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March 7, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
47:05
Ep. 309 - The Left Has Hypnotized The World

Democrats turn on the Jews. Then, a leftist thug attacks a conservative activist at UC Berkeley, illegal immigration triples, and a billionaire dies during penis enlargement surgery. Finally, the Mailbag! Date: 03-07-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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In the wake of Representative Ilhan Omar's repeated anti-Jewish slurs and accusations, Nancy Pelosi tries to take a vote to condemn anti-Semitism.
How do you think that went?
Unfortunately for Pelosi, a generational divide has emerged among Democrats on the question of Israel and anti-Semitism.
We will analyze why the left no longer likes the Jews.
Then, a leftist thug attacks a conservative activist at UC Berkeley.
That In a culture that equates speech with violence.
Will that man ever see justice?
We'll find out.
Illegal immigration is on track to triple 2017 levels.
And then finally, a billionaire dies during penis enlargement surgery.
All the money in the world.
We will get to that, plus the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
So big news.
It's still breaking as we're talking about it, and we'll see what changes maybe even during this show.
You followed Representative Ilan Omar.
She is this woman who has accused Israel of hypnotizing the world, who has said that the world needs to awaken to the evil doings of Israel.
She was asked why people in America support Israel, and she said it's all about the Benjamins, baby.
She doesn't like Israel and she doesn't like the Jews.
This much is clear.
She's got a long history of extremism.
So now there's this generational divide that's broken out among Democrats.
The older Democrats like Nancy Pelosi want her to apologize and to stop criticizing Jews unfairly, stop attacking Jews and get her to stop these comments.
And then there's the younger side, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, who are defending her on it.
Now, you've got Pelosi, you've got Rahm Emanuel just wrote an op-ed, I think in The Atlantic.
You've got the old guard here saying, condemn this.
And the new kids don't want to defend it.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or rather, the new kids don't want to condemn it.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that Ilhan Omar is simply defending U.S. foreign policy.
This isn't anti-Jewish, it's just questioning U.S. foreign policy.
Now, that is not the case.
Where is the difference?
You know I don't throw the phrase anti-Semitism around lightly.
I almost never use the phrase racism.
I try to be more specific because those phrases have been emptied of meaning.
What Ilhan Omar is doing is anti-Jewish.
It is anti-Semitism.
We will explain the difference and we'll see how this is going to damage Democrats in 2020.
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What Ilhan Omar is different than simply criticizing Israel.
One, it seems like her criticisms come unprovoked.
I pray, and they're so...
Outrageous.
They're not just saying, okay, the Venezuelan dictator needs to be ousted.
Okay, China needs to address its trade policies.
Okay, Russia needs to stop interfering with our interests in the Middle East.
Okay, it's not that.
It's saying there is a particular evil of Israel, and Jews in America are not trustworthy.
They're not loyal to our country because they have a dual allegiance.
They have a dual loyalty.
She's now said that she's expected to have allegiance to another country, meaning Israel, to work in the U.S. Congress.
That just is not true.
And this is where it crosses over the line.
When her criticism of Israel is so unlike...
Normal criticism of any other country.
That's how you know that it's prompted by something else.
And so you've got the old guard in the house.
You've got the new guard, the AOC types.
They're fighting it out.
Where is the future of the Democratic Party going to be?
Just look at the 2020 candidates.
Of the 2020 Democrat candidates, they are all universally defending Ilhan Omar.
So much for the Jews.
They're throwing them out the bus for the 2020 race.
Bernie Sanders said, quote, We must develop an even-handed Middle East policy which brings Israelis and Palestinians together for a lasting peace.
What I fear is going on in the House now is an effort to target Congresswoman Omar as a way of stifling that debate.
So this is what they're all doing.
They're making Ilhan Omar into the victim.
Ilhan Omar is the one praying that Allah awaken people's eyes to the evils of Israel, saying that we need to end our friendly relationship with Israel, saying that we need to stop having dual loyalty, targeting out American Jews and saying that they're not trustworthy.
But Ilhan Omar becomes the victim.
In this backwards identity politics.
Harris, Kamala Harris says, quote, There is a difference between criticism of policy or political leaders and anti-Semitism.
Right.
There is a difference.
And what Ilhan Omar is doing is anti-Semitism.
Harris then says, I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk.
At risk of what?
Just at risk.
She's a victim.
Look, she's a victim.
She's at risk.
Well, because what Congresswoman Omar is doing is saying that Jews are not loyal to America and you can't trust them.
Do you think that puts Jews at risk when a member of Congress says that?
Do you think when a member of Congress implies that nefarious Jews are just paying off every politician to support their country in the Middle East, that that puts Jews at risk?
No, no, no.
It's Ilhan Omar who's at risk.
She's a delicate little flower, Ilhan Omar.
She's basically a little girl.
I mean, she's 37 years old and a member of the United States Congress, but look, you can't...
No criticizing Ilhan Omar.
No, she's just...
She's at risk.
And then Elizabeth Warren, Laya Watha, says, quote,"...branding criticism of Israel as automatically anti-Semitic will have a chilling effect on our public discourse and makes it harder to achieve a peaceful solution between Israelis and Palestinians." I think Palestine is...
We've covered it a little bit before on this show.
It's the country between Narnia and Wakanda.
I think it's to the east of Narnia and to the west of Wakanda.
So that's what Elizabeth Warren is talking about here.
Now, of course, she's right.
Yeah, of course, you can't brand all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism.
But that's not what we're doing.
We're using very specific examples.
And the left won't acknowledge those examples.
Why?
Why?
Until right now, congressional Democrats would not vote for a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism, even one that didn't mention Ilhan Omar by name.
Now I'm just getting in that they are going to vote on a...
They are going to vote on a resolution to condemn hatred, but not specifically and exclusively anti-Semitism.
They're going to vote on something to condemn all forms of bigotry.
And this is one of the great ironies of recent politics.
Do you remember a year ago, two years ago, You had the Black Lives Matter movement.
And the candidates would be asked, they say, do Black Lives Matter?
And do you know what they would say?
They'd say, all lives matter.
They'd say, how dare you?
Oh, the left was outraged by all lives matter.
Because all lives matter undermines and overshadows The specific and particular fact that black lives matter.
How dare you generalize when we are condemning a specific form of bigotry unless it's against the Jews and then it's great.
And then that's what we have to do.
Pure hypocrisy from the left.
Now, this is all just taking the premises of leftist identity politics as they are.
Just pointing out the internal inconsistencies here.
Now, the left comes back and they say, well, listen, you have your own racial issues on the right.
Sure, I guess so.
Man's heart is evil from the very beginning, so yeah, sure.
Okay, I guess we're fallen people.
There are going to be bigots all over the place.
They're saying, well, you have Steve King.
Remember Republican Representative Steve King?
He asked the question, he said, white supremacy, white nationalism, Western civilization, when did that become controversial?
And what Steve King said is, I was taken out of context, I meant to say...
I was listing these things and then Western civilization is what I was asking when it became controversial.
Okay, I don't know if that totally carries water.
But then what happened?
When he got called out for it, Steve King went on the floor of the House.
Do we have the clip?
Today the New York Times is suggesting that I'm an advocate for white nationalism and white supremacy.
I want to make one thing abundantly clear.
I reject those labels and the evil ideology that they define.
Further, I condemn anyone that supports this evil and bigoted ideology, which saw in its ultimate expression the systematic murder of six million innocent Jewish lives.
It's true that, like the Founding Fathers, I am an advocate for Western civilization's values, and that I profoundly believe that America is the greatest tangible expression of these ideals the world has ever seen.
Under any fair political definition, I am simply an American nationalist.
Could not be clearer.
Whatever he said in that interview with the New York Times, whether he was misquoted, whether he was quoted perfectly, he comes out there, he says, I reject this evil ideology.
I condemn anybody who supports this evil ideology.
They then had a vote based on the quotation that the New York Times reported from him.
They had this resolution to condemn white supremacy, and it was seen largely as a rebuke to Steve King.
What did Steve King do?
He voted for his own rebuke.
What more can the man do?
How about on the right, though?
What has Ilhan Omar done?
She said, oh, I'm sorry.
Wink.
Oh, no, I didn't mean to say that.
Wink.
Tee-hee-hee.
And then what does she do?
She keeps it up.
She keeps up the dual loyalty smears, the can't trust a Jew smears.
She keeps it all up.
And what happens?
What would happen to any Republican who defended Steve King on the merits of that quote?
That he was reported to have said.
What would happen?
They would be ostracized from American society.
They'd be thrown out of the country.
And yet you have fresh-faced popular Democrat members of Congress defending Ilhan Omar on this.
What's very interesting about this, this is something nobody is talking about, it is actually the most interesting aspect of this whole Ilhan Omar anti-Semitism debate, is the difference between right-wing and left-wing anti-Semitism, and how Ilhan Omar is actually engaging in right-wing anti-Semitism, her defenders are engaging in left-wing.
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So, the most interesting aspect of this whole Omar's debacle on antisemitism is the one that nobody's talking about, which is the difference between right-wing antisemitism and left-wing antisemitism.
Look, today, antisemitism appears to be For the very large part, a left-wing problem.
That wasn't always the case.
When the right is anti-Semitic in history, when the right has been anti-Semitic, has not liked the Jews, has excluded the Jews, the line of attack usually goes something like this.
The Jews are seen as rootless cosmopolitans with no allegiance, with no loyalty to the countries that they live in, and they control the world usually through...
Finance or debt specifically.
And this financial power combined with higher levels of education also allows them to control the media.
More or less, that is the kind of traditional anti-Semitic narrative that has been embraced at times by some groups on the right.
Ilhan Omar, leftist Democrat politician, Has centered her criticism, specifically as it relates to Israel and to her Arab neighbors.
Using this line of attack.
This is the line of attack she's using.
All about the Benjamin's baby, dual loyalty, allegiance to another country.
You can't trust them when it comes to this country.
She is using the classic, traditional anti-Semitic narrative.
But the people who are defending Ilhan Omar are not using that traditional narrative.
They're actually defending Ilhan Omar's anti-Semitism from the left-wing anti-Semitic point of view.
And that leftist angle Is basically this.
It uses parts of the traditional angle, but it views it through an intersectional identity politics scope, which is, you would think, the normal person would say, okay, identity politics, intersectionality, you're all about protecting oppressed minorities.
The Jews have been oppressed for a very long time.
They were slaves in Egypt.
People try to kill them every 50 years or so.
Clearly, if anyone's got a grudge to bear, it would be the Jews.
And the leftist angle on it is this.
The Jews are not really a persecuted ethnic and religious minority because the Jews are successful.
So this uses the kind of classic line, which is the Jews are successful in finance, the Jews are successful in the media, the Jews are successful in the arts, and because they are successful in those fields, fields that they've traditionally been permitted into, because they've been successful, they lose their victim status.
So victimhood has currency in 2019 in the leftist intersectional ideology.
They lose that currency of victimhood because of their success.
Because for the left, success is a sin.
Success, not just when we're speaking about racial or religious demographics, success broadly is a sign that you have cheated.
It's a sign that you weren't playing fair.
The only way the fat guy got fat was by stealing the food of the skinny guy.
The only way the rich guy got rich was stealing the money of the poor guy.
That's the leftist idea, the static world where it's all just competing interests.
Nobody can work together.
No rising tide can lift all ships.
So the fact that the Jews as a people have succeeded...
The fact that Israel, specifically, is a thriving democracy, surrounded by absolute rubble in that region, that is prima facie evidence that the Jews and Israel have cheated and they've oppressed people.
That's how the left views it.
Therefore, that they can't be protected as are other oppressed minorities in their ideology.
The Jews, according to the left, have basically become indistinguishable from the WASP culture, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
Whatever particular version of white that you identify as the man, as the dominant racial or cultural group, the Jews are now considered white, according to the left.
And so this group, obviously a small religious and ethnic minority as far as the world population goes, and as far as the American population goes, becomes big daddy.
They become the top of the pyramid.
They lose their victim status.
And so it is okay to attack them and to attack their country in Israel, even if the two arguments don't necessarily coincide.
And it's amazing to see Ilhan Omar at the center of this.
She's the one uniting them.
She's the one using that classic line of attack and being defended by a totally different line of attack.
And it's going to keep up.
Eventually, whenever Ilhan Omar wises up a little bit, she'll drop the kind of classic anti-Semitic slurs.
Because, by the way, if she just hadn't used that old narrative, she would have gotten away with it.
If she hadn't gone through these old tropes that the left has rejected, and she'd use the new leftist anti-Semitic narrative, she would have completely gotten away with it.
A lot of people on the left have done that for years.
The left has basically permitted boycott, divest, and sanction, has basically attacked Israel for years and years and years.
They've done it in a more subtle way, in a more modern way.
Ilhan Omar is showing us anti-Semitism through the ages, how it morphs, and the freshman Democrats are leading that into the future, and the 2020 Democrat candidates for president have adopted it.
Now speaking of leftist victimizers, do you remember, this happened a little while ago, a conservative activist took a punch from a leftist activist on the UC Berkeley campus.
This was caught on tape.
I think we have the tape of it.
So this guy is there.
This conservative guy, Hayden Williams, he is helping students organize a conservative chapter on campus, and they have a sign that it says, hate hoaxes hurt real victims.
That's in regard to the Jussie Smollett hoax, race and hate hoax.
He makes this perfectly obvious point that hate hoaxes hurt real victims.
Duh.
And this leftist lunatic goes up and punches him right in the face.
Now, it turns out that guy's been arrested.
His name is Zachary Greenberg.
Turns out he's got a long rap sheet.
Assaults, restraining orders.
Obviously, the guy's a thug, and it's no surprise that he's got a rap sheet.
But that guy is an example of a broader problem on the left.
This is not the first time we've seen this.
We saw this two years ago at Berkeley.
There was then a community college professor by the name of Eric Clanton.
It's easy to remember because it sounds like Eric Clapton, so I'm picturing Eric Clapton, you know, attacking conservatives with tire irons.
But no, it was not Clapton.
It was Eric Clanton, a community college professor himself, and he attacked conservatives, hit them on the head with a bike lock.
So this happened two years ago.
What happens?
What was he sentenced to?
What's the justice?
Nothing.
He's got three years probation.
Doesn't have to go to jail.
Doesn't have to pay any fines.
Nope.
Three years probation.
He's all good.
This is a scary trend.
This is part of a broader trend.
And it's evidence that a culture that defines speech as violence is not going to punish people when they react violently to simple speech.
This is what the left has done.
The Buckley program at Yale took a survey, showed that 81% of college students say that some forms of speech are violence.
Not that they incite violence, not that they depict violence, that they are violence.
Now, if speech is violence, then when someone says something you don't like, you are justified in attacking that person.
So attacks on conservatives who are minding their own business, expressing their opinion, are now justified.
Because the conservative speaker was violent first, violent with his words.
And so I was violent with a tire iron.
I said, it's just violence.
Self-defense, really.
So much for sticks and stones can break my bones.
Words will never hurt me, but my tire iron will hurt you.
This is what happens.
And President Trump talked about this at CPAC. He made a brilliant point on it.
He took a hard punch in the face for all of us.
Remember that.
He took a punch for all of us.
I'm glad he brought it up, and he's right.
He did.
He took a punch for all of us.
Because the left wasn't just going after Hayden Williams.
This guy was going after all of us.
All of us with whom he disagrees.
And he thinks he can punch us all in the face because he disagrees with what we're saying.
This is very important for Trump to make an issue of this.
He was criticized in some corners for making an issue out of this scrapple at Berkeley.
But this is the issue.
This is why I did that Prager video, Control the Words, Control the Culture.
This is why the war on political correctness is so important.
This is why it's important that we use correct pronouns, not the fantasy pronouns that the left is bizarrely insisting on, but real language.
Because the left is willing to take a swing at you.
They're willing to hit you with a bike lock if you don't use their fictitious words.
Because words matter.
Because this obviously matters.
And we can't let them get away with it.
And it's perfectly right for the President of the United States to get up there and say, he took a punch for all of us.
They're trying to swing at all of us.
We have to fight this tooth and nail.
That's the issue.
And if 81% of college students think that speech is violence, we need to make it clear to them that it's not.
We need to teach them where their parents and their teachers have failed.
Words are not violence.
They're very different things.
We'll see what happens.
I'm speaking on a college campus tonight.
Maybe someone's going to show up with a bike lock there.
I hope not.
I hope the Cincinnati kids are a lot better educated than the kids at UC Berkeley.
We also have got to get to the immigration debate.
Yesterday I was on the Fox show, Outnumbered.
It was me and four ladies on a couch.
It was, you know, not a bad show to be on.
I usually am in my broom closet all day long, all by myself.
And it's nice to be around people, is what I'm saying.
And we had this debate on illegal immigration.
And to my left, Jessica Tarlov, who I like very much, she's the liberal on the panel, she said, oh, it's not, you know, it's not, come on, it's not a national emergency, come on, come on.
This is a crisis.
This is a crisis.
The people coming across our border.
So we know we've reached an 11-year high.
In February, 76,000 illegal aliens came into our country.
This is way, way up, over 2,500 people a day.
And they're expecting higher numbers as the weather warms up.
DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testified about this yesterday.
Our capacity is already severely restrained, but these increases will overwhelm the system entirely.
This is not a manufactured crisis.
This is truly an emergency.
It's an emergency.
Now, why?
Why is this happening now?
Because at the start of Trump's presidency, illegal immigration was at a low, and then it sort of ticked back up.
Why?
Part of this is because President Trump has facilitated a booming economy.
The economy wasn't fabulous when he took office.
It's done a whole lot better.
So you have a lot of economic migrants who want to come over here and get good jobs.
The other reason is Donald Trump made his presidential campaign Totally focused on stopping illegal immigration.
And the people who were crossing our borders illegally were dumb enough to think that we were serious about it.
They thought...
I mean, they're not dumb.
Maybe they gave us the benefit of the doubt.
They thought we were being honest.
But no.
This country, we've learned, is not able to defend its own borders.
And so, when they learned that very quickly President Trump couldn't stop illegal immigration, they all started coming again.
Now, the left wants to have it both ways here.
They want to have children and their families united as they're being processed.
But then, as we learned from the Flores Agreement in 1997 during the Clinton administration, you can't have the parents and the children in the same place because the parents are being processed by law enforcement.
There aren't that many places where you can house them together.
And you can't have a child in jail for very long.
So you've got to have the child processed by Health and Human Services.
But you've got the parents who broke the law.
They're adults.
You can't just let them off the hook for breaking the law, which is the only other option that the Democrats have left us.
Open borders.
Let them go.
That's how they enforce border security.
They don't.
They don't enforce the law.
All of this is to say, we now have 15 GOP senators who are going to vote against this emergency declaration by the president.
We have 31, now 32, national emergencies currently on the books.
Most of them really aren't national emergencies.
This one is a national emergency.
And even if you say, well, okay, it's an 11-year high, 76,000 illegal aliens invading our country in just one month, but hey, come on.
This has been going on for a long time.
Right.
That's right.
This is how Drew often quotes Hemingway in how people go bankrupt.
The sun also rises.
Guy says, how did you go bankrupt?
He says, gradually, then suddenly.
If you have a moderate crisis for 40 years, that becomes a big crisis.
It becomes a national emergency.
Gradually, then suddenly.
This is not the time for GOP senators to go weak.
Are we to say that only Democrat presidents are allowed to declare national emergencies?
Well, they say, the Democrats, once they have this power, might use it on something else.
Right, the Democrats already have this power.
Well, okay, but...
But the National Emergency Act is wrong in the first place.
Okay, fine.
Then repeal the National Emergency Act, but don't prevent President Trump from using it for a legitimate emergency.
Well, where is he going to get the money?
The National Emergency Act specifically talks about military construction.
Maybe that's why he invoked it.
Now is not the time to go weak.
This is a major issue.
And just because it was a major issue yesterday and a major issue the day before doesn't mean that it isn't an even bigger issue today.
Just because the frog is in the pot and the water is getting hotter by one degree every day doesn't mean that eventually that frog isn't going to boil.
They should not go weak on this.
I have another story that I really wanted to get to today.
About Ehud Aurier Laniado, a billionaire who died during penis enlargement surgery at the age of 65.
I really wanted to get to this story.
This story tells us a lot about our culture, but we just don't have time to do it because we have to get to the mailbag.
So, I guess that's a reason to come back tomorrow.
We will have a Friday show tomorrow because we were unable to do one yesterday.
Tonight, I'm going to be at the University of Cincinnati.
We are going to be talking about global warming and the Green New Deal and why it's a leftist cult and why it won't do anything to help the Earth and why the people who push it don't even really care about helping the Earth.
We'll talk about all of that.
Tonight at the University of Cincinnati, I think you can tune in on either YAF's live stream or Daily Wire's.
One of us is going to be putting out, so check all of our social media pages.
We will have links for you there.
In the meantime, before we get to the mailbag, go to dailywire.com.
$10 a month, $100 for an annual membership.
You get me.
You get the Andrew Klavan show.
You get the Ben Shapiro show.
You get to ask questions in the mailbag.
You get the Matt Walsh show.
You get another kingdom.
You get to ask questions, but you get so much.
You get the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
You get it.
This is very important, as it is revealed for the next two weeks that the Democrats can't even hold a vote to condemn Jew hatred, as there is a major fissure in the Democrat Party.
As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez eats Nancy Pelosi for breakfast, you're going to need that tumbler.
There are going to be a lot of tears.
There's going to be a lot of wailing.
As the 2020 Democrat candidates jump over themselves, one after another, to say that Jew hatred isn't Jew hatred, ooh, it's going to be a schadenfreude-filled event.
Make sure that you have your Tumblr.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be back with a lot more.
First question in the mailbag from Jason.
Michael, can we abort AOC? The logic here being, of course, if you can abort a kid at the third trimester, then you can probably abort a kid after he's born, like Ralph Northam says, like the National Democrats say.
So you can probably abort a kid at 29, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Well, by the logic of the left, by the logic of abortion, We certainly can abort Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as long as her mother and doctor talk about it.
However, I think it would be very bad to abort Ocasio-Cortez.
I really enjoy her on the national political scene.
I think she is making political issues very clear.
So often in the old days, in the days of the Clintons, they would obscure their real motives.
They would say, oh, listen, abortion, it should be safe, legal, and rare.
That doesn't make any sense.
If it's tantamount to murder, why should it be legal?
If it's not tantamount to murder, why should it be rare?
It doesn't make any sense.
Now, what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says is, no, no, here is the logical conclusion, here is the radical conclusion of all of these ideas, all of this ideology.
You would hear the global warming types, the people who, the left basically just wants to use the idea of global warming to take all of the power that they've wanted for a hundred years and to push socialism in through the back door.
And so you'd say, well, if the world is going to end in 10 years, if this is really threatening life on Earth as we know it, one, you need to produce evidence of that, and two, if that's true, we need to totally upend all of human society to save ourselves.
They'll say, no, no, just give us a little more power.
Just give us a little more taxes.
No, no, no, don't worry.
I mean, yeah, the world's going to end.
It's going to end in 12 years, so give us your money.
Give us more of your power.
Give us your liberty and your political freedoms.
No, but it's okay, though.
No, no, no, don't ask too many questions.
And she takes it to the logical conclusions.
She says, no, no.
It's going to end in 12 years.
We need to destroy every building in the country and rebuild it.
We need to outlaw 88% of American energy.
We need to outlaw cows.
We need to outlaw airplanes.
No, we have to.
It's the logical conclusion.
I'm very happy that AOC is following these ideas to their logical conclusion.
I want to give her more airtime.
It's why I talk about her a lot.
It's why I analyze what she's saying a lot.
And also, to her credit, while Democrats are just talking about how Donald Trump, you know...
Didn't tip his waiter in 1983, and that's the most progressive thing they can talk about.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has the political courage to offer ideas.
They're crazy ideas.
They're perverse ideas.
But at least she's offering them so that we can debate them.
I would never want to debate AOC. Some people who like abortion, they say, well, we should listen.
The people who are being aborted, they're welfare people.
They're stupid people.
They're undesirables.
Such as Margaret Sanger would write about in Woman in the New Race, the founder of Planned Parenthood.
That doesn't hold water.
Even if I didn't like what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is doing in the political media so much.
Even if I didn't like that.
Even if I thought she were the worst person in the world.
I still don't think she should be aborted.
Because it is wrong to kill innocent little babies.
It's the way it is.
But, good question.
I mean, listen, this is a confused culture.
If you took the left at its word, totally, you should be able to do it.
From James, what's your opinion on the Convention of States?
The Convention of States is the idea that states are all going to get together and they're going to amend the Constitution because we can't do it through Congress and we're going to make certain things clearer and it's going to be great for American freedom.
I don't like it.
I think it's a terrible idea.
I don't want...
These people who are alive today to rewrite our constitution.
Some people say, oh don't worry, it won't be a big deal, it will be very limited.
We don't know that.
It's never happened before.
Things can get out of control very quickly.
The point of a constitution is to tie us, we the living, to our forebears and to our future.
It's the greatest democracy of all, as Chesterton would say.
It's the democracy of the dead.
It ensures the survival of a certain sense of American tradition.
I don't want to touch that at all.
I don't want to get near that with a ten-foot pole.
No thank you.
It is true.
There is a much better world that we could imagine, a much better government than we could imagine, than the one that we currently have, which has been so perverted since the time of the founding.
I don't think that we're likely to succeed in shaping that government.
In fact, I think the left has their own version of a far better government with far less political liberty for you and me, far more control for the collective federal government.
And I don't want to give them the opportunity to explore that dream.
I think it's a bad idea.
A lot of good people, smart people are taking that idea on.
They think they're really gung-ho for it.
I think that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and we should stay away from it.
From Caesar.
Hi Michael, you're my favorite commentator on The Daily Wire.
Oh, thank you very much.
Thanks.
Do you hear that, fellas?
Are you watching and listening?
No.
Do you think FDR's New Deal, aka government intervention, was necessary to stabilize the American financial system?
I'm always questioned and presented the New Deal as a good example of government takeover.
I look forward to your viewpoint.
No, absolutely not.
It was a terrible, disastrous program for the American economy.
It delayed recovery significantly.
We were only able to recover when the whole rest of the world blew itself up and we were the dominant superpower.
It was awful.
I mean, I mean, you had Franklin Roosevelt setting the price of gold based on lucky numbers.
That's no joke.
You can read about this.
It was horrific.
Wage price controls.
All of these awful things.
Actually, those programs gave us our totally convoluted American healthcare system.
All the problems with American healthcare basically date back to those wage controls because...
When you try to suppress people's creativity and enterprise, it doesn't work.
It's going to find expression somewhere else.
So the government said we need wage controls.
This was ultimately during World War II. This is slightly after the New Deal has been implemented.
But they've got all of these wage controls because they have a labor shortage and they don't want wages to shoot through the roof.
So they have wage controls, but then the employers need to attract talent anyway, so they start offering medical insurance.
And then employer-based medical insurance has played a significant role in some of the complexities and unnecessary complexities in our current healthcare system.
Bad idea for the economy.
However, and this is where Ben and I differ a little bit.
Probably, while it was not economically necessary, it was politically necessary.
You had riots in the streets.
You had a lot of people who had a lot more progressive plans, radical plans for the government.
And unfortunately, sometimes you need to violate economic reality to deal with political reality, because that's what government does.
It deals in politics, the affairs of men.
And so I give FDR a little bit of leeway because he was dealing in political reality.
Ronald Reagan hated tariffs, wanted free trade, ostensibly, during his presidency.
But he instituted those steel tariffs.
Why?
Because sometimes you need to protect American industry.
Because you're a politician, you've just got to do it.
Next question from Andrew.
Hello, Michael.
I personally believe that God views all sin equally.
Due to the fact that, all things being equal, any man can be driven to commit any sin entirely due to the circumstances that his soul has been placed in.
Why then can some sin, as scripture says, not be mortal?
Thank you, Andrew.
Andrew, what you are falling into is the error of fatalism.
Bordering on heresy, if not full heresy.
This error of fatalism has been present from Manichaeism at the time of St.
Augustine all the way up through the present day.
This is the idea that all events are determined by fate and free will plays no role.
This is wrong.
This is not true.
This is not Christian.
You do have free will.
There is providence.
There is omnipotence.
There is omniscience.
And you have free will.
Your will does play a role.
It is not totally fatalistically determined that you will commit some sin.
You have moral culpability here.
Your will has a role.
And so this, I hope that helps to explain your problem with that part of scripture, which clearly shows that all sin is not equal in the eyes of God.
From Grant.
Dear Michael.
Dear Michael from the block.
Like Jenny.
What is your opinion on a poli-sci degree?
Many people seem to think it's useless.
Yes, Ben, who has a poli-sci degree, says that it's useless, and I agree.
Basically, that's true.
Political philosophy is very good.
If you can find a program that focuses on political philosophy, then I think that's quite worthwhile.
If the program is just political science, trying to treat people as...
Predictable robots and automatons just focusing on statistics or something.
That's probably useless.
This is because there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
This is because the social sciences can be highly politicized and turned into just ideology class.
And because if you use a traditional academic discipline like history or philosophy or...
I suppose you...
I mean, look, literature is actually a good way to learn about politics.
There are a lot of ways in the traditional liberal arts to learn about politics that are probably better than poli-sci.
From Nicole.
Hi, Michael.
My friend's main argument for voting Democrat is climate change, and they appreciate that Democrats make more of an effort to address it.
They argue at least Democrats are trying.
Is it better to not propose any ideas to address environmental issues or to only suggest bad ones?
Well, Well, we actually got to this a little bit earlier in the show.
The Democrats are being disingenuous.
They're saying, well, the world is all going to end, but just a little bit more power.
That's okay.
It's basically a way of allaying guilt.
It functions as a religion.
So, I think it's totally disingenuous.
But why?
They make an effort.
I mean, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
If they're destroying our economy and destroying our political liberties in a way that's totally ineffective, what good are they doing?
It's just virtue signaling.
It's totally empty.
Ask your friends what good is being accomplished.
See if they can answer.
From Marcel.
Ave Michael, I recently met a non-denominational Christian and asked her what she would give up for Lent.
She said she does not practice Lent because who cares about pointless old traditions and why should we follow them?
Wasn't sure how to respond.
Love the show.
Thanks.
One way to respond is to ask her how she's so confident that the traditions are pointless.
By definition, traditions are old.
By definition, they're also new because they've survived throughout so much time.
There's obviously some vital force within the tradition, by definition.
How does she know they're pointless?
Can she describe what the tradition is?
Can she explain why it was instituted in the first place?
Can she explain why people have done it over time?
This, to me, is the height of intellectual arrogance and it's very shallow.
It's Chesterton's fence.
When you see the fence in the middle of the road, you have no idea why it's there.
Don't just rip it down.
First, you've got to figure out why it was there in the first place.
And then, only then, can you possibly be ready to tear down that tradition.
And I wonder, does she not engage in any old traditions?
She's a non-denominational Christian.
She probably goes to church on Sunday.
Why does she engage in that pointless old tradition?
Is it not pointless?
Why is it a tradition?
Why does she do that?
Maybe ask her about some of the old traditions she does too.
Because tradition is very important.
We have bodies.
We are people.
We have ritual.
We have need of sacrament.
We have need to encounter the metaphysical in the physical world.
Last question from James.
Hey Michael, I've identified as an atheist.
For the past ten years, which I'm beginning to regret.
I'm struggling to get back into religion.
Do you have any suggestions to help me?
Yes.
Trick the devil by appealing to intellectual pride.
This is what I did.
This is, I think, a cause of atheism a lot in the culture today.
And one way to get past it is to realize that the arguments for atheism are extremely stupid.
The devil, he always seems so convincing and persuasive.
And then you realize he's a fool.
St.
John Vianney would make fun of him, called him little idiot.
Do that.
Maybe appeal in that way.
Try to work around that way.
I mean, you know, listen, you're asking me the question, so you clearly value my opinion.
I'm telling you, God exists.
The smartest people in all of history are telling you that God exists.
So figure out why that is, how that is, how you've come to not believe.
All right, I'm doing one more.
I don't care if we're going to run late.
From Michael.
It's because you have a great name.
Hi, Michael.
No one has really clearly articulated the difference between socialism and communism.
What is the difference between the two?
I'll explain it between the three.
I'll include Nazism in there too.
Socialism is an economic and political philosophy whereby the means of production whereby property is generally owned by the collective, by the government.
You see this as socialists in Congress call for 80% rates of taxation and wealth taxes.
You're just taking property.
It's just theft.
Now, there are different kinds.
There's democratic socialism.
That's what we see with Ocasio-Cortez.
There is international socialism.
That's what communism is.
Soviet communism was an international movement.
Workers of the world unite.
So it wasn't focusing specifically on And primarily on race or sex or within the country, it's focusing internationally.
Get all of the labor of the world to unite, then we'll have an international socialist federation.
And then there is national socialism, which is Nazism, which has a much more national focus to it.
But as an economic philosophy or a political system, they all broadly share socialism.
And so sometimes people will say, well, so-and-so is a democratic socialist.
Not a national socialist.
Not an international.
Okay, whatever.
Fine.
Socialists nonetheless.
Same thing.
Okay, that's our show.
We're running too late.
Check out the speech tonight at the University of Cincinnati.
Should be a lot of fun.
And then I'll see you tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Danny D'Amico.
Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.
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 Walsh Show, we're going to talk about the former star football player from Baylor who's been acquitted of rape charges, but the accusations have permanently damaged his career, his reputation.
So we'll talk about all the issues surrounding that.
The Girl Scouts have gone all in on their abortion advocacy.
It is now basically a left-wing advocacy group, the Girl Scouts.
And finally, why is it that really successful people often did poorly in school?
What is it about the education system that makes it so that brilliant people who are going to be successful in life can't succeed?
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