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July 3, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
46:21
Ep. 376 - America Is Great, But The NYT Is Not

The NYT publishes a 5-minute long “video essay” titled “Please Stop Telling Me America Is Great” just in time for the Fourth of July. Then, Sargon of Akkad stops by to talk YouTube and politics. Finally, the Mailbag, and my favorite soldier story from the Revolutionary War! Date: 07-03-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The illiterate millennials of the New York Times have published a five-minute-long video essay titled, Please Stop Telling Me America is Great, just in time for the 4th of July.
We will dissect the nonsense.
Then, Sargon of Akkad stops by to talk YouTube and politics.
Finally, the mailbag and my favorite soldier story from the Revolutionary War.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
Just in time for the 4th of July, July, the New York Times comes out with a total hit piece on not just some political issue, not just on Trump, not just on conservatives, but on all of American history and the American nation.
And they call it an opinion piece.
So they say it's an op-ed.
You know, we're not necessarily endorsing this view.
We're just publishing it.
It's written, quote-unquote, by someone named Taige Johnson and Naima Raza.
But the New York Times can't distance themselves from this entirely because it's not an essay that these people wrote.
It's a video essay.
This is something that was produced at the New York Times.
It's a five minute long video that they hired someone to narrate it and they hired people to illustrate it and animate it and it goes through and it's just an all out attack.
On America and the idea that America is great.
I mean, there's obviously an underlying message of anti-Trumpism because President Trump's campaign slogan is make America great again, keep America great.
They're saying America isn't great.
Don't tell me that America was great.
But they don't talk about Trump.
They just talk about the country.
Here's how they launch their attack.
America, the greatest country on earth.
A narrative packed and sold to tiny patriots, reinforced by every cartoon, movie, cheeseburger, and mattress sale.
Guaranteed.
A mythology so entrenched, our most beloved personalities urge us never to question it.
Don't let anyone ever tell you that this country isn't great.
This right now is the greatest country on earth.
Greatest country God ever gave me.
You're the greatest country in the world, I'll tell you that.
America's the greatest country in the world.
But what if we did question it?
America is the richest country in this club, but we're also the poorest, with a whopping 18% poverty rate, closer to Mexico than Western Europe.
12.8 million American children live in poverty.
That's almost one in five of our kids.
And speaking of kids, turns out at the level of high school science, we're 19th of 36.
Reading?
20th.
And math?
A dismal 30th.
We spend more in healthcare than any other country in the golf club, especially out of our own private little pockets.
But we live sicker and shorter lives.
We're fatter.
And globally, we're more likely to see newborns die.
We're even behind Bosnia.
So, I don't even know where to begin with this, with all of the internal contradictions and the outright nonsense.
The premise at the beginning is that we're told never to question how great America is.
When was the last time that was true?
Like 1952?
All we are told from kindergarten onward is that America isn't great.
I mean, now in our high schools we are taught left-wing anti-American polemics like Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States as though they were scholarship, as though they were regular old history textbooks.
We're constantly...
We're deconstructing America.
We're knocking down monuments.
Obviously we're knocking down monuments to Christopher Columbus.
We're knocking down monuments to George Washington.
There's a school in California about to spend about $600,000 to cover up a mural of George Washington at a school named after George Washington.
We're always told that America isn't great.
The thing that we're not learning is all the great stuff that America has done.
But then the New York Times goes in just in those first few seconds to contradict themselves several times.
We'll get to that in a second.
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So the premise of this whole New York Times video is just demonstrably false.
We are told by the pop culture.
We're told by our educational institutions.
We are told by the New York Times itself, the gray lady, all the news that fits the narrative, that America isn't great.
And they tell us that we're told never to question how great America is.
I mean, even Barack Obama, the President of the United States, he said he wants to fundamentally transform America.
And he said he doesn't really believe in American exceptionalism any more than anyone else believes in the exceptionalism of their own country.
Did you hear what they criticize America for?
They criticize America for being really poor.
We're so poor, we're starving.
Then they also criticize America for being too fat.
We're obese.
They criticize America because our babies are more likely to die, apparently, than in some countries.
But then the New York Times, almost every day of the week, talks about how abortion is a sacred right, that we need to protect a constitutional right to kill a million babies a year, but it's terrible that some babies die.
They criticize us for spending the most money on health care.
They say it's mostly out of our own pockets, too.
As if...
Some money wasn't out of our pockets.
When the government spends money, I guess the New York Times thinks it comes from magic.
It comes from thin air.
It doesn't come from our own pockets.
Of course government spending comes from our pockets.
It comes from our pockets through taxation.
Then it is inefficiently spent, and there's a lot of corruption usually along the way.
Then they spend it on healthcare.
So they criticize us for spending a lot of money on healthcare.
But we also have the best healthcare system in the world.
Everybody who wants good health care comes to the United States from every other country.
If you want really the top health care in the world, you don't go to Cuba.
You don't go to Canada.
You don't go to the UK.
You don't go to China.
You come to America.
Why?
Because we have the best healthcare system.
And it's not only for the super duper rich.
Everybody in America can get treatment and you don't have to wait in long lines.
We don't have long lines to wait for healthcare.
We don't like the UK have a system where the government just takes control of your baby.
And if you want to get your baby's treatment for his condition, like as in the case of little baby Charlie Gard or baby Alfie, the government in the US can't just steal your baby from you like the socialist government in the UK did.
We have control over our healthcare here.
Also, we lead virtually all of the healthcare innovation in the world.
I guess it comes at a cost, but it's not that bad.
We're all doing pretty well here.
The New York Times then goes on to talk about all of the immense flaws in American democracy.
This year, America slid on global rankings of corruption and freedom and dropped from a functional to a flawed democracy.
I have to stop it there because the flaw in the New York Times' argument is that America is a democracy.
We're not a democracy.
We're a republic.
The founders and framers were terrified of direct democracy.
They were terrified of mob rule.
That's why we have this brilliant federal system, this Republican system that balances different rights, different authority, different powers between the federal government, the state governments, the local governments, between the judiciary and the legislature and the executive.
It's a brilliant system.
But even beyond that, I was wondering, when I saw them say that the U.S. is falling behind, we're a flawed democracy, According to whom?
Whose opinion do I really have to value here?
The answer is it comes from the Economist Intelligence Unit.
That's the Economist, as in that leftist magazine from the United Kingdom.
The magazine that called Ben Shapiro an alt-right sage.
Orthodox Jew, yarmulke wearing Ben Shapiro, is apparently a Nazi, according to this outlet, the Economist.
But I'm going to trust their opinion when it comes to American democracy.
And by the way, America's not even a democracy, we're a republic.
And if we're so stupid, if we're so stupid, we've fallen behind on so many measures, why do we lead the world in everything?
In the economy, in culture, in our political system, in our military?
We are number one.
There is no number two.
We export all of that around the world.
If we're so dumb, if we're failing at everything, how is that even possible?
But then the New York Times totally shows their cards.
They show what this video is really about.
It's not about...
All the flaws that America has.
It's not about correcting miseducation.
It's about something much more fundamental.
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So the New York Times finally gives away their hand here.
They go on to describe everything that we do succeed in in America, but it's all terrible, according to the New York Times.
So what, besides our economy and military, are we actually number one in?
So what are we number one in?
Now listen how they bury the lead here, right?
What, besides our economy and military, are we actually number one in?
The economy and the military are pretty important, aren't they?
The economy and the military are...
I don't know.
Those are the main ways that we judge nations around the world, right?
Kind of glossing over some important things.
And our economy and our military aren't just slightly better than everybody's.
They are a zillion times better.
I mean, there's barely a second place.
GDP in the United States is $21.5 trillion.
That's 51% larger than China's GDP. 51% larger...
Even though China has four times our population, there's an extra billion people in China.
More than an extra billion people in China, and our GDP still crushes them.
We also still have the strongest military.
In terms of military spending, way more than twice the next highest military spending country, which is China.
But as a matter of military victories, military power that we project around the world, you couldn't even quantify it.
So, pretty good.
I mean, it's funny.
They have to admit that because otherwise it's just so dishonest in their video.
But what did they, they spent like four seconds saying that.
Then they move on.
They say, but besides that, besides those two incredibly important measures, what else are we number one in?
Just a bunch of totally bad stuff.
Turns out a lot of things.
Civilian gun ownership, mass shootings, TV watching, prescription drug abuse, prison population.
Oh, and almost number one on environmental damage edged out by China.
Okay, you see all of, oh no, it's so awful.
Let's just quickly debunk every single thing they said.
First of all, civilian gun ownership is a very good thing.
It not only protects us from bad guys, it protects us from tyranny.
The worst tyrannies in the world have taken away people's guns before they've unleashed their worst miseries on their people.
So, civilian gun ownership, that is a plus.
It is good that we have the number one in that.
Mass shootings.
Yeah, mass shootings are awful.
Americans are also much, much more likely to be killed by hands and feet and clubs and hammers than the types of guns that are used in mass shootings.
So it's awful when things happen.
It's sad that in a fallen world, bad things happen.
But it's not even coming close to the real issues here.
The vast majority of gun crimes, by the way, are not mass shootings.
They're not AR-15s.
They're pistols being used in suicides.
And guess what?
If you take away the guns, the people who are going to kill themselves are just going to find out another way to do it.
TV watching, they mentioned.
This is my favorite one they mentioned because they're talking about how awful TV watching is.
In a medium that is being viewed on a TV screen.
This is a video essay.
So you're watching this on a TV screen and they're telling you how bad TV is.
If TV is so bad, why did you make the essay?
Why didn't you just use your words and write it?
Oh, I forgot because the millennials who run the New York Times are completely illiterate.
Prescription drug abuse.
Now this one is very important because it sounds bad, it can be bad, but actually...
It shows you a wonderful aspect of America that they had just been complaining about earlier.
We'll get to that in a second.
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So then they go on in the New York Times.
They criticize prescription drug abuse.
Yeah, prescription drug abuse is awful.
It also means that we have a highly functioning healthcare system where the problem is not that there's too little medicine for too few people, it's that there's too much medicine for too many people.
Obviously, you want to stop prescription drug abuse as best you can.
You want to stop bad doctors from overprescribing.
But prescription drug abuse is the sort of problem that you get in a healthcare system that is actually suffering from abundance, not scarcity.
We're suffering from too much health care, not too little.
Prison population.
They say this like it's a bad thing.
Sometimes conservatives fall into this trap too.
A large prison population means that we are locking up our criminals.
That's a good thing.
When we had a lower prison population in the early 90s and late 80s, we had a lot more criminals on the street committing a lot more violent crimes.
Now we have many more people in prison and a much lower crime rate.
Good thing.
Lock them up.
Lock more of them up.
I want more prison, a greater prison population, so we have lower crime.
And then environmental damage.
This is just BS. You can just take the Paris deal as an example.
We pulled out of that Paris climate deal, and we are leading the world in reducing carbon emissions.
In 2017, U.S. carbon emissions declined by more than 42 million tons.
Now, what's bizarre about this is that Canada, Spain, the EU, and China, who are all signatories of the Paris deal, they're really serious about taking care of the climate.
They actually increased their carbon emissions.
The New York Times doesn't talk about that, though.
So we pull out of these stupid do-nothing deals and we actually lead the world on the environment.
The New York Times doesn't even come close to making an argument that America isn't great.
What they do is show that they don't like America.
They just don't like it.
They don't like the things that make America great.
They don't like the ample liberty that we enjoy.
They don't like the freedom to own guns, the freedom to watch TV, the freedom to purchase medications and the freedom to eat the food that we want.
They don't like any of that.
They want to shut it down.
Well, that doesn't mean America isn't great.
That means that the New York Times isn't great, and I think it never was.
We have got to get to now a fabulous guest.
One of the biggest names on YouTube, Sargon of Akkad, Carl Benjamin.
If there's somehow that you're living under a rock, you've never heard of him.
Take a look.
You're normalising this kind of language.
I'm normalising comedy because at this point comedy is under attack in this country.
I'm being investigated for a joke.
I can name other comedians who are being investigated for jokes.
We have gone down a very dark path.
As Orwell says, printed on the front of this building, if liberty is to mean anything at all, it must mean the right to tell people that which they don't want to hear.
Do you stand by that or not?
This is the BBC. Does the BBC stand by that or not?
Here are some comments from your social media pages.
I'll take that as a note.
Honestly, for me, I'm not going to speak for UKIP as a whole, but for me, being able to table these issues around free speech is the most important thing.
I'm a free speech activist.
We are losing our ability to make jokes in this country because of puritanical moral standards.
I don't promote the language of rape and violence.
I make jokes.
Do you agree with that?
You're the ones decontextualizing this.
And no, that's tyrannical.
That's tyrannical.
That is the state of the mainstream media right now.
And it's the state of big tech right now.
But at least they haven't shut us down yet.
Sargon of Akkad, Carl Benjamin.
So nice to meet you, my friend.
I'm so glad you could come by in studio.
Oh, thank you for having me.
It's a real pleasure.
Of course, I've seen a lot of your videos, but I wanted to refresh.
I wanted to see what people are saying about you now, so I looked up some articles in BuzzFeed.
The best place, I mean, in the New York Times.
I learned, I didn't know this about you, you are an alt-right white supremacist Nazi.
Did you know that?
Actually, yes.
I read those articles too.
So...
Of course, since I read it in the New York Times, of course it has to be true, right?
Front page as well.
That was the great thing.
I mean, I didn't realize that was such big news.
How does this happen?
I mean, you go from being one of the biggest names on YouTube, and your big issue is free speech.
I mean, you are a politically incorrect guy.
You say plenty of outrageous things.
You make plenty of jokes.
Yes.
And they try to turn you into a Nazi.
How did it happen?
Why did it happen?
Why did it happen?
It happened exclusively, and it happens to anyone who challenges the progressive left and the dominance of political correctness across the political sphere of society.
That's exclusively the reason they do it, and they will continue doing it until eventually people just stop listening to them.
And I can't think of any other way for it to end, really.
I mean, we can't censor them out of existence, obviously.
So what other options do we have?
But they can censor us out of existence.
I mean, that's my fear at least.
Yes, they can, but that's because they're Nazis.
Right.
If they're going to call me a Nazi, I'm going to call them a Nazi.
If they're going to say they're anti-fascist, they're marching around literally wearing black shirts, the uniformed fascists, using violence against civilians for political ends.
Yeah.
But I do have a real fear about this because you have, you still have one of the biggest channels on YouTube.
For now.
For now.
They demonetized you.
And then they kicked you off Patreon.
So they kicked you off your...
The instrument of funding yourself.
Yeah, and what's worse as well is that they are definitely de-ranking us on YouTube's algorithms as well.
I can actually see there's a very explicit visual representation of this.
Because YouTube gives you the access to the information on how people find your channel.
Obviously, a huge chunk of it is recommended videos in the sidebar.
And you can see that, I think it was around May the 1st, they obviously altered their algorithm because the traffic from that just plummets.
And that's a huge amount of traffic that comes to your channel.
And this has not just happened to me, it's happened to Dave Rubin, it's happened to...
Tim Pool.
And this was what the Project Veritas whistleblowers have been letting us know.
And it's, again, and it's not new either.
These sort of whistleblowers, like James Damore, coming out and saying, well, look, Google has a monoculture that actively describes us, and as Veritas leaks showed, they describe us actually as Nazis.
They consider Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, and Jordan Peterson to actually be Nazis dog-whistling to other Nazis.
I mean, I don't know where to go with that because it's so comically backwards.
Well, what I love about the dog whistle claim is, you know, I never hear these dog whistles.
You never hear them.
I'm not a dog.
That's right.
There are many people hearing the dog whistle, so what does that make them?
Yes.
But when you got kicked off Patreon, that actually did spark a pretty big backlash.
It did.
Jordan Peterson got off.
Dave Rubin got off.
Has it made any difference?
Not really, because...
Oh, well, initially, yes.
Because that's the sort of dirty tactic they go for.
Patreon's own rules...
And Jack Conte was very clear about this when he was talking to Dave Rubin.
Saying, no, we only care about what we do on Patreon.
Except when they get something that they decide they want to take off Patreon.
Which was, you know, none of this was on Patreon.
It was when I was having a spat with a group of Nazis online.
Actual, you know, Nazis online.
And I was calling them mean words, and Patreon decided, nope, you can't call them mean words.
We are concerned about the sanctity of these Nazis, and therefore you can go.
And that wouldn't have been a problem, because there are alternatives, there are competitors to Patreon.
Because really what they do, it's a very basic service.
They just aggregate donations and then take 5% cut.
But the interesting thing is, I said, fine, that's not a problem.
If you for some reason wish to make up a reason to kick me off your platform, that's fine.
I'll just use one of your competitors.
And Interestingly, Stripe, the payment processing company, pulled out of that competitor a day or two after I announced that I was going on there.
Now, that to me is very peculiar, because this competitor had been going for about eight months prior to me joining it with no problems whatsoever.
Suddenly I join it, and now, oh, no, so you can't have that.
So it looks like it's effectively cartel behavior.
This is the issue, because I used to have...
I mean, would you describe yourself as a conservative or more as a classical liberal?
I describe myself as an English liberal, which I guess is a lot closer to your founding fathers.
I believe in limited government, freedom of action, inherent natural rights.
Nothing that the Nazis would agree with, incidentally.
But this is my issue.
When I look at what they're doing to you, obviously you're just a huge personality on YouTube, so they go for you.
But they're doing it to me, they're doing it to all of us here.
I used to be so laissez-faire about everything.
Hands off.
Don't worry.
It'll work itself out.
Because, look, if one tech company isn't going to let us on their platform, then another one will.
Except they control the flow of information around the Internet.
And, well, okay, never mind.
You know, at least...
I can find a competitor somewhere, except the payment processor is going to pull out.
They're not going to, at a certain point...
Or look at Gab.com.
I mean, you know, you can say, well, Gab.com has a lot of people who have been censored on there.
So it does contain neo-Nazis and, you know, the really sort of, the sort of people that you don't actually want to engage with politically because you know what their ideas are and they're bad.
They're bad hombres, right?
But they have a right to speak like anyone else, and Gab is not a platform to promote that.
They also allow anyone to use it.
It's a free speech-dedicated platform, and unsurprisingly, the censored people go there.
They pulled Gab's hosting service.
They were de-hosted and had to find another host probably somewhere outside of the US, outside of Silicon Valley's tendrils.
This is not a fair marketplace.
This is not a fair marketplace.
And the scales are being deliberately weighted, as we know from Insiders Leaking, where they are not actively deplatforming people or entire platforms just for hosting people that they don't like.
Because at the end of the day, I mean, I don't have a criminal record or anything.
And England has hate speech laws.
So if I'd actually done something, and we're a very left-leaning country, you know they'd come down on me like an absolute hammer and they'd nail me on anything they could nail me on.
But I'm still in the clear.
So really, this is all...
It's kind of a front.
It's kind of a game of chess that's being played, I think.
And it is to the benefit of people who actually do not consider us to be people of rights.
That's the thing.
Because as soon as the left...
One of the best things we can do is to draw the left out and get them to be censorious.
Because as soon as they start saying, you don't have a right to free speech, what they're saying is, you aren't a human as I recognize you to be.
You're not a human as I am a human.
Exactly.
They actually have a two-tier system.
And then when we get to the stuff with Andy Ngo, you're not a journalist, you're not a this, you're not a that.
It doesn't matter.
If you recognize him as a human being with inherent rights, You know you don't have a right to just assault him or deplatform him or any of these things.
You know that what you're doing is a display of power.
You know, that's the justification for it.
It's not justified in principle.
It's only justified because you have the means and you have the motive.
And they, frankly, they hate us.
I mean, I don't know how else to say it.
They hate us.
The journalists so-called at the Huffington Post, New York Times, wherever.
Yeah.
They more or less defended Antifa against Andy Noe.
Openly.
I've seen many of them.
I mean, the Huffington Post posted an article saying the far right wanted blood at wherever the location was, and they got it.
It's like, no, A, Andy Noe isn't far right.
I know the man.
He's very soft-spoken, gay.
He's quite progressive in many ways.
Lives in Portland.
He's part of that culture.
So he's not...
I wouldn't even call him a conservative, really.
By your standards, I wouldn't call him a conservative.
Right.
He's centrist, he supports free speech.
He's very socially liberal, you know.
But yeah, they will describe them as far right, and they will say, no, no, it's completely acceptable to do this.
And then you'll see their talking heads and their verified checkmark journos on Twitter, all spouting the same sort of thing.
And then when one or two, like someone like Jake Tapper, steps out of line and says, well, hang on a second.
And understandably so, this is clearly undermining the rule of law.
Right.
And there's no way you can argue that it's not.
All they can resort to is, yeah, well, he's fascist adjacent.
He's enabling fascists.
And it's like, all right, all right.
Because, I mean, if that's the standard, then Antifa definitely enable fascists, because the fascists can go look at these rampant communists who are beating people up in the streets.
You know, you should listen to us and...
Where does the traffic go?
Fascist adjacent.
This is a new designation.
That's amazing, isn't it?
You know, I want to ask you one last very important question on this about where it goes from here.
But before we do that, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
I probably already said goodbye to YouTube now that I had this guy on my show.
So you've got to go over to dailywire.com.
$10 a month, $100 for an annual membership.
You'll get me, you'll get the Andrew Klavan show, you'll get the Ben Shapiro show, you'll get the Matt Walsh show, you'll get Everything.
You'll get the leftist here's Tumblr.
You know what?
I don't want to rob.
I don't want to rob the YouTube audience of your answer to this question.
So I'll go to the sub break after you answer this.
Now that they take away our platforms, they take away our payment services, they take away our everything.
How do we fight back?
Do we start another YouTube and then they take away that too?
Or do we have to use political means to fight back?
There are two ways of doing it.
Honestly, at the moment, the conservatives in the US are in the driving seat when it comes to political means.
And honestly, there's nothing wrong with using them.
None of this would go against conservative principles as I understand them.
This is not a free market.
It is not...
There is no fair procedure and there is no just cause behind it.
There is no method of appeal either.
So you could not describe the way that people like Tommy Robinson or Paul Joseph Watson on Facebook, the way these people are being treated is monstrous.
And if we, I say we, and when I say we, I mean just the people who are not the radical left at this point.
If the normal sort of centrist people were to act in that way to them, they would be howling and we would be rightfully in the wrong.
So there's no question of it.
There's every reason to look at Silicon Valley as a cartel or a monopoly, something like that, because these platforms are.
I mean, for example, Paul Joseph Watson, because Instagram is owned by Facebook, he's removed from both platforms in the same day, even though they've got different terms of service, even though he didn't actually break any of the rules as they can show them, especially the same with Tommy Robinson.
But it's a...
It's an entire sweep over any of the platforms that that company owns.
It's not just on that thing.
So they're obviously not acting independently because they're owned by the same company.
Exactly.
And this is just demonstrably true.
So there's every reason to think that antitrust laws can be used in these regards, I think.
Failing that, there is also the option for the Conservatives to actually do something here, but it has to be essentially root and branch.
So they're going to have to start with their own search engines, their own payment process, their own platforms and build up to what the...
Our own domain services.
Precisely, yeah.
It's not even what the left has built, because the left didn't build this.
It co-opted this.
Silicon Valley, if you look at the people owning the Silicon Valley tech giants, they look like they're frightened children.
They look like they're on top of a beast of their own making that they didn't realize would turn into a monster, and it clearly has.
Mark Zuckerberg actually had to make a principled defense of Holocaust denial.
Before he got absolutely smashed by the reaction from the rabid left, going, well, hang on a second.
It's like, yeah, look, he doesn't say he agrees with them, but he believes they have a serious conviction.
And should he be the arbiter of truth?
Well, the left has pressured them into becoming the arbiters of truth, which is a rod for their own backs.
The old idea was, if someone has a stupid idea, let him say it, and you can smack him down and prove him wrong.
That's content.
That's what we do.
And that's what they should be doing.
They should be like, well, great.
Alex Jones has said something ridiculous.
We're going to laugh at him, and the whole world will be laughing.
I've never heard him say anything.
I don't know what you're saying.
He never says anything ridiculous.
Bad example.
Are you surprised?
Are you trying to say that the frogs are not gay?
No, that was one thing that he was completely correct on.
He actually got that one right.
If anything, he was underplaying that one.
It was turning him trans.
That's right.
There are things that the right can do, but the problem, I think, is the right is generally quite libertarian.
Yeah.
Principally so.
It's a very strong moral conviction.
And one I am genuinely sympathetic to.
But I'm not a libertarian because I do believe that the state has a role.
This is exactly how I feel.
Yeah, exactly.
There is a role for the state.
And I think that it is to protect our rights.
And in the case of the market, the market's not a perfect entity.
When you have a competition, effectively someone has to win.
And if you want the competition to keep going, then you have to make sure that the winner doesn't just monopolize everything that you have.
And so there is a role, in my opinion, for the state to intervene if something is becoming demonstrably unfair in this regard.
And I think it is.
People are being deplatformed for not even breaking rules.
The Facebook one was the most egregious one for Tommy Robinson, in my example, because they essentially made up a bunch of things that Tommy had not said and said that in the previous months, He had said, you know, kill Muslims and things like this.
It's like, look, if Tom Robinson had posted that, he's under such scrutiny and he has such a large audience, or he had such a large audience, that the second you saw that, you'd see the clip of that or the screenshot, whatever, it'd be everywhere.
Absolutely everywhere.
And he'd be in jail.
He'd be in jail right now.
He'd have it, you know, because we have these laws in the UK. So the fact that they could just make this up, provide no evidence, and then shut down all of his accounts, that to me is...
It's really concerning.
It's terrifying.
And we're going to have to shut down your account right now over there for you watching on Facebook and YouTube.
We are going to see each other later for a cigar, I hope.
Is that right?
Oh, absolutely.
I hope so.
All right.
Excellent.
I've got to let you go now.
We go to the sub break.
But Sargon and Vakad, obviously they'll find you on YouTube.
Where else can people find you?
Good question.
I'm actually still on Facebook and Instagram.
For now.
But there are non-Silicon Valley alternatives like Telegram and BitChute that I definitely recommend.
Minds.com as well.
All right.
Telegram, BitChute, Minds.com, whatever.
When they shut those down, we'll find a new one.
To find them on Sargon of Akkad, Carl Benjamin.
I'll see you later on tonight.
You will.
All right.
Cheers.
Go over to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back with the mailbag.
I could talk to that guy all day.
We have to get him back because there is so much more I want to ask him about.
I mean, he is one of the most interesting guys on YouTube and that's, I think, why they're going after him so hard.
Let's get to the mailbag before I get to my favorite soldier story from the American Revolution.
From Michael.
Michael.
The change is for someone who can win in 24.
Oh, you're talking.
This is about the vice presidential pick.
Mike Pence cannot win an election for president.
If Republicans want to hold the White House, they need someone dynamic.
I pray for Ms.
Rice, Condoleezza Rice, to change her mind and get back in the game.
She's a true leader with more knowledge than all the candidates on both sides put together.
Change is good.
It shows courage and leadership.
Republicans have to hold the White House.
It is the only way to keep the dam from breaking.
Cheers, Mikey G. However, I don't really think that that is cause to ditch him.
I think, first of all, the presidential elections are about the people running for president.
They're not about the vice president.
They're not about the next guy to run for president.
They're not about the secretary of state.
They're not about any of that stuff.
They're about the guy who's running for president.
And I think right now, if Trump ditches a loyal, capable, good, really good vice president, conservative vice president, I think it doesn't look great.
I think it makes him look ungrateful, disloyal.
I'm not convinced that it wouldn't scare some Christians and evangelical Christians and everyone else in the faith and freedom type coalition.
And in 2024, there's no reason that President Trump has to endorse Mike Pence right away.
Trump is his own guy.
I think he could stand back.
And if it's going to be Pence and Haley and whoever else is running, he could say, look, Pence was my VP. He was very good.
Haley was my UN ambassador.
I'm going to sit this one out.
I, in the spirit of freedom, I'm going to let the Republican voters decide who the nominee is going to be.
We've got so many great candidates.
I'm so excited.
Reagan started to do this in 1988.
It's not like he jumped on and endorsed George Bush right away.
And maybe he shouldn't have endorsed him at all, frankly, because he was only a one-term president.
I think it would be fine.
I always caution conservatives against playing seven steps ahead.
There were a lot of people who told me we should vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because then the next election we would totally win and it would be great.
Forget about the next election.
Worry about this election.
I think Trump should stay loyal to his guy and keep the coalition and keep the team united.
From Chuck.
Michael, do you think Judas went to heaven after he died?
No.
If not, what hope is there for us if someone that gave up basically everything to follow Jesus didn't make it?
I make no pronouncements on who is in heaven or hell other than the saints.
We can know that the saints are in heaven.
It's revealed in the book of Revelation.
But I don't make proclamations over whether I think so-and-so is in heaven or hell, generally speaking, because it is entirely possible that Judas could have had repentance in his last fleeting moment on earth and could be now before the beatific vision.
I'm not convinced that that is the case.
I suspect he is in hell, and the reason for that is Christ says, the Son of Man must be betrayed, but woe to the man who does it, and that it would be better for that man if he had never been born.
So that seems pretty unambiguous to me.
The other reason is that Judas is not likely in hell because of the betrayal of Christ.
He's in hell because he despaired.
Hope is a theological virtue, and he lost all hope and killed himself.
Now, he could have repented in his last moments on earth.
I don't see a lot of evidence that he did.
Some say because he threw away the silver that he repented.
But he threw away the silver and then he killed himself.
So I don't really see that hope.
And if you don't have hope Then you don't get to go to heaven.
Heaven is hope.
Heaven is where we hope for something after this death.
If you throw your life away, if you kill yourself, you clearly don't have that.
And so I think it very likely seals Judas' fate, but I'm not willing to make any definitive statement on it.
Hey Michael!
Big fan of the show.
The Pope recently changed the words to the Lord's Prayer from, and lead us not into temptation, to, and let us not fall into temptation.
The argument being that God is not the tempter.
So why would he lead us into temptation?
However, I've read the original text of Matthew, and it's much closer to the first version of the prayer.
Doesn't this present a problem when the Pope is seen to be infallible in matters of Scripture?
Thanks, big fan of the show.
Sincerely, Nick.
You're right.
Your read of that is right.
And the Pope's read of the Lord's Prayer is not right.
But you're wrong in what you think papal infallibility is.
And it's a common mistake.
People make it all the time.
The Pope is not infallible in matters of Scripture.
The Pope is infallible when he is speaking, and the term is ex cathedra.
So when he is speaking from his official office, right?
People think this happens every day.
Every time if the Pope woke up and said 2 plus 2 is 5, we would have to believe it.
No, the Pope can be wrong about a number of things, and the Popes frequently are wrong about a lot of things.
Papal infallibility has only occurred, guess how many times in the history of the Catholic Church?
Catholic Church has been around 2,000 years.
How many times?
Twice.
Twice the Pope has spoken infallibly, and it was to clarify questions about Mary.
Which also were not his random ideas, but had been building up for well over a thousand years in the Catholic Church.
Looking on the bright side, when the Pope gets something wrong, which Popes frequently do, I think it is actually a good reminder, because the Pope is...
He's the primary bishop, you know, he's the successor to Peter, but he's also a bishop.
His bishops get things wrong.
The bishops in the United States get things wrong a lot.
It's good to remember that the Pope is fallible except when he's infallible.
I want to get to very briefly before we go.
My favorite American history figure from the Revolution.
This guy, I always try to write down a few notes about him.
Here he is.
Samuel Whittemore.
Samuel Whittemore, born on July 27, 1696.
He's an American farmer and soldier.
He's the oldest known colonial soldier in the Revolutionary War.
He, according to some sources, obviously they're a little scarce, fought in King George's War in 1744.
He fought in the French and Indian War in 1754.
Then he fought in the American Revolution in 1775.
On April 19th, 1775, Samuel Whittemore.
He's in the fields.
He's outside of Lexington and Concord.
The British are marching toward Lexington and Concord.
And this guy loads up his musket and he takes a shot and he kills a British soldier.
So he's behind a stone wall at this point.
He then turns, takes out his dueling pistols, and shoots again.
Kills another British soldier, mortally wounds a third British soldier.
He then fires off another shot, but by that point the British had finally made it to him.
So Samuel Whittemore throws his guns down, draws his sword, and starts attacking them.
So he's attacking them.
These British must have thought, what is this insane American doing?
78 years old.
The British then shoot him in the face.
So they blow his face up.
They bayonet him numerous times.
They leave him for dead in a pool of his own blood.
So that's the end of Samuel Whittemore, right?
No.
The Patriots come up and they see him lying there in this mangled body of a man.
But he's not lying dead.
He's trying to reload his gun to fire off another shot.
So they pick up this crazy old American man.
They drag him down to the doctor, Dr.
Cotton Tufts of Medford.
And the doctor said there is no chance that he would survive.
So what do you think happened?
Yeah, he lived another 18 years and died of natural causes at the age of 96.
What an American.
That is the spirit of the 4th of July.
I hope that you will ignore the New York Times.
I hope you will ignore Nike shoes, which is now getting rid of American flags, that Betsy Ross flag that we have behind us.
I hope you go out there and shoot off fireworks and eat hot dogs and hamburgers and drink a lot of beer and make a toast.
To Samuel Whittemore.
I know Brett Kavanaugh certainly is going to say a toast, right?
He likes beer.
We all like beer.
Happy Fourth of July.
I'm going to be subbing in for Ben on the radio today.
So if you want three more hours, come on over there.
In the meantime, I will see you after Independence Day.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner.
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.
And our production assistant is Nick Sheehan.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, Colin Kaepernick, as you've heard, is offended by the flag and he thinks it stands for racism and slavery.
Well, it sounds sort of cliched to say it, but in all seriousness, I mean, at what point, if you feel that way about the country, at what point do you leave in search of a country that is not so terrible and racist and all of that?
Also, a congresswoman says that it should be illegal to We're now told that it's racist to point that out.
But why would that be racist?
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