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Jan. 17, 2025 - The Michael Knowles Show
37:04
Ep. 1654 - Joe Biden's Strange WARNING In His Final Speech

Joe Biden warns of oligarchy in his final address, the FBI closes its DEI office, and Trump sends ambassadors to Hollywood. Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/4biDlri Ep.1654 - - - DailyWire+: Join the celebration! Use code 47 at https://dailywire.com/subscribe for 47% off your membership today! "Identity Crisis" tells the stories the mainstream media won’t. Stream the full film now, only on DailyWire+: https://bit.ly/3C61qVU Order your Mayflower Cigars here: https://bit.ly/3Qwwxx2 (Must be 21+ to purchase. Exclusions may apply) - - - Today's Sponsors: Home Title Lock - Go to https://hometitlelock.com and use promo code KNOWLES25 to save 25% and receive a FREE title history report to ensure you’re not already a victim! - - - Socials: Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3RwKpq6 Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3BqZLXA Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3eEmwyg Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3L273Ek

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President Biden, the man who tried to put his political opponent in jail, kept his bag man's son out of jail with the most sweeping pardon in presidential history, and just gave George Soros the presidential medal of freedom, has told Americans that his final warning before leaving office is to has told Americans that his final warning before leaving office is to beware I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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Eisenhower left office, warning of the military-industrial complex.
George Washington left office, warning of engaging in entangling alliances with foreign nations.
We ignored that one pretty good.
And Joe Biden leaves office, warning of oligarchy.
An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.
President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex.
He warned us then about, and I quote, the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power six decades later.
I'm equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well.
A tech-industrial complex.
Any idea who he's talking about here?
Joe Biden dedicated his final speech as president to just whining that Elon Musk backed Donald Trump instead of him.
That was it.
I also love...
Joe Biden ending not merely his presidency, his one term in office, but his 50 plus year political career, he ends it in true form with plagiarism.
It's not quite plagiarism because he gives Eisenhower credit, but he says, hey, Eisenhower said this thing and I'm pretty much going to steal it because I am Joe Biden.
I've never had an original thought in my entire life.
And whereas Eisenhower was warning about a real grave threat, I'm going to warn about how irritated I am that the tech industry, which previously backed me as an oligarchy, now isn't totally in lockstep behind me.
And that really makes me sad.
All right.
Good night, America.
Really, really silly.
When Washington warned of avoiding entangling alliances, he had a lot of credibility because that's what he did.
He, as commander-in-chief and as president of the United States...
He recognized we want to work with nations, but we don't want to be permanently tied to those nations.
We don't want to get ourselves involved in a whole web of alliances that would drag us constantly into war.
When Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, he had a lot of credibility.
He knew a lot about how the military worked.
And as president, he mostly kept us out of wars.
He tried to minimize how quickly we could be thrown into another global conflict in the early days of the Cold War.
With Biden, though, When he warns about oligarchy, all you can do is laugh.
Even specifically tech oligarchy.
Biden, as vice president under Obama, and then as president, wielded government power to bully tech companies into backing the Democrats.
The Democrat Party has done this for a long time.
They've come in.
You even had Mark Zuckerberg say that the FBI came in, pressured Facebook.
Told them, hey, you've got to censor certain stories.
Frankly, even the deep state under Trump was doing this.
We're undermining their own democratically elected boss.
So, yeah, sure, the tech industry has behaved like an oligarchy, but only to benefit Democrats.
Then broadly, though, this fear of oligarchy.
Joe Biden has wielded the power of the state in an unprecedented way to try to put his opponent into prison.
The former president...
At that time, number one threat to Joe Biden's political career and now the future president as of a few days from now.
He tried to put that guy in jail.
Then he issued this extremely sweeping presidential pardon to say that Hunter Biden should not be prosecuted for any federal crime that he did or may have committed over a 10-year period.
And what were those crimes?
Those crimes were, allegedly...
Peddling American influence, raking in money from people overseas as bribes to Joe Biden, and then allegedly kicking the money back to Joe Biden.
Oligarchy.
And then the pièce de résistance.
Biden, in one of his final acts as president, awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Soros.
Being on behalf of George Soros is Alex Soros.
Beware the influence of dark money in politics.
Money from unelected billionaires who are going to twist our...
Hey, is George Soros here, by the way?
I have a medal to give him.
Has anybody seen George?
Old Georgie, I love George.
Tell him thanks again.
Anyway, back to my speech.
The dark power and the oligarchy.
Okay, alright.
When I was watching this speech, my first thought was...
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Okay.
Right.
That's the warning.
Got it.
Thanks.
Bye.
Bye.
Whatever, Joe.
Okay.
Uh-huh.
Got it.
Yeah.
We'll watch out.
We will watch out.
In fairness, we will watch out to make sure that the injustices that occurred on Joe Biden's watch and in some cases at Joe Biden's direction don't happen again.
That's true.
All right.
Thanks for warning us.
Democrats are still really, really mad.
That they don't get to hold on to power.
I think they really thought that they could.
Michelle Obama will not attend President Trump's inauguration on Monday.
And people haven't quite figured out why.
Michelle Obama is remaining mom on the subject.
She didn't go to Jimmy Carter's funeral, so some are saying, oh, she's out of town.
For that, she said she had a prior engagement, but on the Trump inauguration, maybe she's trying to insinuate that whatever the conflict was for Carter's funeral is also keeping her out of D.C., but that was a while ago.
It's not going to really hold up.
A source close to Michelle Obama told People magazine that Obama will not, quote, pretend for protocol's sake.
In other words, she's not going to go because she just hates Trump that much.
This source said, quote, There's no overstating her feelings about Trump.
She's not one to plaster on a pleasant face and pretend for protocol's sake.
Michelle doesn't do anything because it's expected or it's protocol or it's tradition.
Yeah, we noticed.
Breaking news.
Yeah, we noticed Michelle Obama has no respect for her country.
Or her country's traditions, or the American people who have given her family so much, undeservedly so, gave her so much, made her husband president for basically no reason, tolerated her frequent jibes and jabs at America.
The fact that when Obama was running the first time and was elected, she said that it was the first time in her adult life she was ever proud of her country.
This woman who was so disgraceful.
America tolerated her.
They made her fabulously wealthy.
Again, really for no reason.
Not much reason, at least.
Gave her husband the greatest honor that the country can bestow on someone, electing that person president.
But she won't do anything for tradition's sake or protocol's sake or for patriotism's sake.
Because Michelle Obama...
She apparently doesn't care about anyone but herself, and she will not be bothered to do anything to even give a little bit back to the country that's given her so much.
Yeah, that has long been evident, and that is part of the reason why Trump got elected immediately after the Obamas, because we were sick of that.
And we wanted people who would not just put their private interests first, or their little hobby horses first, or their own ideological vengeance, their own ideological bitterness first, but people who were going to put...
America first.
That was the slogan of the campaign.
It was the slogan of the campaign this time, and it's why Trump was a breath of fresh air after the Obamas.
Often, you will have subsequent presidents who are the opposite of the person before them.
A great example of this would be Bush and Obama.
They at least appear to be opposites.
Bush was kind of like a down-home cool guy you'd have a beer with, and Obama had this air of the Ivy League, a very intellectual and sophisticated and cultured sort of person.
George Bush was seen as kind of like a nationalist cowboy, boom, boom, and Obama would just go on an apology tour and say that America has no interest, and we're so sorry, and we want to give everyone around the world everything.
Then you had a flip after that.
From Obama to Trump.
And I think people are still just so sick of it.
I'm not surprised Michelle Obama doesn't want to show up.
Her party and her ideological faction have never been less popular.
Now, speaking of events around the world and...
I just had a fascinating sit-down with a former KGB spy who lived in America undetected for a decade or two.
Well, certainly over a decade, maybe over two decades.
That would be Jack Barsky.
He's got an incredible story about his time in the KGB, the dangers of espionage, how he left it all behind and found Christ, and what it means for American national security today.
Check out this teaser.
All they knew was that A, I was a hardcore communist, and that I was pretty smart.
Being recruited by the mighty KGB, that's like...
You're like James Bond.
You know, I had loved this woman, and I could shake her off like this.
Do you have to be kind of a sociopath to be a spy?
That's a good question.
I've never been asked that question.
What is the mission that you were sent into America to do?
Open up a business, and the KGB knew how to...
Launder money and come to the United States with $20 million.
With this kind of money, I would have made it into the upper echelons of society right next to the Pentagon.
Right.
I would have been a very dangerous spy.
I thought I had become untouchable, with one exception, though.
Eventually, a betrayal by a KGB agent.
I became very...
I'm depressed.
One day I went to the altar at that church.
I think it was my subconscious again forcing me to get up, go up there, and the pastor asked me, can I do something for you?
And I said, I want to give my life to Jesus.
It makes me almost cry.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
Watch the full episode now at the Michael Knowles YouTube channel.
Do not forget to subscribe for the ad-free version on Daily Wire+.
We're winning.
We're winning.
The evidence is everywhere.
The FBI has just announced that it's going to close its Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
In fact, the FBI began to take steps to close down this office in December 2024. Now we're seeing the final DEI officers being shown the door.
This, according to reporting from Fox News.
Why?
We're talking already about how you're seeing actions within the government anticipating President Trump's entrance.
So the FDA bans red dye number three.
Why?
Trump's not officially in power yet.
Well, the FDA is doing that because they know that...
Bobby Kennedy is about to enter and it's just not worth even fighting it.
Let's try to curry a little bit of favor.
You're seeing a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Why?
Why is that happening days before?
Why is it going into effect one day before Trump's inauguration?
Is it because of Biden's diplomacy?
No, it's because they know Trump is the new sheriff in town and they better play according to his rules.
Why are you seeing the DEI office close before Trump takes office?
Why are you seeing Jack Smith, who tried to put Trump in jail, why are you seeing him resign from the DOJ? Before Trump takes office.
Because they know that the new sheriff is in town and there's no use fighting it.
This is the big difference, to me, between Trump's win in 2016 and Trump's win in 2024. In 2016, the left thought they could still fight and successfully undermine his administration.
And they had good reason to think that, and they were largely successful in that.
In 2024, the left has no fight left in them.
They've just given up.
You saw this with the Democrat senators who were whining and crying and generally depressed at the confirmation hearings for Trump's nominees.
You're seeing this in the policies that are being implemented already in the executive agencies.
You're seeing this in the DEI apparatchiks being shown the door.
Shoot, we lost.
2016, they could say it was a fluke.
The election was bought by the Russians.
It was undemocratic.
It was wrong.
It was illegal.
We won't concede.
Even Hillary Clinton, oh, it wasn't legitimate.
Oh, no, it was somehow, something went wrong with this election.
But you know what?
When you win the electoral vote, overwhelmingly, when you win the popular vote, when you win, as I've noted before, one in five black guys, almost half of Hispanics, 40% of women under the age of 30, when you win...
Huge portions of basically everybody.
You're just...
There's no question about that victory.
And the left just seems so demoralized that what they're going to do is they're going to have a tactical retreat and they're going to try to figure out how everything fell apart.
My favorite comment yesterday from HudsonDean2812.
Donald Trump turned YMCA from the LGBT anthem to the MAGA anthem, the power of this man.
So true.
So true.
This is a tactic that I have really enjoyed for many years.
It's, I think, the power of the pink polo shirt.
You know, the pink polo shirt, some would say it's effeminate.
I say no.
The pink polo shirt is this...
Preppy facade that restrains the beast, the virile animal underneath.
That's how I feel about, for instance, dancing on one's table in suede loafers with a martini glass.
On the one hand, people think it's a little, you know, perhaps light in the loafers, literally.
But on the other, I say no.
That is but a facade to keep the inner masculine beast restrained.
Lest he become too virile and out of control.
Okay.
Speaking of the intellect, the Treasury Secretary nominee, Scott Besant, just had a marvelous confirmation hearing, and he completely destroyed Democrat Senator Ron Wyden with facts and logic and tariffs.
I believe these tariffs, you can call it whatever you want in terms of trying to gussy it up.
They're going to be paid for by our workers and small businesses.
All through the campaign, we heard they weren't, that foreign countries were going to pay it.
I think that's baloney.
It's going to be paid for by workers and small businesses.
So, your response?
Yes, Senator.
I would respectfully disagree.
And the history of tariffs and tariff theory, optimal tariff theory, does not support what you're saying.
Traditionally, we see that the current...
We were to say, use a number that has been thrown around in the press of 10%.
Then traditionally, the currency appreciates by 4%.
So the 10% is not passed through.
Then we have various elasticities.
Consumer preferences may change.
And finally, foreign manufacturers, especially China, especially China, which is trying to export their way out of their current economic malaise, they will continue cutting prices to maintain market share.
Beautiful answer.
And Rob Wyden's response to this, which was cut off, is, well, that's just all so academic.
That sounds a little too academic for me.
But I think tariffs are going to just pass on prices, price increases to the American people.
Well, sure, it is.
Academic, or it's scholarly, or it's intelligent, I guess.
Yeah, it is.
And Bessent clearly knows what he's talking about here.
But this exchange, to me, typifies just...
It typifies the usual debate over tariffs in America.
And it also typifies each side.
Because the pro-tariff side...
Is bringing serious economic arguments, is actually drawing on political philosophy even beyond economics because we are not a society that serves a market, but rather we are a society that has a market to serve us and our political ends.
And the anti-tariff side, the pure pro-free trade side, is making arguments.
That are really not much more sophisticated than whatever they were taught by their seventh grade history teacher.
That's where I think a lot of it comes from.
I think most people, if they've ever heard the word tariff, heard about it in seventh grade history class, and what they were taught is that we used to have a mercantile kind of economic system.
Then we had this kind of economic protection into the 19th and early 20th century.
But then we discovered free trade, and free trade was really great.
We kind of had discovered it a little earlier, but we didn't really put it into practice, and then it worked, and it was really great, and tariffs are always bad, and free trade is always good.
And Trump, in his commonsensical, not academic way, pointed out the flaw in this argument in 2016. He said, hold on, if tariffs are always bad, how come every other country uses them?
And by the way, we use them sometimes too.
George Bush protected steel.
Ronald Reagan protected steel.
So if tariffs are always bad, how come all of our...
Our adversaries, many of whom are killing us on trade, use tariffs.
And Scott Besson gives a great answer there.
He said, well, because, you know, tactically they work sometimes.
And actually, those price hikes are not always passed on to the American people.
There are lots of good reasons for tariffs from the standpoint of national security.
We learned this during COVID. You cannot be totally reliant on a foreign country, much less a foreign adversary, for your manufacturing.
For your medicine, for your technology, for your food in some cases.
That's crazy because then the moment that a conflict breaks out, you're going to starve and you're going to die of your diseases and you're not going to have any resources that you need.
But even from an economic standpoint, gutting your entire manufacturing base might not be a great thing.
Even from an economic standpoint, not protecting your vital national industries.
Might not be a great thing, because, as Besant says here, you might have countries like China that are dumping some of their goods below market prices to try to gain market share, illegally violating trade treaties, and then what are they going to do?
The moment that they've totally captured the market, then they're going to have control.
They can do whatever they want.
They can hike the prices, they can do whatever they want.
Or they can steal your intellectual property.
It's another way that China's violated trade treaties, and so on and so forth.
And it's not just China.
There are a lot of other countries that are cheating on trade, too.
This is an example of an issue where I think there's so many people who were just raised in late 20th century right-wing propaganda that said, now, beep-boop, beep-boop, tariff's always bad, we love free trade, all the time.
Well, hold on.
Abraham Lincoln founded the Republican Party, practically, and he said that if you gave him a tariff, he would give you the greatest country in the world.
Republicans were largely in favor of protection for a long time.
Maybe there's a reason for it.
I'm not saying that we don't trade with anyone.
I'm not saying that trade is a bad thing intrinsically.
But, guys, come on.
Let's restore a little bit of prudence here.
Love it.
Besant really humiliated those Democrat senators, and I think he's going to be a good Treasury Secretary.
More Trump picks.
Trump has named his ambassadors to Hollywood.
Did you do a double take?
Ambassadors to Hollywood.
What's that?
He says, It is my honor to announce John Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone to be special ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California.
They will serve as special envoys to me for the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to foreign countries, back bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.
These three very talented people will be my eyes and ears, and I'll get done what they suggest.
It will be, like the United States of America itself, the golden age of Hollywood.
I love it.
First of all, why do we have ambassadors to Hollywood?
Because we have ambassadors to all hostile foreign territories.
If we're going to have ambassadors to Botswana or something, we might as well have them to Hollywood.
Also because, see this here when he talks about the Golden Age of Hollywood?
The Golden Age of Hollywood was an era in which Hollywood had to play ball according to national standards and norms.
Sometimes, It was suggested that the government ought to enforce these standards and norms, and then in response to threats from the government, Hollywood said, no, no, no, don't worry, we'll censor ourselves.
And I know that censorship word is supposedly a bad word on the right.
It's not a bad word to me.
But it is kind of weird that during the period in which Hollywood censored itself, when we had the Hays Code, we had most of the greatest movies ever made.
Most, just name off the top of your head, the very greatest movies ever made.
With some exceptions, maybe with The Godfather as an exception, which was made afterward, those were the greatest movies ever made.
Maybe there's something to it.
Maybe there's something to rhyme and meter and limits that actually allows an industry to grow.
Because, by the way, before we had Hollywood self-censorship...
We had this era of completely degenerate movies.
Like, you know that movie, what's it called?
Freaks?
The one where it's like, oogle boggle, oogle boggle, one of us, one of us.
And it was all kind of obscene and weird and creepy and filthy.
Those are not the movies that play on Turner Classic Movies.
Those are not the ones that you go back and stream and rent.
They were no good.
You want a golden age of Hollywood?
Let's send, especially these guys.
These guys are each in their own lanes.
John Voight, Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone.
Great, great actors and filmmakers.
I absolutely love it.
Now, big question.
Big, big question here.
Who is going to be the next senator from Ohio?
Because J.D. Vance is the vice president.
He's going to be the vice president as of Monday.
So there's an open Senate seat in Ohio.
And President Trump has just suggested Vivek Ramaswamy.
How's that for a cliffhanger?
I want to talk about it more, but we've got to get to the mailbag, so maybe we'll talk about that on Monday.
Monday is the big day!
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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.
Michael, after listening to your episode 1645 about the horrors of Muslim rape gangs in the UK and throughout Europe and their government's response to it, I wonder how the people have not risen up and taken the law into their own hands.
These globalist leftist Satanists are trying to subjugate the free peoples.
I have read books and could write books about the jihad and their 21st century efforts to conquer the Free West.
These passive-aggressive tactics of the offensive-defensive strategy is easily understood by military men and psychologists.
They come into our countries pretending to be helpless, then rape and rob our people, and when our people retaliate, they cry that they're the victims.
This has been the method of jihad for centuries.
We need a comparable crusade in the 21st century.
A second hijra is the only solution that will work short of going to war.
Do you think that President Trump understands what is happening and will put people in place who will send them back?
All right, well, very feisty question.
Trump certainly understands the threats of radical Islam, that's for sure.
Remember when he killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?
Like a dog, like a dog, the leader of ISIS died.
However, to your broader point, that the only way to combat Islam, which has been warring with the West for roughly 1,400 years now, that the only way to do it is to launch another crusade, this would be difficult.
One, because the land now that would have been the kingdom of Jerusalem, the holy land that was to be regained in the first crusade, Is now not controlled by various Muslim caliphates, but is controlled by the state of Israel that was established with the backing of the Christian West.
So that would complicate establishing a kingdom of Jerusalem.
But even to your broader point of maybe not just a crusade, but something like a Reconquista, something like a Charles Martel, or Battle of Lepanto, or Battle of Vienna, repelling, invading Muslim hordes.
Even then, it's difficult to see how it works because of one major problem that Christendom has.
The society once called Christendom, which is that we no longer have unity.
You know, the first crusade occurred.
I was just recently, oddly enough, debating this point on Piers Morgan's show with some left-wingers who were a little challenged on historical facts about the crusade.
But the crusade began because Emperor Alexius in the east asked the pope for support because the Seljuk Turks were running roughshod over Christians and killing Christians in the Holy Land and creating problems in the Eastern Empire.
So the pope, after the Council of Clermont, declared a crusade.
And the popular cries that came up at this announcement were, And then there was a people's crusade, which was this group of miscreants who decided to run off as preparations were being made for the actual first crusade.
They ran off.
They didn't even know where the Holy Land was.
And as Hilaire Belloc says, they died well-merited deaths in the dusty sand of Anatolia.
But then there was the real crusade, which had some serious success, although it ended up actually weakening relations between the West and the East because the crusaders got a little heavy-handed with some of the imperial territories in the East.
And then there were later crusades.
So, the question right now is, if we barely had anything resembling East-West unity in the 11th century, now, not only do we have to deal with division between East and West, we have to deal with division within the West because we've had the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago that cracked up the unity of Christendom.
So, who would lead the crusade?
The East wouldn't call for it, and the circumstances wouldn't exist for the East to call for it, really.
The East was essentially already conquered by the Muslims.
And then, in the West, would it be the Pope?
Would the current Pope lead a crusade?
I wouldn't expect that.
Would it be some Protestant pastor?
Some evangelical Protestant pastor?
Is Pastor Keith going to lead the crusade?
I don't think so.
Is the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Anglican Church?
I don't think so.
So who's going to do it?
it.
You need unity to engage in such an endeavor, if even such an endeavor were prudent or possible, and it doesn't look likely.
Okay, next question.
Hello, Mr. Knowles.
Hello.
Fellow Catholic here.
Given the current state of our border, which I do think needs to be secured in every way possible, I am also an immigration restrictionist myself, but I guess my question would be, as a fellow Catholic, And some of that looks out for other Catholics as well.
How do you think we should handle or not handle the refugee situation going on in Nicaragua, given that the persecuted Catholics and the ones in the other part of the world as well?
Again, I'm in no way pro-open borders or...
I'm also an immigration restrictionist in this time, but any way you think we can manage this to protect Catholics would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your advice.
Okay, good question.
This is often how people ask this question, too.
They say, look, I oppose open borders and taking in more people, but what about this group that I really like?
And so in this case, we're talking about a group that I personally really like a lot and would like to help.
The issue you're identifying is that the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua has been all tough on Catholics in particular, arresting priests, that sort of thing.
So how do we fix that?
The best way to fix that would be for a strong U.S. president to, through a system of sticks and carrots, diplomacy and pressure, get hostile regimes to get in line.
And there are plenty of ways to do that, especially in Nicaragua.
There's a lot of Western investment in Nicaragua, notably in the cigar industry.
So it would be helpful if we said, hey guys, we want to keep investing.
You guys make a great product down there, but you've got to be a little less rough around the edges.
How about we all work together?
That would be one way to do it.
That's ideal, too, because then people get to stay in their own countries.
Now, in terms of what do we do with certain refugees?
Whether we're talking about Nicaragua or Venezuela or North Korea, you know, what do we do?
I don't think anyone is suggesting that the United States needs to totally close itself off to legitimate refugees.
The problem is that the Democrats have lied about what a refugee is.
And they've pretended that millions of fighting-edge male economic migrants are somehow refugees, you know, little dreamer children or elderly women or anything like that, and that's just not the case.
So, sure, should we take in some refugees?
Fine.
People who are likely to get on board with the American program, people who are legitimately in need through America's grace and charity and mercy, we can let some small number of people in.
But right now, we've taken, what, between a million and 1.3 million legal immigrants per year.
Another, what, 2 million?
Who knows at this point?
Three million illegal aliens per year?
You know, that's just way too many people.
So, okay, you take in 25,000, 50,000 refugees.
Okay, fine.
If we get rid of all of the other migration and you go from four million people, three to four million people a year, to 25,000 or 50,000, okay, great.
That's a win.
And you'll get people who are more conducive to your national flourishing.
Anyway, next question.
There seems to be a debate growing amongst Christians.
On the abortion issue, and I'd like your take on it, and I'm going to put forward what I think is happening, and maybe you can say if it's accurate or not.
People who call themselves abolitionists seem to think that voting for a better law rather than the perfect law is a sin.
In other words, if you vote for any law that might be better than what we currently have, but doesn't federally ban abortion and levy major...
On the other hand, people like myself who are incrementalists who understand that we have to take our wins when we can, and politics is a process, we seem more concerned with saving babies.
So what's your point of view, and is this an accurate representation of the debate?
Thanks.
The argument of the abolitionists amounts to political quietism, to pulling out of the political order.
Because voting for any candidate, you know, if you vote for a candidate who will tolerate continued use of cell lines derived from the stem cells of aborted babies from the 1960s, then you would be just as guilty of partiality and justice, wouldn't you?
So if voting for a candidate, any kind of candidate, Involves some kind of remote cooperation with evil when you're talking about a global empire like the United States.
Then the only logical conclusion of their view is to just not participate in the political system.
Which to my mind could be deemed sinful in itself.
It at the very least would be vicious.
At the very least it would be cowardly.
At the very least it would be imprudent.
And I think it would be unjust, actually, for people who do have the right kind of idea to pull out of the political system.
So, no, I'm not really taken with those arguments.
I hate abortion and I'd like it to go away.
But I'm not one for political quietism.
I think that you need to get the wins that you can when you can get them, and I think you need to have the courage to...
Deal with the difficulties and the vicissitudes of politics.
I think courage is the virtue that is the prerequisite for all of the other virtues.
And I think that pulling away because one doesn't get what one in one's limited reason considers to be the perfect policy.
I think basically that amounts to a cowardice, even if people don't intend it or admit it.
Okay, that's our show.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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