Major U.S. cities shut down to stop the spread of the deadly flu pandemic, but as we rush to save our lives, as coronavirus kills our constitution, we will examine the surprising civics lessons of the pandemic.
00:00:00.160Major U.S. cities shut down to stop the spread of the Wu flu.
00:00:05.220But as we rush to save our lives, as coronavirus killing our constitution,
00:00:09.660we will examine the surprising civics lessons of the pandemic.
00:00:14.300Then, former future Democrat, governor of Florida, and potential vice president candidate,
00:00:19.500Andrew Gillum, is found vomiting in a hotel room with a naked male prostitute and a bunch of meth.
00:00:25.240We will analyze, as it were, how the press let him off the hook.
00:00:29.100Finally, DNC chairman Tom Perez illustrates the left's two contradictory takes on religion.
00:00:35.800All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:00:45.140All right, what's the latest with our pandemic that we've got running around all of our cities?
00:00:50.860New guidelines out from the Trump administration.
00:00:53.160The Trump administration is calling this 15 days to slow the spread.
00:01:00.280Typical stuff in here. So it says, stay home if you're sick, stay home if you're old, stay home if you're frail.
00:01:06.340Don't gather in groups of 10 or 20 or 30 people.
00:01:09.860Don't host any mosh pits. Don't go to any raves.
00:01:12.760I mean, kind of what you would expect.
00:01:14.320But all of that is secondary to the most interesting thing in the document, which is the very first line.
00:01:20.440The very first line says, listen to and follow the directions of your state and local authorities.
00:01:29.280Now, if there is a silver lining of the Wu flu amid the death and the economic devastation and, worst of all, the closed bars, very frustrating.
00:01:44.180If there is to be said some sort of silver lining, it is this.
00:01:47.740People are learning more about federalism.
00:03:19.160So the states are basically governing themselves because our president doesn't know how to president at all?
00:03:27.760Are you going to tell her or should I?
00:03:30.120I think a lot of people actually already told her this on Twitter.
00:03:33.640The states are basically governing themselves because we have a form of government called federalism.
00:03:40.240So whether it be during a pandemic or whether it just be during a regular Tuesday, the states, at least theoretically, are supposed to mostly govern themselves because we have a federal system of government.
00:03:56.120Actually, it looks like the president knows very well how to president because the federal government in Washington, D.C. is not supposed to make every single decision for how we run our lives.
00:04:06.580Actually, it's supposed to make very, very few of those decisions.
00:04:11.580It took a worldwide pandemic to get liberals to read the Constitution.
00:04:25.180The Federal Reserve is cutting interest rates.
00:04:27.440There's a program of quantitative easing that's going to go into effect, which is basically just printing money to help stimulate the economy.
00:04:33.540President Trump is waiving interest on student loans.
00:04:37.180There are small business administration loans coming out.
00:05:06.700It's going to put President Trump in a difficult position though, because he's going to have to attack President Obama's economic policies.
00:05:14.460And yet, it looks like these might be similar things to what we saw in 2008, 2009.
00:05:19.420Another very important thing from the federal government, the elimination of the payroll tax.
00:05:23.360A big boost to employees and to employers.
00:05:30.180But most of the decisions that affect our lives, and they're affecting our lives during this pandemic, are coming from the state and local level.
00:06:47.900In that, not everything hateful or odious is covered by some provision of the Constitution.
00:06:55.740The Constitution, at least in theory, is supposed to reign in the power of our federal government.
00:07:00.620But it actually gives the states and localities a lot of leeway to govern.
00:07:04.900Actually, this is a big, big element of a debate going on on the right right now between the libertarians and the more traditional conservatives.
00:07:12.600The libertarians are saying, you know, the government can never pass any kind of regulations ever.
00:07:20.600And what the traditional conservatives are looking at is saying, well, actually, maybe the federal government doesn't have the authority to do that.
00:07:27.900But state and local governments have always had the authority to do that.
00:07:31.080I mean, we think about, just think about the First Amendment.
00:07:33.660First Amendment says there cannot be an established church in America, right, for the federal government of America.
00:07:41.140So, the liberals interpret that to be a total separation of church and state.
00:07:46.820But that's not what the framers intended at all.
00:09:17.500I'm a huge fan and wait impatiently for your show.
00:09:20.560I keep hearing about this mandatory two-week paid leave by companies employing 50 or more.
00:09:24.900I work at a hotel on I-40 in Amarillo, Texas.
00:09:29.600We deal with travelers coming and going literally across our nation.
00:09:33.960Most hotels, motels do not employ 50 people, and my employer does not offer any paid leave.
00:09:39.020I, among others, can't afford even one day off.
00:09:41.860We are at extremely high risk to coronavirus.
00:09:44.820We Clorox wipe as often as possible and use hand sanitizer.
00:09:47.980What else do you think we can do that wouldn't be off-putting or give guests the wrong idea?
00:09:52.700Also, what do you think, if anything, should be done to help us during this time?
00:09:58.520A couple questions in there, so let's get the easy one first.
00:10:01.220First, I think that by Cloroxing everything, by having those hotel and motel rooms reek of cleaning supplies, you will put your customers at ease.
00:10:13.560Okay, nobody, I know sometimes cleaning supplies smell, you don't want that when you get into a hotel.
00:13:16.860Countries that are not prosperous, it's not just some luck of the draw whoopsie-daisy most of the time.
00:13:24.140The reason that they're not prosperous is because they don't have systems in place that allow people to produce things and to work and to make a lot of money.
00:13:30.540So, when you're just sitting on the couch for two weeks, there's no way to fix that.
00:13:34.020There's no magic pill to make that all better.
00:14:39.880You're hearing this especially by the people who are getting hysterical online.
00:14:43.820Then, on the other side, there's what you might call the economic viewpoint.
00:14:48.560And the economic viewpoint, it basically says, hey, guys, look, some people are going to get sick, especially old people, especially frail people, but who needs them anyway?
00:15:02.300This is what you're seeing happen in places like the Netherlands, where they're basically pursuing the strategy of herd immunity and saying, keep everything going.
00:15:42.140This is the problem, especially you see this when you have experts running the economy, experts running our government, is they only focus on their one area of expertise.
00:15:55.240Politics and economics and other viewpoints tell us about society, about real things, about real men and women.
00:16:02.680So, we want a civilization that views human beings as human beings, full human beings, men and women with dignity, whose lives matter, whose lives cannot just be expended by some cold calculation.
00:17:00.760San Francisco's got public defecation on the best of days.
00:17:05.140What's going to happen when things start to go haywire?
00:17:07.080What's going to happen when people can't go to establishments, can't go to coffee shops, can't go to bars, can't go to restaurants, can't go anywhere?
00:17:57.820Europeans are used to being absolutely subservient to their governments, okay?
00:18:03.500There is at least continental Europe, maybe not the UK.
00:18:06.420The Anglo-American tradition of liberty, the Anglo-American tradition of not letting the government push you around, tell you what to do all the time, is a very real thing.
00:18:17.760You don't see that in continental Europe.
00:32:26.080So the other side of this, by the way, is the mainstream media won't talk about it.
00:32:31.740Have you heard of the Andrew Gillum story?
00:32:33.320Maybe you saw something passing on the internet, Facebook or Twitter or something, but not a lot.
00:32:37.560This is not getting wall-to-wall coverage.
00:32:39.040If that had been a Republican, could you imagine?
00:32:41.660And if a Republican had given that kind of statement, if a Republican gave that kind of statement, I would, I would be attacking him just as much as I'm attacking Andrew Gillum.
00:32:49.040So repulsive not to take any responsibility for your actions.
00:33:35.540So you see this in particular on an issue like abortion.
00:33:40.180For years and years, the Democratic Party had a lot of pro-life people in it.
00:33:45.020Then starting a few decades ago with Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York, whose son is now the governor of New York,
00:33:52.740Mario Cuomo came up with this really, really cynical but brilliant strategy for Catholics and other faithful people on the question of abortion.
00:34:03.880When really their religion is leftism, but they want to at least pretend to be Catholics in public.
00:34:09.940So how do you do that on the issue of abortion?
00:34:12.620Abortion is kind of the dividing line.
00:34:15.120If you support abortion, you can't be a Catholic.
00:34:41.920Now, personally, I oppose abortion in my secret heart.
00:34:47.780But in everything that I do and in my role as governor, I'm very pro-abortion.
00:34:53.160Say, well, then I don't, doesn't really matter a lot to me if you're personally against abortion because it doesn't have any effect in the real world.
00:35:00.520But anyway, they got away with this for a long time.
00:35:02.660That led to then the next stage of the Democrat relationship to abortion, which was Hillary Clinton, who said, I think abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.
00:35:14.980So wait a second, that doesn't make any sense.
00:35:25.900Well, I guess the only reason it should be legal is if it's not morally similar to killing somebody, which we've, by the way, already established that it is.
00:35:34.400But if it's, let's, let's say that it's not.
00:35:38.060Somehow abortion is not what abortion is.
00:35:40.000Then, okay, I guess it can be legal because it's not morally similar to killing somebody.
00:35:46.840So if it doesn't have moral gravity to it, if it's just like getting your tonsils out, then it should be legal and it, there's no reason for it to be rare.
00:35:55.560If it should be rare, then it shouldn't be legal because the reason it should be rare is that it's killing somebody.
00:36:02.440But anyway, it got a lot of approval from the chattering class.
00:36:06.020It allowed left-wingers who struggled with this religion question to convince themselves that it was possible to be, say, Christian and support abortion, which it is not.
00:36:43.220He's not an arch-conservative, to put it mildly.
00:36:46.200Cardinal Dolan comes out and says, quote, it saddens me that Democrats are considering this non-negotiable.
00:36:53.480It saddens me and weakens the democracy millions of Americans cherish when the party that once embraced Catholics now slams the door on us.
00:38:31.500If it weren't so dark, it would be really funny that the chapter of scripture that Tom Perez chooses to cite as evidence that abortion doesn't matter.
00:38:39.940And, you know, you can be pro-abortion and really Democrats are super, super Christian or something.
00:38:45.080Is the chapter that includes that verse.
00:38:49.140As you did it to the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me.
00:38:53.660It shows you two different ways to go.
00:38:56.220Two different ways that the Democrats are trying to deal with religion.
00:38:59.760Democrats have become more brazenly leftist and atheist over the last couple decades.
00:39:03.960And the two responses to this are the boo strategy and the boo-to-jedge strategy.
00:39:12.960Those are the two responses to religion.
00:39:15.380The boo strategy is actually the honest one.
00:39:20.000That one is being honest about atheism.
00:39:22.960And it comes from when the Democrats booed God at their national convention.
00:39:27.980So Antonio Villargoza was chairing the session at the Democratic National Convention.
00:39:33.160They were going to add in an amendment that referred to people's God-given potential.
00:39:38.380And this was controversial because they had previously taken out the phrase God-given.
00:41:56.440You can hear it because, I mean, it's obviously hard to pick up on these microphones, regardless of whether you think the eyes have it or the nose have it.
00:42:03.480Certainly, it was not the case that two thirds of people voted to pass that amendment.
00:42:36.960They got the chakras and the crystals and the astrology and they go into all sorts of weird stuff.
00:42:42.160So, it's just a matter of practical religion, traditional religion.
00:42:48.180The boo strategy is, we don't have that anymore.
00:42:50.460The other strategy is the Buttigieg strategy.
00:42:53.140The Buttigieg strategy is where you pretend to be a believer, but you actually openly contradict orthodoxy and scripture at every single turn.
00:43:04.580You constantly warp scripture to mean the opposite of what it plainly says and what people have said that it says for all of human history.
00:43:13.240He did this, again, on the issue of abortion.
00:43:15.800Pete Buttigieg was on a radio show called The Breakfast Club.
00:43:18.060And they said, you know, man, how are you going to square the abortion issue with how you're always prattling on about faith?
00:43:23.560And he goes, well, actually, you know, there's a lot in scripture that says we should kill a lot of babies.
00:43:29.080Now, right now, they hold everybody in line with this one kind of piece of doctrine about abortion, right?
00:43:36.860Which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally.
00:43:40.540Then again, you know, there's a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath.
00:43:47.040And so even that is something that we can interpret differently and take up me, too.
00:43:54.060But I think no matter where you think about the kind of cosmic question of how life begins, most Americans can get on the board with the idea of, all right, I might draw the line here.
00:46:45.280It's the theme of the times we're living in right now.
00:46:47.120There are a lot of people who are trying to emotionally manipulate you into making bad decisions, into panicking, into becoming hysterical, into sentimentality.