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Jan. 31, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show

46:00

Ep. 290 - Fourth Trimester Abortion

As Democrats embrace fourth trimester abortion, they make the same mistake Republicans have made on the abortion debate in reverse. We will analyze the undocumented infants. Then, deepfakes, gene editing, and Cheerios. Finally, the Mailbag! Date: 01-31-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	As Democrats embrace fourth trimester abortion, they make the same mistake Republicans have made on the abortion debate in reverse.
	We will analyze the undocumented infants.
	Then, deep fakes, gene editing, and Cheerios.
	Finally, the mailbag.
	I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
	So much to get to today.
	The Democrats destroy their entire abortion argument.
	We actually just have some breaking news now.
	It's being reported that Herman Cain, former presidential candidate, 999 plan of 999 fame, he is apparently being considered by President Trump for the Federal Reserve Board.
	You know, usually Thursday is kind of a slow news day.
	We're just getting some of the best news possible, so we'll get into that in a second.
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	This is really...
	We're really in my wheelhouse right now as the papist of the Daily Wire.
	This news about Herman Cain, I just want to get to it briefly because it's terrific.
	People are making fun of Donald Trump for picking Herman Cain because Herman Cain is supposed to be some big idiot or something.
	Herman Cain is an extraordinarily intelligent and successful man.
	He was the CEO of a major pizza company.
	Not your mom and pop shop down the street.
	What was it, Godfather Pizza?
	He's actually already served, I believe, on the Federal Reserve Board in Kansas or somewhere, one of the Federal Reserve Boards.
	So he's actually a pretty great candidate for this, and he's well-known.
	He's a public figure.
	He's been vetted by the media and been vetted by voters.
	I think it's a terrific choice, and he's a great character.
	I mean, he's just a great personage to have out there.
	So I'm all for it.
	It also takes the Federal Reserve, which is one of the most opaque institutions in the history of government, and it makes it a little bit more transparent by having a public figure serving on the board.
	If it's true, I think it's a great idea.
	Bring it on.
	And it'll drive the left crazy because Herman Cain drives them crazy.
	So you got my blessing.
	A really dark story that actually is redounding well, I think, for the pro-life movement is in Virginia now.
	Governor Northam appears to be one-upping Andrew Cuomo in New York.
	You remember that last week Andrew Cuomo cheered, signed legislation that would allow a baby to be killed one second before it's born.
	And now in Virginia, Northam wants to out infanticide even Andrew Cuomo by saying that you can kill babies even after birth.
	Cheering it along, fourth trimester abortions.
	Here's Governor Northam in his own words.
	And she was pressed by a Republican delegate about whether her bill would permit an abortion, even as a woman is essentially dilating, ready to give birth.
	And she answered that it would permit an abortion at that stage of labor.
	Do you support her measure and explain her answer?
	Yeah, you know, I wasn't there, Julie, and I certainly can't speak for Delegate Tran, but I will tell you, one, first thing I would say, this is why decisions such as this should be made by providers, physicians.
	And the mothers and fathers that are involved.
	There are, you know, when we talk about third trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of obviously the mother, with the consent of the physicians, more than one physician, by the way.
	And it's done in cases where there may be severe deformities.
	There may be a fetus that's non-viable.
	So listen to what he says.
	First of all, he says, I don't really want to comment on this.
	This is an awkward topic to talk about.
	But that's why decisions should be made by the parents and the doctor.
	So when he's saying that, this decision should be made by the parents and the doctor, he's saying it's perfectly fine for parents and or doctors to kill babies one second before they're born as the woman is dilating.
	But then, I mean, that's just the sort of political empty slogan that allows you to say nothing but sound like you're saying something, where it gets really dark as he says, look, most third trimester abortions, They happen because the baby's deformed.
	You don't want any of those deformed babies.
	You don't want any of those imperfect babies.
	Those babies are garbage.
	We should just throw them out.
	Why would we want any deformed people in our society?
	Yuck.
	Gross.
	There was a video, I wish we had it, we don't have the clip, of a man with Down syndrome testifying on this point.
	You'll remember last year, Iceland said that they had eliminated Down syndrome in the country.
	They didn't eliminate Down syndrome, they just kill all the Down syndrome babies.
	And he said, I am a man, this man with Down syndrome.
	He says, I am a man.
	I'm a person.
	You don't need to eradicate me.
	I want to be treated as a person.
	Look, I am manifestly a human being.
	But according to Governor Northam, that baby should be killed.
	Because he's not perfect in Governor Northam's eyes.
	Morally speaking, I'm sure that that Down Syndrome baby is far more perfect than Governor Northam, who thinks it's perfectly fine to kill babies after they've been born.
	But just listen.
	That's what you always hear.
	Well, what if it's deformed?
	So what?
	You're deformed.
	You're deformed.
	Who isn't deformed?
	Who is a perfect person?
	Show me a perfect person.
	I can point to one, maybe two.
	Show me, are you a perfect person?
	No, you're deformed.
	Maybe you're physically deformed.
	Maybe you're spiritually deformed or mentally deformed.
	You know, look, I don't want to talk myself down here.
	I'm not exactly an Adonis of a man.
	I'm not an Olympian.
	I probably wouldn't do very well in armed combat.
	Does that make me not perfect?
	Does that make me, yeah, I guess I'm not perfect.
	Does that mean that I should be killed?
	Not even just before I'm born, but after I'm born?
	No.
	Barbaric cultures do this.
	And throughout all of history, the vast majority of barbaric cultures have done this, have killed babies.
	And now we, ostensibly a civilized culture, are delving into this.
	We're going back to our animal, brutish, barbaric roots to kill babies, not just before they're born, but after they're born.
	He goes on.
	In this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen.
	The infant would be delivered.
	The infant would be kept comfortable.
	The infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired.
	And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.
	So I think this was really blown out of proportion.
	Blown out of proportion?
	Are you kidding?
	You've made it worse, Governor Northam.
	Governor Northam has made this worse by saying, let's say that the baby survives an abortion.
	Let's say the baby is born.
	That's what he's saying.
	The baby is born, and then, if the mother and father don't want the baby, they won't help it to survive.
	But it gets even crazier than that.
	They're saying, well, okay, the baby's born, it's alive, and then if the mother and father want to resuscitate it or sustain it or keep it alive, they can do that, and then they'll have a conversation about whether they want to kill it, whether they want to go right back and kill it.
	So you've got the baby, you try to kill it, it's born, you then resuscitate it, and then you decide if you want to kill it again.
	This is the logical conclusion of abortion.
	I love that Democrats are finally, honestly speaking about the logical conclusion of abortion.
	and you're seeing it in all of its gory logic, in the natural conclusion of abortion, then the parents will talk about it, if that's what's desired.
	I think there are a lot of parents who might have various desires about their 15-year-old teenage boys.
	I think there are a lot of parents who, if you ask them on any given day what their desires are about keeping their teenage boy or not keeping their teenage boy, you might get different answers.
	That doesn't mean that parents should be allowed to do whatever they want with children.
	That's why we have child abuse laws.
	That's why we have child protection laws.
	The child is entitled to certain rights as well, not to be killed an hour after it's born.
	The baby's born, it's sitting there, and then the mother says, nah, psh, psh, psh, I don't want it.
	And okay, and then you're talking to your doctor, and okay, the doctor says, well, you don't want it.
	It's only been out for an hour.
	It's only been moving around this earth for an hour, so we'll kill it.
	Because it's being blown way out of proportion, according to Governor Northam.
	He goes on.
	But again, we want the government not to be involved in these types of decisions.
	We want the decision to be made by the mothers and their providers.
	And this is why, Julie, that legislators, most of whom are men, by the way, shouldn't be telling a woman what she should and shouldn't be doing with her body.
	This, so what he said is gobbledygook.
	It doesn't mean anything.
	He said two sentences.
	One was more nonsensical than the last.
	But to begin, he says, we don't think the government should be involved in this.
	B.S. You never met one single action on earth that you didn't think the government should be involved in.
	Democrats think that the government should now be involved in all of industry.
	That's what the Green New Deal is.
	You think the government should be involved in 70% of my paycheck.
	And actually, when you add state and local in New York, it gets up to 82.3% of my paycheck.
	You want the government to be involved in my church.
	You want the government to be involved in my work.
	You want the government to be involved in my home.
	You want the government to be involved in what I eat, in fast food, in my car, in my every single thing.
	You want the government to be involved, except protecting a baby from being murdered.
	I want to drop any sense of euphemisms.
	At least I can understand an honest debate where you say, is abortion identical to murder, or is it morally similar to murder?
	I understand that there is an ethical debate to be had.
	I think the answer is relatively clear, but I'm willing to use more clinical language.
	The baby is born.
	You have intent to kill it.
	It is out there.
	It's kicking and crying and moving its little arms around.
	There is no way that you could jump through any sort of mental gymnastics to pretend that that isn't murder.
	Murder is the only instance that Governor Northam doesn't want the government to be involved in your life.
	And then he says, and this is why, this is why the legislators, most of whom are men, and we all know men are idiots, Yeah, well, one is, Governor.
	I at least agree.
	At least one man in this situation is a complete dummy.
	Well, men, most of them are men.
	That's why they shouldn't be involved in these decisions.
	First of all, that conclusion does not follow from that premise.
	He's just describing murdering a baby, and then he says, as an absolute non sequitur, that's why legislators, the majority of whom are men, should not be involved in this decision.
	Why?
	Why is that?
	Show me.
	There's no logic at all that connects those things.
	But also, men have brains.
	Some men have brains.
	Men who are not Governor Northam or Andrew Cuomo have brains.
	And we can think about ethical questions and political questions.
	We have for all of human history and constructed every civilization ever in all of the history of the world.
	So I think that men can consider the question of whether we should kill our children or not.
	In nature, many fathers kill their offspring.
	This is bad.
	We shouldn't emulate that in our societies.
	Men can think about it.
	It's such a cop-out.
	It's for cowardly men.
	I don't mean to use the two synonymously, but it's for Democrats like Governor Northam who don't want to lead.
	They don't want to lead politically or intellectually or ethically.
	And so they say, well, I'm a man.
	I can't do anything.
	Well, I'm like Homer Simpson.
	Yeah, he is.
	You can be.
	Men can be just like that stereotype of the stupid idiot father on sitcoms.
	You know, Ray Romano or Family Guy or whatever.
	Men can be like that.
	Governor Northam's choosing to be like that.
	He is.
	He's Homer Simpson.
	Governor Homer Simpson.
	But not all men are like that.
	Plenty of men are men.
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	Don't say I never did nothing for you.
	This is the only time they want the government to be involved.
	The good side of this, watching that clip, you just want to go out and shake the guy.
	But there is a very good side to this, which is that right now, the Democrats are making exactly the same mistake on pro-life.
	That Republicans have made in arguing pro-life for 20 years, which is they are taking the bait.
	For them, the Democrats have followed their own logic to its conclusion.
	So now they're arguing about pro-life at the moment of birth.
	What the Democrats used to always do was try to argue about pro-life at the moment of conception.
	And so they would say, were you telling me a little egg that has been fertilized for one hour, that's a baby, and if you take that out, that's murder?
	Now this is a disingenuous argument because no abortion happens at one day.
	It happens weeks and weeks later, and often in the second trimester, and now apparently in the third trimester.
	So it's a disingenuous argument.
	But in both instances, you have the left and the right following their ideas to their logical conclusions.
	If abortion is wrong, if it's morally similar to murder, if it is murder, then it's not wrong at some arbitrary deadline.
	It's not wrong because it sprouts a couple fingers or because it opens its eyes or something like that.
	It's wrong from the beginning.
	It's intrinsically wrong.
	It's wrong from the moment of conception.
	That's the logical conclusion of abortion being wrong.
	Now, if abortion is not wrong, if it's, you know, it's just nothing, it's perfectly fine, then it's not just that it's not wrong at the moment of conception, it's not wrong at the moment of birth.
	And frankly, if it's not wrong at the moment of birth, it's not wrong an hour or two after birth.
	And really, really, if it's not wrong an hour or two after birth, it's not wrong when they enter kindergarten.
	They're taking their idea to its logical conclusion.
	The left has been radicalized.
	It's been radicalized, I think, in part by Donald Trump.
	That has accelerated it.
	But this has been growing for a long time.
	The left's radical abortion agenda on demand, not just at the moment of birth, but after birth.
	I love that we are now arguing about abortion there, because as a matter of principle, both sides have to accept that.
	The right has to accept that life is life at the moment of conception, and the left has to accept that the The fetus, the morally irrelevant embryo, has to remain morally irrelevant even at the moment of birth.
	They both have to follow that to its conclusion.
	But just from a PR perspective, just from an optics perspective for people who don't think about this very deeply, it's much easier to argue for pro-life at the moment of birth than it is at the fertilization of an egg.
	It just is.
	We just see the pictures.
	This is why sonograms are so helpful to the pro-life cause, is that you see that it's not just some little blob of something.
	It's a baby with a face and eyes and nose and a mouth and little fingers.
	It's not that the fingers make it a morally significant being.
	It's that the fingers remind us that it is a morally significant being.
	It's a person.
	It's a human.
	It's a living human being.
	You know, I have friends who support abortion.
	I have friends who have had abortions who say that late-term abortion is infanticide.
	Now, they don't see that it's morally grave in the second trimester, in the first trimester, too.
	They can't see that.
	But they can all see it at the end.
	When you look at the public opinion polls, over 80%, 90% of people oppose late-term abortion.
	Duh!
	It's so obviously a baby.
	Let's keep Democrats fighting this here.
	This is absolutely a terrific place to be having this battle.
	Governor Northam, I'm going to donate to his campaign so that he keeps going on the radio and exposing his moral depravity.
	The mainstream media know this, by the way.
	The mainstream media totally know this.
	They're the ones who always force us to have the abortion debate two days after conception.
	They know this, and so they're not covering this.
	Last night, MSNBC and CNN did not cover Governor Northam's comments where he advocated killing babies after they are born.
	Is that a news story?
	No, we have to talk about tweets more, don't we?
	No, guys, look, we don't have time to talk about a sitting U.S. governor advocating the slaughter of babies after they've been born.
	Because we've got to talk about Russia or something or whatever.
	Or Roger Stone or I don't know.
	Anything but that.
	Anything but talking about abortion.
	How did the Democrats fall into this?
	The Democrats fell into this because we have been pushing their buttons.
	And President Trump in particular has been pushing their buttons.
	Barack Obama pushed our buttons.
	He really got under our skin.
	I mean, that guy, those little things he would say.
	You didn't build that.
	You didn't build your business.
	Somebody else built that for you.
	Those little...
	The day that the Supreme Court invents a fictional right to gay marriage by redefining the essential human institution, the day that he does that, what does Obama do?
	He paints the White House rainbow colors in light.
	He just knew how to push our buttons, and it drove us a little crazy.
	And now Trump is doing the same thing.
	He's pushing their buttons, and he's driving them a little crazy.
	You'd have to be crazy to advocate killing a baby a day after it's born.
	So now what happens?
	The Democrats are telling us not to believe our lying eyes.
	They're telling us that a baby isn't a baby.
	It's only a baby if you say so.
	It's only a baby if it's desired.
	It's radical subjectivism.
	We talked about it on the show yesterday with the grievance study guys.
	This is born out of a culture which increasingly undermines reality.
	The sort of funny version of this, I mean, not just darkly funny, but just bizarrely funny version of this, is something called deepfakes.
	If you haven't seen them, deepfakes are videos of real people.
	That look totally real and they're completely fake.
	So the ultimate deep fake came out today.
	This is a deep fake.
	If you are watching, I'm sorry.
	If you're listening, I think you're actually probably better off.
	I can narrate it for you.
	This is a deep fake of Jennifer Lawrence receiving her Golden Globe Award or speaking to the press at the Golden Globes.
	With the head of Steve Buscemi on her, an image I never want to see, I want to spoon out my mind's eye just having looked at it, look at how convincing this is.
	So you see, you can hear Jennifer Lawrence, and her Steve Buscemi head is moving around perfectly.
	It's blinking.
	Sheridan Watson from BuzzFeed right here.
	Oh, the mouth is moving.
	Just little tics, the eyebrows going up.
	Even the eyes are tracking.
	My favorite is probably Lisa Vanderpump.
	Oh, this is so creepy.
	My least favorite...
	I don't want to have to say.
	I need to call an exorcist.
	I don't want to have to say, because who knows when you're going to run into these people.
	This needs to be burned to the ground.
	This needs to be set on fire and burned until it is gone.
	This is a very terrifying thing.
	It's called deep fakes.
	When this hits porn, society is over.
	When deepfakes, and actually I think it already has, Drudge Report has been covering this a lot.
	I think Scarlett Johansson tried to sue some people or was looking at legal options because they were doing this with Scarlett Johansson except in porn.
	And she basically concluded, you can't stop this.
	There's no way to stop this.
	You can't stop this.
	The creation of fake videos.
	Videos that really look like you're doing something.
	It could be you, you know, a video of you committing an axe murder, and it would look really convincing.
	If Steve Buscemi can convincingly become Jennifer Lawrence, anything is possible.
	And so, when this, I think, once we get the combination of sex robots, virtual reality, and deep fakes, that is the end of society.
	This is already affecting Japan.
	Japan is having its...
	Already dwindling population have now a population crisis, in part because of porn and sex robots.
	Deepfakes mean that you can turn any fantasy into reality, almost.
	You can turn any fantasy into virtual reality.
	And this is going to have some seriously negative effects, not just on weird videos on the internet, but on our culture and our politics.
	What this means, what the deepfakes mean, The combination we're seeing, sex robots and virtual reality porn, what this means is that you can turn any fantasy into a virtual reality.
	And it's symptomatic of a culture that we have, which is a culture of fantasy.
	The fantasy that the baby isn't a baby.
	The fantasy that men can be women and women can be men.
	The fantasy that indulging in fantasy will make it a reality, but it won't.
	It will make it a virtual reality.
	It's not real.
	This goes even further.
	It goes further than weird videos or videos of Scarlett Johansson that we certainly can't play on the show.
	This goes to the physical essence of the human person.
	There's a story out today.
	A San Francisco biochemist and entrepreneur, Josiah Zahner, is now making gene editing equipment available to the public.
	There was that horrifying story that came out a couple weeks ago about a baby in China who was gene-edited.
	So some scientist went in, edited the genes of a baby, and it came out as a designer baby.
	And this does not just affect one baby.
	This affects all of that baby's descendants.
	This could affect the human race forever.
	And it's being done in a laboratory with people who should not be tooling around with this stuff.
	Now, this is being released to consumers and the public.
	This guy, what's his name?
	Josiah Zaner.
	He is making it such that you can inject frogs with this.
	And the frogs will double in size in two months.
	And certainly people will start using this on themselves.
	Zayner already does use it on himself.
	He's done it at press conferences.
	He'll just go in and inject it with himself and growth gene editing or whatever.
	This is the lie of...
	Self-definition.
	This is the lie of self-ownership.
	It comes out of this individualist culture that prioritizes the radical subjective, just you, me, me, me, I, me, mine, and tries to pretend that fantasy is reality.
	You don't own yourself.
	You don't have a right to define reality.
	You don't have any of those rights.
	This is the logical conclusion of liberalism, lowercase l and capital L liberalism, that has been going on now for centuries.
	And it is terrifying.
	It is bankrupt.
	It is very wrong.
	Fortunately, we're starting to see the illogic of it.
	One of the great advantages of conservatism and conservative thought is that You can't defeat reality.
	Fantasy can't defeat reality.
	You can try.
	They've been trying since the Garden of Eden.
	But you can't do it.
	Ultimately, the real world will assert itself.
	Before we go, just really quickly, I have to comment on the stupidest thing on Morning Joe yesterday.
	Then we'll get to the mailbag.
	To call it the stupidest thing on Morning Joe is really high praise.
	There's a lot of competition for that segment.
	On Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski has...
	Likely presidential candidate Howard Schultz on, and she asks him the important questions.
	How much does an 18-ounce box of Cheerios cost?
	An 18-ounce box of Cheerios?
	I don't need Cheerios.
	Here's the deal.
	You ask us.
	You know, like, budgets for the VA. We're going to ask you questions about Cheerios.
	I don't need Cheerios.
	I'm sorry.
	Okay.
	It's four bucks.
	Is it four bucks?
	Yeah.
	That's a lot.
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Howard Schultz does not eat Cheerios because he is an adult.
	I also don't eat Cheerios because I am an adult.
	I have eggs for breakfast, or if I don't have time, I'll have coffee.
	The last time I ate cereal, I think I was nine years old.
	What a stupid question.
	What she's doing, she's trying to play it off like it's a harmless question.
	What she's saying is, oh, you're a billionaire.
	You can't relate to people.
	You don't even know how much Cheerios cost.
	I don't know how much Cheerios costs.
	I eat eggs for breakfast.
	Frankly, I don't know how much eggs cost because I'm married.
	When was the last time Mika Brzezinski did her own grocery shopping?
	Are you kidding me?
	Do we really think that maybe she and Joe, they make a date out of it?
	They have a fun time, they go to Trader Joe's or something.
	Give me a break.
	How stupid.
	They're going to try to do to Schultz what they did to George Bush, George Bush I, which is he was doing a press op at a grocery store and he was asking perfectly reasonable questions to the cashier lady and they pretended that he didn't know what a grocery scanner was.
	Because he's so out of touch.
	He doesn't buy Cheerios.
	Yeah, right.
	He doesn't because he's an adult.
	Give me a break.
	What a stupid...
	And he's a billionaire.
	And he is a billionaire.
	He should not do his own grocery shopping.
	If Howard Schultz were doing his own grocery shopping, I would seriously doubt his judgment.
	You know, when these billionaires run as Democrats, they have a hard time because they have to play into this stupid idea that you're supposed to be ashamed of your success.
	Trump did not play into that.
	Trump probably exaggerated his wealth and it was to his benefit.
	That's how you've got to lean in.
	If Schultz is going to run as a billionaire in this day and age with his political party, he is going to have to lean into it and he's going to have to say, I don't know, Mika.
	What a stupid question, Mika.
	Yeah, I don't eat Cheerios and I don't go grocery shopping because I'm Howard Schultz.
	I grew up in the projects, penniless, and I became a self-made billionaire.
	And I got two words for you, Mika, and they're not happy birthday.
	They're not caramel macchiato.
	Okay, we've got a lot of mailbag to get to.
	Go over to dailywire.com.
	$10 a month, $100 for an annual membership.
	You get all the shows.
	You get to ask questions.
	You know what you get.
	You get this.
	You get the Leftist Tears Tumblr because...
	I don't know how much a box of Cheerios costs, but I know how much a vessel of leftist tears costs.
	And do you know what the price is?
	Priceless.
	That's the price.
	Be right back in a couple seconds.
	seconds, we'll be back with the mailbag.
	I'm probably not.
	From Cole.
	Hey Michael, what are the most important benefits of the free market?
	Why do so many claim that it is inherently for the rich and against the common worker?
	Best, Cole.
	Well, what aren't the benefits of the free market?
	Prosperity is a benefit.
	Freedom, liberty is a benefit.
	Material increase is a benefit.
	I mean, I suppose I really should reverse that.
	The liberty is the best part.
	Economic freedom is the best part.
	You are free.
	You are in a free country.
	God wants you to be free.
	You have property.
	You have a right to your property.
	You have a right to your labor.
	You can exchange that labor for goods and services.
	There's the freedom.
	Prosperity comes along with it.
	Pope John Paul II in Centesimus Annus talked about how free markets are the most efficient way to allocate resources.
	And they're not just efficient, but they come out of your natural rights and the natural law.
	They come out of your property and that to which you are entitled.
	That's a good thing.
	The reason that the left is able to demagogue free markets is envy.
	Because in free markets, to use Thatcher's example...
	Let's say you got the poor guy here and the rich guy here.
	The rich guy's got a little bit more money than the poor guy.
	When you have free economies, inequality can be exacerbated, but both groups are getting richer.
	Just maybe the rich are getting richer faster than the poor.
	The other thing that they forget is that these economies are very dynamic.
	So if you're in the upper quintile of wealth or income for one generation, it's unlikely that your family will get to stay there because the free markets are so dynamic.
	So, more likely they'll drop down a quintile.
	Maybe they'll drop down two quintiles.
	And the lowest quintiles, controlling for cultural factors, can increase in free economies because they don't have to game the system or deal with corrupt politicians or deal with nepotism or whatever.
	It's much more dynamic and it's much freer.
	The way that the left demagogues it is by playing on envy.
	Say, that guy has more than me and I want it.
	It's just covetousness.
	It's just, I mean, there are commandments against this, but that's all they play on.
	And unfortunately it works because we have a broken human nature.
	From Mark, I heard you guys had a hoop at the workplace.
	Would you care to record a game between you and Ben?
	No, I would not like to do that.
	And if I were to predict how that game would turn out, I think somehow we would both lose.
	I don't know how exactly, but we would both, I think everybody would lose that game.
	From Jess.
	Dear Michael, you seem like the kind of charming fellow who can probably handle the uber-leftists of L.A. as well as anyone.
	How would you respond to someone who asked your preferred pronouns?
	Sir and Sir.
	Those are my preferred pronouns.
	From Rushton.
	It's a great name.
	Hey, Michael.
	Over the past year, I have been reading incessantly, trying to get myself more enlightened.
	I read Harvey Mansfield's Manliness because you mentioned it, and I found it really useful.
	I'm wondering if you have any other suggestions for other important works of classic or modern literature that I should read.
	I'm not a Catholic, but I'm always trying to understand more about them and have read a little of St.
	Augustine and St.
	Teresa of Avila.
	Thanks.
	Well, sure, read all of them.
	Read St.
	Augustine, read all the church fathers, read the doctors of the church.
	Great idea.
	For a book that you could read right now in politics and philosophy, you should read what I am now going through again, which is The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk.
	Just a terrific book.
	It's not read enough.
	And in many ways, it's the beginning of the modern conservative movement or the post-war conservative movement.
	From Arun.
	Dear Dr.
	Kofefe, you mentioned recently that your degree is in history.
	If, God forbid, Ben Shapiro fired you and you went to grad school for your PhD, what area of history would you study for your dissertation?
	Are there any specific subfields that are in dire need of a conservative perspective or that are simply of particular interest to you?
	I probably would study the medieval.
	I love the Middle Ages.
	It's the most misunderstood era in all of human history.
	It's A wonderful era.
	It's a brilliant era.
	A brilliant era of scholarship.
	The greatest poem ever written was written during that era, the comedy by Dante.
	And a wonderful era of theology and philosophy.
	That's great.
	You know, the one downside of this is it's probably the only field that is conservative.
	You don't become a medievalist if you're not a little weird and certainly a little conservative.
	I don't mean conservative in the 1950s sense.
	I mean conservative in the 1150s sense.
	So I would probably go into that.
	I just couldn't resist it.
	I suppose if I wanted to be really helpful to the culture, I'd go into the history of the progressive era or something.
	But come on, man.
	What are you asking of me?
	You only have one life.
	I can't spend it doing that.
	From Keith.
	Michael, you're certainly the biggest optimist at The Daily Wire.
	Ever since Trump conceded on the government shutdown, I've been feeling that conservatives keep losing, even when they are in power, and I'm afraid conservatives won't be in power for long.
	What reasons do I have to be optimistic that conservative ideas will win out or gain ground in the future?
	I would like to correct you.
	I am not an optimist.
	I have hope.
	I am hopeful.
	But I am not an optimist.
	Optimism and pessimism are two sides of the same coin.
	They're both disconnected from reality.
	The pessimist says, things can't get any worse, and the optimist says, oh yes, they can.
	They're both silly.
	They're disconnected.
	Hope is real.
	I have real hope grounded in a real fact.
	Obviously, first and foremost, in Christ, in my faith.
	That is where my hope comes from.
	My Redeemer lives.
	You can't keep me down.
	It was the last political revolution.
	Even the threat of death doesn't scare me.
	That's a good reason to have hope.
	But I'm not optimistic.
	I don't have a sort of glib, silly, oh, it's all going to be sunny.
	No, I don't think so at all.
	Actually, I'm fairly confident that politics will spiral and spiral, but I have hope.
	I just have hope anyway, despite the politics spiraling, because that's reality.
	The one bit of political hope that I think I can give you is this.
	Well, I mentioned it probably ten minutes ago in the show.
	Reality has a way of reasserting itself.
	Now you have a giant political party, the oldest continuous running political party in the world, the Democrat Party, is embracing the idea that a baby is only a baby if a mother wants it to be a baby.
	It's embracing the idea that men can really be women, or women can really be men.
	It's embracing...
	Total fantasy.
	Total self-definition.
	Ridiculous fantasies.
	There was that video of a transgender guy who clearly had mental issues who is 6'2 and he's walking into a store and he says, I am clearly a woman.
	He's not clearly a woman.
	I don't mean to mock the guy who was acting like a jerk, but I don't mean to mock him.
	I mean to mock...
	The acceptance of that premise, which is absurd, that can't go on forever.
	Reality will reassert itself.
	When is that going to happen?
	I'm not quite so sure, but you should not ground your hope in politicians.
	You'll only be disappointed.
	You have to ground real hope in something more profound than that.
	From James, Hello, Michael.
	Love the show.
	My question is about the argument that Jesus is just a retelling of the god Mithra.
	What are your opinions on this?
	Sincerely, James.
	It's just nonsense.
	This is the thing that they always do.
	The lefties always do this.
	Mithra, for those who don't know, is a pagan god.
	It's a Roman pagan cult god.
	For a while, the scholars tried to link it to a different Persian god, but that's sort of broken down.
	People don't really buy that anymore.
	So the reason that Jesus is not a retelling of Mithra is that Christianity predates the cult of Mithra.
	So Mithra might be a retelling of Christ, but it's not the other way around.
	Also, they don't really bear many similarities.
	They try to say that Mithra was referred to as the Prince of Peace and the this and the that, and that just isn't true.
	That's just totally made up.
	They do this, too, with Christmas.
	They say Christmas, there's no way it really happened on December 25th.
	The only reason that we celebrate it on December 25th is because of the popularity of the pagan holiday Sol Invictus or Soli Invicti.
	Also, that isn't true.
	The celebration of Christmas predates the popularity of Sol Invictus.
	Sol Invictus, if anything, was a reaction to Christianity.
	December 25th has been celebrated for Christmas since the earliest days of Christianity.
	In part, this was calculations from the resurrection, from the Passion of Christ, and they calculated it within, I think, nine months, and that's how you arrive at December 25th.
	But regardless, the left, as always, gets things exactly backwards.
	So they say, maybe it's a retelling of this pagan tradition.
	Well, maybe look at your history books.
	The pagan tradition came after Christianity.
	From Jonathan.
	Dear The Smart One, I was wondering if you could elaborate on your return to Jesus after being an atheist for a decade.
	What was the one event that began your turnaround?
	Hashtag signed for Ben, stayed for Michael.
	How long do we have?
	I don't know.
	We've got like three minutes left.
	I'll tell you about my return to Christ.
	I was an atheist for ten years, more or less.
	Agnostic.
	Probably would have called myself an atheist from 13 to 23-ish.
	It started to break down.
	And you can identify.
	I could identify a dozen moments.
	That were really key.
	One thing that really started to crack my atheism was that all of the smartest people I met in college were Christians, and most of them were Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.
	Some were not.
	You know, there were a lot of smart atheists.
	And in particular, I came across the modal ontological argument for God, which I really found quite clever, done by Alvin Plantinga, who's a Calvinist philosopher out of Notre Dame.
	Then I started looking at other arguments for God, some of the Thomistic arguments for God.
	Then I started looking at the arguments against God, and there aren't really any.
	Then I delved into C.S. Lewis was helpful in this.
	Then Chesterton, obviously.
	And I became firmly convinced that God exists.
	And then the question is, what about Christ?
	And if we think that God exists, then we must confront the person of Christ, the fact of Christ.
	Because Christ is not just a poem or a philosophy.
	Christ is a man who claimed that he was God and died, was crucified, and then resurrected.
	And then you have to look at evidence for the resurrection.
	You have to look at evidence for Christ.
	And the evidence is overwhelming.
	And really only at that point did I begin to have what would be recognizably religious experience, which is everything.
	It's so much more convincing than reading an argument.
	Thomas Aquinas, probably the greatest theologian ever to live, said he had a religious vision and he said, All that I have written seems like so much straw compared to what has been revealed to me now.
	But that came later.
	So that's a brief overview.
	If you and I ever grab a cigar, I'm sure we can go on about this for 8 or 10 hours.
	One more question from Joseph.
	Hey Michael, big fan of your work.
	My question is, why do politicians tend to speak in gibberish instead of speaking plainly?
	Why cryptosism in lieu of speaking directly?
	Thanks, Joe.
	It's because they're cowards.
	So they don't want to have to say anything or take a position on any subject, so they try to speak out of both sides of their mouth.
	Barack Obama reportedly bragged about this.
	He said he could go into a room and have every person in that room, even if they had different views, think that he was agreeing with them.
	Bill Clinton is the master of this.
	He was asked, I believe it was about...
	The Gulf War, if he would go in and he said, well, you know, I would have, my sympathies would have been with the minority, but I would have reluctantly understood the views of the majority.
	What?
	What was that word salad?
	We'll get one more question in.
	The short answer is because they're cowards.
	From Adam.
	Michael, you said on your podcast this week that you intend to send your kids to a liberal arts school.
	You then went on to say that not all kids need to go to college and that some may instead be better served by learning a trade.
	But is it right for you to presume that liberal arts is the best education for your yet-to-be-born children?
	Thanks and love the show, Adam.
	Yes and no.
	I think I can reasonably expect that my children will be somewhat like me, and certainly for me, that was the best choice.
	Education also comes as a result of other education.
	So if I hopefully am going to have a role in educating my children, not just when I pay for college, but earlier on, I will educate them toward a liberal education.
	Now, let's say they don't take to it.
	Let's say that they just don't want to do it.
	I've got Plenty of people in my family who went straight into the military, plenty of people who went straight to trade school, plenty of people who went straight to work.
	Then you've got to guide kids to where they're leaning toward.
	But I think I'm sorry to say it's reasonable to expect that my child will not be a linebacker in the NFL. Probably not going to be a basketball player.
	Probably, I don't know, I'm just judging.
	Maybe I'm prejudging.
	So I would...
	I'll probably guide my child in that direction.
	But, you know, if he proves his old man wrong, then he can do whatever he wants to do.
	And I certainly wouldn't want to force a kid who would be better off enlisting or going to trade school or starting to work.
	I wouldn't want to force him into a quarter million dollar liberal education that by that time probably will be worth not very much.
	Okay, that's our show.
	I am out of here, but I will see you on Monday.
	In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	See you then.
	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.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
	Production assistant Nick Sheehan.
	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 infanticidal Democrats who just cannot manage to quell their enthusiasm for killing babies.
	Now the governor of Virginia is suggesting that we kill babies outside of the womb.
	He's tried to backtrack from it, but he can't change what he actually said, and we'll talk about that today.
	Also, the media was very upset yesterday, not over the infanticide thing.
	They were upset because Howard Schultz doesn't know how much a box of Cheerios costs.
	Is that a legitimate reason to attack him?
	Of course it is not.

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