Ep. 782 - Don’t Be “True To You”
Nickelodeon tries to trans the kids, Fauci fights back against his critics, and Biden undermines “our democracy.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Nickelodeon tries to trans the kids, Fauci fights back against his critics, and Biden undermines “our democracy.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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This Pride Month, Nickelodeon, in the form of a drag queen, has an important message for your kids. | |
They should be true to themselves. | |
Baby blue, pink and white represent transgender people, and black and brown represent the queer and trans people of color. | |
We're all in this together. | |
So wave that pride flag way up high. | |
Go big! | |
Be kind! | |
Be you! | |
Doesn't it just fill you with pride? | |
Showing who you are on the inside. | |
Never have to hide yourself away, there's a place for you Doesn't it just fill you with pride? | |
Loving who you are on the inside Wave that bright flag up high, be true to you Be true to you You need to be true to you. | |
That absolutely horrifying image. | |
But of course that's preposterous. | |
You should not be true to you. | |
You should be true to the truth. | |
Which is not you. | |
It's actually outside of you. | |
When you and the truth are in disagreement, you should go with the truth. | |
But unfortunately, the truth is basically forbidden these days. | |
On COVID, on nationhood, on human nature itself. | |
I'm Michael Knowles. | |
This is the Michael Knowles Show. | |
Welcome back to the show. | |
My favorite comment yesterday from OldSchooled, who asks a question. | |
He asks, what's the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth? | |
The answer? | |
Six to twelve months. | |
That's a very good point. | |
Absolutely true. | |
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Text MICHAEL. That image from Nickelodeon, this scary-looking drag queen telling your children that they need to believe that little boys are little girls and little girls are little boys are whatever nonsense. | |
I mean, this is... | |
I don't think this is liberty. | |
Contrary to some squishy Republicans, I don't think this is one of the blessings of liberty. | |
I don't think this is in the American tradition. | |
But if it is, man, count me out. | |
Something has gone wrong here if this is what we are showing children. | |
And it comes down to not even this question of sex. | |
It comes down to this question of truth. | |
What is the truth? | |
What is our relationship to the truth? | |
Our views and preferences and the truth come into conflict. | |
Who do we go with? | |
Do we go with ourselves or do we go with the truth? | |
It's not just the gender radicals that are making demands on the truth. | |
It's the scientists as well. | |
Dr. | |
Fauci, he's getting attacked all over now because he's been exposed as lying and deceiving and just being flat out wrong about a lot of things through the release of his emails and through other mechanisms. | |
And he's punching back at his critics. | |
He should be fired because he, in the beginning, changed his mind about masks. | |
Well, okay, so let's go back early on with the masks and let's take a look at that. | |
At the time that we were saying we shouldn't be wearing a mask, there were three factors that were going on. | |
A, there was thought to be a shortage of masks. | |
B, there was no evidence that masks worked outside of the context of a hospital. | |
I wear a mask when I'm seeing patients with respiratory disease that could be transmissible like tuberculosis, a well-fitted N95. Thirdly, we were not aware of the extent of asymptomatic spread. | |
So we said you don't really need to wear a mask. | |
As a scientist, as a health official, when those data change, when you get more information, It's essential that you change your position because you've got to be guided by the science and the current data. | |
That issue with masks is people want to fire me or put me in jail for what I've done, namely follow the science. | |
Weak sauce buddy. | |
He's a pretty slick politician, Dr. | |
Fauci. | |
Don't forget, if you're in public health, you're half scientist, half politician. | |
The health is the science, the public is the politics. | |
But this just does not hold up at all. | |
He makes three claims here. | |
We'll get to the first one last, because that, I think, shows you how silly his argument is. | |
The second claim he makes is that we didn't know if masks would work outside of hospitals. | |
Look, we thought that masks only work inside buildings called hospitals. | |
But if you took that same mask into a building called a school or a movie theater, then it wouldn't work. | |
Because of the magical... | |
The magical walls of the hospital? | |
Either the masks are going to work at preventing transmission, either leaving the body or going into the body, or they're not. | |
The magical walls, or the magical name of the building, as compared to other buildings, isn't going to change that. | |
He's trying to distract from the question of, do the masks work, to what buildings are we going to wear them in? | |
But that's completely unscientific. | |
That's illogical. | |
It doesn't make any sense. | |
Then he says... | |
We didn't look. | |
The reason I told all you stupid sheep not to wear the masks is because we did not know the extent of asymptomatic spread. | |
Okay, so taking... | |
Look, obviously there are studies saying that the masks work, and there are a lot of studies that say the masks don't work. | |
There are studies that say that asymptomatic spread is a gigantic problem. | |
There are studies saying asymptomatic spread really isn't much of a problem at all. | |
Regardless of those studies, though, you're telling me, Dr. | |
Fauci, that you didn't know The novel coronavirus that shut down the world, you didn't know the extent of asymptomatic spread, so you erred on the side of recklessness? | |
You didn't err on the side of caution. | |
You didn't err on the side of, let's watch out in case asymptomatic spread is a big problem. | |
You erred on the side of, oh, don't worry, it's not a big deal, you dumb sheep, go out and lick telephone poles. | |
That's what you're telling me? | |
I don't think that's true, because at the same time you were saying that, you were saying 15 days to slow the spread, stop your lives, stop going to work. | |
I think, actually, it has much more to do with the first argument he's trying to make, to debunk his critics. | |
But the first argument actually proves that his critics were completely right. | |
Because he says, look, the reason I switched my opinion on the masks, you sheep, is because I believe there was a shortage of masks. | |
Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. | |
So you're telling me that your professed opinion about the masks... | |
Actually, your opinion on the efficacy of the masks had nothing to do with what you thought about the efficacy of the masks, and it had everything to do with who you thought deserved the masks. | |
He's saying, and he's actually said this almost verbatim, I wanted to preserve the masks for the healthcare workers, not for you dumb peasant sheep. | |
He's almost verbatim, not quite. | |
A few words here, I've taken some liberties. | |
That's a political stance. | |
Not only is it not scientific, it's actually worse than that. | |
He was lying to you. | |
According to what he's saying right now, he was lying to you about his opinion on the efficacy of the masks so that he would persuade you not to wear the masks, even though he thought the masks were good, because he wanted to save those good masks that he thought were effective for his buddies in the healthcare industry. | |
That's much worse. | |
But regardless, clearly, in his own line of thinking, the science did not change so much as the politics changed. | |
And when he found out there were enough masks for all you peasant sheep, then he told you they were effective and that you should wear them and actually you had to wear them. | |
So he comes out swinging against his critics in a very impotent way. | |
If you're just listening to a fast-talking politician, you're not paying very close attention, probably you wouldn't hear how hollow his argument is and how he's actually undermining his own argument. | |
But then, after he's striking out at his critics, like me, I've noticed he also tries to temper his voice now. | |
He tries to sound a little less Brooklyn-y. | |
But you're not going to escape, Dr. | |
Fauci. | |
That's your voice, my friend. | |
So, not only does he strike back at the opponent's, Then he goes on Chelsea Clinton's podcast to play the victim. | |
How do you think we rebuild trust in science and especially trust in vaccines and vaccinations? | |
That is something that is not going to happen easily, Chelsea. | |
I think that we may have to find ways, and that's a complicated issue, as you all know probably better than I do. | |
It's a complicated issue of how you heal the differences and the hostility. | |
I mean, I've been the object myself of a phenomenal amount of hostility merely because I'm promoting really fundamental, simple public health principles. | |
That seems astounding that that would generate a considerable degree of hostility. | |
But it is. | |
It is. | |
But it is. | |
What did I do? | |
I just lied to you? | |
I just, by my own admission, lied to you stupid peasant sheep and shut down the whole world for no reason? | |
Why are people upsetting me? | |
It's just a basic public health principle. | |
First of all, actually, before we get into Dr. | |
Fauci's argument here, I need to make the observation. | |
Chelsea Clinton has a podcast? | |
What? | |
I am calling for a complete and total shutdown of all podcasts until we figure out what the hell is going on. | |
Chelsea Clinton does not need a podcast. | |
Nobody is asking for that, okay? | |
It's gone too far. | |
All right, I say this as, I have a podcast, obviously, you're listening to that podcast right now. | |
It's too much, guys. | |
There's too many. | |
If Chelsea Clinton has one, we gotta, that's it. | |
We gotta pull the plug. | |
We gotta shut it down, okay? | |
Back to Dr. | |
Fauci's argument. | |
He's made this point elsewhere. | |
And actually, I go into great length on this point. | |
In my upcoming book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, a villain out for pre-order, the ding came in even before I said it. | |
That's how used to this we are getting. | |
Thank you, by the way, to everyone who has pre-ordered that book. | |
We've got some copies out there now, some sort of pre-ordered review copies that have gone out to various magazines. | |
People are starting to read it. | |
I look forward to all of you reading it. | |
We'll talk about this little aspect right now, though, on the show. | |
Dr. | |
Fauci said, almost in these words, I'm paraphrasing only slightly, I have never had a political opinion that I have made public in my life. | |
I just focus on the science. | |
Now, this is incoherent. | |
It just shows that he knows less about politics than he does about science. | |
Significantly less, actually. | |
Anything this man does in his professional life is political because he's in a public role, and that's what public means. | |
Moreover, When he says, wear the masks, that's a political statement. | |
Even further, when he says some people should get the masks and other people should not get the masks, that's a political statement. | |
But what he is representing is something the left has done for a hundred years, which is redefining politics out of politics. | |
Saying that you cannot have a legitimate disagreement. | |
It's just Dr. | |
Fauci. | |
It's just follow the science. | |
We've got to shut down the world? | |
Well, that's just the science. | |
Sorry, we have to. | |
We've got to put you out of business? | |
Well, that's just the science. | |
We've got to shut down your church, but we've got to keep the marijuana shop open? | |
Well, look, that's just the science. | |
We've just got to do that. | |
It's not, of course. | |
It's politics. | |
But what they are saying, and you're hearing this... | |
Louder and louder on issue after issue. | |
Not just here on COVID, but on immigration, on abortion, on transing the kids. | |
We're being told it is not acceptable for you to have a political opinion. | |
If your opinion contradicts Dr. | |
Fauci, then unfortunately, you've got to go with Dr. | |
Fauci. | |
You've got to go with the established silence. | |
Now, what's good is... | |
The Republican lawmakers are fighting back because Dr. | |
Fauci, he'll go on all these shows and he'll play the victim to the world's smallest violin and he'll yell and scream about Rand Paul or whoever, those of us in the media who have criticized him. | |
But he won't answer one really tough question that Republican lawmakers are nailing him on. | |
Ooh, it makes me feel so, got my blood pumping to get ready to just absolutely hammer Dr. | |
Fauci on this point. | |
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Dr. | |
Fauci will go on all the shows and MSNBC and CNN and cry and whine about how everyone's criticizing him. | |
He, the most powerful politician in the country, who's outlasted, what, how many presidents at this point? | |
Since Ronald Reagan, the guy's been in office, making major national policy over the past two years, but we're not allowed to criticize him. | |
Poor Dr. | |
Fauci, boo-hoo-hoo. | |
Well, top Republicans on the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees are demanding that he give them the answer to a very specific question. | |
Not the masks, not the whatever he said on 60 Minutes, not that. | |
More specific. | |
I want to read this letter at some length, because there are four parts to this letter, and they're really important here, okay? | |
Because Fauci has not given an answer on this, and I don't think he can give an answer, because I think the answer will make him look really, really bad. | |
Here's the first part. | |
House Republicans remain concerned about the origins of COVID-19, including the increasing possibility that it originated and subsequently leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. | |
At a 2012 conference entitled, Gain-of-Function Research on HPA1-HSN1 Viruses, you said, quote, So I'm going to pause there. | |
First part is, because this is a big debate, did Dr. | |
Fauci, did the NIH support gain-of-function research? | |
Gain-of-function research is very controversial. | |
It's where you beef up naturally occurring viruses to make them deadlier, to make them more transmissible. | |
Why on earth people would do this? | |
Well, I don't know, to create bioweapons, I guess. | |
I mean, I don't, there's very little function. | |
Beyond that, now what Dr. | |
Fauci has said when he's defended this research is, no, it's actually good because then we learn how to protect against the insane viruses that we're making, and you think, well, just don't make it in the first place. | |
Okay, so the first thing they're establishing in this letter is, this is what gain-of-function research is. | |
In your own words, this is what it is. | |
This is how you make it. | |
Okay, they go on. | |
In 2014, you, through the National Institutes of Health, awarded EcoHealth Alliance a grant entitled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence. | |
This grant allowed EcoHealth to, quote, test predictions of coronavirus transmission using reverse genetics. | |
Stop there. | |
You're denying, Dr. | |
Fauci, that you have anything to do with funding this kind of research and the gain of function and the bat coronavirus is okay. | |
Here's your definition of what gain of function is. | |
Here is a grant that you guys awarded for this kind of research. | |
Third part, funds from this grant were subsequently awarded. | |
Using your own definition, it appears that the NIH funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. | |
You see, very methodical here. | |
Dr. | |
Fauci is outright denied. | |
Not only did we not fund this kind of research, we certainly didn't fund this kind of research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. | |
The kind of research that almost certainly is the cause of shutting down the entire world and curtailing a lot of our political rights and upending global economies and societies for the past year and a half. | |
The House Republicans are proving, no, you did that. | |
According to your own definitions, you did that. | |
And then finally, on May 11th, 2021, while testifying under oath, you stated the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. | |
This appears to contradict your 2012 statement regarding gain-of-function research and the Wisconsin Institute of Virology. | |
Nailed it. | |
Got it. | |
That's it. | |
You know, we focus on the things he's said in public and the masks and the things that really impact us day in and day out. | |
Okay, and then he tries to weasel his way out of it. | |
Weasel your way out of that, buddy. | |
I'm so glad that the House Republicans have put this out there. | |
He's not going to answer it, and this is going to get buried in the media. | |
Don't let them bury it. | |
Remember it. | |
Save this clip. | |
Save this video. | |
They got him on it. | |
And there need to be consequences for that. | |
Is it lock him up, lock him up, throw him in jail? | |
I don't know. | |
I don't know if he committed a crime. | |
I suspect he actually didn't commit a crime. | |
I suspect we just have stupid rules in this country and stupid... | |
Bureaucrats running our world in a way that shuts down the whole thing. | |
I think it was some very famous conservative who said that modernity is bureaucracy tempered by incompetence. | |
That's what Dr. | |
Fauci is giving us. | |
But surely there needs to be a professional consequence for this. | |
Surely the man must be fired. | |
Who is defending the truth? | |
Who is the science? | |
Who is defending the truth? | |
Certainly not our schools. | |
The very least schools should be defending truth, right? | |
But no, the kind of incompetence that we're seeing from Dr. | |
Fauci and we're seeing from the broad public health establishment that not only is terrible at its job, but actually doesn't even know what its job is. | |
Can't even make sense of the distinction between science and politics. | |
Well, starting in schools. | |
There is an elite middle school in New York City right now. | |
It's the Lab Middle School. | |
Very well known to New Yorkers. | |
This middle school is getting rid of leveled math courses. | |
You remember this when you were in school. | |
Certainly high school, middle school, even elementary school. | |
Some kids are just a little smarter than other kids. | |
Okay? | |
That's just a natural fact. | |
And you can either encourage people's strengths and talents, or you can discourage people's strengths and talents. | |
For the history of education, we have encouraged people's strengths, right? | |
If you're good at math, you're going to be in the enrichment math class. | |
If you're good at some language, maybe you'll be in the advanced language class. | |
You're good at history, you'll be in the advanced placement history class. | |
But this creates a real problem for our egalitarian democracy of equity and whatever slogan they have today because that means that the slower kids are not going to be in that class. | |
It's going to create a sort of hierarchy. | |
It's going to create gradations. | |
And oh, heaven forfend if members of a certain group are in one class and members of another group are in another, especially if this involves sex and most especially if this involves race. | |
If all those Asian kids are in the math class, oh my gosh, that's wrong. | |
It's bigoted. | |
Because what happens if there are disproportionately more white and Asian kids in the advanced math class? | |
And what happens if they're disproportionately less, say, black or Latino or any other kind of kid in those classes? | |
Well, now this is an issue of white supremacy, including the Asians. | |
Somehow the Asians are white, I guess. | |
And this is a matter of bigotry, and we've just got to get rid of the classes. | |
They haven't given an explanation for why they're doing it, but they're doing it at this school. | |
And you're seeing this happen more and more. | |
When I was in school, we had valedictorians. | |
When I was in school, we had class presidents. | |
When I was in school, we had these sorts of distinctions between people. | |
And then I started to notice, after I graduated, they started to get rid of these things. | |
At many, many high schools, other schools, colleges, middle schools, no longer are there valedictorians at many schools. | |
Because if someone's a valedictorian, then a lot of people are not the valedictorian. | |
And that's going to make people feel bad. | |
And it's probably unjust, you know. | |
If someone's the class president, someone else isn't, and that's not fair, right? | |
What we're seeing is reminiscent of a story by Kurt Vonnegut called Harrison Bergeron, which has actually been quite a while since I've read it. | |
The premise of the story is, in this dystopic future, you've got a world in which everybody needs to be brought down to the lowest common denominator. | |
It's not that some people do really well and so we're going to try to bring people up and encourage other people to have either that same talent or other talents and encourage diversity, right? | |
No. | |
Everybody has to be handicapped. | |
Everybody has to be crippled. | |
Everybody has to be brought down to the lowest possible level and that way we will have equality. | |
This is a distinction. | |
Between modern liberalism and classical conservatism, call it. | |
In the classical conservative view of things, there is excellence. | |
Some people are going to have greater excellence than others, and some people are going to have greater talent at some things than other things. | |
I know I look like a hulking football player, but actually that isn't. | |
Where I am most excellent. | |
But I have other talents, and so do you, and so does everybody, and those are the sorts of things we encourage. | |
There is virtue. | |
There is order. | |
Some people are going to be picked first for the baseball team. | |
Some people are going to be picked last for the baseball team. | |
Some people are going to do very well on their SAT. Some people are not going to do very well on their SAT. And it's not because of injustice exactly. | |
It's not because of the systemic problem. | |
It's just because some people are a little smarter. | |
Some people are a little taller. | |
Some people have a little bit more muscle. | |
We're not all exactly the same. | |
But modern liberalism is leveling, degrading, egalitarian. | |
Equity is the name of the game. | |
Not even just on sports or something. | |
Not even just in terms of the math classes. | |
Not even just within the sexes. | |
But actually, men and women, we are told, with a completely straight face, by these leveling, equity-obsessed modern libs, men and women have to be exactly the same. | |
When a man puts on a dress and runs a track race... | |
There is nothing unusual about that. | |
And one should not find anything wrong with that. | |
And because the girls have just the same chance, because men and women are exactly the same. | |
Oh, the man wins every single time? | |
Well, he's a woman, so there's nothing surprising here. | |
It's so degrading. | |
And they do it in the name of justice, but of course it results in a great injustice. | |
Now, Ben will be talking about our beautiful, wonderful genius experts today, whom he refers to as... | |
Self-serving idiots. | |
Fair enough. | |
I think he's actually going a little light on them. | |
But yes, that's true. | |
Check out Ben's show. | |
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Radical egalitarianism is the name of the game these days. | |
Equity is the term. | |
But it's not equity to bring everybody up. | |
It's equity to bring everybody down. | |
It's an equity and egalitarianism that doesn't even recognize the distinction between nations. | |
It doesn't even recognize that the government of the United States has a special duty to its own citizens. | |
No. | |
Because that's not equal. | |
It's not egalitarian. | |
What about the poor Nicaraguans? | |
Well, I don't know. | |
I mean, we can give them charity. | |
We can be nice to Nicaragua. | |
But the new view is, no, the government of the United States has just as much of a responsibility to foreigners as it does to its own citizens. | |
It erases even the idea of a nation. | |
Joe Biden just showed this today. | |
He showed this because he's meeting with European leaders next week and he is already telling us that he is going to drop U.S. protective tariffs on steel and aluminum. | |
Now, this is an issue that has divided the right because for really only the past 20 or so years, not even, there's been this Free trade absolutism. | |
There's this idea that tariffs never work. | |
Tariffs are anti-conservative. | |
This is just historically ridiculous. | |
The Republican Party was founded on tariffs. | |
Abraham Lincoln said, give me a tariff, I'll give you the greatest nation on earth. | |
The Republican Party was always the protective party. | |
The pro-tariff party, the conservative movement was pro-tariff until the latter part of the 20th century. | |
And there are plenty of good reasons to get rid of some tariffs, but they're instrumental reasons. | |
There is no universe in which tariffs are anti-conservative, you know, just as a general principle, as an eternal truth. | |
That has never been the case. | |
But here's some more evidence of it. | |
Who are the presidents in recent memory most well-known for instituting steel tariffs? | |
Trump and Reagan. | |
Trump and Reagan. | |
They're the two presidents. | |
The two most conservative presidents that we've had in a hundred years, at least, are the two presidents who instituted the steel tariffs and now Joe Biden getting rid of it. | |
Why is he getting rid of it? | |
Well, to answer that question, you had to ask, why did we have the steel tariffs in the first place? | |
Why do we use tariffs at all? | |
We use tariffs because the idea of absolute free trade just doesn't exist. | |
I loved this question that Trump asked when some of the squishy types were yelling at him for even suggesting the use of tariffs. | |
He said, if your argument is that tariffs don't work, okay, if tariffs don't work, why does every other country use them? | |
If tariffs, they actually hurt your own country. | |
If tariffs are so self-destructive and they never achieve anything, how come every other country on earth has them except for us? | |
And actually, we have them too. | |
But you're just sort of pretending that we don't. | |
Because they obviously do work to achieve certain objectives. | |
They work as a matter of leverage to get other countries to lower their tariffs, which is better for our economy. | |
And they work to protect our industries, certain American workers who can be protected by those sorts of tariffs. | |
In this specific case of steel tariffs, why are we instituting it here? | |
Because China is cheating. | |
China is illegally subsidizing its steel and aluminum industries. | |
China's share of global crude steel production increased in the year 2020 from 53.3% to 56.6%. | |
Now, we don't really import steel from China, but the problem is that China's overproduction of steel in violation of treaties is Well, | |
it's not fair. | |
It's not fair to these other countries. | |
Look, yeah, maybe it's better for us. | |
Maybe it's better for our industry. | |
Maybe it's better for our workers. | |
But, you know, that's not nice to China. | |
And Joe Biden, man, that guy's been cheering on China's rise for decades at this point, explicitly. | |
Makes us rethink certain things. | |
Not just on economic matters, not just on trade deals, for instance, or tariffs, but on immigration. | |
The Department of Homeland Security It was created by Bush II after 9-11, brought together a number of different departments. | |
And what DHS is focused on right now, what it's supposed to be focused on, is keeping foreigners who cross into this country illegally out of the country. | |
That's one of the main focuses, if not the main focus, of the Department of Homeland Security. | |
But the new radical Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, It says that actually, the foremost priority of DHS is the dignity of the illegal aliens. | |
I grew up with a very strong sense of my identity as a refugee and what it means to be displaced fundamentally in one's life. | |
And so I Asked, when we were in fact confronting difficult policy questions, the question of identity. | |
What, as we struggle to reach an answer, what would the answer say about who we are and who we want to be? | |
And I think that there are two foundational or guiding principles That really drive the answer. | |
One is the concept or actually the element of dignity. | |
And the other is the rule of law. | |
Those are two foundational guideposts. | |
As I seek to lead an agency, as we as servants of the law seek to bring justice in whatever we do. | |
And here in the Department of Homeland Security, I think that must guide everything that we do. | |
In that word salad, is this guy ever going to give a direct answer? | |
He does. | |
You just got to read between the lines. | |
He says, the things that guide us are dignity, dignity, and the rule of law. | |
Now, he's trying to put these things against one another because he's not talking about the dignity of the American people. | |
He's not talking about the dignity of the American immigration system. | |
He's not talking about the dignity of our borders. | |
He's talking about the dignity of criminals, foreigners, who enter our country illegally and flout our laws is the first thing they do here. | |
That's not a dignified act. | |
But he's saying that has dignity. | |
I thought about my identity as a refugee. | |
I want you to think about your identity as an American. | |
And I want you to think about your identity as the Director of Homeland Security. | |
I want you to think about your identity as the enforcer of the rule of law. | |
When he says it's about dignity and the rule of law, what he's saying is it's about opening the floodgates, ignoring the rule of law, and only prioritizing the illegal alien. | |
I get where it comes from. | |
It comes from this radical egalitarian idea. | |
I feel it myself to some degree. | |
Or I can at least sympathize with this. | |
We live in a very rich country. | |
We live in a country, at least for now, that has relative political freedom and a generally pleasant political tradition. | |
And nice communities and lots of stuff and lots of opportunity. | |
And other people don't live in those countries. | |
And that's unfair, I guess. | |
That's unfortunate, at least. | |
And so, if we recognize the dignity and the equity, then we've got to let them in. | |
We have to. | |
We have to. | |
Even if that will substantially weaken our own country. | |
Radical egalitarianism. | |
This is true overseas, too. | |
Not just to our neighbors in the South. | |
Even across the pond in the motherland. | |
There are some woke students at Oxford University right now who have voted to remove a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II from a common room at Magdalen College, a very famous place at Oxford, because this represents the UK's, quote, colonial history. | |
Queen Elizabeth, one of the most dignified people on planet Earth, This woman has given her life to her country. | |
She has served and served and served. | |
She may be one of the most beloved people on Earth, but you see, the queen is not very egalitarian. | |
If there is such a thing as a queen, it's a poke in the eye. | |
It is the logical conclusion of the different math classes. | |
It's a recognition that different people are in different positions in life. | |
And everybody is not going to be in exactly the same position. | |
You can try, by the way, and the only way you can try is just by bringing everybody down lower and lower and lower, which is what they're trying to do, but you're still not going to get it. | |
Some people are still going to be better at math. | |
Some people are still going to be born with certain privileges. | |
We're all born with certain privileges. | |
Some people are still going to be born with certain disadvantages. | |
To some degree, you must accept your lot in life. | |
You must reconcile. | |
But we can't do that. | |
Even at the question of nature, we have now cartoons and kids' networks telling kids, you don't have to accept anything about your lot in life, including your biology, including nature. | |
You can break that too. | |
You see here, very often in this country, we try to posit liberty, emancipation, and equality as opposites. | |
The way that the political debate has worked for a long time in this country is that the right stands for liberty, and the left stands for equality, and these two things are in conflict with one another. | |
But actually, they both work together quite well. | |
The goal here for the radicals, for the liberals, even the liberals on the right, is this perfect utopian equality. | |
And the way that we're going to get that equality is by emancipating, liberating people from their conditions. | |
That's why you hear this talk of liberation so much on the radical left, even among communists, even among actual Marxists. | |
That is the ultimate liberation that comes at the end of the line here. | |
But, reality reasserts itself. | |
Reality comes back in the end. | |
There's a poll, speaking of our friends across the pond, poll, the majority of Britons support a ban on migrants seeking asylum. | |
So we're talking about even people seeking asylum, you know, safety plea. | |
This is what we're told now is all immigration. | |
It's people fleeing political persecution, but they're not usually economic migrants. | |
But the majority of people in Britain Support a ban on migrants seeking asylum. | |
A ban, an outright ban, according to this poll. | |
Do you think that the government of Great Britain is going to follow that? | |
No. | |
But hold on a second here. | |
I thought that we had to defend democracy. | |
I thought we had to channel the will of the people. | |
You know all this talk about our democracy, which Angelo Cotavilla points out is actually just the elites referring to their oligarchy. | |
Our democracy means their oligarchy. | |
What about our democracy? | |
Well, our democracy in Great Britain says, ban the migrants. | |
They won't do that. | |
The radicals don't particularly care for democracy. | |
There's another poll here in the United States. | |
Majority of voters in the United States support abortion restrictions after 15 weeks. | |
This is a poll released by the Susan B. Anthony list. | |
Majority of likely voters support these sorts of restrictions. | |
Do you think that the Supreme Court will recognize our democracy? | |
No, they're going to actually insist on a fictional constitutional right to abortion that they made up in between the penumbras and the emanations. | |
Do you think even our legislators, frankly, do you think even our Republican legislators, many of them, are going to care about our democracy here on the abortion restrictions? | |
I don't. | |
I don't think they care about our democracy at all. | |
I think the left is actually quite antithetical to our democracy. | |
There's another poll. | |
You know how much I love polls. | |
I don't really buy polls, but when they support my opinions, I'll cite them. | |
There's a poll that shows, just out now, shows that liberals are more likely to unfriend people over politics, on social media and in real life. | |
Quote, Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to report having ended a friendship over a political disagreement. | |
20% of Democrats said they've ended a friendship over a political disagreement compared to 10% of Republicans. | |
This is a survey from the American Survey Center. | |
It also found, quote, political liberals are far more likely than conservatives are to say that they are no longer friends with someone due to political differences. | |
28% versus 10% respectively. | |
And then when you focus just on women, the number gets even more insane. | |
33% of liberal women have, quote, stopped being friends with someone because of their politics. | |
What about our democracy? | |
What about hearing all voices? | |
What about inclusion and diversity? | |
Of course, they don't believe in any of these sorts of things. | |
They have contempt for our democracy. | |
The same people who talk about our democracy are the ones who refer to our countrymen as bitter clingers who cling to their guns and religion. | |
And the only reason they question insane trade deals is because they have resentment toward immigrants or something. | |
And they're bitter and filled with grievance. | |
The same people who clamor on about our democracy are the ones who call their countrymen deplorable and irredeemable. | |
I don't believe in this sort of thing at all. | |
This radical egalitarianism has nothing to do with the care for their actual countrymen. | |
Actually, they're dragging their countrymen, kicking and screaming into this dystopia. | |
In our democracy, you're not really allowed to question the government anymore, are you? | |
Are you? | |
On social media, if you raise a question... | |
About the 2020 election. | |
If you point out that there were a whole lot of irregularities. | |
Is that the term we're allowed to use? | |
There were a lot of irregularities there. | |
You could be banned. | |
You could be investigated, for goodness sakes. | |
There was a game at Fenway, the Red Sox ballpark. | |
And someone just unfurled it. | |
There's lots of flags and banners and signs. | |
Someone unfurls a little flag out there, out in left field. | |
It says, Trump won. | |
Trump won. | |
Okay. | |
Now, this is an unobjectionable statement, first of all. | |
Certainly he won in 2016. | |
No, I guess you're not... | |
Actually, I'm sorry. | |
I've been told by Hillary Clinton and by the entire leftist establishment that all the media and... | |
I've actually been told Trump lost that election and he stole it. | |
Remember, Trump's not a legitimate president, according to them. | |
So I guess you're allowed to question that election, but you're not allowed to question this election, which was far more vulnerable to fraud. | |
That fan was ejected from the game. | |
You're not allowed to say that. | |
You're not allowed to question the government. | |
In our democracy! | |
And by the way, the people who are the enforcers of this are not always from the government. | |
They're from the broad blob as well. | |
But you're not allowed to question it. | |
So much for democracy. | |
Our democracy types are actually not only disdainful of their fellow countrymen, They're actually willing to attack basic elements of our actual constitutional democracy. | |
There was an LA Times columnist, Virginia Heffernan. | |
Who just made a pretty radical suggestion about people who exercise their Second Amendment rights, very basic civil rights in this country. | |
She said, real estate listings should include the prevalence of gun ownership in a 50-mile radius and a number of annual mass shootings in the region. | |
Time to change what a bad neighborhood is and introduce a meaningful tax on guns and gun violence. | |
No one should say this is a great place to raise kids about neighborhoods where even one person has an assault rifle. | |
We don't need to rehash the obvious points that what she thinks an assault rifle is is not actually an assault rifle and yada yada yada. | |
You get it. | |
I want to focus on Nicole here. | |
She's asking that the addresses of gun owners be published. | |
Making them targets. | |
Making them targets for burglary, making them targets for ostracism, making them targets for violence, for exercising a very basic right. | |
The Journal News, actually, where I grew up in New York, did this some years ago. | |
They published lists of the addresses where gun owners live, the places that these gun owners are. | |
I don't even just want to focus on that. | |
I want to focus on the divergence between what she's suggesting and reality. | |
She's saying, we need to redefine what a bad neighborhood is. | |
And now we're going to define a bad neighborhood as places where people have AR-15s. | |
The problem with that is those aren't bad neighborhoods. | |
People have AR-15s in good neighborhoods. | |
AR-15s are just not used in very many crimes. | |
Very, very few. | |
This is a well-trodden out statistic. | |
It's almost become tedious. | |
More people are killed each year with bats and hammers and clubs and fists than they are with rifles of any kind, including the dread AR-15. | |
Now, guns are involved in some crimes, much more often pistols. | |
That's much more often, not in the Trump counties, okay? | |
It's more often in Chicago, in Detroit, in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Los Angeles. | |
Not places that are voting for Donald Trump. | |
Not places that are great defenders of their Second Amendment rights. | |
Not places that are buying the AR-15s. | |
Actually, this woman has undermined her own argument here. | |
She's saying that all these places out in the country where people have AR-15s, those are the bad neighborhoods. | |
They're not. | |
We know they're not. | |
They're nice neighborhoods, actually. | |
People like to go there. | |
They have high real estate prices. | |
If you go to a city, for instance, there will be high real estate prices depending on what neighborhood you're in. | |
But there's so much economic opportunity, and you're making a lot of money, and there's lots of social services and high taxes. | |
But we're talking about places that are just sort of nice, you know, that people actually would like to go to. | |
You can't just redefine reality that way. | |
The left loves redefining reality. | |
That's sort of the central premise of my upcoming book, Speechless Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, which is available. | |
You can get a signed first edition copy at Premier Collectibles. | |
Books coming out in two weeks, at which point I will not be able to say it's available for pre-order. | |
It will just be available for order. | |
Speaking of bad neighborhoods, Kamala Harris just made what I think is her best argument for these radical immigration policies. | |
I don't think it's a good argument, but I think it's her best argument, so I want to take it seriously. | |
It's not about quid pro quo. | |
It's simply about understanding, if nothing else, that the return on our investment is the same return on your investment that if you have a neighbor on your block where you grew up, Who's having a hard time, it's in the best interest not only of your neighbor but yourself to help them out, right? | |
And that's how we think about this work. | |
What is the United States' interest in this? | |
We're prepared to show up and do it in a way that is motivated by the best interest of diplomacy and democracy and goodwill. | |
So this is a very different view of foreign policy than Donald Trump's. | |
Donald Trump's was, we're going to do things that benefit America. | |
This was common sense until very recently. | |
Our foreign policy is to benefit our country, be in the national interest. | |
Kamala's view is we need to have a foreign policy that promotes global democracy, sort of liberal imperialism. | |
But why? | |
Why? | |
I understand the argument if she says, it's in our interest for Guatemala to be a better country. | |
It's in our interest for Guatemala to be more flourishing, to have a better economy. | |
Okay, I get that. | |
Why is it in our interest for Guatemala to be more democratic? | |
How is that in our interest? | |
There are plenty of democracies that collapse and fall and fail. | |
And then all those migrants are going to keep coming over. | |
Why democracy? | |
Why democracy, even at the same time... | |
That Kamala and her Democrat friends undermine our democracy. | |
Right? | |
Democracy is full of deplorables and irredeemables and bitter clingers. | |
What the left has done is try to remove those democratic elements and give all the power to the Dr. | |
Fauci's of the world. | |
So we're undermining democracy at home, but we're promoting democracy abroad? | |
Why? | |
It's totally incoherent. | |
Because what they mean by our democracy is not our democracy. | |
When conservatives participate in our democracy, it is considered illegitimate. | |
I'll give you an example very timely during our Pride Month. | |
We'll end where we began with drag queens. | |
Laverne Cox, who is a man who wears a dress, just gave an interview to Variety talking about how important it is that we trans all the kids. | |
He said, quote, what they're trying to do, what they, the conservatives, are trying to do is to dehumanize these children. | |
Which is so heartbreaking. | |
It's really heartbreaking when you see the way they're talking, the fervor with which they're going after these kids. | |
In the face of that, we insist on the humanity of everyone, insist on the humanity of trans people, in particular of trans children. | |
Of course, it's the opposite. | |
The transgenderists are the ones trying to dehumanize children. | |
They're trying to get the children to deny their human nature and to pretend that they are... | |
They are quite literally, quite specifically, dehumanizing the kids. | |
Cox goes on. | |
A few years ago, it was all about the bathrooms, right? | |
There were a slew of bills all over the country attacking trans people in the bathroom. | |
Pause there. | |
Who were the aggressors in this culture war? | |
We had a men's room and a ladies' room. | |
Then the left got upset with that and said, no, men have to be able to use the ladies' room. | |
And Republicans said, no, they can't. | |
And now that's called the aggression. | |
And he says it was about trying to make trans people not exist. | |
Let me not put too fine a point on it. | |
Trans people do not exist. | |
It's not a thing. | |
Do you know who does exist? | |
Men who have a psychological condition where they think that they're women. | |
Those guys exist. | |
I suppose deserve our sympathy and certainly deserve our compassion and our help. | |
You know who does exist? | |
Men who very much want to be women because they have some sexual preference that way. | |
That certainly exists. | |
But trans people, the idea of a man who then becomes a woman, that does not exist. | |
That is a fake thing. | |
And if you deny that that exists, as virtually everyone for all of human history everywhere does, if you make this obvious point, if you just hold to the truth, right, you just say this basic truth, that's deemed illegitimate and out of our mind. | |
Our democracy. | |
Beyond the limits of our democracy. | |
So much for our democracy. | |
I'm Michael Knowles. | |
This is Michael Knowles. | |
and I'll see you tomorrow. | |
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. | |
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The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring, our technical director is Austin Stevens, supervising producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, production manager Pavel Vidovsky, editor and associate producer Danny D'Amico, audio mixer Mike Coromina, hair and makeup by Nika Geneva, and production coordinator McKenna Waters. | |
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2021. | |
Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, our journalism experts blew it yet again on a major story targeting President Trump. | |
Dr. | |
Anthony Fauci declares that attacks on him are attacks on science. | |
And even the White House is now disappointed in Kamala Harris. | |
That's today on the Ben Shapiro Show. |