The market continues to plummet as the Chinese coronavirus locks people idle in their homes for weeks at a time and the global economy grinds to a halt. We will compare the pandemic to the left-wing policy agenda and see if we can tell the difference. Then, a new study suggests the spread of the virus could have been reduced by as much as 95% if the Chinese government had acted to stop it rather than to cover it up. Of course, instead of reporting on that study, the U.S. mainstream media parrot’s the communist regime’s propaganda.
Check out The Cold War: What We Saw, a new podcast written and presented by Bill Whittle at https://www.dailywire.com/coldwar. In Part 1 we peel back the layers of mystery cloaking the Terror state run by the Kremlin, and watch as America takes its first small steps onto the stage of world leadership.
If you like The Michael Knowles Show, become a member TODAY with promo code: KNOWLES and enjoy the exclusive benefits for 10% off at https://www.dailywire.com/Knowles
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The market continues to plummet as the Chinese coronavirus locks people idle in their homes for weeks at a time and the global economy grinds to a halt.
We will compare the pandemic to the left-wing policy agenda and see if we can tell the difference.
Then, a new study suggests that the spread of the virus could have been reduced by as much as 95% if the Chinese government had acted to stop it rather than to cover it up.
Of course, instead of reporting on that study, the U.S. mainstream media is simply parroting the communist regime's propaganda.
Finally, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles show.
What a week.
Has it been a long week for you?
It's felt like a long week for me.
I was trying to recap everything that's happened this week and I realized there was a striking similarity between everything we've been seeing in the markets and policy from our leaders and in the agenda that the left wing has wanted in this country for a hundred years.
We'll get to that in a second.
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped another 1,300 points yesterday.
The S&P 500 lost $7 trillion in value over the past couple of weeks.
The economy around the world and in the United States is grinding to a halt.
Store shelves are empty.
There are food shortages at supermarkets.
You cannot buy toilet paper.
Countless people are losing their jobs.
We just heard from Marriott, just one company, right?
Marriott, the hotel chain.
They laid off tens of thousands of people a couple of days ago.
The government is now sending checks directly to people who are not working, who can't find work or who have been told to quarantine.
We are not flying anywhere, right?
We're not getting on airplanes.
We're not traveling anywhere.
We're barely driving places.
It occurs to me that this is AOC's dream.
This is the green flu deal.
That's what we're living through.
It's a nice little preview.
You know, I've tried to keep a normal attitude during all of this.
I've tried not to let the panic run away from me.
I've tried to see the glass half full sometimes when everyone else is losing their mind and running around and saying we're all going to die.
I've also said we're all going to die, but I say we're all going to die because someday we're all going to die, not because we're all going to die from this virus.
The coronavirus chaos is nothing compared to what the Green New Deal would do to our society.
And I'm sort of glad that we get a little preview of this so that people stop talking seriously about this policy proposal.
Look around you at what you're experiencing now.
The joblessness, the being confined to your little apartment.
You're not being able to travel.
You're not being able to buy certain things at the stores.
You're not being able to work.
The Green New Deal would be that times a zillion.
What does the Green New Deal do?
Do you remember this?
This is not some fringe left-wing policy proposal.
This was something being proposed by someone that the chairman of the DNC says is the future of the Democratic Party.
It was then endorsed by, I think, virtually every single Democratic presidential candidate and many, many prominent members of the Senate.
But the Green New Deal outlaws air travel.
Green New Deal outlaws most automobiles, so it severely reduces car travel.
The Green New Deal outlaws about 90% of American energy, so right away, the minute that that goes into effect, the economy completely grinds to a halt.
You can't do things in the economy without energy.
Don't think just about the oil industry, fracking.
Don't think about that.
Think about also every single industry that uses those things, namely all of them.
According to the Green New Deal, people would receive direct handouts from the government for not working.
See, at least now, under the current bailouts that are being considered, the government is going to send you a check because it's a crisis, because you can't work, because the Under the Green New Deal, Americans would receive those checks even if they don't want to work.
For people who, this is the language that AOC had used originally, people who are unable or unwilling to work.
So you just like don't want to, and then you get a check from the government.
And it's not just a one-time check, it's a perpetual check.
And the Green New Deal would cost $93 trillion.
So, the S&P loses $7 trillion over the last few weeks.
That's pretty bad.
Now, multiply that by 13.
That's where you get the cost of the Green New Deal.
So while we're living through our green flu deal, let that be a preview of what happens if very mainstream leftist policy proposals actually would be put into action, what that would look like for our economy.
This would be nothing but a little hors d'oeuvre, a little amuse-bouche for that dinner of the Green New Deal.
You ain't seen nothing yet.
If you think this is bad, just wait.
If anything good were to come of this issue, it would be causing people to face these economic realities.
I mentioned on the show in the early days of this virus that people sort of enjoy the freak out.
You know, that people, they like the danger.
They like the uncertainty.
They like that we're all in this together.
They like that it's a little different.
It's shaking them out of their monotonous lives.
It's like when the power goes out in a snowstorm.
And everyone pretends to be really upset about it, but actually you kind of like it.
It's fun.
It's something new.
That only lasts for about a day or two.
And then people start really not to like it.
You get sick of the speculation.
You get sick of constantly talking about it.
You know, it's not so fun when people are losing their jobs.
I know people, multiple people, whose paychecks have been cut in half already.
These are people who never thought that the economy grinding to a halt would touch them.
That only touches the little people.
You know, the people who are working those jobs, they're really vulnerable.
But it doesn't touch all of us.
Yes, it does.
It touches everybody.
When the economy grinds to a halt, it has long-standing effects very, very quickly.
I know a lot of bartenders and waiters who are now completely out of work, but even people who are lawyers, There's salaries cut in half.
Even people who are working in education, there's salaries cut in half.
That's the economic reality.
And of course it makes sense.
You don't need an economist to tell you why this is true.
If everybody stops working, there's going to be less money.
The economy is this abstract concept, but it's also a very tangible, practical concept.
If I work more, I'll get, I'll get more stuff.
I'll be more prosperous.
I'll be able to eat better and dress better and move better.
And if I work less, I won't be able to do that because money doesn't just come from magic.
It doesn't just come from nowhere.
It comes from the productivity that we all have.
So if we all stop being productive, guess what happens?
All that wealth goes away.
This is the economic reality.
I loved Mara Gay, that New York Times editorial member, who she said on the Brian Williams show on MSNBC that Mike Bloomberg could give every American a million dollars for the amount of money that he spent on his campaign, and that was off by six orders of magnitude.
But It actually shows us the left's understanding of economics.
Because when the left talks about money and public policy, whether it's the presidential candidates or whether it's a commentator or it's a New York Times editorial board member, it's all the same to them.
Seriously, they think a million and a billion and a trillion.
It's all the same.
It all ends in illion, right?
It's all got some zeros after it.
What's the big deal?
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren on the campaign trail, when they're proposing these $52 trillion policy proposals, Elizabeth Warren's plan, when you add it all up for healthcare, was $52 trillion.
They said, how are you going to pay for that?
She said, oh, come on, it'll be easy.
Don't worry, come on, that's a dumb question.
We'll figure it out.
Guess what?
It's a lot easier to pay for something that's $52 million than $52 trillion.
But they don't think of that.
We're rich.
We'll have the money to pay for it.
Well, guess what?
If the economy grinds to a halt, we're not going to be rich for very long.
And speaking of our elected representatives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren...
The Wu flu, the Wubonic plague, has now infected elected representatives.
So rather than being at the tail end of this thing, we might only be at the very beginning.
We'll get to what that means in a second, because I actually think there's a silver lining to this too.
First though, I've got to thank our friends over at Bambi.
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So now we've got public officials who have been infected with the virus.
Before this, we just heard they'd been exposed...
Ted Cruz self-quarantined, then I maybe had to self-quarantine because Senator Cruz met a guy who had been tested positive, and then I obviously saw Senator Cruz in the same room.
This isn't like that.
These elected officials now actually have the virus.
That's Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart and Ben McAdams.
Diaz-Balart is a Republican from Florida, and Ben McAdams is a Democrat from Utah.
They both tested positive yesterday.
And so now they're going to have to quarantine and live with the virus.
Other public figures who have the virus, Tom Hanks, Norm MacDonald, the comedian, has taken to calling coronavirus Tom Hanks disease, THD.
Tom Hanks tested positive for it a week or two ago.
Idris Elba, the actor, tested positive for it.
Justin Trudeau's wife tested positive for it.
Interestingly, I don't think Justin Trudeau has, but Justin Trudeau's wife has.
So anyway, there are these well-known figures in public life who now have the coronavirus.
This actually might be a great opportunity to get some perspective on it.
I think some people right now, the initial reaction is that celebrities having the Wu flu is a terrible thing because now it's going to be magnified.
People are going to be even more nervous and neurotic and freak out even more than they already were.
I think the opposite is true.
I think, really, if the statistics are right and all the people who have been infected are not going to face serious complications from it or death or anything like that, God forbid, that seeing these public figures that we all know have the virus and then hopefully just recover quickly...
We'll be a great thing to ease the public, make us realize we're not all going to die from this thing.
We're not all going to be hospitalized.
We're not even all going to have severe symptoms.
And that's just for the people who will eventually get the virus anyway.
It might be a nice way to pump the brakes on all of the hysteria because I think people are sick of it.
I think we enjoyed it for a few days.
We won't admit that we enjoyed it, but we enjoyed it.
It was kind of fun.
It was weird.
It was so unexpected, once-in-a-lifetime thing.
And now people are really sick of this.
People are really sick of being quarantined.
People are really sick of being told where to go and what to do.
People are really sick of having no food on the shelves like we're living in Havana, Cuba or something.
And we need to get back to normal as quickly as possible.
Now, the mainstream media, of course, are not helping this at all.
The mainstream media are not reporting on any relevant data when it comes to this virus.
The mainstream media are not doing anything to quell people's fears.
Actually, what they're doing, because they're too childish and partisan to even report on the virus itself, they are instead focusing on an aspect of Chinese propaganda And parroting that.
The Chinese government is now saying it's racist to call the virus Chinese.
I wonder why they're saying that.
We talked about this a little bit on the show yesterday.
Of course, China doesn't want any blame, and they know that leftists in America will carry their water for them.
So now the media are parroting this line.
They're completely failing to do their job during this pandemic.
So they're asking, is it racist to point out that the virus is Chinese?
I won't get into too many examples of this.
We did it yesterday.
John Nolte on Breitbart has listed 53 examples of the mainstream media calling the virus the Chinese coronavirus or the Wuhan virus before they decided to be parrots for Chinese propaganda and say that that's racist.
Go check that out.
It's really, really funny.
The reason I bring it up is over the last day, President Trump has now addressed this charge himself, and we are seeing peak Trump.
Grade A, this is why we elected you, Trump.
He is asked by some reporter I've never heard of, if it is racist to refer to the Chinese origins of this virus, Trump does not give an inch.
Why do you keep calling this the Chinese virus?
There are reports of dozens of incidents of bias against Chinese Americans in this country.
Your own aide, Secretary Azar, says he does not use this term.
He says ethnicity does not cause the virus.
Why do you keep using this?
Because it comes from China.
It's not racist at all, no, not at all.
It comes from China.
That's why.
It comes from China.
I want to be accurate.
Yeah, please.
John, please.
I have great love for all of the people from our country.
But as you know, China tried to say at one point, maybe this stuff now, that it was caused by American soldiers.
That can't happen.
It's not going to happen.
Not as long as I'm president.
It comes from China.
Great answer.
Two big problems with that reporter's question.
First of all, she says, viruses don't have an ethnicity.
That's true, but they do have a nationality.
Viruses do come from places.
And the Chinese coronavirus came from China.
Just like the West Nile virus came from the West Nile.
Just like Ebola comes from the Ebola River.
Just like the Spanish flu came through Spain.
It actually didn't come from Spain, but Spain gave its popular character.
So...
They do have nationalities.
This one has exclusively, it's not even like the Spanish flu where you say, well, it started here and then it went here and then it became really a big problem here.
This virus just comes from China.
It became a big problem in China.
The whole reason that we're dealing with it is because China didn't deal with it.
It's a Chinese virus.
That's the first problem with her question.
The second problem with her question is how offensive it is to Americans.
Because her premise is That if you refer to this as the Chinese virus, then Americans are just going to start beating Chinese people in the street.
That's what she said.
She said, there are already examples of hostility toward Chinese people.
Why would you make it worse by calling it a Chinese virus?
As though Americans are just waiting.
We are seething with bigotry and hatred.
Oh, give me any excuse to just become violent against people of other races.
Oh, President, please...
Tell us where the virus comes from so we can just become beasts and start beating people over the head.
Are you kidding me?
What do you think of your countrymen?
We are the least bigoted, most open and tolerant society ever, ever in the whole history of the world.
And this reporter looks at her countrymen and says, oh my gosh, they're all animals.
They're bigots.
They're beasts.
They're also idiots and they don't realize the virus comes from China.
So if you tell these dumb violent rubes where the virus comes from, they're going to start clubbing people over the head.
You know, I think that if you took the average American, it would probably be much more polite and have a much better view of the world and probably have much better manners than most D.C. reporters, okay, if we're trying to compare people here.
So that was that lady.
I don't know who that was.
Then another lady, another reporter, asks President Trump a more hilarious version of the same question.
She asks if it's racist to call the virus Kung Flu.
There are some, at least one White House official, who used the term Kung Flu, referring to the fact that this virus started in China.
Is that acceptable?
Is it wrong?
Are you worried that having this virus be talked about as a Chinese virus, that that might help?
I wonder who said that.
You know who said that?
I'm not sure the person's name, but would you condemn the fact that Kung Flu- Say the term again.
A person at the White House used the term Kung Flu.
My question is, do you think that's wrong?
Kung Flu.
And do you think using the term Chinese virus, that puts Asian Americans at risk, that people might target that?
No, not at all.
No, not at all.
I think they probably would agree with it 100%.
It comes from China.
There's nothing not to agree.
Okay, how about the last question?
Here he is.
Here is Trump doing the thing he does best, which is he just plays with those mainstream media reporters like a little marionette on strings.
So she says, somebody, some unnamed person in your administration called the virus Kung Flu.
Heaven forfend, grab my pearls.
Made a...
Pretty funny pun about the virus.
Oh no, it's the end of the world.
Pretty much David Duke, isn't it?
It's like Richard Spencer's working for you because they made a pun or something.
And so Trump, he's really good.
He doesn't laugh out loud.
He keeps the straight face.
He goes, who said this?
And she goes, well, I don't know.
So it highlights, first of all, that these people don't have good information anyway.
They're just passing along innuendo and insinuation.
They're not even going to say it was that person.
It was that staffer.
So he goes, okay, all right.
They move on past that one.
He goes, and what did they call it?
As if President Trump hadn't heard it the first time.
And he does it with a perfectly straight face.
What did they call it?
And she starts to repeat her question.
He goes, no, no, no, just say the term.
No, you say the term, Kung Flu.
Yeah, Kung Flu?
Yes, Kung Flu.
So he gets this mainstream media reporter to utter the phrase Kung Flu to the president on national television multiple times.
And then once he's gotten her to say it enough times, Kung Flu.
And you just, you can't, you can't keep up the mainstream narrative when you actually hear this.
Because what the mainstream narrative is, The White House staffers are using racial insults and attacking their fellow countrymen who are Asian and it's bigoted and it's awful and might as well be the N-word, right?
And that's kind of the insinuation there.
But then the reality of it is, it's Kung Flu.
It's just funny.
Just a funny term to refer to this Chinese coronavirus.
So he gets her to say it, and then anybody who's watching it just thinks, okay, what are we angry about now?
What are we supposed to...
They wouldn't even be able to be angry because they would be too busy laughing.
And I think President Trump certainly was laughing on the inside during that and probably laughed about it a little bit afterward.
Not to put too fine a point on it.
It is obviously not racist to talk about where the virus has come from.
This is 100% the fault of the Chinese government.
We will explain exactly how and exactly how much better our lives would be, how much lower the death rate would be, how much lower the hospitalization rate would be, how much better our economy would be doing if China had just dealt with this in the first place.
But first...
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President Trump is absolutely right to blame the Chinese for this.
The Chinese are 100% at fault.
The government of China is what I'm talking about, by the way.
I'm not talking about the billion people living in China.
I'm talking about the government, the Communist Party.
It is their fault.
We should send the Chinese government the bill for all of the economic chaos.
If they don't pay the bill, we should plunder their wealth until we are made at least financially whole for this.
There's no way to be made totally whole.
Think of all of the deaths.
Think of all of the hospitalizations.
Think even beyond that of just the missed moments.
People's graduations are being canceled.
People's weddings are being canceled.
People's baptisms are being canceled.
Moments that are very, very important in life ruined because of the damn Chinese communists.
We should...
Take all of their wealth.
These people, the Chinese government deserves to be taken out back like old yeller for what they have done in this crisis.
Nobody is reporting on this, but there is a new study that just came out from the University of Southampton.
Research found that if interventions in China could have been conducted one week or two weeks or three weeks earlier, how much do you think The chaos that has been caused by this could have been reduced.
How much do you think the spread could have been reduced?
If they reacted, instead of covering it up, if they reacted to stop it one week earlier, the spread would have been reduced by 66%.
If they had stopped covering it up and actually acted to stop the virus two weeks earlier, the spread would have been reduced by 86%.
And if those bastards in the Chinese government had acted to stop this virus, instead of covering it up, three weeks earlier, the spread would have been reduced 95%.
95%.
You wouldn't have even felt it.
We now have some deaths in America.
Luckily, the death rate is relatively quite low.
You have more significant number of deaths in Italy and Iran.
And it's spreading all over the world.
95% of that could have been wiped away if those horrible, horrible people in the communist Chinese government had acted to stop it.
Instead, what they did was they pretended it wasn't real.
They punished whistleblowers, doctors who were talking about the spread of this virus there.
They would not intervene to do it.
it.
And now the most appalling of all, the most galling of all, the left in America, the mainstream media and elected representatives are carrying water for that government.
The government that killed people, the government that destroyed the global economy, the government that intentionally allowed this virus to spread around the world, the left and the mainstream media are parroting their propaganda.
The Chinese government is writing the talking points for CNN at this point.
Okay.
Absolutely disgraceful.
Absolutely.
Absolutely disgusting stuff.
We need to be very clear about it.
So, when we use terms like the wubonic plague, or kung flu, or chop fluey, or the lung pass sicken, or any of the other terms that are, you know, like, pretty funny.
Somehow, like a week later, they're still fairly amusing.
Not only are they amusing, it's very important because the Chinese government right now, as always, has been trying to dodge responsibility.
Now they're actually trying to put responsibility on the United States incredibly, and we need to make sure that doesn't happen.
And if that means that some of our useful idiot friends in the mainstream media want to call everybody racist for stating simple facts about a virus, that's perfectly fine.
We cannot lose the narrative here.
Okay, I hope you've had a chance to see some of the new show that we launched this week called All Access Live over at DailyWire.com.
That is the first episode, Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring kicked it off on Monday, and then Jeremy and I did it on Tuesday.
We're going to be doing episodes the rest of this week at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific.
It's pretty We're all quarantined now.
We're all, you know, kind of locked at home.
But it's a fun way to hang out.
Talk to you guys, hear from you guys, and it's like we're all in a room.
My speaking tour was canceled this semester because of the Wuhan virus, because pretty much every major speaking event was canceled for the next few months.
And so this is one way that we can all hang out and talk, and it's very cool.
look, we wouldn't have been able to do this even 10 years ago.
But here in America, land of opportunity, technology has grown so great that we can do that now.
So we've had to accelerate the show launch in order to bring you this content.
Please let us know what you think of it.
We will help you get through this quarantine.
You will help us get through this quarantine.
We'll be a stronger country for it, I hope.
If you're around at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific tonight, join us on the All Access Live show over at dailywire.com.
Watch the live stream and join the chat because I've got to tell you before we cut to the mailbag, there is one woman on the internet who's really convinced me that it's all going to be okay.
You You know, she's convinced me what I'm going to do in my quarantine, and I think you should consider taking her advice as well.
This is a woman who was interviewed during a storm outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, and she explained, I think, exactly the attitude we should all have.
We'll probably sit around and cook some soups and eat bread and desserts and just get all fat and sassy.
That's what I'm going to do.
Can't get me down, Mayor Garcetti.
Can't get me down, Quarantine.
I'm just going to sit around, you know, maybe make some soups, eat some breads and desserts, and just get all fat and sassy.
All right, head on over to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back with the mailbag.
First question from Martin.
Hi, Michael.
Any figures on the infection rates and death of other viruses doing the rounds this particular year?
And is coronavirus God's way of saying borders are good for you, you schmucks?
Well, God is a Jew, so he might use the word schmucks.
The first part of your question, yes.
Many, many, many more people, at least according to the official statistics, have had the flu this year and many, many, many, many more people will die of the flu this year than so far from the coronavirus in the United States.
We'll see if that holds up true.
They're all telling us that the day after tomorrow, the whole world is going to implode, but that date keeps getting pushed forward.
So that's certainly the case.
The virus is more contagious than the flu, but it's less contagious than other public health issues we've had in the past.
Zika is one of the examples.
So you know, it would seem to be in this wheelhouse.
We don't really have good data at this point, but the data that we have are either inconclusive or they're contradictory, but nothing is suggesting to us that the world is going to end.
As for the question about open borders or not, this is a big wake-up call on the borders.
You know, the left is telling us a lot of contradictory things when it comes to this, but the left is telling us that we need to have totally open borders, walls are evil, walls don't work, and also quarantine yourself within walls, otherwise you're going to destroy the country.
So apparently walls have the ability to stop the spread of the plague, but walls can't do anything else.
They can't, they don't actually work, but they're actually so important that you need to lock yourself within four very small walls.
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
The other contradiction they have during all of this is when we point out that maybe people shouldn't eat bats.
Ben made this point yesterday.
He said, yeah, maybe don't eat bats.
And then if we don't eat bats, we won't get these kinds of diseases.
And the left is furious about this.
They say, how dare you?
That's culturally insensitive.
That's politically incorrect.
That's racist.
I don't know how it's racist.
Speciesist, maybe, but not racist.
And I think Ben made the point, the left tells you you can't eat meat, that it's immoral to eat meat.
It's so immoral to eat meat, it's immoral to drink milk, like Joaquin Phoenix told us, but it's very good to eat bats.
I think bats are meat, and if you're going to eat meat, by the way, bats should not be at the top of your list.
Of course, the reason they're doing this is the left just wants to take cheap shots because they don't like their own country, and they would rather carry water for communists than be fair to their own countrymen.
From Bennett, Dear destroyer of the libs and austere political podcaster, I'm a high school student who has recently received a nice long break because of the Wu flu, so I've had some extra time on my hands.
The other day, while polishing up on my early Hungarian history, a question occurred to me.
Is there any hope for a return to the fundamental nation-state, like those seen in Europe during much of the second millennium?
How can we go back, or will we just have to bugger on through this new secular system of world government until the end of days?
Thanks for your opinion.
Great question.
I think people misunderstand this a little bit.
Probably not you, but a lot of people do because they don't teach European history anymore in schools.
The nation-state as we understand it today is a relatively new invention.
It comes from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.
Before that, that sort of ended the Thirty Years' War.
You had the wars of religion.
But you also had empire in much larger number.
You had the Holy Roman Empire.
You had various empires throughout the West.
And those are two different forms of government.
The nation-state is a different form of government than empire, which includes many different territories, many different peoples.
The nation-state, much less so.
And now...
We saw the nation-state grow and grow and grow all the way up until, say, the middle of the 20th century.
Then, after the Second World War, nationalism got a very bad name, and so you saw a move away from the nation-state.
This gave you the growth of, say, the European Union, for instance.
Other international, transnational, supranational organizations that really constitute more of an empire than anything resembling a federal republic.
Now, this kind of empire is very different than the old empires of Europe.
The old empires of Europe were religious.
Think about the Holy Roman Empire.
Or the Roman Empire before that.
The actual Roman Empire.
Now, we've got secular empire.
So, the EU is not the representative of Western Christendom.
It's the representative of secular liberalism.
And so, it just looks very, very different than the old empires.
And the question we have now is, is there a future for that?
Is there a future for secular, globalist, modernist, liberal empire?
I don't think there is.
empire.
I don't think there is.
I think Brexit was one of the first shots against that.
People don't like being told what to do by a bunch of secular bureaucrats in Brussels.
And then I think this Wuhan virus could be the final nail in the coffin.
We're now seeing a return to the nation state.
And the reason for that is Yoram Hazani wrote a great book about this called The Virtue of Nationalism, which is the nation state kind of uniquely in history manages to balance freedom and order.
So, empire is really good at order, right?
The Roman Empire kept the order, kept the peace.
But it's not great on freedom, because in order to affect that order, you have to trample on people's liberties, to use our terms for it.
Now, on the other end, you get freedom.
Freedom, you know, say, very small republics or individual communities or individual states are really good at freedom, but they're not really good at order.
And so, if you don't have order, eventually you're going to lose that freedom too.
The nation-state is a kind of unique thing between, say, the city-state or very small territories and empire where you can balance freedom and order.
And that's why I think it's coming back into fashion, and I think that's probably a very good thing.
From Paula.
To end the toilet paper shortage, should we finally put the New York Times to good use?
Thanks.
I would never degrade my body by touching it with the New York Times.
Okay?
I simply cannot do that.
Sorry.
Not going to happen.
Next question from Jeffrey.
Hi, Michael.
I always hear a lot of people on the left claiming unemployment is only low because people have to work two jobs because their wages are so low.
Do you have any insight?
Yeah.
People just don't know how unemployment works, I guess.
AOC, I think, made that point a year or two ago.
She said, yeah, well, the only reason the unemployment rate is low is because people have two jobs.
If you have one job, you will be counted as employed.
Having two jobs doesn't I don't think Bernie will run as an independent.
Bernie is already winding down his campaign.
He's apparently turned off online ads.
That's not confirmed, but there are reports about that.
He was asked about his campaign the other day, and he snapped at a reporter and said, I'm trying to deal with an effing global crisis, okay?
I don't have time for these questions.
So he's a little ornery about that.
He went back to Vermont, allegedly, to reassess the campaign.
So it looks like he's winding it down.
I don't think he's going to run again.
And also, look, he rolled over last time.
For all of Bernie's, I'm a hard-charging fighter.
He rolled over in 2016 when they stole the election from him, and he endorsed Hillary, so he'll probably do that again.
Bernie's career is marked by yelling and screaming and saying that you're different than everybody and we need a radical change, and then ultimately not really doing anything.
I don't think Bernie really wants to do anything.
Frankly, I don't think he would want to be president.
He doesn't want responsibility.
He's never had responsibility in his life.
The guy didn't get a job until he was practically 40.
He got evicted from his apartment when he was a young man in Burlington.
Got evicted with his son because he didn't want to have to get a job and pay his bills.
So, yeah, I don't think he even really seriously wants to be the leader of the free world.
He's a revolutionary yelling at people from the outside, but when it comes down to it, he'll roll over.
From Kelly.
Do you think this quarantine, people staying home, cooking for themselves, schooling their children, will bring some people back to a family-centered life?
Or will we go back to our modern ways as soon as the gates are opened again?
You've been my constant companion this year and a comfort in troubled times.
Thank God for you.
That's very kind.
Thank you.
Thanks for tuning in.
I would like to think that this will bring people back to traditional ways, but I don't think three days of sitting at home and ordering takeout is going to do that, unfortunately.
I don't think that this bizarre quarantine experience is going to do that.
I think it's much more akin to the lights going out during a snowstorm, which, when the lights go out during a snowstorm, it doesn't bring people back to traditional family values.
Part of the reason for that, too, is that In some ways, the lights going out has a better chance of bringing you back to a traditional family values because the power goes out.
So you can't watch TV. You can't just be on your phone.
You can't just be sitting alone in your room on Instagram.
You've got to be with people, talking to people, candle lights on.
Maybe you read a book.
Maybe you play a board game.
Maybe you just hang out.
In this case, we're stuck at home, but we're probably just as socially isolated as ever.
Maybe we're more socially isolated.
Part of that is, too, most people don't live with their families, at least young professionals.
They live truly alone.
So if anything, I think it's going to isolate people more.
Sorry to leave you on a down note there, but if we want to restore family values in America, it's going to be a little tougher than that.
From Jason, can Trump sign an executive order mandating that Mike Bloomberg must send every American $1 million?
Wow, that's an amazing number.
And it's amazing because it's true.
I guess he can, man.
You know, if we all lived in MSNBC world, then absolutely Trump could sign that executive order.
And, look, frankly, in America today, probably he could sign the executive order because we're totally fine confiscating wealth from anybody.
I mean, that's pretty much the Democratic Party platform.
But in order to make the math work, you know, we'd have to be living in MSNBC land in the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
From Paxton.
Hey, Michael, I believe you have mentioned before that you had an atheist phase in college but later converted back to Christianity.
What argument or change was the tipping point that caused you to go back to God?
The ontological argument.
Simple answer.
It was a much more involved process than that.
And it's funny now because the ontological argument is not even the best argument for God.
But it was the one that got me.
I think it's a sort of whimsical argument.
It's a very charming argument.
And even Bertrand Russell, a great logician and a very famous atheist, infamous atheist, couldn't find the logical flaw in it.
So that one got me.
The ontological argument is very simple.
It goes something like this.
God is the maximally great being.
He's got all the great-making characteristics, none of the corrupting ones.
It's not impossible that God exists.
And it's better to exist than not to exist.
So if God has all the great-making characteristics, then God must exist.
It's so unsatisfying for people, and yet I found it very charming.
There are better versions of the ontological argument than that, particularly the modal ontological argument.
But anyway, that one got me, so it's worth checking out, I think.
And then C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, talking and noticing that all the smartest people, the very, very smartest people I knew, believed in God, believed in Christianity.
And that was kind of curious to me.
And then exploring the much deeper intellectual tradition.
And only after that, only after I had sort of assuaged my hubris and intellectual pride, only then did the spiritual component kick in.
And that's probably the more important one.
But it was a long process.
Like Hemingway says, things happen gradually, then suddenly.
From Anna.
Hi, Michael.
I was listening to the All Access Lockdown episode two.
And you and the God King talked about free will and the examples of an addict or a homosexual.
As a young person who's been addicted to nicotine for over 10 years, that level of addiction is still a choice.
I know that I could stop tomorrow.
It would be hard, but I could do it.
I have the choice or the free will to make that choice.
I think that every individual is born with certain temptations that challenge us more than those same temptations challenge others, from drugs to sexual acts and even homosexuality.
I absolutely believe that we have the choice to control or abstain from those temptations, and that's how and why we are held accountable by God.
Could you expand on your opinion of this?
Thanks.
Yes, my opinion is you sound like an addict.
You said, just that key phrase, you said, I've been addicted to nicotine for 10 years, but I could stop any time.
I know a lot of addicts who say they could stop any time, and the majority of them cannot stop at any time.
Maybe you can.
Maybe you're the exception.
The point, I think, still remains.
Addiction makes it very hard to exercise your will.
Now, Jeremy went to an extreme, and he said, I don't believe in free will.
Now, I don't agree with that.
I certainly do believe in free will.
I believe in free will more than most people do, probably.
However, part of the issue with our free will is that when we abuse our free will and we sin, or if you want to use a kind of secular analogy here, let's say we get into an addiction, then it becomes harder and harder to exercise our will because we become habituated to sin.
And It's why, this is the trouble with virtue, is we think of virtue as just this abstract thing.
We help an old lady cross the street.
Good, we're virtuous.
No, virtue is a habit.
You've got to do it more and more.
So when you freely choose to engage in virtue, when you freely choose to do a good thing, then it becomes easier to do the next good thing.
It becomes a habit, and then you live a virtuous life.
When you abuse your free will to do a bad thing, to sin, to do vice, then it becomes much easier to commit the next vice, to sin more, to go further down that rabbit hole.
It becomes much harder to pull yourself out.
You can throw off the responsibility and say, well, I'm an addict.
Well, I can't help myself.
But And that's true, but you've also freely made the choice to practice those vices.
So it's a complex relationship.
The way I would describe the relationship between free will and grace is like two people dancing a waltz.
It's a relationship that you can't separate.
And so, of course, we must have free will in order for anything that we know about ourselves and our society and our God to be correct.
We must have free will.
But The reality of temptation, the reality of sin, has to be real as well.
And grace, most importantly, has to be real as well.
How's that for a way to end the week?
Hope you all survive quarantine.
I'll still be around, but I'll certainly see you, if not before then, on Monday.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you then.
Just get all fat and sassy.
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You know, the Matt Wall Show, it's not just another show about politics.
I think there are enough of those already out there.
We talk about culture, because culture drives politics, and it drives everything else.
So my main focuses are life, family, faith.
Those are fundamental, and that's what this show is about.
