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June 23, 2021 - The Michael Knowles Show

01:15:25

Michael Knowles Book Signing and Q&A | Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds

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Time	Text
	Well, good evening, everyone.
	Good evening, Michael.
	Good evening.
	Hello.
	Welcome to the Daily Wire's live book signing of Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.
	There it is.
	My name is Cabot Phillips.
	I'll be your host this evening.
	And of course, I'm joined by the man himself.
	You may know him as the Saint of Suave, the Sultan of Swagger, the Prescient Prince, the austere religious podcaster, Mr.
	Michael Knowles.
	Wow.
	What an introduction that was.
	There it is.
	You're really good.
	Michael, it's...
	It's here.
	Your book release day is here.
	This is why I really feel good.
	I have been, first of all, I've been a best-selling author for four years now.
	You remind me every time I see you.
	Yeah, I do.
	I wear a little name tag.
	But I have never been an author of words until this very day.
	It was only blank books until this very day.
	I have been shilling this book for what seems like, what, 18 months now?
	Two years?
	I don't know how long.
	This book, this actually took some time to write.
	I will say also, I have seen you around the office on a literal typewriter multiple times, and I've just assumed he is writing his book.
	Yes, that was the sequel.
	The first one is speechless, the next one is shameless for how much we're selling this.
	Do you know this book was due to the publisher on the same day that my son was due into the world, and both of them came in on time?
	Did you induce labor to get the baby part out of the way?
	I actually, I kid you not, I finished the final little bit.
	I still had to do notes.
	I finished the final little bit.
	I go into my wife's belly.
	I say, Sonny, you can come now.
	Five hours later, her water breaks.
	It's not a joke.
	But I still had to finish up a few things.
	So I'm sitting there in the labor delivery room, like the most callous husband in the world.
	My wife is screaming.
	I was like, can you keep it down?
	I'm trying to finish up the book.
	We made it in.
	They say the Lord doesn't play favorites.
	He might play a little bit of favorites with Michael Knowles.
	Anyways, before we get into all of the festivities this evening, I'm going to give you a quick rundown of what we're getting into on this fine night.
	First off, we'll be taking live questions from the viewers, from all you guys, everybody who pre-ordered Speechless.
	So throughout the stream, by the book, you'll get a chance to ask a question, and Michael will get to as many as he can tonight.
	If you want to submit a question again, if you want to submit a question, head over to premiercollectible.com/speechless.
	All right?
	Once you make your purchase, you'll see a window to include your question.
	And we're actually going to get to the first question right out of the gate.
	So I've got a book here for you to sign.
	I'm going to give this to you.
	The first question, as you were signing the book, Speechless, is from Connor in Nashville, Tennessee.
	And Connor asks, you have this ringing bell that you do whenever the words speechless are said.
	How did you pick that?
	And did you just pick it because you wanted to Pavlovian dog people into buying it whenever they hear that bell?
	Yes.
	That's my answer.
	I know it was two questions.
	The answer is the Pavlovian response.
	Do you know, I started this maybe two, three months ago.
	Every time I would say speechless, I could be at dinner and I'd say speechless.
	There it is again, right?
	I could be at dinner and I could say speechless.
	And it would just...
	And I could say speechless and it...
	Okay, there we go.
	And it would just come out.
	There was a listener to the show who mailed me Two physical bells.
	Because sometimes I wouldn't be able, you know, if I didn't have a producer nearby, you know, let's say I'm having dinner and the producer showed up late, I couldn't get the bell in.
	So I'd be there, I'd be caught without it.
	I'd say, I would be sitting at the table and I would say, speechless, nothing would happen.
	That is just a travesty.
	I can't imagine having to say that.
	Uh-oh.
	What is going on right now?
	Oh, no.
	What is happening?
	I broke it.
	I said too many.
	Oh!
	The camera's not just shaking.
	It's actually the whole ground shaking.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	That's what happens, and we're back.
	Okay.
	So that's what happens when we hear Speechless.
	This is a real Hollywood studio.
	That is how you start.
	The entire set was actually shaking, people at home.
	That was not acting at all.
	We literally fell.
	Also coming up this evening, beyond just having the entire world shake around us, we have a shout-out from all of your friends.
	We had to kind of scrape the bottom of the barrel to find enough people willing to endorse the book, but we got a few from the bottom of that barrel.
	I get to hear from some of them this evening.
	Great.
	We might actually have a President of the United States that is offering an endorsement of your book.
	I'm not going to say who it is.
	No.
	It might not be who you think it is.
	It might be who you think it is.
	I'm just going to leave it there.
	That's going to be at the very end.
	You're going to have to stick around to get to hear from that.
	And also, we're going to test your ability to fight through censorship.
	The book is about censorship.
	We're going to test your ability to fight through censorship, not metaphorically, but literally.
	Just going to leave it there.
	Okay.
	Stay tuned for that part as well.
	But first, we talked about the dinging.
	Your good friend, Tim Pool, host of a fantastic podcast, which you'll be on tomorrow, talking about the book.
	You actually had some of your wonderful listeners.
	I don't want to say troll because they weren't trolling.
	They were just doing the Lord's work, promoting your book.
	And they went on his show, and they forced Tim to have to do a free promo for your book.
	They paid money to do this.
	They actually paid money in Super Chats to get Tim to plug my book.
	We have a super cut of that, so you can see just how many people.
	You wonderful listeners.
	Seriously, guys, this was awesome what you did.
	Let's watch a little bit of a cut of that.
	We got the footage right here.
	Michael Brogan says, holy S, it's Michael effing Knowles.
	That's it.
	That's the super chat.
	Plug.
	Speechless, controlling words, controlling minds.
	Ping, ping, ping, plug counter.
	That was, that's my favorite comment.
	Not only from this show, from weeks, from weeks of my show too.
	What you have done with your show and your audience to plug this book is genius.
	Because now you come on my show and they're making me promote your book.
	All right, I'm going to read it.
	Joseph Hoffman says, Michael, I'm looking forward to your new book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available not for pre-order.
	Corporal Hillbilly says, Tim and gang, not asking for financial advice, but where are good places to get into the crypto game?
	Also, don't forget Michael Knoll's new book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, haha.
	P-Dog says, if you want a depiction of life without electricity, read the Going Home series by A-American.
	Really makes you think about how people would act.
	Also, Michael Knoll's book Speechless is available for pre-order on Amazon.
	Ding!
	That dude is gonna sell so many books.
	Yeah, ding.
	Speechless.
	Mediocre Fisherman says, hey Tim, when are you going to write a book?
	If you didn't know, Michael Knoll's book Speechless is on pre-ordering.
	Oh, you got me.
	Oh, I love it.
	You got me promoting Michael Knoll's book.
	All right, Neil Sawyer says, hey Tim, just wanted to plug your newest channel, Cast Castle.
	It seems like it's going to be great, but speaking of greatness, Michael Knoll's new book Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, is available for pre-order.
	They tried to get me on this one, but they didn't do a good enough job.
	But I'm going to read it anyway.
	Rampton says the first chat's name was Nightingale Maury, but did you know that Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds by Michael Knowles is available for pre-order?
	Also, I got my Tim Foyle Gorilla Share.
	So Michael Knowles' book, Speechless, is on sale for pre-order.
	That is beautiful.
	What does that make you feel inside?
	That is a really, really beautiful thing because I'm glad that everyone is in on this.
	The real motivation to write this book, some people said it's because I want to change the way that the conservative movement talks about free speech.
	Some have said it's because I want to win back the culture and the country.
	Yeah, sure.
	Really, it's about the absolute vindictiveness, the pure vitriol I have for the New York Times.
	And I just really want to hit that list.
	I want to stick it right in their eye.
	And everyone seems on board to help me do that.
	You know the best way for people to help you stick it to the New York Times is going to premiercollectibles.com backslash speechless.
	And for just one small payment, you can help feed a little Italian boy.
	And feed his ego in helping to tarnish the New York Times list.
	You can put that anywhere, by the way.
	That's totally fine.
	With your name.
	So we're going to get some more questions here.
	We've got one.
	This one right here is from Raymond in Chesney, South Carolina.
	Raymond asks, what is one thing that Americans are not doing that they should be doing to stop this takeover of words and speech?
	God bless Mr.
	Knowles.
	What do you think of Raymond?
	You know, we were speaking of presidents earlier.
	I hope that President Trump lives a good long life.
	I hope that he has many more years on this earth.
	He's got good genes, you know, he's very well preserved by Diet Coke and delicious American food.
	However, when the time eventually comes, as it must come for all of us, I hope that he donates his body to science and his spine to the GOP. Because conservatives don't have courage on this issue.
	I mean, even at the moments when conservatives have some moral clarity, they say, you know, actually, Drag Queen Story Hour is not so great.
	Maybe having perverts twerk for toddlers at second-grade classrooms may be not the best thing in the world.
	But then, you know what they'll say next?
	They'll say, but I could never impose my views on my crazy view that it's not good for perverts to jiggle around for two-year-olds.
	We need to be able to do that.
	All regimes of speech, all self-governments need to make moral decisions about how we're going to live, how we're going to get along together.
	Every society has taboos.
	Every society has standards.
	And what we need to be able to do is articulate a real standard, a substantive vision of politics.
	We need to put that out there.
	We need to be willing to embrace it and enforce it.
	In the 1950s, you could get canceled for being a communist.
	Today, you get canceled for not being a communist.
	I think we need to go back to the more stable and serious standard.
	I see a new hat here.
	It says, make canceling communists great again.
	Yes, I can't wait to wait.
	That's a movement I would get behind.
	I would do that for sure.
	All right, so next question here.
	Sarah in Alpharetta, Georgia asks, Michael, you wrote a first book about reasons to vote for Democrats with zero words.
	How different was it writing a book that actually had words for you?
	Well, you know, that first book, no one gave me credit.
	I had been researching that book for about 27 years at that point.
	And, you know, everyone says that there were no words in the book.
	There were words in that book.
	There was an extensive bibliography at the back of reasons to vote for Democrats.
	It was the only words in the entire book.
	Here, I had to do a lot of research, but then I had to do the second step, which was to write.
	And I will tell you, it was a little bit of a tricky process because I wanted to write a real book.
	I'm not getting on my high horse, okay?
	I'm not trying to say that this is the greatest work of political philosophy in the last several decades.
	You would never say that.
	The greatest work?
	I'm not saying that.
	What I'm saying is, I wanted to write a serious, substantive work that was offering a different perspective because I never want to do this again.
	It's very, very tiring to write a book.
	So I want to get it all out here now, and then we're done.
	That actually is perfect because Colton from Minneapolis asked...
	What was the hardest thing of writing this book?
	This gives you a chance to just talk about all the hardship you had to go through when you wrote this.
	I had a lot of hardship.
	This is for Colton.
	There you go.
	Thank you very much.
	The hardest thing about writing this book...
	Hold on, I've got to find it.
	I don't even know where to sign it.
	There we go.
	The hardest thing about writing this book was actually after it was written.
	I enjoyed the research.
	It was cool.
	I kind of changed my mind on some things when I did it.
	I enjoyed writing.
	I do enjoy writing.
	I go slowly, but I enjoy the work of it.
	But the edit, and the edit, and the fight, and the battle, and I'm so...
	I'm miserable to work with.
	If you are an editor, I'm so miserable to work with because I labor.
	I mean, you know this.
	You are an editor of mine here at The Daily Wire.
	I labor over every comma, every little dash in the book.
	Oh, it's so...
	I would throw me out of a window if I could have.
	So we did that.
	We had some debates over everything.
	The cover art.
	Every...
	Inch of this book has been argued over and thought over and hopefully will totally persuade conservatives to get along with my way of thinking.
	I will point out, too, you're a formidable foe when it comes to the final editing process.
	You might ask, hey, Mike, what about a suggestion on this sentence here?
	This man stands his ground, ladies and gentlemen.
	He says, here's my argument for why that sentence should not be changed.
	Do you know what I actually, this is telling tales out of school, but I have a really lovely editor, which is a really talented editor at Regnery, And she sent me back very thoughtful edits.
	And we're talking commas here.
	We're not talking about really extensive stuff.
	I wrote about 300 words per page in the comments section of why I wouldn't change the commas.
	It's a whole new book.
	It is a whole new book.
	Actually, there was this moment of real crisis when I was turning in my edit.
	I had an old version of the word processor.
	Most of it got deleted.
	But I felt that was actually good.
	I think she would have probably come to my house and strangled me had I sent in the original returns on it.
	I would have gone to your house by now and strangled you in the editing process if I knew where you lived.
	Very smart to not do that.
	Next question here actually comes from...
	Lianka in Girona, Spain.
	Wow, hey, cool.
	There we go.
	Mr.
	Knowles is known for two things, a great talk show about politics and a blank book he authored.
	How has the experience been changing from the talking format to the written format?
	This one is for Lianka.
	Well, you know, I was an author first.
	I did.
	I did the blank book, actually, before I got my show at Daily Wire.
	I think I'm the only person in history to get his own talk show for not writing a book.
	So the written word, or the unwritten word, is really my first love.
	I much prefer to write.
	I enjoy speaking, and that's very fun.
	There's sort of different things to do.
	But if you told me you could do one thing...
	For the rest of your life, I really enjoy the writing process more.
	It's more frustrating, but the nice thing about writing is, if I go on my show and I get a little excited about a topic, on rare occasions, maybe I'll say something that then our wonderful marketing interns at Media Matters and the other leftist hit groups, they're going to break it out.
	It's going to cause me a headache.
	I'm going to lose a Razor sponsor.
	I don't know, whatever it is.
	So that's a real problem, whereas with the writing, Whenever I want to say something really outrageous, really controversial, and just vile and obscene, I'm going to think about it first.
	I'm going to know exactly what's coming and I can publish it.
	I like that.
	Milton in Freewater, Oregon asks, this isn't really a question.
	I hesitate to read this one because it's just going to inflate your already humble side.
	It says, I bought your book for my husband as a Father's Day present.
	He likes to say he started listening to the podcast at Daily Wire for Ben Shapiro, but he stayed for Michael Knowles.
	He's a big fan who watches your show loyally.
	I would appreciate it for Father's Day if you could give him a shout-out.
	His name is Jesse Monk.
	Jesse Monk.
	Mr.
	Monk.
	You are clearly a gentleman, a scientist, and a scholar, a man of discerning taste, And your wife seems to me to be one of the luckiest, most blessed women on earth.
	Thank you for your judgment, for your discernment, and I hope you enjoy the book.
	If you too want to have a shout-out like that from Michael, again, premiercollectibles.com slash speechless.
	You can get your questions in, Michael will answer them, or ask for shout-outs, which...
	I very much like that.
	I'm going to have to start asking for shout-outs like that.
	Dear Cabot.
	Wait a second.
	What's that, Cabot?
	So the next question.
	Another international listener.
	This one's from Italy.
	Bergamo, Italy.
	This is Voltaire.
	They ask, Hi, Michael.
	I'm dyslexic, but I'll really try to read your book.
	I did manage to read your previous one, so we'll see.
	From one Catholic to another, I wanted to ask you, what future do you see for our church following the reduction in its believers?
	Do you think we will die out, or do you think there will be a rebirth?
	Do you think the different Christian fates might merge?
	Keep up the good work.
	I do not think that the Catholic Church will die out because I, being a mackerel-snapping papist myself, believe that the Church has divine protection and that Christ will be with the Church forever.
	And there's just nothing, no matter how stupidly the leaders of the Church run the thing, they can't overwhelm our Lord.
	There's a line from Hilaire Belloc, one of the great curmudgeonly brilliant Catholic writers, who said that he has to take it as a matter of faith that the Catholic Church is divinely instituted.
	But one of the pieces of evidence for people who do not believe is that no other institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.
	And I think that is very true.
	I am hoping to get an Italian translation of Speechless.
	Out.
	And do you know why?
	Why?
	Because it's the only other language I have.
	I don't speak Spanish.
	I don't speak French.
	I'm Catholic.
	I don't even read Latin.
	But the Italian, I have.
	It's because you like swearing in Italian.
	I like swearing.
	You know, back in my single days, I wanted to be kind of suave with the ladies.
	So that's the one.
	And I basically want to pick up another fee to do the translation.
	All right.
	Next question.
	This one's coming from Daniel in Spring Branch, Texas.
	Thank you for everything you do, Michael.
	You're a much appreciated person in these crazy times.
	On a more serious note, when will you do the drinking game with Steven Crowder?
	That was actually less serious than I expected, but when will you do the drinking game?
	Come on, Michael.
	I can't wait to do it.
	I was texting with Crowder, as I am wont to do.
	He was supposed to come.
	We were supposed to hang.
	I don't want to give any dates in the future for when this is going to come out, but Mr.
	Crowder told me that he was going to bring me some delicious cigars.
	He's a big cigar guy, too.
	I've heard.
	And so then he didn't show up, and I was very, very upset.
	A few days later, I receive a package in the mail.
	He mailed me the cigars.
	And then I was much less upset.
	Because I thought, alright, I'll crowd or take them or leave them, but the cigars, that's what I wanted.
	And I got them.
	So hopefully soon, but I still have a few of his stogies to smoke in the meantime.
	That's beautiful.
	Get you a friend that will mail you boxes of cigars.
	I like that.
	Next question.
	This one is from Jason Rivas in Los Angeles, California.
	Jason, stay strong there in Los Angeles.
	We fled, but keep doing the Lord's work there.
	The question, my swarthy Savior, from a Catholic perspective, is getting drunk or high a sin?
	Yes.
	Next question, yeah.
	Got to elaborate a bit.
	It's not a sin to drink, for instance.
	I mean, you can...
	I forget, there's another line from Chesterton, something to the effect of wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, there will be good sheer and good red wine.
	You know, the Catholics are known for this, certainly the Irish are, the Italians are too.
	So that's perfectly fine, you know.
	I mean, our Lord's first miracle was turning water into wine for people who'd been...
	Hanging out for a while, yeah, at this wedding.
	But drunkenness, I mean, you really shouldn't be doing that, you know, if you just become some derelict who's speaking in cursive all the time.
	You don't want to be doing that.
	And as for the devil's lettuce, as for the topic of the sin spinach, the old Peruvian parsley, you know what I'm talking about?
	I'm talking about the Haitian oregano, you know what I mean?
	The ganja, Mary Jane, the jazz cigarettes is what I mean.
	I don't think that's cool.
	I don't...
	I don't really have a theological argument to make.
	I just find that most people who smoke, not all of them, but most who smoke pot regularly are a little more on the left.
	There are some right-wingers who do it too.
	But my real argument against legalized marijuana is that the people for whom legalization is the number one political issue...
	I want to make them unhappy.
	I don't want those...
	I'm not saying, you know, you have the occasional doobie and you turn on, you know, Miles Davis.
	I don't know what people do when they smoke pot.
	I'm not talking about that.
	I'm saying these guys who just love it.
	It's like they're wake and bake all day long.
	I want them to not have a good time.
	So that would be...
	Is that a theological argument?
	It doesn't sound like it, but it's the theology of Knowles, which is a very different kind of theology.
	It's idiosyncratic, yeah.
	Precisely.
	Next question.
	This one is from Aaron in Kansas City, Missouri.
	To what extent is the left aware of their use of language to control political discourse and silence conservatives?
	I do not believe that the average Democrat voter is aware of the end goal of their progressivism.
	I find it difficult to believe Democrats, even politicians in general, have much deep thought into their speech and are more so blindly following a select few.
	I hope your answer relieved me speechless.
	Your rank-and-file Democrat voter has no idea what's going on, and your rank-and-file Democrat member of Congress has no idea what's going on, about the words or about anything else for that matter.
	The average IQ in the U.S. Congress is...
	A little subpar.
	It's at least like four standard deviations below the normal.
	But the leftist intellectuals, the ones who actually sort of set the program and form the ideas which have consequences in politics, they know exactly what they're doing.
	This actually is the subject of this book.
	In Speechless, I go through the people I think are the most influential of these radical intellectuals.
	I try to give them a fair argument.
	I think I give them more than a fair argument.
	Because we on the right, we like to flatter ourselves and we say, oh, we understand free speech.
	These leftist snowflakes, they don't understand free speech.
	Yes, they do.
	They do.
	They understand it much better than we do, which is why they're so much more effective at manipulating it and controlling the words and controlling our minds and controlling our politics.
	And I think we need to learn a lesson from those people.
	They are very sophisticated thinkers, and it's going to require some sophistication on our part, which we have not really engaged in, to counter it.
	What's the lesson to learn?
	The lesson that you have to learn, I think if I were to distill just one little nugget down, political correctness and wokeism and cancel culture, whatever you want to call it, is not a battle between free speech and censorship.
	We think that it is.
	The left convinced us that it is, but it's not.
	It's actually a contest between two competing sets of standards.
	And those standards open up broad realms of speech and they close off certain realms of speech.
	And conservatives used to know that.
	We don't really know that anymore.
	But it's going to cause, I think, some uncomfortable conversations on the right about how to deal with this issue of free speech and wokeness and cancel culture moving forward.
	But the one thing I can promise you, no matter how resistant you are to adopting my argument, which I think is a sort of novel argument in this book, What we are doing now is not working.
	What we are doing now, just even at the most tangible level, a handful of woke billionaire oligarchs in Silicon Valley censored the duly elected sitting president of the United States six months ago.
	Whatever you think happened in the election, the guy was the duly elected sitting president, and hipster Rasputin, Jack Dorsey, boots him out of the public square.
	The guy's gone.
	Yeah.
	He had a blog for a little bit, you know, and he sent in—he tried.
	I mean, I wish the guy were platformed, but they really effectively controlled that speech.
	And in a republic, speech is politics.
	So no matter how resistant someone might be, to my argument, is the alternative really any better?
	I don't think so.
	See, I'm surprised it took us this long for you to bring up Jack Dorsey.
	Another person I'm surprised has not been brought up yet that Josh from Spring, Texas brings up.
	This is from Josh.
	Michael, please say something in your Fauci voice.
	Literally anything will do.
	Thanks for all you do.
	What do you think I am?
	Do you think I'm some clown?
	What do you think?
	That I'm here to perform for you?
	Like Mr.
	Bojangles?
	Does a little soft shoe?
	Puts on my mask?
	Tells you sheep?
	Where you can stick your freedoms and your liberties?
	No, I will not do that.
	No one tells Fauci what to do, you sheep!
	I would like to revoke that question from Josh from Spring, Texas.
	Please don't ask any more questions, Josh.
	I don't have to go through that.
	I will do an impression of Fauci throwing the ball, though.
	First pitch.
	Just a little dribble?
	Just a little dribble.
	It's all on the wrist.
	It made Obama look like Curt Schilling out there.
	The next question coming up, Jesse in Denver, Colorado.
	Michael, what helps you to remain patient when dealing with individuals who are not as tolerant as you?
	You could just say, with individuals who aren't you, no one's as tolerant as you, but what helps you deal with them?
	Thank you.
	I appreciate that keen observation of yours.
	This comes back to the Catholic thing.
	It really does, because Catholics, if you've ever seen a Mel Gibson movie, you will know this.
	Catholics have a way to make sense of suffering.
	We have this view that suffering is sanctifying.
	That it is actually productive.
	It is producing some good when we suffer in patience.
	You have this idea of your long-suffering Nona, who you never call her, and she lets you know about it every single time that you call.
	When I'm standing somewhere on a debate stage, let's say, and I've got some lib just saying the stupidest, craziest, most insulting, vicious things, I think, bring it on, baby.
	I'm building up that treasure in heaven.
	Give it to me.
	Suck it to me, which is great.
	Also, patience is a virtue.
	It's really good because I, being of Italian and Irish extraction, actually, I don't really look like it, but I am.
	The temper is a real concern.
	It's about once a year I lose my temper.
	The rest of the time, I try to keep it cool as a cucumber.
	Even keeled.
	I like it.
	Next question.
	Benjamin, Asheboro, North Carolina.
	Michael, which book is better, Speechless or Reasons to Vote for Democrats?
	Also, I like this question.
	Also, what is your Subway sandwich order?
	You know...
	I'll answer the second question first, because my first job...
	I've always been in the arts.
	You know, I've always been an artist.
	My first job was as a Subway sandwich artist when I was 14.
	Was it really?
	Yes.
	I rose up to actually become the manager at the store.
	This was during the summer after eighth grade, and then I did it a bit, you know, when I was in high school.
	And...
	Some of the meats are a little suspect there, actually.
	Which ones?
	This was years ago.
	I don't want to get a libel suit from the Subway Corporation.
	But it was not always great.
	The sandwich that I go to every time now, 100% of the time at Subway, the cold-cut combo, the most processed, It's just all bologna.
	It's, I get that, a little light mayo, lettuce, tomato, black olives, red onion, and a nice bit of Italian bread.
	Ooh, that's delicious.
	Now, the less important question.
	Which book is better, Reasons to Vote for Democrats or Speechless?
	Let me ask you.
	Which poem is better, The Iliad or The Odyssey?
	Let me ask you.
	Which poem is better, The Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost?
	The Divine Comedy is, actually.
	That was a bad example.
	The Reasons to Vote for Democrats is my magnum opus.
	I quoted Thucydides at the beginning of it.
	I said, this is not an attempt to win the applause of the moment.
	This is a lasting contribution for all time.
	I think it's already in the Oxford World Classics edition, Reasons to Vote for Democrats.
	This book, you'll have to tell me yourself.
	I think this is a contribution.
	I think it's going somewhere.
	But I need you to tell me.
	I don't want to put that on myself.
	Okay, the people spoke on the first book.
	They can speak on the second book.
	I just would give anything to go in and see you as like a 14-year-old subway manager bossing around a bunch of people.
	I did, yeah.
	I'm sure to not resent you at all.
	No, no, no.
	Definitely not.
	All right, next question.
	Bilal from London.
	And a quick reminder for everyone, these questions are coming in live.
	So if you want to get a question in, go to premiercollections.com slash speechless.
	Buy the book and then a pop-up comes on offering the question.
	So you can still answer a question.
	It's not too late.
	Their question, Bilal from London, Ontario.
	Oh, no, it's London from Ontario, Canada.
	Sorry about that.
	How do you judge if something is immoral without the help of religion?
	P.S. Love the show.
	I aspire to be amazing as you in the future.
	That's very kind.
	Thank you very much.
	You can know something about morality from your inborn moral conscience.
	We do have a moral conscience.
	I know these days people believe, well, look, you think murder is wrong because of the society that you were raised in, but other people think murder is right, and you have your values and your preferences.
	That is simply not true.
	People do have a natural, innate moral intuition, and there is such a thing as the natural law.
	To give another example, and I guess this brings it to your religion point, The existence of God can be known with certainty from the natural world using your faculties of reason.
	This point is denied these days by radical skeptics on the left and even some on the right, but it is simply the case.
	We actually can know things about the world, about the physical world and what the physical world then tells us about the metaphysical world.
	I'm glad you can get those moral intuitions just naturally without religion.
	But religion is how you systematize it and think rigorously about it.
	There's this canard that religious people are superstitious.
	We're superstitious unlike the genius secular scientists, right?
	In my experience, religious people are the least superstitious people in the world.
	Because all my atheist friends, secular friends, they're the ones with the crystals.
	They're the ones with the horoscopes.
	They're the ones with the energy and the chakras and the psychics and all other sorts of craziness.
	You ever hear this line, I'm spiritual but not religious?
	Which means I'm very interested in myself, but I'm not that interested in God.
	But I think I'm very special.
	So when people say that, they'll sometimes say that it's all about spirituality, not religion.
	Religion is how you make sense of what you would call spirituality.
	It's applying rigor and logic and reason to that.
	And when you've got some kooky ideas, you get rid of them, and you stick to what is really true.
	So you can do it, but I would urge you to go further and engage, actually, with religion, which is not just some weird historical eccentricity, some little souvenir from the past.
	It is the fundament, the way of understanding the world, even today, even right now.
	Alright, so while you're signing that one, I'm going to just read your palm real quick.
	Okay, could you?
	Yeah, tell me.
	I'm not superstitious.
	How many books are we going to sell?
	This is all very real.
	And again, I messed up a little bit.
	PremierCollectibles.com.
	I wasn't going to correct you.
	Slash Speechless.
	What a good guy you are.
	I heard it.
	Not whatever I said.
	I messed up.
	I'm sorry to all of you.
	PremierCollectibles.com slash Speechless.
	Again, we are still taking questions, so get them in.
	The next question from our good friend Cassie in Reading, Connecticut.
	Did you actually write this book?
	Love the show.
	I appreciate the skepticism.
	Michael, the floor to you.
	You know, in defense of Cassie's question, a lot of people hire ghostwriters.
	This is a real practice, and certainly in political media.
	And here are the five people who do it.
	Go ahead, Michael.
	Yeah, I can name more than five who do it.
	This is something people do, especially politicians, but people in political media do it, too.
	Sometimes you're just too busy.
	Sometimes you collaborate with somebody.
	Now, I think you have been on enough of my lengthy email threads on some column or something to know that I could never relinquish that kind of control to anybody.
	But I actually put myself in a bad situation because I was running out of time.
	We were busy.
	We were moving.
	I was having my baby.
	I mean, I wasn't.
	My wife was.
	I was there for it.
	You did the hard work.
	I did the hard work, though.
	And...
	I wanted to hire someone to just do the footnotes.
	That's all.
	I just didn't want to format the footnotes or anything.
	But my pride wouldn't let me.
	Because I said, no, I don't want anybody to be able to say I had a research assistant or I had a ghostwriter or something like that.
	So I labored.
	I labored over those notes.
	Not a single other hand touched the book.
	So any typos, I suppose, are my fault.
	Why did I tell anybody that?
	It doesn't make any sense.
	No other hands have touched the book, but I'll tell you what.
	They can touch the book if they order it.
	They get to ask a question.
	That's all I'm saying, and you are such a hero.
	I'm not calling you a hero.
	Other people have called you a hero.
	I would say, yeah, I'm a great inspiration.
	I'm really impressed by me.
	They wouldn't be wrong to call you a hero.
	Cole in Lafayette, Indiana asks, Could you pin down to a single moment, event, or person that contributed the most in turning you into the swarthiest sociopolitical theological philosopher of our era?
	Gosh.
	That's for Cole.
	There were so many of these moments.
	One of the first sentences I ever said—people are not going to believe this, but it's true—was, read my lips, no new taxes, which was a line of President Bush I. I guess my grandfather taught it to me.
	He held to that promise, right?
	Not quite.
	Unfortunately, it didn't work out too well for old H.W. because he broke it and he got booted from office.
	But my grandfather taught me to sing It's a Grand Old Flag— I was absolutely fanatical about Bob Dole in the 96 election.
	I was six years old.
	I campaigned around my first grade classroom to get Senator Dole elected.
	I knew he was a war hero and Clinton was a degenerate.
	That's all I knew about it.
	And I said, I want Dole.
	So I was always a bit of a political junkie.
	Had a little bit of a liberal phase, but was mostly on the right.
	My mother was very...
	She didn't push politics or anything on me.
	I mean, her political views were kind of idiosyncratic, too.
	But...
	But she would always, if I ever made a political claim, she would force me to defend it, which was very helpful, you know, call out the BS. She gave me good advice one time.
	She said, the most important thing in life, Michael, best advice I can give you, do not believe your own press releases.
	That'll get you in trouble if you do that.
	So I was always interested in politics.
	I worked my first campaign at 18 for my friend Nan Hayworth, and we did a whole crazy YouTube campaign for all of that.
	And, you know, I tried to get out of politics, but you know what happened?
	Sucked you back in.
	Just when I thought I was at it.
	Pulled me back in!
	Hoo-ah.
	And now we're here today.
	Simple enough?
	Simple enough.
	Dole.
	I would love to see how your first grade classmates reacted to that.
	Do you know, including...
	Very popular.
	Including Bob Dole.
	I was the only person in the country who was really gung-ho about Bob Dole.
	I think so, yeah.
	Next up, Aaron from Tyler, Texas.
	What logical fallacies would you say are most commonly committed by progressives?
	From Aaron.
	Which logical fallacy?
	I guess the fallacy, or it's really more of a heresy, is radical skepticism or empiricism.
	The idea that we either cannot know things for certain or that we can only know things about the physical world, you know, scientism.
	It's not so much a fallacy as it is just a really stupid idea.
	And it causes them to, when you are having any serious argument about philosophy or ethics or morality or religion or anything about politics, they'll say, well, no, you can't make that argument.
	Because you're arguing from philosophy or you're arguing from religion.
	You're not allowed to do that.
	You can only argue from what?
	What else is there even to argue from?
	So I suppose the fallacy, beyond the ad hominem attacks and beyond the reductio ad absurdum and all these sorts of things...
	I find, I don't think I'm being hyperbolic, they don't know what politics is.
	They don't actually know what politics means.
	It's just how we all get along together.
	They don't understand that man is the political animal, in the words of Aristotle.
	They don't understand that what makes man the political animal, what makes him human and distinguishes him from the grunting beasts, harder to tell the difference these days, is speech.
	That's why speech is so fundamental.
	That's why I felt it was worth a book-length treatment.
	It's very difficult to teach somebody that when you're in the heat of a political debate.
	I mean, I think that's why so many of our political debates are so stupid on cable TV or even in public.
	Our mind has become so shallow.
	The words that we use, we don't even possess the language anymore to have these debates.
	But hopefully you will be able to possess that language when you read this book.
	Next up, Jacob Preston from Christchurch New Zealand.com.
	How do you memorize so many quotes?
	You have a quote for everything.
	Your biggest fan in New Zealand.
	Wow!
	Hey, Cabot, I thought you were from America.
	I've been faking the American accent all along.
	Wow, man, that was something.
	Is Crocodile Dundee in the room?
	Gosh.
	Good for Jacob.
	This is a very flattering question, which are my favorite kinds of questions.
	I was an actor in my wayward youth, and so I do think acting training is certainly very good in politics.
	It's really good in any kind of career, because in particular, it teaches you to be comfortable in your body, teaches you...
	Ideally, how to make sense of human characters and to care really about the truth of a circumstance.
	But it also really works your memory very well.
	And one thing even beyond that sort of stuff, I mean, I'd obviously memorize a lot of lines and things, going back to when I was a kid, but in English class, We used to have to memorize poems.
	I mean, there are many, many poems that I could recite to you right now from eighth grade English.
	Yeah, I know.
	Only when I'm trying to woo you later on.
	You know, I don't know how weird this thing is.
	Save it for when they bring the drinks out.
	Oh, yeah.
	Gosh, that's...
	Jeez.
	This is really taking a turn.
	Talk about decadent culture.
	You know...
	If you work on it, it's like with a foreign language.
	If you learn a foreign language when you're 12, you're going to have a much better time retaining it than if you learn a foreign language when you're 25.
	So I would strongly recommend, if you want to work your memory and keep these quotes, I think it was Winston Churchill who said that a man who doesn't have a great education should just memorize a lot of quotes.
	It will actually help stimulate his mind.
	You should try to memorize a poem a week.
	If you really want to stimulate your mind, memorize a poem a week.
	Your recall will become better, and you will become smarter.
	I must say, my wife and I have been reading through Scripture every morning together.
	It's a lot harder to memorize verses now than it was when I was like eight in Sunday school and did it on a regular basis.
	Keep doing it.
	You lose it.
	It's a muscle.
	It's true.
	We're going to take a quick little break here, not a break from the live stream.
	This thing is going.
	I think we deserve a drink.
	I am arched.
	Let's just get some water.
	Just kidding.
	How about you get yourself?
	Hey, oh man.
	Thank you, Jacob.
	Look at this.
	Service.
	I'll take a Moscow Mule.
	Jacob, what is this?
	This is a martini?
	I believe so.
	I should hope so.
	Otherwise, it's rubbing alcohol, maybe.
	Cheers to that.
	We deserve it.
	We've been working very hard.
	I had the easy job so far tonight.
	Go ahead, just drink that.
	Just sip that in.
	Everyone, if you have a glass, whatever it is, raise it to Speechless.
	Who made this martini?
	This is an actual...
	I'm very picky.
	I'm picky about my commas.
	I'm picky about my martinis.
	Mine is much stronger than anticipated.
	I thought this would be like a TV drink.
	This is a real drink.
	You know what a martini is?
	Churchill actually had a recipe for this, too.
	Oh, give me the quote.
	Martini is supposed to be gin and vermouth.
	And, you know, an olive or something.
	And what Churchill said is, the best way to make the martini is you pour gin in a glass while staring across the room at a bottle of vermouth.
	So this is basically a glass of gin.
	I'm being told my producer, Ben Davies, made it.
	I hate to give him a compliment.
	You did a good job.
	Good job.
	And for everyone at home, while you're toasting to the book, Not too late to get the questions in again.
	Only halfway through with all these questions, so it's not too late.
	Go to premiercollectibles.com slash speechless.
	You buy the book, and then the pop-up comes for the question.
	You can get in there.
	We're going to play a quick little game here.
	We're going to see how well you can put up with physical censorship, how long you can continue communicating.
	So I have a few of your favorite things here.
	Okay.
	It's not a baby.
	It's not a puppy.
	They're masks.
	Oh, great.
	All right, so we're going to see how many masks you can put on while continuing to be able to say the name of your book, which is, of course, Speechless.
	Ding!
	We've already used up all of our dings.
	So, first of all, I feel very safe.
	I can't help but know...
	Okay, so good.
	We're going to try this on.
	Some of these might have some writing on it.
	I don't know.
	Okay, I mean, I'm not very familiar with masks, so...
	Let's see if I can still say, speechless, controlling words, controlling words.
	I can hear that.
	You can get this message loud and clear, huh?
	I got it loud and clear.
	You did.
	I hope everybody got it loud and clear.
	Next up.
	I actually haven't seen these.
	Speechless, controlling words, controlling words.
	I can still hear you.
	I think you're going to have to put another one on.
	The air is getting a little thinner, but that's fine.
	Okay.
	Glad I didn't drink too much.
	Speechless.
	Controlling words, controlling minds.
	You're starting to get a little more muffled.
	If you see his face turning red, it's not because he's embarrassed.
	It is probably because of a lack of oxygen, so we'll do this quickly.
	Probably going to turn blue.
	Next up.
	I feel so safe from the virus.
	Speechless.
	Controlling words, controlling minds.
	I can breathe all over you.
	You are safe.
	Oh man, I feel good.
	Quadruple masked.
	I think you should just, we should probably keep going because I can still hear you personally.
	This is what health looks like.
	You know, this is a healthy society, right?
	Listen, everyone asking, I think we had one question, how can I be a man?
	This is what peak male performance looks like in a man.
	You may not like it, but this is what it looks like.
	This is what it looks like.
	Next up.
	Wow.
	You're still going.
	You're pulling on my ears.
	The real victim here are the ears.
	No, no, no, no.
	Speechless.
	Controlling words, controlling minds.
	That's good.
	We've only got two more for you to get through.
	Okay, I sound like I'm in an old movie.
	Like, hey, yeah!
	Okay?
	You know what's gonna kill it is when the eel gives out.
	The eel is already starting to give out.
	It's getting a little red.
	Keep us controlling words, controlling words.
	Look at that performance.
	We've got one more for you.
	Can you keep going?
	I can hear him.
	I hear you fine, actually.
	Keep us controlling words, controlling words.
	And the crowd goes wild.
	Your ear was hanging on by a thread.
	By a thread.
	Wow, that's really lucky.
	Can you breathe?
	Are you good?
	The oxygen intake is good.
	You know, my blood actually feels a little too oxygenated.
	I think I need to correct that.
	Get the blood flow going again.
	I will drink to that.
	We're going to get back some questions.
	Again, not too late to get your questions in.
	I think we should just do some challenge now where you just start every day like that on your show.
	That's the nearest thing I've had to exercise in quite some time.
	It's like that and walking to my car.
	Next question.
	Tom in Finley, Ohio, how do you get rid of cigar breath?
	Practical advice.
	That's actually my real exercise, exercising my lungs.
	The short answer is I don't.
	The problem with cigar breath is not the fresh cigar.
	The problem with cigar breath is the stale cigar that then you breathe on others.
	So the solution, of course, is to not let the breath get stale.
	You want to keep it fresh all the time, and it's very easy.
	Just clip it, relight it, and you smoke your cigar.
	This is one thing that my wife...
	A long-suffering woman puts up with a great deal.
	I try to have a cigar at night, read a book or something, and then I get into bed.
	And she says, Mac!
	And I say, yeah, girl.
	She goes, Mac!
	I just, I hate that.
	You're breathing on my face.
	It's disgusting.
	Can you please?
	But it's a non-negotiable.
	The toothpaste doesn't do it.
	The mouthwash doesn't do it.
	I must smoke cigars.
	There's a great poem by Rudyard Kipling about how he's got to choose between his beloved and his cigar.
	Doesn't turn out well for the lady.
	You know, so I'm just, one has to make compromises in a marriage, and that's ours.
	I have a solution.
	If you went to bed with all six masks on, I don't think she'd be able to smell it anymore.
	No, I don't know if I'd wake up in the morning.
	It sounds like she wouldn't be that upset with that.
	It's a win-win for her.
	It's a win-win.
	Next up, James in Tilton, New Hampshire.
	And a reminder for everyone, you can still get your questions in.
	And we still do have some very special shout-outs coming, including a shout-out I'm a president of the United States.
	Again, not saying any names.
	Wow.
	Gosh.
	You can still get your questions in.
	Don't forget.
	That's the middle of the story.
	So the question is, really excited to read Speechless Michael.
	What would your advice be for a young conservative looking to run for local office, statehouse representatives, in a blue state?
	I'm going to give you two books because I forgot a book on the last one.
	Okay.
	We'll get two books in there signed.
	I guess my first bit of advice is run!
	No, that's actually confusing.
	Don't run!
	Do not run in the other direction.
	Go have a good life.
	No, I don't know.
	That's my decadent luxury talking.
	It's very good.
	If you are willing to get into public service and elected life for the right reasons...
	That would be very good, especially at the local level because everyone has national ambitions now.
	The first office people run for now is for president.
	And I think it is better to work at that local level.
	That's where a lot of change happens.
	That's where a lot of policy happens.
	You should make sure that you're not relying on it for money.
	I've seen politicians go bad if they need the money and then they end up in kind of crooked practices.
	You should make sure you're not doing it to get famous.
	There are easier ways to get famous.
	And half the country will hate you.
	And if you're in a blue state, more than half of your constituents will hate you.
	So I wouldn't do it for that reason.
	If you're in it for the right reasons, you've got a good head on your shoulders, a good moral compass, you have a concrete agenda, you're not just a convenience politician, you're a conviction politician, then it's very simple.
	You get a good campaign manager, you raise some money from friends and relatives, and you run a very lean campaign.
	Do not get fat.
	Watch out for the consultants.
	The consultants will eat up a lot of your money.
	So keep it really, really tight.
	And you have to be the one to knock on doors.
	This is something...
	People ask me, it's not just politics, it's media, it's academics, whatever.
	They'll say, basically, how do I accomplish something without having to work very hard?
	How do I accomplish something without having to make certain compromises on my leisure time?
	You can't.
	You can't.
	Nobody at the top is getting off easy.
	Everyone I know at the top of their game, especially in public life, is working very, very hard with the exception of Cabot.
	Every other one I know is working very, very hard.
	And so you will, too.
	You will have to knock on the doors.
	You will have to put the policy papers together.
	You will have to make sure that your money's not going the wrong way and make sure that your lawyers aren't messing up.
	You've got to be willing to do that.
	If you are and you're willing to take the slings and arrows, you should check yourself into an insane asylum.
	If they let you out, then best of luck in the race.
	One question I do have, follow-up here.
	You say in this answer, don't trust political consultants.
	But a couple answers ago you said, I was a political consultant right out of high school on your friend's campaign.
	I was a staffer.
	Oh, a staffer.
	I was a staffer.
	Not a consultant.
	I actually did consult on some campaigns.
	The one thing you've got to be careful of, it is fine.
	I mean, seriously, political consultants, you need them.
	They actually do things.
	They actually know how to file the paperwork or whatever.
	But sometimes, here's what happens.
	You'll see it on a local congressional race.
	It's going great.
	Everything's fine.
	And you're raising money.
	Maybe you get through the primary.
	And then, once you're established, like they parachute in from Washington.
	I don't know.
	You'll see them all parachute in, and they all have their retainers, and you pay them a lot of money, but they don't know the district.
	So then you end up alienating yourself.
	You would have been better had they never joined on in the first place.
	You've got to really like the people, know the people, and be willing to shake the hands yourself.
	So we'll raise a toast to everyone except political consultants who do that.
	Except the ones that I work with.
	I like those guys.
	They're great.
	Next question.
	Elisa from Murrieta, California.
	I often think the world would be a better place if all social media disappeared.
	Your thoughts?
	I have deleted all of my social media accounts and can happily say I feel free.
	This is...
	Fair enough at the personal level, I think.
	Really what you just need is discipline.
	And if you don't, I don't mean this in any disparaging way.
	Social media are designed to be very, very addictive.
	So if you find yourself falling prey to that, then I think it's smart to take a step back.
	Or maybe it's just one platform.
	Maybe you're fine on Facebook, but you're bad on Twitter.
	So yeah, get off of Twitter.
	Absolutely.
	At the personal level, do not fritter away your life.
	We're all guilty of this.
	We'll just sit there.
	How many minutes?
	Sometimes hours.
	We'll go by just scrolling.
	You're just sort of drooling at the side of your mouth.
	You don't want to do that.
	However, at the political level, the social media are the reason that conservatives had a pretty good run, at least running for office.
	Unfortunately, circumstances meant we didn't accomplish all that much.
	Part of the reason we didn't accomplish all that much, we didn't follow the strategy in this book.
	But we were able to get our message out there beyond the gatekeepers of the establishment media, beyond Hollywood, beyond Washington Post, or wherever, because social media opened that up.
	Then Trump gets elected, the left freaks out, that wasn't supposed to happen, and so all of a sudden they clamp down on everything again.
	Now we're going to need some other platform.
	Or we can exercise our political power, Use our political will to get these guys, these woke corporations who behave in what Mitch McConnell says is like a parallel government, to get in line and give us our rights.
	I like it.
	I have a feeling people can read a little bit about that too in the book.
	Savannah from Ranger Georgia asks, What is the best way to get younger adults to understand politics and the radical left?
	I have a younger sister who only believes things that she sees on CNN and TikTok.
	I've given her book after book and tried to explain things with facts.
	But she still acts like I'm the crazy one.
	How can I get her to understand?
	You gave her book after book.
	Give her one more book.
	One more book.
	This is the one.
	I actually, I mean that only half facetiously, because a lot of these political books, I've noticed, they're just pure polemic.
	They are just all clubbing people over the head and preaching to the choir.
	And I tried not to do that.
	I actually...
	Probably spend more time in this book going after the right because of mistakes, I think, that they've made and shallow ideas that I think they've espoused.
	And I think we can learn from the left.
	And you need to be willing to say, actually, the left is on to something here, but they've gone totally wrong, and here's what we can learn from that.
	That's all very important.
	In...
	The defense of all these liberal people, they are saturated with this stuff.
	All they get from their teachers, from their communities, probably from their churches, from their schools, from their government, from Hollywood, is this leftist message.
	Okay, so when you go up to them and you say, hey, maybe abortion's not like the greatest thing in the world.
	They might well be shocked to hear that.
	They may never have heard that before.
	So you have to give them a little grace for having their entire world turned upside down.
	The more they follow that, I think, the easier it will become.
	Ideas tend to lead to their own logical conclusions.
	But you've got to dip their toes in the water first.
	You show them a video here, a podcast here, pretty soon.
	They're listening to The Michael Knowles Show every day.
	They're reading this book.
	Soon enough, they'll be reading Reasons to Vote for Democrats, and that's how you know you really got them.
	And you can buy your little sister a book from Michael Knowles at, again, premiercollectibles.com backslash speechless.
	Not too late.
	Get your questions in.
	Once you buy, you'll get to submit the question, and Michael here will be answering it.
	Next up from Hila.
	Hila, I'm sorry if I pronounced this wrong, from Bay City, Michigan.
	What is something beautiful that has left you speechless?
	I love the show, and I can't wait for the book.
	So as you sign Hilah's book, something that's left you speechless.
	I was walking around Iceland.
	One early, late February, early March.
	I was in the middle of nowhere.
	I didn't realize that a road was closed off because of the weather.
	My friends and I were driving.
	And I saw this beautiful, beautiful kind of mountain type thing.
	And I couldn't explain to you why it was so beautiful.
	It was actually more than, and there are a lot of things in Iceland in particular, especially when you go down south and you get all these crazy rocks and it looks like it's in Lord of the Rings, that are not just beautiful, but sublime.
	There's actually a kind of terror associated with it.
	And this would be a good analogy for holy fear, fear of God.
	You see this phrase, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
	What does that mean?
	Am I supposed to be afraid like I'm afraid of a ghost or I'm afraid of a tiger or something?
	No.
	I am really in awe.
	I'm really in wonder.
	And there is a fear aspect there, too.
	This is very important.
	This really is the beginning of wisdom.
	And when you think about probably the most important conservative philosopher of the last thousand years or something, 500 years, it would be Edmund Burke.
	Burke wrote the Reflections on the Revolution in France.
	He's widely considered to be kind of the mac daddy of conservatism.
	Edmund Burke was an aesthetic philosopher.
	He was a philosopher of beauty.
	And one of his most famous tracts, probably his second most famous tract, is on the origins of our ideas and to the sublime and the beautiful.
	So I think there was this problem that conservatives had for the last ten years or so, which is we became just egghead dweebs.
	We became these guys who were trying to manage around the outskirts of the liberal establishment.
	You know, we have spreadsheets and things.
	That's super lame.
	That is not what the conservative project is about.
	They're about bigger things, more fundamental things, beautiful things.
	You know, we want Roger Scruton, the late Roger Scruton, conservative philosopher, he said, conservatives probably want to conserve things.
	What is a conservative?
	Probably wants to conserve things.
	And if we want to love our country, if we want to conserve our country...
	We need a beautiful country.
	We need to have a place that we love, that we really like.
	I think when we start thinking more in that direction, we're going to have a much better time appealing to people than when we're arguing about how some stupid policy wonk thing is better than the other one.
	I have to ask you, has there ever been a point in your life when you have started a quote where you said, as we all know, the great Edmund Burke said, and you paused and realized, I don't have any Burke quotes right now, and you just made one up?
	Oh, you can very easily do that.
	I've done it six or seven times tonight, obviously.
	Edmund Burke, I don't even read a work that I ever wrote.
	There are some times when, and writers have done this throughout the ages.
	It's the peak behind the curtain.
	It's the peak.
	Now, I'm not saying I've done this, but people have done this Throughout the ages.
	Where they will attribute an idea that they want to mainstream to a very well-known writer.
	I actually have not done that.
	That's not what I'm doing right now.
	But there is a little impulse to you accentuate Some strain of thought.
	They thought it, and I also thought it.
	So therefore, you should agree with it, because some smart guy.
	You know, as Abraham Lincoln said, don't believe everything you read on the internet.
	I never do.
	No.
	Lincoln was just pressy in it.
	Smart guy.
	Really smart guy.
	Next up from Alec, another smart guy, I'm presuming, in Avon, Indiana.
	If you were an animal, which one do you think you'd be based on your appearance and personality?
	So let's do both.
	Okay.
	Based on appearance, which animal are you?
	Based on personality, which animal are you?
	It's both.
	It's both is the same thing.
	That's for Alec.
	Thank you.
	I would be an elephant.
	It's my favorite animal.
	One, because I have a bit of a Roman nose.
	I don't know if the cameras really pick it up, but, you know, a little bit of a...
	The Italians are known for their pronounced Dante.
	Prodigious.
	Yeah, Julius Caesar.
	So that, I think, is part of it.
	They have active memories.
	You know, my strongest muscle probably is my memory.
	They are the symbol of the conservative party in the United States.
	I think that's very important.
	They are...
	They've got thick skin.
	That's very important.
	And they have gigantic ears, which I now do after wearing those stupid masks.
	There we go.
	I like that.
	And personality-wise, though, I guess that applies to personality.
	It's all in there.
	There's a unity of body and soul and spirit.
	I know these days it's fashionable to say that my soul could be male, but my body female or vice versa.
	But it just ain't true.
	I won't say it.
	If I look like an elephant...
	Then I feel like an elephant too.
	Beautiful.
	Live your truth.
	Zach from Nassau, New Jersey.
	No, I read that wrong.
	Nashua.
	Nashua, New Hampshire.
	Nashua, New Hampshire.
	That wasn't even close.
	I've been there too.
	Careful guys, I'm a quarter of the way through my drink.
	Nashua, New Hampshire.
	Is the internet to blame for this woke movement?
	And how can we fight back against cancel culture?
	No, no.
	The internet perhaps has made it more popular.
	Though I don't even think it really has.
	I sort of think the internet...
	Maybe a net positive for the right, I think, because the left had institutional power.
	So, you know, this woke movement began at least 100 years ago, as I detail in this book.
	And it goes back even a little bit further than that.
	So I don't blame the Internet for it.
	And the Internet actually has opened up other ideas.
	It has led to, in some ways, a fracturing of society, but I think more to the benefit of people on the right.
	The woke ideology, it's fashionable to blame everything on Marxism.
	On the right, it's like this drink isn't that good.
	This is Marxism.
	This is communism.
	But the thing is, Marx was responsible for a lot of bad things, and the woke movement really does come directly out of Marxism.
	So it comes, when we talk about critical race theory, for instance.
	Critical race theory is a derivation of critical theory.
	Critical theory comes from the Frankfurt School.
	The Frankfurt School was called the Institute for Marxism.
	These were Marxist academics.
	And you could trace a number of other leftist movements right now all the way back to that.
	And I think it really all goes back to Marx's line that we need to engage in the ruthless criticism of all that exists.
	Everything.
	You've got to debunk everything.
	Deconstruct everything.
	Tear down every statue.
	Tear down Lincoln.
	Tear down Grant.
	They're going to tear down Martin Luther King before this time is up.
	That really does go back to this destructive movement.
	And it's not even just Marx.
	Whitaker Chambers, the ex-communist who became a very important conservative thinker in the U.S. Witness.
	Witness.
	The second book that you should buy after you get this book.
	Whitaker Chambers said...
	Communism is the second oldest faith of mankind.
	It's the alternative faith of mankind.
	It began not with Marx and Engels.
	It began in the Garden of Eden when the serpent told Eve, ye shall be as gods.
	It's this pride.
	It's this hubris.
	It's this desire to control everything about the world.
	That's what you're seeing on the left now.
	So that goes back a long way.
	And we ignore that aspect at our own peril.
	Next question.
	Jacob in Shelly, Idaho.
	Buongiorno, Michael.
	Hope all is well.
	What is your favorite cigar and whiskey combination?
	The real questions.
	Okay.
	If we're talking really top-shelf stuff, the 2008 Partica Casa del Habano special release, very hard to find, 15 Anniversario, that's great.
	It's very hard to get, one, because you can't really buy them in America, and not many of them exist.
	If we were talking about non-Cubans, I would have to say...
	You know, I'm very ecumenical.
	I'd just like to point out, you've put more thought into this.
	Yeah, no, this is the only one I really care about.
	I would say that the cigar that I'm going to a lot right now, I love the Armada Man of War.
	I have a cigar sampler pack at Thompson, which I'm not even trying to sell it right now.
	I buy many of these sampler packs because they're way under market price and they're an extremely good deal.
	But...
	That cigar, which not a lot of people know about, is really good.
	The Oliva Series O Perfecto is a great cigar.
	It's like six bucks a stick.
	It's so good, and not a lot of people buy it.
	And Stephen Crowder actually gave me a couple recommendations, but he told me that he would kill my entire family if I mentioned it, because he's got a good price on him right now and he doesn't want it to go up.
	So are you going to do it?
	I mean, family?
	Yeah, family, or I curry some favor with the listeners.
	The whiskey that goes along with it, I'm a simple man, Johnny Black.
	Very simple.
	There's the scotch of Winston Churchill, scotch of the Libyan dictatorship, Muammar Gaddafi, the scotch of the Saudi royal family, the scotch of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
	Christopher Hitchens made this point once.
	Good enough for them, good enough for me.
	I don't know if you really sold it there, but anyways, we'll move on.
	Sarah from Gilbert, Arizona.
	Hi, Michael.
	Why do you suppose we have not had a wealthy, smart, conservative come forward and create a new Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon, or Apple?
	Why do we only have Democrats running big tech?
	Because it's not possible to do that.
	I mean, there are good alternatives.
	I love Parler.
	I use Parler, and I hope that Parler grows.
	But the big tech companies amassed a critical mass.
	And they did so under fraud, really.
	I mean, they told people that they would be able to see who they wanted to and speak to whom they wanted to and see things in their newsfeed.
	And then that was taken away from them.
	And they used and exploited protections in the Communications Decency Act, which actually, not for even big tech purposes, but for other purposes, is a fair part of this book.
	They exploited those legal loopholes, gave them a huge leg up on the competition.
	And then, even today, they don't tell us what the rules are.
	And very often, I think they're in violation of the law.
	Bill Barr made this point, the former Attorney General, but then he's no longer the Attorney General, and that was that.
	And he said, it's very difficult to marshal multiple aspects of the DOJ to come together on either antitrust action or fraud or Section 230.
	So that's really, really tricky.
	I hope that there's an alternative, but the The thing that you want in a social media platform is not the posting ability.
	It's not the cool interface.
	I mean, those are important.
	It's the audience.
	You are the product, right?
	You are what is being sold.
	So Google, Facebook, and Twitter amassed that audience already.
	And I just think it's naive of us to think we can build our own Google.
	I think, really, we need to use our political power to bring Google back in line with the American tradition.
	Matthew from San Antonio.
	This book's for him.
	From San Antonio, Texas asks, "Michael, your show and video shorts "really liven up my day.
	"You say the things I wish I could.
	"Being in the Air Force requires I watch my tongue "since I have the, quote, "wrong opinion on the culture.
	"I appreciate you and I look forward to the day "you announce your run for the White House." It's a statement.
	That's very kind.
	Wow, thanks so much.
	Thank you for your service.
	Thank you for your excellent taste in podcasts and for your support.
	That's very kind.
	I have no snarky comment to add.
	He's just a great guy serving our country who obviously has excellent taste.
	Thank you, Matthew.
	You're the man.
	Will from Alpharetta, Georgia.
	The second from Alpharetta, Georgia.
	My hometown, actually.
	Really?
	I spent eight years of my youth in Alpharetta, Georgia.
	So, shouts out to those folks.
	Michael, what is the best way to ensure that your own moral code is not being changed by the environment around you, like Facebook censorship and the like?
	Can we really free ourselves from the damage that has already been done by the left?
	Well, when you say your own moral code, I fear that you're actually already letting them change your mind with these kinds of words.
	I suppose people have their own preferences, and you're entitled to your own preferences, but you're not entitled to your own moral code.
	There is morality.
	Morality is objective.
	If morality is not objective, then there's no such thing as morality.
	We're just kind of babbling incoherently at each other.
	You'd be saying, I like chocolate ice cream.
	You'd say, well, I like vanilla.
	You'd say, well, let's debate that.
	Well, there's nothing to debate.
	We're just talking about preferences.
	It is objective.
	You can know these things.
	You have to be very careful on the words, though.
	I mean, I suppose that's the theme of the night and the theme of the book.
	You've got to be very careful that subtle semantic shifts are not subtly changing your perception.
	I notice people do this with especially transgenderism.
	I know conservative people Because they want to seem really nice and they want to prove to everyone that they're not mean.
	They'll refer to Bruce Jenner as she.
	And they'll say, well, Michael, what's it to you?
	It's no big deal.
	Because if I say she's a really nice girl, that creates an image in your mind.
	But Bruce Jenner is not a she.
	He might be a really nice guy, but he's not a really nice girl.
	If you give the she, you give away the whole premise.
	Or sometimes to be really moderate about it, they'll say they.
	The singular they.
	They'll say Bruce Jenner.
	They is a nice guy.
	I don't know what it would be.
	But they don't want to give offense.
	Hear me, hear me.
	The truth is...
	May give offense, but it is worthwhile to give offense with the truth.
	The left is trying to convince us that the truth is cruel and lies are compassionate.
	That's not true.
	It's not true on the gender issue.
	It's not true in our politics.
	It's never true.
	The truth will set you free and lies will enslave you.
	And they want to flip that right now.
	Do not let them do it.
	Use the language.
	Even if people call you a jerk for pointing out that Bruce Jenner is a man, For everyone out there that wants to memorize a quote...
	Michael Knowles, a wise scholar, once said, the truth will set you free and lies will enslave you.
	Wow.
	I think I came up with that.
	I think I came up with that.
	Yeah, I'm going to copyright that.
	As Michael Knowles once said on his book signing live stream, we're down to our last book.
	Are you cramping up?
	And one more thing I will add for the viewers at home.
	You may have noticed Michael signing a left-handed chap.
	Multiple people have brought up his run for president, potentially.
	It's what they want to see.
	Yeah.
	Left-handed folks, three times more likely to run for president than right-handed folks.
	We have an advantage in presidential politics, though I hate to be the bearer of bad news.
	We die two years earlier on average.
	Well, bad news depending on who you're asking.
	That's a good point.
	And by the way, the reason lefties die earlier is because of mechanical accidents.
	I'm not the most physical guy in the world, so I think probably I'll be okay.
	You're selling yourself short.
	Final question here.
	Adam from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Dear Michael, if Christ walked our streets today, what welcoming would await him?
	Is humanity ready?
	Some people are ready.
	I hope that I'm ready.
	You know, this is something that, depending on your denomination or your sect or your understanding of Christianity, I know that some people believe that, you know, the minute that you confess your faith, you're good, you can sin, and you the minute that you confess your faith, you're good, you can sin, and you don't need to Christ does tell us, though, many will call me Lord, Lord, and I will say, I do not know them.
	The Catholic perspective on this is that one must die in a state of grace.
	One must repent.
	As St.
	John writes, there are certain sins that are mortal.
	There are certain sins that are not mortal.
	We must be aware of this.
	We need to have a sense of sin.
	There's another line that when the communion lines are long and the confession lines are short...
	The society has lost the sense of sin.
	Something's gone really wrong here.
	I know that now we're not supposed to shame anybody.
	You can't slut shame, fat shame, shame shame.
	If you have shame, you feel shame for that.
	Shame is a very useful tool.
	You should have the appropriate love for yourself.
	You want to love your neighbor like you love yourself.
	If you hate yourself, then it's not going to go very well for your neighbor.
	But you should have a sense of your own shortcomings.
	You should despise those shortcomings.
	And you should humbly beg of your Lord, Lord, please, I am not worthy.
	I've sinned for my fault and my most grievous fault.
	If you cultivate that spirit of humility, then I think you're in a good position.
	And if you don't, then I'd watch out, buddy.
	Nobody knows the day or the hour, not even the sun.
	Could happen anytime.
	There's a song I love in country music called Rain is a Good Thing.
	I think let's do a remix.
	Shame is a good thing.
	Shame is a good thing.
	Not always a bad thing.
	Sometimes it can lead you to repentance, which can be a good thing.
	So for anyone on the website this week at thedailywire.com who was wondering You know, has production been a little down?
	what's going on with the website?
	It's because everyone at the Daily Wire was spending all of our man hours calling everyone around the country saying, can you offer an endorsement for the book for Michael for this live signing?
	Yeah, and they said no.
	We need it.
	They said no, thank you.
	Everyone, person after person said no, or we couldn't meet their demands of prices.
	Yeah.
	We did find a few.
	In all seriousness, Michael, you got a lot of people that love the book.
	They're willing to speak up for you.
	It is awesome.
	So we're going to play a little blurb here of people wishing you well.
	Michael, you haven't seen any of these.
	I have not seen it.
	No, I actually didn't even know this was good.
	This is coming.
	People kept coming up to me.
	They said, Michael, are you excited for the live signing?
	I said, I don't know.
	I don't even know what that is, really.
	I'm going to show up.
	But people really put a lot of time into this so that they can flatter me.
	I think that's the best use.
	That's what you took away from this.
	That's great.
	I love it.
	So we're going to roll the tape here.
	A lot of friends saying some very nice things about the book, and they're telling the truth.
	It's good stuff.
	Let's watch it.
	Hey, this is Kirk Cameron, and Michael Knowles has a great book out right now.
	It's called Speechless.
	I'm sure you've heard lots about it.
	Congratulations on your book Speechless.
	It's fantastic.
	It's funny, insightful, courageous.
	I hear you have a book out.
	Actually, I've read your book, and I just want to say congratulations.
	This is a really wonderful piece of writing.
	Your first book had no words whatsoever, which I actually thought was quite fitting for a Yale graduate.
	Your second book, you decided to jettison all of the principles that had led to the first book being a bestseller, and you actually went with words this time.
	I think that was a risky decision, but you've made it.
	Speechless, controlling words, controlling minds.
	Truly an outstanding book.
	I can confirm the left should be afraid of this book.
	The left doesn't want you to read this book.
	Oh, hold on a second.
	Jay Hay is beaming something.
	Tipping points?
	How to topple the left's house of cards?
	Please buy now.
	Yeah, you should.
	If you're on Amazon, you should buy both books, but we're talking about Michael's book.
	You left me in LA, you moved to Tennessee, but despite that...
	From one far-right nutbag to another, I want to wish you the best of luck with Speechless.
	I have to admit it, I've actually read your book, and it's actually good.
	I don't know who wrote it for you, but you did an excellent, excellent job.
	Speechless, it's really good, so congratulations.
	Personally, I can't read.
	I'm an internet cartoonist.
	But from what I've been hearing, this is one of the greatest books that Michael Knowles has ever written.
	That's a famous voice.
	Speechless, controlling words, controlling minds.
	Get yourself a copy.
	You know that leftist rag, the New York Times?
	I want you to sell so many copies that you get on their fraudulent bestsellers list.
	I did, and I know that you want to be more like me.
	Buy Michael's book.
	It is the finest book ever written by any human being in the history of mankind.
	Going back to the Gutenberg printing press.
	Now, Michael, did I say that right?
	And I want the scotch at least 25 years old and a really damn good cigar.
	Congratulations.
	Everyone should buy this.
	Everyone should read it.
	It's going to help conservatives reclaim and restore our country and everything that we love about America.
	And anyone who cares about the decline of the West has to get this book because it's brilliant.
	So make sure you buy that book, and Michael, congratulations.
	I'm sure that it'll be at least the fourth best Daily Wire host book, which is high praise.
	Hopefully if you make a lot of money off this book, you actually deserve it this time.
	It's actually a really good book, so congrats.
	Congratulations, Matt.
	So make sure you go and order that book now.
	Check out his book Speechless We get the Pope to uh...
	Fratelli e sorelle.
	Maybe my Italian's not as good as it used to be, but...
	That last part may be a little sacrilegious.
	I'm going to absolve you of that.
	You had nothing to do with that.
	No, that's fine.
	It was not you.
	I have to work on my Italian because I didn't quite make out go by Speechless now, but I'm sure that's what he said.
	That is definitely what he said.
	And for everyone at home who's thinking, I'm just tuning in, what's going on?
	It's not too late.
	You can still buy the book, premiercollectibles.com backslash speechless.
	You can get your own signed copy of the book.
	You're going to stick around and sign quite a bit.
	- Yep. - More of these books.
	Also, you're gonna stick around, 'cause you got The Candace Show after this.
	So stay, if you're on thedailywire.com, stay here if you're a member.
	You can watch Michael on The Candace Show right after this talking about all sorts of great stuff, including things that are in the book.
	If you're on the YouTube channel, head over to dailywire.com right now.
	You're not gonna wanna miss that.
	And I'd be remiss if I didn't let you know that we have one more very special person that has endorsed your book.
	Endorses might be a loose term.
	A president of the United States.
	You don't know about this.
	This is about to be a very big moment for you.
	Let's roll the tape.
	Mike Knows wrote a book called Speechless Control.
	Word Control.
	Mind.
	Thank you, thank you, thank you.
	For sharing the powerful story and for helping the country understand what's happening here.
	And in case you were wondering, He's a great and gifted writer.
	I really mean it.
	The honesty with which he stepped forward and talked about the problem and the hope that it gave me hope reading it.
	Children and I suffered the pressure.
	That is the most lucid thing he's ever said.
	I think that...
	No, I've not seen that yet.
	Wow.
	Whatever expectation I had, I had really no idea where that was going, that exceeded it.
	Thank you, Mr.
	President.
	Thank you, Joe, for sincerely endorsing my book, Speechless.
	You know, the thing, you know?
	You know?
	Michael, I'm going to sign us off.
	Do you have any final words for all the readers, everybody, your final closing thoughts on the book?
	Well, I would hate to upstage the president.
	So I guess the only closing word I would have to say is...

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