The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 107 - Are Colleges Destroying Race Relations？ ft. Prof. Carol Swain

00:00:00.180 Statue toppling, shrieking girls, white supremacists, safe spaces, trigger warnings, and English

00:00:06.380 degrees without reading Shakespeare. Somehow, one institution has become a focus point for

00:00:11.780 all of these atrocities. We ask, is the Ivy League destroying America? We will discuss

00:00:17.320 with the great Carol Swain. Professor Swain grew up in a two-bedroom shack in the rural

00:00:21.620 South with 11 siblings, no indoor plumbing, and no running water. She dropped out of high

00:00:26.640 school and became a teenage mother. Carol then earned her GED, as well as five academic

00:00:31.560 degrees from institutions, including Virginia Tech, UNC Chapel Hill, and Yale. She rose to

00:00:37.140 teach law and political science at Princeton and Vanderbilt universities. But then Professor

00:00:41.620 Swain had the gall, the temerity, the audacity to be a Christian conservative, which naturally 0.99

00:00:48.220 led students at Vanderbilt to petition for her suspension in 2015. The university chancellor

00:00:53.180 tepidly defended her at the time, and she retired from Vanderbilt in 2017. We will get

00:00:57.800 her thoughts on the academy, race relations, and book recommendations. Is the Ivy League

00:01:02.860 destroying America? We will discuss. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:14.560 We have got a lot to talk about with Professor Swain. I can't wait to bring her on. I'm a huge

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00:04:13.100 on Professor Swain. Professor Swain, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your

00:04:17.420 introduction. Well, Professor, you have a lot of notches under your belt. I've said a few of them,

00:04:23.440 but also a lot of people I think don't know this. You predicted the alt-right years before anyone had

00:04:29.360 ever heard of them, the new white nationalist movement. You survived for decades in the academy as

00:04:34.320 both a Christian and a conservative. You rose up from crushing poverty to the most rarefied and

00:04:40.080 elite halls in America. My first question is, we know the academy is biased against Christians and

00:04:45.860 conservatives. In what ways does that bias manifest? Well, first of all, when I started my academic

00:04:52.820 career at Princeton, I was not a divided Christian believer. I was always viewing the world differently.

00:05:01.600 And my first book, Black Faces, Black Interest, the Representation of African Americans in Congress,

00:05:08.580 won the highest prize in political science, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Prize for Best Book in

00:05:15.200 Politics. And I was the first black to win it and the second woman. And I've won three national prizes.

00:05:22.320 I've been cited by the Supreme Court. And so I was a hot shot. I had my Christian conversion experience

00:05:28.740 in the late 1990s. And when I was hired by Vanderbilt, they did not know that they were getting a

00:05:36.500 Christian. And when they hired me, I was not as conservative as I am now. And so I didn't have to

00:05:44.400 go through being untenured and all of that as a divided Christian. But I can tell you that once 0.95

00:05:51.780 I became publicly known as a Christian, life as I knew it ended. And then I would say that in 2015,

00:06:02.460 after I published an opinion piece in the Tennessee and criticizing Islam, my life in academia was pretty 0.99

00:06:10.780 much over. Did you know at the time, you must have known that if you were to contravene political

00:06:16.120 correct orthodoxy in such a way as to, I don't know, criticize Islam, the well-known religion of

00:06:23.020 peace, did you know that that would kill your academic career?

00:06:26.800 No. I've always been a provocative thanker. That's why I've been successful in academia.

00:06:32.760 And so, I mean, I was the person who was gutsy enough as an African-American, I mean, excuse me,

00:06:43.440 as a black person. In the early 2000s, that was when I did the research on the white nationalism.

00:06:51.380 And I had a researcher interview the leading white nationalists in the country. And that was when I

00:06:57.480 predicted the rise of the alt-right, a new kind of nationalism that was not based on overt racial

00:07:07.440 hatred, was not using racial epithets, was not espousing violence, but made the case, using the

00:07:14.560 language of multiculturalism and political identity, that white was like any other group,

00:07:21.340 that white people were being discriminated against, that white people needed to have the same rights

00:07:26.840 as other people. I knew that because they framed it around the language of the left,

00:07:33.000 that it would be appealing to young people because it pointed out racial double standards.

00:07:38.520 And that was when I issued my warning.

00:07:40.500 You know, on that point of the alt-right, I'll just skip ahead because I do want to ask you about that.

00:07:46.040 You predicted it. You predicted the rise of these white nationalists. I know you spoke

00:07:49.920 to this new breed of white nationalists, these articulate people, these well-educated people.

00:07:56.020 You know, in 2014, I think you point out in one of your books, and I think I've read through most

00:08:01.780 of your books, in 2014, 55% of Americans were satisfied with race relations. By January of 2017,

00:08:08.660 that number had fallen to 17%. The number even of Americans proud of their country has declined

00:08:13.800 sharply. And then in the new white nationalism, in the book you wrote in the early 2000s, you said,

00:08:19.460 cultured, intelligent, and often possessing impressive degrees from some of America's premier

00:08:24.060 colleges and universities. This new breed of white racial advocate is a far cry from the populist 0.75

00:08:29.640 politicians and hooded Klansmen of the old South who fought the losing battles for segregation and 0.52

00:08:34.600 white supremacy during the great civil rights upheavals of a generation ago. And you presaged

00:08:40.600 these guys like Jared Taylor, Richard Spencer, we see. You've also said you think there's an increasing

00:08:46.100 white racial consciousness. The late columnist, white nationalist columnist, Sam Francis, called

00:08:52.580 for this. Why is that? Why is there this new increasing white racial consciousness? And why is

00:08:58.160 the new white nationalism coming out of places like Yale, where Jared Taylor attended school,

00:09:03.680 and you and I also went, rather than the good old boys, Palookaville country bar,

00:09:08.040 as we saw in the old days of the KKK? Well, there's a lot of reasons to that. And Jared Taylor was one of

00:09:15.280 the white nationalists that I had interviewed. And then later, I brought him to Vanderbilt to debate

00:09:22.440 Tim Wise, a civil rights activist. And I brought him in because he was an intellectual. He defied the

00:09:29.360 stereotype. And the stereotype had been, you know, guys with missing teeth, very good. You know,

00:09:36.240 they couldn't string together two words. And we just laughed at them. We saw them on TV,

00:09:40.620 because no one took them seriously. That was the Klan and the neo-Nazis that the media presented to us.

00:09:47.740 And so with Jared Taylor, I saw someone that frightened me, because I knew that with my mindset

00:09:54.520 and my sense of justice, and how I don't like double standards, that if I were that poor white kid

00:10:00.380 from Appalachia, I thought some of his arguments could be persuasive to me. And I wanted

00:10:06.160 people to see that they had the wrong image, that these were well-educated people,

00:10:10.940 and they were taking the language of the left to its logical conclusion. And I think part of the

00:10:17.820 appeal today is the fact that white people are not doing so well in America. If you read Charles

00:10:24.380 Murray's research, or you look at the opioid addiction, the people that are being affected,

00:10:31.660 and just the outlook, the hopelessness that white people are experiencing, I think it's only natural 0.84

00:10:38.280 that as they become a smaller percentage of the population, they would act and think like other

00:10:44.820 minorities. And in parts of the country, they're already a minority. And so they are just engaging

00:10:50.600 in normal human behavior when you see your world changing.

00:10:55.040 That's right. And I love that you point out that articulate racists like Spencer or somebody,

00:11:02.160 or Jared Taylor, are much more dangerous. Because people might be tempted to take them

00:11:08.840 seriously and to take their ideas seriously, because they have a nice polish, you know,

00:11:12.720 and maybe they wear tweed suits. It always seems to me that the reason that white nationalists go so

00:11:18.280 wrong is that they love Christendom. They talk ad nauseum about Christendom and Western Christendom,

00:11:23.440 but they reject Christianity. Most of these guys are atheists, like Richard Spencer is an avowed

00:11:28.420 atheist. Between getting your part of your academic- And so is Jared Taylor.

00:11:33.640 And so is Jared. I actually didn't know that. Jared Taylor, also an atheist. But you had this

00:11:39.340 experience, this born-again Christian experience during your academic career. How did that come about?

00:11:46.400 And how did that experience of Christianity affect your view of politics?

00:11:50.040 I can tell you that as a child, I was the only one of the 12 that was able to reach college. And so

00:12:00.240 I'm the only one that's, you know, solidly in the middle class. And so I guess in some ways,

00:12:06.980 I'm different as I was growing up. But I always saw the world differently. And when I was a young

00:12:14.100 adult working outside the home, I worked in nursing homes. I worked in a garment factory. I sold things

00:12:21.780 from door to door. One year, I had seven dead-end jobs. And I worked alongside a lot of poor whites that 0.99

00:12:29.340 were just like me. And I think I've always had empathy for people who are working class just like

00:12:35.460 me. And I felt very much discriminated against by the black middle class and upper class. In fact,

00:12:41.480 I didn't feel it. It actually happened. And as far as the people that mentored me, groomed me,

00:12:51.800 saw my talent, pushed me, they were all Caucasian. And I find this very common among people that I 1.00

00:13:01.420 talked with are the black that come from similar backgrounds. The people who offered us a helping

00:13:06.480 hand, many of them were white conservatives. So I don't know what that means. But I can tell you 0.88

00:13:12.160 that my experiences have been experiences where I was treated better by whites than I were by blacks.

00:13:20.320 That's interesting. Beyond even the racial point, you notice this in the language of economic envy. So

00:13:27.940 you hear people say, we hate the 1%, the upper 1% of wage earners. I've never understood that. I came

00:13:33.020 from relatively lower means. I didn't grow up with 11 siblings in a shack, but relative to my area,

00:13:38.900 I came from lower means. And rich people have always been great to me. I've always gotten jobs

00:13:42.800 from rich people. I've gotten scholarships from rich people. I'm not particularly angry at them.

00:13:47.640 And I noticed something at Yale, all the richest and most privileged upper West side children of

00:13:53.720 hedge fund managers. They would lecture me and other students on financial aid about wealth and

00:13:58.440 poverty in America. They would always lecture me. They'd call fellow conservatives who are on

00:14:03.060 financial aid. They would, they would call them uncompassionate or oblivious to a financial

00:14:08.080 difficulty. How, how have you responded throughout your life to elitists who would lecture you on race

00:14:14.660 and poverty in America? I mean, it's really funny when they're white liberals and to me,

00:14:19.240 they're, they're the most racist group of all. Absolutely. That movie Get Out was absolutely 0.99

00:14:24.280 right. The white liberals are the most racist group. They are. And, uh, and I have seen them 1.00

00:14:31.800 discriminate in, uh, college and university admissions decisions between two blacks, that

00:14:38.720 there was a black person from a working class background that has higher scores. And one of the

00:14:44.000 reasons I think that I have been treated well by conservatives and people who, you know, like

00:14:50.420 you, people that were more affluent that 1% is that they saw someone that was hardworking, that was

00:14:57.280 sincere, and they rewarded that kind of behavior. And I think that, uh, those same, some of those same

00:15:03.600 people, if they are liberal, they don't expect anything of blacks anyway. And so they are willing to 0.88

00:15:09.240 reward behavior, you know, that is not very competent and they don't believe any of us are

00:15:15.360 capable of achieving on our own. And so they lower the standards and they are harming black people on

00:15:21.280 the colleges and universities. They're harming them by not holding them, holding them to the same

00:15:27.780 standards. And when they remove the classics, when they dumb down a math or economics course, because

00:15:36.620 students complain, when they cancel a course on free speech, they're harming everyone's education.

00:15:43.360 And I think that we, what we're seeing is the fruits of affirmative action taken to its logical

00:15:48.900 conclusion in that, you know, during the era that I was in college in the 1980s and I, um, I graduated

00:15:56.780 with my PhD in 89, but, um, you know, there was affirmative action, but if you were black and you were on

00:16:04.820 those campuses, I mean, they were, you did not get huge breaks. I did not go to school free. You know,

00:16:11.100 I had, um, student loan debt, I had some scholarships, but I had to work. And nowadays they seem to be

00:16:19.500 telling, uh, black students that they can take separate tracks, that they can avoid any courses that 0.78

00:16:25.300 may be challenging to their views. And, um, and I think they're harming everyone's education and that

00:16:31.740 is totally irresponsible of college administrators making multi-million dollars to run universities

00:16:38.560 and they cave into the students and they're harming the minority students the most.

00:16:44.440 That's such a good point because, you know, like just last year, Yale decolonized the English 0.59

00:16:49.400 department such that now you can graduate with a degree in English literature without reading

00:16:54.340 Shakespeare, Milton or Chaucer, which is incredible to me. And we've all seen that shrieking girl who was 0.78

00:17:00.140 on that campus. In case you forgot, do we have a clip of the shrieking girl? 0.98

00:17:03.520 I did not.

00:17:06.160 Stay quiet for all Silliman schools. Do you understand that? As your position as master,

00:17:12.020 it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students that live in Silliman.

00:17:17.780 You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master.

00:17:22.960 Do you understand that?

00:17:24.340 No, I don't agree with that. 0.96

00:17:25.780 Then why the f*** did you accept the position? Who the f*** hired you? 0.99

00:17:30.640 I have a different vision. 0.99

00:17:31.480 You should step down. If that is what you think about being a master, you should step down.

00:17:36.220 It is not about creating an intellectual space. It is not. Do you understand that?

00:17:41.160 It's about creating a home here. You are not doing that.

00:17:45.160 You're supposed to be our advocate.

00:17:46.360 It is not about creating an intellectual space. So when you see things like this, even at elite

00:17:52.560 universities, Professor Swain. 0.66

00:17:55.580 And it's because they've hired the wrong people and they've sort of turned the black people over to 0.79

00:18:01.160 the black studies program or whatever ethnic studies program. But it's spilling over to the

00:18:08.180 rest of the university now. And, you know, if that were my child or my grandchild, I would be

00:18:15.800 horribly embarrassed. And a lot of black students want to be held to the same standards. And they're

00:18:23.820 not on board with all of the foolishness, but they're drowned out. And if they try to stand up 0.60

00:18:30.200 for something different, then they risk ostracism, not just from other students, but from the liberal

00:18:38.660 left faculty that are actually manipulating the students. And all of this ties into cultural

00:18:44.560 Marxism. That's the roots of all this madness on the college campuses.

00:18:49.980 Can you go into that a little bit? Because I was going to ask, do we blame the students like that

00:18:53.900 girl or do we blame the faculty or do we blame the administration? But how do you see the root of

00:18:59.300 cultural Marxism as hollowing out the academy? I think the students have been brainwashed,

00:19:04.260 they've been indoctrinated, and that they really don't know any better. And I think it goes back,

00:19:12.400 it starts even in some cases in middle school. And then it gets reinforced in high school. And by the

00:19:19.880 time they get to college, they're ready for the orientation program, you know, to teach them

00:19:26.140 how to be a true victim. And I think that it's all about remaking American culture, but it's not

00:19:35.860 about remaking it in a way that's going to make black people or make the society better off. And again, 0.81

00:19:42.380 I think that what we are doing is very destructive. It's harming everyone's education. And I think it's

00:19:49.740 because the universities have looked at the increasing demographic changes, the ethnic makeup

00:19:57.560 of the country, and they've decided, you know, that you have to have people in certain percentages

00:20:03.060 with degrees, even if those people are not college material. And all of this unrest and all of this

00:20:09.640 protest that the universities support, I think it's the product of them relaxing standards so low that you have

00:20:16.480 students that can't do the work, the students are miserable, and all they do is agitate. And they're

00:20:22.100 being manipulated, in some cases, by faculty members that are not qualified. And so it's a vicious cycle.

00:20:31.020 I don't know how you break it. The Ivy Leagues are the worst of all, because they're turning out people 1.00

00:20:35.620 that are going to be Supreme Court justices, they're going to be senators, they're going to be

00:20:41.760 in newspaper editors, the thought and opinion leaders, and these people are shutting down free

00:20:49.600 speech. They have no knowledge and respect of the Constitution. They will destroy America,

00:20:55.600 unless we can figure out a way to sort of dial it back, and to move people to basics when it comes to

00:21:04.280 honoring our Constitution, and our American way of life. And I think that it's being pushed by

00:21:11.600 a minority that all of this chaos that we see taking place, it's being fostered by the actions of a few,

00:21:20.040 but imposed on everyone else. And there's so many people that are cowards, especially, I'm sorry, 0.56

00:21:24.800 white people, in that white people seem to be very afraid of being called racist. What they forget is 0.99

00:21:32.340 that it doesn't matter what they do, they're going to be called racist, they're going to be called

00:21:36.880 nativists, they're going to be called xenophobes. And so they might as well stand on some principles.

00:21:43.260 If people stop standing on principles, we might be able to change things.

00:21:47.360 That is such a good point. I've long thought that when a lefty calls a conservative a racist,

00:21:53.260 the conservative knows he's won the argument. And one shouldn't be afraid of this. The reason I don't

00:21:59.440 worry about being called racist, I get called racist on Twitter all day long. I said that Black Panther 1.00

00:22:03.980 wasn't a great movie and I get called racist for that. And, but you, uh, the reason that I know

00:22:09.400 that I'm not racist is that I know that I'm not racist. That's why, that's why I'm not afraid of

00:22:13.720 people calling me that. And yet people are cowering in fear. And speaking of the destruction of culture

00:22:18.600 and history, you see this most clearly, especially on campuses with the toppling of all of these

00:22:24.180 statues, the toppling of Confederate statues, the renaming of Calhoun college at Yale, because Calhoun

00:22:30.420 was a South Carolina Senator who supported slavery. Uh, you, you see, uh, you see Harvard

00:22:36.800 taking the word Puritans out of its alma mater because it's not inclusive enough. You see it

00:22:41.620 obviously with taking Shakespeare out of the English department. What is the end game for

00:22:46.260 this cultural left?

00:22:47.300 Well, I mean, all you have to do is read George Orwell's 1984 and you see that you see part of

00:22:54.160 the end game. And if you were to read, um, Cleon Scousin's, the naked communist, he has a section

00:23:01.760 in there. The book was published in 1958 and it had a section on 45 current communist goals.

00:23:10.660 And that was current in 1958. They were read into the congressional record in 1963. The political

00:23:18.680 left has accomplished most of those goals. And the end game seems to be to take America down.

00:23:25.880 And I think that if people would read George Orwell's 1984 and maybe Animal Farm as well,

00:23:34.040 uh, Huxley's Brave New World, if they would read it with the knowledge they have today about society,

00:23:41.000 maybe it would awaken enough young people. And I also would include Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. 0.67

00:23:47.960 I think that every conservative needs to read it. And those parts of it that doesn't offend their

00:23:53.880 conscience, they should apply it, such as make your enemy live up to his rule book. And, um,

00:24:00.600 and I think that it's up to the young people that people of my generation can point them in the right

00:24:07.160 direction. But ultimately, if they're going to preserve this society, they will have to fight and they

00:24:15.080 will have to fight with knowledge and they need to know history and they need to value the

00:24:18.760 constitution. They need to know their enemy.

00:24:21.000 Right. I think that's so much of it. I think the hollowing out of the curricula and knocking

00:24:26.040 down all these statues and trying to erase our history and revise our history. I think a lot of

00:24:30.680 that is so that we can wipe away all of that accumulated knowledge of tradition and make it easier for the

00:24:36.360 reformers to keep reforming and reforming and reforming. Now, I notice at the beginning of

00:24:41.160 your book, Be the People, you quote two of my favorite men, Leon Cass, in his book on Genesis and

00:24:46.840 C.S. Lewis on Screwtape, both writers about scripture, both writing about scripture in that case.

00:24:52.600 You know, Harvard's founding motto was Veritas Pro Christo et Ecclesiae, truth for Christ and church.

00:25:01.640 All of these early colleges and universities in America were founded to study scripture,

00:25:06.520 to be as Harvard's rules and precepts of 1646 wrote, the main end of a student's life and studies

00:25:13.400 is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, the only foundation of all sound knowledge and

00:25:18.200 learning. Then you fast forward now and the former president of Johns Hopkins University

00:25:23.240 says the bad news is the university has become godless. Larry Summers, former president of Harvard,

00:25:28.360 confessed things divine have been central neither to my professional nor to my personal life. This

00:25:34.440 sure seems like mission drift to me. Does the university need to return to God or are we so beyond

00:25:42.120 that point in culture that that's a lost cause? No, I think that it's up to the students and their parents

00:25:49.800 and those people who value America to use their influence and their dollars to push the university

00:25:56.520 back to the middle. I mean, they don't have to go, you know, all the way back to the 1700s when God was

00:26:06.440 honored at these institutions that were founded. But I think that they are so off balance now. And I think

00:26:14.040 that we all have a stake in having leaders and producing citizens who know how to think. We're not

00:26:21.320 teaching anyone how to think these days, not even the faculty can think. And that's very problematic.

00:26:29.320 I do have a friend named Mary Poplin, who is at Claremont Graduate School. She has founded a new

00:26:38.120 organization named the Upper Room. It's a nonprofit, but it's Christian intellectual, Christian intellectual

00:26:47.640 faculty members who are looking at that discipline and trying to sort of reinterpret their discipline

00:26:55.000 based on their knowledge of truth, Christian truth. And the political left doesn't want to debate because

00:27:03.800 they don't have the facts on their side. They don't even have science on their side anymore. They don't

00:27:09.400 even know the difference between male and female. They lose when you deal with facts and you deal with science.

00:27:16.840 And I think that the effort that Mary and the faculty members involved in her project,

00:27:23.560 it's all about trying to recapture the universities. I think the universities can be recaptured,

00:27:29.320 but it's going to take all of us working together with a vision.

00:27:32.920 They're absolutely right. I've noticed this just speaking to my own friends in the academy.

00:27:37.240 I find basically all of them are godless except for the smartest ones. And the smartest ones are talking

00:27:42.120 about Jesus. I know, you know, the, the son of the great, uh, Lord of the multiverse,

00:27:47.880 our colleague, Andrew Klavan, uh, his son works on classics at, uh, Oxford and he has a wonderful

00:27:54.360 reading group who work on scripture and a reading group of Christians that I, I try to listen to or

00:28:00.600 glean some insight from. I wonder if we're on the verge of a, of a revival in that way. Organizations like

00:28:06.840 that would be, uh, would be phenomenal if that's the case. If the universities are failing us,

00:28:11.480 which it seems they are. People write into me all the time. They say, should I go to college?

00:28:15.400 Should my child go to college? Is it a total waste? Is it going to simply saddle me with a

00:28:19.560 quarter million dollars in debt? Uh, now, obviously you did very well in, in the academy to say the

00:28:25.160 least. Uh, I enjoyed college very much and I think I got something out of it. In what ways should students

00:28:31.320 augment their education? What books should people be reading that the universities have failed

00:28:37.720 to teach? What things should people be studying on their own if they're not going to get it in college?

00:28:42.920 First of all, I would urge every parent as Christian who has the resources to either 1.00

00:28:48.840 homeschool individually or as part of a cooperative group. Do not send your child to the fancy private

00:28:56.520 school or the public school unless it's a classical Christian, uh, school. And so that's the first thing,

00:29:04.520 because they would get education at those institutions that they would not get anywhere

00:29:09.080 else. So their foundation will be laid. And I think that every literate person needs to know the Bible

00:29:16.920 and whether or not they are a believer or not, that that's the basic, the greatest book in the world

00:29:22.280 that they need to know. But Western civilization, stick with the classics, stick with the great books

00:29:29.000 of the past. And I think that's a firm foundation, but also know your enemy. And I think when our children

00:29:36.680 go off to college, they need to know that they're entering enemy territory. And sometimes it's the

00:29:43.480 Christian schools. So many of them have gone so far left that they're not a safe place for Christian

00:29:49.800 students. Uh, but I don't think we should stop sending our children to college. We need to prepare them ahead of

00:29:57.560 time. If they are Christians in churches, they need to know apologetics as well as worldviews and, 0.63

00:30:04.680 and the literature of the political left. We need to answer that questions before they get to college.

00:30:09.640 And how do we, that's such a good point. And you talk about the Western canon and Western civilization,

00:30:14.360 and now both the left and the radical left and the racists on the alt-right, they say, well,

00:30:20.920 the Western canon, that's just white guys. That's white civilization, uh, that is different than an 0.95

00:30:26.840 exclusionary than other cultures. How do you respond to this? The Southern Poverty Law Center,

00:30:32.280 that vicious and awful group.

00:30:34.040 What about race? I respond as a, I mean, I respond as a Christian because that's my worldview. And I

00:30:40.280 believe there's only one race, the human race. And that, um, that, that, I mean, I, I dismiss,

00:30:48.520 I discount, I do not legitimize those who argue that we should not read Shakespeare because he was

00:30:54.680 white or that we should not read dead white men. I think that some of the greatest works of history,

00:31:02.120 uh, we're making a terrible mistake, you know, by, uh, removing, uh, Mark Twain and, um,

00:31:09.800 what's the Harper Harper, uh, Harper Lee. Yeah. Uh, the, um, to kill a mockingbird and all of those,

00:31:17.320 you know, stories that have impacted generations of people. And, you know, uncle Tom's cabin,

00:31:22.920 that's probably not politically correct, but it's an important book. I think that we were

00:31:27.560 making a huge mistake when we removed literature because the author happened to have been, you know,

00:31:33.960 white. That's right. And that if we treat white people the same way we, the political left says

00:31:40.520 that we should treat members of every other group, we would not have a problem. They, um, created the

00:31:47.240 race and the racism to a large extent, and they are using it, you know, to divide people. And I think

00:31:52.680 it's very, very important that, uh, we don't give up the Western traditions, the Judeo-Christian way

00:32:00.040 of life that is responsible for America being a country that people are willing to risk their lives

00:32:05.880 to come to, even though they try to change it once they get here. Of course. And all of these values of

00:32:11.720 equitable governance and justice and liberty and equality, all of those things come out of the

00:32:17.720 Western tradition that people are now so despising, the Western tradition animated by Christianity, 1.00

00:32:23.320 uh, in which there is neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free nor male nor female for all are

00:32:28.760 one in the body of Christ. That part seems to evade both the radicals on the racist fringe and also

00:32:34.760 the radical left. And really, really excellent to talk to you. We could go on forever, but I'm up

00:32:39.320 against a break. Professor Swain, thank you so much for being here. We'll have to have you back and talk a

00:32:43.720 little bit more. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Wow. She is great. Unbelievable

00:32:49.080 background raised in a shack. One of 12 kids slept on the kitchen floor, didn't have plumbing,

00:32:55.400 didn't have running water and rises up to become a professor of law and political science at the

00:33:01.720 most elite institutions of the country. And now the SPLC calls her a white supremacist or something,

00:33:08.360 a white bigot, absolutely outrageous and despicable. She, yeah, Carol Swain, she is so good. I urge 0.98

00:33:14.280 people to read, uh, to read her books and look her up on YouTube. She's given other great talks as

00:33:17.960 well. Okay. We got it. Speaking about our culture and our history and defending our culture, we've got

00:33:22.600 to get to this day in history. But before we do that, I'm sorry, you guys are monsters. You guys are 0.98

00:33:26.680 just vicious monsters. I have to say goodbye to Facebook and the audience formerly on YouTube, 0.98

00:33:32.200 the former audience that was on YouTube before they decided to censor us. And every syllable that comes

00:33:38.040 out of my mouth, probably because I have those white supremacists on like Carol Swain. That's 1.00

00:33:41.560 probably why they can't, they can't allow our videos on YouTube. Okay. Thank you very much.

00:33:45.720 If you're watching there, go to dailywire.com. If you're already a subscriber, we appreciate it.

00:33:49.880 You help keep the lights on and covfefe in my leftist years Tumblr. What do you get? You get

00:33:54.520 for $10 a month or $100 for an annual membership. You get me, the Andrew Klavan show, the Ben Shapiro show.

00:33:59.240 You get the conversation coming up with the big boss very soon. Uh, the Ben Shapiro, that one will be up

00:34:04.360 next. None of that matters. What really matters is this. Have you guys been watching

00:34:07.800 Jimmy Kimmel lately? Have you been seeing him? Jimmy Kimmel, the former host of the man show,

00:34:13.320 is now sobbing on national television every single night. And you're going to need these guys. He said

00:34:19.320 he was happy that he doesn't have a Republican audience anymore. He said riddance. I won't even

00:34:22.920 say good riddance, riddance. And you're going to need these. Otherwise, I think your computer or your,

00:34:27.160 uh, your television rather is going to explode. It's going to, uh, because you don't want all that

00:34:31.320 salty water near the electrical wires. And Jimmy Kimmel is giving you a steady stream every night.

00:34:35.640 So make sure you get your leftist tears tumbler so you can safely dispose of those salty,

00:34:40.440 salty left, leftist tears. And you, and you can drink them because they're, they're delicious,

00:34:43.960 either hot or cold. They're always delicious. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back with

00:34:47.720 this day in history on Washington's birthday.

00:34:49.560 It is time for this day in history.

00:35:05.640 On this day in history, it's Washington's birthday, which shouldn't be confused with

00:35:09.720 Washington's birthday. It's Washington's birthday, but it's, it's certainly not the day, uh,

00:35:13.720 George Washington was born. He was born on February 11th under the Julian calendar,

00:35:18.040 because the British empire had not yet adopted the Gregorian calendar because they were Protestant

00:35:22.360 savages and the Catholic church adopted that Gregorian calendar in 1582. So on the Gregorian

00:35:28.600 calendar, which is the one we use, Washington was born on February 22nd. It's also not today.

00:35:33.960 It's also not Lincoln's birthday. Sometimes this day is called Washington and Lincoln's birthday.

00:35:37.880 Lincoln's birthday was February 12th. The thing that is most certainly not is President's Day,

00:35:42.840 which was a name change proposed in the 1968 Uniform Monday Holiday Act, but mercifully,

00:35:48.280 it failed in committee because I do not want to take away George Washington's birthday and start

00:35:53.400 celebrating other presidents like Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter or whatever. Maybe, maybe, uh,

00:35:58.840 Calvin Coolidge or something, but Warren Harding, but certainly not, uh, those later presidents.

00:36:05.160 George Washington's birthday. George Washington was born in 1732.

00:36:08.680 The thing I think we all have to drive home. We have this image of George Washington. Well,

00:36:13.640 in the old days, we had an image of him as the father of the country, this, the guy on the $1 bill.

00:36:18.600 Now we have the image of him as a vicious slave holder because we all read Howard's in and stuff like

00:36:23.720 that in schools. George Washington was an amazingly courageous, dignified, and virtuous man of a caliber

00:36:29.560 that I don't think we can even fathom in 2018. He was born in 1732. His father died in 1743. George was

00:36:37.320 just 11 years old. His father left him very little money for formal schooling. So Washington was only

00:36:42.760 able to be formally educated through age 15. How did he educate himself? He clearly was an educated

00:36:48.600 man. He did it on his own. He decided of his own volition to write down the rules of etiquette

00:36:55.240 that a dignified and gentlemanly guy would comport himself with. He wrote his own book. You can still buy

00:37:00.520 Washington's rules for civility. Washington was insanely courageous in battle. People now criticize

00:37:08.680 him for having made some strategic errors as general. You know, if they were errors and maybe

00:37:14.080 there were errors, he was saved time and time again by providence and weather patterns, which sometimes

00:37:19.400 you can't distinguish from one another. But he was insanely courageous. During the French and Indian

00:37:23.560 War at the Battle of Monongahela in 1755, Washington rode through men who were being slaughtered all

00:37:30.680 around him to take charge of the collapsing lines. He could have stayed back, but he decided to ride

00:37:35.560 charge on ahead to take care of these lines as men were falling off horses all around him. During this

00:37:41.480 charge, he had two horses shot out from under him and four bullet holes shot through his coat. Four

00:37:46.600 bullet holes. Now, I am convinced, as are many, that the American Revolution would not have been won.

00:37:51.960 We could not have won it. It would have been over in 1776 without George Washington. Here is a clear

00:37:57.160 example of providence. Two horses shot out from under him in the same instance. Four bullet holes

00:38:02.040 through his coat and he kept on and was able then to take the lead in the American Revolution. At the

00:38:07.560 Battle of Princeton in 1777, George Washington led soldiers from his white charger to within a mere 30

00:38:13.800 yards of the British line. He was an easy target. Everyone thought he was going to get killed. He didn't

00:38:18.520 care. He is said to have said, parade with me, my fine fellows. We will have them soon.

00:38:23.640 This reminds me of Churchill when his plane was shot down the third time. They said,

00:38:26.920 don't you fear death? He said, I love life, but I do not fear death. You see this time and again

00:38:31.240 with Washington on the battlefield. By December 1776, most consider the revolution a lost cause.

00:38:37.080 The Patriots had suffered defeats in New York and New Jersey, massive defeats. So what did Washington do?

00:38:41.880 He led a counter-strike against the ice-filled Delaware River on Christmas Day. And even that

00:38:47.320 charge was delayed immensely. People said, there's no way there won't be any element of surprise,

00:38:51.800 which there wasn't. It was daylight by the time they arrived there. And he said, it doesn't matter.

00:38:56.120 We're doing it anyway. This is how we're going to win. In 1781, with the revolution once again on the

00:39:01.400 verge of defeat, Washington made the risky decision to surround Cornwallis's British army at Yorktown.

00:39:06.680 This wasn't the ceremonial end to the war. This was a major risky decision. And there had been

00:39:11.640 huge setbacks for the Patriots. Nevertheless, he decided to surround Cornwallis's army. It won the

00:39:17.000 war. On December 23rd, 1783, George Washington surrendered his military commission to Congress

00:39:22.920 to affirm civilian control of the military. This handing over of power caused his former foe,

00:39:27.640 King George III, to call him, quote, the greatest man in the world. He then followed this up by

00:39:33.080 surrendering presidential power after two terms. It's not like there were term limits. It wasn't

00:39:37.480 until that dirty, rotten Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, that they would break Washington's 0.99

00:39:42.360 example of two terms and stay on until he died in his mistress's arms. But George Washington set 0.99

00:39:47.640 that precedent. He could have stayed on. He could have been the American king. But it wasn't until a

00:39:51.400 Democrat in the 20th century that someone strove to become the American king. Washington was the

00:39:56.680 richest president in American history. He was the richest president in American history. We now have

00:40:02.280 President Covfefe, who converted the White House into the Gold House. So now Washington is only the

00:40:06.520 second richest American president, but still pretty good record. Upon his death, Washington freed his

00:40:11.800 slaves. Washington was the only founding father to do so. He was universally respected by his peers.

00:40:17.560 He was the only founding father who could say that. They were always infighting with one another,

00:40:21.400 but not with Washington. Abigail Adams wrote, quote, he is polite with dignity, affable without

00:40:27.800 formality, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity, modest, wise, and good.

00:40:34.200 It's a pretty good recommendation. Lafayette said, General Washington is the greatest man,

00:40:38.520 for I look upon him as the most virtuous. Nathaniel Green, one of the greatest officers

00:40:42.760 of the revolution reported, quote, his excellency, General Washington has arrived amongst us universally

00:40:48.360 admired. Joy was visible on every countenance. Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the

00:40:53.080 Declaration of Independence wrote, quote, he retreats like a general and attacks like a hero.

00:40:57.800 One age cannot do justice to his merit, but the united voices of a grateful posterity shall pay a

00:41:04.440 cheerful tribute of undissembled praise to the greatest order of their country's freedom. I hope

00:41:10.040 that's the case, and I hope that ingrates and revisionists don't start toppling statues as we've

00:41:15.160 seen happening all around us, as President Trump spoke about last year. I hope we don't see that too

00:41:20.440 much. I hope the gratitude continues. Thomas Jefferson wrote, quote, on the whole,

00:41:24.280 Washington's character was in its mass perfect. Never did nature and fortune combined more

00:41:28.840 perfectly to make a man great. As Henry Lee wrote famously in his eulogy of Washington,

00:41:34.760 first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, may he ever remain so,

00:41:39.960 the greatest of the founding fathers, George Washington. That's this day in history,

00:41:43.640 and it's not President's Day. It's Washington's birthday. Say it out loud. Shout out from the rooftops.

00:41:48.520 Happy birthday to Washington. That is our show. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll have much more

00:41:52.920 cofefe to cover. Until then, I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. I'll see you then.

00:42:02.360 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production. Executive producer,

00:42:06.760 Jeremy Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Supervising producer, Mathis Glover. Our technical

00:42:12.520 producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Alex Zingaro. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is

00:42:18.920 by Jesua Olvera. Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Michael Knowles Show - February 19, 2018

Ep. 107 - Are Colleges Destroying Race Relations？ ft. Prof. Carol Swain

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