Ep. 1150 - 4,155 Pages Of Garbage
Episode Stats
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Summary
On the eve of the deadline for Congress to vote on a spending bill, the $1.7 trillion Omnibus spending bill passed the House of Representatives and now the Senate must vote on it by Friday or the government will shut down.
Transcript
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Early yesterday morning, the Congressional Appropriations Committee has released their
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spending proposal. Lawmakers will now have to read, debate, and vote on the bill by Friday
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or the government will shut down. The bill is 4,155 pages long. Forget voting for a second.
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Forget debating. How exactly is anyone supposed to read 4,155 pages in three days?
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The Iliad is roughly 700 pages. The Divine Comedy is about 800. War and Peace, about 1,225 pages.
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The Bible, roughly 1,400 pages. If between now and Friday, you somehow managed to read
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the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, War and Peace, and the entire Bible, you would still not have read
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as many pages as are contained in this spending bill. Now, let's say you somehow managed it. You
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read all those books, and you threw in one extra book on top of that. You threw in Speechless,
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Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, just to, thank you very much, just to get you over the
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4,155-page mark. Do you think that you would be able to organize your thoughts about those books?
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Do you think that you would be able to debate the major themes and plot points raised by
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Homer, Dante, Tolstoy, Moses, Ezra, David, Isaiah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Knowles, and 31 or
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so other writers in three days, four days if you include the day of the vote, at which point you'd
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decide whether or not to spend $1.7 trillion. It's very difficult for people to conceptualize what
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trillion is. That is $1.7 million, million. I strongly suspect you would not be able to do that.
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I don't think any of us would. I also strongly suspect you are much more intelligent than the
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average congressman. But then that's the point. The lawmakers are never supposed to read these bills.
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They are just supposed to rubber stamp them. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Rene Tagg, who says,
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I have adult friends who don't have their driver's license, but have spent thousands of dollars on
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their Squishmallow collection. It's genuinely very sad and concerning. I'm just really happy that I can
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say I have no idea what a Squishmallow collection is. In my mind, what I am picturing is a mashup of
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Mitt Romney, like Mitt Romney wearing the Michelin Man suit, like a big marshmallow version of Mitt
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Romney and the guys at the bulwark, you know, and all the libs and the squishes. And so that sounds
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kind of cute. And maybe I get that little collection too. But it is very sad when people
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are spending thousands of dollars on toys and not behaving like adults. You should behave like an
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adult, okay? You got to get big and strong. You got to get a lot of iron pumping through your veins.
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for $35 off. Good Ranchers, American meat delivered. What is in this omnibus bill? I don't know.
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I didn't read the bill. It came out yesterday and it's over 4,000 pages long. So I'm not going to sit
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here and pretend like I read the bill. No one has. Not one person on earth has read this entire bill.
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Now, what I can gather is in the bill based on the small sections of the bill that were proposed
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individually and the people who sponsored them. And based on the reporting of the handful of
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trustworthy journalists that are left in America. The bill includes funding of the government through
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September of next year. It boosts defense spending by $76 billion. So now total defense spending will
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be $858 billion. It's got domestic spending of $773 billion. Then we've got, well, we got $45 billion
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in military and economic aid for Ukraine. That's everyone's top priority, right?
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We haven't given enough billions and billions of dollars to Ukraine. Got to make sure, top of the
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line, we give many, many more billions. This is more money, by the way, than even Biden requested.
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Biden requested $37 billion. What they're going to end up going with is $45. It includes $5 billion
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in earmarks for 3,200 projects. I actually don't care about that so much. That's just how laws are
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made. Laws are made by saying, okay, Congressman, can I get your vote if I send a little bit of money to
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your district? Hey, all right, Congressman, what if I, I know you're holding out firm. Well, what if I
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build this bridge in your district? Okay, that's fine. And they got a really bad rap in 2008. John
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McCain made a big issue about how terrible earmarks are. But it was all BS. John McCain only did that
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because he was a huge, big spending Republican on so many other issues. And earmarks account for such
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an infinitesimally small portion of federal spending that he said, okay, I'm going to make a big
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example out of earmarks and quote unquote pork barrel spending. Meanwhile, John McCain is spending
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zillions of dollars on all sorts of other nonsense that he wants. So I don't mind. You can have your
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$5 billion. It's a $1.7 trillion bill, $5 billion in basic politics, not as big a deal. $47 billion
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for the National Institutes of Health because they've been so trustworthy and so effective in
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recent years, right? What would we do without the NIH sending money overseas to the Wuhan Institute of
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Virology to fund gain of function research? What would we do? Oh, goodness. What would we do
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if we weren't paying the salary of Dr. Fauci? Why? Could you imagine what would happen then? We might
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have a global pandemic or something. So good that we're spending $47 billion on the NIH.
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A billion dollars for Puerto Rico's electrical grid, $600 million to address water issues in
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Jackson, Mississippi. Josh Hawley is pushing to have a ban on TikTok on government devices
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included in the omnibus. So that's a good thing, right? There are certain things in the bill that are
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fine and they add in these little good things as part of what is broadly a terrible bill. And then
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this is a tricky one. They've included in the spending bill something called the Electoral Count
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Reform Act. And the Electoral Count Reform Act is a way to change the process for how presidential
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elections are certified. And this is a terrible addition to the bill, but it's my favorite addition
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to the bill. Because it proves that conservatives were right the whole time. And we've been being
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gaslit by Democrats since election day 2020. The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition
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Improvement Act is a bill that was co-sponsored by Susan Collins, who's a liberal Republican,
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and Joe Manchin, who's a conservative Democrat. And so it's supposed to be this bipartisan bill.
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And it amends our Electoral Count Act of 1887. So this is the biggest overhaul to how presidential
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elections are conducted from the federal level in a very long time, about a century and a half.
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And what it does is reaffirms that the vice president has only a ministerial role at the
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joint session of Congress where the electoral college votes are counted. So remember last time,
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January 6th, there was all this chatter about what the vice president would do when the votes came
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in. There were dueling slates of electors. Some states didn't want to certify these votes.
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There was a big fight. And why? Because the Democrats changed all of the election rules
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right before the election. They used COVID as the excuse to do that. But the way that they changed
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the election rules gave a huge advantage to Democrats. And in some cases, like in the case of
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Pennsylvania, it violated the state constitution by using things like widespread mail-in ballots,
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explicitly prohibited by the state constitution. So there was all this question. It wouldn't have
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been the first time that this happened in the US. In the 1870s, there were also many questions about
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how the election was conducted. And as a result of that, there was an electoral commission that had
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been appointed. This was the option preferred by Senator Cruz in 2020. This was the option preferred by
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Representative Paul Gosar, for instance, and a number of other Republicans in the Congress.
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It was all shot down. Everyone knows. Then what happened the rest of the day? January 6th,
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the worst day in the history of the world. Well, anyway, this electoral reform act that is being
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wedged into the omnibus because the Democrats don't want to debate it on its own merits,
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this would amend that whole process. And my favorite part of it is, it proves that the Democrats
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were lying in 2020. In 2020, what the Democrats said is the vice president does not have the ability
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to reject slates of electors. The vice president does not have the ability to send electors back
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to the states to sort out who the state actually voted for. The vice president does not have the
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ability not to certify the election. That's what we were told by all the Democrats and by a lot of
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the libs on the Republican side. Okay, it's a complex historical political legal question. So what
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do I know? Maybe there, except if all that's true, then why do you need to pass this new electoral
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count reform act? If that's so clearly true that the vice president doesn't have any actual power
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at the certification of presidential elections, then why do you need to change the law to take
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away his power to do anything at the certification of presidential elections? It's an admission that
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they were lying or at least seriously overstating their case in 2020. And so now what they're trying
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to do is streamline the process anymore such that if there are any shenanigans in the states,
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there are fewer ways for the people to come out and object to them. Not good stuff, but it is
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something that we can come to expect. Politicians who are in power want to stay in power. And the
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Democrats in particular, who have done a much better job at rigging elections historically and certainly
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in recent years than Republicans have done, do not want the people to have much recourse to questioning
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the results of those elections. If, for instance, many more states adopt, I guess most states at this
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point have electronic voting processes. And there are some questions about that, or some questions
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about the widespread mail-in ballots, or some questions about ballot harvesting, or some questions
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about fraud, or some questions about the precincts being shut down and people not being allowed to
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cast their ballots in an orderly way. And they have to put them in a separate box called box three,
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like we just saw in Maricopa County in 2022. Then if this occurs during a presidential election,
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there will be less recourse for the people to object to that. That is what they want. There is such,
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so there's so much in this omnibus bill. And what the Congress is betting on, and what the Democrats
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in particular are betting on, is that people don't want a government shutdown. They're going to get
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everything through in this bill. It's going to probably be the only legislation that Congress
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passes for the next two years at this point, because we've got a split power. We've got a
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Republican House coming in. Democrats still run the Senate. Democrats have the White House. So
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they're not going to actually do anything. Instead of passing bills and debating them, like instead of
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just proposing the Electoral Account Reform Act and debating it and having that be an open vote,
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instead of just debating more spending for Ukraine, instead of just debating more spending for the NIH,
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they're just going to throw it all in there. They're going to all lump it in together.
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And the Congress is going to basically say they had no choice but to vote for it.
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And so we get more, more, more spending on crazier things, and the American people don't get to say
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boo about it. What else is in the bill? This may be my favorite part of the bill. I know I just said
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that the Electoral Account Reform Act is my favorite part. This one might even beat that.
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The $1.7 trillion omnibus bill designates a part of Washington, D.C., our nation's capital,
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is now going to be designated as Ukrainian Independence Park. And there are now going to
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be signs around the park that include information on the importance of the independence, freedom,
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and sovereignty of Ukraine, and the solidarity between the people of Ukraine and the United
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States. I mean no offense to Ukraine. I'm sure Ukraine is a great place. I'd love to visit Kiev
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at some point. I love the chicken dish that comes from there.
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Does anybody really believe that the political status of Ukraine, whether it's a little bit more
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democratic, which it basically never has been, or it's a little more oligarchic, which it pretty much
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always has been, and whether the oligarchs lean more pro-Russia, which they for a very long time
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have, or if they lean a little bit more pro-Western, which they sometimes have, does anyone really
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believe that is a matter of existential national importance to the United States? Does anybody
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believe that? No. The only people who believe that work on Capitol Hill. Not one other American
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really, really believes that. The bill is being sponsored by Representative Victoria Sparks,
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who is Ukrainian, and she proposed the Ukrainian Independence Park Act of 2022,
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and Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, who is one of the biggest squish. He's a Republican nominally,
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but he's effectively a Democrat. Huge squish. Co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus.
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And all of this got me thinking, we have a Congressional Ukraine Caucus? Why do we have,
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how many caucuses do we have? Why do we have a Congressional Ukraine Caucus? I think,
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my family is Italian, okay? I like, I like Italy. I like the Italian people. This is no knock on Italy
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or the Italian people. I don't think we need to designate a part of our nation's capital to being
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Italy square about the importance of Italy to America. I don't think Italy matters all that much
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to America. Italy is a very important place, really, for the whole of Western civilization and our
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history and how it developed. But the political status of Italy at any given point in time right
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now has absolutely no bearing on the United States. And I don't think we need to designate
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part of our nation's capital to Italy. We can have a neighborhood. We can have a little Italy and you
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go eat some Italian food. I don't think we need to have a federal law that sets aside part of the
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nation's capital for Italy or for Ukraine or for any of this. Why do we have a Ukraine caucus? Why
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is it that the American people pretty much don't care about the political status of most countries
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outside the United States, including Ukraine? But on Capitol Hill, the Democrats are completely
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head over heels for Ukraine. They all change their little, their Twitter and Facebook bios to include
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the Ukrainian flag for some reason. Absurd, by the way. You're an American. You should have the American
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flag in your bio, not the flag of any other foreign nation, no matter how sympathetic we might be
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with that nation. But a lot of Republicans do, though. The whole Republican establishment is gaga over
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Ukraine. Mitch McConnell, Senate minority leader, leader of the Republicans in the Senate, has said that the
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top priority for Republicans is Ukraine. Making sure the Defense Department can deal
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with the major threats coming from Russia and China, providing assistance for the Ukrainians to defeat the
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Russians. That's the number one priority for the United States right now, according to most Republicans.
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That's sort of how we see the challenges confronting the country at the moment.
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That's the top issue, according to Mr. Cocaine himself. So what does this show? What it shows is
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not just that those guys on Capitol Hill are totally crazy. There are a lot of things, but they're not
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totally crazy. They usually have a reason for doing what they're doing. They are very rational actors,
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politicians in both parties, in as much as they're very, very good at keeping themselves in power.
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They have an uncanny ability for cold calculation. So what is the calculation here on Ukraine?
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I think it shows you what a lot of people have suspected from the beginning, which is that all
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this talk about the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine, that's a bunch of nonsense.
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Ukraine is a border state, a border nation. It has been one for a long time. It is a battleground
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for fights between the East and the West, between Russia and Europe and the United States. And the
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reason that this war broke out in the first place is because in Ukraine 10 years ago, you had a pro-Russian
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leader. And the U.S. didn't like that very much. And so Western powers put pressure on Ukraine and
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helped to fund and encourage discontent in Ukraine that did already exist to, that ultimately led to
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the Maidan revolution and ousted the pro-Russian leader and put in a more pro-Russian leader,
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ousted that guy. It's very confusing when you're talking about Ukraine. The Maidan revolution then
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led to a more pro-Western government in Ukraine. Then you started seeing a lot of talk about Ukraine
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joining the European Union, Ukraine joining NATO. Russia said that that would be an unacceptable
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security risk to have NATO come that close to its borders and that important a country.
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And so then you saw Russia annex parts of Ukraine. This is going back now eight years.
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And then you saw the major war break out earlier this year in Ukraine. And what this tells me is
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Ukraine is not viewed as an independent nation, obviously by Russia or by the United States and
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Europe. Ukraine is being viewed right now as a theater of empire. Russia says it openly.
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The U.S. and the West say it implicitly. When we say that Ukraine is the most important issue for
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Americans, what we're saying is that the American Western empire is very important. The American world
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order where we are the top dog and we are governing the rules of the world is very, very important.
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And I'm not even disputing that. That is the current world order that we have. And they're
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saying we cannot allow Russia to encroach on Ukraine. Why? Not because Ukraine is this
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absolutely sovereign, independent nation. No, because Ukraine is a part of the broader imperial
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project for the U.S. and the West. And we all know that to be the case. I'm not even knocking it.
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I'm not attacking that. I'd rather we run the world than the Russians run the world or China run the
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world. But that's what it is. It is an imperial battle. We like to think that we're living in
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the new modern times. We're so different from all those terrible old state actors in the past.
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Remember when they fought wars of empire and land conquest? We're doing the exact same now.
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Because that's a fact of politics. That is just how people interact in the world. And that's what
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we're seeing. That's what Mitch McConnell means when he says it's the most important thing.
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It's the most important thing to what? The American nation? I don't think so. I think it's the most
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important thing to the American empire. Now, Rand Paul would disagree. Rand Paul, who is much more
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interested in pulling back American influence abroad and focusing in on the problems that we've got here
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at home. He asked the question, where do the real threats to America lie? I brought with me the Omni,
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4,155 pages. When was it produced? In the dead of the night. 1.30 in the morning when it was released.
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But what's the clamor? The clamor is to vote. Vote now. Let's get it done. Why are you standing in the
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way of spending? Well, the real question is this. What is more dangerous? Are we at risk for being
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invaded by a foreign power if we don't put $45 billion into the military? Are we more at risk by adding
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to a $31 trillion debt? I think the greatest risk to our national security is our debt. The American
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people don't want this. They're sick and tired of it. They're paying for it through the nose with
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inflation. Adding a trillion dollars to the deficit will simply fuel the fires that are consuming our
00:22:20.320
wages and consuming our retirement plans. It's a terrible system. Someone needs to stand up. We're
00:22:26.200
standing up and we're going to say no. Preach. Preach, Rand. What's amazing about Rand's statement
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here is that he actually, I believe, got the number wrong on military spending. He referred to the $45
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billion number instead of the $76 billion number. I think he confused the boost to American military
00:22:49.340
spending with the boost to Ukraine spending. And it's not a knock on him. One, it's very confusing and
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the reports are a little bit ambiguous. And it shows you the heart of the problem, which is that
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the Dems dropped this 4,000 plus page bill. And they say, okay, you got to vote on it in three days.
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Where even a United States senator doesn't get a chance to vote on that. And when you look at the
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boost to military spending, you had boost to military spending for our country, boost to military spending
00:23:15.940
for other countries. And they say, without this, without the $76 billion extra that we get in American
00:23:22.440
military spending, that country is going to be at existential risk. I don't know. I think Rand Paul
00:23:27.580
is right. I think that our debt poses a far larger long-term risk than some marginal increase in
00:23:36.400
defense spending. I remember 10 years ago, Mitch Daniels, then the governor of Indiana, a lot of people
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thought he was going to run for president. He said, we're facing a new red menace. This time, it's not the
00:23:45.920
commies. It's not the Soviets exactly. It's the debt. It's a red menace consisting of ink.
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If we manage our own country in such an irresponsible way that we become more and more
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dependent on China to pay for all of our flights of fancy, and we open up our borders, and we allow
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domestic discord to tear our country apart, then Russia's going to be the least of our worries.
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Guys, we've got a lot more problems a lot closer to home. Very often, when you want to improve your
00:24:16.700
position in the world, it's best not just to look out at everybody else, but it's good to look
00:24:20.960
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to download the reading plan for free. That is ascensionpress.com slash Knowles to download the
00:25:32.860
reading plan for free. Speaking of threats, the people of the world, and especially Germany,
00:25:40.740
can rest easy tonight, a 97-year-old woman has been arrested and convicted of the crime that
00:25:48.520
she was arrested for. What is the crime? 97-year-old woman worked in a Nazi concentration camp
00:25:56.060
back when she was 18 years old. She was not firing guns. She was not giving orders.
00:26:05.340
She was a secretary at a Nazi concentration camp at Stutthof, and she was 18 years old. Now,
00:26:13.720
because of her age, she was actually tried in juvenile court. A 97-year-old woman
00:26:23.600
was tried in juvenile court because she was a secretary at the age of 18 when her country
00:26:33.560
was in a state of total war. She was given a two-year suspended jail sentence,
00:26:40.900
and she was found guilty of being an accessory to the murder of 10,505 prisoners and the attempted
00:26:49.100
murder of five other people. And this is where, when you just see the headline, you say,
00:26:55.820
this is really completely preposterous. But then when you see what she's found guilty of,
00:27:02.880
it makes it a little bit more morally complex because this woman was 18 years old working
00:27:12.080
as a secretary for people who were doing very, very bad things. 10,000 plus people killed
00:27:21.640
with her participation in that. I don't know. Part of me looks at that and says,
00:27:28.600
I guess you should be held to account. You feel bad for a 97-year-old woman. You say,
00:27:32.640
well, those 10,500 people, they didn't get a chance to live. She got to live her whole life.
00:27:37.540
Then you say, can a 97-year-old woman really be held responsible for clerical work she did at the
00:27:46.040
age of 18 when her country was in a state? That seems unfair too. That seems sort of unjust.
00:27:52.880
What are we to make of this? One, you have to ask yourself, what is the point of this at this point?
00:27:57.940
What is the point of this prosecution? She wasn't a commander. She wasn't giving orders. She wasn't
00:28:02.400
carrying out orders, really. She was just writing things on paper. She was just a clerical functionary.
00:28:09.200
What is the point of this? The point of this just to get one last ounce of justice or revenge?
00:28:17.540
What is the point to show that if you commit atrocities in war, you'll be held to account
00:28:23.400
by the victors even 80 years later? Maybe. Maybe it is. And maybe it's just. I'm not saying it isn't.
00:28:32.480
You know, if my grandpa died or grandma died in a concentration camp, I'd probably want that woman
00:28:37.340
to actually serve time in jail. She was given a suspended sentence. I'd probably, I don't care
00:28:41.000
she's 97. I'd probably want her to go to jail. I'd like to think that I would be able to have grace
00:28:46.800
and forgive her and say, no, she shouldn't. She's 97, whatever. But I don't know. I don't know what
00:28:50.800
I would feel. I love my grandparents. But it does make you think about us right now. Forget about
00:28:57.780
World War II for a second. Forget about the Holocaust. Forget about this 97-year-old woman.
00:29:07.340
Every year in the United States, we kill roughly 850,000 babies. Since Roe v. Wade was passed down
00:29:15.360
from the Supreme Court, over 60 million babies have been killed in the United States. That's 10 times
00:29:24.600
the number of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. And that's what? That's five times the number
00:29:30.200
roughly of total victims of Hitler's terror. How many people will be held to account for that?
00:29:40.240
How many abortion doctors? How many people who handed down the law? Furthermore,
00:29:44.800
how many secretaries are there working right now at Planned Parenthood today who are signing off the
00:29:50.460
death warrants of all those little babies? And what's going to happen 80 years from now? I'm
00:29:55.180
quite convinced that future generations will look back on our generation with moral horror at what we
00:30:03.680
have done. 850,000 people a year, human beings, living human beings, the most innocent people among us,
00:30:14.660
snuffed out every year in their mother's womb. This is as horrific a crime as you can possibly
00:30:21.260
imagine. And it's been going on since 1973. And it will now contract a little bit because of the
00:30:27.620
Dobbs decision. That's a lot of people, 60 million plus people. How many people? Because what this woman
00:30:35.280
will say and what her defenders will say is, well, she wasn't directly involved in the atrocities.
00:30:40.300
She was indirectly involved. Okay, what about the people who were indirectly involved in the
00:30:45.840
atrocities that we're seeing today? People will look back on abortion. Future generations will look
00:30:51.380
back on it with the moral horror that we look back on slavery, that we look back on genocides,
00:30:55.860
that we look back on all of these things. And what will we say? What about the 97-year-old
00:31:02.100
secretary who worked at Planned Parenthood decades from now? What will we say about her? What should we
00:31:07.120
say about her? I don't know. I don't have an easy answer on it. I don't have an easy answer on
00:31:10.100
this 97-year-old Nazi secretary from when she was 18. But I do think that people ought to take some
00:31:17.200
stock of what they're doing right now because it's very easy to look back at the past and see the
00:31:23.780
horrors that happened. It's a lot harder to see it when you are living through it and when you,
00:31:31.700
to more direct or less direct degrees, are participating in it.
00:31:35.640
A lot of people are going to look at this. They'll say, doesn't Germany have anything
00:31:40.640
more important to do right now than to go after a 97-year-old woman? Aren't there more pressing
00:31:45.780
issues? A lot of people are looking right now at the U.S. Congress. They're saying, aren't there
00:31:49.900
more pressing issues than establishing Ukraine Independence Park in Washington, D.C.? There are
00:31:54.360
more pressing issues. Here's a pressing issue. Right now, people are struggling financially
00:32:00.540
because of Joe Biden's stupid policies on energy and spending and COVID that have caused inflation to
00:32:08.720
skyrocket. So spending power going through the roof, energy prices going through the roof,
00:32:14.240
the way that Joe Biden mismanaged the Ukraine situation. Vladimir Zelensky, who reportedly might
00:32:20.640
speak at Capitol Hill today, that remains sort of unclear as we're recording the show right now.
00:32:25.140
Vladimir Zelensky said that had Joe Biden not behaved as he had vis-a-vis Russia,
00:32:33.740
that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine. So Zelensky places blame for the Ukraine war
00:32:38.820
on Joe Biden because Joe Biden lifted sanctions on Putin's oil pipeline, because Joe Biden said
00:32:48.040
that if Putin only invaded in a minor incursion, that that wouldn't be a huge deal.
00:32:52.400
So that's what we have. And because of that cost of everything going through the roof,
00:32:56.140
people don't have a lot of money. One way that you can make a lot of money would be to not work
00:33:02.060
in at least three states, maybe more. Families of four, I've got a Daily Wire report on this right
00:33:09.020
in my hands. Families of four with neither parent working can receive welfare benefits worth in excess
00:33:14.280
of six figures per year in Washington, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, according to a study from the
00:33:20.960
Committee to Unleash Prosperity. This previous analysis from the conservative think tank found
00:33:27.820
that federal supplemental unemployment benefits, food stamp extensions, child tax credit payments,
00:33:32.540
and other benefits offered in the aftermath of the lockdowns and the whole COVID regime
00:33:38.160
could exceed $120,000 in multiple states. And then even with the expiration of those supplemental
00:33:46.900
programs, because you might say, okay, well, yeah, the government gave out a lot more money
00:33:49.580
during COVID. But then after COVID, it all kind of went away, right? No, there's a recent study
00:33:53.700
that found that unemployment insurance and the dramatic recent expansion of Obamacare subsidies
00:33:58.440
can exceed the national median income in 24 states for families with two parents and two children.
00:34:08.380
And this analysis was not just done by some random conservative think tank. It was completed by
00:34:12.440
UChicago econ professor Casey Mulligan and Heritage Foundation research fellow E.J. Antony.
00:34:17.920
Welfare benefits can exceed the median national income in roughly half the country. Not a good set of
00:34:31.840
incentives to have in your country. I am not one of these Republicans who recoils at the very thought
00:34:37.680
of the government spending any money to alleviate poverty or anything. I don't really, that doesn't
00:34:42.180
bother me. As you know very well, I'm not a libertarian. I don't have any desire to live in
00:34:47.120
some Ayn Rand, Atlas-shrugged future where we're all just industrialists and GDP is the most important
00:34:53.400
thing in the world. I have no problem with the government spending some money to help the poor.
00:34:58.920
But at a certain point, the free marketeers and the libertarians make a very good observation
00:35:05.140
that when the government creates perverse incentives, then it leads to people in misery.
00:35:11.080
If the government creates programs that will allow people to make more money by not working
00:35:18.900
than they would by working, that will be very, very bad. Not just for the country and with regard to
00:35:24.420
our terrible spending problem and our massive debt that imperils national security and our whole
00:35:29.180
American future. But it's bad for the people too. Man was made to work by the sweat of our brow.
00:35:33.600
Shall we eat our food? Okay. And so when people are put into these welfare programs,
00:35:40.080
these social safety nets can very quickly become spider webs that just entrap you. They get you
00:35:43.760
stuck in them. And that leads to the breakdown of family in many cases. It leads to the breakdown
00:35:48.760
of the human spirit. It degrades us. It degrades us individually. It degrades our families. It degrades
00:35:53.000
our whole society. While we're spending $1.7 trillion, maybe we should take a look at that
00:35:59.020
and say, we're going to help you if you're poor. We're going to help you get back on your feet.
00:36:03.120
We're going to give you direct payments. As a matter of fact, we're going to subsidize you
00:36:05.780
having more kids. I'm all for it. We have a declining population. I want people to have
00:36:10.600
more kids. But we are not going to create a system in which you'll make more money if you don't work.
00:36:19.400
That's not going to be good for anybody. Speaking of families, Amy Grant, who is apparently a
00:36:25.500
Christian music star. I've never heard any of her songs, but she's apparently a Christian music star.
00:36:30.460
She has announced that she's going to host a lesbian wedding for her niece.
00:36:37.520
She's drawn some controversy for this. But she said she's going to host this same-sex wedding
00:36:43.700
for her niece. And she said, look, Jesus told us there's two rules. Love God above all else and
00:36:50.420
love your neighbor. And so that's very simple to me. I want to love my neighbor. And so I'm going to
00:36:55.740
host my niece's same-sex wedding. And this is a total cop-out. It's taken completely out of context
00:37:01.220
of the Gospels. And it's not the right thing to do. But it shows you how difficult it can be
00:37:10.400
to resist this kind of stuff in our culture. The reason I bring up the story is not to
00:37:15.940
scold Amy Grant. I don't know who Amy Grant is. I don't really care.
00:37:20.320
But it's to show you how difficult it can be, how emotional manipulation can really, really
00:37:28.740
screw up our politics. More on that in a second. First, though, we relaunched, or we recently launched,
00:37:36.140
for the first time. A brand new biblical series by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. The series is called
00:37:41.240
Exodus. And in it, Jordan Peterson sits down with other scholars to read the book of Exodus
00:37:46.100
and discuss what it means and why it remains significant thousands of years after it was
00:37:50.420
written. Scholars at the table include Dennis Prager, Jonathan Pajot, and many more. The first
00:37:54.920
few episodes are available to stream right now on Daily Wire Plus. There are more new episodes coming
00:37:59.540
soon. Trust me, you've got to see this series. You must be a member to watch. So head on over to
00:38:03.820
dailywire.com slash Knowles to become a member and watch Exodus today.
00:38:12.680
Amy Grant, this apparently Christian music star, is going to host a lesbian quote-unquote wedding for
00:38:18.600
her niece. It's a hard case. It's a very hard case. But in doing it, in saying, look, I'm told to love
00:38:28.000
my neighbor, and so I'm going to make an exception here, and I'm going to host my niece's gay wedding,
00:38:32.600
quote-unquote. Even if I disagree with it, that's what I'm going to do. That's not an example of a
00:38:38.720
charitable, loving action and exception to one's other sorts of views on things. It undermines the
00:38:48.160
entire argument. It undermines the entire worldview. What the left is saying is that conservatives oppose
00:38:57.580
gay marriage because we hate gay people. We conservatives, we're just so hateful, and we hate
00:39:02.900
gay people, and we've never met a gay guy in our lives. We just want to throw them off of buildings,
00:39:06.100
right? That's what we want to do. No. No, the reason that conservatives oppose gay marriage
00:39:13.260
is because we recognize that marriage necessarily, intrinsically involves sexual difference.
00:39:22.680
And if you remove sexual difference, which is at the heart of marriage, then you haven't opened up
00:39:29.080
marriage to include more people. You have just destroyed the entire concept of marriage. If
00:39:34.680
marriage does not include sexual difference, it cannot mean anything at all. And so it is not a
00:39:41.020
loving or charitable act to our gay friends. Every conservative has gay friends, every single one.
00:39:46.860
It's not that we hate our gay friends. They're our friends. We love our friends.
00:39:54.900
It's that it is not possible. If you say, look, I oppose gay marriage, quote unquote gay marriage,
00:40:01.820
and I think marriage has this meaning, but I'm going to make this one exception to host my niece's
00:40:06.080
lesbian wedding, then you've just gutted your whole argument. All that tells people is that you don't
00:40:13.500
actually believe what you said you believed. What that suggests is actually that the libs were
00:40:17.360
right, that your opposition to quote unquote gay marriage is that you actually do hate lesbians
00:40:21.240
or gay people, but you like your niece. And so, okay, I'm going to make an exception here.
00:40:25.420
It's the same thing with abortion. The manipulation that you see from the libs on abortion
00:40:38.100
Yeah, why do you oppose abortion? Well, because I think a person's a person no matter how small,
00:40:41.760
and if we're going to have any rights at all, the right to life has to be the most important one
00:40:45.580
because without the right to life, none of the other rights can possibly exist. And I think
00:40:49.660
human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, and we don't have a right to snuff them
00:40:54.460
out in the womb or murder them. That would be wrong. Yeah, well, what about in the case of rape?
00:41:02.640
This is the hard case. It's a very, very small percentage of abortions, far less than 1% of
00:41:10.020
abortions every year. But they always use that manipulation. They always use that hard case to
00:41:13.280
say, what about in the case of rape? And a lot of, not pro-lifers, but a lot of conservatives or
00:41:19.760
people who haven't really thought through the issue, they might say, yeah, okay, that's fine. You can get
00:41:24.360
an abortion in the case of rape. They view this as a loving, reasonable conciliation, but it's not
00:41:33.080
reasonable at all. It undermines the whole argument. If you believe all the stuff that you just said
00:41:40.820
that you believe, then you can't grant in principle an exception to rape. I guess as a practical or
00:41:48.420
prudential matter, if you were given a bill that said, we're going to get rid of 99% of abortions,
00:41:53.120
but we're going to leave this one exception for rape, then as a prudential matter, you might say,
00:41:56.740
okay, I'm going to reduce the number of abortions by 99% right now. But you can't grant it in principle.
00:42:01.400
You can't say in principle that it's okay to kill a baby if the baby was conceived through rape,
00:42:07.220
because then what that implies is the reason you opposed abortion actually is that you just
00:42:12.720
didn't like women or something like that. What that implies is that the libs were actually right
00:42:15.880
about your motivations, and that you didn't actually believe that a person's a person no
00:42:19.020
matter how small, and that man is made in the image and likeness of God, and that we don't have
00:42:22.200
the right to murder people, even if they're conceived in inconvenient circumstances,
00:42:26.360
even if they're conceived in a crime, in a heinous crime. You don't actually believe that. That's
00:42:32.460
how they get you, and so you've got to think through these things, because if you don't stand
00:42:40.220
firm on those difficult cases, you will have gutted the entire argument. That's why the libs focus on
00:42:47.920
those hard cases. That's why they try to emotionally manipulate you on all of them.
00:42:54.060
Speaking of LGBT issues, there's a great interview from the series creator of Dahmer. This would be
00:43:01.900
Ryan Murphy, and I started watching Dahmer. I thought it was a good show. Sweet little Elisa couldn't get
00:43:06.880
that into it. You know, it's a little grisly. I won't spoil the story, but Jeffrey Dahmer had a
00:43:13.780
not very pleasant life. Difficult to watch it. I think girls in particular, you know,
00:43:18.360
get a little squeamish with it. So Ryan Murphy came under fire because the Dahmer series was listed
00:43:26.380
as an LGBTQ series. They have all these tags on Netflix and the various streaming platforms.
00:43:33.940
They say, this is horror, or this is a rom-com, or this is an LGBT show. And so with Jeffrey Dahmer,
00:43:39.340
who's one of the most notorious serial killers and psychosexual sadists in human history,
00:43:44.820
it listed it as LGBT because he was a gay guy and he only attacked guys and mostly black guys
00:43:51.980
specifically. I don't think it was listed as an African-American piece of entertainment,
00:43:55.380
but it was listed as LGBT. And there was an uproar because they said, oh, how dare you lump in Jeffrey
00:44:01.320
Dahmer with LGBT? Sexual identity has everything to do with everything unless the guy does something bad.
00:44:09.080
And then it has nothing to do with it at all. So Ryan Murphy dismissed this criticism. He said,
00:44:14.980
my job as an artist is to hold up a mirror about what happened. It's ugly. It's not pretty. Do you
00:44:22.640
want to look at it? If you do, watch it. If you don't, look away. And sometimes some of this outrage
00:44:29.140
is directed at the frame of the mirror instead of the reflection. Wow. Hardcore stuff.
00:44:37.140
Does this mean that Ryan Murphy is a homophobe? He just set out to smear gay guys. And we'll know
00:44:45.740
because Ryan Murphy's a gay guy. He says, I think that it got the LGBT tag. One, because of my
00:44:53.400
involvement. I'm a gay man. So most of my stories deal with some sort of LGBTQ thing. And I do that
00:45:00.240
selfishly. When I was growing up, I had nothing to look to. My mission statement has been to talk
00:45:06.480
about those stories and those characters and unearthed buried history. So he's saying, yeah,
00:45:12.020
it's probably just because of me because I'm a gay guy. And sometimes if there's an LGBT director,
00:45:17.020
then they'll put the tag too. He says, and I am selfish as an artist in that I am interested in the
00:45:23.740
LGBT idea. And so I tell stories about that. And I don't only tell really pretty stories or it's all
00:45:32.300
will and grace. Everything about LGBT is always wonderful and fun and gay. I mean, even the word
00:45:39.220
gay became a euphemism for LGBT because gay used to mean happy. And now gay is almost never used in
00:45:46.140
that sense. Like the song, you know, I feel pretty. Oh, so pretty. I feel pretty and witty and gay.
00:45:52.340
Which I am certain is about to be clipped out for a meme. And that's fine. I don't care.
00:45:57.520
That's all right. Used to mean that. Now all it means is LGBT. Well, what he's saying is, no,
00:46:04.780
there's bad stuff that happens all throughout the world. There's no group of people that is immune
00:46:09.900
from bad stuff and bad characteristics. But that is contrary to what the culture says.
00:46:15.220
In our culture, all gay things have to be perfectly good. All traditional things have to be perfectly
00:46:25.160
bad. If they make a show or a movie about Africa, specifically about black Africa, I guess they
00:46:33.560
could make a negative movie or show about white colonization of Africa, and they've made a lot of
00:46:38.780
those. But about Africa and Africans and traditional African societies, it always has to be wonderful.
00:46:44.120
If they make a movie about the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans, it always has to be
00:46:52.640
wonderful. America, before the evil white man got here, it was all just this Pocahontas,
00:46:58.900
have you ever seen the colors of the rainbow? Then the Europeans get there and they ruin everything.
00:47:04.300
The only guy who can make a movie suggesting that indigenous societies maybe weren't all gumdrops
00:47:10.200
and roses would be Mel Gibson. That movie would be Apocalypto. It's a much more realistic view of
00:47:14.660
things. But in our culture, we have decided certain groups and certain ideas and certain societies can
00:47:23.560
only be good. Those happen to be non-Western societies. You see this breakdown everywhere.
00:47:32.620
Gay good, straight bad. Woman good, man bad. Every race of people on earth good, white people bad.
00:47:44.100
East, the Far East, the Middle East, Southeast, Africa good, the West bad. And when you transgress those
00:47:54.760
lines in either direction, if you suggest that maybe indigenous society or maybe LGBT culture or maybe
00:48:02.060
any of these things might have some problems with it, you will be written off. And if you suggest
00:48:07.280
that the Europeans ever did anything good, that maybe Christianity has something to recommend it,
00:48:11.720
you will also fall afoul of that culture as well. That's just the rule. It has nothing to do with
00:48:16.440
reality. It has nothing to do with holding up a mirror. In fact, in some cases, it's probably because
00:48:22.660
people do not like what they see in the mirror. They don't like what they see in themselves. And so
00:48:28.080
there always have to be other problems. Every bad thing that befalls anybody has to be
00:48:33.380
somebody else's fault. You can never take a look at the man in the mirror.
00:48:38.700
Now, much like the former president, I have a major announcement, okay? Yes or no, the game
00:48:47.300
is back and available for pre-order over at dailywire.com slash shop. We have this hit game show on YouTube,
00:48:54.760
YouTube, and the hit game show is called Yes or No. And it's the show where I sit down with my friends
00:49:01.440
and we drink and we, you know, respond to prompts and we try to figure out how well we know the other
00:49:08.800
person. The show really took off. We put it up in the store. I think we ordered a thousand or so games
00:49:13.960
sold out instantly. And I'm really frustrated because a lot of people have tried to order it
00:49:18.760
before Christmas and it just, it sold out way too fast. So we are restocking right now. You can pre-order
00:49:24.180
Yes or No brings the fun home and puts your knowledge of your friends and family to the test.
00:49:29.180
Play with up to nine people and discuss the most pressing issues of our time, including
00:49:32.180
the likelihood of alien existence, questions about God, life and the universe, and so much more.
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You may have missed out on helping to make this the stocking stuffer of the year since it sold out
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at dailywire.com slash shop. We've also got a magician coming up on the member block right now.
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A magician who pulled off one of the most impressive magic tricks of the year. Go check it out.
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If you're not a member, you got to join. Click the link in the description and join us.