Ep. 1154 - Republicans Clash To Find A Worthy Speaker Of The House
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Everyone but Michael is shocked that Kevin McCarthy lost three votes for House Speaker, NASA warns that China might conquer the moon, and NY legalizes “human composting.”
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The 118th Congress, now under Republican control, voted yesterday for the next Speaker of the House, and no one won.
Kevin McCarthy was supposed to win.
McCarthy has been in House leadership for over a dozen years.
He's actually already started moving his files and furniture into the speaker's suite.
But McCarthy did not get the 218 votes necessary to secure the speakership, which brought the vote to a second ballot.
Now, McCarthy still didn't have the votes, brought it to a third ballot, still didn't have the votes, and then the House adjourned for the night.
The whole episode was somewhat embarrassing, certainly for McCarthy.
It was even historic.
It was the first time in 100 years that a speaker election went to multiple ballots.
But the one thing that it was not was surprising.
People are acting shocked right now.
Especially the establishment Republicans.
They are horrified.
They are clutching their pearls.
I'm not sure why.
Because this is the exact same thing that happened last time Republicans had a chance to elect a speaker back in 2015.
It's the exact same thing by the exact same people to the exact same guy.
In 2015, when John Boehner stepped down as Speaker, Kevin McCarthy was his presumptive successor.
Until some members of the House Freedom Caucus refused to go along with it.
And the Freedom Caucus had enough votes to block him.
That election did not go to multiple ballots, but only because McCarthy bowed out of the race when he saw that he didn't have the votes.
And what happened then?
Exactly what is happening now.
Then, members of both the establishment and the Freedom Caucus called on Paul Ryan to take the speakership as a compromise candidate who was acceptable to both sides.
A lot of people don't like Paul Ryan these days because he became extremely anti-Trump and in recent years has seemed kind of like a squish.
But at the time, Paul Ryan was considered one of the more conservative members of the House.
Yesterday, a new compromise candidate emerged.
Jim Jordan, great guy, strong conservative bona fides, and also someone who is not completely unacceptable to the establishment.
And a guy who has backed McCarthy for speaker.
The situation is pretty much exactly the same.
We will see what happens.
I understand why some Republicans are backing the Freedom Caucus candidate, Andy Biggs.
I understand why some Republicans are backing Jim Jordan.
I even understand why some Republicans are backing Kevin McCarthy.
The only thing I don't understand is how all the political geniuses, the politicians, the pundits, the prognosticators, how all of them are completely shocked and appalled that history is simply repeating itself.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is from Matt Duncan, who says, Michael, great news.
I got speechless.
Controlling words, controlling minds for Christmas.
There we go.
And when I unwrapped the book after my mom handed it to me, I heard the signature ding after I realized what she had given me.
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I'm so glad to hear that.
Well done, Mr.
Davies.
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That is GenuCell.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. GenuCell.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Who are the holdouts on Kevin McCarthy?
Who are the holdouts?
These are the people who are being absolutely maligned, tarred and feathered by the libs and by the squishes, by the Republican establishment.
And yet, I look down this list of people who are not backing McCarthy, and a lot of them are some of my absolute favorite members of Congress.
So who are the people on here?
We've got Dan Bishop, Lauren Boebert, Josh Bresheen, Mike Cloud, Andrew Clyde, Eli Crane, Matt Gaetz, Bob Good, Paul Gosar, Andy Harris, Anna Paulina Luna, Mary Miller, terrific, Ralph Norman, Andy Ogles, Scott Perry, Matt Rosendale, Chip Roy, love that guy, Keith Self, and Biggs.
Seeing like half a dozen names here of some of the people that I like most in Congress.
So I think, okay, not so bad.
If they're holding out, maybe they've got good reason to do that.
Now, what the establishment is saying is, this is terrible.
This is a horrible embarrassment for the Republicans.
Why is it an embarrassment?
This used to happen.
There used to be contested speaker races.
It's okay.
It's okay, guys.
Take a deep breath.
It's going to be all right.
You don't need to get the Speaker on the first ballot.
I have nothing personally against Kevin McCarthy, really, as far as Republican leadership goes.
He's far from the worst guy we've ever seen there.
But he wasn't born with an entitlement to become the Speaker of the House.
It's all right.
In democratic politics, lowercase d, it can be a little bit messy.
It can be a little bit untidy.
People can fight and battle and try to get their committee chairmanships.
And it'll be just fine, guys.
Deep breath.
This has happened before.
In fact, this very fight happened the very last time that Republicans were able to elect a speaker.
What is the debate over?
What are the two sides saying right now?
Representative Bob Good has been going on TV to give his side of why Kevin McCarthy should never be the speaker.
I won't be voting for Kevin McCarthy tomorrow.
He's part of the problem.
He's not part of the solution.
There's nothing about Kevin McCarthy that indicates that he will bring the change that's needed to Washington or that's needed to the Congress, or he'll bring the fight, fight against the Biden-Schumer agenda.
It's worth it to fight for a few hours or even a few days to get the best possible person for speaker.
All right, simple enough.
He says the country is in need of dire change.
Kevin McCarthy is not sufficiently conservative, and so we should hash it out and make sure we pick the right speaker now.
Now, some people are saying, who cares who the Speaker is the only job of the Speaker of the House when the opposition party has the Senate and the White House is just to say no and to stall the agenda.
Okay, that's true.
But I suspect what Bob Good and the other Freedom Caucus members are thinking right now is, yeah, maybe the threshold of candidate that you need when you are in the minority of the whole government is relatively low.
But once someone is established as the Speaker of the House, it's not as though if the Republicans win the Senate and the White House next time, they're just gonna boot the Republican Speaker and elect some new guy.
That's not how it works.
Once you get that position, you pretty much stay in that position.
So they're saying, let's fight, let's get it right now, because this could have long-term consequences.
Okay, what's the other side?
Newt Gingrich, who was Speaker of the House of Representatives for the Republicans, he has been going on TV explaining why we need to elect Kevin McCarthy.
I don't understand what they're doing.
They're not voting against Kevin McCarthy.
They're voting against over 215 members of their own conference.
Their conference voted overwhelmingly, 85%, for McCarthy to be speaker.
So this is a fight between a handful of people and the entire rest of the conference.
And they're saying they have the right to screw up everything.
Well, the precedent that sets So do the moderates.
So do the members from Florida.
I mean, any five people can get up and say, I'm now going to screw up the conference too.
The choice is Kevin McCarthy or chaos.
And there's nobody going to replace Kevin because he has far more people totally dedicated to him than this handful of never-enders.
And the result's going to be anybody who tried to replace Kevin I love Newt Gingrich, but I don't think his analysis is totally precise here.
because it's already happened before.
That's why.
He says, well, the vast majority of the Republicans are supporting McCarthy.
And so if they don't go with McCarthy, it's just going to be sheer chaos.
They're not going to be able to find a candidate.
That's not true.
Last time, the majority of Republicans were backing McCarthy, and then a small number of Republicans held out, and we got Paul Ryan.
And Paul Ryan had some success as a speaker.
It's true.
It was like wrangling cats, but that's going to be true of anybody.
It's going to be true of Kevin McCarthy.
If he becomes a speaker, it's going to be true of Andy Biggs.
If he became the speaker, it'd be true of Jim Jordan.
And looking at history right now, looking at the times that Kevin McCarthy has been up for this job, and looking at Jim Jordan emerging as a potential compromise candidate, or some other names have been floated as well, but Jim Jordan is probably leading the bunch.
I don't know.
It seems certainly plausible, if not likely, that you get a compromise candidate type to take the reins from McCarthy if McCarthy cannot command the number of votes that are needed to win the speakership.
Okay, which he wasn't able to do last time and he wasn't able to do yesterday.
So maybe the Republicans seriously have to consider an alternative.
I don't get all that riled up about these House leadership elections because my job as a citizen is to elect the congressman.
That's what I have to do.
But these elections are for the congressman to elect their leadership.
And it's a different sort of thing, and it requires a different skill set.
And so I leave it up to the members.
But I'm certainly not going to castigate any members of the House Freedom Caucus for saying, no, we want a different leader, and the guy that 85% of the conference is pushing is not acceptable to us.
I have no problem with that at all.
That is democracy in action, my friends.
I see no problem with that whatsoever.
Now...
The ballot for the House Speaker is, of course, a secret ballot, even though some members have made their votes public.
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Worth noting, by the way, you don't need to be a member of Congress to be the Speaker of the House.
Anybody could be the Speaker of the House.
So obviously the funniest choice is Donald Trump.
It would be so great...
And, by the way, it would have a lot of political benefit for Republicans who don't want Trump to be president.
If Donald Trump just became the Speaker of the House, that would benefit Ron DeSantis.
That would benefit other GOP rivals who are looking at 2024.
That would benefit the people who don't want Donald Trump to run again in 2024.
And it would be freaking hilarious.
Could you imagine the State of the Union when Joe Biden gets up there and you've got Donald Trump introducing him?
Ladies and gentlemen, Please welcome sleepy, stupid Joe.
Can't remember anything.
Look at his notes.
He's carrying his notes up here.
Okay, sleepy, brain-dead Joe.
It'd be wonderful.
So something seriously for the members to consider.
Who else would be good?
I don't know.
You could get Newt Gingrich.
He was already the speaker.
He was pretty effective.
You could get Newt Gingrich.
It could be anybody.
And I should point out, some people have mentioned on social media They've floated the name of yours truly, okay?
And many people are talking about it, alright?
And I deeply appreciate the countless, countless number of people who are clamoring incessantly for me, Michael John Knowles, yours truly, your beloved podcast host, international sex symbol, to become...
I just want to be perfectly clear.
I am not interested in that job.
I have never sought that office.
I will not accept the speakership of the House unless the congressman elect me to it.
So I just want to be totally clear about that.
What should the House do once they finally get all of these speaker decisions sorted out and start governing?
One great idea that has been floated is to open up a subcommittee on the weaponization of federal agencies.
A subcommittee is different than a select committee.
A select committee is like what Pelosi set up to make a big hullabaloo about the January 6th people and to just put on a big show for the television cameras that doesn't really do anything.
A subcommittee...
Which is what the House Republicans are talking about now on the weaponization of the federal agencies, of the FBI, of you could go even beyond the intelligence community, of the IRS, of all these government agencies.
The subcommittee has the power to consider and introduce legislation.
Which is important because it raises the possibility of reforming some bureaucratic structures that the GOP rightly believes poses a threat to our system of government.
We've seen this before.
An example of using the Congress to fight back against the executive agencies would be something like the Church Committee, which was formed by the Senate in 1975.
And the Church Committee looked into all of the nefarious activities of the CIA and uncovered a lot of bad stuff.
The Church Committee uncovered things like...
Gosh, MKUltra, right?
I'm trying to think of all of their—I just gave a speech on all of the nefarious activities of the CIA over the years.
Think of Operation Mongoose.
You think about the infiltration of the media, not just abroad, but here domestically, to push government propaganda.
And the church committee played a large role in uncovering some of these activities.
So I think this is really important.
I think it's really necessary.
If it were a subcommittee doing it, that would be great because it would actually have the teeth to try to reform the system.
I'm not saying it necessarily would be successful, but it would be the best shot we've got.
These sorts of issues are what Republicans need to focus on because they're not merely political issues.
They're meta-political issues.
It's not just about this policy or that policy.
It's about the way that policy is made.
You look at an issue like immigration.
Immigration is not just a political issue.
It's a meta-political issue.
Because immigration will determine who gets to vote for what sort of things and which party years down the road.
So it's the politics of politics.
Democrats are pushing for mass migration, 3 million immigrants coming into the country every year, 2 million of whom are illegal, because they rightly believe it will give them a political advantage.
Well, same thing here.
When we're going after the weaponization of federal agencies, we're not just talking about one...
One political issue or some other political issue.
We're talking about how policy is decided and who gets to do it.
Who do you want to make policy for you?
Do you want it to be the congressman or do you want it to be some unaccountable bureaucrat who is a lifelong democrat who is going to push leftism whether the people want it or not?
Even with as crazy as the congress is, I think you'd probably rather the congress do that than the bureaucrats.
So this could be really dangerous, too, for the Republicans who do this, if the House goes ahead and opens up this subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government.
I'm reminded of the words of Chuck Schumer, who laughed when Donald Trump was being attacked by the intelligence community, and there were all sorts of leaks and dossiers and insinuations.
And Schumer laughed, and he said, you know, never go up against the intelligence community.
They can get you nine ways from Sunday.
And it was sad in a way, but it is kind of funny.
He's saying, yeah, you think that we run the show over here?
No way.
There's this deep state.
They'll get you nine ways from Sunday.
And so if the Congress does establish this House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Federal Agencies, all I'm saying is...
Look out for some of its members to come out with sex scandals, okay?
Because I don't think that those federal agencies are going to go down without a fight.
So what else can the Congress do?
Pretty much that's it.
I think from the Republican Congress, the best that we are going to get is lots of investigations, lots of hearings, lots of interrogation with the C-SPAN cameras running.
You're not going to get legislation for two reasons.
One, you're not going to get a lot of legislation because the Democrats have the Senate and the White House and they're going to block it.
But two, you're not going to get a lot of legislation because that's just not where the power is right now.
The power is not in Congress.
We are not living like a bill up on Capitol Hill in Schoolhouse Rock.
We're not living like America in the 1790s.
The power has shifted.
And it hasn't only shifted because bureaucrats have taken power or even because the Congress delegated power away to the executive agencies.
The power has shifted because of really basic Financial problems.
Right now, a study just came out, shows that the federal government's budget is in such disarray that if they wanted to balance the budget, the federal government would be required either to cut spending by 30% or to raise taxes by 40%.
Neither of those things are ever going to happen.
It's never going to happen, okay?
Or they could try to find a middle ground, which would still be unacceptable, both on the spending front and on the taxation front.
No one would tolerate that.
The deficit in 2022 was $1.4 trillion.
The national debt is currently $31.5 trillion.
And it's going to get much more expensive than it has been to have that.
Even as we've been running up that debt, we've been doing it kind of on the cheap because interest rates have basically been zero.
But the interest rates have gone way up.
So now just to service that amount of debt, think about the kind of interest that you pay on your mortgage if you have a home mortgage.
Now your home mortgage, instead of it being a couple hundred thousand dollars, let's say it's $31.5 trillion.
The cost of just servicing that debt is astronomical.
So what does that mean for us?
It means that our policy options as legislators, as citizens, as the people executing the government, not executing like bang, bang, but in the executive role of the government, they're rather limited.
This is why the United States has to remain the global hegemon.
This is why debates over our fiscal policy or our monetary policy or our military policy don't seem to go anywhere.
You notice that no matter which side gets elected, the foreign policy basically remains the same.
No matter which side gets elected, the immigration policy basically remains the same.
No matter which side gets elected, the fiscal policy basically remains the same.
Republicans always run on cutting government spending.
They never do it.
They never do it.
The last time a Republican cut government spending, actually reduced the size and scope of the government, was Calvin Coolidge.
Okay, not even Ronald Reagan was able to do it.
He increased spending in many ways.
The reason for that is because the US has to remain the global hegemon.
Because if the U.S. doesn't dominate the world, then the country is going to collapse because our books are completely in the red.
So the only reason that we're able to run up the numbers like this is because we are the dominant power on the face of the earth.
Because our military is the dominant power and because our dollar is the dominant power.
In its realm.
And so the moment that that goes away, it's not like the country is just very slowly and gradually going to decline in its power.
It's going to collapse, and everybody knows it.
This is why both parties are so keen on fighting the war in Ukraine when the American people don't care about Ukraine.
The reason that they're doing that is because they're playing this very complicated game of rebuffing the rival powers that are trying to threaten and question U.S. hegemony.
That's why the United States is so concerned over Taiwan, when the American people don't really care that much about Taiwan.
We have to do it because our whole national policy is dependent on remaining the big dog on Earth.
And if you're so levered that that is the only thing keeping you from a national collapse, then your members of Congress are actually not going to be able to do very much.
The President of the United States is not going to be able to do very much.
And speaking of threats to American hegemony, the NASA chief has just raised a brand new security threat.
It's not the Taliban or the Muslim terrorists trying to blow us up.
It's not those pesky Russians filming us doing weird things with hookers in Moscow hotels, okay, and threatening our pipelines and energy and things like that.
No, no.
It is the Chinese who want to conquer the moon.
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NASA Chief Bill Nelson says, Quote, it is a fact.
We are in a space race.
And it is true that we better watch out that China doesn't get to a place on the moon under the guise of scientific research.
And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they say, keep out, we're here, this is our territory.
If you doubt that, look at what they did with the Spratly Islands.
Spratly Islands are a series of islands in the South China Sea that China has...
I've gone in and basically taken over, even though they weren't supposed to do that.
So it's true.
China is aggressing.
I actually think Bill Nelson is correct in that it's not out of the realm of possibility that China starts making much more ambitious territorial claims, including to the moon.
It's not out of the realm of possibility, which is why, put China aside for a second, even put space exploration aside for a second, it's why the United States is Needs, once again, to pursue a policy of national greatness.
When Newt Gingrich, speaking of Newt Gingrich, ran for president in 2012, he made this an important part of his campaign platform.
He actually made, going back to the moon, an important part of his campaign platform.
And exploring space further.
Because he said, we need a project of national greatness.
Much of our political debate for the past 30, 40 years has gone between two poles of a vision of national smallness.
The left, which is no longer looking out to the heavens, which is no longer looking to expand America.
The left, which says America is evil and we need to contract.
And we need to contract our empire and contract our claims and our own sense of how wonderful the country is.
And we need to just look in at ever smaller circles, just at race or sex or this kind of identity or that kind of identity.
We're basically looking at ourselves under a microscope by the time we're through with that vision.
Or the right, which has said, yeah, forget about expansion.
Forget about exploration.
Forget about going into space.
No, all that stuff's a waste of money.
You know what we need to do?
We need to shrink everything.
We've got to shrink the government.
We've got to shrink policy.
We've got to shrink spending.
We've got to privatize everything.
There's no such thing as a project of national greatness.
There's barely anything as a project.
We're just all individuals.
And you do you, and I'll do me, and we all do whatever the hell we want, and we've got very little uniting us anymore, but I'll get to keep more of my money, and that's all that matters.
Those have been basically the two visions for the last 30, 40 years.
That's not what a great nation thinks about.
A great nation recognizes that it is a nation, that there actually are things that bind us together.
We're not just a bunch of individuals who happen to share a plot of territory with blurry borders.
That's not all we are.
And we're not just bags of chemicals that amount to nothing more than the pigmentation of our skin or our sexual lusts.
We're more than that.
We are citizens.
We're part of a family at the most basic political level, and then part of a local community, a township, maybe a district, a state, and ultimately we are part of a nation.
We have a national character, and we have national desires, and we have national pursuits and endeavors.
And at the most...
Basic level of political vision.
We want to pursue the good and we want to avoid evil.
And we want to do stuff.
And we want to go somewhere.
That's what we need.
We need that vision again.
Because, by the way, without that vision, you are just going to dissolve into a bunch of random individuals airing their petty grievances.
And it's going to happen on the left and it's going to happen on the right.
So I think Nelson is probably right here.
I think Newt Gingrich was right in 2012.
I think we need to go out there...
Go get a nice plot of land on the moon and go further.
Whether we go into space or we don't go into space, we need to have a vision for where we're going and we need to pursue that together in cooperation with one another.
Instead, however, instead of pursuing that agenda of Of great ambition.
Of lifting our eyes up.
Of making ourselves greater.
Instead what we're doing is degrading ourselves.
You see this in New York right now.
New York has just become the sixth state in the country to legalize human composting.
What is human composting?
It's exactly what it sounds like.
Human composting is...
When you die, they put you in a box, they put some plants and straw and wood around you, and they leave you in that box for 30 days until you turn to soil, and then they pour you on the ground.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
Has added natural organic reduction to cremation and entombment as an acceptable burial method.
The new law defines the practice as the, quote, contained accelerated conversion of human remains to soil in a structure, room, or other space in which decomposition can occur.
Now, the question I ask you is, is this wrong?
I think most of us think this is wrong.
I imagine that the majority of people listening to this show right now would say, yeah, there's something kind of wrong about this.
Some people might say, no, there isn't anything wrong.
But most people have a gut feeling at least that there's something wrong about this.
And then the second question.
Why is it wrong?
That's the harder question.
Most people, especially the kind of people who accept many of our culture's premises...
That we should just follow our unfettered reason.
That people should have the right to do whatever they want to do.
Consenting adults should have the right to do whatever they want to do.
We own our own bodies.
We're individuals.
It is important to maximize our individual autonomy.
People who believe these premises, which are not just the premises of the crazy left.
They're the premises of pretty much everybody after the Enlightenment in liberal modernity.
Even many people who call themselves conservative.
If you follow those premises and that kind of logical progression...
It's very difficult to explain why it's wrong to turn grandma into a plot of dirt.
And then grow your tomatoes out of dear Aunt Sally.
But it is wrong, nevertheless.
And it's wrong because all those premises that we get out of liberal modernity are wrong too.
It's wrong because human beings have dignity.
We are not the same thing as all the other animals.
We're not the same thing as plants.
We're not the same thing as bugs.
We're different.
We're human beings.
We are made in the image and likeness of God.
And that is why we have a responsibility to show some respect for dead bodies.
That is why there are laws throughout the civilized world against the desecration of bodies.
What does that mean to desecrate?
It's recognizing that there is an aspect of the body as being part of your human self that is sacred, where you shouldn't desecrate that body.
But what you'll hear from the libs and the squishes is they'll say, well, you know, you're entitled to all your religious mumbo jumbo whatever, but you can't force that on us.
We're a secular society.
Well, I guess we are.
I guess we are.
If we're now at the point where the way that we treat dear old grandma who loved us all our lives is the moment she dies to throw her into the garden so the pigs can eat her and tomatoes can grow out of her, then I guess we are a secular society.
But we shouldn't be.
We didn't start out as a secular society.
It's not what the Founding Fathers set up.
It's not what the Framers set up.
It's not what we were until five minutes ago.
But now we may have become that.
There's this really, really good book that is coming out soon by a writer named Matthew Petrucic.
It's being published by Word on Fire.
And it's a book about evangelization and ideology.
And I just did a blurb for it, so I got an advanced copy of this book.
But it's really great.
I encourage you to pre-order it and get the book.
Because it does a great job of explaining how political issues, the political debates that we have, are just one tiny little fraction of the broader debates that we, the conclusions of which we are simply assuming.
I'll bring this down to earth a little bit.
When we're debating a policy like whether or not to throw Graham in the garden, That political debate is assuming a lot of conclusions about applied morality.
That's kind of the next circle out.
Applied morality, which is assuming a lot of conclusions about morality generally.
Which is assuming a lot of conclusions about Epistemology.
Epistemology is how we know anything at all.
It's the study of knowledge.
How do we know things?
How do we know that certain things are true and certain things are false and certain things are good and certain things are bad?
Then you go out a circle further.
Well, that assumes a lot of things about anthropology.
We talk about anthropology a lot when it comes to the transgender debate.
What does it mean to be a human being?
What is human nature?
Can a boy become a girl?
Can a girl become a boy?
These are going to be just assumed in a lot of our political debates.
When you move out from anthropology, you get to ontology.
The question of being.
What it means to be.
What it means to exist.
And when you have...
Those questions are assuming conclusions from theology.
What is the fundamental reality?
What is reality within which all of those other questions would exist?
We, unfortunately, just go into these debates blindly in many ways.
And the worst part is, everyone goes blind.
We're not going to have extremely high-level scholarly debates over every single question that comes before the Congress.
The problem is, though we are assuming all sorts of conclusions about all those really high-level questions, we used to assume them with the prejudice of tradition, with the prejudice of civilization, with the prejudice of Christianity.
These days, we are assuming those premises now.
With the prejudices of liberalism, of leftism, of atheism.
And when you just take all the...
There is no God.
That's one premise we're assuming.
Or if there is a God, we can't really know anything about him.
Being is merely physical.
Human beings are just a bag of chemicals.
The only way we know anything is through the micro soap and the scientific method.
Morality is just whatever the people want at any given time or whatever makes me feel good.
If it feels good, do it.
And so if grandma wants to get thrown into the garden, it's fine.
Or if we want to throw in the garden, that's fine too.
Well, yeah, I see how you could arrive at that stupid conclusion, but you've arrived at it by assuming all sorts of conclusions about higher level thinking that are simply not true.
And the prejudice has become rote for us.
Because the libs conquered the culture.
And it's going to take a lot to dig ourselves out of that.
But I think the first thing we have to do is dig grandma out of the garden, okay, and dig her out of the tomato plant.
We know that is wrong.
We have a wisdom of repugnance, to borrow a word from Leon Kass.
We know we shouldn't do that.
There is nothing wrong or irrational or stupid or uneducated about using our law to say, no, you don't get to do that.
No.
You should be buried.
I'm actually against cremation as well.
I know a lot of people opt for it.
I think cremation makes a mockery of a notion that animated our culture for a very long time, which is the resurrection of the body.
This is a central concept of Christianity.
And it matters even beyond what will happen to us in the hereafter, or at the second coming, or the final judgment, because it...
It gets down to the question of what is the relationship between the soul and the body?
What am I really?
If the body doesn't mean anything, then transgenderism is A-OK, right?
Because my true self is just my soul.
My body is incidental to that.
If I want to chop it up, even if a little kid wants to chop it up, no big deal.
But I don't think that's true.
I think the body does matter.
So much so that I'm reminded of the words of Tertullian, who said that The flesh is the very hinge of salvation.
That our bodies, what we do with our bodies, what we do in time and space, really do matter.
So we should not just become mulch.
You are more than mulch.
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Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis, speaking of Christianity, was sworn into office again yesterday.
And he did so on the Bible of the Revolution.
This Bible...
It goes back to 1782 when the U.S. Congress endorsed the King James translation of the Aitken Bible, which printer Robert Aitken published after America won the Revolutionary War.
It is the first and only edition ever commissioned.
Ron DeSantis was able to borrow this edition of the Bible from Glenn Beck.
Glenn Beck, as some of you may know, has probably the greatest collection of American artifacts ever assembled.
He just loves collecting this stuff.
And he's got this very important Bible.
And so, Ron DeSantis takes the oath of office on this Bible.
Glenn Beck lent it to him because he believes that Ron DeSantis' Governorship has real historical significance, his words.
It is the beginning of a renewal of the principles for which our founders fought.
This is, of course, just another signal that Ron DeSantis is running for president in 2024.
His wife looked absolutely beautiful at the swearing-in.
DeSantis doing all the right things to do that.
And he's pulling together a coalition of some people who really liked Trump, some people who, like Glenn Beck, really didn't like Trump, certainly not in 2016.
It's a signal that Ron DeSantis is just pulling more and more support together.
2024 is a long way off, so I don't have many more predictions to say about that sort of thing.
But speaking of rising stars in the GOP... George Santos.
George Santos, who is the newly elected Republican congressman, who lied about pretty much everything in his past, his ethnicity, his job, his education, potentially his sexual desires, everything.
He lied about everything.
He's now under investigation in Brazil.
He's under investigation.
I shouldn't laugh, but it's funny, so I will laugh.
When George Santos was 19 years old, he entered a clothing store in Brazil and spent $700 using a stolen checkbook and a false name.
He then allegedly admitted to the fraud on a Brazilian social media website.
He and his mother allegedly admitted to police in 2010 that he stole the checkbook to make fraudulent purchases.
The following year, a legal charge against Santos was approved, but he had already left the country.
He was living in the US.
So now this guy might be indicted by Brazil.
And it raises a real pickle.
Here's the pickle.
I was talking to some friends and relatives over the break, talking about George Santos.
They said, you know, those cowardly Republicans, I bet they're going to seat George Santos.
They're going to allow him to serve, even though he's clearly a pathological liar.
And I said, yeah, they probably will.
Because did George Santos ever claim to be Native American for his whole career when he was a Harvard professor?
Was that?
Oh no, that was Elizabeth Warren.
Did George Santos, he lied about his education.
Did he ever claim to have three degrees that he got on a full academic scholarship after he was the top student in his department, officially named him?
Oh no, that was Joe Biden.
Who also plagiarized, by the way.
The pickle here is that George Santos obviously has all sorts of problems and does not seem to be the most stable individual in the world.
But the ire against him seems so disingenuous because Democrats and libs get away with all the same stuff and actually far worse transgressions.
That's how I feel about Andrew Tate.
Andrew Tate is a pimp.
I am not generally in the habit of defending pimps, okay?
But, for the libs to pretend to be up in arms over Andrew Tate's sex trafficking because he ran a webcam business, seems disingenuous when the libs turn a blind eye to Jeffrey Epstein and to all the other insane sexual behaviors that they not only tolerate but actually encourage.
They themselves are the ones who are pushing the sexual revolution and who are claiming that prostitution is real work.
It's real work and we need to legalize prostitution and all sorts of deviant sexual behavior.
So it just rings hollow when they go after Andrew Tate for that sort of stuff.
It's a real pickle that we are in now.
What are we to do about that?
I think we can just acknowledge both things.
We don't need to really defend George Santos or Andrew Tate all that hard.
But I think we can observe, hey, you guys who are clutching your pearls here, you're being very, very disingenuous.
And I'm not going to prostrate myself at the altar of liberalism and say, no, throw these men to the wolves.
Okay, well, let the system work out as it may.
But I'm going to keep clear eyes about what the libs are doing.
Okay, now speaking of trouble in foreign countries...
Trouble overseas.
In Queensland, Australia, police are now asking citizens to snitch on their fellow citizens if they ever commit the terrible transgression of entertaining a conspiracy theory.
And we welcome that information.
As I said before, if it's anybody out there that knows of someone that might be showing concerning behaviour around conspiracy theories, anti-government, anti-police, conspiracy theories around COVID-19 vaccination, as what we're seeing with the Trane family, we'd want to know about that.
We want to know about that.
And you can either contact police directly or go through Crime Stoppers.
We want to know that.
I can't really do a good Australian.
That's not a knife!
This is a knife!
That's pretty much all I can do.
Crikey!
They want to know if anyone is entertaining a crazy conspiracy theory.
Like that the mRNA vaccines are not totally safe and effective.
Which has been proven true time and time again.
A crazy conspiracy theory that maybe the government is corrupt and has demonstrated that corruption at an international scale over the past three years, like has been proven time and time again.
The conspiracy theories.
We've said this on the show for a long time now.
The difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth over the last three years is about three to six months.
We're told it's a crazy conspiracy theory that the masks and the social distancing don't do very much.
And then later it comes out, oh yeah, actually that was probably right.
Crazy conspiracy theory that the vaccines might cause heart problems and blood clots and things like that.
No, it's a crazy conspiracy theory, it turns out.
Obviously that's true.
The crazy conspiracy theory that the vaccines won't stop you from getting COVID or transmitting COVID. Oh no, actually that turns out that that was totally true.
Even the liberals admit this now.
Even my liberal friends and relatives.
I said, wasn't that vaccine supposed to stop everybody from getting COVID? You know when they still wear the masks and things?
You guys have all the vaccines.
Isn't that supposed to stop you from getting COVID? And what do they tell me?
They say, no, no, actually Michael.
At first that's what they said, but it turned out that actually none of that was true.
Yeah, remember when I said that from the very beginning and you all called me crazy and a lunatic and a murderer?
You remember that?
No, nobody remembers that.
All to say, this is still going on.
These clips that you're seeing come out of especially Australia, they're not from three years ago.
This stuff is still going on right now.
And it's part of a broader plan that is being pushed by some of the most powerful people in the world.
Not so secretly.
They're doing it out in the open.
They're calling it the Great Reset.
This is a term coined by Klaus Schwab, who's the head of the World Economic Forum.
He published a book to this effect.
You've had heads of state.
We've had King Charles in England and many, many heads of state throughout the world repeat this phrase, that we need a great reset, that COVID-19 presents a terrific opportunity to not just change some healthcare policies, but to upend our economies, our political rights, the way that countries interact with but to upend our economies, our political rights, the way that countries That is still happening.
That's not going to go away.
And they're occasionally going to try to bring back maybe the masks or the vaccine mandates.
They might sputter to try to do that, even as that has become so implausible.
But the broader project, which involves changing the relationship of businesses What the sort of state can mandate.
The sort of surveillance that the state is allowed to engage in.
The medical knowledge that state actors are allowed to take.
And the private actors are allowed to take.
The blurring between the public and the private.
Which is a key aspect of the World Economic Forum agenda.
That's why the World Economic Forum exists in the first place.
Is to create a tighter partnership between the public sector and the private sector.
It's not just communism.
It's not just capitalism.
It's this blobby, awful combination of these two things.
This corrupt fusion of people who want to take a lot of power and a lot of money.
And upend your way of life.
That is still going on.
Do not think that you have left COVID in the rearview mirror.
If anything, it's just getting started.
The rest of the show continues now.
Today is not Wednesday.
No, it is Wednesday, right?
Because we had Monday off.
I was going to say it's woke Tuesday.
No, it's woke Wednesday.
And we are going to have a wonderful woke presentation.
The producers have prepared for me.
I will be reacting to it.
I need your expertise to help me decipher the high-level thinking in this woke message.
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