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Dec. 3, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
47:31
Ep. 261 - The War On Advent

The media The French riots in the streets. The years-long War on Christmas rages on, and Christmas is finally winning! Now cultural conservatives must turn our attention to a more insidious struggle: the War on Advent. President George Bush dies at 94; we examine his legacy. Then, climate change alarmism burns down Paris, and Ocasio-Cortez says something nonsensical. Date: 12–03-2018 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The years-long War on Christmas continues to rage on, but now Christmas is finally winning.
Now, cultural conservatives must turn our attention elsewhere, move the War on Christmas forward to the more insidious struggle, the War on Advent.
We will analyze what conservatives can learn from Advent.
Then, President George Bush dies at 94.
We examine his legacy.
Climate change alarmism burns down Paris.
And you're going to be shocked to hear this.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says something nonsensical.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays.
So nice to be back here in L.A. And obviously, the war on Christmas has been going on for a long time.
Some deny it.
Many people deny it.
We will show the evidence for it.
But I want to move in a new direction.
I want to move the war on Christmas forward.
We're winning.
We're making up ground.
Christmas is winning.
Santa Claus is on top of a tank.
And there's a new place to go, which is Advent.
People not paying attention to Advent.
Conservatives, Christians, religious, irreligious, everybody can learn a lot from Advent.
So we'll get to that in a second.
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Let's get to the war on Christmas.
Obviously, some conservatives don't believe that there is a war on Christmas.
It actually turns out the majority of Republicans, 56% of Republicans, do not believe this is a war on Christmas.
I don't care about silly things like the war on Christmas.
But there obviously is one.
The evidence is all around.
In 2005, Boston got rid of its Christmas tree.
It officially changed the name of the Christmas tree to the holiday tree.
What holiday is it for?
Gosh, I don't know.
What is it?
Is it...
Arbor Day?
I guess actually that is the one example it could be for Arbor Day.
In 2005, Walmart got rid of Christmas from its marketing materials.
Target, same thing.
Best Buy in 2006 got rid of Christmas from their marketing materials.
The classic example is Starbucks.
Starbucks, for years and years, had little snowmen and snowflakes and Christmas trees and things on their cups.
Then in 2015, they decided they were going to take out anything that even vaguely resembled Christmas paraphernalia, and it was just a red cup.
And that's what this is all about.
The War on Christmas is about this bland, tedious, taking the particular out of life.
The thing that makes life enjoyable are the details.
The particulars.
That's why we like diversity.
That's why we like talking to people who don't agree with us, maybe, or who see the world a little differently.
That's why we like eating different kinds of food, watching different movies.
We don't just watch the same thing day after day, reading different books.
We like that diversity, and the diversity comes out in the particular.
It seems to me what the War on Christmas people want, what the left wants broadly, is for us all to be exactly the same, look the same, dress the same, talk the same, just be gray like that new meme going around, the NPC meme.
It's the meme of the non-player character, and it makes out the left to be just like robots who have nothing differentiating them from everybody else.
That is what this is about.
It's about taking away the particularity of the season and the particularity of which holiday is being celebrated.
We can say happy holidays, but which holiday are you talking about?
You're not talking about Arbor Day.
So they did this at Starbucks in 2015.
There was both a backlash from some cultural conservatives and then people pretending that there was a much larger backlash to make fun of cultural conservatives.
So the next year, it got even worse.
The cup got, it was a green cup and it just had a mosaic of random people on it.
Didn't have anything to do with New Year's, nothing to do with Hanukkah, nothing to do with Christmas, not even anything to do with Kwanzaa, which is a completely made up holiday It's a contrived atheist socialist holiday made up in the 1960s by a professor at Cal State Long Beach.
It has nothing to do with it.
It has no tradition whatsoever.
It's just a political fad that virtually nobody celebrates anymore.
Didn't even have that.
It was just a green cup with what ostensibly should have been the least offensive picture.
Nobody could have any problem with it.
Trouble is, it wasn't saying anything.
It didn't celebrate any particular holiday.
Then President Trump gets elected.
He campaigns in part on the war on Christmas.
He gets elected.
And so, you know, the Starbucks cup, it starts, you get a little bit more...
Got a little bit more shades of Christmas in there.
This year, oh man, I go in on November 1st, they're already blasting Christmas music wall to wall.
They've got four different Christmas cups, a little holly in there, the big Christmas blend.
It's great.
So Christmas is winning the war on Christmas, and that is a wonderful thing.
I'm happy to hear it.
But because we can never just be happy and take a win...
We now have to look at the next problem.
Look, I am happy.
I am celebrating that we are winning the war on Christmas.
President Trump, I don't want people to think that I'm not grateful for it.
President Trump campaigned on this.
People made fun of him for it.
And it is true.
Just anecdotally, you go to places now and you hear Merry Christmas more often at the Christmas tree lighting at the White House.
Here is President Trump making this point in his typically subtle way.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
We just have to say it all together.
Merry, Merry Christmas.
It's great to be with you.
And let's light the tree.
First lady will do the honors.
We have to say this.
We have to say it.
Just in case you didn't miss my, in case you missed it.
So you remember during the Obama era, Barack Obama took Christmas out of the White House Christmas card.
Just said, happy holidays, have a good holiday.
But there was no Christmas in there.
This was a big break with tradition.
Now, Representative, Democrat Rep Jim Cooper got the Trump White House Christmas card and He said it's the gaudiest Christmas card he's ever seen.
It's gigantic.
It's oversized.
It's red.
It's got gold all over it.
Very, very Trumpy.
It says, Merry Christmas, written right on top.
I'm offended that I did not get one of these cards, but c'est la vie.
These things happen.
So, in any case, they've got the Christmas cards out there.
Barack Obama, you'll remember, during his administration, Started a fight with the Little Sisters of the Poor.
He wanted to make a group of nuns pay for abortions.
This was obviously a terrible thing.
People shouldn't be forced to violate their conscience, especially nuns.
And what did Donald Trump do?
He comes into office.
He invites a group of nuns in a full habit, just as Christian as they can possibly look, to come and sing at the Christmas tree lighting.
Here they are.
Ding dong, ding dong, darling.
One seems to hear words of a cheer from everywhere.
Peeling the air.
Oh, oh, oh.
Raising the sound.
High and down.
High, dear.
Don't hear me.
They ring while people sing.
Telling the world Jesus is King.
Ding, ding, ding, ding.
Just lovely.
Turns out that group of nuns, they are very popular musicians.
They've had Billboard and Amazon number one recordings.
They're number one in classical.
They're not beating out Ariana Grande, but they're still doing pretty well.
So this is all great.
This is a big embrace of this.
You've even got Hollywood stars like Chris Pratt talking about Christmas in explicitly religious terms.
Chris Pratt gave an impassioned delivery He was describing the Gospel of Luke, kind of like Charlie Brown, at the annual candlelight procession at Disneyland over the weekend.
Here's Chris Pratt.
About 2,000 years ago, God sent an angel named Gabriel To a city in Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin who was betrothed to a man named Joseph of the House of David.
This is a descendant of King David.
That virgin's name was Mary.
And having come in, the angel said to her,"'Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women.'" The Bible says, when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of reading this was.
That seems confusing to me, so I'll just paraphrase.
She was kind of scared because an angel just fell up from the ceiling.
I love that guy.
I also love the way that he takes these very serious...
He's obviously quite Christian.
And he takes these serious Christian concepts.
And then he does infuse it with his movie star, young guy, exuberant energy.
He did this at an awards ceremony where he told people to believe in God and understand that they have a soul and the soul matters.
But he just does it in his way that's not pedantic.
It's just really, really good.
So it's great to see him do that.
That's all wonderful.
Now that we're in the Christmas season, there's this rush to rush it.
There's this surge of people trying to rush our way to Christmas.
We're back in, we've got the particularity of it, because it doesn't make sense.
Why are people talking about it's the most wonderful time of the year?
Oh, it's a new family and it's the most wonderful time.
Why is it wonderful?
Why is this time wonderful?
If it's just the holidays, if it's not about a holiday, if it's not about a holiday that celebrates something, then why are people so happy and excited and nice?
It's not just the turkey.
It's not just people eat turkey at other points of the year.
What makes it different than Thanksgiving?
What makes it different than the 4th of July?
The next stage of this The thing that I think we could all use a little help on is Advent.
Because people forget Advent.
Advent is that period of time before Christmas.
It's this time that the four Sundays before Christmas in the Christian tradition celebrate four mysteries that are supposed to prepare us for Christmas.
It's this penitential season.
It's more of a solemn season.
It's not all dancing around the Christmas tree yet.
And the four mysteries that are celebrated are Are death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
We explore these mysteries.
We meditate on these mysteries that mankind has considered for all of human history.
When we were living in the caves, we have contemplated these mysteries.
What is death?
What does death mean?
What is judgment?
Will there be a judge?
Will I have to pay for my sins?
What is heaven?
Is there hope of something after this world?
What is hell?
Will I be punished in the hereafter?
What does punishment look like?
These are mysteries.
You know, the right has always been really strong in taking Christmas' side in the War on Christmas, and the left has constantly been trying to drive out Christmas celebrations, and it's very easy to understand that concept.
But very few people are sticking up for Advent, and Advent could really teach us something.
Whether you're a Christian, whether you're not Christian, whether you're on the left, whether you're on the right, everybody could really use it.
We're so It's such a fever pitch right now.
We're all at each other's throats.
Politics is quite divided.
We're really angry at each other.
The left is especially angry at the right.
And we're missing fundamental, eternal mysteries.
Major, major questions, beginning with death.
Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent.
We're now in the Advent season.
And I think it really, really matters because sometimes when people are...
At a fever pitch in politics, I sometimes think, do you not realize you're going to die someday?
John Maynard Keynes, the economist, said, in the long run, we're all dead.
So I don't know if your policies will work in the long run.
In the long run, we're all dead.
And when we contemplate that mystery, I think it makes us appreciate each other a lot more, appreciate our country a lot more, and appreciate Christmas, which is coming up.
We will get to that.
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So this is Advent.
Nobody wants to talk about Advent.
We want to start playing Christmas music starting on November 1st.
I suppose this is evidence that people can never be happy.
You know, last year I was complaining that Starbucks didn't do enough for Christmas.
Now they start Christmas on November 1st.
And I say, no, that's too soon.
But maybe...
They're just not getting it wrong.
You need a middle ground.
You need to have a little balance here.
And if you rush Christmas, it's like rushing through dinner.
It's like you sit down to a beautiful dinner and you've got steak and...
Turkey and potatoes and all of this.
And you sit down and you just start eating pudding cups.
And then you say, I'm full.
I already ate all my pudding cups.
No, you want to build up.
And you want to remember why we need Christmas in the first place.
Why is Christmas the most wonderful time of the year?
Why is Chris Pratt reciting the narrative from Luke?
Why is he reciting the infancy narrative?
Why do we watch a Charlie Brown Christmas where he's reciting...
This amazing moment in the woods somewhere around the year zero, when in a little cave, in a little manger, surrounded by livestock, because there was no room at the inn, the God who created all of us, the divine love that made us in the universe, becomes flesh, enters into the creation as a little baby born on a...
Traveling road, born in the lowest of the low, inside of a cave.
Why does that matter?
What does that mean?
Why do we need that to happen?
The reason we need that to happen is because of death and judgment and heaven and hell.
In our culture, we are so afraid of death.
I see this all the time when I read all of the tech blogs and science blogs.
Every other day there's somebody in Silicon Valley who says that we're about to find the cure for death.
Oh, we're so close to the cure for death.
All those people who lived before us, they sure missed out because now they're dead, but we're going to live forever.
And this reminds me of every foolish ruler for all of history, every pharaoh, every guy who was certain he was going to find the elixir of life and he would live forever.
And we make fun of these people because we know death is a fact of life.
I don't know that we would want to live forever in this world.
I don't think I would in this world of decay and corruption.
I don't want to live forever in this world, but we will die.
But now the cosmetics industry has exploded.
People spend ever more money on products, on surgeries, on Botox, on plastic surgery, on whatever, to make it look as though they are not aging, to try to pretend that we're not going to die.
I go to funerals, people who are not religious, friends of mine who are atheistic, and it's always so sad.
They have these Really sad celebrations of life, they call it.
And I guess it's nice you like the person you want to send them off, but you don't know what you're celebrating because in those moments, people don't understand what death is.
They don't know, is there a heaven?
Is there a hell?
Where is this going?
What does it mean?
Is life some random chance?
The left has convinced us that there is no meaning to life, that there is just life is a random cosmic accident.
It's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
And so when we die, it's just a pure tragedy.
There's no comedy to it.
There's no hope.
What is it?
Obviously, religious people say, some religious people say that there is life after death, that death isn't the end, but death does have a meaning.
They have different explanations.
Why did death come into the world?
Why do we have to die?
Why are we in a creation such that we have to die?
The biblical answer is because man is free.
Man has free will.
Man sinned.
And so because man sinned, sin and death entered into the world and corruption and decay, and that's why.
So there's death.
The second mystery is judgment.
We're in this world where we say, don't judge.
Don't be so judgy.
Don't yuck my yum, man.
Why are you being so judgy?
There's no right or wrong.
It's just like, you know, it's whatever it is.
This throwing off ideas of judgment has come back on us where now our entire ethical discourse basically amounts to, if it feels good, do it.
That's about the level of moral discourse that we have right now in the country.
We can't explain why it's not good to do certain things.
Why it's not good to watch a bunch of porn and go carousing all the time and stop by wherever else.
Because one particular sin of our culture is...
That sex is everywhere.
I mean, there are a zillion sins in the culture.
One of them is that, so it's a good example.
Because we say, oh, if it feels good, it doesn't matter, it's okay.
Well, as long as you're not hurting anybody, or if you're hurting them, but it's okay and they kind of like it.
That's what our discourse has gotten down to.
And you'll even have people dishonestly quoting the Bible, quoting the scripture, and they'll say, well, judge not lest ye be judged.
Correct.
I'm not judging a person.
I'm not going to condemn a person.
But we must make moral judgments.
It's the only way that we can live.
The only way that we can get out of bed in the morning is to make a judgment.
Say, should I get out of bed or should I stay in bed all day and sleep?
You go down to your kitchen and you make a judgment.
You say, do I eat?
Do I eat Cheerios or do I eat bacon and eggs?
I never eat Cheerios.
I only eat bacon and eggs because I'm an adult.
But, you know, some people have these judgments.
Do I smoke three cigars tonight or 17 cigars tonight?
What am I going to do?
These are all judgments.
But we don't want to have those judgments.
And I think it's in part because we have the sense of sin.
Mankind has always had the sense of sin.
Everybody sins constantly.
We're always making terrible decisions.
But...
That's why we need a corrective.
That's why we need Christmas.
That's why we need to at least atone.
That's why we need to accept a moral standard.
But because we don't accept any of these things now, we have the sense of sin and we're so anxious.
We so don't want to be judged for it that we're trying to abdicate all of our moral reasoning.
Maybe the second weekend in Advent could do a little something, even for conservatives who have that kind of thought.
Then there's heaven.
What is heaven?
Is there hope?
After death, if there's judgment, is there a hope of something beyond this world?
You know, the theological virtues are faith, hope, and charity.
Without hope, we have nothing.
When Dante enters into hell in the poem, the Divine Comedy, on top of hell it says, Abandon all hope, ye who enter.
We have a spate of despair in America.
We have suicides way on the rise.
Among teenagers, it's up 70%.
Among the whole culture, it's very high, especially middle-aged children.
Men, middle-aged white men in particular, are killing themselves in spades.
A ton of people taking antidepressant drugs.
That number is way, way up.
And now for the second year in a row, for the first time in half of a century, the average life expectancy is decreasing because of despair.
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Heaven.
Is there any hope?
I see people despairing, and I know there are mental health problems people have, but...
Mental health problems doesn't explain the surge in suicides.
The reason why average life expectancy for the second year in a row, for the first time in 50 years in America, has actually decreased.
Decreased in the wealthiest, most prosperous, most free, most equitable country in the world.
People are not living as long.
It's because of suicide and drug addiction, drug overdoses.
Why are people killing themselves with drugs and other means?
It's because they are despairing.
Despair means without hope.
It is the absence of hope.
Sperare is to hope, and it's the absence of that.
But what are we hoping for?
Well, there's various things.
I am hoping, one thing that kind of keeps me going, is once I finish this show, I'm going to go up and smoke a stogie, because we've got the backstage holiday edition coming up.
That's one thing.
Maybe tonight I'll get to go see Sweet Little Elisa.
That's a hope.
I've got a hope that, I don't know, that the show gets really big.
I've got a hope that I'll get to go to some more colleges and give more talks.
I've got all of these various hopes.
I have plenty of hopes.
But what are my ultimate hopes?
It has to transcend the physical world.
Because ultimately, I'm going to die.
No one here gets out alive.
Maybe one guy.
I know one guy who did.
And he's about to be born in a few weeks.
But other than that, it's very difficult.
Once you're in the ground, you're going to stay there for a long period of time.
So what is that ultimate hope?
Is there somewhere that I can go?
Does my soul live on?
What is my soul?
Is my soul physical?
Or is it metaphysical?
Is it spiritual?
What is that?
So, the other reason you need this is because we live in a really nice culture where everything is super pleasant all the time and we have cool electronics and TVs going and it's all just really, really nice.
Great.
But as a result of that, when things go wrong, people lose their minds.
You know, millennials, the most coddled generation in American history.
For kids at college right now, there was a study done out of Arizona State University.
It showed that two years after the 2016 election, a quarter of college students were suffering from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
And that's not made up.
They weren't just pretending.
They were actually suffering clinically high levels of stress.
Stress levels as high as people who experience a mass shooting incident seven months after the mass shooting.
That's how high it is.
Because a Republican won the White House.
When things are so nice, when we're in a decadent society, when kids are coddled and protected from the harsh realities of the world, then when things go wrong, they're so fragile, they break, they crack.
Why is that?
What is the ultimate hope?
If you don't have an ultimate hope, then once those things crack, you're going to fall into a pit of despair.
So what is heaven?
And then the fourth mystery, what is hell?
Is there hell?
Antonin Scalia did an interview with New York Magazine with this very glib woman a number of years ago.
And he mentioned that he believed in hell.
And she made fun of him.
She said, oh my gosh, it must be very scary to believe in hell and the devil.
He said, you know, this is basic Catholic theology, that hell exists.
Do you know how out of touch you are with America?
Most of Americans believe in hell and in the devil.
Most of people throughout history have believed in hell and the devil.
Why does hell matter?
Hell matters because it means there is divine justice.
What we like to do, both in religion and in our sort of pseudo-religions, you hear all these people who say I'm spiritual but not religious.
Oh, I'm not a Christian, but I like Christian teachings.
Oh, okay, whatever.
What they try to do is they want all the really nice, comforting things, and they don't want any of those harsh realities.
They want the heaven, they don't want the hell.
They want a God without wrath to lead a people without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross, to quote a famous theologian.
If there is no hell, what does that mean?
It means God is all merciful.
We know God is merciful.
He is love.
God is love.
But if there is no hell, then there is not that justice.
And we don't have the human freedom.
So much what Chris Pratt is talking about at that candle lighting ceremony is this incredible moment in the world.
At the Annunciation, when the angel comes down and tells Mary that she's going to give birth to Jesus...
The angel comes down.
God's grace pours down on the world.
And then heaven holds its breath.
Because Mary ascents.
She still has free will.
She can turn away from God.
She can say no.
But she says, I am the Lord's servant.
May his will be done.
We have free will.
This is the defining feature of humanity.
We have freedom.
We have liberty.
And we can reject God.
We can choose hell if we want to.
We can go right down there.
We can choose hell on earth.
We can choose hell beyond earth.
It is up to us.
God does not deny us that dignity of freedom.
How beautiful a thing it can be that there is justice.
How beautiful a thing that we have that liberty.
You know, in America, we talk about liberty so much.
Our country is a free country founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But how do we pursue that happiness and what is the substance of that liberty?
Why is it so important?
Why is it so essential?
How do we exercise it?
And when we use our liberty and we abuse our liberty, how do we get mercy?
How do we redeem ourselves?
That is what we are waiting for at Christmas.
That's what Christmas is about.
I wouldn't recommend discussing that at your office Christmas party.
I don't know when Susie, the secretary, is sloshed on eggnog and you start discussing death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
That might be a little bit of a downer.
Everyone's playing rock around the Christmas tree and you're there with a little fire and brimstone.
I'm not suggesting that.
But in the moments when you're not at those...
Christmas parties that are all over the place or holiday party or whatever.
In the moments when you're actually contemplating the season and the reason for the joy of this season, think about those things because maybe it seems a little sad or inconvenient or we don't want to think about it.
The reason that we have despair flying throughout our culture is precisely because we don't want to think about it.
This is the season to do it.
Don't skip it, because if you skip that season, you are going to skip the entire celebration.
We have so much more to talk about.
We've got to talk about President George Bush dying, the legacy of George Bush, people on the left and the right are getting it wrong, the Paris riots.
These are my favorite riots.
As far as riots go, these ones couldn't be better, because the mainstream media won't report on the actual cause of the riots, which is global warming alarmism.
We will get to that in a bit, and we've got a lot more if we've got time.
But coming up tonight, let's talk about hope.
Talk about awaiting wonderful things.
Coming up tonight, don't miss our next episode of Daily Wire Backstage Holiday Edition.
But I have to defend the word holiday here, because it actually isn't Christmas yet.
We are in Advent, and it's Hanukkah.
It's the second night of Hanukkah.
So we're being ecumenical.
Yeah.
It's a holiday edition.
Daily Wire God King, Jeremy Boring, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Elisha Kress, and little old me.
We'll be talking politics, culture, and why frozen leftist tears make the most beautiful snowflakes.
They're all unique.
They're all individual.
So, be sure to tune in.
As always, only Daily Wire subscribers get to ask the questions.
So make sure to subscribe today.
Also, if you're a subscriber, you lucky duck, you will be able to see Andrew Klavan's next chapter of Another Kingdom, performed by whom?
Performed by moi.
Today, subscribers get exclusive access to episode 9, titled Orozco.
And it's coming to an end this season.
And this season, I tell you, when I go to these campus speeches, you know, I was on the road for...
I've been on the road forever.
I've been just going all over the country.
I think I've been to 57 states.
I've been to all 57 states that Barack Obama went to.
And people come up to me and they'll say, Michael, Michael, I love the show.
I say, oh, thank you so much for watching.
You caught it yesterday.
They'll say, oh, no, no, Michael, I don't mean your show.
I don't mean the Michael Knoll show.
I mean another kingdom.
I love Another Kingdom.
So it's got really good numbers.
If you want a nice, cozy little Christmas read, either to listen or to watch it with the amazing art, this is a really good one.
Curl Up by the Fire.
It's great because Drew did all the work and I just have to read it.
So go check it out.
If you're not a subscriber, you won't be able to watch new episodes of Season 2 until Friday.
So what on earth are you waiting for?
Go to dailywire.com.
Subscribe to watch the first and second seasons of Another Kingdom.
You get all the shows.
You know all that.
Here's what you need.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
You know that snow is much thicker and fluffier than water, so when the leftist snowflakes start pouring down, those salty ones, you're probably going to need two tumblers.
If you already have one, get another.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back with a lot more.
President Bush died.
This was not shocking news.
I got the news, you know, when I saw the update, and I wasn't exactly thinking, you know, oh, did he flip his Mustang?
Did he?
Although, frankly, with President Bush, he was still jumping out of airplanes at age 90.
But a life well lived, you know, good guy, he was a war hero.
People, I think, are getting reactions to this wrong on both sides.
I guess, really, my first reaction was, We all knew he was not long for this world.
His wife died earlier this year.
He's had a million health problems.
He's lived a good life.
Now he's getting his eternal reward.
But I was thinking, you know, Nixon dead.
Ford dead.
Reagan dead.
Bush dead.
But Jimmy Carter, you know, Jimmy Carter, you cannot stump that guy.
He had brain cancer, for goodness sakes.
He beat it.
That guy, he's going to outlive all of us, Jimmy Carter.
Best of health to President Carter.
So President Bush died.
And some conservatives were a little down on Bush's career.
Why?
Well, George Bush Sr.
was not a conservative.
He was running basically from the establishment wing of the Republican Party, the moderate ring of the Republican Party.
I think he backed Goldwater, so he did have that in him a little bit, but he was the moderate guy anti-conservative movement broadly.
He coined the term voodoo economics to refer to Ronald Reagan's economic plan, supply-side economics, which defined the conservative movement for so long.
Bush was a supporter of Planned Parenthood for a very long time, so that irks some conservatives.
He abandoned Richard Nixon, called on Nixon to resign.
He raised taxes.
One of the first expressions that I ever learned as a kid, I think I was two years old, was, read my lips, no new taxes.
My grandfather taught it to me.
And the irony, this is what George Bush said.
This was his promise.
He said, read my lips, no new taxes.
And then he immediately just raised taxes, and it probably cost him the 1992 election.
So that bothers conservatives.
What else?
What else are they harping on?
Very famously, at the end of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan wins the Cold War, and then George Bush is there, and he's overseeing the dismantling of the Soviet Empire.
And he makes this...
Actually, in a few instances, he talks about what the new world order will look like, and this has bred a lot of conspiracy theories, and there is some basis in what certain people want world order to look like, but then it has this, you know, then also the tinfoil hats and the spacemen come out.
Here is what President Bush actually said about that.
We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law...
Not the law of the jungle governs the conduct of nations.
When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN's founders.
Okay, so people, some conservatives who are excitable react to this and they say, see, it's a nefarious plan for just a government to govern the whole world and the total loss of freedom and sovereignty.
And that's not my reaction.
My reaction is, oh, he likes the United Nations.
Okay, all right, whatever.
That's fine.
That's cute.
But what he's really talking about is that prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, prior to the dismantling of the Soviet Empire, We had a bipolar world.
We had the American sphere, the Western sphere, the free sphere, and we had the communist sphere, the Soviet sphere.
And that was the world broken up between two great powers.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, you had a new world order.
By definition, you have a new world order because America is the only remaining superpower.
And then the question was, how are we going to handle the dismantling of this empire?
What role will the United States play?
Obviously, it's the leader of the world.
How much will we allow ourselves to be governed by international, supranational institutions like the United Nations, like the IMF, like the EU, like all of these different international organizations?
And President Bush clearly favored a much broader role for them than conservatives do.
But whatever.
He wasn't talking about going in and, you know, making everyone loyal only to one god emperor of the entire planet.
That isn't what he was talking about either.
It was just a kind of typical middle of the road republicanism.
That's the bad stuff.
And I got to tell you, in the whole of a career, that's not the worst thing in the world because the good aspects of President Bush's legacy were really excellent.
He was a true war hero, shot down over the Pacific, I think the youngest pilot, right?
Basically the youngest pilot in the war.
Um, We're good to go.
And he didn't.
He chose to move to West Texas, strike out on his own, make his own fortune, his own way.
He was able to do that.
He ran for office.
He lost an election.
Then he won.
He was the head of the RNC, I believe.
He was the head of the CIA. He had this long career.
But the reason I really, really admire George Bush is because he was a totally loyal vice president to Ronald Reagan.
He was really, really loyal.
He went out there.
Sometimes you hear of vice presidents arguing with their presidents, trying to go out on their own, and he wasn't.
George Bush and Ronald Reagan probably didn't agree on very much, but Reagan treated him with respect, and George Bush treated Reagan with the utmost deference and respect.
He went out.
He was always campaigning, promoting the president.
You didn't see a lot of leaks from the office of the vice president.
You didn't see him trying to undermine Ronald Reagan.
He played his role.
And when Reagan was shot, there was this defining moment where George Bush then comes in acting as the president.
And he could have sat in Ronald Reagan's chair before the cabinet.
And he didn't.
He sat in his own chair.
And Ronald Reagan said about this that that's when he knew he had a truly loyal vice president.
Bush was there.
He didn't want to make it seem like he was coming in, taking advantage of a situation.
And so that's a beautiful thing.
I mean, he was a loyal guy to...
The greatest president of the 20th century.
That's a good legacy.
He lived an upright life.
There's not much more to say about that.
You've got people on the left now.
some of them are saying he was a great guy because they want to attack Donald Trump.
Some of them are saying he was a terrible guy because the left just hates conservatives and hates Republicans and even people who they mistakenly think are conservative who aren't really conservative like George Bush.
And so you've got that.
And then you've got people on the right attacking him because he wasn't conservative enough.
My thought, he was my first president when I was born.
He was loyal to Ronald Reagan, the greatest president of the 20th century.
He helped dismantle the Soviet Empire.
He managed a successful and limited operation in Desert Storm, very successful.
He always had dignity out of the office.
He didn't, like Barack Obama, he didn't take the opportunity to just constantly attack his successors.
He was an all-around dignified guy.
Hats off to him.
Live a good life.
Served well.
Had good things to do in American politics.
Helped to bring the Republican Party to the right, even though he himself wasn't trying to do that.
As a member of the Reagan Revolution, he did do that.
That's a good thing.
Hats off to you, President Bush.
Thanks for all you did.
I hope you're enjoying your eternal reward.
Now, Paris.
Oh, Paris.
Have you been following these riots?
This is the best riot ever.
Riots aren't good.
People get injured.
I hope people don't die.
Obviously, that's very bad.
But as far as riots go, it's the best one ever because it explains and demonstrates the insanity of European leftism, particularly environmentalism.
So far, 400 people have been arrested in these riots.
200 people have been injured.
75,000 people have protested.
An estimated 75,000 people going out on the streets.
So what is the protest about?
Because in France, people are protesting all the time.
They're always striking, going on protests, going on riots.
My priest, Father George Rutler, describes a Frenchman as an Italian in a bad mood.
You know, they're always kind of angry and ornery.
So that's fine.
Why are they doing it now?
They're doing it now to protest pro-environmentalist politicians.
They're doing it to protest global warming alarmism.
They are rioting right now because self-appointed elites who want to pretend that the sun monster is a more pressing problem than what people need in the here and now are bankrupting these guys.
So French citizens were already hit by this.
Earlier in the year, Macron, the president of France, said that he was going to attack global warming and he was going to institute a new fuel tax to convince people to stop using fossil fuels.
So they were already hit with this massive tax increase in January.
More than 60% of the cost of fuel in France comes from taxes.
If they cut out those useless taxes, you would have cheap fuel all over France.
Now there is a new fuel tax.
Why?
To fight climate change.
This is what Barack Obama tried to do.
This is what he said.
He was pretty open about it before he wasn't open about it.
He said, yeah, we've got to raise the cost for people to use oil and gas so that it hurts them, so that they have to start using wind power or whatever other imaginary thing doesn't really produce that much energy.
So he was insisting on this.
We've got to make it hurt.
I was elected that I know so much better than the people.
Macron knows so much better than the French.
Obama knows so much better than the Americans.
He's going to hurt them.
He's going to force them to lose money, have a tough time feeding their family, so that we can stop Sending carbon dioxide into the environment.
They did say initially that oil was running out.
Remember, they told us that here 10 years ago.
And then now we're the biggest producer in the world of oil and natural gas.
That's what they're saying.
Oh, we're going to run out.
We need to do this.
Their theory is getting in the way of reality.
All the time, these environmentalist types, the global warming alarmists, talk about all of the climate refugees, all of the people whose lives are going to be upended by global warming and climate change.
We haven't seen any of them yet.
They don't exist yet, but in the fantasy world of the left, they'll exist.
Just in five more years.
The day after tomorrow.
Didn't you say they were going to be around in 2013, 2015?
No, no, no.
I said that you would see climate refugees the day after tomorrow.
When am I going to see them the day after tomorrow?
Okay, I'll wait for the day after tomorrow.
But in the here and now, in the reality, we are seeing climate refugees.
It's the people protesting in the streets in France.
They're the climate refugees.
They're the climate change refugees.
The ones who are dealing at their pocketbooks, trying to feed their families, because...
Frivolous politicians like Emmanuel Macron and Barack Obama are trying to tax them into oblivion.
They're using the sun monster as an excuse to steal more government power and steal more wealth from private citizens.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you'll be shocked to hear, is on this exact same point.
She's speaking in even more grandiose terms than Obama and Macron.
We're at the brink, at the cusp of an abyss and we did not know if we would be capable of saving ourselves.
We have.
We've done it.
We've dug deep and we've done what we thought was impossible.
We went to the moon.
We electrified the nation.
We established civil rights.
We enfranchised the country.
We dig deep and we did it.
We did it when no one else thought that we could.
That's what we did when so many of us won an election this year.
That's what so many of us did.
That's what we did.
It's just the same.
Stopping Jim Crow, stopping black people from being murdered in America.
It's the same thing as electing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
I actually can't even see the difference.
When I look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, when I stare into her googly eyes, all I see is Martin Luther King Jr.
marching down on Washington.
That's what I see, right?
Is that what you see?
No?
Maybe not.
This is a problem of people who don't have any problems.
The problem with people who don't have any problems is they need to make problems.
Because they need to struggle.
And so when everything is going so well, they need to focus on the sun monster.
They need to make up or they need to struggle.
Because we want struggle.
We want to achieve things in life.
And when they're not achieving the things they should achieve, they invent them.
And that is the sun monster.
So, same thing.
She's comparing it to all.
In her mind, I bet she believes it.
In her mind, global warming, which...
The predictions have consistently been wrong.
We're told that even if we instituted the Paris Climate Agreement, we would only reduce the temperature or prevent two degrees of warming, rather, within the course of 100 years.
And ironically, we didn't take part in the Paris Agreement.
We're doing it.
We're actually winning on that.
We're actually reducing our carbon emissions in accordance with it.
And the people who did sign on are not doing that.
We're in all of that.
We know all of the facts.
But she believes that slapping a higher gas tax on middle-class Americans, that is tantamount to ending slavery.
That is the kind of moral idiocy that happens when we don't take real problems seriously.
Problems in the here and now, political problems, temporal problems, and eternal problems.
A good note to leave on at the beginning of Advent.
That is our show.
Tune in to Daily Wire backstage.
We have so much more coming up.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
I'll see you later.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Jim Nickel.
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.
Today on the Matt Wall Show, an NFL player is in big, big trouble for hitting a woman.
But from a modern, enlightened feminist perspective, why should it be any great sin for a man to hit a woman?
We'll talk about that.
Also, we'll look at the prison reform bill that President Trump supports and...
Baby It's Cold Outside has been banned from a radio station.
Will they also ban all of the other sexually charged songs that comprise 90% of modern music?
I'm guessing not.
That seems a bit inconsistent.
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