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Dec. 24, 2020 - The Michael Knowles Show
49:28
Ep. 671 - Hindsight Is 2020

President Trump pardons political allies, NPR names "WAP" the song of the year, and just 49% of Americans believe the coronavirus vaccine is safe. 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It is looking like a Merry Christmas already for some key Trump political allies.
Paul Manafort, who formerly ran the Trump 2016 campaign, Roger Stone, decades-long political advisor to Donald Trump, both found themselves in legal hot water because of their association.
They have received full pardons.
This is a wonderful mercy just days before Christmas, and the compassionate left could not be more furious.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
My favorite comment from yesterday from Henry Knox, who says, for COVID, we follow the science.
What science?
Political science.
That's true.
That was always true.
And actually, the comment is even more insightful than it would seem because the The left, when they invoke this term science, it is actually precisely because they've defined their politics as science, because they've defined their understanding as science.
This goes way back, about 150 years.
And they continue to do it today, and you see it most clearly with those little lab coat doctor dictators who are telling us how to run all of our lives outside of the constitutional system.
It's very bad.
Not making a lot of us feel too well this time of year.
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President Trump has pardoned these two key political allies.
I say good on him.
I think it's great.
Stone and Manafort.
Both of these guys actually have been sort of legendary in conservative political circles.
And I mean legendary in the full sense of that word.
Roger Stone has cultivated this image that he's the sorcerer of the dark political arts.
He's a dirty trickster.
And some of that really is...
A legend of Stone's own creation, I think.
You know, some of it is just a way to kind of gin up publicity.
But he's been involved in presidents going back to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and now most recently Donald Trump.
Paul Manafort, too.
Same thing.
They'd affirmed together back in the old days.
Roger Stone and Paul Manafort have no doubt been involved in shady business deals.
Every political operative has been involved in shady business deals, at least at that level.
That's just an occupational hazard or a requirement of the job.
But I think we all know the real reason that Stone and Manafort were prosecuted, right?
It's because they committed the one unforgivable crime.
They helped the bad orange man get elected.
They didn't get prosecuted because of They put money in this account overseas, or they worked on this particular business deal, or they talked to this witness.
That's not why they got prosecuted.
They got prosecuted because they worked for Trump.
They'd been involved in shady business deals for decade upon decade upon decade.
The only reason they came under fire.
Why?
Because of the abuses at the DOJ, the politicization of our criminal justice system, and they worked for the bad orange man.
So I'm glad.
I'm glad that Trump pardoned them.
When high-level Democratic operatives are prosecuted at the same time with the same ferocity that these Republican operatives are, who are just coincidentally the ones who worked for Trump, when that happens, when Tony Podesta goes to the can, then we can talk about how Manafort and Stone should be prosecuted.
Until then, I think this is a great idea.
There is a reason that we have the pardon power.
I know we talk about law and order on this show a lot.
You have law and order.
That's extraordinarily important to a civilization.
The pardon power exists for a reason, because you do want to have an avenue for mercy as well.
Now, Trump pardoned a lot of other people.
I haven't been thrilled with all of Trump's pardons going back years now.
One I'm not thrilled with here is the pardon of Charles Kushner, who is his son-in-law's father, who actually was prosecuted by Chris Christie, which shows you what a small world it is.
Charles Kushner First of all, his crimes were committed outside of this political realm.
You know, his prosecution was not selective for political reasons.
He pled guilty to a whole host of sort of financial and business charges.
He tried to tamper with witnesses by actually hiring a hooker to seduce his sister's husband.
And then he filmed it and he sent the tape to his sister.
It was pretty shady stuff, man.
pretty dark, dark stuff.
And he does not have the same defense that Stone and Manafort have that because they had some political courage to work for this guy, they were selectively prosecuted.
So I don't like that one so much.
I don't like some of the other pardons, but in terms of the two big ones that we're hearing about today, Stone and Manafort, great stuff.
AOC, the compassionate left winger, absolutely furious.
She tweets out...
A flow of pardons for the wealthy and the corrupt.
Yet Brandon Bernard was left to die when his own jurors and prosecutor begged for mercy.
Our carceral system, our prison system, laid bare for the world to see.
Brandon Bernard was the guy.
He's been on death row for decades and he was just executed a couple of weeks ago because Trump is now actually enforcing the law.
Brandon Bernard, the whole left, said, we need to let this guy off the hook.
Please, he's a black man.
It's racial injustice.
He's been there for so long.
It's more generalized injustice.
You've got to let him off the hook.
Brandon Bernard killed two youth pastors in cold blood after they had helped him.
He and a couple of his criminal friends took a ride from these youth pastors, held them at gunpoint, stuffed them in a trunk, robbed them, drove around for hours, tried to sell the woman's wedding ring.
They were pleading for mercy, reading them, reading these killers' scripture.
Another one of these guys shot them both in the head.
The woman actually didn't die, so Brandon Bernard poured gasoline all over the car and burned her alive and burned the body of the other guy.
That's the crime that AOC says he should have gotten off the hook.
And Stone and Manafort helped Trump win an election.
And that's the more egregious crime, according to AOC. Could you imagine what a pervert you have to be to think that?
Can you imagine what a completely upside-down understanding of justice you need to have to believe that?
That's AOC's understanding of justice.
And frankly, it's more widespread on the left.
AOC is in many ways just a loudspeaker for what people on the far left and increasingly what people more broadly on the left believe.
This year has clarified a lot You might say hindsight is 20-20.
Waka waka.
But it is.
It is.
This year, this past four years, have clarified a lot.
I think the most important takeaway from especially this year, but I suppose the whole Trump era, is that the left is not engaging in good faith.
The left has convinced us to play by standards and rules that they themselves flout.
And for some reason, we've gone along with it.
This is one key.
Sometimes you hear this very famous sort of wicked community organizer, Saul Alinsky, brought up.
He wrote Rules for Radicals.
He was a sort of mentor of Hillary Clinton and most other left-wing organizers.
And he said, the key is you've got to make your opponents play by their own rules.
And the left has not only done that, they've actually made us adopt certain rules that...
Don't really make a whole lot of sense that we previously wouldn't have adopted.
But they've made us forget about political reality, right?
Which is that politics does not just exist in this abstract plane where it's only principle and it's only these ideologies and five maxims written down to explain your whole view of the world.
Politics is circumstantial.
Politics requires that you adjust your strategy based on how your opponent is playing.
It's the same thing as war, right?
War is politics by other means.
Well, your opponent has a say in both politics and war.
And we've been trying to live up to the standard that we at least thought that the left believed in, even though they didn't live up to it.
Standards of fairness, standards of justice, standards of equality, standards of non-discrimination.
They don't.
They don't believe in that, okay?
And so we've got to adjust our strategy if we want any hope of righting this ship.
Not that we need to commit immoralities, not that we need to commit injustices, but we need to be clever.
You know, you want to be wise as a serpent, innocent as a dove.
In terms of these pardons, I would oppose them if the left were playing in good faith, if the left would also throw their guys into the can, but they won't do it.
They're trying to impose radical new standards on us, and we merely throw our hands up in the air.
Right?
Not only that, we need to go further.
We need to first of all start engaging in politics.
We also need to...
Actively defend our own standards.
I think this is, to me, the biggest takeaway of 2020 and 2016, which is you've got political correctness, wokeism, this kind of now scientific tyranny, technocratic tyranny, the Fauci types that you're not allowed to see your family and Christmas gets canceled and you got to wear the mask and you got to jump around on one leg.
And you've got that new standard put in.
And for decades now, the right-wing response has been, You do you.
Hey, you do you.
I can't question what you're doing.
I can't suggest it's better to do one thing or another.
Because the minute that I make a moral claim, then you can make a moral claim and they're both the same thing.
So the minute that I say don't go to drag queen story hour, maybe there shouldn't be drag queen story hour, you can tell me not to go to church.
The minute I tell you don't have drag shows with nine-year-old boys named Desmond where men are throwing dollar bills at his feet at a gay bar, which actually did happen.
The minute I tell you you can't do that, then you're going to tell me I can't go to a restaurant.
And I don't know where we got it in our head that that made any sense, but it doesn't.
We have discernment.
We have faculties of reason.
We have good judgment.
We can say, no, this thing is good, this thing is bad.
In fact, not only can we say that, we must say that.
That is what society must do.
Every society for all times has had standards.
We've had, even on the topic of free speech.
I strongly defend the First Amendment, our traditional American understanding of free speech.
There's still some things you're not supposed to say, some things you are.
And what the left has done is totally flip it, and we've got to re-engage.
If we want any hope of turning the ship around, we've got to re-engage.
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Ron DeSantis, down there in Florida, is, first of all, he's got a famously elderly population there.
Because once you reach a certain age in New York, I think it is a law you have to move to Florida.
A lot of people do this.
So he's got an older population in Florida.
They are at far greater risk for the coronavirus than any of the younger people or the essential workers or whatever, right?
This virus really does break down along age, mostly.
But yet we're being told by the left...
No, the way we've got to determine how to give out the vaccine is not based on age.
It's based on if you're black.
If you're black, you should get it.
If you're white, you shouldn't get it.
Seriously.
There were people talking about this in the New York Times.
If you're a member of Congress, a Democratic member of Congress, you should get the vaccine before people who are older.
Ayanna Pressley says that criminals should be prioritized in getting the vaccine.
I kid you not.
Inmates should be prioritized.
And then the Democrats broadly say that we should ship the vaccines to other countries before every American who needs one So let me just be very, very clear.
Our vaccines are going to be targeted for our elderly population.
We've been going through over the last week to do those tip of the sphere healthcare workers, as well as our long-term care residents and staff.
That mission continues.
There's been a lot of progress made on that.
But as we get into the general community, the vaccines are going to be targeted where the risk is the greatest, and that is in our elderly population.
We are not going to put young, healthy workers ahead of our elderly, vulnerable population.
This is a coherent argument.
And he's going to be opposed by people on the left who say, how dare you?
Older people are predominantly white.
And so therefore, they're disproportionately white.
And therefore, you're a white supremacist if you say that we should give the vaccine to elderly people first.
I don't care that elderly people are more at risk for the virus.
You're a white supremacist.
You're a racist.
We need to prioritize people based on historical injustices.
And they'll redefine that, by the way.
They'll write up whatever they want for what a historical injustice is.
Even on the matter of race, they'll say that some people aren't really a certain race.
Joe Biden did this.
He said, if you don't vote for me, then you ain't black.
They've done this to a lot of people.
Clarence Thomas, they say, is a sort of race trade or any conservative who doesn't happen to be white.
So even on the racial issue, they have their own fantastical ideology on it.
But Ron DeSantis is going to be called all those things.
You are going to be called all of those things.
If...
You want to win back the culture.
You have to not be intimidated by what the left is calling you.
Because it is a different standard.
Let's say it's the case that older people are disproportionately white.
It nevertheless is true that the older people who are at risk from the virus should get the vaccine first.
That's going to be one standard.
That's going to be one moral framework that's put out there.
The other one is we should just measure how dark a person's skin is and give them the vaccine based on that.
That's the standard the left is putting forward.
You've got to pick one.
You can't have both.
You have to pick one.
It's not enough to say, oh, I don't know.
I don't want to engage in this.
It'll work out.
We'll let the free market work it out, or we'll let the randomized distribution work it out, or we'll let the medical workers work it out.
No.
No, you need, in order for it to work, you need a framework.
You need a plan.
This is one of the things that drives me crazy with left-wing science, is they always say, look, I don't want to get political about this.
What we know is masks work.
Work at what?
We know the lockdowns work.
I don't know that they work at anything other than taking away our civil rights and destroying the economy.
But even if you're going to say this works, you need to say what it works for.
In order for something to work, it has to have a purpose and it has to achieve that purpose.
And it is up to us in politics to determine what those purposes are.
To understand what we are trying to achieve.
The left wants to skip that.
And you've got to be able to stand up and defend a framework, an understanding of what politics is for.
What do you think the best song of the year is?
What would you say?
I don't know.
I don't listen to a lot of pop music.
There was a great music video that came out just the other day that was really good.
I think it was a version of Please Come Home for Christmas.
I really liked it.
I love the way it sounded.
Maybe that, but if that's not the best song of the year, what do you think would be?
Well, according to NPR, taxpayer-funded national public radio, the greatest song of the year, you already know.
NPR, it's WAP. It's WAP. Wet genital structure.
I'm not going to say the name of the song.
WAP is the song of the year by Cardi B. NPR described this because they said that it mocks the insecure, the zealots, the moral grandstanders for having the audacity to push back.
It mocks people who are conservative.
It has feminist leanings.
Now, I've never met any moral grandstanders more grandstanding about their morality than the left, right?
The lie that they push is that they're not, you know, religious.
They're not creating a moral framework.
They're just doing what works.
It's all of us crazy Christians and Jews and Muslims.
We're the ones who have these kind of crazy Bible-thumping morality, right?
But the left doesn't do that.
They just have science.
No, they have their own religious understanding of the world, their own moral framework, and their own moral grandstanding.
And if WAP is the song of the year, then that is representing a very different moral framework than the one that we've traditionally had.
Do we have the chutzpah?
Do we have the spine to stand up and say, that one's wrong?
The old moral framework is right.
Do we?
I don't know.
Here's one way we could show that.
Defund NPR. Actually, there are two things.
The first thing that would be good to do is to take it over.
If I were president today, what I would do is I would use all of the power that I had at my disposal to replace the executives at National Public Radio.
And put in people who understand things and who understand that WAP is not the best song of the year.
And then I would totally transform National Public Radio and make it actively defend the old conservative standards.
And if I couldn't do that, if for whatever reason, corporate structure, the law, if I couldn't do that, you know what I would do?
I would defund it.
I would tear it down.
It is not enough for us to throw up our hands and say, oh, well, that, you know, look...
That's NPR for you.
You know, that's the New York Times.
That's the entire mainstream media.
That's big technology.
That's Hollywood.
That's the universities.
That's lower education.
That's the bureaucracy.
Well, that's the whole country.
That's the whole country.
And if you throw up your hands, you've given up the entire country.
We don't want it.
This sort of thing has an effect.
I think for far too long, conservatives have tried to pretend that the private realm has no bearing on the public realm.
The left understands this way better than we do.
When they said in the 70s the personal is the political, they understood that the way that people interact privately on the whole is going to affect how we interact publicly.
And that's true.
You've got NPR saying WAP is the song of the year.
This song that they say is wonderful for women, it's empowering.
It's not.
The song actually says that women are prostitutes.
The only way to convince a man to marry you is to play the role of a prostitute.
The only way to keep him engaged is to put on different wigs so that he can think, he can convince himself that he's actually cheating on you with another woman so that he remains aroused.
That is not empowering, ladies.
Cardi, Cardi, give me a call.
That is not empowering.
But that has effects in a broader culture.
You've got that on NPR. And then here on the New York Times, you've got an op-ed from Megan Nolan, who writes about the joys of frivolous sex.
Listen to this.
It says, In early lockdown, I spent most evenings in the front room of my mother's house, drunk, staring at a computer, reeling at the prospect of my body being deprived indefinitely of touch.
And we can make fun of this woman.
You know, this doesn't sound very pleasant.
I think a lot of people were doing that.
I think especially a lot of single people living in cities who moved to the big city to have all these kind of crazy, frivolous interactions.
They were looking.
They're saying, wait a second.
I don't get to go out anymore.
I don't get to go to the club.
I don't get to go to the bar.
I don't get to go to a restaurant.
I can't go on Tinder anymore.
Because of this virus.
is shutting down my understanding of the world.
Only weeks earlier, I was in New York for an extended visit, recently single, pleasantly crazy with the desire to date far and wide.
My romantic and sexual value seemed higher then and there than it had ever been anywhere else.
My value, like you're an object, like you're a commodity.
I thought it would suffer by comparison because everyone in New York is really hot, but it turned out my mildly manic exuberance and complete lack of interest in anything resembling commitment made up for my physical shortcomings, and I imagine my Irish accent didn't hurt either.
She's saying, you know, I was basically...
It's really fun to go out with.
And so guys would go out with her.
Big surprise.
I felt almost nauseated by the overwhelming knowledge of how many attractive people were out there.
Even when my dates were with guys I would never see again, I found something in them or the evening that I would remember happily, like the one who looked fondly down at me in a hotel room and exclaimed, I love New York, at the sight of my body.
And then came the shutdown.
And she goes on and complains and says, you know, in Holland...
One of the most completely degenerate leftist countries in the West.
In Holland, they said, yeah, there's a virus and it's a pandemic and we've got to shut down all the businesses.
But you should still be allowed to go have casual sex, right?
You have to.
There's no way we could say no.
That shows you priorities.
You shut down the churches, but these people are clamoring to have casual sex.
It shows you maybe.
I'm not even going to, you know, say that this woman...
I'm not going to beat up on this woman too much, you know.
I think a lot of people are in the same boat that she is.
However, if she were married, or at least in a committed relationship, she'd be happier, right?
Because she wouldn't be deprived indefinitely of touch.
She'd be happier for a lot of other reasons, too.
When you look at that, when you look at the screaming girls with the blue hair and, you know, some of the videos we played this week on the show and you read the joys of frivolous sex, you've got to ask yourself, do you want to be that?
Do you want to live like that?
Is that the kind of standard you want to have?
No, I don't think it's conducive to happiness or flourishing.
Well, then we need to have another standard and it's not enough to say you do you.
It never has been in any society.
You've got to orient the society toward good things, toward flourishing.
You have to have a coherent framework for your society.
And the left is denying even that whole concept, even as they impose their own on us.
We're going to have to leave this planet, I think.
We're going to have to colonize Mars or something like that if we want to set up a normal society again.
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There's this battle now between faith, religion, and science. and science.
And it's not a real battle because obviously the only reason science developed as it did was because of Christianity.
That is, Christianity gave birth to science.
The most famous scientists in history were Christians, Isaac Newton, devout Christian, spent decades of his life interpreting scripture.
George Lemaitre, the guy who discovered the Big Bang, was a Catholic priest.
Father George Lemaitre.
Mandel discovered genetics.
Catholic.
All these sorts of people.
However, there is now, in the public view, a debate between religion and science.
And what it really is is a debate between Christianity and encompassed within this kind of traditional religion is, you know, Judaism, Islam, the kind of theistic religions, and science with a capital S. And what that is, is the religion of leftism, secular liberalism, which has its own maxims, its own liturgies, its own rituals, its own completely irrational beliefs.
Nancy Pelosi, just the other day on the House floor, described this battle.
As much as the left wants to say, Joe Biden's a devout Catholic.
Oh, we love religion.
We support houses of worship.
They don't.
Leftism is a rival religion.
And they look upon people who are actually religious, Christian or otherwise, with total disdain.
Nancy Pelosi explained how, in her words, We didn't do it.
We couldn't pass legislation until now because the administration simply did not believe in testing, tracing, Treatment, wearing masks, sanitation, separation, and the rest, scientific approach.
It had come clear to us now that they believed in herd immunity, quackery, springing right from the Oval Office, and not denied sufficiently by some of the CDC and the rest.
So now we have a vaccine, and that gives us hope.
A vaccine that springs from science.
People say around here sometimes, I'm faith-oriented, so I don't believe in science.
And I said, well, you can do both.
Science is an answer to our prayers.
And our prayers have been answered with a vaccine.
And in this legislation, we had provision for it to be developed, purchased, and distributed.
In a way, again, that is fair and equitable and free.
Hold on a minute here.
I have to question a few things Nancy Pelosi said.
Does anybody really believe that someone has come up to Nancy Pelosi and said, I'm faith-oriented and therefore I don't believe in science?
I don't think anyone's ever said that.
Moreover, I don't know that anyone who is faith-oriented has ever uttered the phrase faith-oriented.
Ha!
It's like...
In that movie, the 40-year-old virgin, you know, Steve Carell's character, is explaining what breasts are like, but it's very clear he's never had any encounter.
I think that's what it's like with Nancy Pelosi and religious people.
She goes, yeah, she's like holding it at arm's length.
People who are, ugh, faith-oriented, is that a word you use?
Is that in the catechism?
I don't know.
People who are faith-oriented, no.
That's not what people say.
They say, I'm Christian, I'm Jewish, I'm Muslim.
They don't say.
Or they say, I'm leftist, I'm liberal.
They don't say faith-oriented.
And nobody has said, I'm religious, therefore I don't believe in science.
What they'll say is, I'm a Christian, and therefore I'm morally opposed to taking a vaccine that was developed using stem cells from aborted babies.
Well, you don't believe in science.
No, I believe in science.
I believe that was a baby.
Right?
I'm following the scientific method.
I'm inquiring as to what this physical object, how it came to be.
It came to be through aborted babies.
And there's something beyond the physical.
It's called the metaphysical.
And there's a moral order.
And I have moral obligations.
And we're not just meat puppets.
We also are souls.
And I just think it's wrong to do that, and so I'm not going to do it.
And I also believe in science, because I think there's a 99.7% chance I'll survive this virus.
And I also believe in science, and I know that there is such a thing as herd immunity, despite what Nancy Pelosi is saying.
She's calling herd immunity quackery.
Herd immunity has been a medical concept for ages and ages.
A well-accepted medical concept.
It's still described on the World Health Organization website, even though they keep trying to redefine it according to the new politically correct standards.
If you're faith-oriented, it's like, do you remember when Hillary Clinton described there was a massacre of Christians on Easter and she didn't refer to the Christians, she referred to the Easter worshipers?
This is a woman who has never thought seriously about Christianity ever once in her life.
She's probably thought seriously about some leftist ideology masquerading as Christianity, but no Christian refers to Easter worshipers.
Talk about believing the science.
Talk about believing the science.
We mentioned this a little bit at the end of the show yesterday.
49% of American adults believe that the new COVID vaccine will be safe and effective.
That's according to Rasmussen, which is a little right wing, but it is also a very accurate pollster.
An even lower number, 46%, believe that the new vaccine will be available in a way that is fair to everyone.
That is not the fault of the faith-oriented or the Easter worshipers.
That is the fault of a medical establishment that has totally failed us, that we do not have faith in anymore.
We should not have faith in science, generally speaking.
Even our own faculties of reason are a little bit faulty, so we should rely on them, but we should check.
We should double check, and we should really only have faith in God.
You know the thing, to quote our president.
49%.
Just as a purely descriptive matter, it means that the ruling elite have failed.
If they cannot convince...
The majority of Americans to believe that this vaccine is safe, then they have failed.
They haven't done their job.
You see this in some of the other experts.
Dr.
Scarf is retiring.
You know, Dr.
Birx was sort of, she was the Ethel to Dr.
Fauci's Lucy.
She was the Robin to Dr.
Fauci's Batman.
But Dr.
Scarf got caught because she said, you got to cancel Thanksgiving.
Don't see your family.
Don't go over.
Don't have a good time.
And then she got caught seeing her family.
And she defended it by saying, oh, it wasn't Thanksgiving.
We all had dinner up at my beach house, you know, the next day.
It was the day after Thanksgiving.
Apparently the virus gave everyone a free pass the day after Thanksgiving.
No, I don't think so.
Then her excuse was, I have to go winterize my home.
Okay, what does winterize my home mean?
It means you've got to make your house ready for winter, you know, so the pipes don't freeze and all that.
Right.
Most people don't have multiple homes.
They've got to go winterize.
And that's not a good excuse when you're telling millions and millions of Americans that they can't see their families, they can't celebrate Thanksgiving.
What does Dr.
Scarf say?
She says, it's been a very difficult time.
It's been tough on my family.
My family's tried to be supportive, but they don't want to do this.
My parents had been isolated for 10 months.
They've been deeply depressed.
And so I wanted to go see them.
Right.
It's true for everybody.
They don't need to be deeply depressed.
We don't need to be so deeply depressed.
Bad things happen.
I understand we're all going to deal with suffering.
We don't need to make this harder on ourselves.
And our political elites have made this harder on ourselves and the gullible liberals who have gone along with it and have made it harder on themselves and the rest of us have been coerced into going along with it.
You don't need to do that.
Politics is bigger than that.
One thing to look forward to in 2021, one thing we've certainly learned from Trump, we can take that politics back.
We actually can exert the power that the people give us every now and again.
The politicians we elect can exert the power that we give to them at the ballot box.
Got it.
They have to have courage to do that.
That's in short supply, but we can do that.
We've seen what it's like to have a little bit of courage.
Let's get to the mailbag.
Question from Michael.
Dear Swarthy podcast host, my wife and I differ politically.
I am a staunch conservative.
She is a more classical liberal with some leftist positions.
For example, she likes the idea of critical race theory, but hates the idea of big government.
We typically have good civil debates.
The main issue that we disagree on is abortion.
I have pointed out that the low rates of rape and incest-related abortions, but she counters with the idea that a lot of these go unreported due to fear of backlash.
She has also pointed out that members of the military accidentally killing civilians in other countries go typically unpunished.
It seems like a non sequitur, but okay.
Ultimately, she says that as a man, it is not my place to tell a woman what to do with her body, but I say that it is not just the woman's body at stake.
What are your thoughts on this, most specifically about the two arguments I mentioned?
Your wife is just dead wrong, I'm sorry to say, and it's your responsibility as the head of the household to show her that.
First of all, if she considers herself a classical liberal, she really can't defend abortion.
The reason for this, and you know, I'm not a classical liberal, I'm a conservative, but if you're a classical liberal, especially in the American tradition, then politics to you boils down to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, right?
Or life, liberty, and the protection of property.
Well, you can't pursue happiness or have your property if you don't have liberty.
And you can't have liberty if you don't have life.
The right to life, according to classical liberalism, is not just one right among many.
It's not, you know, I have a right to go to the doctor or something.
If you think about positive rights, the way people are talking about it today.
And then I also have a right to life.
No, the right to life comes first.
And if you're talking about the negative rights of classical liberalism, you can't have a right to liberty without the right to life.
So, The abortion, I think she should change her position on abortion even from that.
As a matter of critical race theory, it's just poison to a body politic.
I don't want to oversimplify it too much, but critical theory generally is the theory to criticize.
It goes back to Marx's famous description of his plan for the ruthless criticism of all that exists.
It's more involved in that.
It goes even kookier than that, but that's what it boils down to.
And so if you are keen on these kind of modern ideologies, what they all amount to is you've got to hate your country, your civilization, the way society is set up.
You've, yourself, you know, you've got to, your religion, you've just got to hate these things because they're, because what you're engaging in is a radical criticism of them.
So that's unfortunate.
In terms, I don't really know what she's talking about with the killing civilians.
I suppose that often is punished.
Even if it does go unpunished, it doesn't really matter.
And the rape and incest issue, I mean, it is simply the case that it's less than 1% of abortions.
And by the way, before Roe v.
Wade, we were told that thousands of women died every year from abortions.
That isn't true.
That the real number was double digits.
And it was statistically the same.
When you consider how many states had legal abortion and illegal abortion, the number of women who died from illegal abortions was statistically almost identical to the number of women who died from legal abortions.
So all those scientific arguments are bunk, but really you should get around the philosophical argument that it's indefensible to call yourself a defender of liberty and not defend life.
From Howard.
Hey Michael, love the show.
You're the reason I'm no longer in my libertarian phase.
Love that.
We all go through that phase.
I went through it for a long time, but glad to hear.
Good to be conservative, is what I say.
Just a question about the Catholic Church.
I was born and raised Catholic, but recently with the Pope's comments, who seems to be just a leftist in disguise, I find myself being disenfranchised with the Catholic Church.
Also, my local church hasn't been open in months, which has not helped.
I'm in New York.
Do you think the Catholic leaders will start to stand up against the lockdowns and start rejecting leftist sloganeering?
Or are we going down a path where the church just lines up with every leftist idea as it seems we are?
I'd like some insight as I'm quite concerned about the direction the church is going in.
Thanks.
Yeah, it's frustrating.
We've had bad popes before.
We've had plenty of bad bishops before and some bad priests too.
Sorry to hear you haven't gone to mass.
I know that some places are holding public mass.
So if you can find one, even if you've got a drive, I would recommend doing it.
And some are doing it kind of on the down low.
I've gone to some of those parishes too.
So I would recommend that.
And I'd recommend a Latin mass parish, the extraordinary form of the mass if you can.
In terms of the pope, you know, he said things that trouble lots of people.
Sure.
I always go back to Hilaire Belloc's line.
Hilaire Belloc was this hilariously surly Catholic writer about 100 years ago, a little more than that.
And Belloc said that, I am required as a Catholic to take it as a matter of faith that the Catholic Church is divine.
However, for unbelievers, a sign of its divinity would be that no other organization conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight, much less 2,000 years.
And I think this is true.
The church has been run poorly forever, almost forever.
And it's a lot of the people who have been entrusted with power in the church and influence have abused that power.
And yet, if you're a Catholic, you have to believe that is the one true church and that's it.
And it's never gone away.
But we can go through very difficult periods and it is up to the laity to...
Exercise respect, but also courage, you know, and to stand up against things when they're not looking right.
From Frank.
Michael, thanks for your show.
I was wondering why and also how do you put up with all the good-natured ribbing that you were always getting from Clavin, Boring, and Shapiro, and perhaps, though I don't remember any instances, Walsh.
I applaud your magnanimity.
You know...
Suffering is sanctifying.
I take it all as an opportunity to become more saintly as I take these sorts of barbs and jibes.
And then it really, it kind of started with Ben.
You know, Ben started.
And that all started because I beat him in an election bet in 2016.
And then I sold more blank books than he sold real books.
So one way that I make myself feel better is I just go home every night and And I sort of stare at my framed check signed by one Mr.
Ben Shapiro.
And I just am filled with absolute joy.
The other point on this, though, which is more broad than the Daily Wire context, is...
Men do this to one another.
This is the way that men talk.
And I'm sure you know this as well.
But I'll never forget in college, you know, four or five guys living in the room.
Not just one bedroom, but it was kind of like a suite type thing.
And I don't know.
One of us brought a girl back to introduce her to the fellas.
And we're all sitting there.
And we were all just like, you stupid idiot.
You dumb, you fat, you lazy, whatever.
We're all just kind of going at each other.
And she looked at us.
She goes, oh my God, what?
Why are you all so mean to each other?
What do you mean mean?
We're buddies.
This is how guys talk.
How do you think guys talk?
And I know these days you're not allowed to do it.
If you're tough on a guy, if you go out there and say mean things, it's like bullying, you're not allowed to do it.
But I don't know.
I think we'd be a better society if we could all do that kind of thing a little bit more.
But, you know, who knows?
That's toxic masculinity, if you ask the left.
From Annie.
Science says influenza cases are down because we're doing so well masking and social distancing.
My governor, Kate Brown, says we need stricter lockdown measures and schools must stay closed because we're doing a terrible job masking and social distancing.
Aren't we supposed to listen to the science?
Also, why is no one talking about the fact that case spikes have occurred exactly as cold cases spike in every other year?
Thanks.
Yeah, look, there is no doubt, there is no question anymore that the coronavirus numbers are inflated.
We know that they are because county coroners and health officials have admitted that anyone who dies with COVID is counted as a death from COVID. So you've heard this in many, many instances.
People will be killed from a gunshot wound and they will be counted as a COVID death.
So we know for a fact that the cases are inflated.
We know for a fact there is a financial incentive for medical institutions to diagnose COVID illnesses because they get more funding for that.
So, yeah, there's no doubt about those sorts of things.
So whether or not the washing the hands and the masks are working, I tend to agree with Dr.
Fauci eight months ago because I believe the science.
I trust the science.
And as Dr.
Fauci said, the masks are basically an ornament.
The masks don't really do all that much.
Obviously, they haven't done that much.
The virus is still spreading like crazy and everyone's wearing the masks.
They can actually make it worse because you're touching your face and, you know, maybe they stop a droplet or two, but they're not going to stop the infection.
I generally agree with that.
And I think that Dr.
Fauci, who is half scientist, half politician, caved to political pressure.
But I tend to believe the first thing that he said, because that is common sense, and it seems to have been borne out by the data and the science.
In our dictatorship of doctors.
From Sarah.
Hey Michael, I'm curious what you feel the role of women in the church should be.
In 1 Corinthians and Titus, there are many passages in scripture explaining different expectations, roles, and even positions women are allowed to have in regard to the church.
Is this something that should continue today, or should we embrace a more open, and by more open I think you mean more liberal or more modernist, idea of church duties between men and women?
Thanks.
Yeah, I think that should continue to this day.
I'm a Catholic, so that's how we do it.
And there have been, unfortunately, some modernist infiltrations and abuses in the liturgy, not even just for the role of women, but just broadly.
But yes, men, priests are men.
Women should not be priests.
I know that the Anglican Church in the 70s decided to add priestesses to their religion, but the Catholic Church can't do it.
A lot of other Protestant denominations will not do it for that same reason.
This is not to say that women don't have a role in the church, or even that their role is less spiritually important or something like that.
Don't forget, I mean, this is something, when I hear people complain about the feminization of the church, Usually it's more my Protestant friends who say this.
I see what they're talking about.
You get all the wimpy music and all the sappy, saccharine, kind of ridiculous liturgical abuses.
And you say, okay, that's kind of feminine.
That's not masculine.
But likewise, let's not forget that the image that we have of the church is that Christ is the bridegroom and the church is the bride.
We are all the bride of Christ in the church.
That's a very feminine idea.
For especially Catholics and Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans to an extent, Mary plays a very important role.
The way that we pray the rosary, the way that we sort of try to view through Mary's eyes.
You wouldn't call that masculine, right?
You'd call that feminine.
But just as we talk about in modern gender theory, you don't want men to become women and women to become men.
They can't do that.
And so I think there are plenty of roles for women in the church.
They can be nuns, for instance.
I know that's now considered shocking that anyone would choose a religious life, but nuns, good place for women to be.
But they can't be priests.
And that's the way it is, because men and women are different.
And I think if you approach this matter, as I've heard even some Catholics say, well, why not?
We deserve to be priests.
I think you're approaching it from the wrong way.
You ought to approach it from a position of humility and...
Of duty and obligation.
What can I do?
How can I serve?
How can I best serve?
So it's not about grandiosity.
I once heard a homily where a priest said that, you know, sometimes people would want to, in a Catholic procession, you have the people carrying the cross up the aisle, and then it goes in order of importance all the way back to the priest or even the bishop or even the pope would be further back.
And that this priest said that sometimes these younger, you know, members in the church would try to go back to see more important where the priests and the bishops were.
And this priest said, those men should pray to have the humility to stand under the cross and pray that the blood of Christ drops on their heads so that they can understand humility.
And, you know, it's a very graphic way of putting it.
But I think that's how we should approach the church.
Not from a position of entitlement.
And feeling that we are owed something, but from the humble desire to serve.
From Aiden, Mr.
Knowles, my college just announced that for the spring semester, COVID testing will be mandatory every two weeks for faculty, staff, and students.
Masking and social distancing were required on pain of expulsion for the fall semester, even though there were no outbreaks on campus.
Now, they're taking it further by mandating medical testing.
I don't think I signed over my medical rights when I decided to attend a public university.
Would love to get your thoughts on this.
He who pays the piper calls the tune, my friend.
I think what's going on at your school is absolutely terrible.
I think it's not going to stop until we all fight back.
But he who pays the piper calls the tune.
The state runs your university.
The state's going to tell you what to do.
This is true, by the way, when people talk about free education, free college.
They want the government to pay for college.
What that amounts to is a government takeover of even the private universities, which, bad as they are, could get a whole lot worse in that scenario, which is why we all ought to pray.
We all ought to enjoy one another's company.
We all ought to ignore these stupid lockdown rules.
We all ought to have a very, very Merry Christmas, because even amid all of this madness and unfortunate turns of events in politics, which always happen, We have a lot to be grateful for.
We even have a lot to be grateful for in the struggle.
You know, the great saints of history have prayed to live in times such as these because there's such opportunity for sanctity.
Merry Christmas.
Happy New Year.
See you in January.
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