The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 79 - It’s Time To Defund The U.N.

00:00:00.400 Just when you thought tax reform couldn't get any better, the worst people on earth

00:00:05.320 voted today to save taxpayers billions of more dollars. Despite warnings from Nikki Haley and

00:00:11.460 President Trump, the United Nations voted 128 to 9 to condemn the United States for moving its

00:00:18.360 embassy in Israel to the capital of Israel. The United States has two words for those countries

00:00:23.520 and they're not Merry Christmas, so those countries might now lose foreign aid. We will

00:00:27.480 explain why President Trump should go further and defund the UN. Then the mailbag. I'm Michael

00:00:34.840 Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show. What a glorious news cycle. This is the last show

00:00:46.820 before Christmas, before New Year's. We're not going to be on the air next week and we're going

00:00:51.300 to do a nice little Christmas show, but Nikki Haley gave us an extra present. How sweet.

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00:04:17.840 sure you do it thrivemarket.com slash Michael. Okay. I was going to do, you see, I have my little

00:04:24.520 Christmas tree tie on today. This was, uh, from Cynthia who does all of the wonderful artwork

00:04:29.360 around here. It, uh, plays music. So I was going to do this nice show about Christmas,

00:04:33.660 but then, then this wonderful speech, uh, came out from about the United Nations. So Nikki Haley

00:04:40.860 turned my whole morning around here. She is ahead of a vote by the UN general assembly condemning

00:04:46.580 the United States for moving our embassy in Israel to the capital of Israel.

00:04:50.300 The United States is by far the single largest contributor to the United Nations and its agencies.

00:04:56.940 When a nation is singled out for attack in this organization, that nation is disrespected.

00:05:03.440 What's more that nation is asked to pay for the privilege of being disrespected.

00:05:10.040 The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the

00:05:15.680 general assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We will remember

00:05:22.640 it when we are called upon to once again, make the world's largest contribution to the United

00:05:27.840 Nations. And we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us as they so often

00:05:34.460 do to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.

00:05:40.140 Be still my beating heart. Oh my God. I would, I just want to watch it like three more times.

00:05:46.680 This is so beautiful. This is the sort of thing we've been waiting to see from the United Nations

00:05:51.520 for a long time. She has been wonderful in this role. So she's laying down the smackdown.

00:05:56.780 President Trump warned people to nevertheless undeterred the United Nations voted 128 to nine to

00:06:02.520 condemn the United States. The only nations that voted against this resolution are Guatemala,

00:06:07.020 Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Falau, Togo, and the United States.

00:06:13.400 A bunch of other islands, rather, a bunch of other nations abstained. Antigua, Barbuda, Argentina,

00:06:19.960 Australia, Bahamas, Benin, Bhutan, Bosnia, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech, DR,

00:06:27.060 Equatorial Guinea, Fiji, Haiti, Hungary, Jamaica, Kiribati, Latvia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mexico, Panama,

00:06:33.120 Philippines, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Solomon Island, South Sudan, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu,

00:06:38.020 Uganda, and Vanuatu. But where are our allies? Where are our allies? You might remember that you

00:06:45.240 can't even pronounce most of those names because you don't hear the United Nations or the United

00:06:49.540 Kingdom. You don't hear France. You don't hear Italy. A lot of our allies voted against us. 128

00:06:54.000 different nations, including our allies, voted to condemn the United States at the UN for exercising

00:06:59.740 its sovereign right to establish embassies where it so pleases. So we might cut their foreign aid and

00:07:05.700 listen to them whine. The Turkish foreign minister, Nevlat Kavuzoglu, said, we were all asked to vote no

00:07:12.800 or face consequences. Some even threatened to cut development aid. Some, the United States,

00:07:18.920 the people that give you development aid. This is bullying. It is unethical to think that the votes

00:07:24.240 and dignity of member states are for sale. Is that right? Okay, that's fine. But you can't stand

00:07:29.580 on your box and preen and moralize while you've got your handout taking money. Good luck, guys. That's

00:07:35.400 okay. You want to vote how you want. You want to bite the hand that feeds you. You want to condemn

00:07:39.300 the greatest force for peace and prosperity in the history of the world. The only reason that we've had

00:07:43.880 peace, relative peace for a century or three quarters of a century. Fine. Fine by me. Go ahead,

00:07:50.060 guys. Back-to-back World War winners. That's absolutely fine. But we don't need to give you

00:07:54.400 money. Let's go over some numbers. The United States pays 28.5% of the $7.3 billion UN peacekeeping

00:08:01.620 budget. We pay 22% of the core budget of $2.7 billion. Since 1948, since it was founded,

00:08:09.420 the United Nations has spent almost $109 billion on peacekeeping missions. Now, countries speaking in

00:08:15.440 support of this measure today were North Korea, Yemen, Turkey, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, South Africa,

00:08:21.780 and Iran. Not to be outdone, Hamas also praised the resolution. You're known by the friends you keep.

00:08:27.320 So why exactly do we have it? Why do we have the UN? We have the worst people in the world standing up

00:08:31.860 and condemning us for this. Former UN Ambassador John Bolton sums it up.

00:08:36.500 The point that I want to leave with you in this very brief presentation is where I start.

00:08:41.880 Is there is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led

00:08:50.800 by the only real power left in the world, and that's the United States, when it suits our interest

00:08:57.040 and when we can get others to go along. The secretariat building in New York has 38 stories.

00:09:03.480 If you lost 10 stories today, it would make a bit of difference.

00:09:07.280 This kind of mindless creation of the United Nations as something different than what it's

00:09:16.760 in the United States' interest to do isn't going to sell here or anywhere else. The United States

00:09:22.980 makes the UN work when it wants it to work. And that is exactly the way it should be because

00:09:28.400 the only question, the only question for the United States is what's in our national interest.

00:09:33.360 And if you don't like that, I'm sorry, but that is the fact.

00:09:36.680 I love him so much. One of the greatest things that President George W. Bush ever did

00:09:41.380 was make that man the ambassador to the United Nations. I one time had lunch with a former

00:09:47.120 UN ambassador, and I said, is it possible for a Republican to be the UN ambassador? You know,

00:09:53.200 is it possible to be an ambassador to the United Nations and still support the United Nations? And he

00:09:58.640 said, yes, you have to support the basic mission of the United Nations, unless you're John Bolton,

00:10:03.460 then you can get out of it. It's really beautiful. And he sums it up exactly as it is. Now, during the

00:10:09.480 Cold War, the United Nations stayed out of the peacekeeping business. Why is that? Because you

00:10:14.740 had the brink of global nuclear conflict and all of these little peacekeeping endeavors would have

00:10:20.080 been proxy wars between the United States and the Soviet Union. So let's just look since the 90s.

00:10:24.480 After the Cold War, humanitarian crises in the Balkans, Somalia and Cambodia led the UN to

00:10:29.860 dramatically increase its peace operations funding. And yet, despite all of the additional

00:10:35.100 funding and activity, it utterly failed. It failed utterly. It failed in Somalia. It failed in the

00:10:40.780 Rwandan genocide. It failed in Bosnia. According to the high-level independent panel on UN peace

00:10:47.240 operations, quote, more than 98% of military and police personnel deployed in UN peacekeeping

00:10:53.460 missions today have a mandate to protect civilians as part of integrated mission-wide efforts. The UN

00:10:59.880 has deployed peacekeeping missions on 70 occasions over the past 70 or so years. It has sort of succeeded

00:11:06.040 in two of them, Sierra Leone in the early 2000s, Burundi later that decade. It only even intervened to

00:11:12.940 protect civilians in 20% of the cases for which it was authorized to do so by the UN Security Council.

00:11:18.900 That's its main mandate, 98% mandate. Only 20% of the time did it even try to come through.

00:11:24.620 At 2007, UN Office of Internal Oversight Services report showed that 40% of peacekeeping contracts

00:11:31.440 analyzed contained significant corruption schemes to the tune of $619 million. 40% of the ones that,

00:11:39.420 just the ones that were analyzed. The UN mission in Sudan alone squandered tens of millions of dollars

00:11:45.360 in mismanagement, waste, fraud, and corruption. Now, we've recently discovered widespread fraud by

00:11:51.740 UN peacekeepers in Western Sahara, peacekeepers illegally reselling food in Lebanon. That's

00:11:57.240 where our investments are going. That's where our charity is going to enrich peacekeepers. Selling of

00:12:02.080 UN peacekeeping jobs in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the most ironically named

00:12:07.280 country in the history of the world. These are just the corruption cases that happen to have been

00:12:12.440 exposed. There are plenty of others. The UN is classically very secretive with its own internal

00:12:17.820 operations. Those are just the ones we know about. In 1975, the UN adopted the resolution,

00:12:23.060 Zionism is racism. You'll notice a running theme at the UN. They're not a big fan of the Jews.

00:12:28.720 Now, in the history of the world, many people have tried to kill the Jews. This has not changed over

00:12:33.520 time. They're God's chosen people. It's not terribly surprising that this would happen.

00:12:37.320 It's the central failure, though, of the United Nations, which is moral relativism. The UN during

00:12:43.860 its founding period was much, much better than it is today because it was limited to countries that

00:12:48.620 had declared war against the Axis powers in World War II. So yes, it might have included Stalin. It

00:12:54.760 wasn't all great, wonderful Western liberal democracies, but it exclusively kept people out

00:13:01.700 who had been on the wrong side of that war, who had been on the side of evil, clear evil. The modern

00:13:07.220 UN bears no relationship to this whatsoever. In 2011, this is unbelievable. In 2011, the United

00:13:13.960 Nations General Assembly held a moment of silence to honor a deceased leader of a country. Do you know

00:13:20.380 who that leader was? Marshall, do you have any idea? Yeah, that would be Kim Jong-il, the dictator of

00:13:27.420 North Korea, one of the worst people ever to live. They held a moment of silence to honor him.

00:13:32.460 It is, we have to end the United Nations. We have to defund it. I see two options here. Either we can

00:13:39.440 admit the reality of this, admit the reality that John Bolton is talking about and say, there is no

00:13:45.380 such thing as a United Nations. This is a ridiculous fiction. The United States is the global superpower.

00:13:51.440 We're going to do what we want to do. We're perfectly happy to listen to other people's ideas.

00:13:55.640 We're perfectly happy to form coalitions, but we're not going to pretend that little nations or little

00:14:01.780 nations that aren't even really nations, there would be nations, they get to tell us what to do.

00:14:06.580 They have an equal seat at the table as the United States. We can call it the American Forum. We're

00:14:10.800 happy to pay for the whole thing. We're happy to host it. And these terrible, terrible people can come

00:14:16.660 groveling to us and beg our mercy and beg our forgiveness and beg us to help them. And we'd be

00:14:21.200 perfectly happy to assume that global leadership and consider their proposals. That's one world,

00:14:26.340 or they can have their United Nations. That's perfectly fine. We'll pay the $20,000 a year

00:14:31.620 that many of those countries pay. Virtually nothing will contribute very little. They don't get to come

00:14:37.140 to our soil. Right now, the United Nations is hosted in New York City. It is ludicrous. It is one of the

00:14:43.740 most ludicrous aspects of American foreign policy that with regard to the United Nations,

00:14:47.960 we invite the worst people on earth to come to our soil, to come to our best city, the best city

00:14:53.680 in the world, and then stand on a platform and criticize us and condemn us. Horrible human rights

00:14:59.340 abusers, brutal tyrants, butchers themselves get to stand on our soil in our city and condemn us for

00:15:06.340 what? For nothing. Because we try to stop them when they brutalize their own people. So that's fine.

00:15:11.860 If they want to have a United Nations, maybe we'll even participate. You don't get our money. You don't get

00:15:15.840 to do it in our country. Host it in your country. See how that works. You pay for the security for it

00:15:20.080 to work in your country. Absolutely fine by me. It is a fiction. There's a feeling, I think, among

00:15:25.900 people of the old liberal consensus or on the left who say, well, it helps us to exert influence in

00:15:32.660 the world. We can exert as much influence in the world as we like. We don't need to play into any

00:15:38.380 fictions. The United Nations has utterly failed when it's tried to intervene in humanitarian

00:15:42.680 conflicts. It has made matters worse. It has made chaos in the world worse because it's given

00:15:47.640 voices to terrible people who should shut their mouths at the end of our guns. They should totally

00:15:53.660 understand that there are allies in this world led by the United States who will put them down.

00:15:59.600 UN peacekeepers, they don't protect the peace. They don't protect civilians. Get rid of it. There

00:16:04.460 isn't any argument for it. I'm glad that we've, it appears that the Trump administration has trolled

00:16:11.460 them into doing exactly what he's wanted to do since the beginning, which is defund this

00:16:16.360 ridiculous institution. They should knock down that building and turn it into the new Trump towers on

00:16:21.500 the East river. I think it'd be very beautiful. I'm flying out to New York tonight. I'll start

00:16:25.280 scoping out the land. There's a great cigar bar nearby. Maybe I'll buy a room when it becomes Trump

00:16:29.700 tower. Okay. Enough on the UN. We were going to have such a nice show today about the nativity and

00:16:34.960 the incarnation, but they get you so riled up these awful, awful people. And it's just really wonderful

00:16:41.060 that finally, after eight years of Barack Obama, who bungled every aspect of American leadership in

00:16:46.480 the world, we have people with moral clarity, like Nikki Haley, who's sitting at the UN and

00:16:52.260 incredibly to many Donald Trump, who has moral clarity on world leadership. Let's get into the

00:16:58.060 mailbag. The first question comes from John. Hey, Michael, AKA Hillary's third cousin, two times removed.

00:17:04.560 I noticed a common debate among liberals is that the reason there is a cycle of poverty in black

00:17:09.860 communities is because the schools are poorly funded. What is your take on this? Can we expect

00:17:14.460 people to rise out of poverty when their education is lacking funding? And where can this funding come

00:17:19.420 from when the communities are struggling? Thank you, John. I've heard this before too. A lot of people

00:17:24.800 talk about this. We need to fund, we shouldn't have any wars. We shouldn't have any security operations.

00:17:30.700 We shouldn't build a wall. We need to fund the schools because there are racial

00:17:34.420 disparities, racial disparities and success are caused by school funding. The trouble with this

00:17:39.520 theory is that it isn't true. So Columbia University's Linda Darling Hammond claimed this.

00:17:44.440 The NAACP claims this. The college board president, Gaston Caperton, declared, quote,

00:17:49.840 tests are not the problem. The problem we have is an unfair education system in America,

00:17:54.380 an unequal education system. So two things here. First, increasing school spending has rarely led to

00:18:00.240 better outcomes. Second, according to the U.S. Department of Education, assumed funding

00:18:05.140 disparities between racial and ethnic groups do not exist. That's according to the Department of

00:18:09.500 Education. Ironically, though, so the trope, the myth is that much more money is spent on white

00:18:15.840 students than any other race of students. Ironically, the opposite is true. More money in the United

00:18:20.220 States is spent on minority students than white students nationally and regionally. This is according

00:18:25.620 to the U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics. So nationally,

00:18:31.080 black students get 105 percent of funding. So an additional five percent of funding than white

00:18:36.940 students. Hispanic students get one percent more funding. Asian students get seven percent more

00:18:41.040 funding. When you break it down regionally in the Northeast, black students get per student 16 percent

00:18:46.140 more funding. Hispanic students 17 percent more funding. Asian students 12 percent more funding.

00:18:51.100 In the South, even in the South, that awful, terrible rural South, backwards Jim Crow, black

00:18:56.520 students get five percent more funding. Hispanic students get three percent more. Asian students get

00:19:00.880 nine percent more. In the Midwest, black students get 13 percent more. Hispanic students get six percent

00:19:06.080 more. Asian students get 11 percent more. And in the West, black students get 11 percent more. Hispanic

00:19:11.700 students get six percent more. Asian students get eight percent more. It's a total lie to talk about

00:19:18.600 discrepancies because it's exactly the opposite of what the left says it is now in perspective

00:19:22.880 black students receive over two thousand dollars more than white student in per pupil funding each

00:19:29.660 and every year why are there disparities in educational attainment or uh in poverty you

00:19:35.800 you'd have to there are many many factors of this some historical some cultural but i would look

00:19:40.320 at the culture there are some immigrant groups succeed in the united states some immigrant groups

00:19:45.040 do not succeed in the united states some native groups succeed some non-native group some native

00:19:50.680 groups succeed at lower rates i think culture is the answer culture is what we worship it comes for

00:19:56.560 it comes from the same word as cult what we're looking to cultures that emphasize two-parent

00:20:01.940 households and not having children out of wedlock and getting married and saving money and having

00:20:07.640 education and pursuing professional careers will succeed at higher rates what the single greatest

00:20:14.640 predictor of financial success in the united states is being born to a two-family home now when it

00:20:21.080 comes to the black community something like three quarters of black babies in the united states are

00:20:24.960 born out of wedlock this is a major cultural issue it's only been happening for the last 50 years or so

00:20:31.380 so before the great society before democrats and lbj decided that they were going to explode the

00:20:39.000 welfare state to help to ostensibly help black families black murder rates were going down poverty

00:20:44.500 was going down everything was going right for that community of americans since that time all of

00:20:50.320 those trends have reversed we have to look at culture and we have to look at perverse government

00:20:55.020 incentives that have that have ravaged the the black community if you want to really be able to explain

00:21:00.900 and fix different levels of attainment okay we've got many more questions to change your life

00:21:05.940 but if you're not on dailywire.com you won't be able to see them it's christmas treat yourself we

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00:21:26.220 we are about to have a blizzard folks this has been an incredible year just just a quick little recap

00:21:31.500 we've got major tax reform obamacare mandate repealed isis defeated militarily consumer confidence at

00:21:37.480 all-time highs markets at all-time highs we've got four percent projected economic growth which

00:21:41.760 obama's economists told us was absolutely impossible we have originalist justice on the supreme court we

00:21:47.340 have originalists i think 28 originalists appointed to federal courts massive deregulation deregulation

00:21:52.980 that we haven't seen in decade upon decade probably since coolidge something like zero net new

00:21:58.940 regulations this year uh compared to an annual average of 13 000 we've got pro-energy policies

00:22:06.400 going into effect we're going to be looking at drilling in anwar you are going to be covered in

00:22:11.360 a blizzard get your leftist tears tumbler before those salty little snowflakes rain down on you

00:22:16.760 and crush you this is very dangerous this time of year you can get hypothermia or frostbite

00:22:21.540 from all of the or you'll just be dried out from all the salt so go to dailywire.com right now we'll be right back

00:22:26.880 next question is from jacob jacob says hi michael i'm a veteran thank you for your service and i've

00:22:43.380 dealt with suicide and mental health issues myself how do you think the suicide problem in the veteran

00:22:48.800 community can be fixed because as of now on average 22 veterans commit suicide per day

00:22:55.060 very sorry to hear about that jacob uh one thing i hope is that you're getting a treatment for mental

00:23:00.600 health so that you're seeing a psychiatrist who can help you it's also good to see a priest it's

00:23:06.380 also good to see someone who can help you on the spiritual side of that but you should see a medical

00:23:10.460 professional as well and it's especially good if you see a medical professional who shares your

00:23:16.880 spiritual views as well i that is a very effective way to be treated for for these tough issues

00:23:23.820 now we we see the story a lot there is a national epidemic of suicide among veterans those numbers

00:23:30.660 are a little misleading so i i hope that you don't feel like you're being washed away in just a tidal

00:23:36.580 wave of suicides because the situation actually isn't quite as bleak as that so the vast majority

00:23:41.380 of the suicides are among older veterans uh national suicide right among military veterans is 38.4

00:23:48.980 per 100 000 and this is higher than average but nationally just men in their 50s alone commit

00:23:56.360 suicide at around 30 30 per 100 000 so it is higher it's significantly higher among veterans but

00:24:04.040 compared to 95 percent of military veterans are men the majority of these suicides or vast majority are

00:24:11.780 older men so the numbers actually are much more in line with the general population than people would

00:24:17.560 think mostly because most of these suicides are being committed by older men so nationally also

00:24:23.640 there's one completed suicide for every 25 suicide attempts the trouble is military veterans on average

00:24:29.560 are more likely to have firearms and to know how to use them so they're they complete suicide much more

00:24:35.260 than the general population this is all really tough stuff obviously military service can take a major toll

00:24:42.120 and this culture takes a major toll suicide numbers are up after years of declining suicide numbers are

00:24:47.480 increasing among the general population there are with regard to veterans obviously mental health access

00:24:53.400 is really important and the total failure of the veteran affairs administration is to blame for a lot of

00:24:58.360 this all of my veteran friends without exception have great difficulty accessing the va this is awful

00:25:06.440 democrats want to expand this to cover all of our health care and they shouldn't do look at the

00:25:11.240 failures of the va and the failure on veterans and let that be a lesson to everybody

00:25:15.240 when it comes to nationalized or socialist health care so uh right now one of the reason that the suicide

00:25:22.440 rate is increasing possibly is that now veterans of the vietnam war veteran older veterans are getting

00:25:29.080 even older and they're entering into this particularly risky uh age bracket for suicide uh one of the

00:25:35.640 reasons that the suicide rate nationally is going up could be caused by decreasing religiosity

00:25:40.920 a number of studies have found that religious people church going people are significantly less

00:25:45.880 suicidal catholicism in particular appears to have a correlation with lower suicide rates this may have

00:25:52.840 to do with its stance on divorce being a happy marriage or really any marriage is a good predictor

00:25:58.680 of of not committing suicide there are also obviously moral foundations teleological visions to

00:26:05.400 uh religion that will play into this as well an idea that there's a purpose there's a reason for me to

00:26:11.000 be here suffering isn't the end of the world most people and most of the history of the world have

00:26:16.280 suffered and that suffering can be sanctifying and it can be for a purpose and it can be and it can even

00:26:22.680 be good it can be refining suffering itself has no moral value to it it's only your reaction to suffering that

00:26:29.720 has a moral value so if you react to suffering with courage and dignity and perseverance and transcendence

00:26:35.800 and you know kissing it up to god that's a that's a wonderful reaction to suffering and if you react to

00:26:40.840 it with self-pity and with self-destruction that's a that's a morally bad reaction to it the most important

00:26:47.800 thing here from a policy level is to make sure that veterans and the american people have easy access to

00:26:55.560 mental health services the cultural vision is that we need to make sure that we don't can persist in a

00:27:01.960 nihilistic culture and from your personal experience make sure you're getting the help that you can there are

00:27:07.800 a ton of resources out there for you many of them are free make sure you do that and thank you for your

00:27:13.800 service and i hope you get better from benjamin hello michael i love your show thank you i'm a recently

00:27:19.880 retired lobbyist from the kentucky legislature on wednesday night rep dan johnson committed suicide

00:27:25.160 presumably in response to unproven allegations that he molested a teenager in quotes in reading

00:27:31.160 the police report information who did not press charges because of lack of evidence beyond the he

00:27:35.640 said she said what is alleged to have happened is that representative johnson had too much to drink

00:27:41.080 and he ended up fondling a 17 year old girl against her will of course there are no distinctions

00:27:45.480 drawn here in our media between the difference between a teenager can range a few days over 12 to a

00:27:50.600 few days shy of 18. i think one important thing that moral thought leaders need to do more of is

00:27:56.360 to speak of the sins of calumny and detraction how many among us could withstand in the public sphere

00:28:02.200 a scrutiny and expose of our personal lives whatever the facts of this case it's my opinion that dan's

00:28:07.640 wife is right this was a high-tech lynching of her husband why do so many people think it is morally

00:28:12.760 licit to spread true information about others to destroy their character thank you mike in louisville

00:28:18.440 this is a really tough one i i did run this story i talked about this a little bit i think last week

00:28:23.480 two weeks ago uh this was really sad story all around but especially in this climate where we're

00:28:29.400 comparing a guy who gets a little drunk and a little handsy but no more than that with a guy like harvey

00:28:35.480 weinstein who's a serial rapist um a couple thoughts on this one if you run for office i've worked on a

00:28:40.760 lot of political campaigns if you run for office you have to assume that people will do these sorts of

00:28:45.480 things to you you have to make sure that you have the stability and a thick enough skin to withstand

00:28:51.000 the worst sorts of lives or even worse the worst sorts of truths uh that are being spread about you

00:28:56.520 on campaigns that i've worked on there have been people on both sides of the campaign our opponents

00:29:00.120 and on our campaigns whose job it is to find dirt and oppo and ruin a guy's life so that he loses the

00:29:06.760 election now there's a rule that i've always tried to to keep in my mind on campaigns if we've if we ever

00:29:13.080 find anything truly truly awful you i think you should always bring it to the other campaign i

00:29:18.600 don't mean awful like it's going to kill his campaign or even his career i mean awful like

00:29:22.200 it's going to ruin this guy's life and his marriage you should bring it to the other campaign first and

00:29:26.920 say you've got 24 hours to get out of the race or we are going to release this if they don't comply

00:29:31.640 it's all fair game politics is a very very messy dirty business unfortunately it often attracts

00:29:37.480 mentally unstable people people who don't have a terribly thick skin and it can result in these

00:29:43.640 awful things but you got to be aware of that it's easy on campaigns to get carried away and say oh yeah

00:29:49.480 we got this dirt we're going to win this race but politics isn't everything and you're going to have

00:29:53.720 to answer for what you do someday so make sure even when you're brawling you're bloody you're tough

00:29:59.400 in politics which is every single campaign make sure that you're not compromising your moral soul

00:30:05.080 make sure that you're playing at least in a way where you could look at yourself in the mirror

00:30:09.960 that was a really sad story all around and uh probably it was a combination of uh representative

00:30:17.720 johnson not having the understanding of what politics how dirty it can get how awful it's going to be

00:30:25.400 not maybe having that really bone thick skin and also a reach on the other side that was just a

00:30:32.360 really vicious vicious attack and they're going to have to answer for that too next question from

00:30:36.440 seamus hi michael do you think it's appropriate for secularists atheists and other non-christians

00:30:41.800 to celebrate christmas absolutely absolutely i was talking to matt walsh about this yesterday

00:30:47.880 matt i think thinks if you don't belong to a benedictine monastery and say 20 novenas a day you

00:30:54.680 shouldn't celebrate christmas maybe i'm exaggerating a little i don't think that uh andrew clavin is a

00:31:00.680 great example on this if you read his book which is very very good the great good thing a secular

00:31:04.760 jew comes to faith in christ if you read his book he converted to christianity around age 50 and one of

00:31:10.760 the seeds for that conversion which was born out of literature and born out of understanding narrative

00:31:17.320 in the world and coming to christ through that he was basically converted by a christmas cookie when

00:31:22.600 he was a little kid he loved christmas celebrations he loved going over to a family friend's house and

00:31:28.760 seeing the decorations and participating in that that could have a wonderful effect uh christmas is

00:31:35.160 the the incarnation christ comes uh he's conceived of the holy spirit born of the virgin mary he becomes

00:31:42.360 man excuse me the divine logos of the universe in that moment one of the first stories we see in the

00:31:50.520 infancy narratives are these three wise men and they come from the east they come from the land of the

00:31:55.960 sunrise and they're not jews they are probably zoroastrians uh eastern priests the word magic and

00:32:05.160 magician comes from magi and but they there's a talk in the town there's talk in the air that the king of

00:32:11.160 the world will be born in judea and so they walk and they walk through and they're they're led by the star

00:32:18.520 to christ that is always important in our world christ comes into the world so that all of the

00:32:24.840 nations will come and worship him and and we don't have to make people insist on people doing it on our

00:32:30.520 terms uh herod didn't say you have to become jews before you can go seek christ uh you know what he

00:32:37.720 really said was tell me where he is so i can go kill him and they went and they left by another way they

00:32:41.960 came to christ by one way and those magi left by another way physically and metaphysically so on the

00:32:47.720 the physical side they didn't want to tell herod where he was and have the kid killed on the

00:32:53.000 metaphysical side they changed their minds and a lot of things can change your mind a lot of things

00:32:57.960 can bring you to christ that you wouldn't expect it's not within your rational ability to limit what

00:33:03.400 can bring you to christ so absolutely everybody should break out the santa claus and the reindeers

00:33:09.080 and the snowmen and frosty and rudolph whatever just bring them along christmas is a gateway drug

00:33:15.000 to to metaphysical truth and the divine logos of the universe and it's very fun and enjoyable so do

00:33:20.840 it from cole hello michael i very much enjoy the show and like the beautiful women you often bring

00:33:26.360 on for the panel of deplorables you're telling me buddy keep up the great work thank you my question

00:33:31.160 big shock regards the catholic faith i never get any of those that's so strange okay i must admit i've

00:33:36.360 been drawn to it recently but i can't help but feel the pope is uh misrepresenting the faith i think

00:33:42.040 you mean to say he seems more interested in spitting out left-wing propaganda rather than

00:33:47.800 representing christ as a catholic are you able to think critically of your leaders or does this get

00:33:52.920 you in trouble with the church i'd hate to put you on the spotlight with your faith but the current pope

00:33:58.200 for some reason has made me question becoming a catholic could you please help me thanks you should

00:34:02.600 become a catholic anyway don't don't worry about that over time i a lot of misconceptions have come out of

00:34:10.200 uh the catholic church so one is that the pope is totally infallible and whatever he says goes

00:34:16.040 and if he says the sky is purple then the sky's not going to be blue it's going to be purple whatever

00:34:20.600 if he says two plus two equals seven then that becomes the truth but that isn't the case the pope

00:34:25.480 is infallible in a very limited number of things we've had good popes and we've had bad popes

00:34:31.000 the church lady is encouraged to think critically and to think for themselves dante the divine poet one of

00:34:37.720 the most important figures who offers one of the most beautiful visions of eternity dante put a

00:34:42.520 couple popes in hell so he he put them there himself uh that that isn't the worst thing in the world

00:34:48.360 uh an important aspect here is to uh think about the difference between the mainstream media

00:34:57.080 portraying pope francis and pope francis himself so i'm not willing to compare pope francis with the

00:35:03.480 various pontiffs who've gone to hell because what we read in the media is so often not true

00:35:09.000 they don't understand anything about the catholic faith so they don't understand anything about what

00:35:12.920 he is saying people would have you the mainstream media would have you think that pope francis is

00:35:17.480 going to get gay married next week and and paint the vatican in rainbows but pope francis said when he

00:35:23.160 was cardinal in argentina he said do not be mistaken same-sex marriage is not a mere political

00:35:30.040 lobby it's a machination of the father of lies that seeks to deceive and confuse the children of god

00:35:35.560 that does not jibe with the image that we are presented with by newsweek of pope francis but that said

00:35:41.720 pope francis has said some things that are a little strange that we might not all agree with uh

00:35:46.600 recently a group of conservative catholics and theologians presented him with a filial correction

00:35:53.160 for heresy so they formally accused him of heresy in a very nice and polite and orderly way

00:35:58.840 if you find yourself being drawn to the church universal as i have been in my life i would keep

00:36:04.520 pursuing that and i wouldn't let one cleric that you don't particularly care for dissuade you it's

00:36:11.960 been around for 2 000 years and there have been some clerics that you won't agree with and some orders

00:36:17.320 that you won't agree with you know very often conservatives make fun of the jesuits because they

00:36:21.800 lean left and they get they're a little clever you know so uh someone was asked the difference between

00:36:26.760 the dominican order and the jesuit order and they said what are the similarities they said well you

00:36:31.400 know both were formed in spain one by uh saint dominic one by ignatius of loyola and both were

00:36:39.480 founded to combat heresy so the dominicans were formed to combat the albigensians and the jesuits

00:36:46.280 were formed to fight the protestants so the guy says well what's the difference between the dominicans

00:36:50.360 and the jesuits and the answer is have you met any albigensians lately we we mock jesuits all the

00:36:56.120 time that's okay you can feel free to veer into very conservative aspects of the church but come on

00:37:01.400 over if you're interested the water is great pal and i hope that answers your question from christian

00:37:06.200 dear knolls can you prove the gospels really are authentic and why don't the why the jews don't see

00:37:13.000 it that way uh well i don't i don't know that the jews writ large question the historicity of of the

00:37:18.920 gospels certainly they don't uh believe in the divinity of christ by definition i suppose but

00:37:25.640 the scholarly consensus is clear the scholarly consensus right now is that the gospel according

00:37:30.520 to mark was written within 40 years of jesus's death matthew within 40 to 70 years luke within 30 to

00:37:36.920 60 years john within 50 to 65 years that's on the outside end so think about it this way

00:37:42.760 would you trust a biography today that was written about andy kaufman andy kaufman was about 35 years

00:37:48.760 old when he died he died about 33 years ago would you trust that or would you say no that's absolutely

00:37:53.320 ridiculous how could they know about andy kaufman well there are people alive who knew him and we have

00:37:58.360 movies and we have books about him uh historians all certainly also agree that uh about jesus's baptism

00:38:05.640 by john the baptist and his death by pontius pilate they all agree that those occurred they might

00:38:10.040 disagree about some of the miracles flavius josephus the roman historian writes about christ

00:38:15.240 and his followers tacitus the talmud writes about christ it i think it's very fashionable now to

00:38:21.800 question the historicity of christ or to question the gospel accounts we know more about him than we

00:38:26.760 know about virtually anyone else of that era we know we and we can rely on more than that so when you

00:38:32.200 engage with the text on that level you should just read it you should read these accounts and encounter

00:38:37.480 this person and then you'll have to grapple with christ himself you'll have to grapple with the

00:38:42.520 person of christ and c.s lewis writes about this when you meet him you have three options he's either

00:38:49.160 a liar he's either just deceiving people going around deceiving everybody or he's a lunatic and he's

00:38:55.720 just a total crazy person or he's the lord or he's the person that he says he is and i'll tell you when

00:39:01.720 you read those books he sure doesn't come off as a liar he has no incentive to be a liar and he doesn't

00:39:06.680 get great rewards for his lies that's certainly true infinite torture on a cross and he doesn't

00:39:12.840 seem a lunatic he does not sound like a lunatic when you read him and you read his piercing words

00:39:20.040 and his and his piercing actions so it's hard not to conclude the latter but your mileage might vary

00:39:26.280 you should read it yourself from stephanie hi michael can you give me a reference for the pascal quote

00:39:31.720 you mentioned on tuesday aside from it being somewhere in the pensée or in the thoughts of

00:39:35.720 pascal it was something to the effect of being a gentleman instead of being known for what one

00:39:39.800 writes yes pascal is one of the incredible genius of modernity most people know him by pascal's

00:39:45.080 wager so his wager is you should believe in christianity because if you're wrong you lose

00:39:50.360 nothing and or if you're wrong you'll burn in hell for eternity and if you're right you lose you

00:39:55.480 know you gain all of infinity so unfortunately he died at age 39 he invented the calculator he's a

00:40:00.760 mathematician he's a physicist child prodigy and a catholic theologian he wrote in his thoughts

00:40:06.200 which are just the notes that he was putting together for a book that he didn't live long

00:40:10.680 enough to write he said man is full of wants he only loves those who can satisfy them all he's a

00:40:15.640 good mathematician say they but i have nothing to do with mathematics he would take me for a proposition

00:40:21.480 he is a good soldier he will take me for a besieged place what i wanted is a gentleman who can adapt

00:40:27.320 himself to all my wants in a general way we should not be able to say either that he is a mathematician

00:40:33.720 a preacher or an orator but that he's a gentleman this quality of universality is the only one that

00:40:39.640 pleases me and it's especially important in our day where everyone specializes even professors nobody's

00:40:45.320 a professor of literature anymore nobody's a professor of history anymore there are professors of the

00:40:50.680 the gender studies read through derrida from 1967 to 1967 and a half the specialization is so so

00:40:59.720 intense that you don't have people who have more qualities who are known by more than just their

00:41:03.800 job who are known by more than just where they live or their friends the that quality of being a

00:41:08.120 gentleman is really something that we could look back to and i think it would balance out a lot of the

00:41:13.720 anxiety that people feel today from betsy hi michael i've often heard you discuss your own path

00:41:19.160 from being basically atheist when you were confirmed to finding god again through evangelists and then

00:41:25.320 finally landing back firmly in catholicism my nephew is preparing to be confirmed catholic this spring

00:41:31.320 and my sister his mom has told me that he's an atheist and she has to drag him to church he is an

00:41:37.400 extremely intelligent kid and unfortunately his high intelligence translates to a know-it-all cynicism

00:41:43.560 he's 14 yeah i hear about that can you offer any tips for how to make him turn back toward god

00:41:50.360 and in particular our catholic faith should he speak to someone who's going through a similar

00:41:54.520 journey a priest i worry about our slightly out of touch not great with kids monsenior turning him

00:42:00.040 further from the faith i think of having him read cs lewis he's an avid reader but you know i wonder if

00:42:06.120 one can force a kid to read something that he doesn't want to read any help would be appreciated okay

00:42:12.280 yes i will take this on i experienced this myself uh it's very very fitting that your

00:42:20.360 highly intelligent 14 year old nephew is an atheist atheism is tailor-made for people who have the

00:42:28.120 wisdom and the ignorance of uh and and the arrogance of smart 14 year olds that is the key

00:42:35.320 demographic it makes perfect sense when you're a smart 14 year old you question everything you're taught

00:42:40.920 but you're not unfortunately you're 14 so you're not smart enough you don't have any experience or

00:42:45.400 any maturity or any deepened understanding of the world or even any any education so you can't get past

00:42:51.320 that hurdle bill whittle talks about that island 120 he said sort of the dumbest people are conservatives

00:42:56.920 and the middle tier are liberals and then the smart people are conservatives again and the kind of

00:43:01.560 middle tier is the new york times editorial board this exact thing happened to me i was a smarter

00:43:06.760 than average 13 14 year old so when i was about to be confirmed i was an atheist i said i was an

00:43:12.680 atheist and my mother said michael just do it go through the confirmation i think you're going through

00:43:18.280 a phase you will regret it if you don't go through that with this later on so i said okay and she was

00:43:24.040 right smarter than average 14 year old i read all of those atheists uh christopher hitchens and richard

00:43:30.280 dawkins and daniel dennett and all of them sam harris later when i was when i was 17 years old

00:43:36.520 a couple days before christmas excuse me i get a little choked up with this my mother died very

00:43:41.720 unexpectedly and uh that is an experience that matures somebody and it's a very humbling experience

00:43:49.160 the experience of death close up especially if you're young or whatever the experience of the traumas

00:43:54.520 that we all face in our lives deepen your understanding of the world and they humble you

00:43:59.880 and you realize oh maybe i don't have all the answers maybe i don't have control over everything

00:44:04.520 in the world during advent the church spends four sundays analyzing four mysteries of life

00:44:14.360 death judgment heaven and hell these are mysteries that we don't think about all of the time we don't

00:44:18.520 think about them every day or every year even every 10 years but they do confront us eventually and when we

00:44:24.280 can when we grapple with these things we can be led up through into some maturity you need that

00:44:29.960 humility first which 14 year olds are constitutionally incapable of then you need some education and as

00:44:35.800 i was educated i came to meet people who were smarter than me who made very good arguments for

00:44:41.800 christianity modern apologists ancient apologists the arguments for god are much better than the arguments

00:44:47.480 against god i haven't really heard any coherent arguments against god once you reach that point

00:44:53.080 and you've got some humility and some maturity and some education just a just even a little bit of

00:44:57.720 any of those can you reach that point again i think and then after that i believe that christianity was

00:45:04.440 true and only after that did i have any real what would be called religious sense or recognition or

00:45:10.600 numinous recognition that's probably not the answer you want the answer you want is probably not wait 10

00:45:15.720 years wait for the kid to experience some of the more difficult parts of life and get a little

00:45:20.920 learning in his head but i wouldn't push him do not push him you're just gonna push him further into

00:45:25.640 his 14 year old atheist delusions don't drag him to church i didn't go to church for 10 years probably

00:45:32.040 you don't have to do that be a little patient there's a time for every purpose under heaven

00:45:36.680 just try to guide him a little bit into make sure he doesn't go off the wrong path he gets a little

00:45:41.320 humility he gets a little maturity and and he will come back especially if he's a smart kid

00:45:45.560 uh all right that's a that's a good christmas message to end on merry christmas everybody

00:45:50.680 happy new year i will see you in 2018 thank you very much i'm michael knowles this is the michael

00:45:55.080 knowles show

00:46:01.480 the michael knowles show is produced by marshall benson executive producer jeremy boring senior

00:46:06.600 producer jonathan hay supervising producer mathis glover our technical producer is austin stevens

00:46:12.840 edited by alex zingaro audio is mixed by mike coramina hair and makeup is by jesua olvera

00:46:19.800 the michael knowles show is a daily wire forward publishing production copyright forward publishing

00:46:24.840 2017

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The Michael Knowles Show - December 21, 2017

Ep. 79 - It’s Time To Defund The U.N.

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