Ep. 1200 - Trans Dudes Dominate Women's History Month
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A former CDC director says Fauci stifled debate over COVID origin, Democrats refuse to get tough on fentanyl, and Michael spurs a crisis in Buffalo.
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Why did it take so long for the government to admit that COVID almost certainly came from a Chinese lab?
It isn't because scientists are just now considering that theory.
Plenty of scientists have openly embraced the Wuhan lab origin theory from the very beginning.
It isn't even that it's only now that government scientists are beginning to take the theory seriously.
There have always been government scientists on the lab leak side of the debate from the According to former CDC Director Robert Redfield, the reason that the government is only now beginning to admit the likely source of COVID is that the government scientists who supported the lab leak theory were previously frozen out of the conversation.
Dr.
Redfield, did you agree, in your opinion, with Dr.
Anderson's assessment at the time that this virus did look engineered?
I was concerned because of the presence of the furin cleavage site that we've talked about.
Why did this virus have the arginine sequences for human there, not bat?
It was very disconcerting to me.
It looked like this virus was engineered.
Was this, what you're observing and speaking of, is this something that would be in line with gain-of-function research and the capabilities it would provide to the virus?
Yeah.
Did you know of any evidence that they had found within three days from February 1st to February 4th to be able to confirm that it was not created in a lab?
As I mentioned earlier, unfortunately I was excluded from those conversations.
Which I found retroactively very disappointed, since I was obviously a virologist and very engaged.
And I actually had asked Jerry Mifrar, Tony Fauci, and Tedros to have these conversations.
And then to be excluded, I found unusual.
So the CDC director who believed that this very likely could have been a lab-created virus, he was frozen out of the conversation by all of the top dogs in public health, in government, including Tony Fauci.
Okay, that's what Redfield says.
What does Dr.
Fauci, Dr.
Fauci, what does he have to say about it?
So let me ask you about what Dr.
Robert Redfield is charging, that you froze him out, that you didn't want him there, you didn't want him at these meetings, and that was deliberate.
You know, Neil, I really feel badly about that because I know Bob a long time.
He is totally and unequivocally incorrect.
In what he's saying that I excluded him.
I had nothing to do with who would be on that call.
That call was organized by a group of evolutionary virologists in order to discuss the possibility that this might actually be a virus that was actually engineered.
So I didn't put anybody on the list of that call, nor did I take anybody else.
So it's really unfortunate That in a public setting, like the hearing, that Dr.
Redfield made that absolutely incorrect statement.
Even if I hadn't before, I now completely, 100% believe Dr.
As he did, you might remember, when furgering himself in front of Rand Paul.
You are incorrect, Senator!
You are incorrect!
Well, actually, Dr.
Fauci, I have all of the emails and documents right here.
Well, well, okay, well, all right, never mind.
All the other things you say are 100% completely incorrect.
That's when you know Dr.
Fauci is lying.
Though, another good way to tell when Dr.
Fauci is lying is when his lips are moving.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is from Tweef, who says, I used to be a liberal and can confirm I am happier now as a conservative.
Many such cases.
Many such cases of that.
I think it's kind of just built in To those views of the world.
Because the liberal view of the world is a view that is just generally kind of pissed off about everything.
It's the view, to quote John F. Kennedy, that some people see things that are and say, why?
I dream things that never were and say, why not?
Which is the view of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
That's what Kennedy is quoting.
And he's quoting it because liberalism looks at the world, looks at reality and says, I don't like reality.
I want this fantastical delusional thing that seems really great in my own head.
And when you live according to delusion, you're not going to be very happy, which was actually the topic of my speech last night at the University of Buffalo, which had all sorts of fireworks.
We'll get to in just a moment.
If you were not able to make it to that speech, maybe you have a friend who was at that speech.
You can call that friend when you want to call that friend.
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The truth is coming out.
The truth is coming out.
The truth about all sorts of government operations over the last few years.
Certainly the truth about COVID, which you and I knew from the beginning, you know, I hate to say I told you so.
And many of you told me so and each other so, because it was so obvious from the beginning that if you've got a major bio lab down the street from where allegedly this virus came from.
And the virus has all these strange features that we haven't seen before.
Probably did not come from a bad batch of bat soup.
Might have had something to do with the bio lab.
Then when you found out that Fauci and the National Institutes of Health were actually funding this kind of research on bat coronaviruses, funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology, all of a sudden it seemed pretty obvious.
But that's just starting to come out now.
Another lie that has been dispelled, some truth that's finally coming out now, is that what we were told about January 6th, the worst day in the history of the republic, what you were told about that was largely not true.
The handful of videos you saw from January 6th were selected to be the most violent, scary videos you could possibly see.
But then when you look at 41,000 hours of security camera footage from that day, it's You find out that the image presented in those videos that the liberal media exclusively had put forward did not accurately reflect what happened.
The clearest example of this would be that the QAnon shaman, the guy with the horn hat, he was not this maniac revolutionary leader running through the Capitol as the police tried to chase him.
The police escorted him through.
They tried to open locked doors for him.
And there were many such cases of that.
So how do we know that?
We know that because the Republicans won control of the House again, which meant that Kevin McCarthy was able to get control of 41,000 hours of security camera footage.
He gave that to Tucker Carlson and Tucker's investigators.
Tucker released that footage.
Coincidentally, I was on the show the night that he released it.
So I'm sitting there in the green room.
I usually don't pay attention to the shows before I go on them.
And I'm spellbound.
I'm looking at this footage.
I said, oh my goodness gracious, what we were told is not really true.
So how is the White House reacting to this?
Karine Jean-Pierre says that you need to stop believing your own lying eyes.
When you look at the depositions that have been out there recently, it even states from Fox News leadership that they do not see Tucker Carlson's show as news or even truthful.
That is coming from the Fox leadership.
That's not coming from me.
That is coming from them.
And I also would quote, I'll paraphrase here, what the Chief of Capitol Police said.
He said, essentially, when you watch Tucker Carlson as it relates to January 6th, it is misleading and it is misinformation with the conclusion of what happened on January 6th, the attacks that happened.
As you saw from the President's statement, 140 people Officers were injured.
Nearly 140 officers were injured on that day.
It was an attack on our democracy.
It was an attack on our Constitution.
And you cannot whitewash that.
Tucker Carlson cannot whitewash that.
Anyone who doesn't see with their own eyes what occurred cannot whitewash that.
And so the president is going to stand with the police officers.
He's going to stand for truth.
And clearly that is not what Tucker Carlson believes in.
If you've seen it with your own eyes, you can't whitewash that.
The issue for you guys is that right now people are seeing this with their own eyes for the first time.
They're seeing lots and lots of security camera footage, and they're seeing that the story that you presented is not true.
Even down to the police officers.
We were told police officers were killed on January 6th.
That was just completely made up, and the newspapers that reported that had to correct those stories.
A lot of newspapers making a lot of corrections in recent times.
But, of course, the story runs on the first page.
The correction runs on page Z, 10,000, so many fewer people see that.
But that's not my issue here.
My issue is not that the White House is criticizing Tucker Carlson.
Of course, that's going to happen.
It's not that the White House is trying to spin and trying to tell people not to pay any attention to the new evidence that's come out.
My issue is that last line.
Tucker Carlson, he doesn't believe in the truth.
Tucker Carlson, he's not on the side of the truth.
This coming from the libs, who constantly insist that objective truth does not exist.
That's my big problem with it.
This was the topic, one of the topics of my speech last night at the University of Buffalo.
The question of transgenderism, the question of feminism, the question of all these ideologies.
It seems to me would be, is it true or is it false?
And yet whenever you bring this up to a liberal, they'll say, oh, who cares?
They'll say, who cares?
They'll say, what is truth?
They'll say, whose truth?
Is it your truth?
Is it my truth?
They'll say, there's no objective truth.
That's a construction of the evil white male patriarchy.
How dare you use the T word in here?
Just much lamer versions of the same cynical question, going all the way back to Pontius Pilate, who, when Christ says, I am the truth, Pontius Pilate says, what is truth?
That's what the Libs say.
And now, Corrine Jean-Pierre and the White House has the audacity to say...
Tucker Carlson doesn't believe in the truth.
Half this country doesn't believe in the truth.
And it's not our half.
It's not the conservative half.
We're the ones who are just trying to keep hold of any semblance of the truth at all.
While the libs say that boys are girls and girls are boys and up is down and black is white.
We're just saying no.
Come on.
They'll say no.
In this modern world, anything can be anything.
In the world of post-modernism, in the world of Derrida, in the world of Foucault, in the world...
Students are taught now, they are educated to believe that there is...
There is no such thing as outside of the text.
It's a famous line from literary criticism in our postmodern crazy era.
There's nothing outside of the text.
There's no objective reality.
It's all just the meaning that we make of it, man.
It's all just whatever you think.
You think you're a woman?
Well, you're a woman.
You think you're a cat?
I guess you're a cat.
Who's to say?
Okay.
Who's to say?
But Tucker Carlson doesn't believe in the truth because he's playing videos of what actually happened for his audience.
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I mentioned I was at the University of Buffalo last night.
Had a great time.
Really, really packed house.
Unfortunately, we were not able to get a larger venue, so the speech was in a venue that I think was...
We were only permitted to seat 300 people.
We were allowed to do a little bit of standing room on the side.
But there were a thousand people outside.
And half of the thousand people were there screaming their heads off and saying that I should be killed and shrieking all sorts of bizarre obscenities.
And then the other half was there just to come in and see the speech.
Most of the people who made it in to see the speech were on the...
Open-minded, inquisitive, calm, normal side of things.
There were a handful of protesters who were sitting there, and then almost the moment I opened my mouth, they started shrieking, trans lives matter!
Trans lives matter!
And I said, okay, I think I got the point.
Trans lives matter!
And then the police had to try to haul them out of there, because they just wouldn't move.
They only knew about six or seven words, so it was not a particularly interesting dialogue.
We survived.
You can watch the speech right now on the YAF YouTube channel.
The thing that most struck me about going to the University of Buffalo, where there was this major, major protest, pretty much every news organization from the Buffalo area had come in.
There were multiple.
There was a press conference the day before.
About what I might say, the university president had to answer for this.
The SUNY, the State University of New York, the whole system of SUNY schools, Board of Trustees and Chancellor, released a statement about how terrible I am, which did not speak very well of SUNY because they apparently didn't understand the basic meaning of my words.
But all of this, I'm not just saying, you know, it's a big show and you should all show up to the next show, though obviously you should.
The reason I mention all of this is because...
There was so much press.
There was so much publicity.
There was so much hubbub.
And then when it got to the questioners, when it got to the Q&A part at the end, the liberal critics who were in the room didn't know what I believe.
That was what was so striking.
There could not have been more publicity about the things that I say and think that spurred all of this protest Going back last week to my speech at CPAC, all the way up to the event last night, people were being inundated in the Buffalo area with information about what I have allegedly said and believe.
And yet, when the questioners got up there, they had no idea what I thought.
A guy gets up there, he says, Michael, you have said that sex and gender is purely a physical factor of biological sex.
Now, I'm just using that one example because I've talked about it on the show quite a lot.
How many times have I said I don't think that human nature is only about biology?
I think that man is body and spirit.
I think that gender expression is a legitimate way of talking about a real phenomenon, which is the metaphysical answer to our physical nature.
How often do I talk about that all the time?
I frequently say I'm a little different than other conservative commentators on this issue because I think that when people talk about gender expression, they're really just trying to talk about the soul, which is obviously an important part of human nature.
So I talk about this all the time.
I'm not saying that these protesters need to listen to every episode of my show or even any episode of my show.
But my question is, if you've never listened to a thing that I've actually said, why would you show up screaming, protesting, saying that people have to kill me?
Why?
Rush Limbaugh used to have this.
People used to believe, they earnestly believed, that they knew what Rush Limbaugh had believed and had said.
None of these people had ever listened to one single episode of the Rush Limbaugh show.
So how did they think that they knew what he thought?
Because they heard three words on MSNBC. Because they saw some press release from Media Matters.
Half the time, the news clip or the press release didn't even accurately reflect Rush's words.
But they formed this image in their mind, and it just wasn't true.
And coincidentally, this was the topic.
Of the speech last night on feminism and how feminism gave us transgenderism.
Since everybody's talking about transgenderism now, the transgender activists who say that we're killing everybody and we're evil and we're terrible, we need to be shut down and shut up and locked up, they're convinced that we're wrong.
We, who hold to the view that everybody held of human nature from prehistory until approximately five minutes ago, we are definitely, totally, hatefully wrong.
And they, the people who hold a view that was invented...
Within the last eight years, as a matter of public life, they are totally 100% correct.
And they know that they're correct because some man feels that he is a woman, or some woman feels that she is a man.
But the question you've got to ask is, is it possible you're wrong?
This was my question.
I talked to some protesters after.
We'll hopefully be able to get some of that video up.
I talked to protesters after the speech.
And they kept telling me things that I believe that I don't actually believe.
That I haven't said.
That I've regularly contradicted.
And I think, if you can be so wrong about that, if you can be so wrong about this relatively minor political event that you've spent the last week wasting all of your time plotting, trying to get shut down, screaming, making posters, showing up, threatening people, if you could be wrong about that, is it possible that you are also wrong when you, a man, say that you are a woman?
Is that possible?
That's my only question for them.
Now, speaking of Of sex and gender and people being very, very wrong.
I wanted to get to this yesterday, but we'll at least get to it now.
Jill Biden, the first lady of the United States, for International Women's Day, gave out an International Women of Courage Award to a hulking dude.
In Argentina, Alba Ruada is a transgender woman who was kicked out of classrooms, barred for sitting for exams, refused job opportunities, subjected to violence, and rejected by her family.
But in the face of these challenges, she worked to end violence and discrimination against the LGBTQI plus community in Argentina.
So she obviously didn't do anything because she is a dude, and I don't really mean to disparage the guy too much because he's obviously not playing with a totally full deck here, but this is really embarrassing.
This is really embarrassing.
Last night at Buffalo, I gave an argument that was more historical and philosophical as to why these sorts of things are wrong in the Q&A. I tried to give really precise answers, even going all the way to anthropology and theology about why transgenderism is wrong.
I'd like to go to a little bit of a simpler answer right now.
Because when we watch that, we know intuitively that it is absurd and embarrassing.
Because we have a wisdom of repugnance, to borrow a phrase from Leon Cass.
And when we look at a man, obviously in some kind of turmoil and desperation, dressing up as a chick and receiving this award and got a smile on his face and everyone in the room feels kind of awkward about it, that's really embarrassing.
And it's embarrassing for the person and he should have help.
And it's embarrassing for our country because this is on a national stage.
And the rest of the world is looking at us and And we're supposed to be the greatest, most advanced, most serious, most formidable country in the world.
And we are an embarrassment because right now we can't even tell the difference between dudes and chicks.
That's how profoundly confused we are.
And for that fact alone, I think we have a right to say no to this.
It's really embarrassing.
Everybody involved is embarrassed by it.
In our modern culture, when we want to overcome embarrassment...
We just try to push through it.
We say, if you feel shame, you should just tell yourself not to feel shame.
Don't allow anybody to shame you.
Shame can be a very good thing.
It's a good feeling because it tells us maybe we've done something wrong.
Maybe we're on the wrong path.
We should embrace that shame and then Turn things around and go in the other direction.
It'd be like turning off all your nerve endings.
You say, oh, I feel so much better now.
Yeah, maybe, but when you put your hand on a hot stove, you're going to set your whole body on fire.
You need those nerve endings.
You need a little bit of that shame.
You need to look at that and admit what we all know is true, which is, it's embarrassing.
Speaking of the way Democrats are governing, they're very, very focused on giving medals to men who pretend to be women on the Women's Day.
Not very good at stopping 100,000 Americans a year from killing themselves on drug overdoses, on drugs that are pouring over the border from Mexico.
There was just a vote on this.
We talked about the fentanyl crisis last week.
The fentanyl crisis, not your regular drug crisis.
In the year 2000, about 20,000 Americans died of drug overdoses.
In the year 2022, about 108,000 Americans died from drug overdoses.
This is driven largely by fentanyl.
The fentanyl is coming from China.
Then it goes through Mexico.
The cartels send it across our effectively open border.
And then our friends and relatives and loved ones kill themselves.
Not because they're going out and saying, hey, I'll take a bag of fentanyl, please.
But because they're buying other drugs that maybe they shouldn't be buying, but that would not otherwise be deadly.
And then the drugs are laced with fentanyl and then they overdose and die.
The country is being poisoned at a rate 5x what we had in the year 2000.
So obviously we need to stop this, right?
One really basic way to stop this would be to increase the penalties for selling fentanyl.
To increase the severity with which we consider fentanyl.
So a vote came up on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reclassify fentanyl as a Schedule 1 substance.
I thought it already would be a Schedule 1 substance.
It's extraordinarily poisonous, unlike basically anything we've ever seen in the country.
And the Democrats shot it down.
The Democrats shot this down.
The, or they at least tried to shoot this down.
They voted against it.
The committee's health subcommittee approved the bill, so that's the good news, in a 17 to 10 vote.
Every Democrat, except for Representative Angie Craig, voted against the measure.
So why would they vote against this?
Thankfully, the Republicans have control of the House, but why would the Democrats vote against this?
Well, because if you make fentanyl a Schedule 1 substance, that's going to increase mandatory minimum sentences for selling this, and the Democrats don't want to do this.
Democrats want to go light on drugs.
Democrats want to go light on crime.
Democrats want to abolish the prisons.
This is the backwards world we're living in.
Democrats are pleading.
They say, we need mercy.
You shouldn't be so judgmental.
We shouldn't be so harsh.
We need mercy.
For the drug dealers killing people.
But mercy to the drug dealers who are killing people right now is cruelty to the relatively innocent people who are purchasing the drugs and being killed by accidental overdoses.
This is a line from Adam Smith, which doesn't tell the whole story about mercy and justice, but gives you a lot to think about when we're talking about this issue of the drug overdose crisis.
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
Which is why we cannot have a justice system that is pure mercy.
Yes, executives have the pardon power that's good.
Because you can think of justice and mercy not exactly as two totally opposing forces, but maybe as two partners in a dance waltzing.
Same way we think about will and grace.
Not the gay sitcom from the 90s, but will meaning our free will and grace being the free grace of God.
Not as opposing forces, but as partners in a waltz.
And unfortunately, right now in our country, the way the libs have governed...
Mercy is just doing a tap dance in front of everybody.
Justice is completely off to the side.
Justice has left the party, and mercy is just doing a soft shoe.
And unfortunately, all of that mercy to all these guilty people is leading to the deaths of 100,000 Americans.
If we just closed that border, you wouldn't even have to worry about...
Making fentanyl a Schedule I substance.
Because the fentanyl's all coming across the border.
But no.
No, no.
The Democrats say, we need mercy.
Mercy for the illegal aliens, for the drug cartels, for MS-13.
We need mercy for them.
Well...
Mercy to them is cruelty to the American citizens who are supposed to have a right to govern their own country.
Mercy to them is cruelty to the women and girls who are smuggled across the border, 60-80% of whom are raped along the journey.
Mercy to them is cruelty to the Americans who are dying of the fentanyl overdoses that come as a result of our open border.
Who's really merciful?
Who's really just?
If this is not a good use of the government, what is?
I sometimes wonder this when we talk about occasionally putting troops on the border.
And that topic is always laughed out of the room.
You can't put American troops on our southern border.
I say, if an open border that is currently in an invasion that is being led by a satanic criminal cartel called MS-13, among other cartels, If that is not a good use of the American military, what is the point of the American military?
With the American military everywhere in the world, we can't put them on the southern border?
No, no, we can't.
The real reason why we can't, of course, is that the elites don't want that.
Because the elites want an open border, because the Democrats want more voters, and the Republicans want cheap labor.
At least the Chamber of Commerce Republicans who have lost a lot of influence in the Republican Party.
That's why.
If they wanted to fix that problem, they could fix it in two seconds.
But the language they dress it up in is the language of mercy for these people.
Okay.
Well, that would be big government.
Yeah.
Government exists within its proper limits.
If this is not within the proper limits of government, then government does not exist.
Okay?
This is a good opportunity for the Republican Party.
It's a good opportunity for the Republican Party because, as I said, for most of my life, the Republican Party was the party of the big business, chamber of commerce, corporate, rich uncle pennybags.
Democrats, they were the party of the working man.
And over the last seven, eight years, really because of Donald Trump, that has flipped.
That's no longer the case.
So, J.D. Vance...
Who ran on a relatively populist platform for Senate.
J.D. Vance wrote Hillbilly Elegy.
J.D. Vance says we're going to be the party of Pittsburgh, not Paris.
Ted Cruz, I think, coined that line and J.D. has run with it.
He has suggested that we now...
Take this advantage.
And the key place to take this advantage is this town that has been totally ignored by the Democrats and largely ignored by the Republicans.
That town would be East Palestine, Ohio.
Before we get to it, There's a line in Proverbs that says, Without a vision, the people perish.
That is absolutely true.
Not just in a spiritual sense, but in a tangible, physical sense, too.
So many people, especially young men, are completely lost today because they don't know what they want to achieve or how to even figure it out.
Jordan Peterson has a fantastic and surprisingly simple solution to this in his new five-part series, Vision and Destiny, on Daily Wire+.
Here is a clip.
If I could have what I needed and wanted, accepting that I need and want certain things, what would that look like?
And then you'll get a fantasy.
Because that's how the revelatory process works.
Say, well...
You know, it might be not a very well-developed fantasy to begin with, but it doesn't matter.
Get it down.
Write it down.
I'd probably like this.
I'd probably like this.
I might like this.
This would be good.
It's like, get it all down.
It's your sort of provisional vision of the beckoning future.
Then the program asks you to do the reverse.
It's like, okay, imagine this.
Instead, you take all your bad habits, these micro-personalities that are trying to sink you, and they get the upper hand, and where are you in five years?
It's like, well, you're on the street, you're a prostitute, you're a drug addict, you've alienated everyone, you're a narcissist, you're successful but lonely, you're work-obsessed.
I don't know what your pattern of temptation and pathology is, but you probably know.
So you outline a little vision of hell.
It's like, okay, I'm not going there, and I'd rather go here.
Now you've got orientation, right, between the ultimate bottom and the ultimate up.
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To briefly wrap up that point, J.D. Vance says that right now we have an opportunity to increase regulation on railways.
J.D. Vance is co-sponsoring legislation with Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, allegedly John Fetterman, but obviously John Fetterman is in a hospital right now, Bob Casey and Sherrod Brown, to increase public safety requirements for trains carrying hazardous materials, among other things.
Republicans generally don't like regulation because so much regulation is unnecessary and burdensome and not very helpful.
That doesn't mean we hate regulation per se.
We're skeptical of government action.
That doesn't mean we're against the government per se.
And Republicans, I think very foolishly, have ceded all of that territory to the Democrats for 30-40 years so that they can pretend to care about the people when they in fact do not.
Don't let them cede that.
They have become The party of the plutocrats, of the ruling class.
The most powerful interest in this country, almost to a man, are Democrats.
Okay, that gives them a lot of power, but at least we can get the PR win here, and we can be on the side of the people.
It's a nice place to be.
Speaking of the people, let's talk to some of the people.
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Let's take it away with the voicemail bag.
Hi Michael!
So first off, my fiancé is a cologne connoisseur of sorts and really enjoys trying out different fragrances.
And since he started listening to your show, he's always wanted to know what cologne you wear.
He always says that you can tell a lot about a person based on what fragrance they wear.
Secondly, on a more serious note, I'm curious what you think the role of the government is on issues relating to social media and the risk that they pose to children and national security at large.
I know that politicians like Senator Hawley from Missouri have introduced legislation to ban platforms like TikTok nationally and institute age limit requirements on social media platforms.
Personally, I think something like this is great, but some of my Republican friends think that it's not the role of the government and it's something that should be left up to the parents.
What do you think about this issue?
Thanks again for all you do.
Love the show.
Great question.
I'll take the second one first, then I'll get to the first one.
Yes, some of the Republicans who just have this reflexive response, anything the government does is bad, they will say, the government has no role here in social media.
But the sad fact is...
The government has a profound role in social media.
The government uses social media as its censorship arm.
We know this because of the Twitter files.
We know this because of leaked information out of Facebook from Mark Zuckerberg himself.
We know, for instance, on the Hunter Biden laptop story and on the Russia hoax and all the rest of it, that the DOJ, the FBI, were leaning in and telling social media to put their thumb on the scales for Democrats.
We know that social media is permitted to exist because it exploits a legal loophole in the Communications Decency Act.
A lot of involvement from big government there.
We know that the tech executives have regular meetings with the government.
So the question is not, will the government be involved in big tech?
I mean, we're talking about basically three companies that control the flow of information around our country.
Obviously, the government's going to have some kind of interest in that.
The question is not, will the government be involved?
The question is, how will the government be involved?
Right now, because Republicans want to bury our heads in the sand, we allow only the Democrats to be involved in big tech and how big tech operates.
And we allow the usually liberal executives at big tech to control speech in our public square, which if you control speech in the public square in a republic, means you control the whole political order.
Or are we going to engage?
It's not a good use of the government.
Right now, an American citizen cannot buy tobacco if he is under the age of 18.
I actually think they raised it.
I think, I believe as of a few years ago, an American cannot buy tobacco under the age of 21.
But an American is allowed to go on to TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Google, all the rest of it, it's allowed to go on all these social media platforms and have their head poisoned a lot more than if you had a few puffs of tobacco at any age whatsoever.
That is obviously insane.
It poisons people's minds.
It gets them hooked on porn for one, but all sorts of other crazy ideas and terrible things that are being presented to kids.
So I think there's totally should be an age limit to that.
We're always talking about banning TikTok.
Yeah, sure.
TikTok's bad, but what about Facebook?
What about Twitter?
What about Instagram?
What about the American ones?
We don't like TikTok because TikTok is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, but But Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, I guess not Twitter anymore, but at least the first three, they're controlled by the American libs.
And they want to poison our kids' minds with all sorts of crazy ideas just like the Chinese do.
In some cases, the American libs have crazier ideas than even the Chinese communists do on things like gender ideology.
So why are we not regulating all of this?
Yeah, it's fine.
Regulate TikTok.
But don't let Facebook and all the rest of them off the hook either.
As to the cologne, I used to wear cologne a lot.
Sweet little Alisa on her health kick has convinced me that fragrances are just poison.
They're not quite as bad as seed oils, but they're not great for you.
So I still wear cologne sometimes, but not all the time.
And the cologne that I wear...
Usually, it's Armani Code, because I was once a young Italian boy in New York, and we don't break our habits very easily.
But the other cologne that I recently ran out of was this cologne a friend of mine, a lawyer friend, who's done very well for himself.
He got this as a gift from a client.
It's called Julescence Blue, Passion of the Desert Shake.
And a client of his got it in Abu Dhabi or something, and it was extremely expensive.
I think it was something like $800 a bottle.
And you would spray it on.
And it didn't burn.
There were no...
Sometimes colognes can have that kind of nasty after-feeling or after-taste.
Put it on.
And you smelled like you were a Persian carpet that had been just wrapped up inside an Armenian kitchen that had been thrown in the casinos of Dubai.
I guess they don't have casinos.
In the nightclubs of Dubai.
And then wrapped up in a nice falafel patty.
It was very, very pungent.
And I really liked it.
And I wish I had more...
So if anybody, listen, if anybody wants to buy me $800 Arabian cologne, I'm more than welcome.
Next question.
Hey Michael, my name is Josephine and my fiance and I were discussing our vows the other day and I asked him his thoughts on including and obey on my side of vows as it is more traditional.
He is Catholic and I am converting to Catholicism.
I'm probably one of the very few Italians that is not Catholic.
I feel like we should include it because I think it would be disingenuous not to.
We're Definitely more traditional in our relationship and it's something we value and I know that he values it.
He's thinking about it, but I wanted to get your thoughts.
It would definitely ruffle some feathers on my side of the family.
I don't think my mom would be very pleased with it.
And I just wanted to see how you would manage that and what you think about including that in traditional vows just to begin with.
Love to hear your thoughts and I love the show.
Thanks.
Great question.
Sounds like you're totally on the right track.
You don't need me to answer this.
You already know the answer.
Yes, of course, include it.
That's great.
Why would you not?
You want to.
Your husband wants to.
It's traditional.
It's good.
You're totally on the right track.
The only reason not to is because, well...
Some feminist relatives might not like it.
I was once at a wedding, I'm not joking, where the wedding was being officiated by ex-nuns.
Sort of, I think, not parted on great terms with Mother Church.
And the nuns were reading a verse from the book of Genesis about wives submitting to their husbands.
And they edited the verse.
They changed the verse during the wedding.
And I thought, you know, when you're changing the word of God because you don't like it, that's not a good sign.
That's not where you want to be.
So that's great.
It's very traditional.
I think it's wonderful.
And furthermore, it might ruffle feathers.
Weddings should ruffle feathers.
I'm not saying they should be antagonistic events, but a wedding is making clear that you are leaving your mother and your father and your husband is leaving his mother and his father and you are clinging to one another and you are forming a new family.
And you might do things a little bit differently than your mother and father might do.
And that's a very fine thing.
A lot of people want to cave on the weddings and say, I'll just do whatever my mother-in-law wants, or I don't like it, but that's what my in-laws want to do.
No.
He who pays the piper calls the tune, so you might have to pony up a little bit more if whoever is paying doesn't like what's going on.
But no, this is the first act that you two are going to have as a married couple.
Do it the way you're going to live your lives.
Okay, next question.
Hi, Michael.
Arun here with a religious question.
You have previously advised us not to explicitly lie to others about our COVID-19 vaccination status.
And I'm guessing that this advice is born out of your belief as a Christian that it is unjustifiable to deliberately lie.
Now, I've mulled over this advice a fair bit because in the Hindu tradition, we are taught not to waste our scruples on those who are unworthy of them.
This comes from a vignette in the Mahabharata in which a hero is engaged in single combat with a villain.
And when the villain's chariot gets stuck in the mud, the rules of combat dictate that he must wait for the other person to free himself.
But Sri Krishna, God incarnate, tells the hero not to obey these rules because the villain has stood by evil his entire life and is deserving of death.
I do think it is dishonorable for someone to ask for my COVID-19 vaccination status.
So I'm wondering if you think that in such a case it would be right for someone to lie.
And I wonder if you as a Christian could perhaps tell me how you might view this based on the example from the book of Joshua in which Rahab hides two spies sent by Joshua and even lies explicitly to the king of Jericho about their whereabouts.
Would this not be an example of a case in which it is right to lie for a greater good?
Thank you, as always, for your thoughts.
As always, a fabulous question from Arun.
Really, really good question.
We're close up on the member block, so I'll try to give this as a pithy answer, and then maybe we can talk about it a little bit more on the member block.
A good example from Rahab in the Bible, and an example so striking because it's so out of line with the rest of the Bible and the way that lying, per se, is treated, that it's merited lots of commentary over the years.
I think St.
Augustine said that what Rahab did was wrong when she lied.
It was wrong.
She committed an evil action.
But God...
Forgave that action simultaneous with it and in consideration of the good that also came from that action.
There have been lots of Bible commentaries on this.
One way that it could have happened though and one way that one can kind of Work around these issues.
Let's say, you know, the Nazis show up and you're hiding a Jew in your basement.
What do you say?
He's in my basement.
Would be through something called mental reservation.
Which is, you could say, the Nazis come up, they say, is there a Jew here?
and you say, there was a Jew here, but he's not here anymore.
Are you lying?
Well, it depends.
You're using somewhat ambiguous language because by here, you could mean the room that you're standing in.
And the Jew may have been in that room, but the Jew is no longer there.
The Jew is now in the basement.
Have you lied exactly?
That would be one option on mental reservation.
But I would still have to stop short of this line that we should not waste our scruples on people who are not worthy of them.
You do not owe a perfectly precise answer to people who do not have any right to that knowledge that they are requesting.
That is true.
But it nevertheless is wrong to tell a lie.
It is always wrong to tell a lie, and the morality of the action of telling a lie is determined by the action itself, not by a consequence of that action.
That would be, if we were to fall into a kind of consequentialist view of things, that would be taking it too far.
And that's the truth, Arun.
Okay, we've got to get to the member block.
It is fake headline Friday.
I've got my fake headlines.
I've got a lot more, not just voicemail bag.
Regular written mailbag.
We got everything, man.
I still have a little bit of coffee.
We're good.
See you over there at the member blog.
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