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Jan. 10, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
47:21
Ep. 278 - Alternative Fact-Checking

It’s a fact that fact-checkers have no idea what a fact really is. We analyze the history not merely of fact-checking but of facts themselves. Then, the APA deems masculinity harmful, Starbucks needs to install needle disposals in their bathrooms, and finally the Mailbag! Date: 01-10-19 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's a fact that fact-checkers are checking facts.
It's also a fact that these fact-checkers have no idea what a fact really is.
We will analyze the history, not merely of fact-checking, but of facts themselves.
Then, the APA deems masculinity harmful, Starbucks needs to install needle disposals in their bathrooms, and finally, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
The left has now decayed so much that it doesn't even understand what a fact is.
We will get to that in a second, but first, let me tell you one fact that is totally incontrovertible.
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There may be nothing more irksome to me in our very shallow modern political dialogue than the phrase fact-checking.
Fact-checking is this phrase that has come about.
It's exploded in the last five or ten years.
It is used largely, if not exclusively, by the left.
And I can't tell if they're being obtuse or if they're ignorant.
I guess it's not When it comes to the left, that's not mutually exclusive.
But they actually don't know what a fact is.
You saw the fact-checking explode during President Trump's speech the other night from the Oval Office.
Let's just look at...
Every left-wing outlet did a fact-check.
Then you have to fact-check the fact-checkers and fact, fact, fact, fact, fact.
Let's just look at one of the fact-checkers, John King, on CNN. Just to exemplify...
How wrong even the premise of fact-checking is.
Did he get it done?
He created a sense of crisis and urgency along the way.
He also created a lot of business for the fact-check machines.
The president says a wall will stop the drugs, the heroin, the fentanyl, the other opioids.
Most of the drugs, his own government says, come in through legal points of entry where there's commerce, where there's crossing.
A wall will not block the legal points of entry.
The president said again, the New Mexico Free Trade Agreement will indirectly pay for the wall.
It's not how it works.
Money created trade deficits, trade surplus, doesn't go to the United States Treasury for free spending on other programs.
The President also said this is powerful when he talks about these heinous, unacceptable, reprehensible crimes, murders, assaults committed by people illegally in this country.
No question, they're heinous and reprehensible, but the statistics show you That the crime rate among immigrants is actually lower than the crime rate among non-immigrants.
So that's cherry-picking and seizing and trying to create an emotional response.
He also talked about the economic impact.
They're taking jobs from especially African Americans and Latinos.
A lot of American corporations would tell you right now they can't find workers.
They're desperate for workers, in part because of a strong economy this president should be claiming credit for.
Boom!
Boom!
You see those fact checks?
Now, I know John King was speaking in his news presenter voice, and he was on television, so it sounds like what he's saying should be true, but it wasn't.
It isn't true.
No fact that he mentioned in that diatribe contradicts any of the facts that President Trump mentioned in his speech.
Just to go through what John King said, he said that a wall wouldn't stop the He says that a wall would not This is not true.
He cites the drug enforcement agencies of the federal government.
The Drug Enforcement Agency has also said that subterranean tunnels are a major route of illegal drugs into the country.
President Trump's proposal for the wall includes digging that wall six feet down to cut off some of those tunnels.
To say nothing of the fact that if you have this giant border along the wall, it's going to be much easier to police where those tunnels are cropping up, where people are showing up, than if people are just willy-nilly running across unpoliced border.
So that one just isn't true.
How about he says, boom, fact check, better trade agreements with Mexico are not going to help Americans pay for the wall because the federal government doesn't get all of that money.
Well, yes and no.
And actually, when you've got a more robust economy, then you've got a greater number of tax receipts going to the government.
So tax receipts to the government increases dramatically because people are making more money.
They're paying more taxes on all of that money.
So in that sense, the government does get more taxes.
Also, how is Mexico going to pay for the wall?
Let's say that American taxpayers do have to pay for the wall.
Let's say that these new trade agreements do help the economy, but they don't really offset it with tax receipts to the government.
Well, Americans have greater wealth as a result of that robust economy and better trade deals.
So money is fungible, right?
Either the money is coming from the federal government or state government or it's coming out of your own pocket.
But either way, if you are getting more money, then in a certain sense, Mexico is paying for the wall or part of the wall or whatever.
So his fact there, also not true.
And then finally, this idea that illegal aliens don't commit crime.
They commit crime at a much lower rate than native-born citizens.
This isn't true.
This might be true in certain state crimes or local crimes, but we know that illegal aliens are two and a half times as likely as non-illegal aliens, as legal residents and citizens, to commit federal crimes.
Now, you could say federal crimes don't make up even a large percentage of all crimes.
Okay, that's fine.
How about on the economy?
On the economy, we know that illegal immigration hurts low-skilled American workers.
President Trump says this in particular affects black Americans.
This in particular affects some illegal immigrants from Latin America.
That is true.
That is undeniable.
Illegal immigration floods the country largely with low-skilled immigrants.
Who does this hurt?
Low-skilled Americans.
For instance, these are just estimates from various think tanks.
7.4 million illegal alien workers competing with the 43 million other low-skilled workers in America.
Call it about an even 50 million low-skilled workers in America.
Well, of those low-skilled workers, black workers account for 5.6 million.
And black workers have the highest unemployment rates of that whole $50 million pie.
higher unemployment rates than illegal aliens in the same arena.
This simply makes sense.
The fact that black Americans are more likely than other demographics to be low-skilled workers means that when you flood the labor market with other low-skilled workers, they are going to be disproportionately affected.
You can't argue with that.
That's simple economics.
So there's the fact check, there's the facts, the fact check, and then the fact check of the fact check.
What does a fact check mean?
Because I'm not just taking issue with John King.
I'm not just taking issue with fact checkers at CNN and the Washington Post and all these other left-wing outlets.
I'm taking issue.
The problem, essentially, is with the idea of fact checking itself.
On yesterday's show, we defended alternative facts.
Because the left has misconstrued alternative facts to mean untruths or the opposite of true things.
In reality, what Kellyanne Conway very clearly said when she was talking about alternative facts is that the left presents one narrative and a small set of facts, and then alternative facts, which are also true, will give greater context and put the whole event into a different light, and it will likely contradict the left-wing narrative.
Where did this idea of fact-checking in the public media come about?
Factcheck.org was founded around 2003.
Snopes is a famous fact-checker.
It was actually founded a little earlier in 1994, but it was originally just to debunk urban legends.
It wasn't primarily political at all.
It only really got political around 2003, actually around the same time as Factcheck.org.
The Washington Post created its public fact checker in 2007.
So what's going on?
This is all happening around the same time.
It's not as though public fact checking has been around as long as journalism has been around.
It's a relatively new phenomenon.
Now, fact checking as an editorial job has been around forever.
When a reporter turns in a story, it's usually an editor's job, or some editor's job, to fact check it.
Say, oh no, you got this number wrong, you got this number wrong.
When you write a book, I don't know about writing books, but I know about publishing books.
When you write a book, you hand it in to the publisher and then they'll have fact checkers go through and make sure that everything is right.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about this public fact checking.
John King going on CNN. The Washington Post publishing a fact checking column.
It all began around this time, the mid-2000s.
It's gotten much wider in recent years.
The fundamental point here is that fact checkers do not check facts, but they give leftist opinion and they call it fact checking.
Most fact checking that we see from John King on CNN to the Washington Post or whatever is actually an op-ed column, usually from the leftist point of view, that is trying to pretend that it's not presenting a political or partisan point of view.
So it calls itself objective and neutral and fact checking.
Where does this come from?
It's actually not just CNN's fault.
It's not just even the left's fault.
It's a problem of modernity.
It's a problem of our modern culture.
Our conception of a fact, what a fact is, has become absurd.
So you hear this dichotomy all the time.
Look, you're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts.
Which is a meaningless statement.
It doesn't mean anything.
Because an opinion is the facts as somebody sees them.
So when I give my opinion, I am stating the facts From my point of view, from my perception, an opinion is not the same as a preference.
For instance, salty leftist tears are my favorite drink.
I really, really like salty leftist tears.
I really like salty leftist tears is my preference.
Some people might not like salty leftist tears.
They must be insane if they don't because they're so tasty and yummy, but that's my preference.
Now, if I were to say leftist tears are very, very salty and delicious, That's a statement of fact, and it's my opinion, because that's what an opinion is.
What does the word fact mean?
The word fact, F-A-C-T, means something done.
I guess that would be one way to describe the etymology of it.
It comes from the Latin, facere, and the past tense of that would be, in Latin it would be factum, in Italian it would be fatto, in Spanish it's hecho, in French it's fe, you see before or after the fact.
A fact is discreet, it's concrete, it's something done.
The reason that we are so confused over what a fact is in our modern society comes out of the Enlightenment.
It comes out of David Hume in particular, who gave us something called the fact-value distinction.
The fact-value distinction is to say that you can't derive an ought from an is.
So I can't say, this is a tumbler of salty, delicious, leftist tears...
Therefore, I should drink it.
That's what David Hume would say.
He's obviously wrong.
If you see a tumbler of salty, delicious leftist tears, you have to drink it.
How could you resist?
You wouldn't be human if you could resist it.
That's where that idea comes from, the fact-value distinction.
So what the left wants to say with all of their fact-checking is, look, I'm not saying you should do this or you should do that or this is what I like or don't like or this is good or this is bad or this is my opinion.
All I'm saying is this is what it is.
And then conveniently, for these left-wing fact-checkers, when they just call it like it is, the world is what it is, it always defends their narrative.
One person who, in modern times, has pushed back against this concept is Alistair McIntyre.
He wrote a book that was going around the Daily Wire.
I think all of our shows, we've talked about it before.
He pointed out that this idea of the fact-value distinction is fairly new.
So...
And obviously there are counterexamples to it.
So, for instance, if the idea is you can't derive something that you should do, you can't derive an ought from an is, what about the sentence, quote, he is a sea captain, he ought to do, therefore, whatever a sea captain ought to do.
And that's kind of a silly example, but it's a real example.
It shows that you can derive evaluative conclusions from factual premises.
If I say, another McIntyre example, if I say, this watch can't keep time, this watch is really, really heavy, I would never say that about my movement watch because my movement watch is one of the greatest watches ever made.
But if I were to say that hypothetically, then you could conclude it's not a good watch.
You can draw an evaluative conclusion from a factual premise.
Now, to bring this into real politics, the politics we're talking about today, if I observe a few facts, drugs are pouring over our southern border with Mexico.
show.
60-80% of women and girls who cross that border illegally are raped.
Human beings are trafficked over that border.
Our political regime is being compromised.
Our democratic republic is being compromised because illegal aliens are being counted for population and representation in the House of Representatives.
We have laws on the books that say that you can't enter this country illegally.
I can draw from those factual observations the evaluative conclusion that perhaps we should build a wall along that border.
I can draw that conclusion.
I'm telling you the facts.
I'm stating the facts.
Now, the Democrats will tell you, therefore, we shouldn't build a wall.
They'll try to draw different evaluative conclusions, but it's from this mistaken idea of a fact.
Just to use the border example, let's look at a clear one.
The border patrol chief under Barack Obama, who actually was replaced by President Trump, he was on Tucker Carlson explaining the rationale for the border.
Joining us tonight is Mark Morgan.
He's the former head of the Border Patrol under Barack Obama.
He was then replaced by the Trump administration.
And we're glad to talk to him again for the second time this week.
Mr.
Morgan, thanks a lot for coming back.
When you hear the term manufactured crisis from politicians and their lackeys in the press, what's your response?
My response is that those people that are saying that, anybody that says that, Tucker, is misinformed and they're misleading the American people.
So before I was even Chief of the Border Patrol, I served in the FBI for two decades.
One of my assignments is I led the El Paso office.
From my office, right on the border, I could see Juarez.
Every single day, Tucker, we worked with the DEA and all components of DHS, and we worked human trafficking cases, we worked drug cases, and we worked gang cases, all impacting the southern border.
And then as chief, every single day, Tucker, I was briefed every single day about the men and women who are risking their lives every day, and they're apprehending murderers, rapists, pedophiles, other violent offenders and gang members.
That's not manufactured.
That is real, and that's a fact, and it's still happening today.
That is real and that is a fact.
He is talking about facts.
He's talking about how many people were apprehending, what people are coming over that border, what they're bringing over that border.
Those are facts.
A fact is a thing that's been done.
That's a fact.
Now usually, when we're talking about fact-checking and fact-checkers, we're not arguing over facts.
I guess sometimes we are.
Sometimes left-wingers just want to put their head in the sand and close their ears and close their eyes and say, la, la, la, la, la.
So they'll say, no, we don't have people coming over the border illegally.
We're not compromising our electoral system.
There aren't drugs coming.
Maybe they say that.
But I think that's the fringe.
I think most left-wingers will tell you, yes, people are crossing the border, but they should cross the border.
Yes, there are millions and millions of people crossing the border, but that's a good thing.
Yes, we don't really have solid borders right now as a nation, but we shouldn't have solid borders as a nation.
They're not arguing over what the facts are.
They're arguing over the meaning of facts, which makes perfect sense.
Again, this is another one of these errors that we are now grappling with in our modern politics that comes out of the enlightenment, that comes out of the fact-value distinction.
Maybe it's possible It is entirely possible, I guess, that the left just doesn't understand this.
The left, because it has such shallow thinking when it comes to philosophy and politics and history, maybe they don't quite get this.
But if they don't, then listen up, guys.
I hope you're watching.
We're arguing over the meaning of facts.
We're arguing over the meaning of things.
This is why conservatives should always talk about the culture.
We talked yesterday about the different reactions to President Trump's Oval Office address.
And we said the people who are usually Trump critics...
Maybe they were never Trump.
They're the fiscal first conservatives, I would call them.
They just want to talk about dollars and cents.
They think the speech should have been about how the border is not that expensive and it's not that big a deal.
And come on, guys, let's not worry about it.
And then the people who really liked the speech, such as myself, or maybe the people who wrote the speech or whoever, they're the cultural conservatives.
They're the ones who say, go for the gore, go for the graphics, go for the moral arguments, go for the emotion, go for the faces of the victims of people of these awful crimes.
The reason we have to make those stands is because we're not arguing over the facts.
Nobody really is arguing over whether the wall will cost X billion dollars or X plus three billion dollars.
Nobody cares about that.
That's bean counting.
What we care about is not the facts, but what the facts imply, what they mean, the meanings that they carry.
So, for instance, if the sort of fiscal first conservatives or the conciliatory conservatives want to say, look, let's just talk about what we, Forget about the things we're disagreeing on.
Forget about these graphic, gruesome, grotesque images.
Let's just talk about what we can agree on.
Five billion dollars isn't that much money.
When you talk about only what we can agree on, you've lost the argument because the left has a much narrower view of politics than we do.
If we come in and say, okay, we're going to accept all of the left's premises and we're going to argue with them over the conclusions, we've already lost.
We can't accept those premises.
That is a recipe for losing.
You know, facts have...
I guess there are physical facts.
We're talking about physical facts like a thousand illegal aliens a day at least crossing the border on average.
And you can talk about metaphysical facts, the metaphysical facts of laws, the metaphysical facts of the moral laws, the metaphysical facts that govern our politics.
Those are facts as well.
And when you're talking about the meaning of them, what that implies, it might be less comfortable.
It might be less clean cut.
You know, you can't really do it in a soundbite.
You can't do it in a CNN Don King soundbite or John King or whatever his name is.
Is Don King the boxing guy with the crazy hair?
I would prefer if we did it with Don King, actually.
CNN, if any of the executives are watching, that's my recommendation for your hiring.
But you can't do it with that.
You can't do that with a little chart or a Vox.com article that says, boom, fact-checked.
Because we're not talking about things that happened or things that didn't happen most of the time.
What we're talking about is the meaning of those things.
And when you talk about the meaning of those things, you need a more sophisticated moral dialogue.
You need to look past these shallow little premises of our very highly modern and rationalist politics, and you need to talk a little bit more deeply.
The border really brings this one up.
When it comes to the border, I think a lot of people think, well...
You know, nobody really wants all amnesty.
Nobody really wants open borders.
Nobody really wants these things.
Yes, I agree.
I agree.
Probably in reality, the vast majority of people don't want open borders and people flooding our country.
Public opinion polls show that too.
But...
We've got to then be able to talk in a more nuanced way, a more sophisticated way.
You can't just talk about numbers and dollars and cents and say, boom, fact checked.
That isn't how an advanced society works.
That isn't how civilized society works.
An even clearer example of this is abortion.
You see the problem of the fact-value distinction in the abortion argument.
You'll say, hey, maybe we shouldn't kill all those unborn babies.
And then the left will say, an unborn baby is a fetus.
And that's a fact.
That's just a scientific fact.
It's a fetus, or it's an embryo, or it's a blastula, or it's a zygote.
And they're using all these made-up words that refer to various things and that people who have categorized human life at various stages have arbitrarily chosen.
They will say those things, but you're not actually getting to the meaning of the fact.
The fact is the human person.
From the moment of conception, through the phase that they call zygote, through the phase that they call blastula or whatever, through the glioblast, I don't know what they call, to the phrase that they call embryo, to fetus, to baby, to toddler, to child, to adult.
The question is the human person.
And if you want to talk about that person, you have to get past these petty little shallow understandings of what a fact is.
And you have to realize that that human person, whether you call it a zygote or whether you call it a bratty teenager, has a certain meaning.
It has a certain import that we have to deal with.
And you're not going to deal with that with Don King or John King or any King on CNN.
It's an empty slogan.
I mean, I guess that's really what we have to remember here.
Fact-checking is an empty slogan.
And one example of this, it just came out in the American Psychological Association.
The APA has decided that traditional masculinity, as opposed to that newfangled masculinity, I don't know what that is.
I think that's femininity.
I think the new masculinity is femininity, but the traditional masculinity, which is masculinity, that's harmful.
This is what they say.
They say, quote, The main thrust of subsequent research is that traditional masculinity, marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression, is, on the whole, harmful.
Masculinity ideology, whatever that is, is defined by the APA as a particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including antifemininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.
Now, just as, again, a point of language, we've got to be really clear about our language because when we're not clear, the left perverts language and totally wins the culture and totally wins politics.
If something is true for virtually all of human history across civilizations, as the APA is saying this definition of masculinity is, then by definition it's not an ideology.
It's not a formalized, rationalized abridgment of some tradition.
It's the tradition itself.
So they're using that word incorrectly to make it seem like this random, arbitrary thing that popped up.
Masculinity is not a random, arbitrary thing.
There were downsides to masculinity, over-aggressiveness, whatever.
There are many upsides.
Masculinity is pretty beneficial, I think, to nations at war.
If someone declares war on your nation, I think you would hope that you've got masculine men in that nation.
If you're being victimized by a criminal, perhaps you would hope that a masculine man will come up and protect you.
Perhaps you would hope that you're masculine enough yourself to defend yourself.
Also, people dealing with the realities of life.
And this is the one that we can all get.
We're not all going to find ourselves in a back alley getting jumped, but we all will deal with the realities of life.
And the realities of life require a little bit of grit, a little bit of fortitude, a little bit, you might say, of masculinity.
And this is an example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
What is really harmful What's actually harmful is sending out, as we're seeing now as a generational problem, weak little buttercups into the world and then watching them crumble.
And we are watching them crumble.
I'm not being hyperbolic.
Rates of depression, anxiety, stress among millennials and younger are through the roof.
Teen suicide is up 70%.
Prescription depression drugs are way up.
This is because you have depression.
An entire generation, now I guess two generations, that has been told that weakness is a virtue and that strength is a vice.
And so when they go out and they meet the realities of life, which are very difficult, even if we had the wonderful, most well-behaved society, people would get sick and die.
Unfair things would happen.
And by the way, we don't have the perfect, totally fair society, so there are going to be more hardships than that.
It's no benefit to anybody to tell people to be weak.
And the APA, in just talking about the facts, in just talking about the science, is forming conclusions that are absurd.
They are writing left-wing op-eds, which I'm not surprised.
I mean, they are conveying a leftist political narrative and pretending that it is science.
It is exactly the same thing that John King is doing on CNN or The Washington Post is doing or all of those other left-wing news outlets.
Unfortunately, this has affected not just psychology, but much of our academic establishment, and it's not true.
We have to point out to them that those facts aren't facts.
It's their interpretation of the facts.
It's their narrative of the meaning of the facts.
And what we need to do is present to them something different.
You might say we need to present to them alternative facts, and we need to present to them an alternative interpretation of the facts.
We've got a lot more to get to, but we don't have time, so we're going to cut right to the mailbag.
But first, but first, go over to dailywire.com.
Why?
What do you get?
What don't you get at this point?
You get me.
You get the Andrew Klavan show.
You get the Ben Shapiro show.
You get the Matt Walsh show.
You get to ask questions in the mailbag coming up.
You get to ask questions in Backstage.
You get to watch Another Kingdom.
You get everything.
You get everything.
But most importantly, you get this.
The Leftist Tears Tumblr.
And let me tell you something.
There's no alternative to the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
This is a fact.
You can derive an ought from this fact, which is you ought to drink those salty, delicious Leftist Tears.
Otherwise, you're going to drown.
You don't want that to happen.
Go over there right now, $9.99 a month, $100 for an annual membership.
You get all of that and so much more.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back with the mailbag.
All right, let's cut right to the mailbag.
I had so many more stories to talk about, but look, the clock says what the clock says.
That's just a fact, okay?
We're just talking about the facts.
First question from Aslan.
Michael, why do you think that the right is superior in the meme war?
Is it our ability to take a joke, or is it the total failure on the left to say that being politically incorrect is a death sentence?
I, for one, enjoy the memes all around.
Thank you, Aslan.
The reason why the right is so much better at memes and the internet, the reason that the left can't meme comes down to clarity of vision and fortitude.
It actually comes down to what we were just saying.
The reason memes, what a meme is, an internet meme, is an image that just strikes you as usually funny and funny because it's true.
It cuts to the heart of some point in maybe no words or maybe a couple of words or images or juxtapositions of images and then it goes viral because so many people think it's true and funny.
The reason that the right broadly is better at comedy right now is because of clarity and vision and fortitude.
I say clarity of vision because the left can't meme because no one finds it to be true.
No one finds their images to be true.
When you go see a comedy show...
You say, it's funny because it's true.
But if what they're saying isn't true, if they're using the language of political correctness, if they're using euphemisms and soft words and lies, it's just not going to be true.
The language of PC, the language of the left, is designed to obscure the truth, and so they can't do that.
The other reason why they can't meme is because they don't have fortitude.
They don't have strength.
So they're so concerned about offending everybody.
This is ostensibly the premise of political correctness.
That they can't take a joke themselves, and they're unwilling to make a joke about anyone else.
I am willing to make just about any joke about anybody, and I'm willing to take just about any joke, and it doesn't really bother me.
Why doesn't it bother me?
I don't feel threatened by them.
I don't think I'm gonna crumble.
I don't put all of my stock in how other people perceive me.
I don't think that my virtue is measured by what left-wing people on social media think about me.
I think my virtue is measured by, namely, virtue.
So those would be some of the reasons why right-wingers have the grit and the thick skin and the fortitude to take a joke.
And if you can take a joke, you can tell a joke.
The left can't do that either.
And so because they're blind and because they're weak, they can't meme.
From Andrew.
Dear Mr.
Knowles, funniest guy on the Daily Wire.
Funny how?
Funny like I'm a clown?
Like I am you?
I'll go on.
I hear a lot of people talk about how the Protestant Reformation and Protestant ideas led to the formation of the greatest country in the history of the world, the United States of America.
As a Catholic, I feel a little disenfranchised.
Should I be?
Thoughts?
No pants.
I think that's his name that he signed it with, no pants.
I see your point.
I had four ancestors on the Mayflower.
Those Mayflower pilgrims were religious zealots.
They were highly Protestant.
They are probably rolling over in their graves knowing that their descendant is a popish papist such as I am.
It is largely Protestant America in much of its thinking and much of its history.
I think it was Arthur Schlesinger said that anti-Catholicism is the deepest bias in American history.
However, however, who discovered America?
Oh, would it happen to be that devoted Catholic extremist, Christopher Columbus, who at a time of widespread illiteracy made sure to read the Bible constantly, who prayed the Catholic Book of Hours constantly on his passage to America?
Would it be that guy?
Of course it was, founded by a Catholic.
And not just that, the country is named after a Catholic.
from Amerigo Vespucci, from whom we get America.
And not just named after that Catholic cartographer, but not just the country, but the whole continent is named after him.
Not just the whole continent, but the other continent in this hemisphere too.
The whole damn new world is named after a Catholic and it was discovered by a Catholic.
That's pretty good.
You can hang your hat on that and have a little pride, even though the Protestants came in much later and seemed to take over much of the political development of the country.
From Tyler.
Hi, Michael.
I have struggled in the past with drug addiction, depression, and continue to struggle.
I have my good weeks and my bad weeks.
I wanted to better myself and give myself strength through these troubling times with Christianity.
My family has always been pretty religious, but I've always felt myself on the fence with religion in general.
I have a very high respect for the religious practice and admire people who truly believe.
I was wondering if you had some advice for a soul struggling to find God and a meaning for life.
Thanks.
Yes, I do.
First, God exists.
God loves you.
Your life has incalculable meaning and worth.
Those three things are true.
That's a fact.
You can quibble with my facts, but it is a fact.
So know that.
Even if you have trouble understanding that or accepting that, that is true.
Speaking of truth, C.S. Lewis put it very well, and this is probably the best advice I can give you.
You say that you're not that religious personally, but you admire religious people, you want to be religious.
Okay.
C.S. Lewis wrote,"...if you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end.
If you look for comfort, you will not find either truth or comfort, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair." If you are looking to be comforted by religion because you've had a tough run of it and you've struggled with various ailments, you will end up despairing.
It will not work.
If you look for the truth, you'll get all of those things.
If you follow the truth to its logical conclusions, you will get those things.
And if you don't follow it, maybe you won't, but you won't be any worse off than you would be if you only looked for comfort.
Look for the truth above all things.
That's the best advice I can give you.
From Nicole, I recently had a Democratic mayor in Massachusetts call me sexist because I told him I would not want to be friends when I was in a relationship.
This being because we went on a couple dates and talked at all hours of the night.
This would obviously be disrespectful to a relationship.
He said I was treating him differently because he was a male and it was the definition of sexism.
What do you think?
I think that this person is upset that you are not giving him the definition of sex.
I don't think it has anything to do with the definition of sexism.
When I read the first part of your question, can you be friends with a woman if you're married to a woman?
Can you be friends with members of the opposite sex?
Yeah, of course you can.
Unless they're trying to date you.
If you've gone on dates with this person, you're calling this person at 3 o'clock in the morning, probably not a great idea.
Sounds like this guy, he's a Democrat politician, right?
Sounds like he's trying to get in your pants so I wouldn't take a line like that.
You'd think he'd be able to muster a better line than you're sexist.
I guess he's a Democrat.
That's the only thing they can say.
You're racist, you're sexist, you're bigoted.
Don't buy it, honey.
He's trying to pull a fast one.
From Catherine.
Hey Michael, big fan.
I recently graduated from college and am having trouble finding a full-time job.
Once I turned 26, I lost my parents' insurance, and since then, they and my friends have been encouraging me to sign up for Medicare.
Because I don't believe in Medicare, that seems a little hypocritical to me, but one of my friends argued that I would only be using it as a safety net until I find a full-time job, and that this is its true purpose.
Thoughts?
Thanks for the response.
Kat.
Okay, a lot of things here.
One, you're 26.
You graduated college.
We have the most robust employment market in recent history right now.
You should be able to get a full-time job.
There are right now more jobs hiring than people who can fill those jobs.
You went to college.
Presumably you paid some money to go to college.
You should be able to get a job.
If you can't get a job, maybe it's because you don't live in a place where you can get a job.
In that case, it might be worth moving to go get a job.
It might be worth commuting a little further to go get a job.
It might be the case that you don't have a full-time job because while you could get a job that you don't want, you can't quite get a job yet in the career that you want to get a job in.
If that is the case, take the job.
Be a barista.
Be a waiter.
I live in LA. A lot of my friends are actors.
Everybody's a waiter.
Take a job that you can get now.
Having a job is better than not having a job.
Having a job that you don't want is better than not having a job that you do want.
Do that.
Okay, that's my advice for getting a job because you should be able to get a job in this market.
With a college education, age 26, you should be able to do it.
And if you can't, then there's something wrong either geographically or philosophically, and you should tweak that.
That said...
I don't think you're talking about Medicare, which is the entitlement program for old people, for senior citizens.
I think you're talking about Medicaid, which is for people who are down on their luck or out of work or aren't making very much money.
There's nothing wrong with being opposed to the expansion of the welfare state and then using those programs when you need to use them.
There's nothing wrong about that whatsoever.
It's not that you don't believe in...
The welfare programs, you certainly believe in them.
When you have a job, you'll pay into them.
I believe in them.
They exist.
They're the biggest driver of our debt and deficit.
There is nothing wrong with that, especially in the short term.
If you're just down on your luck and you haven't been able to pick yourself back up yet, there is nothing wrong about using those programs.
And also, it's ridiculous for the left to ask us to unilaterally disarm.
So we have to pay for all these programs.
We have to support the expansion of this entitlement state.
But then, because we think that it would be better to shrink that entitlement state, we're not allowed to use those programs?
That's a ridiculous unilateral disarmament that we should never do.
Don't feel bad about that.
Don't feel bad about taking a hand up when you need one.
But, also...
Make sure that you can get up.
I mean, make sure that you don't allow that to trap you into a complacency that will really not serve your life.
And take advantage of a very strong employment market right now to go get a job.
Might not be the job you want, but it'll help you get the job that you want.
From Evan.
To the four-star general of Christmas, Michael Knowles, what document should public officials swear on...
When they take the oath of office.
I understand why taking the oath on your religious text is good, but shouldn't the most important document to Americans be the Constitution and that be the standard bearer for such an oath?
Evan, no.
They should take the oath of office on a Bible.
Or, I suppose, if they're not Christian or Jewish, on whatever other religious text they want to take it on.
The most important document, to me, is not the Constitution.
I love the Constitution.
Big defender of the Constitution.
It's right up there.
Maybe it's number two.
I don't know.
But it's not the most important because this physical world, this life that we're in right now, is not the most important thing to me.
There are greater things than just the here and now.
There is eternal life.
There are moral questions.
There is a moral law.
There is my creator who created me, a contingent being.
That is why you have to take the oath on the Bible or whatever religious text you want to take it on.
The reason why we did that in the first place, with the exception, I think, of the Adamses, John and John Quincy Adams, the presidents have all taken the oath on the Bible.
And it's because if you take the oath on the Constitution and then you violate the Constitution, What happens to you?
Not too much.
If you take the oath on the Bible and you believe in that religion, you're a Christian, you believe in an eternal judge, you believe in judgment and sin and grace and the moral law, and you violate that, there are consequences for you.
Even if you're the most important politician in the world, even if you're the President of the United States, there will be consequences because there is a more powerful judge in heaven to whom you will have to answer.
That's why you take the oath on...
Now, taking the oath on a religious text, if you don't actually believe all that, is meaningless.
You might as well take it on the menu at McDonald's.
But that's also a reason why our politics suffers when we have a weak culture that derives from a country that has lost its religious understanding and mooring and direction.
From Kevin.
Hi, Michael.
Should men always offer to pay for dates?
I was raised in a traditional conservative family, and I grew up thinking that gentlemen offer to pay for their dates meals.
I just graduated from college last year, and I was shocked by my experience with guys, who were otherwise polite, feeling comfortable to go Dutch.
Additionally, many girls that I know don't expect men to offer to pay.
What do you think?
Love the show.
Men should pay for dates.
Yes.
Especially after college.
I guess in college everyone's poor and it's a little tougher.
Especially after college, men should pay for dates.
They should at least pay for the first date.
And what they should always do is offer to pay.
So you point out, I actually, I think a couple words were cut out there.
That men suggest going Dutch.
Men should never suggest going Dutch.
Never do it.
That's a very bad idea.
I don't care if she comes from the Vanderbilt family and you are living on the street or something.
Never suggest going Dutch with a woman on a date.
Now, because of the fact of our modern world, modern dating, modern swipe culture, where you could be going on a zillion dates a week, and there's not a lot of commitment, and our economy is such that most women are working, and all of that...
I'm not opposed to maybe in your 20s splitting a check or agreeing to split a check, but you should never suggest it.
The man should always offer to pay.
These are just the chivalrous, polite mores that make society better, that make it nicer, that make a date not just some clinical transaction where you're going to split a bill and sign a contract and go back home and do whatever, but you've got to make it all clinical.
This is about romantic This is about engagement.
This is about seduction.
This is about saying, I'm giving something to you.
I've invited you here.
I want to do something for you.
I'm demonstrating that I'm pleased that you're here and that I'm enjoying this.
And that's why the man should always offer to pay.
If the woman insists on it, that's a very nice thing, too, because she's saying, I so appreciate being here.
I don't want you to think I'm taking advantage of you, that you pay for every date.
Let me pay for one out of ten dates or whatever.
There's a nice dance there.
There's a nice transaction, a moral transaction, a romantic transaction that's going on, and not just a clinical transaction, which you see so much in modern dating.
I'm taking one more.
I don't even care.
From Alexander.
Would it be idolatry to pray for America similar to how Old Testament Jews prayed for Israel?
America isn't directly a promised land.
You sure about that?
So would praying for the success and prosperity of our country be asking the wrong thing of God?
No, it's a perfectly wonderful thing to ask God to pray for our country and we should do it all the time.
God bless America.
Now, if you were praying to your country, that would be idolatry.
If you were worshipping your country, that would be idolatry.
And some people do that.
We make idols out of all sorts of things.
All of us do it.
But that we should resist.
But if you're praying to God to bless your country, your country is your home.
It's an extension in many ways of yourself.
You are you, you're your person, and you have your family.
You could ask God to pray for your family.
I don't think that's idolatry of the family.
You could ask God to pray for your friends and your community.
That's not idolatry of the community.
Broadest level in the world order right now, that's asking God to pray for your nation, which is your big community.
That's a wonderful thing.
We should ask God to do it all the time, and it will also, far from being idolatry, it will actually counter idolatry by making it clear that our nation, wonderful as it is, is beneath God.
It is below God, and it is in so many ways a fact of the providence of God.
Alright, that's our show.
I had more to get to, but too bad.
I hope you have a good weekend.
I'm going to now head to the studio and record the audiobook of Another Kingdom, which is coming out.
So if you haven't binged the podcast, go do it.
Then you'll be ready for the audiobook.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
show.
I'll see you on Monday.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Danny D'Amico.
Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.
Production assistant Nick Sheehan.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, we're going to talk about Starbucks.
Do you remember when Starbucks opened their doors and announced that everybody, even non-customers, could use their bathroom?
It turns out that the new policy has not worked out very well for Starbucks, unsurprisingly.
We'll discuss that.
Also, the president of Planned Parenthood has made a stunning and honest admission about something, and we've got to discuss that today as well on The Matt Wall Show.
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