Ep. 1785 - Sydney Sweeney's Titillating Voter Registration LEAKED
Buzzfeed reveals Sydney Sweeney is a republican, American Eagle doubles down on her “great jeans” ad, and the White House has no current plans to mandate insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization.
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Ep.1785
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A major win for pro-lifers and a major humiliation for the Panicans as the White House reveals its new IVF policy.
Then, speaking of life, the New York Times clarifies its desire to kill you and harvest your organs.
Not joking.
More important than all of that, Sidney Sweeney's voter registration has been revealed.
And apparently everyone is surprised but me.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Cynthia Erivo, who is an LGBT LMNOP actress, has gone viral for playing Christ in Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl.
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Before we get to any of the other things in the news, including there's a big Christian pop star who says he was miraculously healed of a broken back.
And there's a lot.
There's a lot to get to.
It was a long weekend.
But before we get to that, obviously the most important story.
We now know Sidney Sweeney's voter registration.
Drum roll, please.
If you're driving, pull over.
If you're standing, sit down.
She's not a Democrat.
She's a Republican.
BuzzFeed is reporting that Sidney Sweeney, after the whole American Eagle backlash, has emerged to be a Republican.
So I can't even just say she's not a Democrat because there are plenty of people who would say, well, I'm independent.
Well, I don't, you know, neither party represents me.
But apparently, according to BuzzFeed, Sidney Sweeney is a registered Republican in Florida.
She left California for Florida.
That was probably the first clue.
I'm not surprised by this at all.
Apparently some people are.
Many people are saying, who cares?
I don't care what Sidney Sweeney's voter registration is.
But that's kind of rich coming from the party that has for 20 years said ad nauseum, politics is downstream of culture and we need to win back the culture.
And you want to win back the culture, but you don't care what the celebrities are saying about politics.
No, those two things can't be true at the same time.
You obviously care what the celebrities say about politics.
You say you don't care what celebrities think about politics only because the celebrities are always huge libs.
So you say, well, I don't care about that.
I'm going to minimize the effect of their political views.
But it's good to have popular people, people like Sidney Sweeney, who are objects of affection for a great many men in this country.
It's good to have these attractive people support your political side because we live in public life.
They're public figures.
Politics is about the public.
So obviously true.
I am not surprised she's a Republican at all.
And I think the reason some people are surprised is that they don't understand a basic rule of thumb in Hollywood.
And with good reason, I guess.
If you haven't spent time around Hollywood, you would have no reason to know this rule of thumb.
In Hollywood, if a celebrity is not constantly braying about his left-wing politics, he's a Republican.
That's how you know.
It's not that some celebrities constantly are mouthing off about politics on one side and some celebrities are constantly mouthing off about the other side of politics.
That's really not how it works.
There are some exceptions, but generally speaking, they're all constantly braying and mooing and wooing about being huge libs and trying to get you to donate to Planned Parenthood and vote for Bernie or whatever.
And then there are some other celebrities who just don't talk about politics.
Those celebrities are all Republicans.
That's how you know.
And there are other reasons that you could tell Sidney Sweeney's a Republican.
She looks normal.
She's very beautiful, but she looks like a normal, beautiful person.
She seems generally happy much of the time.
She hasn't mutilated her body in ways that express a hatred of her father.
She's not just completely covered head to toe in tattoos with 150 different piercings everywhere.
She's not.
Her hair is a normal color.
I don't know if it's a natural color, but it's a normal color.
She's just kind of normal.
And survey after survey, social science study after social science study shows that conservatives and therefore Republicans tend to be generally a little bit more content in life.
They're not screaming and whining and crying about their families or the political order or ultimately reality, which is what liberalism comes down to is just rejecting reality and trying to liberate yourself from it.
Now, last bit on this.
Some people are going to say, well, Sidney Sweeney's not a real conservative.
You know, she does these kind of sexy scenes and she showed too much skin in that American Eagle ad or what.
I'm not saying she's Russell Kirk in a pair of blue jeans, okay?
I'm not saying she's the blonde reincarnation of William F. Buckley Jr., okay?
But she's a Republican.
And there are plenty of people in the Republican Party who don't wear three-piece tweed suits all the time, okay?
And which is a good thing.
Because if the Republican Party only comprised people who wear three-piece tweed suits and bow ties, We would never win any elections anywhere, including Dog Catcher in the most right-wing county in America.
You need to bring in all these eccentric people, the Maha people and the Trads and some of the right-wing libertarians and the normal people and the people who don't think that much about politics and a handful of rich people and a lot of not rich people.
And you got to bring in all sorts of people who don't have exactly the same views.
So I'm into it.
I love it.
The woman who is considered probably the most beautiful, presently popular, attractive Hollywood starlet is a Republican.
I'll take the win.
I'll take yes for an answer, okay?
I know there are all sorts of malcontents on the right who must clutch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I will take yes for an answer.
One last point on American Eagle.
American Eagle has finally responded to the non-troversy that their genes commercial was apparently a call for a fourth Reich and channeling the spirit of Goebbels and Hitler.
A particularly funny claim, given that the CEO and chairman of American Eagle is Jay Schottenstein.
Not the most pro-Hitler name I've ever heard.
Seems like he's a member of a certain ancient nomadic tribe.
But nevertheless, they were calling this guy a Nazi and accusing the advertisement of promoting eugenics.
Eugenics, which they support when it founds Planned Parenthood, their favorite nonprofit, but eugenics, which the left hates when it promotes beautiful blonde ladies.
This is what American Eagle had to say.
Their first statement on the matter, Sidney Sweeney has great jeans.
It isn't always was about the genes.
Her jeans, her story.
We'll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence.
Their way, great jeans look good on everyone.
There you have it.
And I know a lot of people were worried.
They said, oh, no.
American Eagle, don't back down.
There's going to be a cancel campaign.
There's going to be a lot of pressure, but don't back down.
Don't cave to the woke mob.
I hope they don't back down.
They were never going to back down.
You know how I knew they were never going to back down?
Because they put out the commercial in the first place, which was not subtle.
And you know why they put out the commercial in the first place?
And you know why they weren't going to back down and you know why this was a successful ad and you know why they issued this non-apology?
Because they saw what happened in November.
That's why.
We're good, guys.
We're good.
Bye.
The particular expressions of woke, notably transgenderism, a lot of the race hustling, it's over.
It doesn't work.
Corporations that have boards, that have Excel spreadsheets, that have men in suits and ties making cold calculations about what's going to make them a marginal extra dollar.
The corporations have concluded that woke liberalism, leftism, progressivism is a loser.
Good-looking blonde actresses wearing normal clothing, saying normal things, that's a winner.
That's it.
American Eagle did not not back down because we were all rooting for them.
American Eagle chose not to back down out of a cold calculation, which is really, really great news.
This is the winner, folks.
In part, this is a generational thing, too, because I think had it been just the millennials, this company would have had to back down.
They couldn't have put the commercial out in the first place.
But I think looking at the trends, Gen Z, it's a polarized generation.
The ones who have gone left are really far left, like castrated themselves at 15 left, though some have actually come back since then.
But I think the broad trend with Gen Z is these people are to the right of Francisco Franco.
Liberalism ain't selling.
And if you want to get your genes over the checkout counter, you got to try a different tack.
Okay.
Now, speaking of Republicans, a major Democrat figure, Eric Holder, he was the attorney general for Barack Obama.
He is claiming that Donald Trump is an authoritarian and is actively rigging the midterms.
We will examine that major, major claim.
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Eric Holder making a major, major claim.
He's saying that Trump is rigging the midterms.
This is just an extension of the same threat to democracy line that we've heard about Trump for 10 years.
But don't forget that that line, which says that Trump poses an existential threat to our republic, almost got him murdered twice, came within about a 20th of an inch, blew off part of his ear in Butler, Pennsylvania.
So this is a very serious accusation.
Why is Eric Holder saying that Trump is rigging the midterms?
Because down in Texas, a group of legislators on a Texas House panel voted on Saturday to advance a new draft of a congressional map.
You know, every number of years, the different states rewrite their congressional districts because people move into districts, they move out of districts, the balance of power shifts, and so they redraw the districts based on where people are actually living.
Eric Holder says, this is beyond the pale, authoritarian, a rigging of our elections.
Thank you for joining us this morning, Mr. Holder.
You know, you've been leading an effort to stop gerrymandering.
Now you say it's time to fight fire with fire.
Why the turnaround?
Well, I think we have to understand that the nature of the threat that has been put upon the country through what they're trying to do in Texas has really increased the danger to our democracy.
And as a result of that, we've got to do things that perhaps in the past I would not have supported.
This is an authoritarian move by the White House to try to make sure that they can rig the election, the midterm elections in 2026.
And so I think that a Democratic response that is responsible, that is responsive, and that is temporary is appropriate given these facts.
If it's responsive, if it's responsible, if it's responsorous, if it's responsorific, if it okay, you want Democrats to respond to what?
That Republicans in the Texas legislature, who have the majority, redrew the congressional maps in ways that might be good for Republicans, in ways that might just reflect the reality of the voter base, but that might also benefit Republicans.
And you're saying this is beyond the pale.
We have to do something to stop this.
This is the rigging of our elections.
This is the end of democracy.
Okay.
Even George Stephanopoulos, who was the hatchet man for Bill Clinton, even George Stephanopoulos, who was head of communications in the Bill Clinton White House, this guy is a Democrat operative through and through.
Even he says, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Don't Democrats do the same thing?
You saw what Carl Rode, the former Republican strategist, has said.
He said, we've always had partisan redistricting.
That's it ever was.
Thus it ever will be.
How is this different?
Well, you know, simply because this is something that has afflicted the nation for, you know, an extended period of time doesn't mean that it's right.
There we go.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, sure, both parties have done it, but now it's bad.
Now, as always, this doesn't mean it's right.
Now it's bad.
Yeah, but Mr. Holder, you never had a problem with it when it was you Democrats rigging the congressional districts.
You only have a problem with it now because you're accusing Republicans of doing that.
J.D. Vance pointed this out.
He pointed this out a few days ago, actually, before Eric Holder made these comments.
He said, the gerrymander in California is outrageous.
Of their 52 congressional districts, nine of them are Republican.
That means 17% of their delegation is Republican when Republicans regularly win 40% of the vote in that state.
How can this possibly be allowed?
40% of California among the voters is Republican.
17% of the legislators are.
Come on.
What's that?
It's not just California, though.
What about, I'm going to take you on a little trip around the country.
Have you ever visited the 13th congressional district in the state of Illinois?
No, you haven't.
Okay.
So CD 13 in Illinois, if you're just listening to this, it looks like it's almost a 90-degree angle.
Starts in St. Louis, goes up, curves a tiny little bit, goes right.
Looks like a pistol or something.
This is through, I'm probably going to mispronounce some of the names of these towns, Decatur, Springfield, Urbana-Champaign.
Why is this congressional district look like a weird snake?
Well, because if it just were a plot, if it were a square or a circle or a normal looking shape, it would include a lot of Republicans.
And then the Democrats would lose a safe seat.
So it just connects a bunch of disparate little Democrat strongholds to give Democrats the seat.
Okay.
Let's leave Illinois.
Let's go.
We've been to California.
We've been to Illinois.
Let's go to Maryland, Maryland's CD6.
They call this one the earmuff district.
It looks like earmuffs.
It's right over the top here.
You got, goes down on the left, goes down a little bit.
On the right, it goes down a little bit.
Snakes across the top of the state.
Why?
Because if it had a normal shape, Democrats could lose the seat.
Let's go, you know what?
Let's go back to Illinois for a second.
This one is one of the weirdest ones I've ever seen.
Illinois CD4.
So Illinois CD4.
Hold on.
Is CD4 the earmuffs district?
It's kind of, yeah, no, here, I guess this is Illinois CD4.
No, it doesn't look like earmuffs.
This is very confusing, all the Democrat gerrymander districts.
CD4 looks like a big splotch.
It looks like a birthmark or something.
Starts in Chicago.
And yeah, there we go.
Starts in Chicago, moves west a little tiny bit down to the south and then west.
Then you meet up with this line and then it cuts in the upper right into another splotch.
It looks like a cancerous birthmark.
Why?
Because that way Democrats can hold the seat.
Eric Holder not whining about that district.
Maryland, the other Illinois, all of California, and many, many more.
I don't have to have to get to them all in the show.
Thus it ever was, thus it will be.
This is the best they've got against Trump right now.
This is the best.
It's sad, actually, to see.
After 10 years of calling this man the reincarnation of Hitler, the best they've got to prove that Trump is an authoritarian beyond the pale of normal American politics is some state legislators around the country are gerrymandering, maybe sort of things that Democrats have put Republicans to shame to.
Look at the most gerrymandered districts.
You will see consistently, it's the Democrat districts.
Republicans do it too, but and it's their right to do it, by the way.
That's a right that they have as legislators.
That's the best they got?
Okay.
Let's turn to other supposed authoritarians.
Big news story.
You're going to hear it.
And since I'm one of the big promoters of this world leader, I want to address it on the show.
Naib Bukele, my favorite Latin American strongman, Bukele is the leader of El Salvador.
He has just suspended term limits in El Salvador and slightly extended the term of the presidents.
But he suspended term limits.
And this has everyone saying he's a dictator.
He's an authoritarian dictator because he can run for re-election.
Someone posted some guy, I don't know, it's probably not even a real guy.
It's probably just some operative Twitter account.
He says, if you admire the man on the left, that's Naibukele, more than the man on the right, that's Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, you're not a conservative.
You're an authoritarian.
If you like the leader of El Salvador more than you like the leader of Ukraine, you're not a conservative.
You're an authoritarian.
This is a hilarious line because only one of these men holds elections.
Can you tell me which one it is?
I'm going to tell this random Twitter account is not the guy on the right.
It's actually the authoritarian, awful fascist dictator, right-wing, whatever.
He holds elections.
The guy on the right is not, Vladimir Zelensky.
So that's the first part.
What of getting rid of term limits?
Do you know who else campaigned tirelessly to repeal term limits on presidents?
Ronald Reagan.
All these guys, all these people who insist in this really pedantic, condescending, nebish-y kind of way of the true conservatives.
You know, I'm a true conservative.
That's why I support whatever the liberals want to do in Ukraine or anywhere else because I'm a true conservative.
I practically support open borders because I'm a true conservative.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, hold on.
Now you're a true conservative because you insist upon term limits for presidents.
But all those true conservative conservatives, they all talk about Ronald Reagan as though he were an actual canonized saint, Saint Gipper.
And yet Ronald Reagan, by the end of his presidential term, into his early retirement, which was unfortunately interrupted by Alzheimer's diagnosis, but from the end of his second term through the rest of his public life, Ronald Reagan campaigned tirelessly to repeal term limits because there is a term limit.
I break with some of my right-wingers when they insist on term limits for Congress or the Senate or for the president even.
I see why they want the term limits because they think that these people can be corrupt.
That's obviously true.
I just think what they fail to see is that when you insist upon these term limits, all you do is empower the staffers and the lobbyists who can be even more corrupt than the electeds.
I'm with Reagan.
I'm with Reagan and Bukele and all the actual real conservatives who, one, who support practical matters in elections and lowercase D Democratic politics, but who also realize that there is more to politics than just procedure.
There are substantive goods.
And if your political ideology leads you to ignore substantive goods in favor of some abstract procedure, then maybe you're not quite as conservative as you think.
That's just my view.
Okay.
Speaking of presidents, great, great announcement from the White House.
The libs are furious.
The Panicans are humiliated.
The plan trusters such as myself, totally vindicated.
We will talk about that first, though.
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I love this news story.
This is kind of a niche news story, but if you know, you know.
If you know, you know.
I'm just going to read it directly from the Washington Post, which is freaking out about this.
The White House has no current plans to mandate insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization.
I love this.
I know there are going to be many people listening to this show who support in vitro fertilization.
Even if you do support in vitro fertilization, do you really think that the White House should be mandating that insurers cover it, meaning mandating that people who disagree with in vitro fertilization, who believe that in vitro fertilization is immoral, that they be forced to spend their money to pay for IVF?
Come on.
This is a big win.
Look how upset the Washington Post is over this.
Look at the commentary around this article on social media.
It'll show you what side of this you should be on.
This is a great move from the White House, major win for bioethics, good policy move, good win for pro-lifers, especially.
Because I see why people, I see why people support IVF.
We all know someone at this point, or at least know someone who knows someone, who was conceived by IVF.
And we are tempted, not at a rational level, but at an emotional level, to say, well, I like that my friend exists, so I have to support IVF.
Well, my sister couldn't conceive, allegedly.
And so she needed IVF, allegedly.
Again, I'm a little skeptical because the minute you have fertility issues, you go to a fertility clinic, they try to sell you IVF.
And having gone through fertility struggles for a couple of years, they were constantly trying to sell us IVF.
We said, no, we're not doing that.
Two years later, happily we were able to get a kid.
Doesn't work out for everybody, but a lot of people are told they need IVF and they don't really yet.
They haven't exhausted the other options.
But even beyond these practical considerations, let's just take that argument on its head.
My nephew wouldn't exist without IVF.
Therefore, I have to support IVF.
And you're crazy if you don't support IVF.
Okay.
Do you agree?
Do you concede that while kids are good, it's good to have kids, do you concede that there are some methods of conception that are immoral?
Yes, everyone would concede that.
Rape is a method of conception that is immoral.
No one would justify rape.
No one would say rape should be legal.
No one should say taxpayers should subsidize rape.
But, hey, I do know.
I know someone who was conceived in rape.
I know multiple people who were conceived in rape.
Doesn't mean those people don't have a right to life.
Doesn't mean they don't have the same human dignity as everybody else.
Doesn't mean that it's not good that they exist.
It doesn't mean any of that stuff.
But likewise, no one would justify the means of their concept.
We can be happy for their existence, but we don't need to try to justify the means of their conception when it's obviously immoral.
What's another immoral means of procreation?
Incest.
I don't know.
Their list goes on and on.
So if you grant that in principle, you know, my nephew wouldn't exist without IVF, is not a sufficient argument for IVF, because you grant in principle that there are some methods of conception that are immoral, then you need to come up with another argument.
And I don't think you can because this is no knock on people who support IVF.
This is a novel technology and a novel moral issue that most people have not even really had the opportunity to consider deeply.
But when you think about what IVF entails, practically speaking, practically speaking, it entails the murder of a lot of people because it entails making a lot of human beings in little Petri dishes and test tubes and then either killing them immediately or freezing them for a long time and then killing them.
Or if you are pro-life, if you think life begins at conception, you cannot possibly support IVF.
IVF drastically increases the number of abortions by orders of magnitude.
It can't doesn't make any sense.
Beyond that, though, what else does IVF do?
IVF commoditizes human life.
It means you can go to the baby store and buy a baby.
Or not even just buy a baby, order a baby, custom order a baby.
I want the baby to be this sex.
I want the baby to have this kind of genetic background.
I want soon enough, I want the baby to be likely to be this tall, have this color eyes, have these.
That's commoditizing human life.
But human beings are not commodities to be bought and sold on an open market.
This is a question that we were supposed to have resolved a while ago.
That's another problem.
IVF establishes the domination of science and technology over the origin and destiny of human life.
Do you have the right for every generation that follows you to engineer them as though they were your science experiment rather than begotten of you, rather than the sort of thing that proceeds from you that you do not control, but is a subject with proper rights?
Of course not.
There are many more things to say about IVF.
I'll leave it there as people are considering these bioethical implications.
And on the point of the administration, I'll just point out some of my fellow pro-lifers, some of my fellow conservative, social conservatives, bioethical conservatives, they've railed against Trump.
Trump is, oh, he's turning his back on the pro-lifers.
Oh, he's supporting abortion.
Oh, he's supporting IVF.
Oh, he's doing this.
Oh, he's doing that.
And I just said, yo, guys, yo, yo.
He's the most successful pro-life president in my lifetime.
He's the first one to show up to the March for Life in person.
He's the one who got Roe v.
Wade overturned.
He's got a good record.
And so if he says something, he sends some tweet, he mentions something on the campaign trail.
How about you just chill and give the guy a little bit of grace because he's been your biggest advocate you've ever had in the White House.
And how about you just maybe give him a little bit of grace because he keeps doing the right thing, even if sometimes the way he talks about it is confusing.
Panicans, yet again, on so many issues on immigration, on trade, on war, on now on bioethics.
Panicans humiliated, I'm happy to say.
Plan trusters yet again vindicated.
Okay, speaking of bioethics and life and death, this is an amazing about face from the New York Times.
Headline from the New York Times.
No, hold on.
You know what?
First, first, I'm going to read you a headline that I read on the show a couple of weeks ago or something.
Here it is.
A push for more organ transplants is putting donors at risk.
Remember this?
I covered this story a week or two ago.
People across the United States have endured rushed or premature attempts to remove their organs.
Some were gasping, crying, or showing other signs of life.
So saying, hey, you check the box on your driver's license and then you get into a car accident.
Your kid gets into a car accident.
He's there.
He's on life support.
And then these scavengers go in and cut him open and take his organs out.
And he might be twitching.
He might be making sounds.
He might be crying, saying, don't do that.
But they say, no, it's a natural reaction.
He's not really alive, whatever.
They take his organs out.
And I've pointed out for a long time that this is pretty sus because it's based not on actual death, but on so-called brain death, which is a dubious definition that came up in the 1960s to deal with emerging technologies and ideologies like this.
But that, you know, death is when the soul leaves the body.
That's what death is from a classical and medieval perspective.
And brain death isn't really that.
It doesn't really seem like that.
And so I said, this is a slippery slope.
This is really bad.
Not only were social and bioethical conservatives like me saying this, this got so bad even the New York Times said it.
And then what, two weeks later, July 20th?
No, 10 days later, July 20th to July 30th.
Opinion essay, donor organs are rare.
We need a new definition of death.
The New York Times admitting, hey, we're harvesting organs from living people.
That's kind of scary, right?
New York Times 10 days later.
Hey, we need to harvest more organs from living people.
Give me your organs.
That was fast.
But of course, that is the inevitable consequence of consequentialist ethics.
That is the inevitable consequence of utilitarianism.
Well, you know, look, you're all roughed up from this car accident.
You might be in a wheelchair the rest of your life.
Who knows?
You might not even wake up.
And we could give your organ to somebody who will walk for the rest of his life.
So isn't it worth it?
Doesn't he deserve your organ?
That's how we think about it.
That's how the New York Times thinks about it now.
This is what happens when we tell lies.
Our present understanding of brain death is a lie because, at least some of the time, it's not really death.
So a thing that is not death, we call death and we act as though it is death.
And we do that in order to be able to accrue some of the benefits that we get from people's actual death.
And it can be for the best of intentions because you want to save some kid who needs an organ transplant or something.
It could be for the best of intentions.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
And this is it.
It is just keep this image seared in your mind because when we talk about the slippery slope, when we talk about, oh, well, you know, if you make this moral compromise and you do this immoral thing here, it's going to lead down the road to bad consequences.
People say, oh, forget about your slippery slope.
10 days, kids, 10 days.
Wow.
A push for more organ transplants is putting donors at risk of having their organs harvested while they're living.
We need to harvest their organs while they're living.
Same paper, 10 days.
Now, speaking of the liberal media, a major liberal media journalist has left the Washington Post.
And the reason why is just delicious.
You've asked for years in thousands of comments.
Yes, we actually read them, at least some of them.
When is Jordan going to answer our questions again?
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My favorite comment yesterday is from LMS2379 who says, Michael successfully injects common sense into philosophy.
That's very kind of you to say.
Philosophy is common sense and should be common sense and was understood to be common sense for most of the history of philosophy.
What was philosophy?
What is the original image that we in the West have of philosophy?
It's Socrates walking around Athens, just talking to people, talking to people in a commonsensical way and asking them questions.
That's what philosophy was.
That is actually the ideal of philosophy.
And he wasn't standing there at a chalkboard.
He didn't use a lot of jargon.
He wasn't writing 25,000 page books.
He was just walking around talking to normal people, asking them questions.
And that was philosophy.
It was sometimes more formalized, especially into the scholastics, but that basically was philosophy through antiquity through those Middle Ages and the scholastics up until modernity when, and there was a big shift here with Karl Marx because Marx said, philosophy has sought to understand the world, but I want to change the world in the 11th thesis on Feuerbach.
So, but it's not just Marx, and it actually predates Marx a little bit.
Philosophy starts to get a little absurd, get a little jargony, get very, very abstract, but abstract in a way that's not merely able to model reality, but is actually divorced from reality.
But like real good philosophy for most of this degree of philosophy has been complementary to common sense.
Okay.
Speaking of the liberal media, Jonathan K. Part, Jonathan K. Part, is leaving the Washington Post.
He is a major liberal journalist.
Here is why.
Folks will have noticed that we introduced you slightly differently tonight than we usually do.
We should point out after nearly two decades at the Washington Post, you recently made the decision to leave.
I just wanted to give you a chance to speak directly to our audience to tell them why.
Well, the direction of the opinion section changed.
Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, as is his right, decided that he wanted the section to focus on the twin pillars of personal liberties and free markets.
And it became clear as time went along, and especially when he chose a new leader for the section, that there was just not going to be any room for a voice like mine, especially when we were told that we would have to be unapologetically patriotic in talking about the positive things happening in the country.
So there it is.
Take out, he says, look, I want the page to be a little more pro-free markets.
Okay, whatever.
But pages have a slant and some people disagree with it.
And I don't, you see what really gets him riled up here.
You saw the ask that was simply too great.
That's when he said, hey, journalists, you need to be patriotic.
You need to, he asked two things.
He said, you need to be patriotic and you need to talk about positive things about the country.
I didn't think he said exclusively, but he just sometimes you have to make any positive observation about the country and you have to love your country, not hate your country.
That was too much to ask.
This guy, Jonathan Gaybar, I'm out.
I have to be a patriot.
I'm out.
I have to say any positive thing about America ever even once.
Nope.
I would rather lose my job than do such a thing.
Is it too much?
There are going to be some people who say, well, actually, a journalist should be totally neutral and above everything and indifferent to all.
And he just needs, he can't be a patriot.
Good grief.
No one can be neutral about everything.
We're not blank slates.
We're not a tablo-raza.
We're human beings.
We have desires.
We have prejudices.
We have affections.
We have loyalties.
We have bonds of kinship.
We have countries.
You can tell the truth while being a human being.
It is possible.
Can liberal journalists tell the truth?
No.
And they go even further.
They can't even tell the truth about being human beings.
Okay.
Well, he's out.
See ya.
I've got to get to the story that I wanted to avoid.
Cynthia Arrivo.
Cynthia Irivo is, she's this actress.
Look, looks a little bit funny sometimes.
She's an actress.
I'm not even, I'm not commenting even on her natural appearance.
I'm saying she sometimes in performances, she has really long, pointy, scary nails, lots of tons of, tons of piercings and hunched over.
And that's, that's how Cynthia Irivo, a woman, decided that she would play Christ in Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl.
They're waiting for you, get out.
They're waiting for you, get out.
Every time I look at you, I don't understand why you let the things you did get so out of hand.
You'd have made it better if you had that's enough.
That's all I need of the performance.
You know, the one thing I'll say for Cynthia Rivo, she is striking looking, which is helpful for actors.
It is in the brando is striking looking.
Okay.
What does the director say?
Cynthia's brilliant.
Her voice, presence, and simultaneous power and vulnerability absolutely blows my mind.
And working with her has been a dream.
I'm excited by the challenge of presenting the audience with a production led by a female black Jesus and encourage the audience to expand their minds a bit.
Originally utilizing rock and roll, Jesus Christ superstar is supposed to provoke and challenge.
That's the point.
And shouldn't the teachings of Jesus transcend gender?
And this is going to convince some Christians.
Because obviously Christ's teachings, well, it's not that they transcend gender.
It's that they speak to both genders.
They speak to men and to women.
But even if, let's just grant the premise that Christ's teaching transcends gender, Christ does not transcend gender.
And this is a real stumbling block for people.
Christ does not transcend gender in that Christ is a man.
Christ has a holy mother, the Virgin Mary.
The whole story isn't all just men, but Christ is a man.
And this is the part that is just impossible for people to understand.
This has been, and especially in the fullest extent in the crucifixion, this has been a stumbling block and foolishness.
This is, just to quote, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, 20 to 25, whereas the wise man, whereas the scribe, whereas the debater of his age of this age, has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world.
For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God, for the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
This is the key here.
Here, St. Paul is writing about the crucifixion, but we can extend this even to the whole of the incarnation.
This is a stumbling block to Jews because in the Jewish understanding, God's not supposed to be a man.
This is folly to Gentiles.
This is ridiculous to Gentiles.
Not just that, as St. Paul is describing, that God can be crucified, but how can God be crucified?
Because God has a human nature in Christ, a divine nature and a human nature together.
And that means Christ is a man, which means he looked like something.
And he didn't look like Cynthia.
He looks like something, I should say.
But during his sojourn on earth, he looked a certain way.
Glorified body looks a little bit different too, but in the resurrection.
But he doesn't look like Cynthia Rivo.
He does in the sense of we're all human beings, but he is a certain height.
He's a certain sex.
He has certain hair.
He is a certain race.
He's particular.
There is a particularity to God.
That is a fact of the Christian faith, a fact revealed in the Christian faith, that is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.
And all these people, these directors, oh, how wise they are.
Imagine, though, what if Christ were Cynthia Rivo?
And again, not just, it's not even just about her natural appearance.
It's the long, pointy nails.
It's all of the mutilations, all of the piercings and all the rest of it being hunched over.
It's a presentation that I think is intentionally or unintentionally looks, doesn't quite look divine.
That's the issue.
And it comes out of a scandal.
All these wise people, imagine if.
But listen, I'm going to show you how smart we are.
Imagine if Christ were a woman.
Imagine if, imagine it.
Yeah.
That sounds to me like the thought of the wise man, the scribe, the debater of this age.
But the foolishness of God is wiser than men.
Okay.
Now, speaking of Christianity, one story I have to get to, this was called to my attention by my very hip, cool, pop culture-oriented Protestant producer, Mr. Davies.
Have you heard of Forrest Frank?
Is that the name?
Am I getting the name right?
I'm not intentionally getting it wrong, Mr. Davies.
That's correct.
Forrest Frank.
Forrest Frank is a pop musician, and he has a song that just hit number one everywhere, I guess, Lemonade.
And he wrote another song recently while he was waylaid.
And it's called God's Got My Back.
And he wrote that song because this guy was skateboarding.
He's got blonde tips.
He's always smiling, kind of funny facial hair, and writes pop guitar songs about worship.
This man is the most perfect American Protestant there has ever been.
So, but here's the story.
He's waylaid.
He writes this song.
Broke his back.
Now is claiming a miraculous healing.
Guys.
Do you want to tell them?
What do you mean?
I'll tell him.
Guys.
So I broke my back exactly two weeks ago.
Is today day 14?
Cool.
I got an x-ray and a CAT scan.
It showed that I had multiple fractures.
Could not move an inch without excreting pain.
I wake up today, forget to put on my back brace, just start doing the morning.
I pick Bodhi up, and then I realize, wait, I'm not wearing my brace.
What is going on?
I'm wearing my brace right now for precaution.
Order an urgent x-ray, go get the x-ray.
I have complete healing in my back.
I have no fractures in my back.
No sign of a fracture in my back.
So praise God.
Can we tell them your kids?
Mwah!
Moi.
Thank you.
This is pretty cool, huh?
As I mentioned, I'm not familiar with this guy.
Whenever I hear claims of a miracle, it's not even that I'm skeptical.
It's just that I want more information.
I want to test all natural hypotheses first.
I'm not calling the guy a liar.
He seems like a very nice guy.
For me, I have stuffier musical tastes.
When I want Protestant praise and worship music, I turn to Johann Sebastian Bach, but this guy writes some bops.
There's no doubt about it.
Obviously, 50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong.
But it is entirely possible that this guy had a miraculous healing.
And this calls to mind St. Thomas's teaching on miracles, which is, one, do miracles exist?
The answer is yes.
Why is that?
Because miracles are supernatural.
So they go beyond the natural order.
Now, if you even just acknowledge that the natural order exists, you know, time and space and stuff and all that, if you acknowledge that the natural order rests upon something or someone, if you acknowledge that the natural order is not sufficient to explain itself and its origins and its continuation, then you are granting, using your natural reason from the natural order, that there is such a thing as a supernatural order.
You are looking beyond nature given the evidence that you have from nature.
Okay, so miracles can in principle happen.
If you're a Christian, you think miracles certainly happened in the Bible, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the book of Acts.
Do they happen today?
I think they do.
The Christian tradition is that they do happen today.
I see evidence of miracles all over the place.
One of these might be two.
So then what are miracles?
Well, miracles are ways to point beyond the natural order, to the supernatural order.
You can know some things about God just from nature, like God's existence, but you can know other things about God from the supernatural order.
And St. Thomas in the Summa Theologiae, in the Summa Secunda Secunde, I think it's question 178, says that there are two kinds of miracles.
Miracles that are wrought to point to the holiness of an assertion and miracles that are wrought to point to the holiness of an individual person.
So there's one, and he describes St. Jerome, I think, writing about the gospel of St. Matthew, where he says, people who are imperfect, people who are even downright bad people, can perform miracles calling on the name of Christ.
And when they call on the name of Christ, miracles can happen.
And that is to show the power of Christ.
Nothing about the person through whom the miracle happens, but the power of Christ, that God's power is far greater than our weaknesses.
He says there's a second way, which is to point to the holiness of a person.
Here he points to the book of Acts, where St. Paul is, you know, people are touching handkerchiefs to him and then bringing it to sick people and feeling the relic or the handkerchief, you know, heals the person.
And that's to point to the sanctity of Paul and the authority that Paul has in Christ.
And that's another, but those are two distinct ways in which miracles happen, both of which point ultimately to God's glory, to the reality of Christ and God's glory, and the authority of well, the authority of the mystical body of Christ, the authority of the church.
And so getting to what we were just talking about with Cynthia Rivo, a real scandal for people is the particularity of Christianity.
God's a man, and he has a mother, and he has apostles who pick successors, and he establishes a church, and he gives people particular power and particular sacraments.
And it's also particular.
And that's just for the Greeks who are so waylaid by philosophy, abstract philosophy, they can't, they don't like the particularity of it.
And for the Jews as well, they don't like the imminence of it.
But it's forever, so it's everyone, you know, Jew and Greek.
That's everybody.
And yet, there you have it.
That's how God chooses to reveal himself.
And he reveals himself in very particular ways and in particular miracles and maybe even a miracle to Mr. Forrest Frank.
Okay, today's Music Monday.
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