The White House announces a meaningless “diplomatic boycott” of the Chinese Olympics, lame duck DeBlasio pushes a vaccine mandate for all private sector employees in New York, and Switzerland legalizes 3D-printed suicide pods.
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Steal American intellectual property and take American manufacturing and take over semi-sovereign states and run concentration camps to genocide your own people and start a global pandemic and shut down the whole world for a couple years without consequences?
I don't think so, buddy.
Jen, tell them what we're going to do.
The Biden administration will not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games, given the PRC's ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.
The athletes on Team USA have our full support.
We will be behind them 100% as we cheer them on from home.
We will not be contributing to the fanfare of the games.
U.S. diplomatic or official representation would treat these games as business as usual in the face of the PRC's egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang, and we simply can't do that.
As the President has told President Xi, standing up for human rights is in the DNA of Americans.
We have a fundamental commitment to promoting human rights And we feel strongly in our position, and we will continue to take actions to advance human rights in China and beyond.
We're going to continue to take big actions, like a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics.
You know, like, we're still going to send all the players and stuff, and we're still going to totally participate in the Olympics, but we're not going to send any government employees, which means that you, you don't get a photograph with Pete Buttigieg.
Take that, Jinping!
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is from FarsideSC, who says, Although I found the Jersey Shore reference to be humorous, whoever knew the reference on your staff should be fired for having watched the show.
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The diplomatic boycott of the Chinese Olympics.
It is a completely meaningless gesture.
It does not scare China in the least.
It does not have any consequences for China.
If the United States kept the players away from the Olympic Games, that might have some effect.
It would certainly tarnish the credibility of the Olympics.
It would certainly take down the ratings.
The But withholding some diplomats and some cabinet officials or Pete Buttigieg, it's not going to do anything.
It almost would have been better if the United States had done nothing at all.
But to go out and say, as Jen Psaki did, there is a genocide going on in China.
The leader of China is slaughtering whole races of people in concentration camps.
And then to move forward with this weak, meaningless action, it's worse than doing nothing at all.
And it sends the message that the United States is not serious.
Does anyone really believe that if, really when, China goes into Taiwan, China goes into the United States' interests in the South China Sea, that the U.S. is going to go send in the Marines?
Does anyone believe that?
After pulling out 20 years of war in Afghanistan, after all the wars in the Middle East, does anyone really think that the American people want to go to war in Asia to save Taiwan or some other island?
No.
No, no one really believes that.
Xi Jinping doesn't think that.
This is the weakest possible response from an administration that is extraordinarily weak.
Now, sometimes the weakness of the Biden administration actually benefits conservatives and the American people more broadly.
We're seeing this right now when it comes to Joe Biden's vaccine mandate.
So right now, Joe Biden has issued multiple vaccine mandates.
It gets a little bit confusing because there's the government employee vaccine mandate, there's the government contractor vaccine mandate, there's the OSHA vaccine mandate, which uses the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to force some employers, employers with 100 or more employees, to force their employees to get the Fauci-ouchie.
That's the one that the Daily Wire is fighting and we're winning on.
But Joe Manchin, rather, a Democratic senator, ostensibly part of Joe's party, is saying no, he doesn't want to go along with this.
And he's actually saying now that he will side with the Republicans to work on a bill that will undermine his own president's And his party leader's vaccine mandate.
He says, quote, I do not support any government vaccine mandate on private businesses.
That's why I have co-sponsored and will strongly support a bill to overturn the federal government vaccine mandate for private businesses.
The lesson here is simple.
Stand firm.
Stand firm.
A little courage goes a long way.
When Joe Biden issued his vaccine mandate, he thought he could get away with it because the Democrats control the entire government.
They have both houses of Congress and they have the White House.
And the courts aren't particularly favorable to Republicans either, even though there are plenty of Republican judges there.
He thought, Joe Biden thought, I've got the administrative state, I've got the media, I've got Hollywood, I've got woke corporate America, I've got the schools, I've got everything, and so I can do this and no one's going to fight back.
And then a handful of people fought back.
And I don't want to brag too much here as someone from the Daily Wire, but the Daily Wire led that charge among the private employers.
And we sued the Biden administration and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Other people sued in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
And we're winning.
And we're very clearly winning.
And when you show a little bit of courage, that's going to show other people that they can show a little bit of courage.
And that's what's going on right here.
And Joe Manchin is standing up to the leader of his own party.
And now it looks like we're going to win.
And there's very little that the Democrats can do about that.
Shows there's not unity even within the Democratic Party here.
at the local level, it doesn't matter.
Places that are completely blue, so blue they're actually red, not red like Republicans, red like the commies, they're going to push for even more vaccine mandates.
You're seeing this in New York right now.
Bill de Blasio has announced just yesterday that he is going to force all private sector employees in New York City to take the fauci-auci.
We in New York City have decided to use a preemptive strike to really do something bold to stop.
The further growth of COVID and the dangers it's causing to all of us.
So as of today, we're going to announce a first-in-the-nation measure.
Our health commissioner will announce a vaccine mandate for private sector employers across the board.
All private sector employers in New York City will be covered by this vaccine mandate as of December 27th.
We're going to have some other measures as well to really focus on maximizing vaccination quickly so we can get ahead of Omicron and all the other challenges we're facing right now with COVID. De Blasio is going to launch a preemptive strike 21 months after two weeks to slow the spread.
It's going to be very preemptive because of the Omicron.
And, you know, the Omicron that hasn't killed anybody yet and the Omicron that doesn't seem...
Particularly dangerous compared to the other variants.
Yes, he's going to launch this vaccine mandate.
And a lot of conservatives are saying, Bill de Blasio doesn't have the right to do this.
This is a violation of fundamental rights.
I don't think that's true, and I don't think it's a winning line of argument.
I think Bill de Blasio has the right to do this.
I think, especially local governments, they have the right to enforce a whole lot of laws that I don't like, including vaccine mandates.
They have the political right.
We have some individual rights.
But we also have political rights as a community, and one of those rights that has been asserted in the United States going back 115 years at least, Is the right to public health and specifically the right to vaccines and inoculations and mandating that people do that.
So I'm not denying that Bill de Blasio has that political right.
I think it's a terrible decision.
I think as a prudential matter, it's awful.
I would oppose it vigorously.
But the only question that matters is not whether Bill de Blasio has some abstract political right.
It's does he have the political power to enforce this?
The good news for New Yorkers, and don't forget, I was born and raised in New York.
I have a great deal of love for my fellow New Yorkers who are unfortunately suffering under Bill de Blasio.
The good news is he's a lame duck.
He's on his way out.
There's a new mayor that's coming in.
And so he doesn't have a ton of political power.
If I were giving prudential advice to employers in New York right now, and maybe I am giving prudential advice to them, I would say, just shrug your shoulders.
Maybe drag your feet a little bit.
Maybe slow walk this thing.
De Blasio is a lame duck.
We need to do that.
We need to turn all these guys into lame ducks.
This is a good issue.
This issue of forced vaccination, specifically in schools.
These are winning issues that can bring together a whole coalition of people, not just the hard-right, far-conservative traditionalists, not even just the libertarians, but even disaffected liberals.
Got to get much more prudent.
Why does a serpent innocent as a dove?
All that prattling around about abstract rights isn't going to save you a single freedom or way of life in New York or elsewhere.
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If you stand up against the liberal ruling class, you are going to be vilified.
That is guaranteed.
And you are going to be called a racist, why?
I don't know, you will.
And a sexist, huh?
Where does that come from?
I don't know, that's just what they're going to call you.
They're going to go so far as to call you a murderer.
They're already doing that.
They're saying if you don't do exactly what we say, even if our guidelines contradict themselves one day to the next, if you don't do exactly what we say, you are a murderer, you're responsible for the epidemic, you're responsible for people dying.
This is what the cackling hens on The View said just yesterday about the new, Spooky Omicron variant.
They feel that their greater good is more important than your greater good.
Well, you know, it was interesting to me that the argument was being made, if you're vaccinated, why do you care about me being vaccinated?
You're protected.
And that's why we are at the Omicron variant.
Omarion, Omicron variant, right?
That's why we are where we are, because it's mutating.
It's becoming this crazy superbug inside of the people that aren't vaccinated.
And now it's affecting us.
I don't know why they were not understanding that.
We've got like 80 million people that are not vaccinated.
They understand.
They understand.
They don't want to.
We all understand.
So first of all, the CDC has already told us that the vaccine does not totally prevent you from contracting the virus or transmitting the virus.
They told us this at the end of July.
This is why the vaccinated are still required to wear masks, even in lots of different settings, even after they've received the vaccine.
This is why people are receiving all of these boosters.
And now we're being told in Israel they're contemplating requiring a fourth shot to be fully vaccinated.
And there seems to be no end in sight.
So spare me the sanctimony there.
But furthermore, let's just take them at their word.
The unvaccinated are causing or they're leading the cause of the new variants and their petri dishes and they're creating all these new variants of COVID. What we are told right now by the scientists,
by all the geniuses, is that the new Omicron is less dangerous than the Delta variant, for instance, or the original variant, or some of the other flavors as well.
When viruses mutate, they generally speaking become less dangerous.
And these less dangerous strains can become the predominant strains.
Isn't that a good thing?
If you've got a relatively dangerous variant, and then it mutates and becomes relatively less dangerous, and then the relatively less dangerous one becomes the predominant strain, isn't that...
Better than letting the more dangerous one be the predominant strain?
Am I stupid?
Am I thick?
Am I not reading things correctly?
Here's this from the New York Times.
I'm definitely going to be stupid if I keep reading the New York Times.
The New York Times headline, Omicron is moving fast, but perhaps less severe, early reports suggest.
Researchers in South Africa, where the variant is spreading quickly, say it may cause less serious COVID cases than other forms of the virus, but it's unclear whether that will hold true.
Maybe that'll change over time.
That's right.
right.
As of now, as of recording, I don't think anyone has died from Omicron.
So why is everybody freaking out?
We should be happy that the virus is becoming less and less severe as viruses do.
That's just, that's just what happens.
That's why we're not living through the Spanish flu 1918 every single year.
We're living through endemic sort of seasonal flus that are not particularly severe.
At least we were before COVID.
Then last year, the flu basically just disappeared.
Remember that?
That was kind of strange too.
Speaking of people getting vilified by the media, I've got to take the side of the victim.
I've got to take the side of the man who's down and out.
I'm going to take the widow's corner.
I am going to stand up for poor Fredo Cuomo.
Poor Fredo Cuomo has done a lot of bad things.
I don't particularly like him.
I'm thrilled that the House of Cuomo is done, politically speaking.
But I think that they're doing him a little dirty, okay?
He lost his CNN show.
We've now found out that Fredo has lost his serious XM show.
This is his explanation for it.
The way my time ended at CNN was hard.
While I have a thick skin, I also have a family for whom the past week has been extraordinarily difficult.
So right now I have to take a step backward and focus on what comes next.
That means I will no longer be doing my Sirius XM radio show.
I'm extremely grateful for the support I've received from Sirius XM throughout my time there.
I also want to express my sincere appreciation for my loyal listeners.
I will miss our conversations a great deal, but I look forward to being back in touch with you all in the future.
So this can be one of two things.
One, I don't think this is particularly voluntary.
I don't think he gave up his only other source of employment just because I'm going to take a step back.
I suspect he's done.
People are going after him.
So why?
Either it's because there's another shoe to drop.
Either it's because they've got a bunch of scandals up their sleeve that they're going to drop on him and they're either threatening to release it if they don't play nice, if he doesn't play nice, or it is already going to come out and Cuomo's trying to get ahead of the story and back out.
So that's one option.
Or...
There's no more serious scandal coming out, and Fredo Cuomo is just no longer politically useful to the left, to CNN, and to Sirius.
His dad, Mario Cuomo, is dead.
His brother, politically, is dead.
And so why do we have Chris Cuomo around anymore?
He's not particularly valuable politically, so he's out.
He's canceled.
He's done.
Which is why I think this is going to sound like a little bit of an out-there proposal, but just hear me out.
I think The Daily Wire should hire him.
You know, that's what we do.
We hire people who get canceled.
Alright, we did it with Gina Carano.
Now we've got this great movie with Gina Carano.
We did it with...
Sports journalists.
We've done it with political journalists.
We stand up for people who get cancer.
And I think that we need to bring the Chris Cuomo show over to the Daily Wire.
It would be so funny.
Obviously, we would need a lot of editorial control.
We would need Chris Cuomo to just basically say things that we agree with.
But I think it would be hilarious.
I would do it for the lulls.
Chris, if you're watching this show, I assume you are, think about it.
Ben, if you're watching this show, I know you're not.
Think about it too, please.
Chris Cuomo is trying to manage his cancellation right now.
And I think everyone involved is trying to do it relatively, as nicely as a cancellation can go.
But there are already fault lines.
There are already tensions you can see.
Chris Cuomo for instance just making a statement that Jeff Zucker, the head of CNN, knew exactly what he was doing the whole time.
So, Chris Cuomo gets fired not for lying to his audience, not for lying about COVID, not for that ridiculous special where he pretended to quarantine, remember, for a period of time, wouldn't see his family, and then they filmed him coming out of quarantine, and, oh, wow, I get to see my family again.
Except we found out that was a lie.
He was hanging out with his family the whole time he went on bike rides in the Hamptons, and actually, the way we know about that is because he got into a fight with a guy in the Hamptons while on a bicycle.
So, not for lying, not for his dishonesty, no, he's going to get fired for helping his brother.
What?
That doesn't seem...
So then people raised some questions about this, and now you're hearing talk of potential sexual harassment allegations, which generally appear when people are politically weak and on the verge of being canceled.
You sprinkle a few of those on top.
It's like sprinkles on an ice cream sundae.
He helped his brother.
He's no longer politically useful.
That's the ice cream and the chocolate fudge and the frosting on top and the whipped cream.
But then you put some sexual assault allegations.
That's the little sprinkles on top of the sundae.
So, a spokesman for Cuomo just said in a text message, There were no secrets about this, as other individuals besides Mr.
Cuomo can attest.
Yeah!
Oh, there it is.
There is Cuomo twisting that knife with a big smile on his face.
Just a spokesman.
A spokesman just saying, look, no, no, these men are really close.
Chris has such respect for Mr.
Zucker.
Oh, yeah.
Chris and Mr.
Zucker are super tight.
Oh, yeah.
They talk about everything.
And Mr.
Zucker knows about everything.
And other friends of Zucker's and Cuomo's know that Zucker knows about everything.
So don't try it, buddy.
Don't try this.
Don't pretend.
That Chris Cuomo was out here on his own helping his brother and no one knew about it.
That's obviously...
I said this on the show.
You know, I hate to tell you I told you so.
I said, everyone at CNN knew about this.
There's no new information.
In terms of what CNN knew about their host, nothing has changed in the past week or two.
All that has changed is the political calculation.
And now they're going to pretend, oh gosh, we're rooting out corruption.
B.S., B.S. These sexual assault allegations, I don't know, maybe they're sexual harassment or whatever, they're vaguely insinuating.
They seem trumped up to me.
They seem fake.
Maybe they're true.
But what it seems to me is CNN got caught.
They got caught in some really corrupt practices.
They're trying to throw Fredo under the bus.
They're trying to take him out on that lake in that little fishing boat.
And Fredo...
Fredo is in a standoff right now.
But I hope, I have to tell you, this is like the Iran-Iraq war.
I hope they both lose.
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Also, right now, you've got to subscribe to The Morning Wire.
If you are not tuning into The Morning Wire, you're not getting your news in the morning in that quick 15-minute, not a ton of commentary, not a ton of analysis, just here are the facts.
The left is really good at this.
That's why they have the New York Times and they have NPR. And what they do is they pretend to give you the facts and they speak in a really quiet voice.
And they say, hi, welcome to the New York Times.
I'm Michael Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba.
And Joe Biden is good and Trump is bad.
And they're giving you a lot of leftist opinion, but in a way that seems like they're just giving you the facts.
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We'll be right back with a lot more.
Welcome back to the show.
Some really good news coming out of Washington.
That is a sentence I almost never say, but there is really good news.
And we have a handful of Republican senators to thank for this.
Notably, Ted Cruz, great friend of the show, rather.
Hawley, Josh Hawley, sponsored this amendment.
The great news is that We might not yet, as a nation, start drafting women and sending them into the line of fire.
You'll remember that during the vote over the National Defense Authorization Act, there was a provision that the Libs put in there to draft women.
And some squish Republicans went along with this, and it's disgusting.
To me, a vote for drafting women is basically disqualifying if you are a conservative.
But a lot of people went along and a lot of other conservatives didn't raise a ruckus.
There were a handful of us who said this is disgusting, this is shameful.
Anyone who votes for this does not deserve to walk into the Capitol, does not deserve their seat in the House or in the Senate.
And so some of the good guys in the Senate pulled it out.
Josh Hawley last month introduced an amendment to the NDAA that would strip out that language about drafting women.
The amendment was co-sponsored by Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Roger Marshall, Roger Wicker, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Steve Daines, James Langford, John Boozman, Mike Lee, and Marco Rubio.
And I say all of their names because they deserve credit here.
They deserve credit for taking that out.
If we as a nation start drafting women and sending them to go die in the Middle East or whatever we're going to send them to do, we are not a nation worth defending.
Okay, what do we stand for?
The whole reason that people go out there and fight to defend this country is to protect the women and the children and our way of life.
But you're telling me, you libs and you squishes that go along with it, that you want to upend that way of life, upend those standards, send the very thing that we're protecting, the very people we're protecting, the very institutions we're protecting, send them overseas, throw them under the bus, get rid of them entirely.
It's ridiculous.
What some of the squishes would say, or the liberals would say, is, well, you know, look, men and women are just the same as men, and they should have all those same responsibilities and opportunities as men do, including getting drafted and dying overseas.
No, they're not the same as men.
That's the point, guys.
Remember?
We're the conservatives.
Remember that?
We're the ones who say men and women are different, stuff like that, and there's biological reality.
And there's things like chivalry, and we should hold the door for women, you know, and we should, because we're different and all that.
But yeah, but women want equal rights, so that, yeah, right.
But the libs, just because the libs and the feminists say that men and women are exactly the same, doesn't mean that we should go along with that.
It's not owning the libs to accept all of their fundamental premises.
That's called owning yourself.
Okay?
Don't do that.
So great job to all these guys, clearly showing some moral clarity.
And speaking of moral clarity, I've got to address a topic that, oh gosh, this got me in a lot of trouble over the weekend.
I was on Twitter, you know, just wasting time on Twitter, and we were debating abortion.
And all these libs were very upset that there's a chance that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v.
Wade.
And then hopefully we conservatives can go further and ban abortion everywhere.
Make it illegal.
And prosecute abortionists.
And this is basic stuff.
And the libs lost their minds and said that this is terrible and abortion's a wonderful thing.
And I pointed out abortion is the worst thing America's ever done.
And the libs thought they had a trump card.
They said...
How dare you say that, Michael?
How dare you say that abortion is worse than slavery?
Of course abortion is worse than slavery.
Abortion is much, much, much worse than slavery.
It's not even close.
By just about any metric that I can think of.
Other than the most inhuman materialist standard that takes no account of moral or ethical or metaphysical reality, abortion is much, much, much worse than slavery.
Just on the standard of liberalism, just on the standard of we have natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, If you're talking about abortion and slavery then you're talking about abortion which deprives you of your right to life and slavery which deprives you of your right to liberty.
Liberty is a secondary right.
You can't have liberty without life.
So of course if those two come into conflict you've got to go with life.
Furthermore, we know that life is this precious gift that we have been given, without which we don't have any of the other rights.
So, putting aside liberal philosophy for a second, just go back to basics.
Just remember that life is not a right, it's not just one among many, it is the prerequisite right for all of the other rights.
And so, of course, if you are deprived of that, that is a more grievous offense than if you are deprived of some of your autonomy, if you are deprived of a lifetime of autonomy, even.
But slavery involves suffering.
Yeah, well, getting chopped up in the womb involves suffering, too.
But even beyond that, you're telling me that because one suffers, it would be better to die?
No one really believes that, because we all suffer.
And you people who are making that argument right now, you people out in the Twitterverse, not you listeners, you're very sensible people, but you libs who are making the argument that if one has to suffer, even immensely, like we're talking about with the case of slavery, that it would be better to die, you don't believe that.
Because you suffer and you don't kill yourselves.
Which is good.
You shouldn't.
Suffering is a fact of life.
And suffering can be a bad thing if you react to suffering in a destructive way.
Or it can be actually an edifying thing.
A sanctifying thing.
If we react to suffering with patience and with virtue.
It can actually help us to grow.
Suffering is just a fact.
It's up to you to react to that.
But I don't think that killing yourself, saying that suffering, even immense suffering, justifies killing yourself or being killed, I don't think that makes a whole lot of sense.
Of course abortion is much, much worse than slavery.
And by the way, all of you right side of history people who look down on our forefathers and make more, forget about the slaveholders for a second, just anyone who came before us who maybe made an untoward remark or did something that you disapprove of, just you wait.
Just you wait until you hear what future generations will say about you.
Which you will hear because there is a metaphysical reality and there is heaven and hell.
If you believe, as some of the moderns do, that the whole point of life is just to get physical pleasure, and a lot of libs believe that, I guess that's the only way that you could convince yourself that slavery is worse than abortion.
Because...
Life doesn't really matter.
It's just this kind of bizarre accident of the physical universe and we just happen to think that everything matters and that we have loves and joys.
But it's not.
It's just chemicals firing off in our brain and all we're here to do is get pleasure.
So if you die, it's no big deal.
And if you suffer, it's a really big deal and it's really bad.
If you believe that idiotic, completely unsubstantiated view, then I guess you could come to that conclusion.
But the conclusion happens to be wrong.
There's another non-proversy I want to address.
I got in so much trouble Over the weekend on Twitter.
This would be a statement I made that there is no First Amendment right to be a commie.
Okay?
And so here not only did I irritate the libs, but I irritated some of the more excitable libertarians.
But it turns out I'm right.
Sorry guys, you know I hate to say it, but I'm right.
There is no First Amendment right to be a commie.
There have been many laws in American history, going back to the earliest administrations, going back at least to the second presidential, the Adams administration, that have circumscribed the First Amendment right to free speech to preclude certain ideas, especially if those ideas are seditious or would lead to the overthrow of the government.
You see this from federalist administrations.
You see this from democratic administrations later on.
You see this from the early 20th century presidents.
You see this in the 1940s and 50s.
There was something called the Smith Act.
The Smith Act was used to prosecute communists and fascists and anarchists.
Now, some libs will point out, well, some of those convictions were overturned.
Yeah, they were.
That's unfortunate that some of those convictions were overturned.
But the law still remains substantially on the books.
If you, in this country, it's still in the U.S. Code, if you openly advocate for the violent overthrow of the United States government, if you write pamphlets advocating this sort of thing, if you give speeches advocating this sort of thing, you can be prosecuted.
Very often you're not prosecuted anymore because we're not as serious a country as we once were.
But that is still on the books, folks, to pretend that all of those laws, including the Smith Act, We're completely overturned, completely deemed unconstitutional, is BS. All right?
And it comes...
The reason that the liberals don't like this is because the liberals very often have commie sympathies.
The reason the libertarians don't like this is because they have an unrealistic, anti-historical view of the First Amendment.
And I like the libertarians.
Listen, some of my best friends are libertarians, okay?
But...
That view that the First Amendment allows you to say basically whatever you want is not true.
It's philosophically incoherent, and it historically has never existed, okay?
And I happen to have written a book about this called Speechless, which is selling like hotcakes, by the way.
It was the number one national bestseller when it came out.
It's still selling great for Christmas, so I appreciate it if you have got that book for your friends, for your family.
To go along a little history of political correctness, the use of language in politics, the First Amendment for that matter.
Really appreciate that.
There's another book that you can give to your liberal friends this Christmas to educate them.
That would be Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a comprehensive guide.
That would be my first book.
Really appreciate you giving the gift of knowledge out.
Speaking of the libs, Remaking Society.
Oregon may very well make masks permanent.
Not two weeks to slow the spread, not two months of masks, not even two, just permanent.
The Oregon Health Authority's Rules Advisory Committee is reportedly drafting a more, quote, permanent set of rules for masking in the state, despite the fact that the state mask mandate has already been in place for months.
They're going to make it a little bit more permanent.
This episode today might be the told you so episode, but a lot of you knew it too.
It's not like I'm telling you something that you didn't know.
A lot of us were saying in the comments and in All Access and on the show and elsewhere, we've been saying from almost the earliest days of the COVID stuff, that That there was no end to that.
It wasn't going to end in two weeks or two months or even two years.
Ronald Reagan had that line.
He said, there's nothing nearer to eternal life on earth than a temporary government program.
There's a lot of wisdom in that statement.
That's true.
When the government, or even when big corporations or when other powerful interests take power, they very rarely give it back.
And the masks are useful to the powerful.
It can be debated how useful they are at protecting the public health or stopping the spread or slowing the curve or beating it back or whatever they talk about.
Dr.
Fauci himself seems to have debated this issue with himself when he said, don't wear the masks, they don't work.
And then five seconds later he said, do wear the masks, they're very important and you need to wear them all the time.
But what cannot be debated is that as a political symbol they are very effective.
In the beginning of the lockdowns, the libs and the squishes told us that if you wear the mask, it will hasten our return to normal.
Some of us out there said the opposite is true.
The longer we wear the masks, the longer this is going to go on.
Because the masks are a visual cue.
They're a symbol that things are not normal.
That we're living in extraordinary times and we need to give up extraordinary power and rights to the people who are claiming to rule us during this emergency.
And now they want to make it permanent.
It seems so arbitrary, it seems so capricious, but it is a symbol, a political symbol, of their ability to rule.
The only way to take that power back is politically, you know, vote these guys out of office and put in sane people, but also just push back a little.
Maybe don't be so quick on the draw to put the cloth on.
Use your prudence if you really want to.
Maybe you really like the masks.
Okay, that's fine.
But if, as this all seems, this is capricious and arbitrary and extraordinarily partisan and political, maybe...
Use your prudence.
Okay, that's all I am.
Am I allowed to say that?
I don't know.
I don't know, because the liberal establishment controls everything, including big tech.
Speaking of political power and tech, Devin Nunes is retiring from Congress.
He's just announced his retirement from Congress.
Devin Nunes was, still is, a rising star in the Republican Party.
He was really good on some of the government abuse during the Trump administration, the deep state abuse against the Trump administration.
Well, now he's leaving Congress.
I think he's leaving even before his term is over.
He's leaving to run a Trump tech media enterprise.
And people are, the libs are laughing and dancing and they're so happy and they're even kind of making fun of him.
They're saying, oh my gosh, you're leaving Congress to go do this crazy thing with Trump?
Yes, he is.
And it makes perfect sense as to why he is.
Because he didn't have any power in Congress.
Because the power of Congress, such as it ever was, has been usurped.
It's been usurped in part by the deep state.
It's been usurped in part by private industry.
Because of deregulation.
Deregulation from the left in certain cases and deregulation from the right.
What Devin Nunes is doing is just what Jim DeMint did when he left the Senate because he said he couldn't do anything in the Senate.
He went and ran Heritage.
Now he's running the CPI, another conservative institution.
Because power does not lie exactly where we think it does.
Where I'm a Bill up on Capitol Hill Schoolhouse Rock told us it was.
Speaking of shifting political power.
There is a horrifying headline coming out of Switzerland.
Switzerland has legalized, or is in the process of legalizing, 3D printable suicide pods.
An Australian doctor, Philip Nietzsche, it's kind of fitting that his name sounds like Nietzsche, you know, this very nihilistic, brutal thinker.
He has announced that 3D-printed devices that are being called euthanasia pods are a coffin-like device that makes assisted suicide accessible for nearly everybody and without medical intervention.
You don't even need a note from your doctor to kill yourself.
It will soon be available in Switzerland.
Nitschke has said that his purpose in making these devices is so that everyone can commit suicide with little medical assistance.
Suicide pods.
This is, if you want to blame the left for this, the culture of death in a really creepy form.
But I think you can blame the right for this a little bit, too.
This is capitalism, man.
This is free enterprise, isn't it?
This is just a businessman pursuing his business, giving consumers choice.
He's probably not going to have very many repeat customers, but this guy is going to get rich selling people their death.
And even if he doesn't, even if he just gives it away.
Here, it's open source.
You can 3D print it for free.
You don't need to pay a licensing fee.
This is just creativity.
It's creative destruction.
It's definitely destruction.
I bet there are going to be some people on the right who are okay with this.
Well, it's their choice.
It's their body, their body, their choice.
There are people on the right who actually believe that.
Some people on the right use that expression, ironically, to point out the hypocrisy of liberals who claim my body, my choice when it comes to abortion, but do not claim my body, my choice when it comes to vaccines.
Folks, it's just a line.
It's just a slogan to own the libs.
We don't actually believe that.
At least I don't.
I, as a conservative, do not actually believe that you have the right to do whatever you want with your own body or to your own body.
No.
We are constrained by the moral order.
There is a transcendent moral order, and we are responsible to that.
We didn't create our bodies.
We didn't choose to come into this world.
I hope we don't choose to come out of this world.
I hope we reject this culture of death from this lunatic in Switzerland, or the lunatic in Australia, and then the political lunatics in Switzerland.
Okay, we have responsibilities.
You're not just allowed to do anything you want just because you want to.
We're not just pure will.
Okay, we're also intellect.
We're also moral conscience.
If this is something that your political ideology can look at and not have a problem with, it's probably time to check your premises.
Something has probably gone wrong in your political thinking if you think this is fine.
This represents the literal suicide of the West.
The literal suicide of our civilization.
That's bad.
I don't want...
I, for one, don't want that.
And so the things that are leading our civilization to commit suicide...
Whether that is the destruction of our culture, the emptying out of our churches, the breakdown of the bedrock political institution, such as the family and larger political institutions, the breakdown of loyalty to our own countries, mass migration, the decline of birth rates, mass abortion, or in this case, literal suicide.
Whatever it is, we've got to stop it.
Because I want to live, okay?
I want to live here in this world.
I want to live eternally in the spiritual world.
And I want our culture and our civilization to live as well.
And the libs want it to die.
And there are some squishes who don't really seem to have an opinion one way or the other.
They just say, well, it's choice.
Well, it's whatever you want.
Well, it's the free market.
Well, it's capitalism.
Well, no, man.
There's no neutrality when it comes to life or death.
Pick a side.
Speaking of promiscuous sex, oh no, hold on, there was something I wanted to get to before I get to this.
Because promiscuous sex does have a pretty big role in the death of the West.
But before I get to the Biden administration on this, I want to get to Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders and a lot of other Democrats are defending abortion as the central sacrament.
Right?
This is the sacrament of leftism.
So Bernie says, quote, We can't go back to the days when women had to risk their lives to end an unwanted pregnancy.
We must pass legalization that codifies Roe v.
Wade as the law of the land.
And if there aren't 60 votes to do it, and there are not, we must reform the filibuster to pass it with 50.
Speaking of neutrality, speaking of, well, it's just whatever you want.
Well, it's just free choice.
Well, it's the will of the people.
No.
This This next battle in abortion rights and pro-life, if Roe v.
Wade gets overturned, shows you the ultimate weakness of neutral liberalism, or originalism even, or textualism.
This originalism, this theory, this interpretive principle of reading the Constitution that has been really prominent for several decades now, it may or may not prove effective in overturning Roe v.
Wade.
I hope it's effective.
I'm not sure that it will be, but I hope it is.
Regardless, we need to make more serious arguments.
The arguments that the conservatives have made for a long time is something to this effect.
Well, you know, look, the Roe v.
Wade is constitutionally completely ridiculous and it has no basis in the Constitution.
But that doesn't mean that abortion will be outlawed or necessarily even should be outlawed.
New York is going to have abortion.
Tennessee is not going to have abortion.
And that's federalism and that's just, you know, we're talking about the text of the Constitution and then the people can make their own decision.
Okay, I get why that argument is instrumental, instrumentally useful and true in as far as it is true.
But it's not good enough.
I hope that Roe v.
Wade is overturned.
I hope there's no pretend federal right to an abortion.
But I don't want there to be abortion in New York either.
I don't want there to be abortion in Connecticut either.
And I don't give a damn if the New Yorkers and the Californians want it.
It's wrong.
We, the people, have the right to say that it's wrong.
And states' rights only goes so far.
The question is states' rights to do what?
We're going to leave it there.
We're not going to talk about any more promiscuous sex today, even though there's a juicy story coming out of the White House.
That's going to be the cliffhanger.
I'll see you tomorrow.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, online application forms now provide dozens of gender options, and sometimes man or woman doesn't even make the list.
And speaking of made-up terms, a new poll shows that almost no Hispanic people use the term Latinx, and yet the left continues to push it.
We'll talk about all that today.
Plus, Bill de Blasio bans young children from public accommodations if they don't show their vaccine papers.
The evil is so absurd and over the top at this point as to almost be cartoonish.
And salacious new details emerge in the Jussie Smollett trial.
Also, a company produces a suicide pod to help people kill themselves.
And in our daily cancellation, we'll ask the question, why is everyone so ugly these days?
