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Dec. 5, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show

46:25

Ep. 263 - The Moral Incoherence of Veganism

Left-wing vegans want to destroy language with vegan-friendly idioms. Then, Bob Dole and Alan Simpson dazzle at George Bush’s funeral, a Never Trump magazine goes under, and a new MAGA dating app. Date: 12-05-2018 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	PETA wants us to stop bringing home the bacon and start bringing home the bagels.
	No more can we beat a dead horse.
	Now we must feed a fed horse.
	We will analyze how left-wing vegans want to destroy language with vegan-friendly idioms, presumably because they're a few fries short of a Happy Meal.
	Then Bob Dole and Alan Simpson dazzle at George Bush's funeral, a Never Trump magazine goes under, and a brand new MAGA dating app.
	I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
	I wonder how many more idioms we can break out there.
	Are they?
	You can lead a horse to water, but you can only force feed a goose to give you foie gras.
	I don't know.
	There are very many, and PETA is going after it.
	PETA and some left-wing academics.
	We will analyze why the left is always trying to control our words and to control our culture.
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	How long before we're going to have to start changing all of these words, too?
	We have to change all of the words.
	This is the new line coming out of PETA and left-wing academics.
	This from Sharina Z. Hamza, an academic from Swansea University.
	You know, that's where I get all of my tips about the English language expressions at Swansea University.
	This is what they're saying.
	The increased awareness of vegan issues will filter through consciousness to produce new modes of expression.
	It may very well be that, down the line, powerful meat metaphors are issued.
	What are the meat metaphors?
	Bringing home the bacon.
	We're not allowed to use bringing home the bacon anymore.
	We're supposed to say bringing home the bagels.
	The other one is putting all your eggs in one basket.
	It's not just animals.
	We're not allowed to reference animals.
	We're not even allowed to reference animal products.
	So you can't say putting all of your eggs in one basket.
	Another one is killing two birds with one stone.
	You can't say that.
	It's about killing birds.
	That's terrible.
	And it isn't just one wacko academic.
	If it were one wacko academic saying this, I would say, oh, I would kind of laugh it off.
	I mean, that's what academics do, is they say crazy things and we ignore them.
	But PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is now tweeting about this.
	By the way, PETA is the most ironically named organization probably in the country.
	PETA for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has killed, in the last two decades...
	Just about 96% of the animals in their care.
	On any given year, the animals in their care, this is well over 30,000 animals since 1998, 96% of them are killed by PETA. Even the ones that could be adopted out, they just kill them.
	But they call it People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
	So they sent out a tweet yesterday.
	It's catching a ton of interest online.
	The tweet read, Stop using anti-animal language.
	And this is the money line.
	Just as it became unacceptable to use racist homophobic or ableist language, phrases that trivialize cruelty to animals will vanish as more people begin to appreciate animals for who they are and start bringing home the bagels instead of the bacon.
	Words matter, and as our understanding of social justice evolves, our language evolves along with it.
	This is my thesis on the culture, is that the left uses language to affect their political agenda.
	So by the time we get to the political fight, we've already lost.
	Because they've already changed the language through the culture.
	This is what political correctness is.
	They use terms like social justice.
	What is social justice?
	What they're using social justice as a stand-in for is morality.
	They're saying that we now in our enlightened moral standards realize that it's wrong to kill animals.
	It's wrong to eat animals.
	It's wrong to wear animal skins and use leather and whatever.
	How is that?
	Where is that?
	Where do we find that in any sane moral standard?
	I know that they say it.
	I know that these wacko lefties say it.
	But where do we find it?
	The trouble with these new suggestions, by the way, is that the new idioms don't make any sense.
	So bringing home the bagels.
	Okay, I guess that one's the most defensible of them.
	Putting all your eggs in one basket, they now want us to say, putting all your berries in one basket.
	But that doesn't make any sense.
	If you've got all your eggs in one basket and you drop the basket, all your eggs are gone.
	Because you cracked the egg and then they're gone.
	If you put all your berries in your basket and then you drop the basket, nothing happens.
	They're berries.
	Berries are pretty durable.
	You drop them, you pick them up, you can eat them.
	Dust them off, that's fine.
	Same thing with beating a dead horse.
	That idiom makes sense.
	Feeding a fed horse doesn't make any sense.
	There's another famous idiom.
	You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
	So they're getting very confused about all of their idioms.
	And then my favorite one.
	They took to kill two birds with one stone, and they want to change it to feed two birds with one scone.
	Do you get it?
	You have a scone and you feed two birds.
	That one doesn't make any sense, though, because it is difficult to kill two birds with one stone.
	It's tactically difficult, and what you were saying with that idiom is that you are going to be efficient in your use of tactics.
	You're going to take care of two things in one fell swoop, in an efficient way where usually you'd only take care of one thing.
	To feed two birds with one scone is very easy because birds don't eat very much.
	You could feed a hundred birds with one scone.
	That doesn't mean anything.
	It's so absurd.
	But they're changing this language.
	And the issue here is the language.
	I don't really care about the rise of veganism, although it is a little weird.
	Veganism is up 360% in the UK over the last decade.
	It's up 500% in the US over just the last four years.
	And the issue with veganism, the reason they're so whacked out about the language here, is that veganism is a morally incoherent ideology.
	Veganism, it's not just that you can't eat animals.
	You can't eat fish.
	You can't eat shellfish.
	And you can't even eat animal products.
	You can't eat milk.
	You can't drink milk.
	You can't eat eggs.
	And my question is, why stop there?
	Does anyone really believe that an oyster is more conscious than a carrot?
	I was on Fox News this morning talking about this very topic, and I got actually a lot of letters and tweets and things in, not just from left-wingers, but from right-wingers, too, who say, oh, Michael, you're being too harsh.
	I'm a vegetarian.
	I'm a vegan.
	And it's so much better, and it's so much more moral.
	We have to set the record straight here.
	An oyster is not in any way more conscious than a carrot.
	They are morally identical entities.
	Why is it okay to eat the carrot but not eat the oyster?
	And further, the big example here is abortion.
	Because every vegan I know, every single one, I know a number of vegans, and I've had to sit through terrible lunches when they take me out to them.
	They're all in favor of abortion.
	So they weep for the oyster.
	They weep for the delta smelt.
	But an unborn human baby, it doesn't matter.
	Wipe it out.
	Kill it.
	That is a morally incoherent idea.
	And what it does is it inverts the natural order.
	So we have a natural order of things.
	The animals are here.
	We have dominion over them.
	And they are here for our enjoyment.
	So this is why we don't want to torture animals.
	We don't want to be cruel to animals.
	But the reason that we shouldn't torture animals or be cruel to animals is not because the animals have some rights, some consciousness, some spiritual life, some soul, or anything like that.
	The reason that we shouldn't be cruel to animals is because it deadens our compassion.
	It deadens our humanity to be needlessly cruel to some innocent little animal.
	The reason that we need to conserve animals is not because animals are good and humans are bad or that animals have some right to exist in nature and, you know, prance around the forests.
	It's so that we can enjoy them.
	The reason to conserve the deer is so that we can go kill more deer.
	Or, you know, hunt them and have a good time.
	There was a wolf that was killed in, I think it was Yellowstone.
	And this was a major Twitter moment.
	You know, this made headlines all around.
	And they said, a beloved wolf was killed by a trophy hunter.
	Now, the wolf was killed legally.
	He had a license to go kill the wolf.
	They say, the beloved wolf.
	Beloved by whom?
	Who is crying over the wolf?
	They did this when a guy bought a very expensive permit, that dentist, to go kill Cecil the lion in Africa.
	And they said he was a beloved lion.
	Beloved by whom?
	He's not a beloved lion.
	He's a lion.
	And actually the reason that they sell permits to these trophy hunters is because they cost a lot of money and then all of that money is put toward conservation efforts.
	Beloved by whom?
	They're just crafting this narrative to tug on your heartstrings.
	Also, last time I checked, Cecil is not a particularly African name.
	They're trying to make it sound like it's the Lion King or something, this beautiful natural environment.
	No, not quite.
	I guess the dentist killed the wrong lion or something, but come on, give me a break.
	So, this inversion is very, very strange, and it's true of the entire environmentalist left.
	They think that we are here to serve...
	Animals.
	Which is true only in the sense that we serve them on our dinner plates.
	We are here to conserve them and then serve them to each other because they taste very good.
	But we are not here to give them honor or to give them fealty or anything like that.
	They are here for us.
	And we love them because they provide a lot of nice things for us.
	Like a good veal piccata on a good Saturday night.
	But that's it.
	That's where the line is.
	And they've exactly flipped that order.
	The left does this all the time.
	They're constantly flipping and inverting You know, I love Orrin Hatch, a Republican senator.
	He celebrated PETA's tweet in precisely the right way.
	Here's Orrin Hatch.
	Oh yeah.
	Oh I, it's getting me, getting my hunger up.
	I was at a wedding in New York over the weekend, and the wedding was held at the Harvard Club, and the one cool thing that the Harvard Club has that other clubs don't have is they have a giant elephant head on the wall.
	And actually, I'm a little nervous about this because elephants might demonstrate certain aspects of consciousness, so I'm a little iffy on it.
	But still, we get to honor this cool elephant head on the wall.
	It's being enjoyed so much more than if it were just ravaged by some predator in its natural environment.
	We have more nature worship, more bizarre left-wing nature worship, which is torching the streets of Paris right now, and it's even being heralded by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Terminator at the UN. But first, let's talk about something really, really nice and comfortable.
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	The inverting the natural order is this bizarre nature worship, and we're seeing this now from Arnold Schwarzenegger.
	He was at a UN climate conference in Poland, and he said that if he could, he would time travel, travel back in time, to terminate fossil fuels, which is such, that is the most privileged thing Elitist, decadent thing I've ever heard.
	Because it's true, Arnold Schwarzenegger living in a zillion dollar mansion, he doesn't think about what oil and fossil fuels do.
	Fossil fuels eliminated poverty.
	Fossil fuels and free market capitalism has virtually eliminated poverty around the world.
	It has lifted so many people out of poverty.
	Fossil fuels is the magic.
	That is the magic thing that allows for industry.
	It allows for people to be mobile, to travel enormous distances virtually immediately.
	It allows for people to heat their homes, to cook their food.
	It is so essential to raising people from dire extreme poverty into a good standard of living.
	But people who are zillionaires, elitists like Al Gore or Arnold Schwarzenegger, they write all of that off.
	And imagine this.
	He says, quote, the biggest evil is fossil fuels.
	It's coal.
	It's gasoline.
	It's natural gas.
	That is the point.
	That is what they're all saying.
	Because pollution, carbon dioxide, fossil fuels are evil.
	And the reason that they have to make fossil fuels evil, and they have to pretend that, is because they want to feel morally virtuous, but they're not virtuous people.
	So they say, this is the greatest evil.
	Does anyone really believe the greatest evil is gasoline?
	If that's the greatest evil, stop using gasoline.
	I assume you use gasoline.
	I assume you get on airplanes.
	I assume you drive your car.
	I assume you take trains and turn your lights on.
	And I assume you use fossil fuels.
	If you really think it's the greatest evil, stop it.
	But of course it's not the greatest evil.
	The imagination of man's heart is evil from the beginning.
	We know that there is a natural, original sin in us.
	I don't know.
	What are some things that are more evil than gasoline?
	Murder, for one.
	Rape.
	Fraud.
	Adultery.
	Um.
	I guess that's under murder.
	What else?
	Theft, burglary, aggravated assault.
	Many things are more evil than gasoline.
	Gasoline isn't evil at all.
	I know it.
	I talk to people in Hollywood, and it becomes this bizarre obsession.
	For Hollywood types who are usually hollowed out on the inside.
	These are people who do bad things all the time.
	Their lives are a wreck.
	I mean, the secret is, especially for actors, even A-list actors, very successful actors, Most of them are miserable.
	And they're miserable because they're not working very much.
	Even if you're working all the time, you're still not working that much in the arts in Hollywood.
	And so you've got all of this free time.
	It's virtually impossible to sustain a marriage in show business, in industries that Arnold Schwarzenegger's been in.
	It's virtually impossible to act in a moral, productive, good, virtuous way.
	It just does not happen a lot.
	And so people feel this brokenness, and they feel this need to be virtuous, but they don't want to actually practice virtue, so they practice a pantomime of virtue, which is what environmentalism is.
	Environmentalism is a separate religious system.
	It's a parallel religious system to our traditional religions, like Christianity or Judaism, and it has...
	Indulgences.
	You can buy indulgences in the form of carbon tax credits.
	It has sin, original sin, which is pollution.
	It has atonement in the form of recycling or in the form of reducing your use of fossil fuels.
	It has proselytizers like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Al Gore.
	And it offers them a sense of getting off the hook for their real moral failings by pretending to act virtuously and to reject false moral failings like using gasoline.
	It's really sad to watch it, but the more that people stop paying attention to their metaphysical selves, to their souls, they're going to pay attention to these physical pantomimes of virtue, and that is the environmental movement.
	Now, if you want to look at actual virtue, if you want to look at real men practicing virtue, look no further than the funeral for George W. Bush, pardon, God forbid, not for a long time, George H.W. Bush, Bush Sr.
	He's being laid to rest.
	There was a big, beautiful funeral in the National Cathedral today.
	President Trump attended, and there was a great moment yesterday when Bob Dole, a United States Senator, 1996 GOP nominee for president, was wheeled up there, and he was going to be a great moment.
	He was And I'll just show you the video, I'll narrate it as it goes along.
	Bob Dole goes right up, he's alone in front of the casket, the American flag draped over it, and his guard physically lifts Bob Dole out of his wheelchair.
	He's so frail, and he stares at the coffin, he raises his left arm, and he salutes President Bush.
	And then he stands there and then his guard sits him back down.
	And this is such a beautiful moment.
	You might be asking, first of all, why did Bob Dole salute with his left hand?
	He saluted with his left hand because Bob Dole served in World War II with the 10th Mountain Division and he got gunned up by a German machine gun.
	In Italy, in the Appanini Mountains.
	And it got his back and it took down much of his right arm.
	I mean, just a riddle of bullets down it.
	So he had very, very limited use of his right arm.
	He was really severely injured.
	And he came back.
	They said at the time, they quote, they gave him the largest dose of morphine they dared, and they wrote M for morphine on his forehead in his own blood, so that nobody else who found him would give him a second dose of morphine, which would have killed him.
	Bob Dole, I really love this guy, even though he was sort of a moderate Republican or a liberal Republican.
	He ran in 76 for vice president with Gerald Ford.
	He ran for the presidency in 1980 against Ronald Reagan and George Bush.
	He ran again in 1988 against George Bush.
	Same guy he just saluted.
	He won the nomination finally in 96.
	He was the first presidential candidate that I really loved.
	My first campaign that I ever volunteered on was to campaign for Bob Dole in my first grade classroom.
	And I tried to convince all my friends to get their parents to vote for Bob Dole.
	He wasn't a terribly exciting candidate, and he lost ultimately to Bill Clinton.
	But he also, Bob Dole, came back around.
	He was the only GOP former nominee to endorse Donald Trump in 2016.
	Bush Sr.
	wouldn't do it.
	Bush Jr.
	wouldn't do it.
	John McCain wouldn't do it.
	Only Bob Dole came around and did it.
	And then there's Bob Dole there saluting George Bush, who himself was the youngest Navy pilot during World War II. He was shot down.
	He heroically survived.
	I bring this up to show a little episode of virtue, of duty, of loyalty, of overcoming political differences, of a genuine bond between these men.
	And just to remind you, The Democrats forced us to have President Bill Clinton over George Bush and Bob Dole, two virtuous men.
	They rejected those virtuous men twice in a row for a draft-dodging degenerate possible rapist, Bill Clinton.
	That's what happened.
	So now we talk about civility.
	We talk about restoring honor to the White House, to the Oval Office, how awful Trump is.
	Look at those two men.
	Even if you didn't love their politics, George Bush was kind of a moderate, squishy Republican, Bob Dole, same thing.
	But they were loyal Republicans, they were good guys, and they were loyal Americans who fought for their country, who were wounded for their country, and we had to deal with Bubba Clinton, who ran away like a coward to avoid the draft.
	So it was a beautiful part of the ceremony.
	Then Alan Simpson gets up there, the former GOP Senator Alan Simpson.
	I think he's about 115 years old at this point.
	He gets up there and delivers one of the best eulogies I've ever seen.
	Here are just a few clips.
	Relax, George told me I only had 10 minutes.
	He was very direct about it.
	It wasn't even funny.
	It's for our country that I fought for.
	And he was a man of such great humility.
	Those who travel the high road of humility in Washington DC are not bothered by heavy traffic.
	He never hated anyone.
	He knew what his mother and my mother always knew.
	Hatred corrodes the container it's carried in.
	Such powerful words and such a powerful eulogy that touches on so many points.
	What I really loved about Alan Simpson's eulogy here It was delivered with strength and with balance and with humor and with seriousness and with sincerity and with earnestness.
	It really took the life of George Bush and it really took a view of life and a life well lived that we could all learn from.
	It had these, first of all, hatred corrodes the container it is carried in.
	Such A true statement that we have to remember is people, I can't believe it when I go to these campuses or I look on Twitter or something, how vitriolic and angry and nasty and mean people can be.
	And look, I love owning the libs.
	I love taking the fight to the left wing and pushing really hard and never giving back and punching right back and not being a squish.
	I love all of that.
	You've got to do it with a bit of humor.
	If you are getting angry all the time and irritated and you hate people and you're doing politics wrong, get out of politics.
	Do something else.
	This is not the place for you then, if you're going to really hate people and get so riled up all the time.
	And the reason for that is not because the other guy doesn't deserve it.
	There are plenty of people who deserve our scorn and our derision and our anger and our righteous anger.
	The reason not to become filled with hatred is because hatred hurts you.
	It corrodes you.
	It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth.
	Sometimes you say things that can't be unsaid, and it's so vile and corrosive to what you are.
	And that's why Alan Simpson...
	Rejected it, and George Bush too.
	George Bush and plenty of others.
	Something really we could learn from.
	But even the view of this, Alan Simpson, I guess, in 2012, George Bush, they had been friends for decades and decades.
	I think they'd been friends since the 60s.
	And George Bush thought he might be dying in 2012.
	And the Bush family asked Alan Simpson to give the eulogy.
	And that was when they said to him, all right, Alan, you only get 10 minutes.
	Not more than 10 minutes, so keep it short.
	But apparently at that same time, Bush said, I want you to cry when you write the eulogy so that you don't cry while you say the eulogy.
	Very important advice.
	I see this in, I've given eulogies, I've given best man toasts.
	I think we've all given some version of these things that we have to say in public at events, either joyful events or bittersweet events or sad events.
	They're very tricky things to write.
	They're much trickier than giving a podcast or a lecture or something like that because they have to take a bigger view, a broader view of the human life.
	And a lot of times I've seen eulogies where people are weeping and sobbing and they're angry and they're cursing or you can tell that they want to be cursing.
	And this isn't right.
	What Alan Simpson is showing us is that George Bush lived a life well.
	He did what he came here to do.
	He served others.
	He served his country.
	He was dignified when his country threw him out of office.
	He was always graceful, always tactful, and he lived to be 94.
	There's nothing to be angry and sad about.
	We were talking a little while ago, a few days ago, about how confused we all are about death these days.
	We're trying to cure death in Silicon Valley and do anything we can to extend life even one moment further.
	We're so afraid of natural death.
	I don't think George Bush was afraid of natural death.
	I think George Bush looked forward to seeing his wife and daughter again.
	His daughter Robin, who died decades and decades ago.
	I think he was looking forward to it.
	Not that he was despondent, not that he was despairing that he wanted to kill himself, but he was ready to go meet his maker to his home in eternity, to have his just reward for a life well lived.
	And the trouble with a country that is increasingly atheistic, It's a country that increasingly is full of despair.
	We see this reflected in drug addiction and we see this reflected in suicides, both of which are surging beyond the imagination.
	That's what happens in a country without hope, with despair.
	But there is hope.
	And you can see it when you die in a life well lived, in a life where you have hope in heaven and in your savior.
	Then you get to go somewhere else.
	I remember when those Dallas police officers were killed a few years ago.
	There was an attack on Dallas police officers.
	George Bush went there and he was singing along.
	He was swaying to, I think it was the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
	Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
	His truth is marching on.
	And George Bush is kind of happy.
	And they said this was inappropriate that he was happy at a funeral.
	But he was happy because he believed it.
	He believed that the glory of the Lord was there and the truth was there and the truth goes marching on.
	And we should believe it too.
	It certainly seems George Bush did and Alan Simpson did.
	Kept that balance of the human life.
	And we should always try to keep that balance in times of great celebration and in times of bittersweet, even sadness, while we say goodbye to somebody.
	Really well done.
	We could all learn a lot from those guys.
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	So, really beautiful eulogies all around.
	George W. Bush, George Bush's son, former president, also gave a beautiful eulogy as well.
	So, that's the right note.
	That's the right note to hit during all of these funerals.
	How about the wrong note?
	Who could take a dignified, beautiful expression coming together in a little bit of grief, but in a happiness and joy at a life well lived and a guy who served his country?
	The Clintons, of course.
	Watch as the Clintons snub President Trump while he sits down to the funeral.
	There he is.
	He sits down.
	He shakes hands with Barack Obama, shakes hands with Michelle Obama.
	President Trump shaking the hands of the Obamas.
	The Clintons did not acknowledge President Trump.
	They won't even acknowledge him.
	Hillary there looking even colder than usual, which I think makes her about zero degrees Kelvin at that point.
	I think that basically is what stops time and space entirely.
	It's as cold as the universe will tolerate.
	And then there's Bill next to her who won't even look at him, which is really hard, I think, for Bill Clinton, because Bill Clinton's whole persona is just being a really nice guy.
	Hey there.
	Hey, pass me that cigar.
	Don't worry what I'm going to...
	Yeah, so Bill is sitting there.
	Even he won't turn and acknowledge Donald Trump.
	That's fine.
	We're told by Democrats and by squishy Republicans, we want the good old days.
	We want to, you know, fight with our opponents and then go get drinks with them at 6 p.m.
	We want civility.
	Okay.
	Then lead.
	Then lead on it.
	There's Donald Trump trying to be civil.
	Have you heard what the Obamas have been saying about Donald Trump recently?
	They've been calling him awful, racist, bigoted, terrible person.
	He goes there and shakes their hand and they politely acknowledge him and shake his hand as well.
	Not the Clintons.
	They can't do it because they believe in nothing other than themselves.
	They are just a shameless, solipsistic, egotistical black hole of civility.
	And that's them.
	That's who the Democrats nominated in 2016, nearly nominated in 2008.
	They need to lead, but they won't do it.
	We've got a lot more to get to.
	We've got to get to how this breakdown in civility between the left and the right is leading to bad sex and to new dating apps.
	We also need to say goodbye to a Never Trump magazine, which looks like it's going under.
	We'll try to analyze why that is.
	But if you are on dailywire.com, thank you much.
	You keep the lights on.
	If you are not, then go over to dailywire.com.
	How much is it?
	Ten bucks a month.
	$100 for an annual membership.
	You get me.
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	You get to ask questions in the mailbag.
	That's coming up tomorrow, so get your questions in.
	You get to ask questions in the conversation, in the backstage, and you get another kingdom.
	I mean, you get all of this great stuff.
	But this, this is what you need.
	You need the leftist tears tumbler.
	There is a new study out.
	It says that young Republicans are having more sex than young Democrats.
	This is leading to new dating apps.
	This is leading to the next story that we'll talk about.
	But just that, can you imagine the tears that must be provoked by that simple tears?
	Terrible, sad fact for the left.
	Get your Leftist Tears Tumblr before it's too late.
	And it's the only way to safely enjoy those leftist tears.
	Be safe.
	Be safe about it.
	You don't want to catch any diseases.
	Be very safe about enjoying those sad leftist tears.
	Go to dailywire.com.
	We'll be right back.
	Before we get to why the left is having bad sex, we need to say adieu, probably, to a conservative magazine which has taken a very negative, to a conservative magazine which has taken a very negative, anti, never Trump stance, The Weekly Standard.
	The Weekly Standard, this is Bill Kristol's magazine.
	There was a major report that came out today.
	It's been around for a long time.
	It's really one of the pillars of conservative commentary, and it looks like it is going out of business.
	This is all about Donald Trump.
	This is 100% about Donald Trump.
	The Weekly Standard went to war with Donald Trump, and Donald Trump won.
	I should preface this and say I like Bill Kristol personally.
	Bill Kristol was the guy who founded it and editor-at-large.
	I really like him personally.
	He was a professor of mine at a fellowship that I once did.
	He's helped me out on certain political campaigns.
	I think he's an intelligent guy.
	I listen to his podcast, Conversations with Bill Kristol.
	It's one of my favorite podcasts.
	He made a huge mistake on Donald Trump.
	He made a huge mistake and the magazine made a huge mistake and now the magazine is paying for it.
	And what they're specifically paying for is not making the mistake, it's doubling down on it.
	It's not acknowledging their mistake and it's having the readership question their judgment.
	That is exactly what's happening.
	To be fair, there's a broader trend that's going on right now in certain online magazines.
	Vice Media, Vox.com, BuzzFeed.
	You notice a trend line here.
	They're all left-wing outlets.
	And the Weekly Standard has taken, it was a right-wing outlet, and then it took this very negative anti-Trump stance.
	Now it looks like the Weekly Standard is joining them, and it might not just be that they're cutting staff, it might be that they're truly going under.
	The Weekly Standard, for those who don't remember it, was founded in 1995, strongly supportive of the Bush administration, and then a strong opponent of the Trump administration.
	The Weekly Standard says it's not going out because of dwindling subscribers.
	They say there are more nefarious forces at work.
	It's hard to believe that.
	I just even look at the...
	Attitudes of my own conservative friends and myself.
	The people I know who are conservatives, who are constantly devouring this stuff, don't read the Weekly Standard anymore.
	And it's because of the judgment.
	It's because we're questioning their judgment.
	It's not just that one or two of the editors hate Donald Trump and point out all the flaws in Donald Trump's character and administration.
	That's fine.
	I read a lot of It's okay to get that wrong.
	What's not okay is not to admit that you got it wrong.
	And it took them in these crazy directions.
	Jonathan Last, writing in the Weekly Standard, implied that Brett Kavanaugh was, quote, a Supreme Court justice of questionable moral worth.
	He implied that in the Weekly...
	Does anyone on the left or the right...
	Really believe that Brett Kavanaugh is some moral degenerate?
	No, of course not.
	There was a totally contrived attack against him with no evidence whatsoever, and Kavanaugh fought it off and he won.
	But some people became so crazed by their opposition to Donald Trump, Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, that they would even attack a guy like Brett Kavanaugh.
	Brett Kavanaugh, staff secretary to President Bush, a federal judge for a dozen years.
	If he's such a moral degenerate, why didn't you voice that you're...
	Feelings on that a little sooner.
	He was an assistant to Ken Starr during the Starr investigation.
	It's not like this is some new guy, but they really did this.
	What to take away?
	I don't want to beat up on the weekly standard because I do like the people there, even though they've made an error in judgment.
	What this really is, is a warning to other magazines and other commentary outlets.
	In politics, it's very easy to get things wrong.
	People always get things wrong.
	You know, it's like on sports predictions.
	You go and you watch a bunch of sports analysts, and they make all of these predictions about what's going to happen in the football game, and then none of them happen, and then they're all on TV the next day making more predictions.
	That's fine.
	I get it.
	You just have to, at a certain point, Correct your predictions to adhere with reality.
	Because if you get to a place where everything that you're describing is only true hypothetically, or is only true theoretically, or is neglectful of reality, people are not going to tune in.
	They're not going to pay attention anymore.
	Unfortunately, it seems what's going on at the Weekly Standard, and I hope that other outlets on the right don't fall into that same trap.
	It's okay to be wrong.
	Don't worry.
	When you say that the conservatives fall into this too, because conservatives sometimes fall into pessimism, if you say that the whole world is going to go to hell in a handbasket, and then things actually turn out pretty well for the time being...
	That's a cause for celebration.
	It's okay to celebrate the fact that you were wrong.
	I hope people do this.
	And all of those people, all of those despondent right wingers, I've got even more good news for you.
	You can now get laid.
	This is very good news.
	There is a new dating app just for right-wingers.
	It's called Writer.
	It's an online dating app started by Christy Edwards Lawton.
	And this app is only for right-wingers, only for people supportive of right-wing politics.
	And if a leftist tries to join, the app will sue you.
	Yeah.
	To make sure that the lefties stay off.
	And it encourages really good behavior.
	Apparently, if you're on this app and you go out on a date and the man doesn't pay for the first date, you can report the guy.
	And then there will be consequences for him.
	Because they don't want squishy, vegan, you know, herbivore men to go and say that they want to go Dutch on their first date.
	The man's got to pay because this is a right-wing app.
	That's a beautiful thing.
	Now, Why does this app need to exist?
	I should point out that I'm saying that right-wingers can now get laid.
	That's a cause for celebration.
	Republicans are already having sex at a much higher rate than Democrats.
	This was shown in a survey by Skin Condoms Millennial Sex Survey.
	77% of young Republicans are apparently having sex at least once per week.
	That is compared to 68% of Democrats.
	So sad.
	Too bad for you guys.
	It's a lot of fun.
	This is what happens when you're angry all the time and you deny that the sexual difference exists and you say that baby it's cold outside is rapey and you say that men can't ever kiss women.
	This is the logical consequence, guys.
	Maybe you should think about this before you allow yourself to buy these absurd left-wing lines.
	But why does there need to be an exclusively right-wing dating app?
	The reason isn't that right-wingers only want to date right-wingers.
	That's not the reason at all.
	The reason is that Democrats won't date right-wingers.
	This is borne out by a number of surveys.
	According to one recent survey, 82% of Democrats said that they would not date a Republican.
	82%, vast majority.
	That's compared to just 43% of Republicans who said that they would not date a Democrat.
	So about half as many Republicans say they wouldn't date a Democrat as Democrats say they wouldn't date a Republican.
	And we know this too because on the other dating apps, Tinder, Grindr, that's the gay one, Bumble is the other one.
	I hear about all of these.
	Unfortunately, well maybe fortunately, I missed online dating.
	I was already dating by the time online dating really came around, so I didn't ever have to deal with all of this.
	But apparently in online dating apps, the majority of Republicans hide their political affiliation.
	So if it's asked on OkCupid or whatever what your political views are, they hide it.
	Because they know that Democrats won't date them.
	57% of Republicans hide their party.
	18% of Democrats hide their party.
	And the reason for this is because Democrats own the culture.
	The left wing owns the culture.
	The culture makes it socially unacceptable to be a conservative.
	So if you are a conservative, you could lose your job.
	You could lose your reputation.
	You could lose your girlfriend.
	You could lose a lot of social standing.
	So they have to hide it.
	The other reason is that conservatives have other things to talk about than politics.
	On their first date, they might talk about anything from the weather to sports to religion to how good the soup is to whatever, another round of drinks or something.
	But because for the left, politics is religion and therefore it is culture and therefore politics dominates so much of the social space, it really matters to them.
	We know this from another number of surveys over the last few years.
	The left is much more likely to unfriend right-wingers on social media than right-wingers are to unfriend left-wingers.
	So this makes it very difficult for conservatives to get along in the dating apps.
	This is a great thing.
	I think they're going to have a fun time.
	And it raises this question.
	Would you date a Democrat if you're a Republican?
	Or if you're a Democrat, would you date a Republican?
	And my answer is yes, for sure.
	Of course I would.
	And it's because, one, I don't need to lead with politics.
	I mean, my politics stem from the way I see the world and my culture and my reason and my premises about metaphysics and what the world is for and what our lives are for.
	My politics does come from that.
	But we can talk about other things.
	I understand why Democrats think what they think.
	So broadly speaking, I don't want to sound like I'm being prideful or something.
	I think basically I understand why some left-wingers support abortion or support high taxes or want socialist health care.
	I think I basically get their arguments.
	But as John Haidt pointed out in his work a number of years ago, The left broadly doesn't understand conservatives.
	So they don't really understand where we're coming from.
	So if you say, if we were on a date and some Democrat says, well, I'm a Democrat, I might laugh.
	I might think, okay, that's cute.
	We'll talk for a few weeks and then we'll see if you're still a Democrat.
	Have another drink.
	Yeah, let's talk about the basis of your ideas.
	And it would be interesting.
	And by the way...
	If some girl doesn't change her ideas, that's fine.
	We can learn from each other.
	We can have diversity of thought.
	We know that conservatives appreciate diversity of thought much more.
	But the same is not true of the left.
	So unfortunately now we've got to totally segregate ourselves by politics.
	It's really shallow because it does make an idol of politics.
	I think the app is a good idea.
	I think it's a good idea because...
	The left has made us do it.
	It's sort of like in war.
	If you say, well, I'm opposed to war.
	I'm not going to ever go to war.
	And then some other nation declares war on you.
	The other nation has a say, too.
	You're not the only one who gets to decide if you're at war.
	The other nation has a say, too.
	And so Republicans and conservatives can say, well, I want to date people on the other side of the aisle.
	But if the other side of the aisle says they won't date you, then they have a say in that, too.
	It's not just about what you want.
	It's about what they want.
	So it seems like a good app, but it seems like a bad sign for our culture.
	And maybe in the spirit of the season, of unity, of coming together, go out and date a Democrat.
	Go see if you can.
	Spread a little romantic joy this holiday season.
	Let me know how it works out.
	If not, you've always got writer there to go, and you can swipe right, right, right, right some more.
	Alright, that's our show.
	We've got a lot more to get to, but too late.
	Too bad.
	Put your mailbag questions in the mailbag so that we can answer them tomorrow.
	In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	I'll see you tomorrow.
	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.
	Hey everybody, I'm Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
	Come over today, we'll be talking about the FBI collusion investigation, the Me Too movement, the Khashoggi incident, how it all revolves around one thing, the corrupting influence of power on the left.

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