Ibram Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research squandered tens of millions of dollars with nothing to show for it, Trump calls Megyn Kelly “nasty,” and 1 in 6 Americans can’t name a single branch of government.
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Race hustler Ibram Kendi is under fire after his Center for Anti-Racist Research at Boston University laid off some 20 employees, more than half of the center's workforce.
The Center for Anti-Racist Research was founded in June 2020 during the BLM shakedown campaign that followed the death of George Floyd.
Kendi was given a professorship and a center, the purpose of which remains as dubious today as it was back then.
Since that time, Kendi's center has raised tens of millions of dollars from donors.
And now, nobody knows where the money went.
It isn't that the center produced nothing for its money.
The center launched a blog on the Boston Globe's website.
And then, that's pretty much it.
The Center promised to do lots of stuff.
It promised to develop a racial data tracker to be, quote, the nation's largest online database of racial inequity in the United States, whatever that means.
But that project, like so many of its other initiatives, just never quite happened.
And it was never going to happen, because these race hustlers never produce much of anything.
Their product is the shakedown.
The product is white guilt, and the business is getting donations to produce more white guilt to get more donations.
What did BLM ever produce?
It produced lots of broken windows and empty store shelves and burned out cars.
And other than that, all it produced was white guilt, which earned it some $90 million in donations.
Which then also disappeared along with the formal organization.
The BLM founders moved into mansions in Southern California, and everyone moved on to the next grift.
The only reason that we are hearing about this one, about the financial corruption of Kendi's center, is that he made the mistake of stiffing his woke employees, his fellow con artists, who are now turning the con on him.
But it almost certainly won't hurt him.
Because there's no shortage of white guilt, and there's no shortage of money just waiting to be funneled into leftist patronage.
Like a sidewalk shell game, even if Kendi's BU gig goes under, just wait for him to pop up magically somewhere else.
I'm Michael Knowles.
us the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
Why One in six American adults can't name a single branch of our government.
We will get to why that might be in just a moment.
First, though, speaking of liberal black men who appeal exclusively to yuppie whites, Trevor Noah.
Just had an interview.
He interviewed some... Well, all right.
See you later, YouTube.
He interviewed... I guess this part's going to be on Daily Wire Plus and also X at MNOL's show.
Trevor Noah interviewed a man who dresses up as a woman, and they discussed the topic of Men who identify as women in women's sports.
And the debate, such as it was, was five minutes long.
Here is the most interesting argument made by the transvestite.
There are many who were born biologically women who will say, but you have an unnatural advantage over me, and that makes the sport unfair.
How do you respond to that?
Yeah, there's lots of ways you can respond to that.
So the first is the very language of you were Born and I'm not biological somehow, like, I don't think I'm a cyborg.
So, like, this idea that, like, oh, you're not a biological woman.
Well, I am a woman.
That's a fact.
I am female.
So all my identity records, my racing license, my medical records all say female, right?
And I'm pretty sure I'm made of biological stuff.
So I'm a biological female as well.
So this question of, do trans women have an advantage over cis women?
We don't know.
In fact, there's basically no published research on this question.
However, there's good reason to think that there isn't, but I think it's irrelevant because we allow all kinds of competitive advantages within women's sport.
So it's irrelevant.
Now the follow-up question, which of course Trevor Noah does not ask, it's amazing to watch in this interview Trevor Noah so obsequious and so Afraid to raise any question?
Look, I'm obviously not transphobic, but you know, wouldn't maybe someone, some terrible person might suggest that maybe it's wrong for men to compete against women in the sports?
And this guy's answer is, look, there is a wide spectrum of women within women's sports, some of whom are taller and faster and stronger, and so we allow that range of competition, so why not just broaden the range of competition by including men too?
And the obvious follow-up question is, Well, why do men and women's sports exist separately in the first place?
If it's just a range of competitive advantage, then why not have them all compete together?
Because, obviously, we have all recognized forever that men and women are not just different in degree, but are categorically different.
And that's why there are different categories, so women can have their own sports.
Trevor Noah can't ask that follow-up question.
He can't even poke at the most ridiculous part of that guy's argument.
Which is clever of the transvestites to argue, and it exposes a weakness in the conservatives' response against transgenderism, and it's a weakness that I've been pointing out for a long time, and it's in this stupid phrase, biological woman.
I've said from the beginning, the advent of this stupid phrase, that it's going to come back and bite us, because it implies that there is some other kind of woman.
Conservatives think they're being clever when they say, well, look, a biological woman, to be very precise.
I'm not talking about a trans woman or a socially constructed, I mean a biological woman.
There's only one kind of woman.
You can't be a biological woman and a psychological man.
You can't be a biological woman and a spiritual man.
You can't be a biological woman and an economic man.
It's just men and women.
And so he flips this.
He says, what, am I not biological?
Am I a robot?
Am I a cyborg?
No, I'm biological.
I'm made of organic matter.
And I am a woman, so therefore I'm a biological woman.
And if you accept the silly premise that there are different types of women, that one could be one sex in one domain and one sex in another domain, then his argument holds true.
The issue is not the biological part, the issue is the woman part.
He's not a woman and never can be.
No adjectives to modify that.
Full stop.
He's a man.
But as long as we cede any ground whatsoever to the absurd premises of transgenderism, then we're going to find ourselves, even conservatives are going to find ourselves on the back foot making weak arguments just like Trevor Noah, refusing to bring up arguments at all.
Which is why I got in hot water earlier in the year when I pointed out on certain political issues there's middle ground, we can reach a compromise, we can live and let live, we can accept the glories of pluralism or whatever liberals talk about.
But on certain issues we can't.
It's either or.
Either men can become women or they can't.
If they can, then we should just accept transgenderism at every level of society, in the sports, in the workplace, for children, because a man can really be a woman, so a little child might really be born into the wrong body, or whatever they say.
But, if that isn't true, which it obviously isn't, then we just have to stop entertaining Transgenderism, period, in all of public life.
If that guy has some weird sexual fetish and he wants to dress up in front of his mirror, no one's going to send the purity police to stop him.
But the moment that he starts interfering in public life with his nonsense, then it's a political matter and we've just got to be clear or it's going to be unjust for everybody.
Speaking of women, President Trump has hit the campaign trail and he has identified a new nasty woman.
He brought up that phrase first against Hillary Clinton quite aptly.
Now he's turning that phrase on Megyn Kelly.
I sat down for an hour and then I did a Megyn Kelly one and she had just, boy, she became nastier all of a sudden.
She was pretty nasty, didn't you think?
Anybody that watched it.
I don't think she was particularly nasty.
And more to the point, you know, look, President Trump, he's a good campaigner.
He's a once-in-a-generation political talent.
So far be it for me to criticize his strategy that has worked unexpectedly well for a long time now.
But this seems to me a misstep.
Take aside any moral consideration.
Take aside that I'm friends with Megyn Kelly.
Take aside that I think she conducted the interview in a very fair way.
Just as a tactical matter, If I'm Donald Trump, if I'm on the Trump campaign...
I think I've got to notice, Megyn Kelly is not the enemy.
Even though there was that spat back in the 2016 campaign, even though Megyn Kelly did ask him a very tough question during the debate, said, you've called women fat and ugly and stupid and whatever.
And Trump had the unbelievably brilliant answer, which was only Rosie O'Donnell, probably the moment that he locked up that race.
Just so fast on his feet, so funny.
But in this case, Megan Kelly has been very fair to Donald Trump for many months now.
She's been predicting for a long time that he's got the presidential nomination locked up.
I don't think she conducted the interview in a bad way.
And I just think there's a principle in politics, which is the conservation of enemies.
You know, you don't want to grow your enemy list too long.
And in this case, I don't think Meghan is a fair enemy.
I made this criticism of the DeSantis campaign when I felt that their online campaign was just harassing and going after people who were winnable, who were potential allies, who at least were being fair and were not the enemy.
And I think that the same principle holds true here.
Maybe it doesn't matter for Trump because he's just so far up in the polls that he can afford to expand his enemies list a little bit.
But generally speaking, I think tactically this is kind of a misstep.
He's on the precipice of locking up the nomination entirely.
The interview basically was fine for him, even though he kind of whiffed it on a couple of questions.
I don't think it really is going to upset his standing in the polls.
Seems needless to create an enemy where there is not one.
Now we've got to talk about these things, and when you want to talk to your friends, you've got to check out PeerTalk.
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Speaking of gender, you've heard about this book, Genderqueer, which is this perverse porn that liberal activists are trying to push into schools, even into middle schools and elementary schools.
And it shows graphic depictions of all sorts of bizarre sexual acts.
And it's just obviously inappropriate.
I think for high schoolers too, but in the context of a school, but certainly for middle schoolers and elementary schoolers.
And this is the book that has been brought up as the example by the liberals of the terrible right-wing book bans.
There are those conservatives peddling their censorship.
They're basically Nazis.
They want to burn books.
We're not for burning or banning books.
No siree, we're for free speech and free inquiry and free expression.
But those right-wingers over there, they're the ones who want to ban books.
Side with us.
And that has been somewhat persuasive to liberals, and even to moderates and gettable people in the middle who say, oh, we don't want to ban books.
I was told my whole life that banning books is bad, so I don't want to be on that side.
But then, according to a new survey that's out, when you show voters what is actually in genderqueer, All of a sudden they flip and 90% of them say that the book is inappropriate.
More than that, 93% say that the images of people doing weird sex stuff in genderqueer is inappropriate.
This is according to the polling firm WPA Intelligence.
This is provided to the Daily Wire.
They say that these sexually explicit cartoons are totally inappropriate for public school libraries.
And there's a lesson here for conservatives.
Forgetting schools and genderqueer, whatever.
When politics is abstract, the liberals have the advantage.
When politics is particular, the conservatives have the advantage.
When we talk about the issue of immigration, and you say, don't you think that people should be let into the country?
Don't you think we should be open and inclusive?
Liberals win that immigration debate.
When you say, hey, do you really think El Paso should be run over by cartels who are raping and killing and murdering people?
Conservatives win that debate.
Actually, you saw this in real time in 2016.
For decades, as the debate over immigration had been abstract, liberals won that debate.
When Donald Trump descended that escalator and he said, yeah, Mexico, they're not sending immigration in abstract.
They're sending murderers and rapists and gangsters and human traffickers and drug smugglers.
They're sending really bad people who are killing people in your towns, in your communities.
You see it with your own eyes.
Then the conservatives started to win that debate.
Well, banning books is bad.
Yeah, what about this book?
You really think seven-year-olds should be exposed to extremely graphic images of extremely perverted sex?
Oh, no, I don't think that.
Even on the subject of education broadly.
When this kind of indoctrination was just abstract, you send your kids to school, and they learn whatever, and they come home, and they're saying weird stuff, and they're doing weird stuff, but you don't know.
Look, it's school.
It's an open education.
We're an open society.
Parents did not become a powerful voting bloc.
What happened during COVID, though?
During COVID, all of a sudden, the classroom came into the home, and parents saw the particulars of what their kids were learning.
And all of a sudden, parents became the most fired-up voting bloc in the country.
All of a sudden, Glenn Youngkin wins a blue commonwealth, the governorship in Virginia.
All of a sudden, Joe Biden's DOJ starts describing parents in terms that they would usually reserve for terrorists and domestic violent extremists.
The particulars are where we win.
And this is good for us because politics doesn't happen in the abstract.
That's a big mistake of our modern liberal age.
Politics happens with real people in real places in real time.
It's not just an idea.
It's not just principles floating in outer space.
It's real people in real time.
So, any Republican campaign, any activist campaign, If you want to win, and you're a conservative, you gotta get down into the particulars.
The particulars are far more tethered to reality.
Speaking of particulars in campaigns, a new poll out from CNN and University of New Hampshire.
Trump is at 39% up in New Hampshire.
Ron DeSantis is now down to 5th place.
Very, very bad news for the DeSantis campaign, because the DeSantis campaign has pulled back some of its staff from Super Tuesday and the later primary states, and accidentally they seem to have pulled out of Nevada, which is actually an early primary state, but whatever.
Disantis needs to do well in Iowa.
That won't be sufficient, though, because Iowa hasn't predicted the eventual Republican nominee in over 20 years.
And Disantis needs to do well in New Hampshire, and Disantis needs to do well in a number of the early states.
And the numbers are going in the wrong direction.
So Trump's at 39%.
Now, Vivek is at 13%, Nikki Haley is at 12%, Chris Christie is at 11%, so underneath Chris Christie you get Ron DeSantis.
You dig into the numbers on DeSantis and the picture looks even bleaker because the biggest drop has been among moderates.
Moderates were backing DeSantis 26% back in July.
They're now backing him 6% now, so he's had this huge, colossal collapse among the moderates.
His drop among conservatives has been smaller, which could be predicted.
His drop among conservatives has only been 8%.
The moderates is where he's collapsed.
You know I hate to say, I told you so.
This is not his fault.
This is what I said was going to happen.
And the reason I saw this happening is because Ron DeSantis' lane in the race, his only lane in this race, is to be the anti-Trump candidate.
Which is to say, the more moderate alternative to Trump.
Even if you think Trump is actually secretly a rhino, or he's a Democrat, or he's really not a rock-ribbed conservative.
That's not how he's viewed.
He's viewed as the right flank of the party.
And I think somewhat fairly on issues like trade, on issues like immigration.
I think he has harkened back to a sturdier, older, more right-wing conservative tradition.
But even if you don't think that, that's just how he's perceived.
The people who want an alternative to Trump, who clutch their pearls and gnash their teeth, they tend to be the more moderate side of the party.
They tend to be the Lincoln Project.
They tend to be the people who watch MSNBC and CNN.
So that's where DeSantis has to be to have even a shot in the race.
But DeSantis isn't that guy.
DeSantis is at his very best when he's to the right of Donald Trump.
DeSantis is at his very best when he's more pro-life, at least in his rhetoric, than Donald Trump is.
DeSantis is at his very best when he's more opposed to the sexual revolution, at least in his rhetoric, than Donald Trump is.
DeSantis is at his very best when he's more in favor of wielding state power for conservative ends than Donald Trump is.
So that's where he's strongest.
That's what makes him an attractive candidate to many of us.
But he doesn't have that lane in the race.
His lane's got to be the moderate lane, and so he's got to pick one.
And as he moves more toward the moderate side, he's going to lose the conservatives, who are going to probably stick with Trump.
And as he moves more toward the conservative side, he's going to lose the moderates, as happened in New Hampshire.
If the DeSantis campaign continues on the path that it seems to be on, there are going to be all sorts of postmortems about how he's just a very flawed candidate, and he just wasn't up for it, or how the campaign was poorly run.
And I don't think the campaign's been run particularly well.
But I think all of that is just missing the point.
Which is, it doesn't need to be that he's a terrible candidate.
It doesn't need to be, as some people I think are preposterously saying, that DeSantis is a shill, leftist, rhino, liberal, or whatever.
It doesn't have to be any of that.
It doesn't even have to be that his campaign was poorly run.
It's just that the circumstances of the race in this bizarre year where you've got the first former president running for a non-consecutive second term since 1892, With all of the questions about the state of our democracy and election integrity and the upending of the COVID lockdowns, it's just the circumstances have a say too, and the circumstances don't seem to be favoring a challenger to Trump.
Now, what are we going to do about that?
Well, we're probably going to go home and we're going to work on ourselves, work on our bodies, enjoy the pleasures that we've got.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from the Drummer's Workshop at Norm's Music, who says, at a government-controlled grocery store in Chicago, you can trust that the prices, as well as the customers, will be slashed.
Really, really great point.
So true.
Speaking of polls, one in six Americans cannot name a single branch of the U.S.
government.
According to the Annenberg Constitution Day Civic Survey, which is released every year, a long-standing survey, a large number of Americans can't name three branches of government.
Two-thirds of Americans can name the three branches.
So, one-third of Americans cannot name all three branches of government.
Ten percent of Americans can only list two branches of government.
And another 7% can only name one branch of government.
And then, what's really crazy is that a full 17% of Americans cannot name a single branch of government.
Why is that?
Is it because people are just really dumb now?
I don't think IQs have necessarily dropped.
I don't think that explains it.
I don't think that, you know, a father has an IQ of 100 and then his son has an IQ of 90 and then his son has an IQ of 80.
I don't think that's what's going on exactly.
I don't think it's just that the education system has collapsed, that that's part of it.
I think, and I know this is going to be politically incorrect, It might have something to do with the all-time record high waves of mass migration that we've seen for the last 60 plus years.
That immigration into the United States, legal and illegal, over the last 60, I guess closer to 70 years now, has been the largest movement of human beings ever in recorded history.
And this is no knock on the immigrants.
I'm not saying the immigrants are all big dummies.
Or that they don't even like America, or I'm not saying any of that, just saying that when you flood a country with foreign people, they're going to be less conscious of the particulars and the peculiarities of the country into which they're moving, because they just, they weren't raised in it, they don't have that, even if they studied for a civics test, you know, the test to allow them to become citizens, which for the illegal immigrants doesn't, doesn't even matter, then they're not going to have that kind of
Instinctive, down-in-your-bones understanding of the country.
They're not going to have that generational knowledge, and that matters.
I know that the left-wing liberals and the right-wing individualists don't want to say that that matters, but it does.
Generational stuff matters.
The only reason that anybody talks about the pilgrims on the Mayflower these days is because there are still a fair number of people who descend from them and who have just a family interest in them.
If those people didn't exist, no one would talk about it.
The only reason people talk about it is because they have genealogical interests in them.
The same goes for the sons and daughters of the American Revolution.
The same goes for all sorts of civic associations that have a genealogical component to it.
Very politically incorrect to say these days, but John Jay said it.
John Jay, a very important founding father, first chief justice of the Supreme Court, one of the authors of The Federalist, he said, With equal pleasure, I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give us this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion,
attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established It's a hard truth for an age that is opposed to very basic conservative truths.
That if your family has been in a place for a long time, you're gonna have a little bit more of an attachment to it than if you've just arrived on those shores.
It's just a fact.
Give an example.
I was just in Hungary.
I really like Hungary.
I love what the government is doing in Hungary.
I think it's a beautiful place.
I love the thousand-year history of Hungary as a Christian nation, part of broader empires, fought valiantly.
They've got great food.
They've got great stuff.
If I moved to Hungary, though, tomorrow, I would care about Hungary a lot less than your average Hungarian on the street whose ancestors go back a thousand years.
Just a fact.
Maybe if I stayed in Hungary for a very long time, maybe many generations down the line, my descendants would have a similar care for Hungary and Hungarian culture and history and the quirks of how the society works.
Maybe.
But it would take a long time.
Politics doesn't just happen overnight.
We have a strong focus on democracy and the present, and we ignore a lot of history.
Well, for a democracy to really work, for it to remain stable and not be, as the Founding Fathers feared, the worst form of government, you need to take into account a deeper democracy, which is that democracy that I think it was Edmund Burke talked about.
I always confuse this quote between Burke and Chesterton, but it's the democracy of the dead.
It's probably Chesterton, the way it's written so cleverly and with such whimsy.
We shouldn't just prioritize the members of our democracy who happen to be walking around the earth at any given time.
We should also give some care back in the generations and also forward and care about our nation's future.
But we don't do that anymore, so what do we do?
We tear down statues of our forebears and we leave as an inheritance to future generations nothing but a pile of debt.
Not conducive.
To a stable country.
If we lose that stability and we lose that sense that there's something, if not sacred, at least worth admiring and even venerating about our past, then we're just going to lose the whole country.
It's just going to fall apart.
And you're seeing this happen now.
Speaking of erasing history, New York City is looking to remove the statues of our forebears.
According to a list found in New York City's council agenda, This is for Tuesday, September 19th.
Officials will consider a bill that would, quote, require the Public Design Commission to publish a plan to remove works of art on city property that depict a person who owned enslaved persons or directly benefited economically from slavery or who participated in systemic crimes against indigenous peoples or other crimes against humanity.
What does that mean?
You know the way that this is going to be interpreted, especially by the race hustlers at things like Ibram Kendi's Center for Anti-Racial blah blah blah.
This means everybody.
This means everybody in American history.
Because all Americans have in some way, could at least be said to have in some way benefited from slavery, because slavery was a part of the American economy for a reasonably long time.
And a lot of our forebears, not Not all or even most of them, but a lot of them owned slaves, and it was just part of the economy.
So, if you interact with it in any way, you're taking part in it.
Think about this today.
For a thousand years in Western history, usury was basically illegal.
Lending money at interest was more or less illegal, and that's because Christianity considers usury to be a crime and a sin.
I continue to believe that, I continue to hold to Christian teachings, and yet, today, it is impossible, virtually, I think just flat out impossible, to in any way participate in society without somehow participating in usury.
It's just part of the economy.
500 years from now, we get rid of usury, somehow, and our descendants say, you know, we're going to tear down the statues of anyone who participated in that awful sin and crime of usury.
They're going to tear down all of the statues, because it's just part of the air that we breathe.
It's part of our society.
So these attacks, as Donald Trump predicted, these attacks on Robert E. Lee, these attacks on Stonewall Jackson, these attacks on those mean old nasty Confederates to tear down their statues, it was never going to stop with them.
It couldn't stop with them.
It was always going to move on to George Washington and Christopher Columbus and everyone, all of them, crimes against the indigenous.
What does that mean?
That means any white man who ever came to the Western Hemisphere could be accused of such a thing because the indigenous people were here before us.
Well, all of them.
The Pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, the whole thing has got to go.
And what are we going to be left with?
We're going to be left with a big nothing country.
We're far fewer than one in six Americans can name anything about our civic life.
Now, I've told you time and time again, I don't want to say that I didn't warn you, the Yes or No Game has sold out over at the DailyWire.com shop.
It will come back in stock, but you need to secure your game right now if you still haven't.
We are ordering more, we're ordering as fast as we can, but they sell out.
It sells out every single time.
So if you want the game for your Halloween party, if you want the game for your Thanksgiving get-together with your family, if you want the game even for Christmas, order it now so that you're not caught in the lurch when it sells out again.
Also, if you've already got the classic game, be sure to get the new Conspiracy Theory Expansion Pack in time for spooky season.
Speaking of my collection and the change of season, If you're familiar with this show, you're probably aware of my autumnal affinity for a certain seasonal treat.
I'm talking, of course, about the PSL, the Pumpkin Spice Latte.
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Finally, finally, we've arrived at my favorite time of the week when I get to hear from you in the mailbag.
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Take it away.
Hey Michael, I was recently rejected by a woman that I truly felt that God had placed on my heart.
I've never really felt that way about anyone in my life.
I've been in plenty of relationships.
I'm 30 years old.
I've recently experienced an unprecedented season of consistent spiritual growth in a fantastic church community, and after asking God for wisdom, I really felt that I was in tune with whom God intended for me rather than some random girl that I wanted to pursue according to my own plans.
It saddens me knowing that she continues to sit completely alone at church every week, and she, despite being my age and very attractive, is still single and doesn't seem plugged into a group of friends.
How should I think about this?
Does God not speak to Christians about their lives?
If scripture does not directly address a particular issue in our life, are we on our own?
And if my feelings are indeed in tune with God's wisdom and not my own, should I continue to entertain the possibility of her changing her mind or forget about it and move on?
Thanks, Mike.
Well, you're never on your own.
God's always there with you.
You can turn away from God, but you're never actually on your own.
But there's a big if there.
You say, well, if My desire for this girl and my belief that we're going to end up together is actually in line with God's wisdom and not just my own desire or fantasy.
Then, you know, what's going on here?
But that's a big if.
You just don't know.
You say, the girl doesn't seem to have any friends.
You don't know that.
All you see this girl is at church on Sunday.
Or maybe she goes to daily mass, you see her every day, but it's still only for an hour.
So you just don't know that.
You might be projecting that onto this girl.
You don't seem to know this girl very well.
Now it could be the case that this girl is just a bit shy, or a bit odd, or you know, and so maybe if you become friends with her a little bit, or you chat a little bit more, maybe you can convince her to go on a date with you.
But maybe not, maybe she just doesn't like you.
You know, not to be too harsh about it man, but she gets a say too.
And so you might have this sense, you might have a desire for this girl, and you might have the sincere sense that God has ordained this girl for you.
But maybe not.
Maybe that isn't the case.
And maybe you gotta look elsewhere.
There is a distinction between love and infatuation.
And if you really don't know this girl, if you've barely ever talked to this girl, you just see her across the church and you think she looks cute, then, you know, your deep feelings of love for this girl are probably more akin to infatuation than an actual love.
I don't mean to discourage you.
I mean, you know, being of a certain Italian extraction, I think it's good to pursue girls, even if the girl says, I don't want to have a drink, I don't want to go get a cup of coffee the first time.
Maybe ask one or two more times.
You just try to say, no, but listen, you're very cute and I'd like to take you out to get a drink or something.
So come on.
Come on.
How about that?
So maybe that will work for you.
You also have to accept the reality that, yeah, you just might not be her type, even if you think she is your type.
And so what I would recommend is, even as you perhaps leave open the possibility that this girl might like you, go out with some other girls.
It's okay.
You can explore.
You're a single man.
You want to get married.
I'm not saying go be debaucherous or anything like that, but you can go on other dates.
There is also a strange fact of human nature, which is that If you are going out on dates and it's clear that women like you and are attracted to you, more women will like you and be attracted to you.
You shouldn't use this in a way that's exploitative or anything like that.
But Drew Claven once gave me advice, which is, I said, what should I do in my career?
And he said, well, the more you work, the more you work.
So the more you're just doing anything, the more you're going to be likely to do the things that you want to do.
And I think that's probably true in personal life too.
This is true if you want to make more friends.
Go out and do things with people.
Just really anything.
And you're more likely to make more friends that way.
And it's true of women as well.
Next question.
Hey Michael, I know we've talked about this before, but regardless of what I think, what is your unbiased opinion on high school graduates not going with the traditional route of college and going with something more alternative, like a gap year YWAM or trade school?
Also, being a parent, does that affect your view of college at all, especially with how woke it's becoming?
From your friend with the green pants.
My friend with the- I know!
I know who this is.
It might be someone even in this building who's asking me that question.
It gets back to the point I made earlier in the show.
It's all about the particulars.
I know there are some conservatives who come out, they say, don't ever go to college.
Don't go to college.
College is stupid.
I think some people should go to college.
Well, if you go to college, you should only major in engineering.
I don't think that's true.
In fact, I think very few people should.
I don't think that's the point of a university education.
Studying engineering is good.
Becoming an engineer is good.
But I just don't, no, I wouldn't say that.
Some people should study dusty old books.
Well, okay, then everyone should go to college.
No, I don't think that either.
I think way too many people go to college.
When I went to college, something like 70% of high school graduates went to college right away.
That's insane, and that number has dropped precipitously.
But it's largely dependent on what you want to do.
So if you're extremely academic and you want to go study Plutarch or something, I don't know, you want to go study Virgil, then yeah, you're probably going to do that in a university environment.
If you're not particularly academic and you want to do other things, then why would you waste your time in college?
If you want to get married and start a family a little more quickly, you could do that too.
If you want to take a gap year and maybe, you know, go On some missionary trip, or go on some internship, or if you want to just start working right away, you could do that too.
I think we just need more information, and I think I know who wrote in with that question.
So, I guess in that particular, I would say, if you're not that inclined to do it, don't do it.
Now, I don't want to sound trite or cliche when I say follow your bliss.
But, you know, don't try to slam a square peg in a round hole.
If it's not for you, then allow your desire to help guide you towards something that is more conducive to your flourishing.
I'm not saying just do whatever you want whenever you want to do it, but if you're more drawn to some kind of, I don't know, missionary trip, or if you're more drawn to some kind of internship, or if you're more drawn to family life and settling down right away, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
I would judge that desire in the light of virtue and reason and come to a conclusion that's right for you and in many cases that's going to mean no college.
Though in some it might mean go to college.
Next one.
Hello Michael, Alex here again.
Long time listener, huge fan.
Currently about to finish my Conversion Catholicism.
Thank you to you being a big part of that and leading me to that and just the truth of the One True Church.
So thank you so much.
Anyway, here's my question.
So a discussion I get in frequently with one of my Protestant friends is the Immaculate Conception.
I somewhat understand it, and I'm trying to listen to many people like Dr. Tony Marshall explain it, who's much more intelligent than I am, but I would just love to hear your elevator pitch, or your kind of dumbed-down version, if you will, for somebody like myself, of how do I explain this and fully understand the immaculate conception of Mary?
How is it that even though the Bible says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, how do I explain to a Protestant That Mary was sinless, that she really was Hail Mary, full of grace and sinless.
So, thank you so much, Michael.
Can't wait for your answer.
God bless.
Well, you just partially explained it right there, which is the full of grace part.
But for those who don't know, the Immaculate Conception refers to the conception of Mary without the stain of original sin.
A lot of people think it refers to the virgin birth, you know, or the conception of our Lord Jesus Christ without a human male participating.
But it refers to the conception of Mary.
And so this raises a problem in the minds of some people, which is, well hold on, I was told that all sin and fall short of the glory of God.
So that's got to include Mary too, right?
Because that's literally what it says.
But if we were to interpret that verse in the most strict literalism we possibly could, then we would have to conclude that our Lord Jesus Christ sinned and fell short of the glory of God.
Because he is among the set of all.
He's a person.
Right?
So did Jesus sin?
No, of course not.
That's absurd.
All sin and fall short of the glory of God is a true statement about mankind and human nature, but our Lord Jesus Christ is obviously an exception to that rule, and the Blessed Virgin is an exception to that rule, too.
Does this mean that Mary didn't need a Savior?
No, certainly not.
The Immaculate Conception is a Catholic dogma, but it's been a belief of Christians since time immemorial, which is that Mary was preserved from the stain of original sin by a singular and special grace of Jesus Christ.
So it is still that Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross is what redeems mankind, but that there is a special ordering of that in the case of Mary.
One way to describe it would be, if you fell into a ditch and then I come along and I pull you out of the ditch, I saved you from the ditch, right?
But if you were walking toward a ditch and I said, hey, hey, hey, Step around that, there's a ditch there.
I also would have saved you from the ditch, but I would have saved you from the ditch before you fell into the ditch, which is what our Lord did to his mother.
Part of the reason for this is that as Christ is the new Adam, Mary is the new Eve, and both created without original sin.
Part of this is because Eve is the new Ark of the Covenant, Christ is the new Covenant, and Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant, and the Ark of the Covenant is immaculate, stainless.
But we also see this in Scripture too, which is when, well as you say, Hail Mary, Hail Mary full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
This phrase full of grace is not, hey, you're partially with grace.
It's that you're full of grace.
And then you see this in the greeting from Elizabeth to Mary, which is she says, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
So this same word juxtaposed right next to one another to refer to the blessedness of Mary and It is a singular type of blessedness.
And then you just have 2,000 years of the Christian tradition.
So, if you say, well, that doesn't really convince me, Michael.
I'm not persuaded.
You know, you're just reading parts of scripture.
You're just deducing certain things by reason.
But, you know, that's not really what I believe.
Where is it in scripture more directly or something?
I guess I would just have to ask, why is it that Christians have believed this for 2,000 years and then in more recent centuries people stopped believing this?
That's what I would just would always ask the question of history, why one's views, which are supposedly so ancient, are out of line with history.
And then I would ask the question of authority.
When people say, well I just read my Bible and I know what it means, you say, well a lot of people read the Bible and they have all sorts of varying interpretations.
So you haven't sidestepped the question of authority.
Who has the authority?
of interpretation and the interpretive principle.
And even if you don't believe in the Pope yet or something, you know, even if you don't believe in the authority of the Church, you might at least believe in the authority of the vast majority of Christians who have lived going back to the Apostolic Age.
Okay, I've got one more voicemail-back question to get to.
The mail, I've got the written mailbag to get to, and it is, of course, Fake Headline Friday, so I need your help, and please, I'm just going to say, I'm going to read the headlines, and then some people are going to say, oh, it's number three, it's number four.
The chat is slow, but they're going to say that one.
Don't, you've got to tell me which headline.
You've got to use the words from the headline.
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