Ep. 105 - The Nuts And Bolts Of Mass Shootings
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Summary
On the heels of the Florida school shooting that left 17 dead, the gun control debate takes on a whole new dimension. Lefties demand a ban on assault weapons, while right-wing media and the gun lobby try to blame the other side of the political aisle.
Transcript
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Demagogic leftists have wasted no time in pouncing on the horrific massacre in Florida
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to demonize conservatives while offering not one single solution that would have prevented the
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violence. Lefties insist we need to ban guns. Conservatives say we need to lock up lunatics.
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We will analyze the nuts and bolts of the gun control debate point by hollow point.
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Then our youth culture correspondent, Andy Millennial, joins the show to give a young
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person's perspective on the violence, policy proposals, and the future of conservatism
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broadly. Finally, the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
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The demagogic left is especially awful on these issues. People have read the facts of the case.
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I think Ben was talking about the facts of this awful shooting earlier today. I'll talk a little
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bit more about the reaction. Former Congressman Joe Walsh pointed out that a semi-automatic weapon
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means one pull of the trigger and one bullet comes out. That's what a semi-auto is. Nobody knows what
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these means because there are all these euphemisms flying around. Assault weapons, which was a term
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that was just invented to demagogue and compare regular semi-automatic rifles, which have been
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around for a very long time, to assault rifles where it's an automatic weapon. He pointed out that
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he's not just firing a machine gun. It's one trigger pull, one bullet comes out. Some dummy
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on Twitter responds. He says, defending an AR-15 while 17 children lay dead. You're part of the
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problem, sir. And this is the really awful thing about this because we are accused, if we look at
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this awful shooting, the left would like to pretend that gun rights people, people who support the
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Second Amendment, are thrilled at these shootings. We say, oh, this is, oh, how wonderful. Oh,
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tee-hee-hee, lovey-dovey-dovey. But of course that isn't the case. And to accuse us of not taking
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this seriously, they are projecting because it is exactly the left that does not take this seriously.
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They say there's this awful problem. We say, right, here are the facts of the problem. How can we fix
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it? And they say, how dare you talk about the facts? How dare you observe the reality of these guns
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and the reality of these gun control laws? You're a heartless, you're a monster, you're part of the
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problem. They are the problem. The left, the left play is a huge part of the problem in this issue
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because they won't have a serious conversation about the actual mechanics of, of gun control,
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of firearms, of mental health in the country. They're the ones stopping that conversation
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by shouting down anybody who's willing to point out simple facts, such as a semi-automatic rifle
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is a rifle where you pull the trigger once and one bullet comes out. So the FBI and the local
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authorities clearly failed to stop this threat despite knowing about it. That is all irrelevant
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to CNN though. You know, we know that government bureaucracies are never going to get better
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at these sorts of things. So we can't rely on that. The government was supposed to enforce
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some, some threats that they got. They, they were, they were aware of this. There were laws
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on the books that they probably could have used, but, and they just didn't do it. But that's
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the nature of bureaucracies. We will get to some gun control numbers in a second. Here is CNN.
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CNN, CNN, which was there on the scene to demagogue the situation through. Do you have a message
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for the lawmakers? Do you have a message for Congress, for the president? My message to
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lawmakers in Congress is please take action. Ideas are great. Ideas are wonderful and they help you
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get reelected and everything. But what's more important is actual action and pertinent action
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that results in saving thousands of children's lives. Please take action. Do you have a sense of
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what kind of action that would be? Any, any action at this point, instead of just complete
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stagnancy and blaming the other side of the political aisle would be a step in the right
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direction. And working together to save these children's lives is what this country needs.
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So that, that is David Hogg. He survived the shooting and I'm not criticizing him for this
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statement. Okay. He's a, some shaken up 18 year old, presumably who just saw people get shot. So I'm
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not criticizing him for this statement. I will point out what he said means absolutely nothing,
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right? He said that we need action. And CNN was waiting for him to, you know, to say, please,
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what kind of action? Assault weapons ban, this ban, that ban, that ban. But he didn't,
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he didn't even go that far. He said, we just need some action. But then he said, ideas are good,
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but really we need action. And he was just saying words that sort of sounded like they mean
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something, but obviously they don't. I'm criticizing CNN because they went down there and they put this
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kid on television and they want to make a big splash out of it. You know, these cute little kids who
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are, who are saying we need to do this. And it's this awful, awful event. And they want to tug on our
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heartstrings to make us pass more laws to take away guns from lawful gun owners, even though none of
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those laws would do a thing to prevent shootings like this. The Media Research Center reviewed the big
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networks, ABC, CBS, NBC. They reviewed their gun coverage from 2012 to 2013. They found 216 stories
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on guns. It skewed eight to one to advocate Barack Obama's gun control policies. At that time,
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Barack Obama was pushing a slew of gun control legislation. Eight to one, they favored his
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legislation. Gun control advocates appeared 26 times compared to just seven times for constitutional
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activists and Second Amendment advocates. CBS, the network of Cronkite and Rather, ran anti-gun stories
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at a rate of 22 to one. 22 to one. Not just the way it is. Those are just the facts at CBS. And it
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wasn't just the big networks. Here is a typical example of CNN's coverage of the Second Amendment.
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Not everyone in Colorado wants more guns in the hands of its own people. State Representative
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Rhonda Fields is one of them. This is a quote coming from an employee at a gun shop. He said,
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a lot of people are saying, I didn't think I needed a gun, but now I do. Representative Fields,
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if this person was sitting right there next to you, what would you tell him? I have to challenge
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you. Why hasn't your party, the Democratic Party, done more to legislate guns? Because as you know,
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that assault weapons ban expired in 2004. Wow, really hard hitting, really, really powerful
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questions, really holding, keeping truth, putting truth to power because CNN just exists to tee up these
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little softballs for Democrats to make their points that are basically irrelevant to the debate.
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Let's go through the nuts and bolts of what can be done about gun control and trying to stop these
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shootings. Let's start with the bolts, the facts that pertain to the guns themselves. There are 20,000
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gun control laws on the books. Brookings Institution, the left-leaning think tank, disputes this because
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they modify it and they say there aren't 20,000 relevant laws, but that neglects all of the local laws and
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all of the local regulations. A solid estimate, it's hard to tell because there are so many gun laws
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on the books, but a very solid estimate would be 20,000 and there may be many more than that.
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That number, by the way, has been accepted for 50 years until recently because people don't want
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to believe that there are 20,000 gun laws on the books and they're still not stopping these incidents
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that we see on CNN. Democrat Representative John Dingell explained as early as 1965, quote,
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we now have on the law books of this nation, 20,000 laws governing the sale distribution and use of
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firearms. By the way, interesting to note, 1965 was three years before the gun control act of 1968,
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which was spurred by the deaths of RFK and Martin Luther King. This was three years before that we
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had 20,000 laws on the books. As for the semi-automatic rifle, they say, because they always go after the
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AR-15 because it looks, it's big and black and scary is basically why the TV goes after it. It's an easy
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target, even though it's, it isn't like these sort of blacks, terrifying machine guns that we see and
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automatic, or fully automatic rifles that we see in war zones. It isn't like that at all. AR does not stand
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for assault rifle, it stands for Armalite, the company that makes it. Even on that, if they want to ban
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semi-automatic rifles, you know, one pull, one bullet, the semi-automatic rifle has existed since 1885.
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This wasn't invented in 1970, it wasn't invented in 1960, it wasn't invented in 1990. It's, it's been
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around for well over a century. And, uh, if, if we're going to remove that, we might as well go
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back to the musket, I suppose. Is that going, that's going to be the next call from them. Uh,
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another thing to note is mass shootings are not getting more frequent. So the murder rate in 2011
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was almost exactly the same as the murder, the, as I'm sorry, the raw number of murders in 2011 was
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almost exactly the same as the raw number of murders in 1969. But since we've added 110 million
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more Americans since then, the murder rate in 1969 was about 55% higher than it is today. Overall,
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the murder rate is declining precipitously. So that gets to, uh, the, the point here.
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We will never eradicate these crimes because the imagination of man's heart is evil from the
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beginning. It is easy for left utopians to believe that eventually we can perfect human nature
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and stop war and stop violence. But it ain't going to happen as long as human beings are around.
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We've never seen any example of it in the history of the world. Nothing about it, nothing we know
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from philosophy or history or biology suggests that will ever be the case. There's also no evidence
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that the expiration of the assault weapons ban in 2004 has affected gun violence whatsoever.
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Even Politico reports this. All available evidence shows gun laws will not significantly affect
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incidents or severity of mass shootings. Other studies show that large capacity magazine bans,
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as have been advocated in recent years in my own home state of New York, uh, conceal carry laws have
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had a little to no effect on mass shootings one way or the other. It doesn't move the needle.
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According to the FBI in 2011, you know, I can't believe we have to rehearse all of these numbers,
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but now it's considered, uh, hateful and uncaring and uncompassionate to even point out these numbers
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or name any facts when it comes to the debate, because unless you have a quivering lip,
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you're not considered an authority and not, uh, credible to, to talk on this topic.
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According to the FBI in 2011, 323 people were killed by rifles of any type, bolt action,
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uh, semi-automatic, the dreaded AR-15, uh, 496 people were killed by clubs or hammers that same year.
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726 people were killed by hands or feet that year, twice as many as were killed by any kind of rifle,
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including assault weapons, so-called assault weapons. And 1,694 people were murdered with
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knives over five times as many people as were killed by rifles, rifles of any kind, including
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the AR-15, including the dreaded semi-automatic rifle that's existed since 1885. Far and away,
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the biggest killer was handguns. At 6,220 deaths, though 60% of those deaths were suicides,
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mostly among middle-aged men. That's the bolts of this gun control argument.
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Uh, Marco Rubio pointed this out a few years ago, even the Washington Post, even PolitiFact said it
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was true. None of these laws that Democrats are, are throwing out, vaguely throwing out,
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or specifically throwing out, and calling Republicans uncompassionate monsters for not
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taking them up. None of those laws, not a single one of those laws would have prevented any of these
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shootings, uh, that we've seen that are so horrific on television. We have to get to the
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On the nuts side of this equation, it is now virtually impossible to commit someone against
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his will to a mental institution. All states now require that you prove clear and convincing
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evidence that someone is imminently dangerous to themselves or others. Imminent means 12,
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uh, 24 to 72 hours. They're going to commit some awful thing in 24 to 72 hours. You maybe can commit
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them. Otherwise you can't. People blame Ronald Reagan for this. It actually was underway long
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before he arrived on the scene, though he was active in politics while these institutions closed.
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There were 37,500 mental patients in California in 1959. That was before the Gipper. Reagan entered in
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1967. By that time, the number was already down to 22,000. It continued to decline and kept dropping
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for years. This is in part because we had new drugs that would be able to hopefully cure people and not
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have them be faced there. And there were also reports that these institutions weren't very nice.
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Clearly this kid should have been institutionalized. I won't even use his name. He's a little demon from
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Florida. I won't use his name. He clearly should have been institutionalized. When he was a little kid,
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he used to kill animals. He posted on social media that he wanted to shoot up a school. He was reported
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to the local authorities and to the FBI for saying these sorts of things, being, being an all around
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weirdo. His recently deceased mother apparently reported him to the police, sat down with the
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police and her son and discussed what a deranged monster he is. So the, why aren't they talking about
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this? Because it's harder for Democrats to argue for institutions because that might be a partial
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solution to this problem. It's much harder to say, well, we need to lock up lunatics. Uh, so they
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have to keep demagoguing the gun control arguments that we know for certain, we know with as much
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certainty as we can in public policy that they won't achieve anything because they, the only
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reason they're doing this is because they occasionally help Democrats achieve the only thing they really
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care about on this issue, raising money and winning reelection. Speaking of kids who should be
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institutionalized, we are so lucky that we have our youth culture correspondent here, Andy
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millennial. Andy, thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate it.
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It's good to be here. Yeah. Uh, uh, so I was, I was wondering, we were talking about this shooting.
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Uh, what is your take on, on, uh, this horrific shooting as a millennial? You know, as a millennial,
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I have to say that this was a pretty good mass murder, uh, for me. You know, I got some pictures
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on my cell phone and put them up on YouTube and they got over a hundred thousand hits. And, uh,
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then I even did a piece on, uh, you know, hit on CNN, which I thought was one of my better hits
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about how, uh, upset I was and how much I wanted, uh, gun control. And, uh, I was, uh, I was going
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to, um, you know, uh, I also put some pictures of myself crying, you know, cause I was very upset
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about it. And my picture of crying got a lot of likes on. So I think people are really moved by my
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tears on, uh, on Instagram. I think that really, so, so as mass murders go, I think I did pretty well
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here. Have you considered Andy, uh, looking into an internship at CNN?
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Uh, you know, I, I, that's kind of my next step. I think, I think if I, you know, when you put the
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crying together with the gun control, you're basically a CNN anchor. I will say in, in every
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one of your appearances on this show, your ability to make your lip quiver has been really impressive.
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It's been really, really good. That's what I bring to the, to the conversation. I, you know,
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I was afraid that I was actually going to bite into this. I, I love that we just had Tide Pods
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lying around in general. I don't know what the animators are getting up to in the back there and the
00:17:18.080
producers. That, that is where I've got to send you. There are videos of people on the internet
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just chomping down into these, just detergent pouring out of their mouth. We should, we should
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say that we're not making fun, of course, of any of this terrible thing that happened, but
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It's awful. I actually, I, for, for that little, you know, that little back and forth, I, I have no
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compunction about doing that sort of thing whatsoever because it is so despicable what CNN
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does in these, in these events. They trot them out like these awful shootings. They trot them out
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like the perfect little circus to push their ridiculous policies.
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It's amazing. And at the core of this, there are people genuinely suffering. You know, I mean,
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the, it's a genuine atrocity and then it kind of goes out and radiates out. And by the time it gets
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to CNN and to the networks too, because they do it too, it's just, they're just using these tears,
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you know, as a, as a kind of magic potion to sell their stupid gun control. And, and they're using the
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tears to shut other people up. They're using those tears to make us look uncompassionate because we
00:18:19.520
want to look at the actual facts of the situation and try to do anything that might help it. The funny,
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the funny thing is, I mean, funny, strange is that really, if you looked at it rightly, liberals,
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leftists and right wingers could stand together and weep over what actually is happening and then
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go to their corners and argue about what to do. And that would be the fair way to do it. But that
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because their ideas don't make any sense and because the facts keep contradicting them, they just have
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to carry those tears on. And when we say, let's wait until the emotions pass, they're going, how long
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must we wait? You know, that's not wait. Last time they were screaming like wait, that waiting itself was wrong,
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you know, being reasonable itself was wrong. Thoughts and prayers and waiting are wrong.
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I know. And this, and CNN has now become like a tear fest. It really is like being in a sorority
00:19:03.280
where like these people going, all they do is cry. Well, it's very funny because in my living room,
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it's also a tear fest when we watch CNN, just tears of laughter and joy when we keep them on.
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Do you think, because you're right, they say that we can't wait. We can't, we can't have thoughts.
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We can't have prayers. We can't, we can't think. We can't mourn even together. Is it, is it a weird
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twitch of materialism of their thinking that thoughts and prayers are, are actually meaningless?
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Obviously that has to play into it. And is there, is there some aspect of this that is just,
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they, they don't actually care about the event itself. They just, they're so frenzied in scoring
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points that they don't even see the tragedy. They just jump to score the points.
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It is amazing. It seems to me to be, I think, I won't say that they don't care. It seems to me
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a confusion of their feelings with their thoughts. Like we really have lost the idea. You know,
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it's the old Aristotelian idea that your inner state is important. Your, your pleasures and your joy,
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That, that it's important, but it has to be trained to attach itself to reason.
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And what they've lost that little part of it. So that what they think is, they think because
00:20:19.280
they're upset, it matters. It matters that they're upset. And it doesn't. I mean, it's the
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same way that college kids think I'm offended by that. My feeling is, you know, get, get some
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Yeah. Yeah. You need to build up those feelings calluses.
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I mean, this is, this is the sale from the left is that you're, everything is about your feelings.
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And I think, I think that's basically it. It's not that they don't care. It's that they think
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that the fact that they care gives them some moral, uh, high ground and it doesn't, we all
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care. We all care. Of course we do. You know, nobody wants to see this happen, but that doesn't
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You know what I think is like, I'll get us in more trouble for making this analogy. There
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are a lot of sketches on the internet that go around about this problem. Yeah. You know,
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when you're, you come back and your girlfriend has had a hard day, she's really upset and there's
00:21:00.540
some problem. She's, and she's upset. You say, what's the problem? And then your girlfriend
00:21:04.040
tells you what the problem is. And then you say, okay, well, I think the way you can fix it is this,
00:21:07.640
this, and this. She says, I don't want you to fix it. I just want you to be sad with me.
00:21:11.540
You say, but I'm all, I'm trying to, how dare you try to, I, that's what CNN is doing. That's
00:21:15.680
what the mainstream media do on these kind of issues. We say, okay, we'd like to fix it.
00:21:18.840
We'd like to help you fix it. You know, it really is womanish. You know, I use the word womanish
00:21:23.260
because it's, it's, it's actually the opposite. It's a phenomenal word. It's a great word.
00:21:26.540
It's the opposite of womanly. It is to womanly what like macho is to manly, you know,
00:21:30.320
childish to childlike. That's exactly right. You know, it is womanish is, is like having a woman who thinks,
00:21:36.780
who cries so that you're willing to do anything to just to get her to stop crying. And that's what
00:21:41.540
they think we're going to do. And just, you know, after a while guys catch on. That's right. It's
00:21:45.400
going to happen. It's not going to happen. It's going to happen. CNN. Yeah. Where do you see,
00:21:49.200
you know, I was down. So that takes us through this topic. What I want to know, I was, you know,
00:21:53.880
I was down in Palm beach at the Coudera Institute. We were doing this panel a couple of days ago on the
00:21:58.560
future of American conservatism. And we've got this awful future of mainstream media, maybe,
00:22:03.900
but it was me. It was, uh, Ramesh Ponaru from national review, great guy. And Mike Frank from
00:22:10.780
Hoover and Al Felsenberg who wrote the Buckley biography. And I think I was the only covfefe
00:22:15.840
advocate on the panel. I was the only, well, the national review crowd. National review doesn't
00:22:20.860
exactly love El Presidente. I was certainly the most, uh, vocally pleased with this administration.
00:22:25.800
Yeah. What is the future of American conservatism in the age of Trump?
00:22:29.640
Well, it's a, it's a really good question because Trump is important at least in, in two, uh, very
00:22:35.840
specific ways. I mean, one is the fact that he has shattered. I think that this is the thing that
00:22:42.000
all these never Trumpers and the intellectual anti-Trumpers do not understand. He has shattered
00:22:47.920
this glass bubble that has surrounded conservatism for 30 years, 40 years. I mean, this idea that there
00:22:54.700
are things you can't say, that there are ideas you can't introduce that, uh, I'm, I'm crying. So
00:22:59.340
don't say guns are good. He shattered that if only because he's too boorish in some ways to pay any
00:23:04.420
attention to it. He's not sensitive enough to see it. I mean, this is something that the slavery of
00:23:10.100
political correctness has, has, is something that drives people crazy and it pushes them so far to
00:23:16.160
the right. They go off the reservation. I mean, it makes people overreact. And you know, when you look
00:23:21.800
at Europe where people are, can literally be harassed by the police for criticizing Islam or
00:23:27.000
for saying certain things that are considered hateful, you know, it means that the elite are
00:23:31.860
free to do whatever they want without us saying you're wrong. You just, I'm sorry. I may wash cars
00:23:36.720
for a living. You may have a PhD, but you're wrong and I'm right. So Trump has been really important.
00:23:42.000
And in that way, he has been almost a totally a good thing. The, the other way is this push toward
00:23:48.140
what they call populism. And I'm not sure that's the right word for it because what, what he has
00:23:53.360
done is he has reconnected the Republican party to that base that used to be part, part of Reagan's
00:24:00.860
party. It actually used to be Democrats. They were the Reagan Democrats, right? They were the Reagan
00:24:04.080
Democrats. Yeah. And, and he has reconnected to them and we, we lose touch with them. It's funny
00:24:09.620
because you and I are probably people who would lose touch with them because we are, you know,
00:24:15.380
theoretical. We think in intellect and some, and sometimes people are going, yeah, but I can't
00:24:19.020
feed my kids. What do I do here? Right. And to have some intellectual conservative saying, well,
00:24:22.820
you know, this is wrong and that's wrong. You got to answer the question first. Am I going to lose
00:24:27.580
my job? Am I going to, how deeply has he read Tocqueville? I know, I know that he's going to reform
00:24:31.720
your taxes and create jobs and growth, but how deeply has he read Strauss and Tocqueville? That's right.
00:24:37.760
So you have to come up with other kinds of answers. Trump has been bad for conservatism in that way,
00:24:43.580
in a certain way, because he does not care. He doesn't care that we need to reform entitlements.
00:24:49.760
And, and, you know, the, the arguments for reforming entitlements are simple. People live longer.
00:24:54.580
Yeah. You know, you can't, it used to be that you collected at 65, but you died at 63. It doesn't
00:24:58.980
cost as much as when you're collecting at 80. So I think that this is the part of Trump that we have
00:25:05.180
to deal with. It's not the tweets. It's not the rudeness. Those are the things that actually are
00:25:08.800
working in our favor. It is the spending and the, the fact that he never, even though in the old
00:25:14.840
days, he used to talk about debt, he didn't run on that and he doesn't seem to care. And that is
00:25:18.900
something we're going to have to confront at some point because you do go off the cliff.
00:25:21.760
I do wonder, this is really maybe the optimistic side here is I wonder if he could be a Nixon in
00:25:28.880
China when it comes to entitlements, because he signaled it a few months ago. I felt, I thought
00:25:33.280
that he was using the phrase welfare reform to hint at entitlement reform, because these
00:25:38.180
are welfare programs. I thought Rubio and Ryan started to move in that direction. We don't
00:25:42.560
know. He said, I'm not going to touch social security. But when it comes to the big spending,
00:25:46.220
the big spending sends shivers up my spine. But if he's going to spend a little more domestically
00:25:52.500
on whatever programs he's going to do, he's going to beef up the military. That is a drop in
00:25:56.280
the bucket compared to the long-term liability of entitlements. If he, if he somehow came around
00:26:01.020
to that, it would be, it would be the most excellent presidency.
00:26:04.500
You know, it would be, it would be an amazing presidency. It's been an amazing presidency
00:26:08.300
so far. One of the things about Trump is that he has such a big character that his, his,
00:26:13.640
the bigness of his character obscures who he is in some ways. So for instance, is he a guy
00:26:17.880
who sleeps with porn stars? Probably. I mean, do I care? No, I do not care. You know, do I think,
00:26:23.760
do I think that's a good thing to do? No. But is, does that what he does for me? No,
00:26:27.800
he runs the government for me. That's, that's what I pay him to do. So he is a guy who learns
00:26:33.160
stuff and he is a guy who will make an argument to his base that's unpopular. He will go back to
00:26:38.260
his, I mean, with the DACA thing where he's saying, you know, yes, I will give you a path
00:26:42.440
to citizenship, but I want this, this, this, and this. And if he doesn't get that, he won't sign.
00:26:46.640
He's willing to do that. And he does learn stuff in office and he is willing to go back to his base.
00:26:50.720
So it wouldn't shock me if he said, you know what? I said, I wasn't going to cut entitlements.
00:26:56.180
I'm not going to cut them, but I am going to reform them because take them a little later
00:26:59.220
because you're going to live 20 years longer. You know, I think he's, I think. And he can do
00:27:03.420
that. He, he always levels with people. He writes about it or somebody wrote about it and he at least
00:27:07.180
read it in the art of the deal, which is that, you know, he'll ask for 99% and then in order to get
00:27:12.220
51%. He never, it's really a lovely thing that he does as a politician that all these other
00:27:17.560
politicians would try to worm their way into once they flip-flopped, trying to explain how they
00:27:22.560
didn't flip-flop. And Trump just sort of says, I don't know. Yeah. Now this is what I think. Yeah.
00:27:26.100
Before I thought this and now I think this. I know he does. And so there, there is that
00:27:29.360
chance. I, you know, I don't understand the conservative has always ridden on the back
00:27:34.680
of the Republican party. Right. The Republican party has not been conservative. It has almost,
00:27:38.620
almost ever, ever, ever, you know, and the fact the two most conservative presidents we've
00:27:43.160
had in my lifetime were Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton after Newt Gingrich. Yeah. Is that
00:27:46.980
what Bill Clinton believed? I don't think Bill Clinton believed anything. Right. You know,
00:27:49.580
he still doesn't. He did what he could get away with. Yeah. And on both sides of that equation. And
00:27:53.980
he was a good conservative president. This guy has been a great conservative president,
00:27:57.240
Trump. Mm-hmm. And he's a belligerent guy who sleeps with porn songs. Yeah. You know,
00:28:01.480
it's like, that's, that's also true. I can live with that. You know, like he's not, he's
00:28:05.560
not my son-in-law. I don't have to worry about who he's sleeping with. So it's like, you know.
00:28:08.980
One thing confuses me about the followers of Bill Buckley, and I count myself among them. Yeah. So
00:28:16.540
I'm confused by those at National Review and other places who say that it's so awful that he doesn't
00:28:21.900
articulate these high-minded principles and he isn't always talking about these abstractions. Bill
00:28:26.320
Buckley, by the end of his life, criticized vehemently the George Bush II administration for
00:28:31.720
dealing primarily in abstractions, for dealing in what he called Wilsonianism, Wilsonian conservatives.
00:28:37.420
Yeah. He criticized him, criticized that aspect of conservatism immensely. And here,
00:28:42.640
I think we have the response to that. We have something that is clearly not abstract. It's
00:28:46.940
very tangible. The words he uses are tangible. The policies he's advocating are tangible. And it
00:28:52.580
is bizarre to me that the conservative movement, in the light of Bill Buckley, would ignore what he
00:28:58.820
was talking about for the last several years of his life. You know, I'm perfectly willing to sit and
00:29:03.020
have a conversation about the moral hazards down the line of having a president
00:29:09.060
You know, I'm willing to have that conversation. What I'm not willing to do is sacrifice present
00:29:12.900
gains for things that may or may not happen because I'm afraid they'll happen or I can picture
00:29:17.720
them happening. When you sit and think of what would have happened, all these guys who didn't
00:29:22.420
vote for Donald Trump and, you know, said, I'm too, you know, they're too evil for me to vote for them.
00:29:27.740
You know, when you think what would have happened with a Hillary Clinton presidency, the judges who
00:29:32.320
would now be in place, and I don't, this whole idea of, well, Republicans would have stopped her.
00:29:36.040
When have they ever stopped anything? They don't stop anything. They can barely, they can barely
00:29:40.360
govern conservatively with Donald Trump in the White House. So, you know, the judges who would
00:29:44.560
have been in place, I really do believe we would have lost the Second Amendment. I think the First
00:29:48.200
Amendment would have been gutted. It would have been gutted. She was campaigning on gutting the
00:29:52.060
First Amendment. She was campaigning on gutting it, you know, and so I think that we dodged a
00:29:55.660
bullet. We didn't dodge it any thanks to them. I think that they should all stand up. I mean, I stood,
00:30:00.120
I voted for him, but I stood up and said, look, I opposed him. I think he's done a good job. You know,
00:30:04.880
hey, I don't know the future. I'm doing the best I can. We both variously did TV commercials for Ted
00:30:09.920
Cruz. That's right. Absolutely. Speaking of porn stars. And, but ultimately I came around and voted
00:30:16.880
for him too, and I'm very pleased that I did. I understood the arguments not to, I understand
00:30:20.860
that that's compelling in some way. But now that we know, looking back on this phenomenal year we've
00:30:26.000
gotten, I don't think there's any way to say, oh, I'm glad I didn't vote for the guy. Yeah. And I'm,
00:30:31.000
I am more than willing to say, like, I don't like this new budget. I think he's, you know,
00:30:35.480
I don't like the fact that he's not thinking about the debt. I think the debt matters and I think it's
00:30:39.320
a problem. And I think he knows it's a problem. Yeah. He's a businessman. He understands it's a
00:30:43.260
problem. You know, I'm perfectly willing to criticize him. What I'm not willing to criticize him on is
00:30:46.900
every damn thing he says, especially when CNN and the rest of that, I'm now using CNN as a, you know,
00:30:53.160
a, what is it called? It's a metonym. Yeah. It's a metonym. Yeah. I've got all these obscure words
00:30:59.120
are just coming out today. You're great. I love coming in. You know, but the press takes everything
00:31:04.780
he says and spins it to its worst possible meaning. So if he comes in and he says there are good people
00:31:09.680
on both sides of the Robert E. Lee statue equation, oh my God, he's siding with white supremacists.
00:31:14.200
You know, they do, I'm just not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to appease it.
00:31:18.200
I'm not going to like give it any credence whatsoever, but I will criticize him on policy.
00:31:22.780
Every president should be criticized on policy. Nobody's, nobody's above criticism. I just think
00:31:26.700
he's doing a good job. And this, by the way, people say that we've always held our conservative
00:31:31.060
leaders to account. Bill Buckley in 1968 endorsed Richard Nixon over his good friend, Ronald Reagan.
00:31:38.100
He endorsed him for president because he felt he was more viable. He was tested. He went in there.
00:31:43.060
Nixon did a bunch of terrible things, founded the EPA, a number of other agencies,
00:31:48.640
and Bill Buckley still defended him because of the practical concern is I'm not going to knock him
00:31:53.180
on these little things. All overall, we're getting decent policy out of the guy until China, until he
00:31:58.480
felt that his stance on the Soviet Union and communism was too weak. Then he turned on him, but it wasn't
00:32:04.280
this, uh, I'll hit him here. I won't hit him there. I'll hit him there. I'll, I don't like this. He, he made
00:32:09.480
his decision. There's a long history in the conservative movement. And I, I hope we see, I hope that what we
00:32:14.760
see for the future of the conservative movement is kind of fusionism, but whatever that is for
00:32:19.360
the 21st century. Yeah. I mean, I think, look, I can live with a lot of, uh, liberal, you know,
00:32:24.700
annoying liberal things. And I can even live with a welfare state if we can keep the welfare state
00:32:29.080
under control and keep it reasonable. I think we're, we're old enough at this point to support
00:32:33.440
a welfare state. It, it actually does keep people from panicking at some, at some level, but when it
00:32:39.520
gets up to the European world or the world that Obama imagined in that video he did in the life of
00:32:44.440
Julia, where every minute that you live is governed by the state, I, I start to think, no, we've got to
00:32:50.420
dial this back. I believe so deeply in individual freedom. Uh, you know, and I'm, I'm going to fight
00:32:56.920
that. You have to fight that every day. Right. Every day they're against it. And so if I win today,
00:33:01.200
that's a victory. And if tomorrow Donald Trump becomes, you know, a bad guy, then that, that'll be
00:33:07.340
tomorrow's problem. If I win today, that's a victory. If I eat a Tide pod tomorrow, somebody
00:33:11.700
else will have to win that victory for me. I just want to know how stupid these people are. I mean,
00:33:16.480
what, what on earth has happened to our children that they are putting soap detergent? Just delicious,
00:33:21.460
delicious laundry detergent. Well, if you have any extras out there, save some for me after this
00:33:25.040
segment, we've got to go. I got them fried. Anti-millennial, ladies and gentlemen,
00:33:29.800
the youth cultural correspondent, we've got to go. We've got to, uh, say goodbye to YouTube and Facebook.
00:33:34.280
Obviously I'm not talking to anybody on YouTube right now because they censor every, anytime they
00:33:38.420
see my swarthy complexion come on, they immediately censor whatever videos we have. So if you're on
00:33:42.800
Facebook though, you got to go to dailywire.com right now. What do you get? You get the Michael
00:33:46.980
Knowles show. You get the Andrew Klavan show who bears a striking resemblance to Andy millennial.
00:33:51.120
You get the Ben Shapiro show. You get, you know, the mailbag questions, you get blah, blah, blah,
00:33:55.040
but you get this guys. And you know, CNN though, this is not only the FDA approved vessel for all salty
00:34:02.400
leftist tiers, but especially the demagogic CNN leftist tiers. There is really good for those.
00:34:07.360
And I think it's the only safe way to store them. So make sure to go to dailywire.com right now.
00:34:23.160
All right, we're running, we're running a little late. So I'm going to burn through these mailbag
00:34:26.400
questions. First one from Zachary, Dr. Knowles, I need your expert opinion. My doctor recently told
00:34:31.980
me I consume too much salt and that I need to change my diet. I of course figured as much given
00:34:37.180
the approximately two gallons of delicious and salty leftist tiers that I consume daily.
00:34:42.820
What are my options? Obviously cutting back on my main source of sustenance would not be ideal.
00:34:48.360
Should I dilute them with some covfefe? Pray that lefties stop crying altogether. Help. Thank you as
00:34:53.160
always, Zach. First of all, you got to be very careful with covfefe. Covfefe is a hell of a drug.
00:34:57.220
Don't you use that lightly. Second of all, lefties will never stop crying. Pray as you might. Only at
00:35:02.280
the end of the earth, at the second coming, is there a chance? And then there'll be really sad
00:35:05.860
that, you know, they were wrong about theology, but then maybe they'll be happy and joyful. You have
00:35:10.940
to ignore your doctor. Ignore him. I don't know how long he's going to last. You have, we talk
00:35:14.800
sometimes about supplements and nutrients on here. Don't believe the hype. Nutrition pyramids and
00:35:19.740
everything changes all the time. Keep guzzling those leftist tiers. You might actually want to
00:35:23.720
increase your consumption. Next question from Tyler. Hey, Michael, when are we getting your
00:35:27.680
second book, Covfefe, the art of the troll? Actually, my real question is I have been a
00:35:32.900
Christian all my life and was wondering if you had any great tips on studying the Bible.
00:35:37.140
Where should I start? Thank you. Huge fan of the show. Yeah. Leviticus started. It's a really,
00:35:41.280
it's a great page turner. It's a real, you got a lot of leprosers that you can read about. It's
00:35:45.360
really strong. Uh, you should start with Genesis because it's like the greatest book ever written.
00:35:49.340
Um, and you could read it. I always start these Bible in a year things, and then I fall off at
00:35:53.680
some point. So I've read Genesis a lot. I've read it at a number of times. Uh, whereas, you know,
00:35:59.300
Leviticus is a little tougher to slog through. I would start with Genesis. You might want to skip
00:36:03.620
to the end. The first time I ever really engaged with the Bible, I skipped to the dessert and read
00:36:09.040
the new Testament first. And that, that might be rather nice. Uh, I know the Catholic church and
00:36:13.800
several other Bible reading programs have one old Testament, one new Testament, one epistle
00:36:18.160
or Psalm that you can read every day. I like reading it in order though, in the order that
00:36:21.940
it was compiled and written. So I, that's my Bible in a year program, but just keep doing
00:36:27.980
it. Even when you have to slog through the, uh, relatively boring parts, because the relatively
00:36:33.220
boring parts, like the begat, begat, begat, all the genealogies, all of the rules, they do
00:36:38.180
actually tell you something just in themselves, just in their inclusion. And what kind of a meta
00:36:43.700
literary statement about what they're saying is, is really interesting. Even if as you're
00:36:47.480
reading it, your eyes are rolling in the back of your head. Next question for Becky. Hi,
00:36:51.080
Michael. I listened to your show on Tuesday night and you got me curious. How did Galileo
00:36:55.280
die and by whose hand, if any? And why have we been told that it was the fault of the Catholic
00:37:00.060
church? Really enjoy your show. Thanks. Thanks, Becky. So, uh, Galileo died peacefully at home
00:37:05.680
in 1642, January 8th, I believe, after he had a fever and heart palpitations. No torture, no,
00:37:13.560
nobody sniping at him or anything. He died of natural causes. The Grand Duke of Tuscany,
00:37:18.320
Ferdinando II, wanted him buried in the Basilica di Santa Croce. Uh, Pope Urban VIII and Cardinal
00:37:24.600
Barberini objected to this because Galileo was a huge jerk to everybody and called the Catholic
00:37:30.100
clergy idiots. So they buried him in a less prominent room off of the chapel rather than in the main
00:37:35.280
area of the Basilica. But, uh, about 80 years later, they reburied Galileo in the main body of
00:37:40.400
the Basilica anyway, basically the most incredible honor you could ever possibly get in the church to
00:37:46.180
be buried in the Basilica di Santa Croce. Uh, now he didn't get reburied before losing three fingers
00:37:52.200
in a tooth, uh, for some relics, one of which is now at the Museo Galileo in Florence. Um, the,
00:37:58.220
the reason why you, you hear all of this misinformation that the Catholics tortured him and killed him or
00:38:03.300
whatever is that the Anglosphere is quite Protestant. Henry VIII assured us of that.
00:38:08.820
And he ensured that because he wanted to chop off some of his wives' heads and get some new ones.
00:38:13.760
Uh, you know, people have always hated the church and GK Chesterton talked about this a lot. He talked
00:38:19.300
about it in Orthodoxy actually before he converted to Catholicism. But I think the, the church he's
00:38:24.300
talking about here is quite clearly the Catholic church. Uh, the, the church is attacked for,
00:38:29.860
for opposite reasons. And that's one argument that Chesterton gives for it being right. So the
00:38:35.760
church is attacked for cloistering women, taking women away from the family and cloistering them
00:38:40.400
in these little nunneries. And also it's attacked for insisting on procreation, be fruitful and
00:38:45.420
multiply, no, uh, artificial contraception, right? It's attacked for both of those things. It's taught,
00:38:51.680
it's attacked for disrespecting women's intellects. And it's, it's also attacked because only women ever go
00:38:56.780
to church, only women participate in the church. It's attacked for being too ascetic, sackcloth,
00:39:01.180
dry peas. When you whip yourself, mea culpa, mea culpa. It's also attacked for being too pompous
00:39:05.540
and ritualistic and dripping in gold. Uh, I think those are the reasons they just, people, especially
00:39:10.340
in the Anglosphere, just don't really like the Catholic church. But one of the reasons people
00:39:14.200
don't like the church as far as I'm concerned is because it's true because it's the right thing.
00:39:19.180
And it tells us right there in the Bible that they're going to feel that way. Uh, next question from
00:39:22.640
Christian, providentially from Christian. Hey Mike, where do you see the U S in 10 years in regards
00:39:27.440
to culture, mores, values, et cetera? I actually see it getting a little bit better. People forget
00:39:33.860
how kind of crazy that the PC culture was that really took effect in the 1990s. I see that getting
00:39:39.760
better. Murder rates are going down. Divorce rates are going down. Abortion rates are going down.
00:39:44.160
Those are all excellent cultural things. Um, I do see it getting more divided, unfortunately,
00:39:50.060
because I, there isn't a common culture anymore. Television basically doesn't exist anymore.
00:39:54.700
People are cutting their cable faster than ever. There was a great common culture when there was,
00:39:59.340
when there were just a few networks. It was the liberal consensus, the conservative movement in
00:40:03.360
many ways actually fought to crack up that common culture because it was a bit of a left culture.
00:40:08.500
Uh, so there's no common culture in terms of pop culture. There's no common religious culture.
00:40:13.220
We have a religious pluralism, but largely we just have a lot of nuns, the so-called, uh,
00:40:18.580
atheists, the so-called nuns, the atheists, the agnostics. I do see a little bit of that changing
00:40:23.240
because I get so many questions about religion throughout the mailbag. And you, you, in just in,
00:40:28.740
I know the plural of anecdote isn't data, but just in talking with millennials, they seem to be a
00:40:32.620
little bit more open to some of those questions. So I'm, I'm hopeful for the future, but I see it
00:40:36.880
getting much more divided. And as we talked about on the show a few days ago, you can't stretch those
00:40:41.220
bonds forever. This whole citizen of the world nonsense and hating one's own culture and kneeling for the flag,
00:40:47.180
totally, uh, uh, bizarrely for a flag that it gives you the right to kneel for the flag. So it makes
00:40:53.960
no sense to kneel for it. Uh, that can't be stretched forever at a certain point. It's going
00:40:57.380
to crack and people should be careful of that. And fortunately we have a president right now who is
00:41:02.240
a pop culture figure who is also, uh, who's also perfectly willing to attack these awful aspects of
00:41:10.600
the culture. Next question from Grace. How do you suggest we balance privacy and national security?
00:41:16.040
Grace, the girl from Twitter who has a date with you tonight. I told you never to call me here. I told
00:41:21.120
you, no, I think, I think Grace is referring to my conversation yesterday on Valentine's day, which was
00:41:26.620
marketed as a date with Michael Knowles. And I hope I didn't, didn't disappoint you. Buckley wrote of the
00:41:31.340
need to bring terrorists to justice after 9-11 quote, we should always give solicitous attention to
00:41:36.840
liberty. What we are struggling to do right now is to discover how 15 steel-willed enemies of the U S
00:41:42.320
succeeded in destroying the two largest buildings in New York and one part of the Pentagon. That
00:41:47.580
finding the hidden enemy would require Yankee ingenuity and a couple of days off for the American
00:41:52.920
civil liberties union. Makes sense to me. Uh, the way we have to do it is by making the bureaucratic
00:41:58.300
agencies more accountable, at least to congressional oversight. So right now, uh, you, the, uh,
00:42:04.340
bureaucratic agencies can infringe on all of our civil liberties as we saw happened with the Trump
00:42:08.860
campaign. Uh, Barack Obama spying on the Trump campaign. We saw that happen without much
00:42:13.360
congressional oversight took a lot for Congress to be able to see that. I don't think we need to
00:42:17.140
make it so transparent that the public sees these things, but at least our elected representatives have
00:42:21.340
to have ready access to this so that we, the, we, the people can hold them to account at least
00:42:27.860
through our representatives. That seems to me a nice way of, uh, balancing both national security and,
00:42:33.300
and civil liberties from Benjamin. Hey, bud, I love the show. I'm taking my wife and kids to DC in April.
00:42:38.360
Have you ever been there? If so, what was a must do or see and good local restaurants? Thank you so
00:42:43.840
much. Yeah, I loved, I spent a lot of time in DC. You've got to go see the Lincoln Memorial. Uh,
00:42:47.640
obviously you can't do that without crying. Uh, the monuments at night are great. When I was in
00:42:51.760
college, we would do drunk monuments. That was our favorite thing to do in Washington, DC. We'd go
00:42:56.120
have a few drinks and then just gaze at the majesty of this country. You got to go to Shelley's backroom
00:43:01.560
cigar bar. It's fabulous. I went there with the CEO of daily wire, uh, just a few months ago.
00:43:06.280
You got to go to the gold house, the Trump hotel in order of the, uh, steak burnt with ketchup,
00:43:11.120
the Porter house. Old Ebbets is the best. That is a DC institution. After 11, I think they have
00:43:16.180
dollar oysters and cheap PBR. A great play. Really? You have to go there. National portrait
00:43:20.560
gallery is wonderful. And there's some good theater there as well. People don't know that,
00:43:24.540
but you can check it out. You should ask your congressman to get you a tour of the white house.
00:43:28.320
I've never done that, but I have been to meetings at the executive office building and that's
00:43:32.780
unbelievable to go do that. You should do it from Keene. Next question. What is the future of
00:43:37.420
conservatism in your opinion? After the conference, we talked about this a little bit, but just a few
00:43:41.420
other points. I'm pretty pleased because I think there is a future to conservatism.
00:43:45.580
The fusionism of Bill Buckley, cold war, anti-communism, libertarian economics, and social
00:43:51.120
conservatism doesn't really make sense after the fall of communism. That central thing kind of fell
00:43:55.560
apart. Uh, you know, Buckley came to oppose the Iraq war, as we said, as a Wilsonian abstraction.
00:44:00.900
This is what I, I mean by rationalism. When we talk about that on the show, I think we're going
00:44:06.020
to see a more Burkean conservative thought in the future. Chesterton, speaking of Chesterton said,
00:44:11.540
if you argue with a madman, it is probably that you will get the worst of it. Uh, for in many ways,
00:44:16.040
his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.
00:44:20.500
He is not hampered by a sense of humor or by charity or by the dumb certainties of experience.
00:44:24.760
He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity
00:44:29.400
is in this respect, a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman
00:44:34.380
is the man who has lost everything except his reason. I think we see this a lot, a little bit
00:44:39.940
in conservatism. There's an ossified rationalist conservatism that I think we're, we're seeing
00:44:45.080
clinked away by the realities of our culture, by the realities of seeing Antifa beat up Ben Shapiro
00:44:50.800
attendees at college campuses. And I hope that we can now get a conservatism that rise, relies a little bit
00:44:57.640
more on a tradition. And, uh, you know, the, the eighties were great. Um, but those, those policies
00:45:04.880
sort of ossified into a bean counting, uh, that, uh, a renewed interest in the tradition in light of
00:45:10.700
cultural chaos may propel through its sheer appreciation of mystery and wonder. I think
00:45:15.980
we'll see that with a little more religion too. Um, from Christina, uh, Hey, so Valentine's question,
00:45:22.900
I got my fiance a man crate for Valentine's and he got me a necklace that I hate. Uh, do I tell him I
00:45:28.480
hate it or just deal with a gift I'll never use? And if I should tell him, how do I? First of all,
00:45:32.740
marry me. You, what a wonderful, what a great fiance to get a man crate for her fiance. Uh, if he were
00:45:38.800
your boyfriend, I would say deal with it, but he's your fiance. You're going to have to live with him
00:45:41.720
forever. So be honest with him. You don't want him getting you ugly jewelry for the rest of your life.
00:45:45.740
He'll get over it. It's not a big deal. I did this to sweet little Lisa. I bought her a bracelet she
00:45:49.100
doesn't like when we were 16 and, uh, she, and she basically threw it in a drawer and never wore
00:45:54.060
it again. And that's okay. Now I don't get those bracelets from Jennifer. Hi, Michael. I'm a big
00:45:58.140
fan of yours. I'm wondering if you plan on doing any speaking tours anytime soon. Also, I'd love to
00:46:02.360
get your take on why the Olympics would even allow such a repressive regime as North Korea to compete
00:46:07.300
and be able to show face. I am speaking around soon. I can't give too many details yet. I'll be in
00:46:11.980
New York giving a speech in March, at least one speech. And I'll be in, I think I've got one booked in
00:46:16.580
Alabama coming up. Uh, if you're interested in, uh, uh, seeing a speech or someone hosting,
00:46:22.520
excuse me, uh, just send in that inquiry in the mailbag or to Michael at dailywire.com. And I'll
00:46:28.200
make sure that we can get on the books. And why do, why did the Olympics allow these repressive
00:46:32.460
monsters? Uh, because, because the Olympics hates America. It's all just about hating America. That's
00:46:38.640
why NBC loves it so much. I don't really watch much of the Olympics from Corey. Final question. We got
00:46:44.040
to burn through this. We're running late from Corey. I always enjoyed your show and even your
00:46:49.380
acting in another kingdom. Thank you. Now I feel like I can't even watch you speak anymore. Your
00:46:54.140
smugness over the gay marriage issue was mind blowing. I've got three questions. Why do you
00:46:59.640
care? Why were you so smug about it? Do you believe this issue is worth pushing gays further left? I
00:47:06.100
sincerely hope you can offer some secular answers. Thank you for watching the show and listening to
00:47:10.480
another kingdom. I appreciate that. I will point out one thing in your question, in all three of
00:47:15.300
your questions, you don't once refute my argument. Do you notice that? So I hope that my views don't
00:47:20.960
come off as smug. I know, listen, I've been wearing a lot of bow ties and smoking jackets recently.
00:47:24.700
So I forgive people if they think that's smug and I'm sorry if I've given that impression. What I do
00:47:29.540
think though, is what you call smug, I think is, uh, because I offered an opinion confidently that
00:47:35.780
differs from your own. And I offered it and said, this is my opinion. This is the reality as I see it.
00:47:40.980
And you find that smug because it's not certainly not politically correct. And, uh, right now this
00:47:45.800
is the touchiest issue. Um, I hope that my opinions come off as clear and disinterested. Um, it is not an
00:47:52.280
emotional issue for me, obviously it might be an emotional issue for someone who very much wants to
00:47:57.400
redefine marriage because he or she is gay or something like that. For me, it isn't emotional. It's just a
00:48:03.480
clinical question of language, biology, and tradition. I'm perfectly willing to give a secular
00:48:07.960
answer on these things, but there, there aren't secular answers. I think even that's a little
00:48:13.120
bit of a euphemism. Secular means atheist. So you, you want me to get, I'm perfectly willing to give
00:48:17.360
an answer that is acceptable to non-Christians or acceptable to atheists, but there aren't atheist
00:48:21.960
answers because atheism isn't true. So there, you know, uh, I think basically in all ways,
00:48:27.880
atheism doesn't make any sense. So you might find that my answer makes sense, uh, but I'm not giving an
00:48:33.120
atheist answer. I'm giving an answer that is acceptable to atheists. Uh, this is why no
00:48:37.460
conservatives these days are willing to wade into the question of gay marriage. They think it's too
00:48:41.040
touchy. It's the great cultural taboo of the last few years. Conservatives are afraid of seeming bigoted
00:48:45.920
because we all have gay friends. And I'm, I'm not worried about that because this clearly isn't
00:48:50.520
about bigotry at all. Uh, we're, we're not talking about sodomy laws. We're not talking about whether
00:48:55.000
gay people ought to be able to do whatever they like with one another, whether they ought to be accepted
00:48:58.980
and treated equally and fairly by society and culture and government. We're not talking about any of
00:49:03.040
those things. We're, uh, we're talking about one question. What is marriage? So I, I have gay
00:49:09.140
friends who got hitched at the courthouse and the minute that game gay marriage became the new
00:49:13.380
definition. And I have friends who have been together for decades who did not go to the courthouse
00:49:19.580
and get hitched because they think that marriage doesn't include same sex couples. Practically those
00:49:24.580
same groups of people behave the same way, right? They behave in a monogamous same sex relationship
00:49:30.560
with, uh, all of the trials and tribulations and nice things that come out of that. But, uh,
00:49:37.300
but there is, there's disagreement even among, uh, gay people on this question. The question,
00:49:42.140
why do you care? Uh, because I'm involved in mankind. I don't know. Why do I care about U S
00:49:46.480
policy in Taiwan, right? Because, uh, no man is an Island entire of himself. I am a person with
00:49:52.920
faculties of reason. And the question of marriage is fundamental to culture and society. The question,
00:49:57.720
why do you care is enough to get me to care. The left always does this. They say, why do you care
00:50:02.080
about what pronouns we use? Why do you care? Who cares? What do you care about saying Merry
00:50:06.400
Christmas? Why do you, well, I don't know. Why do you care? Well, okay. If, if, if, if it's not a
00:50:10.280
big deal, then don't, why don't we not change the definition of marriage we've had for the entirety
00:50:14.540
of history until five minutes ago? If it, if, if it doesn't matter, if you don't care, then why don't
00:50:19.820
we just accept Barack Obama's view of marriage as late as 2012? You know, for, for the question,
00:50:25.900
why were you so smug about it? Uh, I hope I wasn't smug. I don't mean to be smug. Uh, I, I am fairly
00:50:32.600
certain that we should proceed with caution when radically redefining the building block of society.
00:50:37.920
I'm fairly certain of that. I hope that certainty doesn't seem smug. Is the issue worth pushing
00:50:41.840
gays further left? I hope it doesn't push gays further left. I don't think it will. Uh, because
00:50:46.320
most importantly, I think conservatives should respect gay people and respect them enough to speak
00:50:50.760
frankly and logically and not sentimentally and bizarrely. Gay people are not some infantilized
00:50:56.020
group that has to be mollycoddled and protected from logic and reason. And, and they're not only
00:51:00.940
thinking with their sexual thoughts. That's not the only aspect of the people. They're, they're not
00:51:05.980
just this one flat two-dimensional sexual issue. That's ridiculous and offensive to them, not to me.
00:51:12.660
Uh, you took issue with my suggestion that perhaps sexual difference has something to do with marriage,
00:51:17.120
that perhaps the definition of marriage held almost exclusively from civilization, uh, you know,
00:51:22.640
from the dawn of man until about 30 months ago, the view of marriage held by Barack Obama as
00:51:26.640
progressive a politician as ever there was until very recently, that perhaps that definition isn't
00:51:32.440
entirely incorrect. None of your questions refuted a single substantive point in my argument.
00:51:38.440
You asked a question about my psychology, you accused me of being smug, and you asked a question
00:51:41.500
about political practicality. Not, nowhere in those three questions did you refute a single point I made.
00:51:46.740
If you think the arguments made by either Father Schmitz or myself are wrong, refute them,
00:51:51.720
and we'll talk about it in the mailbag. If you can't, I encourage you to consider whether it is
00:51:55.800
possible that perhaps it is not we, but you who aren't seeing this issue quite right. I hope that
00:52:02.380
wasn't too smug. Uh, that's our show today. We are going to have a show tomorrow because I, uh,
00:52:07.640
obviously we didn't have a show yesterday, so be sure to tune in for that. We'll save you from one
00:52:12.680
day of the Clavenless weekend. Uh, we'll save you a little bit from it. Uh, in the meantime,
00:52:16.360
I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. I will see you tomorrow.
00:52:23.340
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
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Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Supervising producer,
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Mathis Glover. Our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Alex Zingaro. Audio is mixed by
00:52:38.900
Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.
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