Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

March 24, 2021 - The Michael Knowles Show

52:03

Ep. 727 - Gaslighting The People

A terrible shooting in Colorado raises bad faith debate, a breakfast company gaslights a man who found shrimp tails in his cereal, and a Democrat senator won’t vote for white nominees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	The crisis on our southern border elicits a lot of reactions, a lot of emotions, frustration, anger, compassion, all sorts of things.
	Or, if you are Kamala Harris, maniacal laughter.
	Do you have plans to visit the border?
	Um, not today.
	But I have before and I'm sure I will again.
	Yeah, visit the border?
	Ha ha ha!
	Isn't it so funny?
	Isn't it so hilarious?
	I don't know.
	To me, the establishment assault on our liberties, on our way of life, on the American nation itself, doesn't seem like a laughing matter.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is the Michael Knowles Show.
	Welcome back to the show.
	My favorite comment from yesterday is from A.I. Howard, who says, Guess what, Michael?
	Harry's lost a customer and you gained a subscriber.
	So interesting that you would say that.
	It seems like just another way of saying, get woke, go broke.
	I've gotten a lot of emails from you, so thank you for those of you who have CC'd me on emails to Harry's Razors, which just appears not to want your business if you are a conservative.
	They don't really want your business, but some of the emails that you have sent to Harry's and to us have been very funny, and we've seen, obviously, thousands and thousands of tweets on this point.
	Probably not a great idea for companies to insult their customers.
	Not a great idea at all.
	You know, I've got great memories of so many of those things.
	So many of the emails.
	I've got great memories that I want to preserve forever.
	And when I want to preserve memories, I head on over to Legacy Box.
	Legacy Box is a way for you to easily and affordably digitally preserve your past.
	The process is extremely easy from start to finish.
	First, you pack and send your physical media.
	Then their team digitizes everything by hand.
	Then you enjoy it.
	They use Premiere scanners and playback decks to ensure that each memory is mastered to the highest quality.
	Plus, they keep you up to date with regular email updates throughout the digitizing process.
	Legacy Box is the world's largest digitizer of home movies and photos and has helped over 850,000 families digitally preserve their past, including my family.
	You know, I unfortunately lost all the photos that I had had of a very beloved family member who had died.
	Fortunately, I then came in through another relative to some more photos, sent them off to Legacy Box.
	Now they are future-proof forever.
	Get started future-proofing your memories today so you can gather the family and begin the trip down memory lane.
	Go to LegacyBox.com slash Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S to get an incredible 40% off your first order.
	Buy today to take advantage of this exclusive offer.
	Send in when you're ready.
	Go to LegacyBox.com slash Knowles and save 40% while supplies last.
	The cackling is Kamala's tell.
	She's not a complex politician.
	She's actually a rather talented politician.
	She has made it up the food chain, up the political ladder in ways that some might consider to be a little bit unethical, but she really has done it.
	She was the first candidate that was booted out in the 2020 Democratic primary, but somehow she winds up being VP to an elderly, doesn't seem all that well president.
	As a purely political matter, she's done well for herself.
	But she shares this characteristic, this tick, actually, with Hillary Clinton, which is that when she gets nervous, she starts to laugh.
	You remember Hillary?
	They said, hey, Hillary, did you wipe your private email server that had all sorts of nefarious stuff on it?
	She goes, ha ha ha, what, wipe?
	Ha ha ha, like with a cloth?
	Ha ha ha.
	And it isn't particularly attractive when people do that sort of thing.
	When Kamala is laughing in this case, she is literally laughing at the reporter.
	She is laughing at the question, but more so she's laughing at us because the reporter asks a very fair question.
	Hey, the biggest issue by far that your administration is facing right now is this crisis that you have caused at the southern border that even Mexico says you've caused, that the illegal aliens themselves have said that you've caused.
	Are you going to go down and visit and gather some information?
	You clearly don't have enough information and try to figure out how to deal with it.
	And she laughs.
	She laughs because, of course, she's not going to do that.
	Why would she?
	It's a crisis for the migrants.
	It's a crisis for the American legal system.
	It's a crisis for the American people.
	But for the liberal establishment, this is exactly what they want.
	They want more and more illegal aliens to come into this country because they think that it will give them an electoral advantage and they don't think that the United States ought to have a right to national sovereignty.
	Jen Psaki was just asked about this, our favorite current press secretary, Jen Psaki.
	Peter Doocy, great reporter there, one of the few who's allowed into the briefing room, who's really tough, Jen Psaki was asked if the illegal aliens are being released, Without the COVID tests, often without a court date even to reemerge, what?
	Are they just being trusted with the honor system of immigration?
	She has no answer.
	So now that Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley are letting adult migrants go without even issuing notices to appear, is the immigration policy just becoming more of like the honor system?
	That is an inaccurate depiction of what's happening at the border.
	So there's no change in policy.
	The border remains closed.
	Families and single adults are being expelled under Title 42 and should not attempt to cross illegally.
	So if families are going to be deported and they're awaiting deportation, they don't need a court date and they don't need a notice to appear because it has already been determined that they will be sent back to their home countries.
	So hold on, hold on.
	What you're telling me now is that the Biden administration is being really, really tough on illegal immigration?
	Because what we've just been hearing for the past several days is that these illegal aliens are being released into the country without a court date and without any expectation that they're going to show up again and leave the country.
	We're seeing record numbers of people at the southern border now, and we're being told even by people on the left that that number is expected to swell even more.
	So you're telling me, just don't believe my lying eyes, don't believe the reports that we're getting from left-wing outlets even, don't believe the statements of Biden administration officials, because actually everything's totally hunky-dory and the illegal aliens are not getting in?
	Is that right?
	Peter Doocy presses the question.
	But if Secretary Mayorkas says the border is secure, the border is closed, how is that the case if these migrants are being processed on this side of the border and then put on a bus to points unknown on this side of the border?
	Well, again, there are limited cases where there are families, because they can't be held in Mexico, who are processed, tested, considered at the border.
	Most of them are sent back to their home countries.
	Those are very limited cases, and it's certainly not a depiction of the overarching policy.
	So, vague as that answer was, it's also not true.
	You had people like the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security who refused to say that people are being tested for the coronavirus 100% of the time when they come in.
	So that part just isn't true.
	Now you're saying, well, there are some limited cases where people are being, they make it to this side of the border, and they're being held in some facilities at record numbers way over capacity, and some limited cases where they're being shipped to other parts of the country in record numbers.
	Well, those limited cases don't seem very limited.
	I mean, this is as close to an outright lie, just about, as it gets in politics.
	Jen Psaki is telling us to disbelieve what we can see with our own two eyes.
	This is a policy of gaslighting.
	Speaking of gaslighting, there is a terrible event occurred a couple days ago.
	We did not get to it on the show yesterday.
	This was this terrible shooting in Colorado.
	Ten people were killed in a grocery store in a shooting in Boulder, Colorado after a man walked in to King Super's store and opened fire.
	Before you heard any details about this shooting, you saw prominent left-wingers tweeting, posting, commenting about the perils of white supremacy and how this is just more evidence that evil white Americans need to have their liberties curtailed or need to be dealt with as a public health problem.
	Then, Then it turned out it was not white supremacy.
	The shooter's name...
	We have a policy at the Daily Wire where we do not say the shooter's name.
	So I won't say the full name.
	The first name's Ahmad.
	So...
	Use your mind from there.
	It's not like John Smith.
	It's not a name you would associate with white supremacy.
	Actually, this guy was a Syrian immigrant.
	His family came here in 2002.
	He's not Christian.
	We hear this talk about Christian nationalism now.
	This is another silly phrase that's being conflated with white supremacy.
	He wasn't Christian.
	He's Muslim.
	So now we've gone from blaming the shooter...
	And everything he was going to represent back when the liberals thought that he was a white guy, now we're talking about the guns.
	And it's so bigoted.
	It gets to something we talked about yesterday, we've talked about it several times in the past few weeks.
	According to the left's racial ideology, only white people are fully people.
	According to the left's, actually specifically only white men, only straight white men, only straight white men who know that they're men.
	That narrow group, those are the only people with agency, with will, and with intellect.
	Every other group of people is some sort of passive entity that is merely a victim of whiteness and white supremacy.
	So, when they thought it was a white guy, oh well, that's his fault and everything that he represents.
	When they find out he's not a white guy, oh well, we gotta ban guns.
	Or, some people actually persisted.
	We played a clip yesterday on the show where some millennial gal came out and said that even if a racial minority perpetrates a crime against another racial minority, that can be part and parcel of white supremacy.
	How?
	I don't know.
	That's the premise that they're beginning with.
	Now they're blaming the guns.
	Identity politics actually does have something to do with this shooting, according to the Denver Post and according to people who apparently knew the guy.
	Denver Post, a very interesting article, said that This guy Hernandez, who knew the shooter, said that the shooter apparently appeared to be paranoid about perceived slights against him.
	And another person who knew the shooter said that he was often concerned about being targeted because of his Muslim faith.
	So one of these guys says, he would talk about him being Muslim and how if anybody tried anything, he would file a hate crime and say they were making it up.
	It was a crazy deal.
	I just know he was a pretty cool kid until something made him mad, and then whatever made him mad, he went over the edge way too far.
	So according to people who knew the shooter, he...
	The shooter recognized that grievance was social currency, that the racial and religious identity politics that now pervades our culture Could be used as a weapon.
	Could be used as a political tool.
	And apparently he was rather taken with this kind of grievance politics.
	The same sort of grievance politics that had people jumping to the conclusion, based on nothing other than bigotry, I suppose, or prejudice, that the shooter was a white guy.
	But then the minute he wasn't, never mind.
	Back to business as usual.
	Back to our regular old identity politics.
	And we're supposed to pretend that that never happened.
	I think it is important to learn the motivations of these shootings.
	Very often they're just completely senseless.
	They're just some lunatic.
	Sometimes there is a kind of perverse sense to them.
	And whenever there is a perverse sense to these shootings that the left thinks it can make, get some sort of advantage out of, say it was white supremacy or something like that, then they will harp on that Ad nauseum.
	And is it actually interesting to try to figure it out, to see what role these ideologies play?
	But the minute, and this is a more frequent occurrence, the minute that the ideological underpinnings and motivations for these crimes in any way touch on what the left is mainstreaming today, well, then we got to forget about that.
	Stop it.
	We're not allowed to talk about it.
	We have to stay quiet.
	We got to talk about the guns.
	You know, when you want to really, really get to the heart of a problem, it helps to have really good employees, which is why you've got to check out ZipRecruiter.
	If you're a business owner who's hiring, you probably face a lot of challenges when it comes to finding the right person for your role.
	That is why hiring can feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack, which is why you got to try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S.
	When you post a job on ZipRecruiter, it gets sent out to over 100 top job sites with one click, but it doesn't just stop there.
	It's not just like throwing spaghetti at the wall.
	ZipRecruiter's matching technology then finds people with the right skills and experience for your job and actively invites them to apply.
	It's no wonder that over 2.3 million businesses have come to ZipRecruiter for their hiring needs.
	So, while other companies will overwhelm you with way, way too many options, ZipRecruiter finds what you are looking for, that needle in the haystack.
	Right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Knowles.
	Remember to go to this unique URL so they know we sent you.
	ZipRecruiter.com slash K-N-O-W-L-E-S. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.
	Senator Alex Padilla, who is a Democrat from California.
	Is uttering a typical Democratic Party line.
	You're going to hear a lot more people parroting it for the next parroting it.
	It's a parody of itself, but parroting this line for the next several weeks, which is that in this country, it's easier to get a gun than it is to vote.
	You know, for most states, the age required to legally purchase a rifle and the age required to cast a ballot are both 18.
	However, there's some shocking disparities in legal state requirements for obtaining a weapon versus casting a ballot.
	In 25 states, voters must be registered and have specific forms of ID in order to cast a ballot.
	But those same states allow people to buy rifles without permits and require no background checks for some sales.
	Additionally, in a majority of states, new voters are able to obtain a rifle quicker than they're able to cast their first ballot.
	It seems to me that we have our priorities entirely backwards when it comes to this, when we make it easier to buy a gun than we do to cast a ballot.
	So the guy's wrong on the particulars, but he's wrong on the philosophy and the constitutionality as well.
	The right to keep and bear arms, the right to defend yourself, is a more fundamental constitutional right than the right to vote.
	You also have a right to vote.
	Not everybody, by the way.
	People under 18, for instance, do not have a right to vote.
	Thankfully.
	Thank goodness.
	Though Democrats are trying to change that right now.
	Some people, depending on your state, felons, for instance, in some places, do not have the right to vote.
	Totally up to the states to do that.
	The right that is enshrined in the Second Amendment, a right that our founding fathers supposed us to have inherited, which is why the language says, shall not be infringed.
	That is a more basic constitutional right.
	However, the factual claim he's making here that it's easier to get a gun than it is to vote is simply not true.
	First of all, when he says it's quicker to go buy a gun than it is to vote, I suppose that's true in the sense that there's an election day.
	So, you know, if you want to go buy a gun on a Tuesday in March, you can go do that, unless you're in a place like California, then you have to wait actually quite a while to get that gun.
	But if you want to go vote on the Tuesday in March, you probably have to wait until November.
	Okay, fair enough, but we have election days for that sort of thing.
	And by the way, the Democrats are extending election day into election month, so that seems to be changing too.
	The reason that the Democrats are pushing this argument, pseudo-argument now in particular, is because they're trying to push through the Corrupt Politicians Act.
	This is the name some Republicans have given to H.R.1, Democrats' top priority to steal power over elections for themselves.
	Incumbents in Congress trying to steal the right to set all the election rules from the states...
	And give it to themselves.
	Gee, what could go wrong when the present office holders get to write all the rules for their own elections?
	And what this would do is prohibit states, prohibit the people from making their own election laws in many cases, prohibit voter ID in elections anywhere.
	So not even just saying that you don't need a voter ID, but actually saying that in these elections it is not Permissible for states to pass laws requiring voter ID, all based on some demagogic, ridiculous arguments about racism or something.
	Now, if the Democrats manage to do that, it will be very, very difficult for Republicans to win elections, which is the entire point of it.
	There will be legal challenges because it would appear to me quite clear that the law is unconstitutional.
	But it doesn't really matter, I don't think, because ultimately what that law is going to come down to is the raw exercise of political power.
	And if the Democrats get it through, they're going to be able to exercise that power.
	And Republicans, frankly, are too cowardly to exercise political power even when they're given it.
	But make no mistake, the arguments here for the Corrupt Politicians Act, the arguments about voting rights that people like Padilla are making, completely bogus.
	Basically what it boils down to is that if you have any restrictions on voting, if you have any voter integrity measures for that matter, that that is somehow evidence of racism and white supremacy.
	Well, there's a new poll out.
	It's out from HEP. That shows that a majority of Americans, including a majority of black and Hispanic voters, overwhelmingly support voter ID, which is a central election integrity measure.
	So 77% of Americans overall support voter Laws that require you to show an ID before you cast a ballot.
	That's compared to just 15% who oppose the idea.
	92% of Republicans support voter ID. 75% of independents support voter ID. 63% of Democrats, according to this survey, support voter ID. But how about black and Hispanic voters?
	Because we're talking about race, right?
	Isn't this all about white supremacy?
	Well, among black voters, 64% support voter ID compared to just 22% who do not, and 78% of Hispanic voters support voter ID compared to 16% who do not.
	If we're actually talking about racial groups defending their rights or how they're going to be able to interact in our republic, Voter ID is a totally winning issue.
	But Democrats don't care what those voters think about voter ID because they know that without voter ID, it will be much, much easier for them to steal elections.
	There are a ton of other measures in the Corrupt Politicians Act that will do this too.
	Automatic voter registration, which they know, 100% guaranteed, will result in the registration of millions of illegal voters.
	Many, many other measures, too.
	We went into it a little bit when HR1 was proposed, and it's actually quite plausible that it makes it through the Senate, because it looks like Joe Manchin is going a little squishy.
	He would have been the semi-moderate Democrat to say no to this.
	We'll go more into it in the future.
	But suffice it to say, the arguments they're making on white supremacy, on guns, on voting, completely 100% without merit.
	They're just gaslighting us and they're gaslighting the black and Hispanic voters that they're pretending to speak for.
	Even our cereal companies are gaslighting us these days.
	Yes, our breakfast cereal companies are gaslighting us.
	If you missed this yesterday, you missed the most enjoyable thing on the entire internet.
	A guy with a blue checkmark named Jensen Karp discovered Shrimp tails in his cereal, in his Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
	And it's gross, and you can see the shrimp tails are covered up in cinnamon sugar.
	He tweets out, um, Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
	He tags them.
	Why are there shrimp tails in my cereal?
	This is not a bit.
	Cinnamon Toast Crunch responds and says, we're sorry to see what you found.
	We would like to report this to our quality team and replace the box.
	Can you please send us a DM to collect more details?
	Thank you.
	It wants to replace the box.
	So this guy, Jensen Karp, responds and says, Guys, I'm not sure I'm ready for another box.
	I don't...
	Finding, like, gross shrimp tails in my cereal, I don't...
	Another box is the last thing I want.
	Cinnamon Toast Crunch responds and says, We understand your concern.
	We promise you that our team will look into this and get to the bottom of it.
	But in the meantime, we want to do everything we can to make this right.
	We need further details.
	Then they come back, and he keeps joking with them.
	They come back and say, after further examination with our team that closely examined the image, it appears to be an accumulation of the cinnamon sugar that sometimes can occur when ingredients aren't thoroughly blended.
	We assure you that there is no possibility of cross-contamination with shrimp.
	So if you look at the picture though, they're just obviously shrimp tails.
	It is not physically possible to make cinnamon sugar look like these shrimp tails.
	There is cinnamon sugar on the shrimp tails, but it's just very clearly shrimp tails.
	So then this guy responds and says, Okay, well, after further investigation with my eyes, these are cinnamon-coated shrimp tails, you weirdos.
	I wasn't all that mad until you tried to gaslight me.
	Then the cereal company offered him some coupons for cereal, and the saga has been on pause there.
	This is not to go after Cinnamon Toast Crunch, even for putting shellfish in people's cereal.
	That's unfortunate, but one suspects they didn't do that intentionally.
	Maybe some little rodent dragged them into some cereal vat or something.
	I don't know.
	Accidents happen.
	It's a pretty gross accident.
	It's probably going to have me pausing on eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch for some time.
	It's a good cereal.
	But the real issue here is the gaslighting.
	We've actually been talking about this For several days now, the late conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, he said, civilization requires confession and forgiveness.
	I need to be able to say when I've done something wrong and you need to be able to forgive me.
	And I need to sacrifice my pride and you need to sacrifice your resentment.
	And we both sacrifice something that we cherish and then we move on.
	In our present culture, you might call it a cancel culture...
	You can't ever admit that you're wrong.
	I actually have some sympathy here for Cinnamon Toast Crunch because there is no forgiveness in our culture anymore.
	So the natural inclination here is to say, no, that's not true.
	Whatever you're seeing, it didn't happen.
	That is a culture of gaslighting where we're not even allowed to acknowledge basic truths.
	This is true in our politics more broadly.
	If you say that a man is not a woman, to go back to this kind of most obvious example, that is something that no one is allowed to acknowledge in our culture anymore.
	We're not allowed to acknowledge basic truths because of the implications they might have.
	We're all so on the defensive.
	We can't even call the shrimp tails in our cereal like we see them.
	If you want to deepen your knowledge and wisdom and education beyond this kind of silliness, you got to check out the great courses.
	They are fabulous.
	With The Great Courses Plus, you have unlimited access to thousands of video and audio courses on hundreds of fascinating topics.
	Learn a new language.
	discover what Einstein got wrong, even gain valuable insights into your own public persona.
	There really is something for everyone here.
	You know me, I don't want to learn about anything practical.
	I want to learn about, for instance, their great new course, 1066, the year that changed everything.
	Maybe we'll talk about that, the Battle of Hastings, Bishop Odo, all these great things.
	But really, you can learn just about anything you want.
	I also find when I'm sitting up with my cute little screaming son in the middle of the night, it's kind of fun to throw on something educational rather than just keep burning my mind on the same episodes of whatever.
	The courses are taught by the best professors, the top experts in their fields, plus with The Great Courses app, you're free to watch, listen, and learn on any device at any time.
	Switch between devices.
	It's really terrific.
	I'm really glad that I found a more productive way to spend my free time.
	I want you to try The Great Courses Plus, too.
	Get started with a free month of unlimited access by going to thegreatcoursesplus.com.
	That's a whole month to learn anything you want for free.
	So remember to sign up right now at thegreatcoursesplus.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S. Also, we're going to hear a lot more about the left's lies on whiteness and gun control in Ben's show today.
	So head on over, check out the Ben Shapiro show.
	And also, most importantly of all, you've got to check out the Candace Owens show coming up this Friday.
	Candace Owens has a brand new talk show.
	It is exclusively available for Daily Wire members.
	Now, Candace is also a podcast that you can listen to on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else that you get your podcasts.
	The Candace podcast features a bunch of breakout segments from the full-length show, including interviews, panel discussions, and her advice corner.
	It's so good, in fact, that it reached number two on the Apple podcast charts just after the first episode.
	So head on over.
	I am reliably informed that Candace is going to have a very sophisticated, intelligent, extremely handsome guest on her show this week.
	I won't say any more than that, but it should be a lot of fun.
	So head on over.
	Leave a five-star review on the podcast if you wouldn't mind.
	We'll be right back with a lot more.
	Cinnamon Toast Crunch is gaslighting customers over shrimp tails and their cereal.
	Well, But Cinnamon Toast Crunch is not the only sugary treat in the news.
	Krispy Kreme is in the news right now because as part of a broader effort to encourage Americans to get vaccinated, Krispy Kreme has announced that they will be giving out one free glazed donut every single day to anyone who brings in their vaccination card into any store in the United States for the rest of the year.
	This is the difference between the stick and the carrot.
	This is the difference in incentives through punishment and incentives through reward.
	The public health apparatus in this country really, really, really wants you to get this vaccination.
	Not just if you're 85 years old or you're greatly at risk, but even if you're a young, healthy person who really doesn't need it and is not really personally all that much at risk.
	They really want you to get the vaccination.
	Now, Krispy Kreme is going to be offering people donuts every single day for the whole year if they do this.
	I mentioned that getting a vaccine makes sense if you are 85 years old or something like that.
	It also makes sense if you are extremely overweight because obesity is one of the strongest predictors of vulnerability to coronavirus.
	What Krispy Kreme is doing here is so...
	Such a perfect example of what our public health apparatus has done from the very beginning of this virus, which is to constantly undermine its credibility and many, many public health measures.
	I would understand if the juice company or the health food company were offering this and say, come on in and you'll get a smoothie or something every day if you have the vaccine.
	But it would seem counterproductive during a pandemic that disproportionately affects overweight people to give them donuts every single day to try to stop The pandemic.
	A classic example of our benevolent bettors out there, our experts, our geniuses, totally botching the response.
	Also, I like to think that I'm a little more expensive than a donut.
	You know, if you're trying to get me to do something that maybe I'll do, maybe I won't, maybe I'm a little reluctant to do it.
	I like to think that I have a higher price.
	I can't be bought off for one glazed donut, no matter how delicious it is.
	There's that old line, old joke about a guy who walks up to a woman and says, Hey, I want to pick you up for the night.
	Treats her like she's a prostitute.
	And I'll give you $100 if you go back and sleep with me.
	She slaps him across the face and says, How dare you?
	That's outrageous.
	And he says, Okay, how about a million dollars?
	And she thinks about it.
	She says, Well...
	Okay.
	A million dollars.
	Maybe I'll think about that.
	He goes, okay.
	How about 200?
	She slaps him again.
	How dare you?
	You said a million dollars.
	And he says, look, I was just trying to figure out what you are.
	Now we're just haggling over the price.
	I think that I would like to be bought for a little bit more than a Krispy Kreme donut.
	And I think that if we're going to have public health measures, they should probably be coherent.
	They should probably make sense.
	Speaking of things that people eat when they are very high, lest I never be accused of giving Joe Biden credit for anything, I have to report on this very underreported story from the New York Times.
	Joe Biden is firing potheads.
	Yes, Joe Biden is tossing out five people who used marijuana in the past.
	Which will call now into question his new guidelines that say that if you smoke pot, it doesn't really matter.
	You can work in the White House.
	I'm not saying this because I have some personal grudge against pot or because I've never puffed on the devil's lettuce in my life or anything like that.
	But I don't think that we should further legalize that sin spinach, you know, that Jamaican oregano.
	I don't think that it's some matter of profound constitutional, natural rights even, that you should be able to...
	puff on a blunt or anything like that.
	It's like, it's not the worst thing in the world, but it isn't good.
	And, and unlike say alcohol or other intoxicants that are, are much more natural to our culture, much more traditional rather in our culture, marijuana is relatively new to the culture and I just don't see any reason to introduce it.
	Also, I notice that most of the people clamoring to legalize marijuana like their life depended on it are big libs, and I just don't see any reason to suspect that they're right about that.
	My gut just tells me that's wrong.
	Also...
	It is still the law, right?
	I mean, there are now contradictory laws at the local level, the state level, and the national level on the gange, you know.
	So I think we need to get those laws in order.
	We need to sort this sort of thing out.
	And I actually get a real kick that Joe Biden is taking this issue seriously.
	Don't forget, just 20 years ago, you could really not admit that you'd smoked pot.
	When Bill Clinton...
	In the 90s, he was asked about whether or not he'd smoked pot.
	He had to come up with this ridiculous, totally Clintonian, obviously dishonest answer.
	He said, I smoked it, but I did not inhale.
	No, I just kind of mulled it around in my mouth, and then I puffed it out like a cigar.
	Speaking of cigars, well, never mind.
	We'll get to that later.
	And now, of course, if you don't smoke pot, you'll be like a square.
	You probably couldn't be elected if you say that you've never smoked pot.
	A seemingly trivial cultural change, but it shows the development of what you might call the permissive society.
	This is a phrase used by the historian Paul Johnson, among other people.
	This idea that we should be allowed to do whatever we want.
	At least as long as it doesn't harm anybody.
	And for a while, it was really just leftists who were pushing this idea.
	Then, for some reason, over the past 10-20 years, conservatives have started to buy into this idea too.
	But it's ridiculous.
	It actually gets into the heart of something we're talking about a lot these days, which is political correctness, how it advances.
	This is the subject of my upcoming book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.
	Available now for pre-order until it gets cancelled.
	These debates over, I don't know, drug policy or over speech even, it's not a debate between freedom and censorship, right?
	All speech regimes, all drug regimes, all these sorts of policies are finite things where you can do some things and you can't do others.
	The question is really over standards.
	What are we going to support?
	What are we going to discourage?
	What are we going to include?
	What are we going to exclude?
	And I got to tell you, I got to give Biden a little bit of credit.
	He's drawing kind of a strange line in the sand for someone who's now importing illegal aliens into the country in record numbers.
	But nevertheless, he is drawing a little bit of a line in the sand and good on him for it.
	It gets into this question even of, say, academic freedom.
	There's an organization right now, the Academic Freedom Alliance, which is supporting some right-wing professors, some I guess some left-wing scholars are involved in this too.
	But they've come to the defense of Tom Smith, who is a professor who is now under investigation for a blog post in which he criticized the Chinese government, and a lot of conservatives are upset about this, and even this organization that specifically supports academic freedom is going after it too.
	Wonderful.
	We should welcome their support.
	That's great.
	So glad that they're supporting professors who criticize China.
	However, Academic freedom is not a conservative virtue.
	It's not a conservative value.
	Actually, the modern conservative movement founded by Bill Buckley was started with a book called God and Man at Yale, the subtitle of which was The Superstitions of Academic Freedom, a book in which Buckley called academic freedom a hoax because it is a hoax.
	It's just, it is a dishonest instrument that is used almost exclusively by the left to push their ridiculous and subversive and dangerous and, what other words can I use, destructive ideas into universities.
	We all know this.
	And conservatives, I don't think we actually support academic freedom.
	I think we want to kick all the crazy, radical, anti-American professors out of the universities.
	I think we want to kick them out of Hollywood.
	I think when we say we need to take back the culture, what we are saying, quite obviously, is we want to exclude certain views, certain curricula.
	But then we feel uncomfortable with that.
	And so we say, but we support academic freedom.
	No, you don't.
	Be honest with yourself.
	I don't support it either.
	One, because it doesn't ever really exist.
	Curricula are finite things.
	The semester is only so long.
	You're going to teach some things.
	You're not going to teach other things.
	You're going to include some books.
	You're going to exclude other books.
	So this academic freedom, pie-in-the-sky abstract notion doesn't really have much practical effect.
	What we have to get down to defending as conservatives is not just the abstract procedures of politics.
	You know, free speech in the abstract, religious liberty in the abstract, academic freedom in the abstract.
	We have to get down to what we actually want to say, what we actually believe, what we actually think ought to be taught.
	I don't think any conservative who supports academic freedom thinks that universities should be holding classes promoting the 1619 Project, which is based on a lie.
	I don't know.
	Nobody would support that.
	Of course not.
	We should exclude lies from the university and we should include good, edifying, truthful education.
	The issue here with this professor who's under investigation is not that his academic freedom has been compromised.
	If he had written blog posts talking about how evil the country is and how he wants to overthrow the American way of life, I wouldn't defend him.
	The issue here is that he's talking about China.
	He's criticizing China and he's being punished for criticizing China.
	By the way, if the guy wrote his blog posts criticizing America, he'd probably be promoted.
	He'd probably be the dean of his department by now.
	But because he was criticizing China, now he's under fire.
	That's the problem.
	The, I think, underlying premise to all these really abstract arguments...
	Is that we really can't differentiate between right and wrong, between good and bad, between China and America.
	We can't, between drag queen story hour and going to church on Sunday.
	We just can't differentiate.
	And so every, we have to support all of these things and we have to have no standards at all.
	Give me a break.
	If you can't rely on your moral conscience to make the most basic judgments of reason between good and bad and right and wrong and true and false, then you can't have self-government.
	The whole premise of self-government is that we consider these ideas.
	We distinguish between good and bad and right and wrong.
	We make judgments and then we enact those judgments in our politics.
	That's the point of self-government.
	If you say that we can't do that anymore for whatever reason, because you have a skeptical view of knowledge or of conscience or whatever, then you can't govern yourselves.
	And increasingly, it would appear that we're not able to do that.
	Speaking of self-government and speaking of exclusion...
	There is a movement underway to make Washington DC, the federal district, to turn it into a state.
	The left has been pushing this for a while.
	It's completely incoherent.
	And now they're going after one expert on this, Zach Smith, who is testifying about some of the reasons against DC statehood.
	And they're saying he's making ridiculous, frivolous arguments.
	Take a listen to his argument.
	Framers also wanted to avoid one state having undue influence over the federal government.
	There's no question that D.C. residents already impact the national debate.
	For the members here today, how many of you saw D.C. statehood yard signs or bumper stickers or banners on your way to this hearing today?
	I certainly did.
	Where else in the nation could such simple actions reach so many members of Congress?
	So the left went after this guy, Zach Smith, and said, this is ridiculous.
	He wants to claim that D.C. has special representation because what?
	Lawmakers look at yard signs?
	Give me a break.
	Well, that's true.
	Lawmakers spend a lot of time in Washington, D.C. And the things that happen in Washington, D.C. disproportionately affect the national conversation.
	That's just obvious.
	That's just common sense.
	I was in D.C. two days ago.
	And this is why we refer to the swamp, right?
	This is why we refer to the D.C. bubble, is because the people are there living in a particular place and they're having the conversations and debates that will affect our national politics.
	And the point he made at the very top of that is true, too.
	The founders did not want any particular state to dominate all the other states.
	That is specifically why they said, no, it's not going to be Maryland that has the nation's capital.
	It's not going to be Virginia.
	It's going to be this kind of area that we carve out from these places, and it's going to be a federal district.
	There is no argument, not one single argument for D.C. statehood.
	Other than inclusion.
	And this is this silly slogan, this bumper sticker, that the left is really pushing, that unfortunately a lot of people on the right have fallen for the trap of parroting.
	They'll say, well, come on, people in D.C., they deserve a vote.
	Well, they vote on certain things, but the federal district is a very special, specific place.
	If the D.C. residents want to live in a place that's governed under different rules, then they can move to Maryland or they can move to Virginia.
	But if you're in D.C., you've got to play by the rules of D.C. We actually need to exclude Washington, D.C. from statehood if you want to preserve the integrity of statehood.
	It's a great line from Chesterton.
	He says there's a thought that stops thought and that's the only thought that ought to be stopped.
	The inclusion of all the states in the federal government in the United States of America relies to some degree on the exclusion of Washington, D.C., Because if Washington D.C. remains a federal district and not a state, then all the other states have equal dominance over the nation's capital.
	Namely, none of them have any dominance over the nation's capital.
	If Washington D.C. becomes a state, now we have truly a hierarchy of states in the matter of lawmaking, in the matter of the federal government.
	Cannot, cannot do it.
	But something tells me that the inclusion argument is going to continue to persuade people who are not thinking very clearly.
	What the left is doing with inclusion is trying to turn this into a race issue.
	So they're saying, well, you know, a lot of black people live in D.C., so if you want to exclude it from statehood, it's because you're a white supremacist.
	And they'll just continue to use this phrase, white supremacy, as long as it's in any way plausible.
	I remember this when David Webb, the political commentator, was interviewing a leftist on the radio.
	And she accused David Webb of only holding his views and having certain benefits because of his white privilege.
	And David Webb said, Ma'am, I think if you knew me better, you would not accuse me of that.
	She said, No, you do.
	You've got white privilege.
	And he said, Ma'am, I'm a black guy.
	Ha!
	I'm like, it's not even like that ambiguous.
	I'm pretty clearly a black guy.
	And she said, oh yeah, okay, all right, never mind.
	And then she moved on.
	But it's just the sort of line that you throw at people without any evidence.
	You don't need any evidence.
	Tammy Duckworth, Democrat, is taking this racial politics even further.
	She has now said that she will not vote for any Biden nominee who is a white guy, a straight white guy.
	Tammy Duckworth says, quote, I am a no vote on the floor on all non-diversity nominees.
	You know, I will not vote for racial, or rather, I will vote for racial minorities and I will vote for LGBTQ, but anybody else I'm not voting for.
	This, of course, rank bigotry.
	You know, it's become cliche.
	I almost don't even want to say it.
	If the situation were reversed, you know, this person would be cast into outer darkness where there was wailing and gnashing of teeth.
	Inasmuch as there is any sort of white identitarian movement cropping up on the fringes of our political discourse, and I suppose there's always something like that on the fringes, but inasmuch as it's cropping up anymore, it's because of Tammy Duckworth.
	That's why.
	Tammy Duckworth and her fellow travelers are the only people to blame for this sort of thing.
	Because I think if you polled all the white people in America and you said, hey, do you want to have a politics based on racial identity primarily?
	I think overwhelmingly the white people would say, no, no way.
	But if the left forces a politics of racial identity, Then there is no choice, right?
	This is the problem with war and it's the problem with politics, is your opponent, your enemy, gets a say.
	So if Tammy Duckworth is saying, yeah, we're going to have a politics primarily, exclusively perhaps, of racial identity, then you're going to create the phantom problem that you're pretending exists right now.
	No, the white nationalist, white identitarian, a total contrivance, a total creation of the left.
	Speaking of racial identity politics, have to get to this today.
	The first US city ever has approved slavery reparations to black people.
	not the first U.S. city that was ever created, but the first U.S. city to approve reparations for slavery has just voted on.
	Evanston City Council voted eight to one Monday night to approve the first phase of reparations, allocating $400,000 to be paid out in homeownership and improvement grants up to 25 grand.
	The housing assistance is the first part of a $10 million plan for reparations to be paid to black people.
	The black people will have to prove that their ancestors lived in the city between 1919 and 1969 when discriminatory policies were in effect.
	Applicants must also be able to trace their lineage back to any of the black racial and ethnic groups of Africa.
	How are people going to do that?
	Are they going to spit in a swab?
	You know, they're going to take one of these DNA tests and prove it.
	What happens if the documents are not particularly strong?
	What if they're not reliable?
	What if they're being forged?
	What if there's corruption that creeps in?
	What if the politicians who are just doling out money willy-nilly to people based on how dark their skin is, what if they get a little bit crooked about it?
	What if this is just the beginning?
	What if this is the beginning of a politics primarily of racial identity in the modern political era in this country?
	Certainly would seem that way.
	I don't think this is the end.
	I think other cities are going to vote on this too.
	And I think that a lot of conservatives, the squishy ones, are going to go along with it.
	And they'll say, well, you know, I just don't want to be called a racist.
	And hey, and you know what they'll do?
	The only argument they'll make is, Maybe we should have reparations for other groups.
	You know, anyone who's ever suffered any kind of grievance or discrimination.
	Why is this one grievance?
	Horrible though it was, why is that the only grievance that anyone is allowed to claim some justice for?
	Why not if you're a Japanese American and your parents were interned or your grandparents were interned during World War II? Are you not entitled to some reparations for that?
	What if you're an Italian American?
	You were treated in parts of the South just like black people were treated.
	Largest mass lynching in American history was against Italian Americans.
	Where's my money?
	Give me those reparations!
	What if you're an Irish-American?
	You had signs on the windows that say, Irish need not apply to jobs.
	Where are your reparations?
	What I could see, I don't think any Republicans, very few prominent Republicans, are going to have the spine to say, no, no reparations.
	You don't get it.
	I just don't want to hear about horrible, historic grievances.
	Not because I deny that they existed, but because...
	Everyone can claim grievance because this is a fallen world and some people certainly can claim it worse than others, but the way to have a country moving forward is not to go back and re-litigate things that happened 200, 300 years ago and to try to extort money out of people through corrupt government programs.
	The way to move forward as a country is confession and forgiveness A little bit of grace and love of your country.
	It's an extension of your family and your community.
	That's going to be the way forward.
	Right before we go, I have to mention this article.
	It's in CNN. Speaking of people's physical characteristics.
	To shave or not to shave.
	How beards may affect COVID-19 health.
	The idea that if you have a beard, your mask might not be as effective and therefore you need to shave.
	All I have to say on this particular story is, nice try, Harry's.
	Nice try.
	You know, I know you've got a, you're facing a very difficult news cycle right now because you insulted hundreds of millions of conservative Americans and you said that you don't want their business and now they're canceling your product by the thousands because, you know, I'm seeing the emails and the tweets.
	Nice try, Harry's PR team.
	I'm not buying this COVID-19 stuff, okay?
	Sorry, sorry, pal.
	I think people can grow beards, absolutely, if they want to.
	The credibility of not just corporate America, but of a lot of our egghead bureaucrats, very much in question right now, because they've been gaslighting us more and more each day.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	show.
	See you tomorrow.
	If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe.
	And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe.
	We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
	Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
	The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring, our technical director is Austin Stevens, supervising producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, production manager Pavel Vidovsky, editor and associate producer Danny D'Amico, audio mixer Mike Coromina, hair and makeup by Nika Geneva, and production coordinator McKenna Waters.
	The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2021.
	Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the media scrambles to change the narrative after the masked killer in Boulder turns out to be an Arab man who killed white people.
	Also, five headlines, including the U.S. senator who announced her intentions to only vote to confirm nominees of a certain race.
	And a man finds shrimp tails in his box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
	What's the lesson we can learn from that story?
	There is a lesson.
	I'll tell you what it is.
	Finally, in our daily cancellation, we'll deal with the claim made by a Democratic senator and many others that buying a gun is somehow easier than voting.
	Is that true at all?

▲