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Jan. 29, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
47:14
Ep. 288 - You’re Not “Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal”

Starbucks CEO is almost certainly running for president, exciting precisely 0% of Americans. Then, Comrade Bernie dances shirtless with the Soviets, a Catholic Cardinal won’t excommunicate NY Governor Andrew Cuomo for killing babies, and some good news on the culture. Date: 01-29-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is almost certainly running for president, exciting the precisely 0% of Americans who actually consider themselves fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
We will examine that empty slogan as well as Howard Schultz's empty campaign.
Then, Comrade Bernie dances shirtless with the Soviets.
Oh my eyes!
Oh my eyes!
A Catholic cardinal won't excommunicate New York Governor Andy Cuomo for killing babies and some good news on the culture.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Alright, before we get to all of the weird stuff that you're doing on the internet today and how people can spy on you using your iPhone and all these other nefarious security breaches, let's talk about the greatest story of the 2020 election.
I'm not talking about Kamala Harris.
I'm not talking about Bernie Sanders.
I'm not talking about Beto O'Rourke.
I'm not talking about any of those people.
I'm talking about the Howard Schultz independent Democrat bid for the presidency.
Howard Schultz is the CEO of Starbucks.
We talked about him a little bit yesterday.
He's very left wing.
He's a lifelong Democrat.
It seems that he is going to run.
I am seriously considering running for president as a centrist independent.
And I wanted to clarify the word independent, which I view merely as a designation on the ballot.
Don't help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire a**!
Not going great.
He's up there.
Howard Schultz is saying, I'm really seriously thinking about running, and I'm a Democrat, but I'm not going to run in the Democrat primary.
Why?
Because he couldn't possibly win the Democrat primary.
So I'm thinking about running on a third party as an independent.
And then you just hear this obvious Democrat voter in the audience, don't throw the election to Trump, you egotistical billionaire jerk.
He says a different word.
In the greatest surprise of all, this Howard Schultz possible candidacy, the idea of running as an independent Democrat, the emotions expressed by that left-wing protester in the audience, they have all conspired to make the New York Times publish an accurate op-ed today.
I know.
Nobody saw this one coming.
The New York Times published a spot-on, absolutely-gets-it-right op-ed by Michelle Goldberg.
It is called Howard Schultz, Please Don't Run for President.
And the reasoning why, it's not just because he's going to throw the election to Trump, although one hopes that he would run and that he would throw the election to Trump, but...
What it really gets down to is this ridiculous slogan and label that people use, which is, well, I'm a fiscal conservative, but a social liberal.
Michelle Goldberg writes, quote, After all, if you're rich, you probably know a lot of people like this.
I'm a social liberal, fiscally conservative centrist who would love to vote for a rational Democrat and get Trump out of the White House.
A chief executive of a major bank who wanted to remain anonymous recently told Politico, lamenting Michael Bloomberg's poor odds in a Democratic primary.
But this frustrated executive's politics aren't widely shared by people who haven't been to Davos.
In a 2017 study...
The political scientist Lee Druttman plotted the 2016 electorate along two axes, one dealing with social issues and identity, the other economics and trade.
Only 3.8% of voters fell into the socially liberal, economically conservative quadrant.
And this is certainly true.
Actually, more people identified as socially conservative and fiscally liberal Like seven or eight times as many people identified as socially conservative and fiscally liberal than identified as fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
This is a joke among the elites, though.
Virtually all elite people I know, you know, the ones who grew up in apartments on the Upper West Side and they go to very fancy schools and they know how to drink Chablis, they fall into this category.
Well, I'm...
I'm fiscally conservative, but I'm socially liberal, which means I don't believe in anything, but I do like money.
That's all it means.
And some college conservative types fall into this.
The reason I bring it up, the reason it strikes so close to home, is that I would have called myself a fiscal conservative and social liberal for a long time, probably from the time I was 16 until, I don't know, 21, 22, 23, something in there.
This is just the natural...
The natural course for libertine people who are not economically stupid.
Because what fiscal conservatism means is I've taken an economics course at some point and I think that we should efficiently distribute goods throughout an economy.
You know, the elitism of this, there was an episode of 30 Rock where Liz Lemon's awful boyfriend, Dennis, you know, he just always says things that are so awful, and she said, what are your politics?
And he says, oh, I would say I'm a social conservative fiscal liberal, and this was a joke because for anybody who wrote on 30 Rock, this was exactly the opposite of what they thought.
It's the cry of the elites on both the left and the right.
GOP donors think like this.
I've talked to a lot of big GOP donors, a lot of big party muckety-mucks, almost universally.
They say, oh gosh, I wish we would give up on all this abortion and gay marriage stuff.
Come on, let's just lower taxes.
Maybe we can reform entitlements and let people do whatever they want in the culture.
And this is a classic example of trying to sever effect from cause.
You know, one of the hallmarks of the left, I always find, is they want the appearance of the thing, but they don't want the thing itself.
They eat meatless bacon.
They drink decaffeinated coffee.
They want all of the niceties of civilization, but they don't want any of the discipline and the virtue and the culture of civilization.
So...
When I was a fiscal conservative social liberal in college, as many people listening to this might be, one time Ann Coulter came to college, and so I was talking to her, and she said, listen kids, I know that a lot of you are social liberals, but if all you care about is lowering taxes, and you've got two politicians in front of you, one who is pro-life and one who is pro-abortion, vote for the pro-life politician.
He will lower your taxes more.
And these are really wise words, because on the one hand, you think, well, what does one have to do with the other?
What does the way people think about babies, or the way people think about gay marriage, what does that have to do with lowering taxes?
What it means is that fiscal conservatism flows naturally from social conservatism.
But social conservatism does not flow naturally from fiscal conservatism.
Not necessarily.
Not necessarily.
I think of this as a stage of conservative development, so I'm not too harsh on college kids who would say I'm fiscally conservative, socially liberal, but I am harsh on CEOs of Starbucks, because that guy's just probably beyond hope at this point.
I mean, he has reached the stage of, I'm a billionaire, I like to keep my money, but I don't care about anything other than myself, basically.
I think the reason this is popular among a lot of people, the billionaires and the college kids, is that it's the most material.
It's the most tangible.
It's so easy to make the argument, I should keep my money.
Economies where people have secure property rights are really efficient.
It's so easy to make that argument.
It's much more difficult.
It's much more uncomfortable, especially on college campuses today, to explain why gay marriage is not a legitimate category.
Because then people accuse you of you don't like gay people, or you hate gays, or you're sexually obsessed, or whatever.
Of course, they're the ones who are sexually obsessed.
The left is the one who's foisting sex on us.
But then you have to explain to them the complementarity of the sex issue.
You have to explain how men and women are actually different.
You have to explain to them that...
Our views come from a realist epistemology that we're describing objective truth, not merely subjective experience.
You go down this whole rabbit hole and for a lot of people, they haven't thought through these ideas.
It's easy to say, I made this money, I want to keep this money.
You don't need to think a lot to realize that, but to understand why objective reality exists, why men and women are different and complementary, why we shouldn't kill babies in the womb even if we can't see them, it actually does require a ballast of belief.
It requires some real depth of thought that unfortunately the vast majority of people in our culture today don't have, all the way from billionaire CEOs all the way down to college kids.
The really tangible issue with fiscal conservative social liberal is it doesn't work in reality.
What really successful politicians in all of history have been fiscal conservatives and social liberals?
One, basically, you could name, which is Bill Clinton.
And even that isn't really true.
Bill Clinton was a big government left-winger until he lost his midterm elections in 1994.
And then he moderated because he doesn't really believe anything and he just wants to be popular.
But 94 to 2000, you get the Bill Clinton fiscal conservative social liberalism, right?
He reformed welfare.
He lowered taxes.
Okay, great.
Other than him, and I don't know that anybody wants to replicate Bill Clinton.
I don't think when people are thinking, gosh, I want to go into public service.
I want to be a world historical figure.
I want to really mold the world for the good.
I can't wait to be like Bill Clinton.
Nobody says that.
But who else falls into that category?
I can't think of any.
I just think of the pipe dreams of billionaires who are sitting, drinking their brandy in their studies on the Upper East Side, saying, oh goodness, if we would just get rid of all this little riff-raff abortion business, then we'd finally win elections.
What are we talking about?
Republicans do a great job of winning elections when we appeal to the culture, explicitly when we appeal to the culture.
Culture is all that matters.
Everything else is bean counting.
You raise tax rates a little, you lower tax rates a little, okay.
It all comes from the culture.
If you find yourself in the position where you're a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, ask yourself, why are you a fiscal conservative?
Are you a fiscal conservative because you like money?
We all like money, but And money is not the root of all evil, but the love of money is the root of all evil.
I hope you're not obsessed with money.
So we like money.
Okay, is it because you think it's efficient economics?
This is a better argument.
You say, look, economies work better, society works better when people get to keep more of their money.
Then they can invest it in businesses.
Those businesses can invest in...
Both capital and labor, they can hire people, people are working, they're being productive, they've got incentives because people are driven, at least in part by self-interest, and you can align incentives and everybody's happy.
Okay, that's pretty good.
But even that is not sufficient.
That's a sort of utilitarian view of the world that we get from Jeremy Bentham, we get from John Stuart Mill, but it doesn't really encapsulate the whole of the world.
I mean, those two guys, Bentham and Mill, were so opposed to the father of modern conservative thought, Edmund Burke, so opposed to the people that we draw our conservative thought from, who were in a real sense romantic.
They don't just like efficient economics.
They don't like little tabulations and saying, oh, we can increase GDP X percent if we just let people keep this much more of their money.
They like the diversity of the world.
They like the variety.
They're drawn by veneration.
They're drawn by awe, by wonder, by tradition, by prescription, by all of these wonderful things that we have that you can't put down on tablets.
One of the great quotes from Reflections on the Revolution in France, he says, "The age of chivalry is gone." That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
And I think those people who say I'm a fiscal conservative social liberal because it's really efficient in an economic sense, they are the age of sophisters, economists, and calculators.
Who cares how the economy is going if you don't have the glories of our society, the glories of civilization?
Now, one other reason, which is the correct reason to be a fiscal conservative, is because fiscal conservatism comes naturally from your thoughts on politics and the culture and religion, ultimately religion.
Let's not forget, I know these days some Catholic people like to talk about how great socialism is.
The Catholic Church has condemned socialism multiple times in multiple papal encyclicals.
John Paul II did it in an encyclical called Centesimus Annus.
He said free markets are...
are the most efficient way to organize economies, but he doesn't end it at efficiency.
He grounds that in a moral sense.
This draws from Pope Leo XIII, who had encyclicals called Rerum Novarum and Quod Apostolici Muneris, I think it was called, where he condemns socialism.
He says socialism is totally inhuman, anti-human.
It's opposed to the natural order.
It's opposed to what God wants for us.
Our ideas about free markets, about free economies, which is now where we have modern capitalism, that comes from the 16th century church.
That comes from the school of Salamanca.
That comes from the natural law.
Our ideas of natural rights We should have security of our property.
That comes from the natural law, and the natural law comes from considering the natural law giver, the author of all of nature.
It is perfectly natural to get that fiscal conservatism out of what we would now call social conservatism.
Tradition, our sense of the culture, our sense of religion.
It makes a lot of sense.
But if you try to flip it, you don't make any sense at all.
We've been talking a lot on the show recently about how the left always inverts the culture.
They always get things exactly backwards.
They think that strength is weakness.
They think that injustice is justice and they call it social justice.
They get things exactly backwards.
This is an example of that.
And it's a product of a culture that is dominated by the left.
It would be such an instructive candidacy if Howard Schultz would run.
It would be so good.
First of all, it would fill up my Tumblr right up to the brim.
It would probably throw Trump the election.
So, come on, baby.
Come on, Howard.
Do it.
Do it, buddy.
But what it would do is also expose the absurd lie to both the left and the right of fiscal conservatism, social liberalism.
And it would cause us to stop just arguing around the margins, arguing over, oh, this tax rate or this tax rate.
It would actually get us to talk about the culture, which is what all of our discussions really are.
It's a frequently cited political truism, which has been variously attributed to a lot of different authors, that all political battles are really theological battles.
You're not just talking about how trade policy can affect wines and cheeses or this or that.
What you're really talking about is, what does it mean to be a person?
What does it mean to be a person living in society?
How should we relate to one another?
And how do we ground how we relate to one another?
Well, it's how we relate to the divine.
It's how we relate to our author.
It's how we view ourselves.
Those are the real profound questions of politics.
And Howard Schultz, in a candidacy that is already immolating, it is already just spontaneously combusting, as leftist protesters are calling him a jerk, just within 90 seconds of his quasi-kickoff, it would be very instructive for the country, and it would be a lot of fun to watch, which is really, really what I care about in politics.
It's not...
A question of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism, of course, when it comes to our favorite socialist, Bernie Sanders.
He is a fiscal totalitarian and a social totalitarian.
So we knew that Bernie Sanders has an affinity for dictators.
We know that he has an affinity for communist slave states.
He actually took his honeymoon in the 80s in the Soviet Union.
But it wasn't until today that this beautiful little gem popped out.
Bernie Sanders traveling to the Soviet Union in June of 1988, shirtless, drinking, singing This Land Is Your Land, a song by an American communist named Woody Guthrie.
Bernie, take it away.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a tradition when people sit at the same table at the party, and one side of the table starts singing a song.
For those of you who can't see, there is Bernie looking just like Bernie, talking to some Russian-accented woman.
woman.
He's got the horn-rimmed glasses.
He's got his crazy-looking hair.
Completely shirtless.
Slumped over because he has bad posture.
Chin, chin.
I guess I'll raise my glass of leftist tears.
I would like this video to put to rest forever the left's ridiculous hypocrisy on Trump colluding with Russia.
The American left has colluded with Russia.
Beginning in 1917 all the way up to the present, the American left has colluded, and not just with the modern Russians, who are relatively sort of nice guys compared to the old Russians, who were Soviet, slave state, dictator, totalitarian, murderers, thugs, the worst people on the face of the earth.
Bernie Sanders chooses to have his honeymoon there, to sing, to drink, to be shirtless for some reason, don't know what they're doing, don't really want to know what they're doing.
How absurd to say they're now colluding with the Russians.
Barack Obama, just a few years ago, was sitting next to the head of Russia, Medvedev, the fake head of Russia, because Putin was really the head of Russia, and he said, let them know I'll have more flexibility after my next election.
And then you hear Medvedev lean and he says, duh, I will transmit this information to Vladimir, duh, and then I've ought to suck your blood.
He actually colluded on a hot mic with the Russians.
Bernie Sanders here.
So you say, okay, if colluding with the Russians is so bad, how come the left did it for 100 years?
If colluding with the Russians is so bad, how come Bernie Sanders had his honeymoon there?
Of course, it's crazy.
Now, the other thing this tape reminds me of is that Bernie Sanders is this lovable old coot.
Isn't he?
Oh, he's so lovable.
He's got that crazy hair and that silly Queen's accent, and he's got his glasses.
Oh, he's so lovable and old.
And then you think about this.
And then you see that video.
You know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another socialist.
Proud socialist.
Oh, she's young and pretty and bubbly.
Okay.
And then you think about this.
Because after all the funny, bubbly, crazy hair, ha ha ha, Bernie, what they are doing is supporting wicked ideas, and not just wicked ideas, but the embodiment of those wicked ideas in wicked regimes.
Here is Bernie Sanders partying with Soviets in the 1980s.
Partying, loves it, can't get enough of it.
One of the worst nations, one of the worst states ever to exist on the face of the earth.
As a matter of the scale of human misery...
The Soviet Union under Stalin was worse than Nazi Germany, just as a matter of scale.
There might be a difference in wickedness, which gives Hitler the edge over Stalin, but really you're talking about arsenic and cyanide.
This is a wicked, wicked slave regime.
And that's what they support.
That's what they said.
The entire American left supported the regime in Venezuela that turned it into an awful starving slave state where people are eating rats in the streets.
The American left, Sean Penn, cheered it on.
The American left loved Hugo Chavez, socialist Venezuela.
And what it's led to is unspeakable misery down there.
It's very confusing.
It's really hard because what we see on TV is cute old Bernie Sanders, cute little Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Oh, it can't be that bad.
You got to watch these videos.
I I mean, this is where President Trump really has a sense of politics, and it's where the culture is so much more important than little accounting books for the fiscal conservatives, which is...
The culture dominates.
What you see is what affects you.
When I see Bernie Sanders crazy on a stage, what do I really care?
When I see him cheering and dancing half naked for some reason along with Soviets in the 80s, that really puts it into perspective.
And this is how Hollywood always manipulates our politics, is on any issue, whenever it's their issue, it's the sunniest, rosiest, most wonderful.
They can make abortion look glamorous.
And they do make abortion look glamorous.
Well, what about the conservatives?
What about, did you see the movie Vice?
Vice, which just lied.
It patently lied.
Just one example in the movie Vice about Dick Cheney.
They have an entire scene where Dick Cheney orders his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, to leak the identity of Valerie Plame.
We know that didn't happen.
We know that didn't happen because of an investigation which showed that the leak came from the State Department, not from the office of the vice president.
Doesn't matter.
They lie.
They turn...
Cheney starts soliloquizing like a Shakespearean villain.
They're just these awful, contorted, terrible...
And that's what you see and that's what you think of.
I mean, that's what you believe.
Also, just a little side note.
Where did they get this video?
How did Hillary Clinton not have this video of Bernie in 2016?
Maybe they thought it would have helped Bernie among the Democrat electorate.
But this video was leaked by the head of the draft Beto campaign, which almost certainly...
I've been around a lot of draft candidate campaigns, videotapes.
Very often they're being encouraged by the candidates.
And so I'm sure Beto is basically working with these guys.
And so the Beto team dug up this video of Bernie Sanders from the 80s.
Where was Hillary Clinton on this in 2016?
Just another example of a terribly run presidential campaign.
And it's not just Bernie, by the way.
It's not just Bernie and AOC. Kamala Harris, too, is embracing socialism.
And this should send up a warning sign for everybody.
Because Kamala Harris is the calculating politician.
There was a story that came out yesterday, a San Francisco mayor said that he dated her and she willingly dated this guy who was 20 or 30 years older just to advance her career.
She's the cold calculator.
She's the Hillary...
4.0.
I guess you couldn't be Hillary 2.0.
And she is trending towards socialism.
This is going to dominate the Democrat primary.
We'll see what she has to say, then we'll get to whether or not we should excommunicate the governor of New York over abortion.
And then there actually is some good news about the culture.
But first, if you were on dailywire.com, Thank you.
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It's going to be a long 2020 campaign.
You're going to see a lot of videos of shirtless Bernie Sanders.
I don't know specifically if you're going to see that.
You're going to see a lot of similar videos.
You're going to see videos along that line.
You are going to need your Tumblr.
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Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back with a lot more.
So from the fiscal socialist, social socialist wing of the Democrat Party, which is the whole Democrat Party, social socialist wing of the Democrat Party, which is the whole Democrat Party, we now have Kamala Harris, She's speaking with Jake Tapper, and she gives her explanation of a problem that Democrats have had to think about for a while now.
The question was, if you have a government taking over most or all of our health care system, then how does the patient...
How do you get to keep choice in the system if the government takes over health care?
Kamala Harris has her new answer.
Just to follow up on that, and correct me if I'm wrong, to reiterate, you support the Medicare for All bill, I think, initially co-sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders.
You're also a co-sponder.
I believe it will totally eliminate private insurance.
So for people out there who like their insurance, they don't get to keep it?
Well, listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care.
And you don't have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require.
Who of us has not had that situation where you've got to wait for approval and the doctor says, well, I don't know if your insurance company is going to cover this?
Let's eliminate all of that.
Let's move on.
Let's eliminate all that.
Let's move on.
Look, let's eliminate the greatest healthcare regime in the history of the world that basically single-handedly provides healthcare innovation to the entire world.
The place that everybody goes when they want medical care.
Let's eliminate it, you know?
Like, what did that ever do for us other than be the greatest achievement of healthcare science ever?
Other than that...
Come on, move on!
This is the sign of the radical and the sign of the reformer is they will bulldoze centuries of work on a whim.
They don't care.
They have no respect for anything.
They are utterly filled with pride.
And so they say, whatever, I don't love it, so yeah, I just don't love it, so just bulldoze it.
Who cares?
We'll probably be able to recreate the culmination of centuries of science in like a day, right?
And add on to it something that has never succeeded ever, which is government control of healthcare.
Yeah, let's, whatever.
I don't know.
Who cares?
It's only a sixth of the economy and the healthcare of 300 million Americans.
Whatever.
How ridiculous.
How flippant.
What an unserious person to say that sort of thing.
Also, it's a lie.
Everybody has access to medical care in the United States.
She can't answer it because, you're right, people won't get to be able to choose their doctor.
They won't be able to get to choose who provides their health care.
So she has to answer a different question.
She says, yeah, okay, well, but everyone is going to have access to medical care.
Everyone in the United States has access to medical care.
Illegal aliens in the United States can access medical care whenever they want.
She is right that the system is terrible.
She's right.
It's like that Churchill quote about democracy.
Democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the others that have been tried.
The American healthcare system is the worst form of healthcare other than all the other systems that have been tried.
That's true.
It's so frustrating.
I go to the doctor once every 50 years, so I go get a checkup or something, and I'll get random bills for this, and it really costs $10,000, but you're only paying three installments of $28, and somebody's paying this, and it's all...
All of the costs are hidden from both the providers and from the customers, so you're not really making decisions based on any sort of market incentives.
It's wide, full of corruption, full of abuse, full of inefficiency and fat.
That's all true.
Kamala Harris' idea is worse.
Government healthcare is worse.
It's true.
Our current system has a lot of bureaucratic paperwork.
Do we really think that a government takeover of healthcare is going to result in less paperwork?
Have you been to the DMV? Have you been to, oh, the Social Security Office?
That's sort of the crown jewel of government paperwork.
When has the government ever reduced paperwork?
You know, at least when I get some weird bill or something from my insurance provider, I can call up my insurance provider, I can call up...
The medical office that I go to.
Now there are a lot of little boutique medical offices.
Now there are certain things where you pay a little bit of money and then you get to this and that.
Okay, you get to at least tailor it more toward your tastes.
While still, we have a very robust social safety net that takes care of everybody.
We have a very generous Medicaid system to take care of the poor.
We have a very generous Medicare system to take care of the elderly.
We have emergency rooms for people who aren't even U.S. citizens.
We just give them medical care.
We have a basically wonderful health care system with a lot of inefficiencies that you could fix or make a little bit better.
Gradually, mind you, not all at once, not ripping it to the ground like this lunatic reformer, Kamala Harris, but gradually instituting reforms that would make costs clearer, that would free up some of these markets, that would allow for a little bit more competition in certain places, that would lift that would allow for a little bit more competition in certain places, that would lift some regulations, that would include tort reform so that you don't have crazy malpractice laws where doctors are afraid to do
There are a lot of reforms that you could make gradually to make the system even better than it is.
Or you could take the Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat, Medicare for All approach, which is to bulldoze the greatest health care system ever on which the entire world relies, and then just cross your fingers and hope that a system that has consistently failed will work here just because. and then just cross your fingers and hope that a Yes.
Those are your options.
Those are your two options.
We'll see which one they do.
There's an important observation here.
I guess it plays on the radical reform ideas of Kamala Harris.
It was first made by George Canning.
The observation is that all simple forms of government are bad.
That's it.
In our society, which is increasingly egalitarian, increasingly democratic, increasingly simple, increasingly leveling, all we want is just simple, simple, simple.
It's just this.
Is healthcare a right or a privilege?
We're just going to fill out one form.
We're just going to do one thing.
One size fits all for everybody.
All 50 states.
It's all simple.
That's always bad.
That's what the French Revolution was.
It was really simple.
Really, really simple, wasn't it?
Oh, we're all going to just have quadrants of a country and no neighborhoods, no states, no natural boundaries, no ties of kinship or family, no private relationships between insurance contractors and medical doctors, no personal relationships between you and your doctor.
Nope, no more of that, guys.
It's just going to be simple and it always fails.
It always leads to misery because life isn't simple.
You say, well, it's going to be really clear.
All shallows are clear.
Shallow systems are clear.
They're clearly wrong.
They're clearly bad.
They're clearly ineffective.
All shallows are clear.
Nobody benefits because life is not simple.
Life is not clear.
Life is complex.
It is rich.
It is diverse.
It is beautiful.
It is terrible.
It is awesome.
It is awful.
It is all of these things.
Are relationships to one another?
I have a relationship.
Do I have a relationship to the federal government and that's it?
Is it like during the Obama 2012 campaign, the life of Julia, where it tracked this American woman, Julia, from cradle to grave, and the only meaningful relationship that she had in that entire process was with the federal government?
Is that what life is?
No, that's a horror.
That's a nightmare of what life is.
What are the relationships that we...
I have a relationship to my producers.
I have a relationship to my Leftist Tears Tumblr.
It's kind of a romantic relationship, frankly, and it gets a little inappropriate sometimes, but it's complicated.
And I think the Tumblr would say the same thing.
I just love it so much.
I have a relationship to my employers.
I have a relationship to my friends.
I have a relationship to my wife, my family, my extended family, my mayor, my congressman, my senator.
Finally, the federal government.
I have a relationship to my church.
I have all of these relationships.
That's what's rich.
That's not simple.
That's very complicated.
I can't write it out in a little pamphlet.
I can't make it some doctrinaire ideology.
Can't put it into a manifesto, but that's life.
And when you can put something into a little ideology, a little manifesto, a little Kamala Harris quote, Medicare for all!
Or can people choose?
No, they can't choose anything!
Simple.
That's how you know that something has gone horribly wrong.
So for 2020, what this means is Democrats are going all in on socialism.
This is why Schultz can't run in the Democrat primary, even though he is a Democrat.
He's a lifelong Democrat.
He just would never get elected.
He is not a socialist.
He actually came out and said it, that Kamala Harris' Medicare for all idea is un-American.
And it is.
It's un-American and anti-American.
But Kamala Harris is the future of the Democrat Party.
Maybe she's not.
She might get wiped out in the primaries.
But her ideas are, her approach is, she's a weathervane.
She's a calculating politician.
When she sees that things are moving in the Bernie direction, they're not moving in the Bill Clinton direction, she's going to go that way and you're going to see that everybody is going to follow her.
It's a total extremism.
And you see the extremism not just on the fiscal front or on things that emanate from that, just on healthcare.
You see it on...
Social issues as well.
You see it on life.
You see it in New York.
We talked about that crazy abortion law in New York.
Andrew Cuomo, the governor there, signed this law a week or two ago which now makes it legal to kill an unborn baby up to one minute before it's born.
If the baby is due to be born at 1203, at 1202, you can go in and rip that baby apart.
That's perfectly legal now in New York.
Actually, it goes even further.
That law reforms the penal code.
So now, in the old days, in New York, if a murderer goes up and kills a pregnant woman, a woman who's more than 24 weeks pregnant, that guy would be charged with double homicide.
Naturally so.
I mean, this was always an issue that pro-lifers would bring up.
We'd say, wait a second.
So if a murderer goes and kills an unborn baby, that's murder.
But if a mother kills an unborn baby, that's a choice, and that's not murder at all.
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
Unfortunately, we were hoping that they would resolve that contradiction in the favor of life.
Unfortunately, Andrew Cuomo and the Democrats are resolving it in the favor of death.
They've now removed a protection for an unborn baby.
Now, one minute before birth, you can kill that baby.
A murderer can kill that baby.
Won't be charged with killing it.
Obviously, Andrew Cuomo is nominally a Catholic.
Sometimes he pretends to be a Catholic.
And so this has raised some questions.
Should the Catholic Church excommunicate Andrew Cuomo?
He has now enabled babies to be killed one minute before they're born.
This would seem worthy of excommunication.
Here's a bishop, Bishop of Albany, discussing it on Fox and Friends.
In Albany, the Most Reverend Edward Scharfenberger joins us now.
Reverend, so, first of all, let's get your reaction to this new bill.
Well, as you just said very well, it was a celebration of abortion, which to me is a celebration of death.
It's a dehumanization of a whole class of human beings in our society.
The child in the womb, who clearly is a human subject from the moment of conception.
All the science proves that.
So, even though it has been advertised as a bill that brings more equality to women, it excludes a certain class of women, the unborn.
Half of all abortions are females.
So, I do not see it as something that I would celebrate.
As a matter of fact, it extends.
Actually, it takes away protections that previously we had.
So Bishop Scharfenberger, being very diplomatic here, said, well, you know, it allows you to slaughter babies wholesale, so it's not something that I would celebrate.
That's a very measured way to put it.
But he's right.
He's right on that point.
And he was asked if Andrew Cuomo should be excommunicated, and he says, well...
Basically, he says that he's excommunicated himself, that Cuomo probably is not in a place where he can receive the communion.
Just for those of you who don't know, those who aren't Catholic, or frankly, those who are Catholic and don't know, to be excommunicated means that you are not in communion with the Church, and very practically, it means you can't receive the communion.
You can't receive the Eucharist, the host, because you are not in communion.
So, if you've got mortal sins on your soul that you haven't confessed, you are not supposed to take the Eucharist.
You are not in communion.
What the bishop is saying is Cuomo probably is in that place right now.
Unfortunately, the cardinal in New York, Cardinal Dolan, is refusing to excommunicate Andrew Cuomo.
There are other bishops here.
Bishop Richard Stika of Knoxville, Tennessee, and Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, called for Andrew Cuomo to be excommunicated.
But Cardinal Dolan, a very powerful cardinal, and the cardinal of New York, doesn't want to.
He says it's not appropriate by canon law.
He says that excommunication shouldn't be used as a weapon out of anger and frustration, and that it would be used as ammo by abortion activists.
That doesn't really hold water to me.
I mean, I defer to greater experts on canon law, but we're not using excommunication as a weapon.
I mean, in a sense, it is a weapon.
It is recourse by the church to correct its flock who are erring gravely.
And what is a more grave error than allowing countless babies to be slaughtered a minute before they're born?
If that's not a grave error, what is?
If that's not worthy of the weapon, so-called, of excommunication, then what is?
It's not out of anger and frustration.
It's out of care for these babies that are about to be slaughtered.
And then to say it would be used as ammo by pro-abortion activists, who cares?
Who cares what they think?
I don't answer to them.
Who takes them seriously?
It would be used as ammo.
They've got plenty of ammo.
They use ammo all the time.
They're constantly attacking conservatives, Catholics.
Christians broadly, who cares?
Why would you cater to them and say, well, I don't want to give them an excuse to not like the church?
They don't like you.
They don't like you anyway.
You can't make them like you.
You can't suck up to them a little bit and then they'll like you.
It's just not going to happen.
I understand the real prudential questions of this.
The Catholic Church has always had some relationship to the state, and Cardinal Dolan is the cardinal in the state that Governor Cuomo is the governor of.
This would be a massive deal if the Cardinal of New York were to excommunicate the governor of New York.
It would require an immense amount of courage.
It might result in some serious retribution against the church in New York.
Yeah, that's all possible.
But if you're not going to muster up some courage on this issue, on the issue of the wholesale slaughter of babies a minute before they're born, then what's the point?
What's the point of having that authority?
What are you doing?
If you're not going to use it now, then why do you have it in the first place?
Why do you have that authority?
What is the purpose of that authority?
If you don't correct this action, what will you correct?
There is a good side of the abortion debate, though, which is on the political front, the Democrats are going insane.
They've been so triggered by the culture.
But on this show, Shameless, which is a show with Bill Macy on Showtime, I think.
It's a really good show.
He's there, and it's a scene between him and Katie Segal, who played Peg Bundy on Married with Children.
And it's a scene dealing with abortion.
And it actually deals with abortion in a very honest way.
Well, with my superior genetics, why would you try?
Hold on a second.
What's going on?
Oops.
Oops.
What's oops?
Looks like six of them have hunkered down in there.
Six of them?
What, babies?
Embryos.
I don't usually place all the fertilized embryos in at once, but at your advanced age, most women's uteruses aren't as accommodating.
We're going to have to terminate a few of them.
Five?
What?
It's a safety issue.
Carrying six embryos to term poses a major health risk to the mother.
What kind of health risk?
Months of bed rest, possible death.
You know what?
Let's just keep one.
It's the safest route, I think.
Right, Doc?
What, and kill five of my babies?
Now, embryos.
Engie.
We want as many little Frankies and Engies running around as possible.
That's obvious.
But do you really think we can afford more than one?
Not on my income.
But you'll get a job.
We'll keep five.
You can safely keep three.
Okay, then.
Four.
That's an amazing scene.
That's a really powerful scene.
You've got the doctor.
You've got the woman who's clearly right here.
She's got the babies inside of her.
She has motherly affection.
She's done IVF. She's got six babies in there.
She says, I'm not going to kill my babies.
And the doctor says, no, no, no, embryos.
You realize, well, what distinction is that?
They're babies.
Then you've got this awful character of Bill Macy, played by Bill Macy, and he says, let's kill five of them.
And it's really dark humor, because it's happening, unfortunately, but it's dark humor that is making a really true point.
And then she says, well, no, you've got to kill three of them.
And then Katie Sedol is haggling.
Because she wants to keep her baby.
It's normal to want to keep your babies.
It's good to want to keep your babies haggling over it.
Really, this reminds me of a Louis C.K. bit.
Louis C.K. did a bit in his act before he had his career destroyed where he did this line.
He said, listen, abortion, look, it's just like going to the bathroom, okay?
You know, look, it's going to the bathroom.
You go, you do it.
It's a physical act.
That's all it is.
Or it's killing a baby.
And it was this amazing turn.
He got into some trouble for it on the left.
Because that's what it is.
It's either you can haggle over your babies and kill them and pretend they're not babies.
It's just going to the bathroom.
It's just a typical procedure.
Or it's a baby.
It's a human life.
And I think we know which one it is.
That's our show today.
Come back tomorrow.
We've got a lot more to get to.
Get your mailbag questions in for Thursday.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
show.
I'll see you tomorrow.
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.
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Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, Kamala Harris does her big town hall, Howard Schultz preps his presidential run, and Democrats talk up Marxism.
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