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Jan. 21, 2021 - The Michael Knowles Show

52:52

Ep. 683 - Democracy Without The People

Democrats celebrate the “triumph of democracy” at an inauguration that they prohibited the people from attending, Biden rolls back lots of Trump accomplishments, and the press couldn’t be happier. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Yesterday's inauguration was a triumph of democracy.
	Our democracy has never been more democratic, and we can all revel in democracy, democratizing democracy.
	If you don't believe me, you don't need to take my word for it.
	You can listen to the Mistress of Ceremonies, Amy Klobuchar, who began this big triumph with an absolute ode to democracy.
	Now it falls on all of us, not just the two leaders we are inaugurating today, to take up the torch of our democracy, not as a weapon of political arson, but as an instrument for good.
	We pledge today never to take our democracy for granted as we celebrate its remarkable strength.
	We celebrate its resilience, its grit.
	We celebrate the ordinary people doing extraordinary things for our nation.
	The doctors and nurses on the front line of this pandemic.
	The officers in the capital.
	A new generation never giving up hope for justice.
	And in the end, that is America, our democracy, a country of so much good.
	And today, on these capital steps and before this glorious field of flags, we rededicate ourselves to its cause.
	Thank you.
	There was just one aspect of the impeachment that made Amy Klobuchar and the rest of them, all of their exaltation of democracy, ring a little hollow.
	Namely, there weren't any people there.
	The people were not permitted to go to the inauguration.
	As they were celebrating all the frontline workers and the ordinary Americans, those ordinary Americans were outside.
	Because Washington, D.C. looked like Baghdad.
	Because there were giant fences and walls everywhere.
	And the people were replaced with little miniature flags all over the mall.
	So much for democracy.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is the Michael Knowles Show.
	My favorite comment yesterday was from Inspecting Gadgets, who was reflecting on the new curricula in schools.
	He says, it's reading, writing, and racism in public schools now.
	That's true.
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	Democracy triumphed yesterday at an event that the people were prohibited from attending.
	Amy Klobuchar opened this up and she was the MC for the day.
	She did basically as good a job as you could do as the MC.
	But if you were paying close attention and you'll notice that the cameras on the inauguration, they rarely showed that there weren't any people there, right?
	It was mostly just on the sort of podium, mostly with the people around Joe Biden, but mostly even on those first few rows where there were some scattered people in the audience.
	But it was unlike any inauguration we've ever seen because there were just a handful of people for the cameras.
	Everything else was empty.
	The people had been replaced with flags.
	And it wasn't just a choice of Amy Klobuchar to focus on this.
	Joe Biden himself made sure to talk about the importance of democracy.
	And it was such a bizarre juxtaposition of this word democracy without any people there.
	Not even Joe, who's as slick a politician as they've ever come.
	Not even he was able to sell it.
	This is America's day.
	This is democracy's day.
	A day of history and hope.
	Of renewal and resolve.
	Through a crucible for the ages, America has been tested anew, and America has risen to the challenge.
	Today, we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy.
	The people, the will of the people, has been heard, and the will of the people has been heeded.
	We've learned again that democracy is precious, Democracy is fragile.
	At this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.
	Democracy has prevailed.
	I don't think he could use the word democracy any more times while still reading grammatical sentences, right?
	He's packed in as much as possible.
	Makes me think the lady doth protest too much, all these Democrats going on about democracy.
	Does that look like democracy to you?
	Let me just ask you, compared to the Trump inauguration in 2016, lots and lots of people.
	I know there was some controversy over the crowd sizes, but I think we can all agree lots and lots of people there.
	Versus this inauguration, without any people, which one looks like democracy prevailed?
	If you really believe in the cause of democracy, why would you be so afraid of your own people that you would lock them out, that you would erect giant fences with barbed wire all around Washington, D.C.? It just doesn't ring true.
	You'll notice at the end there, Biden says, democracy prevailed.
	And some people think this is just a typical platitude, some empty Biden slogan.
	It actually gets to the left's view of democracy.
	You'll hear them talk about democracy a lot.
	Well, they didn't seem to like democracy very much in 2016 when President Trump won.
	And then they changed a lot of the election integrity systems in 2020.
	We'll just leave it right there.
	Democracy prevails according to the left when they win and democracy fails according to the left when they lose.
	It's only ever democracy when they win.
	When it's not, they would say, no, it's suppression.
	It's voter intimidation.
	It's something went horribly, horribly wrong.
	And there's actually something to what they're saying.
	I think it's important to recognize that's their view of democracy.
	So if they lose, Al Gore loses, well, then that wasn't democracy.
	Or Hillary Clinton loses, well, that wasn't democracy.
	It's only when they win is it democracy.
	But So prevails, you know, is a complex word.
	Is it saying democracy did what democracies do?
	You know, it acted like a democracy?
	Or are they saying democracies gave us a good government?
	democracy showed how great democracy is.
	And it's a sort of subtle distinction, but we all actually look at democracy in the latter sense of that word, right?
	First of all, we're not a pure democracy in this country.
	We're not a direct democracy.
	We're a Republican government, which is also called a democracy, but we have all of these different systems in place to give us our government.
	The electoral college is a great example of this.
	You can win the majority of voters nationwide and still lose the presidency because we have this kind of intricate system of government.
	There's nothing wonderful about democracy in and of itself, right?
	If you've got a vicious people who have absolutely no virtue, who elect horrible, terrible leaders who trample on everyone's rights, well, that's not a win for democracy.
	I mean, democracy is acting as it should.
	As we would expect it to, but it's still giving us bad governments.
	There's nothing great in and of itself.
	And so when Biden's saying democracy prevails, I think what he's also saying is this is how democracy is supposed to work.
	And in all fairness, I feel the same way.
	When these awful leftists win, I think, gosh, our democracy is not functioning as it should.
	If we still had a virtuous people, you know, if we still...
	And I know there's all this lamentation all the time about it used to be better in the good old days.
	And a lot of that is just nostalgia, which is history after a few drinks, as my friend Father George Rutler says.
	But there actually is something to it.
	People used to know more about our country.
	People used to know more about our politics, about our history.
	They used to have a clearer view.
	They used to be better educated than they are today.
	They used to be more capable of liberty than they are today.
	You can just look at any sort of civic surveys that are given out.
	There was a famous one from ISI a dozen years ago which showed that graduates of very prestigious universities the graduating seniors knew less about civics than the incoming freshmen.
	They actually got more ignorant over their time in that educational environment.
	So that really does happen.
	And I feel the same way.
	When we're electing these awful people who want to trample on our national traditions and who want to upend our system of government I think that's bad.
	I think that's a failure of democracy.
	You've got to get to the people to have that prevail.
	But it was so ironic.
	I mean, I don't think I could ever have the gall to talk about the failures and triumphs of democracy to a crowd of nobody where the people were not permitted.
	It was a farce of an inauguration.
	Right down to even the swearing in.
	So Kamala Harris comes up and she does her swearing in.
	And Sonia Sotomayor is the justice who's going to administer the oath.
	And they make a big point, as they always do when they introduce Sotomayor, of talking about her racial identity and how she's a woman.
	This is how she herself sold her nomination.
	You remember Sonia Sotomayor, when they said, how are you qualified to be on the court?
	You know, her resume was a little thinner than some of the other judges on the court.
	And she said, well, I'm a wise Latina woman.
	You say, I don't...
	I don't see that as a particularly compelling qualification.
	I want to hear about your experience as a judge.
	I want to hear about your law school education.
	Talk about that.
	Don't talk about this identity politics.
	So she gets up there.
	She does the oath.
	And Sonia Sotomayor mispronounces Kamala Harris's name.
	Please raise your right hand and repeat after me.
	I, Kamala Davy Harris, do solemnly swear.
	I, Kamala Davy Harris, do solemnly swear.
	So embarrassing.
	Kamala took it in stride.
	And I know there's always been some debate over how her name is pronounced because it's an unusual name and she's sort of new to the national political scene relative to some of these other people on stage, Joe Biden or even Donald Trump.
	But Sotomayor did not even learn how to pronounce her name.
	I think this does reflect on both of these people.
	You know, Sotomayor, she doesn't have a reputation as the sharpest bulb on the court, okay?
	This was true at the time of her nomination.
	People said, you know, she's no Elena Kagan.
	She's no Clarence Thomas.
	She's no Antonin Scalia.
	Are you sure?
	You know, and the left seemed to play identity politics a little bit as she herself did.
	But then Kamala Harris, too.
	She's so...
	Irrelevant in her own person.
	Remember, she was what?
	The first or one of the first candidates out of the Democratic presidential primary.
	People didn't like her.
	She kind of got in through the back door into this administration.
	It's not like she was the second to last person standing during the presidential primary.
	but they, they've sold her and she sells herself on identity politics.
	Whenever they say, what's your view of politics?
	You've seen all the interviews.
	We played them on the show before.
	What's your view of politics?
	What's your ideology?
	What's your philosophy?
	She goes, I'm the daughter of immigrants.
	I was raised.
	And she talks about all the identity politics stuff.
	And so, yep, even the Supreme Court justice administering the oath doesn't remember her name because she, she is presenting herself as a stand-in, which, which does a disservice to her, I think, and it does a disservice to our politics.
	But there was more farce that went on in this inauguration than all of that.
	I nearly fell asleep during it.
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	But the most farcical moment of the inauguration was the slam poetry portion.
	I have to tell you, I had very low expectations for this inauguration, and somehow...
	The reality was even lower because there was a slam poetry portion of this inauguration.
	The poet's name, gosh, I forget her name, Amanda something or other.
	She's the National Youth Poet Laureate.
	I didn't know we had one of those and we actually didn't have one before her.
	They kind of made up this post to give it to her.
	I will spare you the full poem, but just take a listen to the first minute or so.
	Mr.
	President, Dr.
	Biden, Madam Vice President, Mr.
	Emhoff, Americans and the world.
	One day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
	The loss we carry, a sea we must wade, we've braved the belly of the beast.
	We've learned that quiet isn't always peace, and the norms and notions of what just is isn't always just-is.
	And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.
	Somehow we do it.
	Somehow we've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken but simply unfinished.
	We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president.
	Only to find herself reciting for one.
	And yes, we are far from polished, far from pistine, but that doesn't mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
	It goes on and on and on and on.
	It went on for six and a half minutes.
	All these rhymes.
	When is justice?
	When just is is not justice.
	Harold Bloom, the famous literary critic, referred to slam poetry as the death of art.
	And I think he was being charitable, actually, in his description of it.
	Compare that.
	I don't want to fall into nostalgia.
	I don't want to say, oh, it was always better in the past, and now it's really, really bad, as though that were always true.
	No, sometimes the past was better than the present, sometimes the past was worse than the present.
	But, but...
	Things actually were a little bit better in the past.
	JFK's inauguration, he had Robert Frost, one of our nation's greatest poets, come and give the poem.
	And what's funny is the poem he had actually prepared for the inauguration blew off the stand.
	He couldn't read it that well and part of it flew away.
	So he ended up reading another poem of his.
	Take a listen to that poem.
	The land was ours before we were the land.
	She was our land more than a hundred years before we were her people.
	She was ours in Massachusetts and Virginia, but we were England, still colonial, possessing what we still were unpossessed by, possessed by what we now no more possess.
	Something we were withholding made us weak.
	Until we found out that it was ourselves we were withholding from our land of living and forthwith found salvation and surrender.
	Such as we were, we gave ourselves outright the deed of gifts with many deeds of war to the land vaguely realizing westward, but still unstoried, artless,
	unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become, has become, and for this occasion, let me change that to what she will become.
	That poem is a very good poem.
	I'm partial.
	I like Robert Frost a lot.
	This is a poem about America, about a traditional understanding of America.
	The land was ours before we were the lands.
	She was ours when we were England still.
	This is a view upholding.
	And it's not a perfect view.
	It's saying that deed of gift was many deeds of war.
	It's not saying this is just this wonderful la-la candy land and we've never had any problems in America.
	But it's taking the side of America and it's taking the side of good art.
	It's actually a well crafted poem.
	The same cannot be said of that ridiculous slam poetry that happened at Biden's inauguration.
	But it's because this has become a farce.
	Our view of our country is farcical.
	We hate our country.
	When the left describes the country, it's always about how terrible it is and bigoted and awful and all the terrible injustices we've committed around the world and I'm sorry and I'm sorry and I'm sorry.
	And when the left discusses art, when they perform art, there is no beauty to it.
	It's just ugly.
	It's ugly art.
	When the left extols the virtues of democracy, there aren't any people there.
	It's a farce.
	It was a farce of an inauguration.
	And then in comes President Joe Biden, who actually took the oath, I think it was 12 minutes before he was supposed to at noontime, which means that for 12 minutes yesterday we had two presidents.
	Very strange.
	It's sort of like having two popes, which we have at the moment, you know, the Pope Emeritus and then the Pope Francis.
	Joe Biden comes up there and describes, after talking about white supremacy and all the terrible evil people in America that he's been talking about for years and years and years, he talks about the need to unite.
	And I have to tell you, it was the scariest part of his whole speech.
	On this January day, my whole soul is in this situation.
	Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation.
	And I ask every American to join me in this cause.
	Uniting to fight the foes we face, anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness with unity.
	We can do great things, important things for without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.
	Now, some people are reading this as just typical Biden platitudes.
	Again, I'd like to look a little bit deeper.
	People took time to write this speech.
	Joe Biden certainly didn't write this speech.
	Because Joe Biden doesn't write any speeches.
	Usually Neil Kinnick over in Ireland will write the speeches and Joe Biden will read them.
	Caused him a little trouble back in the day.
	Joe Biden is reading a speech that people took real time to parse every word.
	He says, without unity, there can be no peace.
	My friend Alan Estrin pointed out to me yesterday.
	That can sound a little bit ominous, can't it?
	You remember during the BLM riots when the left was burning down America...
	Prominent left-wingers egged it on.
	They encouraged it.
	Kamala Harris said, this won't stop, and this better not stop, and it better not stop until the election, maybe even after the election.
	You remember Kamala Harris bailed out the rioters, the people who became violent.
	Biden's staffers, Biden himself didn't bail out the rioters, but Biden's staffers were promoting that same fundraiser to bail out the rioters.
	And he's saying We need unity, all you neo-Nazis, all you white supremacists.
	We need unity, all you 70 million evil, deplorable, terrible, bitter, clinging, Bible-thumping Americans.
	We need unity.
	And without unity, there can be no peace.
	Well, is that saying that the evil, rotten right-wingers are not going to bring peace?
	Or is it saying, shape up, fellas, or we are not going to give you peace?
	Well, who's committed more political violence in the last year, the last several years?
	The left.
	I mean, it's not even close.
	I know we keep focusing on the Capitol riot as though this were, you know, the single worst event in American history.
	Certainly, it was a pretty ugly event.
	But it wasn't even close to the BLM riots, which went on for months and destroyed many more lives.
	I mean, literally killed more people and destroyed many more businesses and many more livelihoods.
	and it wasn't anything compared to the political violence we've seen from Maxine Waters or Hillary Clinton or people who say, get up in people's faces.
	Cory Booker said, get up in the faces of some congressman.
	Not good.
	You know, when I think about all of this, when I listen to Joe Biden's sort of ominous speech, when I listen to the farcical kind of poetry that was read, especially when I listened to that poem, I thought of an Ezra Pound poem, which is, the thought of what especially when I listened to that poem, I thought of an Ezra Pound poem, which is, the thought of what America could be What Well, you can get the classics through great courses.
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	The main aspect of this inauguration that struck out to me, it was so short.
	It was an hour and change.
	It was like an hour and 15 minutes maybe.
	You'd think they would have wanted to go on longer and longer.
	Obviously Joe Biden needed a nap.
	You know, I'm right now in the hospital still with my newborn child and I think Joe Biden probably takes more naps than the little baby Knowles does.
	So maybe that's part of it.
	That's why in the campaign trail he would never be out and about for very long.
	But also, I think they just felt they had to go out, they'd give a little show, but there were no people there.
	It was perfunctory.
	They had to go out and give a show, and yeah, unity in America, and yeah, America's great.
	Okay, we're going to go in now and start undoing the entire Trump administration, and we're going to start fundamentally transforming America yet again.
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	We'll be right back with a lot more.
	One aspect of the inauguration,
	more than the others, I think gave us a preview of the Biden administration, more than the others, I think gave us a preview of the Biden administration, which is after the hour, hour, 15 minute ceremony up on the podium with the speakers, Biden goes over to the Lincoln Memorial and they get a nice photo op of paying his homage to the Lincoln Memorial, our sort of pagan temple to civic religion, which is, I'm not even using that as a kind of a joke or a mockery.
	That is the purpose of the Lincoln Memorial is to be a temple to the American civic religion.
	And that's why Lincoln's sitting there like Zeus and it's a Greco-Roman temple.
	So Biden goes in there, pays his respects, there's a cello playing.
	One aspect of it though, that you can't help but notice is, Joe Biden just issues a mandate that on federal lands, you have to wear a mask.
	Right?
	This is part of his big push.
	He wants everyone to wear masks all the time in America.
	And then after the masks, after 100 days, presumably he's going to say, okay, you can take your masks off.
	We beat the virus.
	It's all thanks to me.
	Not thanks to Trump, by the way.
	Who handled the virus marvelously, got a vaccine out in six months, really did a great job and did much better than the governors.
	No, Biden's going to take credit.
	However, on federal land, at the Lincoln Memorial, Joe Biden not wearing a mask.
	That is going to be...
	The hallmark, I think, of the Biden administration is there are going to be rules and mandates for thee, but not for me.
	There are going to be rules that all the deplorable bitter clingers have to play by, but that the elites will not play by.
	You know, Angelo Cotevilla, who's a Claremont Institute fellow, really brilliant writer, he had a piece in The American Greatness where he described the kind of cycle of regimes and how America more and more resembles an oligarchy.
	The idea of the cycle of regimes is that you have democracy and then it can decay into oligarchy and then oligarchy can transform into monarchy and then monarchy can be overturned and turned into democracy and this is kind of a classical cycle of regimes.
	Looking up at the people extolling the virtues of democracy yesterday...
	It looks a lot like an oligarchy.
	It does.
	You see all the same familiar faces, and you don't see very many representatives of the people there.
	And you see all these elites playing by one set of rules that they then foist another set of rules on the people.
	We're going to get a whole lot more of that.
	And nobody, nobody is going to hold Biden and company to account.
	We had our first press briefing yesterday.
	You remember what the press was like to Sarah Sanders or to Kayleigh McEnany or to Sean Spicer, for that matter.
	During the Trump administration, it was vile.
	I mean, it was really unseemly, even by the standards of the press.
	Yesterday, it was a little bit of a different tone with all that's going on.
	The press decides to ask Jen Psaki.
	I don't know how to pronounce her name.
	It's P-S-A-K-I. Is it Psaki?
	I'll say the P is silent.
	Jen Psaki.
	They ask her the most important questions on everybody's mind.
	And, you know, she thinks they're really brilliant.
	She gives them a very serious answer.
	On a lighter note, will he keep Donald Trump's Air Force One color scheme changed?
	This is such a good question.
	I have not had the opportunity to dig into that today, given the number of executive actions, orders, the inauguration, a few things happening.
	I will venture to get you an answer on that, and maybe we can talk about it in here tomorrow.
	That is such a good question.
	Because we're all wondering, now that Joe Biden is issuing all these executive orders, he ditches his inauguration as quickly as he possibly can so he can get back to the business of governing and implementing his...
	I'm not even saying Joe Biden himself is some personal radical leftist.
	He's just nothing.
	He's a vessel.
	He's a vessel for the liberal establishment.
	And the entire liberal establishment has gone radically quite left.
	So he's just there signing, signing, signing executive orders.
	And yeah, so Jen hasn't been able to get that answer.
	But, you know, it's a great question.
	We'll get to it tomorrow.
	Okay, guys.
	Now we're all going to head over and have drinks, right?
	Because we're all really good friends because we're all exactly the same.
	Because the press and the press secretary and the administration and big technology and every...
	It's all part of the same thing.
	It's all part of the liberal establishment.
	There was one almost kind of tough question.
	Not really a tough question, but they pushed a little bit.
	They said, you know, Joe Biden...
	Is making it priority number one to undo most of President Trump's pro-life accomplishments.
	Why?
	Why is that?
	Isn't that kind of weird for that to be priority number one?
	Can you please comment, Jen Psaki, on Joe Biden's bizarre obsession with killing all these babies?
	Two big concerns for pro-life Americans.
	The Hyde Amendment, which of course...
	It keeps taxpayer dollars, as you know, from paying for abortions, Medicaid abortions, and the Mexico City policy, which under the previous administration expanded, to keep tax dollars from overseas paying for abortions.
	So what is President Biden planning on doing on those two items right now?
	Well, I think we'll have more to say on the Mexico City policy in the coming days, but I will just take the opportunity to Remind all of you that he is a devout Catholic and somebody who attends church regularly.
	He started his day attending church with his family this morning, but I don't have anything more for you on that.
	What an answer.
	And Joe Biden leaned into this a little bit during his inauguration.
	He invoked St.
	Augustine.
	Outrageously, he invoked St.
	Augustine.
	And so he's been talking about how he's a wonderful, devout Catholic.
	Joe Biden, it goes without saying, is not a devout Catholic.
	Joe Biden is in a state of grave mortal sin because he is in public office and he is supporting abortion.
	and more than that, he is forcing taxpayers, he's trying to force taxpayers to fund abortion and to subsidize abortion.
	This is a grave mortal sin.
	This is why he was denied the Eucharist at a mass, I believe, in North Carolina, though other more politicized members of the episcopacy have let him get away with it.
	Joe Biden is not only committing that sin, he's committing the sin of scandal because you've got this very high profile Catholic who is violating a very important teaching of the church.
	Now, you might say, Michael, look, there are some people who are conservative Catholics who violate other teachings of the church.
	And usually they leave it kind of vague like that, but they'll try to say, well, you know, they don't give enough money to the poor.
	You say, well, actually, conservatives donate more money to charity than liberals do.
	Say, well, no, but their public policy, it's not totally in line with Catholic social teaching.
	Well, often it's pretty close, but putting all of that aside, We must remember, life is not just one issue among many.
	It's not like abortion and tax policy are on the same level.
	Life is the fundamental right, without which you can't have any of the other rights.
	And it is a grave, grave sin for Joe Biden to be supporting these policies and for him to be doing so publicly and for him to be blasphemously invoking his religion to do so.
	That is a grave, grave, grave mortal sin.
	And that's all we're going to hear from Jen Psaki.
	You notice she didn't answer the question.
	She didn't say, hey, you know, pro-life Americans are worried that your lunatic boss is trying to make all of them fund abortions overseas.
	And not only in America, but overseas too.
	And she says, well, he's a devout Catholic.
	He goes to church.
	Does he now?
	Okay.
	I hope he's not receiving the Eucharist at church because that's a sin too.
	If you're in the state that Joe Biden is very obviously in, there's not going to be any pushback.
	That's just, we are going to be gaslit and gaslit and gaslit.
	And it is very sad on this issue of the abortion policies and other policies.
	Joe Biden is rolling back a great many of President Trump's accomplishments.
	He's doing that because many of those accomplishments were made through executive order.
	And so Joe Biden comes in with his executive orders and he undoes them.
	I am not as opposed to executive orders as many of my conservative friends, as many people on the right.
	You'll hear the right complaining about executive orders all the time.
	I think there's actually a good argument for executive orders.
	Namely, the legislature doesn't want to legislate, ever.
	Even when they've got unified government, they don't want to legislate because they don't want to go on the record because they're cowards.
	So, obviously there's an incentive there for the, if the executive branch wants to do anything, they've got to do it through EOs.
	But also, also, our government is not run in the way that the Constitution describes.
	It has grown and changed over time, specifically during the 20th century, such that now it's not really the legislature that makes the laws, it's the administrative state, it's the federal bureaucracy, is making most of the laws that actually affect our lives.
	And so, If it's the executive agencies that are actually passing the laws, then the most direct way to influence the laws is through executive orders.
	That's the only way you even have a chance of doing it.
	And the trouble with this is, when the left writes an executive order, it goes into effect, because the bureaucracy is left-wing.
	When a conservative writes an executive order, it doesn't go into effect.
	Because the bureaucracy is left-wing.
	So you're already at a disadvantage.
	And it does remind you, if you can get some legislative achievements, that can be very, very helpful.
	Because if you govern through executive order, then the minute you've got a new administration, the executive orders will be overturned.
	The Biden administration, according to NBC, is going to roll back.
	Title 10 funding for Planned Parenthood.
	So Donald Trump went in and he did defund Planned Parenthood partially.
	I think it was only a fraction of Planned Parenthood's funding, but it was still pretty good.
	He took away federal funding through Title 10.
	Biden's going to bring that back.
	Biden is going to expand taxpayer-funded abortion abroad.
	He's going to eliminate protections for religious employers who don't want to pay for employees' contraceptives and abortifacient drugs.
	And there's going to be more debate over what constitutes an abortion drug.
	The left is going to say that Plan B is not an abortion drug because it doesn't always result in abortion.
	Sometimes it can result in abortion.
	They're going to say that it's not abortion because it stops the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus and And conservatives are going to say, rightly, that is abortion because life begins at conception, not at implantation.
	Biden is going to roll back protections for the Hyde Amendment, right?
	Which protects Americans from directly paying for abortion, even though money is fungible, so we already do pay for abortion.
	All of this to say...
	I hope that the quote-unquote evangelicals for Biden are happy.
	There are some prominent people in this country who used to call themselves conservatives and they still sort of pretend to call themselves conservative, who say that they're devout Christians, who supported Joe Biden last cycle.
	And now this is on their hands.
	They are guilty of enabling this.
	Life is not one issue among many.
	Life is the paramount right from which the other rights flow.
	And they bear some responsibility for this.
	You know, we're told Joe Biden's a moderate.
	He's a totally moderate guy.
	This bloodthirsty lunatic went for abortion right away, day one.
	The inauguration was barely over.
	And he starts going for this stuff.
	A hint of the radicalism we're going to see.
	It's very unfortunate to see so many Trump accomplishments rolled back.
	You know, the other day during President Trump's farewell speech, which I thought was a very good speech, he described his legacy and it gave me a little happiness, a little bit of hope when he described it.
	As a result of our bold diplomacy and principled realism, we achieved a series of historic peace deals in the Middle East.
	Nobody believed it could happen.
	The Abraham Accords opened the doors to a future of peace and harmony, not violence and bloodshed.
	It is the dawn of a new Middle East, and we are bringing our soldiers home.
	I am especially proud to be the first president in decades who has started no new wars.
	Above all, we have reasserted the sacred idea that in America, the government answers to the people.
	Our guiding light, our North Star, our unwavering conviction has been that we are here to serve the noble, everyday citizens of America.
	Our allegiance is not to the special interests, corporations, or global entities.
	It's to our children, our citizens, and to our nation itself.
	I love that.
	I loved every part of that.
	That was a wonderful description.
	And unfortunately, a lot of it's going to be undone.
	I hope some of the peace deals last, but the trouble is that Biden is very likely going to reenter the awful Iran deal, and that's probably going to destabilize the region further.
	Joe Biden utterly, utterly beholden to the foreign policy establishment, which is probably going to want to be more provocative in the Middle East.
	President Trump, one of his great accomplishments, was sort of routing the foreign policy establishment.
	That probably gone.
	Abortion policy obviously gone.
	Many, many, many of the executive orders are going to be gone.
	A lot of that is about to be undone.
	Even down to the White House website.
	I was looking yesterday.
	Online, sort of sitting in the hospital room with my newborn child.
	Let's see.
	Is it all crazy already?
	On the White House website, they've already gotten rid of the 1776 Commission, which was an answer to the 1619 Project.
	The 1619 Project says America's evil and awful and terrible.
	Trump comes in and says, we need a 1776 Commission.
	Biden already got rid of that.
	He said, we need to keep people thinking America's rotten and terrible.
	First thing.
	Second thing on the White House website, you now have to insert your pronouns when you contact the White House.
	You can say she, her, he, him, they, them, other.
	You can say that you prefer not to share your pronouns.
	Still a choice on the list.
	They don't, unfortunately, have she, him.
	What if in the nominative, I want to be a woman, but in the accusative, I want to be a man?
	They don't permit that.
	Hopefully, equality will prevail and we'll get more pronouns.
	When we're all told Biden's a moderate, he's going to unify the country, Joe Biden on the White House website on day one is buying into the most radical Sexual ideology we've ever seen.
	Gender ideology.
	Buckle up, folks.
	And I hope you have nothing but scorn for the fake conservatives who endorsed this guy.
	Beyond the website, Joe Biden is showing you what his administration is going to look like through subtle things.
	You remember, you remember this.
	In the early days of the Trump administration, there was a report that went out that Donald Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King from the Oval Office.
	And this was evidence of his racism.
	First of all, I don't know.
	I like Martin Luther King, I guess, as much as the next guy.
	But, you know, there are a lot of great Americans.
	If one were to move the Martin Luther King bust from the Oval Office to some other room in the White House, I don't think that would be the crime of the century.
	And by the way, Trump didn't even move the bust of Martin Luther King.
	It was completely fake news.
	But these little things, how you rearrange the Oval Office, it can tell you actually a lot about the direction of the presidency.
	So President Trump had this portrait of Andrew Jackson hanging in the Oval Office.
	And this was seen to be significant because Jackson was something of a populist, right?
	He deferred to the people, not to the kind of crooked, established elite.
	It's not that elites always have to be crooked, but sometimes they are, and right now it certainly seems they are.
	So he had this picture of Jackson.
	Joe Biden got rid of that Jackson portrait.
	He replaced it with Benjamin Franklin.
	I suspect some of this has to do with the fact that Benjamin Franklin was the oldest founding father, and Joe Biden is about...
	500 years older than Benjamin Franklin.
	There are a lot of ways to read it.
	You know, you could read it one that way.
	I think the left could read this as evidence of their thesis that the parties switched.
	You know, the left will say this a lot.
	They'll say, you know, yeah, the Democrats used to be bad and they defended slavery and Jim Crow and all that stuff.
	But then the parties switched.
	One day, all the Democrats said, we're going to be Republicans now and you Republicans, you're going to be Democrats now.
	And it doesn't really make a lot of sense.
	But Andrew Jackson's the founder of the Democratic Party.
	So the idea that the Republican president would embrace him and the Democratic president would shun him Is some evidence that the parties switched?
	And my take on this is not to say it's just completely preposterous.
	It's preposterous to think that the parties switched.
	That just didn't happen.
	But it's not preposterous to say that parties have changed over time.
	Of course parties are going to change over time.
	And as different political circumstances change, they're going to focus more on one issue or another issue that might change their views on something.
	So sure, that happens.
	I think the deeper reading here, though, It's just to focus on the Democratic Party and show that the Democratic President in 2021 is shunning the founder of the Democratic Party for the same reason that he's shunning the 1776 Commission and supporting the 1619 Project.
	Because for the left, the past always has to be bad.
	You have to always kill your father.
	It's a patricidal sort of ideology.
	You always have to go back and kill your forefathers, the people who came before you, the people who gave you your country.
	You know, the conservative view of the country is...
	Yeah, our forefathers weren't perfect.
	We're not perfect either, right?
	It's a fallen world and we have a broken human nature.
	But we're so grateful to our forefathers for giving us this great inheritance of this wonderful country.
	And we're going to, you know, work to do our part to preserve it for our children.
	It would be so wonderful if we could do as great a job as they did.
	Thank you so much.
	We're standing on the shoulders of giants and some people think we're flying, but we know we're not.
	We know we're on the shoulders of giants.
	And for the left...
	They say, no, we're so much better.
	We in the present are so much better than them.
	They were evil.
	They were racist.
	They were bigoted.
	And we are pure as the freshly, newly driven snow.
	And they've got to destroy not only the forebears that they don't identify with, but even the founder of their own party.
	Notice, you know, the choice to replace him with Franklin is interesting.
	Also because Franklin was never president.
	Franklin was just this wonderful, eccentric American, brilliant figure who was an inventor and he was a founding father.
	But he never had to be really on the record as a president of the United States.
	There's no real record of national leadership that he has to answer for.
	It's a way of sort of evading that kind of historical responsibility.
	I think it tells you a lot.
	I don't think I'm, you know, reading too deeply into these things.
	All of, especially on day one, what the presidents start to do really, really matters.
	And all the signs we got from that farce of an inauguration are really, really bad.
	Now, even though we're told we're going to get unity and peace and it's wonderful and Joe's going to bring the temperature down, it seems like they're ramping the temperature up.
	They were ramping up censorship of conservatives even before the inauguration.
	Even while President Trump was still in office, now there are calls not just to censor the former president, Donald Trump, but there are calls to censor conservatives, generally.
	On CNN, you have a CNN guest coming on saying, enough is enough.
	We have got to kick these guys out of the public sphere.
	We have to turn down the capability of these conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences.
	There are people on YouTube, for example, that have a larger audience than daytime CNN. And they are extremely radical and pushing extremely radical views.
	And so it's up to the Facebooks and YouTubes in particular to think about whether or not they want to be effectively cable networks for disinformation.
	And then we're going to have to figure out the OANN and Newsmax problem.
	You know, these companies have freedom of speech, but I'm not sure we need Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and such to be bringing them into tens of millions of homes.
	This is, you know, allowing people to seek out information if they really want to, but not pushing it into their faces, I think is where we're going to have to go here.
	We're going to have to shut down conservative outlets.
	First of all, buddy, I don't know what this guy's name is, but say my name.
	If you're going to talk about me like that, say my name.
	If you're going to say, there are some people on YouTube who, you know, generally have a bigger audience than daytime CNN. Say my name, you coward.
	If you want to kick me off, you look me in the eye when you try to do it.
	But even beyond that, he's not even just saying, let's kick off the YouTube guys.
	He's saying, let's kick off people in OAN and Newsmax.
	OAN and Newsmax, two TV stations that I go on a fair bit, It's not like they're Channel 5, right?
	It's not like they're on your basic television, on network television.
	They're kind of higher up in the cable channels.
	You have to go there.
	You have to request this kind of stuff to see.
	And he's saying now, and it's too much.
	The way he's phrasing it is, we don't want to shove that kind of right-wing television in their face.
	It's not being shoved in their face.
	You have to go.
	You have to sign up for it.
	You got to go up to the channel, right?
	And what he's really saying is, no, we can't even give people the option.
	The YouTube.
	Look, YouTube is not just shoving it in your face.
	YouTube, you have to go.
	You subscribe to a channel.
	You search for it.
	Say no.
	People can't have that option.
	We need peace.
	We need unity.
	And if you don't have unity, you're not going to have peace.
	If you don't have people, you don't have a democracy, buddy.
	Lots of contradictions in this inauguration.
	Unfortunately, lots to dread from Joe Biden.
	If I weren't a conservative and I didn't have a deep abiding faith that this world is broken and a deep and abiding hope in the world here to come, I would not be feeling good after that inauguration.
	But hope springs eternal.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	See you tomorrow.
	See you tomorrow.
	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 Ben Davies.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
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	Supervising producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
	Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky.
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	Audio mixer, Mike Coromina.
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	The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2021.
	Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, President Biden gives his inaugural address and unleashes his early policy.
	So is it all about unity or is it about compliance?
	That's today on the Ben Shapiro Show.

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