp.
The coloring books, adult coloring books.
Adult coloring books, which there's an activity and I actually call it a dream book.
instead of a workbook because I think workbook is a little too demanding.
That's right.
Here's the dream book right here at section four.
Yep.
It's a dream.
You can't work.
You don't want to work.
No, no.
That's right.
I mean, that's absolutely right.
And I do worry that there's, you know, I guess it's just as with the ignorance, just as with the uncultured, it's the blitheness of it all.
They are cavalier about their parents paying for their lifestyle.
They're cavalier about not working.
They're cavalier about not having responsibility.
And not knowing things.
And not knowing any, you know, I mean, even as a young man, you know, right when I turned 18, you know, or 20 or whatever, because everyone's on their parents' cell phone plan, but I said, like, I've got to pay.
I've got to pay for this, or I feel weird.
Like, it's nice to not have to pay, but there's this kind of anxiety that comes to it.
You think, I can't...
I could never live in my father's house as a 24-year-old.
I'd feel weird about that.
I wouldn't want to do that.
But there are so many millennials who do want to do that.
What is that psychology like?
I mean, where does that come from?
And is there any hope to fix it?
I think part of me doesn't just blame millennials or younger, like, I guess, Gen Z. Part of it, I think, is the boomers.
And that's because they've been so old.
I mean, these are like the original helicopter parents that wanted their kids to stay at home.
I mean, it's like the smother on the Goldbergs who doesn't want the babies to leave the nest.
So I think they hold some of the blame.
But now they're getting older, they're wanting to retire, and they're looking and they're like, well, wait, my kid's still here.
You know, I'm ready to move to Costa Rica, but I can't get the kid out of the house.
They're even doing ads based on those things.
There's a realtor ad that's basically around that concept.
You have to think, if they're doing ads based on these concepts, they're not foreign to a lot of people.
These are real issues that people are dealing with.
To me, they hold some blame in prolonging this adolescence.
I think that goes back to the culture.
You have to make it less accepting with the culture that You know, if you're embarrassed to tell people, you know, I live at home, if you're embarrassed to tell a date, do you want to come back to my parents' place?
And then I think at that point is when you're going to start seeing the culture change.
Yeah, yeah.
That is...
Bring back the shame.
You've got to...
Yeah, you need...
Because now millennials, they're so afraid of shame.
They say, stop body shaming.
Stop age shaming.
Stop...
They do all this shaming.
Yeah, you need a little shame, man, because shame is a good thing.
Shame...
Well, I really enjoyed the book.
I encourage people to go get it.
The Social Justice Warrior Handbook, a practical guide for snowflakes, millennials, and Generation Z. I also do want to quote, I really like Nick Searcy's blurb on it.
Nick Searcy's a friend of the show.
He comes and hangs out with us sometimes, and he said, when it comes to political advice, you should only listen to Hollywood actors like me, but if I'm unavailable, this book will do.
And you've got some great endorsements here.
You've got Ann Coulter really recommends it.
You know, Circe, a number of other people.
And now, a blank book author.
Perhaps the most entitled author ever there has been.
Also really recommends it.
Go out there and get it.
Where can people find you, Lisa?
They can find the book on Amazon.
They can find me on Twitter at atlisadep.
And the website for the book is sjwhandbook.com.
Really good.
Lisa, thank you for being here.
Lisa De Pasquale, we'll have to have you back and talk again.
Yes, for sure.
Thanks.
Okay, we've got a lot more to get to today.
We've got to get to two segments.
This is America, and I'll probably do a little sing, do the dance and everything.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, you know.
And then we'll also have to get to this day in history.
Because there is this weird coincidence, this real providence perhaps, that the Trump-Helsinki summit with a Russian dictator coincides with the historical anniversary of the Potsdam Conference when another straightforward American president met with a Russian dictator.
We'll get to that and we'll get to a great story on this day in America.
This is America!
Where we talk about really the wonders of capitalism and free enterprise and freedom of movement that saved a little British baby.
Before that, I have to say goodbye to you.
I have to get real capitalist now.
I was communist at the top of the show and I skipped the ad, but now we get real capitalist.
Give me your money.
Keep my lights on.
Let me start adulting and pay my own bills.
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When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez goes on TV and talks about fictional countries and the end of capitalism and all of that, and Democrats like good electoral Democrats, smart politician Democrats like Barack Obama or the Clintons, they look and they say, no, no, no, don't say that stuff.
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We'll be right back with This Is America and This Day in History.
We're back.
So let's begin with This Is America.
We're running late as per usual.
As per usual, when I'm adult, I got to start adulting so I can keep my schedule properly.
But on this segment of This Is America, I got to talk about baby Oliver.
This is a great story.
Only in America would this be true.
So you remember, you've heard these stories in the UK of little Alfie Evans.
He was the baby that the UK authorities, the National Health Service, said he's got this disease.
There's no way that he's going to live.
The parents said, well, let us take him to look for treatment elsewhere.
They said, absolutely not.
We own your baby.
You're not allowed to do it.
I mean, even you've got the Pope trying to intervene.
You've got the Italian government offering babies like Alfie Evans or Charlie Gard citizenship so that they can come there and get help they need.
And they say, nope, you're not going to do it.
This baby has to die.
We are going to make this baby die, and he's going to die with dignity.
That's the new euphemism they use when they refuse people the liberty to try to care for their own children and try to save their own children.
So this baby, baby Oliver, was diagnosed with cardiac fibroma, which is an exceedingly rare affliction of the heart where he had this huge tumor in his heart.
Little baby Oliver has this huge tumor.
And the doctors there had never seen anything like this.
A lot of them didn't know what it was, didn't know what it could be.
And all of the doctors in the UK said, we can't treat it.
The only way that we can try to save his life is with a heart transplant.
But the trouble is...
As in all socialistic systems, there are long waiting lines, and for a baby, it's virtually impossible.
Most likely, the baby would have just died waiting to get a heart transplant.
It would have been very, very risky.
They said this tumor just cannot be removed.
Sorry, your kid is going to die.
There's nothing you can do about it.
So what happens?
The parents say, can we look elsewhere?
And the UK and National Health Service in its typical way says, nope, sorry, no way, no, no, we're not going to pay for anything, we're not going to let you look, nope, your kid's probably going to die.
And so the Boston Children's Hospital hears about this, and they post and they say, we can help.
I know that you British socialist healthcare system, you can't help, but we can help.
Because of our free enterprise, we have far better care, more innovative care, and we're going to allow you to do it.
We're going to give you the freedom to try to pay for your kid to live.
And so the National Health Service in the UK hears about this.
And what do they do?
They say, nope, we're not going to pay for that.
We're not going to pay to transport.
We're not going to send any doctors.
Nope, sorry.
The kid has to die.
Die with dignity.
He's got to die.
You know all that dignity of death?
Isn't that so dignified?
Uh-uh.
So the parents started a fundraiser, and they raised almost all of the money that was needed to do it themselves.
And I think because of all the bad press the NHS has recently received, they finally caved on this.
They said, oh, yeah, sure.
Oh, you wanted to save your kid.
Oh, yeah, no, we're, we want, that's good, we do that.
So what about, for the last year, you've been letting those other kids die and refusing to let their parents, oh, no, that would, no, we love saving kids.
Okay, so they finally cave once there's enough publicity and enough money raised.
And they even sent a couple of doctors to go with the kid.
And at the Boston Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, they said, look, it's a huge tumor.
It's really where we don't know if we can remove the whole thing.
We'll do our best.
What do they do?
Because this is America, they removed the whole tumor.
They removed the whole thing in this miraculous surgery.
Everybody was shocked that this could happen.
and now the kid gets to live, which is a very good thing.
Only in America could that happen, not in the United Kingdom, not elsewhere in the world.
And why though?
Why?
I wish Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would watch my show so that she could learn these wonderful things about the capitalist system she so derides.
It's because we have freedom.
And freedom, you know, it is true that freedom allows people to risk things.
You can In a free enterprise system, you have the right to lose your own money.
You have the right to make trouble for yourself.
But you also have the right to have ingenuity and to save yourself and to save your kids.
And the UK, they're focusing on death with dignity.
These are the ghouls who want to fundamentally change the medical profession from only caring for people and helping people and helping to save people to killing them, to assisted suicide, to killing people because death is better than life.
It's an anti-life movement.
And death with dignity means that you don't value life.
In America, we have a life with dignity.
We say you can live with dignity.
When you die, look, we're all headed for the same place.
We're all going to have our bodies turned to worm food at some point, but not today.
You can live with dignity.
And there's another aspect of this, which is economic, and it's the scarcity mindset and the abundance mindset.
In socialistic countries and economies and societies, they have a scarcity mindset.
There's a pie and it's this big and everyone's going to get some of that pie and that's all there is.
The abundance mindset is bake more pie.
The pie can grow.
Economies are not static.
Societies are not static.
You can have innovation.
You can have abundance.
You can grow and grow and grow.
And you don't have that.
I mean, Margaret Thatcher spelled it out very well.
He said the socialists, they just want to reduce economic inequality.
Even if everybody is lower, they want the difference to be down here rather than have some more inequality.
But everybody is doing much, much better.
You know, the economy is not just a pie.
You can have abundance and you can say, yes, we can do it.
That is the outlook, because socialism, I think Winston Churchill, I'm going to paraphrase this because I'm not going to get the quote right, but it's a philosophy of failure and the gospel of envy.
It's just this very dour, down-looking, scarce thing.
Decrepit philosophy.
And it's a 200-year-old philosophy.
150-year-old philosophy.
There's nothing new about it.
There's nothing innovative.
But abundance and innovation, that's always the American spirit.
And we see evidence of this.
We see a wonderful example because it saved a British baby's life.
Very good stuff.
Before I let you all go today, we've got to talk also in this day in history.
Everyone's talking about Russia and, you know, I've got Tom Arnold tweeting at me and saying that Trump's a traitor because he made some...
Perhaps loose comments yesterday at a press conference that changes practically nothing about American foreign policy.
And he did accomplish a few important things, too.
But on this day in history, 1945, President Truman met at the Potsdam Conference.
It was the big three.
He met Winston Churchill was there and also Joseph Stalin, the worst dictator ever, one of the worst dictators, and the Soviet dictator.
So a strange coincidence.
who knows if it was planned that way.
It's hard for me to imagine that it wasn't planned with some sense of the calendar, but they met there.
And Truman and Trump have some similarities.
You know, they're both underestimated, both considered kind of stupid.
They came from industries that are not traditionally political.
A lot of people think that they were too, that they talk too straight, in a too straightforward a manner.
You know, they're too blunt.
And what happens at that conference by by the way, is that Truman mentioned to Stalin, he said, you know, we've got this new bomb that's much more destructive than any bomb we've ever had.
And it's reported differently by different people.
But he told Stalin about the bomb that they were about to use.
They sort of agonized over this.
They said, should we surprise the Soviets and just use the bomb on the Japanese and end this war and they'll learn about it when we blow it up?
Or do we want to give them a heads up because they're our allies in this war?
They ultimately decided on the latter.
But from everyone in attendance, Churchill said this, Anthony Eden said this, Truman said this, everyone said that Stalin didn't really react.
He said, oh, that's good.
You got a good bomb.
Use it against the Japanese.
End the war.
And it was only later on that some of the Russian ministers said, oh yeah, Stalin played it very cool in the moment, but he immediately got down that night and said, we've got to start building our bomb faster.
We've got to catch up with them.
What we do know, though, is that the historical ramifications of that event only became clear much later.
It's not like these are straightforward negotiations and summits.
When you're dealing with these people, Soviet dictators are killers, they're sharks, and what we think is the obvious way to deal with them is not always the obvious way.
And the ramifications will be clear later on.
So everyone is freaking out over this Trump press conference with Putin.
What we really need to do is pump the brakes and see what happens, you know, because these things are not clear in the moment.
They'll become clear over time.
Putin said, I don't trust Trump.
Trump doesn't trust me.
What will come of this will be clear over time.
Are we going to work with...
The Russians, are we going to share some strategic interests?
Or are we going to have just an acrimonious eight years, and then another eight years of the Pence administration, and then who knows, it'll go on and on and on.
What are we going to have?
Everybody take a breather.
It's okay.
This has happened before.
The United States didn't fall apart yesterday.
It's all right.
It's going just fine.
There was a good NATO summit.
We got a lot of good...
Progress there, as the New York Times admits, President Trump accomplished much of what Barack Obama tried to accomplish and failed to accomplish.
And, as the Democrats were always pushing for that Russian reset, the Bush administration was pushing to reset relations with Russia and get out on a good foot.
You know, George W. Bush said, I saw Vladimir Putin's soul in his eyes and...
It's a pretty dark and black place in Vladimir Putin's soul.
It seems just like the fires of hell glowing behind them.
And, you know, President Trump goes there and he says, oh, yeah, you know, look, we're a little bit to blame, too, for the problems and the relationship between the U.S. and Russia.
These are just things that people say, we'll see how that relationship goes moving forward, but take a breather.
You know, on this point, too, another coincidence on this day in history, In 1776, Congress learned that the British General Howe had offered a peace deal to General Washington.
You know, the British had landed.
Washington had moved his troops from Boston down to New York.
The British were ready to wipe them out.
But General Howe said, you know, we'll just try to negotiate some peace and we'll let the colonies come back in and no harm, no foul.
And he sent an emissary to Washington and Washington read the letter.
And the letter...
Did not begin with the word general.
Didn't say General Washington.
He wouldn't address him as general.
And Washington was so insulted by this, he sent them packing, he ripped it up, he said, not a chance.
And this is a little, just a little warning to add here.
Words do matter.
Words really do matter in international affairs, certainly, and in politics.
You know, I did that Prager video on it.
Words really, really matter.
Speech is the essential human act, and the words that use matter.
So, you know, all in all, as I say, take a breather.
Everything is fine in American foreign relations and with Russia.
It is worth pointing out to defend some of the critics of that press conference yesterday.
The words do really matter.
One has to be pretty careful with what they say because speech is the political act.
It's the human act.
I think that press conference yesterday was just great and it was like four words from being Really good.
A few words just really left a bad taste in people's mouths.
One does have to be careful because words, when we're negotiating, when we're talking like loose people, words can be used really in a cavalier way.
But you've got to be precise about what you're saying so that there's not...
Not a lot of confusion.
On that point, I hope I haven't confused you.
On that point, come back tomorrow.
Get your mailbag questions in.
We're going to do that on Thursday.
We've got some great guests.
We have like too many great guests right now, so I've got to figure out.
We did a pre-tape interview with my priest, Father Rutler, so maybe we'll try to get that to you soon because...
Man, if you think I'm right-wing, you've got to listen to my...
Really, talk about the opposite.
We bemoan that millennials are uncultured and uneducated.
This guy has read every single book ever, and he's the most cultured man I know.
So we'll get that to you and some other great interviews coming up, too.
So tune in.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you tomorrow.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Semia Villareal.
Executive producer, Jeremy Borey.
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.
