Biden’s approval drops to 33%, his entire legislative agenda dies on Capitol Hill, and his OSHA vaccine mandate gets smacked down after the Daily Wire scores an historic victory at the Supreme Court.
Sign the petition to stop Biden’s vaccine mandate. Head to https://dailywire.com/donotcomply
DW members get special product discounts up to 20% off PLUS access to exclusive Daily Wire merch. Grab your Daily Wire merch here: https://utm.io/udZpp
My new book ’Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds,’ is now available wherever books are sold. Grab your copy today here: https://utm.io/udtMJ
Andrew Klavan's latest novel When Christmas Comes is now available on Amazon. Order in time for Christmas: https://utm.io/udW6u
Matt Walsh is now a self-acclaimed beloved children’s author. Reserve your copy of his new book here: https://utm.io/ud1Cb
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
Well, within the last roughly 24 hours, Joe Biden's approval rating dropped to 33%.
Kamala Harris is refusing to say if she and Joe will even run for re-election.
Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin killed Chuck Schumer's crusade to abolish the filibuster, meaning that the federal election takeover and the Build Back Broke budget are deader than disco, to say nothing of the even more radical policy proposals, such as, I don't know, court packing.
And speaking of the court, the United States Supreme Court just handed us...
The American people, and specifically The Daily Wire, an historic and somewhat unexpected judicial victory by smacking down Joe Biden's illegal vaccine mandate and allowing Americans to decide for themselves whether or not they want to inject themselves with Fauci juice.
So I'd say I'm feeling pretty, pretty good.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is from Leonard Tomasius, who says, listening to what the Dems want to do with voting reminds me of that scene from the five gangs of New York where they ask a guy how many times he voted three times and then they tell him to shave and vote again.
the Democrats back then.
And they've been doing this for the entire history of their uncommonly corrupt party.
Political parties, political operations involve some degree of corruption.
That has always been the case in democratic politics, lowercase d.
But the Democrat Party, capital D, has been particularly corrupt on this front.
They did it way back in Tammany Hall and Gangs of New York.
They did it in Chicago in the mid-20th century.
They're doing it now.
But unfortunately, their efforts to seize all that power and upend more of our election system, their efforts are deader than disco because Joe Biden is having the worst week possibly of his political career.
You know, it just, it makes you think that even as things are falling apart in this country, there are a few tangible, valuable things we can hold on to.
For instance, birch gold.
It's really important to diversify your investments all the time, but especially when the economy is a little kooky.
Right now, inflation is at 40-year highs.
4-0.
It's here to stay.
Do you know why it's here to stay?
Because the government's dirty little secret is they want it.
Think about this.
Right now, inflation rates are higher than the interest on treasury bonds.
So with every day that passes, the government owes less on its mountain of debt.
Imagine, for instance, if your mortgage had a negative interest rate.
Would you be in a hurry to pay it off?
Would you make extra payments every month?
No, I don't think so.
So your pain is the government's gain.
Protect your savings now.
Hedge against inflation with gold from Birch Gold because the government is sabotaging the value of the U.S. dollar.
Birch Gold will help you convert an eligible IRA or 401k into an IRA backed by real gold.
That is peace of mind.
That's why I am a huge, huge fan of Birch Gold.
With thousands of satisfied customers and an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, you can trust Birch Gold to protect your savings.
Text NOLS to 989898 to get a free info kit on holding gold in a tax-sheltered account.
Then call Birch and protect your hard-earned savings.
Text NOLS to 989898 to get your free info kit now.
Your administrative priorities dead because of the Supreme Court.
The American people rejecting what you want across the entire board.
How are you going to change course?
At what point does the administration say, you know what, this strategy isn't working.
We're going to change strategies.
Six former administration officials last week wrote that open letter urging the administration to change course, to change strategy.
Is it time?
It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day.
Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.
Franklin Roosevelt famously said, We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Ronald Reagan famously said, Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
Kamala Harris famously said, it's the time now to do what we've been doing every day and the time and the time to agree that we are doing, that we've got things to do together and the time.
Powerful.
It's really powerful.
It sends a shiver up your spine.
A shiver up your spine to think that this woman could become the Vice President of the United States.
She is obviously a good politician.
She is.
By definition, she's a good politician.
She's the Vice President.
I called this, by the way.
You know I hate to say I told you so.
I called this during the 2020 Democrat primaries.
I said, watch Kamala Harris.
People laughed at me.
They said, ha ha, Kamala Harris, she's terrible.
I said, watch Kamala Harris.
Then she's one of the first people out.
They laugh at me.
They say, ha ha, Michael, you idiot.
Kamala Harris isn't going anywhere.
Kamala Harris is a heartbeat away from the presidency, and the current president doesn't have a very strong heart.
So she's clearly a good politician.
She's worked her way up.
She's not particularly academically distinguished.
She's not particularly professionally distinguished.
But she worked her way up in politics through various mechanisms that we don't need to get into here.
She became a United States senator and she became the vice president at a relatively young age.
That's impressive.
But she's a terrible communicator.
She is less coherent than Joe Biden.
And Joe Biden...
Has problems in between his ears right now, okay?
And somehow she's worse.
This is the only thing politically Joe Biden has going for him, is that his vice president is somehow less popular than he is, even though he's extremely unpopular.
His vice president is somehow less coherent than he is, even though he's obviously in the throes of senility.
That is something, because potentially I could stave off an impeachment.
If Joe Biden even lasts, if he even makes it that far.
Really bad news for the Democratic ticket in 2024.
So bad that Kamala Harris refuses to say that she and Joe will even be running during the next presidential cycle.
Are we going to see the same Democratic ticket in 2024?
I'm sorry.
We are thinking about today.
I mean, honestly, I know why you're asking the question, because this is part of the punditry and the gossip around places like Washington, D.C. Let me just tell you something.
We're focused on the things in front of us.
We're just...
Lady, this is not a hard question.
This is not an unexpected question.
How do you not have an answer for this question?
This is basic stuff for a vice president, especially in a troubled administration.
We're just thinking about today- No, we're obviously not just thinking about today.
That's why the interviewer asked the question, are you going to be on the ticket?
But she can't say that she or Biden are going to be on the ticket.
Why?
Because the administration is underwater and because they haven't accomplished Anything.
This is the best news for conservatives, is they really have not accomplished much of anything.
Their entire legislative agenda has been destroyed.
They can't even pass a budget.
They can't even pass a budget.
The Build Back Better program is dead, and it was killed.
Obviously, the Republicans were opposed to it, but then it was killed decisively by a couple of Democrats.
The filibuster killed by Republicans and a couple of Democrats.
The filibuster abolition plan.
The court packing.
The federal election takeover.
The whole thing.
So they were not able, even though Joe Biden had served in the Senate for, I think, 350 years, he wasn't able to use those relationships to bring his legislative agenda over on Capitol Hill.
So then he tried to figure out a workaround.
His workaround was going to be to use the administrative state, the agencies, to force through his vaccine mandate.
That didn't work either because the court shot it down.
So why would Biden and Harris run again?
What have they done?
What could they run on?
What accomplishment?
What promise of an accomplishment could they run on?
They've got nothing.
They've got nothing.
And we have got the Republicans to thank, sure, but Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have just come out.
There was some debate.
Will they?
Won't they?
Manchin kind of killed the budget.
But then what about the filibuster?
Kyrsten Sinema comes out and says, no, the filibuster, it's got to stay.
I share the concerns of civil rights advocates and others I've heard from in recent months about these state laws.
I strongly support those efforts to contest these laws in court and to invest significant resources into these states to better organize and stop efforts to restrict access at the ballot box.
And I strongly support and will continue to vote for legislative responses to address these state laws, including the Freedom to Vote Act, And the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that the Senate is currently considering.
And while I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country.
The debate over the Senate's 60-vote threshold shines a light on our broader challenges.
There's no need for me to restate my long-standing support for the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation.
There's no need for me to restate its role protecting our country from wild reversals in federal policy.
This is a really coherent, honest answer from a politician.
About as honest and coherent as it gets from a politician.
She's not saying that she doesn't support the power grab.
She's not saying she doesn't support a federal takeover of elections.
She's not saying she doesn't support the Democrats' legislative priorities.
She's saying she doesn't think that the power grab is worth it.
So she's taking away some of the disingenuous, emotionally manipulative talking points language of, we need this or the poor oppressed people will lose their sacred right to vote.
She's not doing that.
She's saying, yeah, I support this bill, but the filibuster is more important because the filibuster is a great defense of our constitutional system.
Because though we are in power right now, not for very long, probably, by the way, though we are in power right now and we hate the filibuster because it's slowing down our agenda, when we are out of power, if we are ever out of power again, we're going to really want the filibuster. if we are ever out of power again, we're going That's why Chuck Schumer gave such an impassioned defense of the filibuster in 2005, which Tom Cotton read on the floor of the Senate just a couple of days ago, using Chuck Schumer's words against him.
That's why Joe Biden in 2005 gave an impassioned defense of how the filibuster is a great bulwark against threats to our democracy.
But that was then when he was out of power.
Now he's in power and he wants to get rid of it.
And it's short-sighted, as what Kyrsten Sinema is saying.
She's saying, guys, don't be stupid.
We're going to want this thing in about one year when we're out of power and we're going to need it to stop the Republicans.
Or in three years, potentially, when we're going to have a Republican president.
So, let's keep it.
Let's cool it.
We are not a mere radical mob rule type of democracy.
We're a constitutional republic.
Let's be responsible.
And in so doing, let's kill Joe Biden's 2021 and 2022 agenda.
So Biden makes a last-ditch effort to save any sort of agenda he's got.
He can't pass anything through Capitol Hill, so he uses the administrative agencies.
And the Supreme Court says, no thanks.
And this case is a very personal case for us because we were helping to lead it.
We at the Daily Wire sued the Biden administration.
Over their vaccine mandate through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
So, we got an early win in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said, okay, we're going to stop the mandate from going into effect until the legal process plays out, until we determine whether or not, on the merits, this rule is legal or not.
Then, all of those lawsuits, ours and others, were compiled into the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Sixth Circuit reversed the Fifth Circuit and said, no, the vaccine mandate is going to go into effect.
Sorry, tough luck.
The legal process is going to play out.
You might be proven right in the end, but until then, everyone's got to take the jab.
Which is BS, because if we are proven right in the end, but we've already forced everyone to get the jab, then it's a Pyrrhic victory.
It doesn't mean anything.
Not even just a Pyrrhic victory.
It's an utterly meaningless victory.
So, the Supreme Court decides they're going to take it up.
They do the oral arguments.
And a lot of us thought it wasn't going to work.
And then it did.
The majority opinion, 6-3, says that the vaccine mandate should not go into effect until the legal process plays out.
But it actually goes further than that.
It says that the legal process is very, very likely...
To favor the people who oppose the vaccine mandate.
So it doesn't just say we're going to pause it until the judges make their decision.
It puts its thumb on the scale and it says the right decision is to get rid of this rule.
This rule is illegal.
This rule is unconstitutional.
So because of the way our legal system is set up, we're going to let this thing play out.
But I dare you to say that this rule is constitutional.
It's not.
It's BS. That was the majority opinion.
That was the order of the court.
Then there was a concurring opinion by the conservatives on the court.
The opinion by the conservatives and the dissent from the court's liberals actually begin in the same way.
They both begin and they say, the question here is not about COVID or how deadly COVID is.
The question here is not really about the vaccines or the vaccine effectiveness.
The question is, who decides?
It reminds one of Antonin Scalia's great dissent in the Obergefell case, the case that redefined marriage, where he said, as a political matter, I don't really care that much about the definition of marriage.
While I'm sitting here in the Supreme Court in my robe, what marriage means is not the primary question.
The primary question is, who rules me?
Who governs?
Who decides?
And...
According to the majority on the court, the people should decide that it shouldn't just be some random administrative agency that was apparently just a legal workaround because Joe Biden knew he couldn't get his mandate passed through the legislature.
It should be the people through their elected representatives because of court precedent.
There's something called the major questions doctrine, which is on major questions, sweeping issues of public policy.
You want to make sure that Congress is speaking with a clear voice and actually giving to these agencies the powers that they are presuming to have.
Does anyone really think that OSHA, OSHA, the agency that tells you to wear a hard hat on a construction site, is now the agency in charge of the most significant public health questions in the United States?
No, nobody really thinks that.
And furthermore, even if Congress had delegated that power to this administrative agency, let's say they delegated that power because they don't want to be accountable to the voters.
Congress says, yikes, any way I vote on this is going to be really bad.
I might not get re-elected.
So, okay, I'm going to give all this power to make all public health decisions in America to this administrative agency.
Then I don't have to deal with it at the town halls.
The conservatives point out there's another doctrine at play, the non-delegation doctrine, that there are some responsibilities that Congress cannot delegate away to the agencies even if it wants to.
Even if they try and they put it clearly in law, Sometimes that is unconstitutional.
And that's what the conservatives on the court are saying.
Now the liberals on the court came at this question of who decides from a different vantage.
They came at it and they said, okay, who's going to decide these public health questions?
The expert geniuses who are public health gurus who have been given some modicum of authority from Congress?
Or the Supreme Court?
Us?
Bunch of robed lawyers who have no expertise on this.
Who do you want making healthcare decisions for you?
The physicians who have been appointed to bureaucratic roles in the government?
Or us lawyers?
Are those the only two options?
I thought there were more options.
What about, oh I don't know, the people's representatives?
Shouldn't they have some say in this?
Well, that was the argument of the conservatives.
And by the way, they observed that when the Congress has weighed in on Joe Biden's mandate, it weighed in to voice its disapproval.
The Senate passed a resolution that said it disapproves of the OSHA mandate.
So as much as we can tell what the voice of the people is on this, in our constitutional system where the people speak through their elected representatives, the people oppose this.
And the elected legislators oppose this.
But for the libs, they don't care.
They don't really care what the people think.
They're extremely distrustful of American democracy.
They want decisions to either be made by a handful of unaccountable people in the government bureaucracy or a handful of unaccountable people on the Supreme Court.
And what the conservatives said is, no, there's actually more to our government, darlings.
Maybe you've been reading a little too much Woodrow Wilson.
You've been reading a little too much Franklin Roosevelt and progressive literature.
Actually, the people still have a say.
Actually, local communities, state governments, local governments, the family for that matter, has a say.
What I loved so much about the conservative opinion is that it wasn't some radical libertarian opinion.
It didn't say, my body, my choice.
It didn't say the government has no right to force you to take some kind of inoculation.
Because that wouldn't be true.
There is long-standing precedent in the United States that in certain public health emergencies, certain governmental authorities can order you to take a vaccine.
Actually, going back to even before the Constitution, going back to George Washington and the Continental Army, he forced his soldiers to take a smallpox inoculation, a very dangerous one that killed a lot of them.
So there is long-standing precedent, legally, in American culture, going all the way back to the American Revolution.
I know it's fashionable now for many conservatives.
This is probably the consensus view, to say, look, I'm pro-vaccine, but anti-mandate.
I'm kind of the opposite.
I think in this case, where you have a virus that is not particularly dangerous to the vast, vast, vast majority of people, and you can deal separately with the people who are at risk, but for the vast, vast, vast majority of people, it's just not that dangerous.
And you've got a vaccine that is experimental, that is quite new.
It's a new vaccine technology, and it has failed to do some of the things that Joe Biden and Dr. Fauci and Rochelle Walensky promised us it would do.
So the predictions of how the vaccine were going to work did not really come to fruition.
In that case, I don't think that young, healthy people have any reason to go get it.
However, I do think that at least the local government has the right to mandate it.
Because we do have political rights as a community.
And obviously, during times of epidemic, the state has certain emergency and police powers.
So the conservatives on the court understood this.
They say, look, we're not saying that state and local governments don't have the right to mandate these sorts of things.
They do.
But the federal government has less power to mandate these things.
And some random workplace health agency has way less power to mandate these things.
And frankly, the way they've issued this rule is insincere and preposterous.
Because, yes, they're tasked with passing workplace safety regulations, but just because people might have COVID if they go to work doesn't mean that now the workplace safety agency can force you to take a shot.
That's a huge overstep of their authority.
Furthermore, the liberals kept focusing in their dissent on how dangerous COVID was to American workers.
But is that really the case?
What's the median age of a COVID death?
North of 80.
So the median age of a COVID death is well after the age of retirement.
People who are not really working anymore.
Moreover, the risk of hospitalization or death from COVID skews heavily toward the side of the age spectrum after retirement age.
So what percentage of American workers, people of working age, are actually at grave risk of hospitalization or death from COVID? I suspect the number for all Americans generally is extremely small.
But I suspect the number of workers is much, much, much, much smaller.
So the Liberals' case, I think it fails on the argument they were trying to make from COVID and from the vaccine specifically.
They barely even made a legal case.
And the Conservatives' argument...
It was about as strong as it could be.
It wasn't a total win because the Supreme Court forced healthcare workers, for instance, to get the vaccines, which I think everyone expected to happen.
But we do need to take the wins where we can get them, when we can get them.
This is the case that at least we here in this building have been fighting.
This is the case that you have been fighting by subscribing, by signing up, by signing our petition, the Do Not Comply petition.
This is the case where we focused all of our energy And we won.
And we won.
And it's a good day for American rights and freedom and our way of life.
A very bad day for Joe Biden.
So now that Biden's got all this terrible news, Joe Biden is making a special appeal to the establishment media, to the big tech companies that run the social media.
He's saying, look, I'm losing on Capitol Hill.
I'm losing in the agencies.
Please, please, shut down dissent.
Unfortunately, while the military is stepping up, as they always do, there are others sitting on the sidelines.
And we're standing in the way.
If you haven't gotten vaccinated, do it.
Personal choice impacts us all.
Our hospitals, our countries.
I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets.
Please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that's on your shows.
It has to stop.
COVID-19 is one of the most formidable enemies America has ever faced.
We've got to work together, not against each other.
Ann Coulter pointed out yesterday, she said, what is it called when the government controls all of the corporations and uses the ostensibly private corporations to carry out the will of the state?
What's that?
Something about a bundle of sticks.
It starts with an F, ends with an Ashism.
I forget.
What do they call that?
I forget.
This is proof positive.
Of two contentions that I've made on this show for a long time that a lot of conservatives have gotten aware of in recent years.
One is that liberals are the ruling class.
They are the established power.
They present themselves as the opposition.
We're going to speak truth to power.
We're going to fight the patriarchy.
We're going to fight the white supremacy.
We're going to fight the conservative establishment.
But the conservatives don't have any institution in the country.
We don't control a single one.
Talk radio is about as close as it gets.
And even that is regulated by the administrative agencies, which we don't have.
The liberals are the establishment.
Liberals run the government.
Liberals run the bureaucracy.
Liberals run the corporations.
Liberals run the universities.
Liberals run the media.
Liberals run big tech.
Liberals run everything.
The second contention that Joe Biden just proved is that the journalists, by and large, are fake news.
Because the journalists, Joe Biden is speaking to these journalists like good friends.
It's different than when Trump says, you're fake news, I hate you, you're scum.
He would go to his rallies.
He'd say, look at those people back there.
Look at those press.
They're the scum of the earth.
They're slime.
They're fake news.
That was a very adversarial relationship.
And the media started it.
What Joe Biden's doing here is he's talking like a friend.
He's saying, hey guys, come on.
Hey, big tech CEOs.
Hey, heads of the corporate press.
You gotta cool it, letting these conservatives on.
It's too much.
These conservatives are really a thorn in my side.
So come on, guys.
Cool it with that.
I know that you're already...
Extremely unfair to conservatives on Facebook and YouTube and Twitter.
I know that you're extremely unfair to conservatives in the corporate press.
You've got to be even more unfair.
Because they're still getting their message out, and their message is still resonating with the American people, and it's really hurting my approval ratings, so you've got to stop it.
You've got to stop it.
And even still, even with the entire power structure in this country against us, even then, we sometimes get Victories.
Increasingly so.
I don't want to toot our own horn here at the Daily Wire.
We've had a lot of victories recently, okay?
Many people thought that the Daily Wire played a role in the Virginia governor's race, going against the Democrat, going for Terry McAuliffe, because of some investigative journalism we did.
Not because of some political operation, but because we went in, we found a story that the corrupt corporate press was suppressing.
Namely, that in Loudoun County, A gender-confused boy raped a girl in the girl's bathroom, and the school covered it up.
And the school transferred him, the rapist, to another school, and you know what happened?
Take a guess.
He did it again.
And they covered it up, and they smeared the parents of the victim.
They smeared the dad in particular.
And the DOJ and the established powers in Washington, D.C., they called these parents terrorists.
And we dug into that story, pulled on that needle a little bit, pulled on that thread rather, and it turned out that there was rank, hideous corruption.
Well, that rapist has now been sentenced and put on the sex offender registry for life.
Fourteen years old, by the way.
Fourteen year old boy raped a ninth grader.
What put it in his mind to do that?
Maybe he was already a little messed up.
But what happened?
Was he looking at the increasingly violent pornography that pervades the culture?
Was he?
I don't know.
One should look into these questions.
But he committed his crime.
While he was wearing a skirt, while he was allowed to go into the girls' bathroom, because to be politically correct now, all of the liberal schools are letting boys into the girls' room.
And conservatives said, this is a risk, this is a threat, girls should not have to deal with this.
And the liberals said that we were intolerant, bigoted, transphobes, that women face no threats from this, and then what happens?
A boy rapes a girl in the girls' bathroom.
The judge, reading out the sentence, said that...
I think it was a she.
I don't remember if it was a he or she.
I guess that's the question these days we all ask ourselves.
But the judge had not forced kids to be put on the sex offender registry for life.
But this judge was so shocked at the details of this kid's crimes.
Says, over the years, this court has read many psychosexual reports.
And when I read yours, frankly, it scared me.
It scared me for you.
It scared me for society.
All of this.
All of this.
To defend transgender bathrooms.
All of this.
A superintendent covering up a rape, transferring a kid, imperiling other girls, going after the parents, stonewalling the press.
All of this to defend insane policies that are intended to indulge delusion.
It's all about transgenderism.
Well, if a few girls get raped in their bathroom, that's just the price we have to pay for progress.
Can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, a few 14-year-old girl eggs.
That's what they're saying.
The important progressive social crusade to let boys pretend to be girls is worth a few girls getting raped.
Evil stuff worth pushing back on.
And that's the sort of thing that we did.
That's the sort of thing that we...
Speaking of punishment, before we get into the mailbag, Iran is threatening to assassinate Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo.
Take a look at this video.
Take a listen.
So this is being released by the Supreme Leader of Iran...
Showing this military operation, very high tech.
All these Iranian operatives working on their computers.
They've got drones.
They've got little machines outside of Mar-a-Lago.
Trump and Pompeo are playing golf there.
Going all around.
They're going to target them.
They put the light, they put the focus on Trump and Pompeo.
Eventually what happens, you get the point, eventually what happens is they assassinate them.
This video that Iran released shows two things.
It shows, one, that they probably can't assassinate Trump, and they're not going to do it.
Because if they were going to assassinate Trump, they'd just assassinate him.
But they can't do that, so they're going to try to release some B-level Hollywood video showing their fantasy about killing Trump.
Two, it shows that they consider Trump the enemy and Biden the friend.
Biden, ostensibly, is the President of the United States.
Shouldn't they be going after him if they're going to retaliate for an action of the United States?
No, they're going after Trump.
Because they consider Trump the enemy and Biden the friend.
Because Trump treated Iran like a rogue state and Biden is trying to suck up to Iran and Biden is trying to reinstate the Iran deal.
Shows you the way that our American politics is looking right now.
Shows you the way that our foreign policy is looking.
And it shows you something else.
Iran is impotent at the moment to kill Donald Trump.
Iran is impotent to fulfill its agenda and Joe Biden is impotent on that front, too.
Big win for us.
We're so thrilled.
Thank you to everyone for signing our petition, for signing the Do Not Comply petition.
For the rest of the day, we are using the code WINNING for 40% off Daily Wire membership 4-0.
Just a thank you to everybody.
That's today only.
We'll be right back with the mailbag.
My favorite time of the week when I get to hear from you in the mailbag.
First one up from Eric.
Hi, Michael.
Last year I asked you a relationship question regarding an issue with my girlfriend and you encouraged me to marry her in order to solve a lot of the issues we had.
Well, I brought her to the spot where we had our first kiss, got down on one knee, and now we're engaged.
Hey, that's great.
We're so happy and thank you for encouraging me to man up and settle down with this incredible woman.
My question is, since you answer so many dating questions...
When will The Daily Wire release a ten-part series about how to date like a conservative, hosted by you, the Daily Wire love guru, Michael Knowles?
P.S. We live in Canada, and when I first met my fiancée, she was a giant Trudeau fan, and I converted her to become a freedom-loving conservative.
This is all.
Every part of that is really, really great news, my friend.
Congratulations.
And in answer to your question, when will The Daily Wire make a ten-part series on how to date with the love guru, Michael Knowles?
Not soon enough.
That's when.
I assume Jeremy listens to every episode of my show.
Jeremy, let's go.
Come on, man.
We must give the people what they want.
From William.
Michael, you take a simplistic view of the phrase, you can't legislate morality.
Yes, you can make laws that require people to adhere to what you consider a moral lifestyle.
But that does not mean they will be moral in their hearts.
You can pass a law that everyone must pray on their knees in the town square three times a day when the bell in the church tower rings.
If they fail, they will be bullwhipped.
with a law like that, everyone will show up and get on their knees and recite the requisite prayer.
But that does not mean they'll be thinking of God instead of the candy bar they'd rather be eating or the tax forms they should be filling out or the chicken they have to buy for dinner.
You will not have made a more moral religious society, just one that fears the whip.
My friend, you are taking a simplistic view of ritual and the incarnate nature of ourselves, of our God, and of our society.
and What you are saying, it would seem to me, It doesn't matter if people do good things, if they are not feeling good emotions, if their heart is not in the right place, if they're not feeling the spirit, however you want to put it.
What you are taking is a very modern emotivist view of things.
And that is not only...
Out of keeping with our political tradition, it's actually out of keeping with the Christian tradition.
It's a very modern idea that what you do physically doesn't matter.
All that matters is what you're feeling at any given time.
So it doesn't matter if you get down on your knees to pray.
You can just pray while you're brushing your teeth.
But all that matters is that you really, really feel it.
You don't need to receive the sacraments, the sacraments which defined the Christian faith for at least 16 centuries or so.
What you just need to do is just really feel things intensely.
But that's very personal.
It's very emotivist.
It's very modern.
And it ignores the fact that we have bodies and our bodies matter.
And it actually does matter what we do.
This is why a lot of people who are drawn to the emotivist style of religion and politics, they want to ignore parts of the Bible that talk about how faith without works is dead.
They want to ignore aspects of the Bible such as the particular judgment.
They want to ignore the fact that we will be judged in some degree on how we behave.
We will be judged, and Christ talks about this, that you won't get out until you pay the very last farthing, which there are What you do with your body really does matter.
Why do we have laws against murder?
We have laws against murder to stop people from murdering.
But Michael...
Just because we have laws, maybe the people won't murder, but they'll still be murderers in their heart.
Okay, but it would be good if they're not murderers with their axes and their guns and their knives.
And furthermore, though we deny this today, the law is an instructor.
As St.
Paul writes, the civil authority is there for you as a gift of God for your own good.
The law can help to shape us.
Why do parents have rules for their kids?
Don't eat the cookies after 8 o'clock at night.
Don't go reach into that cookie jar.
Well, okay, but there's still a cookie eater in their heart.
There's still gluttons in their heart.
No, actually the rules over time will help to shape and educate and bring up the kids.
That's why you hear this expression sometimes with people who have really bad habits.
They say you weren't raised right.
You didn't have the right rules.
The rules weren't enforced correctly.
You weren't raised right.
But the law raises a society as well.
And Political thinkers or the statesmen who built our country understood that.
That yes, you can say politics is downstream of culture.
I almost don't even want to use that phrase anymore because it's been so horribly abused by people who don't want to actually do their job in politics and govern.
But it could be equally true to say that culture is downstream of politics.
Right now.
In Germany.
East Germany is 10% religious, 90% atheist.
West Germany is more than 50% religious.
Why is that?
Is it because of cultural variations in bratwurst?
I don't think so.
I think it's because one country was dominated by a generally religious or religious-friendly polity.
And the East part was dominated by an officially atheist government.
And there are cultural effects, personal effects of that policy as well.
Do not be an emotivist.
Life is about more than your feelings.
From John.
John, hey, Michael, I've noticed that a lot of our most common political discussion, especially in my personal life with lots of people who don't read much, the things we argue are based off of false premises.
Hey, Michael.
Climate change is really bad.
Therefore, we should do this.
The war on drugs didn't work.
Therefore, we should not do this.
George Floyd was murdered by a racist cop.
Therefore, we should do this.
Is there any way to really get these false premises overturned?
Or are we too late?
And how do we stop new false premises from being so widely accepted so we can have a more intelligent and useful political debate?
Sincerely, came for Ben, stayed for, and subscribed for, and upgraded for, Michael.
Oh, that's so great.
Thank you for doing that.
Yes, well, the simplest way is to ignore them in our real lives.
Don't call men who think that they're women she- Don't indulge the George Floyd liturgies where we treat him as though he were some sort of saint.
Don't indulge in the global warming liturgies where we treat the earth as though she is a goddess and she's about to die.
Just don't do it.
You can laugh at that.
You can joke about that.
And always go back to the premises when you're having a sort of debate.
But then furthermore, this shows the need to exercise political power.
You need to exercise political power, especially in education.
Because if kids are indoctrinated into these false premises, then they're going to come to logical conclusions on BLM, on global warming, on the war on drugs or whatever, from their faulty premises.
And they're going to be really deeply ingrained when our brains are really mushy when we're kids.
So you've got to go in there, you've got to wield government power and political power to shape curricula.
And you've got to do that down the line as well.
Right now, if I... Oppose transgenderism, for instance.
Let's look at Canada, because Canada is further down the line already.
In Canada, if I call a man who thinks he's a woman, he, I may be in violation of the law.
In parts of Europe, I may be in violation of some sort of hate crime.
That's really bad.
So the law is already putting its finger on the scales of delusion and false premises.
We need to wield the law on the side of truth and what's good and what's right and what's beautiful.
From Alex.
Michael, my question for you is...
I want to be eligible to join the State Troopers Academy in a couple of years.
It's always been my dream to be a state trooper, but growing up in a Christian conservative home, my family and friends have mixed feelings about it, as some of them highly encourage me, and others say they don't believe Christians belong in the police force.
Your thoughts on this issue would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, love the show.
Yeah, reread St.
St. Paul, who says, as I just quoted, that the civil authority is there for your own good, instituted by God, and that the civil authority does not wield the sword in vain.
There's nothing unchristian about good government and good laws and ensuring justice.
Justice is pretty good.
Just Justice is a virtue, my friend.
So I think your family is a little confused on that.
If the issue is that your family thinks that Christians should never engage in violence, then I would have them read lots of literature.
But something really easy to read would be C.S. Lewis' essay on why he's not a pacifist.
That's where I'd begin.
And if you want to join the troopers, good job.
Please don't pull me over if you see me speeding.
But great stuff.
It's a good career.
From Victor.
Dear Michael, a teacher asked for my preferred pronouns in a questionnaire.
Should I just leave it blank?
No, you should find a new teacher.
I mean it.
I mean it.
Because your teacher asking for preferred pronouns means your teacher is one of three things.
An idiot who doesn't know what sex is.
A radical ideologue who is taken with delusional theories.
Or a coward.
Maybe a normal person who's just going along to get along because the politically correct administrators are forcing them to.
Either way, or any of those three ways, or any combination thereof.
Probably not going to be a great teacher.
From Maya.
I was disappointed with you today regarding your opinion of Maya Angelou's poetry.
You're entitled to your opinion, but I would encourage you to actually read her body of work.
I have read Maya Angelou's poetry.
Her poetry was written by a wise woman whose life experiences can be a blessing to people no matter their color.
Do not dwell on the fact that she is a woman or a woman of color.
Read the words.
Well, hold on.
I don't dislike Maya Angelou's work because she's a woman or because she's black.
I dislike her work because it's bad poetry.
And I oppose her being put on a coin on the new quarter because she's a bad poet and I don't think a particularly accomplished person, but also because she is being promoted as a token explicitly by the people who are promoting her.
They're saying, this is so great because she's black or this is so great because she's a woman.
And I think it's wrong to engage in that kind of tokenism.
I think it's very disrespectful to our country, to everybody, to people of all races and to people of all sexes or both sexes, I guess I should say.
But her poetry is not great.
There are female writers that I like very much.
There are black writers that I like very much.
Woman writers I think are very talented.
Black writers I think are very talented.
Maya Angelou is not one of them.
I'm sorry.
She's not a good poet.
There's no disputing taste.
Some people say, But in this case, I think there is disputandum.
And I just don't think she's very, very good.
And I would encourage you, I say this with great charity and great love for you, I think there are better poets you should read.
Maybe you like my, I don't begrudge you your Maya Angelou, but I think there are better poets that you could read as well.
Of all races, of all sexes, and so on.
From Patrick.
Hey Michael, I've heard you reference ancient heresies frequently.
I'm just wondering if you think Pope Francis' comments that getting vaccinated is a moral obligation are heretical or merely idiotic.
If they are heretical, have we seen this heresy before?
P.S. 53 pages of footnotes and speechless.
Impressive.
P.P.S. I'm sorry, I'm not named Nick.
Oh, that's very kind.
Thanks for reading Speechless.
Got to be very particular here about what Pope Francis said.
Pope Francis is a Jesuit.
Jesuits can be Jesuitical sometimes.
They can use very sly reasoning and argumentation to make it seem like they're saying one thing, but actually they're saying another thing.
And sometimes Pope Francis is misquoted.
I do not believe Pope Francis said that getting vaccinated is a moral obligation.
He said that getting vaccinated is health care, and health care is a moral obligation.
So, sure, vaccinations are a type of healthcare, but not all healthcare interventions are morally obligated.
And so, it's a clever kind of turn of phrase, but it's the way that he can avoid saying that receiving this vaccine is morally obligatory, because it's not.
Not only is it not morally obligatory, it might not be morally permissible.
The bishops have come out and said, you can get these vaccines.
They're giving you a special permission.
But the reason they even have to give you a permission is because the vaccines were all developed and in some cases produced with stem cells from aborted babies.
So it involves the remote cooperation with evil.
And the bishops are saying, in this case, we are giving you the permission to do that.
But no one can require you, can say it's obligatory to cooperate with evil.
This is one of the many issues with Francis's papacy, which has been somewhat confusing.
There have been questions raised, questions about potential heresy that he has spouted.
They're called dubia, doubts.
He hasn't really answered those, so...
I hope he answers those and clears up the issue.
Last question from Matthew.
Dear Mr.
Knowles, my question does not relate to the normal subjects of the mailbag, namely relationships and religion.
It relates to an interview you had with Michael Anton a few days ago.
I agree with Anton that while we have many parallels with Rome, particularly late Republican Rome, there are many that are unprecedented trends in our current situation.
However, let's say we're on the Rome timeline.
In this case, do you see a Caesar Augustus figure rising to power in the future?
Additionally, what should be our verdict on Augustus' regime?
Was he a visionary leader who assured Rome's place in history or a tyrant who betrayed Rome's core Republican values?
Thanks.
Love the show.
Caesar Augustus came to power, or Julius Caesar for that matter, did not come to power because they took this wonderful, idyllic Republican Rome and then took it over like tyrants.
Late Republican Rome was decadent and debauched and messed up and screwy.
And they took power because the regime was changing.
The regime had decayed.
This is what we call anticyclosis, the cycle of regimes.
There are good forms of government, democracy, aristocracy, monarchy.
There are bad forms of that same government, mob rule, oligarchy, and tyranny.
And the regimes decay and they change and they move around.
So, what do I think of Caesar Augustus?
I think he was one of the greatest leaders in the history of the world.
Called the Prince of Peace, who reigned actually well.
The Prince of Peace was...
Caesar Augustus led to the Roman Peace, the Pax Romana.
Christ, the actual Prince of Peace, was born in that...
He lived in that sort of Rome, that era of Rome.
Caesar Augustus was called the Son of the Divine.
And Christ is the Son of God.
There are interesting historical parallels that are going on here.
What will happen here in America?
Our regime will decay at some point.
That's just what happens.
Who will be our Caesar?
That remains to be seen.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
See you on Monday.
See you on Monday.
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring.
Our technical director is Austin Stevens.
Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky.
Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico.
Associate producer, Justine Turley.
Audio mixer, Mike Coromina.
And hair and makeup by Cherokee Heart.
Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2022.
Hey everybody, this is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
You know, some people are depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moons turn to blood.
But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.
