President Trump wins big in the Middle East, a crazy jihadi preaches from Canada, and legislators might ban a bunch of porn.
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Ep.1736
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Hot off of securing a $1.2 trillion economic commitment with Qatar to secure over 150,000 American jobs annually, President Trump has done something even better.
He has articulated his foreign policy doctrine, which breaks from decades of misadventures from both Democrats and Republicans, which has already greatly reduced the prospect of imminent global conflict, but also, according to major financial institutions, which we'll get to, greatly reduced the likelihood of recession and...
Most important of all, greatly increase the likelihood that on today's show, I will say, I told you so.
I'm Michael Knowles.
That's the Michael Nol show.
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Can we ban porn?
Do we already in our law kind of ban porn but not enforce it?
There's a great new law working its way through the Capitol and I have on this show the author of that law.
That would be Senator Mike Lee coming up.
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Trump is in the Middle East.
He's on this big tour of the Middle East.
He's securing deals with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and he's getting a new luxury airplane for the United States because Boeing can't fulfill its obligations to get us Air Force One 10 years delayed, and it's going quite well.
Maybe my favorite moment, at least from the standpoint of grand strategy, geopolitics, is this statement that Trump made yesterday, which was a pithy little logline, less than one minute, to explain his foreign policy doctrine.
In recent years, far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it's our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use U.S. policy to dispense justice for their sins.
They loved using our very powerful military.
And now it's really the most powerful it's ever been.
We just are getting a budget approved, $1 trillion, highest budget.
We've ever had in history for military $1 trillion, and we're getting the greatest missiles, the greatest weapons.
And, you know, I hate to do it, but you have to do it because we believe in peace through strength.
You have to have the strength, otherwise bad things could happen.
But hopefully we'll never have to use any of those weapons.
Seems to be an awfully big waste of money if you're never going to use them, but hopefully we'll never have to use them because the destructive power of some of those weapons are like nobody's seen before.
I believe it is God's job to sit in judgment, my job to defend America and to promote the fundamental interest of stability, prosperity.
I love this statement.
He says, I don't think my job is to stare into the souls of every foreign leader and mete out punishment.
By sending American troops in to go meet at the punishment, to punish these foreign leaders for their personal sins.
That's not how I view foreign policy.
That's how Democrats now view foreign policy.
That's how Republicans viewed foreign policy, especially about 20 years ago.
He says, that's not what I'm doing.
I view my job as requiring me to defend America and to secure peace and prosperity.
This is beautiful.
This is an articulation of Trump's understanding of America first, as I pointed out yesterday on the show.
Trump can go in and he can cut a big arms deal, the biggest arms deal in history with Saudi Arabia.
The day after, he accepts a nice luxury jet as a gift to the United States from Qatar.
Qatar and Saudi Arabia generally don't get along very well.
Trump can go in.
He can try to work out a deal with Iran.
He can also get a town named after him in Israel because he backs the state of Israel.
These are sworn mortal enemies.
How can he do that?
Because Trump, while he is allies with places like the state of Israel or with Saudi Arabia, while he can do some business with Iran or, say, Qatar, Trump's objective is to promote the interests of the United States.
That's it.
Yet we have alliances, but we're not going to have entangling alliances that force us to put ourselves second and to become just some kind of Worker be for foreign states or for international organizations or anything like that.
He says, my job is to defend the United States and then furthermore as the global hegemon because...
We're not just a tiny little isolated republic of yeoman farmers.
We are the global superpower.
We are the global empire.
Trump's vision is imperial.
That's why he wants Greenland.
That's why he wants Canada.
That's why he wants the Panama Canal.
Because of that, he says, my job as a secondary matter is to secure peace and prosperity.
This is what empires are supposed to do.
The job of an empire is not to insist upon a completely homogenized instantiation of justice everywhere in the world.
The purpose of empire is not to blot out all kinds of local traditions.
No, no, no.
The purpose of an empire is to ensure...
Peace and prosperity.
This is a classical understanding of politics.
It's not a super modern understanding.
It's not a highly ideological understanding.
This is the classical understanding.
Last year, last summer, I gave a long lecture on Dante and his political vision and the classical political vision.
This is top of the list for Dante.
Dante was living in civil war.
It was the great sorrow of his life.
He says, in order to have freedom, freedom the greatest gift from God, you have to have peace.
And the job of the empire, not of the local government necessarily, not of intervening institutions, but of the empire is to ensure peace.
And that's what I'm going to do.
So maybe Saudi Arabia is not going to like it if I cut a deal with Qatar.
Too bad.
Maybe the state of Israel is not going to like it if I cut a deal with Iran.
Too bad.
Maybe India's not going to like it if I cut a deal with Pakistan.
I don't know.
I'm speaking hypothetically here.
Too bad.
My goal as emperor, says Trump, or it's what he's insinuating, is I'm going to pursue peace and prosperity because that's the role of the empire and that happens to be in the American interest.
I love this.
This is correcting some of the real errors of the Bush era.
It's correcting a lot of the errors of the liberal establishment right now.
It's just...
Spot on.
Now, what does it mean for America?
Well, already, what we're getting out of this Middle East tour is J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs coming out and saying, actually, never mind.
I know we told you that we might be headed for recession.
Well, we're correcting that.
We're likely not headed for recession.
You know, you know how much I hate to say I told you so.
What did I say on the show?
Was it yesterday or the day before?
I said, Looking at the China trade deal, I am beginning to think, whatever the substance comes out of it, people will say, well, he shouldn't have done the trade deal anyway, or he shouldn't have implemented the tariffs, or he shouldn't have done the tariffs in another way, or blah, blah, blah, who cares?
I said, regardless of that, my political conclusion is, six months from now, we might be in a position where all that market volatility that all the Democrats were making hay over will be a distant memory.
No one really will remember it.
It will not be a live political issue.
I said that like two days ago.
And then what happens?
J.P. Morgan, which was warning of recession, said, we think the U.S. is heading into recession.
J.P. Morgan places the probability now below 50%.
Goldman Sachs, which never thought that we were most likely going to have a recession, Goldman Sachs put the possibility of recession at 45%, has just reduced its likelihood.
Its prediction now brings it down to about 35%.
Barclays has totally dismissed.
Recession risks.
Says, nope, we're not headed for recession.
This is one I actually will say I'm very happy to say I told you so.
Because it's good for our portfolios, it's good for our economy, it's good for the Trump agenda, it's good for Republicans' political prospects.
But just think, a month ago, two months ago, remember Trump had that word panicans?
He said, don't be a panican.
And all the geniuses, all the geniuses.
In the Democrat Party and all the fancy people on CNBC and many Republicans were losing their minds.
Oh no, this is the end.
There's no way.
We're headed for recession.
This is going to destroy all of Trump's agenda and it's going to kill our bank accounts.
I said, hey, chill out.
Let the guy cook.
He's got a pretty good track record.
I have questions about the tariffs too.
In fact, I still have questions about the tariff policy today.
Exactly what the goal was.
But again, that's kind of part of Trump's negotiation is that he likes to be unpredictable and it served him well.
I said, just chill out for a second.
Lift your head up in a few weeks, see what happens.
And what happens?
The same major financial institutions that were predicting recession now say, no, actually, we're good.
We're like two days into the Middle East tour.
And we're a few days out after Trump and China have apparently resolved their trade differences.
Things are looking pretty good.
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You are already seeing the signs that we're not headed for a major financial catastrophe.
Here's one piece of evidence.
It's not merely that I have an Olstradamus crystal ball.
You can see the signs.
Here's a big one that came out from the Labor Department.
Prices have risen at an annual rate of 2.3%.
So we don't want our prices to go up at all, but that's just how economies work.
An increase in 2.3% is the smallest increase in prices since 2021.
Since the beginning of Joe Biden's term.
You then look at the stock market.
The S&P 500 came roaring back.
The S&P 500 came roaring back so strongly that it actually wiped out all of the losses.
The S&P 500 is now positive on the year.
People were predicting a high likelihood of recession before Trump got elected.
They thought the stock market was just overinflated.
And then you had this major market correction.
Now the market's back.
And I hope people were able to talk to their financial advisors, maybe get some stocks on discount, if that's part of your financial plan.
But in any case, all of that worry, all that hair you lost, all that sleep you lost, all those extra wrinkles on your face, done.
Now, the other takeaway from this politically, and this will be observed by our adversaries and trading partners, is it's pretty clear that the tariffs were about leverage, primarily.
Less so about raising revenue, less so about...
It's about leverage, about getting better trade deals.
Because all three of those trade goals, as I've mentioned on the show, are in conflict with one another.
So okay, it's about leverage.
It's about getting new trade deals.
We're seeing some of those new trade deals now on the Middle East tour.
Good stuff.
Good stuff.
For now, I know it's very untrad, it's very unconservative to suggest that we're not constantly on the brink of absolute catastrophe.
But right now, things are looking pretty good, at least economically.
The West, however, faces problems.
For instance, a man who was going viral yesterday on the internet...
For praising martyrdom, this is some Islamic scholar or cleric.
He's wearing kind of traditional clothing, and he's going on TV to sing the praises of mothers and fathers who raised their little boys and girls to be martyrs and blow themselves up and attack the West through jihad or go attack the Jews or something like that.
What made this video particularly odd is it wasn't filmed in Gaza, wasn't filmed in Tehran, it wasn't filmed in Saudi Arabia.
The guy's Canadian.
Kids, some of them 10 years old.
I'm sure you've heard some of those clips where a child says, I live to be a martyr.
In other words, I live to die.
Yes.
I live to fight for the sake of Allah.
I live...
To defend al-Islam and the Muslims.
I live to defend al-Masjid al-Aqsa.
Yeah, there are lots of examples of them.
And you know something?
It's not just the young boys, the young girls as well.
Some of those little girls, they are braver than every single one of us put together.
One little girl, braver than all of us.
Did you not hear that little girl say, I want to grow up, and I want to get married, and I want to give birth to and raise martyrs?
Eywallah!
What kind of bravery is that?
What are we doing for the Ummah?
Well, the Ummah, the Islamic nation.
All right, pretty horrifying to people in the West.
How did this come into Canada?
Well, I know how it came into Canada, because of mass migration and because of the Libs Open Borders policies.
That's not good.
Because of suicidal empathy from the West.
Okay, that's not good.
But the West needs to take what this guy is saying much more seriously than we have.
Because the way the West reacts to this now is either, if you're on the left, to agree with it.
In an odd way, because the people on the left don't really believe in religion, and they don't...
They don't really believe in anything beyond themselves, but they do have this perception of the oppressors and the oppressed, and the Muslims are part of this favored group, and so you get Greta Thunberg wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh, you know, you're waiting for her to set off a bus bomb or something like that.
This is true on campuses all around the country.
It's bizarre, but they cheer these people on when they say crazy things like this.
The other thing, the other reaction that you get from people in the West is just to condemn this, to say this is awful.
It's a death cult.
What kind of people would wish for martyrdom?
What kind of people would wish this kind of thing for their children?
This is sick.
This is disgusting.
We need to get these people Netflix subscriptions and cell phones.
That's right.
We need to bring them into the modern, liberal, secular culture, and then they'll forget about it.
That's not going to work.
That's not going to work.
The strategy that we've undertaken so far, either to tolerate this nonsense or to just outright condemn it.
Doesn't work.
You have to offer people an alternative.
Because it is impressive that people will not only live for something, but are willing to die for something.
In our civilization, we used to be willing to die for something.
The Pope wears red slippers because he is reminded of the footsteps of the martyrs who died.
The Christian martyrs, not the...
Not the crazy Islamic martyrs who are blowing up buses, but the Christian martyrs who are being persecuted for their faith, but the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
We used to believe in that.
We're not opposed to martyrdom in general.
We're not even necessarily opposed to death in as much as we're all going to die.
We'd like to have life everlasting, but we recognize there are limitations to mortality.
What are we living for?
There was this big spate of news articles some years ago about how men in the UK...
We're signing up to fight for ISIS.
Why?
They're in the UK.
They have cell phones and blue jeans and fast food.
Why would they ever want to go fight and die in the dust of Syria?
Because we want to live for something.
We don't want to be just self-indulgent blobs who want to watch TV and porn and do drugs or something.
We want to live for something.
So what we have to ask ourselves in the West is, what are we living for?
And what would we be willing to die for?
Unfortunately, what these Islamists want to do is they want to die for a bad cause, and they want to do so in an unjust way that is not reasonable and that is contrary to the principles of true religion.
What they're longing for is unfortunately misdirected, but there's a kernel of something there that is deeply human, which is a longing for God and a willingness to sacrifice all the pleasures of our life for the eternal.
They just go wrong about the particulars of it.
Their understanding of religion is off, and their understanding of man's relation to God is off.
We need to have a religious answer to this.
Because if there is to be a war, all human conflict ultimately is theological.
If there is to be a clash between people who are willing to live and die for the eternal, for God, for their understanding of God, there's a clash between that side and people who just really like Netflix or whatever and really like sort of hanging out and doing drugs and watching porn.
They're going to win!
They're making a better argument.
We need to make the argument that we used to make.
When we engaged seriously in this conflict, when we rebuffed incursions by this very same religious group into the West going back to the 7th and 8th centuries, rather than just opening them up and letting it all in without any impetus for assimilation at all.
Assimilation into what?
Into Netflix?
Not going to work.
Now, speaking of unsettling videos, there's a video going around.
This is my favorite video on the internet right now.
I guess I have to say, because the technology has gotten so good.
I'm going to say right off the top.
This is AI.
Had I not told you this was AI, you might have been fooled.
I give you a press conference, supposedly with RFK Jr.
I'm declaring war on fat gay kids.
Not the kids themselves, but on whatever's making them so fat, gay, and pathetic.
I'm talking seed oils.
SSRIs, MSNBC, and perverts masquerading as teachers and guidance counselors.
Sorry, but as an educator, you can't show off your extensive collection of Maryland aides anymore.
You've got Trump to his left.
You've got video.
Isn't it a video game competition or an OnlyFans Academy?
It's a country.
And with the help of President Trump, we'll be focusing on eliminating the things in our society that are turning our kids into effeminate weirdos and scats.
And then they have to put it at the end as a deepfake one, obviously, but let people dream.
It is an amazing video.
It's really funny to listen to and see.
But also, it's amazing because you will soon not be able to believe any videos that you see.
And everyone's clutching their pearls and raining their garments over this.
They say, we're not going to know what the truth is anymore.
We're not going to believe what we see on TV anymore.
Good.
Good.
I'm not upset about this at all.
I think this is great.
Pretty soon, we're not going to be able to just instinctively believe anything that we see on the internet.
Yeah, good.
You're not supposed to.
You're not supposed to just believe everything you see on TV.
That's a glittering hypnotism box.
Yeah, you're supposed to think for yourself, buddy.
And we're incarnate creatures, and we're supposed to get together in society and not just all be isolated in our own little pods plugged into the Matrix with the goggles on to lull us into slavery.
Yeah, good.
Six months from now, I'm not going to be necessary for my show.
You're going to be able to go to AI and say, what would Michael Knowles say about this?
They're going to write a whole script.
Then they'll say, alright, give me a Michael Knowles video.
There's plenty of video of me all over the internet.
Okay, great.
We're going to do a Michael Knowles video.
Okay, now produce a 45-minute show where Michael talks about what are the top news stories of the day?
What are the top cultural stories?
What's going on?
Okay, great.
You do interviews.
I won't even be necessary for it.
I hope I get...
Licensing rights to my image so that I don't starve.
But regardless, what this means for our political order is we're going to have to do more stuff in person.
Just like universities now can't give kids take-home papers because the kids are just going to use AI.
They're going to have to bring back the blue books and the old exam rooms that we had 20, 30 years ago and long before that.
So too in our politics.
We're going to need more in-person events.
We're going to need more rallies.
We're going to need more shaking hands and kissing babies.
I have been really eager for this for a long time.
This is in part why I use printed note cards and I don't use a computer.
I don't want to feel like I'm just plugged in and constantly manipulable by digital sources.
This is why I started a cigar company in part, because I want people to get together in person and have conversations for 45 minutes or an hour.
We need real life.
We need to get back to the incarnate and especially the sacramental realities that pertain to human life.
I know it's very untrad and unconservative to say that new technology could possibly be a good thing.
In this way, it can be, because the technology is destroying itself, or rather, destroying our ability to blindly believe it.
Hold on.
Stop what you're doing.
We will get to much more.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Carmen Duval.
5032, who says, as a white South African, thank you.
Thank you for speaking the truth, for creating awareness, for listening and thinking.
Thank you.
That's very kind.
I'm very sorry for what you're going through in South Africa right now.
There's a lot more I want to get to.
I really want to get to a new Democrat presidential candidate.
That'll be a fun one.
I want to get to a little bit more out of South Africa because South Africa's president is weighing in on Trump's offer to take in refugees, the white farmers, the Afrikaners.
I want to get to all that, but we don't have time because...
I want to get to whether or not to ban porn.
Should the federal government ban porn?
Can the federal government ban porn?
Doesn't the federal government already sort of ban porn, and we all just kind of forgot about it, and it's a little bit ambiguous?
Here to help us answer all of these questions, one of the great men of Washington, D.C., one of the great men in our country, who has authored a bill to outlaw online pornography, that would be Senator Mike Lee.
Senator Lee.
Thank you for coming on the show.
Thank you, Michael.
Good to be with you.
Also, thank you for the bill.
I think it's great.
I've been calling for this sort of thing for a long time, and whenever I've suggested that maybe it's not the best idea to have our country, especially children, just saturated in some of the most extreme, degrading, vicious material imaginable, people tell me that there is nothing more American than You know a thing or two about the law.
I think you've read the Constitution once or twice, one of the leading lawyers in the country.
What say you?
Look, at the outset, we've got to point out obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.
Never has been.
To this day, it is not.
The Supreme Court acknowledges that the First Amendment doesn't cover obscenity.
The question is, What is obscenity?
How is it defined?
Some of those definitions have changed over time.
You referred to this a moment ago, Michael.
There's this sometimes unspoken but widely held false assumption that there is a universal human right or a universal, undeniable, impenetrable First Amendment right to distribute Pornography, explicit material, obscene material even, and make it available to children.
And there's nothing, anything the government can do about it because, well, the First Amendment.
That simply isn't true.
It's never been the case.
It's not the case today.
What my bill is about really is about trying to address the modern age.
Remember, decades ago, people viewed pornography differently than they do today.
They'd either have to go to a movie theater in a shitty part of town, or maybe they'd have to buy something, a magazine or something physically.
And when they did that, typically there were laws and other restrictions that made sure that they weren't selling it to kids, made sure that if the cover was explicit, that it wasn't something that could be viewed by children.
There were restrictions on it.
Now in the internet age, when this stuff is widely available, Children have easy, ready access to pornographic material all the time.
We need to update our laws.
Update our laws to make sure that it's not just fair game out there so that we can protect our children.
That's why I introduced the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act, along with Representative Mary Miller, to establish a comprehensive definition more appropriate for the Internet age so that we can protect Kids from obscene materials under federal law.
Well, you know, this point on obscenity I think is so important because it's not that your bill, as some people are writing about it, would radically change the American law, you know, impose some severe new restriction.
It would just...
Take our legal tradition and continue it and adapt it for the digital age.
There have been efforts to do this before.
I remember in the 1990s.
I actually don't remember it when I was a kid, but I remember reading about it.
There was the Communications Decency Act.
Which, now we focus on how that modifies social media and gives liability to social media companies, but really it was about decency and communications.
And part of that, before part of the law was struck down by radical judges, was about ensuring that kids wouldn't have access to all this kind of crazy material.
There was the Child Online Protection Act, same thing.
This was passed with Republican support, Democrat support, there was a Republican Congress, there was Bill Clinton was president.
I don't know, this shouldn't be so radical to me.
We remember in 2008, the federal government prosecuted, convicted, and jailed a pornographer, a particularly bad one, for obscenity.
So, I don't know.
It doesn't seem radical to me.
What would your bill do?
How would the law change, or how would the enforcement of the law change, if your law is passed?
First of all, it's not radically different.
And it does just reflect the need to update and modernize things from where they've been since 1973.
We have in place today something known as the Miller Standard.
It's a reference to a 1973 Supreme Court case.
The standards on it are subjective and vague, making it pretty difficult to apply to any piece of material in particular.
Although, all that said, this tries to preserve as much of the Miller test as possible, given that some of these things are now familiar.
So the Miller test...
It determines content to be obscene.
If it appeals to what they describe as prurient interest, as the prurient interest in sex, and describes sexual conduct or depicts it in a patently offensive way, and that it also has to lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
But the part that talks about depicting sexual content...
In a patently offensive way, it self-proves problematic, and it makes reference to state law.
The Miller case involved state law, not federal law.
There was no such thing as the Internet back then.
And so we need to update this so that, number one, there's a modern federal standard, a federal standard that determines what happens when you are marketing You're distributing pornography on a channel or through an instrumentality of interstate commerce like the Internet across state lines.
Remember, Michael, there are all kinds of other contexts in which we have overlapping state and federal laws.
And sometimes the state law will be applicable when the conduct is occurring entirely within a state.
You sometimes need a federal standard.
If it's going to occur across state lines or through a channel of interstate commerce like the Internet.
And so this one simplifies it.
It attempts to create a standard that is more manageable and understandable.
and it supplies its own federal standards so that we don't have to make reference back to a non-existent state law because this is a federal issue.
It is moreover worth noting that there are other circumstances in which other types of of constitutionally protected activities are still subject to federal law restrictions regarding how something is distributed.
Let's take the Second Amendment, for example, protects the right to bear arms.
There are nonetheless restrictions, including federal laws, that make it so you're not supposed to, you can't legally Sell a firearm to somebody unless certain minimum standards are met.
And that would include things like the ability to restrict sales to children of firearms.
We know that pornography, obscene content, including a lot of pornography out there, does have a well-known, documentable, provable bad effect on children.
On adults also, but especially children.
And so that's our objective here, because applying a pre-internet standard to the internet era causes a whole lot of challenges, particularly when you're trying to protect kids.
Of course, of course.
And you can go back, even before the founding of the country in the late 18th century, you can go back to the middle of the 17th century, and you can see all sorts of statutes and legal documents pointing out that...
Liberty cannot fall into licentiousness or people are going to lose their true liberty.
And so you have to protect against the kind of content that would appeal to the prurian interest that would not be constitutionally protected speech like obscenity or fraud or libel or any other manner of chatter.
So to me, it seems perfectly normal.
The way that you're talking about it, too, suggests that the law would really go after producers of this content.
It's not that the person who's logging onto a website at night is going to have the purity police come to his door.
It's just saying, look, there are— And the internet obviously changed a lot of people's behavior, but, you know, look, that's why we have laws in the first place, is to protect against these things.
Really quickly, before I let you go, Senator.
What do you think the odds are?
Nuts and bolts politics.
You're talking to your colleagues.
Congressman Miller is talking to her colleagues in the House.
Does it get through?
Is this something that is going to pass into law tomorrow or the next day?
Absolutely not.
People are still grasping to understand it.
Right now, there's a lot of incorrect information out there suggesting that this is criminalizing all pornography, consumption and distribution.
In any of the circumstances, it's not true.
We're going to have to dig our way out of that.
This is going to take a while.
Rome wasn't built in a day, and there are a lot of reasons why we need to act on this, but it's nowhere near the point where I'm expecting passage.
Again, the important thing to remember is we're updating the Communications Act of 1934.
And we're talking about the distribution of content that, taken as a whole, appeals to the prairie interest in sex.
It depicts, describes, and represents actual or simulated sexual acts with this objectively observable intent to arouse and so forth.
And it, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
This would not include the other element of Miller.
It makes reference to the fact that it has to be patently offensive according to the community standards embodied in whatever state or local law or ordinance is at issue.
It makes no sense to maintain that element of the Miller standard in this because we're talking about a national system, a nationwide network, a channel of interstate commerce that is the internet.
It is appropriate for Congress to revisit this.
I love the point also.
I think your point on the distinction between the federal government and matters that pertain to interstate commerce and state standards, but also when we're living in a time that denies standards entirely, just in principle, then the appeal to contemporary community standards is kind of a meaningless statement.
Senator, no flattery at all.
You know, you're really one of the greats out there.
And this issue, I think, is one of the most important issues.
And it's kind of a subtle issue, so people miss it a lot, but it's one of the most important things we could do to help restore a little national health.
We'll leave it there.
Senator Lee, thank you for coming on the show.
Thanks so much, Michael.
All right.
All right, now I get to have this great privilege of going to the mailbag.
Our mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk.
Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.
Get a free year.
I know what you're thinking.
You're saying, Michael, it's Thursday.
Why?
Why, oh, why are we getting the mailbag today?
Well, we'll get some very special content coming out tomorrow.
Very, very interesting content, so stay tuned to the podcast feed and to the YouTube channel and to Daily Wire Plus, of course.
But also because I'm taking my wife and children to the beach.
That's right.
I haven't taken a real big family vacation in a long time.
Many, many years at this point.
And I'm going to take my wife and kids to the beach.
There's nothing you can do about it.
I'll be back on Monday.
No big deal.
But we've got very exciting content coming out tomorrow.
And in the meantime, I get your mailbag questions.
Take it away.
Hey, Michael.
Relationship question for you.
I've been married to my wife now for coming up on seven years.
I love her to death, and she's loved my life.
And when we started dating and then got married, I was a Protestant, but I was just not fully committed to my faith like I thought I was.
And then I recently entered the Catholic Church.
It was one of the most beautiful days of my life.
I'm so thankful for God's grace and mercy and bringing me home to His church.
But my wife doesn't go to Mass with me.
We were going to convalidate her marriage, but she kind of got pushed away by one of the deacons, by him seeing...
Her not at church with me and our son, he didn't want to even let me enter the church, let alone convalidate her marriage.
But now she seems like she just doesn't want to have anything to do with it, and I take my son to Mass every Sunday just by myself.
So how do you handle this?
Do you continue to lead by example and just continue to go, or do you push the issue a little more, risking pushing her farther away?
So we'd love to hear from you, Michael.
Thank you.
Okay, good question.
Glad to hear you've swum the Tiber.
That's great news.
Sorry you have a little marital difficulty here, but hopefully you both come out stronger for it.
People sometimes react against clerics, deacons, because they know that the clerics and the deacons are right.
Did you say at the top, is your wife Catholic?
Or is she not Catholic?
If she is Catholic, then she really needs to go to Mass.
It's not just...
You have a suggestion to go to Mass, but you have an obligation to go to Mass once a week on Sundays, and hopefully more than that.
And you have an obligation to go to confession and all the rest.
So if the deacon is saying, well, hey, if you're really serious about this, you've got to go to Mass.
And she says, well, how dare you?
How dare you tell me what I should do?
Well, that's how the religion works.
There are rules.
The religion is not about the rules, but there are rules that are guidelines to help you navigate a relationship of grace with God.
So if she's not Catholic, Then I wouldn't necessarily jump into the water right away and say, you know, we've got to have our marriage regularized in the Catholic Church.
I would lead her along.
What I would suggest is keep going, you know, with your kid.
That's good.
And just say, listen, honey, I think this is really important because God exists, you know, and we...
I think we owe God something.
So if you wouldn't mind coming with me, we don't need to go regularize the marriage yet.
I'm not going to force you into the confessional box.
You don't have to.
You actually should not receive the Holy Eucharist if you're not in a state of grace because you'll be eating your own damnation.
You don't want to do that.
But I think it's really important that we go at least for one hour a week and just at least think about God.
And really what you're doing at the Mass is worshiping God.
You're not primarily there to learn something.
There can be plenty of great Protestant preaching, but a lot of Protestant services are about preaching.
They're didactic.
It's like a Bible study.
And there's a lot of room for Bible studies, but that's not what the Mass is about.
There can be a lot of emotional growth that goes on in Mass for you personally.
But the Mass is not a therapy session.
The Mass is not there, so it's not a rock concert.
It's not there to entertain you.
The purpose of the Mass is to go and worship God.
And we believe that our Lord is present, really and truly, body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Holy Sacrament.
You're there to worship God.
That's what it's about.
So if you can at least get your wife to say, to agree, yeah, we should at least kind of think about God for a little bit, you know, every week.
I think that's a good place to start.
And the nice thing about that, too, is I don't know if the deacon is a jerk or not.
I'm not saying the deacon's a jerk.
But if he is, or if the priest is a jerk, it could be.
You say, well, the good thing about the Catholic Mass is it doesn't matter if they're jerks.
It can be.
You don't need to take all their advice.
You're not there for them.
And you're not even there for you.
You're there for God.
And, you know, God made you and sustains you at every moment and has blessed you with all such wonderful things like our beautiful family.
And so, you know, an hour a week, it would mean a lot to me, honey, if you'd show up.
That's what I would suggest.
Next question.
Hey Michael!
My name is Abel and I'm a 21-year-old Catholic college student from Hungary.
I really love your show!
I have a question about the death penalty.
I know that conservatives generally in favor of it, but in the Bible, Jesus seems to condemn it, like in John 8-7, with the woman caught in adultery, or just in general, when we say, life is holy and only God has the power to take it.
In my gut, I feel like the death penalty is needed to bring justice in some situations, but what is the Christian justification to it?
Thank you for your thoughts.
Okay, well, so you're bringing up a moment from Scripture, and then I think you're adding a little bit of your own interpretation or revision of Scripture there.
I don't remember the verse in Scripture where our Lord says, Life is holy and no government has the right to execution or civil justice.
I mean, our Lord's sacrifice comes because of a legitimate power executing him according to the law.
That's actually the incident that brings us our salvation.
I remember in Genesis reading that whosoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed.
I remember...
I remember St. Paul writing to us in the New Testament that the civil authority is given to us for our good by God and does not bear the sword in vain.
So, no, I don't think the death penalty is contrary to Scripture at all.
It's certainly not contrary to the 2,000-year magisterial teaching of the Church.
And, in fact, many great doctors of the Church not only defended the death penalty, but even a man on his way to...
Canonization is a saint.
Blessed Pius IX carried it out himself.
So this is why it's very important to interpret Scripture not just one line out of context, but in the context of all of Holy Scripture, and furthermore, in the context of the magisterium of the Church, so it can help you to understand it.
All right, next question.
Hello, Michael.
In light of the election of the new Pope and the talk of if he'd be super woke or not, a hypothetical question came to mind.
If a pope did come along who extensively changed the church so much that it questioned the veracity to you, such as making women priests, accepting abortion and same-sex marriage, etc., is there another faith tradition you would consider whether Christian or not?
Would you try to find a way to justify the new pope?
Could another Christian denomination convince you to join?
Would another faith tradition be convincing to you?
Or would you simply revert to atheism or agnosticism?
Interested to hear your answer.
Thanks.
No, I will die a Catholic.
It won't happen, is the real issue.
A pope can't do that.
Some people think of the pope as some tyrannical dictator who can just demand whatever he pleases and then say whatever he wants is infallible.
That's just actually not what the papacy is.
But also, because the church has not only...
It's not that I'm evading your hypothetical, but I'd like to counter your hypothetical with a real fact.
Isn't it odd that up into modernity, the only faith tradition that hasn't gone squishy on these issues is the Catholic Church?
Isn't that so odd?
Contraception, in some cases abortion even.
Gay marriage, quote unquote, embraced all that stuff.
Women, priests, priestesses.
Mainline Protestants went for that.
All the various versions of Judaism kind of disagree on these issues, but they're much more open to this stuff.
The non-theistic religions of the East are a little wishy-washy in these things.
Even the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is pretty solid in so many ways.
Even the Eastern Orthodox in the 20th century began to tolerate contraception.
Isn't it odd that only the Catholic Church, for all her problems, for all of the difficulties that have gone along with the history of the Church, only the Catholic Church has held firm, even when we've had relatively more liberal popes.
To me, it's a sign that things are pretty solid.
If the Church were to change her views on these very important questions...
I guess I would have to ask or say, like Peter says to our Lord, Lord, to whom shall we go?
You do not go away, Lord, to whom should we go?
Last question.
Mr. Knowles, Ryan from Florida, I've got a fun question for you.
If I could grant you the ability to travel through time and witness one historical event where you're a silent observer and you play no influence in the event, what would you pick to see?
I think we all know your immediate answer, so I'm going to have to add the caveat of you cannot go back and witness Christ walking earth or his resurrection.
So besides that, what would you pick to witness personally?
Thank you, buddy.
Huh.
Oh man, there's so many things.
I mean, well, obviously I'd like to go back to when I arm-wrestled Jacob and see all the ways he was cheating so that I don't need to live with that indignity and shame.
Further back than that, probably...
The apparition of Our Lady in Guadalupe.
The miraculous Tilma with this image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that converted a million people basically on the spot.
Millions of people over history.
Kept the Americas solid for the faith.
That would be up on the list.
I'll have to give it more thought, but that would be up there.
