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April 4, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
46:27
Ep. 326 - Bad Politics

Joe Biden cowers to the woke mob, GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz fights global warming on the Left’s terms, and AOC misses her own advice that the Internet is forever. Then, some men think they’re women, some men think they’re puppies, and finally the Mailbag! Date: 04-04-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Joe Biden cowers to the woke mob, GOP rep Matt Gaetz fights global warming on the left's terms, and AOC misses her own advice that the internet is forever.
We will analyze bad politics.
Then, some men think they're women, some men think they're puppies, and finally, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
Poor Joe Biden.
and Poor, poor Joe Biden.
You know I have been sort of defending him all week.
I've been defending him against the charges that he's a sexual predator.
Or now, what people are telling me, people are tweeting to me.
They say, Michael, how can you defend Joe Biden?
He's groping children.
He's...
Do you really believe?
Just stop yourself for a minute.
Because sometimes ideology does this to us, or sometimes opportunism does this to us.
Stop yourself for one second.
Do you honestly believe that Joe Biden is a child molester?
And that We didn't know about it, or some people knew about it because they saw the videos and they saw the pictures of...
He had his hand on a girl's head or something when he was taking a photo in the Senate.
But we just...
We didn't really know.
We didn't really act on it until right now, the minute that he's declaring that he's running for president.
But actually, he's been a child molester for 40 years, and we just...
And some of us knew, but I guess we didn't care enough to make it a big deal.
Do you really believe that?
No, of course not.
However, Joe Biden is sunk.
It is going to be very, very difficult for Joe Biden to dig himself out of this hole.
Why?
Well, seven women total have come out against Joe Biden.
The people who have orchestrated this attack, and make no mistake, this is a well-orchestrated political attack.
It looks like a lot of it is coming out of the Sanders campaign, but who knows?
Once these things get rolling, more people come out.
Whoever orchestrated this attack has done a really great job because it's a slow drip.
It's a very, you had that one woman who is the big Sanders activist who said, Joe Biden smelled my hair 10 years ago, and therefore he's a sick monster assailant.
Then you had a couple other women.
One woman said, Joe Biden rubbed my nose or something.
He smiled at me five years ago, and therefore he's a misogynist.
He hates women.
And now a few more women.
Joe Biden hugged me too long once.
There was one woman who said, I asked Joe Biden to take a picture with me and my husband, and when we took the picture, he put his hand on my back.
Therefore, he's a sexual predator.
How do you take a photo?
Smile, hands on the back.
Hey, how you doing?
So now more women have come out.
Seven women in total.
One woman.
This is my favorite one.
She told the Washington Post that she had framed a photo, the photo of Joe Biden nuzzling with her.
Friend had printed it out for her.
She actually had framed this photo because it was really cool.
She's got this photo of the vice president being affectionate with her.
And only years later did she take it down during the Me Too movement because she decided ex post facto that it was a sexual assault.
When she took it, she really liked it, framed the photograph.
Then years later, it's a sexual assault because of this mass political hysteria and this cynical attack.
Even so, even with seven women coming out and saying, Joe Biden shook my hand once, therefore he's a rapist, or whatever they're saying.
The reason he's sunk is because he's accepting their premises, and now it's probably over.
In the coming month, I expect to be talking to you about a whole lot of issues, and I'll always be direct with you.
But today, I want to talk about gestures of support and encouragement that I've made to women and some men, and I've made them uncomfortable.
And I've always tried to be, in my career, I've always tried to make a human connection.
That's my responsibility, I think.
I shake hands, I hug people.
I grab men and women by the shoulders and say, you can do this.
Social norms have begun to change.
They've shifted.
And the boundaries of protecting personal space have been reset.
And I get it.
I get it.
I hear what they're saying.
I understand it.
And I'll be much more mindful.
That's my responsibility.
My responsibility and I'll meet it.
But I'll always believe, governing quite frankly, life for that matter, is about connecting.
About connecting with people.
That won't change.
But I will be more mindful and respectful of people's personal space.
And that's a good thing.
That's a good thing.
Totally the wrong response.
It's the wrong response for about a hundred different reasons.
First of all, why is Joe Biden in this mess in the first place?
He's in this mess because the guy's basically a walking simper.
He's just a set of teeth with legs.
His entire political career is not based on conviction.
It's based on ingratiating himself to people.
That's why he does all the hugs and the kisses and the nuzzles.
He just wants to ingratiate himself.
And how do you ingratiate yourself?
In the old school of politics...
In the pre-reality TV, pre-social media, pre-Donald Trump era, you were this saccharine, pseudo-earnest, I just really care.
I just really want to build people up and encourage people and smile with my giant fake teeth and encourage people and, hey there, you can do it.
And it's this overly saccharine, totally performative thing.
But that was the old school of politics.
That's...
Joe Biden's entire career.
And so he's, first of all, that got him into this mess in the first place, because all the fake little nuzzles and hugs and nose Eskimo kisses or whatever he's doing to these people does look weird in this more gritty, authentic reality TV school of politics.
But what his response does is grants the premise.
So he doesn't quite apologize, but what he says is, listen, I've We've had changing societal norms.
Maybe I've made some people uncomfortable.
I'm going to change that.
No, don't.
In this moment in politics, look, maybe this will change.
Hopefully this will change in five years or something.
At this moment, the minute that you admit fault, you're dead.
Every Me Too person survived except for Kevin Spacey.
Why?
Because he's the only one who admitted he did anything wrong.
How many things have people lobbed at Donald Trump?
Some fake attacks?
Some real attacks?
His school of thought is that old mob school, deny till you die.
That's what Joe Biden should have done here.
And the reason he should have done it is because he actually didn't really do anything wrong.
He's done a lot of things wrong in his political career.
There are a lot of reasons not to vote for him, which we'll get to in one second.
But in this hugging politics, that's his whole politics.
That's retail politics.
What his response should have been, because he should have released a response.
He should have gotten that little cell phone camera and posted this on Twitter or whatever.
And he should have said, this is a BS political attack.
This is being launched by my opponents.
This is being launched by the Bernie Sanders campaign.
And it is outrageous.
They are accusing me of sexual...
Predation, sexual assault with no evidence whatsoever and they are making a mockery of the Me Too movement.
They are making a mockery of the real victims of sexual assault.
This is offensive to real victims.
These people should apologize for what they are trying to do for their cynical political attack.
I will never apologize for encouraging people in politics and having a personal relationship with my constituents.
Find me one woman Who can credibly accuse me of sexual impropriety or adultery or sexual assault?
Find me one woman.
Find me one hotel room booking.
Find me one bit of evidence.
And until you do, shut your cynical mouths.
That's what he should have said.
It would have played a lot better, first of all.
And it would have been correct.
It would have been just.
The one thing you can't get Joe Biden on, as far as we know, is sexual misconduct.
He'd probably be in a better space if you could.
Teddy Kennedy let his mistress drown in a car.
Bob Menendez almost certainly had sex with underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic.
Federal prosecutors certainly think he did.
Bill Clinton.
We caught Bill Clinton.
And he survived impeachment.
Joe Biden is sort of the exception here in that he actually isn't sexually improper.
The thing to go after Joe Biden for is that he's a total hack.
He is the most disingenuous, unctuous politician in the country who will say anything to win a vote because he's so desperate to appeal to every single person that he's going to nuzzle them with his nose and give them butterfly kisses.
Frankly, the one way that I could see this...
Fake scandal redounding to Joe Biden's benefit is that it seems to be covering up in the media the actual scandal that he's involved in, the actual impropriety that he's involved in, which is basically that he bullied Ukraine into paying his son millions of dollars.
Oh, you haven't heard about this?
I'm not surprised because no mainstream media outlets are covering it.
But this is the real scandal that Joe Biden is hiding right now.
Joe Biden's son, Hunter, his younger son, Hunter, received millions of dollars from a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings while his father was vice president, while his father was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukrainian affairs, while his father was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukrainian affairs, and while Joe Biden was funneling $1.8 billion to Ukraine, coincidentally, while Joe Biden was funneling all of that money to
while Joe Biden was funneling all of that money to Ukraine, his son Hunter received millions of dollars.
He received regular monthly payments of $166,000 per month from Burisma.
Why is that?
Is it because Hunter Biden is some expert on Ukrainian-US relations?
No.
Is it because Hunter Biden is an expert on Russian-Ukrainian relations?
No.
Is it because Hunter Biden is an expert on energy policy?
No.
No.
He got the money as a payoff crony deal because his father was threatening to withhold money from Ukraine until he got this sweetheart deal.
Joe Biden actually basically bragged about this at the Council on Foreign Relations in December of 2015.
I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko that they would take action against a state prosecutor, and they didn't.
I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.
I said, you're not getting a billion?
I'm going to be leaving here, and I think it was, what, six hours?
I looked, I said, I'm leaving in six hours.
If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money.
Oh, son of a b****.
Got fired.
And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.
Coincidentally, by the way, the part he's leaving out of this bragging at CFR is that the prosecutor that he made sure to get fired was looking into the crony deals that Hunter Biden had with Burisma.
Isn't it a little weird that the vice president of the United States, main point person on Ukrainian-US relations, is saying we're going to withhold almost $2 billion of aid if you don't fire this one prosecutor?
What's wrong with that prosecutor?
What on earth could that prosecutor have to do with U.S.-Ukrainian relations?
Oh, not very much.
He's actually just looking into your son.
And the cojones on Joe Biden.
You gotta give him that at least.
He brags about it at the Council on Foreign Relations.
This is a real scandal.
This is real corruption.
This is a real reason that Joe Biden should not be president.
Also, it's collusion.
This is kind of the funny thing, too.
I guess it's Ukrainian collusion, or is it Russian collusion?
I don't know.
But it is collusion.
That's a real reason.
Demagoguing and race hustling and saying that Mitt Romney wants to put black people back in chains, that's a reason that he shouldn't be president.
The fact that he's a plagiarist, which is why he had to drop out of the 1988 presidential race, that's a reason that he shouldn't be president.
And the issue with the plagiarism being that Joe Biden is an empty suit.
He's a walking grin.
He's a walking butterfly kiss.
That's all he is.
All good reasons to prevent Joe Biden from being president.
But to pretend that he's a child molester?
With no evidence whatsoever?
Other than some YouTube video where he's taking a photo with a family and he, like, touches a girl's hair or something?
Come on, give me a break.
Kamala Harris just came out, you'll be shocked, and said, I believe Joe's accusers.
That's fine.
Look, I'm perfectly willing to enjoy the schadenfreude while the Democrats rip each other apart and Joe Biden, one of the most disingenuous politicians in the country, goes down just before the finish line again for the third time.
I'm I'm perfectly happy to watch it.
But we shouldn't delude ourselves.
We shouldn't pretend that the issue is that Joe Biden smelled some lady's hair on the campaign trail in 2002 or something.
It just distracts from the real issues, which is that this guy really is an old crook.
He really is an old crone.
Maybe not as bad as Hillary Clinton, but he is engaging in crooked deals.
He's been in the Senate for, what, 40 years?
He's been in politics for almost 50 years.
He led the high-tech lynching against Clarence Thomas.
Plenty of reasons to go after this guy.
Fortunately, it seems like he's never gonna be president.
If he can survive it though, if he can survive it, ironically, talk about 4D chess, it will be because he's using these stupid fake scandals to distract from the real scandal.
Speaking of bad politics though, I hate to go after one of our own, but I have to critique GOP Representative Matt Gaetz is offering an answer to AOC's Green New Deal.
He just held a press conference out right in front of the Capitol on what he is calling the Green Real Deal, and it was just a textbook example of bad politics.
We'll go through it point by point.
My name is Matt Gaetz.
I represent Florida's first congressional district while it is above water.
Just yesterday, the Secretary of the Air Force, the Secretary of the Army, the Chiefs of Staff of both the Army and the Air Force testified to the House Armed Services Committee That in real time, climate change is impacting the strategic decisions that our military makes regarding weapons testing, basing decisions, the global movement of humans, and high-stakes territorial claims made by our adversaries in the Arctic.
Our military does not have the luxury of an academic debate about climate change.
They must respond to the reality that we face today and so should the United States Congress.
History will judge harshly my Republican colleagues who deny the science of climate change.
Similarly, those Democrats who would use climate change as a basis to regulate out of existence the American experience will face the harsh reality that their ideas will fail.
Today, along with other members of Congress, I'll be filing a Green Real Deal.
a common sense rebuttal to the Green New Deal. - Ah, ah.
Everything about this was wrong.
It's not even like that bad of an idea, but everything about the execution was wrong.
I say this with great goodwill toward Matt Gaetz.
Not a good rollout.
How so?
First of all, all the optics.
When you're a member of Congress, you're basically a spokesman.
You're basically a performer.
You are a mouthpiece for the policy ideas that you and others around you want to pursue.
That's most of your power.
You don't have a whole lot of raw political power.
What you mostly have is the power of a microphone and the power of television cameras.
A good example of someone using this properly is Dan Crenshaw, who is...
Very intelligent and a serious-minded person and actually good at his job.
So Dan Crenshaw, he's a freshman member of Congress, one of a zillion people there, he is able to use his platforms, Twitter, going on TV news, going on the internet or whatever, he is able to use those very effectively to convey important policy ideas, important philosophical ideas, important ideological ideas.
Okay.
This is the opposite of that.
First of all, When you hold a press conference in front of the Capitol, you need to have people behind you.
I know this seems counterintuitive, because you have a microphone, ostensibly you're speaking to people.
The people that you're speaking to at a press conference are on the internet.
They're behind television sets.
They're not the people in front of you.
So you need people behind you to show that your idea has support.
Here, Matt Gaetz is just all by himself.
The only people behind him are tourists walking by looking at him kind of funny.
So, from an optics level, not a great point.
Also, he's wearing a neon green tie that makes him look silly.
If he wants to wear a green tie, I like that idea.
Wear a dark green tie.
Wear a sober green tie.
Make yourself look serious.
He also has a baby blue pocket square that clashes with a neon green tie, as do most things.
Lose it.
Not a good idea.
Basically, 99% of members of Congress and the Senate buy suits that wouldn't have fit their own grandfathers.
Tailor your suit.
Just look silly.
Cleaner, more presentable.
AOC and all of these guys are actually pretty good at optics most of the time.
The GOP needs to be good at optics, too.
Okay.
Then the sign in front of the press conference says, it says the Green New Deal, and then it's crossed out, and it says Real Deal.
Yeah, we're the Real Deal.
Awful, awful stuff.
When you are just responding to your opponents...
You are losing because you're playing on their terms.
In this case, you're literally accepting their term.
Okay, the Green New Deal is the basis and I'm just sort of responding.
And in this case, it's like crossed out with a marker.
Yeah, we're the real deal.
Awful.
Not good.
It reminds me of the mom in Mean Girls.
I'm not a regular mom.
I'm a cool mom.
That's what some of these Republicans are doing when they're accepting the left's terms.
And to the broader point, they're accepting the left's premises.
And this is where we get to that pseudo-earnestness that Joe Biden is exhibiting.
This idea, this pseudo, look, I really care about climate change.
I represent Florida while it's still above water.
I'm really...
No, come on, man.
The problem with these climate change people is that they're hysterical alarmists.
You are not going to defeat their arguments by accepting their alarmist premises.
It's about to be underwater and I'm serious about it.
No, it's not.
It's just not.
Florida is not going to be underwater.
I know Al Gore told us Florida was going to be underwater by like 2012, but it didn't happen.
It was never going to happen.
It's not going to be underwater by 2024.
It's not going to be underwater by 2050.
It ain't going to happen.
So stop accepting the alarmist premises.
Because if you accept the alarmist premises, then you basically give them the argument.
If you accept the premise that Florida is imminently going to be underwater, then why shouldn't we upend the entire economy and all of American governance and society?
If whole states are going to be submerged underwater in this catastrophe, of course we should mobilize.
The problem is that isn't going to happen.
Don't accept those premises.
You don't need to fight on their terms.
It's a bad political look.
So I don't think this is going to go anywhere, but I would urge all of our other friends in Congress not to accept this stuff.
It's a total loser.
If you've got two people selling the Green New Deal, and one of them is a GOP representative in an ill-fitting suit, and the other one is AOC, who is basically a product of social media, they're going to win.
The left is going to win that.
We are never going to win that fight.
Speaking of AOC, she has made a blunder because AOC has become a punchline.
We were talking about this yesterday.
She was always walking this line.
Is she a punchline or is she winning?
She won.
She upended a longtime incumbent, Joe Crowley, in Congress.
She's become one of the most prominent members of Congress.
She's directly challenged Nancy Pelosi.
And she goes straight to the people.
She says, I'm not here to convince my colleagues.
I'm here to convince the American people.
Now, the trouble with AOC right now, she's finally lost something.
She lost the Green New Deal.
That crazy piece of legislation that she wrote that she got everyone to talk about.
She even got Matt Gaetz to talk about it.
She got members of the Senate to co-sponsor this bill.
And then Cocaine Mitch, Nuclear Cocaine Mitch, comes up.
He says, we're all going to vote on it.
He plays chicken and they all cave.
She lost.
She took the loss.
And so what she's got to do now is pivot.
She's got to go on the attack somewhere else.
She can't keep fighting this battle because she's losing this battle.
And you see this here.
So she does one of her weirdo live streams.
But this one is different than the others.
She's not laughing at people.
She's not above the fray.
She's not winning the media war.
She's reactive.
She's explaining.
She's defending.
She's losing.
How many years until the world ends again?
We have 12 years left to cut emissions by at least 50%, if not more.
And for everyone who wants to make a joke about that, you may laugh, but your grandkids will not.
So, understand that the internet documents everything, and for all those people, You know, you want to talk about looking in the back of history, looking backwards.
You look back and you open history books on the civil rights movement and you see those folks who are protesting against the ability for African Americans and black Americans to have the right to vote.
You should also know that the internet documents everything and Your grandchildren will not be able to hide the fact that you fought against acknowledging and taking bold actions on climate change.
Oh, not her best work.
And she doesn't even hear it.
She's there crouching in what looks like a woodshop.
It's a really awful framing.
You can't really tell where she is.
She's crouching in this really weird way.
And then she says, you know, the Internet is forever.
Aren't you guys going to look silly in 20 years?
Somebody is going to look silly in 20 years.
I don't think it's going to be us, but okay.
Now, by the way, this is still a more effective way to communicate the Green New Deal than what Matt Gaetz was doing.
Much more.
At least this is innovative.
At least this is capturing people's attention.
At least this doesn't look totally contrived.
But it's still weak.
She's got to back off of this if she wants to maintain her primacy among the Democrat House members.
She's just looking crazy here.
She's not really convincing anybody with these arguments.
The internet is forever.
I mean, it's actually the same reason.
Because she's just responding.
She's just reacting.
What you saw Matt Gaetz doing was he's responding and reacting to her.
What you see her doing is she's responding and reacting to the people who are mocking her total devastating loss on the Senate vote on the Green New Deal.
What was Ronald Reagan would say?
When you're explaining, you're losing.
It's the same kind of language here.
It's all the same kind of language.
How do you do this?
What you need to do, what Joe Biden should have done, what Matt Gaetz should have done, what AOC should have done, you have to be very direct.
You have to be uncompromising.
You have to not accept the premises of the other people.
You see, for the first time there, AOC is starting to accept the premises.
She says, I'm not saying the world is going to end in 12 years.
I'm saying it's gonna start to end in 12 years.
Yeah, that's not quite what you said.
That's not quite what you said before, but okay, I mean, this is more, but you're just, ah, that doesn't work as well.
You've got to be direct, you've got to be blunt, you've got to call out the absurdity.
We will call out the absurdity in just a second on how men are not women and how men are also not puppies.
We'll also get to the mailbag, but first you've got to go to dailywire.com.
Head over there, $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 the Matt Walsh show, you get to ask questions in the mailbag coming up, you get to ask questions backstage, you get another kingdom, and you get this.
Listen, the internet is forever.
But you might not be forever if you don't get the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
Because the tears are coming.
Florida's going to be underwater.
You could drown.
Get your Tumblr.
Tumblr, we'll be right back.
You've got to call out the absurdity directly.
You've got to take it on directly, uncompromisingly.
If you try to accept people's premises, if you try to be really nice and conciliatory and I'm a really nice guy, you're going to lose.
This is coming from Teen Vogue to explain to all of us why men are really women.
- Hi, I'm Hannah Gaby and I'm here to tell you the binary is bull . - Sex typically refers to your biological traits.
There's your gonads, your genitalia, your internal sex characteristics, your hormone production, hormone response, and secondary sex characteristics.
Gender is about your identity, your expression, and it's often based on ideas about sex.
It's important that we really break down what are we talking about when we talk about sex and gender and is there something called biological sex and what does that mean?
This idea that the body is either male or female is totally wrong, and I am living proof of that.
We know intersex people exist and break down this binary.
We all have characteristics that are typically male and typically female, and it is really about political choices, social factors, ideological choices that we assign meaning to different parts of our bodies.
So the meaning may be that the thing that most of us are taught, that if you have a vagina, you're a girl, or if you have a penis, you're a boy.
But like many simple binaries, break down when you start to really get into the nitty gritty.
Yeah, things are getting gritty and nitty, that's true.
Things are breaking down, but it doesn't dispute the fact that men are not women and women are not men.
What one of those guys says is that what we have is body parts, biological facts, that we assign meaning to, but we can assign whatever meaning we want.
It's like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland.
He says, in my language, words can mean whatever I want them to mean.
Well, which is to be master?
To use the words correctly or to use the words however you want them to mean, whatever they want to mean?
Actually, what you have is body parts.
You have biological facts that have meaning.
They themselves have meaning.
that is not reliant on what you think the meaning is or what you want the meaning to be.
That person in there says, there are intersex people.
What he means is what we traditionally have been called hermaphrodites, people who have either confusing looking genitals or even confusing chromosomes, people who blur the lines.
This is an infinitesimally small number of people.
But of course those people exist.
Nevertheless, men and women exist.
There are ligers.
There's a hybrid of a lion and a tiger.
The fact that ligers exist does not mean that lions and tigers also do not exist, and that lions and tigers are different, and that lions are not tigers and tigers are not lions.
But ligers exist.
Right, that's true.
There are a very, very small number of ligers.
Nevertheless, the categories of lion and tiger exist.
There are a very, very small number of intersex people.
Nevertheless, the category of man and woman, male and female, still exist.
You have to call that out.
You cannot say, out of a false sense of compassion, that, oh, well, hey, maybe you're right.
Maybe there's no such thing as men and women.
I mean, what's the harm if we just indulge people who think that They're really the opposite sex, or they very much want to be the opposite sex.
Here is the harm of indulging delusion.
Care of the human puppies in the United Kingdom.
But those are actual real bonyos.
They're proper dog treats.
Oh, help yourself.
Oh, you can't.
Oh, you need to be fed.
There's one in the bowl.
There you go.
So whilst he's having his treat, because he's been a very good puppy so far, you were engaged.
Yeah, well, we split up 2008.
Yeah.
How much of this did you know when you got involved?
Bits of.
He didn't have the suit then.
So this is a grown man wearing a giant leather suit that makes him look like a Dalmatian puppy.
And he identifies as a puppy.
Even though he's a man.
And he's quite convinced that really on some deeper level he is a puppy.
He said this, quote, I was incredibly nervous when I first started talking to people online.
I was living with my parents and I would sneak downstairs at 3 in the morning to get on the internet and look for this stuff.
I would hold a pillow over the 56k modem so that you couldn't hear the modem noise.
I was worried that if I ever spoke to anyone about it, they would be like, you're a nutjob.
It's an experience that a lot of pups I know have had, feeling really weird and strange about how they are, and then finding other people and feeling a lot better about it.
There is no difference between a man who thinks he's a puppy and a man who thinks that he's a woman.
I don't mean that in any sort of mean way or spiteful way or hateful way.
These are people who have psychological disorders and they deserve compassion and treatment.
They do not deserve to be deluded or to have their delusions indulged in.
This guy obviously also has a sexual fetish that involves pretending that he's an animal.
Kind of like Beto, who is a furry.
We'll get into that at some other episode.
But this guy was engaged to a woman and now he pretends that he's her puppy.
That's how this works.
No one gains when you indulge delusion.
No one gains when you indulge in fantasy.
That's a false compassion.
Don't be the unctuous, glad-handing, walking simper who tells everyone whatever they think that they want to hear.
You gotta call things like they are.
You gotta call it like you see it.
We get a lot of bad politics when you don't do that, but beyond just the realm of pure government and politics...
You just have bad interactions with human beings when you're not direct with them, when you don't call it like you see it, when you're trying to be everything to everybody.
This is especially true in these hot-button social issues like transgenderism, where you could face social consequences if you speak obvious truths.
You could face professional consequences if you speak obvious truths.
We're not going to get along very well in a culture of lies, what Drew Klavan calls the empire of lies.
You've got to be honest.
I know this seems counterintuitive in politics, but you've got to try.
Let's get to the mailbag.
Let's try to answer directly and honestly in the mailbag.
From David.
Michael, thank you for mentioning Leon Cass and the wisdom of repugnance on your show.
I've long respected Cass.
Do you think there is any hope our culture will start to have serious discussions about bioethical issues, IVF, abortion, or cloning, or technological advancement bound to trample on the sanctity of human life?
Thanks.
Love the show, David.
I'm hopeful in the sense that, I don't know, you're asking about it, so I guess I'm hopeful about that.
I'm hopeful because there is the alternative media, there are the new media now, so people can get into these discussions if they really seek them out.
I'm not that hopeful because podcasts are a shoddy substitute for church.
Podcasts are a shoddy substitute for a firm moral foundation, for a sound religious foundation.
So while the new media, the alternative media podcasts are becoming much, much more popular, Church attendance is declining.
Religious instruction is declining.
Moral instruction is declining.
Our moral vocabulary is going extinct.
We're losing the ability to discuss these things.
So now, even I hear self-described conservatives say this.
They say, Michael, you're talking about the culture and philosophy and religion, but I just want, you got to talk about facts and science and facts.
You don't even know what those words mean.
If you're drawing a dichotomy between philosophy and culture and religion and facts or science, then you don't know what those words mean.
You lack the vocabulary to engage in those sort of discussions, which are relatively sophisticated for our debased dialogue.
But they're essential if you're going to talk about fundamental questions such as abortion, cloning, in vitro fertilization, the dignity of human life.
It's...
If our culture continues down that scientistic and shallow path, I can't say that I look forward to a future where we're going to be able to discuss those things in greater clarity.
I think what you'll see is you'll see people, society, bifurcate.
You're going to have some people who have a fairly sophisticated vocabulary with which to discuss those, and then a lot of people who are simply never given that instruction from birth all the way up through adulthood.
A strong, solid moral and linguistic foundation even is necessary for that.
From David.
Hello, Michael.
For Poetry Month, I have written a haiku.
Are you satisfied?
Cheers, Dave.
For Poetry Month, I have written a haiku.
I'm very satisfied, Dave.
From Arnaldo.
Dear Pedro, some people believe that the current condition of tribalism in the parties started with the Republican Party and the Newt Gingrich transfer of power.
But my Hillsdale professor says that this started after Watergate, when Democrats left Republicans in the dark in congressional affairs.
When did tribalism begin?
Arnaldo.
Tribalism has recurred many times throughout history.
If what you're talking about is our current American political tribalism, where it seems like no one can compromise whatsoever, I tend to agree a little bit more with your Hillsdale professor, but I would go back further.
I think it begins with Watergate itself.
I think Watergate is the moment that tribalism begins because you had Democrats who were so furious that they lost a presidential election in a landslide to a guy that they had previously...
Stolen a presidential election from in 1960 to a guy that they never forgave because he was correct about Alger Hiss, about a communist spy working in the federal government at a high level.
He called them out on it, Richard Nixon.
The left defended this guy.
Richard Nixon was right.
They never forgave him for it.
And so what they did was they used a bunch of political dirty tricks and leaks to overturn a presidential election that Nixon won in a landslide.
It was Watergate.
And the Republicans let them do it.
Because the Republicans were playing by a more dignified set of political standards.
The Republicans hadn't got the message that politics was going to become utterly tribal at that point.
It began then.
It was totally unjust when they did it.
They haven't let up since.
From Seamus.
Hi Michael.
What's the difference between a political philosophy and a political ideology?
Under which category, if any, does conservatism fall?
An excellent question.
Ideology is quite specific.
Michael Oakeshott, the great conservative philosopher, defines ideology as...
The formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational truth contained in the tradition.
He gives that definition in rationalism and politics.
It's a bulky definition, so think about it.
The formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational truth contained in the tradition.
There's another definition of ideology which is given by Slavoj Zizek, the philosopher and communist, has popularized this, although he kind of cribs it from both David Foster Wallace and Erica Jong, the novelist, which is that the way we see ideology is everywhere, even in the most mundane and trivial objects, even in toilet bowls.
So, in Germany, the hole in the toilet bowl is at the front of the bowl.
So, you see the excrement, you see it there.
In the German metaphysical, philosophical, analytical approach to things, you see the excrement.
In the French toilet bowl, the hole is in the back.
It just goes right away.
It's more elegant.
It's more radical.
It's more revolutionary.
And in the United Kingdom and in America, the hole is in the bottom, but there's a lot of water all around it.
So the excrement goes into the water and you don't have to.
It's there, but you don't have to really, you're not supposed to inspect it like those weirdo Germans do.
It's a sort of via media.
It's somewhere in the middle.
It's more moderate.
And this, he says, is ideology.
country.
Ideology, we see it in everything.
It's like the John Carpenter film, They Live.
It's the glasses.
We have ideology on our billboards and our this and everything.
And then you can put the glasses on or take the glasses off, really is what it should be, and then you see the bare facts as they are.
It's very painful to get rid of ideology.
In any case, what all of those people are saying is that ideology is very narrow.
You're not seeing reality unvarnished.
You're not seeing truth unvarnished.
We all bring ideological presuppositions to the way we view the world.
Conservatism, I actually don't even use the term conservatism too much, or I try not to, because what the conservative should do is fight ideology tooth and nail as best he can.
A lot of different ideologies in the conservative movement.
Neoconservatism, libertarianism, the religious right, all of these different ideologies.
What we should do, however, is go back to that Oakshot definition and say that what the conservative does is conserve.
The conservative prefers the tried to the untried.
The conservative reveres the tradition, venerates the tradition, Believes in prescription.
If something has worked for a very long time, maybe I shouldn't totally upend it in a night.
That is not quite an ideology.
What that is is a veneration for a tradition because of the perils of the ideology.
It's a long...
And disgusting explanation of the difference between ideology and philosophy.
But we should prefer philosophy.
We should prefer the view of ideology.
Like Zizek is a philosopher.
So he's viewing ideology and trying to take all of it in.
That's what a conservative should do.
Try to take all of it in and proceed cautiously with good judgment, with prudence, with veneration, with prescription.
From Nicole.
Will Trump become a punchline if he loses in 2020?
Yes.
Yes.
Not as badly as if he had lost in 2016, but he will.
He will because in the United States, we're very harsh on our one-term presidents.
Jimmy Carter's a punchline.
Even George H.W. Bush is a punchline.
Even Richard Nixon is a punchline.
He wasn't just a one-term president, but he got kicked out, so he's become a punchline.
We're not very nice to our one-term presidents, and if President Trump is a one-term president, he'll be a punchline as well.
So we've got to get the guy re-elected because he's done a lot of good stuff.
There's still a lot more good stuff we could do.
And it's important historically to look back on this era and say that was a good era.
We should have more of that.
That's how you build a path to success in the future.
From Jeremy.
Hello, Michael.
My mother is in hospice and will be entering the active state of dying soon.
Very sorry to hear that.
I'm going to give her a eulogy.
Could you recommend a poem, piece of scripture, or other form of written word for inspiration to help guide my writing?
Thank you.
Jeremy.
It's a very difficult thing to eulogize your mother.
A little bit of advice I could give is...
It is very important.
What you say is very important.
It's going to stick with you.
It's going to matter.
This is the moment.
You've got to get it right.
I don't mean to put extra pressure on you, but you've got to get it right.
You're smart to say, is there a poem?
Is there a piece of scripture?
Is there something that I should use?
You know your mother.
You should choose the poem.
You should choose the poem.
The bit of scripture.
You shouldn't get a canned piece of scripture from somebody else who doesn't know your mother.
You should choose it.
But it should be about that.
It should be about your mother.
It should be about her.
It should not be about you.
It should not be indulgent.
It should not be saccharine.
It should not be sentimental.
And it should look at the life of your mother and it should look beyond that.
You know, when Father Paul Scalia was eulogizing his father, Antonin Scalia, he actually kind of had a funny opening.
He said, we're all here because of one man.
A man who was loved by some and hated by others.
A deeply polarizing man.
A man who...
Change the world.
I speak, of course, of Jesus Christ and all the people there because that is the point.
It was looking beyond.
There was another friend of mine told me about how he was asked to give a eulogy by a man who knew that he was dying and he said, This is, I think, the right idea because you're not just giving soft soap to people.
First of all, I don't know how old you are.
I don't know the circumstances.
An important thing when you're eulogizing your mother, especially if you're young, is to let people know, not only will you be okay, not only will they be okay, it will be okay.
Life will go on.
It will be okay.
And so you should do that and then speak about her In a way that involves love and reverence and reality and respect and truth in a way that you will be proud to do it, to look back on that later on.
This may be one of the hardest things you ever do.
It's going to be grueling and awful to write it and to give it.
But you'll be glad that you didn't screw it up and that you didn't take it lightly.
All right, we've got a lot more to get to, but that's our show.
Come back on Monday.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Show.
I'll see you then.
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.
Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, we're going to talk a little bit about this Joe Biden thing.
He struggles to respect personal space.
Is that a huge scandal that we should all care about?
I don't think so, but we'll talk about it.
Also, a woman just recently gave birth to her son's child.
We will look at the lengths that people go to in order to get around biology.
And also, we'll deal with this question.
Should Christians cite the Bible when they're arguing about cultural issues with people who don't believe in the Bible?
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