Ep. 947 - A Stand Against Puppy Killers And Racists
The Canadian government threatens to kill truckers’ puppies, Ted Cruz introduces legislation to defund schools that make kids get the Fauci Ouchie, and NYC mayor Eric Adams threatens to stop taking questions from white reporters.
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The Freedom Convoy truckers are continuing to stand up to Justin Trudeau's vaccine mandates despite a major crackdown on their protest.
The Canadian government has already invoked the Emergencies Act, suspending the ordinary rule of law, suppressing peaceful protests, prohibiting travel, and even freezing the bank accounts of Freedom Convoy protesters and their supporters.
But even those extraordinary measures have not worked to stop the Freedom Convoy from honking for their rights and way of life.
So the Canadian government has ratcheted up the authoritarianism even further by threatening to kill the protesters' puppies.
Yes.
Yesterday, the Ottawa Bylaw Services announced, Attention animal owners at demonstration!
If you are unable to care for your animal as a result of enforcement actions, your animal will be placed into protective care for eight days at your cost.
After eight days, if arrangements are not made, your animal will be considered relinquished.
The government will take your puppy immediately, then it will protect your puppy for eight days, and then it won't protect your puppy anymore.
Now, I am no scientist.
I do not have fancy advanced degrees.
But I am having a hard time understanding how following the science and flattening the curve or whatever requires governments to suspend the rule of law, steal dissidents' money, and kill their pets.
As we enter day 704 of 15 Days to Slow the Spread, after two years of lies and incompetence every single step of the way— I'm beginning to think that this is not about science at all, but rather about the arbitrary consolidation and exercise of power, which will never, ever end unless we exercise what little political power we have left and end it ourselves.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
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What is it with the libs and torturing puppies?
This is a very strange motif that I did not expect to see in the last year.
But we're seeing it.
You've got Fauci and those poor little beagles.
You've got now the Canadian government with the truckers' puppies.
This is a rule of politics.
It's not 100% true, but it's a good rule of thumb.
If you are on the side torturing puppies to advance your political agenda...
You're on the wrong side.
Don't be on that side.
I don't even like puppies.
I'm not a pet person.
I'm a people person myself.
But don't torture puppies.
Don't say that if you don't heal, if you don't get down and obey the arbitrary rules that we're choosing willy-nilly, we're going to kill your pets.
That's bad.
That's not good.
That's not good government.
And there's no end to it.
You know that I love...
How much I hate to say I told you so.
I told you from the beginning.
I told you within the first two weeks, within the 15 days, I said this is just going to keep going on and on and on and on and there's not going to be any end to it.
So Dr.
Fauci, now we are, this is day 704 of 15 Days to Slow the Spread.
Dr.
Fauci was just on television.
He was asked, so, look, it's been a while, man.
We've done the flattening and the slowing and the curing and the jabbing and the masking.
We've done it all.
We've done it all like four times each.
So...
When?
When are we?
What's the number?
What's the number of cases or deaths or hospital or whatever?
What's the number at which point this thing is over?
And Dr.
Fauci says, I don't know.
Our country right now, at least, is still seeing about 147,000 new cases of COVID per day.
But what would that threshold be in the future for you to say, okay, the pandemic has passed?
You know, there's no magic number, but what you want is to make sure the trajectory keeps going down and down and down.
And I think the important issue, and that relates to one of the questions you asked before about the CDC considering giving more precise metrics for decision making, that concentrating more on what the rate of severe disease and hospitalization is We'll determine that.
We don't know what that number is yet, but that will be much more of a determinant than the rate of infection.
There's no magic number.
I didn't ask for a magic number.
I asked for a scientific number.
You're the scientist.
You're the guy who's saying we need to follow the science, and the science is going to dictate what happens, and the science is precise, and the science can be relied upon.
So give me a scientific number, buddy.
I don't want a magic number.
But what Fauci is admitting here is what we have said from the very beginning.
Which is that you can't follow the science.
First of all, what is the science?
capital T, capital S, trademark over the E.
Second of all, the science is always changing because when you're talking, especially about something like epidemiology, when you're talking about public health, which is an extremely political scientific endeavor, there's not going to be a precise number because it requires weighing different social costs and benefits, and there's not going to be a precise number because it requires weighing different social And at least formerly in this country, that involved the input of the people making their own decisions.
But he's saying, look, we don't know, there's no magic number, and we want the number to keep going down, right?
Right, well, it's going to go down.
Here's what's going to happen forever.
The number's going to go down, then it's going to go up a little bit again, then it's going to go down again, then it's going to go up, and then it's going to go down, and that's how it's just going to be, indefinitely.
That's what happens with the flu.
That's what happens with all endemic illnesses.
That's why we have flu season.
That's why we have seasons, because it goes down, and then the season comes, and it goes up again, and then we're just going to be locked down like this forever if we follow this schmuck.
You can't...
Even given all of that, he should be able to give us a number.
This is an amazing statement he makes.
He says...
I think the important issue relates to the questions you asked before giving more precise metrics for decision making.
That concentrating more on what the rate of severe disease and hospitalization is will determine that.
We don't know what that number is yet, but that will be much more of a determinant.
Why don't you know what the number is yet?
You really saw this when it came to the herd immunity vaccination rates.
Dr.
Fauci kept changing the numbers that would be required for herd immunity.
First, he said, I bet 60 percent, 60, 70 percent.
Then he said, that's more like 70, 75 percent.
Then he said, that's more like 75, 80, 85 percent.
That number should never change.
You don't need to be in it to know what that number is.
You don't need to achieve that number to know what the number should be.
You just should know what the number is that you're aiming at, and then you achieve it, and then you're good.
What Fauci admitted on the vaccination rates is, no, we just want to nudge people.
We just want this to go on forever.
So we're going to nudge it up and up and up and up until we get to 100%.
That's what he's doing here.
Yeah, we're going to nudge it.
Don't worry.
Trust me.
I'll get back to you.
Don't worry.
We'll give you the magic number.
And they're giddy about this.
Fauci is giddy.
He's having the time of his freaking life because he's never had more power.
He's never had more fame.
He's never had more influence.
And he doesn't want to give it up.
And the minute COVID's over, he's going to lose all of that.
Well, he'll get to keep his money.
But he's going to lose the notoriety, and he's certainly going to lose the political power, and so he wants it to go on forever.
You're seeing this in Canada, too.
The Canadian Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, is positively giddy about her ability now to shut down the bank accounts of these truckers, freeze their assets, and take them from ordinary working-class people who just don't want to take a...
An experimental drug, the Fauci ouch, to potentially maybe but probably not stop the infection that doesn't pose a particularly grave danger to most people.
She's going to shut down.
She's going to take all of their assets that they've worked for, and she couldn't be happier about it.
So you're confirming that accounts have been frozen, both personal and corporate, but you're not releasing the information.
And the actual follow-up is, I'm just wondering whether the bank accounts will be targeted of individuals who donated to the Give, Send, Go and the GoFundMe campaigns.
Are they considered designated people under the Emergencies Act, meaning that their credit cards could be cut and financial services are targeting them as well?
Okay, so...
The names of both individuals and entities, as well as crypto wallets, have been shared by the RCMP with financial institutions, and accounts have been frozen, and more accounts will be frozen.
When she's answered, this is the follow-up to that question.
And you can hear at the very beginning of that follow-up, oh yes, we have.
You know we have.
Oh yeah, those truckers, we've totally taken their money.
We're sharing it with the financial institutions.
Maybe you shouldn't have questioned the government.
Maybe you shouldn't have protested.
She's drunk with power.
Fauci's drunk with power.
Trudeau is drunk with power.
The ruling class in the bureaucracy and in the elected government, they are drunk with power.
But that's not the whole story.
Okay, a lot of leftists right now are saying, you know, you conservatives, you would have a very different view of the trucker protest if it were BLM and Antifa shutting down the streets.
And to them I say, you're absolutely right.
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And on this issue of hypocrisy, What the left is saying Forget even the riots, because it's not like the truckers are burning down buildings and robbing and stealing Nike sneakers and breaking into Gucci stores.
But if you would oppose, let's say, BLM shutting down a highway, BLM shutting down a street, then it's hypocritical for you to support the truckers' convoy.
You would hate it if it were BLM doing it, but you like it that it's the truckers doing it.
That's true.
Some conservatives right now are trying to weasel out of it and say, no, actually, here is the principled, totally procedural reason.
No, you're right.
You're right.
The form of the BLM and Antifa people who shut down streets and the trucker people in Canada who shut down streets The form is the same.
I'm taking out the Molotov cocktails and the robbing the Gucci stores.
But the form of those two specific protests are the same.
But one is good and one is bad.
Why?
Because of the substance.
Because what BLM and Antifa were shutting down the streets for is injustice.
It's for bad stuff.
They want bad government.
They want bad policies.
They are based on false premises.
And what the truckers are shutting down the streets for is good.
They don't want the government to suspend the rule of law and force everyone to take this experimental drug for no really good reason.
The substance is what matters here.
And we don't want to talk about that a lot.
We have been stuck on the right for 20 years, at least, in this procedural way.
You can even hear this in the way that we talk about the Supreme Court, the way we talk about court cases.
We say, we don't want conservative judges, we just want originalist judges, textualist judges.
And it's a little too clever by half, folks.
We talk about it this way on abortion.
We say, look, when Roe v.
Wade is overturned, that's not going to outlaw abortion.
We're not trying to outlaw abortion.
We just want it returned to the states.
We just want the states to kill a bunch of babies, not the federal government.
Well, no, I don't want any states to kill babies.
I care about the substance.
I want to outlaw abortion throughout the country, okay, and I'm going to be honest about that.
And the left knows that that's what we deep down want to do, and we know it too.
And I think if we're a little more honest about the substance here, then we're going to make a lot more sense.
And politically, we're going to be more effective.
It's about what we are doing that is so wrong.
Sometimes people say, I'm pro-vaccine, but I'm anti-mandate.
And to me, this doesn't quite make sense.
There is a precedent for vaccine mandates.
Not at the federal government level.
Not with OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, doing it like Biden's trying to use this workaround.
But there is some precedent.
George Washington did it to the Continental troops.
There was a Supreme Court case from over 100 years ago that says that at the local level, you can have a mandate for an inoculation.
But the issue is this vaccine.
This vaccine, which doesn't do what we were told that it would do, which was created using a completely new vaccine technology for which there is no long-term data.
And...
And it's a vaccine to fight a virus that does not pose a grave threat to most people.
So it's actually the details do really matter here.
And people are rebelling against that.
You're seeing this in Austria right now.
Austria is doing a complete U-turn on what they call corona apartheid policies.
Austria's coalition government just announced that the vast majority of lockdown measures in place in the country, including all corona apartheid restrictions, that's the phrase used among the opposition in Australia that are specifically creating a new set of rules and laws for the unvaccinated people.
They're going to be scrapped by March 5th.
You just got to fight back.
You have to go in and realize that this whole follow the science thing has always been completely fake.
It's always been propaganda by our ruling political class to keep us going like this forever and to perpetually take more and more and more of our rights and way of life away.
And in some cases our money and in some cases our freaking puppies they're going to go take and kill.
Don't let them do it.
Just stand up and say no like they're doing in Austria.
You're seeing this now in the Senate.
Ted Cruz.
My pal Ted Cruz is now filing an amendment in the U.S. Senate to defund schools that mandate that kids get the COVID vaccine.
So, the amendment would modify the $1.6 trillion continuing resolution that would fund the government through March 11th by prohibiting federal funds from being distributed to schools and childcare centers to have a COVID-19 vaccine mandate related to enrollment, in-person attendance, and participation in school-related activities.
Cruz is saying, I'm going to throw a gigantic wrench into the funding of this government.
I'm willing to go all the way on the line here to get this out.
How bad do you want it, Democrats?
How bad do you want to stand up and say, no, parents, we're willing to risk shutting down the government because we so badly want to inject your little kids with this experimental drug to maybe sort of possibly probably not protect against a virus that poses virtually no threat to them.
How bad do you want it, Dems?
The Democrats know this is not popular at all.
The Democrats know that we've actually got the will of the people on our side here And the Democrats know we're in a midterm election year.
This is really smart politics from Cruz.
In terms of senators, he is the one who gets it the most, basically.
I don't just say that because we do a show together verdict.
But part of the reason we do the show together is because I've recognized this guy gets it.
And he's right here on the Senate.
And the guy who gets it most in the governor's mansions is Ron DeSantis.
He's doing the same thing.
Ron DeSantis is going and he realizes this is a big issue for parents and he's saying we're going to use the power of the state to stop this crap.
Not only Cruz and DeSantis, who are both definitely much more on the right-wing side of the Republican Party, even the most establishment Republicans, I'm talking about cocaine Mitch McConnell himself, as establishment as they get, Mitch McConnell is leaning into, especially the school issue, not just on the vaccine mandates, but on critical race theory, on the transgender stuff.
He realizes that this election, the best option for Republicans, the best opportunity for Republicans in 2022 is to appeal to parents.
And the way he's doing it is not just specifically going after...
Critical race theory.
Not just specifically going after transgender propaganda.
He's going after curriculum transparency.
The far left is admitting in public that if the public gets to look at the racial and gender theories that they want to teach little kids, then those lesson plans will become untenable.
I'm going to say that again.
The far left is admitting in public that if the public gets to look at the racial and gender theories that they want to teach little kids, then these lesson plans will become untenable.
That's what they're actually saying.
If parents gain transparency into the crazy stuff we're teaching, we might have to stop teaching it.
In other words, their reaction proves the point.
The fact that woke bureaucrats are this terrified by transparency proves exactly, exactly why parents deserve it.
Absolutely brilliant.
This is the way to do it.
All we're saying, because we live in a culture now that loves openness and transparency, and that they value these things above most other virtues, okay, let's use it against the libs.
Okay, because now the libs are on the side against transparency, and conservatives are on the side for transparency.
And the Libs don't want transparency because they know that the minute parents see what their kids are actually being taught in these schools, they're going to lose their minds, rightly so, because they're saying, I don't want my kid having his head filled with this ideological poison.
Do you know how potent this political issue is?
Just yesterday, we saw three San Francisco school board members ousted for being too far to the left.
Over these issues.
San Francisco.
San Francisco, about as lib as they get.
By a 70% vote, these far progressive leftist school board members got ousted.
And the board president, I'm sorry, the former board president, Gabriela Lopez, what did she blame it on?
White supremacy.
She says, if you fight for racial justice, this is the consequence.
Don't be mistaken.
White supremacists are enjoying this, and the support of the recall is aligned with this.
You know, San Francisco, that city famously teeming with white supremacists.
San Francisco, 70% of the voters in San Fran-freaking-Sisco are white supremacists, Ku Klux Klan members.
That's the only explanation for why they don't want these sick, weirdo perverts to try to trans the kids.
That's the only explanation, right?
Except, no, there's not one single white supremacist in San Francisco.
It's not...
That's just white supremacy.
Put that away with the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy.
It does not exist.
It is not real.
It is the last desperate gasp of Democrats who recognize that the jig is up.
That's what's going on, and they're going to try to use it in 2022, but if this school board election in San Francisco is any indication, conservatives, parents, ordinary people of all stripes are in very good shape.
Now, This issue of the racial, white supremacy, black supremacy, I don't know, whatever.
This issue is ginning up, okay?
There's no Ku Klux Klansman.
There are no white supremacists running mayhem all over the country.
It is not the case, as LeBron James says, that every time a black man leaves his home, he's being hunted down.
I think LeBron is doing just fine, okay?
You are seeing a rise, though, in identitarian politics, and you're seeing it not just from some kooks, On a blog or yelling in the streets, you're seeing this from elected Democrats.
Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, has just come out and threatened to stop taking questions from white reporters.
I'm a black man, that's the mayor.
But my story has been interpreted by people that don't look like me.
We've got to be honest about that.
How many blacks are in the editorial boards?
How many blacks are determined how these stories are being written?
How many Asians?
How many East Indians?
How many South Asians?
Everybody talks about my government being diversified.
What's the diversification in the newsrooms?
Diversify your newsroom so I can look out and see people that look like me.
And if this is how this is going to be, I'm just going to come in and do my announcements and bounce.
Why am I even answering these questions?
And it happens over and over and over again.
It happens over and over and over again.
You people keep asking me tough questions and so I'm going to stop taking them and I'm going to blame it on racism because I got nothing.
Because I got nothing.
And because of your terrible racism, I'm going to totally stop taking any questions from Whitey.
Hold on, who's doing the racism, Mayor Adams?
By the way, Eric Adams, when he ran for mayor, one of the clips that went viral from his campaign is that he was openly bragging about how he loved to beat out Whitey, how he loved to beat out those crackers in the police department.
Every day in the police department, I kicked those crackers' ass, man.
I was unbelievable in the police department when you keep 100 blacks in law enforcement.
Okay, Mr.
Sergeant, our Lieutenant, and the Captain, you know the story.
Some people all of a sudden try to reinvent me, but the reality is what I was then is who I am now.
Okay, so Eric Adams doesn't have a whole lot of credibility here to be talking about But it's always what they do.
And the Democrats do it because they've got nothing else.
And so they're willing to do it even in the most extreme circumstances, even in San Francisco.
There was a woman called in to David Webb's show once, his radio show.
She called in, and David Webb is a conservative, and she was a liberal.
And she was arguing with him, and eventually she completely lost the argument.
She said, well, you're only saying that because of your white privilege.
Now, if you know David Webb, you know that whatever virtues he possesses, white privilege is not one of them.
David Webb, very much a black man.
But she didn't know that it was a radio show, and so he starts laughing.
He says, lady, I know you're pulling the card that you guys always pull, but it's not going to work on me because you didn't even do the most basic level of homework to know who it is that you're talking to.
And so that's what Eric Adams is doing, because Eric Adams is just a dummy and an incompetent, and he can't govern New York, apparently, any better than the Bolshevik that he replaced.
And there were people who said, look, Eric Adams, he was a cop.
He's like a little bit more normal than Bill de Blasio.
Maybe things will get better.
It's not getting better at all.
And he's actually so incompetent that he can't even answer basic questions from mostly sympathetic reporters.
And so he's saying, all right, I'm going to stop answering questions from you entirely.
I'm going to come in, give my announcements, and go and run away.
And I'm going to make jokes about the crackers and the white reporters.
Not exactly Martin Luther King kind of stuff, right?
And not exactly persuasive either.
The reason that the civil rights movement of the 1960s was very persuasive to a lot of people and remains very persuasive, at least in theory to a lot of people, is because it co-opted patriotic language.
The reason it worked is because Martin Luther King didn't come out and say, man, this country's terrible.
It's horrible to black people.
The founding fathers were big jerks.
I hate it.
We're going to have a new country now.
I hate...
America's awful.
He didn't do that.
He did exactly the opposite.
He said, America's got to live up to her ideals.
America's got to live up to her creed.
Jefferson and Washington and Adams, they would have loved me.
And they would have loved my political supporters.
And you've all got to get on board, too.
And it's extremely, extremely persuasive.
And then...
Basically, before Martin Luther King's body was cold, they got rid of all of that on the left, and they embraced a much more aggressive anti-American form of activism.
And it doesn't really work.
It's turning off a lot of people, and this is why the Democrats look like they're about to get blown out in 2022.
The only people that that kind of aggressive anti-American language convinces Well, some radicals of all stripes and colors, but especially white liberals.
White liberals are the only group susceptible to white guilt.
They're the only group that hears this kind of stuff and says, you're right.
Mayor Adams, you're right.
You shouldn't take any questions from us crackers.
We're awful.
We're the worst people in the world.
Oh, you're right.
In San Francisco, it was just David Duke and Bull Connor that kicked you guys off the school board.
It had nothing to do with your absolute failure and your radicalism of trying to indoctrinate these kids.
No, no, it's because of, I don't know, I guess Strom Thurmond must have moved to San Francisco.
No, not at all.
So there was an article that just came out in the Allied Times from Bryan Cranston.
Bryan Cranston was just being interviewed.
And Cranston has now turned down a part in a play because he felt the part was too much partaking of his white privilege.
He said, I'm 65 years old.
And I need to learn.
I need to change.
Bryan Cranston needs to overcome his white privilege.
And this is really pathetic.
Bryan Cranston has a lot of privilege because he's one of the most famous, wealthy, well-known performers in the entire world.
But this kind of stuff is really pathetic.
I don't think it persuades black people.
I don't think it persuades white people.
I don't think it persuades any of the other races of people.
I think it persuades a very small percentage of radicals.
And Brian Cranston actually went on to make this interesting point.
The new play that he's doing is about the limits of free speech.
He's saying, look, there's no such thing as free speech absolutism.
There's no such thing as having no limits or taboos in speech and in standards and in society.
That's actually the same point as my book.
Brian Cranston is basically doing a play right now about my book.
But the standards that he wants are completely insane.
They're leftist standards.
Yes, it's true.
The truckers and the BLM people who shut down the highways, they're doing kind of the same act.
But the substance of that act is very different.
My friend Andrew Klavan points this out.
Consensual sex between a loving husband and a wife and rape can look kind of like the same physical act.
But they're completely different acts because the substance is different.
Because the spiritual component is different.
Because the telos of it is different.
And that's what we're going to need to dig into.
We're going to need to dig into what those boundaries should be and what we want our society for.
And if you're the one killing the puppies, you're probably the bad guy.
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Welcome back to the show.
My favorite part of the week when we get to hear from you in the mailbag.
First question up from Gabe.
Hey Michael, me and my current girlfriend have been on and off for the past two years.
We have a child, a beautiful baby girl.
She got pregnant within a month of us knowing each other.
She has struggled with substance abuse, specifically alcohol, having to go to rehab for it because of two DUIs in about a month's time.
Recently, our relationship has been getting strained again due to drinking habits.
I'm adamant about trying to keep our family together and raise our daughter under the same roof.
I've been vocal about not wanting her to drink around me because of my request.
She has asked that I stop drinking as well and agree not to do it around her, but she has not stopped drinking.
She won't do it, even if it's just a beer or two.
Physical abuses in the past have made me nervous whenever she drinks any type of alcohol.
She says, I'm trying to control her as a defense.
I'm just struggling between wanting to keep my family together and this constant fight about what is more important.
I'm sorry to hear about your problem, but your impulse is right to keep your family together.
When your wife says you're trying to control her, she's right.
I hope she's right.
You should be trying to control her.
You are the head of your household.
First of all, you should be the head of your household.
I guess you're not the head of your household in the sense that it's you and your girlfriend.
So actually, let me temper what I just said.
If she were your wife, you would be the head of your household.
But she's not your wife, she's your girlfriend.
So one, you should get married.
She has problems.
You have problems.
Everybody's got problems.
You should get married.
You have a child together.
get married.
Then you're the head of your household.
You want to control it.
Your wife says you're trying to control her.
Yes, she should be controlled.
She's got a big problem and you can help her with that problem.
And it's your responsibility to help her with that problem.
Now, one way that she says you could help her is by you stop drinking entirely, but you don't have an alcohol problem.
She does.
So why should you stop drinking?
Well, because if that's going to be the way to solve this problem in your family, then that's just what you're going to have to do.
And you're going to have to make that sacrifice.
And she won't uphold her end of the bargain?
Well, you're going to have to try to find ways to make her uphold her end of the bargain, but you certainly should uphold your end of the bargain.
And it's not even just, okay, I'll stop drinking around you.
If what is required is that you just stop drinking, well, then that's the way it goes, pal.
That's what you're going to have to do.
And that's going to give you a lot more credibility when you say, look, I am doing this, it can be done, and you need to do it too.
And I'm the head of this family, and you're asking me for help, and I'm willing to give the help, but that's the way that it's going to go.
Or should you just break up?
You should not break up.
This is going to be a slight digression, but it's related.
And it is the issue that is occupying my mind right now, much more than the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Much more than many other issues in the country, Kim and Kanye.
The Kim-Kanye skeet drama that's going on right now is much more important to the future of America than whatever Vladimir Putin will or will not do in Ukraine.
I mean that sincerely.
Because the Kim-Kanye skeet drama is about family and the nature of marriage.
And there have been huge attacks on family and marriage in recent years.
I mean, they've redefined the whole thing from the bench of the Supreme Court.
Or they've at least tried to, but it can't be redefined because it has a real meaning.
Keep family together.
I got in a lot of trouble on Twitter yesterday because I said, hey, I've got this crazy idea.
Follow me if you will.
Please hear me out.
What if Kim Kardashian reconciles with her contrite husband for the sake of her children and because of the vows that she made before her family and her community and her God?
What if she did that?
That's what she should do.
The libs screamed at me.
They were so angry.
They said, how dare you!
Kanye is an abuser.
First of all, I haven't heard any allegations that Kanye is beating his wife or anything.
I think that term is being used as a complete excuse.
It's being defined out of reality as a way to justify divorce, which the left has been after for a long time.
But divorce is really, really bad, okay?
And keeping a family together is good.
There are some cases, I grant you, there are some cases, if a woman is a punching bag, like a literal punching bag, there are some cases in which a separation...
Is not only prudent, but probably necessary, morally necessary.
But those are rare cases, okay?
And if it's merely the case that you and your wife don't get along, or you and your girlfriend in this case don't get along, that's not a good reason to destroy a family.
That's really bad for the kids.
It's really bad for society.
Someone wrote to me, they said, well, Michael, marriage is a private thing.
It's a private matter.
Stop poking your nose around in their marriage.
Whatever marriage is, it is not a private matter.
Marriage is very, very much a public matter.
That's why you invite all your family to the wedding.
And that's why you make vows in public.
With a minister there, before the government, and before the ultimate government, by the way, before God.
That's why you register with the civil authority.
That's why you sign a contract.
And then you have children.
Marriage involves lots and lots of other people.
Okay?
And for...
The vast majority of the history of our civilization, it was very, very hard to get divorced.
For goodness sakes, the Protestant Revolution happened because of a divorce.
You had Luther, you had some things going on in the continent, but the Protestant Revolution really took off because the King of England wanted to divorce his wife and the Pope wouldn't let him because he said, you've got to keep your marriage together.
It would destroy the faith.
You're supposed to be a defender of the faith and it would be so scandalous.
And it was scandalous and it destroyed England.
That Sort of thing is very, very important.
The family is the basic building block of society.
If you destroy that, your society falls apart.
Which is why Kim should take her contrite husband back and stop screwing around with Skeet.
And it's why you should marry your girlfriend, first of all.
And then you should do your best as a loving husband to help your wife through this process.
Long answer to a very good question, but...
It's an important question.
From Drew.
Dear Michael, I know that you're a fan of conservatives in power actually using their power for conservative purposes.
I agree with you that the role of governing authorities is to actually govern.
Many conservatives are split in regard to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Conservatives like Rod Dreher see his pro-family and anti-LGBT education policies as a model for conservatives in the U.S.
And other conservatives say he has authoritarian tendencies and is illiberal.
Yeah, okay, well, you know, I'm a conservative, so...
First thing I go for is not to protect the liberals, right?
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
I know some people do, but that's not what I do.
What are your thoughts on Orban and should American conservatives support him?
I suppose I've already given my answer.
Orban is doing a good job.
He is a politician.
All politicians have lots of problems.
But Orban is doing a really good job.
I'll show you an example.
Almost a unique example of how Orban is doing a good job.
Certainly unique in Europe.
Europe has a dying population.
And America has a dying population.
I mean that very literally.
There are fewer and fewer people being born.
We're not replacing ourselves.
The most basic requirement of a civilization, we're not fulfilling that and haven't been for decades.
Orban turned it around.
Orban turned around the declining birth rates in Hungary.
Or Bon answered a lot of the immigration problems that are bedeviling the rest of the West.
Or Bon turned that around.
People are trying to call him a fascist or something.
It's just completely ridiculous.
He's doing a good job, generally speaking.
And yeah, we should learn from him.
from Josh.
Hey, Michael, you and others had mentioned previously that Trump running in 2024 is a problem for DeSantis as he controls much of the Republican base.
I know the future is uncertain, but would it not be better for DeSantis to bow out of the 2024 presidential race, throw his support behind Donald Trump, keep crushing it as governor for another four years, and then just run for president later, likely with the support of Trump and his base?
I know you usually get cultural and relationship questions, but I had this political question and I didn't want to ask Ben.
Thanks for everything you do, Josh.
I think that question is better directed to President Christie.
You know, President Chris Christie, who was doing a really good job as governor of New Jersey in 2012, and a lot of people were calling him to tell him, this is it, you should run for president.
He said, no, you know, I'm going to wait it out, and then I'll let Mitt have this one, and then I'm going to run next time, and then I'm going to get everybody's support, and it's going to be great.
And what happened?
He totally flopped.
You don't win by losing.
This was the problem with the Never Trump argument in 2016.
He said, no, here's what's going to happen.
We've got this planned out.
Trump, he's going to lose.
We shouldn't vote for Trump.
Trump's really bad.
He's going to lose.
Hillary's going to win.
And then, you see, this is the genius.
Hillary is going to be bad.
And so people are not going to like her.
And then they're going to be really angry.
And we're going to win the next time.
That's not how politics works.
You win by winning.
You don't win by losing.
As Mitch McConnell says, the winners write laws and the losers go home.
Politics also comes in cycles.
Time matters with politics.
DeSantis right now is, I think, as hot as he's ever going to be.
The way he talks, the way he looks, the way he governs, the COVID crisis, his impulses, they're right on the money right now.
There is no reason to believe that they will be right on the money four years from now.
And even politicians who don't win the first time for president, almost no one wins the first time other than Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is the one guy who the first time he runs for office becomes the president of the United States.
But otherwise it doesn't happen.
Even the people who then run and they run and they run and then eventually they win.
I'm thinking of Ronald Reagan, right?
Ronald Reagan made moves to run in 68, then he runs in 76, then he finally wins in 80.
He's in it.
He's in the fight.
He's not just saying, hey, Gerald Ford, you have it this time.
And then, hey, you guys have it this time.
Hey, Richard Nixon, that's cool, whatever.
Then I'm going to get it later.
No, he was always in the fight.
He was at least making moves to run.
And then he does run against Gerald Ford, and then he wins in 1980.
I think if DeSantis wants to be president, I think he's got to run.
From John.
Hey, Michael.
I know you are no avid sports fan.
However, I've noticed a natural explosion in conservative values and stars in the UFC. What are your thoughts on a gladiator sport like mixed martial arts?
Why do you feel like the sport has become the most conservative when it comes to values?
And do you watch and have a favored fighter?
I don't watch, but I do like it.
I do like it because I like boxing.
Boxing has also always been a pretty conservative sport.
A friend of mine from a cigar bar in New York of many years was a heavyweight boxer, a pretty well-known heavyweight boxer.
And we had been friends for a while before I realized he was a Republican.
And he said, oh yeah, man, boxers, they're almost all Republicans.
I don't know, it's kind of a conservative sport.
You see it a little bit with baseball.
Baseball is a pretty right-wing sport.
You don't see it with basketball.
Certainly you don't see it with football.
So different sports, the politics varies.
Why is that?
Well, boxing is a beautiful sport.
It uses your whole body.
It's very artful.
We think of it as just bludgeoning people to death.
But there's actually a great deal of beauty to it, a great deal of finesse, a great deal of strategy.
And I guess mixed martial arts turns that up to 11.
It's more violent, I guess, in that way.
But I think that might have something to do with it.
It's also, what was that line from Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr., who had all those problems in the 90s and 2000s.
He went to jail, and when he was asked how he became politically sort of conservative, he said, it's very hard to go into jail, to go into these very aggressive, violent environments and come out a liberal.
What's the line from Mike Tyson?
Tyson, everybody's got a plan until he gets punched in the face.
I think that ballast of reality is probably why you see that as well.
From Verinder, Dear Michael, you say you do very little exercise.
You enjoy culinary delights.
How do you keep yourself in good shape?
Good genes, my friend.
That's how.
Now, the actual way, because I very rarely exercise, the only thing that even gets me to consider exercising is my Echelon bicycle, because it's in my house, so it's not like I'm going to go to the gym or something like that.
The actual thing that keeps me in shape is moderation, because while I love my good Italian pastas and my hoagies and all this stuff, I do try to Keep it in moderation.
I do try to not have the seventh bowl of pasta.
I do try to make sure...
Look, the camera adds ten pounds.
I've got to keep it svelte.
Maybe I'll do a little exercise every now and again.
But moderation is a virtue.
People think that we conservatives are to the right of Genghis Khan, and therefore we're not...
Moderate.
But actually, we're moderate as well.
I don't think that the libs and the squishes and the centrists, I don't think they have a great sense of moderation.
From Jonathan, last question.
Michael, over the past several months, I've gotten romantically involved with a fellow co-worker.
We share the same values and enjoy each other's company.
Everything's great, aside from two caveats.
She's 10 years older than me and has been married once.
I'm 24.
She does not have children.
I like her, but I wonder if I should be concerned about the age difference or the fact that she's been married once before.
So far, it's not been an issue.
Thank you for your time.
Depends what you want, my friend.
Especially if you're Catholic, you'd have to figure out the nature of that.
Was that first marriage a legitimate marriage, a licent marriage, or was it not?
If it was, then you can't get married.
If it wasn't, then I guess you could.
But it also depends on what you want.
If you want to have a lot of kids, then that's probably not going to work.
I've seen it work.
work.
I have friends who are married to women who are 10 years older than them, and it works out fine, and it's a wonderful arrangement.
But there's not going to be a hard and fast rule here.
You do have to ask yourself, what is it that you want?
How do you see marriage?
Frankly, it gets a little bit to the Kim and Kanye question.
It gets to a big, broad political question, too, which is, what are we all doing here together?
I'm sorry that I'm not giving you a direct answer on date this woman or don't date this woman.
I don't know the details, so I can't really give you a hard and fast answer.
But what I do know is that we need to answer those questions if we're going to move forward.
In our big, broad political culture, in our local communities, and in that basic political institution, the family.
We're lost in a sea of relativism right now.
Nobody has any idea what the hell we're doing or what any of it's for.
So it's just a brute battle of power and interest.
And what we're going to need to do is apply a little bit of logic to that and get back to some sense of what is it that we want.
And that's how we're going to get back to society, open up the restaurants, go back to school, stop transing the kids, and stop killing the puppies.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you Monday.
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