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March 29, 2021 - The Michael Knowles Show

51:08

Ep. 730 - The Devil’s In The Details

A Democrat operative tries to stop Ted Cruz from exposing the crisis at the border, Biden pushes vaccine passports, and a rapper sells satanic sneakers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Ted Cruz went to check out the crisis on our southern border this weekend, and the Biden administration does not want you to find out what he saw.
	Please give dignity to the people.
	Please give dignity to the people.
	So you work for the commissioner, your senior advisor.
	You were hired two weeks ago, and you're instructed to ask us to not have any pictures taken here.
	Please respect the people, the rules.
	Because the political leadership at DHS does not want the American people to know it.
	Please respect the rules, sir.
	You keep standing in front of the pictures, so you don't want the pictures taken.
	The rules are arbitrary, and they're designed to keep the American people in the dark.
	Please respect the rules and give the people dignity and respect.
	That's all we ask.
	Dignity and respect.
	You're asking, is this dignity and respect?
	Please give dignity and respect to the people.
	Let me ask you.
	I respectfully ask you, sir.
	There is a pandemic.
	Is this respecting the rights of these kids?
	Are you respecting the rights of these kids?
	This is not a zoo, sir.
	Please don't treat the people.
	You're right.
	And this is a dangerous place.
	Please don't treat the people like this.
	That's all I ask for you, sir.
	And your policies, unfortunately, are trying to hide them.
	I understand you are instructed.
	When 18 senators came down here...
	I ask you to please respect the people, give them dignity and respect.
	I respect them and I want to fix this situation.
	We all want to fix this.
	And the administration you're working for is responsible for these conditions.
	Please respect the people with dignity and respect.
	And I ask you to respect the people as well.
	This is not respect.
	I am respecting you.
	I am respecting the people.
	This is not respect.
	That's her story and she's sticking to it.
	Man, this is Ted Cruz at his absolute best.
	Top of his game.
	That lady wants him to respect the people.
	Not the people who are crowded at 1500% capacity amid the apparently extraordinarily deadly pandemic.
	No, she wants you to respect all the Democrats and the Biden administration workers who have implemented a policy far, far worse than anything they criticized about Trump.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	as The Michael Knowles Show.
	Welcome back to the show.
	My favorite comment from Friday from Charles, who writes, I need an ID to get a library card, but not to vote in American elections.
	Yes, this is very strange.
	I also think this is a better point to observe than to say, you know, I need a...
	ID to buy a pack of cigarettes.
	I need an ID to buy a six-pack of beer.
	Yeah, that's true, but those are privileges.
	And what the left says is, well, yes, but voting is a sacred right.
	Well, sure, but you also need ID to access any sort of government service.
	You need ID to travel.
	That's a fundamental right.
	You need ID for all sorts of things.
	You get an ID the minute you're born.
	You get a birth certificate.
	You get a social security card.
	But for some reason, voting...
	Breaks all the rules.
	Why do we have IDs for all these different government services?
	Down to the level of a library?
	Well, to prevent fraud, to make sure that we know who you are, to make sure that the government is not going to be duped and give certain privileges and certain rights to people who don't deserve them.
	Like, ineligible voters, for instance.
	But then that goes right out the window with voting.
	Yeah, hold them to account on that.
	Very good observation.
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	Really great stuff from Senator Cruz.
	I don't say this only because...
	I host a podcast with a man named Verdict.
	I don't say this just because he's a friend of mine.
	This is the kind of thing that a lot of Republican politicians do not have the culioni to do.
	And Senator Cruz just goes right down, and this woman, in the name of compassion, she says...
	Please respect the rights and dignities.
	Please respect the humanity.
	You're not respecting the humanity, lady.
	You're keeping these people in terrible conditions.
	And worse than that, because, sure, there is this problem of illegal aliens who try to enter our country.
	That seems to be a perennial problem.
	But sometimes it gets better, sometimes it gets worse.
	And right now, your administration is creating incentives for it to get much, much worse.
	So now you've got 1500% capacity in some places amid COVID with deplorable conditions, and you accuse Ted Cruz of not respecting their humanity because he shows people your own corruption, because he shows people the effects of your radicalism.
	It's like saying it, you might say it to journalists.
	Actually, the only reason that this woman isn't saying it to journalists is that they've barred journalists from actually reporting on the inside of these centers.
	Cruz and the other senators were able to barge their way in because they said, look, we're a duly elected branch of the federal government.
	We're going in here.
	But if not for that, we would never see those pictures because the Biden administration is being so opaque.
	They want to hide their corruption and the terrible effects that it's having on both the migrants and on the American republic.
	Ilhan Omar sees it differently.
	Representative Omar wants to stick to the same story that that political operative was sticking to when she was yelling at Senator Cruz.
	She's pointing out that the Biden administration, they are deploying quote, maximum humanity and dignity at the border.
	What they're looking for right now is to figure out how the resources they already have.
	The administration hasn't asked for new resources.
	The resources they already have, how to deploy that in the most effective way to address a problem that was created by an administration that believed you had to create maximum pain in order for immigrants not to come to our border.
	And so when you have an administration now that says we are going to deploy maximum humanity and dignity in treating people in regards to our policies, then we are excited because then we see partners in humanity.
	We see partners who see children who are coming to our country seeking help.
	Did anything she said mean anything?
	Because she said a lot of words, and she said them very emphatically, and she kind of blew out my eardrum a little bit a couple of the times.
	But did that mean anything?
	She makes one factual claim, which is that this problem that Biden is dealing with, you know, the kids in cages, this was caused by the Trump administration.
	That's just not true.
	To quote our president, who built the cages, Joe?
	The cages go back before the Trump administration, ironically, to the Obama-Biden administration.
	The policy that the left took the greatest issue with, family separation, did not begin with the Trump administration.
	It goes back to the Clinton administration, actually.
	So on that claim, it's just completely wrong.
	Then you look at her emotional appeal.
	She says we need to give Biden a break.
	We need to actually approve of what Biden's doing because he's doing what he's doing with maximum humanity and dignity.
	So what she's saying is the practical effect of this might be worse than anything Trump ever did.
	There might be more kids crammed into more cages amid a pandemic, much worse than anything Trump ever did, even by the left's own standards.
	But the way in which Biden's doing it, and more to the point, the motives that have impelled Biden to exert this policy are wonderful.
	And so we need to judge Biden, not by his actions, but by his intentions, which I will remind you about good intentions, pave the road to hell.
	We'll get into the road to hell a little bit later when we talk about Lil Nas X, who's a rapper.
	But this is a classic Tactic of leftism.
	It's a tactic of moral idiots.
	It's a tactic that Screwtape, the demon in C.S. Lewis' excellent Screwtape letters, says to use when he's teaching his nephew Wormwood how to win over souls for the devil.
	He says, make sure you always get the human beings to judge themselves by their intentions, but to judge other people by their actions, to judge yourself in the best possible light, and to judge your opponents in the worst possible light.
	That's what's going on here.
	I don't see much humanity and dignity at the border.
	The Biden administration right now is preparing for 800,000 family migrants.
	So migrants who are coming, you know, illegal aliens with multiple people in their party.
	In addition to the single people who will also be coming.
	That will be a record.
	Not just for the families, but they're also expecting a record inflow of unaccompanied children and a spiking wave of single men.
	Very bad stuff.
	Not able to be compared in any serious way to what happened under Trump.
	My issue is not even to focus on the numbers and what that means for the polity for right now.
	I just want to focus on the moral claims they're making.
	Humane and dignified.
	Many of these people who are getting into our country illegally are not tested for coronavirus.
	The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security admitted this just a couple weeks ago.
	They're not tested for the virus that public health officials have told us is the reason we've needed to lock down and not see our families and cancel Thanksgiving and stop sending kids to school and cancel Christmas and not let the kids go out and play.
	We've been told the virus is so serious that we need to completely suspend our lives.
	Lock our little American children inside.
	Spiking rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide.
	Lock American citizens inside.
	And yet, let foreign nationals who are untested for coronavirus roam free in our country.
	Does that make any sense?
	While the Biden administration is pushing for, practically speaking, open borders or very nearly open borders, We told you this was coming.
	It was ever thus.
	Washington Post is reporting now that the Biden administration is considering multiple versions of vaccine passports.
	One of the most significant hurdles facing federal officials, writes the Washington Post, the sheer number of passport initiatives underway with the Biden administration this month identifying at least 17.
	Those initiatives such as the World Health Organization led global effort and a digital pass devised by IBM that is being tested in New York state or rapidly moving forward, even as the White House deliberates about how best to track the shots and avoid the perception of a government mandate to be vaccinated.
	So they want to avoid the perception.
	They don't want to avoid the fact.
	They want to avoid the perception.
	Just like they want to avoid the perception of being inhumane and undignified at the border.
	They're not going to avoid the fact.
	They're going to keep the Trump administration policies.
	They're going to ratchet them up to 11.
	They just want the perception to be different than the reality.
	And that's what they're doing with the vaccine passports.
	By the way, one of the issues with the vaccine passports is that they want to make sure that the passports can track variants, that they can track booster shots so that the government and the broader regime buffeted by corporate power and technological power and the administrative state and the educational institutions, that they can track booster shots so that the government and the broader regime buffeted by corporate power and technological power and the administrative state and
	And they're going to track you and track your medical history, but they're also going to impel you to get the boosters, to get shots for different variants.
	And your medical rights, such as we have known them, will erode and erode and erode.
	This is going to be a real touchstone issue here.
	This is going to be one that I think separates the wheat from the chaff.
	You're seeing this debate play out in the UK right now, and I think you're going to see it here.
	There are going to be some conservatives who support the vaccine passports, and there are going to be real conservatives who There are going to be squishy conservatives who support the vaccine passports.
	There are going to be real conservatives who do not.
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	In the United Kingdom right now, they are having a debate that is coming to America.
	It's practically here already.
	The debate is not between the right and the left, but the debate is among people theoretically on the right.
	And it's between, right now it's being played out between Boris Johnson, the conservative prime minister, and Nigel Farage, the Brexit leader.
	Another very conservative politician in the UK. Boris Johnson is pro-vaccine passport.
	Nigel Farage is anti-vaccine passport.
	Boris Johnson, he's being a little circumspect here, but he's saying that vaccine passports will have some role in the UK recovering, or perhaps not recovering, from coronavirus.
	Faraj says no way.
	No vaccine passports, no thank you.
	He said it won't fly.
	He said it's unworkable.
	And frankly, to put this upon our struggling publicans at this moment in time would be completely outrageous.
	So you're going to see the squishy Republicans go for the vaccine passports.
	You're probably seeing that already.
	You probably know who those people are, the sort of people who call Drag Queen Story Hour a blessing of liberty.
	Those are going to be the kind of guys who say the vaccine passport's A-OK. Actual conservatives, people who want to conserve anything resembling our tradition, they're going to be against it.
	And by the way, I think you're going to see an interesting split among the right-wingers who are against the vaccine passports.
	You're going to see two arguments against the vaccine passports.
	You're going to see the libertarian argument, which is going to be about freedom and big government, and that government ain't going to put the jab in my arm, darn it.
	And fair enough.
	I'm not a libertarian, but fair enough.
	And then you're going to see a traditional conservative argument, which is going to be focused a little bit less on my individual rights and I've got a natural right not to get vaccinated or something.
	And it's going to focus more on the way that this initiative will upend our political tradition, our American way of life.
	I think the traditional conservatives are not going to say that the government has no police powers and the government has no role in some sort of public health policy.
	Probably the government does and always has.
	But this is so radical.
	This is so foreign to the American way of life.
	This would so restructure the balance of power in society.
	It would give so much more power to the federal government and to these billionaire technological overlords who are going to be tracking our medical history.
	And it's going to so reorder our economy such that now a handful of people are going to be able to say whether or not you're permitted to engage in commerce.
	It's going to be so, so radical.
	We need to oppose it.
	Whatever argument works, it's sort of fine by me.
	We just need to stand against this as strongly as we possibly can.
	There's obviously a contradiction in the narratives that the left is simultaneously telling us.
	They're telling us that the virus is so dangerous that no one can go outside.
	We need to live in fear.
	We need to reorder our society for it and give the government the rights to jab us whenever they want.
	And on the other hand, we're being told that The virus is so inconsequential that we need to open the floodgates of our southern border and let unvaccinated often and often untested foreign nationals pour into our country.
	Why?
	Because that's going to give Democrats an electoral advantage in the short term and especially in the long term.
	And because the left wants to erode the notion of national sovereignty and our current legal system, which would enforce immigration laws passed by our representatives who were voted for by the people in the traditional constitutional way.
	They want to replace that with a technocratic sort of government by the experts who are not accountable to the people.
	There's a contradiction here just on the question of COVID. Is COVID really dangerous or is it just not that big a deal?
	Right now the left is implicitly telling us both at the same time because they're changing their argument depending on their political point of view.
	But Fauci, he's sticking to his story.
	Dr.
	Fauci is saying that the pandemic is so bad right now that your kid...
	Very likely.
	Maybe he'll be able to go to summer camp.
	Maybe he won't.
	You're going to have to monitor this situation very carefully and probably he shouldn't play outside.
	Can they send their kids to summer camp?
	Can they allow them to play again on playgrounds?
	You know, it is conceivable that that will be possible, Margaret, because what we're seeing is, you know, as you just mentioned on the piece, we now have 3 to 3.5 million vaccinations each day.
	If we keep up at that pace, invariably, that's going to drive the rate and the level of infections per day to a much, much lower level.
	If we get into the summer and you have a considerable percentage of the population vaccinated, And the level in the community gets below that plateau that's worrying me and my colleagues in public health.
	It is conceivable that you have a good degree of flexibility during the summer, even with the children, with things like camps.
	We don't know that for sure, but I think that's an aspirational goal that we should go for.
	It is conceivable that if you do every single thing I tell you to do in perpetuity, maybe I'll let little Johnny go outside for half an hour in the sun.
	It's an aspirational goal.
	It's an aspirational goal.
	How about we just do it?
	How about, I'm no expert, I don't have very fancy medical degrees, I think that the kids can play outside.
	Actually, I've got some empirical data here, which is since the beginning of the reign of Fauci, beginning last March, I've 99.9% of the time ignored everything he said.
	Occasionally, I've had to acquiesce because I need to, say, travel somewhere on an airplane, and I've made a prudential calculation and said, okay, it's better that I put the stupid mask on for a second, but And fly to this place and give a speech about how terrible Fauci is, then not do that, right?
	But I'm not acquiescing in the sense that I think he's right.
	I've never really thought the guy was right.
	I've just been living my life normally and ignoring all of his dumb guidelines, and I'm fine.
	I'm not saying I couldn't come down with the Wu flu or something, and that would be unfortunate.
	But I'm just looking at the science here, and the risk is pretty low.
	And the risk to children is infinitesimally low.
	So, following the science here, it would seem that the kids can go out and play, and they should have been able to do that from the very beginning.
	But what Fauci's making here is not a scientific argument.
	He's making a political argument, right?
	She's asking, is it okay for kids to go play?
	And he goes, look, it's conceivable if you do all this other stuff I want.
	If we get the numbers down.
	What do we mean, if we get the public numbers down?
	What does the public numbers in California matter to a kid in New York?
	If the kid is vaccinated or if he's even not vaccinated, but his parents are vaccinated, those are specific cases.
	But what Fauci is doing is he's holding the individual cases as an incentive and saying, you need to get the public matter.
	You all need to obey what I'm telling you to do.
	And then maybe in your individual cases, which are disconnected from the public matter broadly, then maybe I'll let you and your kids go out and play.
	He's not just talking about summer camp.
	He's actually talking about letting your kids go out and play.
	He says that if you let your kids go out and play, they should wear a mask.
	Yeah, the children can clearly wind up getting infected.
	When we talk about what you can do when you're vaccinated, you can certainly have members of a family if the adults are vaccinated and you're in the home with your child.
	You don't need to wear a mask and you can have physical contact.
	When the children go out into the community, you want them to continue to wear masks when they're interacting with groups from multiple households.
	Nah, I don't want them to do that, actually.
	So, I mean, sweet little June is like two months old now, so he's not going to go out and see a lot of people.
	But if I had older children right now, I certainly would not have them wear a mask.
	I would not listen to anything that this power-mad sociopath has to say.
	I just don't care.
	The guy has admitted to misleading people on this issue.
	The idea that anyone feels that he still has credibility is just patently absurd to me.
	The arguments seem always to be changing, even though the effect is the same.
	From the very beginning, we need to slow the spread.
	Okay, we slowed the spread.
	We need to flatten the curve.
	Yeah, we flattened the curve.
	Well, we need to find a cure.
	We found a cure.
	Well, we need to have total maximum vaccination.
	Okay, people are getting vaccinated in huge numbers.
	Well, there might be variants, so you got to keep wearing the masks.
	Well, you're going to need boosters, so you need the vaccine passport.
	I get it if you didn't see what this was a year ago.
	Some of us, hate to say I told you so, some of us did see what this was a year ago.
	But I get it.
	I understand how persuasive the regime can be.
	I understand how much authority experts in lab coats hold in our secular, scientistic culture.
	If you don't see it now, I don't know that I can help you.
	This power grab is never going to stop unless we stop abiding.
	The Fauci's of the world and all the other eggheads who want to control us.
	You know, we've got some great shows coming up.
	We've got...
	Me, on the Ben Shapiro show.
	So if you feel like this is not enough Michael today, you can get a little bit of me there.
	Because, you know, Ben does this every few months.
	He tells me that there are these ancient holidays and things like that.
	But I'm starting to get a little skeptical.
	You know, every few months, I don't know if I buy it.
	Also, the Candace show is out.
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	We'll be right back with a lot more.
	The Biden administration wants to hold all of us accountable on the coronavirus.
	And it wants to make us follow all the ever-changing dictates of the regime.
	At the same time, the Biden administration does not want to hold China accountable.
	China, where the virus started.
	China, which lied about the virus.
	China, which hid what was going on for months.
	And according to early studies that came out last year...
	May have increased the virality by something like 95% just because they covered it up and didn't let other countries prepare.
	Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, going on CNN now, asked a blunt question.
	Do you think we should hold China accountable?
	Well, I don't know.
	Maybe not so much.
	You said at your confirmation hearing, Mr.
	Secretary, that you believe the Chinese government misled the world about coronavirus.
	Given that, and the millions of people, of course, who have died around the world, should China be punished for that?
	And I think the issue for us is to make sure that we do everything possible to prevent another pandemic, even as we're working through this one, or at the very least to make sure that we can mitigate in much more effective ways any damage done if something happens in the future.
	And a big part of that is making sure that we have a system in place, including with the World Health Organization, that features transparency.
	That features information sharing, that features access for international experts at the start of something like this.
	And that's where I think China, like every other country, has real obligations that it needs to make good on.
	So I think what we need to be focused on is making sure we're protecting ourselves and protecting the world going forward.
	And that's going to require a lot of reform, and it's going to require China to do things that it hasn't done in the past.
	That sounded like a no.
	Credit to Dana Bash here, who says, you know, buddy, I'm obviously on your team.
	I'm on the left, but that was not a persuasive argument.
	That was a lot of words to say.
	No.
	The nearest thing he suggested to holding China accountable was we need to partner more closely with the WHO, which is practically owned by China, to make China be more transparent Even though the WTO partnered up with China to hide what was going on in the early days of the virus.
	Pathetic, pathetic stuff.
	But the Democratic establishment, and Joe Biden in particular, seemed to have a real affinity for China.
	Their vision of the world is one in which China gets lots of special privileges and rises up and becomes a significant power.
	Joe Biden talked about this 10, 20 years ago.
	He said, a rising China is good for everybody.
	This is why these guys supported letting China into the World Trade Organization, not the World Health Organization, but the World Trade Organization, a disastrous idea that has imperiled our country, economically speaking, but also as a matter of security.
	China caused this virus.
	The former director of the CDC, Robert Redfield, believes actually that the flu, the Wu flu, came from a lab.
	If I was to guess, this virus started transmitting somewhere in September, October in Wuhan.
	September, October.
	That's my own view.
	It's an only opinion.
	I'm allowed to have opinions now.
	You know, I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped.
	Other people don't believe that.
	That's fine.
	Science will eventually figure it out.
	It's not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect a laboratory worker.
	Can you believe this crazy conspiracy theorist?
	Okay, Mr.
	Redfield, please take off your tinfoil hat, sir.
	You think, you think, that just because this novel coronavirus that apparently came from a bat was discovered like a mile from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where they were experimenting on coronaviruses in bats, that maybe that had something to do with it?
	It's crazy.
	Excuse me, sir.
	What's your credential?
	What makes you think that you're authorized to pontificate on these issues?
	Oh, just because you're a health expert and the former director of the CDC? Oh, wait.
	Whoops.
	That goes against the narrative, doesn't it?
	Yikes.
	That doesn't work out.
	Anthony Fauci...
	Who is the grand poobah of all these eggheads.
	He is not so thrilled with what Dr.
	Redfield has to say.
	Now, Redfield, because he's a part of this club, former CDC director, public health official, Fauci doesn't go after him as viciously as he might after other people.
	But he does want to downplay Redfield's ideas.
	Okay, so when you think about the possibilities of how this virus appeared in the human population, obviously there are a number of theories.
	The issue that would have someone think it's possible to have escaped from a lab would mean that it essentially entered the outside human population already well adapted to humans, suggesting that it was adapted in the lab.
	However, The alternative explanation which most public health individuals go by is that this virus was actually circulating in China, likely in Wuhan, for a month or more before they were clinically recognized at the end of December of 2019.
	If that were the case, The virus clearly could have adapted itself to a greater efficiency of transmissibility over that period of time, up to and at the time it was recognized.
	So Dr.
	Redfield was mentioning that he was giving an opinion as to a possibility.
	But again, there are other alternatives, others that most people hold by.
	Now, I can't criticize this guy too much, unfortunately, without undermining my own argument.
	But don't listen to him.
	Okay.
	I don't know.
	It doesn't seem...
	Again, I'm no expert.
	I don't wear the white lab coat.
	But it would seem to me that there are no coincidences in this world.
	And particularly those that are so glaring as this question of China, which we know is working on these viruses in bats at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, notoriously opaque regime that lied about it and that exerted their political power over the WHO to lie about it for months, notoriously opaque regime that lied about it and that exerted their political power over the WHO to lie
	Speaking of a lack of accountability, two teenage black girls tried to steal a Pakistani Uber Eats driver's car Then as he was trying to stop them while he's still sort of half in the car, they took off, flipped the car, and killed him.
	Then...
	As this man was dying, breathing his last breaths on the ground, one of the young girls walked right past him, back to the scene of the crime, the flipped car, and she was very upset because she realized she left her cell phone in the car.
	And as the people on the scene said, get back, what are you doing?
	She said, no, no, I gotta get my phone.
	I left my phone in the car so that they could walk off.
	The victim's name is Mohammed Anwar.
	If the racial...
	Aspects of this crime were different.
	This would be international news.
	If it were two white teens, say, and a black driver, or perhaps some other race of a driver, this would be international news.
	The left would be blue in the face screaming about this.
	As evidence of white supremacy and how whiteness is corrosive and we need to abolish whiteness and it would just all be about white, white, white, white, white.
	And because the perpetrators of this crime are black, that's it.
	They're going to try to suppress the story.
	They're not going to mention race.
	Race is only ever mentioned and encouraged to be mentioned when it suits the narrative that white people are the perpetrators of crimes and black people and other racial minorities are the victims of crimes.
	Very, very sad stuff.
	The left is now taking this further, but it's a point they often go to in saying that these girls should not be looked on as criminals because they're just young teenage girls.
	Really, they're sort of victims.
	We shouldn't ask how to punish them.
	I saw various blue check marks tweeting this.
	We shouldn't think about how to punish them.
	We should think about how to help them.
	We shouldn't ask why they chose to do this, but what forced them to do this, what compelled them to do this.
	I would like to bring together these two arguments.
	The right tends to focus on free will and how perpetrators of crimes, whether they're teenage girls or fully grown adults, how they choose to perpetrate these crimes.
	And how the left says they don't choose.
	They're merely passive figures.
	According to the left now, everyone other than straight white men are passive figures.
	And whenever they do anything, or they seem to do anything evil, that really that's just because society made them do it.
	And by society we just mean the white patriarchy.
	And that's why really even when...
	A racial minority commits a crime.
	You had prominent left-wingers saying this just last week.
	When a racial minority commits a crime, really, it's the fault of white supremacy.
	Or it can be the fault of white supremacy.
	So, these two apparently polar opposite arguments that the left and the right are making right now.
	I would like to propose some sort of reconciliation between them.
	I get this.
	I was just reading it a couple nights ago in Old Uncle Boethius, a very, very smart writer who was killed, bludgeoned to death at the end of the Roman Empire as we moved into the Middle Ages.
	He wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, one of the greatest books ever written.
	And Boethius describes punishment, justice, in a way that it's sort of, it sounds both super right-wing and super left-wing, in that he says punishment for crime is an act of compassion.
	It's not an act of vengeance or wrath.
	It's an act of compassion.
	Because human beings seek happiness and seek the good and seek justice.
	And when they go down the wrong path, it is a compassionate action to punish them for that.
	Both for the injustice that must be satisfied, but also as a matter of sort of rehabilitation.
	When you punish them, you're...
	Encouraging them to go back down the right path.
	And Boethius then presents a kind of left-wing argument.
	He says, when you see people, defendants in court, really prosecutors shouldn't make an argument about how terrible they are and that's why they deserve punishment.
	They should make an argument about how sick they are.
	Something really sick has gone on with them.
	And we therefore as a society need to administer the medicine of just punishment, which is compassionate.
	Sounds sort of left-wing, even though the left I'm sure wouldn't agree with that.
	I have no doubt that...
	Look, these girls are past the age of reason.
	So to some degree, they have some understanding of the moral order and some control over their will.
	And they chose to do this horrific thing, commit this horrific murder, and show horrific callousness afterwards when they cared more about their stupid cell phone than about the man they had just killed.
	Also, I have no doubt that to some degree...
	These girls had some weird upbringing.
	I bet something went wrong somewhere.
	Look, I don't know.
	I don't know their family history.
	I don't know whether they had a normal, stable family.
	I don't know whether they had a father in the house.
	I know statistics, so I know it doesn't look great.
	I don't know their schooling.
	I don't know whether they were brought to church on Sunday.
	I don't know any of these things.
	But it would seem to me, likely at least, that if you commit this kind of a crime, something went wrong somewhere.
	Some parent failed and some teacher failed somewhere.
	Probably.
	Sure.
	That is not an excuse to let injustice reign and to let these two murderous teenagers off the hook.
	They should, at the very least, be put away for life.
	I think there's no question about that, at the very, very least.
	That is an act of compassion, and I think that when we call for justice, we can do so in a compassionate way, because justice is not evil and it's not cruel.
	It is good.
	That is what justice is.
	Speaking of evil stuff.
	I have to get to Lil Nas X, someone who I didn't know existed until a few days ago when he engaged in a satanic publicity campaign that I guess sort of worked because it caught my attention.
	It caught a lot of other people's attention.
	Lil Nas X, who is a rapper, is releasing Satan Shoes.
	666 individually numbered pairs of Nike Air Max 97s that were modified by the company MSCHF Mischief.
	Okay, I got it.
	They'll be going for over $1,000 beginning March 29th.
	Your mind must be truly warped by the devil if you're willing to pay $1,000 for a pair of running shoes, but there are other issues at play here.
	First things first.
	If you embrace Satan, who is a real person, you will burn in hell for eternity.
	Hell, which is a real place.
	We should establish that.
	People are going to joke about this and say, oh, here goes Michael.
	He's talking about some crazy religious stuff.
	I'm not.
	I'm just bringing you the facts.
	And facts don't care about your feelings, as my colleague here loves to say.
	Satan is a real person.
	Antonin Scalia Most people in history have believed in the devil.
	Most of America believes in the devil.
	Many more intelligent people than you or I have believed in the devil.
	So don't do that.
	If you play around with this stuff, even if you think it's funny, it's not, and you're really putting yourself in a lot of trouble.
	It's all fun and games until the devil's eating your soul for eternity.
	Beyond the outrage, though, Is there something that we can learn from Lil Nas X? Is there something?
	Once we tone down the outrage for a second, what is this really saying?
	What can we learn about this for our culture?
	I think there's actually quite a lot there.
	Lil Nas X is putting out the devil shoes that are numbered 666, you know, 666 pairs or $1,000 each.
	They include a drop of human blood in it.
	Not great.
	He's doing this in conjunction with a song that he's releasing in which he describes his, I guess, his sexual desires.
	Turns out he's gay and he came out and he says he's homosexual.
	And where he's like doing, like jiggling around for the devil and giving him a lap dance and things like that.
	So, I'm going to tamp down the outrage for a second and say, Nike is denying any involvement with this.
	It would seem that Nike's statement is that this company, Mischief, along with Lil Nas X, just kind of bought retail shoes and then redesigned them.
	Is that true or not?
	I don't know.
	But Nike's saying, we don't want anything to do with this.
	And no matter how woke your company gets, even a company like Nike, it would seem to me unlikely that one of their corporate executives thought, yeah, I know the way that we're going to make a lot of money.
	We're going to embrace the devil and put human blood in our shoes.
	I think that's a bridge too far even for Nike.
	Second of all, Little Nas X is not the first Satanist in entertainment.
	He's not even the first popular black entertainer who's embraced Satanism.
	Sammy Davis Jr., one of the great tap dancers and singers, famous for the Rat Pack, famous 20th century entertainer.
	He was an actual Satanist for some time.
	He eventually left and he converted to Judaism, but he joined the Church of Satan.
	He actually, he even made a sitcom pilot We're good to go.
	Well, I've got him here on the monitor, and you were right.
	Really?
	He's exactly what you've been waiting for.
	Can you come up right now?
	Oh, honey, if I come up there now and Lucifer catches me, I'm gonna be in all kinds of trouble.
	Oh, honey, you can't get in more trouble than what you are right now.
	Come on up, Sammy.
	You're right.
	See ya.
	So it gets even weirder.
	There's pentagrams in the show and everything.
	People don't forget this.
	They think about the 50s and the 60s.
	They think, oh, you know, that time when America, you know, it had all this very bourgeois morality and all these nice suburbs and everything.
	And, you know, one of America's most beloved entertainers was a one-eyed Satanist.
	You know, it kind of cuts against a lot of what we're told.
	It's amazing because we're told it was an ableist time.
	We're told it was a racist time.
	We're told it was an extremely Christian time.
	And yet one of America's most beloved entertainers.
	A black, one-eyed Satanist.
	He eventually got out of it though.
	So, obviously they're releasing this now during Holy Week.
	We're now approaching Easter.
	Little Nas X is doing this for publicity, no question.
	However, I watched the video and I think the video is actually somewhat interesting.
	In the video...
	Lil Nas X is in the Garden of Eden, and then he goes up to heaven, and then he goes down to hell.
	He actually glides a stripper pole down to hell and starts twerking on Satan's face.
	He is not condemned to hell.
	He freely chooses hell.
	And even beyond that, we have to realize that in the Garden, he is depicted as being tempted by the devil.
	So even that free choice is conditioned by sin.
	So you have to ask, well, how free was he really to do it?
	You know, you and I, we try to resist temptation and we fail.
	On and on and on we fail.
	Hopefully we get a little bit better at it, but we still fail because we're human and we have a broken nature.
	So it's very interesting here.
	It's not the judgmental people in heaven, though there are judgmental people depicted, who force him down to hell.
	He freely chooses hell.
	At least in his own mind.
	Even though he has been tempted very clearly by the devil.
	Is he really free?
	Then he gives a lap dance to Satan and then he kills the devil and puts the devil's horns on himself.
	There's nothing new under the sun, as you know, and this is not some new work of art that's come out.
	This is really, in a way, it seems to me, a hip-hop modern retelling of Paradise Lost by John Milton.
	Famous line in Paradise Lost where the character of Satan is presented in a sort of sympathetic way, and Satan, when he's thrust down into hell...
	He embraces hell.
	He sort of makes a free choice for hell.
	Very famous lines, he writes, Farewell, happy fields where joy forever dwells.
	Hail, horrors.
	Hail, infernal world.
	And thou, profoundest hell, receive thy new possessor, me, Satan, one who brings a mind not to be changed by place or time.
	The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell a hell of heaven.
	What matter where, if I be still the same, and what I should be, all but less than he whom thunder hath made greater, God, here at least we shall be free.
	The Almighty hath not built here for his envy, will not thrive us hence.
	Here we may reign secure, and in my choice to reign is worth ambition, though in hell.
	There is a lot here.
	I think actually the Little Nass music video makes a lot of sense in our present political climate, especially with what the left is pushing, but even with what some portions of the right is pushing.
	One of the more provocative elements in Milton's Paradise Lost is that Satan reads kind of like what you might call a classical liberal, at least in the way that we understand that term now.
	He reads as a guy who values his will and his ambition and his choice, even if he thinks it's a free choice, but maybe it's not a totally free choice.
	He values that over what is true and what is good and what is actually beautiful.
	He says, well, I've got my mind so I can make a hell of heaven or heaven of hell.
	Me, me, me.
	I'm going to choose it.
	The reality doesn't really matter.
	It's just my mind, my will, my desires, my appetite.
	That's what matters.
	This is, sure, you can have this as a logical conclusion of leftism.
	You can have this as a logical conclusion of individualism, too.
	It's why you're seeing this right now sort of collapsing on the right.
	Of the last 10 or 20 years, it's become fashionable to reduce all of conservative thought to, I want to do whatever I want to do, and I want to follow whatever desires I want, and darn it, that's my right.
	That's freedom.
	That's not real freedom.
	None of the serious thinkers about freedom, liberty, have ever thought that.
	Certainly our founding fathers didn't think that.
	There is a difference between liberty and licentiousness.
	You cannot really make heaven into hell or hell into heaven.
	But your mind can become so perverted and so self-obsessed and so prideful that you would prefer, that you would feel heaven to be hell.
	Because of a disorder your desires and your perception has become.
	That is the risk that we're in for society right now.
	It's why I think actually this Lil Nas video, which is satanic, you know, so don't, it's bad.
	I'm not encouraging it.
	But it's why it actually does have something rather interesting to say about our politics.
	And hopefully, through providence, we can, evil things can be turned toward good.
	Hopefully, we can learn some lessons from this terrible video, especially during Holy Week.
	It's why it was released.
	We sing the Easter antiphon.
	We sing, O happy fault that won for us so great, so glorious a redeemer.
	Christians celebrate even the fall of mankind.
	Which was evil and bad in and of itself, but God turns it to good, and it gives us our great and glorious Redeemer.
	So that's why we call it a happy fault.
	Perhaps we can see these things that can be turned to good and take that good turn when we can find it.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	We'll show you tomorrow.
	We'll show 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.
	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.
	Two teen girls in D.C. carjack and murder a man, and it's all caught on video.
	Biden plans to require vaccine passports.
	Dr.
	Fauci says that children should still wear masks when they play with each other.
	And a TikTok teacher speaks out against the racism of light-colored Band-Aids.
	That's a big problem.

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