Ep. 366 - Harvard Sucks
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
181.22073
Summary
Harvard rescinds its acceptance of conservative activist Kyle Kashuv over leaked chats of lewd jokes that he and his friends made when they were 16 years old. Then, President Trump endorses a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning and almost all of the conservative commentators instantly condemned the idea as anti-American. Finally, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg plays the gay card perfectly.
Transcript
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Harvard has rescinded its admission of well-known conservative activist Kyle Kashuv
00:00:42.520
over leaked chats of lewd jokes that he and his friends made when they were 16 years old.
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We will examine what this means for the American University and how conservatives can fight back.
00:00:52.140
Then, President Trump endorses a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning.
00:00:57.740
And almost all of the conservative commentators instantly condemned the idea as anti-American.
00:01:03.560
I will explain the case for the amendment because I am not most conservative commentators.
00:01:08.260
Finally, 2020 Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg plays the gay card perfectly.
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I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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First and foremost, the news, I guess it's not news, but the obvious fact that Harvard sucks.
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Harvard has just rescinded its acceptance of Kyle Kashuv.
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Kyle, he was working for TPUSA, the conservative activist organization around the country.
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And they've rescinded their admission of Kashuv.
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Now, Kashuv didn't just get admitted to Harvard because he's a celebrity.
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Some other people who also became celebrities from that Parkland school shooting had pretty low grades.
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And they got into very good schools because they became celebrities.
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He got a 1550 on his SAT, which is almost perfect.
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I mean, I've known him a little bit for at least a year now.
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It can be a life-changing event for a young teenager.
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If you get into an elite university, it means you can have access to certain networks.
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And then at the end of May, one of Kyle's political opponents posted an old Google document in which Kyle and some of his friends were saying the most outrageous things they possibly could.
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Just saying the most grotesque and outrageous things you can possibly say.
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As a result of this, Harvard has rescinded his admission because he made outrageous comments privately with his friends in a little chat box when he was 16 years old.
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So the question that Harvard needs to ask now is, does this mean that any student who has ever said anything outrageous or offensive at the age of 16 will lose his admission?
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How many students were admitted to Harvard, do you think, who didn't say something outrageous or offensive at the age of 16?
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How many, do you, any, none, none, none is the answer.
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Not one single student who was admitted to Harvard has never said something mean or outrageous or offensive or racial or sexist or whatever in their lives.
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Now, is Harvard going to investigate all of their other students and figure out what they said in their G-chats when they were 16 years old?
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I assume Kyle Kashuk isn't the only student matriculating into Harvard class of 2023 who had the internet when he was a kid.
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I assume he's not the only one who had Google documents and G-chats and Facebook Messenger and all those things.
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I think if we're going to analyze Kyle's 16-year-old G-chats, maybe we should analyze every other student at that university.
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How many matriculating Harvard students have ever said the N-word even once, even as a joke?
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He said all that other stuff, but he said the N-word, so he has to have his life ruined and be kicked out of school.
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How many students in that class have said the N-word even once, even as a joke?
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Maybe you were saying it to reclaim the word for yourself or for your friend or whatever.
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How many matriculating Harvard students have ever said F me up the A?
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If that's a problem, Harvard's going to have a homophobia case on their hands.
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Because these aren't just the kids going into Harvard.
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These are the people who are deciding who gets to go in, who gets to be part of this diverse and inclusive community.
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They're the most powerful people in the whole equation.
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Do you think any people on the Harvard Admissions Committee, when they were 20 or 15, 16 or 10 years old, do you think any of them said the N-word even once, even as a joke?
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Do you think any of them said some other racial?
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They said Guido or Guinea or Mick or something like that.
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Do you think they ever said that once, one time?
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Sure would be a shame if the Dean of Admissions, William R. Fitzsimmons, sure would be a shame if it turned out that that guy had said some offensive things in his past when he was 16 and then we dug them up.
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The real irony here is that there is no evidence whatsoever that Kyle harbors any sort of actual racial bigotry.
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I made this point on Twitter and all of a sudden the lefties came.
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But there's no evidence that he actually harbors racial bias or resentment or bigotry because in that same exact sentence he said, F me up the A.
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Do you think it's more likely that these chats reflect what Kyle really thinks and what he really feels deep in his core?
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And therefore, Kyle is secretly gay or do you think that it was just a 16-year-old kid saying the most outrageous things he possibly could for shock value as all 16-year-old kids do?
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And you've done similar things and so has everybody else.
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Now, there is a big irony here because while there is no evidence that Kyle Kashif has any racial bigotry in his body at all, there is a lot of evidence that the Harvard admissions office harbors a lot of racial bigotry.
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There is a major lawsuit right now from Asian Americans who observe that Harvard unfairly discriminates against Asian applicants.
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This is not some conspiracy theory or something.
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The dean of admissions himself has testified that Harvard docs Asian applicants 250 points on their SAT.
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So if you apply to Harvard and you're a black student, there is a lower bar for you according to the admissions office because the admissions office apparently thinks that black applicants can't compete or something like that because they're racial bigots.
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If you are an Asian applicant to Harvard, there is a disadvantage.
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So if you're an Asian applicant, you have to score higher on your SAT to be considered at the same level as students of other races.
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There's no other word for that than racial bigotry.
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You can use whatever euphemism you want, affirmative action or progress or whatever euphemism, social justice.
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That's not some G-chat from when you were 16 years old.
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That's the current policy in the admissions office at Harvard.
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Kyle apologized right away when these texts came out.
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He should have privately apologized to anybody that he offended, any of his friends who were offended or any people that he knew that he had offended.
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Of course, I suspect none of them were actually offended by Kyle because he was just saying shocking, outrageous things.
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Did Kyle have to apologize to his gay friends as well for saying F me up the A?
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Kyle Kashif does not owe a public apology to anybody for saying the stupid sort of things that kids say.
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He doesn't owe a public apology to one single person.
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They should realize that when you're a kid, you act immature, and then you grow up and you act in a mature way.
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So we don't want to say he should be proud of what he said.
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And if he privately offended anybody, okay, deal with that.
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He doesn't owe anybody a public apology for being a stupid kid.
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He should not have bought into the leftist premise that he owed the public an apology.
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Some conservatives now are attacking him from another angle.
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They're attacking him for wanting to go to Harvard in the first place.
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And this is a fairly compelling argument because I don't care for Harvard and I'm pretty disenchanted with all of higher education at the moment.
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What they say is conservatives talk a good game about the universities being worthless and pointless and just a worthless credential.
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But then all of them go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford.
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What those conservative critics are missing is the actual point here.
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The reason that the anti-conservative bias of schools like Harvard matters is because a Harvard degree does matter.
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It has nothing to do with G-chats when you were 16.
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This is just an excuse for Kyle's political opponents to get Harvard to kick him out for being a conservative.
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And the reason that that anti-conservative bias of these institutions matters is that having that degree from Harvard matters.
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It means you will make more money or you're able to make more money.
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You have a better chance of getting into a better graduate school or a law school or a medical school.
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You get access to better alumni networks, old boys club.
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Even if you have a kind of paltry education there, you will still get access to a terrific network because Harvard is the oldest university in America.
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Now, this problem for Kyle is, there's no problem that he wanted to go to Harvard.
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There's no problem that he apologized and said, please, Harvard, please take me back.
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It's actually incumbent on us as conservatives to keep the heat up on these universities.
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But first, there are a lot of things in life that aren't right.
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There are a lot of things in life that aren't right, like kicking a kid out of college because he said something stupid when he was 16.
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We shouldn't blame Kyle for wanting to go to Harvard or for trying to salvage his Harvard admission.
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I mean, conservatives should stop letting the left run through all of our institutions.
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First of all, we should dig up every single thing that this dean of admissions has ever written or published.
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You know, the advantage of believing in grace and repentance in politics is that I'll face up to anything that I've ever said.
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Anything I've said on this show or on tweets or in columns or whatever, I will face up to anything that I have said.
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And in some cases, I'll say, oh, yeah, that was stupid.
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In some cases, I'll say, well, yeah, I don't know.
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In some cases, I'll say, oh, I changed my mind.
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I'm perfectly willing to do that because I believe in a society that has grace and repentance and in which people mature.
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By the impossible standards that Harvard is now setting, no man can possibly stand.
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There's a line in The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare.
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The line is, in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation.
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And that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.
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And if all you're focusing on is justice, or I guess in this case, social justice, none of us will see salvation.
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We will be totally destroyed because we all fall and sin and do stupid things when we're 16.
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Now, ironically, the only way that we can show the need for mercy here is to hold Harvard to their own impossible standards.
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We should dig up as much as we can on whatever the Dean of Admissions, William R. Fitzsimmons, ever put in his G-chats when he was 16 years old.
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He's a little older than that, so maybe we'll have to look up columns that he wrote when he was a kid.
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Maybe we'll have to look up correspondence that he's had as he's been an adult.
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Because something tells me he has not had a perfect 100% series of communications and essays and articles and emails.
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Something tells me that he's said some things that maybe he regrets.
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And we should dig them up if they're going to hold Kyle to that standard.
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Because this is going to increase a lot of pressure.
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We should keep the pressure up on this Harvard race discrimination case.
00:18:20.480
The Supreme Court and the other courts watch the poll numbers.
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This is how the left has won a lot of victories at the Supreme Court.
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We don't want to let Kyle hang out to dry here.
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Moving on to a different story, but another one actually that involves the Supreme Court.
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Over the weekend, President Trump has endorsed a constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning.
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This new constitutional amendment has been suggested by Representatives Steve Womack of Arkansas and Steve Daines of Montana, Senator Steve Daines.
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Right now, it's legal to burn an American flag.
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This was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1989 in a case called Texas v. Johnson.
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And the court found that burning an American flag is protected speech under the First Amendment.
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What this constitutional amendment would do is specifically ban the burning of the American flag.
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President Trump tweeted out, he said, all in for Senator Steve Daines as he proposes an amendment for a strong ban on burning our American flag.
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Remember, every pundit in the country, immediately when Trump said this, left, right, and center, came out and said, this is a terrible idea.
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There's a very good argument for this constitutional amendment.
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What is the argument to protect the right of people to burn the flag?
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Every one of these pundits invoked Antonin Scalia, who put it very well.
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I would not allow people to go about burning the American flag.
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However, we have a First Amendment, which says that the right of free speech shall not be abridged.
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And it is addressed in particular to speech critical of the government.
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I mean, that was the main kind of speech that tyrants would seek to suppress.
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Speech doesn't just mean written words or oral words.
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Burning a flag is a symbol that expresses an idea.
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He said, look, if I were king, this is another life.
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He said, if I were king, I would throw in prison every scruffy bearded sandal wearing weirdo who burns the American flag.
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So all the left and the sort of liberal conservatives are heard here is we have a First Amendment that protects the right to burn the flag.
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And so therefore, it's a good thing that we can protect the right to burn the flag.
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He said, if I were in charge, I would prohibit burning the American flag.
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I was actually, I was covering a rally, a revolutionary communist rally just a week or two ago, and they burned American flags there.
00:21:33.860
It is, you don't know what it's like until you see it in person.
00:21:40.240
He says, actually, he makes the argument in the Supreme Court case.
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In 1989, Texas v. Johnson, he joins some liberals.
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And he says that the First Amendment protects the right to burn the flag.
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Justice Brennan wrote the argument for the court there defending flag burning.
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So see, really, flag burning is, flag burning is our strength or whatever ridiculous line they have.
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Okay, so that's the, that's the cut and dry argument.
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That's the cut and dry argument for allowing flag burning.
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What's the argument against flag burning, even from the First Amendment perspective?
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Justice Rehnquist and White and O'Connor dissented, and Rehnquist wrote the dissent.
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In holding this Texas statute unconstitutional, the court ignores Justice Holmes' familiar aphorism
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that a page of history is worth a volume of logic.
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For more than 200 years, the American flag has occupied a unique position as a symbol of our nation,
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a uniqueness that justifies a governmental prohibition against flag burning in the way
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So he's saying there's a unique place right here for the flag.
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And then he goes on, and he, I love this line about how, the importance of history here
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And he gives the history of the place of the American flag in American history.
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The flag symbolizes the nation in peace as well as in war.
00:23:42.420
In 1931, Congress declared the Star Spangled Banner to be our national anthem.
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No other American symbol has been as universally honored as the flag.
00:23:50.260
So even you think our national anthem is the flag.
00:24:04.240
And as such, our flag is such a symbol of our country that our national anthem itself is the flag.
00:24:15.480
It is a symbol of the nation which precedes the Constitution.
00:24:19.820
This is the conservative argument for this constitutional amendment,
00:24:26.160
But first, we've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
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Ten bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership.
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You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show,
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you get to ask questions in the mailbag, you get all that great stuff.
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And also, you truth-loving, cigar-smoking, whiskey-imbibing, seekers of laughs and insight,
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pay attention because we are taking backstage live.
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We are taking that show on the road August 21st to the Terrace Theater in Long Beach, California.
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Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire God King, Jeremy Boring, Andrew Klavan, and little old me will be live on stage
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discussing the winners and losers of politics and pop culture
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and doing our best to answer your burning questions from the audience.
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Also, we'll be selling merch. By we, of course, I mean me because they're probably going to make me go work on merch booth duty.
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So this is all starting tomorrow, June 18th through Thursday the 20th.
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So subscribe right now. Get your tickets tomorrow.
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It's going to be an incredible event, so go join us and I look forward to seeing you there.
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You're going to need it more and more these days, especially if we get an anti-flag burning amendment.
00:25:47.860
So the argument that the conservatives, Rehnquist at least, is making in the Texas v. Johnson case
00:25:56.400
is that the flag is not just some regular idea.
00:26:01.020
It's a special symbol and therefore it supersedes the First Amendment.
00:26:07.500
So he says Congress and the states have enacted many laws regulating the use of the flag and how
00:26:21.380
He says the flag is not simply another idea or point of view competing for recognition in the
00:26:30.440
Millions and millions of Americans regard it with an almost mystical reverence, regardless
00:26:35.440
of what sort of social, political, or philosophical beliefs they may have.
00:26:40.440
I cannot agree that the First Amendment invalidates the act of Congress and the laws of 48 of the 50
00:26:45.380
states which make criminal the public burning of the flag.
00:26:55.780
I agree with Scalia in this case and some of the liberals that the First Amendment permits the burning of the
00:27:07.940
However, if there is a constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning, there's no constitutional
00:27:17.460
If you made a law right now that outlawed flag burning, I would say that's unconstitutional.
00:27:22.040
But if you have an amendment that says in the specific case of the American flag, you can't
00:27:42.200
Are conservatives so, have we gone so far in this direction that now we're celebrating the
00:27:50.100
There's no good being accomplished by burning the flag.
00:27:53.200
By the way, it's not as though plenty of countries don't have laws against burning the flag.
00:27:59.420
Flag burning right now today is illegal in Argentina, Austria, Croatia, Finland, France,
00:28:06.760
Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Serbia, South Korea,
00:28:13.160
Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and Uruguay, at least.
00:28:27.940
Do you know what country doesn't have any laws against flag burning?
00:28:35.920
Croatia, Finland, France, India, Japan, Israel, or Canada?
00:28:43.400
There are actually some countries in Denmark and Norway, it is illegal to burn their own
00:28:48.840
national flag, but it is illegal to burn other national flags, which is like exactly
00:28:53.760
the opposite of what, if you're going to have this kind of, that sort of silly law, I mean,
00:29:11.700
It is a heinous act of national and cultural suicide.
00:29:18.000
I am perfectly fine with a constitutional amendment banning flag burning.
00:29:28.860
Because the nation comes before the constitution.
00:29:34.920
There have been many countries without constitutions.
00:29:38.040
The vast majority of countries in the history of the world have not had a constitution.
00:29:42.860
Our country, our own country from 1620 up until the late 18th century didn't have a constitution.
00:29:50.200
For most of England's history, it didn't have a constitution.
00:29:54.500
You can't have a constitution without a country.
00:29:57.500
A constitution without a country doesn't mean anything.
00:30:00.580
By that, I mean the nation is the basis of the constitution.
00:30:07.080
Our First Amendment, which we all cherish, does not exist without America.
00:30:15.900
The flag is not a symbol of the First Amendment.
00:30:17.780
Though, if it were, it would be just as incoherent to burn the flag as it already is.
00:30:23.600
Let's say that the flag were a symbol of the First Amendment.
00:30:26.880
And you say, see, I have the right to burn this flag because of my First Amendment.
00:30:31.180
And this flag actually represents my First Amendment.
00:30:35.680
You just set on fire your own First Amendment right.
00:30:37.940
You destroyed your right to burn the flag by burning the flag in the first place.
00:30:41.480
Well, it's even more the case that because the flag represents the country, without this
00:30:47.580
country, you don't get your right to your First Amendment.
00:30:52.620
The reason that kneeling for the national anthem, disrespecting the national anthem, disrespecting
00:30:58.000
the flag is so stupid, it's so profoundly stupid, is that without the country, you don't have
00:31:06.220
Without that flag, without what that flag represents, which is America, you have no First Amendment.
00:31:20.180
He said, there is a thought that stops thought.
00:31:23.440
And that is the only thought that ought to be stopped.
00:31:31.180
When you burn the flag, what you are burning is the country.
00:31:36.600
Not only everything the country stands for, but everything the country is, everything about
00:31:41.940
the country that gives way to all of the things that you like about it, the First Amendment
00:31:45.700
and this civil liberty and this economic prosperity, you're burning it all up.
00:31:54.060
And I think it is perfectly reasonable to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting that.
00:32:04.480
And I'm perfectly happy to answer any conservative who has become so obsessed with this idea of
00:32:09.800
liberalism without any limits on it that they're, for some reason, celebrating the right to burn
00:32:15.140
Look, I agree with all of the arguments from the First Amendment.
00:32:21.860
Today, it is perfectly legal and constitutional to burn a flag.
00:32:26.160
But if you pass a constitutional amendment, it's all good.
00:32:28.400
And by the way, if we could start passing more constitutional amendments, it would show
00:32:34.460
We really do have some control over our government.
00:32:36.620
But Antonin Scalia, the one that they all keep invoking, he said before he died that the
00:32:41.560
one regret he has about the Constitution is that it's not easier to make amendments.
00:32:47.780
It's as good as an amendment as I've ever seen.
00:32:51.420
I want to turn, also speaking of wrapping yourself in the flag in American history, I have to turn
00:32:57.040
to the 2020 race and Pete Buttigieg, because Pete Buttigieg, this guy is such a slick, smart
00:33:04.520
Pete Buttigieg was doing an interview and he's putting out material from Axios on HBO, which
00:33:14.920
He was asked if it's going to matter that he's gay, how that's going to affect him and what
00:33:25.040
Republicans claim that John Kerry was a traitor.
00:33:30.560
If you were to win the nomination, they'll say, you're too young, too liberal, too gay
00:33:39.800
I'll respond by explaining where I want to lead this country.
00:33:43.520
People will elect the person who will make the best president.
00:33:47.180
And we have had excellent presidents who have been young.
00:33:50.620
We have had excellent presidents who have been liberal.
00:33:53.060
I would imagine we've probably had excellent presidents who are gay.
00:33:57.400
You believe that we've had a gay commander in chief?
00:34:02.700
And like in your reading of history, like, do you believe you know who they were?
00:34:07.060
My gaydar doesn't even work that well in the present, let alone retroactively.
00:34:18.360
What do you mean statistically, almost certainly, we've had gay presidents?
00:34:23.160
You can't name the gay presidents, but you're certain that we've had them.
00:34:26.660
You don't know which ones, but statistically, what does that mean?
00:34:29.560
So just that word statistically, what he's doing is he's cloaking his ideology in this guise
00:34:36.900
This is what the left always does because they worship at the altar of science.
00:34:40.620
So they say, yes, I'm, I'm not telling you historically there were gay presidents, but
00:34:54.440
There, there aren't any statistics on gay presidents.
00:34:57.040
There's no statistical textbook or some data set on gay presidents.
00:35:02.780
But Pete Buttigieg, because he knows his base, is using the scientific language to make it
00:35:24.320
So this is the first lesson is just being very matter of fact and dress up your language
00:35:33.580
Because when he says, we've almost certainly had gay presidents, what's he referring to?
00:35:41.480
This is the president that everybody always says he's the gay one.
00:35:46.440
He was the 15th president of the United States.
00:35:56.260
He presided over Bleeding Kansas, a horrific early, early stage, an event in what would
00:36:07.040
And he presided over the, the beginning of that war.
00:36:09.760
Now, the reason they say that Buchanan was gay is because he's our only bachelor president.
00:36:15.940
So it's the same reason, you know, people say that Lindsey Graham is gay because he never
00:36:22.940
He did have a romantic encounter with a woman when he was younger, but then that was the only
00:36:29.640
He also had a close relationship with William Rufus King, who was this politician.
00:36:36.920
And he was sometimes referred to in Washington circles as Miss Nancy or Aunt Fancy.
00:36:42.460
These were terms for a feminine man, sort of like the 19th century version of being a little
00:36:49.340
And so there were rumors, I guess, that he, he was a gay guy or he at least surrounded himself
00:36:54.040
with gay guys, or at least that he was a confirmed bachelor.
00:36:57.760
Now, of course, I don't think Pete Buttigieg wants to claim him, one, because it's so presumptuous.
00:37:03.620
Pete Buttigieg calls James Buchanan gay, and that leads Buttigieg all the way from the news
00:37:10.100
The other one is he was a horrific president and a Democrat, so Buttigieg probably doesn't
00:37:13.820
want to draw any comparisons between himself and the guy who started the Civil War.
00:37:18.160
The next president that they sometimes call gay is actually the next president, is Abraham
00:37:24.360
Lincoln, and the gay Republican group is called the Log Cabin Republicans, because Abe Lincoln
00:37:31.400
And they sort of tip their hat to this story that he was gay.
00:37:38.340
When he was a young man, he shared a bed briefly with another guy.
00:37:42.740
This was common at the time because people didn't have a lot of money, and so they would
00:37:52.680
You know, if you go, you're like on a road trip, and there's only one bed, you got to
00:37:56.820
Or, I mean, that sort of thing happens all the time.
00:38:01.420
And I don't know, maybe he thinks there have been other gay presidents.
00:38:11.880
But, my second reaction to this was that this was brilliant.
00:38:18.940
I mean, this was absolutely a brilliant way to handle it.
00:38:23.340
Because the question to Buttigieg was, are you too young?
00:38:32.280
And so, what the kind of stupid leftist would answer is, well, we should have a young president.
00:38:37.800
It's about damn time we have a young president.
00:38:39.840
Well, it's about damn time we have a liberal president.
00:38:45.640
That's the stupid leftist reaction, where you claim victimhood and you say, I've been
00:38:50.040
And okay, that's the knee-jerk reaction of our age.
00:38:54.040
The smarter reaction is, oh, we have a long tradition in America of liberal presidents.
00:39:07.260
We know for a fact we haven't had any gay presidents.
00:39:10.900
We don't know the sexual desires of every single president, you know, but none of them
00:39:16.800
behaved in a gay way or had a gay husband or so.
00:39:22.980
Because the way to change America, the way to push your innovative, progressive platform
00:39:29.940
is not to set yourself up in opposition to America.
00:39:32.980
It's to pretend that America has secretly been this way all the time and you're just bringing
00:39:45.720
I mean, this is what the civil rights movement did.
00:39:47.660
They said, I mean, the reason we talk about Martin Luther King is because Martin Luther King
00:39:52.200
didn't say America's an awful, racist, terrible, irredeemable place like Malcolm X did.
00:40:06.560
Same thing with women's suffrage and the women's rights movement.
00:40:22.000
I initially wrote off a small town mayor from South Bend who is the mayor of 100,000 people
00:40:33.560
And one of his pitches, especially if he's pitching himself for vice president, is that
00:40:37.960
it'll be great to watch him go up against Mike Pence, who the left has completely unfairly
00:40:42.680
painted as some sort of anti-gay bigot or something like that.
00:40:48.740
And I suspect he's going to keep rising up in the polls.
00:40:51.840
One thing I have to get to before we go is this little clip from Donald Trump's interview
00:40:56.200
with George Stephanopoulos, which just leaked out today.
00:41:00.440
It was kind of some of the extra footage there.
00:41:02.840
And it shows an interaction that is actually very telling about Donald Trump.
00:41:09.400
And then his budget, or rather his former budget director and now his chief of staff,
00:41:15.200
And Trump stops the footage, stops the cameras, says, we got to reset because he was coughing.
00:41:26.820
But at some point, I hope they get it because it's a fantastic financial statement.
00:41:41.160
If you're going to cough, please leave the room.
00:41:43.020
If you should get a shot of, and I'll come over here.
00:41:51.260
Do you want to do that a little differently then?
00:41:55.580
So at some point, I look forward to, frankly, I'd like to have people see my financial statement.
00:42:07.480
But they're asking for things that they should never be asking for.
00:42:11.160
That they've never asked another president for.
00:42:13.360
They want to go through every deal that I've ever done.
00:42:20.800
They want to keep it going as long as possible to try and demean and hurt as much as possible
00:42:26.520
so they can possibly win the presidential election.
00:42:31.180
And it, I hope, puts to rest one of the stupidest takes on Donald Trump,
00:42:36.960
which is that he's this completely undisciplined, wacko lunatic who doesn't know what's going on
00:42:41.820
and he shoots from the hip and he's only just belching various emotions all the times.
00:42:53.300
Because he's giving this answer that he wants to give to Stephanopoulos.
00:42:58.880
He had 15 seasons of a network show, hit network show.
00:43:01.580
And he knows that that sound is going to ruin that clip and they're not going to be able to use it.
00:43:10.320
Get out of here if you're going to cough on set.
00:43:15.360
He's talking like a guy either who's in a movie or at least who's, who's doing a nonfiction TV show.
00:43:24.620
And then the camera guy screws up and he moves.
00:43:32.980
And then Trump gives the message that he wants to the American people.
00:43:36.640
And he gives it as though it's right off the cuff.
00:43:43.020
It's not like he's giving this perfectly scripted monologue.
00:43:45.880
But he is letting you know, you, the American people, the people who watch ABC News,
00:43:51.360
which is a lot more people than watch cable news or Fox News.
00:44:03.020
And this is a guy who knows how to communicate.
00:44:10.320
People are still going to pretend that he's this total buffoon who just accidentally has succeeded
00:44:14.620
at the highest levels of everything he's ever tried.
00:44:16.680
But this was more revealing than the Billy Bush tape, which was a guy engaging in locker room
00:44:23.860
This is much more telling about how Trump's brain works and how he views politics and the
00:44:30.900
Oval Office and imagery and how he views mass communications.
00:44:36.360
Oh, I should point out, by the way, Sarah Sanders is stepping down as press secretary.
00:44:40.780
And some people have suggested that maybe she should be replaced by me.
00:44:46.860
I don't I don't know who's been suggesting this.
00:44:48.940
Someone pointed out that my new Twitter handle is potential White House press secretary, Michael
00:44:53.720
That's an old nickname that I had in high school.
00:44:57.420
But, you know, it's funny that they've suggested it.
00:44:59.340
I do think, you know, if my country called on me, I would certainly serve.
00:45:02.860
And my experience of dealing with shrieking leftists on campuses around the country has
00:45:17.480
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner.
00:45:44.160
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
00:45:49.160
Over on The Matt Wall Show today, some Republicans are once again trying to ban flag burning because
00:45:54.020
this is something we have to do every few years, it seems.
00:46:05.420
But we'll take a look at that subject and talk about it.
00:46:07.780
Also, we'll look at a very powerful yet heartbreaking and tragic video of an incident that transpired
00:46:20.520
It is incredibly boring, yet obnoxious at the same time.
00:46:25.020
And that is an impressive combination, which Taylor Swift seems to have protected or perfected,
00:46:30.960
So we'll talk about that today as well on The Matt Wall Show.