Ep. 844 - The American Psycho's Plan For Your Life
Gavin Newsom survives his recall election, Nicki Minaj demonstrates the political realignment, and AOC proves herself to be an establishment shill.
My new book ’Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds,’ is now available wherever books are sold. Grab your copy today here: https://utm.io/udtMJ
Subscribe to Morning Wire, Daily Wire’s new morning news podcast, and get the facts first on the news you need to know: https://utm.io/udyIF
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Gavin Newsom has officially won his recall election in California.
And because elections have consequences, Newsom is already using the win.
California Democrats are already using the win to push for vaccine mandates at the state level.
I want to focus on what we said yes to as a state.
We said yes to science.
We said yes to vaccines.
We said yes to ending this pandemic.
We said yes to people's right to vote without fear of fake fraud or voter suppression.
We said yes to women's fundamental constitutional right to decide for herself what she does with her body and her fate and future.
We said yes to diversity.
We said yes to inclusion.
We said yes to pluralism.
We said yes To all those things that we hold dear as Californians and I would argue as Americans.
So Newsom obviously got a lot of things wrong in that speech.
Most notably pluralism.
California did not say yes to pluralism.
California said yes to one party rule.
And that one party rule...
Is going to mean vaccine mandates.
He's right about that.
It's going to mean more terrible government.
Elections have consequences.
Our regime has consequences.
Our ruling class has consequences for us.
Elections be damned.
I don't think the American people are going to like the consequences in the long term.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is from Michelle Glass, who says, There were people who went to vote only to find out that they had already voted when they didn't.
How can that be a good system?
It is a good system for the ruling class.
And not just in California.
I'm not saying the California recall election was rigged.
I strongly suspect.
Well, I know it was rigged.
It certainly was rigged.
But I don't think that the outcome was contrary to the will of the people.
I strongly suspect, just looking at the way voter registration works in California, I strongly suspect Gavin Newsom would have survived the election recall even if there weren't widespread mail-in votes and all the problems with those mail-in votes and people showing up to the polls to find out they already voted, even without all of the fraud that you see there.
But throughout the rest of the country, who does this system serve?
The system serves the entrenched ruling class.
So it does work.
It doesn't work In the traditional American constitutional order way, but it sure works well for the ruling class.
You know, when you want a little autonomy, when you want to do things for yourself and not just be told what to do by everyone else, I strongly recommend you check out Rock Auto.
Listen, I'm not the most handyman in the world, okay?
I am not telling any tales out of school here.
And yet, when I want an auto part, Even I can navigate rockauto.com's amazing catalog.
It's that simple.
It's that straightforward.
And it's so much better than going to that brick-and-mortar store where you get peppered with a thousand questions and you don't know the answer to them.
And is your car a GT or an XB? I don't know what my car is.
It's like a gray sedan.
That's what my car is.
And, you know, okay, well, and it's a 2010, and okay, and then they go online.
They don't have the part.
You have to wait.
You have to pay twice as much.
Don't do that.
Skip that.
Go to rockauto.com.
You get the best prices.
They're reliably low.
There's no gimmicks.
It's not this price on Tuesday morning and this price on Wednesday afternoon.
It's a family company.
They've been in the business serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.
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, and their How Did You Hear About Us box so they know that we sent you.
Newsom declares victory.
Larry Elder, very gracious in his defeat, says, we lost the battle, but we will win the war.
Conservatives will come back, and we will fight.
And I really feel for California conservatives.
I'm one of those who fled.
Some of my...
Many friends who were left in California were texting me despairingly.
Some of my well-known friends, I'm not going to name Dave Rubin's name, but some people were really upset by what happened in California.
It's time to flee to freer pastures, I think.
I don't think that you are going to see anything resembling conservative government in California anytime soon.
And it's not as though...
The Democrat rulers in California are taking this recall as a reprimand and saying, oh gosh, all right, we better moderate.
Clearly the people don't like how far we've gone.
No, they're taking it as a mandate to go even further, notably on the point of vaccine mandates.
So LA County announced yesterday...
They're going to move forward with a vaccine mandate.
You're going to need to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test for a ton of events.
For indoor bars, wineries, breweries, nightclubs, and lounges.
They'll also require it for big outdoor events like Dodgers games, Ram games, Chargers games.
This according to the county public health director.
Now what they're going to say is it's not a vaccine mandate, you see.
Because you can just show a negative COVID test.
Okay, I guess that's better than not having that option, but negative COVID tests are expensive.
You're going to have to pay, whatever, $20 to $30 to $40, $50 every time you want to get one of these tests.
For the at-home rapid test, for instance.
Are you going to be able to do that once a week, twice a week?
Are you going to be able to do that for your entire family?
No, they're just going to bleed these people dry and they're going to impel them to get the vaccine.
The irony, of course, with this is that while we hear left-wing demagogues decry the vaccine hesitancy among the Trump supporter murderers, they're compromising public health.
Of course, the original vaccine hesitancy came from the libs.
And by the way, I'm not just pointing out that, for instance, black people are...
We're disproportionately likely not to want to get the vaccine, and black people are disproportionately likely to vote for Democrats.
That's not even the point I'm making.
When I say the vaccine hesitancy came from the libs, I'm saying it came from Joe Biden.
I'm saying it came from Kamala Harris, as the RNC reminds us in a lovely little montage.
I think it's going to be a very skeptical American public about taking the vaccine, and they should be.
We can't trust the president and take his word and take a vaccine that might cause harm to us.
If and when the vaccine comes, it's not likely to go through all the tests and trials that are needed to be done.
Let's just say there's a vaccine that is approved and even distributed before the election.
Would you get it?
Well, I think that's gonna be an issue for all of us.
When we finally do, God willing, get a vaccine, who's gonna take the shot?
Who's gonna take the shot?
We will need to have access to the vaccine results so we can make our independent assessment to make sure that Donald Trump's fingerprints are not on it.
You're gonna be the first one to say, put me, sign me up.
They now say it's okay.
Is the vaccine safe?
Frankly, I'm not going to trust the federal government's opinion.
And I wouldn't recommend to New Yorkers based on the federal government's opinion.
I would not recommend that you take the federally approved vaccine, says the now former governor, Andrew Cuomo, who was the toast of the town.
Remember, we were all Cuomo sexuals.
He won an Emmy.
He was pushing vaccine hesitancy.
Joe Biden, not just the disgraced former Democrat politicians, Joe Biden, the current president of the United States.
I'm not sure he knows that, but I guess he's the current president.
He was saying, who's going to take the vaccine?
Who's going to take it?
Joe, you're going to take it.
Okay, I'll take the vaccine.
Come over here, Joe.
I'll give you a chocolate chocolate chip ice cream if you take the vaccine.
The hypocrisy is...
Obvious, but we forget about this because all of this so-called vaccine hesitancy from the libs was memory hold.
So now we're told that it's only the intransigent MAGA people, and if you don't take the shot or you have any skepticism of this hastily developed drug to treat a condition that for most people does not pose particularly grave threat, with effectiveness that is seriously in doubt, you are a killer.
Fortunately, some people at the individual citizen level are sensible.
Jim Brewer, a comedian of...
I've been watching Jim Brewer for many, many years.
He came out and he said that he is not going to play at venues that mandate the vaccine.
Take a listen.
Two quick updates.
On shows that you may think you may be getting tickets to or you already have tickets to.
The Wellmont Theater, New Jersey.
Not doing it.
Also, that's going to be December 3rd.
Also, the Royal Oak Theatre in Michigan.
Due to the segregation of them forcing people to show up with vaccination to prove you're vaccinated, to prove that you've had a shot, I am absolutely not doing those shows.
I know I'm going to sacrifice a lot of money, but I'm not going to be enslaved by this system.
Or by money.
My man!
Love that.
That's great.
The only way that we're going to fight back against these sorts of things is if people in prominent positions take a stand.
And that can be in the private sector, or it can be in the public sector, which we'll get to in a second.
It can be a political leader, or it can be a comedian, an SNL comedian, who's playing a show.
Or it can be Eric Clapton, who says that he's not going to play to vaccine mandate venues.
Great, great stuff.
Notice what he says here.
I think the right can learn a lot from this.
It's amazing that we on the right, conservatives, we talk a good game on virtue, on religion, on morality, on defending our way of life, but for the past 20-30 years at least, we seem to be slaves to money.
On the one hand, conservatives go out there and they say, we need to protect our traditions and our family values and our way of life, and also we need to support free trade and creative destruction and outsourcing and GDP at all costs.
We've become whores to slight upticks in GDP. We've become whores for tax cuts.
We have become whores.
Even on the right, forget about the left for a second, even on the right, slaves to the system and to money.
And I think what you're seeing in the past few years at least, certainly since the Trump phenomenon, it's funny that it took a billionaire to show us this, is Republicans and conservatives breaking away from that slavery, that slavery to a system of money, recognizing, you know, even if...
I don't know.
Mass migration increases GDP a little bit.
That's not good.
We don't want that.
That's not good for our country.
Even if outsourcing all of our stuff, all of our jobs to China and buying all, outsourcing all of our manufacturing to China, buying all their cheap trash, even if that increases GDP a little, we're not going to be slaves to a system of money.
Even if COVID vaccine mandates increases GDP a little bit, even if it gets the economy going again, we are not going to be slaves to money.
When you want...
To save a little bit of money and protect yourself, I strongly recommend you check out Ring.
Ring alarm equals peace of mind.
If you're watching this show right now, you'll notice I am in a hotel room.
Sometimes I am on the road.
I really like to know that my sweet little wife and cute little baby are safe.
Ring allows me to have that kind of peace of mind.
It is a state-of-the-art security system.
Obviously, you've heard about the Ring video doorbells where you can see and speak to whoever's at your door from wherever you are.
You can keep an eye on every corner of your house.
Keep it all together in one simple app and security system, Ring Alarm.
Head on over there right now.
Go to ring.com slash Knowles for a special offer on a Ring Alarm security kit.
Today, start building that ring of security around your home.
Have a system that is right for you, up and running in minutes.
Ring.com slash Knowles.
That is ring.com slash Knowles right now.
I have given this out to friends of mine at...
I have made this a housewarming present, in part because it's not particularly expensive, so they get a great gift and you don't have to spend a lot of money.
Do yourself a favor.
Protect your home and your family.
Ring.com slash Knowles.
You're seeing individuals right now pushing back against the vaccine mandates.
And you're seeing individual performers like Jim Brewer or Eric Clapton.
And you're seeing it from individual companies like us at The Daily Wire.
Joe Biden comes out and enforces a vaccine mandate through this bizarre channel of the administrative agencies.
And OSHA, I actually talk about that with Senator Cruz on an upcoming episode of our podcast, Verdict.
The constitutionality, how that works.
But you're seeing pushback from companies.
Daily Wire says, nope, we're not doing it.
You can sue us if you want, see in court, but we're just not going to enforce that.
That's all good.
But it's got to be backed up with political support as well.
You're seeing that right now from the Riverside County Sheriff in California.
Riverside County Sheriff says, quote, The government has no ability and no authority to mandate your health choices as your sheriff.
I have an obligation to guard your liberty and freedom.
So he's saying, specifically what I am being told to do is to vax all my employees at the sheriff's office.
I'm not going to do that.
He also has a law enforcement authority, so in as much as the sheriff's office is going to be involved in enforcing the vaccine mandate broadly, it seems quite clear to me that he's not going to do that.
That's good stuff.
That's what we need more of.
And that is what conservatives have missed in the past few decades while we have just mindlessly repeated a statement that is true but not adequate, which is politics is downstream of culture.
Yes, the Breitbart maxim is true in as much as the movies matter and the culture matters and we've got to shape the culture.
But it's false if you believe it to be exclusively true.
Because it's also true that politics influences culture.
It's also true that government Influences culture.
And I think a lot of Republican politicians have mindlessly pushed the Breitbart maxim, politics is downstream of culture, because they don't want to do their jobs.
So they want to say, no, the government never has any role to do anything.
It's all got to be at the cultural level.
No, buddy, you have to do your jobs too.
If the vaccine mandate is going to be pushed by radical leftist politicians, then we need the vaccine mandate to be opposed by the politicians that we conservatives elect.
You've got to do your job too.
There's nothing wrong with using the government, wielding government power, to stop this encroachment on our liberties and traditions and way of life.
Whether that encroachment is coming from the federal government or whether that encroachment is coming from Google.
We're glad to see that sheriff's office pushing back.
I think a lot of other sheriff's offices should be pushing back.
And I think basically all the conservative politicians we elect...
And judges that we get in there should be pushing back as well.
Use the politics.
That's what it's there for.
There's a big divide that we're seeing in this country right now.
And a lot of people are waking up to the fact that the divide is not sexual, as the left would tell us.
The divide is not racial, as the left would tell us.
The divide is not even partisan.
I don't even think the divide is Republicans versus Democrats.
In many ways, what we've seen in the past few years is that there's a kind of uniparty.
There's just this blob, and it's mostly run by Democrats, but there are a few court jester Republicans there whose job it is to provide the appearance of opposition, but really they're just jesters.
They just really exist to prop up that establishment.
And do you know who showed this to us?
Nicki Minaj.
I didn't see that one coming.
Okay, I wouldn't have put my money on that bet.
But she showed us this.
She got into a fight yesterday or two days ago with Joy Reid.
Joy Reid is ostensibly this left-wing woman on MSNBC. And Nicki Minaj, I think, is left-wing.
Maybe not.
It's very unclear what her politics are now.
Nicki Minaj comes out and says, look, mask up, follow some guidelines, but make your own health care decisions.
Don't take that shot and think that there are no concerns whatsoever.
And then she told this story about a friend of hers who had some health problems, apparently, from the vaccine.
And she says, you know, just do your own research, make your own decisions.
Enjoy, read.
The putative radical comes out and says, no, don't do that.
Don't do your own research.
Take the shot.
Do what Fauci says.
And Nicki Minaj comes back to her and says, you're just a shill.
You're just a total shill for the white man, is what the words of Nicki Minaj, but I think what she was implying is you're a shill for the establishment.
You're a shill for the ruling class.
You're telling people they can't use their own minds.
So then, to make this situation even more politically complicated, Tucker Carlson, on his...
Very conservative TV show came out and defended Nicki Minaj.
And Nicki Minaj reposted that to her Twitter account with a bullseye.
Take a listen to Tucker's monologue.
It's Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend's testicles who are swollen from taking the vax.
That's the claim.
But it's not anything to do with the physical effect of the vaccine that makes our political class mad.
It's the last part of Nicki Minaj's tweet that enrages them.
The part where she says you should pray on it, make the decision yourself, like a free human being, and quote, don't be bullied.
So our media and public health officials didn't like this because they make their livings bullying people.
So they couldn't let it stand.
So, Tucker gives, as always, a terrific little monologue, and Nicki Minaj reposts that with a bullseye emoji.
So you've now got this major pop star who we all assumed was on the left...
Who is tweeting even about how she doesn't like the white man that much and how she's upset that a black woman like Joy Reid would go along with the white man, who's not even usually a white man, but he's the ruling class.
And then she's posting this, what we're told is this hetero, patriarchal, imperial hegemonic sort of Tucker Carlson.
She's posting him and saying, that guy's got it exactly right.
And what is the criticism from everyone in the ruling class on Tucker?
Tucker is a populist.
Tucker doesn't fit neatly.
Forget that he disregards and contradicts a leftist orthodoxy, but he doesn't even fit neatly on the right.
He's not a usual Republican.
He's something different.
He's a terrible white nationalist.
That's the phrase they use now when they really want to shut somebody up on the right.
But what Tucker is, is he's just not going to play along with the preset ridiculous caricatures of our politics of the last 20 years.
Which is, there's supposed to be the leftist radical, and then there's the right-winger who really is just a libertarian or something.
He just cares about tax cuts.
And then there's kind of the liberal ruling class, and we see this all play out, and then nothing really changes.
And Tucker comes in and he says, no, no, I don't think so.
I think it's less about this pretend Republican-Democrat-left-right divide.
I think it's more about the people versus the ruling class.
And Nicki Minaj agrees.
You see this with AOC. AOC proved this too.
From the other side of the play acting.
AOC is not the pretend right-winger, you know, libertarian dork of the last 20 years.
AOC is the socialist dork.
Dork that we also see play out.
She shows up to the Met Gala and she's wearing Tax the Rich on her dress.
And that's right, she's going to stick it to the man who are all at this gala and they're all her friends and they're all celebrating her and they're all giving her magazine covers and they're all celebrating actually this dress in particular.
There's a video that just came out of AOC walking out of the Met Gala with her dress on, with the dress being carried by all of her servants.
So you see AOC walking out there, and she's being followed by her slaves, by her servants who You know, the servants at the Met Gala have to wear masks, generally, and they're lifting up her dress.
It says, tax the rich.
Tax the rich so I can buy more slaves.
Tax the rich.
And then what happens?
All those people out there, all those people who are They're for the ruling class or they're for the rich.
They say, yes, yes, queen, slay.
Yes, you're doing it.
You're showing us.
Yes, yes.
It's all just a play.
It's not so much even about capitalism versus socialism.
I don't even think that's really the debate.
I think it's the ruling establishment versus all the people who want to change something about it.
AOC just introduced a new bill.
The bill is to extend unemployment insurance through 2022.
This will...
I know that people are going to decry this as socialism.
This is socialism or communism.
I don't think it's really quite that.
I think it's just neoliberalism.
I think it's just more of the same.
I think this is Andrew Yang kind of stuff.
Remember Andrew Yang runs for, well, first president and then for mayor of New York.
Or you've actually seen some people on the right talk about this.
they floated this idea of the universal basic income.
And the universal basic income is just where zillionaire plutocrats pay people to go away.
People who are not going to have jobs, who are not going to have meaning in their lives, who are not going to have much say in their government, they just get a check to go away.
And that's called the universal basic income.
And it's a consequence, not even really of communism, it's a consequence of neoliberalism.
And AOC, the supposed radical, is pushing for a modest, somewhat modest version of that now.
That's the effect of it, at least.
She might not be aware that that's what she's doing, but rather than attack the establishment and lead a revolution, she is propping up that establishment and leading it down its decadent and desiccated course.
You know...
When I want to make sure that I am in no way desiccated, I like to have good ranchers.
When was the last time you think you had American meat?
I know you go to the store and you see, okay, oh, grass-fed, oh, it's got to be...
local meat, you know, from my local farm around here.
Did you know that 80% of the grass-fed beef in the grocery stores is, I guess it's from local farms that are in South America.
It's not from America, which is why my friends over at the Good Ranchers have traveled the country on a mission to help Americans, American ranchers with American beef from American farms at incredible prices for American customers.
They've got excellent T-bones, fillets, strips.
I love their burgers.
I think their burgers can't be beat.
They've got better than organic chicken.
You get the steakhouse quality you deserve at a price you can afford.
Go to GoodRanchers.com slash Knowles right now.
Save $20, or better yet, subscribe, and save on each box of mouth-watering American meats that will show up right on schedule to your customers.
Doar.
That is $20 off and free express shipping if you go right now to goodranchers.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, or use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S at checkout.
$20 off and free express shipping at goodranchers.com slash Knowles.
You know...
We are not going to comply here at The Daily Wire.
We've made that very clear with the new Biden mandate.
If you want to help us in that fight, head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe and use code do not comply at checkout for 25% off.
We are being threatened with major, major fines and consequences, and we're almost certainly going to have to go to court for this, and we're staffing up on lawyers.
And it's You don't go up against the liberal establishment and think it's going to be easy.
We never thought it was going to be easy.
We really appreciate your support.
So head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
Use code DO NOT COMPLY at checkout for 25% off.
Also, subscribe to The Morning Wire.
Great new podcast.
You can go check it out on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, wherever you get your podcasts.
Leave a five-star review if you like it.
like it.
We'll be right back with a lot more.
AOC pretends to be the radical working for the people She is really nothing more than a tool of the plutocrats.
You want evidence of this?
She and Joe Biden seem to be in agreement.
Joe Biden, the most establishmentarian politician ever there was.
AOC, the supposed pretend radical, they seem to agree.
AOC wears her tax-the-rich dress, and then what happens?
Joe Biden tweets out, it's time to tax the super-wealthy and big corporations and make them pay their fair share in taxes.
AOC responds to Joe Biden, couldn't agree more.
Taxing the rich will help us expand Medicare, extend child care, take action on climate, and so much more.
We have a precious opportunity right now in reconciliation with the Build Back Better Act, and we should use it.
So this is being used to suggest by some people on the right, naively, I think, that Joe Biden is really a radical.
Joe Biden is a socialist.
Joe Biden is a communist.
I think it actually makes more sense in the other direction.
Meaning, AOC is the tool of the establishment.
Joe Biden is just an empty suit.
He's just an avatar of the establishment.
And AOC is just a tool of that as well.
And Yes, she openly advocates socialism.
Well, a lot of socialism has crept into the liberal establishment.
I mean, there's no question about that.
The American liberals have never apologized for their support, sometimes overt, of the Soviet Union for their support of actual communists in the country.
The lines between those things are a little bit blurry.
And this has become more and more so over time.
But make no mistake, the battle between the moderate Democrats and the radical AOC, it's mostly an illusion.
They're all kind of doing the same thing.
They're all kind of palling around.
Their real opponent is not the right or the left or the this or the that.
It's us.
It's ordinary American people of various backgrounds, of even various political stripes, who want to preserve a capital C constitutional political order that increasingly has nothing to do with the way that we're governed.
The way that we're governed increasingly is when these soft shoe performers, these politician performers, just empower the federal bureaucracy to do whatever it wants.
This is bad.
This is why a lot of people are concerned about election integrity, for instance.
We're concerned about election integrity because we see our constitutional system of government slipping away before our very eyes.
And we can see the blob changing all the rules on election integrity, even important rules like minimizing mail-in votes, which Barack Obama himself just a few years ago said was really important to voter integrity.
Even basic rules like show an ID so that you can vote.
You've got to show your medical history if you want to go to a bar these days, but you don't have to show an ID and prove you are who you say you are for this supposedly sacred act of our supposed democracy.
It doesn't make sense.
It's obviously just a power grab.
And the left is mocking us about this.
Karen Bass, who is a former communist, maybe not so former, who is a Democrat congressman, Karen Bass is laughing at us.
And she's saying, you know, you don't see Democrats complaining about election integrity.
Republican Larry Elder has emerged as the frontrunner on the GOP side, and we've seen him already raise doubts about this election's integrity, even before the results are known.
So how do Democrats respond to these kinds of claims, or do you not?
Do you just ignore them altogether?
Oh, absolutely not.
We cannot ignore them.
But I do think that we need to look at it within the national context because there is an undermining of the confidence of the election process nationally.
Of course, it started with President Trump, what he did on Election Day.
And so now we're questioning the integrity of our election system And this is so ironic.
For somebody like me who focuses on foreign affairs in Congress, we go around the world talking about the strength of our democracy, and then people see all around the country and around the world us questioning the very institution.
So I believe that what is behind it is the fact that the Republican Party is using this as a strategy.
You don't hear Democrats raising big questions about the integrity of the election.
So, first of all, I guess Karen Bass is right on the particular point.
Right now, you don't hear Democrats complaining about the integrity of our elections.
Five years ago, even less than five years ago, that's all you heard about.
Remember, Russia stole the election.
Hillary is the legitimate president of the United States.
Trump is a usurper.
Remember, that wasn't that long ago.
And it goes back even 20 years.
Bush v.
Gore, remember?
Bush is an illegitimate president.
Gore really won the election.
Remember that?
All that stuff?
Democrats have often complained about election integrity.
Then, in 2020, they got rid of all the election integrity measures and they totally upended the system in their favor to make it easier for them to steal elections.
And now they don't complain about it.
Well, gee, I wonder why.
Yeah, because they won.
They won the election integrity game.
And they put the rules in their favor.
So yeah, now they don't complain about it.
And this is so embarrassing that Americans lecture people overseas on democracy, but we can't conduct our own democracy.
Yeah, that is embarrassing.
I wish you people would stop doing it, Karen Bass.
I wish you people would stop destroying our system.
You'll notice, Harvard professor Adrian Vermeule made this point yesterday.
When the Democrats talk about our democracy...
The word democracy does not refer to democracy in their minds.
Democracy is what happened in Texas when the people of Texas decided not to permit other people to kill babies.
That was a democratic process and the left hates that.
What the left means when they say democracy is liberalism.
And liberalism and democracy are not the same thing.
They're kind of related concepts, but they're different.
And when the people vote against liberalism, we are told that that is the undermining of democracy.
It's the undermining of liberalism, but the undermining of liberalism is a very good thing.
And as our...
The other thing they often mean when they say our democracy is they're referring to their oligarchy.
But even those two concepts are related.
As liberalism has grown in the governing ideology, democracy has shrunk.
You do not have the right, for instance—actually, abortion's a great example—you do not have the right to make your own laws about abortion.
Liberalism has decided that abortion is a sacrosanct sacrament, for that matter.
And so you're not allowed to vote.
They're going to pretend that it's in the Constitution, when obviously it's not.
And that's it.
Now that's off the table.
And this is true increasingly of many areas of public policy.
There are different rules for different people.
We're seeing this not just in the government.
We're seeing this in the so-called private sector, though the private sector seems pretty public to me.
We're seeing this in big tech and Facebook.
There's a big report just came out in the Wall Street Journal.
Facebook says its rules apply to all company documents reveal a secret elite that is exempt.
So there's this program known as XCheck that gives millions of celebrities, politicians, and other profile users, high-profile users, the privilege to get around the rules.
And this is not some conspiracy theory.
This has been revealed from internal Facebook documents that say for certain people, they're not going to be held to the same standard.
And that's that.
Now...
Sometimes I show different reactions to these sorts of stories on a scale.
Broke, woke, and bespoke.
Okay?
So the broke take, which is what the libs are rattling on about right now, is that this is a good thing.
It's good that Dr.
Fauci, for instance, hypothetically could be exempted from certain rules.
It's good that the left gets to play by easier rules than the right does.
Okay.
That's the broke take.
The woke take, the little bit smarter take, is that this is bad.
Everyone should be equal.
Everyone should have to play exactly on the same level playing field on Facebook as everyone else.
That's definitely a better take than the left should be given special privileges.
But I don't even think that quite gets it.
A lot of conservatives are pushing that argument right now.
But I don't think that even quite gets it.
I would suggest the bespoke take, the more perceptive one, which is hierarchies in politics are inevitable.
This is a very conservative understanding of human nature and political communities.
There are going to be hierarchies.
There is going to be an elite.
People are going to be in different positions.
It's just the way human nature works.
It's just the way politics works.
What is really bad about this is Is that Mark Zuckerberg should not be setting the political order.
Yes, I grant you.
This is kind of my point on free speech.
When the right reacted to the left's manipulation of our free speech regime and said, you should be able to say whatever you want and do whatever you want.
I'm a free speech absolutist.
And I just think that's...
A silly argument.
It's a utopian argument.
That's never been true anywhere, certainly not in America.
Free speech has never meant you can say whatever you want whenever you want to say it.
Every society has standards and taboos.
The question to me that's more interesting is, who sets those standards?
Who sets those taboos?
What are they going to be?
Well, it's the same exact principle here.
Who sets the political hierarchy?
Who sets the way that privilege and status is doled out in society?
That's going to be inevitable.
That's going to happen.
But why is this one billionaire oligarch in Silicon Valley, why is he the one doing it?
We used to at least live in a constitutional republic where we the people did that sort of thing.
Where our political system did that sort of thing.
But now, these elites, these oligarchs in Silicon Valley, run that political system because they control speech.
And that is a political act.
And part of that is the result.
It's not just the result of the left grabbing power.
It's the result of the right becoming obsessed with this idea of privatization and government always bad and politics always bad and corporations good.
And so we've just given our politics to the corporations and now the corporations run our politics and we have even less of a say in it.
That doesn't make very much sense to me.
You've got to step in and reassert an authentic political order.
You're seeing this in Ohio.
You're seeing this in a town in Ohio.
Where the mayor of Hudson is showing up and telling school board members to resign or else be charged with kiddie porn over an assignment.
So I'll tell you about the assignment before I play this mayor's excellent speech.
There is an assignment that went out in the school to students with writing prompts that say, for instance, write a sex scene you wouldn't show your mom.
This is to high school students.
Rewrite the sex scene from above into one that you would let your mom read.
Describe a time when you wanted to orgasm but couldn't.
Ten euphemisms for sex.
Write an X-rated Disney scenario.
A room full of people who want to sleep together.
Describe this.
Describe the first time you had sex.
This is to high schoolers.
I'm not a prude.
I promise you I'm really not a prude.
But this is creepy.
This is really weird.
I don't think that this is the only or best way to improve a student's writing or ability to think, cognitive skills.
I think it's really creepy and weird.
And so does the mayor of this town.
And the mayor showed up and said, you know, I talked to a judge.
This might be kiddie porn.
You sickos need to resign or else we're going to charge you.
Members of the board, my name is Craig Schubert.
I'm the mayor of this city.
It has come to my attention that your educators are distributing essentially what is child pornography in the classroom.
I've spoken to a judge this evening.
She's already confirmed that.
So I'm going to give you a simple choice.
You either choose to resign from this Board of Education or you will be charged.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comment.
I love this.
This...
There are going to be libertarian, or I'd really say libertine types, who say this is an encroachment on academic freedom, which is another totally bogus concept, and this is the teachers should have every right and students should learn about sex in the classroom, and this is wrong.
He's taking away their freedom.
No.
What you're seeing here is not, in a way, I guess, it's taking away the freedom or licentiousness of these educators to push porn in the classroom.
But it is asserting a higher freedom, an exalted freedom, a political freedom to decide how your kids are going to be educated.
Those two kind of freedoms are coming into conflict, but the higher freedom, the freedom that is really in keeping with the American political order, the true understanding of liberty here is that assertion of the political freedom.
We all need to do that.
We all need to do that at our own levels.
We have been enslaved by freedom.
By people who want to arouse our basest passions and our appetites and make us mistake those for true liberty.
And think that as long as we're getting a steady stream of drugs and porn and free government cheese from AOC and Joe Biden and Andrew Yang, he was pushing the universal basic income.
As long as we're just given stuff to satisfy our appetites and to go away and to stop bothering the elite while they rule the world, that then we're really free.
We're not.
We're not.
We're slaves.
We're no different than those people who are carrying AOC's preposterous dress to the cheers of, yes, slay queen.
That's what we are in this situation.
And if we want to, and this is where you go back to the founding fathers, if you want to regain and reassert that political freedom, you've got to discipline yourself.
You've got to limit yourself.
You've got to limit what these educators are putting in the classrooms.
Then and only then are you really going to be free.
We need to bring back consequences.
We have been living in a dream world for the past several decades that is pushed not just by the left, but by the right as well, where you can just do whatever you want and not face any consequences.
You saw this notably with free trade.
Yes, we're going to ship all our jobs overseas, and we're going to ship our manufacturing overseas, and we're going to empower our geopolitical rival China, but it's going to be only good There's going to be no downside whatsoever.
Money, money, money.
It's going to be really good for China and it's going to be really good for America and the GDP is going to go up and there's going to be no consequence.
This was the utopian promise of the free traders and it hasn't really worked out.
So now, because China has risen and because China is now challenging American hegemony on the world stage, now all of a sudden we're finally, way too late, beginning to push back against this.
this.
The United States is announcing a new effort today with the United Kingdom and Australia, three of the nations in what's called Five Eyes, which is an intelligence alliance, that is going to focus on sharing advanced technologies in a not-so-hidden effort to counter Chinese that is going to focus on sharing advanced technologies in a
Well, I'm glad that finally these developed countries are going to push back against China, but that's a big change of policy after decade upon decade of encouraging China's rights, permitting China into the World Trade Organization, What does China do?
Immediately starts violating its agreements.
Promoting Chinese manufacturing, promoting Chinese education, and bringing Chinese students and sometimes spies to American schools.
Promoting China at the expense of our own country.
And who was one of the leading voices in that stupid campaign?
Oh right, the current President Joe Biden.
Last year, 130,000 Chinese were studying in the United States.
They're really good.
We're going to try to keep some of them.
I'm only joking.
I'm only joking.
But they are.
We cannot claim the same number of Americans in China, but our 100,000-strong initiative will dramatically increase the number of young Americans living and studying in China.
Competition is not bad.
Competition that's healthy is good.
This is the reason why I have held the view for so many years and continue to hold the view that a rising China is a positive development.
And there is the line.
This was from about 10 or 11 years ago.
The rest of the speech was bad and typical back-slapping Joe.
You know, they're pretty smart.
Those kids, look at my teeth.
I'm going to slap you on the back.
I'm Joe Biden.
But that line at the end, I am of the opinion, and I've for a long time been of the opinion, that a rising China is a positive development.
And now everybody with two brain cells to rub together, which I guess does exclude a number of people in our ruling class, recognizes that a rising China is a very negative development.
It's very bad.
In this world.
Very, very bad indeed.
So, where is the consequence?
Joe Biden needs to be held to account.
The people who encouraged the rising China, which they did not just in the Democratic Party, but in the Republican Party too.
They need to be held to account.
And they probably won't be.
Even the people who openly collude with the Chinese are not going to be held to account.
General Milley General Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was just caught in this new report from the Washington Post, reporting on a Bob Woodward book, apparently willing to go to China to give them highly classified information in the event of an American strike to undermine the Commander-in-Chief and the U.S. President.
This is a huge deal.
This is incredible insubordination.
This is conspiracy to commit treason, if you ask me.
Even Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, one of the most annoying Trump critics, and he's a military man, but extremely left-wing, even he came out and said, Milley's got to resign for this.
So Milley was asked about it, and he gave a non-denial, a non-denial denial.
This came through a spokesman.
He said, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs regularly communicates with the chiefs of defense across the world, including with China and Russia.
These conversations remain vital to improving mutual understanding of U.S. national security interests, reducing tensions, providing clarity, and avoiding unintended consequences or conflict.
Meaning, yeah, he did it.
That's the right.
Yeah, he did it.
So what?
What are you going to do about it?
Really ugly stuff.
There should be an investigation.
To my mind, he should be put on trial.
He should be charged with a crime and put on trial.
This is really bad stuff.
I usually think, keep it calm.
It's all right.
Let people do their jobs.
I know.
Don't throw our presidential candidates in jail.
What General Milley did is really bad, and he's not even denying it.
Speaking of, speaking of what's going on overseas, speaking of America losing hegemony around the world, there is a report coming out now that Angela Merkel, who is the Chancellor of Germany, she could become the new head of the EU. There's a big survey that came out pitting her against the French President Emmanuel Macron, and it said who should be the head of the EU, and Merkel is leading the pack.
So this just reminds me, because we've been talking about Norm MacDonald, who died, not unexpectedly to him, he was privately fighting cancer for nine years, but unexpectedly to all of his fans.
And it reminded me, really, of a great Norm Macdonald bit he gave on the last episode of David Letterman's show.
When I heard that we were going to give the EU, possibly, to Germany, I thought, that's pretty strange, isn't it?
Because they tried to take over Europe one time, and then we beat them.
And it was a world war.
And then they tried to take over Europe a second time, we beat them, and there was a world war.
And now we're just going to give them Europe.
I don't know if y'all are history buffs, but Norm Macdonald, I think, explains it well.
There is one country that worries me, though.
Not Iraq, not Iran, not North Korea.
The only country that really worries me is the country of Germany.
I don't know if you guys are history buffs or not, but...
In the early part of the previous century, Germany decided to go to war.
And who did they go to war with?
The world!
It had never been tried before.
And so you figure that would take about five seconds for the world to win, but no, it was actually close.
Then about 30 years pass, and Germany decides again to go to war, and again it chooses as its enemy the world.
And this time they have that guy, scrankly, scrankly, that guy.
I'm not even going to dignify him by saying his name, but I think you know I'm done.
But you'd think at that point the world would go, listen, Germany, here's the deal.
You don't have to be a country no more on account of you keep attacking the world.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe.
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts.
The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boren, our technical director is Austin Stevens, supervising producer Mathis Glover, production manager Pavel Vidovsky, editor and associate producer Danny D'Amico, associate producer Justine Turley, audio mixer Mike Coromina, and hair and makeup by Nika Geneva.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2021.
An asthmatic two-year-old is kicked off a plane for not complying with masking regulations, while video shows yet another woman getting followed around the grocery store and harassed by a male member of the masking cult.
Also, a mayor in Ohio threatens to arrest the entire school board because of pornographic material distributed to students.
Meghan Markle and Harry are named one of the most influential people in the world, but they still just want privacy, of course.
