All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 12, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
47:22
Ep. 465 - The Media Lie About Everything

The IG testifies before the Senate, Trump gets called an anti-Semite for helping Jews, and Don Lemon melts down on air. Then, a study shows loneliness affects the young more than the old, and finally the Mailbag! Can't get enough of The Michael Knowles Show? Enjoy ad-free shows, live discussions, and more by becoming an ALL ACCESS member TODAY at: https://dailywire.com/Knowles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified before the Senate yesterday on his report, and it turns out, you're going to be shocked to hear this, that the mainstream media have been lying to us about everything.
On the same day, the New York Times reported that President Trump was redefining Judaism as a nationality, sparking widespread hysteria, comparisons to the Nazis, before it turned out that the report was completely false.
Then, as the cherry on top of the Fake News Sunday, CNN's Don Lemon had a meltdown on air over a meme.
Over nothing.
We will examine why and how the fake news lies so well.
Then, a new study shows the loneliness epidemic is affecting the young more than the old.
That's not good news.
Finally, the mailbag.
All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
The media have been lying to us about everything.
Now I know that's not exactly a man bites dog story.
We've known that generally for a long time, but so many fake stories, so many important fake stories collapsed yesterday all at once.
And we got to watch it in real time.
I want to begin, before we get to the actual meat of these lies, the actual meat of this hysteria and nonsense, I want to start this delicious meal of fake news with the dessert first.
I'm I want to start it with that little cherry on top of the chocolate sundae.
I want to start it with CNN, where CNN's Don Lemon decided to skip over all of the actual news and have a breakdown, an on-air hysterical breakdown of Because President Trump's campaign team tweeted out a meme.
In addition to all the lies and all the blustering at tonight's rally, Trump's war room posted a meme on Twitter today showing Trump as the supervillain Thanos from the Marvel Avengers movies, dispatching his Democratic enemies.
Take a look at this.
What are we in junior high school?
What the hell?
What is this?
Like, what?
What?
I cannot believe that I'm even having to report this on the news.
This is crazy.
This is literally crazy.
Are you people insane?
It goes on.
In some ways it even gets better.
The key takeaway though here for me is that Don Lennon and CNN and the mainstream media overall are always projecting.
They call Trump a liar.
They lie more than Trump.
They say that Trump is behaving in an immature manner.
They behave in a much more immature manner.
They say Trump is vulgar.
They're more vulgar.
I mean, he says, what are we?
What are we, in middle school?
What the hell?
What is this crap?
He says crap later on in the year.
What is he stumbles?
He's silent.
He's befuddled.
He says like.
What is this like?
Like what is...
Yeah, you are behaving like you're in junior high school, Don Lemon.
He says in there, he says, I can't believe I actually have to cover this.
You don't have to cover it.
This is not news.
This is a Twitter account run by one of the Trump campaign officials saying Tweeting out a funny meme on the internet which is made for memes.
That's not news.
You don't have to cover that at all.
You're choosing to cover that because you're a fake news organization.
So you don't want to cover the good jobs numbers.
You don't want to cover the devastating Horowitz testimony.
The Nets didn't even cover the Horowitz testimony.
They've been streaming the...
Ridiculous impeachment testimony, back-to-back, wall-to-wall coverage for weeks now, and then the devastating Horowitz testimony on the abuses in the FBI and the DOJ. Well, that one they can't cover.
They don't have time.
They've got to cover memes on Twitter instead.
And it gets worse than that.
The news stories get even worse than that.
We'll start with the Horowitz testimony, but then we'll go through a whole confection of lies.
Before we do that, though, I have got to thank our friends over at ExpressVPN.
You know, we've been having a debate all week long, among conservatives especially, about what kind of stuff you should be able to look at on the internet.
If you should be able to look at some of that scintillating, titillating, not-so-great kind of stuff on the internet.
And then some people are saying you shouldn't, and some people are saying you shouldn't.
But you can skip the whole debate.
When you just encrypt your data with VPN, then you don't need to worry about it.
At The Daily Wire, we invest thousands of dollars in cybersecurity because we are regularly the target of attacks.
Now, as an individual internet user, you don't need to have a whole IT department to protect you from online threats.
What you do need is ExpressVPN.
You know how much I love ExpressVPN.
I've been talking about it on my show for so long that you understand why encrypting your data is so important.
Some of you still haven't acted.
Why is that?
I don't think it's cheapness because it's so cheap to use ExpressVPN.
It's so inexpensive.
I think it's like laziness and this feeling that nobody wants your data, right?
Your data, that's totally fine.
They just want everybody else's.
Wrong, buddy.
Not using ExpressVPN is like leaving your front door unlocked every time you go out.
And if you listen to this show, you probably look at some pretty weird stuff online in that old incognito window.
So one of the easiest ways to secure your data is with ExpressVPN.
Why haven't you gotten ExpressVPN yet?
Right now, visit my special link, expressvpn.com slash Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L. Get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free.
That is my Christmas gift to you.
Protect your internet today.
Do it seriously.
You will regret it if you don't.
Use the VPN that I trust to keep my data safe.
Go to expressvpn.com slash Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L, to get started.
So beyond Don Lemon's meltdown on CNN... You saw, when you looked really closely into the media, which were basically blocking out the Horowitz testimony, when you were streaming it from C-SPAN and getting it on the internet, you could see that the media story on this whole three year witch hunt, I'll use Trump's term, because Trump's term is right.
This whole three-year witch hunt, the media's story, collapsed.
And it collapsed in particular with the testimony of the Justice Department Inspector General, Michael Horowitz.
So the mainstream media have been telling us for months now that there was no problem with the Russia investigation.
There was no, no spying on the Trump campaign.
And even if they did spy, it's not a big deal.
They've now told us since the IG released his report over just the past few days that the IG report vindicated James Comey, vindicated the FBI officials, vindicated all the people who were spying on the Trump campaign.
So Michael Horowitz, let's get it in your own words, the words of the inspector general, Did the Obama administration illegally spy on the Trump campaign?
So let's play this out.
They never told Trump about the concerns.
Is it fair to say there came a point to where surveilling Carter Page became unlawful?
I will let the court decide that.
The court has this report and will make that decision.
Let's put it this way.
If you don't have a legal foundation to surveil somebody and you keep doing it, is that bad?
Absolutely.
Is that spying?
It's illegal surveillance.
It's not court-authorized surveillance.
Whatever illegal surveillance means, they did it.
I love this answer because Michael Horowitz wants to be measured.
He doesn't want to be partisan.
He's the inspector general, for goodness sake.
The media have just been talking about what a great guy he is because his report that nobody has read, his 400-page report that not a soul has actually read, is said to have vindicated James Comey and the FBI, right?
He says, was it bad?
That's what Lindsey Graham asks Horowitz.
Was what the FBI did with regard to FISA abuse, was it bad?
Horowitz says, yes.
And he says, was it illegal?
Yes.
Was it spying?
Well, it was illegal surveillance.
Okay, fine.
You want to sound more measured.
Apparently spying is a bad word now.
William Barr, the attorney general, made a joke about that.
He said, spying is not intrinsically a bad thing.
It depends on whether the spying was legitimately predicated.
It depends on whether the spying was legal or illegal.
So he says it's bad, it's illegal, and it was illegal surveillance, which is to say, illegal spying.
Okay, we've established that.
Then Lindsey Graham, Lindsey Grahambo, asks Horowitz, the media's been reporting that you're This report exonerates the FBI and all those senior officials.
Does it?
Is the FBI exonerated?
Do they look good after this report or do they look really, really bad?
Senator Tillis, very quickly.
I think Senator Blumenthal makes a good point.
How would you describe the behavior here of knowing that the subsource disavows the dossier that was the primary reason you got a warrant?
Finding that a lawyer doctored an email to keep the investigation going in a way unfair to Mr.
Page.
This is not routine.
Do you agree with that?
It is definitely not.
It certainly better not be routine, and I don't know any reason to think it is routine.
Is it kind of off the charts bad?
It's pretty bad.
Thank you.
It is.
It's pretty bad.
It's kind of off the charts bad.
By the way, I should just mention, I love the Senate Judiciary Committee because you get Lindsey Graham 2.0, and you also get Ted Cruz.
You get Mr.
Zodiac himself, who runs roughshod over the leftist case here on the IG report.
I mean, he...
Cruz is so good.
He is so in his element when he's in these Senate hearings, and he...
It goes even further than Lindsey Graham.
He asks Horowitz.
Let's say that it wasn't protected people.
Let's say it wasn't James Comey and very protected people in the FBI and the DOJ who were illegally spying on the Trump campaign.
If it were just an ordinary person, Joe Blow off the street...
Who falsify these court documents?
Would that person be prosecuted?
Horowitz's answer is terrific.
We will get to that in a second.
First, I got to thank our friends over at Daniels NYC. I love this company.
Daniels NYC. What do they make?
They make excellent briefcases.
Now they also make belts.
I love my Daniels belt.
That's now my number one black belt.
But they primarily make briefcases.
I've owned a lot of briefcases.
I've owned very nice briefcases.
Daniel's is my favorite briefcase I've ever owned.
These guys just get it, and they make high-quality, excellent-quality briefcases at a price that you can afford that's accessible.
So if you want to get a really nice, high-quality briefcase, often it's $800, $1,000, more than that sometimes.
Daniel's brings that price way down, and they maintain the exact same high-level quality.
And frankly, I think their designs are better than most of the, you know, name brands that you've all heard of for 30 years.
Daniel's is designed in New York City with working professionals in mind.
It's a bag built for real life.
That means high quality, durable Italian leather.
Daniel's is even...
I didn't think it was possible, but they've actually upped their game even more recently.
They have some of the finest quality leather in the world.
Simplicity in design.
No flashy logos.
You're not going to look like you're some, you know, rapper or something with all these big gaudy logos and stuff.
It's just timeless style that works no matter where you are in your career.
It's just that classic New York beautiful style.
They have really great subtle liners on the inside.
So the designs are really nice.
It's clean.
It's sleek.
I can't speak highly enough about this.
Great Christmas present if you're going to give it to somebody else.
And if you want to treat yourself, it's a good Christmas present for you.
This week, my listeners can get $50 off their Daniels briefcase at DanielsNYC.com by using the promo code Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L, at checkout.
That's $50 off one of their leather briefcases.
Plus, they offer free shipping, free returns, and free exchanges.
There's no reason not to try it.
Treat yourself or a friend or a loved one this holiday season with this one-of-a-kind gift.
It's just tremendous.
You will impress everybody.
And functionally, it's so great.
DanielsNYC.com promo code Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L, for $50 off a handcrafted, high-quality leather briefcase with free shipping.
So Cruz then goes further than Lindsey Graham.
He says, would an ordinary person who acted in the way that these FBI officials acted, would they be prosecuted?
In any ordinary circumstance, if a private citizen did this, Fabricated evidence.
And by the way, what he inserted was not just slightly wrong, it was 180 degrees opposite what the evidence said.
So the intelligence agency said this guy is a source, and he inserted this guy is not a source.
If a private citizen did that in any law enforcement investigation, if they fabricated evidence and reversed what it said, In your experience, would that private citizen be prosecuted for fabricating evidence, be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, be prosecuted for perjury?
They certainly would be considered for that if there was an intentional effort to deceive the court.
On this one, I'm going to defer, because as we noted here in the sentence you indicated, we referred that over to the Attorney General and the FBI Director for handling it.
Now, this is an important answer here.
Because Horowitz, look, he doesn't want to come off as a partisan.
So he answers right away.
Would an ordinary citizen be prosecuted for this?
Well, you know, we would certainly look into it.
We would have to check it out.
But I don't want to make that Final judgment because I'm the inspector general.
That's not my job.
That's the job of the Justice Department and the Attorney General.
And by the way, we've turned this matter over to the DOJ and the Attorney General.
Now you see the key here.
What the media have wanted you to believe since the IG report came out is, okay, they're not going after anybody.
They didn't find evidence of this awful partisanship.
So never mind, nothing to see here moving along.
And what Bill Barr and the prosecutor John Durham and conservatives have been saying is the IG... Is not tasked with going over and pursuing criminal investigations.
That's what we have this separate criminal investigation for.
And what the left has been saying is, oh, you're just trying to spin it.
You're just trying to save face after this IG report doesn't implicate our guys, doesn't incriminate our guys.
And now you have the IG himself saying, it's not my job to pursue criminal investigations.
That's the job of the attorney general.
And I have referred this matter to him.
It means there's some bad news coming for the people who tried to overthrow the president and overturn a presidential election.
So what happens now?
Horowitz, of his own accord, not even in the questioning, but in his own statement, admitted a bombshell yesterday.
He admitted that the warrant to spy on the Trump campaign For example, the Crossfire Hurricane team obtained information from Steele's primary subsource in January 2017 that raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele reporting.
This was particularly noteworthy because the FISA applications relied entirely on information from the primary subsources reporting to support the allegation that PAGE was coordinating with the Russian government on 2016 U.S. presidential election activities.
However, the FBI did not share this information with department lawyers, and it was therefore omitted from the last two renewal applications.
Wow.
What that means is...
Thank you.
You had the Steele dossier.
This was contracted through Fusion GPS by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC. They engaged with a former foreign intelligence analyst who himself was dealing with even other foreign intelligence sources, namely in Russia.
And they compiled this hit piece, this oppo, uncorroborated document on President Trump.
These crooked officials at the FBI then used the Democrat-funded OPPO research as the entire basis to spy on the Trump campaign.
And then, when it became clear that so much of this was bunk, that it was unwarranted, that the spying on Carter Page, generally speaking, was unwarranted, they omitted all of that information, including their source, including the funding for their source, from the FISA application.
That's a few too many errors to chalk it up to accidents.
That's a little too specific in those errors to chalk it up to accidents.
This stinks to high heaven, which is why I strongly suspect Michael Horowitz included that in his statement and why he mentioned that this has been referred for criminal investigation at the level of the Attorney General.
And that is what we're going to see coming up.
On top of all of this, as the whole Russia hoax formally collapses, the whole predicate, the whole basis for spying on the Trump campaign collapses.
There is a report out of the Office of Management and Budget.
The Office of Management and Budget out of the White House releases a legal memo We're good to go.
It was completely routine.
Completely routine.
Here is what the OMB released.
For decades, OMB has routinely used its apportionment authority to prevent funds from being used.
Often, in managing appropriations, OMB must briefly pause an agency's legal ability to spend those funds for a number of reasons, including to ensure that the funds are being spent efficiently, that they are being spent in accordance with statutory directives, Routine.
Normal.
Happens all the time.
Now, we should have already known this.
Because the Democrats actually are not pursuing the Ukraine issue as the basis for impeachment.
They could have.
They could have charged Trump with bribery.
They could have charged Trump with extortion in regard to his phone call with Ukraine.
They didn't do it because they don't have any evidence for that.
So instead, they're charging with two articles of impeachment.
Abuse of power over, I don't know, whatever.
Shrug.
I mean, it's as vague a charge as you can get.
and obstruction of Congress because only some people testified before the impeachment inquiry.
By the way, those people, all of whom either hadn't talked to Trump about Ukraine or said explicitly that there was no quid pro quo from Trump's mouth.
But because of that, because only some people testified, that's obstruction of Congress, which by the way is the president's job is to obstruct Congress.
So we already should have known this Ukraine thing is bunk, but we get this memo out of the OMB and guess what the news reports.
Absolutely nothing.
The media won't report on this story.
It gets even worse, though, because yesterday, the New York Times ran a piece that was designed in many ways, and it was received in many ways, to make Trump look like Adolf Hitler, and the story was completely false.
We'll get to that in a second.
First, I gotta thank our friends over at Movement.
Movement is making the perfect gift easy.
You know movement.
Movement now makes like everything.
Makes watches, sunglasses, blue light glasses, bracelets.
Movement...
Watches are designed in-house.
They're super sleek.
They have these beautifully curated gift boxes, his and hers gift guides, free and quick shipping to your door just in time for the holidays.
I have gotten so many compliments on my movement watches.
I'm partial to the Revolver collection.
I think that's the coolest collection.
It's sleek.
It's retro in a certain way, but it's not just a repeat of some old watch.
It's also got this kind of modern minimalism to it.
Last year, I gave my father a movement watch for Christmas.
He loved it.
He wears it all the time.
It was probably the most popular gift I've given in recent memory, I mean, since I was a kid.
Movement watches are starting at just $95.
If you were to go into a department store and try to buy a watch of this quality, it would be three, four times that.
Clean design, minimal, Minimal design and really, really high quality.
Movement has sold almost 2 million watches in over 160 countries.
Be the big winner this holiday season with a gift from Movement.
Get 15% off today with free shipping and free returns by going to mvmt.com slash Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S. That is mvmt.com slash Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S, and join the Movement.
A major fake news story coming out of the New York Times yesterday.
This was the tweet that the Times sent out.
President Trump will sign an executive order defining Judaism as a nationality, not just a religion, bolstering the Education Department's efforts to stamp out boycott Israel movements on college campuses.
Now, in the New York Times' defense, I can't believe I'm uttering that statement.
They do frame the second half of this story as a help from the White House for the Jewish people, for Jewish Americans.
That's the second half of the story.
The first half of the story includes what should be just the facts.
President Trump will sign an executive order defining Judaism as a nationality, not just a religion.
This caused a lot of concern, a lot of hysteria on the left because it evoked images of Nazi Germany othering Jews and making them seem not American, not part of this country.
This is just another step in those brown shirt Trump supporters campaign of anti-Semitism and Nazism, right?
Molly Jong Fast, who is a left-wing writer, she tweeted out, quote, my nationality is American.
And this feels like it's ultimately going to be bad for Jews.
A lot of other people were tweeting out all sorts of things.
This is how it begins.
This is how it began in Germany.
They're going to be othered.
In Germany, you had to have Jewish on your passport, and that's what America's coming to.
And then it turned out the story's completely false.
If you read the executive order, Trump did not define Judaism as a nationality.
If you read the executive order, all he said was that under Title VI, where you can't discriminate against people on the basis of race or nationality, it doesn't say that you can't discriminate against people on the basis of religion.
Trump said that his administration will treat Jews for the purposes of these civil rights protections as though they had the same protections whatsoever.
As people on the basis of race or nationality.
A wonderful thing.
Very nice thing to do for the Jewish people.
Obviously there were a lot of Jewish activists who were in the White House when President Trump was signing this.
It was the left...
And the Times kind of started it, but it was the left more broadly.
They were actually even more guilty of this than the New York Times.
They took a story that was about Trump helping Jews and they managed to turn it, not just a little bit, but 180 degrees in the opposite direction and turn it into a story about how Trump is a Nazi.
That is what we're up against.
That is what the media do.
They have no credibility on this stuff.
What does this mean for you and me?
What this means is we have to not be taken in by the fancy people who wear the ties and the jackets, who look like Don Lemon.
Don Lemon looks so great, doesn't he?
He looks like such a serious guy.
He's a handsome guy.
He's got that very serious face.
He's got his jacket on and his tie.
So he would never lie to you.
He would never behave like a child on television.
He would never...
Just be a hack partisan who's attacking the president for partisan reasons.
Except that's what they all do.
That's what the whole mainstream media does.
And time after time, I think even many conservatives want to give deference or subconsciously are just brought in to give deference to what you read in the paper, what you read online, what you hear from the TV news.
There's no reason to do that.
At this point...
The partisan political operatives and politicians in the Trump administration have much, much more credibility than the New York Times and CNN and the Washington Post and all the others.
President Trump's Twitter account, I'm not saying Trump never exaggerates.
I'm not saying that President Trump never stretches the truth.
President Trump's Twitter account has a greater record of honesty and journalistic credibility than these partisan hacks in the mainstream media.
That's what they are.
And yet, they won't admit it.
So what we need to do is tune out of that stuff.
Alright?
I think it's perfectly great to read honestly left-wing news sources and opinion sources.
And I think you should read honestly right-wing news sources and commentary.
But for the people who are pretending to report the news, they have no credibility.
They have hollowed out these institutions from within.
They are just zombie New York Times and zombie Washington Post.
Who are not who they used to be.
We will get to the loneliness epidemic.
Because it actually, the loneliness epidemic does tie back into all the kind of political questions and political philosophical debates we've been having all week on everything from the role of government to internet porn.
We'll get to that in a second.
We'll get to the mailbag.
But first...
Let me tell you about the Daily Wire store on Amazon.
It's the perfect place to get your holiday shopping needs.
From our classic Facts Don't Care About Your Feeling shirts, which is 15% off, to our very popular Zero Bark 30 shirt.
This is one of my favorites we've ever done, and I'm wearing it right now.
Even including all the Christmas sweaters that we've got, even including our brand new Santa Trump's hoax, hoax, hoax.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
You will find plenty of goodies to make this the best gift-giving season ever.
And if you buy this week, your orders will arrive just in time for Christmas.
So head over to The Daily Wire.
Come and check out our Amazon store and let the shopping begin.
That's over at dailywire.com.
And actually, in addition, while you're there, you can save time and money this holiday season by giving your loved ones a Daily Wire gift membership, which from now until January 1st, all insider plus gift memberships will be 25% off.
That's a major, major savings.
It means that your loved one will get this fantastic perk, all these great gifts, the Leftist Tears Tumblr, and you will get the savings.
Go to dailywire.com slash gift, get your 25% off, dailywire.com slash gift, 25% off all Insider Plus gift memberships this Christmas season.
Give them the gift.
They'll thank you for all year long.
DailyWire.com.
We'll be right back with a lot more.
Before we go to the mailbag, I have to mention this survey because it tells us a lot about our culture and it actually tells us about some of the political debates we've been having.
A study out of George Mason University of 1,200 people, 1,200 Americans, found that one in three young people below the age of 25 feel lonely, whereas only 11% of adults older than 65 feel the same.
This is on top of a survey out of the United Kingdom which found that 40%, 4-0, of young people, 16 to 24, feel lonely often or very often.
That's compared to 27% of adults over 75.
This is very strange.
This is the opposite of what we should expect.
Historically speaking, older people, people of a certain age, You know, beginning 65 plus, certainly by 75, certainly into your 80s, feel lonely.
They begin to feel lonely because they're kind of set in their ways.
It's harder to make friends as you get older.
Perhaps they've had loved ones or friends or spouses die.
And so, just naturally, you feel lonelier at that point.
Very odd for young people in their 20s, in their teens, to feel lonelier than senior citizens.
Why is that happening?
Why is it?
I mean, the researchers conclude our research shows that loneliness is a subjective mental state rather than an age-related symptom.
Why is it?
Why is this happening?
On top of this, we find antidepressant use up 65% in 15 years, the highest rises among young Americans.
Teen suicide up 70%, 70% over just the past few years.
Marriage rates declining, birth rates declining.
We are very lonely.
We're very, very lonely.
You can look at the technological aspects that isolate us.
You can look at some of the social aspects that isolate us.
I think there's an ideological aspect, too.
It gets to what we've been talking about all week when we're talking about anything from internet pornography to the role of government in politics and culture.
You know, I tweeted out a couple days ago.
I asked, what is the purpose of government?
What is the primary purpose of government?
And I listed liberty, equality, justice, and other.
And you could add other.
Liberty won by a mile.
It's like 61% to 20%, something like that.
20% said justice.
60 some odd percent said liberty.
2% said equality.
Good job, guys.
You got that one right.
Now, I think some people said liberty because liberty is such a broadly defined word.
The great conservative political philosopher Edmund Burke said, of all the political concepts, liberty has indefinite numbers, infinite numbers of definitions.
When we talk about liberty, the kind of liberty that we like, we're talking about ordered liberty.
We're not just talking about going to Drag Queen Story Hour every night.
We're talking about the kind of liberty that allows you to flourish and live a good life and order your will towards something that's good and not just sitting in a ditch somewhere doing drugs and looking at internet porn.
Even so, we should be more precise about our language.
This wasn't a true question.
The purpose of government has a real answer, especially in America.
The father of our constitution, James Madison, answered this in Federalist 51.
James Madison, writing in Fed 51, wrote, justice is the end of government.
It is the end of civil society.
It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.
So liberty plays a very important role in justice.
You're not going to have justice without liberty.
But merely unfettered individual liberty, especially if it's unmoored from the moral order, is not the purpose of the American government.
It's not the purpose of any real government.
And the founding fathers never thought it was.
And it's a very recent idea that it was.
This has happened over the past 40, 50 years.
There's actually been a sort of consensus on the right and left.
And the consensus has been that the purpose of government is liberty.
Even the left believes this.
They're incoherent about it, but they believe it.
So for the left, they say, we want totally expanded social liberty.
Sexual liberation, women's liberation, abortion on demand, reproductive freedom is what they So they want social liberty like redefining marriage, abortion all the time, porn everywhere, casual sex, all those sort of things.
What conservatives have done is they've taken the flip side of that coin.
They've said, yes, the purpose of government is just untrammeled liberty, and so we want economic liberty, tax cuts, deregulation, free trade.
That all puts the cart before the horse.
Because liberty is very, very important for a purpose.
Don't take my word for it.
This is not some crazy reactionary view.
This is what James Madison, who is the father of the Constitution, said in the Federalist Papers, which unfortunately nobody reads, so very few people are aware of this.
There is something bigger than that, which is justice.
There is something bigger than that, which is call it ordered liberty, social liberty.
The recognition that we're not all just atoms floating around in space, that we actually do live in society and we don't want to be tyrannized.
We don't want to live in some collectivist hellscape.
We want our rights to be protected.
We want our liberties to be protected.
But we actually do have bonds to one another, to our families, to our communities, to our state, to our government, to our people, to our civic associations.
We have to recognize that because if you simply take this hyper individualistic, atomistic idea of liberty as the total end of government, what you're going to end up with is a loneliness epidemic.
What you're going to end up with is a government that says that we have the right, the duty to define reality for ourselves.
That's what Justice Kennedy said in Planned Parenthood v.
Casey.
Decades ago, that we have the right to define reality for ourselves, define what it is to be a man or a woman, or that a baby's not really a baby.
And that, of course, is crazy.
Libertinism is not liberty.
And you don't want to have a lonely country.
You want to have a good country.
You want to have a free country.
We all love freedom, but freedom has a higher purpose.
I have a piece on this at the Daily Wire if you want some more on it, which is called The Porn Debate Isn't Really About Porn.
But it speaks to a lot of the socialills that we're seeing.
And we've got to start taking a deeper view of politics than maybe we have in the past We have to start taking the deeper view that we had 50 years ago before our culture and our politics got so hollowed out and so shallow.
Let's get to the mailbag.
From David.
Hail Michael Knowles, king of trolls.
I was wondering if you could explain what critical theory is.
It gets mentioned very often, but rarely explained.
Yes, critical theory is used a lot.
Critical theory is a highly politicized academic approach that was developed by Marxists of the Frankfurt School in the 1930s.
It has been popularly referred to by the literary critic Harold Bloom, who recently died and was a lifelong liberal.
He referred to it as the school of resentment.
Critical theory is where you just deconstruct your culture, where, for instance, you approach literature not as you should, which is through love, the love of the poetry, the love of the images, the love of human nature, the love of the story, the love of academic pursuit.
Not through that, but through criticism.
You read Walt Whitman to find out how racist and sexist and evil he was.
And this has been the approach, not just to literature, but to history.
To political science, to sociology, to so many of these academic departments.
Critical theory has taken over all of the academy right now.
And it's a very bad idea.
Not merely because it's so shallow and ideological and partisan, but because it actually inverts the purpose of learning.
You know, any...
Any theory of education or theory of knowledge that begins with the premise that you have to hate what you're studying is dead wrong.
The only way that you're going to learn anything, the only way that you are going to grow in knowledge, is through love.
Actually, somebody who explains this very well is Dante, speaking of great literature, speaking of people who aren't read anymore.
You know, what Dante shows us is that unity of learning, of growth in knowledge, of education, And of love.
The famous image that ends the poem is the love that moves the sun and the other stars.
That there is this love that comes with it.
Especially with Dante.
I love Dante.
When I read Dante, it's because I'm drawn by a love of that.
And that love leads me to a deeper understanding.
It leads me to wisdom.
That's what should be going on in the Academy, and it's not.
And critical theory plays a huge role in that.
From Justin, what is your favorite Christmas movie?
That's a tough one.
No, I guess it's not.
Jingle All the Way, obviously.
It's the greatest one of all.
What an amazing movie.
You get The Governator.
You get a superhero character.
It's just an amazing movie.
Jingle All the Way.
Next question from Adiem.
As a fan of Gavin McGinnis, I've heard a lot about the no fap and no wanks movements.
Well, I guess I just said those things on air.
The fact that he is against porn is often trotted out as proof of his Nazi nature.
Why does the left love porn so much?
This is unbelievable.
I really like Gavin.
You know, you get Gavin, who is a comedian, who's telling people don't look at porn because it's going to make you into like a weak little creepy degenerate.
And they say, see?
If you don't look at runaway girls...
Being abused on video all the time, you're a Nazi!
That's not a very compelling argument.
I think it's obviously right.
Porn is a major social problem, regardless of what you think about whether the government should get involved on the local or the state or federal level or not get involved at all.
I think we can all admit it's not good.
You don't want to be a wanker.
You don't want to be a guy who closes the blinds and looks at poor runaway girls having strange things done to them by strange men on high-resolution video.
That's not a good thing, right?
So...
Gavin comes out there and says, hey, don't do that.
And the left calls him a Nazi.
They call a lot of people Nazis.
They do it because the left requires sexual libertinism.
The left really benefits from this libertinism.
One, because it compromises you.
Some people who ostensibly are on the right wing even said this in the porn debate.
They said, if you've ever looked at porn, you can't say that we should ban porn.
If you've ever looked at porn, who are you to say porn is a bad thing?
You're doing it.
You're a hypocrite.
Shut up.
So the left wants you to do that.
And the left also promotes libertinism because the left exists to break down the traditional order.
The left exists in opposition to the tradition.
So any way to break down that tradition, whether that's marriage, whether that's traditional relationships, whether that's traditional sexual desires, whether that's Traditional behavior, which says, hey, maybe restrain your appetites and your lusts and your sexual appetite.
They don't want any of those restraints.
They want to break down all of the restraints so that once the traditional structures, which they blame for all the evils of the world, the patriarchy and the hierarchies and the thisarchy and the thatarchy, once that's all broken down, then they will just have a ton of atomized individuals living in cultural rubble, and from there they can build their utopia.
From Rustem, dear Michael, out of the broom closet, Knowles.
I'd like your thoughts on a debate that is currently raging in my country, the Netherlands, where a child born with severe and usually terminal birth defects can be euthanized.
The government in my country is considering easing up the laws that allow for the murder of those children by physicians.
I believe this practice is wrong, but anyone that shares my view is castigated as an uncaring demon that wants to let children suffer.
What do you think?
As always, love the show and a Merry Christmas.
I think woe to you that call evil good and good evil that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
I'm not surprised at all that these genuine ghouls who are advocating The legalization of killing children are calling you a bad guy because you want to protect children.
That always happens.
It's the nature of the world.
And obviously the euthanasia laws are abhorrent.
They are indefensible.
This is what happens when you compromise on human dignity in your politics.
So it's what happens when you embrace abortion.
Then why shouldn't you embrace euthanasia?
You're saying you can kill innocent people at one stage of life.
Why not at another?
And if you've embraced euthanasia for old people who are going to die in three days, why not embrace euthanasia for people who might die in three months?
If they're suffering, why not embrace euthanasia for people who are depressed?
Why not embrace euthanasia for people who are born defective in their minds?
I don't think they're defective.
In an ultimate sense.
But they seem to.
They say, yeah, ultimately you're defective.
You're not worth life.
So why not kill them even if they're children?
Netherlands has been leading the way down that dark path.
All of that is premised on the idea that suffering is intrinsically evil and the primary purpose, if not the only purpose of life, is to feel pleasure.
And this is such a perverse idea.
The purpose of life is not to feel pleasure and suffering is not only not intrinsically evil, but it can actually be helpful because it helps us grow.
It deepens our experience of life.
It...
It prompts the moral quality of how you respond to suffering.
Do you respond in a bad way?
or do you respond in a good way?
Also, suffering is a fact of life.
This is what's so insidious about this, is everybody suffers.
A lot of the time.
You don't know that from Instagram.
You don't know that when you see people and they tell you, oh, everything's great.
A lot of people are suffering a lot of the time.
That is a fact of human life.
And so, if you say that if someone suffers, they can end their lives, if you accept that premise, then it's just a matter of time before...
They come for us, whether through, in the case of the Netherlands, actually holding people down and euthanizing them, meaning murdering them, as has happened, or through the cultural pressure and the cultural persuasion to off yourself if you're not feeling happy all the time.
Very, very bad situation.
Good job standing up for life and for the good.
From Martin, last question.
Does the Constitution need new amendments of separation of powers between the media and the politicians?
That's a great question.
You know, I have two thoughts on this.
Obviously, it's unfortunate that the media are such hacks for the politicians that they so carry water for the Democratic Party.
That is an unfortunate thing.
On the other hand, I gotta hand it to reporters who go out there and get their stories.
You know, in some ways you get the stories by getting drinks with a politician.
Sometimes a little bit more than that.
At the very least, befriending a politician.
Getting in their good graces.
I mean, good dogged reporters are actually able to kind of penetrate these circles and...
And get good scoops.
I think that's a wonderful thing.
We don't need to change the Constitution.
The media are not addressed in the Constitution.
But we should have a code of ethics for journalists.
That would be a nice thing.
And for the journalistic outlets that do have codes of ethics, like New York Times, Washington Post, it would be nice if they actually abided by them.
And if they don't, we'll just have to tune them out.
I guess we're already doing that.
Today, you'll have to tune me out right now, but be sure to come back on Monday.
Have a good weekend.
In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
So see you next week.
If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh 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.
Assistant Director Pavel Wydowski, edited by Danny D'Amico.
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
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 everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
What a week this has been.
The left has covered itself in shame with its sham impeachment.
The press has not only been caught lying, but is now lying about lying, and then lying about lying about having lied.
And yet Trump goes on appointing judges, making the economy sing, and defending our civil rights.
What a time to be alive.
We'll talk about it on The Andrew Klavan Show.
▲
Export Selection