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Nov. 21, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
59:25
The Conversation Ep. 15: Michael Knowles
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Hello, everyone, and happy Thanksgiving.
We're live with our newest episode of The Conversation.
I'm your host, Alicia Kraus, and with me is the, you know, questionable, reputable, dislikable...
Am I making up words?
Yeah, some of those.
Michael Knowles.
You should all be thankful you're not stuck on this couch with him like I am.
He will be taking your questions live for an entire hour.
Music Please remember our conversation is streaming for everyone to watch on Facebook and YouTube and on dailywire.com.
MySpace, Zanga, I think we have something going on.
Do you remember Zanga?
Yeah, we're on there.
LiveJournal.
Aim for all of you AOL email users.
So it's live for everyone to watch, but only subscribers get to ask the questions.
Click the link in our video description if you want to ask a question of Michael or become a Daily Wire subscriber.
And be sure to tune in for next month's episode.
It's going to be with the wonderful editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, on Tuesday, December 18th at 5.30 p.m.
Eastern, 2.30 p.m.
Pacific Time.
We also got a backstage coming up in December that should be a lot of fun.
Oh, excellent.
I wonder if it's going to be a Christmas-themed backstage.
Perhaps.
We can smoke Christmas-themed cigars, like they're rolled with dark and light tobacco, like a nice little candy cane, like a Cuban candy cane, you know?
Remember the bubblegum, like, cigarettes?
Oh, yeah.
That's what got me hooked.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
At a young age.
Oh, yeah.
A little 15-year-old me.
The tobacco industry, you know, decided to...
Oh, yeah.
They were great.
They never light, though, is the trouble with them.
Oh.
That's the trouble.
So you were a pyromaniac and addicted to sugar.
Yeah.
I tried all of the vices when I was a kid.
And I've persisted in all of them as an adult.
We were talking about the importance of the sides at Thanksgiving earlier.
Maybe we'll have some Thanksgiving-related questions.
Perhaps.
We got the first one, though.
Ready to roll?
Here we go.
Evan wants to know, Michael, since the panel of deplorables, i.e.
the Knowles Army of Beauties, have been disbanded and Friday Live has been canceled...
I have to wonder, does sweet little Lisa get jealous seeing you with other attractive women?
I had to hide when Ann Coulter came on the show.
I told Elisa there was no show that day.
Don't even watch.
Forget your iPhone.
There's nothing on.
Because I can't give up my Ann.
I mean, it was so sad to give up Friday Live, the panel of deplorables.
This was part of our vows, though.
When we got married, they added this in to the liturgy, to the Catholic ceremony, is you cannot surround yourself with beautiful young conservative women on a daily basis.
And we make sacrifices for marriage, and that's the one that I made.
But once a month for the conversation?
But once a month.
That feels really vain, but it was a subscriber that said I was pretty.
That's true.
It was right in there.
It was him, not me.
Him and my mom think so.
So MB says, oh sorry, Carlos Gomez says, MB, Ben said that you were a degenerate in college.
Did you party, sleep around, and smoke pot?
I like beer.
Did you like beer?
I like beer.
I like beer.
I still like beer.
And in college, you know, sometimes I would drink too much beer.
Did you ever drink beer in college?
Do you?
What do you drink?
What do you like to do?
Yeah, I was under the impression in college that there's a time and a place for everything, and that place is college.
I also, you know, we talk about religion a lot on the show, and I had this reversion to Christianity at about 23, and Perfectly timed.
I know.
Talk about providence.
From the time I was 13, basically from my confirmation, until about a year or two years out of college, I was an atheist or I would have called myself agnostic.
And I consider this last period, you know, late teenage years, early 20s, I consider this my St.
Augustine period because one of the great fathers of the church, St.
Augustine, said, Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.
And the other one that gives me some hope is St.
John Vianney said, not all the saints started well, but they all ended well.
So you see a lot of them had a little bit of a rough start, but I think that's what a lot of teenagers have.
Are you giving yourself sainthood right now?
Well, I'm aiming for it.
We're all called to be saints.
We're called to, but I'm just saying elevating yourself to sainthood.
Kind of vain.
Well, no, you just have to have a goal for it.
This is actually a serious point.
In our society, we're so afraid of asserting anything or trying to go after a goal that we always say, oh, you know, I just feel like or this.
But true humility does away with false modesty.
We have to assert, we have to shoot for things, and then sometimes we fall into that college trap.
All right, Gabriel wants to know, do you think that Jews, Christians, Muslims, and even Eastern polytheists are worshiping slash pursuing the same God?
To what extent do you think each of these belief systems are credible?
No, they're obviously not worshipping the same God because they say so.
We know that, just to use the example, today is Muhammad's birthday.
It's his 1,447th birthday.
The God of Muhammad, as described by Ibn Hazm, an incredible, very bright 11th century Islamic scholar, is a different God from the God of Christianity.
He is a God.
Allah is a God of pure will.
He is a God of such will that he is not bound by his own logic.
If Allah so willed it, he could compel all of us to become idolaters or pagans.
That is the God of Islam.
The God of Christianity is not that God.
The God of Christianity is a God who is logic itself, is the divine logic of the universe.
In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.
You have the combining of will and intellect, will and reason, will and logic.
That separates things.
You know, Islam was founded in the 7th century after Muhammad was on a trip with his uncle Abu Talib in Syria.
And they met a heretical Christian monk named Bahira.
And this monk was either an Aryan or an historian.
It's unclear.
You see the aspects of that Christian heresy develop throughout the religion of Islam.
This is not to denigrate Islam, it's to point out the differences.
And of course this is true of the non-theistic religions as well, Buddhism and Hinduism.
There was a piece in the New York Times today where a Muslim writer said, Muhammad never fought back against his enemies.
He always turned to the other cheek, for lack of a better word.
In the liberal, secular West, we want to turn every religion into Christianity.
We want to turn every religious leader into Jesus Christ.
And then we want to reject those religions.
But not all religions are the same.
We're reacting to one religion that some of us have a little cultural understanding of and we're pretending in our ignorance of all of the other ones.
But the left, especially in our secular culture, can't take other religions seriously and the actual claims of those other religions seriously.
Because they don't take religion itself seriously.
So you have Barack Obama lecturing Islamic radicals on what Islam is.
What is Barack Obama going to teach Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has a PhD in Islamic studies from Baghdad?
What is he going to teach him about Islam that he doesn't already know?
It's a ridiculous presumption.
And if we started to take religion more seriously, I think we could understand that.
All right.
Andrew says, Hi, Michael and Alicia.
I know that men and women are complementary to one another, but what are some examples or traits that both sexes bring to the table for each other?
Oh, where does one begin?
One example could be modesty.
Women are more modest than men are.
Men are more aggressive and more assertive, and women are more modest.
This comes out in the song, Baby, It's Cold Outside.
So Baby, It's Cold Outside is, I really can't stay.
It's a date rape song.
How dare you?
Oh, I forgot.
I forgot it's a song about rape.
How dare you?
I know.
That's the new line.
You know, the woman says, I really can't stay.
And the guy says, but baby, it's cold outside.
Maybe you stick around in here.
She's paying lip service, at least, to the virtue of modesty.
And he is trying to go after his woman.
He's trying to seduce.
He's trying to pursue the woman.
And women like to be pursued.
That's exactly...
At least they used to.
Do they still?
You're a better expert on this than I am.
No, I think that...
I mean, I've been married a little bit longer than you.
That's true.
And it is something, I think, in every healthy marriage, you have to keep dating.
I know.
I mean, I tell Elisa this all the time.
She gets angry.
I say, no, I've got to go out on a couple dates to have a healthy marriage.
Oh, God.
But you have to keep dating.
You have to keep pursuing her.
That's right, yes.
And buying her flowers.
My love language is time.
So, like, quality time is very important.
And the time that my husband and I spend together.
My love language is Italian.
I thought that was everybody's lovely.
Yes, and.
Yes, and.
Yes.
No, that's absolutely right.
I think the question was, what are some, even though the sexes are different, I think his question was, what are similarities that the sexes have?
Oh, I thought he was saying, what are the traits that they bring to the table?
No.
Let's go back to that question.
I want to see that question again.
We want to see it again.
Where is it?
I want to see the language.
What are some examples of the traits that both sexes bring to the table for each other?
So I think that is the complementary trait.
Okay.
So modesty is one of them.
For men, it would be assertiveness.
But these days, men are not assertive.
They refuse to be.
They're the sensitive man or the soy boy or the vegan or whatever the euphemism you want to use.
Pajama boy.
Remember pajama boy?
Pajama boy, yes.
So you need men to be men.
When men behave like women, it doesn't make them better men.
It makes them the worst men.
That would be one of them.
Another one for women is moderation.
Women are much more moderate than men.
I was at a bachelor party two weeks ago.
Moderation is not a male virtue.
It is not one men are particularly good at.
Men, however, are a little bit bolder.
They exhibit more courage.
I don't mean to say that women are not courageous.
Women have more endurance, but men are more likely to undergo risky behavior.
That's why they're more likely to be entrepreneurs.
That's why they're more likely to fall off a mountain.
It's also more likely why they're to run for political office.
That's right.
Because women are more risk-averse.
That's right.
So there's this whole movement right now for, oh, yay, she power, women must run for office.
And it's kind of like, well, one, maybe they don't want to.
And two, we're generally more risk-averse.
Of course.
There's a real irony with modern feminism, which is that during the second wave of feminism, feminists like Shulamith Firestone decided they were going to deconstruct gender categories.
There's no female trait.
There's no male trait.
There are no female virtues.
There are no male virtues.
And what it ended up doing is forcing women to become men.
If there's no category of men and women...
You see this now, especially in the transgender movement, which denies the existence of gender altogether.
If there's no categorical difference between men and women, it raises this question, what are women?
And if women are just supposed to do everything that men do and be exactly like men, then the question is why do we have feminism?
Well, shouldn't we just have humanism or mankindism or something like that?
It's a real confusion, but I think if women, not to lock themselves in a box, but to lean in at least in some ways to natural inclinations, they'll be much happier.
During the rise of second wave and now third wave feminism, study after study has shown women have become much less happy.
That's in relative terms to men.
And in absolute terms, to their prior happiness.
And most importantly in this too, men don't get off the hook.
Men have to behave like men.
It might be unpopular.
You might have feminists and political ideologues calling you toxic or whatever.
Doesn't matter.
That's the point of manhood.
You've got to listen to all that nonsense and push right through it.
Alright, next question comes from Joel.
I guess he's in Georgia, and he talks about how Georgia might become purple due to the trend of technology and cybersecurity jobs that are moving to the state with the Army Cyber Command in Fort Gordon.
How can Republicans gain those suburban or urban votes with such a demographic?
I really enjoy redistricting.
I'm a strong proponent of redistricting.
This is why it's very important to win state houses.
Because it's very difficult.
Traditionally speaking...
You realize that's going to be just plucked in?
Good.
I try to be very honest about my political views.
The left is very good at stealing elections.
I don't know why the right can't use perfectly legal means to try to even the playing field.
But traditionally speaking, the left wing wins in the cities, and the right wing wins in the countries...
And the suburbs are where they both go and do battles.
But, of course, the nature of a suburb changes.
There are districts, districts that I grew up in, that were once leaned red, then they were kind of moderate, now they lean right.
This is what happens when people get pushed from the cities into the suburbs, and then the suburbs maybe into the exurbs, and the exurbs become more suburban.
This is a process that is constantly in flux, but I think the most important thing Republicans can do is stand by their message.
Don't try to focus group it.
Don't try to appeal to the mythical suburban housewife or whatever other political character we have.
Stand for something.
Stand for policies.
Push those policies.
Stop trying to tell people what you think they want to hear.
It's not going to work.
It didn't work for John McCain.
It didn't work for Mitt Romney.
Donald Trump managed to tell everybody what they didn't want to hear.
He somehow manages, even me, I'm a big fan of the president.
He says certain things and I think, oh gosh, why did he have to say it that way?
He does, because he's authentic at least.
And you at least feel that you're not being played.
In that old version of politics, where you think, how do I pluck this voter off?
You would hear a politician speak, and you would say, now what does that really mean?
You would hear it and you say, oh, if he says that, it really means this.
Because he's using the talking point.
The talking and the slogans.
And one nice thing about having a political apparent amateur, obviously he's not an amateur, in the White House, Donald Trump, is all of that goes away.
And it's really a breath of fresh air.
I say embrace that.
Don't try to suck up to people.
Call it like it is.
It worked for Chris Christie when he ran for governor.
It worked for Mitch Daniels when he was the governor of Indiana.
It worked for Donald Trump when he got himself elected president.
Talk straight to people.
Be frank with them.
The American people are smart.
They're as smart as you and me.
We're not so much better than they are.
I think they respect you for that.
It's interesting, because wasn't the straight talk express...
The most ironically named campaign bus in history.
John McCain's 2008 bus, maybe 2012, or maybe 2000 as well, was called the Straight Talk Express.
And then he used the most mealy-mouthed, ridiculous political slogans to undermine the Republican Party.
Yeah, you need to do the real Straight Talk Express.
That's what I recommend.
R.I.P. R.I.P. It's been a little while now, right?
Are we allowed to now?
What?
Am I not allowed to?
As the mom of the office, I'm just saying be nice.
No, I'm being very nice to Senator McCain.
This is the tough thing.
You have to calibrate when you're allowed to criticize people again.
I think in the scheme of political history, you and I are both nerds.
I don't know if everybody knows this, but we've actually run campaigns and worked on campaigns and done the grassroots and the door knocking.
And so there is legitimately in the scheme of history things that you could look back and I mean, I don't even know that it's John McCain's fault.
I think I'd throw Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace under that bus.
Yeah, I mean, the buck stops with the candidate.
But he surrounded himself with certain advisors who were not smart for him.
And you know what's interesting, too, is before he ran for president, he was pretty conservative.
And then his political positions changed so dramatically.
He gutted the First Amendment with that campaign finance, Bill McCain-Feingold.
He just consistently attacked his own party, attacked the conservative elements within it.
It was really frustrating to see that.
But he positioned himself as a moderate Republican.
And I'm really glad that now the lines are a little clearer.
We complain about polarization in politics.
At least I know which party stands for what.
At least now, it's not just a country of John Kasichs who are trying to play it both ways and just relentlessly tell me that their father was a mailman.
I don't care about that your father was a mailman.
I care about what you're going to do about health care and taxes and judges.
Give me that.
Or actually signing the heartbeat bill.
Right.
Oh, yes, of course.
Oof, don't get me started.
Etan says, Hello, Michael, master of trolls.
Your lectures always seem to be thought out and well prepared.
I don't know about that, but okay.
Any insight into how you prepare for them?
Yes, plagiarism.
I read other people's speeches that other people haven't read, and then I just repeat them.
Exactly.
No, I actually really appreciate that, because I do try to prepare for these speeches.
As the author of a blank book, a best-selling blank book, I feel that I really must bring something to the table at these speeches.
You've got to prove yourself.
Well, I need to offer something.
I guess I could just stand up there and sort of the end of it.
Let's go slack-jawed for 40 minutes.
But I like to focus in on a topic.
And then, you know, there are a lot of books right now that people never encounter in their undergraduate curriculum, in their graduate school sometimes, because the curricula have narrowed so much.
We just read a very narrow number of modern writers or little excerpts.
And so you have this vast quantity of rich books Writers, when it comes to philosophy or theology, people don't read all of the works of Chesterton or Belloc or Lewis or obviously medieval or ancient writers.
When it comes to history, so many wonderful writers just simply are not assigned.
So I go to the old bookshelf, I pluck one out, and I really consider them a great opportunity to pick up on all of this.
You know, one of my last speeches was on Manliness, how to be a man when you look like a mad owl.
I love that one.
That was for Young America's Foundation, right?
That was for Young America's Foundation.
And one of the great books on that is Manliness by Harvey Mansfield.
It's a relatively recent book, and nobody reads it.
It hasn't gotten reviews in political science journals, but highly recommend that.
Maybe after the speeches, I'll release a reading list.
That's an idea.
You should do a Christmas wish list for dailywire.com.
That's pretty good.
That's a very good idea.
You're welcome.
Ryan says, is my understanding correct that the Constitution serves to protect the negative rights of citizens?
If so, is the right to vote a positive or negative right?
Well, it protects negative rights, certainly.
I mean, really what you're thinking of is the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence outlines those negative rights.
The negative rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Those aren't rights to a positive good.
Those are rights to be left alone and left to maintain your own liberty.
But the Constitution establishes institutions.
So it establishes the judiciary.
It establishes the White House or the executive branch.
It establishes the legislature.
That's more than a negative right.
That's actually establishing the foundations of our government.
You know, I got to talk to Scalia, the late, great Justice Antonin Scalia, twice before he died.
And he said, I'm sure you all can rattle off the Bill of Rights, which protects many negative He said, but how many of you know, could rattle off all the other articles of the Constitution?
How many of you could rattle off the Federalist Papers?
He said, every tinpot dictator has a Bill of Rights, but we have the foundations and the institutions of a government that protects those rights.
That's what really matters.
That's what's really important.
There is a combination.
I think sometimes conservatives get a little bit lost up here in the ethereal, in the abstraction.
We're only protecting negative rights.
We're able to protect those negative rights because of the firm foundations and the culture that we have and the people who run the culture and our geography and all of these real tangible things.
And more and more I think you're seeing that come into the conservative conversation and I think that's a wonderful development.
Alright, Marcus wants to know, why is it that the most self-absorbed people seem to be the least self-aware?
I'm sorry, were you talking to me?
No, yes, I got it at Kohl's.
And that's a movement watch.
This is a movement watch, I'm sorry.
Oh, of course, because if you're staring at yourself, you can't look out at anything else.
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package indeed.
You see this all the time when you're having conversations.
This is kind of ironic because these conversations are just soliloquies.
But when you're actually at a dinner or a bar or something, you're having a conversation with someone.
The person who's talking the whole time at the end of the conversation will always say, wow, that was a wonderful conversation.
You're a great conversationalist.
You really know how to talk.
But you really just listen to them.
You just listen the whole time.
You might have been thinking of, you know, your laundry list or whatever you have to do.
Yeah, of course, they're oblivious.
You know, this is a very interesting world, and you should never be bored in it.
But if you're constantly worried about everything you're doing, this expands not just to talking about your achievements, but this expands to obsessing about what you eat, obsessing about what you wear, obsessing about how people are seeing you.
You're not going to enjoy it.
You're going to get bored.
It's going to be very tedious.
This happens to everybody, but when you go to a party and you introduce yourself to someone and they introduce yourself to you, you will forget their name within three seconds.
You ever do that?
You go, you meet somebody and they say, hi, I'm Johnny.
You say, hi, I'm Michael.
And you say, what was that guy's name?
And the reason that you do that is because you're thinking, how is this guy...
What does he think of me?
How should I introduce myself?
And then you miss the opportunity to meet somebody.
So get out of your own head.
If you stop thinking about yourself, you'll be less bored, you'll be more interesting to other people, and the world will seem a lot brighter.
Or in L.A. and New York, they ask the three most important questions that are not never your name.
It's what do you do, where are you from, and where do you live?
Who's your agent?
And in L.A., who's your agent?
That's right.
It's like their level.
And then they'll determine whether or not they need to know if your name is Michael Knoll.
Oh, yes.
Especially when I was years ago.
Mm-hmm.
I would go to these things.
I'd introduce myself.
And you could just see them as you're talking to them.
You say, oh yes, I'm represented by this disreputable agent.
And they're just kind of looking over your shoulder, scanning for somebody more famous.
Welcome to LA. Joel says, as a promoter of traditions, what are your thoughts on eggnog?
Real with eggs, not packaged.
Also, thoughts on the FDA tyranny on issues like raw milk ban, e-cigarette ban, food temperature requirements, etc.?
I'm a big fan of eggnog, especially at Christmas time.
But my recipe is a little bit different.
What I do is I take out, obviously, I take out a nice thing of eggnog and I take out a nice bottle of rum.
And then I put the eggnog right back in the fridge.
And then I pour all the rum into the glass.
And it's one of my favorite cocktails.
That's why I love eggnog so much.
As for the FDA, yes, they obviously overreach.
And when we mention this, when conservatives mention that any administration of the federal government overreaches, The left says, well, do you want diseased food?
Well, do you want diseased air, unclean air?
No, we don't.
We're talking about an agency that is overreaching.
The e-cigarettes are a great example.
The e-cigarette is a safer alternative to smoking.
We're probably going to get kicked off the air for saying that.
Smoking is terrible for you, especially smoking cigarettes.
It is awful.
Do we know everything about the e-cigarette yet?
No.
Is it a good way to get off of that awful tar that's ripping up people's lungs and just give you nicotine with water vapor?
I suspect it is.
I'd put money on it.
I'd double down.
Absolutely I would.
And yet, it's not just the FDA, but so many other government institutions overreach on this.
You see, in bars now, they'll say no e-cigarettes.
Santa Monica.
The entire city of Santa Monica said you cannot smoke an e-cigarette in a restaurant, bar, or public space.
You know what that shows you?
It shows you that the secondhand smoke bans, it was never about public health.
Obviously, there's no study that shows anything about the negative side effects of secondhand smoke.
That's a television thing.
But it was never about public health.
It was never even about other people's comfort.
It was about telling you what to do.
It was about controlling you.
Because now they invented these cigarettes.
It's water vapor and nicotine.
And they say, oh, you can't do that either.
You say, why can't you do that?
Because I said so.
Because I, the big hand of the state, the nanny state, I'm going to tell you what to do.
It really made them show their hand.
But I don't know how to fight back exactly.
Alright, Dave, speaking of alcohol and smoking, all of your vices.
Dave wants to know, do you prefer whiskey neat or on the rocks, especially when paired with a cigar?
It depends on the whiskey, as with all things.
So, if I'm pairing it with a cigar, I think my favorite whiskey, I go back and it changes all the time, but with a cigar, I think the best whiskey is Johnny Walker Black Label.
As Christopher Hitchens pointed out, the preferred scotch of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, of the Libyan dictatorship, of a faction of the Saudi royal family, of many of the worst people on the face of the earth.
Johnny Walker Black Label.
The reason I like it with a cigar is because it makes your experience about the cigar.
People always make fun of me for drinking Johnny Black because Johnny Black is sort of, you know, there isn't too much flavor.
It's a little smoky.
You can't have a powerhouse of both things.
If you have some delicious Macallan 25 or even Lagavulin 16 or something, it's going to overpower the cigar and then you're not going to get to experience the cigar, you sick hedonists.
So you've got to calm down.
Now, if I'm going to have some Macallan 25, for instance, I wouldn't put a big chunk of ice in that.
I'd put just a few drops of water, maybe, to open it up.
But you've got to tailor it to the particular whiskey.
And if you want me to do a taste test of this, feel free to send me a bottle of Macallan 25.
Please feel free.
You can send it to the Daily Wire, and I will do it on the air for you.
Okay.
Can I be a part of that?
Yeah, I think you might be able to have a few sips of that.
Sweet.
Okay.
Sawyer says, what's your opinion of the Jones Act?
Oh, I don't know very much about it.
Do you know anything about the Jones Act?
A little bit, like from my Claremont Institute.
You tell me.
Please don't make me do that.
I need to pull up my notes.
Yeah, okay.
All right.
I'm sorry.
I've got a punt on that.
I don't know.
I know as much as people read about, but I don't have enough to give a really informed view, and I don't want to torpedo it or...
In other words, this is not the robotic walking encyclopedia that is Ben Shapiro.
That's right.
That conversation is next month.
I'm not plugged into Wi-Fi right now to just be reading the wiki page of the Jones Act.
No, Ben has it memorized.
I'm sure he has the text of the bill memorized.
When you mentioned Scalia earlier, and he said, how many of you can name the Federalist Papers?
I was thinking, Shapiro.
Ben is currently reciting Fed 51.
He already got through the first 50.
Wow, that's impressive.
Ricardo says, why was democracy as we know it born in majority Protestant countries instead of Catholic ones?
Well, oh, this is a long answer, I'm afraid for you.
Brace yourself.
Brace yourself.
The modern liberal movement and liberal democracy, you see this come out of Protestant countries because Europe cracked up before the Protestant Revolution.
There was a unity of Europe.
Hilaire Belloc said, Europe is the faith and the faith is Europe or something to that effect.
Not to say that the faith is some blood and soil, but they were so closely intertwined.
And with the crack-up of the Protestant Revolution, you had Luther make his stand, but without terribly much intellectual rigor to that movement.
John Calvin provided the intellectual rigor, but this created almost immediately Fault lines within the Protestant movement.
This ultimately spread to the defender of the faith, according to the Pope, Henry VIII, when he broke England away from the Catholic faith.
And you see then the rise of nationalism.
This was only solved by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, I believe.
And with the Peace of Westphalia, this ended these wars between Protestants and Catholics, between various nations.
Because there was, prior to the Protestant Revolution...
One faith.
There was the Great Schism in the East, and yet even that wasn't as influential as the Protestant Revolution.
You still had the lungs of the church, the East and the West.
When the West cracked up, you had to somehow make sense of 50 zillion different groups all claiming to have the one true faith that just coincidentally cropped up in the 16th or 17th century.
And one of the ways to deal with this was democratizing our politics, It's liberalizing politics and increase, eventually leading to what we have now as religious tolerance.
Obviously, you can make lemonade out of lemons, and there have been wonderful things that came out of this.
But it was a direct response to what was the crack-up of Europe.
And a good book on this is by Jacques Barsin called From Dawn to Decadence.
It traces the modern era from the Protestant Revolution.
That is the decisive moment.
And it led to some very nice things, materially very nice things, but it also likely sowed the seeds for the undoing of the Western consciousness.
So forget that question about the Jones Act.
You just got a whole...
How did you have all that in your head?
Well, because I don't want to read anything about public policy.
I just want to read about...
I could go on forever on this topic.
Another good book on this is Hilary Belloc's How the Reformation Happened, which Drew gave to me, even though he's a Protestant.
He gave it to me because he likes it when he sees me give Jeremy boring grief about Protestantism.
So he just gave it to me as little factoids that I could use.
So you can picket the God King during the backstage?
That's right.
That's right, although it's a very fearsome thing to pick at the God King, because then eventually he can turn on the laser eyes and unleash his wrath, and you'll turn to stone.
I mean, as much as Ben wants to fire you, the God King is truly the only one with the power to do so.
That's true, and he's just sitting there on his throne, just waiting, just abiding time.
Petting the dog.
That's right.
He has a little cat or something.
Yeah, that's right.
Hello, Michael.
All right.
He's on vacation.
We shouldn't give him that much of a hard time.
All right.
Joel wants to know, Papist Knowles, where is your crucifix?
Do you have one hanging on your rearview mirror?
Or is it too dangerous in California?
No, it's right here.
It's just right around my neck.
This is because I am a Papist, as you point out.
I'm also Italian, so we wear gold jewelry around our necks.
Some of the Italians wear the little cornicello, the little horn.
The sign of the cuckold, actually, is what it is.
That's a story for another day.
I wear the crucifix.
I've had this crucifix since I was eight years old, and I like it very much.
Though one does wear it under the shirt, not just because we'll be tarred and feathered here in atheistic California, but because you want to keep the faith close to your heart, and you don't want to wear it as a jewelry for people's outside consumption, but to keep it for you to remind yourself of the faith.
All right.
We're almost at the halfway point.
So we got to roll through all these questions.
And remember, our conversation is live for everyone to watch, but only subscribers get to ask the questions.
So click the link in our video description to ask questions or sign up at dailywire.com.
And be sure to tune in for next month's episode on Tuesday, December 18th at 5.30 p.m.
Eastern, 2.30 p.m.
Pacific, featuring our very own co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire and, you know, host of the most listened to conservative podcast of the country.
Fastest rowing.
Fastest growing.
And most listened to.
Yeah.
Wow.
What's his name?
I believe that would be Mr.
Ben Shapiro.
There we go.
Next month.
That'll be fun.
I'm just going to play Christmas music in the background the whole time.
Which Ben actually likes because, as he says, Elisha, all the Jews wrote it.
Well, it was all written by Jews.
And I also loved at the Daily Wire store, Ben has his Hanukkah sweater.
And I think he's got a menorah coming out of his head.
And it says something to the effect of, get lit this holiday season.
It's really, really excellent.
People should check out the...
I mean, we've got lots of cool products over there.
We do.
On the Daily Wire store on Amazon.
I've got a Christmas sweater up there.
I think it's a stogie with smoke coming out.
And it says, Remember Democrats, Christmas is December 26th.
Be careful.
That'll get you suspended from Twitter.
They're going to shut down the show.
I know.
Suspended from Twitter forever.
If you tell them that Christmas is on the wrong day.
That's right.
I mean, let's be honest.
Democrats don't really care about Christmas anyway.
That's true.
They're more of a Festivus kind of people, you know.
They're more of the winter solstice.
Laurel wants to know, Hello, Michael.
What is your favorite type of pasta?
The shape of the pasta, not the type of sauce.
Perciatelli.
Which one's that?
You don't get it out here too much.
It's like a really thick bucatini.
A very thick pasta.
It looks like a bowl of worms.
It's almost impossible to eat, but I love it.
Is it my go-to all the time?
No.
It's a finicky pasta.
It can be very difficult.
Sometimes I'll settle for the bucatini.
Obviously, spaghetti are just fine.
Linguini, ferrucine are fine.
I prefer the longer pastas, though.
I don't always go for the rigatoni or the penne.
Okay, or the bow tie.
Yeah, I don't know.
Oh, I do.
Oh, gosh.
Oh, my gosh.
What?
I've got to change my answer.
Uh-oh.
Gnocchi?
No, I love gnocchi.
Very close.
Does it count as a pasta?
It's a dumpling.
Is it a pasta?
This is a long-standing debate.
Okay.
Or Italians, white people.
I don't know.
It's a long-standing debate.
I have to change my answer, even above percitelli.
Cavatelli.
Okay.
Those beautiful little, they got a little cheese in them.
You've got them fresh.
I'm going to get them right around Christmas time.
Oh, that sounds delicious.
Bring some back for me, please.
Trenton says, what do you think the balance between Catholics and Protestants, if any, should be here in America and the world?
Well, obviously, at the final judgment day, we'll all be Catholics.
But before then, in America, America is a Protestant country.
This is...
Undoubtedly true.
We've got Thanksgiving coming up.
Four of my ancestors were on the Mayflower.
One of them was a pilgrim.
Three of them were degenerates.
One was the first man executed for murder in America.
Another one was a mutineer who was on...
You guys should have gone to Australia.
I know.
The other guy was a mutineer who...
A shipwreck that he was in is the basis for Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Another one was a rabble rouser.
The really good guy was Samuel Fuller.
He would be shocked and horrified by my papism.
So America is a Protestant country.
It's founded by Protestants on Protestant ideas.
They tried to have a Catholic colony, Maryland.
It didn't last very long as a Catholic colony did it.
Arthur Schlesinger says that anti-Catholicism is the most enduring bias in the United States.
I think that might be true.
The biggest mass lynching in the history of the United States was in 1891, it was against 11 Sicilians, Catholic Sicilians.
So it's very nice when we have toleration for Catholicism in the United States.
But increasingly, especially under the Obama administration, you had a lot of anti-Catholicism.
He literally went into legal battle with a group called the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of Catholic nuns, pretty outrageous.
You know, half of American Catholics don't practice the faith very much.
The majority of American Catholics, I believe, do not go to church weekly, and half of American Catholics support abortion.
This is not true among evangelical Protestants.
Mainstream Protestants, mainline Protestants are basically the same way.
Evangelical Protestants, like your people, they go to church more, they're more pro-life.
And what's been really nice in recent years is that Catholics and evangelicals have formed a political alliance to defend the unborn, to defend religious liberty in the United States.
These are people who are still going to church.
And that's really wonderful.
I think that's a great balance.
I think it's probably the best balance we've ever had in American history.
And I really hope that we can maintain that going into the future.
It's a powerful political alliance.
Alright, Margot says, Hi Pope Covfefe.
Am I saying that right?
I believe it's Covfefe, yeah.
Speaking of Islam, do you think we'd ever have a Muslim President of the United States and what would the ramifications potentially be?
There are so many politically incorrect jokes I could make right now, but I'm not going to do it.
That would be wrong to do such a thing.
I don't think we will.
I think if we did have a Muslim president, the country would be basically unrecognizable.
Even now, presidents still pay lip service to Christianity, even though we've had many post, now I think two post-Christian presidents, Barack Obama...
Didn't seem to be terribly Christian.
I think he said he was Christian, but he also drew on the fates of all religions.
He criticized Christians for the Crusades.
Clinging to their guns and religion.
And clinging to guns and religion.
Barack Obama strikes me as the spiritual but not religious type.
You know, very interested in himself, but not too concerned about the nature of metaphysics and the divine.
And obviously Donald Trump is a thrice-married, lapsed Presbyterian, but he does at least One, he's excellent for Christians and for pushing the things that Christians want, and he does pay lip service to it as well.
We may be in a post-Christian period.
We may have the fast-growing religious groups in the United States are the nuns, the religiously unaffiliated, the spiritual but not religious.
So we may get to a point where we're electing practical atheists or practical agnostics.
But if we were at the point, and a person might call himself Muslim who really is a practical atheist, If we got to the point in America where we had a serious, practicing Muslim elected president, I just suspect that the culture of the country would be so different we wouldn't recognize it.
Well, it could potentially be.
I mean, you see studies how so many millennials are unchurched.
Yes.
I think perhaps it's just as likely we get a Muslim president as a practicing Christian president in the future.
I'm really not disparaging Muslims.
Muslims.
I'm just saying it seems that the culture is trending in an atheistic direction, and we're probably gonna see that reflected in our politicians. - All right, Sam has a very important question.
He wants to know, "Michael, why does Ben hate you?
"What have you done to incur the most terrible wrath "of our future president?" - I think I received the applause of our current president.
I think that was part of it.
The real issue, and I say this as a best-selling author, Ben and I, you know, he and I are best-selling authors, and And you have how many books?
Well, how many books have I sold is the real question.
Ben made this point when I became a bestselling author.
That he was a little upset because he has written, I don't know, a dozen books or something at this point.
A lot, yeah.
But I sold more copies of not a book than he sold of all of his books with words.
And this is very difficult, you know, obviously among us best-selling authors, there's always a little bit professionally where you go back and forth, you bounce ideas off of one another.
But I've tried to teach Ben my secrets, which is to stop doing all that research, Okay?
For one.
Stop putting all those hours in.
I mean, the guy works like a dog.
He's got two kids.
He's running multiple shows.
Stop doing anything.
His wife's a doctor, too.
I heard his wife's a doctor, you know?
That's got to be trying.
And just stop putting all those words in the books.
He hasn't taken my advice.
Once he takes my advice, he's going to be so happy.
He's not going to be angry at anybody.
The world, but I think he's going to keep putting words in them.
He should write a comprehensive guide to writing by Michael Knowles.
That's going to be my next book.
For Michael Knowles, and it's by Ben Shapiro, but it's just blank inside.
Yeah, that's going to be my, you know, it's like Strunk and White.
That's going to be the guide to writing.
Yeah, the principles of writing by Michael Knowles.
Ryan wants to know, is the GOP better or off, I'm sorry, better off or worse off with Never Nancy as the Speaker of the House for Democrats?
Or would Republicans be better if they found someone else to be the Democratic leader?
This is a confusing way you phrased it, because when I think of Never Nancy, I think of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Yeah, and the people, the 16 congressmen that were against her being speakers.
That are opposing Nancy being the speaker.
We are way better off with Nancy Pelosi as the speaker.
She is a superb speaker for Republicans.
We have spent zillions of dollars vilifying this woman.
Not that we really needed to.
She's done a good job of it herself.
She's a weak adversary.
I mean, she's a good adversary, but she's a weak leader as she doesn't have a ton of support within her own party.
The only reason she didn't get thrown out is she's still a pretty good fundraiser and can make it rain.
But she's very left-wing.
She and Ocasio-Cortez are out left-winging themselves.
Ocasio-Cortez invaded Nancy's office.
Nancy said, bring them on.
I encourage everyone to participate in democracy.
They're all very far left.
But she is very good, and she is the most likely speaker to sow discord within the Democrat Party.
There are stronger, younger candidates who could take it over, and she's a shrewd politician.
So I think it really worked out as well as it can be, and we've got to keep the cameras on her, and we have to keep the cameras on her opponents, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, because before you got a great show with Trump, before you got a pretty good TV show, But now, you've got Trump, you've got the adversary, and you've got even more drama because the adversary has an adversary within her own party.
Season, what is this now, season three?
Season three is going to be the best one yet.
I'm wondering if there will ever be a point where Trump goes, oh, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and Pelosi and the Donald will become besties because they're against the kind of more left wing of the Democratic Party, and because Pelosi specifically is that shrewd politician and wants more power.
They can't do it.
The left in particular can't do it.
They've boxed themselves in on this Trump is Hitler narrative.
They've boxed themselves in so hard.
I don't think they could make a deal with him.
I'm frankly surprised they're even going to get criminal justice reform through.
Because if they're describing the man as a fascist who's eroding our freedoms, destroying our democracies, stealing elections, working with the Russians, whatever, how can you work with that man on anything?
I agree with Ben and Drew and Jeremy and everybody who say that if the Democrats had come in and tried to work and make a deal with Trump, they might have had some success, but they just can't win for losing.
2020 is going to be so fun.
I know.
Just around the corner.
Max says, I just lost a significant amount of money in the market recently.
Do you think it will recover or will it wait until the Dems are out of the house?
I think we all lost a lot of money in the market recently.
The stock markets are tumbling.
Tech stocks are tumbling.
Yeah, it's really falling.
I don't know if this was a reaction to the Democrats being in the House.
The partisan in me wants to blame it on them and the timing is a little suspect.
But we have had, I think, basically the longest bull run in American history so far.
So, you know, this has taken...
A very long time.
At some point, we're due for a market correction.
We're really past due at this point.
Plus, we're going to have to see how the Fed manages things.
During the midterm elections, Donald Trump was saying his biggest threat is the Federal Reserve.
If they raise interest rates too fast, it's going to damage the economy and his electoral chances.
You know, America, broadly speaking, don't take your money out.
America is still a good bet.
If you've got time, and demographically speaking, if you watch this show, you're probably on the younger side.
So they got time.
So they got time.
Leave your money in America is still a good bet.
But in the short run, yeah, it's going to hurt people.
And the way to lose money in the stock market is to take all your money out when it falls to nothing.
That's a good way to lose all your wealth.
All right.
Rachel wants to know, Michael, who's your favorite philosopher?
Oh, where does one begin with that question?
I don't know.
I'll just name some of my favorites.
Aristotle's right about everything.
Plato gets a great many things right as well.
Of modern, obviously, I like John Locke.
I don't go as crazy for John Locke as some people do.
Like, Ben goes crazy for him.
I don't do that.
Of living philosophers, I really like Alistair McIntyre.
Of recent philosophers, Michael Oakeshott is terrific.
I really enjoy, obviously...
Thomas Aquinas takes Aristotle and brings him, baptizes Aristotle, makes him, and creates so much of our Christian philosophy and so much of our Western culture.
So it's hard to beat Thomas Aquinas.
I don't know.
We could go on and on and on.
I really do like to focus, though, on...
Everybody is always talking about Enlightenment philosophers and people thereabouts.
I... Because I'm contrarian and because the world is much bigger than just a 200-year period in certain parts of the world, I like to focus on ancient philosophers, medieval philosophers, and some more modern philosophers as well.
Giving a nice mix.
Expand and balance our view, because all we read in school is, if we are even privileged to have this assigned...
I'm sure the majority of the people watching, due to their age, were not taught any of this in school.
Of course, yeah.
Maybe you'll be assigned Locke, Rousseau, maybe Nietzsche, the guy who predicted modernity and ruined it.
Hobbes, maybe.
I suppose the first proto-liberal philosopher would be Hobbes.
So you're assigned those guys, but...
History began before the 17th century.
We like to pretend that there was a dark ages.
That didn't really exist.
And the more you dig into the medieval, the more you dig into ancient philosophy, you'll find the ruins.
Or you'll find maybe the way to save our culture, which is currently lying in ruins.
All right.
Peter wants to know, Michael, I live in California and should a conservative stay and fight for the policies and laws that they believe in or move on to a freer state?
You should stay and make money.
That's what you should do.
I mean, you should stay if the opportunity is here, which is true.
There's a lot of economic opportunity in the cities and especially the cities on the coast.
New York, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco.
So go there and get yours.
Don't surrender that to the left.
They don't get to make money.
They don't even have much of a work ethic a lot of the time.
So you should go there and get out of it what you can get out of it.
But I wouldn't hold out false hopes.
What is insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
I don't expect a different result when I go to the ballot box in Los Angeles.
Plus, we've just lost Orange County, California, the birthplace of Reagan conservatism.
That was a tough blow.
I don't weep about it.
I think there's a lot that we can get out of LA. Right now, there was an article about this in Vox the other day, talking about us and other people.
There was a conservative renaissance happening right here, right on this very spot that we're sitting in.
It can happen here.
It's happening in Los Angeles.
Before that, 50 years ago, Bill Buckley started the conservative movement in New York and Connecticut.
Who would have expected that?
and Manhattan was the epicenter of the conservative movement.
So you can get good things out of there, even if it's not good policy.
You can get good thinkers, you can get good communicators, you can get good candidates.
And you should take these places for what they're worth and not knock your head against a wall because you're not electing a Republican mayor of Los Angeles.
That just ain't gonna happen in the near future. - All right, Rachel says, "Michael, "what's your favorite holiday tradition?" - Again, so very many.
On Christmas Eve, the Italians do an extraordinary feast.
They do a lot of all the fishes.
Yeah, it goes on and on and on.
That was always my favorite as a kid.
I really liked Christmas Eve because of the anticipation.
And this gets to a broader point in the culture.
I was at Starbucks the other day.
November 1st, they started playing Christmas music wall-to-wall, nonstop.
And This reminds me that people can never be happy because I was complaining about the war on Christmas.
Starbucks wouldn't acknowledge Christmas.
Now I'm complaining that Christmas is too early.
People can never be happy in this world.
But what that misses out on is the season of Advent.
Advent is a wonderful season.
It's a solemn season.
It's a season of anticipation.
You are awaiting the incarnation, the most incredible moment in the history of the world other than the Resurrections.
The salvation of mankind.
God coming down and taking on human flesh and being born as a little baby in a cave, in a manger.
And that anticipation is so wonderful.
Don't just skip ahead to dessert.
The whole dinner, the whole meal is so wonderful to enjoy that.
And then Christmas Day is a time of celebration.
But I love the anticipation of the whole Christmas season as we're waiting for the rebirth in the spring.
Also, don't forget Thanksgiving.
I can't get into it.
I'm just not that into Thanksgiving.
I know, I mean, I like the history.
I could do a whole conversation with Elisha, by Elisha, about the importance of Thanksgiving.
I mean, look, I like eating and I like drinking and football, take it or leave it.
But, you know, I don't know.
I do that every day of the week.
See, I feel like Thanksgiving is the perfect cornerstone to starting off the Advent season.
Hmm.
But that could be a conversation for another day.
We could do a whole hour on that.
That's true.
Dalton wants to know, Hey Mike, as we all know, you are a fan of tobacco.
What are your opinions on the smokeless tobacco products like dip, chewing tobacco, and snuff?
I wonder if this guy is a...
Oh, he is!
He's a cowboy and he says he's a southern boy.
This is very important to him.
That's a great question.
Do you have a skull ring?
Well, I love smokeless tobacco, but none of the ones that you mentioned.
I love nasal snuff.
Nasal snuff is the most whimsical, dandy-ish of all of the forms of tobacco.
It's this finely ground tobacco powder.
I picked some up on my drive from New York to LA. I got it in North Carolina.
If you buy a jar this big, it is a lifetime supply of snuff.
You take it a little bit.
You put it on your fingers.
You kind of sniff it.
You don't snort it.
You sniff it.
And then you sneeze a lot.
And it wears away at your nasal cavity.
And it gives you post-nasal drift.
And it's a very stupid thing to do.
But it feels kind of nice.
It was very, very popular for a long time.
You can think of guys in the American West, cowboys doing it.
You can think of popes doing it.
A number of Catholic popes did snuff.
One saint, St.
Philip Neary, did so much snuff that it became an issue during his canonization process.
Because he was...
It was a vice.
Well, no.
Actually, that wasn't the issue.
Really?
That was being debated.
The reason it was an issue in canonization is you're supposed to be incorrupt.
Your body is not supposed to decay if you're going to be a saint.
And when they did the examination, they realized his nose had fallen apart.
They said, see, he's not incorrupt.
They said, no, no, no.
It fell apart during his life because he snorted so much tobacco up his nose.
So that's my favorite one.
I've also...
I've occasionally done snus.
That's another ridiculous form of tobacco.
This seems like very yuppie Yale-type version.
It's Swedish.
It's very sweet.
I know.
It's like dip without the coolness.
This subscriber is like a real man.
I know.
I can't pack that horseshoe lipper.
I know.
I'm just...
I'm not...
Wrangling cattle.
I'm simply...
And you're like...
I'm not physically intimidating enough to pack that lucky lipper all around my gums.
Plus, that one actually does...
I don't mean to be a scold, but that one really does have some pretty serious health effects.
You know, you can see the leukoplakia wears away a lot.
I prefer my cigars because you don't inhale them.
It's probably not good for you, but some of the most famous cigar smokers in history are some of the oldest people.
George Burns, Winston Churchill, that oldest man in America smokes 12 cigars a day.
I'm sticking with that one.
All righty.
Caleb says, Senor Covfefe, how did you go from acting to your job at the Daily Wire?
Well, now I'm the real thing.
That's what happened.
Show business and politics are very similar in many ways.
It's true, they say politics is show business for other people.
There's lots of money in both.
Yeah, right.
Or no money in both, actually.
A lot of money is spent and wasted in both.
That's right.
And for most people in them, you don't make a lot of money.
But politics and acting are very, very similar.
And I don't just mean it in this glib sense of...
You lie on camera or you like to see pictures of yourself or something.
In a very real sense, if you're in both of those fields, you have to be really concerned with the truth.
You want to find the truth.
Bad actors are not looking for the truth.
They're just putting on a representational show.
But good actors find the truth of a character.
They live truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
And good politicians are looking for the truth, too.
The other one is you have to love people.
If you're an actor and you're constantly creating characters, engaging with characters, poking the human condition, probing it, you have to really like people.
You have to like examining them, how people tick, how people move, how people think and react to other people.
And the same with politicians.
If you don't like people and you're a politician, find another line of work.
You are at spaghetti dinners all the time.
You've been on campaigns.
You are constantly shaking hands.
You're constantly talking to people.
Kissing babies.
You're constantly kissing babies.
And so those things go together.
I had always worked in politics.
I've worked in politics now professionally about 10 years, shockingly, even though I look like I'm 15.
Really right around 18, I was on my first campaign.
Well, they hire them at 18 because they don't pay you anything.
They pay you nothing.
I mean, I think I made 75 cents an hour if you actually break it.
After the fuel and the coffee.
That's right.
And then I got a speeding ticket and it all went away.
So that was always kind of my day job as an actor.
And so I was working here a little bit on the sly.
And then after the blank book blew up, I noticed my phone stopped ringing from my agents.
And you can't hide that sort of thing forever.
So I'm really glad.
I mean, I love acting.
I love politics.
I'm glad to be doing the real thing.
Alrighty.
Rick says that he needs advice.
He's wanting to get back into the church but finds himself reluctant.
He says, I'm thinking of trying a non-denominational church, but I am Catholic and feel I'm betraying the church.
Any advice is appreciated.
Well, you know my views on which denomination is correct.
I'm a Catholic.
But I will point out, when I was an agnostic atheist, I loved reading Protestants.
C.S. Lewis, of course.
He seems a little bit Anglo-Catholic.
But other evangelicals, I liked listening to Tim Keller, who's at that church in New York.
Redeemer.
Redeemer.
Presbyterian Church.
I liked listening to some other people.
I was convinced in some ways...
We're compelled back to Christianity by a Calvinist philosopher at Notre Dame named Alvin Plantinga.
So there is something to pick up from these places.
I think, ultimately, I became convinced that the Catholic Church is the Catholic Church, that it is the Church instituted by Christ.
And so that's why I... I don't think there's anything wrong with you talking to a lot of Protestants, checking out Protestant things, seeing what is speaking to you, especially now that the Catholic liturgy in America is so...
It's so degraded that it's very hard to have a sense of the divine when there are awful acoustic guitarists playing ridiculous, sentimental claptrap in your ears.
So feel free to explore that.
You know where I stand, but only the Holy Spirit is going to lead you, so you should follow him.
All right.
Dave says, you pointed out that lefties seem incapable of separating a person's politics from their character or moral status.
Why is this?
Yeah, because the personal is the political for the left.
The left adopted this slogan in the 1960s.
It came from a 1969 essay by a prominent feminist writer.
Her name escapes me now.
And they realized in the 1960s that the radical left understood that what was holding them back from total revolution were the personal loyalties that we have to one another.
Men to women in particular.
Shulamith Firestone, very influential second wave feminist, said that love is the greatest obstacle to women's liberation, the love for women to men and men to women.
And so what they had to do was personalize everything.
There was no difference between private acts and public acts.
Everything was scrutinized.
You could have your career destroyed because of a comment you made offhand.
And it was really awful.
It was really awful.
It was It really coarsens our society.
Liberal society, such as we have in the United States, demands a separation of the public and private.
We are called to be public citizens and govern ourselves.
We also are governing ourselves so that we can live our private lives and pursue our private interests and our private goals and take care of our private relationships.
The left eroding that is a huge A huge impediment and a huge detriment to our society.
They're beginning, I think, to see the effects of that as the entirety of Hollywood has been taken down over Me Too, as the personalization, the nastiness of politics has opened their eyes that they're not immune to it.
But if we don't recover it, we're not going to have a liberal society left.
Alright, this is the final question.
We've made it to the end of Michael Knowles' conversation, guys.
Thank you so much for hanging in there with us.
And thank you to our subscribers who helped put Covfefe in our cups and ask all these great questions.
Jeffrey wants to know, why do you think a majority of Hollywood is on the left?
Because they don't work.
Because they're never working, that's why.
I'm telling you, as a former working actor, even working actors aren't working most of the time.
As actors?
Period.
Really?
I mean, they're loafing around.
And yes, I have a lot of friends in the arts in New York and L.A., a lot of actors, writers, and directors.
And they access unemployment.
They go on the dole and they refer to welfare as the federal arts subsidy.
Unironically, I kid you not.
I don't blame them.
I have so much respect for actors.
I love the craft of acting.
And it is a hard, tough, awful life.
You are constantly going out and auditioning.
Your job is to audition.
Your job is to prepare material.
And you're being rejected 90% of the time.
If you're good, if you're a really good actor, you're only being rejected 90% of the time.
Most people are being rejected 98% of the time.
And that's very hard, but what it means is that for most of your day, you're just kind of going around.
You're working on a script, you're working on your monologue, you're driving, you're sitting in an audition room.
Even when you're on set, even when you book a movie or a TV show, you're just sitting around doing nothing.
And so on the one hand, this gives people very fanciful ideas and a very bizarre sense of how our society and economy works.
But also, it is a fantasy.
You're living in a fantasy.
The work itself is a fantasy, and the process of getting to the work is a fantasy.
And leftism is a fantasy, too.
It is a fantasy economically, politically, and spiritually.
And so it's very difficult to resist that.
There are a handful of conservatives in Hollywood.
I know every single one of them.
We all know each other because they're so under siege.
And I do find, broadly speaking, The conservative people in show business are the smartest, or at least the best informed, the most rational, the most balanced, the most even keel.
When I was in a very, I won't say his name, but a very well-known acting studio, legendary acting teacher, and when he auditioned me to come in, he said, do you think you're too smart to be an actor?
This was a very nice compliment.
You know, I'd gone to a good school.
But he meant it seriously, because actors have to be gullible fools, and leftists do too.
That's a wrap.
That was the final question.
Good final question.
And thank you again to our amazing subscribers.
Thanks for joining us, everyone.
And don't forget that if you want to be a part of next month's conversation, it's going to be taking place on Tuesday, December 18th at 5.30 p.m.
Eastern, 2.30 p.m.
Pacific, featuring our very own Ben Shapiro.
And only subscribers can ask the questions.
So, thank you for doing that.
Thank you for being here.
I'm Alicia Krause.
I'm Michael Knowles.
Have a happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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