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July 9, 2021 - The Michael Knowles Show

49:11

Ep. 802 - Getting Over Self-Government

Dr. Fauci wants Americans to “get over” their political views and take an experimental drug, the White House declares defeat in Afghanistan, and prominent leftists run away from their most radical views. My new book ’Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds,’ is now available wherever books are sold. Grab your copy today here: https://utm.io/udtMJ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	After lying to us and flip-flopping on just about every single aspect of the Chinese coronavirus for the past 18 months, public health officials are furious that some Americans just don't want to take the experimental drug that they keep peddling.
	Dr.
	Fauci has had enough, okay?
	He's had enough to hear with your political objections, and he wants you to get over them.
	This is not complicated.
	We're not asking anybody to make any political statement one way or another.
	We're saying try and save your life and that of your family and that of the community.
	It's, you know, we have so many things, as you said, so many diseases that I deal with that don't have solutions.
	It's very frustrating.
	You don't have a treatment or you don't have a vaccine.
	Here we have a vaccine that's highly, highly effective in preventing disease and certainly in preventing severe disease and hospitalization.
	It's easy to get, it's free, and it's readily available.
	So, you know, you've got to ask, what is the problem?
	Get over it.
	Get over this political statement.
	Just get over it and try and save the lives of yourself and your family.
	Get over your politics.
	Get over your self-government and take the vax, sheep.
	Well, you know, some Americans don't want to get over our political views.
	Some are fighting back in the Senate race in Ohio, in the courts against big tech oligarchs, and in schools around the country.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is the Michael Knowles Show.
	Welcome back to the show.
	My favorite comment yesterday from IdahoMan54, quoting Jim Morrison, who says, I've noticed that when people are joking, they're usually dead serious.
	And when they're dead serious, they're usually pretty funny.
	This is exactly how to look at what the left says.
	I could not possibly agree more.
	You know what else is a joke?
	Going into the brick-and-mortar auto parts store for your auto parts when you could go to rockauto.com.
	Rockauto.com is so much easier than walking into a store and someone demanding quick answers to things like, hey, is your Odyssey an LX or an EX? And then they usually just have to order the part online, probably from rockauto.com, and then you've got to wait and wait and spend and spend probably twice as much.
	It's just, it's pathetic.
	Seriously, when you could just go to rockauto.com, a family company, got the lowest prices possible.
	They don't change their prices according to all these stupid gimmicks.
	You know, Tuesday afternoon, that's when you have to order your fuel pump assembly.
	No, I don't think so.
	Reliably low prices, the same prices for pros such as myself and do-it-yourselfers such as you.
	And the catalog is so simple to navigate.
	Even I can do it.
	It's very, very impressive.
	You can choose all the parts available for your vehicle.
	You can choose the brands, the specs, whatever you want.
	Go to rockauto.com right now.
	See all the parts available for your car or truck.
	And then write Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, in there.
	How did you hear about us, Box?
	So they know that we sent you.
	Dr.
	Fauci says, get over your political views and just save your life.
	You take the vax, even if you've already had the virus, by the way.
	Even if you already have immunity.
	Even if you're in one of the many demographic groups that faces an infinitesimally small serious risk from coronavirus.
	You've got to save your life by taking the experimental drug that has had some questions raised about it, even by the CDC, especially when it's being taken by young people.
	Just get over it.
	This is what progressivism does.
	Under progressivism, everything becomes political except for politics, which is depoliticized.
	Your sneakers become political.
	Your choice of sandwich becomes political.
	The sports you watch become political.
	But politics is taken out of your control.
	The people lose their political power because all that power goes to egghead technocrats like Dr.
	Fauci, unaccountable to the American people.
	Presidents come and go since Ronald Reagan, but Dr.
	Fauci remains.
	He will outlive us all, have no doubt about that.
	I think we do have a political objection.
	I think we ought to have a political say.
	Not just a personal say, which I think is fair enough.
	People saying, look, I'm assessing my own risk.
	I'm assessing the demands that are being made of me by my school, by my community, by my work, or whatever, and I'm going to make a prudential judgment.
	If I think that I'm really at risk from taking this vaccine, I'm going to avoid it.
	If I think it's kind of up in the air, whatever, maybe I'll take it.
	And if I really want to take the vaccine because I'm in some at-risk category, okay, I'll take that too.
	That would be a personal judgment.
	But I'm saying we also have the political right to say, no, you little jerk, you don't get to force all of us to take this experimental drug and you're not going to go door to door to do it.
	The former head of Planned Parenthood, Dr.
	Liana Nguyen, just came out with a column in the Washington Post describing the political aspect of vaccination.
	And I think some conservatives are not taking the political aspect seriously enough.
	They're saying, look, it's my body, my choice, is actually what a lot of conservatives are saying.
	And ironically, the former head of Planned Parenthood is saying the opposite.
	She's saying, it's your body, but it's not your choice.
	She says, quote, vaccination is not just an individual decision, but one that affects the health of others.
	You don't say.
	Now, how can we apply this logic to, say, other aspects of our public policy?
	Like the million babies a year killed through abortion.
	Obviously, there is some hypocrisy going around.
	I think there is hypocrisy on the part of the left here.
	I think there's hypocrisy on the part of Leanna Wen.
	But I don't think it's exactly hypocrisy on the part of conservatives.
	So the reason it's hypocrisy on the part of Liana Wen is that abortion directly involves two people.
	It involves the mother and involves the baby.
	And the mother kills the baby.
	That's what abortion is, right?
	Or in the case of forced abortion, as happens in China, you've got doctors killing the babies against their mother's will.
	Okay, well, that's not good.
	And now to say, well, look, because your vaccination will, in a less direct way, affect other people in your community or around the state or even around the country.
	That's why you shouldn't really have a say on what goes into your body.
	That is preposterous.
	But for the conservatives here, who say you should not kill babies, but you also shouldn't make me get vaccinated.
	I don't think the issue here is so much individual liberty or the question of whether or not the state has any right to encourage vaccinations in any cases.
	I think we're going to get caught in a trap here if we think about this only through the lens of My Body, My Choice, like the flawed logic of abortion.
	I think we're going to get caught in a trap if we think of it just as a matter of maximizing individual autonomy.
	I think we need to invoke some conservative virtues here, namely common sense, And prudence.
	If this were medieval Europe and the bubonic plague, the Black Death, were killing off huge portions of the population and there were no way to treat it and there were very few precautions people could take, and then suddenly there was the Black Death vaccine that came out and it was kind of experimental, but it was relatively effective at stopping the plague, then I think the state or the feudal kingdoms or whatever would have a pretty good argument for encouraging people to take the vaccine.
	But COVID ain't the plague.
	As we know, thankfully, we should all be very happy, COVID is not nearly as deadly as many people told us that it was early on during the epidemic.
	Not even close.
	And for many demographic groups, other than the very older people who are quite ill, who have a lot of comorbidities...
	It's not particularly fatal at all.
	And in young people, they face very, very, very little risk of any serious complications.
	So that's going to be a different calculation then.
	It's not as clear.
	It's not an ideology in five bullet points written on a napkin.
	In all cases, the government has the right to tell you to get the vaccine.
	In all cases, the government has no right to ever tell you.
	It's not that simple.
	Shallows are clear, as my friend Father George Rutler says quite a lot.
	Shallows are clear.
	Profound things are a little murky.
	They're a little more complicated.
	So I think conservatives are going to be much more successful if we make arguments from common sense, from prudence, looking at the details of what this virus actually is, and whether this warrants government thugs going door to door trying to jab your kids who face very, very, very, very, very, very little risk from this.
	By the way, by the way, you remember the story in Ohio, this was a few weeks ago now, Ohio was trying to encourage everyone to get vaccinated, and so they created a vaccine lottery.
	Other states and cities did this sort of thing, where they would say, if you get vaccinated, we'll give you a cheeseburger.
	One of the most disgusting scenes in politics was Bill de Blasio stuffing his face with cheeseburgers and french fries.
	Mmm, yes!
	I get the vaccine!
	I get fries!
	Yes, you slop!
	You swine!
	You pigs!
	Don't you want your feed bags?
	Get the vaccine!
	Which raised the question, if you need to bribe people with a million dollars to get this vaccine, maybe it's not that desirable.
	Maybe this virus is not as bad as everyone told us it was, since people are just not interested in getting it.
	But we were told the vaccine lottery, this was a huge success.
	There's a study out now that says it just wasn't.
	Ohioans who got the vaccine were entered to win a million bucks, and children who got the vaccine were entered to win a full-ride scholarship to one of Ohio's state universities.
	This new study says the lottery did not increase the state's vaccination rate any more than states that did not offer a similar lottery.
	This according to Boston University's School of Medicine.
	I'm very pleased to see this.
	This will be a big shock to Dr.
	Fauci and all the other eggheads who think that they're so much better than all the American people and who think that they can boss us around and tell us what to do without any particular constitutional authority to do that, without any particular accountability to the people.
	The premise of the vaccine lottery and of Mayor de Bolshevik in New York stuffing his face and trying to get you to take a jab for a cheeseburger, the idea was that we are such...
	We're appetitive little creatures that if you just dangle a little candy in front of our face, we'll do whatever you tell us to do.
	But it turns out we're a little more serious than that.
	We're a little more human.
	We're a little more rational than that.
	And we think.
	We have faculties of reason.
	You know, the prerequisites of self-government.
	You can't just...
	I think the ruling elite want to be able to rule us with a very elaborate system, sometimes a little bit of a simple system, of sticks and carrots.
	You get the stick if you don't do what we tell you to do, and you get that delicious little carrot just if you keep running toward the goal that we set for you.
	But that's not quite how it works.
	It turns out the American people still possess some common sense, can still think for themselves, and are not merely base desires and passions and appetites that can be manipulated at will, much to the chagrin of the ruling elite.
	By the way, when you want to keep your data safe from that ruling elite, I would strongly recommend ExpressVPN.
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	Talking about dailywire.com, you know, very politically incorrect.
	You think that no one's going to get your info, right?
	I don't think so.
	That's not how it works.
	People are out there.
	They can get your info.
	It's so exposed.
	Unless you're using ExpressVPN.
	ExpressVPN, you click just like one button.
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	This stuff is very valuable.
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	There is a new kind of conservatism that is coming up.
	It's not the conservatism of the past 20 years or so.
	The cut taxes and let the left rule the culture conservatism.
	The throw your hands up in the air and refuse to assert a political vision conservatism.
	The drag queen story hour is no worse than going to church on Sunday conservatism.
	I think that kind of silly...
	Court jester conservatism.
	I think that is kind of dead.
	I think a new, more assertive, more confident, more virtue-oriented, more substantive conservatism is on the way up.
	And J.D. Vance, who's running for Senate in Ohio, is trying to channel that.
	J.D. Vance is the author of Hillbilly Elegy.
	It was a very popular book a few years ago.
	It became popular because it supposedly explained the kinds of deplorable people who voted for Donald Trump, for instance.
	And I'm not really making any point about J.D. Vance as a candidate right now.
	He's held lots of different views over the years, and so this is neither an endorsement nor a criticism of him.
	But I do think that he can tell which way the wind is blowing, and he is very much channeling What you would call populist conservatism, a more worker-oriented conservatism, a more national conservatism.
	And one of the things he's calling for is term limits for the people who have been in government for a very, very long time.
	What about term limits?
	Would you be for term limits, J.D.? Yes, certainly.
	I mean, we've definitely just got to get better people in there, which is why I'll put in another plug for JDVance.com.
	I mean, look, what we have right now is a geriatric ruling class in our business community, but especially in our government community, that doesn't even understand the companies that have become ultimately more powerful than the U.S. government.
	I mean, we saw after January 6th, a sitting duly elected president United States was kicked off of Twitter, kicked off of Facebook.
	And it's like our congressmen, our senators had no idea what to do about this.
	It's because we've given these companies too much power and we need to get people in our Congress who understand these companies and can actually fight back against them.
	So I love his point on the companies.
	He's right.
	Describing what Mitch McConnell called the woke parallel government that Republicans are largely responsible for because while the left focused on social deregulation, the right focused on economic deregulation, and the effect of that has been to empower woke corporations that have very little loyalty to our own country and that hate our way of life.
	And that's a very bad thing.
	I don't like it when Google takes away my rights and upends my society any more than I like it when the government does.
	So good stuff.
	But I disagree with him on term limits.
	I understand term limits.
	It's a complex question.
	There are people on both sides of it.
	I think generally it's a bad idea because term limits do not take away power from the government.
	term limits do not fundamentally alter the relationship of the citizen and the community to the state.
	All they do is empower staff members and lobbyists.
	Someone is going to rule.
	The total amount of power in the federal government is not going to change.
	So when you enact term limits, what you're doing is reducing the power held by the elected officials and then just shifting it to the lobbyists or the permanent staff members on Capitol Hill or the administrative agencies, even more so than they already are empowered.
	So it seems to, I understand the impulse to do it, but I think it's kind of misguided.
	And I hope J.D. changes his views on that, because he's channeling the right kind of conservatism, but it's a little nebulous right now.
	It's a little bit up in the air.
	These are the things that people care about, though.
	They care about They care about their local communities, they care about their way of life, and they want to make sure that some zillionaire head of a multinational doesn't take all those things away from them.
	One thing that people do not care about, and this has become clear over the past 5-10 years, is fighting wars overseas for dubious purposes.
	When you think about the war in Afghanistan, which has gone on now, what, 20 years ago?
	I don't think it's a partisan issue, exactly.
	I think the State Department basically wants us to be there.
	I think the liberal empire wants us to continue to have these little wars of empire.
	But I don't think it's a Republican issue.
	I think a lot of Republicans want to get out of Afghanistan.
	Trump ran in 2016 on getting out of the Middle East because he said they were just big flops.
	They were crazy wars and it was a big mistake of George W. Bush.
	Same kind of arguments that Democrats were making before that, although even Barack Obama, for instance, runs for office on how Iraq was a terrible idea, but he didn't want to be seen as a weakling, so then he decided that Afghanistan was the good war, so he pulls out of Iraq to some degree, and then he restarts the war in Afghanistan that had basically been winding down, because he needed to have a good war.
	So Joe Biden right now is...
	Seeing which way the political winds are blowing, he is calling to draw down and pull out of Afghanistan, a continuation of what Trump was trying to do.
	And Jen Psaki was asked about this.
	He said, so what were we doing?
	Did we win?
	What's the goal?
	What are we doing in Afghanistan?
	And Jen Psaki cannot say that we declare victory.
	In terms of plans for the end, for our men and women coming back, I don't have anything to preview, but we don't, we're not going to have a mission accomplished moment in this regard.
	It's a 20-year war that has not been won militarily.
	We are proud of the men and women who have served, incredibly grateful.
	The President will note that in his remarks today, how grateful he is for their service and the families who have sacrificed over the last 20 years.
	And we will continue to press for a political outcome and a political solution.
	But beyond that, I think we're going to continue to look for ways to communicate why we make the choice choices we make.
	You mentioned mission accomplished.
	Has this mission not been accomplished?
	Well, I would say we did exactly what we wanted to do.
	What I was referring to, Jeff, is we're not having a moment of celebration.
	We're having a moment where we feel it's in our national security interest to bring our men and women serving home.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Hold on.
	I got it at the first part when you said, look, this has been a 20-year war.
	It's a complex war and there's not going to be a mission accomplished moment like George W. Bush had with Iraq before we realized that mission had not been accomplished yet.
	But then you said, wait, the mission has been accomplished.
	We did what we set out to do.
	What was that?
	What did we set out to do?
	If what we set out to do was kill Osama bin Laden, then I guess that mission was accomplished.
	But then what were we staying there for afterward?
	If the mission was to defeat terrorists, well, terrorism really sprung up in Iraq and Syria with the rise of ISIS. So what was going on in Afghanistan?
	If the mission was to get rid of the Taliban, that just didn't work because the Taliban are coming back in.
	What was the mission?
	The mission was whatever the foreign policy establishment wanted at the time.
	The mission was whatever the State Department wanted at the time.
	I think the American people are just as confused about this sort of thing as Jen Psaki appears to be.
	And that is a big problem.
	I think we've got to be much clearer.
	When Dr.
	Fauci says, get over it.
	Get over your political objections.
	Having the government force you all to get a vaccine is not political.
	Good grief.
	He has this progressive conception of the political, which is so, so desiccated.
	A public act, such as mass government-compelled vaccination, is by definition a political act.
	But when he says it's not political, what he's saying is you have no right to have an opinion about it.
	And for too long, that has been not just the case in public health.
	It's been true in foreign policy.
	That's been true in trade policy.
	You're just not allowed to have an opinion.
	You're just not one of the smart people.
	You don't get it.
	These trade deals that are going to hollow out the manufacturing in America, they're like obviously true.
	They're the best, okay?
	And you have no right to question that.
	You're just a deplorable, irredeemable idiot.
	You're questioning the wars overseas.
	You just don't get it.
	Leave it to the experts, okay?
	Leave it to the State Department.
	Leave it to Dr.
	Fauci.
	Leave it to the administrative state.
	Leave it to the trade negotiators.
	Leave it to the WTO. Leave it to everyone but you.
	Get over self-government.
	That's what they're telling you to do.
	I don't want to get over self-government.
	Although our elected leaders are not exactly instilling confidence.
	Joe Biden tried to answer some questions about what was going on in Afghanistan.
	Didn't go well.
	For the release of detained Americans, including Mark Ferex.
	I want to pronounce the name correctly.
	I misspoke.
	And starting this month, we're going to begin relocation flights for Afghanistan SIV applicants.
	Half have gotten on aircraft and commercial flights and come, and other half believe they want to stay.
	We went for two reasons.
	One, to bring Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, as I said at the time.
	I'm not even going to make fun of this.
	This is extremely sad and pathetic, and the man is obviously not up to being president, and this is probably why the establishment just continues to rule and rule.
	It's why Joe Biden refers to they all the time.
	Well, they told me to say this.
	They didn't let me say this.
	They don't want me to do that.
	The man clearly cannot do the job.
	While Joe Biden flounders, while Joe Biden struggles to say things, to articulate things, to understand what is going on in his government, Donald Trump appears to have something of a laser focus on the issues that really matter beyond wars overseas, beyond trade, beyond even immigration.
	Free speech, topic near and dear to my heart, as you well know.
	Donald Trump, after announcing his lawsuit against the big tech companies whom he is suing for deplatforming and censoring him, he has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal outlining the lawsuit.
	Why I'm suing big tech.
	Subheader.
	If Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube can censor me, they can censor you, and believe me, they are.
	I really like this column.
	I think people who are making fun of this lawsuit are pretty misguided here.
	I think they have the same sort of attitude about politics that Dr. Fauci does.
	Just get over it.
	Get over it.
	Build your own Facebook, you twerps.
	Build your, you proles, you peasants.
	Here's what President Trump says in the column.
	Perhaps most egregious in the weeks after the election, big tech blocked the social media accounts of the sitting president.
	If they can do it to me, they can do it to you.
	Believe me, they are.
	At the end of the column, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can't use private actors to achieve what the Constitution prohibits from doing itself.
	In effect, Big Tech has been illegally deputized as the censorship arm of the U.S. government.
	This should alarm you, no matter your political persuasion.
	It is unacceptable, unlawful, and un-American.
	So the argument that Trump is making is that his First Amendment rights were violated.
	But Michael, you say, private corporations can't Violate a First Amendment right.
	That's just an issue for the government.
	The argument that Trump is making is that these private corporations aren't really so private, that they're actually part of what I would call the blob, that they work in tandem with the government, with the liberal establishment, and that they act on the government's bidding, explicitly or implicitly.
	When the government, when the Democrats are threatening to impose penalties on big tech, if they don't rein in some of the speech of conservatives, including the duly elected sitting president, big tech might then act on January 7th or January 8th of 2021.
	Eugene Volokh, very serious lawyer, very good commentator on these legal issues.
	He thinks that this argument might have a chance, but it's a big if, if they can prove that the government is in any way really pressuring the companies to do this sort of thing.
	Fair enough.
	I do think, however, that the issue here is much bigger than just this very narrow legal issue of did the government pressure the corporations to take away Trump's platform?
	I think the issue is who controls speech.
	Who controls speech?
	Even if the government didn't pressure these private corporations, if the private corporations control 90% of the flow of information around the internet, which is the public square, which then will decide how we govern ourselves, because speech is politics in a republic, if they are doing that...
	That alone is reason to use our political power to break them up.
	I asked Bill Barr about this when I got to meet him back when he was Attorney General.
	I said, what should we do on big tech?
	He said there were three ways to attack big tech.
	Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which we've talked about quite a lot.
	Fraud.
	They amassed their critical mass through fraud by telling you you could get information from people you follow when actually often you can't.
	And antitrust, that we just need to update our antitrust laws, that these companies are operating in a monopolistic way.
	I said, which one should people pursue?
	And he said, all of the above.
	Yes, just do it.
	Just do it.
	That's a huge threat.
	So what Donald Trump is doing here, and he's doing it in a somewhat narrow way, I think we need to do it in an even more assertive way, is reasserting our political rights.
	I'm reasserting an authentically political sphere in this progressive world that has taken politics away from the people.
	Where Dr.
	Fauci says, get over it.
	Get over your politics.
	Trump says, I'm not going to get over it.
	I'm not going to get over it on your public health measures.
	I'm not going to get over it on your free speech measures.
	I'm not going to get over it on anything.
	I am going to keep my political rights and my political power.
	It's un-American for you to take that away from me.
	Speaking of un-American, by the way, I have to touch on this story.
	You remember a few weeks ago, there was a big hubbub because the University of North Carolina had not offered tenure to Nicole Hannah-Jones.
	Nicole Hannah-Jones is the fabulist behind the 1619 Project at the New York Times.
	She was completely unqualified to hold a tenured professorship at that school.
	She doesn't have a PhD, first of all.
	It's very strange to have tenured professors without PhDs.
	She's won a lot of fancy awards from the liberal establishment, like the Pulitzer Prize, for essays, an essay that had its central thesis as a lie, the lie that the American Revolution was fought to defend slavery, No serious historian defends that assertion.
	She won the MacArthur Genius Grant, also undeservedly, but she simply was not qualified to be this professor.
	Then there was political backlash.
	Then UNC offered her the tenured professorship, which is really pathetic and reflects poorly on the school.
	But then the best outcome happened.
	Nicole Hannah-Jones turned it down.
	And she took a professorship at Howard University.
	She's also unqualified to teach there, but neither here nor there.
	But I love it.
	I love that this weak, simpering, pathetic UNC, which used to be considered a pretty good school, they stood up for something, then they couldn't withstand the public pressure from the liberal establishment, then they caved and they got a lot of egg in their face.
	According to a Rasmussen report out today, 78% of voters believe that it is at least somewhat important for schools to teach the traditional values of Western civilization.
	52% believe it is very important, so the majority think it's very important.
	Only 14% of voters do not think that teaching traditional Western values is important.
	And only 4% say it's not important at all.
	So what people want their kids to be taught in schools is the West.
	They want to be taught classical education.
	Now, unfortunately, what the left has been defending for a long time is the antithesis of Western education, namely BLM. BLM sets itself up explicitly on its About Us page as opposing, for instance, the Western-prescribed nuclear family.
	The BLM sets itself out on its About page that it has since deleted as a very radical organization.
	The founders of it describe themselves as trained Marxists.
	So Democrats had defended that for a long time.
	Now they seem to be running away from the extremes.
	Chris Cuomo is now doing a total about-face.
	He's saying he never supported BLM violence.
	What good is it to have a mouth that says, blue lives matter, if you're going to have hands and feet that do this?
	Around 140 officers assaulted, some very badly.
	This is the truth.
	Period.
	It is no less the truth because Black Lives Matter supporters committed acts of violence too.
	Even if you want to believe that the media was okay with what they did, which sure as hell isn't true on this show, but even if you want to say they were, it doesn't change this.
	And be clear, what happened on January 6th has no equal In terms of what and who was targeted and how.
	And you know it.
	It sure as hell didn't happen on this.
	No one defended Black Lives Matter on this show and all the violence that they engaged with.
	Right?
	Right?
	Roll the tape.
	Now, too many see the protests as the problem.
	No, the problem is what forced your fellow citizens to take to the streets.
	Persistent and poisonous inequities and injustice.
	And please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
	Please, show me.
	So Chris Cuomo himself was defending violent BLM riots.
	Now he's realizing, gosh, that's not playing very well.
	And I want to accuse the riot of being violent.
	yeah, okay, we're going to pull that back.
	They're realizing that the extremes are very tough here.
	They're realizing that people are asserting their political rights again.
	Continue to assert those political rights.
	That's a good thing.
	These eggheads, these technocrats, these liberal establishmentarians don't want you to do it, which should make us readier all the more.
	By the way, Ben today is going to be talking about a very important political issue, your yoga pants.
	So make sure you go check out Ben's show today.
	Also, really appreciate all of you who made Speechless the number one best-selling book in the country heading into the 4th of July weekend.
	This, according to Publishers Weekly's list of bestsellers, a Publishers Weekly list directly tied to book sales.
	Around the country, brick and mortar, online, no bulk sales, none of that sort of stuff.
	We sold an unprecedented amount of books since then, and I think a lot of this is because the New York Times snubbed us.
	The New York Times has done this to conservatives before.
	But it's never been this blatant.
	It's never been this egregious.
	Just by the numbers, Speechless should have been number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
	But the New York Times admitted some years ago in a court case that the bestseller list is not actually a bestseller list.
	The bestseller list for the New York Times is an editorial product.
	And so if they don't like a book, they won't permit it on there.
	So occasionally they'll allow a book by a conservative author on.
	Right now they have Bill O'Reilly's book on.
	But you'll notice Bill O'Reilly's book, it's not a political book.
	It's It's just kind of a history book.
	It's about the mob.
	So they'll let that on.
	They tend not to permit books onto the list that actually threaten what they're trying to do, that actually threaten the narrative.
	So I'm really honored that they snubbed it.
	And I think it is a good blurb for the book.
	We actually put it on the cover.
	It says, number one national bestseller snubbed by the New York Times.
	So I really appreciate all of you who went out there and got it.
	If you haven't gotten it already, go do it.
	it.
	We'll be right back with The Mailbag.
	Welcome back to the show.
	Now is my favorite time of the week, The Mailbag.
	First question from Camille.
	Hey, Michael.
	I'm a single woman in my mid-20s in the dating world and have a question.
	My mom and men and women from older generations always talk about how women hold the power in relationships and dating.
	But to me, it seems like that power balance has shifted since our culture has changed.
	More women are likely to sleep around with guys that they aren't in a relationship with because society is preaching sex positivity, and this gives away a lot of the power.
	This type of culture allows more and more guys to remain single because it's easy to get what they want from girls, and they are reluctant to put in the effort for a girl who would make them wait.
	I know your opinion on waiting for marriage, but what are your thoughts on the concept of the power women have?
	And if you agree that it has shifted more toward men, sincerely, who runs the world?
	No, seriously, who?
	Who?
	A reference to my cousin, Beyonce.
	You're totally right.
	Your intuition is right.
	Older generations would think that women hold the power because women withheld something that men really, really wanted until they got something out of it.
	And then feminism convinced them to give up their leverage in romantic relationships, and that has led to misery for women.
	And it has led to some physical pleasure for men, but I think probably ultimately misery for men as well.
	And certainly that power dynamic has shifted dramatically, even now to the point that some women...
	Who don't want to have sex before marriage will feel really pressured to do that because they don't think that they'll be able to hold on to a guy because a guy can just move on to any chicky he wants and get exactly what he desires.
	So, yeah, that's a very big problem.
	I am noticing a little bit of a shift when you look at young conservatives, and I don't mean millennials.
	Somehow we always refer to millennials as the youngest generation.
	We're going to be 60 and they're going to say, oh, you young millennials.
	But Gen Z, for instance.
	A lot of the memes coming out of Gen Z, a lot of the arguments you hear from politically astute Gen Zers is that they don't just want promiscuous sex.
	That they don't just want to look at porn all the time and move on girl to girl to girl and swipe culture.
	They actually want a serious relationship.
	They want to get married.
	They want to have a family.
	They want to have kids.
	That would be the way to stand to thwart history yelling stop.
	The progressive march toward this drugged up, promiscuous, sex-crazed culture would be to say no to that.
	So, you know, find one of those guys.
	I think the trads, as they are called, are having a real ascendancy right now.
	But the power has shifted, and so there's no denying that.
	You are at a disadvantage.
	But I wouldn't be discouraged by that.
	I would...
	I would stand for virtue if you are so inclined to do that.
	Because I think ultimately that will be more gratifying, even if it's a little tougher in the dating world right now.
	From Shelley.
	Michael, sweetheart.
	Thanks for using my official title.
	I have recently had a disagreement with my husband.
	We are both conservatives, and while he does not like it, he supports the burning of the American flag as free speech.
	I told him that if I went into someone's home and burned a picture of them in front of their family as a symbol of the hatred I felt for them...
	That I would be at the very least arrested and probably cast into the outer darkness where there's wailing and grinding of teeth.
	The flag is a symbol of our American community and the USA is our home.
	Burning a flag is not free speech.
	It is an act of hatred and violence and terrorism against the American people and should be treated as such.
	Where that ended the argument, he didn't seem entirely convinced.
	Do you have any additional arguments?
	Wisdom as to why the burning of our flag should not be considered free speech and should the law have consequences for those who take part in such acts?
	Yes, so for most of American history...
	Burning the American flag was not considered First Amendment-protected free speech.
	There were laws against this sort of thing.
	Because it's an incoherent act.
	The flag is a symbol of the country.
	And so if you assert your rights as an American to burn the symbol of America, that is an incoherent act.
	And if we do not have anything, any symbol that is sacred among us, if even the symbol of the very country is not sacred, then nothing is sacred and nothing is binding us together.
	So that was some of the argumentation for it.
	And if you just look at tradition, there were laws against this sort of thing.
	And then the Supreme Court, with the support of very conservative judges like Antonin Scalia, said, no, burning the flag is an expressive act.
	It is political speech, and therefore, while it is odious, it is protected by the First Amendment.
	Scalia said, this is almost verbatim, I'm only somewhat paraphrasing, that if he were king, he would throw into jail every scruffy, bearded weirdo who burns the American flag, but he is not king.
	Now, I am inclined to favor the arguments from the other side of that Supreme Court case.
	I think William Rehnquist was on the other side of that case, where he just described the history of this, why this is a sort of unique symbol, why this is not protected speech.
	But regardless, we live where we are now.
	The court has established this right, this First Amendment right to burn the American flag.
	I would favor a constitutional amendment I suppose is what you would need, or I would certainly favor some law to criminalize it.
	To say, no, you really can't do this.
	There are limits to speech, and we're not going to do it.
	If you right now go out and burn a rainbow flag...
	You could be charged with a hate crime.
	There was this case, actually, just came up some months ago, where a guy ripped a rainbow flag off of a church or something, some obviously very liberal church, and ripped it from some private institution, burned it, and was charged with a hate crime.
	Now, the argument here was, well, it was theft of property and then also a hate crime.
	One imagines if someone ripped an American flag off of a building that wasn't his and burned it, he would not be charged with a hate crime.
	So, we do have sacred symbols in this country.
	We have sacred flags that you're really not allowed to desecrate.
	It used to be the American flag, and now it's the gay flag, or the progress flag, or the BLM flag.
	Society will always have taboos, will always have standards, as I've mentioned to you, and I write about it at length and speechless.
	So I just think we shouldn't deny that.
	We shouldn't go nuts with this free speech absolutism that has really only led to the erosion of traditional standards and the implementation of new leftist standards.
	We should stand for something.
	And if you can't stand for the American flag, what can you stand for?
	From Nathan.
	Hello, Michael.
	Thank you for all that you do.
	Congratulations on your new book.
	Thank you.
	I was listening to your show, and you talked about the death penalty.
	As a Christian, does this go against the commandment, Thou shalt not kill?
	Or is this an exception, as the people receiving the death penalty have caused harm that cannot be punished enough?
	Thanks again.
	It does not violate any Christian teaching to exercise the death penalty.
	If a man sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.
	It's not just true in the book of Genesis.
	This is repeated throughout the Bible.
	And St.
	Paul himself writes that the civil authority does not bear the sword in vain.
	That's about as explicit as it gets.
	Throughout history, the fathers and doctors of the church have rigorously defended the death penalty, up to and including St.
	Thomas Aquinas, one of the most brilliant men and most important doctors of the church who ever lived.
	In recent years, Some popes have suggested that as a practical matter, the death penalty should not be practiced because while society has a right to defend itself today, our criminal justice system is so great that we actually don't really need to do it.
	But recognize their guidance here is a prudential matter.
	It's not a principled matter.
	Even Pope Francis, who seems extraordinarily opposed to the death penalty, even he could not change the catechism to say that the death penalty is intrinsically evil because that would contradict the Bible.
	That would contradict the New Testament, the Old Testament and the New Testament.
	It would contradict the doctors of the church, and he cannot do that.
	Powerful though he may be, he cannot do that.
	Pope Benedict XVI said that Catholics may have a legitimate disagreement over the death penalty.
	Pope John Paul II defended the death penalty in principle, though he did not really defend it in practice.
	So yes, a Catholic certainly can defend the death penalty.
	There's no issue there.
	And I do.
	I do, by the way.
	As a matter of justice, I think we're really skewing our perception of justice if we do not defend that.
	Blessed Pope Pius IX not only defended the death penalty, he carried them out in the Papal States.
	And when he was asked for a reprieve during the last execution of the Papal States, he said, I cannot do it and I do not want to.
	So, pretty good to me.
	Good enough for Blessed Pius IX. Good enough for me.
	Good enough for St.
	Paul.
	Good enough for the Book of Genesis.
	Good enough for me.
	From Marissa.
	Hey, Michael.
	Love the show.
	Hope you can help answer a question that I have.
	I want to know if you believe in soulmates, and what is the Catholic take on that concept?
	I want to believe it's true, but it is a hard concept to grasp.
	Sincerely, a cynical, hopeless, romantic P.S. Careful with your answer, because sweet little Elisa may listen to today's episode.
	Well, no, I'm glad you brought up sweet little Elisa.
	I married my soulmate.
	No doubt about it.
	And not everyone gets to say that, and I do.
	Isn't that great?
	But I will have a caveat here.
	I think I could have married...
	Maybe some other women.
	I'm sure there are some other women out there that I could have married and had a perfectly fine life.
	I think I have the best life I could possibly have.
	So if you want to call that soulmate, sure, yeah, makes sense to me.
	But I don't want to take this to such an extreme that I say, you know, gosh, if it doesn't work out with your high school sweetheart or something, then you're doomed to a life of misery.
	I don't think that's true.
	Because marriage is not merely about that spark, that romantic love, but it is about, it's a real institution.
	It's a sacrament.
	I jump for joy in my marriage, but even people who don't, even people who have tougher marriages, because it's a thing, because it's real, because it's not just floating around in your head and it's not just about my feels, because it's also about the things that you do and the way you behave and the thing you build together, people can take even bad marriages, marriages where maybe you didn't marry your soulmate, and really make them into beautiful things.
	So, yes, it's out there.
	There's no question that some people are better suited for you than others, and there's no question that providence works in its own way, and there is a plan to the way that life unfolds.
	But what you do matters as well.
	And if you are struggling in your marriage, there are things that you can do to improve that.
	And even if you might seem a little incompatible, it's not just about the subjective impulses that you both have.
	You can look toward objective criteria and certain standards of behavior that will improve things.
	From Ian.
	Hey, Michael.
	Here is a question.
	Which is sure to generate no controversy whatsoever.
	What are your thoughts on the traditional Latin Mass?
	Do you ever attend Latin Masses or do you stick to the Novus Ordo?
	That is the new Mass invented by Vatican II. So happy you published a book with words in it, Ian.
	Thank you very much.
	Yes, I almost exclusively attend the Latin Mass, the traditional Latin Mass.
	If you haven't been to one, especially if you're Catholic, I strongly recommend you find one, Society of...
	Or the Priestly Fraternity of St.
	Peter does them.
	That one's a very wonderful organization.
	The Norbertines tend to do Latin Masses.
	You might be able to find one in your diocese.
	Or a Reverend Novus Ordo, so the new Mass, but maybe with the priest facing the altar, maybe with a little Latin, a little chanting.
	That will be good, too.
	I think that, sadly, the liturgy after Vatican II, after the Second Vatican Council in the 60s, really, really became hollowed out and is so much of the beauty...
	And therefore, so much of the sense of truth and goodness that was in that gorgeous liturgy was booted out in favor of sappy 70s power ballads on acoustic guitars that often involve heresy.
	So I would strongly recommend, strongly recommend, as you can tell, attending a Latin Mass, even if you're not Catholic, by the way.
	Even if you have real problems, or you think you have real problems with Catholic theology and the Catholic Church, if you are a Protestant of any sort of denomination, You should attend a Latin mass just to know what you're talking about.
	I mean, this is the mass that shaped Western civilization.
	For centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries.
	And you should know about that.
	That will enrich your own understanding, even if you feel at the moment that you disapprove of Catholic theology.
	From Max.
	Hey Michael, as a man of history, I'd like to get your opinion on historical authenticity in movies.
	Movies like Braveheart and The Patriot have been heavily criticized for their historical inaccuracies, yet the movies themselves are very good.
	You know, it's funny, I was having dinner last night with some friends and we were discussing how great The Patriot is.
	While I understand the need to tell a story accurately, it seems unfair to hate a movie for inaccuracies, especially when the movie is either historical fiction or merely based on a true story.
	What are your thoughts?
	Thanks, I love the show.
	Deus vult.
	My man means God wills it.
	It's funny, with my friends we were actually talking about Gladiator 2, which is another historical movie with some historical inaccuracies.
	I think it's great.
	I think it's great.
	You need narrative.
	The plays of Shakespeare are not entirely concerned with historical accuracy, okay?
	They're the highest works of art.
	Dante, not entirely concerned with historical accuracy, highest work of art probably in the West.
	Of course there can be artistic license here.
	The left does it all the time, by the way.
	The left does it in that stupid Oliver Stone JFK movie, that stupid movie about Dick Cheney, Vice.
	We never worry about that, but then whenever there is a patriotic movie, whenever there's a movie that endorses a conservative point of view that has any little tiny thing off even, they say, oh, it's a worthless movie because it's historically inaccurate.
	It's a work of art.
	Enjoy it as such.
	All right, that's our show.
	Enjoy some works of art this weekend.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is the Michael Knowles Show.
	We'll see you on Monday.
	We'll see you on Monday.
	The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring, our technical director is Austin Stevens, supervising producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, production manager Pavel Vidovsky, editor and associate producer Danny D'Amico, audio mixer Mike Coromina, hair and makeup by Nika Geneva, and production coordinator McKenna Waters.
	The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2021.
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	You know, some people are depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon's turned to blood.
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