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Feb. 5, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show

45:02

Ep. 292 - The State Of The Union Is Terrific

Get ready for primetime executive time tonight as Trump delivers the SOTU. Then, Andy Millennial stops by to discuss Millennial workaholics—possibly a contradiction in terms—and Ariana Grande’s botched tattoo. Date: 02-05-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Turn on the telly, cozy up with some popcorn, and get ready for primetime executive time tonight as President Trump delivers the State of the Union, which some conservatives despise, but I've come to really enjoy.
	We will analyze.
	Then, Andy Millennial stops by to give his perspective on the state of the nation, you know, as a millennial, as well as to discuss Ariana Grande's botched Japanese tattoo.
	I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
	Tonight is the State of the Union, the night that libertarians despise and I sort of enjoy, especially when Donald Trump is the one giving it.
	We'll get to that in a second.
	We'll get to why some people on the right don't like the State of the Union.
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	That'll probably help my cough and my little health.
	The State of the Union is a terrific experience.
	I have to break with some of my fellow right-wingers and conservatives here.
	I really enjoy it.
	So some conservatives hate it.
	It's basically libertarians who hate it.
	Because they feel it's too monarchical.
	It's too grandiose.
	You know, they just want the government to leave them alone, basically disappear.
	They view the president as no different from any other government office.
	And so they just want to ignore it.
	And you know, Antonin Scalia felt this way too.
	Antonin Scalia, the late great justice, refused to go.
	He thought it was such a ridiculous parade.
	So plenty of conservatives don't like it.
	Or at least libertarians.
	I think conservatives have a good deal of reason to enjoy it, though.
	For one, it fulfills a requirement of the Constitution.
	Constitution Article 2, Section 3 says, quote, He may on extraordinary occasions convene both houses or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper, he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers, he shall take care that the laws he faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States.
	So that's the whole block that we get the State of the Union from, and really we only get it from that first little line up there.
	I think there's a modern misconception Especially on the right, that the State of the Union is some wholly modern invention.
	It was just invented by Woodrow Wilson.
	And that isn't true.
	George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address before the White House existed.
	He delivered one, and then Jefferson discontinued the practice.
	So the third president discontinued it, and it's because Jefferson was a Democrat, lowercase d.
	He felt it was too monarchical.
	He was an anti-federalist, a socialist.
	Which then led to the Jeffersonian Democrats.
	He thought it was dreadful, and I think his reasoning was not so great, but we'll get to that in a second.
	Then, for a very long time, for over 100 years, no one did it until Woodrow Wilson.
	So you've got Jefferson, good, then...
	I'm sorry.
	George Washington gives it.
	That's good.
	Jefferson doesn't give it.
	That's probably a mark in favor of the State of the Union.
	And then Woodrow Wilson gives it.
	So that's a mark against the State of the Union.
	Woodrow Wilson, one of the worst presidents in American history.
	But then, Warren Harding, a highly underrated president, was the first president to broadcast it on radio.
	So he gives it good old Republican, limited broadcast, but nevertheless.
	Then Calvin Coolidge, it's harder to find any more small government conservative than Calvin Coolidge, Silent Cal.
	He gave it, and he actually was the first to broadcast the State of the Union to the entire nation.
	I think he's also the only president to actually shrink the government.
	So I think small government conservatives can take a little solace there.
	Coolidge broadcast it from coast to coast.
	And then, President Ronald Reagan was the first ever to delay the State of the Union speech.
	So, President Trump, again, following in good stead by delaying the speech for the government shutdown...
	President Trump obviously has followed in President Reagan's steps a lot of the time.
	The reason that the State of the Union, I think, is not only tolerable but actually somewhat important is that the executive is not just the DMV. The executive is not just the post office or the IRS. The executive is...
	The president, in particular, as the head of the executive branch, is representing the spirited part of government.
	So our framers were very brilliant when they set up the government.
	This brilliant system of checks and balances, complex system that allows...
	A balance of power between the people and the states and the federal government, between the judiciary and the executive and the legislature.
	And all of those parts of the government reflect different aspects of human nature.
	They reflect the tripartite soul, the ethos, the pathos, and the logos.
	The appetite, the pathos, the spirited part, the ethos, and the logos, which is the reasonable part.
	And you see that reflected in the pathos.
	The appetite is the Congress.
	It's the people who are most directly answerable to the appetites of the people and formerly the appetites of the states.
	Then you have the judiciary, which is the logos.
	They sit in their robes.
	They all went to the best law schools in the country.
	They're very straight-faced, except for when they like beer and they still like beer.
	They don't respond to anything at the State of the Union.
	They're very judicious.
	And then you have the president, which is the spirited part of the government.
	He's the one who embodies the spirit of the country, and you look to him as one single representative.
	And so it seems to me to make perfect sense to have that representative of the spirited part of the country show a little spirit.
	He's not just a bureaucrat.
	He's not just some technocrat sitting there filling out economic tables.
	He's representing something a little more passionate and a little bit more romantic in the government.
	The State of the Union is criticized by people who lean more democratic, lowercase d, in their views.
	And we should remember the founders and the framers were terrified of democracy, rightly so.
	They were terrified of the tyranny of the majority.
	And also what they were terrified of was leveling.
	The idea that in egalitarianism, when everybody is just exactly the same, that levels everybody down.
	People who are more impressive, people who are more virtuous, people who have more spirit.
	You can't level people up.
	That's not possible.
	The only way, if you want everyone to be exactly equal, is you have to cut down the tall trees.
	You have to level people down.
	That is necessarily so.
	This is what Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservative thought, saw happening in the French Revolution.
	He wrote this in the famous tract, Reflections on the Revolution in France.
	It seems to me, despite this silly democratic tendency, we should have something to look up to.
	We should have something dignified.
	And the State of the Union, imperfect as it is, is a vessel of that dignity.
	The State of the Union, and really just the State of the Union as a representative of the executive dealing with the legislature, it dignifies the people who hold that office.
	President Trump, in some ways, does demonstrate dignity.
	In other ways, not so much dignity.
	But the office can raise you up to that.
	You can improve over time.
	Bill Clinton is a good example of this.
	Even Lyndon Johnson.
	He was a depraved degenerate, but he was able to rise on occasion to a bit of dignity.
	And for all of us who are the people of this country, it's good to look up to that.
	We are not simply automatons.
	I mean, this is the mistake of libertarianism or egalitarianism or Lowercase d democratic politics taken to their extreme.
	They just level everybody.
	They make us into little robots, consumers.
	There's nothing really metaphysical.
	There's nothing really noble.
	There's not a sense of purpose or virtue.
	It's just a little leveling in plain.
	I think it was Canning who said, all simple forms of government are bad.
	I think that's just about right.
	Our reform of government is not simple.
	It's not simple at all.
	It's about as complicated as it can be.
	It evolves.
	It grows through evolution, not revolution.
	This example that the executive does something a little different than the legislature.
	He has an occasion to come in and speak to the legislature.
	A lot of the time, the legislature goes and We're going to see a lot of that for the next year as Nancy Pelosi is running the House of Representatives.
	I think that is just perfectly fine.
	And speaking of the executive part of government, the spirited part, there is a bombshell report out that President Trump spends his day in executive time.
	That's his phrase.
	The presidential private schedule leaked.
	We don't know who leaked it.
	And the left is having a field day.
	Here's Nicole Wallace on MSNBC. If he were your teenager, you'd call your mom friends for advice about how to get him up and out of his bedroom in the morning, away from the television, off social media, and phone calls with his friends.
	We start with that bombshell report in Axios, a White House source turning over dozens of Trump's private schedules filled with hundreds of hours of executive time over just a few months.
	The leak, either the greatest act of insubordination in modern political history or the bravest act of a White House whistleblower.
	Either way, the truth bomb has been detonated.
	Donald Trump doesn't do much of anything as president.
	The schedules, which cover nearly every working day since the midterms, show that Trump has spent around 60 percent of his scheduled time over the last three months in unstructured executive time.
	So what she's saying is some of the best news for the left.
	President Trump doesn't do much of anything as president.
	You can celebrate!
	He's not Hitler.
	He's not going to invade the Rhineland or take over Poland.
	Oh, great, he doesn't do anything.
	Because what they are saying is that President Trump, he's just spending 60% of his day lying around watching Fox News.
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	So, executive time, 60%.
	Apparently Trump only spends 15% of his day in meetings, and the left says this is just dreadful.
	Now, the Heritage Foundation pointed out that President Trump has installed a conservative agenda, specifically the Heritage conservative agenda, faster even than President Reagan.
	So the idea that he's not doing much as president is a little weird.
	What this really gets to is the difference between the left and the right as they view work, and I suppose as they view the world, which is that for the left, if you're not in a meeting, If you're not in a structured meeting with a lot of bureaucrats and a lot of tables and Microsoft Excel open, then you're not doing productive work.
	You need more meetings and then you have to have a meeting to set up a meeting.
	The trouble with meetings is that meetings are almost never productive.
	Meetings, to quote my priest Father Rutler, are the opiate of the bureaucrat.
	And the left is bureaucratic.
	President Trump spends 60% of his time in executive time.
	He's managed to effect a pretty conservative agenda in that amount of time.
	And what is executive time?
	He's calling people.
	He's calling foreign leaders.
	He's tweeting.
	He's taking in the news.
	We need unstructured time.
	You don't really think about the big picture when you're in a meeting with a bunch of bureaucrats around you.
	You think about it when you're driving around, when you're going, you've got an hour in between meetings.
	You're walking to the airport.
	I don't know.
	That is unstructured time that really helps.
	The left did this to Ronald Reagan.
	Ronald Reagan famously would end work at 6 o'clock.
	He said, if I see an executive who can't finish his work in 8 or 9 hours, I see an ineffective executive.
	And Ronald Reagan, another one of the great effective conservative presidents.
	So, great job.
	If the left really believes this, good.
	You can be at ease.
	He's not going to take over all of Europe.
	The right won't last a thousand years because he's so lazy.
	For the rest of us, we know that he is working in a much more effective way than the bureaucracy of the left.
	We have got to bring on.
	We have a lot more to say about working.
	We have first got to bring on someone who obviously doesn't work very much by virtue of his youth and vigor.
	Andy Millennial.
	What's up?
	Andy, thank you so much for coming on.
	It's been a while.
	We haven't had you on in a little while.
	It's been a long time, yeah.
	But you've been busy.
	You've been collecting a lot of experiences.
	Yeah, something.
	Something, I don't know.
	So, what's going on?
	What can you update us on?
	Well, you know, not much.
	I mean, we've got this State of the Union.
	I think it's an urgent moment of political, you know, something of urgency going on for the country.
	And, you know, I would watch it myself if I weren't hanging with my buds.
	But, you know, I think I'm really hoping that an important progressive agenda will be put forward.
	It's very, very important to me that we are progressive.
	So what specifically do you want to see out of the State of the Union?
	I don't know a lot about issues or facts or anything like that, but speaking as a millennial, just speaking as my lived experience as a millennial, I think I live out my progressivism.
	You know, like, you look back in the old days, and people didn't have tattoos, you know?
	And now, like, I have a tattoo on every part of my body, so that's, like, progress.
	You know, I made progress.
	People, you know, wouldn't wear stuff.
	They were afraid to wear anything.
	But, you know, I have, like, piercings on my nose, and I put rings on my nose.
	That's progress, you know?
	And, like...
	I believe in, like, the environment, you know, environment.
	So, like, I think we've got to get rid of all this, like, oil and all these cities that are just ruining the environment.
	Bring back the jungle, you know, so we can be walking through the jungle with tattoos and rings on our nose, and I think that's...
	And that's progress.
	We stop speaking this language, you know?
	We just get rid of all this written language.
	I could have gone on with that for about ten more minutes, but...
	That is progress.
	That's progress with a capital P. You know, we can go back to sacrificing babies.
	The left has got it all figured out.
	I think we've got it.
	I think we make the Aztecs look like children.
	I think we make them look...
	We're living in apocalypto at this point.
	That's right.
	So, the State of the Union addresses tonight.
	You are...
	I have to...
	You are the most articulate millennial spokesman that I've ever met.
	It is amazing, isn't it?
	It's amazing.
	For a man my age, to have a grasp of language that's extensive, it can only be attributed to hard study.
	I think it just comes in through this hat, actually.
	That's what it comes in through, through hard study, the legalization of shrooms.
	Right.
	Right.
	I do.
	You touched on this tattoo question.
	Yes.
	Did you see this story about your fellow millennial, Ariana Grande?
	She got a tattoo for her new song.
	She has a song called Seven Rings.
	She got a tattoo, for some reason, in Japanese.
	And she got it, for some reason, on the palm of her hand.
	But it turns out that the tattoo doesn't say Seven Rings in Japanese.
	It says Barbecue Grill.
	Well, I'm very supportive of barbecue.
	That's right.
	I'm into it.
	I would get that tattoo myself, I think.
	I might get it in English.
	Like, wings on the side and ribs on the side.
	This is...
	I actually can't make a joke about this, because that is the joke.
	I mean, this is the idea that these little white millennial girls are getting Japanese tattooed on their wrist, and they think it means water, and really it means, like, you know, four-wheel truck.
	You know, what is this?
	You know, I was watching the Super Bowl, and the Maroon 5 guy, what's his name, Adam Levine, he takes off his shirt, and, like, every inch of his body is tattooed, and you just think, like, you know, in about 20 years, it's going to look...
	Really, really bad.
	I mean, look at Schwarzenegger, you know, the way what happens to your body after all.
	And that's Mr.
	Universe.
	Yeah, exactly.
	One of the strongest men in the world.
	You know, it is funny.
	I have to tell you, Alyssa Milano, though, is part of a very, very weird...
	You look at her, she dresses like a little girl.
	Have you noticed this?
	Yeah.
	But she's hot, you know.
	I mean, she's obviously very beautiful.
	It's a weird little thing we're having in our rock idols at the moment.
	I don't really understand where it comes from.
	I have an inkling, because it's not just these stars.
	Millennials, broadly, are so much more tatted up than other generations.
	They all have tattoos.
	I mean, I have seen people on their kneecaps, they'll have giant citrus fruit, one kneecap and the other, and just random little designs that don't seem to mean anything.
	I was kidding around when we started, but it really does seem to me that certain things that were considered primitive, like the idea that you were primitive was not a good thing.
	You were trying to be civilized, trying to move forward.
	But certain things that were considered primitive, like all these piercings and things that you see in Native cultures and the tattoos, they actually are coming back.
	I don't think it's a good thing.
	I think we're actually, like that trajectory up out of the jungle, I think is a good one.
	I think that's the kind of one we want to stick with that, you know, like less killing, less beating up women, things like that.
	And there used to be specific times to get a tattoo.
	For instance, if you're in the Marines or you're a criminal.
	And you wake up with a tattoo, but you can't remember how you got it.
	Yeah, that was okay.
	That's actually to be encouraged, I think.
	I suppose for our criminals and also for our service members, for obviously very different reasons, those are two groups where strength really matters, where the niceties of civilization really kind of have to go away.
	One, if you're trying to protect people and fight for the good guys, and two, if you're making your way through prison.
	Right.
	Now it's all of these little hipster guys who weigh 120 pounds and they wear leggings all day long.
	It really is strange and it is this harkening back.
	You know, Steven Pinker, he's kind of a liberal.
	I wouldn't call him like a far lefty or anything like this, but he does like to, because he's a scientist, he does like to say things that kind of make the left crazy, like men and women are different.
	I mean, all the science shows that men and women are different.
	And one of the things he talked about, and he's been talking about it for a long time, is that the world has gotten less violent as it has become more civilized.
	Obviously, our wars are so horrific because we have these engines of destruction, but if you live in an uncivilized society, a primitive society, you are more likely to get killed or raped than you are now in this incredible world that we have.
	Why these kids who have never been to war, who have never...
	Most of them, the way they talk, the way...
	Alexandria, occasional cortex talks, you think she has never left New York.
	I mean, she has never...
	But only the really nice part of New York.
	We're not talking about the South Bronx here.
	I know, she is.
	But they've never seemed to have been anywhere.
	And yet, and yet, they are bedecked with this kind of, like, you know, stuff in their skin.
	And I don't mean to just be...
	Just dismiss it, because, like, believe me, my generation, if we had thought of piercing our faces...
	We would have done it.
	It just didn't occur to us.
	We were so stoned out of our minds.
	So it's not like just saying, oh, this is...
	It's the particular message it's sending, this message that we're going backwards.
	You know where I think it comes from a little bit, too, is this postmodern nihilism.
	Because the tattoos are not often significant.
	I will make an exception if someone has a really significant tattoo and they have really good reasons for it.
	I sort of can understand that.
	I was at an Apple store in Grand Central and the guy who was helping me out on his ring finger had a little mustache tattoo and then on the middle finger it said...
	S, a word for fecal matter, cray, in cursive.
	Stuff cray, short for crazy.
	That's meaningless.
	That is the embodiment of meaninglessness.
	And you see, and women too, have these crazy tattoos where it's just like a little squiggle.
	Yeah.
	Or just a random little shape all down their body.
	I think it's because we are saying nothing really matters, nothing really matters to me.
	Why not?
	I'm just a big hunk of flesh.
	And there's also in this oppression matrix that we've created, the intersectionality ideology, The one thing that unites all of these disparate groups that seem to contradict one another is that they hate big daddy western civilization.
	And so, I mean, from the time of Rousseau, certainly up to the present, you have this romantic idea of the primitive, of the savage, of the jungle.
	And I think on a certainly unconscious level when we're talking about millennials, I think that's what that's getting at a little bit.
	Just, you can't make me conform, man.
	Well, think about it.
	Think about the fact that they've made these movies.
	Avatar, Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves are all the same movie.
	A civilized man goes back into a more backward culture and finds that that is where truth is.
	That's where...
	You know, honesty and integrity are.
	And there's always, and the women are always treated well because, you know, primitive cultures, women are not treated well.
	And it really is interesting when you watch, Avatar was the one that always got me because they have everything that you would have if you had oil, but they have it by magic.
	So they have lights, but they have little plants that light up.
	They can fly around.
	Yeah, and then they fly around in dragons and all this.
	Yeah, but you need that oil if you're going to get those things off the ground, you know?
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	State of the Union is going to be on tonight.
	We're going to be watching it.
	Other than progress, what are you looking for?
	Well, I mean, I think it is interesting.
	He's been talking about, they've been talking about a call for unity, which is just a really fascinating idea to me because Donald Trump, in many ways, erased all the attitudinal stuff, all the tweets and the insults and all those things, the style that people love and hate, you know?
	I don't want to erase that, but for the moment I will.
	Just stipulate this out of the way.
	Donald Trump is a very practical guy.
	I mean, he wants things to work.
	And I've always noticed this about him, that he's a narcissist and so he wants to be loved, but he wants to be loved for fixing stuff.
	He said it again and again, I fix things, that's what I do.
	And he's actually taken that approach.
	I mean, nothing he's done has been ideological.
	Right.
	Except in the sense that the left has given him no room to move, so he's only been able to move to the right.
	That's the only way he's been able to go.
	But he's perfectly, you hear him when he negotiates, like, yeah, I'll give you the dreamers and I'll take the wall.
	Give you the dreamers, let all the criminals out of prison, I don't know.
	Yeah, whatever.
	You know, he actually has no ideology whatsoever.
	I think most Americans are like that.
	I do not think.
	I think people like us have an ideology.
	Most Americans just want stuff fixed.
	Why isn't this working?
	Why can't I get to work?
	Why can't I do this stuff?
	And so it is interesting.
	If it weren't for his affect, he would actually probably be a uniting figure.
	As it is, he has made his personality such a big part of his presidency that I think he's in this battle, locked in this battle with Nancy Pelosi, who I seriously think, for all she's a highly professional politician and a real killer, I think she can't let go of the battle.
	I do believe, you know, I think Trump actually...
	You know, he gets personal, but he'd give her a lot of what she wants, but she can't do it.
	She can't, because he can let go of the battle, so much as people smear.
	Lindsey Graham called him all sorts of awful names.
	He called all of the other Republicans awful names, and now they're buddies.
	He goes down to Texas for Ted Cruz.
	He says, I know, he used to be lying, Ted.
	Now he's beautiful, Ted.
	I love him.
	He really doesn't take it personally.
	And I just think it is interesting that if you could just look at his policies, just look at his approach, he would be a unifying figure, but he's not.
	And I think that's really interesting because I think if you look, he's the opposite of Obama, who had a kind of appealing, quieter style, but did things that actually tore the country to pieces.
	And we're deeply ideological.
	And we're deeply ideological, and so he's kind of the opposite of that.
	But I really do believe that he and Pelosi are in a battle royal, that he can move because his base will follow him, but she can't because her base is actually not following her, it's following an ideology.
	And I love that idea, if he had a different personality.
	If I had some ham, I could have a ham sandwich if I had some bread.
	Yeah.
	Well, it'll be a lot of fun tonight.
	It's true.
	And it will be fun, except boring as hell, I think.
	Yeah, I think that'll be the thing.
	Well, at least, you know, I've got this little throat chest issue.
	So I'll be able to work through that with all those good cigars.
	That's the important thing.
	Those cigars will cure you right up and we'll bury you.
	Andy Millennial, good to see you.
	I won't shake your hand on account of, but I'll see you in a few hours.
	I'll be there.
	All right.
	We've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
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	Oh, President Trump is going to have...
	What is it going to be?
	An hour tonight?
	An hour and a half?
	Of saying whatever he wants.
	And all those Democrats, they're going to...
	It's going to be like that picture of Chuck and Nancy.
	The American Gothic.
	It's going to be that.
	Turned up to 11.
	Get your Tumblr.
	Go to dailywire.com.
	We'll be right back with a lot more.
	I do want to finish this thought on executive time and how we work and what work really means.
	The left attacks Donald Trump for opposite reasons.
	They attack him for being too effective and right-wing and awful and terrible.
	And they attack him for being lazy and not doing anything and just watching Fox News all day.
	And it can't be both.
	They've obviously come to a conclusion and they're in search of an argument.
	But the way that President Trump works, 60% executive time, 15% meetings.
	One, I think that's a pretty good idea.
	And two, I think it's pretty emblematic of our time and the way that we work these days.
	You know, there was a study that just came out about half of Americans consider themselves workaholics.
	48% consider themselves workaholics.
	They have, on average, 7.5 hours of screen time daily.
	Makes sense.
	A lot of us are on our screens for work.
	And if you're not on your screen a lot for work, maybe you're on some screen or you're obviously using screens in all your personal life.
	What does it mean to be a workaholic?
	It's not the people who are in the coal mines for 18 hours a day.
	What they mean is that they worry about work on a day that they're off.
	What it means is that, this is just how they described it, they feel too busy to take a vacation, ever.
	It means that the minute they wake up, they're on their phone, they're checking email.
	They're right away logged on.
	58% of respondents say that they do that.
	I certainly do that.
	They say that these are the top three symptoms of workaholicism.
	Does this mean that we're working harder all the time?
	No.
	Actually, it doesn't.
	But what it means is that we're almost never not working.
	I say this as a man who sleeps 27 hours a day.
	I'm not working like grinding away at the coal mine all day long.
	But I am always sort of working.
	It's very rare that I'm not working, and I don't think I'm the only one.
	I think most people are there checking emails.
	In the old days, you would have business hours, and then after business hours, you wouldn't really be bothered.
	Now, what's business hours?
	I get calls all through the night.
	I make calls all through the night, and I expect people to pick up on the East Coast or on the West Coast.
	President Trump is emblematic of this.
	He's always sort of working.
	So when he's watching Fox and Friends and tweeting, obviously that's work.
	He's gaining information.
	He's pushing his agenda.
	In one of his biggest roles, he's a spokesman.
	He's a communicator.
	That's maybe the chief charge of the president as a political figure.
	And that doesn't have business hours.
	The modern economy doesn't have business hours.
	So there are some proposals now.
	I just read one of them where a few companies are giving women over 30 Time off to date.
	You think this is ridiculous.
	What a ridiculous idea.
	These millennials are so coddled, whatever.
	I actually think it's a pretty good idea.
	Because what it makes us aware of is the one moral hazard of our economy.
	Of our work hard, free markets, capitalist American economy, which is so wonderful.
	The one hazard is that we lose perspective and we think that we're just economic creatures.
	We're just automatons, consumers, whatever.
	But really, life is so much more than that.
	That's one aspect of what we do, but we only do that to serve ourselves.
	We have higher aims than just buying a lot of nice stuff.
	We have relationships and duties and responsibilities to our families, to our communities, and to our God.
	We have a purpose in our life beyond just consuming the nicest electronics.
	And in this economy, especially I've lived in New York and L.A., it's really hard for people to date because they're working all the time.
	And so I think this actually, in a kind of silly way, is addressing that problem.
	And more executive time, if that's the way of the American economy, so be it.
	That's good and we can be more effective that way.
	And if private solutions are coming around to trying to get a little bit more of a balance in life and try to make you see that life is about more than just chugging away on Excel spreadsheets or something, I think that's a good move too.
	We have to get to Nancy Pelosi's Bible quote.
	If you didn't see this, Nancy Pelosi has been using this quote from the Bible.
	Nancy Pelosi is a self-described Catholic.
	Of course, she has a radical abortion agenda, but she at least says that she's a Catholic.
	Andrew Cuomo, who legalized infanticide two weeks ago, he said that he's a Catholic too.
	Nancy Pelosi has been giving this little stump speech for years and years where she quotes a line of the Bible.
	There's just one problem.
	I can't find it in the Bible, but I quote it all the time, and I keep reading and reading the Bible.
	I know it's there someplace.
	It's supposed to be in Isaiah.
	But I heard bishops say, to minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship.
	To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.
	It's there somewhere in some words or another, but certainly the spirit of it is there.
	It's there somewhere it's got to be.
	I know it's supposed to be in Isaiah.
	Oh, really?
	You should take that up with him.
	Isaiah promised you it was going to be there.
	It's supposed to be there.
	I mean, it's not.
	It isn't there, or anywhere else in the Bible.
	But Nancy Pelosi, the Gospel according to St.
	Nancy of Sacramento, or of wherever, she insists that it's there, but it's not.
	It's not there.
	The quote that she's using is, the Bible tells us in the Old Testament, to minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship.
	To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.
	What Nancy Pelosi is doing is an act of worship.
	It is an act of self-worship.
	That's what she's doing.
	She's saying, listen.
	I know that this is in the Bible.
	I know that this is what the Bible tells us.
	I mean, it doesn't, and it's not anywhere in the Bible.
	But I want it to be, and so I will turn the Scripture, the Word of God, to what I want.
	An analogy that is used for this sometimes is looking down a well.
	I have no doubt that Nancy Pelosi has read the Bible on some occasions in her life, skimmed it at least.
	And what we do when we just skim the Bible for our own purposes without any sort of interpretive doctrine, without any sort of people teaching it to us, going through it with us, guiding us spiritually through it, what it's like is it's like looking down a dark well.
	A profound and dark well, and all you see is your own reflection in the water.
	That's what Nancy Pelosi's doing.
	She's looking at the Bible, whatever she skimmed, and she's seeing her own reflection.
	And so it couldn't possibly be the case that that quote is not in the Bible.
	It has to be, because Nancy said so.
	And what is the quote?
	The quote is, to minister to the needs of creation is an act of worship.
	No, that would be idolatrous.
	To worship the creation is idolatry.
	Now, we have stewardship over the earth.
	We have dominion over the earth.
	That's our job.
	That's the duty that God gave to us.
	Worship is worship.
	We worship God.
	We don't worship the creation.
	We're not supposed to worship ourselves.
	This is the trouble with being lightly educated.
	A little learning is a dangerous thing.
	This is the trouble with only reading books of quotations or only reading Quotation memes on the internet.
	There's that famous meme, a picture of Abraham Lincoln.
	It says, don't believe everything you read on the internet.
	Abraham Lincoln, 1862.
	And I like books of quotations.
	Winston Churchill, I believe, recommended books of quotations to people.
	He had some of the great quotations in all of those modern books.
	Actually, speaking of Churchill, I was at a dinner with a fairly well-known actress, and we were having dinner, left wing, and this actress said we were discussing Winston Churchill.
	She said, you know, Churchill said during the Second World War that Parliament was about to cut funding to the arts, and Winston Churchill said, then what are we fighting for?
	Of course, he didn't say that.
	I knew this immediately because I know anything about Winston Churchill.
	Winston Churchill did not fight the Second World War.
	He didn't fight in the Boer War.
	He didn't escape from a prison camp in South Africa.
	He didn't do all of that to preserve government funding for stupid plays that often are terrible and bad modern murals.
	I promise you he didn't do that.
	Because I know something about Winston Churchill, so I just know that that isn't true.
	But what people do Is they look down that well at whatever profound issue they're looking at, and they only see their own reflection.
	I forget, I was tweeting about something the other day on the internet, and some dummy blue checkmark guy tried to make some point, but it wasn't a very good point.
	But because he didn't seem terribly intelligent, and he didn't seem terribly humble, he couldn't understand that his point had been refuted.
	So I used a line from the Bakke by Euripides, which is...
	Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
	It's useless to talk sense to a fool.
	And then he responded with a quote from Oscar Wilde that said that quotations are a substitute for wit.
	And then I said, I know Oscar Wilde didn't say that.
	And I looked it up, and that quotation is not true either.
	We're in this very shallow culture.
	We're in a very glib culture where we are quoting all of these great ideas, great thinkers.
	We are pretending that we are following in a long intellectual tradition, and we are not.
	We are severing ourselves from that tradition because we are not being cultured and we're not being educated.
	And what we are doing is just substituting a false fantasy of that tradition.
	And everyone else who's also uneducated and uncultured thinks that that's true.
	What is required to fix this is humility.
	We actually can't just tell the left, "You guys are a bunch of idiots." I mean, we can maybe, you know, once every so often we can say that.
	But what we need is a little humility, too, because even us on the right, we are not well educated.
	This is just a symptom of the 20th and 21st centuries.
	Our education systems have been destroyed.
	K-12, college and graduate school, they've been really hollowed out by ideology, by leftism, by trying to look down the profound well of our tradition.
	And only seeing ourselves.
	Only seeing the perpetual present.
	This is a really big issue.
	I'm going to be speaking at UCLA tomorrow.
	I'll be giving a lecture on a similar topic.
	So if you're around, go check it out.
	Before we go, I also have to get to the Super Bowl.
	I know.
	I didn't watch the Super Bowl.
	I was on an airplane.
	Apparently no one else watched it either, though, so I don't feel that bad.
	I suppose it happened.
	This was the lowest moment of the Trump presidency.
	I'm sorry that I even have to watch this.
	Would you let your son, Barron, play football?
	It's a very tough question.
	It's a very good question.
	If he wanted to, yes.
	Would I steer him that way?
	No, I wouldn't.
	Why?
	I wouldn't.
	And he actually plays a lot of soccer.
	He's liking soccer.
	And a lot of people, including me, thought soccer would probably never make it in this country, but it really is moving forward rapidly.
	I just don't like the reports that I see coming out having to do with football.
	I mean, it's a dangerous sport.
	And I think it's really tough.
	I thought the equipment would get better, and it has.
	The helmets have gotten far better, but it hasn't solved the problem.
	So, you know, I hate to say it because I love to watch football.
	I think the NFL is a great product, but I really think that as far as myself, well, I've heard NFL players saying they wouldn't let their sons play football.
	So it's not totally unique, but I would have a hard time with it.
	I don't even disagree with much of what he said, but that soccer line.
	Barron plays soccer.
	Mr.
	President, please.
	You know that I care about you, your office, your family seems lovely.
	The soccer, please don't.
	What good is it if we secure our border, we deport illegal alien criminals, we get our economy moving again, we make America...
	What good is that?
	What does that avail?
	If American children are playing soccer, what's the point?
	What then are we fighting for?
	To quote not Winston Churchill.
	Really sad.
	The future of football is in question.
	I don't care because I don't watch football and I like baseball.
	And I think baseball is a much more sophisticated sport and more enjoyable to watch.
	And I think football is very boring.
	And it's especially boring during that Super Bowl where they scored a combined 16 points.
	But we're looking at the lowest rated Super Bowl ever, 10 year low, We're looking at a few reasons for this.
	Part of it is TV. People aren't watching linear TV anymore, but of course they can stream it on any device they want.
	Part of that is the growing popularity of other sports like soccer.
	Part of it is politics.
	Part of it is get woke, go broke.
	The NFL came in and embraced Colin Kaepernick, let all of those ingrates on the field make a mockery of our country and make a mockery of the sport.
	They tolerated it.
	They encouraged it.
	That incompetent football commissioner did it.
	And now look at what has happened.
	And now an ad that was supposed to be run during the Super Bowl from CBS was shut down for being too political in the other direction.
	Don't ask if your loyalty is crazy.
	Ask if your loyalty is crazy enough.
	When they question you running towards danger for those who are unable or unwilling, when they laugh at the thought of you willingly sacrificing your life for someone you may never know, stay that way.
	Some people think you're crazy being loyal, defending the Constitution, standing for the flag.
	Then I guess I'm crazy.
	And for those who kneel, they fail to understand that they can kneel, and that they can protest, that they can despise what I stand for, even hate the truth that I speak.
	But they can only do that because I am crazy enough.
	Great commercial.
	It's from Nine Line, which I believe is a vet-owned company.
	In normal America, Colin Kaepernick would be ostracized, Nike would not be allowed to advertise, and this company would be doing great.
	And today it's the opposite.
	That spells trouble not just for the NFL, about which I don't care at all, but for the country.
	We'll have to see what happens tonight at the State of the Union.
	In the meantime, I'll see you in a few hours.
	In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	show.
	See you soon.
	The Michael Knowles Show is produced by 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.
	Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, President Trump prepares for the State of the Union, Stacey Abrams prepares for her response, and Virginia Democrats implode.

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