A Democrat gubernatorial candidate says “diversity and inclusion” is as important to a student’s education as math and English, a Yale epidemiologist encourages parents to pull their kids out of school rather than making them take the Fauci Ouchie, and Dave Chappelle refuses to cower to the woke mob.
Daily Wire just signed ousted ESPN sportscaster Allison Williams who resisted Disney’s vaccine mandate for a new sports series. Take back your content from the Hollywood elites - get 25% off a Daily Wire membership with code DONOTCOMPLY: https://utm.io/udJyw
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
As parents around the country, and especially around Virginia, storm school board meetings to keep radicalism out of the classroom and boys out of the girls' room, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe is doubling down on his promise to keep parents out of their kids' education, most recently insisting that the ideology of diversity and inclusion is as important to a student's education as math or English class.
I make the point that we've got to do a better job in our education system.
We've got to go back K-6.
Early on, we've got to start teaching, talking about these issues much earlier than we've done it before.
And we don't do a good job in our education system talking about diversity, inclusion, openness, and so forth.
We don't.
We've got our textbooks.
But, you know, there has to be a big part of how...
How do you fit in into the social work of our nation and our fabric?
How is it that we deal with one another is, to me, is as important as, you know, your math class or your English class and so forth, and we don't.
As the liberal ruling class turns up the pressure on normal Americans, people are starting to break rank.
A prominent Yale scholar is encouraging parents to homeschool.
Dave Chappelle is refusing to cower to the radicals.
Down in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis is calling out the regime by name.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday from Eddie Gesch, who says, you know, I remember a time not that long ago when we were energy independent.
Yes, there was a time not that long ago we were energy independent, the economy was great, unemployment was at historic lows, we were defending America, keeping a lot of crap out of the classroom, enforcing our immigration laws.
How long ago?
Oh, that was like, what, three years ago or something?
But now it's much...
That was in the bad days when everything was working, and now we're in the good days where nothing is working.
And prices are going through the roof and the grocery shelves are empty and every time you fill up your gas tank, you nearly go bankrupt.
Well, I've got one way to help fix that last problem.
You've got to check out GetUpside.
I am thrilled to introduce an incredible app that everyone who buys gas needs to know about, needs to get right now.
It is GetUpside.
My listeners are making up to 25 cents for every gallon of gas that they get every time they fill up.
How you do it?
It's very simple.
You download the free GetUpside app in the App Store or Google Play right now.
Use the promo code Knolls.
Get a bonus 25 cents per gallon on your first fill up, which means up to 50 cents cash back.
You don't pay full price at the pump anymore, okay?
You get cash back using GetUpside.
Download the app for free.
Use promo code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, to get up to 50 cents per gallon cash back on your first tank.
Some people who drive a lot are making as much as $200 to $300 per month in cash back.
There's no catch.
The cashback gets added right into your account.
You don't need to go chase it down, okay?
You can cash out anytime to your bank account, PayPal, or an e-gift card for Amazon or other brands.
Just download the free GetUpside app.
Use promo code Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to get up to 50 cents per gallon cashback on your first tank.
That is code K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Terry McAuliffe says that inclusion and diversity and openness, the ideology of our regime, that's just not taught in schools.
Not nearly as well as it should be.
Now listen, I have not been in school in a long time.
I graduated from college about nine years ago.
Graduated from high school, what, 13 years ago.
And...
Therefore, I graduated from middle school 17 years ago, and I graduated from elementary school 20 years ago.
And even then, in all of those schools, including elementary school, They were already teaching the ideology of diversity and inclusion and openness a lot, quite a lot.
Okay, we've been teaching that in our country for a very, very, very long time.
To the detriment and the neglect of English and math and history and all of the actual subjects.
I actually agree with Terry McAuliffe in his most broad philosophical point when he says, teaching students how to get along together and how to be citizens with one another, that is a very important part of education.
That's true.
That was the point of civics.
But we've replaced civics.
We no longer teach civics.
We no longer teach about the American system of government and we no longer teach about the brilliance of the founding fathers and the men who developed our country.
We no longer inculcate in our students a love of country and a desire to be a good citizen.
We do the opposite.
We teach them that the country is evil, that the founders were evil, and that the best way to be a citizen is to tear everything down.
That is achieving the opposite goal.
From the idea of proper civic education.
And the whole time, we're also neglecting the actual academic subjects.
That's what we've got to teach, though.
And if parents don't want to teach diversity and equity and inclusion, well, they can go to hell.
Because I, Terry McAuliffe, I, the Virginia...
State bureaucracy, I, the school boards in Virginia, we are going to make the decisions.
Even if it means that a little girl gets raped in a high school bathroom.
You know that story.
This is the story that Daily Wire broke.
No one wanted to talk about it.
Daily Wire broke the story.
They've got transgender bathrooms in Loudoun County and a boy who wears a dress viciously raped.
I mean, the most extreme rape, I'm not going to go into the details, it's as horrific as it gets in a bathroom because a boy went into the girl's room, a boy who's allowed to pretend that he's a girl sometimes and boys and girls are allowed to go into whatever bathroom they want.
A girl was victimized and then the school covered it up because the school is obviously guilty here of at least extraordinary negligence Well, first the school tried to cover it up.
Then the school tried to deny it.
Now a Virginia court has ruled there is enough evidence to find that this boy, who occasionally pretends to be a girl, did in fact engage in, quote, non-consensual sex.
Now maybe me, maybe I'm just old-fashioned, maybe I'm just a little thick and stupid, but when I was a kid, non-consensual sex was called rape.
But now we don't call it rape, because rape evokes real images.
It's an evocative word.
Non-consensual sex, that's just another kind of PC jargon to paper over the harsh reality of this situation.
The radical leftists in Virginia schools engaged in a delusional policy based on the false premise that boys can be girls and girls can be boys.
And as a result of this, a girl was raped and they don't want to take responsibility.
Well, that's what happened.
And Terry McAuliffe has to own that.
The parents are saying, we don't want this in our schools.
The leftists are saying, we do want this in our schools.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Terry McAuliffe has to own this.
Michael, how can you say Terry McAuliffe doesn't run the school?
He's not the superintendent.
He's not the principal.
He didn't even push this policy in the school.
Come on, Michael.
Look, it might have happened even if they didn't have the transgender bathrooms.
Yeah, maybe.
It would have been a lot harder, first of all.
Would have been a lot less likely to have happened.
And the buck stops with the governor.
This guy was the governor, Terry McAuliffe.
He wants to be the governor again.
And he's pushing for these policies.
So he owns it.
And this is not just at the local level.
It's not even just at the level of Virginia and the Commonwealth and state level.
It goes up to the national level.
But I think people are misreading the real motivations here.
So, the White House just released the National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality.
Okay, this Kamala Harris just tweeted it out.
You've got container ships off the coast that can't get any goods and services.
I suppose they don't have a lot of services on the container ships.
You go into a grocery store, the shelves are empty.
You go to the gas tank, the prices are through the roof.
You try to go into a restaurant, but you've got to show your VAX passport.
People are losing their jobs if they won't take the Fauci-ouchie.
Countries in turmoil.
That's why we need a national strategy on gender equity and equality, right?
A lot of people think...
One, this is a big distraction.
A lot of people think, two, this is Marxism, you know, this is some radicalism, and it's undermining our great liberal democracy.
I think there's something even more basic at play here.
Just listen to the first paragraph of the National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality.
President Biden and Vice President Harris believe that advancing gender equity and equality is fundamental to every individual's economic security, safety, health, and ability to exercise their most basic rights.
It is also essential to economic growth and development, democracy and political stability, and security of nations across the globe.
Economic growth.
Hold on.
Gender equity is important to economic growth.
You go down a few pages, some more platitudes in here, and then you see this strategy identifies 10 interconnected priorities.
Guess what number one is?
Economic security.
It seems to me that all this crazy gender focus and the push of transgenderism and feminism and making sure that women work as much as they possibly can in the widget factory and never stay home and raise their kids and never have a family and never run the household and they just work work work for the man.
I think that a lot of this Comes not even necessarily from Marxism or from radical social theory.
I think a lot of it just comes from neoliberalism.
I think a lot of it comes from the ruling elite that just wants to make as much money as they possibly can.
And when half the country is staying home raising kids, they're not going to make as much money and GDP is not going to be as high.
So they've got to force women out of the home and they've got to force women to go work for some guy doing spreadsheets for their entire life.
So that they can make enough money so that they can pay some other woman to raise their kids if they choose to have kids at all, which is increasingly less and less common.
And I think that's really what it's about.
You'll notice after the economic issue, you've got improving economic security.
Then they talk about gender-based violence.
Then they say increasing access to health care.
What do they mean by health care?
It says it right here in the second bullet point.
Defend the constitutional right to safe and legal abortion in the United States, established in Roe v.
Wade, and promote access to sexual and reproductive health and rights both at home and abroad.
Of course, abortion is not reproductive health.
It's the opposite of reproduction.
It's killing a baby.
Why?
Why do they push abortion?
In part, it's these radical social theories, but in part, it's that women can't be expected to just go back and work all the time and continue to seem indiscernible for men if they can't kill their babies.
Because babies, the ability to conceive and bear children is a difference between men and women.
So you've got to push contraception.
You've got to push abortion.
You've got to push women out of the home.
This was a big debate between Betty Friedan, the American feminist, and Simone de Beauvoir, the French feminist.
Betty Friedan said, give women the choice to work or stay home.
Simone de Beauvoir said, no, you can't.
If you give women the choice, too many of them will stay home.
And that's not conducive to liberation.
And I think our neoliberal ruling class, I think they see the exact same thing.
Follow, as always in politics, follow the money.
We've got to protect our civilization.
We've got to protect our homes.
When you want to protect your home, I'd recommend you check out Ring.
You know that I go on the road a fair bit, and sometimes when I go on the road, I go solo, and I like to know that my wife and sweet little baby can know who is outside the door before they open that door, and sometimes I take the family with me, and then I still get incredible peace of mind from Ring.
With Ring, you can keep an eye on your home.
Not just that you all know about the video doorbell where you can see and speak to whoever is at your door, wherever you are, whether you're in the home, at the office, on the beach, on the other side of the world.
But you can keep an eye on every inch of your home, inside and out.
You control it all from the very simple app.
It's extraordinarily easy to install.
Even I can do it.
And with the full Ring Alarm system, you can subscribe, get even more features, and it's extremely inexpensive.
It's just a terrific product all the way around.
Protect your home anytime from anywhere with Ring Alarm.
Go to ring.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, for a special offer on a Ring Alarm security kit today.
Build a system that is right for your home.
Have it up and running in minutes.
That is ring.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, ring.com slash Knowles.
The White House has a national strategy on gender equity and equality.
Nothing says girl power quite like that news this week that a man has now been promoted to the first female four-star admiral in the United States.
You know this, Dr.
Richard Levine, who is the Assistant Secretary of Health, and he goes by Rachel now, and he, the Assistant Secretary of Health, is a man who believes that he is a woman, though he of course is not.
He was just given this promotion to four-star admiral.
He's not in the military.
He's a four-star admiral in the commissioned corps of the public health service, and they say that he is a female admiral, but of course he is not because he's a dude.
Nothing says girl power like a man taking a woman's job.
It's also just not true.
So we covered the Levine story a couple of days ago.
But one aspect of it that we're missing is that while the media are reporting on this guy as though he's the first female four-star admiral, he's not.
That honor would go to Admiral Michelle J. Howard.
She is the first woman to become a four-star admiral.
She retired from the Navy four years ago.
So Levine is not even close.
He can claim to be the first guy who says that he's a woman to become an admiral.
I think that he might claim to be the first female admiral in the Public Health Corps, but again, because he's not a woman, I could claim to be a giant octopus, and it wouldn't be true.
But even the claim that the media are making here, they are erasing an actual woman who actually attained this title in deference to the new transgender ideology.
Speaking of unfairly taking credit for the accomplishments of other people, and speaking of Terry McAuliffe, There's something even more delicious about watching McAuliffe squirm in Virginia.
McAuliffe tried to defend this indefensible position that parents should have no right in their kids' education.
McAuliffe really beginning to fall in the polls in a blue state.
Because of this issue.
Which is that Terry McAuliffe is also really undermining the Democrats' favorite slogan of the right-wing insurrectionists.
You know, what the left has been telling us, for the past year at least, is that if you question the results of an election, you are undermining our democracy and you're an insurrectionist and you're a domestic terrorist.
And then, what did Terry McAuliffe do this week?
He denied the results of an election.
So let me now bring out, she would be the governor of Georgia today had the governor of Georgia not disenfranchised 1.4 million Georgia voters before the election.
That's what happened to Stacey Abrams.
They took the votes away.
That's what happened.
It was illegitimate.
It was unfair.
Oh my goodness, someone call Adam Schiff.
Someone call Liz Cheney, that great defender of our democracy.
This man, this man, Terry McAuliffe, he's inciting an insurrection.
He's eroding faith in our institutions.
He's undermining our democracy.
He's doing that a hell of a lot more clearly than the horn guy at the Capitol or the smiley guy who took Pelosi's lectern.
By golly, this man's a former governor.
This man's running for governor again, and he...
Oh, Liz Cheney, I know that you're so earnest and sincere in your defense of our institutions.
Well, let's have an investigation of Terry McAuliffe, right?
Except we won't.
Except we won't.
By the way, Terry McAuliffe, earlier, I think just last month, Terry McAuliffe was asked what he thought about the 2000 presidential election, Bush versus Gore.
And he denied the results of that election, too.
And of course the left has done this for a long time.
They did it in 2000.
They did it in 2016.
They still haven't admitted that Hillary lost.
And they pretended that Trump didn't win.
And they're still doing it with Stacey Abrams.
So it's just bunk.
It's just bunk.
And people like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, he's like the store brand Liz Cheney, and all of the rest of the Democrats.
I know that Cheney and Kinzinger have an R next to their name, but, you know, all the Democrats...
They're just full of it.
And there's just no reason to take any of that seriously.
And the whole purpose of the insurrection talk and all of that is to split the right.
It's to split the squishes, the people who go a little lily-livered and weak in the knee, away from the rock-ribbed people.
But I'm pleading with you, lily-livered people and those who go weak in the knee, don't fall for it.
It's a trap.
It's a lie.
They don't believe any of it.
They undermine our democracy and our elections every chance that they get.
If McAuliffe goes down, If Terry McAuliffe fails in Virginia and the Republican Glenn Youngkin wins, it will not be because of undermining faith in our institutions, and it won't be because of taxes, and it won't be because of immigration.
It will be because of this school issue.
This is a really important issue.
This is an issue that I think can bring together a lot of people who are conservative, who are libertarian, who are normal, who are of any stripe, who are even left-wing but still kind of reasonable.
They're going to say, no, of course, our kids are in these schools for eight hours a day or more.
Our kids are going to be there for 13 years or more.
So if we want to have any say in how our children are raised, we need to have some say in the schools.
And this has a medical aspect too.
Right now the schools are trying to force the Fauci ouchie on a bunch of healthy kids who face statistically very, very, very, very low risk of hospitalization or death from coronavirus.
An infinitesimally small risk.
And, at least according to one study from UC Davis, they might face some risk from the vaccine.
And we really don't know.
There are no long-term data on the vaccine.
Just by definition, the vaccine is very new.
And so, there's a real question that parents are facing.
Why would I inject my kid with this experimental drug when the drug is supposed to protect against a virus that poses almost no, very, very low risk to him?
Well, that argument is getting buttressed by a very serious, well-credentialed epidemiologist.
That would be Professor Harvey Risch at Yale.
So he's one of the top schools in the country.
Harvey Risch says, if you as a parent are facing the choice between injecting your kid with the Fauci ouchie, even if he's otherwise healthy, and pulling your kid out of school, you should probably do the latter.
If the child has chronic conditions that make their risk appreciable, then there's a reason that they should be considered for vaccination.
Other than that, if it were my child, I would homeschool them.
Honestly, I would organize with other parents.
To take them out of the school and create homeschooling environments.
There's no choice.
Your child's life is on the line.
It's not a high risk.
Vaccination is not a high risk that's going to kill every child by doing so.
However, it's enough of a risk that on the average, the benefit is higher for homeschooling than it is for vaccination and being in school.
And that's just the bottom line.
You know, we were seeing employees in the companies facing mandates quit or being fired.
And now the public perceives that.
And companies are having a hard time replacing those employees.
In the climate of bad employment circumstances and missing workers, it's getting even harder.
And so those policies are being rethought.
When the people rebel because of their own interests, then it has to be reckoned.
It does have to be reckoned.
And I think the great relief here for a lot of people is not even that this guy is pointing out the questions about the vaccine or permitting the, at least giving parents the permission, the intellectual permission to go put their kids in homeschool.
It's that finally we're seeing a scientist who sees the big picture.
This was one thing that really bugged me about Trump.
I know his back was against a wall.
He was facing this unprecedented crisis and everyone and every power in the entire country was coming after him and demanding that he lock down and listen to Fauci.
But the big mistake here for those early coronavirus press conferences was that the only people who talked were Trump and the doctors.
Right?
Fauci and Dr.
Scarf and the other one, that Surgeon General jerk who spends all his time now just attacking conservatives.
Was this Jerome Powell?
Is that his name?
Jerome?
Not Jerome Powell.
Jerome Adams.
Yes, that's right.
Jerome Adams.
So, why is that the problem?
Well, the left said all we should be listening to is Dr.
Fauci and Dr.
Scarf and Jerome Adams.
All we should be listening to are the doctors, but that's not true.
Because it's a country.
We're talking about the politics.
Politics refers to public things.
There's more to the public than just germs.
Trump also probably should have had a military advisor get up there and speak, and had an economic advisor get up there and speak, and had a constitutional advisor get up there and speak, and had people speak from different segments of society, because what the president is supposed to do in particular, but what our public representatives are supposed to do, is bring together all these different segments, all these different interests in society, so that we can have a coherent, balanced public policy.
But that's not how the regime wants to govern itself, okay?
That is not how the technocratic progressive regime wants to be just run by a bunch of eggheads that kick out every other interest in society.
And there's at least one Republican governor in this country who sees the problem for exactly what it is.
By the way, if you haven't already heard the news, the Daily Wire has signed Allison Williams to lead a very special sports series exclusively for our members.
Alison was a seasoned sports reporter for ESPN. She announced her resignation last week because Disney, which is ESPN's parent company, is forcing their employees to receive the Fauci ouchie or get fired.
Well, here at The Daily Wire, leftist elites do not get to dictate our content.
You do.
So if you want sports content without the woke, then...
Become a member at dailywire.com slash subscribe and use code DO NOT COMPLY at checkout.
You will get 25% off.
That is dailywire.com slash subscribe code DO NOT COMPLY for 25% off and join the fight.
Also, you can subscribe and start listening now to Morning Wire on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Leave a five-star review if you like what you hear.
year.
We'll be right back with a lot more.
When the Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch comes out and says parents should pull their kids out of school if the schools are going to demand they take this experimental Fauci-Augie, I think this is a great surprise that This is wonderful.
And the most surprising thing here might be that someone from Yale is doing that.
Yale is a very far left place right now.
So it's great to see.
That's very shocking.
That's kind of the cherry on top of the sundae.
Well, there's another guy who came from Yale who is standing up to this regime.
That would be the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who is calling out our ruling class by name.
We're not going to let the federal government come in and impose bad policies or mandates on Floridians.
We're going to make sure we're protecting parents And students in the state of Florida.
We're not going to let the Department of Justice be weaponized to infringe First Amendment rights of parents.
We're going to fight to preserve the rights of parents.
And as we continue to see the use of fear and intimidation to suppress opposition to the regime, we're going to find new ways to be able to empower parents' rights to decide what is best for their children.
That one word, that one word gives you the clue that Ron DeSantis sees what's going on here.
Regime.
What do we mean by regime?
Regime is a little different than the Democrats.
Regime is a little different than the leftists.
Regime is the entire ruling power structure.
Which includes some Republicans.
And it includes some squishes.
And it includes some people who probably wouldn't even call themselves political.
Like Dr.
Fauci.
Dr.
Fauci says, I'm not political.
I'm just in public health.
Now this is a complete nonsense.
Politics refers to public affairs.
But he thinks, no, no, no, but I'm just, I'm in public health.
I'm just a scientist.
I just follow the science and you all have to do whatever I say.
that doesn't make me a politician.
I'm not the ruler.
I'm merely the vessel of the science, right?
And there is the public health establishment.
Then there are all those other agencies.
You know, all of those other agencies like OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
OSHA is the organization tasked with forcing all of you to take the experimental Fauci-Auchi, right?
It's not even Biden.
It's not like it's the courts.
It's not like it's some legislator who did this.
It's Biden tasking some random bureaucrat, part of the regime.
And DeSantis is calling that out by name.
And regimes, by the way, have ruling ideologies.
What is the ruling ideology now?
You keep hearing everyone talking about it.
Not just Democrats, but even some Republicans.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion.
We all hail diversity, equity, and inclusion.
What is that?
It's a weird mantra.
It's a weird kind of religious mantra.
I was emceeing.
A dinner, the annual Claremont Institute Gala in Los Angeles.
They actually had to relocate from Los Angeles to the more conservative Orange County because of all of the stupid mandates in LA. Ron DeSantis was the award recipient.
He won the Statesmanship Award that night.
And so I had a long opportunity to speak with him at the table over dinner.
And then I got to hear his speech.
And he used a lot of the same language in the speech.
And he was, he called out the regime by name in the speech.
And he described the ways in which the Republican Party and the conservatives have been kind of wrong in their shallow in their approach over the last 20 years.
He said a lot of the same things that we say on this show.
And that is kind of in the current right now.
This is a guy, I think, who knows what time it is.
And I think it's very, a lot of other conservatives are catching on to this too.
DeSantis is getting a lot of attention because he's a governor, so he's got an executive role in Florida.
He clearly wants to be president, so he's putting himself into national politics.
There are other people who are governors who want to be president who don't get it.
Kristi Noem in South Dakota has made misstep after misstep, fallen back on the same ridiculous talking points, the same corporatist sucking up to the various woke interests.
That when push comes to shove, she's not going to stand up for the difference between men and women.
When push comes to shove, she's not going to stand up for the rights of people to maintain their way of life over the rights of employers to force everyone to take the Fauci out.
At the crucial moment, she's kind of broken.
DeSantis is not.
This is a very good sign for DeSantis in Florida and for whatever ambitions he has after Florida.
But it's not just governors who can do something here.
Some people stand up in the Senate, for instance, and kind of know what time it is there, but ordinary people, too.
There's a great story I just saw on CBS Evening News.
I don't remember the last time I uttered that sentence, but there was a really great story on CBS Evening News about some dads in Louisiana.
There was a school in Louisiana where 23 students Nobody here has a degree in school counseling.
No majors in criminal justice.
No.
Your qualifications are?
We're dads.
We decided the best people who can take care of our kids are who?
For us.
I immediately felt a form of safety.
We stopped fighting.
People started going to class.
How could that be?
You ever heard of a look?
A look?
Dads have the power to do that?
Yes.
Not many people know it, but yes.
They just make funny jokes like, oh, hey, your student's on Tide, but it's really not on Tide.
And they hate it.
They're so embarrassed by it.
And it's that perfect mix of tough love and gentle ribbing that dads do so well that has helped transform this school.
The school has really just been, like, happy and you can feel it.
Because not everybody has the father figure at home.
Or a male period in their life.
So just to be here makes a big difference.
So there is so much wisdom in this segment, and there's so much wisdom in what these dads are doing.
I think there are two levels here.
There's the first level, which I think we all know, which is that fatherlessness causes the decay of society.
You notice this especially in the black community because rates of out-of-wedlock birth are over 70% now.
And fatherlessness has been blamed for a lot of the sort of social pathologies, specifically among black Americans.
And it's true wherever it rears its ugly head, this problem of fatherlessness.
So we all know, yeah, you've got to protect the family.
You start with good families.
You keep the father at home.
You're going to have a much better society.
But there's a deeper level of wisdom even here, too.
What are the fathers doing?
The fathers are, in the home and at the schools, they're showing up and providing leadership and a good example and some levity, you know, some of these little jokes, the dad jokes that everyone talks about.
End restraint.
End authority.
End limits.
End the look.
What did that girl say?
She said, he said, how do these dads do it?
It's not like they have any degrees.
It's not like they've got any particular governmental authority.
She goes, you ever hear of a look?
You know when dad gives you, what is that look?
That look is a warning.
That look is a threat.
But that warning and that threat is coming from someone who does love you and who does want what's best for you and who is entrusted with your care.
So he doesn't want to go kill you.
He doesn't want to destroy your life.
But he wants to exercise his authority and to constrain your desires and basest appetites to make sure that you flourish.
This is what politics does.
The family is the fundamental building block of society.
It's the smallest political unit.
Then you have the local community, then you have the state, then you have the national government.
But the principles apply the whole time.
And a good political community is not libertine and licentious and doesn't say, just do whatever you want.
A good dad doesn't say, go do whatever you want.
Oh yeah, go do a bunch of drugs.
Stay out all night drinking, teenager.
Yeah, go sleep with whoever you want.
Yeah, don't do your homework if you don't want to do it.
I'm a good dad because I'm respecting your freedom.
No, that's not freedom.
That's going to destroy somebody.
Doesn't work at the family level, doesn't work at the local or the state or the national level either.
You need wise leadership, judgment, prudence, restraint.
The left doesn't like that.
The left blew out all of the restraints and now they're reimposing them along their own lines.
And the conservatives are so stuck in a bunch of libertarian claptrap that they won't do it either.
When the left says, let's legalize all the drugs, what does the right say?
Okay, well, actually, I read some stupid libertarian essay a few years ago, so yeah, let's legalize all the drugs.
The left says, let's get rid of all sexual mores.
The right says, well, you know, I love liberty, and so if liberty means letting anyone sleep with whoever they want, however often they want, wherever, with as many people, that's totally, that's cool, whatever, let's do that liberty.
No, guys.
Take a lesson from those dads.
Those dads get it.
Listen to those kids.
Those kids get it.
Look at the difference in what's going on in those schools.
Speaking of cool black guys standing up against liberal decadence, this is a very narrow category of topic, but it works.
Dave Chappelle.
Dave Chappelle's been in big trouble.
Dave Chappelle had a Netflix special.
Dave Chappelle mocked the idea that a boy can become a girl.
And now he's in big trouble.
And there are protests at Netflix.
And the Netflix CEO initially stood by Chappelle.
But now he's kind of caving and he's going weak.
And Dave is under the gun.
So Dave released a response to the transgender activists who are demanding his head on a platter.
And Dave's response was, in my view, pitch perfect.
To the transgender community, I am more than willing to give you an audience, but you will not summon me.
I am not bending to anybody's demands.
And if you want to meet with me, I'd be more than willing to, but I have some conditions. .
First of all, you cannot come if you have not watched my special from beginning to end.
You must come to a place of my choosing and a time of my choosing. - Thank you.
And thirdly, you must admit that Hannah Gadsby is not funny.
Absolutely right.
And so the punchline is what everyone's focusing on here.
Hannah Gadsby was trending yesterday.
She is this woman who did a Netflix comedy special, but the whole hook of the special was that she wasn't actually doing comedy.
They said she has redefined comedy because what she said wasn't funny and it was all just kind of sad.
And it wasn't even really supposed to be funny.
It was just sad.
And so she had redefined comedy.
This was the new comedy.
And by the way, there was a word for the new comedy.
It's called tragedy.
But the idiot critics did not know.
I guess they didn't know that word at the time.
So audiences hated Hannah Gadsby's special, but the critics loved it.
If you look on Rotten Tomatoes, It's got 90% plus, I think it's like 96% critic score and a very, very low audience score.
Then if you look at Chappelle's special, it's got a very low critic score but a very high audience score.
That's how you can tell that Dave Chappelle is doing a good job.
So everyone's focusing on the punchline.
You gotta do this, you gotta do this, and you gotta admit Hannah Gadsby's not funny.
But the setup of the joke is what's more important politically.
This is, I'm not just playing the Chappelle clip because he's a funny guy and we can all get a laugh.
I'm doing it because he's got a political lesson here.
And the political lesson is throughout, and it's really more focused on the first two things he says.
He frames the debate.
Chappelle obviously understands politics.
So right now he's being protested.
There's a lot of money on the line.
I mean, he gets paid very well for these specials.
And if Netflix isn't going to work for him anymore, and if the radical leftists and the LGBT LMNOP activists are successful, then he's not going to work again.
And he's going to lose millions and millions of dollars.
And maybe Chappelle doesn't care.
He's a wealthy guy, but I think he wants to keep doing comedy.
And so what he does is he goes, listen, I'm willing to talk to you people.
Sure, you're demanding that you talk to me.
He had another funny line in his response where he said that transgender people are saying they don't feel safe.
He goes, I'm the only person who's not allowed into the Netflix office right now.
I'm the only one who's being threatened here.
You guys aren't being threatened at all.
But he frames the debate.
He says, I'm willing to talk to you on my terms.
You do it.
First of all, you have to watch my special.
I'm putting a constraint on you.
I'm making a demand of you.
Then you've got to come where I want you to come.
Then you've got to do it at a time when I want you to do it.
And then you need to admit.
This is the little cherry on top.
When he says you need to admit that Hannah Gadsby is not funny, what he's saying is you need to admit that I have a point.
And you need to admit that the people support me.
And you need to admit that the people support me because I'm right.
Okay?
There's a lot, a lot here.
This is the reason it's funny.
I mean, you know, it's the old line from any comedy club.
People say, it's funny because it's true.
That's what's going on here.
Dave Chappelle's...
Special and his response are funny because they're true and there's an important lesson.
When you look at the people who are right now really standing up in executive positions in politics, whether it's at a comedy special or in Florida or at the national level, DeSantis sets the debate.
Donald Trump sets the debate.
He's always framing the debate from his point of view.
Whoever frames the issue wins the debate.
I don't think that the uproar about Ron DeSantis or about the curricula in schools and critical race theory and gender theory and big tech and all of these related issues, what we are being told by the geniuses out there is that this is all about censorship.
Free speech or censorship.
That's what we're being told by the geniuses on the right or on the non-left, you know, the disaffected leftists.
A great example of this would be Glenn Greenwald.
He says, Glenn Greenwald is this, I guess, formerly leftist journalist.
Now he's kind of independent.
Nobody owns him.
He has a relationship with WikiLeaks.
Says a lot of interesting and correct things and says some other things that are a little kooky.
He says, quote, I regard it as nothing short of tragic that free speech, which began as a core enlightenment value and then was built into a real ideology by the U.S. left, In bold, in the 20th century is now demonized as a right-wing view and begging Google to police our speech is left-wing orthodoxy.
I regard that as nothing short of tragic too, Glenn, but I suspect it's for different reasons.
It is true that right now free speech is a right-wing cause and censorship is the left-wing cause.
It is true that free speech began as an enlightenment value, core enlightenment value, Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
I don't know.
I'm not a huge enlightenment guy.
I know that a lot of right-wingers now make themselves out to be big enlightenment guys, but I don't know.
I kind of like the older stuff, you know?
Maybe I'm a little old-fashioned, but I don't think that the enlightenment, I don't think that the 18th century and afterward, I don't think that was the peak of European civilization.
I think it was more like the 16th century or even a little earlier, maybe the 15th century.
Even a little earlier than that, when you think of all the great works in the West, you think of the high Middle Ages, you think of the great developments in philosophy, the great developments in art and architecture and the beautiful cathedrals and all the wonderful paintings.
It was all before the Enlightenment.
As far as I can tell, the Enlightenment was kind of the beginning of the end, and everything started to fall apart, and you had all these insane ideologies that came out of it.
Well, you had liberalism was the chief export of the Enlightenment, but then, you know, communism, fascism kind of fall out during the age of ideology.
Everything starts to fall apart.
So it's a core Enlightenment value.
It was built into a real ideology by the U.S. left.
I think that's true.
Whatever free speech meant during the Enlightenment, it's not what it means now.
And I talk about this in my book, but if you read what John Locke, the father of liberalism, writes about free speech, it is very different.
It's much more right-wing.
It's much more authoritarian than the way we talk about it now.
John Locke didn't think atheists had any right to speak.
Okay?
John Milton didn't think that atheists, or Catholics even for that matter, had any right to speak, really.
So...
Yes, it became a real ideology built by the U.S. left, and now it's described as a right-wing view.
But it's not a right-wing view.
We should recognize.
I'm going to be speaking at Miami tonight, at the University of Miami.
I'm going to be speaking about Dave Chappelle.
I'm going to be speaking about the Black Panther Party.
I'm going to be speaking about the...
The way in which we talk about free speech today.
We're going to cover some ground we haven't covered before.
It might be a little bit of a barn burner.
It should be fun.
If you're out in Miami, come on out.
I think this is a big mistake.
I know that we have this boogeyman of authoritarianism!
No!
We're the real liberals!
That's what conservatives say now.
I'm a conservative because I'm a real liberal.
I'm not a real liberal.
I'm a conservative because I'm a conservative.
Call me simple, but...
I think that those dads in Louisiana make a really good point.
Yes, we want people to be free.
The point of education is to make us free.
It's to learn the liberal arts.
It's to have a liberal education to make sense of our freedom.
And that involves guidance and guardrails and limits.
And frankly, even a little bit of coercion.
And a little bit of a threat of transgressing.
You don't want to transgress.
You don't want to get into fights.
You don't want to do bad things.
Because dad's going to give you that look.
Okay?
And because there is such a thing as the law, and there are social mores, and there at least once was a coherent society that had standards and taboos.
And that's how you become free.
You don't become free by doing whatever you want, and sleeping with whoever you want, and doing whatever drugs you want, and getting into whatever fights you want.
Okay?
Speaking of truth and falsehood, Which I think is really what's at stake here.
The way we talk about free speech is just you can say whatever you want or you can't say whatever you want.
What if you can just say true things?
What if we defend true things and we suppress false things?
What if we do that in the traditional kind of way that we've understood speech and politics?
Well, speaking of truth and falsehood, we have one of the greatest...
One of the greatest corrections in the history of the media, this by way of the Washington Post.
