Ep. 1769 - BREAKING: FBI Admits Epstein Had Over 1,000 Victims
Joe Biden's doctor pleads the Fifth before Congress, England and Wales kill 30% of their kids, and "Superman" calls most Americans un-American.
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Ep.1769
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I know we're all supposed to move on from the Epstein saga.
The government is not going to pursue it under Democrats, under Republicans, under anyone.
There's no surprise there.
I never expected the government to give us the full story, but there's one last little detail that has just trickled out to remind us, if anyone ever had any doubt, that the official story that we've been hearing for years and years now is preposterous.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
Horrible story out of England and Wales.
30% of pregnancies in England and Wales end in abortion.
We'll get to what that means because we all say that the political problems are so complex and they're so difficult and they're so, I actually don't think they are.
I have one weird trick to save our whole civilization.
I have much more to say first, though.
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We got to move on from Epstein.
It's over.
We're never going to.
It's totally fine.
Epstein had no clients.
E-Lane Maxwell is in prison for trafficking underage girls to no one.
He was definitely not blackmailing anyone.
He had cameras on every square inch of his widespread properties, but he was not blackmailing anyone.
There were hours and hours of tapes of no one.
We got to move on.
Okay, one last little cherry on top of the evidence Sunday here.
This is great email from Ken Klippenstein, I think it is, journalist here, who writes to the FBI to get comment on a new report.
This is a report that comes from the DOJ.
Previously, we were told that Epstein had about a dozen underage victims.
There were about a dozen victims of his sex trafficking ring.
Now we are told there were a thousand victims.
Pretty big delta, wouldn't you say?
A dozen?
Okay.
You might just be a weird pervert with a dozen.
A thousand victims?
So this journalist, Ken Cleppins, who writes to the FBI, says, hey, do you have any comment on this?
And the FBI responds, thank you for reaching out.
The FBI declines to comment.
So that's it.
That's it.
We're not going to hear much more.
A thousand victims.
This again, the official story that we're told for years now, not just under this administration, but for years, is Jeffrey Epstein was just a rich pervert.
And yes, he was friends with the richest and most powerful people in the world who would come to his private island, but that had nothing to do with his weird, perverse sexual activities.
Totally separate, just a coincidence.
Nothing to see here.
Move along, move along.
You could almost maintain that with a dozen victims.
Oh, it's a dozen victims.
Maybe it's just a weird.
I'm sure there are plenty of weirdos who pick up a dozen victims for various prostitution activities.
A thousand?
Genghis Khan didn't have that kind of appetite.
A thousand?
Seems, it seems at this point almost as if the government is kind of admitting to us, yeah, there's a lot more here and we're not going to tell you about it.
And as I meant, I mean, a lot of people are saying that right now.
Seems like it's obviously an intelligence operation, might have foreign involvement, might have domestic involvement, but like the one thing I'm pretty confident it's not is what the government is saying it is.
And a lot of people are saying that.
I'm one of the few people, though, who's saying, yeah, right.
I never expected to get the full story.
It's right.
Either the official story is true, or if the story is what you think it is, then you are never going to get the information.
And states engage in espionage and the governments are not totally transparent and they cannot be totally transparent and they should not be totally transparent.
And this takes me back to a line.
It's going to irritate a lot of people, but it takes me back to a line from Edmund Burke.
Edmund Burke, who points out, you elect your representatives, not just so that they can be a rubber stamp on your will and your passions, but you elect representatives for their judgment.
And so in this case, you might hate.
You might, hey, I get it.
You might hate that you are not getting the full story on Jeffrey Epstein.
You might think the government should give you the full story on Jeffrey Epstein.
This might make you pull your hair out.
But Biden, Trump, all the guys, when did the story really, I guess Obama was already out by the time the story really came up, though it had been percolating for many, many years.
But both parties, Democrat, Republican, Biden, Trump, establishment, anti-establishment, have come in and said, we're not going to release information about this.
That's their judgment.
You might not like it, but that's the judgment you elected.
But I think most of us know that's what's going on here.
It's a judgment call.
They're not going to release it.
The FBI put it very, very well.
Thank you for reaching out.
The FBI declines to comment.
That's really what's going on here.
At this point, it's so brazen.
I think the government, Really, the way you should interpret this is the government saying, hey, yeah, you know, you know, and we know that you know, and you know that we know that you know, and but just for the sake of the world order, we're just going to move on.
Unsatisfying, but there it is.
Now, speaking of cover-ups, Joe Biden's doctor, Kevin O'Connor, was just brought in to testify before Congress.
And people want a testimony on whether or not Joe Biden was the president.
Was he senile?
Did he now has this very aggressive advanced cancer, it seems?
Hold on.
You, Doc, said that his mind was working perfectly and his body was totally fine.
And then all of a sudden he leaves office five seconds later.
He has super advanced cancer and he's drooling and he can't speak.
Hold on.
What was really going on?
Did you lie?
And this is astounding.
I think this is unprecedented.
Joe Biden's doctor pled the fifth.
He just pled the fifth against self-incrimination.
He refused to answer questions.
According to James Comer, running the testimony, Biden's physician was asked two questions.
Were you ever told to lie about the president's health?
One.
Two, did you ever believe President Biden was unfit to execute his duties?
And the physician, rather than saying, no, I was not told to lie, no, I never believed Biden was unfit for, he said, I plead the fifth.
I exercise my Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Comer points out this is unprecedented and adds more fuel to the fire that there was a cover-up.
Just a reminder, in case you'd forgotten, the White House physician, who clearly lied to us about Biden's health, was saying Biden's fine.
Now he's saying, I plead the fifth.
I don't want to be caught perjuring myself before Congress.
I want to go to jail over this.
But yeah, pretty much it looks like I lied to you.
Meanwhile, at the time, this is what we were being told by the likes of Morning Joe.
And F you, if you can't handle the truth.
This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever.
Not a close second.
And I've known him for years.
The Brzezinskis have known him for 50 years.
If it weren't the truth, I wouldn't say it.
Much has been said about conspiracy theories.
And some people really do engage in wacky, wild theories about aliens and all sorts of nonsense, you know, that just boggle the mind.
This is why the conspiracy theories come out.
This is why, because the media, Joe Scarborough and the White House physician, come to you and say, Biden, he's more fit than ever.
He could run a decathlon.
Oh yeah, that guy, man, he's as fit as can be.
And then we find out that was just a complete lie.
And they start to spread because the government says that Jeffrey Epstein was just coincidentally was hanging out on this island with a bunch of rich people and his business partner's in prison for trafficking girls to nobody.
And I get why those things flourish.
Something to keep in mind, though.
I'm not telling you not to engage in interesting theories.
In fact, I kind of get a kick out of conspiracy theories.
They always seem to attend a little bit to right-wing media.
Even back in the 90s and 2000s, late night talk radio.
You get the normal conservative show, then you get the slightly wackier conservative show, and then you'd get ghosts and aliens and Bigfoot.
And so there's something, a conspiracy theory is the sign of an active mind, even if it's a little bit a sign of insanity sometimes.
But I get a kick out of them.
Here's the thing to remember.
When you doubt the established narrative, because these people lie to you, like the White House doctor, when you doubt that narrative and you say there's got to be some other explanation, you're going to open your mind up and you're going to entertain all sorts of explanations for everything.
And some of the things you can come to are going to be way wackier than others.
Just remember one rule, and this comes from G.K. Chesterton.
The purpose of an open mind, like an open mouth, is not to keep it open forever.
It's to close it on something solid.
That's the point.
So you open your, you say, look, the White House doctor, the establishment is lying to me.
I'm going to open my mind.
But you got it, two things.
You got to close it and you got to close it on something solid.
You don't want to close it on something kooky because then you're going to be a kook and your understanding of the world is going to be wrong and you're going to keep banging your head against a wall and getting upset.
You got to close it on something solid and you do have to close it.
This is the same thing when we rail against the establishment.
Yeah, good.
The establishment right now is very, very corrupt in government, in the academy, in media.
It's very, very corrupt.
We're in a process actually of shifting that establishment.
So it is changing.
It is getting better.
But the purpose of attacking the establishment is not so that there is no establishment.
The purpose of attacking the establishment is to fix the establishment, is to have a new establishment.
But you need some kind.
We're a global empire.
You need some kind of established power.
You need institutions in order to do anything.
Open your mind up and close it on something solid.
Knock down some of those buildings of the establishment so that you can rebuild them and make them more functional and more beautiful and more correct.
Now, speaking of open minds, got to give credit to Chris Ruffo.
Chris Ruffo just got the SAT score of the next mayor of New York, most likely, Zoran Mamdani, the Muslim socialist next mayor of New York.
And his SAT score is really, really funny.
Hold on one second.
We will get to all the important stuff.
But first, I have another important thing to get to.
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Chris Rufo.
Man, he's good.
He's good, that Rufo.
He got Zoron Mamdani's SAT score.
I encourage you to go to Chris's sub stack.
It's very funny.
Zoron's SAT score.
You know why this matters?
It's not just to call him a dummy or something.
It's because Zoron Mamdani got caught lying about his race.
Not quite lying, actually.
Lying in the spirit of things, technically not lying.
He got caught exaggerating his race on his Columbia University application.
Because Mamdani, you can see here, it's a pretty white-looking guy.
He's part Indian or something, but very, very light-skinned.
But he pretended to be a black guy in his college application.
He checked the African box because he was born in Uganda.
Pretty white, probably lighter than I am, but he was born in Uganda.
So he says he's African.
And why did he do it?
Well, he said, because my identity is so complex that there's no way to capture it in a single box.
And so I pretended to be black.
Okay.
You know why he really did it?
Here's his score.
His score is 2,140 out of 2,400.
Now, even that score, at that time, he's roughly my age, Zohran Mamdani.
At that time, the college board had introduced a third section to the SAT.
Typically, the SAT is out of 1,600, but they had introduced a third section into it.
So it brought it up to 2,400.
Some schools looked at the third section, some did not.
That's why.
So I don't know, out of a normal SAT score, I don't know what his score would have been, but it was lower than, say, the Asian, average accepted Asian student score, but it was a little higher than the average black accepted student score because obviously Mamdani pretended to be black on his college application because being black on your college application gave you at that time and probably still does bonus points.
So it was easier to get in if you were black.
That's why he did it.
Now, this tells you something about Mamdani.
We're not here to just call him a dummy.
We're not here.
You can really learn something about politics here.
People are trying to attack Mamdani as a radical Muslim.
I don't think he's a radical Muslim.
I don't think he cares about Islam really at all.
Listening to him speak, he doesn't sound like Saeed Qutib.
He's talking about queer liberation.
Okay, he doesn't, listening to him speak, I don't think I'm hearing Anwar al-Alaki.
I think I'm hearing a Columbia lib.
Actually, he didn't get into Columbia, but it sounds like a regular Columbia lib.
I actually think he's less ideological than people are saying.
I don't think he's a radical Muslim.
He makes himself out to be a communist.
I don't know that he's even all that ideological.
I think Mamdani is a typical millennial striver.
I think he's a typical millennial political striver.
He wants to say the right thing, smile the right smile, wink the right wink so that he can make something of himself and get political power.
And at the time for his generation and his political party still right now, if you want to get ahead, you got to go to schools like Columbia.
You got to pretend to be black.
That'll help.
You got to start talking about all the weird, queer stuff.
You have to have a non-Christian religious identity.
These days, you also have to be non-Jewish to be a successful Democrat.
You got to be something kind of a little more exotic.
Ooh, Muslim.
That's good.
Yeah, that'll check.
And that's how you become the Democrat nominee for mayor of New York City and probably the mayor of New York City.
But if the incentives were different, mark my words, I promise you, this guy would have positioned himself differently.
If you did not get bonus points at that time and probably still after the Supreme Court knocked down affirmative action, but probably even still, if you did not get bonus points for being black on your college application, Mamdani would not have lied about being black.
He wouldn't have cared about the complexity of his identity.
He would have done anything to give himself an advantage to get in.
That's how incentives work.
That's sticks and carrots.
If you didn't get bonus points, if you didn't get cultural currency, certainly at that time, but even today on the left, by exalting all manner of sexual deviancy, this guy would be father knows best.
This guy would be wearing a tweed suit, smoking a corn cob pipe, okay?
If the cultural incentives were there to give him power by believing different things, I promise you this guy would have done it.
If in the current political culture, especially in the Democratic Party, if it weren't cool to be Muslim, if it were cool to be Christian, this guy would be campaigning at Liberty University.
You can craft, you can help guide society's development through incentives.
Conservatives pretend that they know this in the economic front, but then they deny this in the cultural and political fronts.
They say things like, politics is downstream of culture, as an excuse to ignore political realities.
No, you need to go in there.
One of the reasons it's important to get rid of affirmative action in college admissions is because it's racial discrimination against whites and Asians, and that's bad.
So it's a matter of justice, that's true, but it's also just a matter of political prudence and incentives.
What kind of society do you, do you want a society where mom Donnie is lying about being black and white people are being told they're evil and are being alienated from the society?
No, you don't want that.
So create different incentives.
Sometimes politics is a little more basic than the highfalutin.
Look, I'm all for highfalutin ideology and religion and all the rest, but sometimes politics is a little more basic.
A lot of these people in politics, including on the left, are just cynical strivers.
And if you give them different carrots and different sticks, you're going to get a different and better society.
Mom Dani strikes us a little bit as a clown.
He's a killer clown, but he's a clown.
Now, speaking of clowns, the Washington Post has a really amazing, this is an amazing article.
There's a picture of a clown, like a clown with a clown nose and hair.
And this is an opinion piece from the Washington Post.
Donald Trump is not a clown.
I should know.
It was written by a clown.
He's a clown.
Actual the Washington Post has had amateur clowns writing for it for a very, very long time.
Now they have a professional clown.
Trump is not a clown.
I should know.
Real clowns bring joy to the world, not chaos to Washington by Tim Cunningham.
Tim Cunningham is board president of Clowns Without Borders, a nonprofit of clowns.
We have reached the logical conclusion of the Washington Post, where the articles are now written by literal clowns about clownish things.
What is the criticism of Trump here?
Is the criticism of some policy or other is handling of the economy?
No, not exactly.
The criticism is that he's not bringing joy.
So the second thing here, that means Democrats are still running with this joy line.
Remember joy?
You might not even remember this.
Politics moves so fast right now.
Kamala Harris, when she ran for president, when she took over for Biden, after Biden was exposed to be senile, after the White House doctor said that he was in perfect health and Morning Joe said that too.
Kamala ran on joy.
I'm joyful.
It's joy.
We're bringing joy to what the thing is, she's not joyful.
Trump seems much more joyful than Kamala.
That was one reason this didn't work.
But that's what you're going to attack, joy?
That's how you know that the libs have nothing to attack Trump for.
That's how you know.
Just like I said on the show yesterday, they were attacking him because some audio came out of Trump threatening to bomb Moscow and Beijing.
This is a story that's three years old, and they're dredging this back up, which is a good sign.
And it's part of why when you read the news, it will benefit you not merely to read the news, but read the news.
That wasn't very articulate.
You should not just read the stories that are in the news.
You should read the selection of the stories that are in the news, how the news is being presented.
When the news is just pummeling Trump on the economy and the border and war is breaking out and boom, boom, boom, boom.
Okay, now Trump has some problems.
When the attacks are going to be constant from these people, but when the attacks are dredging up a story from three years ago that wasn't a big deal then, when the attacks are literal clowns whining about abstract joy and its dearth, it's supposed dearth in this administration, you know, you've got an administration that's going pretty well.
Now, things are not going well overseas.
This is a horror story.
You're looking into a crystal ball as to where America's headed.
And it gives you one simple trick to save the whole civilization.
Politics doesn't need to be complicated.
It really doesn't.
You know, Reagan said this in Time for Choosing.
He said, they say we offer simple solutions.
Maybe the solutions are simple.
Not easy, but simple.
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My favorite comment yesterday.
Once again, the Drummer's Workshop in Norm's Music.
Hey, Grok, did Sierra Ortega use a racial slur against Chinese people?
Grok, indeed.
Sierra Ortega crossed the Rhine.
Crossed the Rhine.
It's funny.
I laughed.
Three in 10 pregnancies in England and Wales ends in abortion.
This, according to the Times of London.
I want to translate that for you.
Here it is.
Here's the article.
I want to make sure I'm getting it word for word right.
Almost three in 10 pregnancies in England and Wales end in abortion.
So what that means is Brits murder almost a third of their children.
Almost one in three children, the Brits murder.
Official figures show that a record 29.7% of conceptions were legally aborted in 2022, up from 26.5% a year earlier and 20.8% in 2012.
I'm going to translate that again.
Almost a third, almost one in three babies in the UK is murdered.
Three years ago, it was only one in four babies in the UK murdered.
And 13 years ago, it was only one in five babies in the UK murdered.
This is the most direct and immediate cause of all of our political problems.
That's it.
I'm speaking at TPUSA later today.
This will be one topic that we really hit on.
Politics is so complicated.
We've got migration and the economy and wars and alliances and this and that.
It's not that complicated.
We are almost all of our political problems come from us murdering our children.
One in five to one in four to almost one in three.
If the UK did not murder a third of its children, the UK would not need to import migrants from all over the world.
If America did not murder a million babies a year, now more than a million babies a year because of the abortion pill, we would not have any excuse from the big business leaders and the left to import all the migrants.
If we didn't import all of the migrants, we would not have the labor issues that we're dealing with with the American working class.
We would not have 75,000 Americans a year dying of fentanyl poisoning.
We would not have the social discord and breakdown.
We would not have, statistically, a ton of new people voting for Democrats, which brings with it all sorts of other problems.
We would not have the collapse in religion, which is attendant and goes along with the murder of our children.
Sacrificing our babies to Baal does not necessarily conduce to proper Christian worship.
We would have proper family formation.
We would not have all of the psychological problems that go along with killing your kids.
We would not have a licentious culture that dulls its own conscience to engage in all other manner of deviancy.
This one weird trick, the only political issue really that matters right now is getting the birth rates up because our civilization, not just the UK, not just America, the whole civilization faces an existential crisis.
I'm not an alarmist.
I don't use the E-word all the time.
This is an existential problem.
We are not having enough people to replace ourselves, which means in the long run, we go extinct.
And in the short run, our social services collapse, our economy collapses, and we're overrun by people who are having children.
But in the long run, we just don't have enough people.
We die out.
That's an existential problem.
There are ways to fix that, like encouraging marriage and discouraging contraception and all the rest.
But if we just didn't kill a third of our babies, we'd be good.
We'd be good.
The birth rate would recover.
But we can't do that.
And so why can't we do that?
This is the other issue.
People see that we face an existential problem, and so that inclines us more towards scapegoating.
You know, we've talked about scapegoating on the show in a real technical sense.
I've talked about the philosopher René Girard, a great writer and philosopher who died only relatively recently in history.
He's a favorite of thinkers on the right.
And Girard has this great theory of mimetic desire, that we imitate each other, we imitate each other's desires, and this leads to ever-increasing competition until there's a war of all against all until we scapegoat.
Scapegoating, which is a biblical principle.
It's an ancient principle, which is that you push the sins of the community onto a goat and you basically send it out to be punished for our sins.
And the archetypal scapegoat is the goat.
And the Jews, I guess, in the Bible, it's the Jews.
And then the perfect scapegoat is Christ, the fulfillment.
You have the figure and then you have the fulfillment.
And that would be Christ who takes all of our sins upon us and conquers death.
But we have all sorts of scapegoats.
We blame the deep state.
The reason we don't have kids is the deep state.
Oh, no, the reason that we're facing this existential social crisis, it's the uniparty.
Oh, no, the reason we face this crisis is the Jews.
Actually, to go back to one of the original ones, it's the this, it's the that.
How about you don't kill your kids?
How about you don't kill your kids?
How about we, as a people, don't let you kill your kids?
That's not the deep state, exactly.
That's not the uniparty, exactly.
That's not this group or that group or this group.
That's you.
You allow that.
You're the one who permits that in your political order.
You're the one not having kids.
You're the one not getting married.
One simple trick would go, well, I hate to be so harsh.
Usually I'm a little more happy-go-lucky.
But if I had to pick a scapegoat between the deep state and the uniparty and the Jews and, I don't know, this group or that group, this, do you know who I blame?
If I had to pick one cause, I would say liberalism, which spreads like a miasma and brings with it all of these various policies with its ideology because liberalism is the ideology of the fall.
Liberalism is the ideology of the fall.
Liberalism is the ideology of ye shall be as gods.
Liberalism is the ideology of no kings, no gods, only men.
Liberalism is the ideology that says we are going to save the world ourselves.
We are going to create the world anew.
We are going to make our own moral order.
We are going to make our own reality.
We won't respect even physical reality.
We won't respect everything.
We are the creator.
That's what I blame.
So I blame us.
And if you want to fix it, one weird trick.
It's not complicated.
I'm not saying it's easy, but I think Reagan was right.
This is a great point that Reagan made.
Sometimes the answers are really simple.
Not necessarily easy, but really simple.
Okay, speaking of saving the West, I have to get to this story before, you know, the movie came out, Superman came out.
I think I'm going to do a separate video about Superman.
But Sean Gunn, who I guess is in the movie and he's the brother of James Gunn, the director of the movie, he tipped people off to what that movie is going to be like.
Well, I'll give it to you in his own words.
Your boss, your brother, talked about Superman being an immigrant.
And now MAGA is already upset that he's called Superman an immigrant.
I wanted to get your reaction.
You know, my reaction to that is that it is exactly what the movie is about, I think, that like we support our people.
You know, we love our immigrants.
We love, yes, Superman is an immigrant.
And yes, the people that we support in this country are immigrants.
And if you don't like that, then you're not American.
People who say no to immigrants are against the American way.
They're against what the American Dream is all about.
Truth, justice, and the American way.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Now, for much, if not most, of American history, we've had minimal or no immigration, including recent history.
We had severely restricted immigration from the very beginning of the country.
Then we loosened it up a little bit, caused some problems.
We tightened it up.
Then for much of the 20th century, we had very, very little immigration.
It's really only since 1965 that we've opened up the borders.
And really, it's only in the last few decades that we've literally opened up the borders and told illegals to come here.
So what he's saying is not true.
Being opposed to immigration is deeply, deeply American, and being for open borders is itself very un-American.
And it shows you that this movie, I don't want, I'll do a separate video on the movie, but not set up for success.
Sweet little Elisa asked, she said, is it possible that the studios at this point are trying to bait conservatives?
They're trying to get publicity by intentionally sending out people to make their movies sound insufferable.
And maybe, I don't know, maybe that's one way to get people to go to the movie theater.
Finally, finally, we get to my favorite time of the week when I get to hear from you and the mailbag.
This mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk.
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Take it away.
Hi, Michael.
My husband and I recently had our first baby, and I had to have a C-section to deliver her because in my wayward youth, I acquired an STD that I didn't want to spread to my child.
So thankfully, she didn't get it, and she's happy and healthy and doing great.
However, when we bought our child to church, we have all these people asking me why I had a C-section.
Well, I feel like that's really personal.
I don't really want to tell them that information, but I also don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or lie to them.
So how should I respond when people ask me why I had a C-section?
Thanks.
Okay, well, congratulations.
First of all, that's great.
And it's very rude for people to ask those questions.
Truly, basically anything pertaining to pregnancy, I'm reluctant to ask.
If I don't know a woman's pregnant, she could be 400 pounds sticking out wider than she is tall.
I will not ask when the baby is due because I just don't want to presume.
And to say, so why did you have a C-section?
Who asks that?
That's very, very rude and ridiculous.
But anyway, I think your answer should be, if it were me, I would probably say, oh, well, sometimes things don't work out the way that you're hoping that they will.
But we got the end result that we were after.
So, you know, it's a happy ending.
I would leave it at that.
Because that's a polite and diplomatic way of saying, mind your own business.
Oh, well, sometimes I'm sure you would have loved to deliver naturally.
Maybe.
Probably you would have.
But sometimes things don't work out the way that you're hoping they will.
But look, all's well that ends well.
Now, mind your own beeswax.
Okay, next one.
Hi, Michael.
Years ago, my son's team made it to the Little League World Series, a wonderful slice of Americana as our town rallied around our home team of 12-year-olds.
That's cool.
Despite the good vibes, that summer, our narcissistic manager was explosive, unkind, and alienated most families on the team.
Upon elimination, the team splintered, returning home with hurt feelings, anger, and disillusionment.
Our ill-mannered manager soon divorced, remarried, and abandoned his kids.
Our boys are now young men and no longer dwell on losing at the series, but thankfully recognize the incredible feat it was to qualify.
It's time to celebrate and relive the journey with the wonderful community that embraced them that epic summer.
Tentative plans have begun for a milestone celebration in a couple years.
However, the player families I've talked with love the idea, but will not attend if the manager comes.
He would hear about it from the one friend he still has from the team.
It's not a secret event.
We just don't want him to spoil it.
My question, how do I exclude this manager from the gathering?
How should I tell him?
We are prepared to remove him if he shows.
Thanks, Michael.
Oh, just don't invite him.
That's what I would do.
You're throwing a party.
He's not invited to the party.
That's that.
I don't know.
I mean, do some of the families want him there and some don't?
And who's throwing the party?
And is there some discord?
That I don't know.
But if you're all in agreement that you don't want this guy at your party, then just don't invite him.
You don't have to talk to him.
What do you have to talk to him for?
You're throwing a party.
He's not invited.
You don't need to give him a warning or make a big deal out of it.
He's just not invited.
And if he shows up, just like if you show up uninvited to a party, a lot of the time you're not going to be let in.
That's it.
You don't need to make a big deal out of it.
Just move along.
Next question.
Hello, Mr. Knowles.
My wife and I have been listening to your show for quite some time and have come to really respect your advice.
We're expecting our first child in the next month.
It is a boy.
We're pretty confident on everything, except we're on the fence for two things, his name and circumcision.
We've heard arguments from both sides of the circumcision debate, whether it be matching dad in the status quo, health, is it normal, no religious reasons, no real reasons.
So we're just kind of curious about your thoughts.
I figured you would have a good and strong opinion on the matter.
Looking forward to hearing what you have to say.
Thanks.
I don't have a strong opinion on the matter.
I have strong opinions about opinions on the matter.
But first of all, just a little point that you said, religious reasons, real reasons.
But you would surely agree.
Religious reasons are real reasons.
Now, that said, unless you're an Orthodox Jew, there's no religious reason to circumcise.
So if you're a Christian, you don't have to circumcise.
Baptism is the new circumcision.
It's the fulfillment of circumcision.
So you don't have to do it for that reason.
But if you already have another kid who's circumcised, you should circumcise all your next boys.
You don't want one kid got the SNP and the other one doesn't.
That's going to give them a complex.
But beyond that, okay, maybe dad's got the SNP and the kids don't and you want them to look like dad.
Okay, that's fine.
Really, this gets to a political problem.
And the political problem is in America, in Europe, Christians don't circumcise.
In America, I think largely because of our puritanical tradition, Christians Do circumcise.
It's just a cultural thing.
It's fine.
It doesn't really matter.
It's probably a little bit cleaner if you do circumcise.
It's not the end of the world if you don't.
It's fine.
Back when everybody circumcised, I would just say, yeah, well, if you're an American, circumcise.
That's just what that's what 95% of American boys do.
And so you want to kind of fit in with the culture and it's no big deal.
So why not?
If you were in Europe and where basically no one circumcised, I'd say definitely don't circumcise.
The reason it's confusing right now is because I think it's about 50% either way.
So now you're kind of damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Because either way, he's going to be weird.
And you hope that it's only really a matter for his wife one day, but it's going to be a bit...
So that's trickier.
There, I guess I would lean toward, I guess I'd lean toward whatever the father did, but I don't know.
Mostly because if you're a father, you got to teach the kid how to manage all manner of questions in life.
And you might not be familiar if the kid is not circumcised.
So I'm sorry.
I know you wish I had a really strong hardcore opinion about it.
I don't really.
I would say this is one where you should just go with cultural norms.
But here the cultural norm has been totally shattered in America.
And it was kind of a weird cultural norm to begin with for non-Jews to circumcise.
All right, next question.
Hi, Michael.
I have a religious question for you this week.
I'm a Protestant, and I'm also a singer of sorts, whatever the community theater version of a singer of sorts, that's me.
Occasionally I get paid to do ball games or weddings, things like that.
I recently got a request from a dear friend to sing at her wedding.
She is Catholic and she wants me to sing Ava Maria.
It's a beautiful song and really fun to sing, but I am a Protestant, as I said.
So I have a couple of sort of hesitations about it.
My father's a Presbyterian pastor.
He's sort of filled me in on the Protestant point of view, and I would love to get the Catholic point of view.
You know, from your perspective, what does it mean to sing the Ave Maria?
And as a Protestant, is that something that's appropriate for a Protestant to sing?
And just kind of get your take on it.
So let me know what you think.
Thanks.
Sure.
Yeah, I see the problem.
That's a good question.
So Ave Maria, the Hail Mary is one of the most popular prayers in all of Christianity.
After the Our Father, it's probably the single most popular prayer.
It's been around in its current form for over a thousand years or thereabouts.
And so the first part, you have no problem.
Ave Maria, Ave Maria, Gracia Plana Dominus Tecum, Benedict tun Mulieribus, Benedictus Fructus Ventris tui Jesus.
That's all scriptural.
Comes from the Gospel of Luke.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
You know, it's from the archangel.
Blessed are you among women.
And from Elizabeth, her cousin Elizabeth, blessed are you among women.
Blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
So that part you don't have a problem with.
It's the second part that you have a problem with, which is Holy Mary, Mother of God.
That part you should have no problem with.
Mary as the Mother of God has been affirmed definitively since the Council of Ephesus in 4, what was it, 431 or something like that?
So I don't think you have a problem with that.
You're not denying the divinity of Christ.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
That's the part that might give you trouble if you don't believe in praying to the saints.
Now, plenty of Protestants do believe in praying to the saints.
I certainly believe in praying to the saints.
I think praying to the saints is biblical.
I think you see it in the book of the Apocalypse, and it's obviously a Christian tradition.
It has gone on for 2,000 years.
And so I think it's fine.
Lutherans say the Hail Mary.
Anglicans say the Hail Mary.
You're saying you're Presbyterian.
So that might give you pause.
I would encourage you to do it because I think it's a wonderful prayer and it's good to honor the mother of God and praying to the saints is scriptural and part of the Christian tradition.
But if you disagree with that, I see the problem.
There is a problem there because you are, the second part of the Hail Mary is asking the mother of God to pray for us.
Now, just to assuage your issues, you would ask Bob down the street to pray for you.
You'd say, Bob, Shelly's in the hospital.
Could you pray for her?
So all the more so you should ask the mother of God.
You say, well, Bob's alive and mother of God is dead.
Mother of God is not dead.
Our God is the God of the living.
Those who are in heaven, we know, are living.
We can have greater confidence that the people who are enjoying God in heaven are living than we have confidence that the people we see around us are living.
And if anyone's in heaven, if any created being is in heaven, I think it's going to be the mother of God, wouldn't you say?
Blessed are you among women.
And blessed is the fruit of you.
All generations will call you blessed.
We know she's in heaven.
We know she's alive.
There's nothing wrong with praying to people who are alive, and there's nothing wrong with praying to the saints.
That's my argument for you to do it.
But if you oppose those things in principle for whatever reason, I see your problem.
And you will have to either have to compromise on your apparently principled belief or you'll have to forego it.
But I encourage you to do it because it's a beautiful prayer and a beautiful song.
