Ep. 261 - The War On Advent
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
187.20609
Summary
The years-long War on Christmas continues to rage on, but now Christmas is finally winning. Now, cultural conservatives must turn our attention elsewhere, move the war on Christmas forward, to the more insidious struggle, The War on Advent.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
The years-long war on Christmas continues to rage on, but now Christmas is finally winning.
00:00:06.340
Now, cultural conservatives must turn our attention elsewhere,
00:00:10.260
move the war on Christmas forward to the more insidious struggle, the war on Advent.
00:00:15.280
We will analyze what conservatives can learn from Advent.
00:00:26.720
As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says something nonsensical.
00:00:30.560
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:00:38.960
Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays.
00:00:43.380
And I, obviously, the war on Christmas has been going on for a long time.
00:00:57.220
Christmas is winning. Santa Claus is on top of a tank.
00:00:59.780
And there's a new place to go, which is Advent.
00:01:04.880
Conservatives, Christians, religious, irreligious, everybody can learn a lot from Advent.
00:01:10.680
But first, let's make a little money, honey, with Candid Co.
00:01:15.320
Listen, if you need to fix crooked teeth, crowding teeth, gaps between your teeth,
00:01:20.200
you don't have a nice little smile, then you need Candid.
00:01:23.700
Candid is helping people gain confidence through accessible and affordable orthodontic care.
00:01:28.320
It makes the process of straightening your teeth convenient and easy
00:01:31.160
by having the customer take the process into their own hands.
00:01:34.480
Straighter and brighter teeth in an average of six months,
00:01:44.600
If you don't have a great smile, it's so easy to fix it now and inexpensive.
00:01:53.080
They're customized specifically for you to straighten your teeth.
00:01:55.700
The aligners fix crooked teeth, crowding, protrusion, and gaps.
00:01:59.080
The first step is to purchase their modeling kit, which will be sent to your home.
00:02:11.640
provides you with a 3D preview of what your treatment will look like.
00:02:14.260
Best part, the treatment time is an average of six months.
00:02:17.040
We'll save you literally thousands of dollars compared to the other guys.
00:02:19.540
You're one step away from getting straighter, whiter teeth like little old me.
00:02:22.640
Take advantage of Candid's risk-free modeling guarantee.
00:02:24.540
Plus, when you use my dedicated link, candidco.com slash covfefe, C-O-V-F-E-F-E.
00:02:42.120
Obviously, some conservatives don't believe that there is a war on Christmas.
00:02:47.100
It actually turns out the majority of Republicans, 56% of Republicans, do not believe this is a war on Christmas.
00:02:53.320
I think largely this is from the fiscally conservative, socially liberal set.
00:02:57.920
They don't want to get, oh, they say, I'm not one of these people.
00:03:00.400
You know, I just want to go and I'm a cool guy and I want to go to cocktail parties.
00:03:04.080
I don't care about silly things like the war on Christmas.
00:03:14.500
It officially changed the name of the Christmas tree to the holiday tree.
00:03:22.380
I guess actually that is the one example it could be for Arbor Day.
00:03:25.360
In 2005, Walmart got rid of Christmas from its marketing materials.
00:03:30.260
Best Buy in 2006 got rid of Christmas from their marketing materials.
00:03:35.960
Starbucks for years and years had little snowmen and snowflakes and Christmas trees and things
00:03:41.780
Then in 2015, they decided they were going to take out anything that even vaguely resembled
00:03:46.640
Christmas paraphernalia and it was just a red cup.
00:03:50.880
The war on Christmas is about this bland, tedious, taking the particular out of life.
00:03:57.140
The thing that makes life enjoyable are the details, the particulars.
00:04:02.580
That's why we like talking to people who don't agree with us, maybe, or who see the world
00:04:07.400
That's why we like eating different kinds of food, watching different movies.
00:04:10.940
We don't just watch the same thing day after day, reading different books.
00:04:13.820
We like that diversity and the diversity comes out in the particular.
00:04:17.700
It seems to me what the war on Christmas people want, what the left wants broadly, is for us
00:04:21.520
all to be exactly the same, look the same, dress the same, talk the same, just be gray
00:04:29.700
It's the meme of the non-player character and it makes out the left to be just like robots
00:04:35.700
who have nothing differentiating them from everybody else.
00:04:40.000
It's about taking away the particularity of the season and the particularity of which holiday
00:04:48.220
We can say happy holidays, but which holiday are you talking about?
00:04:55.960
There was both a backlash from some cultural conservatives and then people pretending that
00:05:02.040
there was a much larger backlash to make fun of cultural conservatives.
00:05:07.880
The cup got, it was a green cup and it just had a mosaic of random people on it.
00:05:14.000
Didn't have anything to do with New Year's, nothing to do with Hanukkah, nothing to do with
00:05:17.220
Christmas, not even anything to do with Kwanzaa, which is a completely made up,
00:05:22.020
It's a contrived atheist socialist holiday made up in the 1960s by a professor at Cal
00:05:29.640
It has nothing to do with, it has no tradition whatsoever.
00:05:33.260
It's just a political fad that virtually nobody celebrates anymore.
00:05:37.680
It was just a green cup with a, you know, what ostensibly should have been the least
00:05:54.820
And so, you know, the Starbucks cup, it starts, you get a little bit more, a little bit more
00:06:02.820
They're already blasting Christmas music wall to wall.
00:06:06.120
They're already, they've got four different Christmas cups, a little holly in there, the
00:06:18.080
But, because we can never just be happy and take a win, we now have to look at the next
00:06:25.300
I am celebrating that we are winning the war on Christmas.
00:06:27.960
President Trump, I don't want people to think that I'm not grateful for it.
00:06:33.600
And it is true, just anecdotally, you go to places now and you hear Merry Christmas more
00:06:38.200
often at the Christmas tree lighting at the White House.
00:06:41.680
Here is President Trump making this point in his typically subtle way.
00:06:59.120
Just in case you didn't miss my, in case you missed it.
00:07:01.200
So you remember during the Obama era, Barack Obama took Christmas out of the White House
00:07:08.540
Just said, happy holidays, have a good holiday.
00:07:13.980
Now, Representative, Democrat Rep Jim Cooper got the Trump White House Christmas card.
00:07:20.760
He said it's the gaudiest Christmas card he's ever seen.
00:07:29.020
It says, Merry Christmas, written right on top.
00:07:31.800
I'm offended that I did not get one of these cards, but c'est la vie.
00:07:36.020
So in any case, they've got the Christmas cards out there.
00:07:41.500
Barack Obama, you'll remember during his administration, started a fight with the little
00:07:46.840
He wanted to make a group of nuns pay for abortions.
00:07:51.600
People shouldn't be forced to violate their conscience, especially nuns.
00:07:56.220
He comes into office, he invites a group of nuns in a full habit, just as Christian as
00:08:02.360
they can possibly look, to come and sing at the Christmas tree lighting.
00:08:27.920
It turns out that group of nuns, they are very popular musicians.
00:08:31.660
They've had Billboard and Amazon number one recordings.
00:08:38.320
They're not beating out Ariana Grande, but they're still doing pretty well.
00:08:43.820
You've even got Hollywood stars like Chris Pratt talking about Christmas in explicitly
00:08:53.600
He was describing the Gospel of Luke, kind of like Charlie Brown, at the annual candlelight
00:09:00.540
About 2,000 years ago, God sent an angel named Gabriel to a city in Galilee named Nazareth
00:09:12.900
to a virgin who was betrothed to a man named Joseph of the house of David.
00:09:25.580
And having come in, the angel said to her, Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with
00:09:37.300
The Bible says, when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying and considered what manner of
00:09:46.680
She was kind of scared because an angel just fell up from the ceiling.
00:09:52.780
I also love the way that he takes these very serious, he's obviously quite Christian, and
00:10:01.240
And then he does infuse it with his movie star, young guy, exuberant energy.
00:10:07.480
He did this at an awards ceremony where he told people to believe in God and understand
00:10:13.820
But he just does it in his way that's not pedantic.
00:10:22.000
Now that we're in the Christmas season, there is this rush to rush it.
00:10:27.600
There's this surge of people trying to rush our way to Christmas.
00:10:31.980
We're back in, we've got the particularity of it, because it doesn't make sense.
00:10:35.680
Why are people talking about it's the most wonderful time of the year?
00:10:38.560
Oh, it's a new family and it's the most wonderful time.
00:10:44.460
If it's just the holidays, if it's not about a holiday, if it's not about a holiday that
00:10:49.280
celebrates something, then why are people so happy and excited and nice?
00:10:53.640
It's not just the turkey, you know, it's not just people eat turkey at other points of
00:11:01.100
The next stage of this, the thing that I think we could all use a little help on is
00:11:09.760
Advent is that period of time before Christmas.
00:11:13.460
It's this time that the four Sundays before Christmas in the Christian tradition celebrate
00:11:19.840
four mysteries that are supposed to prepare us for Christmas.
00:11:26.720
It's not all dancing around the Christmas tree yet.
00:11:28.920
And the four mysteries that are celebrated are death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
00:11:38.400
We meditate on these mysteries that mankind has considered for all of human history.
00:11:44.020
When we were living in the caves, we have contemplated these mysteries.
00:12:01.460
You know, the right has always been really strong in taking Christmas's side in the war
00:12:06.660
And the left has constantly been trying to drive out Christmas celebrations.
00:12:12.660
But very few people are sticking up for Advent.
00:12:17.980
Whether you're a Christian, whether you're not Christian, whether you're on the left,
00:12:21.080
whether you're on the right, everybody could really use it.
00:12:32.640
And we're missing fundamental, eternal mysteries.
00:12:45.340
Because sometimes when people are at a fever pitch in politics,
00:12:48.600
I sometimes think, do you not realize you're going to die someday?
00:12:55.260
So I don't know if your policies will work in the long run.
00:12:58.180
And when we contemplate that mystery, I think it makes us appreciate each other a lot more,
00:13:02.860
appreciate our country a lot more, and appreciate Christmas, which is coming up.
00:13:07.620
Because Advent leads to Christmas, which is sweet as honey.
00:13:12.240
And speaking of honey, honey will help you buy all of your Christmas gifts and save a lot of money.
00:13:17.760
I've been an evangelist for honey for years, before my show existed, before the Daily Wire existed.
00:13:24.640
Honey is the way to always get the lowest price on the internet.
00:13:28.920
Especially important when you're buying your gifts.
00:13:33.020
I think it's the second night of Hanukkah tonight.
00:13:36.700
Honey is a free shopping tool that automatically saves you money by searching the internet for the best promo codes whenever you shop online.
00:13:42.480
That means you get the best deals without even trying on your favorite sites like Amazon, eBay, J.Crew, Walmart, Sephora, Expedia, and more.
00:13:50.460
In fact, honey has already saved its 10 million members an average of $28.61.
00:13:57.180
I couldn't tell you the last time I used honey because I only use honey.
00:14:02.940
I've been buying people Christmas presents online.
00:14:14.380
And especially for Christmas season, it saves me hundreds of dollars, if not more, buying gifts for my family.
00:14:22.060
It has over 100,000 plus five-star reviews on the Google Chrome Store.
00:14:27.180
Add honey to your browser, especially, you know, during the holiday season.
00:14:31.840
Get it for free at joinhoney.com slash covfefe.
00:14:43.420
That's my gift to you, is I saved you a bunch of money on your Christmas shopping.
00:14:50.060
We want to start playing Christmas music starting on November 1st.
00:14:53.840
I suppose this is evidence that people can never be happy.
00:14:56.740
You know, last year I was complaining that Starbucks didn't do enough for Christmas.
00:15:03.500
But maybe, maybe, they're just not getting it wrong.
00:15:08.740
And if you rush Christmas, it's like rushing through dinner.
00:15:11.740
It's like you sit down to a beautiful dinner and you've got steak and turkey and potatoes and all of this.
00:15:18.960
And you sit down and you just start eating pudding cups.
00:15:25.360
And you want to remember why we need Christmas in the first place.
00:15:29.160
Why is Christmas the most wonderful time of the year?
00:15:31.420
Why is Chris Pratt reciting the narrative from Luke?
00:15:37.120
Why do we watch a Charlie Brown Christmas where he's reciting this amazing moment in the woods somewhere around the year zero?
00:15:46.460
When in a little cave, in a little manger, surrounded by livestock, because there was no room at the inn, the God who created all of us, the divine love that made us in the universe, becomes flesh, enters into the creation as a little baby born on a traveling road, born in the lowest of the low, inside of a cave.
00:16:15.500
The reason we need that to happen is because of death and judgment and heaven and hell.
00:16:20.840
You know, in our culture, we are so afraid of death.
00:16:24.680
I see this all the time when I read all of the tech blogs and science blogs.
00:16:29.800
Every other day, there's somebody in Silicon Valley who says that we're about to find the cure for death.
00:16:38.000
All those people who lived before us, they sure missed out because now they're dead, but we're going to live forever.
00:16:42.980
And this reminds me of every foolish ruler for all of history, every pharaoh, every guy who was certain he was going to find the elixir of life and he would live forever.
00:16:53.240
And we make fun of these people because we know death is a fact of life.
00:16:57.340
I don't know that we would want to live forever in this world.
00:16:59.580
I don't think I would in this world of decay and corruption.
00:17:02.460
I don't want to live forever in this world, but we will die.
00:17:08.920
People spend ever more money on products, on surgeries, on Botox, on plastic surgery, on whatever to make it look as though they are not aging, to try to pretend that we're not going to die.
00:17:20.480
I go to funerals, you know, people who are not religious, friends of mine who are atheistic, and it's always so sad.
00:17:26.920
They have these really sad celebrations of life, they call it.
00:17:30.560
And I guess it's nice you like the person you want to send them off, but you don't know what you're celebrating because in those moments, people don't understand what death is.
00:17:38.740
They don't know, is there a heaven, is there a hell, where is this going, what does it mean, is life some random chance.
00:17:43.660
The left has convinced us that there is no meaning to life, that there is just life is a random cosmic accident.
00:17:50.420
It's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
00:18:00.680
Obviously, religious people say, some religious people say that there is life after death, that death isn't the end, but death does have a meaning.
00:18:14.340
Why are we in a creation such that we have to die?
00:18:21.280
Man has free will, man sinned, and so because man sinned, sin and death entered into the world and corruption and decay, and that's why.
00:18:45.540
This throwing off ideas of judgment has come back on us where now our entire ethical discourse basically amounts to, if it feels good, do it.
00:18:56.220
So that's about the level of moral discourse that we have right now in the country.
00:19:00.700
We can't explain why it's not good to do certain things, why it's not good to, like, watch a bunch of porn and go carousing all the time and stop by wherever else, you know, because one particular sin of our culture is that sex is everywhere.
00:19:17.100
I mean, there are a zillion sins in the culture.
00:19:18.960
One of them is that, so it's a good example, because we say, oh, if it feels good, it doesn't matter, it's okay.
00:19:24.140
Well, as long as you're not hurting anybody or if you're hurting them, but it's okay and they kind of like it or, you know, that's what our discourse has gotten down to.
00:19:31.100
And you'll even have people dishonestly quoting the Bible, quoting the scripture, and they'll say, well, you know, judge not lest ye be judged.
00:19:46.080
The only way that we can get out of bed in the morning is to make a judgment.
00:19:49.760
Say, should I get out of bed or should I stay in bed all day and sleep?
00:19:54.260
You go down to your kitchen and you make a judgment.
00:19:57.100
You say, do I eat Cheerios or do I eat bacon and eggs?
00:20:01.500
I only eat bacon and eggs because I'm an adult.
00:20:03.540
But, you know, some people have these judgments.
00:20:05.540
They have to, do I smoke three cigars tonight or 17 cigars tonight?
00:20:12.140
And I think it's in part because we have the sense of sin.
00:20:34.460
But because we don't accept any of these things now, we have the sense of sin and we're so anxious.
00:20:39.600
We so don't want to be judged for it that we're trying to abdicate all of our moral reasoning.
00:20:45.940
Maybe the second weekend in Advent could do a little something, even for conservatives who have that kind of thought.
00:20:55.640
After death, if there's judgment, is there a hope of something beyond this world?
00:21:01.140
You know, the theological virtues are faith, hope, and charity.
00:21:08.140
When Dante enters into hell in the poem, the Divine Comedy, on top of hell, it says,
00:21:21.140
Among the whole culture, it's very high, especially middle-aged men.
00:21:24.840
Middle-aged white men in particular are killing themselves in spades.
00:21:33.080
And now, for the second year in a row, for the first time in half of a century,
00:21:37.260
the average life expectancy is decreasing because of despair.
00:21:44.260
But first, before you die, before you get to heaven, before the judgment,
00:21:51.560
Not in a vain way, but because you want to live your life to the fullest.
00:21:58.880
That is why I love OMAX 3, ultra-pure supplements.
00:22:06.960
It's not going to completely mess with your body.
00:22:08.800
It's not some wacky chemical that's trying to do it.
00:22:15.560
Go there right now, today, and get a box of OMAX Ultra-Pure for free with your first purchase.
00:22:23.460
C-O-V-F-E-F-E, you will get a free box of OMAX 3 with your first purchase.
00:22:33.480
That is a kind of a depressing thing when you have fish burps.
00:22:42.460
It alleviates joint pain, inflammation, and muscle soreness.
00:22:45.580
And for the time that you got on this world, it will make you feel a little better.
00:22:48.920
It can help memory, cardiovascular health, brain health.
00:22:52.400
OMAX 3 has sold over half a million boxes of Ultra-Pure due to its cult-like following.
00:22:59.080
You'll have plenty of time to try it and really feel the OMAX difference.
00:23:05.940
Get a box of OMAX Ultra, OMAX 3 Ultra-Pure for free with your first purchase.
00:23:29.380
But mental health problems doesn't explain the surge in suicides.
00:23:36.180
The reason why average life expectancy for the second year in a row, for the first time in 50 years in America, has actually decreased.
00:23:45.280
Decreased in the wealthiest, most prosperous, most free, most equitable country in the world.
00:23:50.980
It's because of suicide and drug addiction, drug overdoses.
00:23:55.540
Why are people killing themselves with drugs and other means?
00:24:17.360
One thing that kind of keeps me going is once I finish this show, I'm going to go up and smoke a stogie because we've got the backstage holiday edition coming up.
00:24:25.840
Maybe tonight I'll get to go see Sweet Little Elisa.
00:24:28.220
I've got a hope that, I don't know, that the show gets really big.
00:24:32.660
I've got a hope that I'll get to go to some more colleges and give more talks.
00:24:41.460
It has to transcend the physical world because ultimately I'm going to die.
00:24:51.900
But other than that, it's very difficult to, you know, once you're in the ground,
00:24:57.840
you're going to stay there for a long period of time.
00:25:10.860
So the other reason you need this is because we live in a really nice culture where everything is super pleasant all the time.
00:25:22.260
But as a result of that, when things go wrong, people lose their minds.
00:25:26.320
You know, millennials, the most coddled generation in American history.
00:25:30.420
For kids at college right now, there was a study done out of Arizona State University.
00:25:34.740
It showed that two years after the 2016 election, students were, a quarter of college students were suffering from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
00:25:47.320
They were actually suffering clinically high levels of stress.
00:25:49.780
Stress levels as high as people who experience a mass shooting incident seven months after the mass shooting.
00:25:59.640
When things are so nice, when we're in a decadent society, when kids are coddled and protected from the harsh realities of the world,
00:26:07.800
then when things go wrong, they're so fragile, they break, they crack.
00:26:14.720
If you don't have an ultimate hope, then once those things crack, you're going to fall into a pit of despair.
00:26:24.200
Antonin Scalia did an interview with New York Magazine with this very glib woman a number of years ago.
00:26:33.940
She said, oh my gosh, it must be very scary to believe in hell and the devil.
00:26:38.200
He said, you know, this is basic Catholic theology, that hell exists.
00:26:41.800
Do you know how out of touch you are with America?
00:26:45.340
Most of Americans believe in hell and in the devil.
00:26:48.500
Most of people throughout history have believed in hell and the devil.
00:26:53.380
Hell matters because it means there is divine justice.
00:26:56.980
What we like to do, both in religion and in our sort of pseudo-religions,
00:27:01.420
you hear all these people who say I'm spiritual but not religious.
00:27:04.080
Oh, I'm not a Christian, but I like Christian teachings.
00:27:07.700
What they try to do is they want all the really nice, comforting things and they don't want any of those harsh realities.
00:27:15.260
They want the heaven, they don't want the hell.
00:27:17.180
They want a God without wrath to lead a people without sin into a kingdom without judgment
00:27:20.860
through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross, to quote a famous theologian.
00:27:32.820
But if there is no hell, then there is not that justice.
00:27:38.680
You know, so much what Chris Pratt is talking about at that candle lighting ceremony
00:27:46.180
At the Annunciation, when the angel comes down and tells Mary that she's going to give birth to Jesus.
00:27:56.140
And then heaven holds its breath because Mary ascents.
00:28:05.460
She can say no, but she says, I am the Lord's servant.
00:28:28.960
How beautiful a thing it can be that there is justice.
00:28:32.140
How beautiful a thing that we have that liberty.
00:28:34.660
You know, in America, we talk about liberty so much.
00:28:37.220
Our country is like a free country founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:28:49.880
And when we use our liberty and we abuse our liberty, how do we get mercy?
00:29:00.640
It's not, you know, like I wouldn't recommend discussing that at your office Christmas party.
00:29:06.740
I don't know when, you know, Susie the secretary is sloshed on eggnog, you know, and you start discussing death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
00:29:16.920
You know, everyone's playing rock around the Christmas tree and you're there with a little fire and brimstone.
00:29:21.460
But in the moments when you're not at those Christmas parties that are all over the place or holiday party or whatever, in the moments when you're actually contemplating the season and the reason for the joy of this season, think about those things.
00:29:34.340
Because it seems, maybe it seems a little sad or inconvenient or we don't want to think about it.
00:29:39.620
The reason that we have despair flying throughout our culture is because, precisely because, we don't want to think about it.
00:29:48.120
Don't skip it because if you skip that season, you are going to skip the entire celebration.
00:29:54.420
We've got to talk about President George Bush dying, the legacy of George Bush, people on the left and the right are getting it wrong, the Paris riots.
00:30:02.400
As far as riots go, these ones couldn't be better because the mainstream media won't report on the actual cause of the riots, which is global warming alarmism.
00:30:12.460
We will get to that in a bit and we've got a lot more if we've got time.
00:30:19.980
Coming up tonight, don't miss our next episode of Daily Wire Backstage Holiday Edition.
00:30:26.080
And I have to defend the word holiday here because it actually isn't Christmas yet.
00:30:37.680
Daily Wire God King, Jeremy Boring, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Elisha Kress, and the little old me.
00:30:42.220
We'll be talking politics, culture, and why frozen leftist tears make the most beautiful snowflakes.
00:30:52.020
As always, only Daily Wire subscribers get to ask the questions.
00:30:57.480
Also, if you're a subscriber, you lucky duck, you will be able to see Andrew Klavan's next chapter of Another Kingdom.
00:31:06.140
Today, subscribers get exclusive access to episode nine titled Orozco.
00:31:12.100
And this season, I tell you, when I go to these campus speeches, you know, I was on the road for, I've been on the road forever.
00:31:22.520
I've been to all 57 states that Barack Obama went to.
00:31:25.320
And people come up to me and they'll say, Michael, Michael, I love the show.
00:31:32.560
They'll say, oh, no, no, Michael, I don't mean your show.
00:31:39.440
If you want a nice, cozy little Christmas read, either to listen or to watch it with the amazing art, this is a really good one.
00:31:46.620
It's great because Drew did all the work and I just have to read it.
00:31:50.460
If you're not a subscriber, you won't be able to watch new episodes of season two until Friday.
00:31:57.520
Subscribe to watch the first and second seasons of Another Kingdom.
00:32:04.840
You know that snow is much thicker and fluffier than water.
00:32:08.760
So when the leftist snowflakes start pouring down, those salty ones, you're probably going to need two tumblers.
00:32:31.440
I got the news, you know, when I saw the update and I wasn't exactly thinking, you know, oh, did he flip his Mustang?
00:32:38.820
Although, frankly, with President Bush, he was still jumping out of airplanes at age 90.
00:32:47.120
People, I think, are getting reactions to this wrong on both sides.
00:32:51.380
I guess really, really my first reaction was, we all knew he was not long for this world.
00:33:20.020
That guy, he's going to outlive all of us, Jimmy Carter.
00:33:27.700
And some conservatives were a little down on Bush's career.
00:33:36.820
He was running basically from the establishment wing of the Republican Party, the moderate ring
00:33:43.300
I think he backed Goldwater, so he did have that in him a little bit.
00:33:46.220
But he was the moderate guy, anti-conservative movement broadly.
00:33:51.480
He coined the term voodoo economics to refer to Ronald Reagan's economic plan, supply side
00:33:57.860
economics, which defined the conservative movement for so long.
00:34:01.160
So Bush was a supporter of Planned Parenthood for a very long time, so that irks some conservatives.
00:34:08.340
He abandoned Richard Nixon, you know, called on Nixon to resign.
00:34:13.340
You know, one of the first expressions that I ever learned as a kid, I think I was two
00:34:35.660
He, very famously, at the end of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan wins the Cold War.
00:34:43.140
And he's overseeing the dismantling of the Soviet Empire.
00:34:46.320
And he makes this, actually in a few instances, he talks about what the new world order will
00:34:52.720
And this has bred a lot of conspiracy theories.
00:34:55.600
And there is some basis in what certain people want world order to look like.
00:35:00.300
But then it has this, you know, then also the tinfoil hats and the spacemen come out.
00:35:05.440
Here is what President Bush actually said about that.
00:35:07.400
We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new
00:35:14.440
world order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct
00:35:21.800
When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order,
00:35:29.500
an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the
00:35:39.100
Okay, so people, some conservatives who are excitable react to this and they say, see,
00:35:44.360
it's a nefarious plan for just a government to govern the whole world and the total loss
00:35:51.020
My reaction is, oh, he likes the United Nations.
00:35:58.280
But what he's really talking about is that prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, prior
00:36:03.180
to the dismantling of the Soviet Empire, we had a bipolar world.
00:36:07.220
We had the American sphere, the Western sphere, the free sphere, and we had the communist sphere,
00:36:13.200
And that was a world broken up between two great powers.
00:36:17.160
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, you had a new world order.
00:36:20.160
By definition, you have a new world order because America is the only remaining superpower.
00:36:24.960
And then the question was, how are we going to handle the dismantling of this empire?
00:36:32.600
How much will we allow ourselves to be governed by international, supranational institutions
00:36:37.060
like the United Nations, like the IMF, like the EU, like all of these different international organizations?
00:36:45.960
And President Bush clearly favored a much broader role for them than conservatives do.
00:36:52.520
He wasn't talking about going in and, you know, making everyone loyal only to one god emperor
00:37:00.620
It was just a kind of typical middle-of-the-road republicanism.
00:37:06.860
And I got to tell you, in the whole of a career, that's not the worst thing in the world because
00:37:11.300
the good aspects of President Bush's legacy were really excellent.
00:37:16.660
He was a true war hero, shot down over the Pacific.
00:37:30.160
He came up, lived a totally admirable life, went to Yale, started having kids, captain of
00:37:36.680
He could have easily gone into banking in New York.
00:37:39.300
His family was a major Wall Street family, and he didn't.
00:37:42.620
He chose to move to West Texas, strike out on his own, make his own fortune, his own way.
00:37:57.780
But the reason I really, really admire George Bush is because he was a totally loyal vice
00:38:08.140
Sometimes you hear of vice presidents arguing with their presidents, trying to go out on
00:38:13.020
George Bush and Ronald Reagan probably didn't agree on very much, but Reagan treated him with
00:38:17.060
respect, and George Bush treated Reagan with the utmost deference and respect.
00:38:21.580
He was always campaigning, promoting the president.
00:38:24.160
You didn't see a lot of leaks from the office of the vice president.
00:38:27.120
You didn't see him trying to undermine Ronald Reagan.
00:38:31.800
And when Reagan was shot, there was this defining moment where George Bush then comes in acting
00:38:38.460
as the president, and he could have sat in Ronald Reagan's chair before the cabinet, and
00:38:45.660
And Ronald Reagan said about this that that's when he knew he had a truly loyal vice president.
00:38:50.860
He didn't want to make it seem like he was coming in, taking advantage of a situation.
00:38:56.660
I mean, he was a loyal guy to the greatest president of the 20th century.
00:39:08.800
And so you've got people on the left now trying, some of them are saying he was a great guy
00:39:15.760
Some of them are saying he was a terrible guy because the left just hates conservatives
00:39:19.280
and hates Republicans and even people who they mistakenly think are conservative who aren't
00:39:26.740
And then you've got people on the right attacking him because he wasn't conservative enough.
00:39:30.160
My thought, he was my first president when I was born.
00:39:33.540
He was loyal to Ronald Reagan, the greatest president of the 20th century.
00:39:40.960
He managed a successful and limited operation in Desert Storm, very successful.
00:39:48.740
He didn't, like Barack Obama, he didn't take the opportunity to just constantly attack
00:40:01.140
Did good, had good things to do in American politics.
00:40:04.960
Helped to bring the Republican Party to the right, even though he himself wasn't trying
00:40:09.960
As a member of the Reagan revolution, he was, he did do that.
00:40:28.580
But as far as riots go, it's the best one ever because it explains and demonstrates the
00:40:33.380
insanity of European leftism, particularly environmentalism.
00:40:39.400
So far, 400 people have been arrested in these riots.
00:40:47.660
An estimated 75,000 people going out on the streets.
00:40:52.280
Because in France, people are protesting all the time.
00:40:55.400
They're always striking, going on protests, going on riots.
00:40:58.180
My priest, Father George Rutler, describes a Frenchman as an Italian in a bad mood.
00:41:02.580
You know, they're always kind of angry and ornery and, oh, right?
00:41:09.980
They're doing it now to protest pro-environmentalist politicians.
00:41:14.700
They're doing it to protest global warming alarmism.
00:41:17.600
They are rioting right now because self-appointed elites who want to pretend that the sun monster
00:41:24.940
is a more pressing problem than what people need in the here and now are bankrupting these
00:41:33.960
Earlier in the year, Macron, the president of France, said that he was going to attack
00:41:37.740
global warming and he was going to institute a new fuel tax to convince people to stop using
00:41:45.980
So they were already hit with this massive tax increase in January.
00:41:48.920
More than 60% of the cost of fuel in France comes from taxes.
00:41:54.260
If they cut out those useless taxes, you would have cheap fuel all over France.
00:42:06.040
He was pretty open about it before he wasn't open about it.
00:42:08.400
He said, yeah, we've got to raise the cost for people to use oil and gas so that it hurts
00:42:15.740
them so that they have to start using wind power or whatever other imaginary thing doesn't
00:42:24.820
I was elected that I know so much better than the people.
00:42:35.060
He's going to force them to lose money, have a tough time feeding their family so that we
00:42:40.760
can stop sending carbon dioxide into the environment.
00:42:45.140
They did say initially that oil was running out.
00:42:49.680
And then now we're the biggest producer in the world of oil and natural gas.
00:42:58.260
All the time, these environmentalist types, the global warming alarmists, talk about all
00:43:02.840
of the climate refugees, all of the people whose lives are going to be upended by global
00:43:11.620
But in the fantasy world of the left, they'll exist just in five more years, the day after
00:43:17.420
Didn't you say they were going to be around in 2013, 2015?
00:43:20.520
I said that you would see climate refugees the day after tomorrow.
00:43:23.680
When am I going to see them the day after tomorrow?
00:43:27.560
But in the here and now, in the reality, we are seeing climate refugees.
00:43:31.580
It's the people protesting in the streets in France.
00:43:37.620
The ones who are dealing at their pocketbooks, trying to feed their families because frivolous
00:43:44.140
politicians like Emmanuel Macron and Barack Obama are trying to tax them into oblivion.
00:43:49.600
They're using the sun monster as an excuse to steal more government power and steal more
00:43:56.920
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you'll be shocked to hear, is on this exact same point.
00:44:01.840
She's speaking in even more grandiose terms than Obama and Macron.
00:44:04.820
We were at the brink, at the cusp of an abyss, and we did not know if we would be capable of
00:44:14.520
We've dug deep, and we've done what we thought was impossible.
00:44:27.160
We did it when no one else thought that we could.
00:44:30.420
That's what we did when so many of us won an election this year.
00:44:40.580
Stopping Jim Crow, stopping black people from being murdered in America.
00:44:46.260
It's the same thing as electing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
00:44:49.200
It's almost, I actually can't even see the difference.
00:44:51.700
When I look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, when I stare into her googly eyes, all I see is Martin
00:45:04.880
This is a problem of people who don't have any problems.
00:45:08.880
The problem with people who don't have any problems is they need to make problems because
00:45:13.240
they need to struggle, and so when everything is going so well, they need to focus on the
00:45:19.000
They need to make up, or they need to struggle because we want struggle.
00:45:23.080
We want to achieve things in life, and when they're not achieving the things they should
00:45:26.020
achieve, they invent them, and that is the sun monster.
00:45:33.800
In her mind, global warming, which the predictions have consistently been wrong.
00:45:40.540
We're told that even if we had instituted the Paris Climate Agreement, we would only reduce
00:45:44.840
the temperature, or prevent two degrees of warming, rather, within the course of 100
00:45:48.900
years, and ironically, we didn't take part in the Paris Agreement.
00:45:55.400
We're actually reducing our carbon emissions in accordance with it, and the people who did
00:46:01.000
We know all of the facts, but she believes that slapping a higher gas tax on middle-class
00:46:08.620
Americans, that is tantamount to ending slavery.
00:46:11.760
That is the kind of moral idiocy that happens when we don't take real problems seriously.
00:46:16.440
Problems in the here and now, political problems, temporal problems, and eternal problems.
00:46:20.320
A good note to leave on at the beginning of Advent.
00:46:30.180
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal.
00:46:54.500
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
00:47:00.180
Today on The Matt Wall Show, an NFL player is in big, big trouble for hitting a woman.
00:47:06.540
But from a modern, enlightened feminist perspective, why should it be any great sin for a man to hit a woman?
00:47:13.700
Also, we'll look at the prison reform bill that President Trump supports.
00:47:18.520
And Baby It's Cold Outside has been banned from a radio station.
00:47:22.060
Will they also ban all of the other sexually charged songs that comprise 90% of modern music?
00:47:31.400
We'll talk about all that coming up on The Matt Wall Show.