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Oct. 11, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show

49:16

Ep. 233 - Democrats’ Demon Craft

According to left-wing outlet Vox, “modern-day witches” are putting hexes on Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh. Then, Kanye kills it in the Oval Office, PC mobs tell us to stop calling them mobs, or else. Vox’s Jane Coaston joins to discuss civility, and finally the Mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	As the leftist tears downpour enters its sixth day, Democrats have embraced the rain dance.
	According to left-wing outlet Vox.com, modern witches are creating rituals to foster activism in the wake of Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court.
	We will analyze Democrats' demon craft and cultic symbolism more broadly in politics.
	Kanye totally kills it in the Oval Office.
	PC mobs tell us to stop calling them mobs, or else.
	And Vox's Jane Koston joins to discuss civility.
	Finally, The Mailbag.
	I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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	This was such a...
	I can't...
	Look, I wish...
	I could turn off my show today and we'd just watch the Kanye press or the whole thing and we still wouldn't have enough time.
	We'd still have to do another show tomorrow.
	It is so phenomenally good.
	It is one of these things you watch it and you just...
	I know some conservatives are still doer and pessimistic for some reason.
	Watching this...
	And just imagine you today telling you three years ago that this would be happening, that the biggest pop star in the world, the biggest popular musician, probably on planet Earth, would be wearing a MAGA hat in the Oval Office talking about how great the Republican administration is and making fun of liberals with that language.
	You wouldn't believe it, but it's happening.
	It's how you know we're living in the matrix.
	Without further ado, Kanye West, take it away.
	And that's a move.
	One of the moves that I love that liberals tried to do...
	The liberal would try to control a black person through the concept of racism because they know that we are very proud, emotional people.
	So when I said I like Trump to like someone that's liberal, they'll say, oh, but he's racist.
	You think racism can control me?
	Oh, that don't stop me.
	That's an invisible wall.
	Mr.
	West, what would you like...
	Oh, your question.
	You have one question.
	We're going to go to another question.
	I answered your question.
	I don't answer questions in simple sound bites.
	You are tasting a fine wine that has multiple notes to it.
	You better play 4D chess with me like it's Minority Report.
	Oh, I'm tasting a fine wine, too.
	That's the fine wine from MSNBC and the media melting down.
	And I love it, by the way.
	These guys, remember Kanye West said he and Trump have dragon energy.
	They really do.
	They do share something together.
	Watching them sit across from each other in the Oval Office, it's like seeing double.
	If I were a lefty and I went in there, I wanted to go get Donald Trump, I wouldn't know which one to shoot.
	I'd say, oh no, which is the real Trump?
	I can't.
	They're like such similar people and they have such the same approach.
	When you go out there and you say, you try to shame them, you try to get them to change their mind, you try to get them to stop saying what they want to say, they just flat out say no.
	They'll double down on what they're saying.
	You know, Kanye West said, you think that by using the word racist, you can control my actions.
	Well, it ain't gonna happen.
	I was talking last week about how rapist is the new racist.
	It's just the way that the left tries to control you and pressure you into kowtowing to their will.
	It used to be they'd call perfectly good people racists with no evidence.
	Now they're calling them rapists with no evidence.
	And some squishy conservatives, they say, oh no, I don't want MSNBC to call me something bad.
	No, no.
	Donald Trump, he don't care.
	Kanye West, he don't care.
	They're sitting there in this room, arms crossed.
	Come at me.
	So beautiful.
	He got so much pushback.
	What did he do?
	He tightened his MAGA cap on his head.
	And he's going out there saying, you know what liberals do?
	Like he's doing a stand-up routine.
	Absolutely beautiful stuff.
	By the way, he's there on the day of signing the MMA, the, what is the, I forget the actual title of the Music Modernization Act, which is a very important piece of legislation, by the way, and it's good that he's here for that as well.
	And only this administration could have gotten that through with the Republican Congress and Senate.
	We'll get to that in a second.
	But he's there just fielding questions.
	He cannot be pressured.
	He cannot be...
	Forced to say some view that he doesn't hold.
	MSNBC, CNN, the mainstream media, they are furious about that.
	Open up your tumblers and let the good times roll.
	I'm doing this for everybody who's watching us who turned their volume down.
	You can put it back up again.
	That was bonkers.
	But if you think you're going to get a thoughtful play-by-play and political analysis, you're not.
	Because that was an assault on our White House.
	We're not.
	You can't analyze some of that stuff that was said.
	As we warned you at the top, there was a little bit of profanity.
	There was actually more than you heard.
	We were able to bleep some of it out.
	But some of it did make it in there.
	That was crazy.
	That was bonkers.
	All of a sudden now, the left, they're clutching their pearls about profanity.
	They hate profanity.
	The left airs PSAs of little children screaming the F word, screaming all of these things.
	They have slut walks.
	Every big sign that they post is F this and F Trump and F that.
	They all giggle now.
	They clutch their pearls.
	He said Kanye West might have said a swear word in the Oval Office.
	Just Google Lyndon Johnson cussing.
	Lyndon Johnson cursing.
	Listen to what Lyndon Johnson said in the Oval Office.
	I'll tell you, his language was a lot saltier than Kanye West's.
	How about Bill Clinton?
	So we're talking about what Kanye West said in the Oval Office.
	When we think back on people degrading the Oval Office, what did Bill Clinton do in the Oval Office?
	You know how I like cigars, for instance?
	I'm a cigar fan, a cigar enthusiast.
	And they say sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
	Well, for Mr.
	Clinton, sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar, and sometimes it's not just a cigar.
	In the freaking Oval Office, you hacks!
	You hypocrites!
	Open up the tumblers!
	And what they're really upset about...
	It's not just a racial thing, though there is a racial component.
	They're upset that a prominent black man is now a Republican, is supporting a Republican administration.
	They're also upset that a celebrity is supporting a Republican.
	They're also upset that a young person is supporting a Republican.
	They're also upset that a musician is supporting...
	It's a perfect storm.
	And they are...
	They're all Alyssa Milano's.
	They're all these little kind of doughy white people.
	Alyssa Milano's not doughy, but her intellect is at least a little bloated.
	And they say, make Kanye Kanye again.
	Kanye, he's not allowed to say these things.
	What does he do?
	Tightens that MAGA cap even tighter.
	Absolutely beautiful stuff.
	We're going to have to talk about this with Jane Koston when she comes on, because the left is furious.
	The narrative is breaking down.
	What MSNBC is saying, they said, you probably had your TV on mute.
	No, no, no.
	You had your TV on mute, MSNBC. We were all watching.
	And you wish we had our TV on mute.
	They're saying, no, it's the Wizard of Oz.
	No, no, don't look at the man behind the curtain.
	No, no, don't believe your lying eyes.
	Sorry, I saw it.
	I saw it.
	Love it.
	We've got to move on, unfortunately, because there's so much to get to.
	The Democrats are now admitting that they're practicing witchcraft.
	Am I the voice of one crying out in the wilderness right now?
	I was calling this last week, and now they're admitting, yeah, we practice witchcraft.
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	Before we bring on Jane, I have to read you this article from Vox.
	It's actually from Jane's publication.
	Jane Koston, I'll say something nice about her.
	She is certainly the most reasonable person at Vox.com.
	That's why we talk.
	That's why I'm having her on the show.
	And actually, I read Vox all the time because it presents honestly the left-wing point of view.
	And they're being really, really honest today.
	They have this...
	This piece out.
	We refuse to be silent any longer.
	Magic as self-care after Kavanaugh.
	And I actually managed to infiltrate a recent Democrat strategy meeting.
	I got to go down there, I got to bring a camera, and I got to see firsthand how the Democrats are retooling their strategy through the midterms.
	By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
	LAUGHTER I conjure you!
	By that which you profess, howe'er you come to know it, answer me to what I ask you!
	Answer me, Dianne Feinstein.
	That last one was Dianne Feinstein there.
	If you couldn't see, I think the shot was mostly from the back of her head, but that was Dianne Feinstein.
	So this is how the article goes.
	Quote, modern day witches are creating rituals to foster solidarity, activism, and healing.
	It goes on.
	First, take a candle, then pour some salt into your hand.
	Then, keeping the grains in your palm, take a pen to write out a thank you to Christine Blasey Ford, the woman whose allegations, uncorroborated, evidence-free, frequently contradicted and refuted, allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee and now Justice Brett Kavanaugh, stunned a nation.
	Or if you prefer, simply say, I believe you, It's just one of the many quasi-religious rituals circulating the internet, particularly pagan and hashtag resistance circles.
	I love that they conflate those two.
	You know, the pagan and the resistance circles, very similar.
	In the wake of Kavanaugh's confirmation, these rituals help self-identified witches process trauma, anger, and grief.
	Now, I will tell you something.
	I have always appreciated the political philosophic value of Exodus 22, 18.
	Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
	I have long appreciated that.
	And I told you this.
	We were talking about this just a couple days ago.
	Leftism can rise to the level of religion, and these days it really seems to have risen to the level of religion, and not good religion.
	You know, I will point out, because this thing goes on and on, people describing the rituals as a vital spiritual solidarity, and it also goes on to talk about the 20% of Americans who identify as spiritual but not religious.
	For whom rituals can provide a framework for finding meaning in trauma or pain.
	You know I talk often about spiritual but not religious.
	It is just fertile ground for this kind of religion.
	Everybody's got to serve somebody.
	And for the atheists who are watching, conservative atheists, conservative agnostics, I just want to point out, atheists always...
	Atheists always get this wrong, and agnostics, I think, kind of miss the point here, too, which is when they say, oh, it's so silly.
	Religion is so silly.
	Oh, it's so ridiculous.
	It's superstition.
	Some things can be superstition.
	But religion...
	In here's, in every human society throughout all of history since the dawn of time, perhaps that tells us something about the human condition.
	Perhaps that tells us something not just about our own condition and our own longings, but the satisfaction of our longings which exists in the metaphysical and the spiritual world.
	Perhaps it tells us that because everybody's got to serve somebody.
	You know, the piece goes on.
	It says, Okay.
	By the way, this means Matt Walsh was right too when he said that yoga is just paganism and Satanism.
	It is witchcraft.
	You know, Mayor Bolshevik, Bolshevik Bill de Blasio in New York, he signed a bill today saying that there's now a third gender on birth certificates, male, female, and exe.
	That's witchcraft.
	That's hocus pocus.
	That is superstition.
	There are two sexes.
	We know that there are two sexes.
	And there are men, there are women.
	There are men who think that they're women.
	There are women who think that they're men.
	And there is a small number of people for whom their sex is a little ambiguous.
	They might have an extra X chromosome.
	They might have ambiguous genitalia.
	That's a real thing.
	Of course that's a real thing.
	But that's not a third gender.
	That's a combination of two.
	The idea that there is some third sex or gender, that is a fiction.
	That is witchcraft.
	And this religion of leftism gets worse and worse.
	Before I bring Jane on, I just have to show you this.
	Remember that guy, the one who kicked the pro-life woman at that rally?
	On YouTube, they're calling him Cuck Norris because Chuck Norris would roundhouse kick people.
	And this guy is not the manliest man.
	So they're calling him Cuck Norris.
	Anyway, you might remember him.
	I'm a 16 year old and I can't have this baby.
	And Think you should keep it?
	It's a baby.
	If someone is raped and she gave birth and she decided to kill her three-year-old child.
	I meant to get your phone!
	I didn't notice this the first couple times.
	He's wearing a pentagram on his neck.
	He's wearing the sign of Satan on his neck.
	That's no coincidence.
	Do we think that's really a coincidence?
	He might say, oh, it's just a sign that he likes.
	It's a very specific sign.
	Oh, it's no big deal.
	Well, if it's no big deal, why is he wearing it?
	And why are all of these hysterical mobs focused around one thing?
	The fictitious constitutional right to kill a baby.
	You know, as this guy kicks this woman because she was at a pro-life rally, all of the Kavanaugh hullabaloo, all of the witchcraft that Fox is talking about in the wake of Kavanaugh is about the fictitious constitutional right to kill an unborn baby.
	It's about Roe versus Wade.
	Maybe that's not a coincidence.
	Because ideas do have consequences.
	Little decisions, little indecisions have major consequences.
	If you trace bad ideas back far enough, you get to the devil.
	You've got to go back pretty far for some of them.
	But you do get to the lies.
	You get to the father of lies.
	And that cultic aspect is hard to ignore.
	You have to almost willfully ignore it.
	But I really appreciate Vox.
	This is why I read Vox all the time.
	Because they do provide...
	Very honest perspectives, honest left-wing perspectives that you're not going to get anywhere else.
	And the best person at Vox, you all know the best person at Vox, is Jane Koston, who I have on now.
	Jane, do we have you?
	We do.
	How are you?
	Jane, thank you for coming on.
	I appreciate it.
	Of course, anytime.
	I was just going through, did you see that article on Vox today about the witchcraft in the wake of Brett Kavanaugh?
	I did, I did.
	That was from Tara Burton who writes a lot about religion.
	It's interesting because I think that a lot of her work works on, she has talked a lot about the Vatican and the recent crisis in the Catholic Church.
	And I think it's particularly challenging because when we talk about religion here, we're talking about a lot of different religions.
	So I think it's interesting that she's able to write so effectively Across a wide swath of religious beliefs.
	I really like the piece.
	I think people should go read it.
	I liked another.
	There was one at Alatea a while ago on the cultic imagery in that Ariana Grande video.
	And it was this terrific piece written by a self-described witch.
	And I think a lot of people on the left and the right don't appreciate religious symbolism because a lot of people are religiously illiterate now.
	You are not religiously illiterate and you have some common ground with conservatives or you at least have an understanding of some aspects of conservatism, which I think makes you unique in many ways.
	So I want your perspective on this.
	Completely changing gears here.
	Hillary Clinton, within the last couple days, has said that the time for civility is over.
	We can't be civil.
	We're going to be civil once the Democrats retake the government.
	Eric Holder said, forget about Michelle Obama's.
	When they go low, we go high.
	When they go low, we're going to kick them right in the face.
	What say you, both the perspective on civility from the left and broadly for the whole country?
	Well, I think from the left, we have to recognize that the left is responding to this phenomenon at which the right has basically been saying, why are you kicking yourself?
	Why are you kicking yourself?
	Why are you kicking yourself for three years?
	No, do you think the right has been uncivil?
	I think the right has been uncivil, yes.
	I think everyone involved has been uncivil, and I'm operating entirely in good faith here.
	I think that it's complicated, and I talk about this a lot, how when we talk about the right or the left, we need to be really careful in our terms.
	Because I think that we run the risk of conflating David French at National Review with someone writing at Breitbart.
	When we vote, we all know that those are not the same thing.
	Different perspectives, yeah.
	Right, different perspectives.
	We're not talking about Noah Rothman at commentary versus someone getting aggregated at Twitchy.
	These are different things and a different conceptualization of what the right is.
	So I think that first and foremost, it's important to kind of get at our terms here.
	Because I think what Clinton and Holder and others are responding to is this idea that, you know, I remember that that was that kind of meme of 2015-2016 about Trump, the butt he fights.
	That, you know, Trump accusing Ted Cruz's father of being the killer of JFK. He was just raising questions.
	He was just raising questions.
	He was just raising questions.
	You know, nothing happened to him.
	And you saw again and again that, you know, everyone made fun of Jeb Bush because basically, you know, called him a cuck because he wasn't like Trump.
	And this idea that Trump won on the basis of fighting.
	And on the basis of just being willing to insult people and insulting Ted Cruz's wife and insulting Hillary Clinton and this idea that, okay, well, that seemed to work.
	And now you're seeing, I think, some people on the left All right, well, I mean, I think that that's what you're kind of getting at.
	But Jane...
	That Michael Avenatti is a logical presidential candidate because he's just as terrible.
	Right, right.
	But, you know, and I totally grant you Donald Trump fought very hard against his Republican primary opponents and against Hillary Clinton.
	But you remember Hillary Clinton called half the country deplorable and irredeemable.
	This wasn't...
	And I'm not even that concerned about political rhetoric per se, because both sides can get nasty.
	Both sides can fight.
	What I'm talking about, though, is since President Trump won, you've got elected Democrats.
	Maxine Waters say, go out there, find Republicans where they eat, where they sleep, go to their homes, you know, harass them in public.
	I don't think that we have seen a similarity on the right now.
	I actually don't think that there's moral equivalence here.
	I think that it's challenging because, again, we're working with our definitions of who gets to be counted on the right.
	Because I know that if I bring up Unite the Right and Charlottesville, you will rightly say those aren't conservatives.
	They say that they're not conservatives.
	They say that they're alternative.
	And then, you know, you'll see, like, David Duke, when he was at Unite the Right, was like, I'm here because of Donald Trump.
	And understandably, conservatives will be like, whoa, that's, no, that's not on us.
	That's not a part of us.
	But those guys, Jane, surely there's a difference between David Duke and Richard Spencer and the, you know, now I think what has atrophied to the five people in their basements who call themselves alternative right, down from 200 or 300, to Maxine Waters, who's an elected Democrat and who's been in office forever.
	Yeah, and Steve King is also an elected Republican.
	And again, we could keep going back and forth, and I think that...
	But Steve King's never called for violence, never called for public harassment.
	I think that when you're talking about someone like Steve King, or you're talking about this concept of who's promoting violence and who isn't promoting violence, I think that it's important...
	First, I want to say at the top that Promoting violence is bad.
	It's a bad idea.
	We agree.
	If someone drives into a building because Jane Coaston said something, I just want to be here on the record saying, please don't drive into a building.
	But I want to be clear that there is a sense that I think a lot of people in love have this idea that when there's a lock her up chant at a rally, which obviously features not violence, to be perfectly clear.
	But I think that there's a sense, like, why can these people get away with something and we can't get away with something where no one should be getting away with it at all?
	But the lock her up chant is asking why Hillary Clinton is allowed to get away with something as well, right?
	Which is, why is she allowed to get away with mishandling federal records?
	Why is she allowed to get away with wiping her servers?
	Why is she allowed to get away with this and that?
	I'm not defending it, though I do defend the lock her up chant.
	I'm just saying there is a difference between that and saying go to Hillary Clinton's home where she sleeps and kick her out of restaurants.
	I think that there is a sense that there is no, how best to put this, I think that for some people on the left there is a sense that the degradation of how people see politics and the personalization of politics Means that they're an idea that,
	you know, if you see Ted Cruz, that's the same Ted Cruz who is, you know, making fun of Beto O'Rourke for pointing out the murder of Botham Jean in a Twitter ad.
	You know, that the personalization of politics means that people, you know, you see Ted Cruz, you're not seeing Ted Cruz guy-eating dinner, you're seeing Ted Cruz that politician.
	And I think that there's a sense on the left And I think somewhat on the right, in a little bit, but I think it's a different conceptualization, that the personalization of politics means that political figures, it's not, you know, a lot of people have criticized this, because you see pictures of Michelle Obama and George W. Bush together.
	And they've talked a lot about how they have this really enjoyable friendship.
	And people get very mad about this.
	I'm both the right and on the left.
	Because there's that, you know, that old five versus five thing that everyone kind of clocks in, we yell at each other, we clock out, we go back to hanging out, which in some ways is actually kind of how it should work a little bit.
	But for a lot of people on both sides, there's a sense like, no, no, this is a fight to death.
	You know, you see people who start longing for the return of the Civil War, which no one should long for the return of the Civil War.
	And you see that on both sides, people saying like, Well, the red states have more guns.
	We do have more guns.
	I mean, there's no question about that.
	I think that, you know, one, the Civil War was bad, and we shouldn't do it again.
	But also, the personalistic politics means that, you know...
	People, when someone is sending Maxine Waters or someone is sending Cory Gardner death threats, you're not sending a person death threats.
	You're sending this political entity who's not a real person.
	I do want to point out on the personalization of politics, though, because I agree with you entirely.
	I despise the personalization of politics.
	I will point out, just as an historical point, it was the new left that adopted this mantra in the 1960s.
	The personal is the political.
	The political is the personal.
	Second wave feminists, but much more broadly than second wave feminists.
	And I don't know, I think you're seeing the fruit of that today.
	But I do want to know also, because when I look at where the Democratic Party is going...
	I don't know.
	I have my own skewed perspective.
	I don't think I've referred to Elizabeth Warren without calling her Laya Watha in the last two years.
	So I want to know from your perspective, where do you think it's going to go?
	Is it going to be some belligerent Michael Avenatti guy who just makes things up and challenges people to mixed martial arts fights?
	Or are you going to get a more...
	I don't know.
	I actually don't even really know who the moderate or centrist Democrat would be.
	I guess Joe Biden would be maybe the closest.
	Where is it going to go as we head through the midterms and into 2020?
	Well, I think that it's complicated because, you know, if we think back to 2014, people were not exactly talking about a Donald Trump presidential run until we get to that, you know, the June 2015 escalator moment.
	Right.
	But I think that what you're seeing on the ground right now is that the number one issue that Democrats are running on isn't Trump.
	It's not Russia.
	It's health care.
	And you're seeing that in state after state after state after state.
	And I'll talk specifically about, say, the state of Michigan.
	The state of Michigan is a really interesting example because you have the Democrats going really hard on the issue of criminal justice because they're pointing out the fact that Larry Nassar, one of the worst sexual abusers in American history, who abused hundreds of children, essentially, you know, A lot of Democrats are kind of saying, like, clearly Republicans who were in charge in Lansing were not able to get a handle on this issue or on the Flint water issue.
	So I think what you're going to see more is this increased, you know, I think conservatives will love it because it's a return to federalism, increased localism in politics, because you're seeing, you know, in Ohio, in Wisconsin, in Minnesota, in Michigan, a lot of these states, you're seeing people saying, you know, I don't really care, you know, Trump, Russia, whatever, that's fine.
	I want to talk about this specific issue.
	You saw that in Virginia last year in the special election, where you had candidates who were running for the Virginia House talking about, like, I have nothing to say about Trump.
	All I care about is this traffic issue.
	And they win.
	Because it turns out that when you live in the state of Virginia, you care a lot about traffic.
	And so I'm not sure what that's going to result in, in terms of a 2020 nominee.
	Because I have gotten out of the business of trying to predict what is going to happen with presidential nominees.
	But I do think that Democrats on the ground are really going with a, okay, what are people actually worried about?
	Not like, I think that there's a sense that there's like what we get riled up about on Twitter.
	There are people who are fake worried about things.
	And then there are people, you know, I think, you know, when I was, before I came to Vox, you know, I was paying for my own And my spouse's own health care.
	And that's a major concern for millions of people.
	I was really concerned about housing issues because, you know, I live in the city of D.C. D.C. is very expensive for housing.
	And it kind of, you know, when we decide to have a family, that's something we need to think about.
	And it is for a lot of people, which is why you're seeing housing becoming a big electoral issue.
	I think in Seattle and elsewhere.
	Well, I do agree.
	I think you're absolutely right, especially on the Twitter point, which is that Twitter is largely fake.
	You know, it is all of the outrage.
	I think that is largely fake when it gets down to real people.
	I'm skeptical that we're going to be returning to federalism.
	I hope you're right.
	I think it would be very nice if we do that.
	But I think that we're...
	Thoroughly in the bread and circuses, politics is entertainment, presidential politics is entertainment mode.
	But we'll have to see.
	I have to let you go, Jane.
	Thank you for being here.
	We'll have to have you back.
	Sounds great.
	Great.
	Have a good one.
	All right.
	See you later.
	So we have to get to mailbag.
	Before we do that, I do want to mention very briefly the Music Modernization Act.
	The Music Modernization Act, nobody is talking about this.
	Nobody knows what it means.
	I think conservatives are a little misguided on this.
	That is what President Trump signed into law today.
	All the musicians were at the White House.
	It passed, I think, unanimously through Congress and the Senate.
	It's the first bill to do that maybe in my lifetime.
	You know, I don't remember, certainly in this political climate.
	What the Music Modernization Act does is it really helps out songwriters.
	So So just briefly, because I think some people think that it's the government intruding into the market with regard to music and music publishing and streaming.
	It's exactly the opposite.
	The government has had its heavy hand on this for so long.
	And I know a number of songwriters, pretty well-known songwriters, so they've been looking into this for years and years.
	Apparently, what happened is in 1906 or 1909, when this kind of copyright and music regime was established, it was because piano roll companies, you know, like the player pianos, you put the roll in and it just starts playing.
	They were really upset because they didn't want to have to pay songwriters.
	So they go to Papa, Uncle Sam, big government, and say, we don't want to have to pay them a lot.
	We want the government to set rates.
	We don't want rates to be adjusted with inflation.
	We don't, all of this, right?
	So the producers and the publishers and the songwriters really get hurt with this.
	Now, until today, another aspect of this Music Modernization Act was that songwriters who published works before 1972 would just not be paid when their music was streamed.
	They just wouldn't get, they'd just get nothing.
	Sorry, too bad.
	And the whole regime was really messy.
	This Bill is the biggest change to that since 1909, since the first decade of the 20th century, and it took a lot of political courage.
	The reason is no senator, no congressman wants to champion the rights of songwriters.
	Like, who cares?
	They're kind of spread out all over the place.
	L.A., Nashville, a little bit.
	Nobody wants to be their champion.
	There's no political upside for them to put their necks out for this.
	It's a complicated issue.
	You don't want to upset either record producers or this or that.
	And it took a lot of political courage, and a lot of songwriters were saying, Democrats were behind the bill, but only this administration could have gotten it through.
	Only a pro-business, pro-market administration who took this seriously and was willing to take the political risk and the moral risk could have gotten this through.
	And that's what I've been saying all week, and I've been saying it for a long time about this administration.
	It has real moral clarity.
	I'm not saying the President knows everything about this law.
	I don't know that he's read this law.
	Probably he hasn't read this law.
	But he does have this kind of gut instinct, it seems, on moral and political clarity.
	And I'm glad we could see that.
	And I'm glad that we could also get that Kanye presser out of it, too.
	We've got a lot of mailbag coming up.
	Don't go away.
	But you've got to go to dailywire.com.
	If you're on Facebook and YouTube, head over there.
	You've got me, The Andrew Klaven Show, The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Guys, none of this matters.
	This is what matters.
	If you haven't gotten your Tumblr yet, then I'm sorry that you've drowned.
	May the Lord have mercy on your soul after that Kanye presser in the Oval Office.
	If you have your Tumblr, but it's filled to the brim, you're worried for your family and your property and yourself, go get another one.
	Go to dailywire.com.
	We'll be right back.
	You can't stop me.
	Starting with Timothy.
	Hey, Michael.
	What is the most recent book that you have read, and what is one book that you plan to read soon?
	Thank you.
	You're the man.
	No, you're the man.
	Funny you should ask.
	What I'm doing right now is I'm rereading Dante, rereading the comedy, which is the greatest poem ever...
	And it's been nine years since I've read Dante.
	And I just felt like reading it again.
	Nine is a very important number to Dante.
	And it's just the most tremendous work of art I've ever encountered.
	So I really recommend that you read it.
	You can read it in translation.
	There are a few good translations, all free on the internet.
	And if you have Italian, it's much more beautiful in Italian if you can read it that way.
	And if you want, you can also on the podcast get a lecture series on the comedy.
	So you can read along with the lecture series, coincidentally, by the guy who taught me Dante, Giuseppe Matzotta.
	It's a Yale Open course.
	It's really, really good.
	I highly recommend it.
	And it's in English.
	It's in translation.
	So you can get that.
	I think that it was actually recorded the year I studied with him, coincidentally, at 2009.
	But now it's up on podcast.
	So you can go listen to that, too.
	I also just read, I was reading Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem by Carol Delaney.
	It's a really good book.
	I've got Gorka's book.
	We talked about Gorka's book yesterday.
	That was a lot of fun.
	I'm always reading a lot of books at once, so that's what I'm reading.
	What do I plan to read in the future?
	I don't know.
	I've got to get through Dante first, and then...
	Got to get back through.
	You know, that takes a long time.
	100 Conti.
	So get through Dante and then let me know if you have a good book.
	Recommend one to me.
	From Rodolfo.
	Hi, Michael.
	My sister and her female partner recently decided to have a baby after being together 13 years.
	You need to rush out and call a scientist.
	You need to call the President of the United States.
	This is incredible.
	They have been trying to do this for all of human history, and now two women have figured out how to...
	No, no, no.
	I'm sorry.
	I have to read more.
	Both in their early 30s, her partner would be the one to conceive the baby.
	I oppose her decision based on the argument that I think it's deeply selfish to deprive a child of a father just to fulfill their own wants.
	Legally, I think they should be able to do whatever without the law forbidding them.
	What are your thoughts, and how would I go about to express my disapproval without getting a knee-jerk reaction of, you think we shouldn't be allowed to have babies argument, but I expect, thanks, love the show.
	Yes, I agree with you entirely.
	I think it's deeply selfish and wrong to conceive a baby for the purpose of not letting it have its father, or have its mother, whatever.
	I think that's really, really profoundly wrong, and they shouldn't do that.
	There are some options, though.
	You know, we're in a very complicated regime of in vitro fertilization or conceiving some other way.
	There is the old-fashioned way.
	And adoption, because now single parents can adopt, so of course same-sex couples can adopt.
	It's very convoluted.
	Also, the problem with in vitro fertilization is very often, almost all the time, it necessitates the abortion of embryos or freezing embryos in perpetuity.
	So you create embryos that are either going to be killed or not allowed to grow.
	So that's a big problem in and of itself.
	What your sisters could do if they want to raise a child, or your sister and her partner, if they want to raise a child, that can be a noble thing.
	I don't think that you should create a baby, beget a baby, and not let it know its father or have some strange relationship to its father.
	But, you know, you could always, your sister could always adopt, especially a foster child.
	In the United States, there's something like 32 or 36 families waiting to adopt for every one child.
	But when it gets up to, or for every one infant, but when it gets up to older children, it's much harder.
	And there are a lot of people in the foster system.
	There are a lot of people in group homes.
	A lot of people have had to leave bad homes for bad reasons.
	Your sister could adopt one of them, and I think that would be taking a bad situation and making it much better.
	You're not depriving a child of knowing its father or knowing its mother.
	The parents have deprived that child of knowing his parents, and you could take a bad situation and make it better.
	I wouldn't start, though, from the premise of condemnation or of yelling at them or anything like that.
	It's a perfectly natural desire to raise a child, and it can be a perfectly good desire, but you don't want a good thing to be turned for a bad purpose.
	You want to be able to channel that and make the best of the situation as you can.
	From Sarah, Hi, Michael.
	I had a situation recently that the father of one of my best friends passed away due to cancer.
	This friend and her family, who I have known and loved for more than 20 years, are vehemently anti-Christian, very liberal, have always been.
	Because I had so much love and affection for the man, I felt compelled to somehow convey to him my Christian thoughts about Jesus dying for our sins in hope for a deathbed conversion when I visited him.
	However, I hesitated at the last minute and he died the next day.
	I have felt bad ever since because I missed my opportunity.
	What would you have done in this situation?
	Very hard situation, and I think a lot of Christians feel this way when they visit friends or relatives who are dying and remain atheists or whatever.
	I don't think that it's appropriate to, you know, proselytize at the very last minute in a very heated emotional moment.
	St.
	Francis said, preach the gospel and if you must speak, so hopefully some of that Christian charity and virtue and grace will That is reflected in your behavior and that your friends saw that.
	You can never know the state of a soul.
	You can never know the soul's relationship to God.
	Antonin Scalia said before he died that he doesn't even know if Judas Iscariot is in hell.
	You can never know that.
	Christ finds people.
	Christ comes down the mountain to find people and then you have your free will to turn and accept that or not.
	So I certainly, you know, maybe, I don't know.
	It's really hard to say what I would have done in a hypothetical situation.
	I don't think I would have gotten up and proselytized.
	Maybe I would have made a couple little remarks about, you know, going up to meet your maker, good maker, and all of that.
	But I wouldn't beat yourself up over it.
	I don't think that would be appropriate.
	Your job is to reflect the love of Christ in your actions and to preach the gospel, and you don't necessarily have to speak.
	From Thomas.
	Dearest Saint Michael, I wrote to you.
	That's very nice.
	It was the Feast of St.
	Michael a week or two ago.
	I wrote to you recently about dating these days despite my 60 plus hour work schedule.
	You recommend online dating.
	Or I recommended it to you.
	I took your advice, and boy howdy, I got some dates.
	This past weekend, I went on a second date with a woman with a PhD in biology.
	We got talking about social issues.
	It did not go well.
	She is a female Bernie bro with a white girl's guilty conscience about slavery.
	I asked some exploratory questions, some how do you define X questions, and she got triggered hardcore.
	I saw a leftist, uh, gathering at the corner, a leftist here gathering at the corner of her eye, but we hugged it out at the end.
	So here's the question.
	Do I keep dating her hoping to either flip a communist or do I swipe left on the leftist and roll the dice again?
	Yours truly, Thomas.
	I don't know.
	Is she cute?
	You're getting things really backwards here, buddy.
	I don't know.
	Let's assume she is.
	The point on this that you should really consider is...
	The hardcore left-wing, you know, screechy, no, purple hat, pink hat, that girl would never see you again.
	That girl would not even entertain.
	She probably would have stormed out of the restaurant or, you know, shrieked in your face.
	So if she didn't do that, there's hope.
	Where there's life, there's hope.
	And also, look, I've supported abortion in my life.
	I would have called myself agnostic or atheist.
	I even had a flirtation with leftism when I was, you know, 8th or 9th grade, something like that.
	People change.
	They change their minds all the time.
	So there might be hope for her.
	I was hanging out with Fleckes the other day, Austin Fletcher, you know, Fleckes Talks, and he had a friend of his along, and she said that she was a Bernie bro leftist a year ago.
	And now she's a conservative because someone opened her eyes.
	So I think that's very important, especially on biological and bioethical issues.
	Because the people who are pro-abortion, I think they just don't see the argument.
	They're seeing all of the science and they're seeing none of the...
	Philosophy and theology.
	They're seeing all of the physics, but none of the metaphysics.
	So I don't know.
	If she's cute, take her out again.
	If she's not, you know, and you're not into it, move on, man.
	This is like the one advantage of dating apps is that you can meet a lot of people.
	But I don't know.
	I wouldn't dismiss an open-minded or curious left-winger just because she doesn't check all the boxes of politics.
	We have time for a couple more from Nellio.
	Good day, Mr.
	Opium of the masses, Michael.
	I'm a Catholic and the rise of anti-humanism today is rather frightening.
	Some friends of mine are advocating for one-child policies and even going as far as to say that we have a moral obligation to not have children anymore.
	How can we fight this neo-Malthusian garbage?
	How can we start pulling ourselves out of this hole of anti-human narcissism?
	Thank you for an amazing podcast.
	Greetings from South Africa.
	South Africa!
	This is a defining feature of the left.
	They hate human life.
	It hates human life.
	And leftists who flirt with leftism hate human life to varying degrees.
	The communists, that cuck Norris, you know, was totally anti-human life.
	They talk about, they want to kill old people with euthanasia.
	They want to kill babies with abortion.
	They're just anti-human.
	And it's because they get everything backwards.
	They, I, I've heard this from friends of mine who are environmentalists, vegan, you know, that whole thing is.
	They say, oh, global warming is so bad.
	It's caused by people.
	We need less people, fewer people.
	They say, you know, humans are bad for the environment.
	Which isn't true, by the way.
	In the history of America, since Western colonization of the Americas, the environment has improved dramatically.
	The natural environment, forests, and all things have improved dramatically because the indigenous peoples burned down whole forests.
	It's a sidebar.
	But they get it backwards.
	The natural environment is here for us.
	We have dominion over the land and over the sea.
	It's here for us.
	We tend it.
	We tend it as we tend to garden.
	We are stewards over it.
	But it's for us.
	Don't get it backwards.
	This is a difference between environmentalism and conservationism.
	Environmentalists say that we need to protect the environment because it has rights and it's so beautiful and it's Mother Gaia.
	And conservationists say we need to protect the environment so that we can enjoy it some more.
	They say we need to protect the deer so that we can keep shooting the deer.
	And that's a much more balanced perspective.
	So I think one way is to mock it.
	Because it's not that environmentalism doesn't have a good point.
	It's just that it gets everything out of balance.
	It has no sense of humor.
	It has no sense of the natural balance of the world.
	Which is true so much in leftism.
	And when something doesn't have a sense of humor, you should laugh at it.
	And hopefully it will restore a little balance.
	Do we have time for one more?
	One more.
	I don't care what you say.
	From Christopher.
	With Columbus Day, I mean Indigenous People's Day over.
	I re-watched your Columbus Day special, which talks about how he was a great man.
	However, I also saw the Adam Ruins Everything episode about Christopher Columbus, and he starts off calling him an incompetent buffoon.
	He does back up what he says with sources, but you can't both be right about Columbus.
	With two diametrically different points of view on the same person, how are we supposed to distinguish who is right and who is wrong?
	Big fan of the show.
	Thanks, Chris.
	Oh, I'm right.
	Does that clear it up?
	I don't know who Adam Ruins Everything is, and I have never seen it, but I do know a lot about Christopher Columbus.
	If this guy is saying that he was an incompetent buffoon, I'll just throw out some factoids that maybe could dispel that.
	He discovered the Americas from Europe.
	He discovered the New World.
	He was the greatest navigator of his age.
	He made it across the Ocean Sea using mostly dead reckoning.
	He didn't even have an astrolabe on his first voyage, and yet he made it down.
	How did he know?
	He sensed when he was on Porto Santo, when he was in Portugal, he could feel, and he would take all of these incredible voyages up to Britain, up to even past Britain, up into the Arctic...
	And he could feel the easterly currents in the northern Atlantic.
	So he just suspected, as far as I can tell, the first guy to suspect, that there might be a westerly current if you went a little further down south.
	So he decided that he would sail a little bit further south.
	Certainly he felt that westerly current, and he took it all the way over to the Americas.
	He was also brilliantly educated beyond just his...
	His navigational skills, which were unparalleled in his time.
	The evidence of that, of course, there is a lot of evidence of that, one of which is he discovered the Americas.
	But also he was devoted to reading the Bible at a time when a lot of people didn't read the Bible because either they were illiterate, and Christopher Columbus certainly was literate and in many ways self-taught, but he made sure education was very important to him.
	But he read the Bible...
	I think he was with Franciscan monks, and he would read it all of the time because he was trying to figure out the age since the first man.
	He was trying to figure out when predictions of the apocalypse would happen.
	He was trying to figure out how to make sense of all geopolitics, the fall of Constantinople.
	And so he would read that very well.
	He spoke a number of languages, Italian, Spanish, obviously.
	He was determined and he knew exactly how to play the Portuguese and the Spanish.
	He was kicked out.
	He was ultimately rejected from the Spanish crown to fund his voyage.
	And at the very last minute, they called him back.
	And his biographers, his contemporary and early biographers, suggest that the reason he was called back is because of the sheer force of his personality and the brilliance of his wit.
	So that's just a little taste.
	Just a little taste.
	But whoever this Adam person is has no idea what he's talking about.
	That's our show.
	I wish we could get to more, but we can't.
	Make sure that you tune in tomorrow, I think.
	Another Kingdom is being released for everybody.
	If you're a subscriber, you can already see Another Kingdom right now on the website.
	And it is really cool.
	You know, my job in Another Kingdom is to read the book.
	So I got the best job.
	But the story is incredible.
	And the artwork is really, really good.
	We now have visual production.
	So there's sets, there's artwork.
	It's really cool.
	It's awesome.
	So check it out at dailywire.com or you can watch part of it tomorrow and listen to the whole thing.
	Otherwise, have a good weekend.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	show.
	I'll see you on Monday.
	The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Semia Villareal.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
	And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Jim Nickel.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
	The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

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