The Michael Knowles Show - Cross The Picket-Line ｜ Clemson & Vanderbilt

00:00:00.000 The man you all have been waiting for, Michael J. Knowles.

00:00:04.520 Thank you very much. You're all too kind.

00:00:06.900 You don't belong here, you genocidal maniac! 1.00

00:00:09.860 Oh, there we go. Finally. I was wondering where you were. 1.00

00:00:12.900 When a conservative speaks on a college campus, one of two things usually happens.

00:00:18.080 Activists and indoctrinated students try to burn the place down,

00:00:21.440 or leftist groups post strategies for limiting or shutting down the event,

00:00:26.060 and then hide in their dorms, and then just hope that no one shows up.

00:00:30.000 Both responses are to be expected from miseducated students 0.85

00:00:33.380 who scroll through the endless hit pieces from left-wing outlets,

00:00:36.920 and then have those lies reinforced by their liberal professors.

00:00:40.280 Do you think there's a chance that they sat down and listened to him speak,

00:00:42.500 that their minds would be changed?

00:00:44.400 Yeah, some of them.

00:00:46.160 There is a third option, which I greatly prefer.

00:00:49.760 That is when my producer journeys into the mob of protesters

00:00:52.540 and finds someone willing to cross the picket line,

00:00:55.600 away from the activists and the mindless chants,

00:00:58.460 to talk with me directly. 0.94

00:00:59.620 Are you a fascist?

00:01:01.260 I don't know. 0.96

00:01:01.500 You look like one.

00:01:02.120 Do I?

00:01:02.520 Yeah.

00:01:03.160 You know, we asked you a few questions.

00:01:04.580 No, I do mine.

00:01:05.680 Thank you.

00:01:06.280 All right.

00:01:07.460 Often, no matter how welcoming the invitation for a cozy front-row seat at the speech,

00:01:12.000 and a friendly discussion with me afterward,

00:01:14.160 the offer falls on deaf ears.

00:01:17.000 Thank you.

00:01:17.880 I also invested in hating other people,

00:01:20.440 telling other people what to do with their bodies.

00:01:22.760 Does anyone want to talk to Michael Knowles after the speech?

00:01:25.920 I have nothing to do with you in front of your business.

00:01:27.600 Anybody?

00:01:28.580 Other times, my producer is left out in the cold.

00:01:35.880 But sometimes, you find someone like Wes at Clemson University,

00:01:40.000 who chose not just to hold some nonsensical sign

00:01:43.520 while screaming at people waiting to hear me speak,

00:01:45.840 but rather to come listen to what I had to say,

00:01:49.180 and then to ask a question to challenge my views.

00:01:51.340 A respectful strategy that gave Wes and me the opportunity to sit down and talk face-to-face.

00:01:57.780 Thanks for sitting down.

00:02:00.140 No problem.

00:02:01.080 So your name is Wes.

00:02:02.340 Yes, Wes.

00:02:03.140 And you did not protest me.

00:02:05.000 I did not.

00:02:05.840 But you disagreed with me.

00:02:07.620 I do disagree with you in many issues, including what you talked about today.

00:02:12.520 So tonight, we talked about IVF and surrogacy.

00:02:16.080 You got up and you asked a question that I thought was really good.

00:02:18.360 So you disagree with me on this topic.

00:02:19.980 You came in disagreeing with me.

00:02:21.560 Did I change your mind at all through the speech?

00:02:24.920 I didn't disagree with the reasoning.

00:02:27.000 I do disagree with, you know, the principle,

00:02:30.760 I don't disagree with IVF and surrogacy.

00:02:34.220 But I understand why you do.

00:02:36.340 And I don't think you're wrong for believing what you believe.

00:02:39.780 So if you agree with my reasoning,

00:02:43.680 and you think that I made at least a logically sound argument,

00:02:47.420 then don't you have to come over to my opinion?

00:02:52.340 Well, it kind of goes back to my opinions on everything.

00:02:55.580 Like, I am personally pro-choice.

00:02:58.420 But I believe that people who are pro-life, 0.99

00:03:02.380 I don't think that they are stupid and wrong. 0.97

00:03:05.620 I think that they have logic in their reasoning. 0.89

00:03:09.040 But I also think that people who believe the opposite

00:03:11.440 also have logic in their reasoning.

00:03:13.900 And I almost believe it is just a moral difference

00:03:17.800 that is almost can't be broken.

00:03:21.020 I think it's just a difference of morals.

00:03:23.320 So I agree with you that people who disagree are usually not evil. 0.96

00:03:30.020 And they're usually not even stupid. 0.97

00:03:31.980 Usually. 0.96

00:03:33.380 But if two people have opposite views on a question

00:03:38.640 that has an objective answer to it,

00:03:41.240 then at most one of those people is right, right?

00:03:45.780 Contrary things can't simultaneously be correct, right?

00:03:50.480 So if you say, in this wonderfully polite and respectful way,

00:03:56.140 that you say, look, I'm pro-choice.

00:03:58.320 I support legal abortion. 0.66

00:03:59.600 But I think that the pro-lifers make really good arguments

00:04:02.760 and their logic is consistent.

00:04:06.360 For me, at least.

00:04:07.700 If someone makes a really good argument and is logically consistent

00:04:10.360 and I can't find the flaw in their argument,

00:04:12.340 I have to come over to their side of the argument.

00:04:17.500 I think that sometimes that there's just a moral disagreement,

00:04:21.160 not necessarily that someone's completely right or completely wrong.

00:04:25.360 Me personally, I believe that what gives people value is not just a beating heart or the fact that you are a human.

00:04:35.400 I believe that it is your consciousness and your personhood.

00:04:39.160 That's my personal moral belief.

00:04:41.180 But I don't think someone else is wrong for believing that they don't think that's what gives someone value.

00:04:48.240 They believe it's a beating heart and brain function and a body.

00:04:53.600 Or just their very existence.

00:04:55.400 Yes, exactly.

00:04:56.860 I believe that people, I don't think that that's, I disagree with it,

00:05:01.220 but I don't think that that is illogical or I guess I disagree with it,

00:05:07.100 but I don't think it's an incorrect way of thinking.

00:05:09.680 You don't see the flaw in the logic.

00:05:11.720 You just, you're still confident that the person, that they have the wrong side of the argument.

00:05:16.840 Or at the very least that you have the right side of the argument.

00:05:18.840 But I guess I would say that I, well, because it's my belief,

00:05:24.960 I would of course think that I'm correct and that they are incorrect, 1.00

00:05:28.360 but it's not as simple for me as, oh, you're an idiot, you're wrong. 1.00

00:05:33.880 That's a stupid way of thinking. 1.00

00:05:35.280 Have you ever changed your mind on one of these questions? 1.00

00:05:37.540 It used to be, I grew up with a conservative family.

00:05:39.960 My brother's conservative.

00:05:41.380 I was very conservative growing up and I actually switched to becoming a liberal.

00:05:45.280 What happened?

00:05:46.460 I got indoctrinated by the college.

00:05:48.840 That's the best and most precise answer.

00:05:53.640 Did it really happen at college?

00:05:55.740 Not, I was about a senior in high school when the transition started happening.

00:06:00.760 I used to consider myself fiscally conservative, but socially liberal.

00:06:05.540 That's what all teenage boys say, so that the girls still like us.

00:06:08.460 Exactly.

00:06:09.280 And that's kind of, you know, that's the start of the liberal pipeline.

00:06:12.280 It is.

00:06:12.620 That is the beginning.

00:06:13.720 You're very perceptive of these things.

00:06:17.320 I wonder if you're a little too respectful, meaning if you really believe, say, that the

00:06:24.260 thing that gives a person value, the reason not to kill a person through abortion, is not

00:06:29.360 their existence.

00:06:30.420 It's not a beating heart.

00:06:31.420 It's not, it's consciousness.

00:06:32.700 And you said, that's the determining factor. 0.92

00:06:36.260 Then I would respond to that and I would say, okay, well, would it be okay to kill an unconscious

00:06:41.460 person, someone who's asleep or who's in a coma, but who might likely come out of the 0.67

00:06:47.140 coma?

00:06:48.000 That would be an example of someone who's not conscious, but who still has a right to life.

00:06:51.640 And it is of my understanding that we do take, we do take people off of life support that

00:06:58.060 are in comas sometimes.

00:07:00.020 Well, if they have like brain death or something, but I'm just saying a coma, if we're in a

00:07:03.160 car accident, let's say they're in a medically induced coma or something, and there's some

00:07:06.760 great likelihood that they're going to come out of the coma.

00:07:08.920 I've heard someone put it this way.

00:07:10.320 It is the ability of the person to project consciousness in the sense that their body

00:07:16.700 has that function.

00:07:18.260 It is capable of projecting a conscious experience.

00:07:22.420 So even if the person is not at the time actually conscious, there is the potential for

00:07:28.460 consciousness there.

00:07:29.500 But then you would apply that same description to a baby in the womb.

00:07:32.220 That baby might not be actively conscious there, but they certainly have the potential

00:07:35.860 for consciousness.

00:07:36.540 I wouldn't say that it has the potential or the ability to project consciousness in that

00:07:41.800 moment physically.

00:07:42.840 It's incapable.

00:07:44.100 It will.

00:07:45.380 Same with the guy in the coma.

00:07:47.420 His body is developed to the point where it would be able to project a conscious experience.

00:07:54.320 But it's incapacitated.

00:07:56.100 Yes.

00:07:56.640 And I think that that also plays a role into it.

00:08:00.180 The fact that you were a conscious being and you've been experiencing life as a conscious

00:08:05.780 human and then some unfortunate accident or whatever may have happened puts you into an

00:08:12.220 unconscious state.

00:08:13.240 I think that the fact that there was a conscious experience beforehand does play some role in

00:08:19.760 the value of the person.

00:08:21.200 So having been conscious.

00:08:23.040 So you notice you've now sort of changed the criterion because you're saying, well, it's

00:08:28.420 no longer being conscious, but it's having been conscious at some point, which would separate

00:08:32.600 someone who is asleep or in a coma from a baby in the womb who has never been conscious,

00:08:36.460 but has the potential to be conscious later.

00:08:38.000 Then one might bring up the case of killing the elderly.

00:08:42.220 Do you support euthanasia?

00:08:45.120 Assisted suicide?

00:08:46.300 You know, whatever euphemism they want to call it.

00:08:47.920 I've struggled with that.

00:08:49.460 I've not, I don't have firm convictions either way.

00:08:51.940 Whenever people bring up like medically assisted suicide, I have not formed an opinion on that

00:08:57.960 yet.

00:08:58.260 I'm not in support or against it.

00:09:01.040 I would have to, you know, learn more about it and really think about my morals.

00:09:05.160 According to the setup that you've just made, you're saying if you've ever been conscious

00:09:09.740 and you've sort of fallen out of the active use of your conscious faculties, that it would

00:09:13.980 be wrong to kill that person.

00:09:15.160 So that would be an argument against euthanasia for the senile or demented in that case. 0.82

00:09:19.840 Though I don't, sorry to interrupt.

00:09:21.520 I don't think it's like steadfast if you've been conscious before, you absolutely have

00:09:28.840 value that cannot be taken away.

00:09:30.480 I think it's on it like a case-by-case basis.

00:09:32.940 But then what is the principle by which you discern one case from another?

00:09:40.700 I don't, personally, I would have, it would just have to be on a case-by-case basis.

00:09:45.700 I don't have this, you know, this rule that I go by.

00:09:49.540 But then, this is what's so curious about this.

00:09:51.720 Because you're saying, I don't have a rule.

00:09:54.400 I'm not applying reason exactly to this question.

00:09:58.540 I'm just kind of going on my gut.

00:10:00.440 And that's what a lot of people do.

00:10:01.940 What's strange about that, though, for you, is that you show up to a lecture given by someone

00:10:09.320 who you go in disagreeing with.

00:10:12.900 But then, at the end of it, you say, well, you know, you have your logic, I have my logic.

00:10:18.560 We can't really reason about these things in an objective way.

00:10:20.940 And I think, well, then why show up?

00:10:22.920 If you're not going to come to a conclusion, if you're not going to say, no, you're wrong,

00:10:25.980 or I was wrong, and now I agree with you, or actually, I still disagree with you,

00:10:29.380 because here's the flaw in your argument.

00:10:30.400 If you're not going to grant that there's some objective reality to these arguments

00:10:34.480 that might pertain to a great many people or everybody,

00:10:38.400 then what's the point of the logic?

00:10:41.920 Like, well, there's, I, you know, I don't come here to get my mind changed or change anybody

00:10:50.400 else's mind.

00:10:51.380 I think that hearing other opinions, whether you personally believe that they're going

00:10:55.660 to change yours or not, it's just healthy in general.

00:10:58.380 And I support free speech.

00:10:59.760 And also, to be frank, I'm here because I'm friends with a lot of YAF people, and they

00:11:07.340 asked me to come, and I was like, sure, I'll come.

00:11:10.520 You're like the most amiable liberal on campus.

00:11:13.740 And you say, sure, I'll come.

00:11:14.840 It's just, Wes, you're a confounding figure, because you might be the nicest guy I've ever

00:11:22.540 met on a college campus, you might be the most open-minded guy.

00:11:27.440 And yet I feel defeated, because you're saying, Michael, your arguments, all arguments, they

00:11:32.680 don't work on me.

00:11:34.280 I believe that abortion is just a, it's a moral disagreement.

00:11:39.160 I think that some people have one moral code of ethics, and some people have a opposing

00:11:46.660 moral viewpoint.

00:11:48.180 If I say two plus two equals four, that's a view that we would both agree to, and that's 1.00

00:11:53.620 my opinion.

00:11:55.160 Someone might say, I've heard people say this, that when you really think about it, two plus

00:11:59.440 two equals five.

00:12:01.300 You don't agree with it, and I don't agree with it.

00:12:03.060 Definitely not.

00:12:03.720 Now, those are contradictory opinions.

00:12:08.060 Two plus two cannot simultaneously be four and five.

00:12:11.220 At the same time, it can't happen.

00:12:13.000 So one of them is right, and one of them is wrong.

00:12:15.460 Yes.

00:12:15.800 And you can't dispute that a fetus is a human.

00:12:21.880 It is a human.

00:12:22.900 I don't disagree with that.

00:12:24.560 Where the morals come into play, there's no, I don't personally believe that there is

00:12:31.600 any set of facts that tells you what gives human value.

00:12:35.500 I think that's what the argument is about.

00:12:37.760 No, it's what morality would put place to that.

00:12:39.040 What gives a human value, and I don't think that that is something that can be, I guess,

00:12:46.760 objectively known.

00:12:48.000 Objectively known, exactly.

00:12:48.820 Can you know, can you know that it's better, it's morally better to help a little old lady 0.96

00:12:54.820 cross the street than it is to kick a little baby in the head?

00:12:58.740 Can you know that for a fact?

00:13:01.220 You see, I personally don't agree in objective morality.

00:13:05.920 So you don't know.

00:13:07.100 If someone came to you, this is just you, there's no cameras.

00:13:09.620 Well, there are cameras, but imagine there were no cameras, and someone came to you and

00:13:12.700 said, hey, Wes, just between you and me, man.

00:13:14.920 There's a guy who's helping a little old lady cross the street, and there's a guy who's 0.95

00:13:17.540 kicking a little baby in the head just because he's a sadist.

00:13:21.540 Is one of those guys morally better than the other guy? 0.99

00:13:25.140 Obviously, I believe so, because I have a moral code of ethics, and I believe those to

00:13:30.420 be true.

00:13:31.420 So, of course, I would say that.

00:13:33.000 And where do you get your morality from?

00:13:36.520 Evolution.

00:13:36.880 Evolution may be a higher being.

00:13:39.020 Evolution never gave me any morality.

00:13:40.680 Well, may be a higher being.

00:13:42.020 I'm not a Christian.

00:13:43.720 I may not be a Christian.

00:13:46.680 I'm told by Christians that I'm not a Christian, but I do think that there can be a higher power

00:13:52.940 that created the world.

00:13:53.920 It's like the non-contradiction thing again.

00:13:55.580 You're not a Christian, but you're not not a Christian. 0.99

00:13:57.800 Well, I've been pushed out of the Christian. 0.98

00:14:01.920 By whom?

00:14:02.680 Who pushed you out?

00:14:03.420 Let me go talk to him.

00:14:04.320 Well, I mean, some people could say I led myself out because I have moral disagreements

00:14:09.160 with certain things in the Bible, and I've always rationalized my whole—

00:14:13.160 Shellfish.

00:14:13.540 What's that?

00:14:14.000 Shellfish?

00:14:14.580 Yeah.

00:14:14.920 You say I love shellfish.

00:14:15.840 I like shellfish, too.

00:14:16.740 There's lots of moral—exactly.

00:14:18.300 Lots of moral disagreements that I have with the Bible.

00:14:20.920 And I've been saying, okay, I believe in God, but the God that I believe in and want to

00:14:26.120 believe in doesn't necessarily think those things that are in the Bible.

00:14:29.600 If you get your morality from evolution—

00:14:32.440 Well, I don't know necessarily if that's where it comes from.

00:14:34.940 It's just—

00:14:35.720 Because evolution, in theory, just exists to propagate the species, right?

00:14:41.440 It's just the process by which a species adapts to its environment to propagate itself.

00:14:47.360 That's all it is.

00:14:47.940 So evolution doesn't care at all about good or bad.

00:14:51.880 It just cares about life or death.

00:14:54.860 It seems like you're looking for love in all the wrong places.

00:14:57.580 You know, if you're looking for good or bad, you're not going to find it in any theory of evolution.

00:15:02.180 Evolution could have guided you in such a way to believe all sorts of things, as long as it would

00:15:05.840 impel behavior that were conducive to reproducing.

00:15:09.960 So don't you have to look somewhere else for good or bad?

00:15:12.860 Well, I'm not necessarily—I completely understand what you're saying, and I'm not claiming that my morals

00:15:17.560 do come from evolution.

00:15:19.620 I don't really know where my morals come from.

00:15:21.960 I was raised the way I was raised, and I just have the belief system that I believe.

00:15:27.240 But even people in Tahiti or wherever, in Papua New Guinea, even though they believe some weird

00:15:31.380 stuff and they do some weird stuff, but there are certain things that everyone, every people

00:15:35.720 for all of human history just kind of know, even if they express it differently.

00:15:39.180 You know, we know that murder is wrong.

00:15:41.600 We know that theft is wrong.

00:15:43.120 People transgress those.

00:15:44.000 But every culture knows this, right?

00:15:47.180 And it can't just be the particular environment in which you were raised.

00:15:49.620 There has to be something perhaps more objective and universal about it.

00:15:53.300 Well, going back to evolution, I don't think that—again, I don't think that all morals come

00:15:57.240 from evolution.

00:15:58.080 But I think specifically knowing that murder is wrong probably does come from evolution,

00:16:02.620 wanting to make sure that the race continues.

00:16:06.240 It's if you murder people, that's bad for the human race. 0.89

00:16:08.460 Would you murder anyone right now? 0.64

00:16:10.540 No.

00:16:11.120 No, you wouldn't.

00:16:11.620 But the thing is, the moment that you become aware of the evolutionary impulses in you that

00:16:17.980 have tricked you into believing that murder is objectively wrong, when it's not, that's

00:16:21.560 just a trick we've concocted in order to propagate the species.

00:16:25.400 Well, the moment you become aware of that, then you can contradict the moral order, right?

00:16:30.100 Because it's not objectively true.

00:16:31.240 It's just a product of evolution.

00:16:32.620 It's just something to spread the species.

00:16:35.060 So if you are aware of that now, and it's not objectively binding, and you could benefit,

00:16:42.640 you know, some guy's got a million dollars in a satchel, and you could kill him, and no 0.93

00:16:46.300 one would find out. 0.94

00:16:46.860 You could take the money, and you could live a great life.

00:16:50.280 Something tells me you still wouldn't do that.

00:16:53.120 Well, I wouldn't.

00:16:53.860 But I personally don't think that just the fact that I know where they come from, I don't

00:16:59.180 think would give me the ability to go against them.

00:17:01.900 I think that there's still that deep gut feeling that's ingrained in me that tells me that

00:17:07.340 murder is wrong.

00:17:08.260 If I know that that came from evolution, that doesn't change the fact that I have a gut feeling

00:17:13.000 that tells me that murder is wrong.

00:17:14.240 So even if you've arrived at that from your reason, what you're saying is, no, my gut instinct

00:17:17.860 is going to overpower my reason, which is what you've been telling me the whole time.

00:17:22.960 Well, I don't think that, I don't even necessarily believe that I did get my morals from evolution.

00:17:28.240 There very well could be a higher power and a creator.

00:17:32.360 I do not dispute that.

00:17:34.500 But I don't think that I can just say that murder is wrong.

00:17:41.440 I think that that—

00:17:42.260 You can't force that view on someone else.

00:17:44.620 You can't say that it's objectively true, is what you're saying.

00:17:46.880 I think that morals and what we decide as a world or I guess a country or society is wrong

00:17:56.820 is based on the collective subjective morality of all the different people put together.

00:18:04.420 I think that if everyone in America in their subjective moral viewpoints thought that murder

00:18:11.280 was okay—

00:18:12.280 And then murder would be legal.

00:18:14.600 Well, it would be legal, but you still wouldn't think it's okay.

00:18:17.660 I wouldn't, but I mean, that's my subjective morality.

00:18:21.380 I don't think that somebody—

00:18:22.240 I think it's your objective morality.

00:18:23.580 I think, Wes, you don't give yourself enough credit.

00:18:27.120 But you're here.

00:18:29.080 You listen to these arguments.

00:18:30.320 You parse them rationally.

00:18:32.420 You say, in some cases, I guess in this speech tonight, I actually agree with his arguments.

00:18:36.780 But I came in disagreeing and my first principles are a little different, so I'm going to have

00:18:40.220 to consider that.

00:18:41.160 But I don't know.

00:18:42.000 I don't want to like—I don't want to say that someone's wrong.

00:18:44.840 Because you're very nice.

00:18:45.520 Wes, my only advice as an older man coming—you know, I was a student once, much less open-minded

00:18:53.700 than you—I would say, you can be less nice.

00:18:58.440 You can give yourself permission to be right about the things that you instinctively want

00:19:02.080 to be right about, that you kind of know that you're right about.

00:19:04.600 You don't need the permission of Charles Darwin or, you know, 50 million Frenchmen or anything

00:19:08.700 like that.

00:19:09.220 Your gut, ironically, is pretty good, and it's okay to—when you hear a logical argument,

00:19:17.000 you can accept the conclusion, even if all the other people tell you wrong.

00:19:21.580 Just my humble advice, in no way condescending as someone who was a student once.

00:19:26.740 Wes, thank you so much.

00:19:27.700 Thank you.

00:19:28.620 Wes may not have been completely convinced by my views, but the fact that he showed up

00:19:33.040 and sat down with someone he fundamentally disagreed with was impressive.

00:19:36.500 Wes is a student and showed a lot more courage and integrity than many former teachers on

00:19:42.040 the AFT tour that I have encountered, all of whom showed up with all that shallow confidence

00:19:47.100 in the world, screaming at my producer and storming out of the event, but who, when given

00:19:52.520 the same offer to sit down with me, went mum and slunk away.

00:19:56.820 I'm hoping to find more people like Wes who are willing to cross the picket line, to hear

00:20:01.040 what conservatives have to say, and maybe even muster the courage to talk about these topics.

00:20:06.500 face-to-face.

The Michael Knowles Show - December 27, 2023

Cross The Picket-Line ｜ Clemson & Vanderbilt

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript