Elon Musk mounts a hostile takeover of Twitter, the Republican National Committee ditches the Commission on Presidential Debates, and Ron DeSantis signs a major abortion ban in Florida.
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For years, the Libs told conservatives that if we don't like the way that they censor us on big tech platforms, that we should build our own.
Build your own Twitter.
Build your own Facebook.
Build your own Google.
The suggestion is absurd.
Maybe in the very earliest days of social media, there was room for competition.
Remember MySpace, LiveJournal, Zanga, Friendster, lots of other sites.
Those days are over.
They've been over for a long time.
Eventually, a handful of platforms reached a critical mass and ensconced themselves in power.
And they formed cozy relationships with the federal government.
And they exploited legal liability protections.
And they even outright defrauded the user base that gave them the critical mass in the first place, with the understanding that they would be able to see and post whatever they wanted to.
Then the big tech companies pulled the rug out.
It is simply not possible to build our own Twitter.
It hasn't been for years, and leftists know it, which is why they keep making the suggestion.
Conservatives could try to wield the government to bring these massive corporations into line, but that's very difficult, if not impossible.
And lots of conservatives don't have the stomach for it, and even those of us who do have the stomach for it don't have any real political power in a system dominated almost entirely by the left.
But it turns out there's a third option beyond build your own Twitter and break Twitter, and that is buy Twitter.
Buy Twitter, which is what Elon Musk is apparently willing to do, spending more than $41 billion right now on offer.
And why is he doing it?
My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.
But you've described yourself.
I don't care about the economics at all.
Okay, that's quarter here.
Bingo!
Republics govern through speech in the public square.
Twitter makes up a huge portion of the public square.
And Twitter is keeping lots of Americans out of the public square.
Including really prominent ones.
Including Donald Trump, right?
Including the duly elected sitting president when they took him out.
Which means, as a practical matter, that right now we are no longer living in a functioning republic.
So Elon Musk is going to mount a hostile takeover to take it back.
And what happens if that takeover attempt doesn't work?
Okay, so you don't like to lose.
If, in this case, you are not successful in, you know, the board does not accept your offer, you've said you won't go higher, is there a plan B? There is.
I think we would like to hear a little bit about Plan B. For another time, I think.
Another time?
Yeah.
All right.
I love it so much.
I don't think I'm going to tell you my Plan B. Elon, of course, could have anything up his sleeve.
He's currently got more than 9% of the company up his sleeve, meaning that he could sell all of it and tank the stock.
Or he might have something even more creative planned.
Or it might all just be a giant troll to expose the hideous corruption at Twitter and throughout Silicon Valley.
Either way, it is the most hopeful moment for conservatives that we have had in politics since election night 2016.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is from AI Survivor 2020, who says, wow, the show hasn't even started yet, and YouTube already has a warning underneath this video.
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I think they probably do.
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When YouTube puts that banner, the CDC, go listen to Dr.
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Hey, head on over to the Michael Knowles Show.
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Bring it on, YouTube.
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Twitter.
Twitter is so upset.
Not Twitter users.
Twitter users love the potential Elon takeover.
But I'm talking about the staff of Twitter.
I'm talking about the leadership over at Twitter.
Just to be sure that we're not here knocking down straw men, that we're not here stuck in our own echo chamber, I'm really pleased to be joined right now by the staff and leadership over at Twitter headquarters.
Hey, guys, what...
Thank you, one, for being here.
And two, what is your reaction to the news that Elon Musk might be taking over Twitter?
That's pretty articulate.
I It's about as articulate as I thought it was going to be.
No!
No, they are really, really upset right now, and they're upset because they're going to lose a lot of political power.
This is not about the financials at all.
The stock soared when Elon Musk announced that he had bought some of it.
So it's not about the financials.
It's about the real value of Twitter, which is that Twitter allows you to control discourse in America.
By the way, Twitter's the smallest of the big tech platforms by far.
It doesn't have a particularly large user base.
Facebook, for instance, has a much, much larger user base than Twitter.
And Google controls way more information, really, than either of them.
But Twitter sets the news cycle.
Because of the people who are on Twitter, you've got a ton of journalists.
You've got a ton of those blue checks who have a lot of influence.
And so if you can control the narrative on Twitter, in many ways you're controlling the news cycle.
That's the reason that Elon's going in there to buy it right now, I suspect.
That's at least why people are excited that he's going to do that.
There's a lot of powerful entrenched interests who want to make sure that that doesn't happen.
One of the wildest examples was Saudi Arabia.
So in response to Elon Musk's potential takeover, Saudi Arabia has just come out and said, listen, the kingdom has a lot of stock in Twitter, and we don't think that the price that Elon is offering, which is at a huge premium, by the way, over what the stock is actually worth today. which is at a huge premium, by the way, over He's offering something like $54 per share.
It's way up.
It's over 50% over what the price was when Elon bought into Twitter and 38% over what the price was right before Elon announced that he had bought into Twitter.
But the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for whatever reason, says, no, we don't think this is high enough.
Why is that?
Well, Elon Musk asks the question.
He says, interesting.
Two questions here, if I may.
How much of Twitter does the kingdom own, directly and indirectly?
And two, what are the kingdom's views on journalistic freedom of speech?
And that second question is important because we know that Saudi Arabia likes to take a hacksaw to journalistic freedom of speech.
And notably in the case of Jamal Khashoggi, who was not merely just some independent journalist shedding light on issues.
Jamal Khashoggi did write for the Washington Post.
He also was a Saudi regime insider.
He also was a spy for the regime.
He also was on the wrong side of political issues in Saudi Arabia.
This became a big political football a few years ago.
But the question is a good one from Elon Musk.
What is it, Saudi Arabia, about Twitter that is so valuable to you?
Saudi Arabia just pumps money out of the ground.
The smallest big tech company doesn't matter as a financial issue to Saudi Arabia.
It matters as a political issue to set the agenda.
And so frankly, even if the Elon takeover doesn't work, or even if he backs out in the end, the fact that he's exposing all of this corruption there is a service into itself, unto itself rather.
And you're seeing this kind of bare knuckle politics throughout the system.
The The RNC has just made an excellent announcement.
So rare to say that about the RNC, which usually only does extremely stupid things and clutches defeat from the jaws of victory.
But the RNC made a great announcement.
The RNC is going to pull out of the Nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.
That commission, it sounds really nice, doesn't it?
It's nonpartisan, so they say.
It's just a way that we can all come together.
Oh, you awful Republicans.
You're afraid of debate.
You refuse to work across the aisle.
You're putting party before country.
No, the Commission on Presidential Debates is a rigged game.
It has been for a long time.
Bob Dole pointed this out in 2020.
Bob Dole, who was the 1996 Republican nominee for president.
Bob Dole, major force in Republican politics for half a century.
Dole came out and he said, this is not fair to Trump.
Because yes, while technically the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates is half Democrats and half Republicans, Dole said...
No one on the commission supports Trump.
Even the Republicans on the commission are those squishy Republican types who were effectively working for the Democrat campaign.
So it's just a totally rigged system.
And we know this in all the major presidential years and for the past, I don't know, 20 years or so, quarter century, in the big presidential debates, the debate moderators have tried to throw the debates for the Democrat.
Certainly you saw this with Chris Wallace just outright lying during the big debate between Trump and Biden.
You saw this with Candy Crowley.
Do you remember that?
Candy Crowley during the debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama also lied on behalf of Barack Obama, contradicted Mitt Romney dishonestly and threw the entire debate, possibly through the election.
Probably wasn't that, probably wasn't sufficient to actually throw the election.
Romney didn't run a great campaign, but it's a totally rigged game.
And something that I think conservatives have woken up to, and this is a really important rule.
I mentioned this the other night on the backstage when we were talking about the Daily Wire business strategy.
When the game is rigged, you have to break the rules.
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More great news for the right.
We're going to take the wins when we can get them.
There's always so much bad news for conservatives, for the right, for a traditional way of life.
Let's take the big wins when we can get them.
them.
Ron DeSantis down there in Florida has just signed a major abortion ban.
And not only that, but they say flattery will get you nowhere.
That's not necessarily true in politics.
Ron DeSantis, as he's signing this major abortion ban, cites Daily Wire as one of the inspirations.
You see how that type of mindset has led to things that really shocked the conscience in our society.
We just saw...
This terrible scandal in Washington, D.C. Is Mary Margaret here from the Daily Wire?
There's Mary Margaret.
She did this great expose.
They found all these remains of babies, and they found five who were basically infants, premature they would have been, but they would have been able to survive outside the womb.
And yet Washington, D.C. is treating that Just like we would treat the trash from our lunch or something like that.
It's really horrifying to see that that could go on in our country, but particularly in our nation's capital.
And so that is callous.
That is wrong.
And I want to thank her and Daily Wire for exposing me.
So, great stuff.
I'm glad that Governor DeSantis recognized Mary Margaret Olihan, who's doing really great journalistic work.
It's nice that he mentioned Daily Wire.
But the law itself is just great.
He's banning abortion after 15 weeks.
Really important stuff.
There is a good chance that Roe v.
Wade will be overturned in a matter of a couple of months.
This would be the most important political development, I guess, in my lifetime.
If you're talking about now saving hundreds of thousands of babies per year at least, that would be great.
And so the states are setting the stage.
One, they set the stage for the court challenge.
And then two, what happens in a post-Roe versus Wade world.
And DeSantis is doing a great job on this.
One, because it's the right thing.
And I think DeSantis has a really good political compass.
And I think, as far as politicians go at least, he does seem to have a good moral compass.
The other reason he's doing it is because it's a political winner.
And frankly, this is even more important to me, because it means that there are now real incentives for Republican politicians around the country to follow this stuff.
If you are a Republican governor right now and you have higher political aspirations, pass one of these bills.
Do it.
Not only is it the right thing to do, but it is in your political interest.
That is where the public opinion has gone.
That is where the culture is moving.
That is where the country is moving.
And oh, by the way, it's the right thing to do.
Really, really good stuff out of Florida.
What's the other side offering?
For years, the other side muddied the waters on abortion by saying, look, we don't support abortion.
We just think it should be safe, legal, and rare.
Abortion's a really bad thing, but it should be legal for some reason.
Why is it a bad thing?
Because it murders babies.
Well, then, if it murders babies, why should it be legal?
They never explained that, but they used enough squishy language, the old Clinton answer, safe, legal, and rare, that That it muddied the waters.
That's not the message of the left anymore.
The message of the left is celebrate abortion on demand without apology.
There was a tweet that went viral from a woman who was celebrating an abortion she had just had.
And the story looks legit to me.
The woman took a picture of a cake.
The cake said, it's a boy.
And then over the Y, she wrote, orted.
So it's aborted.
And the woman wrote, quote, Abortion is healthcare and also traumatic, so if you do have one, please gather all of your closest friends after to celebrate.
Be around endless love and happiness for your decision.
Thanks to everyone who came last night.
Two major problems here with what she just said.
I suspect, given how sad and desperate this post is, I actually suspect this is real.
I don't think it's a troll or a setup.
She says you've got to be around endless love and happiness.
Well, the only way you're going to get endless love and happiness is in the life of the world to come.
You're only going to get that in eternity in heaven.
Here, we live in a finite world.
And in a finite world, eventually the party's over.
And eventually the friends go home.
And eventually the lights go out.
And then what are you left with?
If you are so desperate to manufacture some artificial sense of celebration and happiness...
How long can you keep that up?
Eventually, once the party's over, what are you going to be left with?
That same nagging feeling that you were trying to paper over with the balloons and the streamers and the festivities.
And what is that nagging feeling?
The nagging feeling comes from what you say is a traumatic event.
That's my one question here, lady.
Why is abortion traumatic?
Why is it traumatic?
It's healthcare, you say?
It's a good thing.
It's something to celebrate.
So then why is it traumatic?
Well, because it's a difficult decision.
Right.
Why is it a difficult decision?
Well, because it's a complex issue.
Sure, you're just making the same statement over and over again.
Why is it a complex issue?
Because it involves a mother killing her child.
That's why.
That's where the trauma comes from.
We're not just talking about physical trauma.
We're talking about emotional trauma here.
That's why you've got to be around the love and the happiness and the festivities and everyone telling you you made the right decision even though you didn't.
So if it is traumatic, if you're being eaten away from the inside and you just know it's so awful that you've got to try to manufacture some semblance of happiness, how about we just be honest and say you shouldn't have done it in the first place?
You're going to be a lot happier if you just face up to that.
If you have an abortion...
That doesn't mean that your life is over and you're condemned to hell and you'll never have a moment of happiness or joy again.
You actually do have the prospect of happiness and joy available to you.
But you've got to be honest with yourself about what you did.
And you've got to repent.
That's what repentance means.
It means changing your mind.
You have to turn your mind.
You have to turn the way you're thinking about it and be honest.
And if you're just going to live in delusion and denial and beg all of your friends to come and pretend that this horrible, horrific act is somehow other than it is, you're never going to be happy again.
That's always going to be eating away at you.
There's an abortion activist who just made a similar kind of post, a prominent abortion activist.
She said, quote, Posted a picture of a book called What's an Abortion Anyway?
It's a little children's book and you've got a couple of kids in the background.
Her kids, I guess.
And she says, this has been our family's bedtime story on our vacation this week as my niece loves this book and reads it to her little sister every night.
Okay, I guess it's her nieces.
Our family was created by abortion, adoption, and parenting decisions.
I love our family.
And then she plugs the book.
Whatever else might be true or sincere in this woman's understanding of what happened, the one thing that I know for a fact was a lie is that she says our family was created by abortion.
No family is ever created by abortion.
Families are destroyed by abortion.
That's all abortion can do because abortion means killing someone in your family, right?
Presumably it's a...
The mother is the one who's getting the abortion.
And so the abortion is destroying your family.
It's so ghoulish.
I mean, the post itself is saying, Hey kids, read this book and be happy I didn't kill you.
Be happy it was only your siblings.
Ghoulish.
And we all know it's ghoulish.
And this woman knows it's ghoulish.
And the lady doth protest too much, me thinks.
If she or the cake lady, if they were really confident in their decision, If they were really secure and they felt this really is the good thing, they wouldn't be lighting up a freaking cake.
And they wouldn't be making these posts.
And they wouldn't be writing books about how great it was that they're now trying to show to kids to convince the kids who obviously know better.
And they wouldn't be posting it constantly all the time.
I'm so good.
I made the right decision.
You can read them gritting their teeth in the posts.
Because they know it's wrong.
The guilt that you feel for this is not coming from me.
I suspect neither of these ladies watch my show or listen to my show or listen to many other conservatives.
I suspect they've probably ensconced themselves in as much of a bubble as they possibly can ideologically.
And I bet they just invite all of their pro-abortion friends to constantly affirm them in their bad decision.
And yet they still know it's wrong.
They are still wracked by this nagging guilt.
That is called your conscience.
And you are not, oh man, you are not ever going to feel better by trying to ignore and suppress your conscience.
By trying to deny the shame and the guilt that you feel.
Shame and guilt are a healthy thing.
They can be a healthy thing at least.
Because they're telling you you're going down the wrong path.
You can turn around.
The shame and the guilt is not the end of the story.
It's like how we feel pain.
It's good that we feel pain because we know that we're in danger.
When I put my hand on a hot stove, I'm glad that I can feel pain because I know, get my hand away, do something different.
Same thing here with our moral conscience.
Guilt, shame, they can be very, very good things.
Speaking of guilt, this still regards the leftists, but it's on a completely different issue.
BLM is in a lot of trouble, and BLM is in a lot of trouble because BLM, which we once believed stood for Black Lives Matter, actually, it turns out, stands for By Large Mansions.
BLM raised guilt.
Tens of millions of dollars.
Something like $90 million a couple of years ago.
You know, especially at the height of the George Floyd riots.
And no one seems to be able to track where all of that money went.
And when the financial irregularities popped up, the leaders of the organization all headed for the hills.
And now we find out that BLM spent upwards of $6 million on just one mansion in Los Angeles.
Angeles.
And whenever we ask any questions about it, the co-founders of BLM say, hey, that's a triggering, dangerous question.
Patrice Cullors, who is one of the co-founders of BLM, there were three co-founders, all of them avowed Marxists, but pretty clever political operatives.
Obviously, they made a lot of money.
Patrice Cullors was just responding to a question about the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which has come under scrutiny now, in particular for the purchase of one mansion in Los Angeles worth $5.8 million.
And she was asked, hey, what's going on with your financial disclosures?
How come you guys seem to have been hiding all this stuff?
Where are your 990 forms?
Right, 990 forms, the basic tax form that non-profit organizations have to fill out.
And this woman, credit where credit's due for the sheer chutzpah, for the sheer audacity of this answer.
She says, it's such a trip to hear the term 990.
This is like deeply unsafe.
This is literally being weaponized against us, against the people we work with.
She says BLM has been, quote, attacked and scrutinized for the financial activities.
Quote, people's morale in an organization is so important.
But if their organization and the people in it are being attacked and scrutinized at everything they do, that leads to deep burnout.
That leads to deep, like, resistance and trauma.
So her argument is that the IRS... Doing the same sort of analysis of BLM that it would do of any nonprofit organization, or any individual for that matter, is triggering and unsafe, and it should not happen.
Not only...
Should BLM be permitted to burn the country down with impunity, as they suggested in 2020?
But BLM also should be permitted to launder money and engage in all manner of financial corruption without the IRS looking into it.
Anything else would be racism, would be triggering, would be violent.
They're just saying, hey, we're a criminal organization and you better not look into us.
That's a nice political order you got there.
Sure would be a shame if something happened to it.
This woman makes Al Capone look like a Boy Scout.
And in a way, you've got to kind of respect the game.
At least she's being open about it.
This is a woman who's gone on camera and said, yeah, I'm a Marxist.
I want to completely upend society.
Yeah, it's fine.
I'm not going to make any apologies for BLM burning the country down or committing all sorts of violence or threatening people or embezzling money and funneling money into all these crazy ways and enriching myself.
I'm not going to apologize at all.
What are you going to do about it?
Take the gun, leave the cannoli.
We're out of here.
You have to have a kind of grudging respect for that brazenness, for that audacity.
Are we going to do anything about it?
This group, BLM, is a criminal organization.
There should be RICO cases against these guys.
This is racketeering.
These guys are doing everything that the five families did in New York, except on a much larger scale.
Are we going to do anything about that?
Are we going to investigate and prosecute them?
Not as long as this ruling class is allowed to maintain their power because the ruling class, the Democratic Party in particular, relies on BLM to be its militant wing.
It's the terrorist wing of the political elite.
Speaking of crime, a really strange story out of a female prison.
This is a women's only prison in New Jersey where two of the female inmates were just impregnated By one of the other female inmates.
Now, I, like future Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Jackson, I am not a biologist.
I suppose this could be miraculous, or there could be some development.
Or, oh, right.
Right.
That female inmate is not really a female.
She is a he.
It's a dude who's pretending to be a woman who has now just knocked up two of the inmates.
This occurs...
Less than a year after the state began to adopt this new transgender theory into the prison system, which places inmates in the system based on their gender identity rather than their actual sex.
This story is going to be suppressed because it's just another example exposing the transgender nonsense for what it is, which is an absurdity.
This story, apparently the inmates who were impregnated were impregnated willingly.
Apparently, that's not totally clear, but I think that's generally what's being reported.
But let's take it further.
What is one of the main things that occurs in prison?
Rape.
Rape.
It occurs so frequently in prison that it's a joke.
The joke is, hey, you're going to prison.
Don't drop the soap.
Hey, you're going to prison.
You better punch the strongest guy in there because you're going to be made somebody's girlfriend.
You're going to be the girlfriend of Bubba when you go in there, buddy.
This is a joke in movies just throughout our culture.
And I guess it's bad enough when we're talking about single-sex prisons, but now let's say you've got hardened male criminals going into female prisons.
It's a little less funny, isn't it?
It's a little more, it's a lot more jarring.
Well, this could never happen, they tell us.
You're just arguing about some slippery slope.
No, of course, not only is this stuff going to happen, it is happening now.
So what is your absurd false gender ideology worth to you?
Is it worth lots of prisoners?
Well, one, getting knocked up.
That creates a huge problem in and of itself.
Think about these poor kids.
These poor kids are now going to be born to women in prison.
It's a horrible situation for the women and for the kids.
Or the kids are going to be killed through abortion.
Or they're going to be sent into the foster care system.
This is a horrible situation that only exists now because of the absurd, selfish sexual theories of radical degenerates who are running our country.
So that shouldn't happen, period.
What's it worth to you?
Is your radical, crazy sexual theory worth getting women raped?
Because that's what's happening.
It's what's going to happen.
Of course.
We know, actually, that a transgender bathroom policy in Loudoun County led to multiple rapes of young girls.
We know that.
Is it worth that to you?
What the left would say is yes.
We know they would say that because they know the risks and they're pushing this stuff anyway.
Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
And the omelet, I guess, is having men dress up like women.
Before we go, I have to get to this story before we get into the mailbag.
New York Times pushing this gender-bending weird stuff.
This is from the Style section of the Times.
Sexy lingerie for men is here.
Lacy thongs and sheer undergarments designed for men's bodies are shaking up the traditional lingerie market.
I'm no expert.
But I don't think they are.
I don't think so.
I don't think men are going...
Maybe a very small minority of homosexuals are doing this.
A very small minority of an already very small sexual minority maybe are doing this kind of...
But this isn't really happening.
The Times is just trying to make this happen.
The Times, like all of our political institutions, all of our major centers of power in the established institutions, Are trying to push this gender-bending weird stuff that the vast majority of Americans don't want.
Quit cramming it down our throats.
Quit grooming the kids and trying to trans the five-year-olds.
And quit trying to get me to wear lingerie.
I'm not doing it.
Darn it.
Now, as you know, the Daily Wire is intent on changing the culture, which is why we are actively changing it in as many ways as we can.
We're doing it in books.
We're doing it in movies.
We're doing it in everything.
So we've got this publishing-winning DW Books.
We're really happy to publish books that are actively fighting the left's monopoly on storytelling.
Such as Fiery but Mostly Peaceful, the 2020 riots and the gaslighting of America by Julio Rosas, who pulls back the curtains on the BLM riots that broke out across the country and burned city after city down.
Rosas exposes the media's attempts to convince Americans that the fatal riots, the destructive, violent riots, were peaceful.
Here's the trailer.
The media gaslit the American people for all of 2020 as the riots unfolded.
They did not give you the full story.
I was there.
George Floyd, Kyle Rittenhouse, Rayshard Books, Chaz in Seattle.
I saw all the riots with my own eyes.
Windshields being smashed, giant rocks that were being thrown, businesses that were starting to be looted.
The crowd started to become hostile.
All the cops were trapped and surrounded.
Police were being ordered to retreat.
I experienced the tear gas.
I experienced the smoke.
This was very real to me.
The mainstream media, they were trying to call them protests.
CNN with that chyron saying, fiery but mostly peaceful.
They're trying to push a narrative of don't believe your lying eyes because they were trying to appease a very dedicated Antifa movement that's there.
When you read my book, Fiery But Mostly Peaceful, you will get the full story.
You will learn what actually happened during the riots of 2020 and what the media did not want to tell you.
Buy my book, Fiery But Mostly Peaceful, everywhere books are sold.
Looks great.
The book is available for pre-order on Amazon or anywhere you get your books online, so go pre-order your copy today.
today.
We will be right back with The Mailbag.
Welcome back to my absolute favorite time of the week when I get to hear from you in The Mailbag.
First question up is from Sam.
Dear Michael, I'm in my 30s and a wife and mother of two small children.
I'm doing my best to live a wholesome life and raise our children well.
But when I was younger, I had multiple abortions and all I can say is that it destroyed my life and any semblance of self-respect I may have once had.
My feelings about it get worse and worse as I get older and the thought of what I participated in makes me almost physically ill.
There were even times over the years that I felt suicidal.
I still struggle with the feeling that I do not deserve to be alive and don't deserve my beautiful children I now have.
I cannot change the past, but it is consuming me and I want to be a strong and happy person for my kids.
How in the world can I move beyond these disastrous feelings and stop hating myself?
I'm going to give you a specific religious answer that I think will help you a lot.
I don't know your religious views or what church you're a part of.
I would just strongly recommend, and I say this from my experience as a Catholic, you should go to confession and receive absolution.
That's my very practical advice.
Now, I'll broaden that out a little bit philosophically and historically.
St.
Paul was a murderer.
St.
Paul, who is one of the most important men to ever walk the earth, one of the greatest evangelists in history, wrote a lot of the New Testament.
St.
Paul was present at, sort of participated in, the martyrdom of St.
Stephen, the first Christian martyr.
He was there.
The people who were throwing the rocks at St.
Stephen put their coats by St.
Paul to watch their clothing.
This guy was a really tough persecutor of Christians.
And then...
He had his conversion on the road to Damascus, and he turned his life around.
And then he became one of the greatest men in history.
You can't change the past.
You can change what you're doing now and what you're doing in the future.
It sounds like you've already done that.
If grappling with what you did, and I'm not going to sugarcoat it, what you did is just terrible.
But one perspective that I have gained from Christianity that has really changed the way I view the world is that Christians are, in one sense, the most judgmental people on earth because they have an answer for everything, because they have a very cogent, coherent understanding of the moral order of actions that seem small and trivial and actions that seem very large and public.
But on the other hand, at the same time, paradoxically, Christians are the least judgmental people on earth because all sin and fall short of the glory of God.
And I know that when I have lust in my heart that I'm committing adultery.
When I'm angry at my brother, I'm committing murder.
We know that we're not perfect and we sin all the time.
And so the great hope there is that there is the opportunity for repentance and forgiveness and absolution of your sins.
And that's not just soft soap and wishful thinking.
That's a fact.
If you're a Christian, that is, you are basing that on an historical event called the crucifixion and the resurrection.
Funny, coincidental, providential perhaps, that you're asking me this question on Good Friday, which is when we commemorate the crucifixion, where Christ conquers death on the cross and is resurrected, and those who believe in Christ and follow him can have eternal life and be forgiven their sins.
So that's my answer for you.
I know that some people out there who are more secular, or they want me to give some kind of atheist, rationalist answer for that.
I can't.
I can't do that.
If we lived in a world that really was atheistic, then I couldn't give you an answer to how to feel better that made any sense.
Actually, nothing would make sense at all.
There would be no logic to the universe.
But luckily...
That's not, the atheist delusion isn't real.
So, there is an actual real hard fact of repentance and atonement.
And some of the worst, people who have committed the worst crimes in the world have become some of the holiest people on earth.
St.
John Vianney said, the saints did not all start well, but they all ended well.
And you can, too.
And the way to do that is not to deny or suppress or try to put out of your mind what you did, but to grapple with it head on.
From Kerry.
Hey, Michael.
I'm a 17-year-old girl.
My best friend of nine years is an 18-year-old boy.
We have never had any interest in dating each other.
The thought isn't even in the realm of possibility.
Recently, my friend has started to date a girl.
I don't know.
I'm very happy for him, but I'm worried.
Not only did he tell me very suddenly one day, but he has since started talking to me significantly less.
The girl said she felt uncomfortable by how good friends he and I are when we met at prom.
I knew stuff like this could happen when we date other people since we are not the same sex, but I feel so unprepared to lose touch with my best friend.
Any advice is welcome and desperately needed.
Sincerely, too worried to say something witty.
Sorry, Carrie.
That's the way it goes.
That's the way it goes.
You have to ask yourself one question first.
When you say, he and I would never even consider dating each other, that's nuts.
We would never do that.
Do you really mean that or is that just a thing you say because you met at a very young age and you hadn't made sense of sexual attraction yet and so now you're just so used to doing that and you don't want to risk a great friendship to possibly date him?
Because that happens sometimes too.
And if that's the case, you and he should actually date.
But if that's not the case and you actually don't have any sexual attraction to one another, then you're just going to have to deal with the fact that you and he are not going to be as good friends moving into the future because men and women are different and because when guys start dating other girls and certainly when they get married, that their friendships with women, and especially with single women, just don't work as well.
Because it's weird.
It's the Mike Pence rule.
It's weird for a married man to go on dates with women.
It's just weird, and you're really not supposed to do that.
It doesn't mean that you can't have any friendship moving into the future, even in the current circumstance.
It's certainly while he's dating people and before he's married.
But one way that this could work is he's got some girlfriend and you guys are hanging out.
And Maybe you get some boyfriend and then all four of you hang out.
That would be a way to spend time together that would be a little more wholesome and less open to the prospect of you and he having a few too many cocktails one night and whatever happens, happens.
Oh, I never expected it.
And then maybe it does because that sexual difference really does matter.
That actually is a powerful force that you can't merely deny just because you've been friends for a long time.
That's one thing.
Maybe you become friends with his girlfriend.
I don't know.
Or maybe she's a jerk and you don't like her very much and you want him to dump her and get some better girlfriend or date you instead.
But there's not going to be any sugarcoating it.
That is inevitably what happens to friendships between men and women that are platonic and not sexual at all.
Because we're going to grow closer to our boyfriends and girlfriends and then ultimately to our spouse.
And if you want to maintain that, I have lots of female friends, and many of whom I've been friends with for many, many years.
But if you want to maintain those friendships, they're going to have to evolve and change.
It's not just going to be you and him.
It's going to involve other people.
Because if it's just you and him, then, you know, date and get married.
From Mitch.
Hey, Michael, I know the rest of the hosts at DW don't want to hear this, but you have the most style.
Stop it.
Get out of here.
Come on.
Why would you say something like that?
So where did you get your impeccable taste?
Thank you for that flattering question.
I got it from Elvis Presley.
I've been an Elvis fan since I was five years old.
Frank Sinatra, same thing.
I've been a Sinatra fan since I was five or six years old.
And Jay Press.
You know, the kind of more waspy, American, old school style.
Those are the preppy kind of.
Those would be the three places.
You get the kind of slick stuff from the mid-century Italians and showbiz, and then a little more put together from that.
That nice preppy style.
It never goes out of style.
That's the great thing about...
All of that.
From Daniel, dear Michael, I have heard you say several times that moderation is a virtue.
I have struggled with moderation when it comes to drinking alcohol at times.
I know many people struggle with socially acceptable vices such as food, caffeine, tobacco, or the aforementioned alcohol.
Could you please expound upon the idea of moderation as a virtue?
As a Christian, do you have any wisdom on accepting grace for God for falling short versus getting upset with myself for lack of moderation?
I've become more temperate as I've gotten older, but I think that if I gain some insight, I could enjoy some of life's pleasures without some of the regrets.
P.S. Listening to your show every morning and you turn me on to cigars.
I love them and thankfully have only overindulged a couple of times.
Oh, that's great.
I'm glad to hear it.
I do fear though that I've turned so many of my friends on to cigars at this point that statistically I've probably killed a few of them.
I hope not.
I hope not.
I hope, you know, they...
Everyone has it in moderation and we avoid the dangers of that.
But glad to hear that.
And look, what you're describing is something that's really common.
I don't know very many people who have not overindulged in booze in their younger years.
Late teens, early to mid-twenties.
That sort of thing happens.
I certainly drank way more when I was in college and in my early twenties than I do now.
Now I don't really have time to drink because I have a screaming baby who I have to tend to.
So that happens.
But really...
You should pursue moderation even in drinking, which is so socially acceptable, because it's the right thing to do intrinsically and you're going to feel terrible the next day.
When you drink too much during the night, then you're just borrowing happiness from the next day, because the next day you're going to wake up and you're going to have a terrible headache.
And you're going to do things that you don't want to do, and you're going to say things that you don't want to say, and it's just not a good look, and you're going to regret it.
I don't have a particularly addictive personality.
I know people who are addicts, who have extremely addictive personalities.
It is never hard for me to say, okay, I can't have any more booze, okay, I'll put this down.
It's never hard for me, even, you know how much I love cigars, for me to say, okay, I can't smoke cigars this week, okay, no big deal.
So for me, I'm not really worried about it.
But I do know people who, if they have one drink, they need to have ten drinks.
And there is no middle ground.
There's no two or three drinks for them.
And so for those people, you might have to abstain.
You might just have to say, okay, if one means ten, then I'm just going to abstain.
If one cigar means I'm going to start smoking two packs of cigarettes a day and I can't stop, then you just can't smoke cigars.
And that's too bad, and maybe it's because of your genes, and maybe it's because of your experiences, but that's too bad for you.
And it seems unfair.
I think Norm MacDonald made this point.
He says, it seems really unfair that...
Alcoholics, who really, really like booze, can't have any booze.
And I, who am not an alcoholic, and I don't really like booze that much, I'm allowed to have as much booze as I want.
Yeah, that's true.
It's unfair.
But that is sort of the point of moderation.
It is a little bit contingent on you and your tastes and your discipline and your abilities.
So if it's just that you're in your early 20s and you're drinking a little too much...
Maybe you don't need to worry about that.
But if you're finding that it's a real problem, you might just have to abstain.
From Peter.
Hey Michael, I was hoping you could clear this up for me.
You told Ethan Behrman, if sexual ideology is not being taught, then why would you oppose the parental rights and education bill?
Because if it's not happening, then this doesn't change anything and it shouldn't be an issue.
But couldn't the left use that same argument against us with regard to the anti-lynching bill?
If lynching isn't happening, then why are you voting against the bill?
To me, the statement made to Ethan Bearman is better left unsaid because it can be used to undermine the reason for voting against the anti-lynching bill.
And instead, we should focus on the fact that sexual ideology is actually being taught, which is what makes the bill necessary.
Thoughts, thanks, and love the show.
Well, that's a good question, and your point is almost totally right, but there's another difference here, which is the anti-lynching bill That just came up that the Democrats only passed to portray Republicans as pro-lynching or to pretend that lynching is still a problem in America and that's why we need all of this anti-racist activism.
Lynching is already illegal.
Not only is lynching not happening, And no lynching has happened for many decades in America, and that was only one, and before that, really the last time that lynching was anything even near a frequent problem in America was in the 40s and 50s.
But it's already illegal.
It's already illegal to murder people.
There are federal laws against murder.
There are state laws against murder.
And so the anti-lynching bill, there are laws against hate crimes as opposed to what?
Love crimes.
And so it's already illegal in many ways.
So there's no reason to add that.
Whereas, right now, until this law was passed in Florida, it was not illegal to teach kids about sex.
So even beyond the question of, is this actually happening, is another question, is this legal or illegal?
In the case of lynching, it was already illegal.
So why pass a law to outlaw a thing that's already illegal?
Whereas in Florida, whether it's happening or not, it was not illegal.
And so that law is clarifying it.
So I don't think they're comparable, and I think it's why it's important to point out the hypocrisy of the libs here, or the contradictory stories.
This isn't being taught in schools, and it's a good thing that it is.
I think you can point that out with any risk of hypocrisy for conservatives.
All right, that's our show.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Have a happy Easter.
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We'll see you on Monday.
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You know, some people are depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon's turned to blood.
But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.
