The Michael Knowles Show - April 22, 2019


Ep. 335 - Our Post-Christian Society


Episode Stats

Length

46 minutes

Words per Minute

160.51707

Word Count

7,471

Sentence Count

583

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

34


Summary

In Sri Lanka, on Easter Sunday, a group of radical Islamic terrorists attacked a Catholic church, killing at least 290 people. The mainstream media and political and media elites are quick to point fingers at the Christians as the only ones responsible for these attacks.


Transcript

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00:00:37.700 Islamic terrorists in Sri Lanka murder 290 Catholics on Easter Sunday,
00:00:42.880 and around the world, churches have become the number one target for attacks.
00:00:47.180 So political and media elites who don't want to admit that fact have made up a new term to describe all of them.
00:00:53.700 We will explore lies and ignorance in our post-Christian society.
00:00:57.820 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:01:07.080 Hello there, fellow Easter worshipers and non-Easter worshipers, Passover worshipers,
00:01:15.300 maybe some Ramadan worshipers out there.
00:01:18.320 I want to have all of those worshipers in here to analyze the new way that left-wingers, media elites,
00:01:26.700 want to deny that Christians are being victimized around the world.
00:01:31.120 Welcome, welcome, welcome.
00:01:32.740 We will get to all of that in a second.
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00:03:11.400 Islamic terrorists murdered 290 people in Sri Lanka.
00:03:16.380 This was mostly at a Catholic church, also at some hotels that were frequented by tourists who were in town for Easter.
00:03:25.520 The group that we now think has committed this crime is the national Thamwif Jama'ath.
00:03:32.980 This is a radical Islamic group, and it's not really being reported very much by the mainstream media.
00:03:39.320 They're saying, we don't know.
00:03:41.000 We have to wait.
00:03:42.060 We're not certain who this is.
00:03:44.260 Now, finally, it does seem that it's this radical imam that was behind this attack.
00:03:49.480 It's this Islamic group that's behind it.
00:03:51.940 And so now the media are pivoting.
00:03:53.560 Daily Beast put out a headline.
00:03:55.480 They said, quote,
00:03:56.420 Is Sri Lanka Easter Massacre a bid to revive global holy war?
00:04:03.440 This is the response that the left so often gives to Islamic terrorist attacks.
00:04:10.040 Barack Obama used to give this response.
00:04:11.920 They'd say, listen, the most important thing we can do right now is not identify the fact that Islamic terrorists committed the attack.
00:04:22.200 Why?
00:04:22.780 Because that's just what the terrorists want.
00:04:26.700 This is what they would always say.
00:04:28.220 They'd say, listen, if Islamic terrorists commit a terror attack, the most important thing, don't associate the attack with Islam.
00:04:39.580 They might want a global holy war.
00:04:42.060 We can't allow them to get what they want with a global holy war.
00:04:44.680 At a certain point, they're waging the war.
00:04:47.340 This is the thing with war is that your opponent has a say.
00:04:51.820 You're not the only person who can say, well, I'm going to be at war or I'm not going to be at war.
00:04:56.840 This is how the left tried to frame 9-11.
00:04:59.120 They said, we launched a war into Afghanistan.
00:05:01.660 We launched a war into Iraq.
00:05:03.280 No, we didn't.
00:05:04.840 Islamic terrorists waged a war on us when they knocked down our Twin Towers and when they hit the Pentagon.
00:05:11.460 They declared the war.
00:05:12.600 So you can have two options at that point.
00:05:15.980 You can either put your head in the sand, surrender, pretend that nothing's happening, or you can fight.
00:05:21.760 Those are your two options, but you don't get a say over whether or not you're in a war.
00:05:29.200 When someone wages a war on you, you're in a war, and there is an explicitly holy aspect to this war.
00:05:37.440 Say, oh, is this just an attempt to revive a global holy war?
00:05:41.320 No, it is a global holy war.
00:05:43.420 This is explicitly an attack on Christians and on Christianity.
00:05:47.800 It happened on Easter Sunday.
00:05:49.740 When that cathedral of Notre Dame burned down on the first day of Holy Week,
00:05:56.000 said, you know, this timing is a little strange.
00:05:58.180 Although we don't know, we actually don't know what caused that cathedral fire.
00:06:02.940 This happened on Easter Sunday.
00:06:06.460 Two hundred and ninety Christians, specifically Catholics, attacked.
00:06:11.920 Three churches and hotels on the holiest day in the Christian calendar, holier than Christmas.
00:06:16.280 Christians are a highly persecuted minority in Sri Lanka.
00:06:21.240 Christians make up 7.4% of the population of Sri Lanka.
00:06:25.600 And it's not just in Sri Lanka.
00:06:26.900 Around the world, churches have become the number one target for attacks.
00:06:30.740 Right now, around the world, more than three churches are attacked per day.
00:06:35.380 There's an average of 105 church attacks per month,
00:06:38.280 almost all of which are ignored by the mainstream media.
00:06:42.980 Obviously, the Notre Dame burning is the most explicit example.
00:06:47.560 And again, we don't know what caused that fire yet.
00:06:50.720 We don't know one way or the other.
00:06:52.140 I think a lot of people are trying to say, well, it was just some accident.
00:06:55.020 Move on.
00:06:55.580 We don't know.
00:06:56.060 It was just an accident.
00:06:57.600 We have no idea what caused that fire, for sure.
00:07:00.120 However, there are also many, many desecrations and burnings of churches all around France
00:07:06.940 that were going on all during the week prior to the burning of Notre Dame.
00:07:11.600 All of those other church attacks, desecrations, smearing excrement all over the church,
00:07:17.920 burning churches down.
00:07:20.420 Days after the Notre Dame attack, there was an American professor who walked into St. Patrick's
00:07:25.660 Cathedral in New York with two gallons of gasoline and lighters.
00:07:30.980 And when he was finally arrested, he said, oh, I was going to bring these to my car.
00:07:36.940 That's, uh, you were going to your car.
00:07:39.360 Did you park in St. Patrick's Cathedral?
00:07:41.120 What were you doing?
00:07:42.360 Obviously, another attempt to burn down a major cathedral, the most important cathedral
00:07:47.780 in the United States.
00:07:49.280 That same guy had booked a ticket to Rome later that day.
00:07:51.900 I guess he thought he'd burn down St. Pat's, fly over to Rome, and I don't know,
00:07:55.300 try to burn down St. Peter's or something.
00:07:58.160 Yesterday, also on Easter Sunday, a woman jumped on stage at an Easter service,
00:08:03.880 holding a baby and a handgun, screaming about how she's going to blow up the church.
00:08:08.860 Fortunately, she was tackled.
00:08:10.520 I think the baby is okay, and nobody was injured during that attack.
00:08:15.200 Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world.
00:08:18.980 That's the conclusion of all of this.
00:08:21.420 That's not hyperbole.
00:08:23.080 That's not some shocking statement.
00:08:25.300 That's according to the Pew Research Center.
00:08:27.220 The Pew Research Center, last year, came out with a study analyzing trends all the way
00:08:31.340 up to 2016.
00:08:32.660 It showed that Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world.
00:08:36.420 They are harassed by law, often, in 144 countries.
00:08:41.680 That's up from 128 countries the year before.
00:08:44.360 That edges out Muslims, who are also harassed in a lot of countries, but not as many as the
00:08:49.580 Christians are.
00:08:50.120 And yet, if you went out to someone on the street right now and you said, Christians are
00:08:54.780 the most persecuted religious group in the world, what would happen?
00:08:57.260 They would laugh in your face.
00:08:59.940 You hear this all the time.
00:09:01.780 If you write on a column or on Twitter or something, I hear this all the time.
00:09:05.980 They'll say, oh yes, Christians are so persecuted.
00:09:09.580 Oh yeah, wow, wow, wow for the Christians.
00:09:12.620 Actually, they are.
00:09:14.460 At my church in New York, the Church of St. Michael, they dedicated a shrine to persecuted
00:09:21.440 Christians in the Middle East because that story was totally untold.
00:09:25.120 Nobody had talked about the Christian persecution that's been going on for years and years and
00:09:29.620 years.
00:09:29.760 Even when we look at our immigration policies in the United States, under Barack Obama, we
00:09:34.220 took in scores and scores, hordes, untold numbers of Muslim refugees from war-torn countries
00:09:41.020 like Syria.
00:09:41.900 We took in barely any Christians.
00:09:44.580 But Syria today is a Muslim nation.
00:09:47.380 Why weren't we taking in the most persecuted minorities?
00:09:50.460 Why weren't we taking in Christians?
00:09:51.780 The reason for this is because a post-Christian society, which is what we now are, has two
00:10:01.600 problems.
00:10:02.980 The society both does not understand Christianity and it thinks it does understand Christianity.
00:10:09.080 It's like that line from Mark Twain who says, it's not what you don't know that gets you
00:10:14.420 into trouble, but what you know for sure that just ain't so.
00:10:18.400 We don't even know in the United States that we're a post-Christian society.
00:10:21.780 We don't even know in the West that we are a post-Christian society.
00:10:25.560 What do I mean by that?
00:10:26.420 Do I mean that Christianity is over?
00:10:28.680 No, it's not over.
00:10:29.940 Christianity will endure until the end of the age.
00:10:32.380 The church will always be with us.
00:10:34.900 But the period in which Christianity was the dominant cultural institution where virtually
00:10:45.100 everybody went to church, where the Christian view of the world was the nearly
00:10:51.740 exclusive view of the world in the West, that period is over.
00:10:55.420 And we're watching it come to an end right now.
00:10:58.780 It doesn't mean that all of society is permanently over.
00:11:03.040 It doesn't mean that there won't be a Christian revival.
00:11:05.600 Let's not forget, Christianity was not born into a Christian society.
00:11:10.100 Let's not forget that the beginning of Christianity, which we've just gone through on Good Friday
00:11:14.880 all the way through Easter Sunday, was Christ himself being crucified.
00:11:19.400 Let's not forget that Christians were persecuted for all of the early history of the church.
00:11:24.040 The martyrs were crucified upside down, were tortured and killed in horrific ways.
00:11:30.000 Then we had this nice period of Christian society.
00:11:34.440 Now we're in a post-Christian society.
00:11:37.080 How do I know that we're in a post-Christian society?
00:11:40.060 Because you're all just a bunch of Easter worshipers.
00:11:42.720 That's according to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
00:11:44.820 A new phrase yesterday entered into the English language.
00:11:48.520 That came by way of our political elites, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
00:11:53.760 The phrase is Easter worshipers.
00:11:56.140 Barack Obama, responding to the terror attacks in Sri Lanka, said,
00:12:01.860 The attacks on tourists and Easter worshipers in Sri Lanka are an attack on humanity.
00:12:07.140 On a day devoted to love, redemption, and renewal, we pray for the victims and stand with the people of Sri Lanka.
00:12:15.060 Attack on tourists and Easter worshipers.
00:12:20.260 Does he mean Christians?
00:12:22.240 I think the word that Barack Obama is looking for is Christians.
00:12:26.580 Specifically, actually, Catholics.
00:12:29.200 And listen, even the language that he uses on a day devoted to love, redemption, and renewal,
00:12:35.540 we pray for the victims and stand with the people of Sri Lanka.
00:12:40.140 What the day is, it is a day devoted to love and redemption and renewal
00:12:44.380 because of the resurrection of Christ.
00:12:49.000 There are other days devoted to love and redemption and renewal.
00:12:52.820 Easter Sunday is about the resurrection of Christ.
00:12:58.200 People would always say, actually, Chris Cuomo, the Fredo of the Cuomo family,
00:13:02.280 was just going off on this because we've been pointing this out.
00:13:06.240 A number of conservatives have pointed out how ridiculous the phrase Easter worshipers is
00:13:10.540 when Barack Obama should have used the phrase Christian.
00:13:13.420 And what Chris Cuomo said is, oh, you guys are just using code to say that Barack Obama isn't one of us.
00:13:23.560 First of all, we're not using code.
00:13:25.180 It's not code when you directly criticize somebody and you're explicit about what you're criticizing them for.
00:13:30.340 And we're not even saying Barack Obama isn't one of us.
00:13:33.340 We're saying he's not even the guy that he's pretending that he is.
00:13:36.380 Remember, Barack Obama ran, I would go to church all the time.
00:13:40.280 He's a very professed patriot, professed Christian, all of this, all of these words.
00:13:46.180 But then in his behavior and in the language that he uses after he gets elected, it doesn't seem that way.
00:13:54.420 Easter worshipers.
00:13:55.820 I've never heard that phrase before.
00:13:57.480 Have you ever heard that phrase before?
00:13:58.580 Hillary Clinton said the same thing.
00:14:01.460 On this holy weekend for many faiths, we must stand united against hatred and violence.
00:14:07.240 I'm praying for everyone affected by today's horrific attacks on Easter worshipers and travelers in Sri Lanka.
00:14:16.200 Not Christians, not Catholics, Easter worshipers.
00:14:19.880 A holy weekend for many faiths.
00:14:21.360 You see, it's not Easter Sunday.
00:14:22.800 No, no, no.
00:14:23.840 It's the holy weekend for many faiths.
00:14:27.280 And it was actually just those evil attacks that hurt people.
00:14:34.540 It was those evil attacks.
00:14:36.200 It was just hate.
00:14:37.460 It was hatred and violence.
00:14:38.740 It wasn't Islamic militants waging war on Christians as they prayed on Easter Sunday.
00:14:46.000 No, no.
00:14:47.240 It was these broad terms.
00:14:50.360 Easter worshipers.
00:14:51.840 That's all we can talk about.
00:14:53.080 Now, Julian Castro had the same thing, by the way.
00:14:55.660 He said,
00:14:55.880 This is so strange.
00:15:07.400 Why all of these responses say Easter worshipers.
00:15:12.880 Hillary Clinton, when there are attacks on gay people, she says, I stand with the LGBT community.
00:15:20.160 When Orlando gets hit, she doesn't say, I stand with nightclub dancers.
00:15:25.220 My heart goes out to nightclub dancers.
00:15:28.920 No.
00:15:29.500 So, I stand with the LGBT community.
00:15:32.100 When Muslims are attacked for something, she doesn't say, I stand with Ramadan worshipers.
00:15:38.320 I stand with hijab wearers.
00:15:40.940 I, no.
00:15:41.760 She says, I stand with Muslims.
00:15:44.060 But when it's Christians, then we can't say that.
00:15:47.000 We're not allowed to say that word.
00:15:48.000 Uh, Christian, it sounds so, it sounds so, you know, like accurate and precise.
00:15:54.560 We're not allowed to use that kind of language when we're talking about our culture, our civilization.
00:16:01.060 Christians, we're not allowed to do that.
00:16:02.760 We need this generic made up term, which I don't think anybody had used until last night.
00:16:08.060 Easter worshipers.
00:16:09.780 So, why is the left using the phrase?
00:16:12.020 Nobody worships Easter.
00:16:14.920 We've never heard of this phrase before.
00:16:16.540 Remember, we worship Christ.
00:16:18.620 We are Christ worshipers.
00:16:19.880 If you want to use the word worshipers, use the word Christ.
00:16:22.900 Why can't the left say Christian?
00:16:24.500 It's because Christians can't be victims.
00:16:28.300 That Christians can't be victims.
00:16:29.960 Not in reality.
00:16:30.940 Obviously, in reality, Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world.
00:16:34.500 But in leftist ideology, Christians cannot be victims because of all of their theories,
00:16:40.740 because of intersectionality.
00:16:42.140 Because we know that at the top of the oppressor pyramid is the straight white man who knows that he is a man who is a Christian.
00:16:52.880 That's the worst oppressor in the whole world.
00:16:57.020 So, when that person is the victim, he can't be a Christian.
00:17:00.620 He has to be, some new phrase, he has to be an Easter worshiper.
00:17:04.660 However, in fairness to the phrase Easter worshiper, by the way, there are lots of people who only go to church on Easter Sunday.
00:17:11.200 They're the ones who go on Easter.
00:17:12.560 Maybe they go on Christmas.
00:17:14.120 I don't think that it's, that this is the reason why Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are using that phrase.
00:17:19.660 Anyways, I don't think that's what they're trying to convey.
00:17:22.580 I think what they're trying to do is defend their own ideologies.
00:17:25.640 But this is true.
00:17:27.480 This is also a problem.
00:17:28.840 The number of Americans who are members of a church right now is at the lowest number ever recorded.
00:17:35.660 You're going to see a lot of headlines that say,
00:17:37.520 American church membership falls to 80-year lows.
00:17:42.380 It's going to make you think that 80 years ago, there were also not a lot of people going to church.
00:17:46.540 Then it rose and then it fell.
00:17:47.740 That's not true.
00:17:48.840 The reason that we're at 80-year lows right now is because we only started looking at these numbers 80 years ago.
00:17:55.020 So we are at certainly historic lows, all-time lows of church membership in the United States.
00:18:03.020 Church membership in the U.S. held steady at about 70% from 1938 to 1999.
00:18:09.580 You had 61 years of it, basically around 70%.
00:18:13.440 Maybe it goes up to 73 or even a little higher.
00:18:16.000 Maybe it goes down to 68, 67, but it's around 70%.
00:18:20.340 Then around 1999, that number plummets to 50%.
00:18:23.740 The plummeting, the collapse of church membership is by far most pronounced among Democrats.
00:18:30.980 It's down 23% in the last 20 years.
00:18:34.620 It's down from 71%, now down to 48%.
00:18:38.760 The majority of Democrats do not belong to any church.
00:18:42.640 And it's much less pronounced among Republicans.
00:18:45.360 It's down only 8%, single-digit drop from about 70% to, I'm sorry, down from about 76%.
00:18:53.520 That's not true.
00:18:56.060 Down from 75% to 69%, somewhere around there.
00:18:58.680 So Republicans were punching above the average before by two or three points.
00:19:03.840 Then there is still a drop, much less pronounced than among Democrats.
00:19:09.680 Why has church membership plummeted?
00:19:12.040 There are a few theories on this.
00:19:13.580 The number one theory that's being pushed by people who don't want to take an explicitly cultural lens
00:19:19.200 is that it's the internet.
00:19:21.740 This is the idea that Alapundit is writing about at Hot Air, which is that basically anything that happens
00:19:29.760 starting in the 90s is explained by the internet.
00:19:32.200 And this theory usually holds true.
00:19:36.280 However, in this case, the church membership thing is that it's part of a trend that began earlier.
00:19:41.560 Membership in civic institutions in the United States dropped earlier than the internet became popular.
00:19:48.480 And then churches followed afterwards.
00:19:51.620 So first you had people not going to the PTA, people not going to the Kiwanis Club, people not going to the Lions Club, whatever.
00:19:58.020 Then you had people not going to churches.
00:20:02.080 I think the actual culprit here is most likely not the internet.
00:20:05.980 I don't think it explains, I don't think the internet theory explains why there was such a difference
00:20:12.380 in the way Republicans and Democrats reacted to this trend.
00:20:15.800 Republicans use the internet just as much as Democrats do.
00:20:19.660 Doesn't explain why it follows earlier trends.
00:20:22.760 I think the biggest issue here is religious ignorance.
00:20:27.300 This is also known as millennial theory.
00:20:29.840 The theory that as people are raised totally ignorant of religion, they're not brought up really as members of churches,
00:20:40.240 they're not brought up with any real religious education,
00:20:42.860 they're not brought up with much education at all, be that philosophical or literary or historical.
00:20:48.580 As a result of that, religiosity plummets.
00:20:52.280 You're not going to hear this from the atheist types on the internet.
00:20:57.700 What you always hear from the mainstream media, the elites, is as education increases, atheism also increases.
00:21:06.040 This isn't true.
00:21:07.580 It's true in a very narrow way because you can look at credentialism.
00:21:11.880 You can look at people, oh, so-and-so has a degree from Harvard and Harvard graduates are more likely to be atheists.
00:21:17.100 Therefore, educated people are more likely to be atheists.
00:21:19.820 The problem isn't too much education, it's too little.
00:21:23.860 You've got this whole generation raised without religion, largely raised without religion.
00:21:29.100 Now, you've got religiosity declining.
00:21:32.860 If it's the millennial theory that's right, if it's my theory that's right,
00:21:35.960 if it's just that these generations are being taught less and less about religion,
00:21:39.540 it would explain why it's most pronounced among Democrats because millennials are overwhelmingly Democrats.
00:21:44.600 They're almost two to one Democrats, two Republicans.
00:21:47.740 The New Atheism Movement highlighted this.
00:21:52.120 Those new atheists, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, made terribly weak arguments against religion,
00:21:59.080 totally pathetic arguments, but they were bought by people who couldn't refute them
00:22:03.160 because they were basically biblically illiterate.
00:22:06.660 You see this playing out in the mainstream media.
00:22:09.620 You see this playing out by people who went to really good colleges, really good universities,
00:22:15.340 then they go and they work for the New York Times, and then they expose their total ignorance.
00:22:19.680 This headline came from the Associated Press over the weekend.
00:22:22.860 Quote,
00:22:23.400 Tourist Mecca, Notre Dame, also revered as place of worship.
00:22:30.140 Breaking news.
00:22:31.980 Breaking news.
00:22:33.040 Notre Dame is a cathedral.
00:22:34.380 Some editor at the Associated Press thought that it was newsworthy that Notre Dame, cathedral, is a place of worship.
00:22:42.900 And even look at the language.
00:22:44.500 Tourist Mecca, Notre Dame, also revered as a place of worship.
00:22:47.980 Wait until they find out that Tourist Mecca, Mecca, is also revered as a place of worship.
00:22:53.440 Wait until they find out what the word Mecca means, which refers to a holy city in the Islamic religion.
00:22:59.340 It's not just the Associated Press that's religiously ignorant.
00:23:04.080 The New York Times last week reported that Father Jean-Marc Fournier ran inside Notre Dame to retrieve a statue of Jesus.
00:23:14.220 Now, the problem is there's no statue of Jesus in Notre Dame.
00:23:17.480 And Father Jean-Marc Fournier didn't run out carrying some giant statue of Jesus on his back.
00:23:23.540 It's because the writer at the New York Times didn't know that the body of Christ that Father Fournier was referring to means the blessed sacrament, means the Eucharist, means the communion, the host.
00:23:38.180 He said, I went in and I got the body of Christ.
00:23:41.480 And they thought, body of Christ?
00:23:42.300 I guess that, I don't know, like a big statue or something?
00:23:44.980 The body of Christ is about as elemental to the Christian faith as things get.
00:23:49.700 Totally ignorant.
00:23:50.400 In 2013, the New York Times reported that Easter commemorates the resurrection of Jesus into heaven.
00:23:59.380 Think about that for a second.
00:24:01.220 Let that one settle in.
00:24:03.060 If Jesus is resurrected into heaven, then he's not really resurrected, is he?
00:24:09.720 The resurrection means he comes back to life in his body.
00:24:14.120 He walks around in a body on earth.
00:24:16.160 Then he ascends into heaven.
00:24:17.700 Then, the basic fact of Christianity, the resurrection, totally ignorant.
00:24:25.180 It's actually better what they said the next year.
00:24:26.660 The next year, 2014, the New York Times said that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre marks, quote,
00:24:32.540 the site where many Christians believe Jesus is buried.
00:24:38.220 Let it sink in.
00:24:39.400 If you believe that Jesus is buried somewhere, chances are you are not a Christian.
00:24:46.320 This reporter, this reporter who wrote that, has a master's degree from Cambridge University,
00:24:51.480 one of the most ancient and elite universities in the world.
00:24:55.280 And he's apparently never read the New Testament.
00:24:57.960 Or if he has read the New Testament, he apparently missed the point.
00:25:01.860 He missed the ending where Jesus stops being buried and is resurrected.
00:25:09.000 He could have talked to the reporter who reported the previous year.
00:25:11.580 In 2005, the New York Times was talking about Pope John Paul II's funeral.
00:25:17.240 Pope John Paul II was holding that staff that bishops hold.
00:25:21.140 And that staff is called a crozier.
00:25:22.720 And he had it in his hand.
00:25:25.280 And the New York Times referred to Pope John Paul II as holding a crow's ear.
00:25:30.740 Like a little ear of a little bird.
00:25:34.280 I guess he was holding a little crow's ear.
00:25:35.960 Because they didn't, not only did they not know these aspects of the Christian faith,
00:25:40.420 it didn't even occur to them to ask.
00:25:42.880 Now, do you think that the media would treat Islam in this sort of way?
00:25:49.720 Do you think that they would, no, they wouldn't.
00:25:52.840 They would do their research.
00:25:54.500 They would go in depth.
00:25:56.320 They would make sure that they try to get it right.
00:25:59.360 But they treat Christianity in a more flippant way.
00:26:02.780 Because that's the ideology.
00:26:04.320 And also, I mean, even broadly on all sorts of religions,
00:26:07.940 these guys think, okay, oh, you're just some scared little people
00:26:14.280 who are afraid of the dark and need a sky daddy to help you wake up in the morning.
00:26:18.160 We are so sophisticated.
00:26:19.960 We are so educated.
00:26:22.020 We are so elite.
00:26:23.260 We don't need to concern ourselves with your silly little fairy tales.
00:26:27.000 And as a result, they do not know the most basic elements of the faith that shaped the entirety of their civilization.
00:26:37.080 This is a major problem.
00:26:41.940 This calls for an obvious solution.
00:26:45.040 That solution is that we must start teaching the Bible in schools.
00:26:51.140 We'll explain why in a second.
00:26:52.240 But first, we've got to say about a Facebook and YouTube.
00:26:54.100 If you're on Facebook and YouTube, go to dailywire.com.
00:26:56.820 Ten bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership.
00:26:59.200 You get me.
00:27:00.000 You get the Andrew Klavan show.
00:27:01.300 You get the Ben Shapiro show.
00:27:02.600 You get the Matt Walsh show.
00:27:03.840 You get to ask questions in the mailbag.
00:27:05.700 Coming up on Thursday, get your mailbag questions in.
00:27:07.700 You get to ask questions backstage.
00:27:10.520 You get another kingdom.
00:27:12.380 And you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
00:27:17.260 You know, I'm going to be going to Cal State LA tomorrow.
00:27:21.240 I'll be giving a speech on immigration on the wall.
00:27:24.300 There's a good chance you're going to need your Tumblr.
00:27:28.960 Now, the last time I gave a speech at a university, a bunch of wackos screamed and howled the whole time.
00:27:34.400 And then one of them squirted me with some weird chemical.
00:27:37.520 I'm hoping nothing like that happens tomorrow.
00:27:40.000 The president of the university is already sending out letters condemning offensive, awful speech.
00:27:46.740 So if something tells me he's a little worried about how his students might react, check it out.
00:27:51.620 If you're in LA, I'd love to see you over there.
00:27:53.200 Otherwise, hopefully we'll be streaming it online.
00:27:56.140 In any case, make sure you get your Tumblr.
00:27:57.740 Go to dailywire.com.
00:27:58.820 We'll be right back.
00:28:09.800 So if you write for the New York Times, you are allegedly highly educated, right?
00:28:16.420 You almost certainly went to Harvard or some good university.
00:28:19.540 Maybe you went to a graduate school.
00:28:20.960 Now you write for this elite publication.
00:28:23.200 You probably went to a top high school if you got into those good colleges.
00:28:27.420 So you've had good education basically your whole life.
00:28:30.680 What's supposed to be good education.
00:28:32.900 And yet, you are biblically illiterate.
00:28:37.220 This is a big deal.
00:28:38.980 The easy solution is to teach the Bible in schools.
00:28:41.620 President Trump has just endorsed this idea.
00:28:43.520 President Trump came out a while ago, early this year in January, and said it's time to teach the Bible in schools.
00:28:50.080 Multiple states have bills on the table right now endorsing this idea.
00:28:55.540 Why is that?
00:28:56.580 What all of them are pointing out is that the Bible is integral to our culture and our civilization.
00:29:01.200 Now, do I want the Bible to be taught in schools as though it's from one particular perspective and this is the only way that this can be interpreted and this is the only way that you can read it?
00:29:15.340 Absolutely not.
00:29:16.340 Why?
00:29:16.600 Because I'm a Catholic.
00:29:19.760 I'm a Catholic in a country which has more Protestants than Catholics.
00:29:24.400 So I probably disagree.
00:29:26.960 Now, the difference here, of course, is that there are lots of different Protestant denominations, all of which disagree with one another about Bible exegesis.
00:29:34.860 But that actually underscores my point.
00:29:37.180 All of these Christians in America maybe have a different take on the Bible.
00:29:40.620 So I'm not saying that everyone needs to have this only one approach.
00:29:44.740 By the way, in public schools, no other books are taught with only one approach either.
00:29:50.500 I think the boogeyman argument against teaching the Bible in schools is, well, then you're going to get one particular faith shoved down people's throats.
00:29:58.740 I don't think that's true.
00:29:59.920 When you read Hamlet in an English class, does the teacher say, this is the only way to interpret it and every other way to interpret it is wrong and if you don't interpret it this way, then you're going to burn in hell forever?
00:30:11.140 No.
00:30:12.600 I'm going to give you an F if you don't interpret it this way?
00:30:15.580 Hopefully not.
00:30:16.680 No.
00:30:17.900 However, the Bible is the most important book ever written.
00:30:21.100 The Bible is at the basis of all of our culture, all of our civilization.
00:30:29.920 This year, no public school student will read the Bible in school.
00:30:35.720 Today, all of those public school students will celebrate Earth Day.
00:30:43.480 None of them will read the Bible, the most important book ever written, undergirds our entire civilization.
00:30:47.920 All of them will celebrate some ridiculous made-up pagan nonsense that was invented by some weirdo who ended up murdering and composting his girlfriend.
00:30:59.280 No one reads the Bible in school.
00:31:02.100 Everybody celebrates Earth Day.
00:31:04.760 He did.
00:31:05.540 He did end up murdering and composting his girlfriend.
00:31:08.040 The guy who started Earth Day, Ira Einhorn, invented Earth Day in 1970.
00:31:13.420 He then, seven years later, murdered and composted his girlfriend.
00:31:16.540 I'm not drawing a direct connection between the two.
00:31:19.420 I'm pointing out that Earth Day is a very young, new, neo-pagan, weirdo holiday,
00:31:25.380 and it is taught like a sacrament in public schools in this country.
00:31:29.780 And the most important book ever written is banned from public schools.
00:31:33.240 Why is it banned?
00:31:33.960 The Bible has been banned from schools since 1963 because of a very stupid Supreme Court decision called Abington School District v. Shemp.
00:31:42.380 This was part of the very activist, leftist, war in court.
00:31:46.380 And in the ensuing decades since 1963, people have been getting dumber and dumber and dumber.
00:31:53.100 I don't think this is a coincidence.
00:31:56.440 Not only is the Bible the most important book ever written, the Bible is the 73 most important books ever written.
00:32:02.360 All of them are more important than all the other books ever written.
00:32:07.380 How could you possibly understand the other things you're supposed to learn in school without knowing the Bible?
00:32:13.900 Speaking of Hamlet, how could you possibly understand Hamlet without understanding the story of Cain and Abel?
00:32:20.700 Or without understanding purgatory?
00:32:26.200 Hamlet begins, spoiler alerts, if you haven't read Hamlet, got some spoilers coming.
00:32:31.200 It begins because King Claudius murders his brother, who's Hamlet's father.
00:32:37.640 He murders his brother and he specifically invokes the story of Cain and Abel.
00:32:42.120 How can you really appreciate that without knowing first the story of Cain and Abel from the book of Genesis?
00:32:46.840 How does Hamlet find out about this something rotten in the state of Denmark?
00:32:56.000 How does he find out about this nefarious act?
00:32:58.520 Because the ghost of his father comes to him.
00:33:00.720 But you cannot appreciate that scene of Hamlet talking to the ghost of his father without understanding purgatory.
00:33:07.260 without understanding this middle ground between hell and heaven.
00:33:12.320 This area where you get in, you have hope, you are going to go to heaven, but you are being punished and cleansed until you get to heaven.
00:33:20.560 The reason you can't understand it until that point is because at the time that Hamlet was written,
00:33:27.040 the conception of purgatory and purgatorial souls is that the souls could come down to earth,
00:33:33.360 you could maybe see a vision of this spirit, and they would ask you to pray for them.
00:33:38.660 And what's interesting about Hamlet is that the spirit comes back to earth and tells Hamlet to get revenge for him.
00:33:44.920 So then Hamlet has in his mind this question.
00:33:47.980 Is this the true soul of my father in purgatory waiting to go up to heaven?
00:33:52.180 Or is this a demon, an apparition, some manifestation of madness in my own mind?
00:33:57.740 All of that you would miss if you don't understand purgatory.
00:34:01.680 How about the Protestant Revolution?
00:34:05.220 Hamlet is a play about the Protestant Revolution.
00:34:08.540 It is explicitly about Martin Luther and Wittenberg and the Protestant Revolution.
00:34:14.400 You would miss the essence of the play, what it says about truth, what it says about the church,
00:34:20.040 if you don't understand that.
00:34:21.960 All of that will be missing because you are not allowed to be taught the Bible in schools.
00:34:26.440 You're not allowed to be taught those theological disputes at the heart of the Protestant Revolution,
00:34:31.800 at the heart of Hamlet.
00:34:33.700 How could you understand, forget Hamlet, we've been talking about Hamlet for too long.
00:34:37.040 How would you, I guess you could talk about Hamlet really for days and days and days because it's so rich.
00:34:41.220 The only way you can't talk about it is if you don't know the culture that undergirds it.
00:34:45.760 How could you discuss the Gettysburg Address?
00:34:48.600 Gettysburg Address is a lot shorter than Hamlet.
00:34:50.460 Very short text.
00:34:52.820 And yet it is not understandable without the King James Bible.
00:34:58.360 Basically all that Abraham Lincoln ever read was the King James Bible and Shakespeare.
00:35:02.780 The language of the Gettysburg Address is the language of the King James Bible.
00:35:09.240 That that nation conceived in liberty, dedicated, devotion, the last full measure of devotion,
00:35:17.900 all of this language is coming from the language of the King James Bible.
00:35:22.740 John Adams, second president of the United States says,
00:35:25.200 How does that constitution survive when church membership reaches all-time lows,
00:35:43.640 when religiosity reaches all-time lows,
00:35:45.880 and what ultimately the cause of all of that,
00:35:49.380 when biblical literacy, when religious education hits all-time lows?
00:35:56.320 If your religious education disappears, if your biblical literacy disappears,
00:36:00.660 all of your other education is going to disappear in the West.
00:36:03.620 It cannot remain because it's the basis of it.
00:36:07.020 How on earth you say, listen, you can keep your whole house.
00:36:10.140 You can keep your entire beautiful house.
00:36:12.120 We're just going to rip out the foundation.
00:36:14.860 But keep living in your house.
00:36:16.200 It'll be fine.
00:36:17.200 What could go wrong?
00:36:19.200 You say, well, I'm pretty sure I need my foundation if I'm going to live in my house.
00:36:22.300 No, the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, said in 1963,
00:36:26.340 you're not allowed to have a foundation to your house.
00:36:28.400 But it should be fine.
00:36:30.700 What would happen in the ensuing decades if you ripped out the foundation of your house?
00:36:37.040 It would all come tumbling down.
00:36:38.480 And that is what we're seeing happen to our education and, therefore, to our society.
00:36:45.000 We've talked a lot about liberal education because of all those scandals at the universities,
00:36:48.680 all the way from parents trying to buy their kids' way in
00:36:51.880 to me getting squirted with some weird chemical at University of Missouri, Kansas City.
00:36:56.420 This crisis of liberal education is a crisis of politics and culture and the whole country
00:37:02.280 because you need liberal education in order to have a free society.
00:37:06.060 The liberal arts mean the arts of freedom.
00:37:09.380 It's the way that we make sense of our freedom, the way that we earn our freedom.
00:37:12.600 If that disappears, which it is, we've seen that happening since the 60s,
00:37:17.320 your institutions of liberty, your governmental institutions, your society,
00:37:21.920 are going to erode along with it.
00:37:26.240 How can we educate people without exposing them to the most important book ever written?
00:37:30.840 Not very well.
00:37:31.720 And this brings us to the bigger question.
00:37:35.040 Can the West survive a post-Christian society?
00:37:41.220 I don't see how they can, which is why President Trump is attacked all the time
00:37:46.020 because he's cheated on his wife and he's been married multiple times
00:37:49.580 and he says naughty words and he doesn't seem to go to church very much.
00:37:53.340 They say, this guy, he's a terrible guy, he's a terrible Christian.
00:37:56.160 Why on earth would Christians vote for him?
00:37:57.920 At least he gets it.
00:38:01.160 At least he gets the existential problem that we're facing.
00:38:05.620 He might behave in a way totally contrary to how we hope Christians should behave.
00:38:11.760 He might behave in a way totally contrary to sainthood.
00:38:16.020 Maybe he does.
00:38:16.620 I don't know.
00:38:17.020 I don't know Donald Trump.
00:38:19.400 Maybe he does.
00:38:20.140 Maybe he doesn't.
00:38:20.680 Maybe he has immense contrition and repentance and faith.
00:38:23.980 Maybe he doesn't.
00:38:24.900 I don't really care.
00:38:26.020 That's his problem.
00:38:26.700 That's a problem between him and God.
00:38:29.500 What I care about is whether the society can survive.
00:38:33.200 And when that guy, a thrice married lapsed Presbyterian, is calling for Bible literacy in schools,
00:38:40.440 I got to support that.
00:38:42.900 You should support that too.
00:38:44.360 Atheists should support that too.
00:38:46.440 The secular, the religious or the spiritual but not religious, they should support that too.
00:38:51.300 Imagine if someone came out and said, you can read every single book in school, but you can study everything in school, except you can't study arithmetic.
00:39:02.020 No, you can do algebra and trigonometry and calculus, but you just, you can't do arithmetic.
00:39:10.520 Why not?
00:39:11.280 Well, the Supreme Court said in 1963 you can't do arithmetic.
00:39:16.040 Without arithmetic, you can't do any of the other math.
00:39:18.320 Even if you don't believe in the Bible, even if you don't believe in Christianity, even if you don't believe in the stories, certainly we know that there's a lot of truth value there.
00:39:30.280 Certainly we know.
00:39:31.340 It's the difference that John Stuart Mill, the philosopher, explained between radicals, what we would call leftists today, and conservatives.
00:39:41.140 He says the difference is when the radical comes across a tradition, like Jeremy Bentham, he looks at it and he says, is it true?
00:39:51.180 Is this specific story in the Bible literally true in the way that I'm asking if it's true?
00:39:55.360 And what the conservative says is, like Carlyle, is, what does it mean?
00:40:04.360 What does the Bible mean?
00:40:06.220 What do those stories mean?
00:40:09.080 If we don't ask that question, if we don't have the humility and the seriousness and the wisdom to ask that question, we're not going to know what any of the other stuff means either.
00:40:19.320 This is a problem of education.
00:40:22.340 And it's why I am encouraged, I have to bring this up.
00:40:25.360 You know, I was in Missouri, I was harassed, shouted down, screamed, silenced, and then eventually physically assaulted by these weirdos at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
00:40:36.380 And what happened the next morning?
00:40:38.640 There was a letter from the chancellor of that university, Molly Agrawal, not apologizing to me, not condemning the students trying to use the heckler's veto,
00:40:47.300 but actually condemning me as some sort of bigot with no evidence, no reasoning, no argument, just smearing me as a bigot,
00:40:56.160 and then applauding the students who screamed and shouted and tried to silence the speaker from the very beginning.
00:41:02.880 That man is unfit to run an American university.
00:41:07.840 That man should be fired.
00:41:10.060 He should actually have the integrity to resign because he is such an abject failure in his job of running a university.
00:41:18.200 He should have great contrition, he should apologize, and he should resign.
00:41:23.160 But he's not doing that.
00:41:24.400 He's not going to do that.
00:41:25.860 He's going to continue to run that university into the ground.
00:41:28.380 And so fortunately, there's some courageous Missouri state legislators who are trying to do his job for him and get him to resign.
00:41:36.500 Missouri state legislator David Sater said, as far as I'm concerned, Agrawal can go.
00:41:43.020 Missouri state representative Robert Ross asked the president of the entire University of Missouri system, President Mun Choi, quote,
00:41:52.380 At what point would a staff member not be worth that trade-off in a reduced amount to your budget?
00:41:59.800 He's threatening to defund the system.
00:42:02.340 Cut the budget of the University of Missouri system if he doesn't fire this absolute disgrace to higher education, Molly Agrawal.
00:42:12.840 That's good.
00:42:13.900 That's showing some backbone.
00:42:15.380 That's what Republicans have to do.
00:42:17.120 We have to push back hard.
00:42:18.440 We can't just work around the edges and try to get a few more conservative professors in there and try to maybe get a few more teachers and break the public teacher unions just a little bit.
00:42:28.740 No, that's not going to work.
00:42:30.760 You need to talk tough and you need to back up your talk with actions.
00:42:35.140 You need all the way up to the president of the United States supporting legislation for Bible literacy in schools.
00:42:40.940 For Bible literacy that has been totally destroyed because of some stupid, ridiculous Supreme Court decision.
00:42:51.600 And we need our legislators all around the country, not just in Missouri, not just David Sater and Robert Ross.
00:42:57.120 We need them to go in and say, listen, you hacks, you leftist thugs who are gutting out our universities,
00:43:06.300 who are hollowing them out from within and destroying education in America.
00:43:10.620 You've got to go.
00:43:11.480 And if you don't go, we're going to defund you.
00:43:13.560 And those kids can go to some other school.
00:43:15.500 Plenty of schools in the country.
00:43:16.960 Plenty of colleges in the United States.
00:43:19.220 Way too many colleges in the United States compared to the ones that are actually fulfilling their mission of educating students.
00:43:26.660 So we'll defund you.
00:43:27.740 We'll defund the whole damn school.
00:43:29.980 It's not doing any good anyway.
00:43:31.460 All it's doing is harm in its current form.
00:43:36.220 So we'll defund you unless you back up the values of education.
00:43:42.380 Those guys are doing great work.
00:43:43.980 I hope that legislators around the country do this.
00:43:46.660 I hope that I'm a little nervous for how Cal State is going to react to my speech tomorrow
00:43:54.220 because the president of that university is already sending out advanced letters talking about the awful costs of free speech.
00:44:02.220 So I've got to tell you, I don't have a whole lot of confidence that they're going to handle that well either.
00:44:08.240 But bad educators, bad administrators have to go.
00:44:11.520 We've got to hold their feet to the fire.
00:44:12.700 It seems like a minor issue because it affects 18 and 22 and 15-year-olds and all that.
00:44:18.040 So we think, oh, we'll focus on bigger issues, tax cuts, reforming certain welfare programs.
00:44:25.340 No, the big issue is the education.
00:44:27.400 That's what could gut the whole society.
00:44:31.160 So we'll see what happens tomorrow.
00:44:32.560 In the meantime, I'll be subbing in for Ben on his radio show today.
00:44:37.000 So if you want two more hours of just unbridled me, come on over there.
00:44:43.000 In the meantime, I'll see you tomorrow.
00:44:44.820 And maybe I'll see you at Cal State LA.
00:44:46.620 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:44:47.300 This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:44:53.840 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner.
00:44:58.540 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
00:45:00.560 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
00:45:02.340 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
00:45:04.560 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
00:45:07.000 Edited by Danny D'Amico.
00:45:08.660 Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.
00:45:10.560 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
00:45:12.760 And our production assistant is Nick Sheehan.
00:45:14.820 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
00:45:17.200 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
00:45:19.440 Hey, guys.
00:45:19.900 Over on the Matt Wall Show today, horrific terror attacks against Christians in Sri Lanka, which I'm sure you've heard about.
00:45:25.540 We're going to discuss that.
00:45:26.800 We're going to discuss the persecution of Christians, which is happening on a large scale across the world and is often ignored in the West.
00:45:34.640 And we'll talk about the fact that certain prominent Democrats seem to be going out of their way to avoid acknowledging that Christians are the ones being attacked and who were attacked yesterday.
00:45:46.300 Also, I have been the subject of a pretty outrageous and ridiculous smear by a British publication for comments that I made on my show about gay adoption.
00:45:58.080 So I'll dissect that a little bit and we'll talk about that as well today over on the Matt Wall Show.
00:46:02.620 We'll talk about that as well.