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April 14, 2021 - The Michael Knowles Show
48:47
Ep. 742 - Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers

A BLM supporter defends looting, Cruz and Hawley move to bust up woke corporations, and the CDC pauses one of the WuFlu vaccines.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I have said for a long time on this show that the left through political correctness or wokeness or cancel culture or whatever is seeking purely to destroy, to dismantle, to deconstruct.
This is not a positive movement trying to build something.
It's just trying to tear stuff down.
And sometimes left-wingers say, Michael, that's not fair.
No, you're straw manning.
That's not true.
Well, one social justice warrior with a podcast, Kim Brown, her show is called burn it down with Kim I think you can get the thesis of what that is.
She is acknowledging that what we're seeing right now in leftist activism is purely designed to destroy.
I support all that s***.
I support them looting the damn Dollar Tree.
I support the looting of what other s*** did they loot?
Like the advanced auto parts?
I remember last year they looted Target.
I support all that s***.
Loot all that s***.
Do you know why?
Because Black people and marginalized and oppressed people could loot Every store in this whole country for 200 years, it would not even come close to the debt that America owes us.
But, of course, that's not true.
America doesn't owe any people or any peoples anything.
Nothing.
Nunc, niente, nada.
This is true of the West more broadly.
The West, though the West flagellates itself and says, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, the West does not owe anybody anything.
The West produced the greatest civilization in the history of the world, which has been an unbelievable A fathomable blessing to the entire globe.
Unfortunately, the opinion that America and the West owe something to everybody else has gained a lot of currency on the left.
It has come to dominate our national conversation.
We're only focusing on these screaming, radical leftists.
I hate to be a kicker.
I always long for peace.
But the wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday from Josh Pedrazza.
Pedrazza?
I don't know, something like that.
I'm trying to make it really Italian.
He says, if Fauci came down to Florida and saw the open bars, he would probably tear his cloak and yell, blasphemy!
Blasphemy!
He is the Caiaphas of our present religious order, the high priest of secular progressivism.
I can't believe that people can't see it.
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Everybody is apologizing.
For things that they don't need to apologize for because of the imagined transgressions of the West.
I'm not even talking about real transgressions, which every civilization has.
I'm talking about the imagined transgressions.
Hank Azaria, who is the voice actor from The Simpsons, he's the guy who does Apu.
If you haven't listened to The Simpsons, Apu is a guy who kind of talks like a stereotypical Indian guy.
Apu is now, this is very racist.
If an Indian or Pakistani guy voices Apu, does the exact same voice, that totally fine.
If a white guy like Hank Azaria does Apu, this very racist, terrible Azaria just apologized for the 7 millionth time.
He said, quote, I really do apologize.
It's important.
I apologize for my part in creating that and participating in that.
Part of me feels like I need to go to every single Indian person in this country and personally apologize.
And sometimes I do.
That is very pathetic.
That's sad.
That is neurotic.
You should seek professional help, Hank Azaria.
But it's also empty because Hank Azaria has made a lot of money on the Simpsons.
Last I checked, he hasn't been doling out $100 bills to every Indian guy that he meets on the street.
He hasn't been donating, giving away all of his money.
He still enjoys the fruits of the Simpsons.
He just feels bad about it.
Just like so many, So masochistic people in the West, of all races, but especially the white liberals, enjoy the fruits of the West.
They still enjoy this nice civilization.
They just want to denigrate it.
They want to deride it.
They want to apologize for it all the time.
Indian people are not offended by Apu.
I'm speaking only anecdotally here.
I have many Indian friends.
They don't think that Apu should be cancelled.
I don't think that Mario and Luigi should be cancelled as a member of the Italian race, or at least partially the Italian race.
I don't think so.
People who have it really, really well They got it real good.
They need to invent things to complain about if they are in this kind of perverse society in which, rather, complaints and grievance has social currency.
There was an article in the LA Times, some commentary, the casual racism of mispronouncing an Asian person's name.
They're really upset.
I actually followed this story a little bit because some of my friends in the theater community in L.A. L.A. theater community has this ovation awards ceremony.
It's a smaller awards show for plays in the L.A. area.
And the organizers mispronounced the name of an Asian-American nominee.
And they displayed the wrong photo of one of the actors.
You see the name, I forget, the name is spelled J-U-L-L-Y, I believe, and they pronounced it Jelly or something, but it's really pronounced Julie, and this is a big problem.
Every single time that I go to a coffee shop in this country and I order a coffee and they say, what's your name?
And I say, Michael.
M-I-C-H-A-E-L. That's how you spell Michael.
It's one of the most popular names in the world.
When I get my coffee, they spell it M-I-C-H-E-A-L. Where is my reparations?
Where is my apology?
How can I even get out of bed in the morning?
I'm so offended.
No, it's not a big deal.
It just doesn't matter.
It's fine.
J-U-L-L-Y is an uncommon name.
It is no surprise that somebody might mispronounce it.
Furthermore, there is something positively good about mispronouncing foreign names in this country.
I have many ancestors who had foreign names when they got to this country.
I am glad that this country mispronounced those names.
My grandfather's last name, Is misspelled.
Because when they went to Ellis Island, the guy at Ellis Island didn't take the time.
He didn't really know.
How do you spell it?
How many N's?
How many S's?
What?
Okay, well, whatever.
Here's your new last name.
I like that.
Because America has a culture.
And when we take people into this culture, they need to give up.
Maybe not their whole culture, but they need to give up part of it.
And they need to get on board with this culture.
And they need to learn this language.
And they need to renounce, to some degree, the land they've left.
If they really want to be part of this country.
That's a good thing.
I'm glad.
It's wonderful to speak other languages.
I speak other languages.
It's wonderful to engage with other cultures.
I love doing that all the time.
But we cannot expect the United States and the West more broadly uniquely to give away its identity and uniquely to apologize for sins that are ubiquitous around the world and that frankly other civilizations have committed to a far greater extent.
You see this notably with slavery.
The liberals pretend that the West invented slavery or uniquely practiced slavery.
Of course that isn't true.
Slavery existed long before it came to the West and it existed long after it left the West.
And it existed and continues to exist even more viciously than it was practiced in many parts of the West.
What's unique about the West is that we got rid of it.
In parts of Africa and parts of Asia, it continues to be practiced today.
It's good to apologize when you do something wrong, and it's good to forgive people when they do something wrong to you.
That is, according to the late conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, that is essential to civilization.
So I like that.
I wish we lived in a culture right now where I could apologize if I do something wrong, and you would forgive me, and that'd be fine.
When you apologize, you sacrifice your pride.
When you forgive someone, you sacrifice your resentment.
You both sacrifice something that means something to you, and you move along together in society.
We don't live in that culture right now.
It is not in good faith.
You heard it from that crazy leftist at the top of the show, who I think represents a lot of people, when she said, no, we want to burn it down.
It's good to loot.
It's good to burn down stores.
That's not a fringe opinion.
Kamala Harris bailed the people who actually burned down those stores out of jail.
She's the sitting vice president.
In that culture, that does not...
Agree that we should all continue to get along together.
Then you can't simply, you know, we'll just forgive a little bit.
We'll move on.
We'll sacrifice our resentment.
No way.
Our society seems incapable of that right now.
It's really nice to have an open, broad, private sphere.
This is kind of the Republican politics of the last 20 years.
We made this neat distinction between the private sector and the public sector.
And the public sector, that's the government.
Government, bad.
And the private sector, that's business.
Small business, big business, that's good.
And whatever business does, that's good.
And whatever government does, that's bad.
Well, what happens when the businesses start going just as woke, maybe more woke than the government?
What happens when those private, allegedly private businesses, start controlling the flow of information around our public sphere?
What happens when those businesses start undermining our elections?
What happens when we're not all just trying to get along together to build something, but actually even corporate America has been hijacked It's just rolled over into helping the radicals burn down our society.
Are we going to throw up our hands and because of some shallow pseudo-conservative principles say, well, you know, if the government wants to destroy our society and our election system, we should just let that happen.
That's a good thing.
That's conservative.
Nothing more conservative than supporting terrorists who go around the country burning down our buildings and undermining our elections.
No, I don't think so.
You have to push back.
You have to recognize that this fringe thing that we used to say, oh, it's just on the campuses.
Wait until those radical snowflakes get into the real world.
Well, guess what?
The real world is now acquiescing to them.
You have to stand up for a separate set of standards, which is the point I explain in great detail in my upcoming book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available now for pre-order.
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Well, some prominent Republicans are really wising up to this.
They are really leading the charge.
They are being called heretics.
Liberals by the squishes, but actually they are asserting a very conservative principle.
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Senator Ted Cruz, I don't just say it because we host a show together.
I don't just say it because he's a friend of mine.
That guy sees where the Republican Party needs to go.
He does.
And he's not alone.
With him, Mike Lee.
With him, Josh Hawley.
By the way, this is not just a matter of a libertarian side or a more traditional conservative side.
Look at those two guys.
Mike Lee, much more libertarian.
Josh Hawley, much more of a traditional conservative.
And Senator Cruz seems to be leading the pack here.
In particular, in his attacks on the woke corporations.
He's recognizing this isn't about one faction of the Republican Party or another faction.
This is about just seeing that we apply eternal principles to changing circumstances, and the circumstances are such right now that we cannot let these woke corporations get away with it.
Specifically, Major League Baseball.
Listen to Senator Cruz.
This last month has seen a significant and indeed a dramatic change in our country and not a change for the good.
This past month we have seen the rise of the woke corporation.
We have seen the rise of big business enforcing a woke standard It's always been the case that big business wants to get in bed with big government.
It's always been the case that big business seeks handouts, seeks subsidies, seeks special benefits at the expense of the little guy, at the expense of the small business.
But in the past month, these woke corporations have decided to become the political enforcer for Democrats in Washington.
They've made the decision to get in bed even at the price of spreading disinformation.
Bingo.
There it is.
You hear that key word there?
Standard.
Enforcer.
The woke corporations are pushing a radical standard on this country that is undermining our country, specifically in the case of the MLB in Georgia.
They are trying to undermine election laws and the ability of the people of Georgia, through their representatives, to protect the ballot box.
All at the behest of Democrats who want to undermine our election system.
Cruz, totally right.
Josh Hawley gets it too.
So it's time for a new round of trust busting in the United States.
Major League Baseball is a great place to start.
This is why I support Senator Lee's legislation.
Proud to join him and Senator Cruz on it.
It's time that we sent a clear signal that, first of all, there shouldn't be these dramatic carve-outs in our antitrust laws, like the one the Supreme Court made up for Major League Baseball.
And it's also time that we sent the signal That no corporation is above the law.
That no corporation should be able to be a power and a state unto itself, whether we're talking about Major League Baseball or whether we're talking about Big Tech or Big Pharma or Big Banks.
All of these corporations exist to serve our democracy, the people of the United States, and ultimately competition.
Free, open competition.
It's the guarantor of liberty.
It's what protects the people's liberty.
It's what protects our democratic process.
And we've got to act now to ensure that there is that free, robust competition again in all sectors of our economy.
And Major League Baseball is a great place to start.
start.
I'm delighted to join this legislation.
Big government is not the only problem.
Big tech is a problem.
Big corporate America is a problem.
Big, big, big, unlimited power in the hands of a few is, is the problem.
That is the progressive dream.
That's what Woodrow Wilson writes about explicitly when he says, what is progress?
Progress is taking, taking our old system, which was under the laws of Newton, where we have eternal laws governing an eternal nature, where we need checks and balances.
We're gonna junk all of that because now we need an energetic organism of government.
That is living under the laws of Charles Darwin, and we need to ditch the old constitutional order and rev up so that we can move forward into progress.
No.
No, we don't.
There remain eternal laws, so this remains a fallen world, and we need checks and balances.
I mean, even if you think of the divine right of kings, the claim of the divine right of kings, Even that involves a certain check, which is that the kings are subject to the moral law, which is eternal, and obviously it's the highest power in the world.
They're subject to God.
They can't just do whatever they want.
But these liberals, these leftists, won't even acknowledge that.
They won't even be checked by that.
This gets to something at the heart of the Republican and conservative tradition, which is busting up big unchecked power.
Cruz gets it.
Lee gets it.
Hawley gets it.
Why don't the rest of those guys in Washington get it?
Because that is the future of the GOP. Get on board or get run over.
We are going to take these things much more seriously than in the past, and we're going to break up those ossified, ridiculous slogans that pretend that woke billionaires in Silicon Valley ought to do whatever they want, including undermine our country.
No, I don't think so, buddy.
That seems kind of like a public sphere to me, too, no matter how much you want to pretend it's private.
Speaking of the future of the GOP, talk about a big tent party.
Caitlyn Jenner is seriously considering running for governor of California, according to reports.
We had mentioned this about a week ago, that there was a rumor.
I didn't know if it was real or not.
Well, according to Politico...
Caitlin has hired up Ryan Irwin, who's a former top California GOP official, had roles on Romney and Jeb Bush's presidential campaigns.
Hired up Harmeet Dillon, a Republican National Committee member and a San Francisco attorney.
Hiring up Carolyn Wren, longtime GOP fundraiser, and Brad Parscale, who was the ousted campaign manager for Trump 2020.
That seems a little bit more serious.
Now, how should one think about this?
Obviously, Caitlin is quite mistaken about a fundamental aspect of human nature, namely that men can't be women and women can't be men.
Though his views are a little more nuanced on this, but he gets that pretty wrong.
However, however, politics is pretty strange.
We vote for the most right viable candidate, to use Buckley's term.
And I'm not convinced that Caitlin's views, even on transgenderism, are further left than Governor Pretty Boy, than Mussolini up there.
I suspect Mussolini probably has further left views.
Than Caitlyn Jenner.
Last I checked, I don't think Caitlyn Jenner supports pumping little kids full of hormones, cross-sex hormones.
Could be wrong about that, but I don't think so.
And on a whole host of issues, Caitlyn more conservative.
Now, there may be other people who get into the race, so I think we should hold off before we start waving the Caitlyn Jenner signs.
And obviously, there comes a point when the party becomes so broad that you've undermined your own principles.
If you're really going to exalt this idea that a man can become a woman, that might be too...
Too harmful to the Republican Party broadly.
He can't do it.
But it would seem that Caitlyn is serious about running for governor.
We've seen stranger things in California before.
And if he does want to do that, he's got to get serious about wooing GOP voters.
Maybe California is ready to turn.
I don't know.
I always assumed that Newsom gets recalled, but then he survives the recall because there's too many Democrats in the state.
Because they've been flooding the state with illegal immigrants for a long time.
But maybe California is ready to turn.
I don't know.
Garcetti just went to opening day at Dodger Stadium.
He was there with a few other people.
Eric Garcetti is the mayor of Los Angeles, possibly the single worst mayor in the country.
He might be worse than Bolshevik Bill de Blasio in New York.
Well, when he went out there to Dodger Stadium, that guy got booed.
Please join me in welcoming Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, LA City Councilmember Gil Sedil, Hall of Fame broadcaster Jaime Harin, Dodger owner Billie Jean King, and Dodger owner Irvin Magic Johnson.
Wow.
So you see, they're very clever here because they have five big people on stage and four of them seem fairly popular.
So they get the applause at the end.
The first guy mentioned, though, is Garcetti.
And I think they know that Garcetti is going to get booed and you can hear it.
Eric Garcetti, boo!
And then all the other guys, Magic Johnson or whatever.
Yay!
We like Magic Johnson, right?
But they don't like Garcetti.
Maybe this means...
That California has had enough.
The pendulum takes a long time for that pendulum to swing.
Perhaps it is beginning to swing back.
How about at the national level?
There are a lot of people who could run for president in 2024.
It looks like Ron DeSantis wants to run.
I think he's all but ready to dye his hair blonde and run in the Trump lane.
And he's doing an excellent job down in Florida.
I have said on the show before, I've encouraged Senator Cruz to run for president.
As I've just said in this show, I think he sees where the Republican Party is going and he's helping lead on it.
Hawley seems like he wants to run for president.
Nikki Haley seems like she wants to run for president.
And Nikki Haley...
She got a lot of flack recently because she seemed to turn against President Trump.
Well, who knows?
I mean, she was quoted in a Politico article, so you take Politico with a grain of salt.
But Nikki Haley is quite clear now.
She says, no, Trump is the leader of the party.
And if President Trump decides to run in 2024, then I will not run.
That is a signal from former Governor, former Ambassador Haley.
That the old Bush Republicans, the Bushies, the old squishy Republicans, they, much to their chagrin, are not taking back the party.
We are not going to be moving in that squishy direction.
The future of the GOP, if it is to have a future, is to become more conservative.
Ben will be discussing not just the direction of national politics, but also local politics.
Are we going to abolish the police?
Go check that out on his show also.
Be sure to check out The Candace Owens Show.
It's already episode five.
You know we can't get enough of Candace and her new show.
What's the show called?
It's called Candace.
If you have not checked it out yet, what are you waiting for?
She is a fearless conservative leader.
Hosting this lively series of guests each week for panel discussion, interviews, and her signature, Cancel Corner.
This week, she'll be hosting comedian and podcaster Adam Carolla.
Tune in because you do not want to miss their conversation.
The show streams on Fridays at 9 p.m.
Eastern, 8 p.m.
Central at dailywire.com.
You can get the audio podcast Candace on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
If you need some Candace Owens in your feed, Nikki Haley is a good writer.
Bellwether on where the GOP is headed.
Because she has had support among the moderate wing of the party before.
But she's also had a lot of support among Trump supporters.
And she lost a little bit of that support when a Politico article came out.
And she seemed to dispute that Politico article.
And who knows?
The media have lied before.
So who knows?
In any case, she was just asked, would you run if Trump runs in 2024?
Here's her answer.
He still has a lot of popularity.
If he runs again in 2024, will you support him?
Yes.
If he decides that he's going to run, would that preclude any sort of run that you would possibly make yourself?
I would not run as President Trump ran.
And I would talk to him about it.
You know, that's something that we'll have a conversation about at some point if that decision is something that has to be made.
But yeah, I would absolutely.
I had a great working relationship with him.
I appreciated the way he let me do my job.
I thought we did some fantastically great foreign policy things together.
And look, I just want to keep building on what we accomplished and not watch it get torn down.
When was the last time that you talked to him?
After the election.
Before January 6th or after?
Before January 6th.
So notice here, she doesn't hesitate.
And the cynical people who already don't like Ambassador Haley, they'll say, oh, you know, it's just opportunism.
I don't know.
I mean, if it were just opportunism and she was trying to really just calculate exactly what the answer should be, don't you think she might have paused a little bit?
She might have hesitated.
Well, I'd certainly talk to the president, but she doesn't hesitate.
So whatever the impulse is, I think she's showing opportunity.
Excellent judgment here, not just on the Trump of it all, but on the direction of the GOP. She is recognizing what Senator Cruz is recognizing, what Josh Hawley is recognizing, what Ron DeSantis is recognizing, which is that the future of the GOP is going to be in the conservative direction.
It's not going to be, oh, let's, you know, Asa Hutchinson says, we need to castrate kids because we got to broaden the tent.
We got to have a big, broad party.
Bring new people in.
Uh-uh.
The impulse, I think, for the past 20 years was to reduce conservatism down to do whatever you want.
Just do whatever you want.
Oh, we're the party of let big business run roughshod over our culture.
We're the party of...
Mutilate your body.
Mutilate children.
Do engage in all manner of degeneracy.
Just, hey, just don't make me pay for it.
You know, the GOP was the party of permissiveness.
That was supposed to be the conservative tradition.
It hasn't conserved very much.
It hasn't conserved the ladies' restroom.
And now I think what a lot of people are waking up to is that there is a difference between liberty and licentiousness.
There's a difference between our higher will and our lower will.
The clearest way to understand the difference between our higher will and our lower will is when you go on a diet.
When you're on a diet, you get hungry.
Your lower will says, feed me, feed me, give me, you know, your appetite's down here.
But your higher will says, no, I want to lose weight, I want to be more in control of my body.
And so you want your higher rational will to dominate.
Because your rational will is the intermediary between your lower base appetites and the divine will to which it is turned.
And you recognize, as our founding fathers did, that you need to cultivate that higher will if you want to have true liberty.
And if you get rid of all that and you just give in to whatever desires, however disordered they are, that is simply going to be licentiousness and it's going to totally undermine liberty.
You need to sometimes say no.
It's a little counterintuitive in our day and age, but if you want to be more free, sometimes you have to say no.
This is an insight that I try to develop quite a lot in my upcoming book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available now for pre-order.
So, Nikki Haley getting a lot of other politicians getting this.
Harry Reid on the Democrat side of the aisle.
Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader for Democrats, Harry Reid says, look, there's a big radical agenda going on right now.
Jim Acosta on CNN is trying to get him to double down.
Yes, yeah, more radicalism.
Put the pedal to the metal.
But Harry Reid is a clever politician, and he might see which way the political winds are blowing.
And he urges Democrats, hey, be careful what you do now.
You might not be in power forever.
I think something sort of thought-provoking came out of the Biden administration this past week, and it didn't get a lot of attention because there's so much going on in the news.
He's now created a commission to look at adding seats to the Supreme Court, other ideas that some progressives are pushing for.
They want to see the court's conservative majority be balanced.
Where do you stand on that?
Do you think it's a good idea to add seats to the Supreme Court?
I think we should be very, very careful in doing so.
I have no problem with the Commission, but I think that the Commission is going to come back and disappoint a lot of people because I think they're going to come back and say we should just kind of leave it alone.
I think it would be inappropriate at this time after that long history that in the country have term limits for judges.
I think that we better be very, very careful in saying that we need to expand the Supreme Court.
I think we better be very, very careful.
I love Jim Acosta.
You can just see how crestfallen he becomes by this answer.
Shortly thereafter, he says, Okay, well, see you, Harry Reid.
Bye.
Not the answer I was looking for.
But Harry Reid is not all of a sudden worried about the state of our country and coming together in Kumbaya.
I mean, this is the guy who severely weakened the filibuster.
And Mitch McConnell famously said to him, you all, you're doing this today, but you're not going to be in power and you're going to regret this sooner than you think.
Pfft!
Ha!
Hooah!
Say hello to my little friend.
He was right, too, because then the Republicans came into power and pushed through a lot of things that they wanted.
So Harry Reid, always willing to go pedal to the metal when he thinks he's got political advantage.
But I think here what he's seeing is, gosh, there's a lot of discontent in this country right now over immigration, over BLM terrorists burning the country to the ground, over pumping little kids full of cross-sex hormones.
People are not totally on board with the left's agenda.
The left has attained cultural hegemony, so they're able to wield a lot of influence, even though they don't have a ton of popularity in terms of their policies.
But that's not going to last forever.
Eventually, the people are going to say no, and he says, slow it down.
Harry Reid here, frankly, is giving me more hope than any of the other politicians of either party.
Because I think he's a pretty good bellwether, too.
There's actually, unlike a lot of the news recently, I think there's actually a fair bit of reason to hope.
You got the GOP signaling that they get that the future needs to be more conservative for that party.
And you're getting Democrats saying, oh, hold on, gosh, maybe we're not as confident as we're pretending that we are.
Speaking of urging caution...
We mentioned it very briefly yesterday, but it bears a little bit more fleshing out.
The FDA and CDC are pausing one of the COVID vaccines, the Johnson& Johnson vaccine.
Here is their statement.
We are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution.
As of April 12th, 6.8 million doses of the vaccine have been administered in the U.S. CDC and FDA, reviewing data involving six reported U.S. cases of a rare but severe type of blood clot in individuals after receiving the vaccine.
Right now, these adverse events appear to be extremely rare.
Okay, so they're pausing it.
Now, I hate to say I told you so.
But I told you so.
There are two big arguments here, and they don't cut neatly across party lines.
There are some Republicans who are super into the vaccine, some who even seem to support some kind of vaccine passport.
And there are some left-wingers who maybe are a little bit more skeptical of the vaccine.
So I think here, broadly, the two camps.
You have people on one side saying, come on, it's only six cases.
The risk of blood clot from birth control drugs, from oral contraception, is much higher.
No reason to pause it.
Let's keep pumping out that vaccine.
Then you have people on the other side saying, see, we told you so.
The vaccine isn't safe.
It was rushed through.
Nobody should take the vaccine.
And here I am right in the middle holding the same position I've held from the beginning, which I think is being proven truer and truer each day, which is that anything you do in politics and in your personal life is going to involve some degree of risk.
And a great key to politics, which none of the rationalists on either side, on the left or on the right, want to acknowledge is prudence.
Prudence is not just a virtue broadly.
It is specifically and especially a conservative virtue.
You weigh your risk.
If I were extremely obese and 85 years old, I would very likely take that vaccine because I would feel that I had some risk, some serious risk of coronavirus.
If I am a relatively healthy 30-year-old, Then I probably won't take the vaccine because I don't think I'm at great risk.
And by the way, if, God forbid, if I get the virus, if, God forbid, I have some terrible adverse side effect, do not let them write articles about me that say virus skeptic or vaccine skeptic has a terrible adverse consequence of the virus.
Don't let them write those articles.
Because I am acknowledging, I know that there is a risk, but there's a risk in anything in life, and I'm just making a risk calculation based on the numbers here, based on the data, the science, and I'm recognizing that I have a greater risk of getting in a car and driving to work than I do from the coronavirus as a relatively healthy millennial.
It doesn't mean I have zero risk.
I'm just recognizing that all of life has risk.
So it seems to me people ought to use their prudence and their judgment.
Now, President Trump, interestingly, came out and is very upset at the pause in the vaccine.
He says, the Biden administration had a terrible disservice to people throughout the world by allowing the FDA and CDC to call a pause in the use of the Johnson& Johnson vaccine.
Dr.
Fauci, on the other hand, is saying, I don't think it was pulling the trigger too quickly to pause the vaccine.
We are ruled by the science and not any other consideration.
First of all, We are not ruled in this country by the science.
At least we're not supposed to be.
We are supposed to be ruled by ourselves, within the confines of the Constitution, using our higher reason.
The science, capital S with a trademark over the E, and its high priest, its pontiff, Dr.
Fauci, are not supposed to rule us.
And the science seems to change day by day by day.
The science would not have been a great guidepost.
In assessing your risk from the virus or from the vaccine.
The science told us don't wear masks through the pontiff Dr.
Fauci.
Then, a few weeks later, the science told us you have to wear masks through the pontiff Dr.
Fauci.
Then the science told us there's no risk whatsoever from the vaccine.
Then the science told us there is such a risk that they're going to pause the vaccine.
And they've said it's going to be a short pause, but then other people have said it might be paused indefinitely.
So the science, quote unquote, is not going to guide you.
Your prudence and your higher faculties of reason will.
There's even dissent among the left on this.
Not on the vaccine specifically, but for instance, on the origin of the coronavirus.
The former CDC director, Robert Redfield, we played this on the show a couple weeks ago, he suspects, in just his private opinion, but he suspects that the virus had something to do with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is a mile away from where the virus was allegedly discovered.
This seems pretty reasonable to me.
The left has insisted, no, absolutely not.
It had nothing to do with the Wuhan Institute.
That's racist to say that it did.
It's from the wet markets in Wuhan.
You can't even call it the Wuhan virus.
How dare you say it?
Well, Dr.
Sanjay Gupta on CNN is dissenting from his CNN colleagues.
He says, you know, there's a fair chance it came from that institute.
He's an experienced virologist.
He was also head of the CDC at the time this was happening, which means that in addition to everything that we know, he had access to raw data and raw intelligence that was coming out of China.
My point is that it's a much more informed sort of thing for him to be saying.
Then for, you know, anybody who may have expertise in virology, because he has a lot more knowledge and information that he has that maybe he can't share, but is informing his opinion.
I must have asked the question a dozen different ways.
And I gave a lot of escape hatches for him to really clarify.
Well, you know...
It's anybody's guess, whatever.
And he did, you know, he hedged a little bit.
He didn't come out and say 100% this came from, but he really was quite adamant that this is the origin of the virus.
You know, I mean, there's reason to suspect that this is the origin of the virus.
I mean, it's the only, it's a big virology lab right in Wuhan that happened to be studying bad coronaviruses.
Just from an Occam's razor standpoint, finding the simplest explanation, it would make sense.
Also keep in mind that 14 months now, 15 months into this, we still don't know for certain what the origin is.
Bingo!
Thank you.
Thank you, Dr.
Gupta.
Thank you for being maybe the only person on CNN to exercise any prudence, reason, open-mindedness to what is right before one's eyes.
Yes, that does seem like a very likely, I'm not saying it's the definite cause, but it's a very likely cause.
There is reason to suspect that that was the origin of the virus.
No two ways about it.
Now, that might not be politically correct because the Biden administration and the left and liberal establishment wants to have a good relationship with China, including big corporate America, including the big sports leagues, which are selling out our country and our principles to make an extra buck over in China.
But we should be able to call it like we see it.
We should be able to pursue the truth and to pursue our national interest.
That is a principled, virtuous stance.
And people on the left and the right don't want to do it.
But I think the future, if we're going to have a conservative future, it is going to be just that.
Recognizing that we do have a national interest here and we ought to pursue truth, not the delusions and fantasies of the left.
Speaking of medical advice, there was an article in the Washington Examiner, which I had to read because I think it shows you the divergence between the old right-wing order and the new right-wing order.
This one, I think, is representative of the old, kind of squishy wing of the right over the past 20 years.
The writer says, headline, he won't allow over-the-counter birth control, but Biden is pushing risky at-home abortions.
So, to me, when I read that headline, I say, okay, so Biden's batting 500 here.
You know, allowing risky at-home abortion's bad, but hey, at least he won't allow over-the-counter birth control.
But then I find in the article, the author writes, quote, an easy solution here would be to deregulate oral contraceptives so that uninsured women can acquire them over the counter, reducing the pills list price over time and reducing unplanned pregnancies among a demographic least able to afford children.
Lucky for Biden, Senate Republicans such as Joni Ernst of Iowa, among others, are on board with this.
That's the opposite of what we ought to do.
That is exactly the wrong conclusion.
Why?
Why, Michael?
Because you're a scold, a prude, a theocrat?
No.
Why would we make it easier, even than it already is?
It's extremely easy to access oral contraceptives.
Why would we make it easier?
So that underage girls can get them.
That would be one consequence of over-the-counter oral contraceptives.
So that we can further reduce our birth rate.
We already have a dying population.
We already have a very low birth rate.
Should we really do that?
So that we can further promote the hookup culture and the culture of casual sex that has given rise to the Me Too movement and claims of epidemic sexual assault on campus around the country because of that.
Because it makes women so much happier?
Because it makes families so much more stable?
No.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
I'm making a prudential judgment here based on the actual circumstances of the country.
I'm not making some totally abstract rationalist argument whereby the only principle in our politics is maximizing individual autonomy And individual liberty, meaning our basest passions, I'm just looking at the prudence of it.
Why would we do that?
That seems like it would be worse.
Right?
Sometimes, to have greater freedom, you have to say no.
There is this common thread.
Have you noticed this to liberal activism, to left-wing activism, even among the sort of libertarian or squishy types on the right?
They always seem to want fewer people.
Notice that?
They want legal abortion in the name of women's rights.
They want subsidized contraception or even easier access than we already have to contraception in the name of personal autonomy.
They want euthanasia in the name of mercy.
They want smaller families because of climate change or overpopulation, a completely made-up problem.
They want to pump little kids full of hormones that will castrate them in the name of transgender health.
So no matter what the argument, they always seem to want fewer people.
Isn't that weird?
Doesn't that make you think, huh, what is the metaphysical aspect going on?
What is the, dare I say it, spiritual underpinning of all these policies that seem to be so anti-human?
We've got one of the more ridiculous examples right now in Colorado.
Colorado might become the second state to legalize human composting.
And to allow human remains to be composted after a person passes away.
Love you, Grandma.
Love you, Grandpa.
Hey, love you, Great Aunt Becky.
Can't wait to put you in my garden.
Can't wait to eat tomatoes that sprout out of your liver or something.
No, gross.
That's bad.
And why is it bad?
Why is it bad?
I understand the rationalist argument for composting, Grandma.
Okay, the rationalist argument is, look, come on, you're just taking a dirt nap.
Just turn into worm food anyway.
Might as well get some heads of lettuce out of you.
Come on, we're all just stuff.
We're all just matter, right?
We're all going to turn to dust anyway, right?
From dust we are, and to dust we shall return.
So why not just toss someone in the backyard and let the wolves come and eat you?
Or let some vegetables grow out of you.
There is a natural revulsion that we have at this.
It's what the bioethicist Leon Kass would call the wisdom of repugnance.
It seems anti-human.
It seems pretty undignified.
This is human dignity, according to the libs, is turning your grandma into mulch.
Let me ask you something.
If you're tempted to go along with the Colorado thing, if you were walking along the street and you saw a dead body, would you kick it?
Would you spit on it?
Would you desecrate that body?
No, I bet you wouldn't.
If you, God forbid, stumbled on a member of your family, dead, this has maybe happened to a number of people, would you attack that body?
Would you punch it?
Would you desecrate that body?
No.
You wouldn't.
You just wouldn't do it.
Why not?
The rationalist in you would say, oh, it's just a hunk of flesh.
Well, the word desecrate tells you everything because you recognize that there is something sort of sacred about the human person.
There's some hint of divinity there that man has made in the image of God, that we treat even a dead body with certain special care.
That's why it's against the law to desecrate bodies.
Why is that?
Because we recognize, at least on some gut level, we used to recognize in our whole culture that That we're not just meat puppets.
We're not just worm food.
We're not just flesh.
We are not just our fleshy desires.
Our will is not just our fleshy desires.
We have spirit and soul too.
And we have a higher rational faculty and a higher rational will too.
And we need to treat humans as a little bit more special.
And we need to treat human society as As more than just our appetites and our desires in the economically rational, materialist, self-interested society.
We're more than that.
Culture is more than that.
Conservatism is more than just saving a couple bucks and letting people pursue whatever disordered desires they have.
Well, what is it?
What's more than that?
I think it's pretty clear that our traditions, our rituals, our American way of life, our self-respect, our dignity is what we're aiming at here.
And the conservatives who recognize that are giving us an opportunity for a future here.
A future for conservatives and a future for the country.
And the ones who don't recognize that are only driving faster or slower off the cliff on the way to decline.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
See you tomorrow.
See you tomorrow.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
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.
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