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Aug. 23, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
52:05
Ep. 206 - The Best Defense Is A Good Offense

Democrats have fallen victim to one of the three classic blunders. We’ll analyze why the best defense is a good offense. Then, a CNN contributor posts the stupidest tweet of the week. Patrick Madrid joins the show to discuss how to approach politics as a Christian. Finally, the Mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Democrats have fallen victim to one of the three classic blunders.
Everybody knows the first, never fight a land war in Asia.
The second, less well-known, never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
But the third is where they've stumbled.
Never challenge Donald Trump to a battle in the media.
We will analyze why the best defense is a good offense.
Then, a CNN contributor posts the stupidest tweet of the week.
Patrick Madrid joins the show to discuss how to approach politics as a Christian.
And then finally, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
Oh, the, I can't believe they fell for it.
This is something right out of the Princess Brides.
These media have fallen for the worst mistake they could possibly have done.
And Democrats broadly.
Because the media are just the TV representatives of the Democrats.
So we know the big news, it's on every website, it's all anybody is talking about, is the Cohen plea and the Manafort guilty verdict.
On some counts, not all counts.
Trump, they've got him.
They've finally got Trump.
Now, legal scholars are really mixed about all this.
We'll get into the legality of it.
We'll get into what the mainstream media are doing.
And we will get into why this is such a big mistake.
And they're going to run themselves into a wall if they keep it up.
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Let's get into it.
They're all talking.
This is it.
We've got Trump.
Because of the guilty and the this and the campaign finance.
Now, mind you, legal scholars are saying that it's far from clear whether Donald Trump could have even committed a crime with regard to the Michael Cohen testimony.
Even if Donald Trump instructed Michael Cohen, his lawyer, to make a payment regarding Stormy Daniels or any of these other girls coming out of the woodwork, A number of lawyers say that that would not be a crime, including Alan Dershowitz, including one of the great legal scholars of this generation and the past generation.
He says there's no crime here.
It's certainly possible that Michael Cohen committed a crime, but it's basically impossible that Donald Trump committed a crime here, and President Trump is more correct than his critics.
And that's from Alan Dershowitz, who is a liberal, who is not a conservative, even though people are pretending he is.
He's certainly a liberal.
Other lawyers are saying exactly the same thing.
So, mainstream media, what's your take on all this?
The President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, is named a co-conspirator of a federal crime.
Is that grounds for impeachment?
Do you think impeachment is more likely at this point?
Impeachment.
Impeachment.
Does this move the needle at all?
More confidence to move forward on impeachment.
The President facing impeachment.
Impeachment will be on the Democrats' agenda.
The I word, impeachment.
The I word, the I word and impeachment.
Let's take a look at the process of impeachment.
Impeachment.
Impeachment.
To impeach.
Or impeachment.
Impeachment.
He would have been impeached.
All of it bringing impeachment back to the forefront.
Talking about impeachment.
Impeachment talk.
That was yesterday.
That was one day.
I don't even think it was all of yesterday.
That was the cable news networks.
Immediately you've got this plea deal from Michael Cohen.
You've got the guilty verdict from Paul Manafort.
Nothing really talking about the president.
The president hasn't been accused of a crime here.
And you've got legal scholars saying that he couldn't have conspired in this crime and on and on and on.
And the typically sober response from the mainstream media.
Impeachment!
Okay, okay.
So, how does Donald Trump respond to this?
Because this is what we've all been waiting for.
There are two ways that President Trump could respond.
He could immediately go on the defense and say, I didn't commit this crime.
I couldn't.
And just focus all of his energy on how he didn't commit a crime, how the law is a little vague, but he didn't do it.
And it's very difficult to convict someone on campaign finance.
And it's especially hard to get the president for these sorts of crimes.
And this isn't what the framers meant by high crimes and misdemeanors.
He could have gotten onto all that.
And we would be drooling asleep on our desks, right?
That would be very boring.
So the one option is defense.
The other option is offense.
Guess which one President Trump picked?
I'll give you one guess.
So, President Trump begins this massive tweet storm, and not just a tweet storm.
This was a media blitz.
He was shooting videos at the White House.
He was doing radio interviews.
He was doing TV interviews.
He was just blasting out there.
It begins with a joke.
He puts up this tweet, and the tweet says, quote, This is after Michael Cohen pleaded guilty and sort of implied that Donald Trump committed a crime.
He said, if anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen.
I think that the left has become so humorless here that they can't understand when the president is telling a joke.
That tweet is an objectively funny tweet.
That is a joke.
In the sitcom version of all of this, in the TV version, which is really what we're living through, the president's lawyer, the guy's lawyer would come out and say, you're a criminal and you're going to be impeached and you're a threat to the country.
And then the main character, his punchline would be, well, if you want a lawyer...
I don't recommend you hire this guy.
Waka waka and the laugh track would play and the credits would roll.
He's telling a joke and it totally lands.
It's a very funny clip.
But he doesn't just leave it at the joke.
So he immediately hits them with humor.
Why does he hit them with humor?
Because humor deflates one's opponents a lot better than being angry and small and, you know, crass and vulgar.
Laughing at them is a much more effective tool.
And then you start punching.
And it's all big.
It's all spirited.
It's not specific.
It's not in the details of the law.
It's not in the details of policy.
It is big, it is spirited, and it is an offense.
Here is President Trump first leading the way, talking about that poor girl, Molly Tibbetts, killed by an illegal alien.
Molly Tibbetts, an incredible young woman, is now permanently separated from her family.
A person came in from Mexico illegally and killed her.
We need the wall.
We need our immigration laws changed.
We need our border laws changed.
We need Republicans to do it because the Democrats aren't going to do it.
This is one instance of many.
We have tremendous crime trying to come through the borders.
We have the worst laws anywhere in the world.
Nobody has laws like the United States.
They are strictly pathetic.
We need new immigration laws.
We need new border laws.
The Democrats will never give them.
And the wall is being built.
We've started it.
But we also need the funding for this year's building of the wall.
So, to the family of Molly Tibbetts, all I can say is, God bless you.
God bless you.
So for those of you who are only listening who can't see, this is President Trump standing alone just outside the White House, just in front of a camera, and he's going on about this killing of Molly Tibbetts, killed by an illegal alien, talking about the wall.
He's got a little dig in there about the family separation crisis scandal, manufactured scandal at the border.
He said, this girl has been forever separated from her family.
We need to build the wall.
We need to double down.
And so where is this coming from?
The Molly Tibbetts story has already come out.
It's come out for over the past few days.
He's hitting this because this is one of his most popular points, his most popular rhetorical points, and it was central to his campaign.
Build the wall.
It's very popular because the mainstream media are going to try to convince you that a payment to a porn star two years ago is worth taking down this entire presidency.
And he's going out there and he's going to hit you really hard.
But he's not just stopping with Tibbetts.
He then goes on and he suggests that his critics owe him an apology because of how great the country is going.
Here's the next video.
This comes up right afterward.
When I got elected, you had some people that said, this is going to be the greatest thing to ever happen to our country.
I guess that's why I won.
We had a lot of people.
But you had others that say, oh, the market will collapse, lots of bad things will happen.
And take a look at what's happened.
We have the greatest, longest bull market in the history of our country.
They turned out to be wrong.
Some have actually apologized, but very, very few.
I think the rest will soon be apologizing because honestly, the American public demands an apology.
We are doing better financially as a country than we've ever done before.
Same position, same right outside the White House, right in front of that camera.
Totally different topic, talking about how great the economy is, how everyone predicted.
And you remember this.
You remember in 2016, they predicted if Trump wins, the economy is going to tank, we're going to go into a recession, the global economy is going to crash.
What happens?
We have the strongest economy we've ever had.
We have record high employment.
We've got record low joblessness.
The global economy is doing better.
And he's calling people's attention back to that.
This doesn't begin to scratch the surface.
Donald Trump has tweeted 16 times yesterday.
He does not tweet that much.
He tweeted 16 times yesterday.
As of just early this morning, when I was going through the news, he had already tweeted three times this morning.
And not just little one-off tweets.
He tweeted several videos, big media appearances, all of this.
And what are the topics?
Was it just Molly Tippetts?
Was it just the economy?
Was it just...
The Michael Cohen issues and the Paul Manafort issues.
No.
He tweeted about all of the topics as of 10 a.m.
He tweeted about deporting a Nazi, hurricane relief, how the Democrats want to abolish ICE, how he is killing ISIS. He tweeted about a Medal of Honor.
He tweeted about the longest bull run in American history.
He tweeted about an illegal alien killing Molly Tibbetts.
The economy, Hillary, the South African farm expropriation that's going on right now.
Right now in South Africa, the government has voted to steal farms from white farm owners on the basis of their race, and the left is denying this.
They're saying that this is a white nationalist talking point, even though the government of South Africa has said this and has said that they're going to do this.
Apparently now it's facts or racism or something like that.
So he's tweeting about that.
He tweeted about the crooked press.
He's tweeted about repealing Obamacare, deregulation, and of course the rigged Witch hunt.
He's tweeted about all of these things in the last 24 hours.
What we're seeing here is Donald Trump hard charging.
This is the superpower of Donald Trump.
Trump.
It is the reason that it is good that he got elected over many of the other more qualified, more politically experienced candidates who were in that field.
Because Donald Trump does not just play defense.
He plays strong offense in a way that a lot of other politicians, especially Republicans, don't do.
He answers every charge.
It's not that he doesn't defend himself.
He's always answering the charge.
This is a rigged witch hunt.
I didn't do this.
I didn't do this.
But he doesn't just leave it there.
He punches back a hundred times as hard.
This reminds me of the Rosie O'Donnell thing.
Rosie O'Donnell said that Donald Trump was bankrupt.
Donald Trump went on a holy jihad for the next five years, calling her every name in the book and trying to ruin her life, all the way up to the debate stage in 2016, a decade later.
This guy is scorched earth, and it's the sort of thing we need right now, because the forces trying to take it down are so corrupt.
This is not a novel idea that the best defense is a good offense.
This is an idea that was embraced by George Washington.
Mao Zedong talked about this.
Sun Tzu talks about this.
Machiavelli writes about this.
Sometimes the best defense is a good offense.
Ronald Reagan frequently said, when you're explaining, you're losing.
If you're explaining, if you're defending, but if you're hitting fast, if you're hard-charging, if you're fearless when it comes to these guys, you are in a much better position.
I was watching Trump's...
President Trump's rally in West Virginia the other day, I was sitting with Cassie Dillon here at the office, and this was right as the Michael Cohen news broke.
We thought, oh, he's definitely going to be off-footed by this.
He is, this is going to be, let's see what he does.
And she and I looked at each other.
It was the best that he's performed at one of these rallies in a long time, in recent memory.
Why is that?
Because Democrats think that they're going to off-foot him with these things.
This is where he thrives.
He actually doesn't do as well politically when things are going well and things are kind of normal.
That's not where Donald Trump thrives.
Donald Trump thrives in fighting and hostility and barbs and punching.
That's where he lives.
And in many ways, Democrats have backed themselves into his corner and are playing on his home turf.
Perhaps there's this legal question he's going to have to deal with.
That's going to be tough.
I'm not really commenting on the legal aspect of it.
Maybe we'll try to get Professor Dershowitz back to talk about that.
I'm just talking about politically.
He wins when he's got an opponent to punch.
Donald Trump wins when he's got Jeb Bush.
He wins when he's got crooked Hillary.
And now he wins when he's got these Democrats threatening his presidency over a porn star.
That's where he's gonna win.
If they really wanted to off-foot him, they would just lay off.
They would just lay off and let him tweet about football players or something.
Try to start fights.
Donald Trump is always ready to punch people in the face.
If they really wanted to make him look bad or really wanted to get his presidency off on the wrong foot, they would tone down the rhetoric, tone down the hostility.
But they just can't do it.
They've made one of the classic blunders.
You are never, I promise you Democrats, you are never going to win a media war with a guy who has lived in the media since the 1980s.
It's just not going to happen.
This guy has lived in every aspect of the media.
He is a creature of the media.
They make fun of him.
They say, oh, Trump consumes 10 hours of TV a day.
He probably does.
He probably does because he has his finger on the pulse of the popular culture.
Not a smart move for them, but a pretty good news for us because that's where we see him win.
If Trump didn't have foils, if he didn't have fighting, if he didn't have rough, brutal attacks in 2016, he would not have won.
He wouldn't have won the general.
He wouldn't have won the primary.
It takes all of those attacks and he's let it happen.
We'll see what happens.
We'll see what happens with the legal intent, or the legal aspect of this.
Did Trump have criminal intent?
Did the payment only have electoral benefit?
Was there personal benefit?
Who knows?
You know, they're trying to make this a legal question.
It is a political question.
Impeachment is a political question, especially for Democrats who are running on impeachment before legal questions were even really brought up.
This is a political question.
And who is better at these politics?
It really vindicates this argument.
At least he's a fighter.
This is really good news.
Before we get to Patrick, I want to bring Patrick Madrid on.
I do have to talk about the stupidest tweet on the internet today.
Just very quickly before we go.
The CNN contributor, Simone Sanders.
Big lefty.
She tweets, quote...
Molly Tibbetts was murdered because she told a man to leave her alone while she was jogging.
Her murderer happens to be undocumented.
That's lefty talk for illegal alien.
I was undocumented when I worked as a 14-year-old at Subway.
That was an undocumented person.
This guy's an illegal alien who broke our laws and was here illegally.
She goes on.
Her murderer happens to be undocumented.
This isn't about border security.
This is about toxic masculinity.
Molly Tibbetts lost her life because a man couldn't take her saying no.
Full stop.
I hate, if you're watching, Simone, I hate to be the bearer of bad news.
It's about border security.
It's about illegal aliens.
That's what it's about.
Toxic masculinity.
What on earth?
I think the issue here is that lefties must feel immense guilt because their reckless, lawless, immoral advocacy of open borders and not supporting border laws is leading to Americans being murdered.
Time and time again.
There's a name for the mothers, angel mothers, of mothers whose kids have been killed by illegal aliens.
This is not the same, by the way, as people, they try to flip it, they'll say, well, you must feel guilty if you're pro-Second Amendment at all the people who get shot.
No, there's no gun control law that's been proposed in recent times that would have stopped any of these big shootings.
There's none.
However, immigration enforcement would have stopped all of these murders.
If we actually enforce the law, detained and deported illegal aliens in this country, none of the people killed by illegal aliens would have been killed, by definition, because they wouldn't be here.
It's really bad.
I understand why they feel guilt about this, but it's really horrific.
I mean, she's getting some blowback about this all over the internet, and she really should.
That's a really vicious way to politicize a death and to try to wipe the blood off her hands, but she probably won't be able to.
Let's bring on Patrick Madrid so that we can talk about politics and Christianity and how to deal with this absurd political climate as a Christian.
Patrick, do we have you?
Yes, I'm here, Michael.
How are you?
Patrick, thank you for being here.
I'm a big fan of yours.
You will know Patrick Madrid as the host of the Patrick Madrid Show on Relevant Radio.
He also has hosted a bunch of shows on EWTN. He's an author and an all-around very smart guy and has a great Twitter account.
Patrick, we could talk about any number of subjects.
What I really want to talk about is how to approach politics in this political moment As a Christian, without delving into a lack of charity or something like that.
I saw a few tweets from pastors around the country in the past few days.
One of them talked about this kind of wacky church where it's at a brewery and they talk about how Jesus was a Palestinian and, you know, he was killed by white supremacists and they donate their proceeds to Planned Parenthood.
And then this other pastor guy who said that, he said, Jesus wasn't white.
Jesus wasn't a Republican.
Jesus wasn't this.
He wasn't even a Christian.
Hashtag Wednesday Wisdom, which really makes me wonder how he defines wisdom.
I don't want to be uncharitable toward these people.
How should Christians deal with this absurd, polarized political moment, especially when it comes to the left?
Well, thank you, Michael, and thanks for having me on your program.
I'm not primarily into politics, although on my show we do veer into politics from time to time.
Can't help it.
It's just the way things are.
So I will begin by saying I'm an admirer of the way that you and Ben Shapiro and others handle it.
You go straight on, you go head on to the absurdities, expose them for what they are.
I think that's very important that people need somebody to lead them and say, look guys, this is ridiculous and here's why.
So that would be the first thing that I would propose.
And you're already doing a good job of that.
Oh, thank you.
Also, oh, you're welcome.
Yeah, and this is one of the reasons why I follow The Daily Wire because it's a steady source of For people to see exactly how it's done.
It's a fine line, I think, between using irony and perhaps a little bit of light mockery, perhaps.
And at the same time, like you said a moment ago, not offending unnecessarily.
We don't want to be gratuitously.
We don't want to insult people.
We don't want to do what so many people on the other side do to us routinely.
But at the same time, you have to stand and engage these people.
And what I've found, Michael, as I know you've found, Is that as soon as the ideas get exposed in the public arena and people can actually see them for what they are and they can analyze the logic behind these beliefs, clearly we have the better arguments.
But it has to be done in public and it has to be done vigorously.
That's right, because I really admire your show.
I love listening to your show.
And I do sometimes...
I think you handle politics very well with good restraint and a nice charity and seriousness to it.
But it can be very difficult.
So then I guess I'll ask on the religious aspect, too.
So much of what strikes me about political confusion, religious confusion, is that people are largely ignorant.
They're ignorant in a way that past generations were not ignorant of basic concepts of either conservative politics, left-wing politics, Christianity, the Catholic Church.
They're ignorant of these basic things.
In light of that culture, where an education system has failed a whole generation of people, how do you advance...
Any aspect of instruction or commentary from apologetics all the way to politics, how do you advance that in a culture with such a low degree of knowledge?
Yeah, you've pinpointed one of the real serious problems of our generation, and I would argue that it's probably three generations worth now that academia has failed in terms of teaching basic concepts like critical thinking skills and And not that we should always be critical, but we should have clear thinking.
We should be able to think clearly about these issues.
So what I do, and you'll hear it on the program, and I'm happy to know that you listen, what I do is I, as often as possible, I use the Socratic method with callers who want to joust or they want to promote a view that I disagree with.
And as you know, the Socratic method is by interrogating the other person, you're asking him the questions.
And he may not even realize that the burden of proof remains firmly on his shoulders, which is where it belongs, typically, in arguments like this.
So because people don't think critically anymore, they've resorted to bumper stickers and slogans and thought-stopping epithets like racist and homophobe and nonsense like that.
The only way to get past those thought-stopping slogans is to ask questions.
Well, if that's true, what about this?
And then how do you explain that?
And how about this?
And without them realizing what you're doing, you're actually picking apart their ideas, but they're doing the heavy lifting for you.
And to the extent people can see this on Facebook or Twitter or on the radio, for example, it has great effect, I find.
That is a very good point.
And every time that I engage in that, just in my personal life even, or at a speech or something, it's always much more effective, I find, because if your debate opponent can come to the idea on their own, then it's more likely to stick, I think.
Yes.
One thing, speaking of the education system failing whole generations of people, one of the aspects of that is that the religiously unaffiliated, the nuns, the so-called nuns, have exploded, especially among millennials.
And I know so many millennials who were raised not just in a religious tradition that they reject, but without any religious tradition or religious education at all.
So a lot of people will write into this show.
I think a lot of viewers of this show are agnostic or they haven't really thought about it before.
Some are atheists.
But they'll say, how can I believe in God?
Convince me of God.
Give me apologetics in 280 characters.
I'm sure you get this as well.
How do you do it?
How do you convince people of God in 280 characters?
I don't know that that's possible.
But, you know, the old saying, Michael, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
I believe in the policy that you can put salt in his oats and make him thirsty.
- That's a good strategy. - Yeah, I figure if guys like you and I can get the person at least to start thinking about it, and I'm not at all surprised to know that you have atheists and agnostics and others who listen to your program.
The same is true for my program on Relevant Radio.
And what I find from them is they listen because there's something, they don't agree with it, but there's something about it that they find at least worthy of their time to listen to.
And I'm content if I can just get that, If they'll just listen, and if we listen and dialogue long enough, I'm hopeful that those ideas will become clearer to them.
But how do you do it?
Well, you can't quote the Bible, because you might as well quote the Yellow Pages.
That's right, the Harry Potter or something, right?
Yeah, I mean, it has no authority in their eyes, so I don't quote the Bible to them, nor should we.
I don't think it's useful to appeal to the things that we would appeal to if we were speaking, let's say, to a person who did believe in God but wasn't Christian.
Rather, I think our task is to use pure reason and demonstrate on the basis of the strength of the rational proofs for the existence of God that are ultimately unanswerable, I would argue.
By the atheist worldview.
Richard Dawkins hasn't answered them.
Christopher Hitchens, may he rest in peace, didn't answer them.
Sam Harris hasn't answered them.
And we could go on down the list.
Those kinds of logical, rational evidences for the existence of God are key.
Now, some examples, if we have a moment, would be the classic question, why does anything exist at all?
And if we take a metaphysical approach to the question, we don't have to use the term metaphysics, because that's scary for some people, but just raise the question of being.
What does it mean to be and how do things come into being?
Can something come into being on its own?
No.
Because it didn't exist.
It can't give itself being.
But it receives being.
And if it received being, it received being, existence from something before it.
But that had to receive existence from something before it.
It's almost like the caboose on a train.
It's only moving because the car in front of it is moving.
But that car is only moving because the car in front of it is moving.
And so we logically know, we assume, even if you don't see it, there must be an engine.
At the front of the train that doesn't need to be pulled because it's pulling everything.
And if it weren't there, nothing could move.
And so in a similar sort of way, even things like change in motion and being and all these things, they have evidences that believers really need to become more proficient at understanding how to explain it to an audience that has lost touch with so much of this patrimony that we used to know.
This is such a good point, because the first chink in my armor...
I know you were a cradle Catholic.
I also was a cradle Catholic, but I had a nice little 10-year saunter through the atheistic and agnostic landscape.
By the time I was 13, it was right around my confirmation, and I chose Thomas as my confirmation name, because I was doubting.
Doubting Thomas.
That's right, which now I think is very unfair of me.
But...
The first thing to really knock away at that atheist armor was the ontological argument for God.
It was one of these rational arguments formulated by St.
Anselm of Canterbury, and it was that first one.
And I think that argument actually worked on C.S. Lewis as well.
Everything came from there.
There might be something that, in this rationalist sort of culture, that's the first way that you can bring people to God.
Obviously there are many more evidences of God all around than just those.
Before I let you go...
I'm glad you came home, by the way.
I'm glad you came back.
Me too.
We need you on our team.
I appreciate it.
It's really nice to be back, I gotta tell you.
Life is just a lot nicer.
And I see this with my atheist friends and my agnostic friends.
I really like being sort of a pugilist and snarky and everything, perhaps on Twitter.
But in real life, you can't really do that with your friends.
And it does pain me to see my agnostic and atheist friends who are...
Living out, to some degree or another, the miserable conclusions of that worldview when they don't have to.
The thing I do want to ask before I let you go, specifically on the Catholic front, is obviously the church is in grave distress at the moment, not only because of the grand jury report in Pennsylvania, but also because of confusion that is coming out of the Vatican, doctrines that seem to be changing dramatically. but also because of confusion that is coming out of Even if they're not being presented as changing dramatically, there's just a lot of uncertainty going on.
How are faithful Catholics, Protestant Christians, non-denominational God believers, How are we to react to what appears to be rank bureaucratic corruption in the Catholic Church?
Well, first and foremost, I think all people of goodwill, whether you're Catholic or any of the groups you just described, we should name it and condemn it for what it is.
As you say, it is rank evil.
It must be named and it must be condemned publicly.
And thankfully, there are people who are doing that.
It is shocking, but it's not surprising, honestly.
I look back over the history of the Church for 2,000 years, and we've seen other epics where clerical corruption has been through the roof.
And so, although it's new to us, and it's shocking to us in the near term, this is not the first time it's happened.
Now, that doesn't excuse it.
It certainly doesn't minimize it.
I don't say that to suggest that there's, well, it's okay, we can just get along.
It's a serious problem, but it's not the first time the problem has arisen.
So, I take from that a great deal of encouragement that we Catholics would have destroyed this Church many times over if it were not something that had a divine beginning, which is what we believe that it was founded by Jesus Christ.
And so it's all the more reason that it's shocking that Catholic priests, cardinals, bishops have done this kind of thing.
So I'll leave you, since I know we have to go, but I'll leave you with this thought.
I'm always comforted by that passage in Scripture that describes The storm that came up on the lake when the apostles were sailing on the Lake of Galilee.
And we have a little detail in the story that Jesus was asleep in the back of the boat.
And the storm was getting so bad that some of these apostles who were seasoned fishermen, and they knew from being on a lake with a storm, they thought they were going to die.
And we're told that they were so beside themselves that when they woke up Jesus, they said, Lord, you know, we're about to die here.
Can you help us?
And he calms the storm, and he says, why did you doubt, you of little faith?
So personally, I think of that when I look at these headlines, because it seems, A, like this is a storm that will sink the ship, and B, it kind of seems at times like Jesus is asleep, but I know he's not.
And so I'm trusting in what he said to the apostles, and that would be my respectful suggestion to all people of goodwill, those who believe in Jesus anyway, to consider that as they're facing these kinds of problems and headlines.
That is a tremendous point, and you've made me feel better.
This is the main purpose of me inviting guests on the show, is so they can make me feel better about the world and the culture and everything.
Patrick, so good to have you.
Everyone should tune in to The Patrick Madrid Show.
They can find you on Twitter.
What is your Twitter handle?
My Twitter handle is at Patrick Madrid.
That's very simple.
I should have known that.
Very simple, and I hang out there a lot, so you'll find me there very easily.
Absolutely.
Patrick, we're going to have to have you back.
That was really good, and we'll talk to you soon.
Thank you, Michael.
That guy is so good.
I really love his show.
His show on the radio.
I don't listen to a lot of radio.
I usually listen to either classical music.
I'll tune into conservative talk radio in the morning.
But his show is one of the few that I will listen to regularly.
It's so, so good.
Okay, we've got a lot of mailbag to get to, and I'm running late because it's a day that ends in Y. So go to dailywire.com right now.
If you're already there, thank you very much.
You help keep the lights on.
You keep leftist tears pouring endlessly into my cup.
And after the last 20 tweets from Trump, they're really pouring right in, baby.
So go to dailywire.com.
You get me, The Andrew Klavan Show, The Ben Shapiro Show.
You get to ask questions in the mailbag.
That's coming right up.
Questions in the conversation.
The big boss, Ben Shapiro, is up on that next month.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
I'm going to get through all of them today.
I'm going to do it.
I usually don't.
I usually get through half of them.
But today we're going to get through all of them.
Mark my words.
First question from John.
Cardinal Michael.
You know, after these cardinals get ousted, I think I might have a chance.
I might have a legitimate chance at becoming a cardinal.
Cardinal Michael, I wanted to let you know that my three-month-old son smiled the biggest for you when I mentioned many conservative commentators such as Shapiro Clavin and Dennis Prager.
So we are getting him examined this week.
Real nice.
Anyway, I wanted to know what the difference between nationalism and patriotism is.
Thanks.
Love your show, John.
Great, great question.
What is the difference between nationalism and patriotism?
Some conservatives want to pretend that there is a huge difference between these things.
And I say this respectfully because I think Ben has written about this.
I think Jonah has.
All the way up to Bill Buckley.
Bill Buckley has said this.
Bill Buckley said, I'm a patriot, but I don't have one ounce of nationalism in me.
George Orwell talked about this.
He said, you know, patriotism is defensive and nationalism is offensive.
And it's this and that, and I think it's an artificial distinction.
I think it's an artificial distinction and it's a term of political usage to throw at your opponents, but I don't think it really means very much.
Patriotism and nationalism refer to love of country.
Patriotism in the modern usage is taken to mean good love of country.
Nationalism is taken to mean bad love of country.
And some of the distinctions that these people make will be that patriotism is ideological.
It's just about ideas, and that's why it's good.
But nationalism is psychological.
It's just about the blood in the soil, and it's just an unthinking, unconscious reflex of people to their own land.
But this doesn't make any sense.
The French army, after the French Revolution, was very ideological, and it tried to conquer the whole world.
Because of ideology.
Not because of blood and soil.
Would you call that nationalistic?
People call it nationalistic, but it fits the definition of patriotism that people who want to draw that distinction make.
How about the Nazis?
Were the Nazis just nationalistic?
They were certainly nationalistic, but they were motivated by an ideology.
Perhaps more than any government in modern history, they were motivated by an ideology.
The ideology of Nazism, of fascism.
So is that patriotism?
Well, it seems to fit the definition of patriotism that many want to talk about.
They say that patriotism is all about ideals and nationalism is bad because it's all about just the tangible things.
In some ways, this is a little gnostic.
We'll actually get to that probably later in the mailbag.
But also, if patriotism is just about all about ideals and nationalism is not, it's about the real tangible things, then what do we say of somebody who is a patriot?
They support American ideals, but they oppose the American nation.
Say they support open borders.
say they support voting rights for foreigners.
What about that?
What is that person?
Is that a patriotic, anti-nationalist?
If you support the ideal but not the country of the ideal, what is that?
That's a mess.
That's a total mess.
And to say that, like the Orwellian definition, nationalism imposes itself on others.
Patriotism does not.
It's defensive.
Where do we see that in history?
A American patriotism has led us to put those values out to the rest of the world.
American patriotism has a great universalizing character to it.
The West has a great universalizing character to it.
And that imposes on the rest of the world, not always militarily, but certainly culturally, economically.
And that's a good thing.
That doesn't matter if we impose American culture on the rest of the world.
Is that nationalistic and bad, therefore?
Or is it patriotic?
You know, if there is any distinction to be made, I don't use any distinction.
We're going to have an excellent author, Yoram Hazoni, on the show in a couple weeks to talk about The Virtue of Nationalism, which is his new book.
If there is any distinction, it's just this.
When people say patriotism, they're talking about the appropriate love of country.
When they talk about nationalism, they talk about the inappropriate or idolatrous love of country.
I think it is a totally false distinction.
People should not make an idol out of their country.
Even America, which is the greatest country in the history of the world, they shouldn't make an idol out of it.
That's not the only thing that we're serving.
We're serving God, country, and our communities in that order.
God, country, and our communities.
So there is something higher.
You wouldn't have America without the divine providence of the American founding and the metaphysical ideals to which America aspires and in many ways on which it was founded.
But you can't just abstract the ideals and not have the real thing.
It's totally false.
Usually when people do that, it's because they don't like One person's version of patriotism, and they prefer a different version of patriotism, so they try to draw a distinction without much of a difference.
Next question.
You know, at this rate, we're not going to get through even three questions.
Next question from Nathan.
Michael, I have been meaning to read the work of the great religious minds like Chesterton and Thomas Aquinas.
And also C.S. Lewis, outside of the Chronicles of Narnia that I read as a boy.
And also some classical philosophers like Aristotle that I was never made to read in school.
What are some books to start with that are the closest to the source material as possible?
Well, what sort of material are we talking about?
The source material for Aristotle is Aristotle.
The source material for Lewis is Lewis.
The source material for what Lewis is writing about is the Bible or Aristotle or whatever.
I would say, it is true, often now you're not really made to read Aristotle or Plato, basic things that you should read in school.
Just because of the order that you listed those in, I would say start with Lewis.
Never let it be said that I'm too popish, that I'm too much of a papist.
Start with the Protestants.
Start with Lewis.
Lewis is just wonderful to read.
He is captivating.
He is transformative.
He did transform much of my spiritual and intellectual thought.
Reading Lewis is like sitting down with an old friend.
It is utterly enjoyable every second you do it.
I got to visit Lewis' house in Oxford at the Kilns, and I felt like I was in the book.
I felt like I'd already been there before.
He's just wonderful.
He writes with extraordinary clarity.
He is...
I just read a great book comparing Lewis and Freud as these opposing geniuses that define the 20th century called The Question of God.
Read Lewis first.
Start with Mere Christianity.
Read Abolition of Man, Weight of Glory.
The Problem of Pain, Surprised by Joy.
There's so many good ones.
You can't really pick The Great Divorce is really good.
They're all just so-so.
Just read them all.
Miracles.
They're superb.
Read him first.
And then you'll get quippier lines from Chesterton, because Chesterton just had such a way with words.
But I think to just get into it and hang out with an old friend, read C.S. Lewis.
From Raymond.
If we kicked all the foreigners working in Hollyweird out of the country, how many people would be left?
Why do you think we import all these actors when there are thousands of out-of-work American actors with equal talent and appeal?
Well, as a former out-of-work American actor, I can speak to this pretty directly.
The reason is that the rule of thumb in Hollywood is write Yiddish, cast British.
Which is, you get Jewish people to write the shows, and then you cast Brits to act in them.
And why is that?
I don't know.
Jewish writers tend to be very funny.
They're disproportionately represented in comedy writing, and Brits are disproportionately represented in American film.
There is a reason for this, and it gets to Hollywood itself.
One thing I noticed, having been in New York and LA for long periods of time, New York actors, generally speaking, are much better than LA actors.
They're just a higher caliber, they perform at a higher caliber, they're capable of greater depths of character, and they're just better.
Why is that?
Because if you go to New York to become an actor, you really care about the craft of acting.
Few actors in New York are famous.
They don't get paid very well.
Even on Broadway, you don't get paid very well.
Off-Broadway, you don't.
And the majority of them, if they work off-off-Broadway, get paid peanuts.
So you have to really care about the craft of acting and not primarily be chasing fame.
The same is true in England.
If you're an actor in London, there is a great theater scene in London, but you're not going there primarily for fame.
You're there for the craft of acting.
This is not true in Hollywood.
Broadly speaking, if you're an actor and you go out to Hollywood, it's to get famous and become a star.
There's a great line, I think it was about Katharine Hepburn, when the group theater was being founded in early days, you know, Elise Strasberg, Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler, starting American modern method acting.
She was there, and they were all kind of crazy communists who wanted to do plays in the woods.
And she walks in and she said, this is absurd.
I'm leaving.
I don't want to be doing this.
I don't want to roll around on the floor.
I'm going to become a star.
She goes out, you know, and the rest of them are rolling around on the floor acting.
This gets to also the difference in medium.
If you're acting in a film, you don't have control over that.
It's nonlinear.
You're shooting scenes totally out of order.
You have to do many takes of each shot.
And it's not the actor's medium.
It's a director's medium and it's an editor's medium.
In theater, you're in an actor's medium.
So English actors just tend to come from the theater.
Just like New York actors, that's why they're better.
So as a former out-of-work actor, I gotta give it to them.
They're good actors, those Brits.
We got time for a couple more.
From Nathan.
Hi, Michael.
I'm a public high school teacher and a female student identified themselves as transgender and asked me to refer to them by male pronouns.
And a masculine name.
I need some advice on how to handle this situation.
Should I oblige them or refuse?
Man, that's tough.
There's a girl in your class.
She wants to be called a man.
She wants to be called by male pronouns.
She wants you to call her by a man's name.
There is an obvious answer, which is that you should not indulge this lunacy.
She isn't a man.
I have great compassion for her if she thinks that she's a man or very much wants to be a man.
She needs psychological counseling for that.
We should not indulge people who have delusions.
We should care for them.
There's nothing compassionate about indulging delusion.
Not on a personal level, not on a cultural level.
Doesn't mean you need to be a jerk and say, ha ha, you're a girl, ha ha, you know, nobody wants to do that.
But you shouldn't indulge delusion.
So there is a clear answer on that.
Here's the caveat.
If you refuse to go along with this PC thing and call a girl a boy and a boy a girl, you will lose your career.
You will lose it, guaranteed.
So, especially as a public school teacher, even as a private school teacher probably, certainly as a public school teacher, you'll lose your job.
So, this presents a real problem for you.
Are you going to go out there, take this moral stand, die on the hill, as the expression goes, or do you think that you can pick your battles and have to fight this one another day and try to affect the culture in another way?
I can't answer that for you because this will certainly cause financial and personal turmoil for you and your family if you do the thing that is clear, which is to call a boy a boy and a girl a girl.
I can't answer that for you because you've got to feed your family.
So you've got to answer that.
I will say I don't think it's total cowardice to go along with the PC line because there are other ways that you can work within the system and really try to reform that.
And there's nothing honorable exactly about seeding the fight and leaving the field.
So there's nothing wrong about being a little crafty.
But you're going to have to pick that for yourself.
If you think there's no way to fix this and we're going inexorably down this path and you've got to get out of that environment and that job, then you can call a boy a boy and a girl a girl.
But if not, then you might have to play along in some ways with the PC culture and try to change it from within.
From RT, Dear Mr.
Michael Knowles, please explain what we should know and think about Gnosticism.
Yes, I saw this question come up.
This is a great question.
Because we're in a very Gnostic age right now.
Even some conservatives are a little Gnostic.
Gnosticism, broadly, is salvation by knowledge.
By the secret knowledge.
If you have the secret knowledge, you will be saved and transcended.
There isn't one single Gnosticism.
There are lots of different types of Gnosticism.
It refers specifically, capital G, to these beliefs around the time of the life of Christ.
And the early Christian church, which denied that Christ was a human, that he was just God, he was just an illusion that he was a human, or denied that Christ died, or suggests that matter itself is evil, or suggests that God, the creator of matter, the God of the Old Testament, is evil.
There are all these Gnostic heresies, and fortunately the early Christians, you know, got rid of them.
But they keep coming back.
They keep coming back.
St.
Paul refers to Gnosticism.
He says, There's a lot of babbling going on these days.
It's very New Agey.
But this also ties into our politics, which is that we...
Gnosticism rejects the tangible and the material and the flesh in favor exclusively of the metaphysical, of the ideas, of the secret knowledge.
But we are united as individuals.
We are body and soul united.
It isn't just that we're soul and our body is evil, like the Albigensians thought.
It isn't just that we don't have a soul, or that our soul is physical and we're just machines and robots like a lot of modern atheists think.
We're body and soul.
We're both of them together.
When you go too much in one direction or the other, you're entirely wrong.
You've got to hold that balance, and that's what the Gnostics get totally wrong.
Do we have time for one more?
We've got to go.
One more.
You're too good to me.
From Becky.
Hi, Michael.
I was wondering, since there has been so much coverage about how the Russian bot Facebook ads must have swayed the election, could an argument be made that preemptively deplatforming Alex Jones and Gavin McGinnis could be construed as election interference?
Thanks.
Love the show.
Becky.
Yes, of course.
Of course it is.
By their definition of election interference.
By the left's definition of election interference, big tech is absolutely interfering in the election.
Because that phrase, election interference, doesn't mean anything.
It is a construction of left-wingers because they were upset that Donald Trump won the 2016 election.
What does it mean?
What does election interference mean?
Do we...
President Obama famously interfered in the Israeli elections when he was president.
He famously sent his political crones to try to throw the Israeli elections.
We're always...
What does it mean to interfere in an election?
I interfere in every election.
I really try to go and interfere in elections.
Absolutely.
So do companies.
So do people who make donations.
So do people who volunteer their time.
They're interfering in the election.
Of course, foreign powers have been interfering in our elections since our first elections.
It's an absurd euphemism.
It's one that tries to convince you that it's a legal term, kind of like collusion.
They say, well, he colluded.
They say, well, what's the crime of collusion?
Well, they interfered.
What is the crime of interference?
They brush their teeth.
No, that's not a crime.
What do you mean?
None of these things are crimes.
You're just saying words now.
You're absolutely right.
We should stick it back on them, though.
I think this is a great point.
I love to use the left's absurd rhetoric to attack them and to show them that they're doing that.
So that's the new one.
Let's talk about it.
Big tech interfering in the election.
I want subpoenas.
I want indictments.
I want a special counsel.
Let's get him.
I want to get Zuckerberg.
I want to drag him right in front of Congress again.
Same with Jack Dorsey and all the other ones.
Okay, that's our show.
You've got to binge the first season of Another Kingdom because we are shooting season two of Another Kingdom and it is really good.
I can say that in humility because I don't really contribute much to it.
Drew writes it and then I have this hard job of reading it.
So he just gives me a script.
It's like that Ian McKellen line in Extras.
Oh no, is it Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen?
Tomato, tomato.
And they said, you know how I act.
Somebody tells me where to go.
You know how I know what to say?
They hand me a script.
That's acting.
That's acting.
So binge season one because we've got season two coming and it is going to be really, really good.
Enjoy the weekend.
I'll see you on Monday.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Jim Nickel.
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
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