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In recent years, the United States and our allies in Western Europe have peddled lots of far-left causes onto the rest of the world, from climate change hysteria to transgender ideology to other radical social movements.
But it turns out the rest of the world, countries in Africa, in Asia, and elsewhere, Don't really like those leftist hobby horses all that much.
Increasingly, they're turning to our geopolitical adversaries, including China and Russia, for help and leadership in stopping the tide of radicalism.
All of which is leading American conservatives to an unsettling question.
Have we become the baddies?
I'm Michael Knowles, this is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday from MCL Black, who says, funny, the WNBA parade looks about like a Biden press conference.
No, that's not fair.
It looks like a Biden campaign rally.
At the press conferences, at least there are usually some people there.
They don't get any answers and Biden runs away.
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They're going after Chappelle.
They're going after Chappelle.
I know this story broke about a week ago, and I just haven't had time to get to it.
Left-wingers going after a politically incorrect comedian.
That's nothing new.
That's not exactly a news story.
But I think it ties in with a lot of the other things we're seeing on the world stage now.
Countries outside of America and Western Europe are starting to push back against some of the radical, kooky, lunatic ideologies that we are exporting, the woke ideologies that we are exporting to the rest of the world.
And Dave Chappelle just came under fire because he stood up against it.
Initially, the CEO of Netflix defended Dave Chappelle.
Then he got a ton of backlash from lunatics, many of whom worked at his own company.
And now he's sort of apologizing for defending Chappelle.
So the first question, I actually haven't seen the Chappelle special yet.
Not because I don't want to.
I like Chappelle well enough.
I really like that he's got a little tribute to Norm MacDonald at the end of it.
I just haven't had time.
So I haven't watched.
I finally said, what?
What did this guy say to lead to all of these protests?
And it turns out what Dave Chappelle said is that...
I can't believe we got to do another show on it.
He said that men are not women.
She said gender was a fact.
And then the trans community got mad as s**t.
They started calling her a TERF. I didn't even know what the f**k that was.
But I know that trans people make up words to win arguments.
So I looked it up.
TERF is an acronym.
Stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.
This is a real thing.
This is a group of women that hate transgender.
They don't hate transgender women, but they look at trans women the way we blacks might look at blackface.
It offends them.
Like, ooh, this bitch is doing an impression of me.
I'm Team TERF. I agree.
I agree, man.
Gender is a fact.
You have to look at it from a woman's perspective.
It's a fact.
It's a simple statement.
Dave Chappelle is not a right-winger.
He's not a conservative.
I don't think he's a Christian.
He and I probably disagree on many, if not most things.
But we do agree on this.
And this shouldn't be the shocking kumbaya moment that it has become.
Until about five minutes ago, everyone agreed that men are not women.
And then starting, I don't know, what, like 2017 or something, the left in this country lost its mind and now pretends that men are women.
But what's interesting to me is not the argument Dave's making, We all know that that's true.
What's interesting is the reactions.
The CEO comes out.
He initially said, quote, While some employees disagree, we have a strong belief that content on screen does not directly translate to real-world harm.
I'm glad that he defended Chappelle.
I'm glad he didn't at least initially give in to the kooks and the lunatics at his own company protesting him.
But what he said is not true.
Conservatives don't believe that that's true.
He said, we don't believe that the content on screen translates to real world harm.
So what you're saying is, you don't believe that cultural products have real world implications, right?
That's kind of the broader version of what this guy said.
But that's not true.
For how long have conservatives said politics is downstream of culture?
For how long have conservatives said we need to take back Hollywood and take back the academy and take back the press and take back the publishing?
How long have we said that?
We say that because we believe that cultural content does have real world implications.
You know, this is parodied as this idea that in the 90s, mothers were very concerned that kids would start shooting up schools because they played violent video games.
And the right was kind of split on this.
Yes, the video games matter.
No, the video games don't matter.
Oh, it's cool.
You see this with the debate with porn.
Well, just because kids are watching a ton of porn doesn't mean they're going to have disordered sexual relationships.
No, come on.
But if you believe in any way that politics is downstream of culture, or if you at least believe that culture kind of matters in politics, then surely what this CEO of Netflix said is not true.
So, the lunatics protesting him knew that that was not true, and they kept going after him, kept going after him.
Now he says, Then he goes on to point out, yeah, there are real world implications from cultural products.
First of all, he led with humanity.
What the left is saying here that is not true is that it's inhumane and cruel to tell deluded men that they're not really women.
Their argument is that it's not nice and compassionate To tell people the truth if they happen to be confused.
And that's not true at all.
It's actually very disrespectful and cruel to lie to people.
So what Dave Chappelle did, and what the Netflix guy did, at least initially, was very humane.
It was very compassionate.
It was very respectful to tell people the truth.
Now he's going squishy because that's what happens.
There are three takes on the Chappelle fiasco.
I notice on a lot of news stories there were three takes that one really can have.
There's the lib take, the far left, I'm sorry, the leftist take, which is that Dave Chappelle needs to be silenced and shut up and Netflix should never have done this and they should delete the comedy special now.
Then there is the kind of lib, libertarian take, which is Dave Chappelle has the right to say whatever he damn well pleases, and how dare you squash free speech and engage in censorship?
He should be able to say whatever's on his mind.
Then there is the conservative take, which is that Dave Chappelle absolutely has the right to say true things.
I don't think Dave Chappelle has the right to say whatever he wants.
I don't think Dave Chappelle has the right to threaten people.
I don't think Dave Chappelle has the right to engage in fighting words.
I don't think Dave Chappelle has the right to slander people.
I don't think Dave Chappelle has the right to engage in obscenity, to engage in obscene speech.
He certainly doesn't have the right to do any of that sort of stuff.
He does have the right to say the truth, and he did just tell the truth here, and the truth is that men are not women.
So he has the right to do that.
So...
The libertarians and the conservatives are on the same page with regard to whether or not to take down the Dave Chappelle special.
But...
Really, the conservatives and the woke people are on the same page when it comes to the observation that there are limits to speech, okay?
And what the woke people want to push is they say that you have the right to say false things, and you don't have the right to say true things.
And the conservatives say you have the right to say true things, but you don't necessarily have the right to say false things.
And the libertarians and the squishes in the middle refuse to distinguish between true and false, or good and bad, or right and wrong.
How has that worked out?
We have taken the libertarian squish approach for the last 30 or so years.
How has that worked out?
Not looking great by my lights.
The fact that we even have to debate this.
The fact that this is even controversial.
That men are not women.
Shows you that the squish libertarian approach has not worked.
So now you have two choices.
You either go with the woke approach, which insists upon lies and bans the truth, or you get the conservative approach, which insists upon the truth and is not so polite to lies.
And that requires us to have the conscience and the reason to be able to discern truth from falsehood.
And it requires us to have the intestinal and spinal and maybe some other kind of anatomical fortitude to actually stand by the truth and enforce it.
Dave Chappelle is a TERF. He's a TERF because he said a thing that's true.
You are seeing this right now on the right.
It's not just me pushing it.
it.
I may have been among the voices crying out in the wilderness on this particular issue before, but I think now this is kind of the mainstream view and you're seeing it playing out at the level of the governors and the senators.
And the more willing conservatives are to make a distinction between true and false and right and wrong and actually wield government power, it seems the better positioned they are for 2024.
If I asked you right now, which governor at least is best positioned for the 2024 presidential race?
It wouldn't take you two seconds.
It's Ron DeSantis.
And it is no coincidence that Ron DeSantis, right now in Florida, is not just reciting the same old shallow false platitudes from late 90s Republican pamphlets that say that we should never use government power and we should just, you know, let rich woke people do whatever they want.
Ron DeSantis is willing to use the government for good ends.
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Ron DeSantis.
I think the first or certainly one of the first states to reopen after the COVID lockdowns, he gave businesses a lot of liability protection in order to do that, right?
He said, look, we're open for business in Florida, but you can't go around suing people if you catch COVID, right?
The businesses are open and the business owners really liked that.
But now they're getting some pushback from the woke people.
They're getting some pushback from the Biden administration.
And so they are not willing to offer that same courtesy to their customers or to their employees.
Right now, there are businesses in Florida that are mandating that the employees get these experimental drugs about COVID. And Ron DeSantis is using the government to punish businesses and to disincentivize businesses from doing that.
What we're going to be doing, in addition to mounting aggressive legal challenges to federal mandates, we're also going to be taking legislative action to add protections for people in the state of Florida.
And that's something that cannot wait until the regular legislative session next year.
It needs to happen soon.
And so we will be calling the legislature back for a special session.
We're going to be pursuing a number of protections For employees, first of all, if you think about it, if anyone has been forced to do an injection and has an adverse reaction, that business should be liable for that.
Any damages, you have to do it because that's on them.
It wasn't an individual choice.
Once again, there are three positions here.
There's the woke position, which is, yeah, let's use OSHA and the federal government and the businesses to make the businesses mandate that the employees get the vaccine, right?
Yeah, anything to inject you with the Fauci ouchie.
Then there's the libertarian view, which is, well, it's a private business and the business can do whatever it wants and it's bad if the government injects you with the drug, but it's not bad if the business injects you with the drug and, you know, just start your own corporation or whatever.
And then there's the conservative view, which is, This experimental drug...
It has side effects, some of which have been pretty serious.
It does not have any long-term data to go along with it.
There are some studies that suggest that there could be really negative consequences for groups of people who take it.
The virus itself does not pose a particularly grave danger to the vast majority of people.
And there are a lot of questions about natural immunity and people's own risks here.
So because of that, we're going to take the cautious, prudential measure to not...
Using dubious legal mechanisms and power companies to zap you full of an experimental drug.
It's a long way of giving the conservative point of view, but I just want to point out how reasonable and prudential it is.
That's what DeSantis is doing.
Okay?
DeSantis is saying, I'm not any happier about having my rights and way of life taken away if it's taken away by a corporation than it is by the government.
The ideologues On the squish kind of libertarian-ish side, they're the ones who say, yeah, I don't care.
Shoot me with the Fauci out.
You just don't let it be the government.
All hail big corporations.
A conservative view, no, we're not going to do that.
So just as Ron DeSantis gave businesses a huge amount of freedom in the early part of the COVID lockdowns, Now, he is prudently wielding the government to protect the freedoms of employees and of the people and to have just government.
Really good stuff.
Very good use of state power.
And of course, he's going to be called an authoritarian.
That word, more than almost any other word, I would strike that word from the English language because I don't think it really means anything anymore.
By the current use of authoritarianism on the left and on the right, Thomas Jefferson would be an authoritarian.
John Locke would be an authoritarian.
What does that mean?
If you have any limits at all to people's individual autonomy, to what?
To do drugs, to sleep with whoever they want, to force your employees to take experimental shots, to what?
Everything.
Anything I don't like is authoritarianism in today's day and age.
Well, they're calling DeSantis an authoritarian.
Speaking of authoritarians, looking overseas.
I'm turning to Russia for a moment, and I notice that while Boris Johnson, the allegedly conservative prime minister in the UK, is pushing for a massive climate change summit where they're going to push a bunch of crazy hysteria about the sun monster, and the US is for it, and a lot of Western Europe is for it, Vladimir Putin in Russia says, I'm not going to go.
Now, we on the conservative side were accused of collaborating and colluding with the Russians some years ago.
We were accused of that by the deep state and liars in our federal agencies and based on nothing.
But now I'm starting to think maybe we should start colluding with these Russians.
You know, maybe these Russians, at least on the topic of the sun monster, they seem to have a better idea.
And the power grab being pushed by Boris Johnson and other Western leaders, including our own.
I think Putin probably has the right idea here.
Putin apparently just funded this cathedral.
It's an amazing military cathedral just opened recently in Russia.
It's beautiful, beautiful architecture.
It's probably the one example of new, beautiful architecture with a deep cultural and religious basis.
The minute I saw it, I said, maybe we've got to start colluding with these Russians.
They got the right idea.
I don't think the Russians exactly have our interests at heart.
But I would like it maybe if our leaders here in the woke West...
Took a couple notes, perhaps, from Putin.
Even more authoritarian than Putin, Xi Jinping, the leader of China, is also ditching this ridiculous summit that Boris Johnson is putting.
And people in other countries around the world who are resisting the tyranny of the sun monster technocracy, first you had the COVID technocracy and now they're trying to maintain their recently acquired power by pretending that the new existential threat is the sun monster.
A lot of other countries are looking...
To other nations for leadership now.
Where they once might have looked to the United States, they're looking to other nations because they don't want to import these kooky, woke ideologies like transgenderism or climate hysteria.
You see this right now in an article from the AP. AP just came out with an article.
Across Africa, major churches strongly oppose LGBTQ rights.
And when they say LGBTQ rights, they mean redefining marriage in a way that, you know, marriage for all of human history everywhere in the world involved sexual difference, right?
Maybe some places tolerated polygamy.
Some places in the Christian West did not tolerate polygamy.
But sexual difference was thought to have maybe something to do with marriage.
Now, five minutes ago in the West, we decided that isn't true.
And we really don't know what marriage is now anymore.
We've settled on this idea that it's a monogamous, well, not necessarily, because there's polyamory and all of this sort of stuff, but that it's a union of two people of any sex who love each other.
But they don't love each other the way that siblings love each other, and they don't love each other the way that friends love each other.
They love each other in this more romantic way, but for some reason it's only two people for now, but maybe it'll be three people.
We don't really know what it is.
So, The article begins, So they can continue
their practice of refusing to recognize same-sex marriage or ordain LGBTQ clergy.
And it goes on to complain about how these Africans won't accept woke Western secular ideologies.
You'll notice here they don't talk about the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church has not changed its view because the Catholic Church cannot change its view on marriage or these sorts of things.
But a lot of Protestant churches have and some Protestant churches are holding out.
So another way to read this article is African countries try to maintain their own culture And try to resist Western imperialism.
In this case, the imperialism of the pride flag or the progress flag.
It's even beyond the marriage issue.
You see it with abortion.
The West pushes abortion on Africa.
A lot of countries that don't want it.
Or the West pushes all sorts of things.
Contraception even too.
You would think that the woke people would be in favor of the Africans keeping their own culture and opposing Western imperialism and hegemony.
But they're not.
Because what we're seeing here is that liberalism is really not so much about you do you and I'll do me and live and let live.
It's not that at all.
Liberalism actually appears to be a fairly totalitarian ideology.
This is why we focus on the rainbow flag as the kind of new flag of the United States.
The flag of the United States, the stars and stripes, is a national flag that talks about the nation of America.
Which is a bounded concept.
The LGBT, the rainbow flag, is an imperial flag.
It's a universal flag.
The claims of the rainbow are just as true in Tibet as they are in Detroit.
This is a flag for all people at all times throughout history.
And the State Department is pushing this imperial ideology.
The State Department just yesterday tweeted out its support of International Pronouns Day.
State Department tweets out yesterday, quote, Today on International Pronouns Day, we share why so many people list pronouns on their email and social media profiles.
Read more here.
That's great.
We really support pronouns and men pretending to be women.
This is what it says, actually, underneath.
You can read it in the post.
Read on to learn why it matters what pronouns you use to refer to people and how the United States embraces sharing pronouns.
So, There are two questions here, or two possibilities, I guess, to the question, why is America sharing this?
Is it because America is just oblivious to how radical this idea is that men can be women, and it's important to pretend that men are women in some cases?
Or is it because the U.S. State Department knows that this is a poisonous but very effective ideology, and the United States is weaponizing it to increase our power and influence around the world?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I suspect it's some combination, actually.
I suspect that most of the pawns who are pushing this just think it's just true.
It's just true that men can be women.
It's just good to do that.
And I suspect a lot of people at the top recognize that it's a powerful ideological weapon.
It's an information weapon.
Either way, though, it is authoritarian.
It is an imperial ideology.
And people do have the right to resist it.
Back when the United States stood for truth, justice, and the American way, back when we were a Christian nation in our self-understanding, back when the West broadly was Christendom, I think a lot of us could get on board with sending that overseas.
That was the point of Columbus' voyage.
That was the point of Western exploration, to share the good news of the gospel and the civilization that Christianity created to the rest of the world.
And I'm on board with that.
Yeah, let's do it.
Let's go.
Let's bring the good news, man.
Let's do it.
As a great civilization, let's share it with people.
But now, if the empire is going abroad to share transgender bathrooms and climate hysteria and fear of the sun monster, I'm not on board with that.
And I have a great deal of empathy, actually, for the nations in Africa or Asia or wherever else that want to resist it.
People are resisting it here.
The ALCS was on TV the other night.
You've got A-Rod and Big Poppy were on Fox Sports discussing the game.
And the crowd decided to start chanting a very well-known expression, a variation on the phrase, let's go, Brandon.
Guys can come in like a chess in the queen or a rook on the chessboard, right?
These people have routines, but I think Ivaldi's the one guy he can get away with.
I thought Ivaldi kind of let his hair down a little bit.
He threw two most unbelievable split fingers for strikeouts for in two.
When Laz Diaz, by the way, missed 21 calls tonight, right?
The average is eight or nine for an umpire.
21 is a great deal.
When he got that call, I thought he lost his concentration and when he hung the split.
Kudos to A-Rod for not breaking his commentary.
He keeps pushing right ahead, but you can hear.
And it's not, let's go Brandon, that they're chanting.
It's the real version of that.
That took place outside Fenway Park.
It wasn't in South Carolina.
It wasn't in Texas or Tennessee.
That was in Boston.
It's become a meme.
And also, Joe Biden has a very low approval rating, even in places that might have voted for him.
I think the oppressed masses, yearning to be free, want political leaders to free us from the shackles of this libertine, woke, progressive, liberal madness.
And I think that politicians, Republicans, who run on the old squish way of things, I'm thinking of Asa Hutchinson in Arkansas, or any number of those squishes, who run and they say, if you elect me, I won't do anything.
I'll never impose my views on anybody.
I'm going to defend the neutral order.
You know the neutral political order of transgender bathrooms?
You know the neutral political order of completely redefining marriage?
You know the neutral political order of this, that, and the other thing?
No.
I think what people recognize is there is no neutral political order.
All polities have some view of what's good and wrong and bad, and we want our leaders to have a spine.
We want them to fight for us.
You're seeing this right now, speaking of sports.
In Texas, Governor Abbott just banned boys from playing in girls' sports.
Okay, cool.
Makes perfect sense.
The White House is furious.
This is what the White House said.
Quote,"...this hateful bill in Texas is just the latest example of Republican state lawmakers using legislation to target transgender kids whom the president believes are some of the bravest Americans." You know, they're just storming Iwo Jima.
"...in order to score political points." These anti-transgender bills are nothing more than bullying disguised as legislation and undermine our nation's core values.
You know Thomas Jefferson's core value, Abraham Lincoln's core value of letting dudes go into the girls' changing room.
You remember that?
Amazing how fast that happened.
Okay, it's amazing how quickly.
In 2012, 2011, Barack Obama opposed, and Joe Biden and everyone else opposed, redefining marriage.
Today, if you oppose letting Husky Hank go into the girls' changing room with your daughter, you're a bigot.
Amazing how fast that happened.
Conservatives used to say, oh, don't worry about these woke people.
Oh, don't worry.
Common sense will get the better of them.
I don't think that's true.
Common sense will only be around if people defend it and embrace common sense and enforce common sense.
Which brings me to another favorite politician of mine since I was a kid.
But he's getting criticized right now.
It's Rudy Giuliani.
He gets criticized because sometimes he does things that are eccentric.
So Rudy just posted on social media this image of him, this video of him, as a kind of face-swapped Abraham Lincoln talking about Terry McAuliffe in Virginia.
Virginia, vote against the man who dishonored our past by selling my bedroom clothes.
Hundreds and hundreds of times to scoundrels in a pay-for-play scheme.
In my time, we had a name for men who sold bedrooms for one night.
In your time, the name is Terry McAuliffe, and the Clinton flees once and for all.
I love this.
I love it.
I love it.
People are making fun of him and they're saying, Rudy seems crazy.
And what are you doing?
Oh, no.
Please stop.
No, I'm not a Rudy Republican.
I think it's great.
I think it's hilarious.
I think it's like Clint Eastwood talking to the empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention.
I think we need more of this in our politics.
A little levity, a little humor.
Trump was obviously the king of this.
I don't want to hear any more nitpicking of Republicans who are doing a good job and who basically have their heart in the right place and are basically doing the right stuff.
Okay, I don't...
Marjorie Greene is kooky!
Yeah, whatever.
I don't care.
Is she doing, like, good stuff?
Is she not doing evil stuff?
And is she doing good stuff?
And is she trying to go in the right direction?
Okay, that's fine by me.
Rudy?
Yeah, Rudy?
Man, he's America's mayor.
That's great.
Gotta recognize what the stakes here, folks, and cut it out with the squishy stuff, alright?
We gotta get into the mailbag.
First, though, you know, Drew is gonna be talking about this cold civil war that we appear to be in.
He's gonna ask if it is going to turn hot.
You can check that out today.
Also check out The Morning Wire.
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We'll be right back with The Mailbag.
Welcome back to my favorite time of the week, The Mailbag.
First question up from Asher.
Michael, my name is Asher, I'm 16, and I have a little philosophy question for you.
Imagine you live in a world where you had everything possible that you wanted.
Wealth, you had a perfect family, Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney voted using conservative values, all SCOTUS justices ruled like Scalia and Thomas, and most importantly, everyone used a ring alarm system, and But in order to live in this world, one person has to be humiliated and suffer every single day.
You have the option to leave this perfect life, but if you do, everything you have is not guaranteed to be the same.
Would you leave this perfect life where all of it is predicated on one person being tortured every day?
Thanks.
Love your show.
I would leave that world.
I do not want to live in a world Where I benefit, but only at the expense of someone being ruthlessly, needlessly tortured.
Okay?
This is a thought experiment that does come up sometimes, and the just answer is that, yeah, you would not accept a world where you get good stuff, but only by inflicting torture constantly on somebody.
Okay?
What's interesting about this thought experiment is its relationship to Christianity.
This is a fallen world.
This is a broken world.
And because of original sin, sin and death pervade the world.
And the consequence of that is our mortality.
So we're born and we have this wonderful, fun time and some free will.
But we're going to die, right?
And that is the consequence of original sin.
But there is...
Good news.
And the good news is that Christ dies on the cross and is crucified and redeems us and is resurrected and redeems us.
Our Savior lives.
Oh, happy fault that one for us so great, so glorious, a redeemer.
So in a way, our eternal happiness, which is provided for, through no particular help of our own, this eternal happiness does hinge on the The torture,
the sort of infinite suffering of Christ on the cross, the idea that God himself, the eternal logic of the universe, would be crucified, but would then conquer death.
So the greatest imaginable suffering, but would then actually conquer death on the cross.
So, there is a real theological depth to that question.
But if you're asking as an ethical matter, would you, you know, chain someone up to the radiator and torture them forever so you could have a good life?
No, not a good idea.
From Nick, good morning, Michael.
The nature of news reporting in the original sense has shifted dramatically in the past decade, so much so that younger people tend to take their news from influencers on social media, not traditional news sources.
As a result, influencers who have almost no credentials in news media cannot be held accountable if and when they boast an influential opinion, which produces the same results traditional news media produce.
The effect of this is that in the war for culture, the liberal media has claimed enough influencers to take the cultural tide, and the only current way for conservatives to win the war is to garner more influencers on social media than the left, something that is actively being suppressed.
My question is, is there a way, governmentally, to run around the problem, to rein in influencers with the same rules, and long story short, can social media be safe from the libs via government intervention?
Sincerely, Nick, the happily married one.
I think you're overestimating the credibility of journalists before this happened.
You know, someone like Walter Cronkite, the most trusted journalist in America, was a gigantic lib and a world federalist who probably lost us the Vietnam War.
So, frankly, if it's between...
I don't know.
Nicki Minaj, you know, or Kanye West tweeting something and Walter Cronkite having a monopoly on credibility.
I'm with Kanye.
You know, I don't want to go back to a world where Walter Cronkite is trusted.
Dan Rather, my goodness, Dan Rather is a liar.
He's a lib liar, but he was trusted by many people for a long time.
I don't want to go back to that.
I say this as an influencer.
I don't have a journalism degree.
I've never worked as a reporter.
I have worked as a journalist for a long time.
I've written books and I've done shows and things like that.
But I guess I'm an influencer.
But I would rather my influence be in the politics than that of Walter Cronkite.
Now, for the suppression of the right-wing influencers on social media, can the government be used to help?
Yeah, totally.
I asked Bill Barr this.
I said, how do we do it?
Do we do it through claiming that the big tech companies are violating their Section 230 responsibilities from the Communications Decency Act, that they shouldn't be protected from liability?
Should we do this by saying they're really publishers, not...
Should we do this by saying that they're a monopoly?
Should we do this by saying that they're committing fraud?
And he said yes.
All of the above, but we should do it.
Because if you control speech in a republic, you control the whole political order.
So, yeah, we should use the government against our political opponents who have a lot of political power in big tech.
That's just common sense.
From Caitlin, hey Michael, question for you.
How many kids is too many?
I'm the youngest of four kids.
Our parents are divorced.
In the hustle of shuffling between mom and dad, the consistency of always having my siblings was comforting.
I was talking about this with my sister somewhat recently.
She's the eldest sibling, and she shared that she has some resentment for having to take on parenting roles while still a child herself.
Both of our parents worked, and so she had to fill in the gaps, especially with me.
I'm now married and have two children.
My husband and I have always had the good old Catholic approach.
However many children the good Lord will bless us with, I want to make sure I am available to provide for emotional and physical needs, and they don't need to get that from their siblings.
I'm not saying I want to be like 19 kids and counting, but I don't want to be done at two.
Sincerely, I don't want to be the reason my kids need therapy.
Yeah, keep having kids.
Be open to life.
It's great.
It's great.
You know, why not?
The problem that you and your siblings had is not that you had too many siblings.
I mean, you said that's a great comfort.
The problem is that your parents got divorced.
And actually, the number of siblings was a great comfort for you.
So I would do it.
I would say more.
There are going to be some downsides.
You won't be able to pay as much attention to every kid, and you won't be able to buy them Christmas presents that are quite as expensive.
So what?
You have a good big family, and if you keep the family together, it's a great gift you can have.
I come from a small family myself.
Sweet little Elise and I are working on growing our family.
You know, it's a great deal of fun to work on that sort of thing.
And we'd like to, and we're just going to remain open to life and have as many kids as we can.
But my father comes from a big family.
He's got five siblings, which used to be considered a small Catholic family.
Now it's considered a gigantic family.
And it's great, and it's just a wonderful thing.
And I think the siblings are all really grateful for one another, and we, you know, who are in the next generation, are really grateful for it.
It's...
It's worth a lot more than, you know, nicer Christmas presents or something.
I think you really can't put a price on how wonderful it is to have a big family.
From Allie, my dearest favorite podcaster, my question to you is in regard to female sports.
After the laughable WNBA parade, I had to ask, what are your thoughts on the low viewership of female sports?
Mostly basketball because the other ones are all right to watch.
But specifically, do you think that networks like ESPN, shoving them down our throats is hurting them at all, or not affecting it because they're lame on their own?
The WNBA will never be popular, so do you think it should just cease to exist, or should we just allow them to play and ignore the left's attempt to make it equal to men's sports?
Sincerely, they need to stop trying to make fetch happen.
Yeah, it's not cool at all, and the only reason you hear about it, even, is because they make a big political stink about it and force the NBA to subsidize it, and then, as you say, the networks try to push it on you.
But even so, no one shows up to the parades, right?
So, yeah, sports are for physical excellence.
So, generally, as a rule, people are only going to watch men's sports.
There are some exceptions to this.
They're going to watch women's gymnastics.
They're going to watch women's ice skating.
There are certain sports that...
Do you even call that really a sport?
It's certainly an athletic feat.
So you're going to watch things where you're watching the greatest displays of physical excellence.
And so in some cases that can be women, but in the vast majority of sports it's going to be men.
And I guess the one exception I would say to this is in tennis, but I think that's really just because of the celebrity of the Williams sisters.
I don't know that people would really care that much about women's tennis if not for them.
They really became a big celebrity...
A couple.
Not a couple like they're dating, but the two of them really help popularize that sport.
But yeah, in general, people are not going to pay attention to it.
So I couldn't name WNBA players, and I don't pay any attention to it at all.
And I say this as someone without really a dog in the fight, because I've never been the most athletic fella in the world.
But if I am going to watch sports, I want to watch, as everyone does, we want to watch the best and the strongest and the fastest.
And Just as a fact of biology, that is going to be meant.
From Quaid.
Hello, Smokey Mike.
Hello.
Hello, Quaid.
I was wondering what your opinion on how secularization in Europe from 1500 onward contributed to society.
My one university class is requiring a final paper on how secularization was what drove the success of Europe.
I got permission from my professor to argue that it was not secularization, but rather the fulfillment of Judeo-Christian values that drove the success of Europe and that secularization was what led to the atrocities of the 20th century and the decline of Europe.
I was wondering what resources you would recommend to best argue my position.
Thanks, a Canadian who escaped to Florida.
Well, I think your position is a little confused because you're talking about the great success of Europe after 1500.
But you're then focusing, then you have to explain away the lack of success.
Then you have to explain away the atrocities.
So I guess the first question you have to ask is, is Europe's great success post-1500?
I don't really think it is.
I think that this is a line of argument that is argued by woke people and secularists and liberals and Protestants to some degree because you'll notice what happened in 1517 was the beginning of the Protestant Revolution.
And so I think as a result of that...
First Protestants and then liberals and then secularists had to rewrite history to say that everything before 1500 was really bad and it was filled with the dark ages and people who didn't know anything and a lot of that was just completely made up.
But you think about the greatest works of art and the greatest contributions to Western civilization and Well, I don't know.
Thomas Aquinas, that was before 1500 by a lot, right?
St.
Augustine, that was a long time before 1500.
Dante Alighieri, that was a long time before 1500.
And, you know, there were a lot of wonderful artistic developments afterward, but I don't think they were a major break from the civilization before 1500.
Actually, a lot of it comes from the counter-reformation.
A lot of it comes from artists like Caravaggio or Rainey or other people who created so much of the art and the beautiful cathedrals and things that we think of when we think of Western civilization.
So I would maybe make the argument that secularization, which I do think actually does trace itself to the Protestant Revolution because it cracks up the confidence of Europe to make truth claims and leads to liberalism.
Which then led to secularism, which has led to wokeism.
I think that you might make the argument that secularization led to Europe's downfall.
And I think you might make the claim that Europe was actually a great deal stronger before secularization began.
From Kathy, hi Michael, love your show, thanks for all the great work you do.
I have a question about a situation that's come up at work recently.
My company is requiring that I participate in an interactive unconscious bias training.
I want to be better about speaking up in a way that's authentic and true rather than staying quiet or worse, equivocating.
Not sure if this is the forum for this, but do you have any tips for how to articulate reflections on this topic from a conservative point of view?
I'm a very facts-first person, so it's hard for me to think about how to do this in what is sure to be a feelings-oriented conversation.
Thanks.
Sure, it depends what they bring up to you.
The issue with unconscious bias is if their argument is that you have these unconscious biases, but then once they become conscious, you can cure them, then you can just judge them on the merits.
Is, you know...
Are they really bringing up unconscious prejudices?
Are those prejudices bad?
And what should I do to fix them?
But usually what they say is, everyone has these unconscious biases and prejudices, and everyone's racist.
All the white people are racist, but no other people cannot be racist.
You can be a white person who doesn't hate people on the basis of their race.
You can be a black person who does hate people on the basis of their race.
The white guy will still be the racist, and the black guy will still not be the racist.
Or the anti-racist or whatever.
So if that's the case, and they say, well, yeah, we can talk about these unconscious biases, but you can never fix them.
Then I would say, well, then what's the point of the training?
If there's nothing we can do about it, then what's the point of the training would just be to instill a sense of racial guilt, you know, an irredeemable racial guilt.
So I would avoid that.
And then I would stand up against the claims that you find false.
And I would be firm about them.
You don't need to be flamboyant, but I would be firm.
And I think you mostly need to be aware that that could have professional consequences for you.
And I think you ought to have the integrity and the courage to stand up for them and do it in a way that's prudent and wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove.
But you might have to face consequences for it.
Increasingly, we all might have to face consequences if we want to stand up for what is good and true and beautiful.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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