President Trump’s big, beautiful bill is attacked for opposite reasons; the U.S. State Department has the greatest blog in history, and Harry Potter gets diverse.
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President Trump's big, beautiful bill is being attacked simultaneously for cutting too much government spending and too little government spending.
King Charles gives an Indian land acknowledgement in Canada with monarchs like this who needs Democrats.
And the U.S. State Department is discovered to have the greatest substack in the history of blogging.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
Harry Potter is going diverse.
There's a new Harry Potter TV show that has cast at least one black actor, maybe multiple black actors in roles that are truly...
I have much more to say.
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Join me, go to oldglorybank.com slash Knowles, It's kind of funny that this is the signature legislative achievement or soon-to-be achievement of the Trump administration, and we've barely talked about it on the show.
But that's because we're busy talking about all sorts of other stuff, culture and philosophy and religion and all the principles that are undergirding this administration.
So the actual bill itself, I sort of feel like we don't need to cover that much.
However, it's made its way through the House by one vote.
Now it's got to get through the Senate.
Then they have to reconcile the two bills.
Then they need to sell it to the public.
But I think the public is going to be on board.
And here's my evidence.
People on opposite sides of the bill.
Or criticizing it.
Obviously the libs, they'll whine about anything that Trump touches, but Elon Musk, the first buddy in the White House, Elon Musk, who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump campaign and campaigned with him, Elon Musk, who led the doge efforts to trim the fat out of government, he doesn't like the bill.
So, you know, I was like disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly.
I actually thought that when this big, beautiful bill came along.
I mean, like, everything he's done on Doge gets wiped out in the first year.
I think a boat can be big or it can be beautiful.
But I don't know if it could be both.
That's a good line, and it makes clear where Elon's criticism is coming from, namely that he's pretty libertarian.
So he says, well, the bill can be big or beautiful, but it can't be both.
Now, a conservative, traditional conservative, doesn't necessarily mind a big bill, doesn't necessarily mind government doing all sorts of stuff, as long as the government is operating within its proper limits and toward justice and the common good.
A libertarian says, no, no, the best kind of government is the smallest kind of government.
I want the government to be able to fit inside my pocket.
And that's Elon's criticism.
He's saying, oh, I've done all this great work on Doge, cutting out a bunch of fat, stupid spending from the government, but now Trump is going to go spend a bunch more money, in part because he's got to wrangle congressmen and senators to extend his tax cuts, which I'm sure Elon does like, and to extend the spending priorities of the Trump administration.
Not only from the first term, but also the new ones for the second term.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle...
Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, serves on the Appropriations Committee, and he joins me now.
Sarah, I do feel that there's a basic understanding in the public that the Republicans are cutting taxes for rich people, they're going to kick people off health care, and the approach in the House is basically saying no or not.
What do you think?
How does this fight take shape in the Senate?
Well, I mean, what they're doing is wildly unpopular.
I mean, it's the most massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich in the history of the country.
And I don't think anybody's fooled because they're also watching Donald Trump use sort of every vehicle and instrument available to him to enrich himself and his friends, often through, you know, just old-fashioned graft and corruption.
So it's a pretty consistent story throughout this White House that whatever leverage they can press to try to make themselves richer, they're going to do that.
And in this case, they are throwing probably around 15 million people off of Medicaid.
I mean, that's the sort of population equivalent of about 12 states.
And they're going to use those savings in order to pass along a tax break to a bunch of really rich people who don't want.
When you have people who are ostensibly on the right, at least the libertarian right, and people on the left criticizing a bill for opposite reasons.
The bill's probably fine.
It's probably pretty good.
It'll probably be relatively popular.
This is Chesterton's argument about the Catholic Church.
He said that the church was so interesting to him because it's criticized for opposite reasons, for being too luxurious and for being too ascetic, for being too feminine and for being too misogynistic.
And he said anything that is attacked for opposite reasons so persistently, it's not that it's necessarily good, but it's definitely a great thing.
It's definitely noteworthy.
It's definitely something special.
So I think the big takeaway here also is that Trump is not a libertarian.
The libertarians would say the purpose of Doge is to cut government spending.
A conservative would say the purpose of Doge is to cut all the bad.
Corrupt, stupid spending so that we can redirect government resources toward good things because power is going to be conserved.
Power is going to be used, and it's either going to be used by us or it's going to be used by our opponents.
Chris Murphy there, he says, well, I think we all understand that the Trump big beautiful bill is going to kick people off healthcare.
First of all, I don't think we all understand that.
What are you talking about?
Oh, he's speaking specifically about Medicaid.
Okay, well, who are those people who are supposedly being kicked off Medicaid?
Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, just reveals 1.4 million illegal aliens are on Medicaid.
Medicaid is for American citizens only.
And only for a specific subset of American citizens.
Right there.
Chris Murphy whining that 1.4 million illegal aliens could be kicked off of Medicaid.
Is Chris Murphy whining that the law is going to be enforced?
That the basic aspects of the law are going to be enforced?
Then who are the other ones?
Millions and millions of people could lose Medicaid.
Well, who are they?
It's people who are abusing the system.
It's people who do not meet the criteria that should qualify them for Medicaid.
Trump is not a libertarian slash the entitlements kind of guy.
He has been very consistent throughout his decade now at the top of American politics.
He does not want to do as Paul Ryan wanted to do, as many of the reform conservatives and the libertarians and all these, the Tea Party wanted to do, and cut entitlements.
He has said, I ain't touching Social Security, I ain't touching Medicare.
Even on Medicaid, I guess he's got to tweak it a little bit only so that the law is enforced.
That line of attack from Democrats.
Not going to work.
What spending is being cut?
Well, here's a good example.
Planned Parenthood is closing eight abortion mills.
Eight.
Across just two states, Iowa and Minnesota.
Why?
Because of the Big Beautiful Bill.
Planned Parenthood is now citing in public a threat to its funding as the reason for the closings.
Now, it's not just the Big Beautiful Bill.
It's also because back in April, the Trump administration froze Title X funding to Planned Parenthood.
Stripping Planned Parenthood potentially of $20 million.
According to NBC News, that was almost $3 million from Minnesota locations.
And you'd say, well, okay, no big deal, right?
Because Planned Parenthood says they don't take federal money to pay for abortions.
Except that we all know that money is fungible.
So you say, okay, well, you're giving us $3 million to pay our light bills and our heating bills.
Okay, and then, well, we're going to take the money that we would have used to pay for the light and heating bills, we're going to use it to kill babies.
So, okay, put your money where your mouth is.
If the money's really not going to go toward abortions, then you're going to keep carrying out the same number of abortions, right?
No.
You're going to shutter eight abortion mills.
Because President Trump, who was elected with the popular vote, just representing the will of the people, said, we're not going to give you taxpayer dollars to murder babies anymore.
And all those abortion mills are closing, which reminds us that It reminds us that we need to engage in politics.
And I think there's a big takeaway here.
Because there are all sorts of hardcore culture warriors.
Guys who will talk real tough on abortion and transgenderism.
Who knows?
Maybe even so-called gay marriage.
They'll talk tough on the cultural issues.
But they won't support the politicians who are going to get the job done.
There were all sorts of really tough pro-life politicians.
Who said they were never Trump.
Really tough, anti-trans advocates who said, no, no, I can't vote for Trump.
And yet Trump's the guy who gets it done.
To me, the culture warriors who will not engage in the messy reality of government, I think this kind of thing shows you they're basically useless.
They can talk a good game, but they're not good.
And you are not actively working the levers of politics, not just at the presidential level, but dealing with senators and congressmen and working in the actual game of politics to get stuff done, which requires you to get your hands a little messy.
And it requires you to not always look pristine and perfect, and it requires you to compromise, and it requires you to deal in reality.
If you're not doing that, you're useless.
Electing Trump just shut down eight abortion mills in Minnesota and Iowa, with probably more to come.
That's good for me.
And it got Roe v.
Wade overruled, by the way.
And it's getting a lot of other stuff done.
Talk a good game, that's fine.
Then get your hands a little bit dirty.
My, my, my.
There is one beautiful aspect of this administration that...
And it comes from the State Department of all places.
It's supposed to be one of the most liberal parts of the government.
Hold up one second.
We'll get right back to the important stuff I'm saying first, though.
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We want to talk about culture warriors in government.
The State Department has a sub stack.
Substack, you know, the blogging platform.
The State Department has one.
And you say, well, that sounds really boring.
Why don't I read any Substacks?
Why don't I read State Departments?
It's the best one.
The State Department has the best Substack.
They just posted a missional statement of the United States as to interact with the rest of the world, specifically Europe.
I'm going to read you just a little bit of this.
You should go read the whole thing.
This is beautiful.
It gives me a lot of hope, even more hope in the Trump administration, but they just get it.
This is from Samuel Sampson, Senior Advisor for the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the State Department.
Listen to this.
Oh, boy.
Just savor this.
The close relationship between the United States and Europe transcends geographic proximity and transactional politics.
It represents a unique bond forged in common culture, faith, familial ties, mutual assistance in times of strife, And above all, a shared Western civilizational heritage.
Yes.
Yes.
Straight into my veins, that's right.
Our relationship with Europe is not just, you know, a neutral relationship as we have with every other nation of the world.
We are closer to Europe than we are to Timbuktu.
Geographically, that's true.
In the way that we've helped each other in the past, that's true, but it's beyond transactional politics.
We have a common culture, in some cases a common language.
We have a common faith.
We are Christendom.
We have common familial ties, and it's not wrong to say so.
It's actually good to acknowledge that we have bonds of kinship.
These people are our cousins.
And a shared Western civilizational heritage.
Love it.
The State Department goes on.
Our transatlantic partnership is underpinned by a rich Western tradition of natural law.
Let's go!
Natural law, virtue ethics, uh-huh, and national sovereignty.
Oh, I don't know if I can continue reading this.
I am getting a little too excited, I think.
Yes, our partnership is not just underpinned because Churchill and FDR got along.
It doesn't just exist because You know, we trade with each other or something.
Or because of the UN or the IMF.
No.
It's a Western tradition.
And it's not just the tradition of John Locke and Rousseau and the Enlightenment and John Rawls and modern liberalism.
No!
Natural law.
Then on the ethics front, it's not just utilitarian ethics and even deontological ethics and all this modern nonsense.
Virtue ethics.
That's right.
Aristotle to Alistair MacIntyre, the late great philosopher Alistair MacIntyre, who just recently died.
May he rest in peace.
That's right, baby.
And, third part, national sovereignty.
The N-word.
Not that one.
And not nuclear.
Nation.
The N-word.
This tradition flows from Athens and Rome through medieval Christianity.
Yes, that's right.
The Libs love to deride the Middle Ages.
They don't know it.
Damn thing about the Middle Ages.
But they love to deride it.
They don't know any, not one lick about it.
They love the Renaissance, the rebirth, a polemical term in itself.
And yet the glories, the real height of our civilization actually came during the high Middle Ages.
Athens and Rome, to medieval Christianity, to English common law, and ultimately into America's founding documents.
Yes, the American Revolution was not a break.
It need not be a break with our Western tradition.
It can, in fact, be a part of that tradition.
If we understand it through what Pope Benedict XVI would call a hermeneutic of continuity, not a rupture, but continuity.
This goes on.
Their declaration's revolutionary assertion that men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights echoes the thought of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and other, I love this phrase, European heavyweights who recognize that all men possess natural rights that no government can arbitrate or deny.
Yes.
Some would argue.
Perhaps even some in the founding era would try to argue that the Declaration of Independence should be understood as a break with the Middle Ages, with scholasticism, with classical antiquity.
No, as I've argued many times on this show, our plan of government, certainly our constitution, is in many ways an iteration of what St. Thomas Aquinas calls for as the highest form of government in the summa and one hopes that the American civic tradition exists.
Anyway, it goes on.
America remains indebted to Europe for this intellectual and cultural legacy.
Then there's a lot more.
I'll just give you the last few lines here.
This connection between Europe and the United States is also the reason we speak honestly when we disagree and have concerns.
When Vice President Vance addressed this year's Munich Security Conference, he made the reason clear, saying, what I worry about is a threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.
Yes, that's why J.D. Vance's speech was so good in Munich.
Finally, the United States remains committed to a strong partnership with Europe and working together on shared foreign policy goals.
However, this partnership must be founded upon our shared heritage.
Yes.
Our relationship is too important, our history too valuable, and the international stakes too high to allow this partnership to be undermined.
Therefore, on both sides of the Atlantic, we must preserve the goods of our common culture.
Not some abstract BS from the Enlightenment, not some ideology that can connect everyone.
No.
The goods of our common culture.
The goods, even to talk about goods is so unusual, given the shallow politics of our last half century.
Ensuring that Western civilization remains a source of virtue.
Virtue, even the V word coming back into parlance.
Beautiful.
It's a masterpiece of a blog post.
Very inspiring.
Wonderful to see this coming out of any government department, especially the Department of State.
Historically understood to be one of the most liberal departments.
This is great.
And right before the 250th anniversary of America's founding, it reminds me, as we look ahead to America 250 next year, our understanding is going to change.
There was actually a very good piece in the American Conservative the other day, which is a paleo-conservative magazine founded by Pat Buchanan.
I think it was by Dr. Maitra.
I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name correctly.
He was very good on historical revision.
He said, you know, revision is a part of history.
You are constantly revising history, uncovering new evidence, rethinking things.
That's part of it.
I'll clean up his language a little bit.
You don't want to do revision in a stupid way, which often happens with revisionists.
You don't want to do it in a stupid way that's disconnected from evidence or is based primarily on some kind of revisionist.
But you want to rethink things, sure.
As we enter America 250, we are going to rethink our country.
That is just part of the historical process.
That's part of national development.
That happens.
The question is, will we have a deeper understanding of America or a shallower understanding?
Will we go further in the liberal progressive direction of America being a rupture with the past and a rupture that is so radical that ultimately it turns on itself?
That's what you see with the liberals.
America's not only a break with the old world, but America's going to have to break with herself and we're going to have to topple statues of Washington.
That's the radicalism of the left.
Or we're going to say, no, no, no.
The great men who built our country need not be understood to have been breaking with the old world.
But America might be understood within the broader Western project.
Because if we untether ourselves from our foundations, if we no longer have that ballast of the roots, historical, cultural, philosophical, and religious of our civilization, we're going to fly off into outer space.
We will be destroyed.
Now, speaking of the English relationship, speaking of the old world, King Charles is doing land acknowledgements in Canada.
I have a lot to say.
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King Charles just shows up to Canada.
He is the king of Canada, after all.
He's in America's evil top hat, and he opens up his remarks with a land acknowledgement.
I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the unceded territory of the Algonquin and the Shinabeg people.
This land acknowledgement is a recognition of shared history as a nation.
While continuing to deepen my own understanding, it is my great hope that in each of your communities, and collectively as a country, A path is found toward truth and reconciliation in both word and deed.
Fact check.
I'm pretty sure the land was ceded.
This is the unceded territory.
The Algonquin Indians.
I think they ceded it.
Because they're not there anymore.
And you're there.
So it got ceded.
They might not have willingly ceded it, but they ceded it.
It's over.
This is pathetic.
Why is the King of England speaking like a blue-haired, trans, pans, lesbian at Oberlin College?
Why?
I think I know why.
You know I'm not a Charles hater.
I actually quite like King Charles.
I have a healthy respect for the English crown, even though there's a little bit of problem that happened around, you know, We're not going to get into that right now, okay?
I have a great deal of respect for the English crown and for King Charles, who is in many ways a traditionalist.
Not of the Edmund Burke variety, maybe that too, but also of the René Guénon and the kind of philosophical traditionalism, granulism.
So, anyway, our views don't totally overlap, but I have a great healthy respect for the guy.
I think he's doing this not because he's become some blue-haired left-wing radical.
I think he's doing this because he thinks this is his best shot to hold on to power and prominence, that the last century at least has been an uninterrupted rehearsal of the English crown losing its privileges, losing its stature, and just trying to hold on to something as the other monarchies were essentially all destroyed in Europe 100 years ago.
I think that's the calculation he's making.
Well, I have to change and adapt or they'll throw me out and chop my head off.
They have chopped the heads off of some of his predecessors.
I think this is just a bad calculation.
I see how he got there.
I get it.
I think it's a bad calculation.
We want monarchs.
At least somewhere in the world.
Maybe we don't want a monarch in America, but we want monarchs to exist.
Americans get a kick out of the King of England, at least.
We want the monarchs to be monarchs.
With monarchs like this, who needs Democrats?
Lowercase d.
If you're going to have a monarch, have him be a monarch.
That's how I feel about church.
If you're going to go to church, have it be church.
Have there be smells and bells, investments, and serious worship.
I don't need to go to church to go to a rock concert.
I can go to a rock concert any day of the week.
I don't need to go to church to have some guy in a tight t-shirt with a microphone on his ear speak to me in a quotidian way.
I can listen to TED talks, okay?
I don't need that at church.
I go to church to go to church.
I go to church to worship God.
If you're going to have a monarchy, have your monarch act like a monarch.
He doesn't need to get down and make ridiculous apologies toward often cannibal natives who were vanquished many centuries ago.
We don't need to do that.
He thinks it's going to help him hold on.
I'm skeptical.
Hate to tell the king how to do his job, but I think the way the monarchy holds on is by being a monarchy, by embodying the best aspects of monarchy, not trying to play act Democrat.
Now, speaking of...
Harry Potter is going diverse.
Harry Potter has cast at least one black actor to play Snape and maybe multiple black actors.
It's unclear.
They cast little kids to play Harry and Ron and Hermione.
And it's a little unclear.
Some people are saying that the girl they cast to play Hermione is black or something.
I don't know.
It's kind of hard to tell from the pictures.
And I just generally don't.
I think it's kind of weird to be guessing the ethnic background of 12-year-olds or 11-year-olds.
Forget about that for a second.
Let's just focus on Snape.
Snape is being played by an actor, Papa Esiedu, which is pretty clearly not English.
You know, it ain't Thomas or Henry.
And of course, as I mentioned at the top of the show, if the, the, TV network really wanted the cast of Harry Potter to reflect the population of England, all the actors would be Pakistani or at least Arab.
But I don't know that they'd be black.
And I don't.
Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, Liberal Prime Minister of the UK, had an interview and a debate with Constantine Kislin.
In which he argued, essentially, that there is no such thing as the English people.
That Rishi Sunak, who is Indian and Hindu, is English.
That he's just as English as, you know, Henry VIII.
And that's obviously not true.
Constantine's point, I thought, was quite moderate and well said, which is, well, he could be British.
There's a British empire.
Plenty of people can be British.
But he's not English.
The English are people who descend from the angles and other people who have come along the way.
The question that even something as apparently trivial as Harry Potter raises is, can we accept that there is such a thing as the English people?
Or no?
Or no?
When I was writing Speechless, I was reading a book about Political correctness.
And in it, this book was written probably 20, 30 years ago.
And they said, you know, look, certain countries are ethnic countries.
And certain countries are multi-ethnic, multicultural, liberal democracies.
Like America and England.
I thought, hold on.
Maybe America in the late 20th century could make that argument.
But England?
No English anymore?
is there's so much racial identitarianism for every other race other than white people.
The question is...
Or can we recognize that there are white races?
Just as there are ethnic countries with every other race, there are ethnic countries with at least vaguely white people.
You know, I know the Italians are a liminal case, but can we accept that or no?
I suspect we're heading more into that because I don't think you can have a situation where every race has greater than 50% racial ID, racial consciousness, and have white people be the only group that don't.
I just don't.
Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, I just don't think that's sustainable.
Now, speaking of the Commonwealth, before we get into the mailbag, the South African president, who's been under fire because he was in the Oval Office, President Trump played those clips of South African politicians.
And crowds calling to murder white farmers, the boas, the farmers, the white people.
And then the Trump administration says they're going to take in a very small number of refugees who are being targeted for rape and murder.
And that's the one group of refugees that the left apparently doesn't like.
They want to send them back.
So the South African president has just revealed himself to be a little bit of a liar.
Little bit dishonest because in the Oval Office, the Kill the farmer!
Shoot to kill!
And the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, looked bewildered.
Kind of smiled a little, chuckled a little, didn't, what?
I don't, what's that?
For us, and when it comes to the issues of arresting anyone for any slogan, that is a sovereign issue.
It's not a matter where we need to be instructed by anyone that go and arrest this one.
A very proud sovereign country that has its own laws, that has its own processes, and we take into account what the Constitutional Court also decided when it said that, you know, that slogan, kill the boar, kill the farmer, is a liberation chant and slogan.
And it's not meant to be a message that elicits or calls upon anyone to go and be killed.
And that is what our court decided.
So they will probably want to arrest people willy-nilly.
We follow the dictates of our constitution because we are a constitutional state.
We follow the constitution.
How about you follow the English language?
Where did you get that silly idea?
Now you want to arrest people willy-nilly.
That is so crazy.
Where did you get the idea?
The courts have said that when we chant by the thousands, kill the boy, shoot to kill, chop his freaking head off.
They don't quite say that, but they are a little...
How silly.
What a silly misunderstanding.
Okay.
Alright, that's fine.
I get it.
You know, there's a little bit of a tense history and fraught political situation in South Africa.
Whatever.
What I care more about is the political situation in America, which is that
They're going to have to defend that because the justification for taking the refugees is that Top South African politicians are chanting, kill the bower, kill the farmer, shoot to kill.
Effectively kill all the white people.
The libs who are opposing that, and Trump's putting that on a big international stage, Oval Office meeting, playing the videos.
He wants this to be a topic of conversation.
The libs who oppose that policy are now on the side of people chanting, shoot the white people.
Good luck in the midterms.
Good luck, Dems.
Have a good time.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Isaac Cubes, who said, not to be confused with Ice Cube, but Isaac Cubes.
Who says, isn't it great to see two people with illegitimate supposed PhDs in the same room?
Okay, I don't have an illegitimate PhD.
I have a very legitimate doctorate of humane letters honoris causa.
DLITHC or I think DHL, which means I'm sort of like a shipping company.
Professor Jacob, we've never said that he has a doctorate.
He's a professor.
Finally, finally, we get to my favorite time of the week, the mailbag, which is sponsored by Pure Talk.
Switch to Pure Talk at puretalk.com slash Knowles Canada W-L-E-S.
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Hi, Michael.
My question is in regard to your recent take on that pro-Palestine activist who murdered two people in D.C. And your response was that, you know, we don't want to be on the side of violence.
We don't want to be on the side of...
We just want to avoid, sidestep, all of that.
And you've diplomatically placed yourself in a neutral zone in this conflict, and I would say that I and many of my peers find ourselves in a similar spot.
What would you say to someone who argues that we could say something similar about siding with Israel, that Israel has performed a bunch of atrocities?
Against the Gazans and we don't want to be on the side of people murdering women and children.
It just kind of seems like the snowball of violence just goes so far back that it's impossible to pick a side, at least for me.
But I guess I'm just curious, for those people who are intent on picking a side and they're intent on finding a good and a bad, or at least an overall good against an overall evil, what would you say to those people?
Well, a couple little corrections here.
I am not opposed to violence.
I support justified violence.
So I'm not afraid of being on the side of violence.
The United States commits a lot of violence.
But I like justified violence.
Violence in self-defense would be justified.
Violence by a legitimate civil authority against convicted criminals.
That would be legitimate violence.
So it's not that I'm against violence.
That helps to work you out of the apparent conundrum.
I don't think it's much of a conundrum that you say there at the end, which is, well, Israel commits a lot of violence.
Yeah, yeah, it's not.
Not all violence is made equal.
Now, you say I'm neutral on the Israel-Gaza conflict.
That's not exactly true.
I am, I guess, broadly supportive of Israel, but in a way that is different from most of the pro-Israel people.
I don't believe the religious premises of Zionism.
I don't believe the historical premises of Zionism.
I'm Christian, so I don't really buy that.
However, broadly speaking, my rule of thumb is an even more modest version of what you've articulated, which is More or less, whichever side Greta Thunberg's on, I'm on the opposite side.
I'm not saying that's 100% effective, but it's 99% effective.
Whatever side most of the Democrats are on, and Greta Thunberg, and the shrieking Columbia graduate students, and the people who engage in unjust violence and terrorism, which is targeting civilians to affect political ends, I'm on the opposite side.
But that doesn't mean that my interests are exactly aligned with Israel's.
The state of Israel would have it in its rational self-interest to probably glass Gaza, or at least remove the entire population of Gaza, put them somewhere else, and have regime change in Iran.
I'm not sure that that's exactly in the American interest.
So my interest as an American is to wrap that war up quickly.
And you're seeing that play out right now in the reported tensions between Trump and Netanyahu.
It's not that Trump is anti-Israel.
They have a town named after him in Israel.
But his interests are a little different from Netanyahu's interests, and they're trying to come to a practical, prudential solution.
That's the side that I'm on.
It's not exactly neutrality.
It's prudence.
It's prudence, which is the paramount political virtue.
Next one.
Hi, Michael.
This question is in regard to the Afghanis coming to the United States, the fact that they're white, all this pushback.
I'm with you.
Everything that you were saying, I'm nodding along.
Yes, I totally get it.
That makes sense.
But now I'm kind of confused about the counter-argument that it does seem kind of random that we're accepting them into this country, when I'm sure there are other countries that have refugees.
The one that my friends bring up most often is the Gazans, and why aren't we accepting innocent citizen Gazan refugees?
And to that, I've kind of just been saying, okay, well, that's a war zone.
It's a little bit different.
This is not a war zone.
This is, like, people fleeing from their government.
It's kind of a different thing.
I guess I'd just appreciate it if you could flesh out your thoughts a little bit more on this and, like, what you would say to our liberal friends because it does seem kind of odd to me that we haven't accepted other refugees or maybe it just hasn't been as much of a news story and I'm unaware.
Yeah, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you.
Sure.
The reason is that we have more in common with them.
There are vastly fewer of them, and they're more easily assimilable.
That's why.
We have more in common with them.
We speak the same language.
Even though they said, I guess it'll basically understand them.
And they're Christian, and they descend at least in part from the British, as we descend from the British.
And we just have more in common with them.
Which means they'll be more easily assimilable.
And also, there are many fewer of them.
There's something like 59 South African refugees who are trying to come here right now.
At most, there would be 70,000, I think.
There are two million people in Gaza.
The South African Boers are Christian, broadly.
The Gazans are almost entirely Muslim.
How many Christians are left in Gaza?
Sometimes the pro-Palestine propaganda tries to promote this.
I think there are like 600 to 1,000 of them.
So if it were Gazan Christians, I would be much more inclined to say, yeah, bring them over here.
But we have much less in common with the Gazans, and there are over 2 million of them.
We're going to take 2 million Gazans in?
I don't think so.
We're going to take 2 million people who don't share our religion, don't share our language, who, broadly speaking, are not so friendly toward the United States, sometimes dance in the streets when our tower is toppled.
That's not going to work.
That's just not going to work.
And there's nothing wrong with observing that.
There's nothing wrong with giving greater care and greater concern to people who share your beliefs, share your history, share your language, share your religion.
There's nothing wrong with that.
We want to have charity for everyone around the world, but we need prudence, too.
Prudence is the theme of this mailbag.
Next mailbag question.
Hey Michael, this is Jeff, and I'm getting married tomorrow.
I used to be an atheist, but I'm not so sure about that anymore.
She doesn't practice any religion either, and really neither do either of our families.
And between listening to you and Jordan Peterson, I've started to open up to religion some more, and I'm not really sure how to reconcile everything.
I was also hoping to get some tips.
But follow as a newlywed couple.
Thank you for helping your insight.
Beautiful.
Wonderful.
Congratulations on the wedding.
You're in the position of a lot of people, especially millennial and Zoomers, who were not really raised with religion.
Then they realize the old gods of the copybook headings keep coming back.
They start to really take seriously eternal questions, and they realize, oh, turns out that all the great That, you know, it's true.
God exists.
And we should do something about it.
So, you say, well, I don't know what to do with that.
Okay, here's what I would do.
Go to church.
You know, my view is I'm a mackerel-snapping papist.
Went 10 years in the wilderness as an atheist.
Came back in.
explore different flavors of Christianity.
So I would recommend you...
I'd encourage all of that.
But if you're not, I don't know, if you're not totally sure, you're not totally ready, you just kind of want to dip your toe in, just do it.
Just do it.
Just go to church.
Just pick up that Bible.
Just watch a lecture from, I don't know, the Thomistic Institute or the Augustine Institute You know, just kind of do it.
Don't worry that you don't know everything.
Don't worry that you have questions.
I think it was St. John Henry Newman, probably the greatest theologian ever to write in English, who said 10,000 questions don't make one doubt.
Just do it.
Okay, last question.
Hey Michael, as another year of my life has gone by, I couldn't help but think about life itself.
My question to you is, what is your philosophy on how one should live and how long one should live?
Obviously, we should not be in a hurry to die, but at the same time, we should not be afraid to die.
Our purpose on the earth is to repopulate and carry on our bloodline, which I want to do more than anything, but is impossible.
But with life itself, are we to live every day like it was our last?
Do we have to earn our keep in heaven?
Or are we to enjoy life on earth that the Lord gave us before it becomes a thing of the past?
I know this is a rather deep question, but I really appreciate your insight.
Okay, well, good question.
My philosophy of life is this.
Credo in unum deum, patrem omnipotentem, factorem celiatere, to translate.
For those of you, probably actually many of you have much better Latin than I do.
My Latin's a little bit weak.
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered in a bunch of blood, who was crucified, died, and was buried.
He rose again on the third day.
Some of you know the rest.
I believe, my philosophy of life is the Catholic faith.
And that's going to be unsatisfying.
Ultimately, it will be very satisfying.
But to some people, they're going to say, no, I want something original.
What's your own zesty little spin on the philosophy of life?
Come on, I want a self-help guru.
Come on, I want a guy to give me something new.
No.
Ain't nothing new under the sun, kid.
And if you find something new, some new philosophy of life is wrong.
That's what it is.
Because we know the scope of history.
We know how it starts.
We know the pivot of history, which is the incarnation.
We even know how it's going to end, and yet here we are in this suspended time of history doing our best to cooperate with God's grace.
So, no.
I'm not looking for anything new.
I'm looking for things that are old, that are paradoxically ever-ancient and ever-new.
That's my philosophy of life.
You say that the purpose of life is to pass on your genes.
No, that's what a materialist might say.
That's what a, I don't know, someone for whom Darwinian evolution is the highest truth.
That's not what I would say.
That's part of life, often, but I don't think a priest has failed in his life quite the opposite.
I don't think someone who has Who is single or who is infertile, has failed to fulfill his or her purpose.
Far from it.
The purpose of life, ultimately, is to know God, serve him in this world, and enjoy him forever.
And that even is knowable by reason, because we know that there's more to life than mere matter.
So to reduce the ultimate things to matter is incoherent.
It's irrational.
That's what I recommend.
The Carpe Diem religion.
You say, should we just seize the day?
Chesterton also wrote about the Carpe Diem religion.
He said, it's not the religion of happy people.
It's the religion of very unhappy people who are grasping, who are desperate, who just want to feel anything.
One little titillation.
Please give me some joy.
But it's not going to give them ultimate satisfaction.
