Ep. 256 - The End Of Feminism
Episode Stats
Summary
Feminist writer and podcaster Megan Murphy tweeted her observation that men aren t women. She's been banned from Twitter for a tweet about it. What's the difference between men and women? Is there no such thing as a woman and a man?
Transcript
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Last Thursday, feminist writer and podcaster Megan Murphy tweeted her observation that men
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aren't women. Twitter promptly suspended Murphy for hate speech. As somebody who's been banned
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from Twitter for making completely innocuous statements before, I feel for Murphy. She is now
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experiencing as a leftist the same targeting and censorship that big tech companies inflict on
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conservatives on a daily basis. But I cannot help but feel just a teeny tiny supremely satisfying
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tinge of schadenfreude as the left's ideological chickens come home to roost. The problem is clear.
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The left can have transgenderism or feminism, but it can't have both. Murphy correctly observes that
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transgender ideology, which believes that gender is fluid and socially constructed, undermines
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feminism, which advocates the advancement of women, a real and essential gender category. What Murphy
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doesn't seem to understand, however, is that the root of this new censorious anti-woman ideology of
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transgenderism lies in feminism itself. First wave feminists of the 18th and 19th century,
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women like Mary Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Cady Stanton acknowledged and celebrated the differences
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between the sexes. Both of them were married. Elizabeth Cady Stanton actually was married to the
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co-founder of the Republican Party. Just a little aside, they didn't hate men. They didn't hate the
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natural differences between men and women. By the 1960s, however, radical feminists of the second
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wave, women like Shulamith Firestone, rejected the complementarity of the sexes. Shulamith Firestone
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called the love between men and women the single greatest impediment to women's liberation, and she sought
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to deconstruct gender categories altogether. In this very extreme view, sexual difference necessarily impedes
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equality. Therefore, no distinction between men and women may be tolerated. Now, 50 years later,
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it's that very premise that threatens to destroy the feminist ideology that begot it altogether.
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The left can have transgenderism or it can have feminism. It cannot have both. Either men cannot be
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women or there is no such thing as a woman. Either men and women are distinct categories or, to quote
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Planned Parenthood back in March, some men have a uterus. If some men have a uterus, that is to say,
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if some men are women, then what exactly is a woman? If the sexes are the same or they're only
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superficially different, they're only different in a trivial way, then why do we have different words,
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man and woman, to describe the same thing? Further, if there's no categorical distinction between man and
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woman, that is to say, if there is no real difference between the sexes, then what precisely is
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feminism? Shouldn't we just have humanism or mankindism? The very word feminism demands that
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there be a difference between men and women. Even the targeting and the censorship that Murphy is
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now experiencing finds its roots in the second wave of the feminist movement. Those radicals of
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the 60s and 70s adopted the slogan, the personal is the political. This comes from the title of an
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essay by feminist writer Carol Hanisch. The personal is the political. That means that the private is the
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political. There's no difference between our private lives and our public obligations. That
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distinction, however, between the public and the private is essential to our liberal society. The
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erosion of that distinction has coarsened the character of political activism and it's encouraged
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a politics of animosity and personal destruction. The trouble for the left now is that it's set leftism on a
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course of radical subjectivism that prioritizes feeling over fact, your truth over my truth, over
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the truth. It even justifies the censorship of opinions by redefining speech as violence, which has
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led us to justify the censorship of triggering, unsafe, hateful language as a violent act. Megan Murphy is
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absolutely right to acknowledge that men are not women and she's right to fear the consequences of a
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politics that is so personal. Conservatives have long known these simple truths. Now the leftist
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feminists, such as Murphy, face a difficult choice. Do they ally with conservatives who support free
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speech and admit facts don't care about your feelings or do they persist with a left that would annihilate
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feminism altogether? I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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a better way to cook. So much to get to. But I love this question. We have to delve into this question
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because the left is finally acknowledging this central conundrum in their ideology, which is
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you can have transgenderism or you can have feminism, but you cannot have both. Right now
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at Eastern Michigan University, this school is canceling a performance of the vagina monologues.
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If you, you know, I've done a lot of theater in my life, so I'm familiar with this. If you're not
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familiar, it's women who get on stage and they talk about their vaginas. That's the vagina monologues.
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This was a groundbreaking theater in recent years. They're canceling this performance. Why is it?
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This has long been a favorite staple of feminist groups on campus. They always do the vagina
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monologues. The reason they're canceling it is because it's offensive to people. Because of course,
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not all women have vaginas. And not all people who have vaginas are women. Don't you know that?
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Of course, that's ridiculous, but that's what they believe now. Not all women have vaginas.
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Because some men who dress like women or who think that they're women or who very much want to be
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women are now calling themselves women. And this erases the category. I feel for this woman,
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Megan Murphy. If you're watching Megan, this feminist writer in Canada, you're welcome to
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come on the show anytime you want. We can talk about this because it has me siding with the
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feminists. That's a rare occurrence. Choosing that new gender ideology or feminism is a little bit
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choosing cyanide or arsenic. But if I have to choose, I'm going to choose the feminists because
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at least they're sort of talking about women. At least feminists of the old school, at least of
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the first wave, are talking about women. And the feminists in the 1960s and 70s made a deal with
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the devil. Specifically, they made a deal with Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. They made a deal
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with relativism, with nihilism, with obliterating the category of gender altogether. The reason they did
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this, it makes perfect sense why they did this. That first wave of feminists, they wanted the vote
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for women. They were suffragettes. They wanted certain political protections, certain political
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privileges and advantages and economic advantages. Okay, that's fine. They still acknowledged that men
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are men and women are women. Men and women have different bodies. They have different virtues in many
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ways. They have different tendencies, often have different goals, have different ways of being.
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Just for one example, women tend to be more moderate than men. Harvey Mansfield writes about
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this in his book, Manliness. They tend to be more moderate than men. I can tell you this because I
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was at a bachelor party two weeks ago. I know that moderation is not a particularly manly virtue. It's
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not something that men are very good at. Men tend to be bolder, more assertive, and more willing to take
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risks. That's why the vast majority of entrepreneurs are men, because they're more willing to engage in risky
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behavior. That's why the people who fall off of mountains and go swimming with sharks also tend
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to be men, because they take riskier behavior that sometimes leads to needless danger. Women do not
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do that as much. What are some other virtues? Modesty is one. Women are more naturally inclined to the
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virtue of modesty. This is another virtue that feminism has tried to cancel out. They've tried to
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pretend that men and women have the same attitude towards sex. For instance, men are not terribly modest.
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Men, if anything, are given to a little boastfulness or a little aggression. And women are modest,
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which is why men pursue women. I really can't stay. Baby, it's cold outside. The man is pursuing
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the woman. The woman says, oh, I really shouldn't, but I'd like to, because it's very nice to be here
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with you. Feminists have attacked that traditionally feminine virtue as well. Now they've insisted that
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women be promiscuous, that women go out and treat sex just like men do. But the trouble is men
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like casual sex a lot more than women do. And a lot of what you're seeing on campus, the so-called
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campus rape epidemic, is not so much about rape. It's about consensual relations that maybe involve
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a little too much booze or a little too much this or that, and a lot of bad ideology. So in a lot of these
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campus so-called rape hoaxes, we've found out from text messages or emails or phone calls that
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very often women will go back to the man's room. They'll engage in certain sexual acts that are
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perfectly consensual. And then the next day they will regret it and say, this was rape because I
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didn't really want to do it, or I wish I hadn't done it, or I drank too much, or whatever you want
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to say. The cause of this, obviously this is not to say that men should ever feel that they can get
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aggressive, or if a woman says no, that they should be able to have sex with her anyway. That is totally,
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that's the point that feminists want to focus on. That isn't the point. The point is that second
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wave feminism has made these women miserable. Studies show this. From the 1970s all the way to,
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I think the study goes up to around 2010, we see that women become much less happy during the rise
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of second and third wave feminism. That's true in relative terms, that's true in absolute terms,
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not just relative to men, but absolutely their happiness has decreased. A lot of this has to do
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with the denial that men and women are different. And just as a matter of talking about the virtues
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of men and women, it seems to me an insane notion that developed in the 60s and 70s, that the only way
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for women to be free, to be equal, to be living their best lives, is to pretend to be men, to be a worse
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version of men, to be aggressive, to be promiscuous, to be what all of, some of the worst characters
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and characteristics of men that women would adopt. This seems crazy to me. Even just on that question
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of promiscuity and the virtue of modesty. It is true there's a sexual double standard, that this
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has been true forever. Men get away with more, they get away with more casual sex, and women take them
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back, and this isn't true the other way around. The traditional response of women to this is to try to
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get men to stop being such dogs, to stop being such cats. But the response of second wave feminism
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changed that, flipped it on its head and said women should be dogs too. Women aren't any better than men
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in that regard, but in that regard really they are traditionally. All of this is to say when you erode
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the distinction between men and women, you end up with transgender ideology that ironically guts
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feminism itself. I'm not, when I talk about transgenderism, I'm not talking about the handful
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of people who are confused psychologically about their gender. They're a man, he's a man who thinks
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he's a woman, or he very much wants to be a woman. That, we're talking in that case about 0.2 to 0.4%
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of the population at the wildest estimates. I'm not talking about those people. I'm talking about the
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ideology of transgenderism, which is being foisted on us by leftist activists, which is
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why 0.2% of the population is dominating the national conversation about the sexes, because
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it's not really about helping those people at all. What it's about is erasing the difference between
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men and women. Okay, fine, that's one strategy if they want to take it. They say, okay, the way for
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women to be equal to men is to just behave like men and pretend that they're men and to act like men.
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All right, if there's no difference between men and women, as we are told time and time again,
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there's no difference. Even the physical differences are minor, but really, on a real level,
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there's no difference. Then what's a woman? The reason that we have different words for men and
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women is because they're different. If men and women are the same, you would only have one word,
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which is man, right? Or woman, I guess, but you don't really just one word. There wouldn't be any
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difference. Okay, now few of us would grant that, that there's actually no difference between men and
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women, even though the ideologues are trying to tell us this. But take that one step further.
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If there's no difference between men and women, then why do we have feminism? Feminism, femme,
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it comes from femme, from females. But if there's no distinction between males and females, why have
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feminism at all? What is feminism? It's nothing. What this opens the door to, especially the transgender
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ideology, is a question of who gets to define what a woman is. And this is the big argument that people
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like Megan Murphy, the feminist writer, is having with Twitter right now, which is Twitter is taking
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the side of the transgender ideology, and Megan Murphy is defending the feminist ideology. And what
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Megan Murphy is saying is, I am a woman. I will define what a woman is. Men do not get to define what a
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woman is. And what Twitter is saying is, no, what are you talking, there's no definition of men and
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women. No, how dare you, how hateful of you. But just think of the transgender ideology. One of its
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expressions is transvestitism, crossdressers, drag queens, you go to drag bars. Would you say that a
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drag queen, and I'm from New York, so there are drag bars all over the village, you know, you see this a
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fair bit. Would you say that a drag queen is a woman, that that's what a woman is? No, of course
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not. That's one fantasy version of a woman. That's a caricature or a cartoon of a woman. Big eyelashes,
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crazy hair, wild outfits, big lipstick and everything. That's a cartoon of a woman. But that's not a woman.
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And feminists have been telling us for years, they're saying, how dare you doll us up and force
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us to wear makeup and high heels and big eyelashes. That's not what a woman is. A woman can be
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anything. This is the snake eating its own tail. This is the natural, logical conclusion of second
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wave feminism. The feminists like Megan Murphy are upset about this now because obviously it's
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undercutting their entire ideology. But this is not some random turn of events that swooped in and
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tried to undermine feminism. The roots of feminisms being undermined is in the ideology itself.
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You have to decide, are men and women different or are men and women exactly the same? Are the sexes
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complementary or are the sexes indiscernible, identical, exactly without any distinction between
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them? Reasonable people, for all of history and including right now, all reasonable people will
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have to conclude men and women are different, are complementary. This is true biologically. This is
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true spiritually. This is true psychologically. This is simply true. It's true socially. They are
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complementary and different. They are not exactly the same. But this raises many more difficult questions
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for the left because if men and women really are different, if there is a difference between the
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sexes, then what are we to make of the court's redefining marriage? The court has redefined marriage
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to include monogamous same-sex unions, but not polygamous same-sex unions, not polygamous
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different-sex unions. Why is that? Because the premise, not the debate over whether we should
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expand the definition of marriage, but the premise of just doing it by judicial fiat is that sexual
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difference doesn't matter to marriage. It doesn't really matter that much at all. But the question is
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what is marriage? Does sexual difference have something to do with marriage? It has for all of history in
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every single society ever. Now we are on an experiment of the gender-neutral society. We're trying to see if we
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can erase sexual distinctions, not just from marriage, but from bathrooms, from occupations,
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from battle, from athletics. Can we erase them? And I suppose we can. We're doing it. We're plotting
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along. But is that good? Is that good for women? Is that good for men? Is it good for society? Is it
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real? I'm not so sure about that. If we conclude that men and women are different, I think it's very hard
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to look through history and culture and just our own experience of the world and pretend that sexual
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difference doesn't have something to do with marriage, for instance, or that sexual difference
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doesn't have something to do with athletics. You know, now millennials are shocked when they find out
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that Serena Williams can't beat professional male tennis players. Remember, there was that big hubbub
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a while ago. Serena Williams, the Williams sisters were insisting that they could beat male tennis
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players. And this became, of course they could. They're wonderful tennis players, but they can't.
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They can't at all. They tried this in 1998 at the Australian Open. They said that they would be
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able to beat any male tennis player ranked outside of the top 200. So the guy who was ranked number 203,
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Karsten Brosh, decided he would play both of them in the same day and see if they could beat him.
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He prepared for his matches by playing a round of golf, drinking a couple of beers, and smoking a few
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cigarettes. He beat one of the Williams sisters six to two and the other one six to one. He handily
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beat, of course, I'm not making fun of the Williams sisters or female athletes. I'm saying that male
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athletes and female athletes are different, and men physically are stronger than women. This is a fact
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of biology and a fact of nature. We're trying to pretend that that isn't true. We're seeing this now in
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certain combat positions among soldiers. We're seeing this in other athletics as well. There was that
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woman, Tamika Brents, I believe, a female UFC fighter who decided she was going to fight a
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transgender, which means male, fighter, someone named Fallon Fox. So they went into the ring.
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Tamika Brents is a great athlete. She got her skull crushed. She got her skull cracked open by this guy.
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She said she'd never felt more overpowered in her life. Of course, men are physically stronger.
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This is why in our culture, men don't hit women, like Michael Avenatti, allegedly. You're not
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supposed to hit women. Why would we not hit women if men and women are exactly the same?
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If men and women are exactly the same, there's no difference, then there's no reason
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to treat women in some special way. But of course, men and women are different. We should treat them
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in a special way. We've been grappling with this problem for a long time. Conservatives have been
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pushing and discussing this for a long time. We haven't let up on it, even in the wake of second
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wave and third wave feminism. Transgenderism brings this issue to the bear because it's no longer
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just theoretical. It's no longer just a question of, well, you know, perhaps in some hypothetical
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world, men and women are the same. No. Men are now pretending to be women. They're demanding
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that they use the changing rooms with little girls. They're demanding that bathrooms have
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genders erased from them, that there are all gender bathrooms. And even that deconstruction
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of male and female is leading to the deconstruction of gender categories altogether. Facebook has
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56 gender categories, or they had 56 gender categories, and now they have an unlimited number.
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56 was too restrictive. So you have to ask the people, how many genders are there? What is a
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gender? If we're told that the genders are all the same, then why have two? Why have 56? Why have
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any? They're all the same. They're all the same and they're all different. It's a total destruction
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of these narratives that have been building for a long time. We should celebrate this
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because we're correcting a lot of errors that have been in our culture for 50, 60 years at this point.
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But both sides have to be honest here. And it's fun to watch various factions of the left battle
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with each other. It's like the Iran-Iraq war. You somehow want them both to lose. All you're hoping
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for is a prolonging of the battle. But we hope that they come out on the right side here. We have to
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make sure because as this woman is finding out, Megan Murphy, she is being silenced for saying that
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men are not women. She's being silenced for stating the premise of feminism. I hope that this opens her
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eyes also to the kind of censorship that conservatives face on a daily basis on these platforms. And perhaps
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we'll end up with a feminist-conservative alliance against this absurd gender ideology. But it's going to
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mean that feminists have to come to the table, that they have to stop insisting that the personal
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is the political, that they have to deal with an alliance with people that they might not agree with
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on a number of other issues. I think it's just delicious. I think it's a little Thanksgiving
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treat. I'm excited. Feminists watching this show, come on, come on over. The water's warm. Can't wait
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to have you on. We'd love to have you on the show to talk about it. We have a lot more that we have to
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talk about too, though. So Thanksgiving is coming up. This is very exciting. I'm about to get out of here.
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I'm going to fly out on the red-eye tonight. I'm going out with my in-laws. It's going to be a lot
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of fun. Right now, oh, you know, gosh, before we get to it, I do, I wonder too, it just occurred to
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me, if we're having this battle now between the feminists and the transgender, what will happen
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about other conflicts within the left? There are other conflicts within the left, central ideological
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conflicts. One that comes to mind are the people who are vegan but pro-abortion. You know a lot of
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people like this. They say, oh, gosh, I love the little, the cute little chicken. I could never
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eat the cheese, the cute little chicken. Oh, that baby? Kill it. That human baby that's going to
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become a person with consciousness and thoughts and an appreciation of beauty and love? Kill that
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thing. But the chicken, but the little, but the Delta smelt. I love the Delta smelt. Oh, that,
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yeah, watch that. Stop talking to me about the baby. Get the baby out of here. That, of course,
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is impossible. You can't coherently be a vegetarian or a vegan and in favor of abortion. But the left
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does it. I don't know what will force them to deal with that issue, perhaps sonograms or something.
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But it's the same with Islam and Western liberalism. You have that same conflict too. Western left-wingers,
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Western liberals have embraced Islam because they want to be open-minded. They want to be religiously
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tolerant. And also, they don't really like Western culture. And the West and the Islamic world have been
00:24:03.780
engaged in a tension since the 7th century. But what happens when you invite in this Islamist
00:24:12.920
ideology, which undermines all of Western liberalism, which undermines religious tolerance itself?
00:24:19.080
G.K. Chesterton said there's a thought that stops thought, and that's the only thought that ought to
00:24:22.600
be stopped. Will the left understand that tension, that essential conflict? There are so many others.
00:24:27.940
We could talk about them all day, but we don't have time because Thanksgiving's coming up. But food for
00:24:31.520
thought, if we can get them to reconsider their feminist premises, what other premises will the
00:24:37.060
left have to reconsider? We're living in the best timeline. I tell you this all the time.
00:24:40.700
On Thanksgiving, the University of Oregon is hosting an event called Thanks, But No Thanks, Giving.
00:24:48.120
They hate Thanksgiving. Why is it? They call it decolonizing an American holiday.
00:24:53.080
The description of the event, the main messages of Thanksgiving are that of gratitude, food,
00:24:57.620
and family. However, Thanksgiving is, foundationally speaking, a celebration of the ongoing genocide
00:25:04.480
against Native peoples and cultures across the globe. You knew that, right? That's what you do.
00:25:10.720
You go to your Thanksgiving table. You sit down. Oh, it's so nice to see you, Auntie May.
00:25:14.920
All right, well, let's raise a glass to the ongoing genocide of Native peoples all around the globe.
00:25:19.400
Let's chin-chin. Huzzah. Sláinte. No, I don't think so. That's not what happens.
00:25:23.100
It's just not true. This is what happens when an entire generation is deprived of a historical
00:25:30.540
education, and instead that historical education is replaced with ideology. The Pilgrims did not
00:25:36.200
commit any genocide against the Native Americans. It did not happen. In fact, the opposite happened.
00:25:41.440
The real story is much more interesting. Christopher Columbus did not commit a genocide against the
00:25:45.700
Native peoples. He adopted his Indian friend's son, is what he did. He didn't commit any genocide.
00:25:50.480
It just simply didn't happen. So from an historical standpoint, their main premise is bunk. The real
00:25:56.880
story, though, is so much more interesting. I have four ancestors who were on the Mayflower.
00:26:01.900
One was a pilgrim, Dr. Samuel Fuller. The other three were derelicts. They were strangers. You know,
00:26:08.180
half the Mayflower were these pilgrims who were godly men, religious separatists, wanted to start their
00:26:13.960
own religious commune. And the other half were just guys who wanted to go into the new world. So three of the
00:26:19.760
four were those guys. One of them, 11 years before the Mayflower sailed, Stephen Hopkins was
00:26:25.220
actually shipwrecked in the new world. And that shipwreck was the basis of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
00:26:31.840
He was a mutineer. Another one of my Gregory grandfathers, John Billington, was the first man
00:26:36.400
in America executed for murder. The other, Francis Eaton, was another mutineer, another troublemaker.
00:26:42.380
So those three kind of shady fellas. But one of them was good and a godly man, Dr. Samuel Fuller.
00:26:48.460
And so they came over. The story of them arriving is a miracle. It is pure providence. There is no
00:26:55.080
other way to explain it. They were separatists living in England. They then moved to Leiden in
00:27:00.980
the Netherlands because they wanted to escape persecution. They were there for about a decade.
00:27:05.620
And they started to get a little nervous, though, because their children became a little too Dutch.
00:27:09.220
They didn't like how Dutch their kids were becoming. So they decided they're going to sail
00:27:12.620
for the new world, start their new community. Okay. They hire a captain. They hire a cruise and
00:27:19.460
everything. But because of the religious tension between them and King James, between them and the
00:27:24.020
Church of England, there was an attempted sabotage to stop the ships from sailing out. This delayed
00:27:32.100
them by months. They finally make it out of England. But they're many months late. They sail across
00:27:36.180
and they veer way off course. They were headed for Manhattan. They ended up around Cape Cod.
00:27:41.780
So they had no land grant to that area. They land there. It's not nearly as hospitable as
00:27:46.660
Manhattan was. They land and they couldn't find a good place to park the boat. But they get out.
00:27:55.100
They're looking around. They immediately are approached by a group of 30 Indians who start hurling arrows at
00:28:01.780
them. And miraculously, none of them was hurt. None of them had even a scratch on them after this
00:28:08.280
encounter. They're wandering around. They finally end up at Plymouth, Plymouth Harbor. They pull into
00:28:13.600
Plymouth and they find fields that are totally cleared. They're cleared for agriculture, but there
00:28:20.680
are no people there. They're just, they're whitened bones because an epidemic had taken place just within
00:28:27.020
a couple of years before the pilgrims landed. And they cleared the field. They found a bushel of corn
00:28:31.960
that was just waiting for them there. And they also found arrowheads. They found some weapons that
00:28:39.860
they could use against any potential hostile natives. What the pilgrims did is they took the corn.
00:28:45.720
So one of their first acts in the new world was an act of theft, but they wouldn't take the arrowheads.
00:28:50.460
They wouldn't disturb what was a grave site. They felt it would be very wrong to disturb what had become
00:28:55.900
a religious grave site for them. So there was this act also of respect toward the natives.
00:29:01.340
They're there for about two months and out of the woods walks a naked Indian, naked is the day he was
00:29:06.440
born, Samoset, who says in English, welcome Englishmen. They somehow stumbled on one of two
00:29:15.120
natives in the Western Hemisphere who spoke English. And Samoset wasn't even supposed to be there. He was
00:29:19.980
just, he was from Maine and he just happened to be visiting down by Plymouth, down where the
00:29:25.260
pilgrims landed at exactly the time that they accidentally landed there. He says, welcome
00:29:29.020
Englishmen. It gets weirder because he then brings them Squanto, who speaks virtually perfect English.
00:29:34.940
Squanto was at that time a hostage of the Poconocet, Sachem, Massasoit. And he was brought there to
00:29:43.440
communicate between the natives and the English. He also just happened to be walking down. He spoke
00:29:49.180
perfect English because he'd lived in Spain and London. He was captured by Thomas Hunt, an English
00:29:55.380
sailor years earlier, brought to Spain, worked there as a slave. He somehow makes it to England. We don't
00:30:01.180
know how. One story is that Catholic monks smuggled him over. We really, really don't know. He's talking
00:30:06.480
to the Englishmen about the streets of London. Can you imagine the feeling that the pilgrims must have
00:30:11.220
had. He then is brought, because of a kindly Englishman, back to the New World. He wanders down
00:30:16.800
to Plymouth and is then held hostage by Massasoit just at the time that the pilgrims accidentally
00:30:27.560
arrived there or providentially arrived there, which seems obviously to be the case. So they make it
00:30:32.240
there and they negotiate a peace between the natives and the pilgrims. This was not taking advantage of the
00:30:38.860
natives. I think the left now, what they want to pretend is that the natives are these idiots.
00:30:42.680
They're these imbeciles who can't possibly talk to the advanced Englishmen and they don't know
00:30:47.720
anything about politics or war or statecraft. That's absurd. That's so disrespectful to the
00:30:54.120
natives. Massasoit was a serious man. He forged an alliance with the pilgrims. It helped him
00:30:59.960
essentially found the Wampanoag nation to greatly expand his power as the head of the Wampanoag nation.
00:31:06.260
And he helped out the pilgrims. The pilgrims saved his life one day. Massasoit was on the verge of
00:31:11.100
death. Edward Winslow, a pilgrim, cleared out his mouth, gave him a little medicine, brought him back
00:31:16.460
to life. He then told the pilgrims that the Massachusetts tribe, I think led by Elizabeth
00:31:20.660
Warren, was going to attack them. They were able to join together and repel them. This was an incredible
00:31:27.100
alliance. They embraced Christianity, the natives, largely. They took on Christian names. Massasoit's
00:31:33.100
children were named Alexander and Philip. They had Christian names. Alexander remained a good friend
00:31:37.700
of the pilgrims until he died, unfortunately, while he was being interrogated by the pilgrims.
00:31:45.000
And his brother, King Philip, blamed the pilgrims for his death. There's no evidence that the pilgrims
00:31:50.380
killed him. But that means that within 20 to 30 years after the pilgrims landed, that wonderful
00:31:55.380
alliance, which benefited both of them, had broken down because King Philip was a terrible leader
00:32:00.980
and made a mistake in his interpretation of the events and destroyed the whole region. He started
00:32:05.660
a war that killed a lot, a lot of natives and ultimately broke down that relationship. That's
00:32:12.440
the real story. That's a very different story than what the left wants to foist on you. It's a much
00:32:18.280
more interesting story, too. It gives much more respect to the natives and it gives a lot more respect
00:32:22.740
to our ancestors, to whom we should be very grateful, to whom we should give thanksgiving. We are standing on
00:32:27.860
their shoulders in this greatest country ever in the history of the world. And we are spitting on
00:32:33.420
our ancestors because we want to judge them, not only from our leisurely position in history and
00:32:40.580
from our dubious moral stances in our present time in 2018, but also based on history that is total
00:32:48.900
bunk. You can bring that one up at your Thanksgiving table. We've got a lot more to get to. We've got to
00:32:52.720
get to the mailbag today. So first, if you're on dailywire.com, thank you very much. You keep the
00:32:57.500
lights on. You keep covfefe in my cup. That's very important. It's $10 a month, $100 for an annual
00:33:02.920
membership. You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get to ask
00:33:06.400
questions in the mailbag, which is coming up right now. Most importantly, the leftist-tears tumbler.
00:33:12.240
If you, I don't recommend that you prod your left-wing relatives at the Thanksgiving table. Don't do it.
00:33:18.440
If they bring something up, answer it, but don't prod them. But if they bring it up and you've got
00:33:23.240
to talk to them about how incredible this administration has been, how great the country
00:33:27.960
is going, peace abroad, tax reform, Justice Kavanaugh, ooh, ooh, ooh, I'm getting all excited.
00:33:33.600
You're going to need this. Or you're going to get flooded right out of your living room, right out
00:33:37.600
of your dining room. Hopefully, maybe you can try to grab onto the dining room table like your rose in
00:33:42.320
the Titanic. But this is the safer option. Collect the leftist-tears in the only FDA-approved vessel
00:33:47.280
for them, the leftist-tears tumbler. And we'll be right back.
00:34:00.700
From Ryan, is the right to vote a positive right or a negative right? This question was asked yesterday
00:34:07.340
during the conversation, but you sort of drifted into another, albeit informative, tangent and never
00:34:12.620
actually answered. I do that sometimes. The answer is voting is a positive right. I'm
00:34:17.260
sorry. I got very taken by your question. I remember it yesterday during the conversation.
00:34:21.300
A negative right is a right to be left alone. It's your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit
00:34:26.860
of happiness. It's a right that doesn't require anything from anybody else other than they're
00:34:31.060
respecting that right. A positive right is something that does require somebody else. So healthcare is
00:34:36.900
a positive right. If we have a political right to healthcare, it is a positive right because it
00:34:40.880
requires certain technology, certain advancements, certain buildings, certain people's labor,
00:34:45.060
money, productivity. So that's a positive right. Voting is a positive right. It is established
00:34:52.460
in our country. It's run by the states. So you need states to run it. You need voting machines to
00:34:58.760
process the votes. You need poll workers to check people in. You need poll security to make sure that
00:35:04.480
people aren't violating the laws when it comes to elections. You need people to count the ballots.
00:35:10.080
You need people to certify the ballots. You need a lot of people. So it's a positive right. It's a good
00:35:14.960
right that we have in this country. I'm not saying that all positive rights are bad in any way.
00:35:19.620
Governments do create positive rights and they need money and they need participation to ensure
00:35:24.880
those. But it's not a negative right. And we talk about, as conservatives, how important negative
00:35:29.740
rights are. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. That's true. But we interact with positive rights
00:35:34.580
every day and that's a wonderful thing. From Nathan, deplorable Knowles. A leftist asked when I thought
00:35:40.680
the child became a human life. And I said when it's got its own DNA at conception. He said sperm and
00:35:47.240
ovaries have their own DNA and it must be a crime every time a woman ovulates without giving birth or a
00:35:54.220
man ejaculates. Any counter to this argument would be helpful. Thanks, Nathan. I think the human child
00:36:00.360
becomes a human around 18 years old. Maybe 22. I don't know. Maybe. No. The traditional answer
00:36:06.260
and the correct answer is at the point of conception. You're absolutely right. Human beings have 46
00:36:11.620
chromosomes in their DNA. The sperm and the egg each have 23 chromosomes. And that's why when the sperm
00:36:18.560
and the egg come together, you get a human being, which is 46 chromosomes. You're making the argument
00:36:23.320
from DNA. Fair enough. I think that's a perfectly fine argument. But that's why. That's why it's
00:36:29.940
different. You know, the sperm left alone will never become a human adult. It doesn't have the DNA for
00:36:39.820
it and it won't happen. Same thing with the egg, but brought together at the point of conception
00:36:44.040
that new human life will develop. When does the human life begin? We know that at the point of
00:36:51.440
conception, it is living. That created entity, that begotten entity is living. And we know that it's
00:36:59.700
human. It's not a duck. It's not a platypus. It's not a sperm. It's not an egg. It's a human being.
00:37:04.740
It's what we would call a human. Just as a matter of language, too, conception is the beginning.
00:37:13.000
When the thing is conceived, when it is begotten, when it is initiated, that is the beginning of it,
00:37:18.240
by definition. And the question for your friend, I guess, is when else would be the beginning of
00:37:24.400
that human life? We know it's human at that point and not before. We know that it's living at that
00:37:30.100
point and not before. When else would the human life be a human life? Three weeks later? Why?
00:37:37.680
Because it grows fingernails or something? Do fingernails make us human? No, of course not.
00:37:42.480
A human life becomes a human life at the beginning when it becomes a human life.
00:37:46.060
From Jared. Dear patron saint of the Covfefe's, my wife and I are starting to argue more just
00:37:51.800
because it is difficult to clean my Leftist Tears tumbler. Every time that we attempt to clean it,
00:37:57.260
it just fills up again. Especially after the recent DeSantis and Scott wins in Florida,
00:38:02.200
as well as Mia Love pulling ahead in our state of Utah. How can we attempt to clean the tumbler out
00:38:07.620
if it just keeps on filling? You've got to drink faster. It's the only way that you can do it.
00:38:14.120
I can't do this for you. I can't give you some magical device to desalinate your Leftist Tears.
00:38:20.360
You just have to drink faster. If you're not drinking fast, do you love your country?
00:38:26.300
Do you love watching the Left implode? I don't know. I'm beginning to question that.
00:38:30.600
Guzzle guzzle, especially on Thanksgiving Day. Leave a little room. Leave a little room for pumpkin
00:38:34.740
pie and leave extra room for Leftist Tears. From Max. Dear Michael, what do you think about the
00:38:39.820
metric system? Should it be introduced in the United States? Thanks for the show. You're just
00:38:45.460
trolling me, aren't you? Is that what this is about? I think the metric system is the soccer
00:38:49.760
of measurements. That's what I think it is. It's absolutely un-American. It's horrific. It's too
00:38:54.880
rational is the problem. That's the thing I dislike the most about the metric system. It's based on
00:39:01.640
units of 10 and you've got the Mila and the Senta and the Desa. Okay, that's fine. Too rational.
00:39:07.880
Life isn't that rational. Life isn't that clean. It's not that clinical. How many inches in a foot?
00:39:12.900
12. Why? I don't know. Couldn't tell you. How many feet in a yard? Three. Why? I don't know.
00:39:17.680
Couldn't tell you. That's why. Because it's American, damn it. Because we're in the West. Because we've
00:39:23.540
done it for years and years. Because that's our tradition. It's built into our institutions. It's built
00:39:27.940
into our culture. And I'll be damned if you're going to replace it with some French nonsense.
00:39:31.720
They did this in the French Revolution. After the French Revolution, they took away everything that
00:39:36.120
was beautiful and traditional about that culture. And they just divided the country up into quadrants
00:39:40.500
and neighborhoods along these perfectly rigid lines. And it just was disgusting. It's too clinical.
00:39:45.980
It's too rational. One point I will make too about the English system, the standard system of
00:39:51.660
measurement, is it's got these really nice numbers in there. Three. Three feet in a yard. Like the
00:39:57.620
trinity. Like the holy trinity. That's three is a very important number. Twelve inches in
00:40:01.700
a foot. Twelve apostles. One plus two is three. That's a beautiful... I like this. So this is
00:40:07.120
very nice. There's something that speaks to something deeper than just the cold French
00:40:13.100
rationality. Frenchy rationality of the metric system. Get it out of here. No way. If it comes
00:40:19.260
into the United States, I'm moving to Canada. Except they have the metric system too. Damn it.
00:40:22.940
That's not good. That's very... Maybe I'll move to England. No, no. They use it sometimes too. Oh,
00:40:26.760
that's very tough. Where am I to go? This is the last best hope of man on earth. If the metric
00:40:31.180
system comes here, there's nowhere left to escape it. So we have to defend standard measurements.
00:40:35.260
From Peter. Dear best book writer ever, Knowles. What do you think it will take for the United States
00:40:41.900
to have a second civil war? Love the show. Thanks, Peter. It would take people getting off their couch.
00:40:48.820
It would take people lifting up their eyes from their smartphones for two seconds.
00:40:52.940
And not taking selfies constantly. I'm not that worried about the civil war. I know some people
00:40:58.740
are. We're in a cultural cold war, if you want to use that language. I know Dennis Prager uses that
00:41:04.740
language. Some other people do. We do seem to be very angry with one another culturally. There's not
00:41:10.280
much bridging that gap. But that's all tweets. I'm not worried about tweets. Tweets can't shoot me.
00:41:15.020
We use these terms, war. We bandy them about attacks. We bandy them about... Dan Crenshaw,
00:41:19.660
Congressman Dan Crenshaw, made this great point on Face the Nation. The other day,
00:41:23.980
some lefty lunatic on Face the Nation was saying, Donald Trump is attacking our freedoms. He's
00:41:28.100
attacking. He's attacking. Dan Crenshaw said, listen, I've been attacked. This is my wound from my
00:41:33.420
attack. Let's use our words precisely. Because when we tweet, that's not an attack. That's not what
00:41:38.780
that is. I don't think we're moving toward a civil war. Who would have the stamina to fight the civil
00:41:44.780
war? To say nothing of the fact that only conservatives have guns in this country, more
00:41:48.700
or less. So I don't think the civil war would last very long. I think we've got relative peace for the
00:41:53.380
time being. We've got to put down these little Antifa thugs, of course. But more or less, I think
00:41:58.120
we're doing just fine. Something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. From Mark, dear Michael,
00:42:02.100
if we make it easier to voluntarily commit insane people in order to protect the public from them,
00:42:08.960
don't you have an inherent fear that the left will use that as a tool against anyone who happens to
00:42:12.840
own guns because gun owners are pretty much insane people to them? Side note, I mean seriously. You
00:42:17.820
should have seen the faces on my colleagues over here on the East Coast when I told them my two-year-old
00:42:21.820
son loves to help me load Nerf guns. I said I'd rather have him be comfortable with guns and know
00:42:27.940
about them than to always be in fear of them. Their faces were priceless. You make a good point.
00:42:31.060
The story illustrates that. The left doesn't understand guns. They would try to commit gun
00:42:34.480
owners. Right. We need to be able to make it easier to involuntarily commit people because we've got
00:42:40.140
lunatics who are hurting themselves, who are hurting society, who are shooting people, who are committing
00:42:45.900
all sorts of violent acts. But it doesn't necessarily mean that some government agent should be able to
00:42:50.860
come in and lift you out of your home and throw you into the loony bin. Perhaps, though, your family
00:42:55.880
should be able to do it more easily. Perhaps relatives of yours, your spouse, your maybe close
00:43:01.680
friends should be able to do it a little bit more easily. It doesn't have to be big brother government
00:43:06.340
comes in on the helicopter and lifts you out of your life, or we allow crazy people to live on the
00:43:11.620
street in squalor, hurting themselves, hurting society, and posing a danger to society. There is some
00:43:17.020
middle ground. I know this irritates libertarians sometimes, but we need to be able to deal
00:43:24.280
seriously with these problems that are not accounted for in their ideologies. We need to be able to
00:43:29.280
account for people who cannot take care of themselves, who are mentally unfit to behave in
00:43:34.840
society, and who pose a danger. We've got to be able, perhaps most importantly, to protect society
00:43:40.280
from them. This has been true in virtually every society in history. This was true in the United
00:43:45.180
States until just a few decades ago, and we need to return to that. The reason that we let the
00:43:50.400
lunatics out of the asylums is because of the development of psychiatric drugs. So you would
00:43:55.080
take the drugs, and many of your symptoms would be cured. This is good. You no longer have to lock
00:43:59.500
them up. The trouble was that when people got out, they would stop taking the drugs, and this would
00:44:03.940
pose a threat to society, to themselves, and make them live in squalor. If we can make them take the
00:44:09.060
drugs and ensure that they'll keep taking the drugs, it's fine to let them be on the street
00:44:13.240
and be in their own homes or wherever, behave in a way that is conducive with civilized society.
00:44:19.440
If not, you've got to pin them up because they pose a threat. From Peter,
00:44:22.980
Millennial Knowles. I was raised Catholic, went to a Catholic school, but have been an atheist most of
00:44:27.140
my life. Recently, I've been attending Protestant churches with my girlfriend. I've learned much more
00:44:32.120
about the Bible in Protestant churches than I did from Catholic school and church. Protestant churches
00:44:36.660
seem to have an hour-long homily and little sacrament. Catholic mass is the opposite in
00:44:41.140
my experience. Can that change? Should that change? I've noticed this too in certain Protestant
00:44:45.620
churches, which is that, especially evangelicals, Southern Baptists, you get this a little bit,
00:44:50.420
they just can be excellent exegetes of the Bible. Sometimes they're very poor exegetes of the Bible.
00:44:55.960
The trouble with an hour-long homily is sometimes it can be illuminating, life-changing,
00:45:00.680
spiritual, and sometimes it can be drivel. It can be anti-biblical, anti-Christian heresy.
00:45:06.860
The trouble is and depends upon who is giving the homily. This is a major difference though. I
00:45:13.300
like that. I love Bible studies. I love exegesis. I like reading theologians, some Protestant theologians
00:45:18.840
as well. But I don't go to church for a Bible study. I go to Bible study for Bible study. I read my
00:45:24.920
Bible for Bible. I read books about the Bible for Bible study. I go to church to worship God,
00:45:29.700
to engage in the sacraments. Christ came down. He's the divine logic of the universe, and he became
00:45:36.180
incarnate. The only begotten Son of God, who is God, became incarnate and talked to men and touched
00:45:41.840
them and rubbed mud on their eyes and spoke to them and had a body. And in my view, at least,
00:45:47.820
in the Catholic view, he founded a church and he left us sacraments. He says, do this in memory of me.
00:45:53.520
This bread is my body, which will be given up for you. This wine is my blood, which will be given up
00:45:59.020
for you. This bread is my real body. You have to eat the flesh of the Son of Man. My flesh is real
00:46:06.920
food. This is a hard saying. He harps on this, you might say. He makes this a very serious point of
00:46:14.040
saying this is real food. You have to engage in a real sacrament, in the real combination,
00:46:20.440
the real meeting of the metaphysical and the physical, the metaphor and the literal. And that's
00:46:24.240
what happens in Catholic churches. That's what happens in certain Protestant churches,
00:46:29.780
Church of England, Anglo-Catholic. This is what happens in Eastern Orthodoxy. And so that's what
00:46:34.600
I go there for. I go there to worship God. Sometimes I get a good homily. Very often I get a not so great
00:46:39.700
homily. And maybe I'll listen to somebody else's homily on the ride home. I'm glad that you're learning
00:46:46.300
more about the Bible and getting good exegesis. But you might ask yourself, what else should I be
00:46:52.200
getting? Should I be getting sacraments? Should I be eating the flesh of the Son of Man? Should I be
00:46:57.800
worshiping God in a way that is not just edifying for me and my knowledge of the Bible, but which is
00:47:05.140
giving praise to the creator of the universe and giving thanks, which we'll do on Thanksgiving.
00:47:08.720
That's our show. Have a very good Thanksgiving, everybody. I hope you survive all of the traffic
00:47:13.480
and the dinner table discussions of politics. I will see you back on Monday. In the meantime,
00:47:17.920
I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:47:43.480
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production. Copyright forward publishing
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