The Michael Knowles Show - December 27, 2023


Cross The Picket-Line ｜ Clemson & Vanderbilt


Episode Stats

Length

20 minutes

Words per Minute

180.9295

Word Count

3,640

Sentence Count

250

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

When a conservative speaks on a college campus, one of two things usually happens. Activists and indoctrinated students try to burn the place down, or leftist groups post strategies for limiting or shutting down the event, and then hide in their dorms.


Transcript

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!
00:00:09.860 Oh, there we go. Finally. I was wondering where you were.
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
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.
00:00:59.620 Are you a fascist?
00:01:01.260 I don't know.
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,
00:03:02.380 I don't think that they are stupid and wrong.
00:03:05.620 I think that they have logic in their reasoning.
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.
00:03:30.020 And they're usually not even stupid.
00:03:31.980 Usually.
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.
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,
00:05:28.360 but it's not as simple for me as, oh, you're an idiot, you're wrong.
00:05:33.880 That's a stupid way of thinking.
00:05:35.280 Have you ever changed your mind on one of these questions?
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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?
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.
00:13:57.800 Well, I've been pushed out of the Christian.
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.
00:16:08.460 Would you murder anyone right now?
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
00:16:46.300 one would find out.
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.