The Michael Knowles Show - April 02, 2019


Ep. 324 - Killing Babies, Saving Murderers


Episode Stats

Length

43 minutes

Words per Minute

162.84718

Word Count

7,106

Sentence Count

573

Misogynist Sentences

16

Hate Speech Sentences

13


Summary

Today's show is all about death. Beginning to end, it's all about the Supreme Court's recent 5-4 decision on the death penalty, Bucklew v. Praseth, a case about cruel and unusual punishment.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The left launches a crusade to murder innocent babies in Georgia while simultaneously doing
00:00:06.060 its best to overturn the death penalty for rapists and murderers. We will examine the
00:00:10.680 left's inverted judgment and why good judges matter. Then a new study shows that assault
00:00:16.140 weapon bans do not reduce homicide. Finally, Dorothy Parker describes all the ways to kill
00:00:21.640 yourself on this macabre way to kick off National Poetry Month. I'm Michael Knowles and this is
00:00:27.040 The Michael Knowles Show. Today's show is all about death. Beginning to end, it's all about
00:00:38.920 death because there was a very important decision that just came down from the Supreme Court
00:00:43.580 thanks to Justice Gorsuch and I guess thanks to Justice Kavanaugh because this was a 5-4 decision
00:00:50.320 on the death penalty and Kavanaugh was the one who replaced Anthony Kennedy. He was that swing vote
00:00:56.240 and he sided with the conservatives. This is very important and it's funny I say sided with the
00:01:00.600 conservatives because a lot of people who were conservative or libertarian or in the conservative
00:01:05.340 movement oppose the death penalty. They hate the death penalty. They're very wrong about this
00:01:10.620 and we'll examine why. Judge Gorsuch was the one who gave this opinion. The case was Bucklew v. Preseth,
00:01:19.200 the director of the Missouri Department of Corrections et al.
00:01:22.840 The case was all about cruel and unusual punishment. The case was all about evolving
00:01:28.860 standards of decency. The case was basically about whether we can outlaw the death penalty
00:01:36.740 by making up imaginary things in the Constitution. That's really what it's about. Whether you like
00:01:42.300 the death penalty or you don't like the death penalty, what this case is really about is whether
00:01:46.060 a bunch of robed justices or benevolent bettors or self-appointed elites can outlaw the death penalty
00:01:52.940 simply because they imagine something in the Constitution that isn't there. We'll get to the
00:01:58.060 specifics of this in just a second. But first, let us make a little money, honey, with candid
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00:03:40.780 off the price of your modeling kit, candidco.com slash cofefe. What was this Supreme Court decision
00:03:47.920 about? Bucklew versus Praseth, director of the Missouri Department of Corrections. This guy,
00:03:54.640 Bucklew, he's a convicted murderer, convicted rapist. He's on death row. He has blood-filled
00:04:01.920 tumors on his neck, and I told you this show was going to be really tough. It's a little grotesque,
00:04:06.840 a little tough to listen to, but very important decision that came out. He's got all of these
00:04:11.740 blood-filled tumors, and what his lawyers are arguing is because of this medical condition,
00:04:17.100 it could make lethal injection painful. Now, I know what you're thinking. The guy's going to be
00:04:22.180 dead in 30 seconds. If he has a little pain, what's the big deal? The question in this case
00:04:27.520 that ostensibly the judges were looking at is whether the possibility of this guy having a
00:04:33.780 painful execution makes the execution itself cruel and unusual punishment and therefore
00:04:39.500 unconstitutional. And Justice Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and all the conservatives came out and said,
00:04:46.220 of course, this does not, because you have a tumor on your neck, this does not mean that the state
00:04:53.100 can't execute you. This does not mean that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment.
00:04:58.360 The Constitution does not ensure you a painless execution. That's one of the main takeaways from
00:05:05.940 this decision. By the way, it was a total cheap trick, total BS. This guy, Bucklew, had faced the
00:05:12.140 death penalty for 18 years. He was waiting on death row. And then 12 days before he was scheduled
00:05:18.660 to be executed, all of a sudden he said, oh no, I've got this medical condition and we have to
00:05:26.980 file appeals. So they filed appeals. This led to five years of litigation. The appeals ran out last
00:05:32.820 year. So he was finally going to be killed. It was on death row for 18 years. Then another five years
00:05:37.760 of litigation. You're looking 23 years down the line. And just as he's about to be killed,
00:05:41.240 the justices halted the execution when Kennedy sided with the liberals. So some of the fears
00:05:49.620 with Kavanaugh being appointed to fill Kennedy's spot is Kennedy sort of liked him. He clerked for
00:05:54.600 Kennedy. Kennedy sort of picked him. And there's this fear that Kavanaugh is going to side with the
00:05:58.420 liberals. But on this case, on this exact case, you saw Kavanaugh siding with the conservatives while
00:06:06.660 his predecessor, Kennedy, had sided with the liberals. You are seeing a change in the shift
00:06:11.420 of power on the court. So thank goodness for Kavanaugh. Thank goodness for Neil Gorsuch. Thank
00:06:16.900 goodness for the election of Donald Trump, because you wouldn't have had any of those things had
00:06:20.760 Hillary Clinton won. So to the actual meat of the case, I guess the question is, why do we need to
00:06:25.980 kill this guy? Because we're only arguing over these points of the Constitution. We seem to forget that
00:06:31.520 there is a criminal here who has committed serious crimes, crimes serious enough to merit execution in
00:06:38.040 an age where we don't like killing people very much. This is what Gorsuch wrote.
00:06:44.320 The people of Missouri, the surviving victims of Mr. Bucklew's crimes and others like them,
00:06:49.960 deserve better. Under our Constitution, the question of capital punishment belongs to the people and
00:06:56.040 their representatives, not the courts, to resolve. Now listen to this. Adam Smith used to say, he wrote
00:07:03.140 down famously, mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. And we think, all we think about is
00:07:09.760 this poor murderous rapist, Bucklew, who's got some tumor on his neck and it might hurt when he gets
00:07:15.460 lethal injection. That's what we think about. We don't think about the victims of his crimes, which we'll
00:07:21.840 get to in a second. Most importantly of all, the people that we always forget about are the citizens,
00:07:29.380 the people of Missouri. Now listen to how Gorsuch begins this. The people of Missouri, dot, dot, dot,
00:07:36.360 deserve better. Why? Why? He didn't murder the people of Missouri, not more than a couple of them. He
00:07:42.020 didn't attack the people of Missouri. He did. Because crime is an assault on the country, on the
00:07:50.000 community, on justice. And therefore, the civil authority has to enforce justice, has to bring us
00:07:57.640 justice. Because it affects all of us. This is the point of criminal justice that we always forget.
00:08:04.520 We remember the criminal part. We remember rehabilitation. We remember deterrent. We forget
00:08:08.760 about the justice part of it. And this is important and this affects all of us. And we all demand it.
00:08:15.360 Then, of course, Gorsuch gets to the point here. The question of capital punishment belongs to the
00:08:19.840 people and their representatives, not the courts, to resolve. Okay, obviously, at the time of the
00:08:26.860 ratification of the Constitution, nobody thought that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment.
00:08:34.080 The death penalty was basically the definition of a felony. There was the death penalty everywhere
00:08:39.980 when the Constitution was adopted. Nobody thought that was cruel and unusual punishment. Now today,
00:08:47.700 some people think it's cruel and unusual to kill criminals for committing crimes.
00:08:55.320 It's becoming increasingly unusual because these courts and these judges have taken away the power
00:09:00.940 of the people to decide this. But let's say we don't like the death penalty anymore. Society has gone
00:09:05.520 soft. We don't want to kill criminals anymore. Whatever the reason. Say you don't trust the state to carry
00:09:10.740 it out. You think there's too much corruption. Okay, there are a lot of arguments against the death
00:09:14.640 penalty. If you don't like the death penalty, then convince your fellow citizens and pass a law
00:09:19.260 outlawing the death penalty. You can do that. That's what a self-governing people is allowed to
00:09:24.720 do. What you shouldn't do is have attorneys general or DAs or governors or presidents or judges just
00:09:34.020 waving their hand and saying, oh, pish posh, forget about the law. We don't need the law. Who cares what
00:09:39.480 the people want? I know in my infinite wisdom. I know better than everybody else. I know better than
00:09:44.660 all the citizens of this country, the citizens of this state, the framers of the constitution.
00:09:48.960 I know better than everybody. And so I'm just going to pretend that the death penalty is
00:09:53.760 unconstitutional. It's not unconstitutional. It's very constitutional to kill criminals.
00:09:58.620 But if you don't like it, fine, convince your fellow citizens and pass a law. However,
00:10:03.900 remember that these guys are pretty bad hombres. Remember that these victims deserve justice.
00:10:11.600 Remember that a civilized society deserves justice for the victims, on behalf of the victims,
00:10:18.780 on behalf of justice generally, and for the perpetrators. This guy Bucklew, now 20 years ago,
00:10:26.780 23 years ago, I guess, went on a rampage in 1996 after his girlfriend tried to break up with him.
00:10:33.900 Where are the feminists on this? Where is the Me Too movement? This guy goes on a violent rampage
00:10:39.200 as his girlfriend tries to break up with him. She flees to a neighbor's house. He goes over there
00:10:43.920 and shoots and kills the neighbor. He then beats this woman with his gun and rapes her.
00:10:50.600 Then the police come and he gets into a shootout with the police. Finally, thankfully, he's arrested.
00:10:56.200 He's sent to jail. He escapes from jail and then he goes and attacks the girlfriend's mother with a
00:11:00.960 hammer. This guy needs to be put down. He needs to be taken out back and put down like old yeller
00:11:06.480 for all reasons. For all three reasons that we have capital punishment and criminal justice as a
00:11:15.180 deterrent. And we would have a much better deterrent effect if we had taken this guy out back and put
00:11:19.780 him down like old yeller in 1997, right after it happened, not 23 years later. We have to do this
00:11:26.820 for the retributive effect because this demands justice. Justice demands to be satisfied.
00:11:34.000 And even as a matter of rehabilitation, I don't think any amount of therapy is going to turn this
00:11:39.180 guy around. I don't think going into a therapy session and hugging each other and saying,
00:11:43.880 oh, hey, let's talk about our feelings. Oh, daddy didn't go to your baseball game when you were a
00:11:48.760 kid. Oh, okay. They're there. Now you're reformed. I don't think so. The only chance this guy has at
00:11:53.260 rehabilitation is to stare down the gallows and say, well, I'm about to meet my maker in an hour. I
00:11:58.960 guess I had better start taking these things seriously and I better throw myself on the ground
00:12:03.700 and ask for forgiveness. That's the only, that's the closest to rehabilitation this guy's ever going to
00:12:09.560 get. So what's the bottom line from this case? We're talking about cruel and unusual punishment.
00:12:14.980 We're talking about the eighth amendment to the constitution in the bill of rights. And this is
00:12:20.260 what Gorsuch writes. The eighth amendment has never been understood to guarantee a condemned inmate,
00:12:27.560 a painless death. That's a luxury not guaranteed to many people, including most victims of capital
00:12:34.160 crimes. This is a great point, by the way, for the vast majority of people on earth, for all of human
00:12:41.120 history, no one can expect a painless death. We all sort of hope, we think, you know, when my day
00:12:48.780 finally comes, I hope that I can go out in my sleep or, you know, smoking a cigar on a beach
00:12:53.640 somewhere. You say this, oh gosh, I just like a painless death because for the vast majority of human
00:12:59.440 history, we've had very painful deaths. Now he makes that point about everybody. Then he makes
00:13:06.540 the point of the victims of capital crimes because Bucklew's girlfriend didn't have a pain-free
00:13:14.200 experience with him. His, his girlfriend's mother didn't have a pain-free experience. That
00:13:20.120 neighbor just in the very moment of that incident didn't meet a pain-free death and Bucklew can't
00:13:26.260 expect to meet a pain-free death either. Now Neil Gorsuch goes on to clarify what he means. Does
00:13:31.880 this mean that we should torture the guy? Does this mean that we should give him an intentionally
00:13:35.440 painful death? No, of course not. Gorsuch writes, what the eighth amendment does guarantee is a method
00:13:42.540 of execution that's not cruel and unusual. And ever since the founding, people have understood that
00:13:48.600 the only way to tell if the method is cruel is to compare it with other known and available
00:13:53.400 alternatives to see if the state is inflicting substantially more pain than necessary to
00:13:58.940 carry out its lawful sentence. So we're not, we don't want cruel and unusual punishments. It goes
00:14:05.320 in, in the opinion here, they talk about other punishments that at the time of the ratification
00:14:10.400 of the constitution were done away with. Drawing and quartering people, disemboweling them,
00:14:18.180 those sort of things would be cruel and unusual. They were understood to be cruel and unusual at
00:14:23.680 the time. And so even as the constitution was adopted, you couldn't inflict that sort of capital
00:14:30.400 punishment on somebody. But how about today? This is the question that the court's liberals bring up.
00:14:36.160 I mean, why are we having this discussion? It is so obvious that the, that capital punishment is not
00:14:41.420 unconstitutional. And yet a lot of people are pretending that it is. Why? Because of this one man,
00:14:48.320 Chief Justice Earl Warren, in 1958, coined the term evolving standards of decency. He did it in this
00:14:57.860 case, TROP versus Dulles. Evolving standards of decency. This is a very funny statement because we like to
00:15:08.740 flatter ourselves. We moderns, we people living in 2019. I said, gosh, we're just such decent people.
00:15:14.640 We're just so good. We would never do barbaric things like kill murderers and rapists for their
00:15:21.920 heinous crimes. We would never do awful indecent things like enforce justice and bring about justice
00:15:29.960 for the victims of violent crimes and for the society at large. Oh, that would be so indecent.
00:15:35.440 Oh, hey, let's go kill a million babies a year. Hold on. I'm sorry. I'm just,
00:15:40.600 I'll be right there. I'm going to go kill a million babies a year. I'm going to go boycott Georgia
00:15:45.020 because they don't want to kill a million babies a year. But hold on one second. I just have to
00:15:48.660 finish my lecture on decency, but I'll be right there. And then we can go kill all of those babies.
00:15:53.000 I'm sorry. Where was I? Oh yes. I was talking about our evolving standards of decency and how much
00:15:57.960 more decent we are today than those awful people in the past who enforced capital punishment for violent
00:16:04.280 criminals and also didn't kill a million babies a year. Decency. So Gorsuch basically goes right at
00:16:13.300 the jugular of this stupid idea from Earl Warren. And he says, quote, the Constitution allows capital
00:16:20.920 punishment. In fact, death was, quote, the standard penalty for all serious crimes at the time of the
00:16:28.860 founding. It was the definition of a serious crime. You hang. He goes on, nor did the later
00:16:34.840 edition of the Eighth Amendment outlaw the practice. On the contrary, the Fifth Amendment
00:16:39.740 added to the Constitution at the same time as the Eighth expressly contemplates that a defendant may be
00:16:45.420 tried for a capital crime and deprived of life as a penalty so long as proper procedures are followed.
00:16:53.420 It is manifestly clear that the Constitution permits the state to deprive criminals of life for serious
00:17:02.340 crimes. This is an argument also for originalism because, especially on this case, because conservatives
00:17:11.720 are divided about this. Pope Benedict said this when he was still Pope, which is that there can be
00:17:18.840 legitimate disagreement among Catholics as to the question of the death penalty. He's recognizing
00:17:25.360 Catholics are very split on the question of the death penalty. This new Pope wants to pretend that
00:17:31.720 there can't be legitimate disagreement, but there can be. And the same is true for the conservative
00:17:36.800 movement. I totally get the arguments against the death penalty. I don't think they're ultimately
00:17:42.040 convincing. I don't even think they're really that good. But they're legitimate arguments. I think there
00:17:46.940 can be totally legitimate disagreement among conservatives about the death penalty. However,
00:17:52.940 there cannot be legitimate disagreement over the constitutionality of the death penalty.
00:17:58.860 The death penalty is obviously, repeatedly, manifestly constitutional. And even if you don't like the death penalty,
00:18:08.900 even if you wish that there were some prohibition of the death penalty in the constitution, you still
00:18:17.940 should defend originalism. You still should defend what the constitution means. You still should defend
00:18:25.320 the constitutionality of the death penalty. Why is that? Because what is the alternative?
00:18:32.400 Even the liberals should defend originalism. Even the radicals, even the radical reformers.
00:18:40.640 Because what is the alternative? I got to ask Justice Scalia this when I was still in college. I got to meet
00:18:48.140 him twice before he died. And one of the questions that was asked was, shouldn't this method of
00:18:58.020 constitutional interpretation? Originalism, shouldn't this just be taken in the context of all the other
00:19:03.800 methods of constitutional interpretation? And he said, what other method? At least originalists have
00:19:11.440 a clear interpretive scheme. At least originalists have a clear interpretive methodology. What's the
00:19:19.440 constitutional interpretive methodology of Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Sonia Sotomayor? It's willy-nilly. What is
00:19:29.380 the clear method of constitutional interpretation of Earl Warren? There isn't one. It's whatever little
00:19:36.260 fancies pop into his head. Who is to decide evolving standards of decency? Earl Warren, I guess. Just
00:19:45.440 whatever they want. They say, you know, those framers obviously allowed for the death penalty. But
00:19:50.940 today, I, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, don't like it. And so I'm going to pretend it's unconstitutional.
00:19:55.520 Okay. Well, I think, I think when the framers wrote the constitution, I think what they really meant
00:20:02.940 was that in 2019, Michael Knowles should get a lifetime supply of Chick-fil-A sandwiches.
00:20:08.320 I'm pretty sure that's what they meant. That's just what I feel because,
00:20:12.920 because that would form a more perfect union for me. So I think they wrote, we the people,
00:20:19.220 in order to form a more perfect union, obviously my having free Chick-fil-A sandwiches for the rest
00:20:25.040 of my life would make the union more perfect, definitely to me. So give me my Chick-fil-A.
00:20:30.340 It's there. Look, it's just evolving. It's just an evolving understanding. I know what you're
00:20:34.560 going to say. There wasn't Chick-fil-A at the time of the ratification. Right, right. But because
00:20:39.440 of evolving standards of decency, because of evolving standards of taste and deliciousness,
00:20:46.280 I think it's manifestly clear that in order to form a more perfect union, you need to give me free
00:20:50.740 chicken sandwiches for the rest of my life. What the liberals on the court are saying is not in any
00:20:56.480 way less ridiculous than the statement that I just made. And I really am waiting. I know a few
00:21:03.520 liberals, left-wingers who would call themselves textualists and originalists because they see
00:21:09.300 that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. They see that either you accept the meaning
00:21:15.740 of the constitution for what it is, or you don't have a constitution. Either you accept what the
00:21:22.720 words mean, and then if you don't like them, you amend the constitution, or if there's more wiggle room
00:21:27.900 in the law, you just pass a law, or you don't have law, or you don't have the constitution.
00:21:33.680 This reminds me of that Bible analogy. When people say, they start quoting the Bible out
00:21:40.440 of context. Alyssa Milano does this a lot. We'll get to that in a second to defend the indefensible.
00:21:45.820 But when people say, well, in the Bible, it says this, and that's why, and then they go form all
00:21:50.600 these crazy conclusions from it. Looking at the Bible without context, without a knowledge of
00:21:59.340 history, and trying to draw grand theological conclusions from that is like looking down a deep,
00:22:06.380 dark well, and all you see is your own reflection on the surface. This is why there are 30,000
00:22:14.820 denominations of people who all have the one true interpretation of the Bible, and it was finally
00:22:22.000 discovered in 1967, and finally, oh, after 2,000 years of darkness, finally, random Joe Schmoe has
00:22:28.360 figured out the true meaning of the, okay, fine, whatever. The same thing about the constitution.
00:22:33.880 When you look down at that profound document, with all that profound history and tradition that it
00:22:38.360 represents, and all of the tradition that's come from it, and you look down at it, and you take it
00:22:42.860 completely out of context, completely out of the context of what the words meant by the people who
00:22:48.240 wrote them, and what they were commonly understood to mean at the time of ratification, you are just
00:22:53.620 looking down a deep, dark well, and all you see is your own reflection on the surface, your own
00:22:59.500 evolving standards of decency, or in this case, indecency. Excellent decision from Judge Gorsuch,
00:23:06.040 excellent decision from Kavanaugh, and Alito, and Roberts, and Thomas, all the good conservatives.
00:23:10.680 Well done, guys. Really glad we won that last presidential election, so we got those two
00:23:15.180 judges to make a very good decision. Speaking of death, there is an evolving indecency standard
00:23:23.820 from Alyssa Milano, who now is leading the charge in Hollywood to boycott Georgia. Why, you ask?
00:23:32.340 Because Georgia doesn't want to kill as many babies. This has become the crusade. Now Alyssa Milano is
00:23:38.120 invoking God in her quest to kill more babies. We will analyze Alyssa Milano's very suspect theology.
00:23:46.540 Then, news that the assault weapons ban doesn't lower homicide. Then, a poem about suicide to kick
00:23:53.460 off National Poetry Month. But first, go to dailywire.com. You have to do it. You have got to do it.
00:24:00.480 Listen to the headline today from Think Progress. This was after that decision came down from Judge
00:24:06.900 Gorsuch. Gorsuch just handed down the most bloodthirsty and cruel death penalty opinion of
00:24:14.140 the modern era. Get your tumblers out. You need the tumbler, or the tears will get all over your
00:24:23.300 computer, or your phone, or your... And it will all break apart. All your electronics will fizzle, and then
00:24:31.220 you will drown. So go get the Leftist Tears Tumbler. Ten bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership.
00:24:36.300 You get everybody at The Daily Wire. You get to ask questions in the mailbag coming up Thursday, so make
00:24:40.080 sure to get your questions in. We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:24:43.040 Alyssa Milano is invoking God to kill more babies. Okay, so why is this? The background
00:25:01.680 here is that Georgia is trying to pass a heartbeat bill. This is the idea that you can't kill babies
00:25:08.240 down the line. Now, we know that 80% of Americans oppose late-term abortion. We know that two-thirds
00:25:12.940 of Americans who identify as pro-choice oppose late-term abortion. The vast majority of this
00:25:18.920 country opposes late-term abortion. But Hollywood loves late-term abortion. And the Democrat Party
00:25:25.440 loves late-term abortion. And the Democrat governor of Virginia loves abortion after the child's
00:25:31.440 already been born. And the governor of New York loves abortion while the child's being born. And
00:25:35.800 all of the Democrat senators love taking away protections from babies who survive abortion.
00:25:40.860 They've just gone crazy on the question of abortion. So now, Georgia's trying to pass this
00:25:45.980 heartbeat bill to save some babies. And Hollywood is up in arms. Because a lot of TV and film is shot
00:25:54.060 in Georgia. This has been going on for years now. Georgia had a lot of tax incentives for Hollywood
00:25:58.800 to come out there. And so it's brought a lot of the industry out to Georgia. Now, Hollywood is
00:26:03.220 threatening to take it all away if they don't let them keep killing babies and serving them up to
00:26:06.940 Moloch for dinner. So Alyssa Milano is leading the charge, of course. Alyssa Milano, the voice of
00:26:12.500 her liberal generation. Alyssa Milano has somehow become the most articulate spokesperson on the
00:26:19.320 left. It's her and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And she's leading Amy Schumer, Judd Apatow, Alec Baldwin,
00:26:25.680 all threatening to boycott if Georgia doesn't keep killing babies. Also, for those last two guys,
00:26:32.540 Judd Apatow and Alec Baldwin, how creepy is it when men are pro-abortion extremists?
00:26:40.240 It is the creepiest thing. It's creepier than Beto O'Rourke. Well, I guess he's just an example
00:26:45.660 of that. Never mind. It's so, so creepy. It's creepy when women do it, too. But it's especially
00:26:50.240 creepy when men do it. This is what they wrote, quote, we cannot in good conscience continue to
00:26:56.140 recommend our industry remain in Georgia. Now, Hollywood brings a lot of money to Georgia.
00:27:01.580 Hollywood brings a lot of work to Georgia because a lot of people now have gone to Georgia, worked in
00:27:06.380 the industry, working around the industry, working downstream of the industry. So Hollywood is now
00:27:12.760 literally offering to Georgia a deal with the devil. They're saying, ooh, hey, do you like all
00:27:19.060 that mammon that we keep bringing you? Do you like how we keep satisfying all of your lusts and greed
00:27:24.300 and giving you a lot of money? Do you like that? Okay, we'll keep doing that. But you have to keep
00:27:31.240 feeding us all of those babies of yours. You have to keep giving us all those babies.
00:27:35.860 Listen, here's, it's a really simple tax incentive structure. You just give us a little bit of a tax
00:27:40.780 incentive and you pour an endless stream of babies down the gullet of Baal to satisfy his demonic
00:27:46.880 urges. And then we'll keep bringing you the jobs. Come on, it's no big deal. We hash these out all the
00:27:52.000 time. I'll get my agent from CIA on the line. We'll hash it out. You'll give us all your babies and
00:27:56.360 we'll eat them. And it's all good, right? Okay. That is what a deal with the devil is. So it's no
00:28:01.460 surprise that Alyssa Milano is now invoking God to justify killing babies. Here's what she wrote.
00:28:08.300 I love God. I believe in God. But I don't believe my personal beliefs of which we can't confirm
00:28:16.720 should override scientific facts and what we can confirm. Okay. Then she goes on to quote John 3, 12,
00:28:26.040 but I'll just obviously try to get past the incoherent grammar and syntax. She says,
00:28:33.100 I love God. I believe in God. That's interesting. I didn't know that she believed in God.
00:28:37.200 I take her at her word. So she believes in God, but I don't believe my personal beliefs,
00:28:44.580 which we can't confirm, should override scientific facts and what we can confirm.
00:28:49.120 So she doesn't believe in God. Because what she's saying is that God is a personal belief that she
00:28:57.260 can't confirm. And God is not a fact. The existence of God is not a fact. So she's saying the existence
00:29:04.340 of God is not knowable. She is not claiming that God exists. She's not claiming that the statement God
00:29:10.960 exists is true. What she's really saying is I sort of have this personal feeling about God. I just have
00:29:16.780 the feels. You know, sometimes I imagine certain things and I guess one of them is God, but it's
00:29:23.700 the existence of God is not a fact. So I prefer scientific facts. What scientific facts is she talking
00:29:32.520 about? We know that unborn babies are babies. We know that they're alive. They're not dead. They're
00:29:42.480 not rocks. They're living. We know that they're humans. They're not giraffes. They're not platypuses.
00:29:49.640 They're not goldfish. They're humans. So they're living human babies. That's a scientific fact.
00:29:57.580 Now, taking God out of it for just a second, it's very, I don't know what her personal beliefs
00:30:06.700 really are on God. She hasn't really explained that very much. We do know the personal belief
00:30:11.660 that she's really pushing here is that it is morally acceptable to kill babies. But then look
00:30:18.120 at what she just said. She said that personal beliefs that we can't confirm should not override
00:30:25.040 scientific facts that we can confirm. Babies are babies. That's a scientific fact that we can
00:30:33.460 confirm. It is morally acceptable to kill babies and murder them in the womb. That is a personal
00:30:41.640 belief that we most certainly cannot confirm. Even if you believe that it's true, even if you think
00:30:47.440 it's perfectly fine to kill babies in the womb, at the very least, you would have to admit that is a
00:30:53.380 personal belief and we can't confirm it. You can't confirm that to me, right? Okay. So if it is the
00:31:00.100 case that we should not allow personal beliefs that we can't confirm to override scientific facts that
00:31:05.220 we can confirm, then we most certainly should not be killing babies in Georgia or anywhere else for
00:31:11.940 that matter. She actually makes the case for the opposite of the thing that she thinks she's making
00:31:16.920 the case for. And then she goes on and quotes John 3.12. If I have told you earthly things and you do not
00:31:25.620 believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? Again, just a total, total self-own, just a total
00:31:34.840 colossal attack on her own argument. Here is an earthly thing. Babies are babies.
00:31:42.340 That's an earthly thing. And you do not believe that. So how can you possibly believe if you're told
00:31:51.740 heavenly things? Really bad argument, really weird obsession, really out of line with the vast
00:32:00.120 majority of Americans who oppose killing babies in the womb. That's Hollywood for you.
00:32:06.780 No wonder people aren't going to their movies. That's so weird. It doesn't make any sense,
00:32:11.760 does it? No wonder Unplanned, a pro-life movie, one of the first ever made, made on a shoestring
00:32:19.540 budget, cut off from social media, savaged by the mainstream critics, became the number five movie
00:32:25.840 in America over the weekend. 94% audience score. It's a huge, when you look at it, you know,
00:32:36.540 their Vox.com is finally admitting. They finally say they went crazy with the Russia thing. It was
00:32:42.860 Matt Taby from Rolling Stone said, in purely journalistic terms, this is an epic disaster.
00:32:48.180 Sean Illing from Vox said, a lot of people simply did not want to believe that Trump was a legitimate
00:32:53.760 president. That someone this vulgar and this dishonest to win the election. And I think that
00:32:57.440 disbelief and the emotional devastation of his election colored a lot of our judgments. Basically
00:33:01.960 taking a mea culpa and saying, you know, we all went crazy. Gosh, wasn't that crazy how for two years
00:33:08.640 we all convinced ourselves that Donald Trump, the guy we've all known for 40 years, tabloid star,
00:33:14.420 reality TV star, that that guy was actually a super secret double agent spy working for the Kremlin.
00:33:20.080 Wow, what a crazy self-induced psychosis we've just lived through. That's what we're seeing with
00:33:25.720 abortion. We're going to look back on this, or future generations are going to look back and say,
00:33:32.040 do you know that the most famous people in the country, people who were in movies and TV,
00:33:39.240 they were totally obsessed with killing babies? And they, do you know, they made arguments
00:33:47.000 invoking the name of God himself to justify killing babies? How on earth did that happen?
00:33:57.640 It's a self-induced psychosis. And the way you know it's a psychosis is it's basically only believed
00:34:03.680 by these small numbers of lunatics in Hollywood. That they are not representative of the American
00:34:12.560 people. They're not representative of Democrats. They're not representative of liberals. They're
00:34:18.620 not even representative of people who support abortion. Even people who support abortion,
00:34:26.620 two-thirds of them oppose late-term abortion. These guys cheer on abortion up until the baby's being
00:34:34.100 born and some of them thereafter. That is a self-induced psychosis. And they're all going to look
00:34:41.900 very foolish in the coming years. They already look foolish, I guess. But it's a very dangerous
00:34:49.380 game to be invoking God on these things. They might have consequences beyond just public opinion.
00:34:54.420 Speaking of death, again, there was a new study that came out. You know, we've been told by all
00:35:01.800 these same people, we need to ban the AR-15. We need to ban large capacity magazines. We need to ban,
00:35:09.340 we need to do something. Do something. David Hogg is going to go on television and call senators
00:35:16.980 murderers and terrorists. All those kids from Parkland who decided to try to get famous off
00:35:23.920 of a tragedy. They go on TV. If you don't stop taking money from the NRA, if you don't ban the AR-15,
00:35:32.320 if you don't ban high capacity magazines, you're a murderer, you're a terrorist, you have blood on your
00:35:36.520 hands. Turns out none of that's true. There was a study that came out. It's called The Impact of
00:35:41.100 State Firearm Laws on Homicide and Suicide Deaths in the USA, 1991 to 2016, a panel study. This study
00:35:48.440 looked at four states. It looked at 10 different types of gun control. It concluded high capacity
00:35:54.920 magazine and assault weapons bans do not lower homicide rates. Period. Punto e basta.
00:36:03.560 Now, I sort of say these things in a, with a little bit of a sarcastic voice or I'll put them in quotes
00:36:11.780 when I write it. Because what is a high capacity magazine? I think in California these days, it's
00:36:17.060 like if you can have 11 rounds, that's high capacity. What is an assault weapon? Assault weapon is a made
00:36:22.080 up term. What's the difference between a regular hunting rifle that you can think of and an AR-15
00:36:29.560 assault weapon? Practically, basically no difference at all. A lot, but the reason that they use these
00:36:35.360 terms, the reason that activists invented these terms is because they create a false image in your
00:36:40.180 mind. When you hear assault weapon, you think of an assault rifle. You think of a fully automatic
00:36:44.720 rifle. You think of a machine gun. You think of people going into war, pulling the trigger once and
00:36:49.720 having a spray of bullets come out. You think of Al Capone with a Tommy gun. What is an assault weapon
00:36:55.840 though? It's just a gun. You pull the trigger once and one bullet comes out. Fully automatic weapons
00:37:02.460 have been outlawed for a very long time. Heavily, heavily regulated. Pull the trigger once, one bullet
00:37:10.400 comes out. And the people who are pushing gun control laws are so disingenuous. This study is not going to
00:37:16.760 change their mind. It was never about preventing homicides. It was never even about preventing mass
00:37:21.760 shootings. We know for a fact that many, many, many more people are killed every year from handguns
00:37:28.380 than from AR-15s and actually any rifle all put together. Order of magnitude and multiples more
00:37:35.240 people killed from handguns. More people are killed from hammers and baseball bats than are killed from
00:37:40.380 AR-15s. And yet they go after the AR-15. One, because the AR-15 is a very popular rifle. And two,
00:37:47.680 because they know they can trick people. Because it looks scary. It's not really much more lethal.
00:37:53.640 It just looks really scary. And they know that they can. It's totally disingenuous.
00:37:58.200 All a gun grabbing law. So this is a good statistic to have to be able to cite. But it's not going to
00:38:03.940 change anybody's mind. It's not going to, it's not really going to change the discourse other than
00:38:12.260 giving the people who want to protect our rights and our liberties and our constitution a little more
00:38:17.760 ammo, so to speak. But it doesn't matter. The arguments over gun control are not going to be won
00:38:24.460 on statistics. Very few arguments generally are won over statistics. I was just talking about this last
00:38:30.200 night at Drew University, which is, I was giving a talk last night on identity politics there. And at all
00:38:37.360 these schools, the students will come up and ask, how can I make more compelling arguments to the
00:38:42.480 left? And I say, stop being an egghead. Stop using statistics. Statistics are all fine. They're all well and
00:38:48.820 good. They're sort of impressive. They're also easily manipulable, and especially in the social sciences. So
00:38:54.760 that's fine. Cite a few statistics. But arguments are not won and lost on statistics. You have to make a moral
00:39:00.200 argument. You have to make a qualitative argument. You have to say the reason that we need the Second
00:39:06.180 Amendment is to protect our liberty. The framers of the Constitution knew this. We need to have the
00:39:12.140 Second Amendment in case the government ever turns tyrannical and tries to take away our Second
00:39:16.180 Amendment. Democratic governments have turned tyrannical many, many times throughout the West
00:39:20.940 in recent history. Happened all throughout Europe. It hasn't happened here yet. Good thing. One of the
00:39:25.840 reasons that it very, very likely will never happen here is because we have the right to keep and bear
00:39:30.420 arms. The right to keep and bear arms is not about hunting. It's not about target practice. It's about
00:39:36.120 protecting me and my family and my friends and my property. That's in a very personal, tangible
00:39:44.580 way. In a broader sense, it's about protecting my community. It's about protecting my liberty. It's
00:39:50.820 about protecting my way of life. It's about protecting my traditions. It's about protecting our system of
00:39:57.760 governance in the United States. That's what it's about. Oh, and also, assault weapon bans don't do
00:40:04.580 anything to change the homicide rate. It's a little addendum there. Even if you could make a good
00:40:11.100 moral argument, you lefties, you're also making a completely stupid argument because the thing that
00:40:18.020 you're proposing doesn't achieve the thing that you say will achieve. But it's not inefficiency that
00:40:24.360 is the cause of the argument being bad. It's the premises themselves. It's the arguments themselves from
00:40:30.260 the left that are bad, and we should discuss them on those terms. Do we have time to talk about Biden's
00:40:37.660 second accuser? Oh, I really want to talk about it, but I think we're out of time. So instead,
00:40:43.380 I will end, oh gosh, it's so good though, because I have to defend Joe Biden again. I have to do it.
00:40:48.660 I guess we'll have to do it tomorrow. More people coming out of the woodwork. Looks like Bernie Sanders
00:40:53.120 is behind a lot of these hits, and it's just a totally BS, disingenuous attack. We'll get to it
00:40:58.040 tomorrow. Before we leave today, it's National Poetry Month. Poetry is basically dead. Nobody
00:41:02.940 reads poetry anymore, but conservatives should read poetry. Don't be an egghead. Make good arguments.
00:41:10.160 People forget. We think of conservatives in this day and age as these sterile, cold, clinical,
00:41:15.700 calculating economist types. When Edmund Burke began what we would call modern conservative thought,
00:41:22.820 he said, the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded
00:41:27.960 it, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Edmund Burke and the conservatives
00:41:32.060 who follow in his tradition are not sophisters, economists, and calculators. Actually, the people
00:41:38.420 who followed right after Burke were the romantics. They were romantic poets. Coleridge, those guys.
00:41:43.920 And so it's National Poetry Month. The left has sort of alienated conservatives from poetry because
00:41:49.700 they've written horrific poetry for a century. So when you think of poetry, you think of some schmuck
00:41:53.920 wearing a black beret in some club downtown saying, like, fish, I saw my dad in the hallway.
00:42:03.800 Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. Hamburger. And they think that that's a poem. You know, as the literary critic
00:42:10.860 Harold Bloom said, slam poetry is the death of art. But good poetry is a wonderful thing, and it enriches
00:42:17.320 our lives. And, uh, and it, there can be light poems, there can be funny poems, there can be profound
00:42:23.380 poems, there can be, you know, poetry is just a wonderful art form. It's too bad that it died.
00:42:27.480 So to begin, in keeping with our theme today, I'm, I wanted to read a very mediocre poem, but sort of
00:42:34.460 funny nonetheless, by Dorothy Parker called Resume, and I'll try to, try to bring up some more poems as they occur
00:42:40.120 to me throughout National Poetry Month. Resume by Dorothy Parker. Razors pain you, rivers are damp,
00:42:48.460 acids stain you, and drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful, nooses give, gas smells awful,
00:42:56.740 you might as well live. That's our show. I'll be back tomorrow. See you then. In the meantime,
00:43:00.640 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:43:02.640 Today on the Ben Shapiro,
00:43:32.640 Is the Democratic Party ready to break with Joe Biden and Barack Obama? That's today on The Ben
00:43:37.640 Shapiro Show.