My former teacher has been suspended for teaching while conservative. We will speak with Mike Poplardo about his suspension and what it means for teachers and students around the country. Then, more stolen valor from Nathan Phillips emerges, a CNN contributor compares the MAGA hat to the KKK hood, and AOC proves herself to be the only honest radical. Finally, the Mailbag! Date: 01-24-2019
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A high school teacher in suburban New York, the only openly right-leaning teacher at his school, has been suspended without pay for showing a Fox News documentary about due process on college campuses in class.
The story has been gaining media attention over the past week, and it has a personal dimension for me because he was my teacher.
He was the teacher at my school.
We will speak with Mike Poplardo about his suspension and what it means for teachers and students around the country.
Then, more stolen valor from Nathan Phillips emerges.
A CNN contributor compares a MAGA hat to the KKK hood.
And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proves herself to be the only honest radical.
Finally, The Mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
This is a really, really personal day to me.
You know, it's one of these moments where you're reading the news, and I was actually going through news on the Daily Wire.
Oh, gosh, a teacher was suspended for having the audacity to show a documentary from Fox News.
Oh, I wonder who that...
Oh, and it's my teacher.
Okay, and it's the one conservative.
It's not like the guy was wearing a Make America Great Again hat in school.
He just showed both sides of the political aisle, which frequently does not happen in education.
We'll speak to him.
I can't wait to bring him on.
What they're doing to him is awful, and it's not just him.
This is happening to teachers around the country, and it leaves students poorly educated when teachers with different views of politics and history are confused.
It leaves them poorly educated.
It also leaves them feeling as though their political views could get them lower grades, could hurt them in school, could make them face punishment.
It's a really, really serious thing.
So he'll come on.
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Before we get to my teacher, Mr. Poplardo, just a little bit of news.
We've covered the Covington boys, giving you updates every day.
And we called it on the show.
The guy said he was a Vietnam Times veteran.
That Native American man, Nathan Phillips, said it sounds like he didn't serve in Vietnam.
Even though all the mainstream media outlets said he's a Vietnam veteran, he's a How dare these kids harass a Vietnam veteran?
So it turns out he didn't serve in Vietnam.
He was in the Marines, but he was never deployed.
He never saw combat.
He never went overseas to Vietnam.
Now, the mainstream media then defended him and said, well, he never said he was a Vietnam veteran.
He never said that he went overseas.
He said he was a Vietnam Times veteran, which is technically correct.
That is.
Except he's also claimed to be a veteran who was in the theater in Vietnam.
I'm a Vietnam vet, and I served in the Marine Corps, 72 to 76.
I got discharged May 5th, 1976, you know.
Um...
I got honorable discharge and one of the boxes in there shows if it was peacetime or what my box says is that I was in theater.
I don't talk much about my Vietnam times.
He doesn't talk much, except on every television station that will let him talk about it.
He doesn't talk, except when he's on Facebook that he talks about it.
He does seem to talk about it a lot.
It turns out that he was not in the theater, though he claims that he was.
He's clearly, this is a clear example of stolen valor.
He's not just claiming he was a veteran.
He's not just claiming he was a Vietnam veteran.
He's claiming he was a Vietnam veteran in the theater, in combat, which is demonstrably not true.
He's elsewhere said that he was a recon ranger.
I'm actually not disparaging...
Look, the military needs refrigerator repairmen.
That's honest work, and he did serve his country.
What I'm disparaging is the lying.
The lying about it, the stealing valor.
And even beyond that, look, this is a crazy person.
This is an insane guy, Nathan Phillips, who lies about his past, lies about his military service, tries to bust in and break up Catholic vigil masses, starts banging drums in the face of 16-year-olds.
This is a bizarre man who clearly has a lot of problems.
The real target of my ire is the media.
The mainstream media who ran with this.
They, oh gosh, he's a hero.
He's a frail old hero who's minding his own business.
And then the kids came and harassed him, those evil Catholic kids.
They used their assault smirks.
They pulled out that weapon of mass destruction, the 16-year-old smirk.
Oh, how awful to inflict that on him.
And it's not true.
So the mainstream media get it wrong.
Okay, fine.
The mainstream media always get it wrong.
And that's fine.
People make mistakes.
It's hard in reporting sometimes.
What I have noticed, however, is that every time the mainstream media gets something wrong, they get it wrong to favor left-wingers.
They never get it wrong to favor right-wingers.
They never get the narrative wrong such that it reflects well on conservatives.
They always get it wrong in a way that reflects very well on the left and very well on Democrats.
And then they don't really apologize when it turns out it's fake news.
They just move on and misreport another story.
They just move, oh, well, whoops, too bad.
The mainstream media constantly tell us that they deserve our respect.
They're so important.
They're defending democracy.
They're on the front lines, and they're the most wonderful people in the whole world.
They have none of my respect.
None.
Not one iota, not one ounce.
Certainly the American political media.
Obviously some reporters around the world, wartime reporters, they have a lot of my respect.
A handful of reporters in the United States, sure.
The vast majority, statistically 100% of these journalists, have zero of my respect.
That's fine.
The reason they don't have my respect is because they lie.
The way that this will all make sense to you is when you realize that the people on CNN and MSNBC and the Washington Post and the New York Times or wherever, they are not journalists.
They are Democrat political operatives.
That's it.
I think, look, we've been saying this for years.
Some people think we're speaking hyperbolically.
We're not.
They're just operatives.
They're just hacks.
And when you realize that, when you realize George Stephanopoulos was the Clinton communications director, when you realize that Chris Cuomo's brother is Andy Cuomo, who just made infanticide legal in New York, and whose father was Mario Cuomo, who created the I oppose abortion personally, but I want it to be legal line, which now all of the moderate Democrats have to tout.
When you realize that they come from...
Political operations.
It will all make a lot more sense.
This is the line that we're hearing now between the mainstream media story and the reality is that, oh, there were competing narratives.
Oh, wow, look, people see things differently through different perspectives.
And, you know, maybe we rushed a little to push our perspective and some people had other perspectives.
They're just different perspectives.
No, that isn't true.
That isn't true.
There are two narratives.
There's the mainstream media narrative and there's the truth.
Those are the two, and they're diametrically opposed to each other, certainly in this circumstance.
What they're trying to do to excuse their awful behavior is push a tyranny of relativism to say, well, who can really say what happened?
Who knows?
I mean, yeah, look, okay, so there are two hours of video footage showing that the Covington kids behaved admirably and with great maturity, and showing that Nathan Phillips is a lying lunatic, and showing that the black Israelites are horrible racists screaming at these white kids.
Okay, there's video...
That's one perspective.
But I don't want that to be true.
I mean, some of these columns they posted, they said, look, okay, the video shows one thing, but we know what we saw.
No, you didn't...
Look, I know what they saw, too.
What they saw was what they wanted to see.
But they didn't see the truth.
It's this tyranny of relativism, this hysteria, and this primacy of feelings, emotivism, rather than looking at objective reality.
Nowhere is this clearer than on CNN. On Chris Cuomo's show, he had a CNN contributor, Angela Rye, come on To compare the MAGA hat to the KKK hood.
But this Make America Great Again hat is just as maddening and frustrating and triggering for me to look at as a KKK hood.
Like, that is the type of hatred that his policies represent.
And until we can have common ground and understanding about that, that it's that triggering, we're going to continue to have problems.
It's very triggering for her.
She thinks of the MAGA hat as the KKK hood.
She says, as long as that's the case, we're going to have problems.
Right, there is a problem.
But that's a you problem.
That's an Angela Rye problem.
That's a left problem.
It's not my problem that Angela Rye lives in a fantasy world.
That's not my problem.
Angela Rye's feelings are not my problem.
The fact is, a MAGA hat is not a KKK hood.
In part because the MAGA hat represents the Republican Party and the KKK hood represents the Democrat Party.
There's nothing racist about making America great again.
It's been a Republican slogan now for 40 years.
Nixon used it.
Reagan famously used it.
She says that she can't be friends in this interview.
She can't be friends with certain conservatives.
If people wear the hat, she can't be friends with them.
That's a you problem.
Sorry, darling.
Grow up.
I can't make you grow up.
I can't resolve your daddy issues.
That's not up to me.
Not only am I unwilling to do it, I actually can't do it.
People will order themselves...
Toward virtue.
They will order themselves toward discipline.
They will order themselves toward recognizing a moral standard.
Or, those standards will be imposed from above by the government.
Or by some giant oppressive force.
That's the way it's going to happen.
All of the founding fathers wrote about this.
Especially John Adams and Hamilton and a lot of the Federalists.
They wrote about how if the people loses its...
It's maturity.
It's sense of discipline.
It's virtue.
It's moral understanding.
It's religiosity.
It's humility.
If the people loses that, it's all sunk.
We're all sunk.
We just end up with this.
I can't argue with Angela Rye's feelings.
They're her feelings.
I can just point to reality.
And when you look at the reality of that video, those 16-year-old Catholic school kids were not the KKK. They're not.
I'm sorry.
Maybe Angela Rye needs to talk it over with her therapist or something.
I'm not a therapist.
I just talk about politics.
I just try to advance a conservative agenda which is based in reality.
It's based in objective reality, not subjective fantasy.
We've got a lot more to get to, but first...
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Immigration enforcement, law enforcement is immoral.
That's a radical position.
But at least it's honest, and at least you can have an honest debate on it.
My kudos to her for being honestly insane.
We've got to bring on my teacher, Mr.
Poplardo.
Mike Poplardo is a veteran teacher from Fox Lane High School.
That is my high school.
That's where I went to, where I grew up, K-12 in Bedford Central School District.
He was my teacher.
He taught economics and government while I was there.
One thing, having been one of the few conservative students, I noticed that Mr.
Poplardo was one of the few openly right-leaning teachers.
That's not to say he was very conservative, you know, talking about the Republican Party all the time or anything, but one thing I loved about his class is he would listen to both sides.
He would present both sides of an issue, which all too often in our educational system doesn't happen.
Now, that open-mindedness This is all over showing a documentary produced by Fox News which talked about due process on college campuses and what college students are going to face when they go there.
We bring on now Mr.
Pablardo.
Mr.
Pablardo, thank you for being here.
Thank you for having me, Michael.
I gotta tell you, I didn't know this was happening.
We haven't talked in a number of years now.
I didn't know this was happening until I read about it on my own website.
One of our reporters at the Daily Wire wrote about this, and I am, as a matter of principle, I'm so...
I'm so outraged that this is happening to any teacher in the country.
But on a personal level, it really pains me because I love that school district.
I know you love the school district.
I was as involved as any student was.
All of the student body president while you were the advisor, class president, all of the band, orchestra, chorus, top of the class, all these sort of things.
I love the district, and they are acting so outrageously.
What is this suspension about?
First, I'm so glad that you started with that because I want to make it clear that I love the families and students at the Bedford Central School District.
They are great.
I've appreciated every one of my 29 years working as a Foxwood High School teacher.
And this really just comes down to a small group of people that have grabbed a hold of the reins of the school district and are making some really bad judgment calls here.
So...
Want to get into the details of the actual story?
I do, because from what I read on the Daily Wire, from what I read in your class, you played a documentary that was produced by Fox News on what students can expect on college campus, due process, some of these questions that are really in the news, they're really affecting our politics today, and then some of the political forces at Fox Lane High School are punishing you for that.
Correct.
As a matter of fact, we probably have to go back...
About six years ago to truly understand what's happening.
So about six years ago, I went from being a closet conservative, secret with listening to Rush and Hannity, and occasionally using Fox News program as an instructional device, to become an outed, so to speak, because I was now serving as the Fox Lane High School Republicans Club advisor.
That's when the way I was treated by some, and a relatively few, Bedford Central School District and Fox Lane High School leaders started to change.
The way they treated me.
So fast forward to last May, and what we have is we have 12th graders getting ready to leave Fox Lane High School, and as I and many other teachers often do, in late May with only a few days left to the school years, class days that is, we start planning what some of us, including me, called bridge lessons.
The types of things that will get kids to be able to make the transition from the Bedford bubble To the next part of their life, which is likely going to be college, the military, the world of work.
And that plan, that type of lesson, is not very uncommon.
I've been doing it for 27 years.
What changed this time, however, was a few things.
One, the two-day lesson included a Fox News documentary.
Two, there's a new superintendent that had not yet even finished his second year in the school district and, in my opinion, had not yet assimilated into the Bedford Central School District family culture.
Three, there was a new principal that also was new to the school district and had not yet completely assimilated into the Bedford Central School District.
As a matter of fact, those two gentlemen that I just spoke are still commuting to Bedford.
They haven't moved their family into the district.
So they're just coming in from outside somewhere.
What surprised me so much about this story is, at least when I was there, I just hosted my 10-year high school reunion.
I guess when I was there, I felt I was obviously much more conservative than anyone in the district, but I didn't feel that it was some oppressive environment.
I didn't have a chip on my shoulder.
I didn't feel that people were out to get me or anything.
But what you're saying is the new leadership has just come in, and they're...
Clearly, just if you look at the timeline, they're what precipitated some of this change.
Yes, absolutely.
It's kind of a perfect storm.
You add into the fact that we have some new-to-the-district commuters spending their professional time on campus, but their personal time far away from campus.
Add to that that there was a conservative teacher at the center of all this, and boom, we have an explosion.
An explosion is charges drawn up against me demanding a six-month unpaid suspension from Fox Lane High School in what would be my 30th year, just one year away from me being eligible to fully retire and collect my full pension.
It's absurd that that was what they demanded.
Again, the alleged crime is showing a Fox News documentary to 12th grade students and providing a 60-minute discussion period to debrief that video.
I wonder what would have happened if you showed a documentary from CNN, or I wonder what would have happened if you were the advisor to the Young Democrat Club in that high school.
I think they probably would have given you a raise.
I think I would at least get a flap on the back and maybe a picture on the website.
That's amazing.
It's unbelievable.
It's such an outrage.
I was just thinking, you know, When I was in your class, all of these students really liked you.
Left and right.
I mean, I think I was one of three conservatives, maybe that.
So most are on the left, obviously.
But what's so astounding about this is the parallel that you see at colleges now.
Because we all know that the college campuses have really decayed into a politically toxic environment.
And a lot of it is because they're bringing in these outside deans and assistant deans and deputy assistant deputy deans of inclusion and political ideology.
And they come in and they stir up trouble and they try to be politically divisive and push their own political agendas.
We know that happens.
But it's rare that you hear stories about that happening in high school.
What is the shift here?
What is the fallout going to be?
Just actually, since I tweeted about this, I've gotten a lot of messages from Fox Lane High School alumni and some parents saying, please cover this, Michael.
This is such an outrage what they're doing to Mr.
Poplardo.
But you're actually fighting back.
Did they offer you any kind of deal, or is this now sort of out of everybody's hands?
I'm so glad you brought that up, because the superintendent issued a two-page press release, and in it he lied about the settlement that was offered, and challenged or implied to the public that I refused to take what was a reasonable settlement offer.
So let me describe what the real offer was and why I refused it.
So first of all, the real offer was that I would agree that removing me as a JV girls soccer coach should not be challenged, that that was the right thing to do because of this Fox News documentary.
Number two, that I should agree to be removed from the JV softball coach, be agreed to be removed as the advisor to two clubs.
So agree to all that, waive or release the district from pending or future litigation, and And that was absolutely unacceptable.
So they're saying basically shut up and take a huge...
Because when you're coaching sports or you're advising clubs, that comes with some money.
So they're saying take a pay cut and shut up and maybe we'll let you keep your job.
Yes, and it's even worse than that.
The reason they knew, and they should have known immediately, there was no way I was going to accept that, is because anyone that knows me knows that I'm a person that's unyielding with my sense of morals and ethics.
I wasn't going to agree to something that would change me and make me a different and weaker person.
As a matter of fact, the morning I went for the first hearing, my wife said to me something that I'll never forget.
Let me just paint the picture.
So I'm getting dressed to get ready to go to this thing, throwing on a suit and a tie, which I hate wearing.
And my wife's getting ready to go to work.
And she says to me, Mike, you're a good man.
You did nothing wrong.
Don't let them break you.
We all love you.
I am not going to let them break me.
And I wasn't going to agree to that ridiculous settlement, because doing so would have broken me.
They are continuing to try to break me, but I'm unbreakable.
Well, that's what it is.
They basically say, here's the settlement, here's the Faustian bargain, sell your soul, and maybe we'll let you continue to teach here as a shell of a teacher.
You know, they...
This is what happens when leftist ideologues come in and try to stir up trouble and try to push their agenda.
They fight so dirty.
And this is as dirty as I've ever seen anyone do it.
It would be one thing to go after a first or second year teacher, or an unpopular teacher, or a teacher who's not involved in the school, or a teacher who's, you know, pushing his...
Politics is the only politics or anything.
You're none of those things.
The school knows that you're none of those things.
The alumni know that you're none of those things.
And the reason I bring it up, other than this personal issue, is I think that you're not the only person that this has happened to around the country.
You might be the only person whose former student has a podcast where you can talk about this.
But I think that this is probably happening in a lot of other places.
And if you give up, if you took a settlement...
Like that, where you're saying, I'm sorry, mea culpa, mea culpa.
I showed a documentary from a non-left-wing outlet.
I'm sorry.
I'll never do it again.
Take my money.
Take my coaching.
Take my school spirit.
Take it all away.
Please, please.
If you did that, it would be so demoralizing to other teachers who are facing this problem.
And moreover, it would be demoralizing to students who maybe are independent or right-leaning or conservative.
You were advising the young Republican group.
What is the sense among the students?
Alright, this is a very touchy question, because the students are outraged, and I do not want to put students in the middle of a conflict, but it's unavoidable.
And not just the young Republican students, but students at large are really trying to reach out and support me.
They're doing it in a number of different ways.
And there actually, a comment on the Facebook page today actually said, on that Facebook page, the GoFundMe page, I actually said, I'm trying to quote it.
I should point out, I did see this on Facebook.
Somebody else set up a GoFundMe page because you're now being suspended without pay.
And I actually saw that you wrote somewhere on it.
You said, guys, I'm a conservative.
I feel really uncomfortable taking money from people if I'm not doing work, which I thought was like the perfect distillation of your political views.
Yeah, as a matter of fact, I'm putting together some plans to earn the money that's coming in.
Through that GoFundMe page.
More importantly than the money, the Comets are amazing.
They're heartwarming.
And you're exactly right.
When this whole thing started, it was a struggle to defend my family and my integrity.
But now that I see Comets coming from Texas and South Carolina, one person said, Mr.
Popolato, I don't know you, but we need people like you.
Please move to Texas and teach my kids.
You're right.
This is now becoming, and I didn't intend it to, obviously, But a struggle to not only defend myself and my family, but to defend some important principles that all teachers Fair-minded teachers should respect.
That's absolutely right.
Unfortunately, we're out of time, but I'm so glad that you could come on today and bring this up a little bit.
I love that district.
I mean, I love my high school.
I was involved in it as much as anybody possibly could be.
And I am so outraged as to what the Bedford Central School District is doing right now.
I'm outraged that this new superintendent would allow this to happen or would instigate this.
I personally am going to give him a call to express my views as an alumnus of the school and I encourage other people to express their outrage at the obvious injustice that's being done against you.
Obviously, I'm going to be following this and I'm really sorry it's happening to you because obviously it's hurting you and it's hurting your family and it's hurting your students.
But in a sense, I'm glad that Thank you so much.
Alright, we've got to get to the mailbag, but first, if you are on Facebook or YouTube, go to dailywire.com.
Check it out.
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We'll be right back with the mailbag.
All right, we're getting through them today.
I always take too long, so I'm going to try to fly through them.
From Paula.
Listen, Michael, I don't usually bother to write to anybody about this, but I like you, and I think you can go far in life.
It's the students are all right.
Two words.
Not the students are all right.
A-L-R-I-G-H-T. X-O-X-O-X-O. I did an episode a few days ago called The Kids Are Alright, A-L-R-I-G-H-T. You're correct about how to spell the word alright.
However, where you are incorrect is that the reference that I was making is to a song by The Who called The Kids Are Alright, which spells the word, albeit incorrectly, A-L-R-I-G-H-T. I appreciate your concern and your attention to grammar.
But the reference was to pop culture, which so often gets language wrong.
From Nicole.
Hi, Michael.
Do you have any opinions on the drinking age in the U.S.?
I'm currently in college, and I see 18 to 20-year-olds go to outrageous parties, constantly putting themselves in dangerous situations simply because they want to drink.
Most friends I ask say they would prefer to have a safer night drinking with a close group of friends if they were able to just buy alcohol themselves.
Would you argue for a drinking age of 18, or do you think the drinking culture in America is not suitable for an age that young?
Thanks.
I 100% support a drinking age of 18.
I think it's absurd that the drinking age is 21.
I certainly drank at 18.
I know everybody else that I knew drank at the age of 18.
Just about.
You can serve your country at the age of 18, but you can't have a drink.
That is so absurd.
And if you were going to all those outrageous parties where people are putting themselves in dangerous situations, you may have seen me there.
I don't know when you were in college.
If it was around the same time, maybe we saw each other.
I'm sorry if I was drinking too much.
I like beer.
I still like beer.
And more importantly, it's important to teach kids how to drink responsibly.
I come from an Italian family.
Italian families let you have wine at dinner sometimes, from when you're like seven years old onward.
And what this teaches you over time is how to drink responsibly, what your limits are, how to drink so that you don't get drunk.
If you do get drunk, to know how to stop and be safe about things like that.
And That's very important.
When I got to college, a lot of the people there, a lot of my friends, had never been allowed to drink even a sip of alcohol in their lives.
They're the ones who went to the hospital.
They're the ones who went to the health centers.
They're the ones who got into a lot of trouble.
Whereas, if you've had some experience and you know your limits, maybe you push your limits a little too far sometimes, but you're able to just be a little more safer and a little more mature.
I also have the opinion that if you raise kids With respect, and you raise them with expectations that are mature, and expectations of people to behave in a civilized and adult way, they're more likely to rise to that expectation.
I've just seen that anecdotally, so you bet.
18-year-old drinking age?
Cool for me.
From Austin.
Hello, Michael.
I recently watched your panel from Politicon, and at one point you were accused of being inconsistent because you're pro-life and for the death penalty.
Do you think it's inconsistent to hold both of those views at once?
How do you feel about the current death penalty system in the U.S.? Yeah, this one actually really bothers me because I only saw this after the fact on the tape.
The panel you're talking about, I was with a few liberal guys from YouTube, and Charlie Kirk was there, and that CNN guy, what's his name, Bakari Sellers.
And so we're sitting there.
Hall was so gigantic that you couldn't really hear anybody on these panels.
So one guy, I guess at the very end, said that I was being hypocritical for opposing abortion but supporting the death penalty.
And I just couldn't hear it, so I couldn't give him a snarky response.
But I will now.
There is no disagreement whatsoever.
There is no hypocrisy.
There is no contradiction.
It is perfectly reasonable to believe that the state has the authority to impose capital punishment, which has been widely believed for all of human history, which has great scriptural, legal, theological, moral, ethical foundation, and also it's wrong to kill babies.
In New York State now, you can kill a baby on the day he's born.
Just right before he comes out of the womb, you can snip, snip, and you can kill that baby.
You can commit infanticide in New York.
That's obviously very wrong.
The reason that this is wrong is because it's an innocent little baby, and an innocent little baby is very different than a convicted murderer who has had the right to due process.
But if you're looking for just some little legal mechanism, due process would be one of them.
The state, at least, can kill people with due process.
That innocent little baby hasn't committed any crime.
He certainly hasn't had a trial by a jury of his peers.
He hasn't been convicted.
He hasn't been given any sort of due process.
But, of course, beyond that, we know that...
Capital punishment has three purposes.
Retributive, which is just punishing the criminal because he's committed an injustice.
Then there's the deterrent effect, to deter people from committing future crimes.
And then there's the rehabilitative effect.
This obviously starts to go away when you're talking about killing the criminal.
However, as Dr.
Johnson famously observed, hanging concentrates the mind.
When a man knows he's to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
There is a little rehabilitative effect, at least, to that.
Retribution is the purpose of criminal justice.
It's about justice.
It's not just about rehabilitation.
That's what it's about.
They've committed a crime, and now they are able to be killed.
Only the left could confuse a convicted murderer, convicted rapist, with an innocent little baby.
They confuse it because they're being obtuse, because they want to confuse it, because they want to put their heads in the sand.
But it's absurd, and I think the reason that you see the left using all of these euphemisms for abortion is, they say, women's reproductive health, women's right to choose.
They never talk about abortion or killing, per se.
The reason they use those euphemisms is because they do understand the distinction, and it makes them very uncomfortable.
From William.
Michael Knowles is a critic of modernity, a history buff, and a staunch papist.
What is your take on monarchism?
The Catholic Church has canonized several kings, such as Stephen of Hungary and Fernando III, while the famous Catholic philosopher, St.
Thomas Aquinas, concluded that monarchy was the best form of government.
Perhaps it is true.
After all, our Lord is himself the King of Kings.
As an American, a Republican, and a Catholic, what do you make of monarchism?
Thanks in advance.
Depends on the monarchy.
I don't know.
Which monarchy are we talking about?
Politics is very important in its particulars, in its tradition.
We don't have a tradition of a monarch in America.
It would be very strange to impose a tradition of a monarchy.
Now, some of the Federalists wanted a monarchy when the country was being founded.
Perhaps they could have done that.
Perhaps that would have not succeeded.
James II of England is a great monarch.
I support that.
Certain monarchs gain monikers like the Terrible, you know, Ivan the Terrible or whatever.
Those might not be great monarchs at all.
The form of government depends on history and tradition and the culture of the people.
There are some political universalists who say a particular form of liberal democracy is the only legitimate form of government that has to exist in every single place.
And if any government differs in any way, if England has a constitutional monarchy or any other country, then that is somehow unjust and wrong.
That's absurd.
I mean, that is just leftist, rationalist nonsense.
One reason why it's probably good we don't have a king in America is because we have such an ethic of liberalism and democracy and egalitarianism that, I don't know, if we made Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez our queen, I'd probably finally move up to Canada and then Elizabeth would be my queen.
But people who take that universalist approach to politics are being too simplistic about it, and they're being too narrow, both as a matter of time and as a matter of political philosophy.
From David.
Hail the king of trolls!
Given the controversy surrounding the Covington Catholic students, what would your reply be to one of the protesters' words that the white students go back to Europe?
Oh, that's right.
One of the guys with that Indian phony, Nathan Phillips, he yelled, go back to Europe.
My reply would be no.
I'm not from Europe.
I was born in America.
America is my native land.
I'm a Native American.
I'm just as much a Native American as any of those guys are.
This issue of stealing land, this is the new line, America's stolen land.
Stolen from whom?
Who's it stolen from?
I guess technically, most immediately, it was stolen from the British.
And then the British stole it from the Dutch.
And then, I don't know, the Iroquois stole some land from a lot of their neighbors.
The Comanches stole land from the Apache.
The Lipan Apache stole land from the Cheyenne.
I don't know, the Aztecs expanded pretty quickly.
Who did they steal land from?
Whose land is it?
That's absurd.
That's a ridiculous question.
Nathan Phillips standing there.
In the middle of our nation's capital saying, this is our land.
Go back to Europe.
I'm not from Europe.
You go back to Europe.
Enjoy Europe.
Have a good time.
See if they deal with your looney tune drum banging in their face.
Go move to Italy.
See what happens if you bang a drum in the face of some Italian guy.
Not going to end well.
From Andrew...
Hey Michael, right now if the pro-life movement were to succeed, would we not have a major problem on our hands dealing with underage girls getting pregnant from failing with safe sex?
Which, I think, is the lead cause of all or at least most of the abortions in this country.
No, we wouldn't, and no, that is not the lead cause of abortions in this country.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, which is a pro-abortion research institute, it used to be part of Planned Parenthood, The vast majority of abortion patients are in their 20s.
Or higher.
So over 50% of them are in their 20s.
34% of abortion patients are aged 20 to 24.
I think about 27% of that are 24 and above.
The people who are aged 17 or younger, so what you're talking about, underage girls or minors, that makes up just 3.2% of abortions.
About 97% of abortions are taken by girls who are not minors.
It's just another one of these myths, legends of the pro-abortion movement.
It's all just these poor underage girls who don't know any better, who are desperate.
No, that's not true.
It's mostly just people in their 20s who don't want to have a child, and so they'd rather kill it than have it.
That's a sad fact, but it's important to name these statistics.
Since Roe v. Wade, 60 million kids have been killed, unborn babies, 30 million of whom roughly are women.
It's important to point out the reality of abortion versus the myth that They say, oh gosh, before Roe versus Wade, 5,000 to 10,000 women a year would die from back alley abortions.
That's not true.
The guy who came up with that statistic, who was the founder of NARAL, Dr.
Bernard Nathanson, admitted that was a total lie.
The actual number, which we have from the CDC, is that 39 women died that year from illegal abortions.
And 24 women died that year from legal abortions.
And statistically speaking, because abortion was still illegal in 30 states, it was just as dangerous to get a legal abortion as it was to get an illegal abortion.
A lot of lies.
The pro-abortion movement is made up of lies.
It's based on lies, and it's advanced by lies.
And I think those lies are finally being exposed.
They're being exposed by the sonogram, most importantly, and they're being exposed by statistics.
From Michael.
Hi, Michael.
Hi, Michael.
Like another subscriber said, I came for Ben but stayed for Michael.
That's very nice.
In your podcast about the State of the Union, I got the impression that you don't like Thomas Jefferson.
Was my impression correct?
If so, why aren't you so enamored of him?
Thanks for all your free labor at the Daily Wire.
My pleasure.
It's not that I... I hate Thomas Jefferson.
I like Thomas Jefferson perfectly well.
He's a complicated man and obviously a genius.
But Thomas Jefferson does represent the beginning of the American left.
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, the anti-federalists, They represent basically the early stages of the American left and the American right are represented, the conservatives in America are represented by John Adams, probably most importantly, and Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.
The people who wrote the Federalist Papers, of course.
That is a distinction.
And when you hear of Thomas Jefferson writing about how we should have a revolution every dozen years, and how the tree of liberty must be quenched in the blood of patriots and tyrants, when you hear him writing all of these Tom Paine-like...
You just think that this is a guy who has gotten lost in the ideology of rationalism.
This is a guy who supported the French Revolution, which of course led to the guillotine, led to the terror.
He's a guy who just went a little bit wrong in his ideology.
So I still love him.
He's still a father of the country.
But as far as the philosophical founders of the country, of our constitution, and of the good parts of American philosophy and our doctrines, that goes to the Federalists.
Okay, we've got a lot more to talk about, but unfortunately we're out of time.
Have a good weekend.
Enjoy.
Check out Another Kingdom.
We've got the audiobook of that coming out soon.
In the meantime, I will see you on Monday.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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 more about that terrible abortion law in New York, and I'll explain why the arguments made in favor of that law could apply just as easily to post-birth abortions, which maybe is where we're headed next.
Also, why hasn't Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, and other Catholic pro-abortion politicians been excommunicated?
