All Episodes
Previous Next
March 28, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
47:09
Ep. 322 - The Left’s Last Defense: Cry Racism

The Left’s worst week ever concludes with them using the only weapon left at their disposal: calling conservatives bigots. When the Left calls you a racist, you know you’ve won the argument. Then, Mike Lee takes on the Green New Deal, the NYT gets Russia wrong, and finally, the Mailbag! Date: 03-28-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
The left's worst week ever concludes with them using the only weapon left at their disposal, calling conservatives bigots.
From The Economist to Eric Holder to Ilhan Omar, when the left calls you a racist, you know you've won the argument.
Then, Mike Lee gives a highly entertaining Green New Deal performance on the floor of the Senate.
David Brooks is wrong in the New York Times.
Surprise, surprise.
And finally, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
What a week, what a week, but all good things must come to an end, and the way that the left is ending their week is by using their last resort, their last ditch.
When they have no argument, they have no evidence, they have egg on their face for two years, what do they do?
You They call you a bigot.
We will get to those very sad strategies.
But first, let's make a little money, honey, with purple mattress.
Oh, I've got a little purple mattress story.
So, sweet little Elise is out of town, and so I've got this giant, beautiful California King purple mattress all to myself.
Look, it's been a long week.
I've been traveling a lot.
That alarm goes off this morning.
I could not bring myself to get out of my purple mattress.
I snoozed and I snoozed, and it was absolutely lovely.
Purple mattress is what you've got to try to get a good night's sleep.
The founders of Purple are these two brothers who have been developing cushioning technology for 30 years.
Purple mattress will feel different than anything you've ever slept on because it's not quite a, it's not an inner spring.
It's not a memory foam.
It's this new technology.
It's both firm and soft at the same time.
How is that possible?
I don't know.
I couldn't tell you.
I'm not a rocket scientist, but the people who designed Purple mattress are rocket scientists.
It is so nice and, There's a 100-night risk-free trial.
If you're not fully satisfied, you can return your mattress for a full refund, backed by a 10-year warranty.
Free shipping and returns.
You're going to love purple right now.
My listeners get a free purple pillow with the purchase of a mattress.
That's in addition to the great free gifts they offer site-wide.
Just text Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to 84888.
The only way to get this free pillow is to text K-N-O-W-L-E-S to 84888.
K-N-O-W-L-E-S 84888.
Message and data rates may apply.
So, I've got to give it to him.
I held out for a long time.
But Ben Shapiro's book, The Right Side of History, has topped number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
We've been going back and forth.
We've been talking about this.
They say, oh, your book was number one on Amazon.
Oh, that's good.
Mine was number one on Amazon for 11 days.
But no, it's okay.
No, but that's good.
That's good.
Now we have, I thought there was no way that the New York Times was going to give it to him.
Because they hate his guts, as we'll see in just one second.
But this book sold so many copies so fast, it reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
It is selling out like crazy.
It is a really good book.
I read it when it was in draft form.
I've been going to college campuses since the book is released.
People bring me the book.
I say, did you read that yet?
This is like an entire history of, an intellectual history of Western civilization.
They say, you bet, I read it in two days, couldn't put it down.
Gotta give it to the guy.
Number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
It is a huge deal that is really cool.
So go out and buy the book if you haven't bought it yet.
The other reason you have to buy it is because the left is furious about this book.
They are so upset.
The Economist published a headline today.
Quote, Inside the mind of Ben Shapiro, the alt-right sage without the rage.
Ben Shapiro, alt-right sage.
Now, they went inside his mind, apparently.
They didn't look at his head, on the top of which is a yarmulke, which is good evidence that you're not part of the alternative right.
There's a lot going on in this headline.
To begin, first of all, it's just not true, right?
Ben has been very clear in his condemnations of the alternative right, and they just use this smear.
So, Anne McElvoy, I guess, is the editor of The Economist.
And she said, Ben, in fairness, we said, and then she has some misspellings or something, I think she said, you're like a figure in alt-right thinking, but that's not really a label.
She's saying, we didn't label you alt-right, we're just saying it's sort of like you're in the alt-right thinking.
So, I would like to point out that Anne McElvoy is a Nazi pedophile.
Anne McElvoy, the editor of The Economist, is a Nazi pedophile.
But I'm not labeling her a Nazi pedophile.
I'm just saying she's a Nazi pedophile.
But don't you accuse me of labeling her that way.
Because this, first of all, that statement, Anne McElvoy is a Nazi pedophile, is as much of a label and it's as accurate as the Economist headline that Ben Shapiro is an alt-right sage.
Now, this thing got ratioed into oblivion.
People were both rightly quite angry about this and just making fun of them for what shoddy, ridiculously sophomoric journalism they made.
So, they did release a correction.
They say, quote,"...a previous version mistakenly described Mr.
Shapiro as an alt-right sage and a pop idol of the alt-right.
In fact, he has been strongly critical of the alt-right movement.
We apologize." There it is.
Big headline, big tweet, and then hours and hours later when no one's going to read it, they have a little correction down there.
That's what they do.
What's so funny, too, in this is they criticize Ben for using clicky headlines to get people to come engage with his content.
They did a far more egregious version of that than Ben or The Daily Wire or any of us have ever done.
But I'm not saying this to defend—Ben can defend himself, he's a big boy, and I'm not doing this just to make fun of The Economist.
If we were going to do that, we'd be here all day long.
The reason I bring it up is because this is what the left does with language.
Ben is an alt-right sage.
By the way that the left uses the term, the alt-right, I guess he is.
I guess anybody to the right of Hillary Clinton is alt-right.
This is why I actually don't use that phrase anymore.
I did a PragerU video when the alternative right was being brought up as a new topic of discussion, just to make clear what the alternative right is, why it's wrong, and why we should move on.
Then the left took that term, and they watered it down to mean nothing.
So now I don't use the term.
I try to be much more precise.
I don't use the term racist too frequently because what does it mean?
It had a meaning, then the left robbed it of meaning.
So now I try to be more specific.
I'll say racially bigoted.
Bigotry at least has a meaning for now.
At least it still has not been robbed of its meaning.
This is what the left does.
The term alt-right has been robbed of its meaning.
And it's too bad because there is an ideology...
That that term once described, an alternative to conservative thought.
And what it was really specifically being used by its biggest proponents is a politics that essentially boils down to race and ethnicity without much regard for Well, on the one hand, without much regard to values or traditional civic nationalism, whatever.
Okay, that's one side of it.
But where I really object is it's without regard to culture and religion and God.
So you're taking all the trappings of Christendom, but you're robbing it of the Christ.
And so what is that?
That's a sick perversion.
I mean, that's why I reject it, as I explained in my PragerU video.
Now that term...
Has been robbed of any meaning.
So I don't use it because I'm not going to give the left any opportunity.
People say this.
I hear this everywhere from left-wing commentators.
They'll use it in passing conversation to dummies on the street.
They'll say this is alt-right, alt-right.
You don't know what that is.
We don't know what that means.
So, they do it all the time.
During the Bush years, they did this with the term neocon.
Do you remember?
Some of you are too young to remember.
All you'd hear during the Bush years, neocon, neocon, he's a neocon.
Neoconservative once had a meaning.
It was a movement popularized by Irving Kristol, Bill Kristol's father, and it was described as liberals who were mugged by reality, socialists who were mugged by reality.
This turned during the 1960s Of people who would have called themselves liberals, some who were really far left, to see the realities of communism and international socialism to become more conservative, at least with the approach to foreign policy, and many of them came along with a conservative approach to domestic policy as well.
This was robbed of meaning during the Bush years, and now the term is useless.
To call someone a neocon, what does that even mean anymore?
Now when they use the phrase, they mean bigoted, warmongers, People who want to bomb brown people.
What does the term alt-right mean?
It means anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton is a racist bigot.
Bigot, bigot, bigot.
And this brings us to the best week ever for the right, the worst week ever for the left, and the last thing they can possibly do, which is call everybody a bigot.
You know, in conversations, you'll say, yeah, I think we should lower the top marginal tax rate.
Bring it down a little.
I think that'll be good for the economy.
That'll help everybody.
They'll say, well, but...
And once they finally run out of arguments, they'll say, well, the reason you want to do that is because you're a racist.
Yeah, I think we should modify our environmental policy.
I don't think we should over-regulate businesses too much.
But, but, but, but, but, but, you're a racist.
That's always the bottom of the argument.
And that's what you're seeing here.
You're not just seeing it from The Economist, which can't argue with Ben, can't argue with the book, so they just call him a bigot.
You see this with Eric Holder.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder came out.
He was doing an interview on MSNBC. And they were talking about the Mueller probe, the Russia investigation, DOJ more broadly, and he couldn't defend his legacy.
He can't defend two years of ridiculous hoax narrative on the so-called Russian collusion.
So what does he do?
He accuses everybody of racism.
I'm thinking about the judges who assessed Paul Manafort.
And as you know, there were people who said, oh, well, one of the judges was good and the other wasn't.
But both judges assessed him as this sort of courtly grandfatherly figure.
Judge Jackson said that he didn't seem likely to re-offend.
When Mr.
Manafort had re-offended after His charges.
And I thought, would any judge, and again, I don't want to single a single judge out, but would those judges be as likely to say that about a first-time young black male offender?
You know, I don't want to talk about the judges, those judges in particular, but I do worry that judges, like all other Americans, carry with them implicit biases, and especially in the criminal justice sphere.
How do you fix it?
Well, you certainly have to have training.
You have to make people aware of the fact that they do carry these biases and make them understand that if you see an African-American defendant in front of you, that's going to probably trigger things in your mind unconsciously, subconsciously, and you're perhaps going to treat that person differently than somebody who shows up in a tie and has a great lawyer that they have paid for.
You're going to maybe cut that person a break that you wouldn't otherwise give to a Hispanic or African-American defendant.
So implicit biases.
This is the great crown jewel of smearing people as racist because they can't do anything about it.
Because it's implicit.
It's subconscious.
You can't consciously change it because it's subconscious.
Also, by the way, if you didn't catch that at the end, Eric Holder says the reason that African American people and Hispanic people are treated unfairly is because if you see somebody wearing a tie, you're going to give them greater respect and credit.
Because apparently, according to Eric Holder, a black man who is wearing a tie, black people and Hispanic people can't put on a tie.
Bye.
You see, he's conflating race and knowing how to dress in a respectful situation.
Oh, black people and Hispanic, they can't wear ties.
Eric, you're wearing a tie.
No, no, no, no.
Nothing to see here.
That's your implicit bias that thinks I'm wearing a tie.
It's all implicit, implicit, implicit.
We'll see in just one second why this is the weakest of the racist arguments.
But first, let's make a little money, honey, with keeps.
Listen, fellas, losing hair is no good.
I am not an Greek Adonis of a man.
I am not some old ancient hero.
Not the most athletic fellow.
But one thing I've always had going for me in the ladies' department is my head of hair.
Two out of three guys will experience hair loss by the time they're 35.
Which brings us to Keeps, the easiest and most affordable way to keep the hair you have.
These FDA-approved products used to cost a lot of money, but now, thanks to Keeps, they're finally inexpensive.
They're easy to get.
For five minutes now, starting at just $10 a month, less than $33.33 per day.
Is that right?
Did I do that number right?
I think so.
Maybe.
You will never have to worry about hair loss again.
Just getting started with Keeps is very easy.
Sign up, takes less than five minutes.
Answer a few questions.
A licensed physician will review your information online and recommend the right treatment for you.
Then it's shipped right to your door every three months.
Keeps offers generic versions of the only two FDA-approved hair loss products out there.
10 to 35 bucks a month, plus now you get your first month free.
One fabulous way to keep your hair.
Receive your first month of treatment for free.
Go to keeps.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, K-E-E-P-S dot com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.
Guys, you are going to kick yourself if you allow hair loss to begin when you could have stopped it so easily and for such little money.
Free month of treatment at keeps.com slash Knowles keeps hair today, hair tomorrow.
The implicit biases.
services.
This is just, we're not aware of it.
We're just kind of robots moving with our racial bigotry inside of us.
That's why, anytime the left loses, it's because of that.
Because of this mythical implicit bias.
By the way, the studies on so-called implicit bias is very, very weak.
Not a whole lot of evidence for this phenomenon.
But, did you see what Eric Holder said?
He said, well, how do we combat these implicit biases?
He says, well, you need a lot of training.
You need a lot of training.
You need re-education.
You need brainwashing.
What this means is that in institutions that the federal government touches, that the left touches, you are going to have to go through mandated re-education and brainwashing of leftist ideology.
And you see this everywhere.
This happens all over.
Anywhere that there is an institution in America...
With any relation to the left or the government, they have this.
At universities, you have to go through mandatory trainings, diversity training, sensitivity training, implicit bias training.
In corporate America, the same is true.
Some of the things I see from my friends in the academy is absurd.
You'll see they're constantly getting emails about this, constantly getting trainings about this sort of thing.
That's what he wants.
I mean, this is why the government is always trying to come in.
K-12 education.
Pre-K education.
They want, hey, we'll give you free education.
Hey, we'll subsidize your student loans.
Hey, we'll give universities a ton of money.
But...
Come on.
You've got to give us a little something.
Do this training.
Do this re-education.
Do this brainwashing.
That's what he wants.
That's what we're talking about.
Why?
Because they don't have the argument.
So they've got to come in.
Nancy Pelosi said this the other day.
We need to lower the voting age to 16 so that we can capture them when they're already in our grip in public education.
And...
So now we've got Eric Holder.
This is not just some wacko elected official or just some wacko activist.
This is a guy who was the Attorney General.
This is a major political figure in the country.
Now we have Ilhan Omar.
Ilhan Omar, elected Democrat, freshman Democrat representative, doesn't like the Jews very much, has made many comments repeatedly with weak apologies and then repeated slurs against Jews.
Her communications director, what does he say?
He posts on Twitter the other day, Jeremy Sleven, quote, Anti-Semitism is a right-wing force.
Anti-Semitism is a right-wing force.
Anti-Semitism is a right-wing force.
This is what they do.
This is the new left thing for leftist tweets.
They'll either repeat some empty slogan time and time again.
They had one Planned Parenthood tweeted out something like, Some men have a uterus.
Some men have a uterus because they think if they repeat it enough times, it makes fantasy true.
And so they do this here.
The other one they do is they use the clapping sign.
They do the clapping.
Anti-Semitism is a right-wing force.
And he's saying this because his boss is an anti-Semite.
Again, language has been watered down so much, I don't use the term a lot.
I don't use it To apply to a lot of people.
But she has expressed this time and time again.
She said Israel has hypnotized the world.
She's prayed to Allah to wake people up to the evils of Israel.
She said the only reason anybody in America would support Israel is because they're getting paid off by Jews.
She has said that the only...
The reason that we have to treat Israel so differently is that Jews in America can't be trusted not to have dual loyalties.
They can't be trusted to be loyal to their own country.
She is an anti-Semite.
And what this guy, Jeremy Slevin, is trying to do is convince everybody that it's opposite day.
I know you are, but what am I? That's what he's saying.
Because they've had the worst week ever.
And for Ilhan Omar, this has been the worst month ever.
She's been roundly condemned, even by her own party.
This is one of the reactions to the best week ever that we noted last time, which is gaslighting.
They're trying to gaslight us.
They're trying to say, no, no, no, the Russia probe that wasn't legitimate, it was caused by racism.
No, no, no, the bigotry of members of our own party, it's actually opposite day, it's actually your bigotry.
No, no, no.
Ben Shapiro and his book, which is all just about Western intellectual history and it's selling and it's number one on the New York Times list.
It's only number one because he's a big racist and everybody's a racist.
La, la, la.
Everybody who doesn't agree with me is a bigot.
Everyone who doesn't agree with me is Hitler.
La, la, la, la, la.
That is the only conclusion that we could have expected from this week.
It's a wonderful way to end the week.
We knew it was going to happen, so I'd just like to toast all of you who have your leftist-tears tumblers out.
That is the natural conclusion.
When the left calls you a racist, you know you've won the argument.
Speaking of race frauds, Jussie Smollett, the guy who gave a good acting performance on Empire and a bad acting performance on the streets of Chicago, you know he just had his charges dropped by the crooked Cook County State Attorney's Office.
You know he's trying to say he's been totally cleared now.
I mentioned this just a day or two ago.
I said this is not the end for Jussie Smollett.
They would be crazy to bring him back on that show, Empire, because he faces federal charges.
So, okay, he gets off in crooked Cook County.
The big issue is he sent himself a hate hoax, a threat hoax.
He sent it through the mail.
That makes it a federal crime.
And I said it the other day, the feds are not going to take kindly to crooked Chicago politics.
They're not going to let this off the hook.
And looks like I was right.
We are now finding out that the feds are not only looking into the deal that was reached in Chicago, they're also looking into federal charges of mail fraud.
The FBI is investigating fraud.
Whether or not Jussie Smollett sent the hate mail to himself.
This was laced with white powder, so it was a real threat.
And if he is convicted of this, Jussie Smollett could face up to a decade in prison.
What do they say?
They get called out.
Jussie Smollett called out as a total fraud, a total hoax.
And he...
He says, no, no, it's racism.
It's anti-gay.
I would never do that.
And that works a little bit.
It can work in the short run.
It will not work in the long run.
Reality eventually reasserts itself.
We're seeing it again.
And, speaking of racial politics, this last one might be the most ridiculous part of the whole day.
Stacey Abrams, who is a failed gubernatorial candidate in Georgia.
Stacey Abrams, whose only job that she's ever had, as far as I can tell, is being in the Georgia state government.
That's her only political experience.
She is now being heralded by weirdos on the left as a potential 2020 candidate.
Here's Andrea Mitchell asking why she's not at the top of the pack.
How do you feel about some of the white men who are running being asked about a running maid and saying that they would guarantee putting a woman on the ticket?
You and Andrew Gillum came way closer to winning your races than Beto O'Rourke did.
How do you feel about all the publicity, the campaign that Beto O'Rourke has gained by the listening tour, cooking at home, going to the dentist, his online presence, his fundraising?
Why Beto O'Rourke and not Andrew Gillum and not Stacey Abrams as the darling of the media?
Beto's a weirdo too, but why Stacey Abrams?
She's nobody.
She is nothing.
She was in the Georgia State Assembly or something.
Are you kidding me?
That qualifies you to be president?
She lost an election.
She lost her election for governor.
She then didn't concede the election.
She then finally conceded, but she says it was all wrong.
And now there's a rumor that Joe Biden might announce her as his running mate.
And oh, the mainstream media are so excited about this.
During that lunch with the vice president, let me ask you, did the conversation of a potential future ticket between the two of you, with vice president, you being his vice president on the ticket?
One quick other piece of political business.
You said you've been meeting with and having drinks with everybody who's thinking about running for president.
When you drink alone, are you having drinks with somebody who's thinking about running for president?
I am.
There are a number of women, there are a number of minority candidates running for this Democratic nomination.
Is this the year one of them ends up being the nominee?
I believe so.
I believe so.
I'm Stacey Abrams.
I was in the Georgia State House, in the State Assembly for like a little while, so that's why I should be President.
This is how you know.
That not just on Russia, not just on Jussie Smollett, not just on Ilhan Omar, this is how you know broadly, nationally, the left has lost the argument, is the only thing they can play is racism.
The fact that this woman, who has done nothing in her life, is being considered as a legitimate presidential candidate, couldn't even win a governor's race down there, tells you everything.
Why is she being considered a serious candidate?
Because she's a black woman.
There's nothing bigoted about pointing that out...
These guys admit it themselves.
All of those interviews say, well, but you're a racial minority.
You're a woman.
Shouldn't you be considered a candidate?
You're better than Beto O'Rourke.
Shouldn't you, by virtue of your sex and race, become the presidential candidate?
And this is really bad, because this is always the case.
When you only focus on race and sex...
When that's the bottom of your argument, you don't have an argument.
And the Democrats, if they want to win in 2020, need to have an argument.
They need to present some reason to the American people to vote for them.
They need to say, Trump has done this wrong.
We're going to do this right.
Here's what we're going to offer.
They have nothing to offer.
offer.
They have nothing to offer other than the Green New Deal, which Mike Lee came out yesterday and had one of the most hilarious routines on the floor of the Senate.
It's one of the best presentations there ever.
He started showing photos of Ronald Reagan shooting machine guns on a velociraptor.
He said, this is as serious as the Green New Deal.
And he's right.
We've got to get to the mailbag.
But before we go, I just want to point something out from David Brooks.
David Brooks, this is the real cap to the best week ever.
He wrote a piece in the New York Times that said, we've all just made fools of ourselves again.
We've all made fools of ourselves because of all the Russia stuff and everything.
He calls it the awful corruption of scandal politics.
He says, quote, Republicans and the Sean Hannity-style Trumpians might also approach this moment with an attitude
of humility and honest self-examination.
For two years, they've been calling the Mueller investigation a witch hunt.
For two years, they've been spreading the libel that there are no honest brokers in Washington.
They should apologize for peddling that sort of deep cynicism that undermines our country's institutions.
No, no, no!
No, you don't get to do this.
The left doesn't get to do this.
There is no moral equivalence.
The left has said for two years, Donald Trump is a stooge, a tool of Russia, a traitor to his country, who sold our whole country out and now we're a satellite state for the Kremlin.
That was totally wrong.
Every syllable of that was wrong and it was proven wrong.
Also for two years, conservatives have said there was no basis for this investigation.
We know that it was crooked from the beginning because it was based on a fake dossier funded by Hillary Clinton with massive FISA abuse, massive collusion between the Democrats, the Obama DOJ and FBI, and foreign intelligence sources, including in Russia.
We said this was crooked from the very beginning, and so we are skeptical of the investigation because of hard evidence, which we still have, which is still demonstrable, that this investigation never should have been launched in the first place.
There is no moral equivalence.
We were right.
We were 100% exonerated.
Not just on Donald Trump not being a stooge of Russia, not just on Donald Trump not obstructing justice, but us.
We were exonerated in our deep skepticism and our deep opposition to this Russian hoax investigation because it was wrong, it was a lie, it was a total fiction and fantasy from the very beginning.
No equivalence.
The left owes an apology to us.
We owe an apology to absolutely nobody, including David Brooks.
We win.
You lose.
Deal with it.
We've got to get to the mailbag.
Go to dailywire.com right now.
Coming up at 7 p.m.
Eastern, 4 p.m.
Pacific.
Tune into our next episode of Daily Wire Backstage, where I'm going to smoke a cigar and have a glass of whiskey because I'm a little riled up by this silly equivalence, this ridiculous attempt to say, well, we both did something wrong.
Nope.
Best week ever for Republicans.
Worst week ever for Democrats.
Deal with it.
We're going to celebrate tonight.
It's going to be me, Jeremy, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, and this week's special guest, Matt Walsh.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
As always, only Daily Wire subscribers get to ask the questions.
And if you subscribe during tonight's live stream, you will be automatically entered to win a visit to Daily Wire and sit in on a future episode of Backstage.
Meet us.
Watch the show.
We're going to have a great time.
Subscribe to Daily Wire tonight during the live stream and be automatically entered to win the sweepstakes.
Trust me, we will have a very good time.
You know what you get.
You get everything.
If you weren't already a subscriber, you'd have drowned all week.
Go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back with the mailbag.
Running late as always, but we are going to get through this mailbag from Kamey.
Hi, Michael.
My husband and I are having a problem in our marriage and would like your opinion.
While everything is mostly going well, we cannot decide who is at a greater risk of drowning, given all of the latest news.
Unfortunately, we only have one Leftist Tears Tumblr.
What should we do?
Please help.
The obvious answer is to subscribe again.
It's the only way to save both of you.
If you don't have time to do that, if you're not watching the backstage live stream tonight and you're not subscribing to enter to win a chance to come out here and hang out with us during the next backstage, women and children first.
Sir, that's just the upright thing to do, especially in a week like this with so many tsunamis.
Next question from Elliot.
Hi, Michael.
At 29, you have your life together and have achieved a lot more than many liberals do even into their 40s.
It is true, not writing a book is a far greater achievement than many of our friends on the left will ever have while they're whining and screaming for two years straight.
What do you think separates you and many other young, successful conservatives from liberals who at 29 are still figuring themselves out, whatever that means, and over 29?
It's funny you ask that.
When I was a kid, I vividly remember this.
I was eight or nine years old, and I was watching The Wonder Years, and I heard the phrase about Kevin's older sister.
He said, she's just finding herself.
I said, what the hell is that, finding yourself?
Thank you.
Well, you've got to look.
You're right there.
You can find yourself right there.
That was when I knew I was really a conservative.
And so, I appreciate the compliment that things have gone well for me.
The main reason things have gone well is the holy, unmerited grace of God.
And just wonderful providence before which I am awed.
That's the main answer.
However, in so much as we can help ourselves out, God helps those who help themselves, I think a big difference between conservatives and left-wingers...
We know broadly that conservatives are more content, have more life satisfaction, are happier and more joyful.
This is true...
It's been seen in many, many social scientific studies.
It's not just true in the United States.
It's true around the world.
There was a huge meta-analysis of this, taking into account 16 countries, tens of thousands of people, and it remained true.
Why is that?
I think the main issue is that conservatives see purpose in the world.
Four conservatives who are drawing on the tradition, even if you would call yourself secular or agnostic, you're drawing on a tradition which is Christian.
And so you see purpose in the world.
You are accessing that even by way of your culture and your behavior.
And it's a far...
Greater encouragement to live life well or to try to live life well or to try to thrive and to try to flourish if you understand that life has a purpose and there is a moral law and there is redemption and resurrection and there is a God who created it all, who sees it all.
And...
The alternative view to that is that, as Hamlet says, life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
That's a pretty depressing, why would you get out of bed?
Why would you do anything other than scream at the chaos?
Why do conservatives, why are we resilient when we lose elections?
And why does the left never concede elections?
Because to them, this is just total chaos.
This is just total, no, no, ripping their hair out.
But for conservatives, we say, well, that's the way of the world.
It's a fallen world.
These things happen, but ultimately, there is a divine justice that prevails.
That's probably, at the base, the reason.
You can add on a lot of culture and politics and behaviors on top of that, but I think that's what lays at the base of it.
From Peter.
Question.
Nickname for Beto.
Play-Doh Beto.
He is soft, childlike, and easily manipulated.
What do you think?
And can you tweet this at the president?
I don't have Twitter.
It's clever, but it's a terrible nickname.
It's not going to work.
It doesn't stick.
This is what conservatives do a lot.
We overthink it.
We are too clever by half.
Senator Ted Cruz, whom I greatly admire, he's a Donald Trump understands not to be.
Donald Trump, the reason he's so great at nicknames is he just punches people right in the gut.
A great example of this is Elizabeth Warren.
The nickname for her, before President Trump adopted it, was Faux Cahontas, F-A-U-X, Cahontas.
This is a play on words.
Faux, meaning false, and Pocahontas.
It's clever.
It's pretty good.
Liawatha.
It's Lai and Hiawatha.
Okay, these are good nicknames.
But President Trump didn't go for Pocahontas, he went for Pocahontas, which is not a double entendre.
He's just calling her the most famous Indian name, and that's it.
But that was the better nickname, even though it's less clever.
Because that nickname paints a picture.
It's direct.
It doesn't require that you know what the word faux means.
It doesn't require you to put together this play on words to look at the juxtaposition of those two words.
It's clear.
It's right to the point.
Play-Doh-Betoh.
Sure, he's soft and he's weird and he's childlike, but it's not going to go right to the point.
We've got to wait for the master of nicknames himself, President Trump, to get to it.
From Alyssa.
Hello, Michael.
Do you have any universities you're planning on speaking at in Texas in the near future?
If so, where and when?
Yes, I'm going to be down at Texas A&M with none other than Andrew Klavan.
We're going to be doing a joint event down there.
I think that's coming up in April.
I don't have the exact date, but check it out at Young America's Foundation.
You can see my whole speaking tour there and figure out where I'll be at a university near you.
But I will be down, I think, next month with Drew.
So check it out.
From Katya.
Hi, Michael.
I just turned 18 last Monday.
I'm super excited because I get to vote, even though I heard your explanation of why voting isn't inherently good.
My co-workers, however, think I'm naive because our votes don't mean anything.
How would you respond to this?
Look at the Senate race down in Florida.
Look at the governor's race down in Florida.
Look at the governor's race that beat out Stacey Abrams down in Georgia.
Look at the 2000 presidential election.
Sometimes elections come down to hundreds of votes or less.
Your vote often does matter quite a lot.
Voting is not the be-all and end-all.
We don't have a republic so that we can vote, but we do vote so that we can have a good republic.
And if you've got good opinions and you're supporting a good side of politics, you better make sure you go out there and vote.
It certainly can matter, and in recent years, it frequently has.
From Bryce.
Dear Michael, I'm currently writing a book about my experiences as a male domestic abuse victim, and I'm trying to think of a great title that not only will get attention but will rile up the left.
I'm considering naming it hashtag me too, but friends I've discussed this with have given this a stern no.
As a best-selling book title author, what say you?
I'm open to any and all suggestions.
Thank you for acknowledging my expertise.
Obviously, I know nothing about writing a book, but I know a lot about writing titles.
I would say, I assume they objected to Me Too because it's so controversial.
So keep that idea.
I mean, you should be controversial if you want people to take a look at the content, and then hopefully you'll have good content.
I would recommend, not Me Too, but...
Men too.
Hashtag men too.
The male victims of female brutality or of sexual assault or something to that effect.
I think that's a good title.
It would have the controversy.
It gets your point across directly.
And no one's written it yet.
So I think that would be a very interesting book.
From Michael.
Brother Michael, I need your love guru advice.
Two months ago I started dating one of my friends of three years.
She moved to Nashville six months ago and agreed to start a relationship only if I planned to move to Nashville.
I agreed to eventually if it worked out.
She wants me to give her a date on when I plan to move, but I have so many responsibilities keeping me home.
Is it too much to ask of a significant other to move across the country after two months of a relationship?
Best, Michael.
Man, what has happened to young love?
What is wrong with you people?
Listen to this language.
We agreed to have a relationship.
We sat down.
You have a negotiation.
You sat across the table.
You said, okay, I'm willing.
But you've got to move and you have to give me a date.
But I've got responsibilities.
Are you kidding me?
I think it was George Will made fun of this one time from the perspective of Cole Porter.
Cole Porter didn't sing, Let's do it.
Let's be in a relationship that we negotiate and eventually I'll plan to move once my responsibilities are over.
No, he said, Let's do it.
Let's fall in love.
Come on, man.
I don't know.
Do you want to?
Do you like her?
First of all, you haven't been dating for two months.
You said you're friends with her for three years.
Three years?
You haven't come to a conclusion?
No.
I'm not saying you've got to move there.
I'm not saying you've got to move there even to continue dating one another.
I've done long distance for a long time.
I've done that, and I'm on the road all the time now, so I'm practically long distance for half the week.
But, don't be motivated by, well, I've got these responsibilities, and well, you know, it's just really, we were planning, and we negotiated, and what's the time?
Don't do that.
Are you moved by a great feeling of love?
Do you love the girl?
Do you want to go?
Yeah, then go do it.
Go see her a lot and don't negotiate it out.
And if you're not, if it's just some kind of clinical thing and it was a love affair of convenience, then break it off and do something else.
But don't approach it in this cold way.
That's like leftist rationalist types do this.
They're weighing out the pros and cons.
Don't do that.
Conservatives, don't forget, Edmund Burke inspired all of the romantics.
The conservatives were romantics in many ways.
Be a romantic.
This is a highly controverted issue of constitutional law.
The 13th Amendment, which outlaws slavery...
May, in fact, prevent us from owning the libs.
This will probably make it up to the Supreme Court eventually, and they'll give us a final judgment on it.
The one thing we do know, though, is that the 13th Amendment does not prevent the libs from owning themselves, at which they have done all week long.
They've done this for over two years.
They've done it for longer than two years.
They are owning themselves, and I think this will be the great defense.
In this 13th Amendment argument over if they can own themselves, we might as well not be left out of the fun.
I think that actually would create a discrimination case.
Because if they can own themselves, why can't we own them as well when they're so obviously owned?
Great question.
Really thoughtful.
From Brandon.
Hey Michael, what would your opinion be about a conservative church as a business?
People would pay to hear a sermon and worship God, then learn about ideas and great people like Aristotle.
The reason being, regular churches can't speak on politics.
So they end up being an LGBTQP, LMNOP meeting sometimes, where the heart of faith and ideology is never discussed, because they have to dance around everyone's feelings.
I think it's probably a bad idea to turn churches into businesses.
I remember reading something about only being able to serve one master and not being able to serve God and mammon at the same time.
And frankly, the problem with churches, many churches today, obviously many Protestant churches, but even many parishes of the Catholic Church, certainly in America, is that they are treating it like a business.
They're treating it like they're responding to market forces.
And if the parish, the congregation, They're not really a congregation.
They're just the audience.
And we've got to give the audience what they want.
We've got to put on a show for them.
And we've got to tell them exactly what they want to hear.
That's the only way they'll fill up those pews.
That's the only way they'll fill up that donation basket.
The problem is we're treating churches too much like a business.
Now, if you want churches to be able to talk about politics, I agree.
I think it's absurd that churches can't talk about politics, and I hope they change that soon.
Hopefully they change it during the Trump administration.
That has been bandied about as an idea, and I hope they do it.
From Kyle, Dear Big Papa Knowles, Is a hot dog a sandwich?
Yes.
Yes, it is.
From Nathan.
Knowles, hello.
I have recently been interested in the creationism versus theistic evolution debate.
Where do you come down on the issue and do you think churches should teach one way or the other?
Thanks, big fan of the show, Nathan.
I know that the books of the Bible take into account all genres.
They're not just written like modern histories are written.
That's just a huge interpretive mistake of certain church movements in the last 60 years or so.
Mostly I don't care, though, because as Cardinal Baronius said, the scripture teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.
C.S. Lewis was of this opinion.
G.K. Chesterton was of this opinion.
I mean, I'm interested as a matter of science as to how the human race has come to be as it is.
I suppose as a scientific matter I'm interested, but as a theological matter it doesn't change one little thing for me.
From Eric.
Hey Michael, you mentioned earlier this week that you believe anarchy to be of the left.
I've been trying to think it through and I'm just curious how you would go about arguing that position.
Thanks.
Well, because anarchy takes on the primary premise of the left, which is that the chief unit of society is the individual.
It takes on the idea of social contracts, which is an essentially leftist and rationalist idea with no relation to history whatsoever.
And so the anarchists take the idea that because the Idol of society.
The atomic unit of society is the individual.
Then we're all just a bunch of individuals and there should be no government whatsoever because we're all just individuals.
The flip side of that argument is that the atomic unit of society is all individuals and that's all we have and there's no more atomic unit of society.
And so because we're all individuals, we ought to be all swept up together as individuals in the collective with a super collectivist state.
Two sides of the same argument.
The conservative response to that is that the individual obviously is not the atomic unit of society.
We obviously are not born into just thin air from nothing, with no bonds tying us to anybody or anything.
Obviously we're born from women, from our mothers.
And we were conceived because of the love between our mothers and our fathers.
And they're not alone either.
They've got families as well and they're in certain places with certain cultures and certain community organizations and bonds of kinship and bonds of loyalty and bonds of patriotism and not just entitlement and not just rights but duty and responsibility to those things because we didn't create our own lives.
This is given to us as the greatest gift.
And so we ought to be grateful for that.
We ought to have veneration for that.
We ought to give some credence to the prescription of the tradition, which is not the oldest thing, it's the newest thing, because it's survived through all of the years.
It's not anti-democratic, it's the greatest democracy of all, because it's the democracy of the dead that ties us as we are tied to our ancestors and to our future generations.
That's the conservative answer to two sides of a rationalist and ultimately left-wing democracy.
Alright, that's our show.
We've got a lot more to get to, but too bad.
We'll get to it later.
Check us out at Backstage Today.
That'll be happening later on.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you later.
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, a brutal assault of a pro-life activist by a pro-abortion extremist is getting, of course, no attention in the media, but I want to give it some attention today.
And also, I want to give some attention to the greater problem, the epidemic of pro-abortion extremists assaulting pro-lifers.
It happens all the time, and I will show you some evidence of that today on the show.
Also, Vox has come out Perhaps unsurprisingly, in defense of Cardi B, who admitted to drugging and robbing men.
We'll talk about the double standard there.
Also, we have the latest on Jussie Smollett.
▲
Export Selection