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Dec. 30, 2022 - The Michael Knowles Show

01:09:31

Spencer Klavan is STUNNED By Michael's Answer | YES or NO

Spencer Klavan sits down with Michael Knowles to see how well they think they know each other. They must choose "Yes" or "No" when it comes to gay marriage, religion, and how to deal with the porn epidemic. Check it out! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Skipping leg day is a lot like attending a liberal arts college and staying committed to your cheating girlfriend.
	In both cases, you are throwing your life away while also acting like a butter soft simp who just hopes things will work themselves out.
	Like the former president, I have a major announcement.
	If you go right now to dailywire.com slash shop, you can get your very own copy of the Yes or No games.
	Look at this.
	We've got game pieces in here.
	We've got a scorecard.
	We've got cards.
	This is the real deal.
	We had an initial run of these.
	I think we had about a thousand boxes of this game.
	They sold out instantly.
	And so, unfortunately, I think we would have sold 10,000 of these things had we had them in time for Christmas.
	You can't get it as a stocking stuffer, but you can pre-order your copy right now.
	And you should pre-order, because I think these are going to sell out to dailywire.com.
	You can play with up to nine people.
	Test how well you know your friends and family and loved ones.
	Discuss all the most important issues of the day.
	Debate.
	Do aliens exist?
	What are the merits of vegan suffering?
	What do you know about God, life, the whole universe?
	Head on over to dailywire.com slash shop.
	Get your copy of the Yes or No game in the flesh.
	In the box.
	I don't know.
	In the cardboard.
	We have in the flesh here my very good friend of many, many years.
	Indeed.
	Spencer Clavin.
	Hey.
	Good to see you.
	I'm glad you're finally on this show.
	When you buy the game, does it come with the day drinking?
	It does.
	You can.
	It's not required that you have a couple of Coca-Colas when you play the game, but you can, and I, for one, encourage it.
	It enhances the experience.
	It does enhance the experience.
	We have our drinks.
	I have a bit of a girly drink.
	You know, I actually think the martini...
	It's a manly drink.
	It's the James Bond drink.
	It's the James Bond drink.
	It gets a bad rap because people put berries and things.
	Okay, this is very important.
	Maybe this is a side piece, but that is not a martini.
	If you've got sugar around the rim, you're serving something else.
	It's like a Sex on the Beach or something.
	Now, you have a delicious glass of scotch.
	I do.
	I saw this troll on Twitter who said, it was like, you know, all these conservatives, they grow these beards to try to look manly.
	Because this is fake masculinity.
	And so I thought, I not only have a beard, I have whiskey neat at 2.30 in the afternoon.
	I am one of those manly conservatives you heard about.
	That's right.
	You know, 2.30 is usually when I go to the dentist.
	Okay, shall we begin?
	I'm ready.
	Bring it on.
	Like porn, violent or graphic video games are bad for society and should be banned.
	There's a lot there of portions of that question.
	Violent or graphic video games.
	So I have to say whether you think that's true or not.
	I'm going to put you on the yes.
	I'm not sure.
	This is like a how based is Knowles question.
	I know.
	You've got me on no.
	Now what happens?
	I've got you on no.
	Okay.
	Conditionally, yes.
	You're right.
	Okay.
	In my answer, conditionally.
	Alright, I want to hear about the conditions, but first you have to drink, right?
	Or no?
	Well, did I get you wrong?
	What's your answer?
	No, no, no, you got me right, so I guess you did.
	I did, okay.
	Okay, very well.
	So, I say conditionally, it's a real margin call, only because I do think that some video games can warp your mind.
	Like, when I was playing Donkey Kong Country as a kid, man, that stuff had me messed up, okay?
	You had misapprehensions about monkeys?
	Yeah, I was walking around throwing barrels at people everywhere I went.
	I never played a lot of video games, but I did get a kick out of Grand Theft Auto.
	Oh, sure.
	It was so outrageous and shocking, and...
	But when I was learning to drive, because I had played Grand Theft Auto a lot, where all I would ever do is I'd try to hit the guys on the motorcycle and make them fall off the motorcycle.
	When I was learning to drive, there was a motorcycle coming down the road.
	And it all turned out okay.
	I had the impulse to veer in and hit him head on.
	Oh, interesting.
	Because I'd played this video game so much.
	And so I think, in extreme cases, There should be some regulatory authority to set standards for video games.
	But broadly speaking, I wouldn't ban Call of Duty or something like that.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	What's your take?
	Okay, well somebody obviously knows me because they're trying to mess with me with this question.
	I mean, I am kind of, not famously, but known as a kind of video game optimist.
	I think they contain some of the great works of art of our generation.
	I think as fine art has dithered into abstraction and obscurity, you can actually turn on Final Fantasy and see panoramas unlike anything else that's being made out of the world.
	So all of that to say, I'm a total lib about this.
	And part of this, I think, is probably because my taste in video games is, like, Crash Bandicoot.
	Fuzzy McFuzzerson defeats the evil dragon.
	Yeah.
	And so I'm like, these are great!
	They're so beautiful!
	I'm having so much fun!
	Because in Crash Bandicoot, you don't carjack hookers that shoot them, right?
	I think you can get an expansion pack.
	You can re-skin it.
	Well, no.
	And I do like...
	And Gears of War.
	Everything is of war, but the Gears of War game.
	And those are definitely, I wouldn't give them to a child.
	And I think there's a huge domain of parental supervision and engagement.
	is one of those problems that goes like way deeper than the thing that is the tip of the iceberg.
	It's like, well, the breakdown of society, like, you know, the failure of the modern American family, like the corrosion of our values.
	All of it, like, you know, you'd have to rectify all of that before I would be like, and you also should ban the video.
	But I mean, like movies, I definitely don't think, you know, I think there should be some restrictions in place to make sure kids aren't playing Grand Theft Auto.
	I don't know.
	They do melt your brain.
	So since we both got it right, we just chose to drink anyway.
	Naturally.
	Okay.
	I can't...
	The glass is too appealing.
	It's too appealing.
	And the other thing, I've really restricted my drinking on this show in some recent episodes because we shot the thing at like 10 in the morning.
	And even for me, even I am not that much of a degenerate.
	Right.
	All right, you're up.
	Oh boy.
	Okay, so I get to pick.
	Uh...
	Wow, I did not know this.
	Okay.
	Steven Crowder is right.
	One of the most overrated writers in history is Shakespeare.
	I did not know that Steven Crowder thinks this.
	Yes, I had never said that.
	We pay no attention to facts on this show, so that may or may not be true, but I'll take them at this word.
	Just pick somebody.
	Jeremy Boring thinks that...
	That Shakespeare is the most overrated writer in history?
	Yeah.
	It's a big claim.
	Definitely.
	This is an easy one for me.
	That would be a no.
	That's a big no.
	Has he ever heard of Toni Morrison?
	I know Zora Neale Hurston.
	There's just a huge...
	Like that chick that wrote the poem at the inauguration.
	Oh my goodness.
	I was in a bookshop the other day, and I saw two collections of her poetry.
	What was her name?
	I can't remember.
	Amanda Gorman.
	Amanda Gorman.
	I'm shocked at myself.
	Where'd you pull that from?
	No idea.
	The things that I don't know because I know that is probably too depressing to think about.
	There's some line of poetry I've forgotten, but I know Amanda.
	I remember a line of literary criticism where the late, great literary critic Harold Bloom referred to slam poetry as the death of art.
	What's with the hate for Shakespeare?
	Why would anyone hate Shakespeare?
	So, I'm going to make the strongest possible case for this.
	I mean, because, for one thing...
	It's impossible to be more highly rated than Shakespeare.
	I mean, if you leave aside the woke crazies who likes to say white man, whatever, his name is synonymous with literary excellence.
	And I at least think that there are some other writers in the English canon, Milton, for instance, even if you're just restricting yourself to English language books.
	Yeah, yeah.
	There's definitely other contenders for the throne of the great poet of English.
	And the other thing you could kind of adjuice, as perhaps Crowder does, who knows, is that, you know, Shakespeare's reputation is kind of invented in the generations after his death by, you know, Johnson and Boswell.
	And, you know, those great who put him on the stage with like Aeschylus and he's our, you know, he's the English languages.
	But I don't know, man.
	And you know, for God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.
	How some have been deposed, some sleeping killed, some poisoned by their wives, all murdered.
	For within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps death his court.
	And there the antic sits, allowing him a breath.
	A little space to monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks, and humored thus, comes at the last, and with a little pin, bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!
	Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood with solemn ceremony, for you have but mistook me all this while.
	I live with bread, like you.
	Taste, want, feel, grief, need, friends.
	Subjected thus, how can you say to me, I am a king?
	Remember, Jew, though justice be thy plea, consider that we're politically incorrect ones.
	I was going to say, you're getting us banned even without the bad questions.
	I'm just getting us banned by reading Merchant of Venice.
	Ultimately, when you're faced with a genius of that totality, which really, I mean, the language aside, the completeness of his vision of human life, the capacity of it.
	I mean, we've been talking a lot about Dante lately, and I think he's maybe the person you could put next to Shakespeare for that just, like...
	Totalizing vision of human life.
	It's got to come from one mind, and I have no...
	I've seen no evidence why it shouldn't have been Shakespeare.
	And if it was some guy named Bob, like, what difference does it make?
	Bob Shakespeare.
	Bob, Billy...
	I love when they say Shakespeare was actually multiple people.
	And I think, yeah, because you know what produces really great art?
	Committees.
	Committees are known for their artistic vision and skill, right?
	All right, next question.
	Yes.
	I am more inclined to believe that the Earth is flat than that bodies were recovered from Roswell.
	Okay, after we answer this, we have to diagram.
	Yes, basically, I'm seeing many verbs and I'd like a lot, yeah, snaking.
	Okay, so I am trying to decide whether you think it's more likely that the Earth is flat than that bodies were recovered from Roswell.
	Oh, this is actually really hard.
	I thought it was easy and then it turned out to be hard.
	Drink.
	Hey!
	Boy, oh boy.
	Okay, this is a good one.
	I'll drink, too, just in solidarity.
	Okay.
	No, I am much more inclined to believe in the flat Earth theory, since the Earth actually is flat for all intents and purposes.
	This is Jonathan Peugeot's big thing, right?
	This is Owen Barfield's point.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So that was why I instantly went for...
	And then I thought, actually, he's probably going to say that Owen Barfield...
	Yes, go on.
	I also...
	Like, demons exist.
	Aliens don't exist, but demons exist.
	But they don't have bodies.
	The definition of an angel or a demon is that they're pure spirit.
	Right, right, right.
	So whatever they found at Roswell or whatever, you know, Soviet spy planes, even if they found a demon, they wouldn't be able to grab his body.
	He doesn't have a body.
	Right, right.
	But what about counter-argument?
	What about what Beatrice says to Dante when he asks her whether the blessed souls really are on Venus or really are...
	She says, they showed themselves to you here, not because this is their sphere, they all live in the Empyrean, but as a sign for you, since this is suited to your senses.
	And in this way, the Bible condescends, right, to speak of God as having hands and feet, but meaning something else.
	Yes.
	All of this to say, right, like couldn't It might be the case that although angels and demons don't have bodies...
	They could appear to have bodies at Roswell.
	I suppose that's true, but I guess the way I picture that, because we entertain angels unawares, and I could give you examples where I'm quite confident this actually happened.
	Please.
	But I'll tell you...
	I didn't reach out and grab them.
	I kind of wonder, if there really were demons or something, you know, at Roswell, the moment that the cops went out there to get them, it'd be like a B-ghost movie, where they'd go grab them and just kind of fall right in.
	Interesting.
	Now, so, I was correct on the Flat Earth thing?
	You were right.
	You're more inclined to believe in the Flat Earth.
	Well, but only...
	Is that what you said, that I'm more inclined to believe?
	Right.
	But only in this Owen Barfield-y way, which you should probably define since people are going to be watching us.
	Which is to say that the notion that there is a scientific theory of physical space that doesn't simply correspond to our perceptions, but actually outlines the bedrock of reality, is heretical and a scientific fowl.
	Yes.
	This is why...
	Right.
	This is the problem with Galileo.
	It's not that he thinks the Earth revolves around the Sun.
	It's that he thinks there is an answer to, does the Earth revolve around the Sun, or vice versa, which reflects some absolute fundamental truth, which makes a fundamental truth physical rather than spiritual.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	Because that's what they say.
	Sometimes, if people ask the Galileo question, they'll say, does the Earth revolve around the Sun?
	And I'll say, man is the center of the universe.
	They'll say, but, you know, does the Earth revolve...
	The best way I have of describing reality is that man is at the center of the universe.
	That's right.
	And they will say, no, no, no, yeah, I get it, you're using some stupid metaphor talk, but like, literally, objectively, literally, and you're telling me that the fundament of reality is some stupid rock?
	I mean, that's not true.
	Nobody really believes that.
	Right, right.
	And, I mean, it is, in fact, true, so far as I understand, that you can describe the universe as, you know, revolving around the Earth.
	I mean, it's just the equations are a lot more complicated.
	But the fact that they're more complicated doesn't mean that they don't actually describe, you know, they don't predict the outcomes of our observations.
	Right.
	That is all, like, it is a kind of a fiction, a pernicious fiction.
	Right.
	That when we write math, which predicts physical outcomes, we are somehow getting something more real than the experience, the quote-unquote subjective, by which people usually mean arbitrary, experience of the world as it occurs to our senses.
	This is a real problem.
	And so the argument that the Earth is flat is not that if you walked far enough, you'd fall off it, but that...
	For your, in your experience of the world, it is flat.
	You don't have to account for its curvature as you walk.
	You can see its, you know.
	So yeah, I think that's true, although that's not what the conspiracy theory is.
	I guess the conspiracy theory is also scientistic and is also referring to a physical.
	But yes, if someone said, Michael, well the question that keeps coming up, what is a woman?
	Right.
	What is a woman?
	And unfortunately the conservative answer keeps being two X chromosomes and a uterus.
	That's right.
	Adult human female.
	Adult human female.
	Even that's better than two X chromosomes and a uterus.
	But you know the real answer.
	Go on.
	Sugar, spice, and everything nice.
	That's a much more accurate and descriptive answer.
	It is.
	Yes.
	Yeah, I would say it's a two-legged rational animal of the female gender.
	Right.
	There is this problem, and this happens a lot, I think.
	It occurred to me just the other day that there's a certain form of biblical literalism which is also scientific.
	Because you start out with the true statement that everything in the Bible is true.
	Yeah.
	And then you defend that statement by trying to claim that every word of the Bible corresponds to a physical event in space and time.
	Which, you know, again, if you chase this down, you get, like in the Psalms, you get the earth revolving around the...
	Or you get the sun, rather, moving across the sky, revolving around the earth, and so forth.
	And this is a con that the libs pull the traditionalists into, which is they say, like, oh, well, you can't prove, you know, show me on a map...
	And then our response is like, yes, I can show you on a map.
	It's the XX chromosomes.
	It's the whatever.
	And of course, the response should be, that's a completely childish and untenable view of the world, even according to science.
	Even once you get down to the quantum level, you realize that perception does have this fundamental role to play.
	Right, right.
	Describe a kiss.
	Exactly.
	Like, oh, it's when these lips, which are made up of these atoms, kind of do this, it's like this thing, and then maybe a little like a tongue, if you're French, kind of comes in.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And then dopamine.
	And then the dopamine surges, and then that's what a kiss is, right?
	Of course.
	Okay, so this is my turn.
	Here we go.
	Okay.
	Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
	Okay, well this is going to be easy.
	There's no possible way that a gym selfie could be considered an appropriate thing for a self-respecting man to post on Instagram.
	Well, you know my answer to this, but I'm not sure I know yours.
	We're going to spill a little bit of tea here, I think.
	Are we going to pull out gym selfies?
	That's right, yeah.
	They made me take away my phone for this.
	No possible way.
	You're correct.
	Oh, boy.
	Okay, I'm going to drink it.
	Yeah, I choose to as well.
	Okay, you are also correct, of course.
	And I must have gotten this from you, so I guess it's sort of cheating, but when I think of arete, when I think of real excellence, okay...
	I think, yes, we can demonstrate our intellectual...
	Oh, and yes, we can demonstrate some virtues through acts of kindness and charity.
	But also, we need to post-physique is what we need to do.
	Because the physical excellence matters, too.
	Yes.
	This is in the central, one of the central chapters of my book, which I should probably talk about.
	Yeah.
	Because I'm supposed to like publish it.
	I would plug that.
	You know, I'll plug the book.
	It's called How to Save the West.
	And there's a whole section on the body and the relationship between bodies.
	And this is, it's a tricky thing because I accept the premise of the question, which is, if I were to rephrase it, I would say, there's no possible way that most gym selfies that get posted are something that a self-respecting man would there's no possible way that most gym selfies that get posted are something On the other hand, we live in a culture where...
	In order to break down every standard of objective excellence, we are constantly assaulted with ugliness.
	That is one of the major kind of means of our...
	I wouldn't even call it...
	I mean, leftist is almost too small a term for it.
	It's like this...
	My friend James Poulos calls it the Borg, right?
	It's this totalizing, out-of-control kind of sameness and...
	You know, in C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Proposes a Toast, he has a perversion of democracy, which is kind of reflected also in, like, de Tocqueville, the total equalizing impulse that I'm as good as you, everything as good as everything else.
	And, you know, why are we constantly being shown images of obese women in their underwear, right?
	That didn't used to be the case.
	I used to.
	I remember because I was a kid.
	And the Victoria's Secret billboards and the catalog would have super hot chicks.
	And now it doesn't.
	And the minute you say this, people say, you hate fat people.
	Which is like, no, no, no.
	I don't hate fat people.
	I've got Michelle Obama over here.
	Some of my best friends are fat.
	But...
	But the point is not at all what is the range of things that's okay for a person to be.
	The point is what do we aspire to?
	What are our images of excellence?
	And to deny that there's such a thing as physical excellence is corrosive and demeaning and belittling to people.
	And just obviously not true.
	We all know that it's not.
	I say this as an international sex symbol.
	Let's recognize physical beauty and excellence where it is.
	Exactly.
	Okay.
	Did I read that one or you?
	That was me.
	That was you.
	Okay.
	I read this one.
	America will not correct course and will cease to exist as we know it before 2050.
	2050?
	Yeah.
	Correct.
	Drink.
	Go on.
	You think I'm a pessimist about this?
	Yes.
	You think that I think America is doomed?
	Yeah, you're an editor at the Claremont Review.
	Goodness gracious.
	Well, I know that pessimism is like a favorite.
	I'm a pastime of the conservative movement, and I'm only saying no because of the absolutism of the prediction, which I reject out of hand.
	I think nothing is written in the stars until it happens.
	I also think, you know, things could go terribly wrong.
	You can always see how things could go terribly wrong.
	But there's a ton of energy and excitement also about recognizing the problem, more than I think has been true in a long time.
	So no, I'm not a determinist about anything.
	I think determinism is unmanly.
	You know, I was wrong because I underestimated your optimism.
	You were right because you overestimated my optimism.
	My feeling is that America won't be so fundamentally different in the future from where we are now.
	It'll just limp on it.
	It'll just kind of...
	We're already on kind of a bad path, but maybe we can change it.
	I agree.
	Determinism is for wimps and losers.
	Right, right.
	But...
	There's a difference between a conservative optimist and a conservative pessimist.
	That's okay.
	A conservative pessimist says things can't get any worse.
	And a conservative optimist says, oh yes they can.
	Oh yes they can.
	That's great.
	Yes, I remember that.
	Yeah, I mean, it's big like, you know, late Western Roman Empire hours.
	Like 2050 is small.
	That's nothing compared to the like, you know, we could elect a horse as a senator.
	We could do any sort of thing.
	We may have.
	We've got to answer some of these questions.
	Okay.
	Ooh, good.
	Stoicism is compatible with Christianity.
	Hmm.
	Ah.
	Yeah, okay.
	Okay.
	Go on.
	I mean...
	You got me right.
	It's another one of these hard questions because...
	And Paul reaches for the Stoics almost more than any other.
	I mean, I don't have like a tally, but I feel like he's more into the Stoics than any other Greek philosopher.
	And John, the prelude to John's Gospel in the beginning was the Word, obviously in some deep consonants with Stoic metaphysics.
	But Stoicism, full stop.
	It's incompatible with Christianity, right?
	It's a cyclical notion of time, this whole thing that, like, the soul dissolves into atoms, like, or whatever the soul's made out of, right?
	That's incompatible.
	But I think Stoicism is one of the most easily baptizable and most frequently baptized forms.
	I noticed a lot of tech bros and Silicon Valley types got really into Stoicism in the last 10 years or so.
	And I think that is not contrary to what I see as a Christian revival.
	I think it's sort of part of the Christian revival.
	But yes, ultimately, the two are not.
	I just wrote this whole...
	We're coming out with this new introduction to the Stoics, Gateway to the Stoics.
	We're just reprinting some old translations, but I wrote a foreword to it.
	So I did a lot of this.
	you know i went on the reddit forum for stoicism which is huge i mean like who doesn't yeah every night right before bed i'm i know you're You think you're joking, but it's like half a million people are on it.
	These Reddit bros be like, you know, scrolling through Epictetus, you know?
	And they talk about this stuff.
	And I did find a lot of this kind of, it's sort of like Christian atheism.
	You know, it's like I like the thing that this delivers, but I don't want to like the bullet of metaphysics of it.
	And so I did find a lot of people being like, well, you can't really talk about gods anymore.
	But, you know, it's like, well, look, I mean, the things that appeal about stoicism are all things that, you know, we come to us through Christianity.
	Like all men are brothers, right?
	It's like, so who's their father?
	Right?
	All men are brothers, who's the dad, right?
	Oh, we're all brothers, yeah.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, it's not literally true, so something must be spiritual about that, and it must be real.
	Yeah.
	And I do think there's like a temptation among these people to be like, oh, I got stoicism, now I have a philosophy.
	Now we're good.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	It's like, you think Tidus is epic, you know?
	Just wait until you discover John.
	Yeah, let me tell you about a little somebody called John of Patmos.
	A little something-something.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah.
	It's okay to be white is a racist statement.
	Oh.
	This is too easy.
	No, I'm joking.
	I'm joking.
	All right, you white supremacist.
	That's not racist?
	We're going to get kicked off of YouTube.
	We are for this.
	I know.
	No, I think not only...
	It's like I'm sitting across with Kanye here.
	You said you're a white supremacist, you know?
	You just called me a Jew.
	I don't know.
	No, I mean...
	Not only is it okay to be white, not a racist statement, but calling it a racist statement is how you end up with actual white supremacists.
	At a certain point, I think...
	You know, I'm truly...
	Open-minded, sort of.
	I don't get angry.
	I'm like the only guy in the conservative movement, probably other than you, who doesn't get angry.
	We were just talking about this backstage.
	And I don't think about race, almost ever.
	But I think, you know, if you just come up to me and you say, like, it's not okay to be white.
	I think, like, well, all right.
	It would have been completely ungentlemanly, like, 20 years ago, for me or anybody to go out there and pump my fist and be like, It's okay to be white, right?
	Like, that would just seem uncouth, you know?
	And so, naturally, I think you and I both are fairly affable fellows, you know?
	We don't want to, like, go out here carrying signs that say things like, you know, men are men, you know?
	Nobody wants to be...
	I have better things to do with my time and more interesting things to say.
	But, like...
	But if you're going to call it into question, then, yeah, you do.
	Yes, I gotta say it.
	Right.
	I know.
	I know.
	We should drink to that.
	We should.
	Amen.
	Cheers.
	Alright.
	My turn, right?
	Your turn.
	Okay.
	These are great.
	Libertarians...
	You guys did a great job.
	Good job, Bruce.
	Yeah, well done, everybody.
	We need to talk about grammar, but we'll get to that later.
	Libertarians are basically communists who either shower or don't live off their parents.
	That's the whole thing.
	Well, fair enough.
	Oh, boy.
	Yeah.
	Are you going to make me drink for that?
	No, we obviously agree.
	Oh, man.
	I feel like I have to make you drink just to be, like, nice.
	Yeah, we're all friends.
	Look, some of my best friends are libertarians.
	Truly.
	I mean, truly some of my best friends.
	That's what I was going to say.
	Some of my best friends are fat.
	Some of my best friends are fat libertarians.
	But...
	Yeah, but...
	The statement is correct.
	I mean...
	The statement's correct because the libertarians and the communists, I think, ultimately share the same view of anthropology.
	Ultimately, they believe that men are fundamentally individuals born primarily in, as much as we have a political life, with rights and entitlements and And the commies say we're all individuals, and then they bunch us all up together in their sort of hideous collective, and the libertarians just don't get to that next stage.
	But both of them reject the reality of man as not merely an individual, but as a social being, as a political animal born into a family, in time and space, into a community, into a nation, with, I think, primarily duties and obligations and traditions.
	And he has rights and things, too, but that's not the primary fact of his life.
	This is a great argument, and it's making me understand, I think, what my answer to this question is.
	Solzhenitsyn, sorry, Dostoevsky.
	Do I have Jordan Peterson on the show?
	Yeah, right, exactly.
	Dostoevsky, the narrator in Brothers Karamazov, very early on, says socialism is just the Tower of Babel project.
	Done for real.
	The effort to bring heaven down to earth.
	Yep.
	And I think this is an extremely apt statement, and you are basically saying libertarians and communists have the same fundamental idea about human personhood, which is that we are interchangeable widgets.
	And even though libertarians don't chase this to its logical conclusion, that is the Tower of Babel project.
	Let us all have one language, one place, just the total uniformity for Follows on from the idea of the individual as seemingly autonomous, but actually just kind of empty, right?
	Just, you know, consumer A, consumer B.
	And so my answer is actually, I think, going to be the same as my answer about stoicism, which is to say stoicism alone cannot save.
	Libertarianism alone is, you know, as like a totalizing philosophy of the world, is basically the metaphysics of communism.
	But I know a lot of people who have libertarian, like, ideas and leanings about how we should operate within a constrained sphere who are not really, you know, who think that libertarianism is like an operating system that you can run within an already existing computer called America.
	And the critique of libertarianism is, well, that computer is, like, now completely...
	It's gone viral.
	Yeah, it's totally fried, in part because of, like, an excess of classical liberalism.
	So, yeah, I don't...
	That's good.
	You have to drink, but go.
	Yeah, okay, but I'll drink anyway.
	But, right, why not?
	In fact, your turn?
	For real.
	By the way, Spencer, I'm going to give you a little show business right now.
	They're telling me in my ear that they split this question into two cards.
	I feel like I got the backstage pants.
	You got it.
	This is how it really works around you.
	Are they giving you directives?
	They always are.
	They're speaking when I have an earpiece in and when I don't.
	This is all those conspiracy theorists on Twitter.
	Conspiracy...
	Realists.
	Conspiracy scholars, shall we say.
	We are being conditioned so that before the 2024 election, there will be a transgender version of George Floyd, along with the subsequent protests and social unrest.
	Knowles, this is a fun game.
	I like this game.
	I love this game.
	Yeah, people should buy this game.
	It's a great game to get at home, by the way.
	I don't know how much it costs or when you're going to get it, but it is going to sell out, so you actually should.
	I did that just because you let me plug my book.
	Thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	They'll call it Grift, but really it's just friendship.
	Boy, okay, so there will be a transgender version of George Floyd.
	You've already put my drink.
	I say no.
	Oh my gosh.
	I say you say.
	I don't know what I say.
	Or you don't know what I say.
	I don't know what you say.
	I don't think you know what you say either.
	For that matter.
	Half the time.
	I create your answer by moving your martini.
	Oof.
	Yeah, no, that's not going to happen.
	There's like 12 of them, and I know that they're trying to groom the kids now, so it's like 20% plus of Gen Z, according to that one random survey.
	Right, right, right.
	But no, it doesn't work.
	There's a lot of kids out there who think they're transgender.
	That's a very different thing.
	Also, it's just race is the...
	Right.
	Whereas this new gender fad is simply that.
	There were no transgender plantations.
	Yes.
	There was not like an actual crime against humanity like embedded into our history vis-a-vis transgender people.
	Yes.
	Whereas you're right.
	The whole thing about race in America is that they're actually grabbing on to something truly awful and traumatic in our past.
	And the other aspect of this is it's too specific.
	It's a little tinfoil.
	But I certainly think if they could, they would.
	I mean, the version of this that is real...
	And this, we're going to get banned for like five different reasons off of YouTube.
	This is the end of this show.
	I hope that's okay.
	Yeah, that's fine.
	I had a good run.
	Yeah, right.
	Exactly.
	It sold some games.
	No, the version of this that is real is the, like, transgender people are being murdered en masse in the streets, right?
	They kind of have this line that goes on.
	And that is created to...
	And also, if you don't pump your kid full of hormones, they'll commit suicide.
	Yeah, you've killed your kid, okay?
	Right.
	They totally hold you emotional hostage with all of these things, which are lies, right?
	These are not true things.
	But no, I don't think they can fabricate out of nothing.
	I mean, I don't think they fabricated George Floyd out of nothing, you know, so no.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	I'll drink anyway.
	Yeah, why not?
	Let's be honest.
	I like the start.
	I like where this is going.
	95% of our political issues in America would be solved if benching 225 pounds was a requirement to vote.
	Hmm.
	Well.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	You know, I remember one time, maybe it was Ann Coulter, said we need to repeal the 19th Amendment.
	And I'm sure she said it more than one time.
	But I was talking to Elisa about this.
	And Elisa, this was early on in our sweet little Elisa in my dating life.
	And she goes, oh my gosh, that's crazy, you know, come on.
	And I sort of thought and I said, well, what's the point of voting?
	Because what you're being asked right now, you sweet little elite, would you give up your vote to have a better political outcome?
	So I thought of it and I said, because women vote for Democrats and men vote for Republicans.
	It's more complicated than that, but basically that's what it is.
	And I thought, well, young people vote for Democrats and older people vote for Republicans.
	So if you told me tomorrow, Michael, the only people over 50 get to vote, would I agree to that?
	I absolutely would agree to that.
	I'd lose my vote.
	Right, right.
	But I'd have a better political outcome for my community.
	Now, I'm not saying I can't bench 250 pounds.
	No.
	But...
	Right.
	If it were a risk that I couldn't...
	In the hypothetical universe where you're not putting up three plates for refs all the time.
	Yeah, yeah, like a big beefcake that I have.
	Like a big dude.
	Yeah, right, exactly.
	I would still go for it because it would have a better outcome for my political community.
	Yeah, yeah.
	This body by lasagna.
	Well, okay, so...
	I am in favor of voting.
	I mean, I am not a, like, everybody must vote!
	Lower the age to five.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Twice, in fact, if possible.
	So I think, you know, I've heard good arguments for, like, you should own land to vote.
	I do think the question was, would our political outcomes be improved?
	And the answer to that question is certainly yes.
	Totally.
	Other question behind it is, should we therefore do it?
	And I'm enough of a lib to say, just because you get better outcomes doesn't mean it's just...
	Well, you won't get it.
	There is no mechanism within politics to actually do it.
	But yes, would, if only GigaChads voted, would we have better political outcomes?
	I just think that's a statistical fact.
	Even lib gym bros are way more reasonable than lib couch potatoes.
	Totally.
	Okay.
	Easy.
	I'm up.
	There is at least a 51% chance JFK was not killed by the communist Lee Harvey Oswald.
	Hmm.
	51?
	51% chance that he was not killed by Oswald.
	I think he was killed by hate.
	Ha ha ha There is an epidemic.
	The real epidemic.
	Yeah, exactly.
	No, he was killed by Oswald, I think.
	Do the people who...
	Like, I know there was just this release where Tucker did a whole segment where he essentially said that the CIA was involved in JFK killing.
	But...
	And there are all these files from the CIA and their relationship with Oswald that sort of have not come to pass.
	But even still, does anybody say that Oswald...
	Didn't pull the trigger.
	Didn't pull the trigger?
	I am not up on this conspiracy theory.
	I'm into the moon ones.
	I mess around with some of those.
	But this is one that kind of bores me because I sort of think he did pull the trigger.
	I don't think anybody thinks it was like...
	Grover.
	Like...
	Right, right.
	Yeah, I don't...
	Yeah, it wasn't just LBJ sitting on the knoll.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Much as he might have celebrated.
	He would have been delighted.
	Right, right.
	Okay, all right.
	That's good.
	All right.
	The only conspiracy theory that...
	Ah.
	This is a good one.
	The Respect for Marriage Act is neither respectful nor about marriage.
	Hmm.
	Hmm.
	The Respect for Marriage Act is neither respectful nor about marriage.
	So we're saying yes, it is not respectful or about marriage.
	That's right.
	That's right.
	If you agree that it is about neither of those things, you should say yes.
	Hmm.
	I was going to say no, and now that you've said that, I think maybe I do think yes.
	Uh...
	Okay, don't drink and we'll explain the sides of this, I think.
	Because...
	Well, I'm going to drink anyway.
	Right, right.
	First of all, did I get it right?
	No, I would say it is not about...
	Respect or marriage.
	I don't think it's...
	So you have to drink.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Because I was thinking you would say, well, it is about marriage.
	It's about...
	Destroying marriage.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	But the people who pushed it, the libs who pushed it, I don't think they give a damn about marriage, and I don't think they want to respect people.
	I think they want to drive Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cake Shop out of business.
	And they tried to do it through the court, and the court wouldn't let them do it.
	And so now, and they take the Obergefell decision, which redefines marriage, and they go further than that.
	And they say, no, no business, no wedding website maker, no cake shop owner, whatever, is allowed to not participate in a gay marriage.
	Totally.
	And I think this is, that interpretation of it's not about marriage is definitely correct.
	You know, I think it's about, it's nominally, obviously, about marriage.
	Yeah.
	But I agree that, and I've gotten a little red-pilled on this.
	The moment is when they rejected the Lee Amendment, which basically just said in the kind of gentlest possible terms, perhaps you have to try constitutional to sue not even an organization, but an individual out of existence because they expressed.
	And so, yeah, I mean, I think I agree with you about Obergefell.
	I mean, we're on the same page, I think, about that.
	And I think that, you know, when the bill first came up, I thought, well, I truly believe that when it comes to, like, some sort of place in society for freedom-loving gay people, like, we can work this out.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like, we'll call it floof, we'll call it whatever.
	Like, there's something, there's some arrangement that makes sense that recognizes that A man and a woman producing children is at the center of our civic life, is marriage, but there are these arrangements that kind of still have a place in our society.
	I think there's, like, I really believe there's room for a good reason.
	That is the sort of Jonathan Pejot.
	He made this point on another conversation we were having where he said, you know, if you look at medieval manuscripts...
	There are all these kind of odd and eccentric things all around the corners of the page.
	The marginalia.
	The marginalia.
	But they're not at the center of the universe.
	No, you wouldn't want the guy who's like farting a demon out to be...
	I'm not making that up.
	No, but I think this is right.
	And I think that, you know, anybody sensible of any political persuasion...
	And so I thought, well, maybe there is some...
	Obergefell is not that.
	And that's why I dispute it.
	Not because of its outcome, but because of its logic is not that.
	It's the logic of...
	We talked about this before.
	The total all is the same.
	You define reality.
	A man and a man in a relationship is the same as a man and a woman in a relationship.
	I think...
	You can believe a man and a man in a relationship is okay.
	You can believe it's not okay.
	But you can't believe it's the same.
	Nobody seriously believes it.
	Nobody can believe that.
	Because that means that men and women are the same.
	So they're not the same, right?
	And so when they rejected little Mr.
	Lee, who is like, maybe you might like to not sue people out of business.
	Then I was like, okay, so you're just totalitarian.
	And so, yeah, my basic answer is like, yeah.
	I know, I know.
	I'll tell you one other thing about that, Bill, and then I guess we have to do another question.
	I guess.
	I don't know.
	These are too interesting.
	The other thing about that bill that suddenly occurred to me is that all of these things were going to codify.
	Because we found out that actually you can't just write things.
	If you just write things into law via the courts...
	You can actually unwrite them.
	And this whole, it was this absurd thing that they did where it was like precedent.
	You can't overturn precedent.
	It's like, where does, what?
	Like, where did you get that?
	You can't overturn precedent, like Plessy.
	No, no, Plessy.
	Right, Plessy, this is settled law.
	Like, you know.
	Right, you don't want to do that.
	So they found this out and they were like, well, what we really need, therefore, is a bill to codify.
	It's like, I have a news for you about Congress.
	Like...
	Every two years, we vote in new people.
	If they ever did overturn Obergefell, which I think they should do, and I think we should re-litigate this question, if they ever did that, you'd just vote on another bill.
	You don't need the permission of the Supreme Court to pass a bill.
	Everybody wants, on all these questions, abortion, on gay marriage, everybody wants some cataclysmic victory.
	We're not going to have to think about it because one side won.
	That ain't politics in America.
	We are having this, let us have that damn discussion.
	Right.
	Very good point.
	I'm glad we both drank on it.
	I can't remember what we said.
	That's the point of the drinking.
	Skipping leg day is a lot like attending a liberal arts college and staying committed to your cheating girlfriend.
	In both cases, you are throwing your life away while also acting like a butter-soft simp who just hopes things will work themselves out.
	Did they make these more and more extravagant?
	I don't think it's merely my perception.
	No, no, it's not the...
	There's so much in that question.
	I'm not even going to try to parse it.
	I'm just going to take the spirit of it.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Mm-hmm.
	Which is, I was going to say, this is pretty self-intentional.
	I call it like I see it.
	I like to think I'm quite unbiased.
	Even when my personal interest or ego are challenged by something.
	Hypothetically, in Minecraft.
	Hypothetically.
	Calling balls and strikes.
	That's what I do.
	You're big into neutrality.
	I'm a big neutrality guy.
	Michael Knowles, famous neutrality enjoyer.
	Average neutrality enjoyer.
	Oh boy.
	Generally speaking, if Protestants were to accept a tenant of Catholicism, either the Immaculate Conception or Purgatory, it's more likely it would be Purgatory.
	Ah...
	There are a lot of Protestants in the world.
	There are a lot of Protestants.
	It makes this a difficult question.
	Yes, yes.
	Many shades.
	Some say 30,000.
	Some might say that's a strike against Protestantism in the great schismatic debates, but that's a separate question.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Yeah, for sure.
	It's very hard for many Catholics to accept the Marian dogmas.
	To even accept that Mary has a really important place in the faith.
	For me, I was an atheist for 10 years.
	I came back into the faith in many ways through Protestants, some of whom now are Catholic, actually, interestingly, or reverted to Catholicism.
	But even for me, even well into it, the Marian stuff was tough for me.
	And now...
	I find it so enriching and edifying and sanctifying and, like, really central.
	Yeah.
	If not perfectly central, like, quite close to it.
	That's right.
	This Protestant would take Mary before Purgatory, although I'm open to both.
	I kind of like both of them, you know?
	Yeah.
	I am an average Mary enjoyer, and I think, like, but the reason that the correct answer to this is yes, is that people are ready, they be out there ready to restart the 30 years war over this question.
	I mean, if you talk to people, they will be like, they're Catholics, they are the idolaters because they have another god, and she's a woman, and whatever.
	They worship Mary.
	They worship Mary, right.
	No, you need, I mean, there is, C.S. Lewis says that what is beyond time and space is so male that in relationship to it, we are all female.
	Mm-hmm.
	This is true.
	This is beautiful.
	And it is right and just that the representative of humanity and man's relationship to God should be a mother and a woman.
	To me, that's the beauty of the doctrine.
	I disagree about the perpetual virginity.
	But yes, I would go with that first, but I think most people would take it.
	That's right.
	But on the next game, we'll talk about marriage.
	I do remember.
	I remember when you got Mary-pilled.
	Or as you became increasingly Mary-pilled.
	It is harder.
	Purgatory...
	Some of my Protestant, you know, they don't like it, but they can kind of see more of it.
	But, yeah, we'll have to do a whole yes or no game on Mary.
	On Mary, yeah, I think the doctrinal questions.
	You, yeah.
	That's me, okay.
	Sisyphus is rolling a boulder toward the Grand Hilbert Hotel.
	The hotel has an infinite number of rooms, but they are full, so they may not be able to accommodate him or his boulder.
	If he chooses to divert his boulder, it will instead destroy the ship of Theseus.
	But the ship has had all of its constituent parts replaced, so it may not actually be the same ship.
	Is Sisyphus happy?
	Ha ha ha ha!
	I think I know...
	Did people send these questions in?
	Or did the producers just write them?
	I think the producers just write them.
	Wow.
	I feel like I know exactly who asked this question, but I must be wrong.
	It's too late in the game to answer this question in a serious way.
	Also no.
	He's pushing a boulder up.
	You can't be happy.
	Sisyphus is not happy.
	There will be no existentialism sympathy on this here podcast.
	We will not accept even Iota.
	Stoicism, libertarianism, fat people.
	We can entertain all of these possibilities, but existentialism is a bridge too far.
	You get your dirty camu out of here.
	Dirty Camon.
	I can't believe you brought up the C word.
	It's a good name for a band, Dirty Camon.
	If I had to pick between pre-, mid- and post-tribulation...
	Oh, I hate this one.
	This is bad.
	I'm like the least Protestant Protestant.
	Pre-, mid- and post-tribulation?
	Am I going to have to explain what's...
	You're speaking Greek?
	I don't know what you're talking about.
	I tend to side with the Left Behind movie take and think Rapture would be pre-tribulation.
	That sounds to me much more complicated than the Sisyphus question.
	It's vastly more complicated.
	And...
	This is a series of questions.
	Whatever.
	Do your answer and then I will go.
	Well, I've got to move yours.
	That's the wrong one, I'm sorry.
	So...
	I don't even know what that answer was.
	I'm going to say no because...
	No.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Whatever.
	I mean, sure.
	Why not?
	Whatever.
	Okay.
	I'm being the worst Protestant here because this is like, especially for evangelical Protestants, this is a matter of utmost concern.
	I've had so many people ask me about this.
	This is about the end times?
	It's about the end times.
	It's about whether the thousand year reign is going to be, I'm going to get this so bungled, but it's about whether like the lake of fire and the thousand year reign, like when is Christ coming in between?
	Like when does Christ actually come back?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And then what happens after that?
	What happens before it?
	To me, this is a question on which we are expressly told we have no idea.
	No one knows the day or the hour.
	Not even the Son, but only the Father in Heaven.
	And so I find all of this to be vastly above my pay grade.
	I think the book of Revelation is a profound mystic vision, which if read carefully, it's like people always say...
	Is the tribulation, is the revelation, whatever, is it about the sacking of the temple by the Romans after Christ's death, or is it about some cosmic thing?
	And it's like, yes.
	The answer is yes.
	There are real historical events that this refers to, and those historical events...
	Is the book of Revelation a mystical description of the Holy Mass?
	Yes.
	Yes, it is.
	Right.
	And so all of this simply to say, like, stop worrying about it.
	Yes.
	I agree.
	Let's drink to that.
	You read the tribulation.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Science is fake and gay.
	Obviously.
	I mean, I've recently been a little bit, like, lived on this in that what I really think is fake and gay is scientism.
	And I think that natural philosophy is a venerable thing to do.
	And I think that people who...
	I didn't say...
	Well, I didn't say any of these.
	Natural philosophy.
	I would never say natural philosophy is fake and gay.
	I think most of the time, what people mean when they say science is a thing that is fake and gay.
	Yes.
	And that is science.
	Easy, easy.
	Yeah, yeah.
	The referent of the word science.
	The understood referent.
	Oof, it is okay to wear sweatpants in public.
	Hmm.
	It's very hard when one does not go to the gym to understand the thinking of one who does go to the gym.
	What are you saying?
	Are you saying you don't?
	No, no, no.
	Hypothetically.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I'm sitting here in my t-shirt with a man in a suit.
	No, I think...
	But you're not wearing sweatpants.
	That's right.
	I'm not wearing sweatpants.
	The question hinges on the meaning of the word in public.
	So I think I'm going to make you drink because I wear sweatpants to the gym.
	You were correct on my end.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Would you wear...
	If, hypothetically, you were to go to the gym, would you wear sweatpants to the gym?
	Spencer, I would not wear sweatpants in private.
	No, you would wear a bow tie to the gym.
	I would.
	Yes.
	I can't...
	I did...
	No, I wouldn't count the gym as in public.
	I mean, I'm saying, you know, walking down the street, I would not.
	But there was a period where The Daily Wire was going to make a movie, and I was told to beef up for this movie.
	Oh, I remember.
	When I said body by lasagna, I wasn't counting.
	No, this is true.
	I was shoveling in pasta, pizza, meat, all this stuff.
	And I really did gain, I gained 20 pounds, and I cut my body fat in half.
	So it was actually muscle.
	I never actually cut...
	Yeah, yeah.
	But I... No, you did it, bro.
	You totally...
	I remember.
	First time in my life.
	Only time in my life.
	And I did purchase a pair of sweatpants for the occasion.
	And a pair of sneakers also to wear.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And they have not had much use since then.
	Did you...
	When you put them on, did you scream, Adrian!
	Adrian!
	I tried to break my nose a few times so that it would look convincing.
	Okay.
	Most likely, the elites at the top, such as Bill Gates, George Soros, and Klaus Schwab, are all just possessed by demons and or directly worship the devil in an attempt to transcend the human race and merge with their existence in a higher plane.
	Due to YouTube rules, make your guess, but do not verbally confirm if the other person guessed correctly.
	Give only an ambiguous nonverbal confirmation.
	Gates, Soros, and Schwab all worship demons.
	Or are possessed by demons.
	I feel afraid to speak.
	I think I've just signed some sort of...
	Don't speak.
	Terms of service.
	I won't speak.
	Can we talk about it?
	We can talk about...
	In the abstract, in Minecraft, let me tell a little story.
	When Dobbs came down as an actual decision, when Roe v.
	Wade was overturned, I saw on Reddit, in a Satanist forum, somebody struggling with whether or not to convert to Satanism.
	And one poster said, Satanism isn't really about worshipping Satan.
	It's just about bodily autonomy and privacy.
	It's really enlightenment virtues.
	And I thought, boy, do I have news for you.
	And that's my only answer to that question.
	Very good answer.
	Very good answer.
	The war in Ukraine is roughly 5% crazy Russians and 95% money laundering for the new world order.
	I have to think what you say.
	I have to think what you say.
	You are right.
	Yeah, you have to drink.
	Oh, good.
	Okay, all right.
	I don't think it's money laundering for the new world order.
	I think it's an imperial war between the Western Empire and the Eastern Empire of Russia.
	And I think that any...
	The West is dishonest when they say it's about national independence for Ukraine.
	That's obviously absurd.
	It's about getting Ukraine to join NATO and the broader Western alliance.
	And that's why when there was a pro-Russian leader of Ukraine before 2014, we wielded our political power, as great powers do, to influence the politics in that country and oust the pro-Russian guy and put in a more favorable pro-Western guy.
	And then Russia responded to that by increasing its influence operations, including military operations in Ukraine.
	And then Obama, because he was weak, wasn't able to stop that.
	And Trump was able to stop these things.
	He was able to at least put a pause on them.
	And then Biden actually invited Russia to invade when he said if it's only a minor incursion in the East, then we won't really do anything about it.
	And so Russia did that.
	And Russia said it's unacceptable for Ukraine to join NATO. And Ukraine is a buffer state.
	And buffer states often do better when they play great powers off of one another than when they...
	Declare an allegiance to one or the other.
	That's often the proximate cause of war, and I think that's what happened in Ukraine.
	All those beautiful towers.
	Yeah.
	That's very eloquently said.
	I think people misunderstand.
	The transgender question is like this, too.
	I think people misunderstand how the New World Order works, and I think you see this with COVID as well.
	Yeah.
	Oh, it's the pandemic, or they engineered this in a lab.
	No, no.
	They're nowhere near competent enough to orchestrate these massive global events.
	What's true is that they have a totalizing philosophy about how the world works, which is anti-human, which is post-human in some ways, which is evil and wrong, and And which inclines them to respond...
	The only thing restraining that philosophy is circumstances.
	The fact that we live in a country which is still nominally a constitutional republic, to which politicians must still pay some form of lip service in order to succeed and so forth.
	That held them back for however many years from saying what they already believed long ago about public health.
	It's not like...
	COVID brought into being some new attitude about public health, right?
	And in fact...
	It barely brought into being a new virus.
	Exactly.
	It's just a variation on an old virus.
	Exactly.
	And so, similarly, I don't think that any...
	I don't think that, like, money...
	Nobody orchestrated the war in Ukraine to launder money.
	Right.
	The war in Ukraine happened for a number of reasons, among them those that you just laid out.
	And it is the case that our leadership class is feckless, incompetent, and foundationally, philosophically wrong about metaphysics, which makes you evil.
	Being wrong about metaphysics makes you evil, even if you don't sit there rubbing your hands together.
	Right, good point.
	Am I up?
	Oh, sorry, it's you.
	I'm up.
	It's you.
	Okay.
	They are pervasive and key pillars of some of the most influential and wealthy brands in America.
	They strike at the very heart of American civilization and must be eradicated from society if the West just have a fighting chance at survival.
	But to mention them is to be looked down upon with derision and contempt.
	By they and them, I mean seed oils.
	Wow.
	I was a little nervous, fellas.
	Yeah.
	A little nervous.
	Whew.
	Duh.
	Duh.
	Come on.
	At this point...
	Does this need defending?
	Yeah.
	At this point, I believe that one's view of seed oils is far more indicative of one's entire political outlook and whether or not I agree with a person than their view on...
	Immigration or whatever.
	It is one of the most defining political issues, even though it seems somewhat out of left field.
	Yeah, these are way deeper signifiers.
	And this is like a generational thing that you have a hard time explaining to older people.
	It is definitely more of a millennial.
	Yeah, this is why you get...
	It's not because boomers are stupid or wrong.
	They say things like, you don't believe in unfettered free markets.
	Because that was once seed oils.
	That was once the signifying issue.
	Exactly.
	But the seed oil thing.
	I'm totally, totally, and I get more pushback on this than anywhere, but also more engagement.
	Like, people are really...
	Do you know how crazy Elisa's gotten with this, sweet little Elisa?
	She says to me, I mean, she's gone down the rabbit hole.
	No plastics in the house, and...
	Well, I mean, there's plastics, but not with our cooking that we heat up, and no seed oils.
	It's all butter or avocado or olive oil, which I think are much tastier anyway.
	But then she goes to me.
	She says, Mac!
	What?
	What?
	You've got to get rid of your right guard deodorant.
	Because I have.
	I'm an old man, so I use the spray aerosol deodorant.
	Sure.
	I goes, Mac, you've got to get rid of that.
	It's pure poison.
	I'm like, okay, what do I have to do?
	She goes, I've got this deodorant that you've got to try.
	It's made of...
	And I kid you not, it's made of grass-fed beef tallow.
	Honestly, I was going to say yak butter, and I wasn't far off.
	You were not far off.
	You were too timid.
	Yeah, right.
	Do you know?
	So I said, how much does this cost?
	I'm still on my first bottle.
	And probably my only bottle.
	I said, how much did you pay for this?
	Is that what this is?
	Is that?
	I've been wondering.
	This beautiful musk.
	This aromatic.
	Sort of natural.
	Yeah, right.
	I said, how much did you pay?
	How much did I pay for this?
	She goes, I don't want to tell you.
	I said, how?
	What was it?
	Because my Riker said $3.
	I said, was it like $5 or $6?
	No.
	Ten?
	No.
	$22.
	And I think, do I really want to live that bad?
	Do I want to live $22 bad?
	I don't know.
	I shave a few years off my life, I save $22.
	I think that's fine.
	How much do you care about the ozone layer?
	If I'm in a state of grace, I'll get to go to heaven eventually.
	A million or two years in purgatory.
	No, I think this is a million years in purgatory.
	It's like this or that.
	No, that is hilarious.
	And the question is not Are our foods killing us?
	The question, as you say, is how much are we willing to do about it?
	No, I remember when this was a crunchy granola lib thing, and now it's like a hard-wing white nationalist.
	Anti-vax used to be a crunchy granola lib thing.
	Yes.
	Now it's a total preserve.
	Right.
	It just depends on my biggest conspiracy theory.
	I'm going to say this.
	The first time I've seen this on camera, but I've said this to a lot of Daily Wire guys.
	You and I will live to see the day when nicotine is good for you.
	When the health industry...
	Your mouth to God.
	Yeah, amen, amen.
	Oh, dang.
	Speaking of conspiracy, this is my big conspiracy theory.
	I don't know how to pronounce.
	I refuse to learn.
	The fact that you just said that, I bet I could tell you.
	Do you know what it's going to be?
	Guess.
	This is your choice.
	This is my personal proprietary conspiracy theory.
	Does it have to do with a certain secretary?
	It does.
	It certainly does.
	Somebody knew.
	First of all, I still don't know and I refuse ever to learn how to pronounce the name that begins this question.
	Chasten Buttigieg is most likely aware peat is a deeply closeted straight CIA plant.
	Duh.
	Obviously.
	How could they do it without his conclusion?
	This is actually your...
	The first and maybe only time I've heard this is from you.
	Oh, yeah.
	Nobody else.
	This is my...
	I totally...
	I'm actually...
	Buttigieg is not gay.
	That's your theory.
	This is my theory.
	I will almost never claim ownership over...
	If I see an idea that I think maybe somebody got this for my piece, whatever, this is one that I will die on this hill.
	I invented this, but I'm sure I'm right.
	That man is not a homosexual.
	Yeah.
	He's an opportunist.
	Yes.
	A cynic.
	He understood that the way the wind was blowing, you could never, as a kind of, you know, Ivy League, I don't actually know if you'd say, probably Ivy League.
	Harvard, wasn't it?
	I think he was a Harvard guy.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Of course.
	So Ivy League, yeah, you know, veteran JFK mold lib.
	Yes.
	Once he realized that that was passing away and you had to check an identity box, what's the identity box you can check?
	Yeah.
	Easiest.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Now, do you have evidence for your theory?
	Other than his poor taste?
	His incapacity to match his ties with his slacks.
	That's good evidence.
	Yeah, right.
	I tell you, because some of the audience might not know that we're college buddies.
	That's right.
	Going back to your freshman year, my sophomore year.
	When you said we've known each other, we've been friends for many years.
	Yes, many, many years.
	But because we went to a very liberal, elite school, we know a lot of these guys.
	We do.
	A lot of these guys, and there's a type.
	And they're all...
	They all look like Pete.
	They all look like Pete.
	They all kind of sound like Pete.
	And they're going to go get a job after college because they're really passionate about management consulting.
	I just really want to improve efficiency within certain corporate structures.
	And then he goes and he is a military veteran.
	And he did the Ivy League, and he did the corporate consulting, and he's just the perfect political candidate, except old Pete is a pretty bland white guy.
	And so you're saying he had to have something, and I... I don't understand why it's more artificial than any other part of his personality for him to pretend to be.
	Do you know what I mean?
	All these guys are cooked up in a lab.
	They carefully curate, as we know from rubbing shoulders with them, they carefully curate every aspect of their life, including their disavowal of the curation.
	Including, like you said, I'm so passionate about...
	Like, you know, synergistic incentivization of, like, spreadsheets.
	Birth control in Africa.
	Whatever.
	Like, name it.
	But then they get into power.
	Right.
	And, like, that pipeline was so clear that he wasn't going to let a little thing, like, being a heterosexual stop him.
	No way.
	Look, for the right price...
	I'm whatever sexuality.
	It's better than castrating himself and being the first trans candidate.
	Lucky Pete.
	He came along five years, just in time.
	Because let me tell you, that gate is closing on white gay men.
	It's about to be part of the established power class.
	So, do we know who won?
	I think we both won, Spencer.
	I feel that I won.
	Chin Chin, you probably did.
	No, I mean just by being here.
	Yeah, you're right.
	Cheers to that.
	I'm a little ashamed of us because we've gone out many times, had many, many cigars.
	We only had...
	You had your full drink.
	I'm a little child here.
	I only had half of my money.
	Well, we were so engaged in the profundities.
	You're right, that's true.
	Spencer, you've already finished yours.
	Chin-chin.
	To your health.
	Yes.

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