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April 13, 2021 - The Michael Knowles Show

52:09

Ep. 741 - When Culture Is Downstream Of Politics

Squish governor Asa Hutchinson takes Breitbart’s maxim that “politics is downstream of culture” to an absurd extreme, major corporations collude to undermine election integrity, and a new shooting sparks more riots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Squishlib Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson doubled down this week on his argument that preventing perverts from pumping little kids full of cross-sex hormones somehow violates a deep conservative principle.
	I think it's helpful for our party to have that kind of vigorous debate About an important issue.
	And to me, this is about the future of our party.
	Are we going to be a narrow party that expresses ourselves in intolerant ways?
	Or are we going to be a broad-based party that shows conservative principles but also compassion in dealing with some of the most difficult issues that parents face, that individuals face?
	And at some point, I had to say, I've got to remind my wonderful Republican colleagues that we are the party of Ronald Reagan that believes in a limited role of government, and let's just ask that question.
	Sure, I sign pro-life bills, and I know that there's a role for government even in the social issues, but we have to fundamentally ask ourselves, Do we need to do this?
	Is there a better way?
	Is this something that we need to leave to the hand in the home or in the church, our faith leaders to handle?
	Is this calling out for a government solution?
	Do we need to pass laws to protect little kids from being pumped full of hormones by perverts?
	Or can we just do it in the home, in the society, in the culture?
	In other words...
	Politics is downstream of culture.
	How often have we all heard that?
	How often have we all said that?
	But does Asa Hutchinson not realize that culture can be downstream of politics, too?
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	the Michael Knowles Show.
	Welcome back to the show.
	My favorite comment yesterday from Sagan Sagita, who says, I wish Brian Stelter would show the same enthusiasm for voter ID that he shows for the vaccine passports.
	Show me your ID or you cannot vote.
	I know, wouldn't that be so great?
	It kind of gives away the game when you realize that the same left-wingers who were saying that it's racist and bigoted and outrageous and terrible to demand that people get ID to vote are demanding that people get ID to go into a bar or into a restaurant.
	Things that affect their daily lives multiple times a day.
	Obviously, the call for a COVID passport is much more onerous than getting an ID before you go vote so you can go and prove that you are who you say you are.
	But it's not...
	It's not about that at all.
	This is just about grabbing political power.
	Not just cultural power.
	They have that.
	We'll touch on that too.
	Not just social power, but political power, which Republicans have been ignoring for way too long.
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	Politics is downstream of culture.
	Sure.
	Yes.
	What did Andrew Breitbart, the patron saint of Hollywood conservatives, what did he mean when he said that?
	He meant that the entertainment industry influences a lot of our political discussion.
	It's a pretty straightforward point.
	Breitbart put it in this great, memorable way, but that's what he's saying.
	He's Yeah, totally, of course.
	But does that mean that policies, that law, that our political institutions have no effect on our culture?
	That's just preposterous.
	I don't think that Andrew Breitbart thought that.
	First of all, it's very difficult to have a neat and tidy distinction between politics and culture to begin with.
	When our reality TV star former president got elected, Was he a cultural figure or a political figure?
	When big technology companies that run the social media outside of the government, when they censor the duly elected president, are they behaving in a cultural or a political way?
	Obviously, it's a little bit of both because both culture and politics refer to how we all get along together.
	Does culture get impacted by politics?
	Yeah, of course.
	Look at East Germany.
	So East Germany right now is mostly atheist.
	Okay, more than 50% of East Germans are atheists.
	Only 10% of West Germans are atheist.
	Does culture explain this?
	Is it because of regional variations in Bratwurst that you have a huge disparity in religiosity?
	No, I think it has to do with politics.
	I think it's because East Germany was dominated by the officially atheist Soviet Union for decades, which pursued a ruthless policy of stamping out Christianity, and that had cultural effects even after the East German government went away.
	Even the most ardent disciples of the Breitbart doctrine on the right, the ones who say, no, government can never do anything.
	We can never act through our political institutions to affect what we want.
	It's only got to be cultural because politics is downstream of culture.
	If you ask those people, hey, do you think the great society programs in the 60s affected the black family?
	They will all tell you, yes, of course, it was terrible.
	It would have been Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society destroyed the black family.
	Okay, well, that would seem to be an example of culture being downstream of politics.
	Breitbart made a very good point.
	He's right.
	Conservatives need to amass and wield cultural power.
	But squish politicians are now exploiting Breitbart's argument as an excuse for not doing their own jobs in the political sphere.
	I didn't elect Asa Hutchinson to everything, but Asa Hutchinson's constituents didn't elect him to be the head of a film studio or the pastor of a church.
	They elected him to be the governor so he can do conservative things and effect conservative policies, and he's just not doing it.
	Fortunately, some other states are taking their roles seriously.
	Montana and Ohio are now, in their Republican-led legislatures, placing restrictions on the ability of people to obtain abortion pills through the mail.
	This is very good stuff.
	We mentioned the first time Asa Hutchinson brought up his ridiculous Reagan-Buckley point.
	The limited government point.
	I said, if keeping kids from being castrated does not fall within the legitimate limits of government, then what does?
	Then the government is going to be the size of an atom.
	The limits are going to be so small, nothing fits inside it.
	Here is another example of a good mandate.
	of a good regulation, of a good time to outlaw something.
	Because increasingly, people can order abortion pills online.
	They don't really even need to consult a medical doctor.
	So, right, but that's not my primary concern.
	My primary concern here is that babies are being killed with, with the tacit and sometimes explicit approval of the law.
	But a secondary effect here is that women are taking these drugs without medical advice, so it could hurt them as well.
	all.
	This is a good opportunity for the government to step in and say, no, you're not allowed to do that.
	But Michael, doesn't this constrict your freedom?
	No, it certainly doesn't constrict the baby's freedom.
	But no, that's not what freedom is.
	We've talked about it a lot on this show, that liberty and licentiousness are not the same thing.
	They're actually polar opposites.
	And it has been a trick of the left of political correctness to conflate the two things.
	I talk about this at great length in my upcoming book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available now for pre-order.
	You can also pre-order a signed autographed first edition copy.
	Just wanted to mention that.
	Just wanted to throw that out there.
	They're not the same thing.
	And even when we discuss our will, our ability to pursue our will, I think we've got to get a little more specific about this.
	I often use the example of the heroin addict.
	When the heroin addict wants to go shoot up heroin and then a bunch of squish liberal politicians who sometimes pretend they're Republicans say, oh yes, in the name of freedom, we got to let the heroin addict shoot up heroin.
	Is he pursuing his will?
	Kind of, but he's pursuing his lower will.
	He's pursuing his appetite, his desire.
	He's not pursuing his rational will.
	We all know this, right?
	St.
	Paul writes about this where he says, the things I want to do, I don't do, and the things I don't want to do, I do do.
	What does that mean?
	It means that I've got certain passions that rationally I know are bad.
	And so at the level of my intellect, I don't want to do them.
	But my flesh, because we're all kind of fleshy creatures, my flesh does want to do them.
	And so I need to train my will to stop my flesh from pursuing these things.
	That is called liberal education.
	That is called attaining liberty and virtue.
	We all used to know this in this country.
	The founding fathers wrote about it at length.
	But we don't seem to get that anymore because we've got this atrophied, shallow understanding of liberty and culture and politics.
	I'll give you another example of the culture.
	The culture here that seems to act a lot like the political sphere.
	Like what Mitch McConnell has called a parallel government.
	More than 100 corporate leaders met over the weekend to plot out their opposition to voter integrity laws across the United States.
	This includes, this according to CBS News, leaders from American Airlines, United Airlines, Levi Strauss, Walmart, Viacom, Aerial Investments, LinkedIn, Twitter, AMC movie theaters, they're still around, I'm shocked, and others were invited to this left-wing cultural and others were invited to this left-wing cultural private sector event for some of the most powerful entities in the United States, publicly traded entities in a lot of cases, to undermine our election integrity laws, to undermine our constitutional
	To undermine our election integrity laws, to undermine our constitutional republic.
	Should we just say, okay, well, that's the culture.
	Throw our hands up.
	We just need to write better books or something.
	No, of course not.
	I am all for, don't get me wrong, I am all for a thriving, broadly protected private sector where people broadly get to act without too much impediment from the federal government.
	But there are limits here.
	We're talking about limited government.
	Limited, we're talking about true liberty here.
	Which has limits.
	When these woke companies are putting their immense amount of cultural and political power...
	They all got lobbyists and all these lines blur together a lot.
	When they are putting that at the service of undermining our political system, undermining the will of the people of Georgia through their elected representatives to pass some election integrity laws, which, by the way, we had across this country...
	Before they were weakened by the 2020 election, in some cases explicitly violating state constitutions to make it easier for Democrats to get votes.
	When those companies do that, then I don't think we should protect them.
	I don't think that we need to suck up to big corporate America like some misguided Republicans have done for the last 20 years.
	I think we need to wield cultural power, sure.
	Stop buying Harry's razors if you don't like how much they hate your guts.
	Okay.
	Also, we need to wield political power.
	We need to take these tax breaks away from Delta like they get in Georgia.
	We need to maybe take even more aggressive measures at the political level on some of these companies.
	I do not want to be governed by a bunch of woke lunatics in Congress, but I am even less inclined to be governed by a bunch of woke lunatics in corporate America.
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	Corporate America colluding to undermine...
	Our political process and our constitutional order.
	That is not good.
	However, I do have some good news for those who want to weaken certain woke aspects of corporate America.
	At least one liberal corporation is not doing very well.
	That would be GoodPillow.
	Now, GoodPillow, I guess it's legally a company.
	It isn't doing anything yet.
	Good Pillow was the liberal pillow company that David Hogg, the activist, and some other guy whose name I forget, but I actually met him one time.
	But anyway, I forget him.
	He's like a Twitter left-wing troll guy.
	They came together and they formed this pillow company.
	And they just said, this is so great.
	We're going to put Mike Lindell out of business.
	We hate MyPillow.
	It's too conservative.
	Some of us called to the new liberal version of MyPillow, NowPillow, or OurPillow is another one for the real reds out there.
	But anyway, it's collapsing.
	So David Hogg tweets out, quote, Effective immediately, I have resigned and released all shares, any ownership, and any control of GoodPillow, LLC. I want to thank his partnership, I assume he's referring to this guy whose name I forget, and wish absolutely nothing but success with the future of GoodPillow.
	So he's resigning all of his shares.
	And it turns out, I did the calculations, all of David Hogg's shares of GoodPillow plus $29.98 will get you one premium queen-sized MyPillow, which is great.
	That's good news for him if he finds the $29.98.
	This whole fiasco is representative of David's political affiliation and also of his generation.
	They all want the semblance of the thing, but they don't want the thing itself.
	They all want the adulation.
	They want the nice write-ups.
	They want to be told, they're doing great work.
	They're brilliant.
	They're leading the country.
	They're bringing us out of our age of darkness.
	But they don't know anything.
	The fact that the left often relies on young people, not just even young people as spokesmen, but young people to go out and vote at college campuses and they're always trying to lower the voting age.
	The fact that they're relying on people who, by definition, are more ignorant than older people, more educated people, shows you this.
	They don't No, very much.
	They're just full of passionate intensity and desire.
	They haven't cultivated their higher will and their intellect.
	They've only exercised their lower wills and their desires and their appetites, and they get really angry and really wrathful and really impetuous, but sometimes it all goes down in flames.
	These young, very young activists should be in school Guys, why is David trying to start a pillow company right now?
	Isn't he in college?
	He should be doing that.
	I'm not saying I'm scolding him.
	You need to go back to class.
	I'm just saying it's a better use of his time than whatever fake pillow company some liberal activists are trying to use him to start.
	These people should be in school, but...
	One of the reasons that they're not, I suppose, is that the quality of education has plummeted in this country.
	There's a newly released video of a teacher from the San Marco Unified School District, this is in California, you'll be shocked to hear, yelling at her students over distance learning and other issues.
	This was posted to Facebook.
	Apparently it's a common occurrence.
	Take a listen to what your children are being taught in the virtual classroom.
	My question is, in this case, where is the white student union?
	You need a white student union, Jake!
	You need everything!
	Your parent wants to talk to me about their profession and their opinion on their profession?
	I would love to hear that.
	I know very little about anything else in the world other than education, okay?
	However...
	If your parent wants to come talk to me about how I'm not doing a good enough job in distance learning based on what you need as an individual, just dare them to come at me.
	Because I am so sick to my stomach of parents trying to tell educators how to do their job.
	I have never once gone to a doctor's appointment and tried to tell my medical health provider how to treat me.
	You know why?
	Because I know nothing about that.
	I didn't get my degree in medicine.
	I know nothing about that.
	I know very little about anything in the world.
	Those are true statements, I would suspect.
	Not the sort of thing you want to hear your kid's teacher say.
	Look, I know very little about anything in the world other than education.
	You see the problem, right?
	Education is an instrument to convey all that other knowledge you know about everything in the world to a student.
	You're supposed to know a lot of things, like dates and battles and...
	And books.
	You're supposed to know all that.
	And then education is the process by which you convey all of that knowledge, which this woman admits she doesn't have, to a student, which is why she doesn't do it very well.
	She also doesn't seem to be particularly talented at the education part of it.
	If you're screaming at students and you're parroting a typical left-wing racialist line that we need to have racial grievance groups and racial unions for every racial group, except for white people, the awful, terrible white people.
	And then to make this point about education that is so elementary, but she just doesn't understand it, which is she says, your parents have no role in your education.
	I, crazy ignorant lady, I am going to be your educator.
	I, who haven't cultivated my upper will and intellect, I who am given away to wrath and invective, I will educate you and how dare your parents suggest they have any say in it.
	But of course, the family is the first place that education happens.
	I'm not just talking about for homeschoolers or people who have some very solid view of the world.
	I'm saying for everybody.
	The best lessons you ever learned in your life, really the enduring lessons that you learned.
	Maybe some you learned in school.
	I learned some great lessons in school.
	But really, those enduring lessons that have really shaped my life, beyond even the technical aspects of learning how to write, learning how to read history, The ones that really shape how you are educated, meaning the whole person, the way you are raised up, where did you learn those?
	You learn those at home, of course.
	And parents ought to have some say in their child's education.
	This was one of the premises of William F. Buckley Jr.'s famous book that launched the post-war conservative movement, God and Man at Yale, that parents, trustees, people outside of the education system, ought to exert power on that education system.
	Is that going to be a cultural power or a political power?
	We're talking about a public school here.
	So it would seem that you got to...
	It's a little bit of both, isn't it?
	Certainly, whatever parents are living in this school district ought to exert a lot of political power to make sure that their students aren't being educated by people like this crazy lady.
	How are the teachers getting away with it?
	The teachers are getting away with this sort of thing because...
	Of the lockdowns because they're now, they get to teach from distance learning and they have a lock on these kids.
	They've clearly gone a little bit kookier than usual even.
	And they're just sitting in their homes saying and spatting off on whatever they want.
	And Dr.
	Fauci says absolutely no end in sight.
	Eating and drinking indoors in restaurants and bars, is that okay now?
	No, it's still not okay for the simple reason that the level of infection, the dynamics of infection in the community are still really disturbingly high.
	Like just yesterday, there were close to 80,000 new infections and we've been hanging around 60, 70, 75,000.
	So if you're not vaccinated, please get vaccinated as soon as vaccine becomes available to you.
	And if you are vaccinated, please remember that you still have to be careful and not get involved in crowded situations, particularly indoors where people are not wearing masks.
	So you get the vaccine, but you can't change the lockdown behavior at all.
	And this is, by the way, this is a little bit of a side point.
	Does it sound like Dr.
	Fauci has been moderating his accent a little bit?
	Does it sound like he's, maybe I'm just crazy here.
	To me, it sounds like he's tamping down the accent.
	Because when he's ordinarily on TV, it's, you know, well, listen here, you.
	I'm Dr.
	Fauci.
	But it actually sounds like he's, I don't know if I'm not saying he's heard my impression of him.
	Okay?
	I'm not saying that.
	I'm just wondering.
	I'm just asking questions, okay?
	I've been asking questions about coronavirus from the very beginning.
	And I've been asking questions specifically about the wisdom of these stupid lockdown policies that I have been ignoring as best I possibly can, other than when I occasionally have to fly on an airplane.
	And I said from the very beginning, they're not going to let this up.
	It's not two weeks to slow the spread.
	It's not a month.
	It's not two months.
	It's going to just go on until we take that power back from them.
	How are we going to take the power back?
	Are we going to take the power back by just walking into bars with our masks off?
	In some cases, maybe.
	In some cases, you don't want to get the owners in trouble.
	Okay, that's cultural power.
	Or are we going to exert political power?
	And mandate that power-hungry technocrats like Dr.
	Fauci should never be able to amass the kind of power that they have.
	Probably we need a little bit of both.
	Now, there is one cultural issue where I think you really can help yourself.
	That would be when you're shopping for auto parts.
	And the best place to do that, rockauto.com.
	rockauto.com always offers the lowest prices possible rather than changing prices based on a bunch of gimmicks.
	So Tuesday, you know, it's 30% up and then Wednesday it's 20% down.
	No, not at all.
	It's always reliable and they will always give you the best prices.
	All right, why would you go into the brick-and-mortar store and spend up to twice as much for the same parts?
	If you need, for instance, this is just off the top of my head, a Delphi FG1456 fuel pump assembly for, I don't know, let's say 2005 to 2010 Honda Odyssey.
	And let's say costs, I'm spitballing, $354 at a big chain store.
	That's the sort of thing Rock Auto will give you for $217.
	Do not Spend money needlessly.
	Do not humiliate yourself by going into that store and not having answers to all those questions they have.
	Rockauto.com, great family business.
	The website is so easy to navigate.
	Even I can do it.
	That is very impressive.
	Go to rockauto.com.
	Write now, see all the parts available for your car or truck.
	Then write Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, in their How Did You Hear About Us box, so that they know that we sent you.
	Also, make sure that you check out Ben Shapiro's show, because Ben is going to be talking about the next riot in Minneapolis.
	You, me, and the next riot.
	They just...
	This probably...
	When Ben wrote the show, there was one riot, but there's a new riot for a completely different reason right now.
	Also...
	It's already time for episode 5 of Candace.
	People can't get enough of Candace Owens.
	You know that.
	If you have not checked it out yet, what are you waiting for?
	The fearless Candace Owens hosts a lively series of guests each week for a discussion, panel, interviews, and her signature cancel corner.
	And if you look closely, not even that closely, you'll see a giant picture of my head there for that time that Harry's tried to cancel me.
	This week...
	She'll be hosting comedian and podcaster Adam Carolla.
	Tune in because you will not want to miss their conversation.
	The show streams on Fridays at 9 p.m.
	Eastern, 8 p.m.
	Central at dailywire.com.
	But you can get the audio podcast, Candice, on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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	you.
	If you like what you hear, we will be right back with a lot more.
	Dr. Fairbanks, Fauci is clearly attempting to hold the lockdowns over everybody until a sufficient number of people, in his estimation, get vaccinated.
	That's clearly the point, right?
	He's sort of admitted this.
	He's said, well, you know, look, the percentages, maybe I'll bump it up a little bit, bump it down a little bit, because we're just trying to get...
	Well, look, maybe we're going to bump the percentages up a little bit or down a little bit, but we're just trying to get everybody vaccinated.
	That sort of thing.
	I'm paraphrasing him here.
	But, by the way, that is his job.
	If you buy into the cult of public health, you recognize that the progressive vision here is we will be governed by a panel of experts who possess the science, capital S, trademark over the E, and the political power.
	Public, politics, science, or health, rather, science.
	So the political aspect here is that Fauci is trying to persuade people and lead people to doing what he wants them to do.
	A lot of this involves getting the vaccine, but they're having a little bit of trouble getting the vaccine.
	Jen Psaki is focusing in her recent press conference on trouble getting evangelical white voters to take the vaccine.
	You know, that awful group of people, worst people in this whole country, if you ask me.
	Jen Psaki is very upset that white evangelicals won't get the vaccine.
	And so she was asked how they're trying to remedy this situation.
	And she has a simple answer.
	They're just going to start advertising on NASCAR. We're also investing $3 billion to states and community-based organizations to strengthen vaccine confidence in the highest risk and hardest hit communities.
	And often people think of that as just black and brown communities, and that is not.
	As you've noted, that is also conservative communities, white evangelicals.
	It's a range of communities around the country.
	What we found to be most effective is to work with these local organizations.
	So faith-based organizations, community health organizations, civic leaders, and others who can really get this message deeply in communities.
	We've also had a number of our members of our COVID team from Dr.
	Fauci and And Dr.
	Collins participate, as an example, participate in a range of media interviews.
	You know, an example is Dr.
	Collins participated in the 700 Club.
	Dr.
	Nunez-Smith hosted a Faith Leaders Roundtable.
	We're also looking for, we've run PSAs on The Deadliest Catch.
	We're engaged with NASCAR and Country Music TV. We're looking for a range of creative ways to get directly connected to white conservative communities.
	We won't always be the best messengers, but we're still trying to meet people where they are.
	Okay, so she's putting this on with a real sincere straight face.
	She's saying, look, we're just, we're trying to reach these white evangelicals.
	And she ignores the fact that similar rates of black Americans are not getting the vaccine as white evangelical Americans.
	She's kind of, she's brushing that to the side.
	She's like, these white evangelicals, and we're trying to reach out to them where they are, you know, in their culture.
	So we're advertising on the deadliest catch.
	You know, we're advertising on NASCAR. And so we're just doing our best.
	This is obviously a dig at white conservatives.
	Do you think that she would say, if she were to address these similar rates of reluctance to get the vaccine among black people, do you think she would say, you know, we're trying to reach black people by advertising in gangster rap and Tyler Perry movies, and so we're just trying to meet them where they are?
	No, of course not.
	By the way, not because black people don't listen to rap music and not because white people don't watch The Deadliest Catch or whatever, or NASCAR, but because the specificity here would be designed to create a caricature.
	And that's obviously what she's doing here.
	It's a slightly subtle dig, so kudos to Jen Psaki, who's usually rather unsubtle for using a bit of subtlety.
	But it's creating a caricature of culture.
	The implication, of course, that it's completely insane for these white evangelicals to be reluctant to get a vaccine or to make a risk assessment over the vaccine.
	Completely ridiculous.
	And we know better here in the Biden administration.
	And we have the science, you know, with the capital S and everything.
	So now we're going to convince you to do it.
	Maybe, hear me out, maybe these groups of people, the black Americans who are reluctant to get it, and the white evangelicals, maybe they're making a risk calculation.
	And they're saying, well, my risk, depends who you are.
	If you're elderly or if you're fat, then you might have a greater risk from COVID itself.
	But if you're, let's say, you're relatively healthy, you're relatively thin, you're relatively young, your risk from COVID is pretty low.
	And you're saying, okay, well, I'm not saying the vaccine is poisonous.
	I'm not saying the vaccine is going to kill me.
	I'm not saying it's going to pump me full of 4G, 5G, and make my telephone service much better, or whatever other theories you're reading on the internet.
	I'm just saying I don't really need it.
	I think just this morning, didn't I read somewhere that one of the vaccines is now being recalled?
	Johnson& Johnson vaccine, I believe.
	Because it's causing a very small number of people, but still enough people that they're taking some steps here to deal with it, a blood clotting issue in women.
	Okay, well, maybe that means that people have some right to be a little bit skeptical or a little reluctant.
	I'm not saying across the board.
	I'm not anti-vax.
	Don't call me anti-vax.
	I'm just saying, if I'm a healthy young guy, Why do I need to worry about this?
	Well, because Dr.
	Fauci told me to.
	And because I'm watching The Deadliest Catch, and they told me to in the commercials as well.
	Those white evangelicals, those white people, they drive me crazy.
	Speaking of racial tensions, there is more rioting going on.
	Back, somehow, in Minnesota.
	Why is this?
	Because of a shooting, an officer-involved shooting, of Dante Wright.
	Well, I'll tell you what.
	Just take a listen to the footage and you can see what happened.
	Because it seems to be a whole mess of a situation.
	So Dante Wright is this guy being arrested outside of his car.
	They got him in the cuffs and then he breaks away and he jumps in his car.
	He gets back in his car.
	He's obviously resisting arrest.
	Who knows?
	Is he reaching for some weapon or something like that?
	He's trying to drive off.
	Now this woman pulls her gun out, screams taser.
	He drives off, but you hear her say, I just shot him.
	So what happened?
	The woman didn't reach for her taser.
	Maybe she thought she did.
	She seemed to think that she did.
	But she grabbed her pistol and then shot this dude in the car.
	So it doesn't sound like she did it intentionally.
	He drives away and she says, oh my goodness, oh my gosh, what just happened?
	I shot him.
	Also, This guy was resisting arrest.
	He was being arrested for a weapons charge and escaping police before he was then killed, which is now sparking more BLM, race rioting and looting.
	The criminal complaint says he had an illegal Ruger.45 pistol, and then he skipped his court date.
	Do we need to totally defend this woman cop?
	No.
	It seems that she was...
	Quite inept here.
	Really, regardless of the weapons charge or skipping arrest, you should not be grabbing a pistol and shooting a guy when you think that it's a taser.
	If she'd shot him with the taser, I'd think totally fine.
	But that seems like a big, big mistake.
	And when life and death is on the line, you can't tolerate that.
	Also, You shouldn't resist arrest and you shouldn't skip your court date for your weapons charge.
	And cops who are under attack in this country have some right to arrest criminals and to protect themselves when these guys try to get away.
	Horrible situation all around for everybody involved.
	The guy should not have died at this traffic stop, at least given what we know about this traffic stop at the moment that he died.
	That should not have happened.
	Also, if he had not resisted arrest, it would not have happened.
	Okay, that's, I think, as reasonable a take on the shooting as you can possibly have.
	So now Minnesota is going up in flames.
	Again, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry has declared a state of emergency in the city.
	Together with the St.
	Paul Mayor, Melvin Carter, has announced a curfew starting at 7 p.m.
	as the city braces for further riots following this shooting.
	The National Guard was called out Sunday night to help keep the peace and is likely to assist Minneapolis and Brooklyn Center Law Enforcement Monday night.
	If I were the mayor of Minneapolis or St.
	Paul, nobody has elected me to that position.
	Seems like a pretty blue place, so something tells me I would not be elected there.
	My solution to this would be, yep, call in the National Guard, institute a curfew, and then anybody who riots gets arrested and goes to prison for a very long time.
	And then, when you have arrested all of these rioters, One, or even a good percentage of the rioters, you deter further rioting, which these feckless people did not do last year when BLM torched the city for the first time in recent memory.
	They didn't do that, so they encouraged more of this violence.
	But also, when you put enough of the rioters in prison, you don't have any more rioters.
	Now, we are told we have an over-incarceration problem in the United States.
	As long as cities are being torched, I don't think we have an over-incarceration problem.
	I think, as Senator Tom Cotton pointed out the other day, we have an under-incarceration problem.
	Because we got all these criminals who are torching the cities and burning people's private businesses and private homes.
	It's the cultural side.
	And burning government buildings.
	That's the political side.
	And we're not just going to have a cultural response and persuade people through our local civic organizations like the Lions Club.
	You can do that, too.
	That's helpful.
	And make better movies and have cultural institutions.
	Yeah, go ahead, do that.
	Also, you need a political response from the government.
	The left doesn't want to do that, though.
	The left doesn't really want to tamp down the violence.
	That's why they've encouraged.
	That's why Kamala Harris last year bailed these criminals out of prison.
	She raised money to bail the criminal rioters out of prison, out of jail.
	They don't want to tamp this stuff down because the left thrives on crises.
	And the other strategy that the left relies on is the redefinition of words.
	Bernie Sanders showing this just the other day.
	So this all began...
	Because Kirsten Gillibrand, the not very successful Democrat candidate for president, senator from New York, she tweeted out, quote, paid leave is infrastructure.
	Child care is infrastructure.
	Caregiving is infrastructure.
	Now, of course, those sentences don't mean anything because none of them is true.
	You could just say, you'd say, like, apples.
	Apple is love.
	Television is up.
	Purple is seven.
	I know you're saying words and they seem to, they got the noun and the verb, but they don't mean anything.
	Bernie Sanders, picking up on this theme from Kirsten Gillibrand, is also radically redefining the word infrastructure.
	You've got to take a broad look at what infrastructure means, human infrastructure, for ordinary people.
	Human infrastructure means housing.
	You've got half a million people in this country who are homeless.
	You've got 19 million households who are spending 50% of their limited incomes on housing.
	We need to build housing.
	And by the way, when you deal with housing, you create jobs.
	You've got to deal with climate change.
	Who in their right mind would believe that transforming our energy system To protect us from the devastation that we're seeing from climate change, who would not believe that that is not infrastructure?
	So moving away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energies, that can create millions of jobs.
	When I talk about infrastructure, it means if a worker, mom and dad are going to work, they have the right to know that their kids are in decent childcare.
	That's infrastructure.
	Infrastructure is having the best educated workforce in the world.
	Child care is infrastructure.
	Education is infrastructure.
	But it isn't.
	Infrastructure is infrastructure.
	Roads and bridges, that's what infrastructure is.
	Education is education.
	Child care is child care.
	But this is what the left relies on.
	They believe that by redefining words, they can redefine reality.
	This is the central feature of political correctness.
	This is something that I detail at great length in my upcoming book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.
	Available now for pre-order.
	You see this on the left.
	I guess the way that you can always tell they're about to do this is when they say or imply that When you really think about it, right?
	Whenever they say or imply, as Bernie, I think, implied, but sometimes they say it explicitly, hey, when you really think about it, isn't childcare infrastructure, whenever they say when you really think about it, just know there will not be any thinking going on.
	You will have to suppress your thinking, your higher will and intellect, to become a gullible fool and go in for whatever they're saying.
	Because when you really think about it, Child care is not infrastructure.
	They're different things.
	They can be good.
	Child care can be good.
	Actually, raising your own child can be really good.
	Highly recommended.
	But, sure, certain education can be good, unless you're going to that unified school district in San Marco with the crazy teachers.
	But there can be good education.
	There can be bad.
	Sure, that's fine.
	It just isn't infrastructure.
	And no amount of Bernie Sanders or any other leftist trying to redefine words is going to make it so.
	The reason they're pushing this now is because they're trying to push through an infrastructure bill, infrastructure funding, and so they want to get all of their goodies into that bill, just like how they put 91% of a COVID bill.
	They make 91% of a COVID bill just about whatever random nonsense they want.
	They say, well, when you really think about it, isn't socialized medicine, isn't that infrastructure?
	Or in the COVID case, when you really think about it, isn't child care public health and COVID protection?
	No, I don't.
	When I really think about it, I don't think it is.
	The Libs, by the way, are planning on putting some infrastructure in our bodies.
	A lot of talk about infrastructure now.
	They apparently want to put a little bit of that in our bodies.
	This report just came out yesterday.
	I'm not joking.
	I did not find this in the deep recesses of the internet.
	This is being published by the mainstream, even left-wing outlets.
	Doctors and researchers at the Pentagon are working to prevent a future pandemic By developing a microchip that can go under our skin that can detect a virus.
	This according to Dr.
	Matt Hepburn, a retired Army infectious disease physician.
	This is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which is a secret research agency, not that secret because we're talking about it on this show, tasked with protecting soldiers from contagious diseases and biological weapons.
	I... I can't believe I'm saying this for the second time in, what, a week or two?
	But it seems like Alex Jones and associated people were sort of right.
	I'm not saying...
	I want to be very clear.
	I am not saying that the government is currently injecting people with microchips.
	But the news report is very clear.
	They are developing a microchip that can go under a person's skin to detect diseases.
	The headline that I'm going to read tomorrow is going to be breaking news.
	Pentagon confirms that they are, in fact, turning the frickin' frogs gay.
	That I wouldn't be surprised.
	And by the way, the EPA and Yale University were engaging in research on whether or not chemicals in the water in Connecticut were turning the frickin' frogs trans.
	Not gay, actually.
	They were turning them trans.
	This is, on the one hand, I want to back away for a moment from all the theories about the microchips and stuff like that.
	On the one hand, this is incredibly technologically impressive.
	Okay, I'm going to put the political question aside for a second.
	I'm just focusing on the science or the technology or whatever.
	It is very impressive that scientists could develop a microchip that can detect if you are coming down with a virus and, you know, beep or boop or something or light up and tell you that you've got to go get some medical care.
	That is.
	That's genuinely very impressive.
	I don't want it.
	Don't want it.
	Not interested.
	I don't care.
	I am not an adherent of the cult of public health.
	I know a lot of people are.
	At the cultural and the political level, that's how these sociopath politicians and public health officials have shut down our country for a year.
	I don't want it.
	If the option is live 10 years longer With a microchip under your skin that makes you neurotic about every time you're about to get a virus or something.
	And social distance and wear the stupid masks and all that nonsense.
	But you live 10 years longer.
	Or, don't live 10 years longer, but don't live your life in the neurotic paranoid fear of coming down with the sniffles.
	And ultimately, the neurotic fear of death.
	I'm going to take the latter.
	Because...
	No one here gets that alive.
	I'd like to live a good long life.
	Emphasis on the good, I suppose.
	But I know, look, eventually, if I am to have a future, it ain't going to be here.
	Because we're all going down eventually.
	And hopefully that natural fact helps you to think about supernatural and eternal things.
	Or we can all just become neurotic ninnies and put microchips in our skin and worry about getting the flu or whatever.
	Speaking of outlandish things that have become plausible, can't miss this story.
	According to the New York Post, there is a New York parent who wants to marry his or her own child.
	We do not know whether this individual is a man or a woman, this parent, because the person who has filed this court document wants to remain anonymous because obviously this person is a sicko.
	And we also don't know the sex of the child because in the last five or seven years we've fundamentally redefined marriage to take sexual difference out of it.
	So we don't know, is it a daughter?
	Is it a son?
	We don't know.
	Here's what we do know.
	As a matter of, quote, individual autonomy, this parent wants to remain anonymous because what he or she wants is, quote, an action that a large segment of society views is morally, socially, and biologically repugnant.
	But...
	What this person wants is, Maybe intentionally so, is the language of Anthony Kennedy's decision in Obergefell v.
	Hodges, the decision that redefined marriage from the court bench to include monogamous same-sex unions.
	I wonder if this is a troll.
	I wonder if this parent suing to marry his or her own son or daughter is doing so to make a point.
	Or maybe it's real, though.
	I mean, this sort of creepy stuff does happen a lot in our culture.
	Regardless, the question I have is, by the logic of Obergefell, by the logic according to which the Supreme Court, specifically Anthony Kennedy, redefined marriage to include monogamous same-sex unions, why should this matter be any different?
	Why should these people be excluded from this important bond of marriage?
	Why should these people's individual autonomy between consenting adults, who by the way can't procreate, it says in the court documents they can't procreate, so who knows, maybe it's an age thing, maybe it's a sex thing, who knows.
	Why should they be excluded for that?
	What's the argument?
	What's the argument?
	Well, because it's wrong.
	Well, that's what you say, but you know, that's just your opinion, man.
	Come on, man.
	That's just your value system.
	Maybe people have other value systems.
	Doesn't marriage expand intimacy?
	Well, Antonin Scalia had a great line about this, which is, he says, you know, Anthony Kennedy says that marriage expands intimacy.
	But as someone who's been in a long time marriage, I think actually marriage restricts rather than expands intimacy.
	Ask the nearest hippie, which is a great line.
	Marriage expands spirituality.
	What does that mean?
	I have no idea.
	Neither does Kennedy.
	Neither does the person writing this.
	But what's the limiting principle?
	There isn't one.
	So then maybe we need to rethink some of the radicalism that we've engaged in in the last few years.
	Not because we hate people.
	First of all, not because we hate homosexuals.
	No one's saying we need to outlaw homosexuals.
	No one's saying that at all.
	But what the left has done, because they're so smart about this, they conflate these two things.
	They say, well, if you don't want to radically redefine the fundamental political institution, and cultural institution, by the way, the building block of society, the family, if you don't want to fundamentally redefine it from what it's been for all of human history everywhere on Earth, then you hate gay people, and you want to ban them, and you don't want to let them do anything, and you're mean.
	What are you talking about?
	Well, what they're talking about is using language.
	A topic I talk about at great length, by the way, in Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available now for pre-order.
	Using language to redefine these cultural questions and these political questions and then bullying you, the conservative, tricking you, the conservative, into only focusing on the cultural matters, where, by the way, the right is not wielding power anyway, and totally conceding the political realm.
	Seems like a big trick.
	Seems like we should wake up to it and start fighting back.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	show.
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	Copyright Daily Wire 2021.
	Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, another police shooting of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis spurs riots.
	Rashida Tlaib calls for an end to policing.
	And the federal government puts a pause on the Johnson& Johnson vaccine for no apparent reason.
	That's today on the Ben Shapiro Show.

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