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Dec. 2, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
48:47
Ep. 458 - All Human Conflict Is Religious

A Muslim terrorist goes on a rampage, climate activists admit environmentalism isn’t about the environment, and Bernie Sanders calls Christianity un-American. We examine what all three stories have in common: all human conflict is religious. Date: 12-02-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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In England, a Muslim terrorist with prior terrorism convictions goes on a rampage at London Bridge, raising a number of questions including why he was freed from prison in the first place.
In Sweden, child climate activist Greta Thunberg teams up with two adult leftist activists to publish an article admitting that environmentalism Isn't really about the environment.
And back home in the good old U.S. of A, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says that Christianity is un-American.
We examine what's really going on, what all three have in common.
At bottom, all human conflict is religious.
Then, Joe Biden bites his wife's finger at a campaign stop in Iowa on the No Malarkey Tour.
Ha ha ha!
Mayor Pete says illegal immigrants subsidize America.
And German Chancellor Angela Merkel says we must get rid of free speech in order to be free.
All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
So much to get to today, and there will be no malarkey on this show.
This will be a completely malarkey-free show.
There's a lot happening in the news, and it's all on this central theme.
It's a theme that Cardinal Manning, one of the great writers of the 19th century, a great philosopher, Catholic cardinal, he pointed out that at bottom, all human conflict is ultimately theological.
All human conflict is religious.
Even when we don't think it's religious, even when it looks like it's just about this political issue or that political issue or this taste or that taste or this desire or that desire, ultimately what it all boils down to are differences in religion.
Just yesterday, at least 14 Christians were murdered in the African country of Burkina Faso.
That was when suspected Islamic militants attacked a church on the first Sunday of Advent.
Very likely you haven't heard of that story.
I mean, it's sort of percolating a little bit now, but it's not even getting a ton of play.
This was a major attack.
We don't know exactly who the militants were.
I don't think it was radical Methodists.
It would appear to be, there's a lot of jihad in that area.
It would appear to be Islamic terrorists attacking Christians.
Not a ton of play.
Just a couple days earlier on London Bridge, a Muslim terrorist went on a rampage.
This was on Friday.
He killed two, he wounded three, and he did it using a knife and a fake suicide vest.
It wasn't a real suicide vest.
He just said, I've got a suicide vest on so that nobody would walk up to him because then he would blow himself up.
This guy was eventually beaten back by Londoners.
There was one Londoner with a fire extinguisher.
One Londoner used a five foot long narwhal tusk to attack him and pin the guy down.
So it was a pretty dramatic scene.
Ironically, actually maybe not ironically, this attack took place at a prison rehabilitation conference.
And the perpetrator, the terrorist here, was part of the program.
He was considered a success story for this terrorist rehabilitation, deradicalization program.
They bring him to this conference to show how wonderful this lenient prison system is.
And then he goes on a rampage and kills people.
Also ironic, or maybe not, the first confirmed dead was one of the organizers of this conference and an activist for leniency on criminals and terrorists.
The other person who was killed, same thing, was one of the activists to go lenient on these terrorists.
The killer, the terrorist, was Usman Khan.
He's been a terrorist his whole life.
He was a devotee of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was the spiritual advisor, I suppose, of al-Qaeda, major Islamist figure.
This guy, Usman Khan, had his home raided by counter-terrorism police in 2008.
He got off that time.
In 2010, he was arrested for planning to bomb the London Stock Exchange.
They found the map of the plans at this guy's house.
He was given an indeterminate sentence.
So they said, we're going to just put you away until you're no longer a threat to the public.
That included a minimum of eight years.
This sentence was then changed to 16 years.
But in London, for these sentences, I guess you get off.
You can get off and very likely do.
After having served only half your time, this was eight years, this was the minimum he could have been sentenced for.
What should have happened?
What should have happened is, the guy should have been executed.
Terrorists should be executed.
Period.
Simple as that.
If you are going to not only betray your country or your adopted country, but target civilians for political purposes and attempt to kill them or succeed at killing them, you should be executed for that.
Simple.
That's what we used to do.
It's worked for thousands and thousands of years.
Very easy.
Let's say that For some reason in our society, we don't want to execute terrorists.
Certainly, terrorists like this guy should be deported.
The guy should have been deported in 2010.
Short of that, let's say we don't want to deport them.
Short of that, they surely should receive life in prison.
In no universe should terrorists like this receive sentences of eight years.
This guy, however, got off after eight years because of this movement in the West to go easy on criminals and specifically to go easy on terrorists.
And specifically to go easy on Muslim terrorists.
So Usman Khan was considered a success story for this rehab program.
He ended up murdering a guy named Jack Merritt, who was leading this rehabilitation conference that was celebrating Khan as a success story.
Merritt, Jack Merritt, who was killed, Notice that.
He's writing about it from the perspective of race.
Black, Asian, minority ethnic.
But, of course, Usman Khan wasn't in prison for his race.
He was in prison for his ideology, Islamism, and then what his ideology impelled him to do, which was terrorism.
It had nothing to do with his race.
It had to do with his culture, had to do with his actions, and ultimately it had to do with his religion.
His father, not Usman Khan's father, but Jack Merritt's father, his father David, wrote this after the awful killing.
My son Jack, who was killed in this attack, would not wish his death to be used as the pretext for more draconian sentences or for detaining people unnecessarily.
Now, I don't think an eight-year sentence for a terrorist is draconian.
I think it's way too lenient.
Earlier, though, this father, David Merritt, had tweeted out two years ago, Going to see my son in Bristol at the weekend.
He loves its diversity like most young people do.
He's the future.
Racist, angry wanks is the past.
He's saying if you oppose indiscriminate mass migration, if you oppose strong sentences for terrorists, if you oppose these things, you're a racist, you're angry, you're crazy.
Now, this ended up tragically, right?
This ended up tragically with his son being killed.
Same thing, the other victim, Saskia Jones, was another student activist for leniency on terrorists.
What are we seeing here?
What we're seeing is a conflict of religious vision.
Not even just between Christianity and Islam, but between Islam, radical Islam rather, and secular liberalism.
We'll get to that in a second.
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C-O-V-F-E-F-E. So what are we seeing here?
You know, we saw the New York Times posted this article after the London attack.
Jack Merritt died in the London Bridge attack.
Don't forget what he stood for.
Which is to say, don't Change your mind about criminal sentencing for terrorists just because this terrorist was broke out because of this rehabilitation program was out of prison and then ended up killing even the people who advocated to get him out of prison.
This is a conflict of visions.
We know what motivated Usman Khan.
It was radical Islam.
What motivated the people who let him out of prison?
What motivated them was another sort of religion, secular liberalism.
Secular liberalism is a matter of faith, and unfortunately, it is the dominant religion of the West right now.
It is the religion that took over the West after the West gave up Christianity.
Secular liberalism is taken on faith.
The way I can show you this is, look at how the people who defend secular liberalism are talking about the incident.
They're saying, don't ignore what happened.
Don't look at what happened.
Don't look at the results of these secular liberal, tolerant, diverse, everybody forgive everything as a matter of civil law.
Not as a matter of personal law.
Forgiveness is very good personally, but as a matter of the actual civil law, You can't just only forgive people.
You need criminal justice.
Secular liberalism is saying, no, don't do that.
Don't look at that.
It's refusing to acknowledge the facts.
It's refusing to acknowledge the circumstances here.
Because secular liberalism has this faith that everything can just be rehabilitated.
In criminal justice, there's no such thing as justice itself.
You should never have retributive justice.
Criminal justice.
It's all just about rehabilitating everybody because everybody can just be rehabilitated with the right circumstances.
That isn't true.
That's a religious premise and it's not true.
We know that radical Islam is a problem in the West.
There have been countless Islamic terrorist attacks and terrorist plots over the past several decades.
Thousands and thousands of people murdered.
Disciples of secular liberalism refuse to acknowledge that.
Here's an example.
Just last week, a radicalized Muslim was arrested for trying to blow up Miami-Dade College and Broward College.
Did you hear about that?
Did you know about that?
Did you read about that in the news?
Probably not.
It's there.
You can look it up.
But they didn't do it.
A young man, 23-year-old Salman Rashid of North Miami Beach, tried to bomb both of those colleges.
This is not being covered because it conflicts with the narrative of secular liberalism which seeks to ignore Islam and suppress Christianity.
If you want an example of that, by the way, Look no further than the Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders last week was pressing, was interrogating Russell Vaught, the nominee to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.
He was put up there by Trump for the position.
Sanders was interrogating the guy because he believes, ultimately, Sanders believes, that Christianity is not compatible with America.
Here's Bernie.
In the piece that I referred to that you wrote for a publication called Resurgent, you wrote, quote, Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology.
They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ, his son, and they stand condemned.
End of quote.
Do you believe that that statement is Islamophobic?
Absolutely not, Senator.
I'm a Christian, and I believe in a Christian...
Again, I apologize.
Forgive me.
We just don't have a lot of time.
Do you believe that people in the Muslim religion stand condemned?
Is that your view?
Again, Senator, I'm a Christian, and I wrote that piece...
Well, what does that say?
...with the statement of faith of Wheaton...
I understand that.
I don't know how many Muslims there are in America.
I really don't know.
Probably a couple of million.
Are you suggesting that all of those people stand condemned?
What about Jews?
They stand condemned too?
Senator, I'm a Christian.
I understand you are a Christian, but this country is made up of people who are not just...
I understand that Christianity is the majority religion, but there are other people who have different religions in this country and around the world.
Listen to how angry Bernie gets there.
I understand you're a Christian!
You stupid...
Shut up, you Christian!
Shut up, you Christian, you...
But Bernie doesn't understand religion because Bernie's an atheist.
I don't know that he's ever come out right and said that he's an atheist, but he's all but said that.
He said, I'm not religious.
I don't practice a religion.
He's an atheist.
He's certainly practically an atheist.
And he doesn't understand religion.
I mean, what a stupid question.
Excuse me, Mr.
Vought.
You say that you don't believe that people who don't believe in Jesus are going to heaven.
Do you believe that that statement is Islamophobic?
Well, first of all, I don't think anything is Islamophobic because it's a completely ridiculous and made-up term.
But even if he did, unfortunately this guy Vought, probably to his benefit, but unfortunate for all of us who want clarity on this issue, he should have thrown the question right back at Bernie.
He should have said, Senator Sanders, you're asking me if it is wrong and hateful and bigoted for a Christian to believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior.
That there's no salvation outside the church.
Senator Sanders, do you believe that your question is Christophobic?
Do you believe you're asking a Christophobic question?
That's another term that, I mean, what is that?
What on earth could that term mean?
You don't hear that term a lot, but that would be...
A way to show the ridiculousness of the point that Sanders is making by throwing it right back on him.
But you never hear that.
Because Bernie Sanders, as an atheist, is effectively practicing the religion of secular liberalism.
And it's just not sufficient.
It just doesn't work.
We'll see.
He actually goes on.
He gives away the whole game in the end.
We'll get to that in a second.
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I mean, how crazy to ask a guy, hey, do you believe that, if you're a Christian, do you believe that people who don't believe in Jesus are like a little bit in trouble?
You think they don't quite have it right?
You think maybe there's no salvation without the Savior?
Senator Sanders, do you know what religion is?
Do you know what Christianity is?
I mean, would he ask this question to a Muslim?
Would he say, excuse me, you say that people who do not believe in Muhammad are wrong about religion, that they're condemned, that they're in trouble.
Do you think that that statement is a little Christophobic, a little Judeophobic, a little atheistophobic?
No, he would never ask him that.
Because the purpose of this line of questioning...
What the left always does in the religion of secular liberalism is ignore Islam, suppress Christianity.
He goes on and Bernie gives away the game.
In your judgment, do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?
Thank you for probing on that question.
As a Christian, I believe that all individuals are made in the image of God And are worthy of dignity and respect, regardless of their religious beliefs.
I believe that, as a Christian, that's how I should treat all individuals...
And do you think your statement that you put into that publication, they do not know God because they've rejected Jesus Christ the Son and they stand condemned?
Do you think that's respectful of other religions?
I would simply say, Mr.
Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone Who is what this country is supposed to be about?
He's just, look, the guy, this Christian guy, is not someone who is what this country is supposed to be about.
By the way, Russell Vaught, it's not like he's some total, radical, wacky Christian.
He just believes that you need Jesus to be saved.
That's something that all Christians believe.
That is the New Testament.
What Bernie is saying is that Christians, that's not what this country is about.
This country that was founded by Puritans who sailed on the Mayflower and celebrated the first Thanksgiving, which we all celebrated last week.
This country which had its first major speech titled, A Model of Christian Charity.
This country who, in all of its famous orations, has invoked God, specifically the Christian God.
It was invoked in our most famous speeches and in our currency.
There has been a movement in the West for over a century to sideline religion.
You heard Bernie Sanders just say it.
He said, do you think that it's respectful to other religions to have your own religious views?
What he's saying is, if you believe in Jesus, that's exclusive.
It's excluding other religions.
If you hold any religious belief, that by definition excludes other religions.
Same thing with Islam.
Same thing with Judaism.
It's exclusive.
So he's saying, is it respectful of other religions to do that?
Well...
By that definition of respect, the only way you could respect other religions is not believe in them at all.
And that's what the secular left has tried to do.
It doesn't work, though, because man is fundamentally a religious being.
It's why you're seeing young people flock to climate activism.
We saw there was an article published just last week by Greta Thunberg, Louisa...
Who's the child climate activist?
Louisa Neubauer, who's a radical leftist German politician.
And Angela Valenzuela, who's another adult leftist activist.
And the column admits that climate change is fundamentally not about the environment.
It's about so much more.
It's a totalizing religion.
What does the article say?
say.
The article says, quote, the climate crisis is not just about the environment.
It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will.
Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it.
We need to dismantle them all.
Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities.
There was a blue checkmark guy on Twitter who acknowledged this, this guy Zach Cantor.
He said, quote, one huge drawback of nuclear power is that it doesn't dismantle systems of oppression.
It only produces clean energy.
That's the drawback for the environmentalist, is that it only produces clean energy.
This makes it unsuitable for solving the climate crisis, which isn't just about the environment.
It is like this guy is the environmentalist version of St.
Paul.
St.
Paul writes in Ephesians,"...our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places." Very famous line from the Bible.
That's what this guy said.
He goes, the purpose of environmentalism is not just to have a clean environment.
It's so much bigger.
The climate crisis is not about the climate.
It's about religion.
It's a religious vision.
It is led by political activists and idols rather than by scientists.
And by the way, I'm not pointing out that climate change is a religion as a knock-on climate change.
I mean, I'm pointing it out because there's some hypocrisy or they say it's scientific and secular when really it is a sort of religious vision.
But I'm not attacking it as an insult, right?
I'm not saying it's religious, therefore that's bad.
I'm pretty religious.
I think religious is a very good thing.
I think that man is fundamentally a religious being.
And I don't even blame leftists for falling for their religion.
At least these people, the radical climate change people, at least they're recognizing that secular liberalism is insufficient.
Our humanity requires something more than that.
We're longing for something more than that.
Same way I feel about transgenderism.
Transgenderism is literally false.
It's not true.
A man cannot become a woman by wishing it.
A woman can't become a man by wishing it.
There are not 57 genders and more.
It's literally false.
But at least what it speaks to is this sense that human beings have a soul.
We're aware that we have a soul, that we're not just matter, we're not just clumps of cells, that scientific materialism and secular liberalism are ultimately false.
Same thing with climate change.
The world's not going to end in 10 years because of the sun monster.
That's not true.
But there is a sense that there are greater forces at work in this world.
It is not the case that the patriarchy and this supremacy and that supremacy, that those are systems of oppression that are keeping us down.
That's not true.
But there is a true sense that these people are intuiting that this world is fundamentally broken, that this world is flawed, that there are principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places.
It's not that this world is controlled by the wickedness of the patriarchy or the white supremacy or this...
So that it's controlled by the devil.
So that the devil is the prince of lies and the prince of this world here.
And that we need some salvation.
It's not that they're wrong that there will be an end of days.
They're wrong that it's going to end in ten years.
But there will be an end of days.
And look, we're entering this Advent season right now.
Advent is the period of time before Christmas when Christians contemplate death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
It's a good reminder that all human conflict is ultimately theological.
We are going to have a religion.
Everybody's got to serve somebody.
The question you have to ask as an individual and as a society is, what religion are we going to have?
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It tells you a whole lot about 2020.
And look no further for the 2020 Democratic chaos than Pastor Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden biting his wife's finger, and then some really crazy stuff from Angela Merkel, which I think ties it all together.
We'll get to all of that.
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We'll be back with a lot more.
All right, we've got to check in on the 2020 campaign trail.
Things are not looking great for the left, okay?
You don't need to take my word for it.
You can take their words for it.
The left knows that things are not looking great for them, which is why I got, I guess it was on Thanksgiving or Black Friday.
I think it was on Thanksgiving, though.
I got a news alert on my phone.
Alright, now, the story was that Trump decided to spend Thanksgiving with the troops in the Middle East.
That's great.
What a great thing to do.
That's really nice.
Already there had been news reports.
Trump is spending the day golfing.
Trump is spending the day selfishly.
He wasn't really.
He was overseas with the troops.
This was the Washington Post news alert that I got on my phone.
I don't have a Washington Post app.
I don't subscribe to the Washington Post.
This was from the Apple News Alert.
Quote, Facing impeachment, the president strives to look hard at work.
That's the story.
The story is Trump spent Thanksgiving in the Middle East.
But WAPO says, it's a photo op.
Yeah, it's because of impeachment.
Yeah, he just wants to look like he's working hard, but he's not really doing it.
He's just looking like it.
Don't believe your eyes.
From Philip Rucker in the Washington Post.
As Democrats in Congress push to impeach him, Trump has toured a manufacturing plant in Texas, boasted about economic gains, and signed numerous bills.
He served Turkey to U.S. troops in Afghanistan on Thanksgiving and grieved with the families of fallen service members at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
That's the story.
That should be the headline.
But the left hates what's going on so much because the real headline, if they had just been honest about what they were thinking, is Trump is doing a good job and we hate that.
That's the real Washington Post headline.
Why are they so upset that Trump is doing a good job?
It's because none of their candidates are doing well at all.
They are falling apart on the campaign trail.
To begin with, the frontrunner, still the main guy, Joe Biden.
Joe Biden is on a bus tour of Iowa right now called, I kid you not, the No Malarkey Tour.
Oh, Joe.
Joe would have been better doing the hair smelling and shoulder massage tour.
I mean, at least, it wouldn't have been so cringe-inducing, isn't it?
The no malarkey tour.
This is a rip-off of John McCain's 2008 tour.
It might have been his 2000 tour, too, called the Straight Talk Express.
By the way, if you want to rip off a presidential campaign, don't rip off a two-time loser, okay?
That's just a suggestion.
Joe Biden's already a two-time loser, though.
He's about to be a three-time loser.
It's a rip-off of John McCain's Straight Talk Express, which was ironic for McCain, because McCain was one of the most notorious flip-floppers in U.S. political history.
And it's ironic for Biden, because Biden is one of the most prolific liars in American political history.
But it's stupid for another reason.
Obviously, the word malarkey just makes him seem like he's 6,000 years old.
He could call it the 23 Skidutor.
The spirit of, I don't know.
He...
Might as well say, I'm a really, really old guy, bus tour, by calling it no malarkey.
Now, what Biden is trying to do is just embrace it, right?
Yeah, I'm an old-fashioned guy, but that's what you need.
You need stable statesmen.
But even by using the word, you could call it the BS tour, no BS tour.
By putting the bus tour in the negative, you are making that term the essence of the campaign.
So no malarkey tour, the word that people remember is malarkey.
It's not no.
So actually when I was thinking of this today, this morning, in my mind it was called the Malarkey Express tour, which obviously would be the opposite meaning of no malarkey tour.
But you just think malarkey.
Okay, it's the malarkey tour.
It'd be like if it were called the no BS tour.
What you would think of is BS.
Okay, this tour is about BS.
You don't want to put yourself in the negative.
But look, that's the least of Joe Biden's problems.
Joe Biden was on the campaign trail on the No Malarkey bus tour, and his wife was up there talking about what a great guy he is and why you should vote for him.
And she's waving her hand around, and Joe Biden decided to bite her finger.
And when they cut to the President of the United States...
You call your kids in from the other room because you want them to hear what the President of the United States has to say.
Okay, this was a funny moment.
You probably saw the memes going around, but as she's speaking, she's waving her hands around, and it's going right in front of his face, and he just leans in and kind of nibbles on her finger a little bit.
This actually could have been cute or funny.
If Joe Biden were not already being dogged with the image that he's creepy and he's inappropriately affectionate and he's going senile, this could have been a really funny little moment.
But because of that, the guy just didn't read the room and he goes for it.
And now there's this image going around of him like kind of feebly and confusedly licking his wife's finger, you know, or chewing on her finger.
Doesn't look good.
He's not helping himself.
It's the fact that there are always going to be unfair attacks in politics.
People are going to take a cute moment and turn it into a creepy moment.
People are going to take a funny moment, turn it into a serious, somber moment.
That's always going to happen.
The trouble is, if you have not countered that image that they're putting out already, then you're in trouble.
And Joe is not countering that image.
He was in Iowa giving a talk about, I don't really know what, because the talk ended up surrounding his leg hair and the color and shape of his leg hair.
I kid you not, I don't really know what he was talking about.
Here is Joe Biden rambling incoherently for 30 seconds.
And by the way, you know, I sit on the stand, and it get hot.
I got hairy legs that turn blonde in the sun.
And the kids used to come up and reach in the pool and rub my leg down so it was straight, and then watch the hair come back up again.
They'd look at it.
So I learned about roaches.
I learned about kids jumping on my lap.
And I've loved kids jumping on my lap.
If a Saturday Night Live writer turned in that script and said, hey, this is going to be our satire of Joe Biden this week, the producers would say, no, that's too far.
That's too ridiculous.
Except that was actually Joe Biden actually talking about how, for some reason on the campaign trail, how he used to be at a pool and the kids would go up and rub his legs because it had kind of weird hair on it.
And that's when he learned to love kids sitting in his lap.
You can't make this stuff up.
He appears to be losing it.
I'm not even saying he's totally demented.
I'm saying he's lost whatever political ability he once had.
Joe Biden is one of the all-time great glad handers.
He's one of the all-time great, just smiling, simpering politicians who goes around and pats you on the back and makes you feel like he really likes you and he's a really good guy.
That's always been Joe Biden's superpower.
He's losing that because he's just not as with it as he used to be because he's up there in ages and people of his, not just his age maybe, but his age.
Wherewithal should not be running for president.
So, the Democrats are in trouble.
They're now pinning their sort of moderate, could win in the Midwest hopes on Mayor Pete Buttigieg, but that isn't going to work because Buttigieg, this whole campaign, has not been able to figure out who he is.
I think his instincts tell him to be the Midwestern, nice, likable, moderate guy.
Okay, look, he's a Harvard guy.
He's a Rhodes Scholar.
Okay, that's the lane that he's going to go in.
But he keeps...
Seeming like a radical.
He keeps his radicalness...
Just keeps...
Peeking out, you know.
I wonder if this is because he's a millennial.
He's younger, so radicalism comes more naturally to young left-wingers.
But he keeps coming out.
So you see it not just on the hectoring over, you know, if you don't support radically redefining marriage, you're a bad person and a bad Christian.
It's not just, even in he'll say that if you don't support abortion, you could be a bad Christian.
He tried to say that the Bible defends killing babies.
Now, he was at a campaign event called the Poor People's Campaign, and he said that illegal aliens are actually subsidizing America.
I mean, the uncomfortable reality is that undocumented folks are, in many ways, like Social Security, subsidizing everybody else.
And we need to talk about that.
Yeah, not true at all.
Completely false.
The uncomfortable reality is that it's an outright lie.
The Government Accountability Office found in 1995, 1995, 24 years ago, when the illegal immigration problem was way, way...
Less intense than what we're seeing right now.
They found that illegal aliens in the US generate more in costs than revenues to federal, state, and local governments combined.
The estimates of national net cost of illegal aliens vary greatly, ranging from $2 billion To $19 billion per year.
That's not today.
That was in 1995 when we had way fewer illegal aliens and when we had way fewer government services available to illegal aliens.
Illegal immigration is a huge net cost on the country.
There is no evidence whatsoever for what Pete Buttigieg is saying.
But then he somehow gets even more radical because the person from the Poor People's Campaign who is interviewing him Has the audacity to suggest that illegal aliens are just coming here because they're reclaiming land that was stolen.
And there's Pete Buttigieg nodding along in agreement.
And shouldn't we have some conversation whenever people say we call people illegal aliens and all these things that are not human and certainly not Christian, why can't we just own in America that some of the people that are trying to come from Mexico here are coming back to land we stole?
And the reason we took the land is because people wanted to keep their slaves.
I mean, we have to have some historical clarity around these issues.
Abraham Lincoln was against the Mexican-American War.
We need to have some historical clarity here, which is why, and look, I've never cracked a history book open in my life, but it's why I'm just going to say random things that have popped into my head for historical clarity.
Obviously, what he's saying is not historical at all.
The United States didn't steal land from El Salvador or Nicaragua or Guatemala, which is where the majority of these illegal aliens are coming from these days.
The whole idea of we stole the land anyway is ridiculous because until very, very recently, the law of conquest was the law of the land.
So, for instance, very often you will hear these kind of, they're just plain old leftist activists, but sometimes they'll pretend that they're indigenous activists or some other subset of leftist activism.
They will say, we need to return the land to the Native Americans.
And I always say, okay, which Native Americans are we returning it to?
We stole land from the Comanche Indians.
Should we return it from the Comanche Indians?
The Comanche Indians stole it from the Apache Indians.
Do we return it to the Apache Indians?
Who had the land before the Apache Indians?
How about further down south in Latin America, which is what these guys are talking about?
Do we return land to the Aztecs?
The Aztecs were some of the most barbaric conquerors in all of human history.
They were monsters.
They slaughtered 80,000 men, women, and children at just the single consecration of the Temple of Tenochtitlan.
Do we return it to them?
I don't think so.
Do we return land to the Taino Indians?
Do we return land to the Carib Indians who attacked, viciously physically attacked and often ate the Taino Indians?
Who are we going to return this land to?
A ridiculous argument.
But it's not an argument based on reality.
It's an argument based on these kind of random...
Impulses toward leftism.
And that's what Mayor Pete is falling into.
He just can't resist it.
He's nodding there along because he doesn't want to contradict the guy.
It means the Democrats have nobody.
Who's going to win it?
Who's going to take it now?
I think Bernie maybe has more of a chance than ever because Warren exploded herself with her ridiculous health care plan.
Biden is falling apart and Pastor Pete can't find his lane.
Who's going to win?
Mike Bloomberg?
I don't think Mike Bloomberg is going to win.
They're in trouble.
And Trump is doing very well at the moment.
He's got...
Pretty decent support.
He's got his base firmly in line, largely because of impeachment, and he's made huge inroads into the black vote.
One poll shows he's got 34.5% of the black vote at the moment.
Which would historically end the Democratic Party on the national level.
And there are other polls that back up his significant support among black voters.
Bad news for the left.
They don't know how to respond to this.
And around the world you see just this kind of doubling down on the same stale old secular liberalism that we've seen for decades and decades, for over a century now.
Over in Germany, Angela Merkel is...
Now, so doubling down on this, she says that we need, in the name of liberalism, in the name of freedom, we need to suppress free speech.
I am generally skeptical of chancellors of Germany, okay?
And it's because, you know, I want a little historical clarity too.
Just like that guy talking to Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
If you look with a little historical clarity, you will find out chancellors of Germany, not always the best people.
But Angela Merkel there, with a completely straight face, gives this speech saying, we need to stop free speech in the name of freedom.
I'll translate from the German.
She says, we have freedom of expression in our country.
For all those who claim that they can no longer express their opinion, I say this to them.
If you express a pronounced opinion...
You must live with the fact that you will be contradicted.
Expressing an opinion does not come at zero cost.
Okay, fair enough.
Then she goes on.
But freedom of expression has its limits.
Those limits begin where hatred is spread.
They begin where the dignity of other people is violated.
This house will and must oppose extreme speech.
Otherwise, our society will no longer be the free society that it was.
Unless we get rid of freedom of expression, we won't have any freedom.
Look, the freedom that matters most is the freedom of expression, right?
Man is ultimately a religious animal, and the way that our society expresses itself is through politics.
How do we engage in politics?
Through speech.
Speech separates us from the beasts.
We have this ability to communicate with each other.
If you Radically restrict that, you are restricting our humanity and our freedom.
But the question is, what kind of freedom are we talking about?
What kind of freedom is Angela Merkel talking about?
There are many types of freedom.
Freedom from material want.
That's what socialism promises.
It never delivers, but that's what it promises.
That's what capitalism promises, and it does deliver.
That's one type of freedom.
There's freedom from discomfort.
That's what the safe spaces promise.
Although they're pretty uncomfortable for the people who they're censoring.
There's freedom from censorship.
Then there is a deeper kind of freedom.
An exalted freedom.
The traditional understanding of freedom in the West.
Which is the Christian understanding.
Which is freedom from sin.
It's freedom from this kind of wickedness.
Christ says, he who sins is a slave to sin.
This is why just that very shallow understanding of freedom, that freedom is not having other people tell you what to do, which is important.
We don't want other people to tell us what to do, but that's insufficient.
That secular liberalism is insufficient ultimately because we can enslave ourselves to addictions, to drugs, to porn, to any of our appetites.
We can do that.
And this is why the wisest ancient societies all the way through the present have understood that freedom comes from pursuing the good.
It comes from virtue.
It comes from self-discipline.
That discipline will be imposed on you or it will be imposed by, it will be imposed by you rather on yourself or it will be imposed by a massive tyrannical government.
But that will, the order will stand.
The discipline will have to be there.
That is not merely a political question.
What that boils down to, ultimately, is a religious question.
And what we have to acknowledge, what we have to decide, is which religion we are going to follow.
Because everybody's got to serve somebody.
That's our show.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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