The GOP wins a big court victory over mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, The Mayor of Baltimore say's their purpose in life is to make white people afraid, and a new report claims the CIA is embracing gender ideology.
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Republicans have just won a major court victory in Pennsylvania that could prove crucial to the 2024 election.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that undated mail-in ballots do not count.
The ruling reverses an order by a federal district court which had ruled that mail-in ballots possessing an incorrect date or no date at all under the voter signature should be counted.
Knowing the Democrats' proclivity for dubious mail-in ballots, the Republican National Committee sued, and the appeals court ruled correctly that no, mail-in ballots must in fact meet the bare minimum standards of voter integrity to count in elections.
The Democrats are furious, and the case will likely make it all the way up to the Supreme Court, which raises a serious question for the Democrats.
Why exactly are the Democrats so desperate for these unverified ballots to count?
First, why are the Democrats so certain that the undated or incorrectly dated ballots will help them?
Do the Democrats know something about these ballots?
Are they confident for some reason that these undated, unverified ballots are not going to help Donald Trump and the Republicans?
And then furthermore, What does the lack of a date or an ineligible date say about the people filling out these ballots?
It says one of two things.
Either the ballots are fraudulent, they were not cast when they were supposed to be cast, or that the voters who cast them are incompetent, that they couldn't perform even the most basic tasks required in order to vote.
In either case, I have no doubt that the votes will help Democrats.
And either explanation, fraud or incompetence, shows us precisely why they should not count.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
There's a new report out that the CIA is going trans.
That is really upsetting.
I think of the CIA, I think of Felix Leiter, you know, in the James Bond movies.
Now, not so much.
Now, Felicia Leiter maybe.
We will get to that in a moment.
First, though, speaking of Leiters.
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Okay.
Speaking of Democrat politicians, the mayor of Baltimore says That white people should be afraid and that making white people afraid is actually the purpose of his life.
I know, and we all know, and you know very well, that black men, and young black men in particular, have been the boogeyman for those who are racist and think that only straight, wealthy white men should have a say in anything.
We've been the boogeyman for them since the first day they brought us to this country.
And what they mean by D.I., in my opinion, is Duly Elected Incumbent.
We know what they want to say, but they don't have the courage to say the N-word, and the fact that I don't believe in their Untruthful and wrong ideology and I am very proud of my heritage and who I am and where I come from scares them because me being at my position means that their way of thinking, their way of life of being comfortable and suffering and while everyone else suffers is going to be at risk and they should be afraid because that's my purpose in life.
My purpose in life, I, what's this guy's name?
Brandon Scott.
I have a purpose in life and my purpose in life is to make some of my constituents, particularly white men, afraid.
Not exactly the civic spirit, kumbaya, bring us all together kind of happy talk that we sometimes hear from Democrat politicians.
But of course, this is really what underlies all of leftist ideology, is a kind of resentment.
I mean, let's not forget that the term left comes from the National Assembly during the French Revolution when on the right side you had the monarchists and the Catholics and on the left side of the assembly you had the atheists and the revolutionaries who were preparing to chop off the head of the king and the queen and a lot of other people and then to destroy whatever cultural patrimony there was left in France.
And to raid the churches and loot and steal and pillage and burn.
So, no surprise there that leftism would continue to have this envious and resentful and vengeful aspect to it.
I think it was Winston Churchill who famously said that socialism, here we might just substitute leftism broadly, is the Creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy, to say nothing of the philosophy of failure.
And so looking around Baltimore, the city is a disaster.
It's too bad.
It could be nice.
There has been beautiful architecture there.
It's in a nice spot in the country, but it's a total disaster.
And with this guy running the show who says that his His purpose in life is to make his constituents afraid if they're white.
Then you can expect that to descend even further into kind of third world conditions.
I'm not sure we're quite at the level of barbecue in Haiti yet, but that's the direction.
That's the direction that these guys are headed because what he's articulating is not only an indifference to the common good, which is supposed to be the chief concern of civil servants, of statesmen, but actually a hostility toward the common good and a preference for selfishness and for private interest over the common good so that he can
Plunder and terrorize some of his constituents for a smaller interest group.
Now, speaking of America's cities, things are not only bad in Baltimore, they're also bad in Los Angeles, they're bad in San Francisco, and they're bad in New York City right now in particular.
And having been a New Yorker for a lot of my life and having grown up in New York and lived in the state of New York and in the city of New York, I can see it.
When I go back and visit, things are getting a lot worse over there, and that's particularly true when it comes to crime.
And the New York Police Department is one of, if not the best police departments in the world, but they've been hamstrung in their ability to stop the crime.
When the NYPD is allowed to do its job, then New York goes from being Gotham to becoming a really safe place.
That happened under Mayor Giuliani.
That lasted even through Mike Bloomberg.
And then right about the time I moved out of New York, things started to get really bad again.
And they're getting bad now, and the NYPD are big targets.
So there was a New York police officer, Jonathan Diller, who was murdered by a career criminal.
Very sad.
It's very sad when any innocent person is murdered, especially sad when the people who are risking their lives to protect all the rest of us.
Well, thank you very much, everybody.
I wanna thank Bruce and all of the people that have worked so hard to make this area beautiful and safe.
establishment takes the side of the criminals instead of the cops and instead of the innocent people.
So President Trump went to New York to attend the wake for officer Diller.
Here's what he had to say.
Well, thank you very much, everybody.
I want to thank Bruce and all of the people that have worked so hard to make this area beautiful and safe.
And this is what happened is such a sad, sad event.
Such a horrible thing.
And it's happening all too often.
And we're just not going to let it happen.
We just can't.
21 times arrested, this thug.
And the person in the car with him was arrested many times.
And they don't learn because they don't respect.
They're not given the respect.
The police are the greatest people we have.
There's nothing and there's nobody like them.
And this should never happen.
I just visited.
With a very beautiful wife that now doesn't have her husband.
Stephanie was just incredible.
Their child, brand new, beautiful baby.
Sitting there, innocent as can be.
Doesn't know how his life has been changed.
But the Diller family will, you'll never be the same.
You can never be the same.
And we have to stop it.
We have to stop it.
We have to get back to law and order.
We have to do A lot of things differently, because this is not working.
This is happening too often.
So it's the right thing to do, obviously, to pay respects to a fallen New York City cop who's killed by a career criminal, especially at a time when the political order won't lock up the criminals and so many of these tragedies are totally preventable.
It's also a good campaign theme.
And it's a good campaign theme not in the sense that it's cynical or exploitative.
It's a good campaign theme in that The people want law and order, and their elected representatives are not being responsive to that.
They're actually undermining the desire of the people.
If you look at top election issues in 2024, crime is pretty high up on the list.
I think according to a recent Gallup poll or a morning consult poll, it was number four.
So it's not quite in the top three, but it's really, really close.
And it's true not just in New York.
It's true around the country.
And so it's an important campaign theme because it resonates.
And it's good for that to be a campaign theme.
And it's a disgrace that Joe Biden won't make it a campaign theme, but he can't because he's campaigning on promoting crime, effectively.
Crime all the way down to our national border, which is controlled by criminal cartels wide open, encouraging people to violate our most basic laws in this country, a major crime in and of itself.
But then even street crime, even murder, even robbery, and the rest of it.
The Democrats are going very soft on that.
Trump is getting stronger on that.
I know that the Republican Party has been taken in recent years by certain flights of fancy when it comes to going easy on the criminals.
And there have been voices within the Republican Party saying we need to let some criminals out of prison, you know, and we need to reduce punishments for it.
No, I don't think so.
And in as much as President Trump has been persuaded by those voices, it's not only not in keeping with the properly conservative position, but it's not in keeping with Trump's future.
Trump, for pretty much his entire career, has been very, very tough on crime, including when he was making political comments from the private sector, which is most of his career.
So, I see this as an excellent re-articulation of Trump's view, and it happens to be the traditional view of the conservatives, and it happens to be what most people want.
And the cherry on top is it's the right thing to do.
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Now, turning to major issues and keeping on the theme of violence, there's a new Gallup poll out that shows that most Americans disapprove of the war in Gaza.
The This is a shift.
Back in November, Gallup found that 50% of Americans approved of Israel's actions in Gaza, while 45% disapproved, 4% said they had no opinion on the war.
So even then, it was a somewhat contentious issue, but Half of Americans, and certainly a plurality when we're talking about the three opinions expressed, said that they supported Israel's actions.
Makes sense in November.
I'm actually surprised the number wasn't even higher.
This was in November right after this horrific attack by Hamas on Israelis, killing well over a thousand and committing all sorts of crimes and then taking a lot of hostages back to Gaza.
So that was in November.
And it's amazing because in my mind, the war's only been going on for a couple of months, but no, it's been going on at this point for what, six months?
At this point, public opinion has changed.
55% of Americans say they disapprove of Israel's military action in Gaza.
Only 36% say that they approve of it.
Now, what does this mean for Israel's conduct of the war, and more importantly for our purposes as an American political program, what does this say for how America ought to feel about it?
The biggest issue when it comes to the conduct and continuation or cessation of the war between Israel-Palestine Is not just public opinion because public opinion can be wrong.
And we don't base our judgments of right and wrong.
We don't base our understanding of justice on consensus.
The people can be wrong.
The biggest issue I see here is a news report that comes along with these bad numbers.
And the news report coming from the Telegraph says that Israeli intelligence is now admitting that it might not be able to destroy Hamas.
This is the biggest change, I would say, and this is probably feeding into why public opinion has shifted, probably the lengthy duration of this war now is feeding into why public opinion has shifted, so much so that even President Trump is saying it's time for the war to wind down.
But I haven't heard a clear articulation of why the war now, all of a sudden, really should wind down.
The reason comes down to Proportionality and the reasonable probability of success.
It comes down to a concept that is not discussed nearly enough these days, which is just war theory.
Some people, you know, I don't know, the Kumbaya hippies or something, they say, there's no war ever, war is terrible all the time, man!
Give peace a chance, man!
Pass the bong!
And that is not a serious view, and it's not a moral view.
We have no moral obligation to allow the cruel to rape the earth, for instance.
We have a natural and correct inclination to defend ourselves.
Self-preservation is an aspect of the natural law.
So, some wars are justified.
Not all wars are justified.
And it's even more complicated because there is justice in going to war, and then there is justice in the conduct of war.
And those are separate questions.
A country could be justified in going to war, but then not justified in its conduct of the war.
So, on the two separate questions, the first one is, did the state of Israel have a right to go to war in Gaza?
I think most people would agree, yes, it obviously did.
After this major attack by the government of Gaza, which explicitly in its charter says, we want to wipe out the Israeli state, and then they go in and they kill and maim and take as hostages a number of civilians.
Very few people would disagree that Israel had a right to go to war.
Then the question over the last six months is, does the state of Israel have justification in its conduct of the war?
This has been much more contentious.
There have been strong arguments on both sides, but I think many people would say yes.
The goal of the war is to get rid of Hamas.
The Hamas leadership in Gaza is an unacceptable security risk, and so they are justified.
In conducting the war, even from the perspective of proportionality.
Proportionality is misunderstood.
A lot of people bandy that word about, and they seem to think that proportionality means one side kills one guy and then the other side kills one of their guys.
That's not what proportionality means.
But what proportionality does mean is that you are not using excessive violence to achieve the aims of the war.
So the war has an objective that you're trying to achieve, and so in war, innocent people are killed.
That is basically inevitable.
But it means that you're not using excessive violence that will not further your aims.
And a related concept here is the reasonable probability of success.
So if Israeli intelligence is now saying, according to reports, that it will not be able to wipe out Hamas from its control of Gaza, Then the war has to end.
Then it's not even clear what the goal of the war is.
Then the criticisms that the State of Israel is not being proportionate and it's carrying out of the war are justified.
If the State of Israel says they can wipe out Hamas from the government, then you might say the war continues to be justified, although debate would continue to range.
But if this is the case now.
And why, by the way, why is Israeli intelligence, according to reports, saying that it can't wipe Hamas out of Gaza?
They're saying it's because the U.S., which is the most prominent sponsor of the state of Israel, and especially of the Israeli military, I think we fund 6.5% of it, if the American people have turned against it, The State of Israel is saying, well, now we can't achieve our goals.
And maybe that's the case.
And maybe you say, well, that's wrong and the American people shouldn't have turned against the State of Israel.
And actually, you know, if we just, you know, run another ad campaign or something, maybe public opinion will swing back and that way they can wipe out Hamas.
I don't...
Whatever the explanations are, whatever one's opinion is of that, if that is the case, then the war has to wind down.
Because there is no longer a reasonable probability of success at achieving the war's aim.
If the war's aim is taken off the table, then obviously the violence is excessive vis-a-vis the goal of the war, because the goal of the war, we now say, is totally out of sight.
So, this is happening.
Whether you want that to happen or not, both political parties in the United States are turning against the war in Israel.
Israeli intelligence is saying that without America's full-throated support or thereabouts, they're not going to be able to achieve their war aims.
Okay, that's the end of the war.
If you find a hole in my logic, please let me know.
I think even the Israeli sources are basically coming to this conclusion.
If the war continues to go on, which it seems in the interest of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government for it to continue to go on, that's going to continue to be a major issue in the 2024 election as well.
It's one of these strange ones because now all of a sudden, just within the last couple of days, President Trump has said it's time for the war to wind down.
So you've got an odd issue where Biden and Trump seem to be in agreement.
And President Trump, who's the most pro-Israel president ever in my lifetime, they named a town after the guy in the state of Israel, would seem to be at odds with the government there, the Netanyahu government, which is already on shaky grounds and where one cannot even articulate, it seems, a goal any further for that war.
Might come to an end soon.
Now speaking of things that are potentially nuclear, I suppose that war could potentially go nuclear, the Washington Post is celebrating the demise of the nuclear family, which is very, very unfortunate.
Probably speaks to a lack of education and a lack of patriotism over in the left-wing newspapers.
So when we want to turn that around, we got to get educated.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Phil Vetta, who says, all I want to know is, did Diddy do it or did Diddy not do it?
That's the question, I think.
It's one that has bedeviled philosophers.
For many, many days now.
Did Diddy do it?
Did Diddy didn't do it?
Did he?
Let me know in the comments, please.
Washington Post says the nuclear family is dying.
That's a good thing.
Headline, farewell and good riddance to the typical American family.
This article is really worth reading.
It makes some interesting points, and more importantly, it gives you a really good view of how the left views the basic unit of society, the building block of all politics.
Just a few lines here.
The Washington Post observes, They're thriving economically.
Dinks have a median net worth of over $200,000 and are making six figures.
Wow, that's a lot of money.
They're also set up for a cushy retirement with more money stashed away than any other groups.
I don't know who's going to take care of them in that retirement, but they got a lot of money.
I guess they'll go to a nice retirement home or something.
Seems like everyone wants to be a dink these days.
Okay, I don't.
Yeah, the first part is true, the dinks have a lot of money, and the dinks are saving a lot of money, and all of that's true.
But I don't know that everyone wants to be a dink.
I certainly don't want to be a dink.
Some people have to be dinks because they're infertile, and maybe they don't want to adopt or something.
You know, not everyone gets a kid.
You don't have a right to a kid.
You're not entitled to a kid.
Infertility can be very, very troubling, obviously.
But some people are choosing it and that's a major aspect of the cultural battle right now.
The people who want family and the people who don't really want family.
To say everybody wants to, I don't want to be a dink.
Probably many of you listening don't want to be a dink either.
So how does Washington Post explain this?
They say the first major death knell to the nuclear family came with the 1973 oil crisis in the two-year recession that followed, which signaled the end of the West's post-war prosperity boom.
Since then, the nuclear family has crumbled piece by piece.
In 1970, more than two-thirds of American adults between 25 and 49 lived with a spouse and at least one kid.
By 2021, only 37% of adults fit that bill, according to Pew Research.
Very troubling, but you're noticing a theme from the article already.
Very Washington Post, very Lib.
Every— Everything is being described in economic terms.
The dinks are thriving because they've got $200,000.
Well, it's true.
I know very rich people who are very miserable.
I know people who have a lot more money than $200,000 who are very, very miserable.
How is that?
How is that possible?
Because unlike what the Washington Post and many of the Libs and the Marxists seem to think, money does not equate to happiness.
Money cannot buy happiness.
And sometimes it has the opposite effect.
Up to a certain level, money is kind of nice because it supplies your material needs and it actually can take a load off.
I'm not downplaying that.
But after a certain point, the marginal returns are kind of low and sometimes it can even go in the other direction.
And what's the price of a child?
What's the value of a child?
I would say priceless, having two and a half of them myself, my friends with children, pretty much all of them would say priceless, but that doesn't make sense.
If you're approaching this through a Marxist or even a liberal lens where everything is just about money, it seems like they're thriving, and then they look at the breakdown of the family and they say it's all because of economic circumstances.
Economic circumstances do play into that, but there are a lot of cultural and religious circumstances too.
Okay, the bill goes on, or the article goes on.
Critics of the nuclear family include radical family abolition scholars such as M.E.
O'Brien whose 2023 book Family Abolition Capitalism and the Communizing of Care argues that the contained family structures cannot carry the immense burden of work placed on them.
So here you're seeing an affirmation of what a lot of Traditional conservatives have been saying for years, which is, the libs are not just trying to liberate you and, you know, let you do what you want, man, and if it feels good, do it, you know.
They're trying to destroy the family.
They're not trying to expand it.
They're not trying to open up new pathways of liberation.
They're trying to destroy the family because they view the family as the primary impediment to their political ends.
And the WAPO admits that.
They say, yeah, no, there is a movement, the family abolition movement.
They view the family as tied up with capitalism.
And so if you want to abolish, Capitalism, such as it is, you gotta destroy the family.
Okay.
Pat Robertson was saying this back in the early 90s.
All right, this is nothing new on the right.
What's new is that the left is admitting it.
While a smaller global population has its perks, the planet certainly isn't complaining.
That's what they're saying.
They're saying it has its perks.
Fewer people means that there will be less climate change, you know?
There will be less global warming.
The sun monster will be less angry with us.
The planet isn't complaining.
You know, the planet never complains because the planet's a rock.
With flora and fauna on it, no doubt.
It's teeming with life, but it's a rock.
Humans complain because we have rational souls, but you don't like the humans.
You want to get rid of all the beings that could complain in deference to a rock.
Shows you something a little bit wrong with their view of human nature and the cosmos.
Goes on, it poses a serious threat to long-term economic growth if the family disappears.
Shrinking GDPs in the future are a direct result of shrinking populations.
That will challenge the very foundations of American capitalism.
This is one reason why conservatives are so keen to limit women's reproductive freedoms.
Yeah, okay.
We want economic growth.
Sure.
But we don't want the tail to wag the dog.
We like economic growth.
That's a good thing.
It's important.
The reason we want to limit women's reproductive freedoms is because we think it's wrong to murder babies.
That's the reason.
If murdering babies made us money, we would still oppose murdering babies.
And in fact, it can.
That's why a lot of corporations that have implemented liberal policies Encourage abortion.
They'll pay for abortion.
They'll pay for women to go out of state to go get abortions if their state has banned abortion because it increases the profits of the company.
That would be an instance where it's the liberals, it's the leftists, who are prioritizing profits over people.
The conservatives are saying, no, we prefer the people.
Even if it's going to hit GDP a little, we don't think you should murder kids.
So they get that totally wrong.
Then it goes on, today nearly a quarter of children in the U.S.
live in single-parent households.
That's so sad.
That's so terribly sad, and it's a degree of child abuse that has reached a national level.
It's a national scandal.
The pandemic invigorated people's desire for collectivism and community.
Okay, put that word aside for a second.
Put a little bookmark there.
Collectivism.
Rather than, this is how it concludes, rather than changing families to be more like society, this vision of the future imagines a society that's more like a big supportive family.
Okay.
It's a really worthwhile read because it shows you how the left, some of their desires are good.
Probably all of their desires have some good aspect to them.
They just get so perverted.
I agree with the left that we don't want to make an idol out of capitalism or GDP.
I totally agree with that.
I agree with the left that It takes a village to raise a child because we're the social creature.
So we're not just isolated living in outer space as individuals or even as a nuclear family, but we're embedded within extended families and embedded within generations and embedded within a community.
I agree with that.
But there's a big difference, a big, big difference between collectivism and community.
There's a big difference between The state controlling a bunch of atomized individuals who are in a hodgepodge of bizarro sexual relationships and largely choosing not to have kids because they just want to pursue their own financial and economic Frivolities and the extended family, the real family, the organic communities that crop up.
In one, it's an ideological contrivance.
What the left is pushing for is just pouring acid over society and all of the intermediating institutions of society.
From states' rights to local government rights, all the way down to the family, from voluntary civic associations to natural and organic communities like churches and other groups.
They want to pour acid all over that.
Parochial schools, private schools, homeschools, pour all that and just then pull it all back together.
In a contrived, highly centrally controlled way.
The Collective, with a capital C. Community is great.
Community is totally natural.
In fact, you are born into a community.
All of us.
We're not born as individuals, we're born into a community.
The first community is the family.
And there are extended families, and it's good to get the wisdom of generations, and the wisdom of your neighbors, and so on.
And the state is a natural institution, too.
But with the Libs, they always want to just totally flip it.
No surprise, then.
They say, good riddance to the nuclear family.
I would say we want the nuclear family.
You don't want to destroy the family, but you want it to be embedded within bigger families, and the tribe, and the community, and the state, and the country.
They want to do the opposite.
They don't want to keep growing out from there.
They want to destroy the family as that last stumbling block.
And then we're all a bunch of undifferentiated individuals and the state can do with us as it pleases.
You know I'm a big tease.
Well, I've got a story here.
The CIA is embracing gender ideology.
This is, speaking of weird sex stuff, Cliff Simms, who served as Deputy Director of National Intelligence under President Trump, he has a new book out.
It's called The Darkness Has Not Overcome Lessons on Faith and Politics from Inside the Halls of Power.
He sheds a light on how transgender ideology has infiltrated not just our schools and our corporations and even the CIA.
Which makes perfect sense.
It tells us a lot about how the ideology works, how it works within the state.
But because I'm a tease, we're going to have to get to that on Easter Monday because now it's time to get to the mailbag.
The second episode of Divided States of Biden with Ben Shapiro has just been released.
It focuses on how fentanyl has become America's silent epidemic.
The Biden administration is completely silent on the matter.
In fact, Biden's policies Make it easier for fentanyl to be distributed and sold across the country, allowing it to fall into the hands of any American, many of them very young.
Ben Shapiro uncovers the fentanyl crisis in one of the cities most affected in the latest episode of The Divided States of Biden.
Watch The Divided States of Biden, Fentanyl, America's Silent Epidemic, now exclusively On Daily Wire Plus.
Finally, finally, we've arrived at my favorite time of the week when I get to hear from you in the mailbag.
Our mailbag is sponsored by PeerTalk at peertalk.com slash Knowles Canada WLAS.
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Take it away.
Dear Michael Knowles, I'm a Christian conservative and I love your show.
You've been a huge inspiration to me and I'm so glad we have political commentators as honest as you.
I know your practice in Catholic and your argument supporting this denomination have deeply impacted me.
I was raised a Presbyterian and I now attend an Assemblies of God church.
I also have a Jehovah's Witness friend and her faith seems accurate as well.
Due to God's sovereignty, wouldn't God be able to change the church as he saw fit, especially if there was corruption in the church?
I know your argument for Catholicism rests on its history, but I would think that God could change the church if he thought it fit to do so.
Also, what are your thoughts on Jehovah's Witness?
I really like their faith because they attend to biblical accuracy.
Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you have a great day.
Happy Friday!
Good Friday!
Good Friday, that's right.
Really good question.
God, of course, can change the Church and necessarily does help the Church to grow and promises always to be with the Church.
That's what our Lord promises us in the Gospels.
But I think that, ironically, that would be one of my chief defenses for the Catholic Church.
There's corruption in the Church.
There have been bad Popes.
To quote Hilaire Belloc, he has to take the Catholic Church to be divinely instituted as a matter of faith, but one evidence of it for the non-believers is that no other institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight, much less 2,000 years.
So, the Church does change in the sense that the Church grows and develops within history throughout the ages, that's of course true.
It doesn't change its fundamental teaching, it doesn't change its dogmas, but it does change in that way, in the sense that it grows, in the way that a human being grows over time.
Our Lord promises never to leave the Church.
The marriage, rather, is the symbol of Christ's love for her Church.
So ironically, I think, you're kind of making the Catholic argument here, which is that Whatever we call the church that was instituted by our Lord, that has historicity and apostolic succession and an unbroken line going back to the first Pope, St.
Peter, whatever you want to call it, whatever your views on that.
He would have to stay with that church.
There would have to be some authority that is wielded over time, because if not, if, you know, as you seem to be suggesting, our Lord can just say, okay, well, I was with the Catholics until this time, and then I went over to the Presbyterians at this time, then I went over to the Methodists at this time, or something like that, that would be tantamount to a divorce, so it would actually rupture the probably most prominent symbol of our Lord's love for the Church.
You mentioned Jehovah's Witnesses.
They're lovely people who are Jehovah's Witnesses.
I would probably dispute the precision with which Jehovah's Witnesses look at Scripture, but the problem would be a denial of the divinity of Christ.
Among some other problems.
So that would be, you know, lovely people, I like them very much, but that would be why I am not a Jehovah's Witness, among other things.
And is there a third question in there?
I don't know.
If so, ask it again next week and we'll get to it.
Next question.
Hi Michael, my name is Eric.
I was wondering if you could help me with a problem I'm facing.
I'm thinking about going back to school for my doctorate and I'm wanting to get my doctorate in philosophy with a focus of ethics and a focus of criminal law.
But I know that I'm going to have to read a significant amount of books from authors who have worldviews that are Counter to my Christian beliefs.
I was wondering, how do you handle reading a lot of information from people who have more of a toxic mindset when it comes to Christianity and morals and ethics and still be able to hold to your values without facing doubts?
Thank you for taking my question and I look forward to hearing from you.
I don't seek out a ton of evil reading material, or false reading material, to put it in a nicer way.
I read it, I obviously read plenty of things that I don't agree with, and to some degree that can be very helpful because it can challenge your notions, it can expand your thinking, of course.
But contrary to the liberal spirit of the age that you hear on the left, and on the right probably these days more than on the left.
I don't go reading false things just for the sake of it.
Just, you know, in deference to the free marketplace of ideas or something like that.
I read to find truth.
So I am drawn more toward books in which I think I will find truth.
Sometimes you can find truth by way of contrast.
You read something that's just so terribly wrong that it...
Like, by contrast, sheds a light on what is true.
And in some things that are quite wrong, like Marxism, say, you can find little kernels of truth in there that have been really perverted.
You especially see this with Marx.
But I would ballast that with a lot of reading that is good and true.
No, resist the libs on the left and the right who tell you, no, just read everything that you disagree with.
No, perhaps read some of these things that you disagree with, but be careful.
Just like you wouldn't want to fill your body with a bunch of garbage, so too you don't want to fill your mind with a bunch of garbage.
Sometimes eating things that are a little more challenging as a matter of taste or ingredient can be helpful.
It can help build up your immune system, it can expand your palate, allow you to understand your tastes a little more clearly.
But sometimes it can kill you, so you don't want to do that.
And I think the same is true when it comes to what you put into your mind.
Probably a very controversial take on the right, but there you have it.
It's very traditional, like a classical take.
Next question.
Hi Michael, I hope you're doing well.
I'm such a big fan.
I just wanted to send this in and ask what you think the biggest slash most detrimental theological idea in Mormonism or LDS faith is.
Sure!
LDS, some of the nicest people you'll ever meet in the world, just so lovely.
They have strong, thriving communities and families.
They go, they do their jobs, they've got proper systems of government.
So, please don't take this as some kind of, you know, withering criticism on the poor Mormons, but probably the central problem would be that they deny the divinity of Christ.
It's a similar answer I gave earlier to the Jehovah's Witnesses.
LDS is a non-Trinitarian religion, so this would be...the Trinity is the central mystery of the faith.
Articulated by our Lord, but then really codified at the First Council of Nicaea, which is that we believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, who is begotten of the Father.
He's begotten, not made.
He is consubstantial with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
He's God from God, light from light, true God from true God.
That view is not, to my knowledge, held by the Mormons, that the Son is subordinate to the Father and There are other aspects to that as well, but in any case, it's not the Trinitarian view.
There are other sects like this.
There is at least one major Pentecostal sect that is non-Trinitarian.
Obviously, the Unitarians are non-Trinitarians, so that's the central mystery of the faith.
God is one, distinct in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but also one, and of one divine substance.
That's the central mystery, and so that would probably be the chief stumbling block that one would have with LDS.
Though they have conducted themselves in public so wonderfully that, you know, I don't really I don't want to knock them all too much, but while we're here in theological disputes and we're just discussing the faith itself and not just the external effects of a certain culture, that would be it.
Next one.
Hey Michael, my question is a little bit taboo, but I think your young adult audience really needs to hear it.
I'm a young adult, a lot of my friends have made choices that they now regret, specifically having premarital sex.
As we are walking into marriage, a lot of us have fiancés and are married, and we look on our past.
We tend to feel shame and frustration at our former selves for making choices that we now regret.
Much of us have gone to church and asked for forgiveness, but it's become really hard for those of us to forgive ourselves for choices that we can no longer go back and reverse.
So my question to you is, do you have any advice for young adults who have a hard time forgiving themselves for choices that they made in the past, specifically premarital sex?
Sure, I'd say go to confession, and then you will be absolved of your sins, and then your sins are forgiven, and that's it.
If God forgives your sins, then we ought to forgive people's sins too.
That's about it.
I'm not saying that there aren't temporal effects that come as a consequence of sin, but you know, all sin and fall short of the glory of God, and it's a fallen culture that greatly encourages premarital sex, so I guess the first thing you would do is stop the behavior you bring up if someone's engaged.
If you're engaged, and you've been doing that, but then you realize actually that's not a good thing to do, then just stop.
Stop until your wedding.
I don't know when your wedding is, but if you're engaged, it's probably not that far into the future.
Just stop.
That's the first thing.
If you're going down the wrong path, then the first thing to do is stop, then you turn around, then you go down the other path.
And if you did all sorts of bad things when you were young and dated around or whatever, and then you've had a different idea, okay, well, one, be grateful that you've turned it around.
That's a wonderful thing to be grateful for.
And then the reason I recommend sacramental confession, I know not everyone believes in that, but it In my view of things, it gives you a certainty that an authority has been promised to the apostles and the successors of the apostles, that they have the power to forgive and to retain sins, and that this is a real power in a visible church.
And so it's not that you can't confess your sins to God, and it's not that God can't forgive you when you confess your sins in your head to God, but it's an assurance In case you lack perfect contrition, which most of us do most of the time.
So I would do that.
And there's a psychological aspect here, which is, even if you don't really believe in the sacraments or something like that, I recommend that you do, but even if you don't, there is just something psychologically very comforting.
In the real sense, you know, it gives you strength to say, no, it is objectively the case that your sins have been forgiven.
Go forth and sin no more.
You know, all of us commit sins.
I mean, if we just focused on that.
The devil wants us to focus on that all the time, and then you can't do anything, and you live a miserable life.
But, you know, hope is not just happy thinking.
It's a theological virtue and a demand.
So, do that.
That's what you should do.
Okay, we have more voicemail bag to get to.
We have more written mail bag to get to.
And we have Fake Headline Friday.
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