Ep. 1279 - Supreme Court Finally Ends Affirmative Action
Episode Stats
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Summary
The Supreme Court strikes down racial discrimination in college admissions at Harvard and UNC. Chief Justice Roberts joins the conservatives and writes for the court, saying that eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. Michael Knowles reacts to the ruling.
Transcript
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We are very possibly living in the era of the greatest Supreme Court bench in American history.
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That has been true, that we are very possibly in that era since last year's decision in Dobbs,
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which overruled the single worst decision in American history, Roe v. Wade. But the claim
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has now gotten some strong backup since yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down
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affirmative action, racial discrimination in college admissions. And as a cherry on top,
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the exact losing party was the liberal lunatics over at Harvard. That was just that, just a little
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L for Harvard was just a right on top of this otherwise totally beautiful case, already totally
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beautiful case. The case was Students for Fair Admissions Incorporated versus President and
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Fellows of Harvard College. And the court ruled six to three that race-based admissions programs at
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Harvard and UNC violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Chief Justice Roberts joined
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the conservatives and wrote for the court, quote, eliminating racial discrimination means
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eliminating all of it. I know that conservatives are supposed to whine and complain and constantly
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lament the end of the world. But this Supreme Court, thanks to three judges appointed by one president,
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one president who was improbably elected after all the smart set political geniuses said hope was lost,
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he didn't have a chance, 99% chance the Democrat was going to win. Well, this Supreme Court that exists
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only as a result of all those things happening, has officially and significantly changed the chorus
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of American history for the better. Just when conservatives were inclined to give up hope,
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we remember an important lesson heading into Fourth of July weekend, a verse of a very important song
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Oh, thus be it ever when free men shall stand between their loved home and the war's desolation.
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Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land praise the power that hath made and preserved
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us a nation. Then conquer we must when our cause it is just, and this be our motto, in God is our trust.
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And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave, for the land of the free and the home of the brave.
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I'm Michael Knowles. It's the Michael Knowles Show.
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It's a good day, folks. It's good. We got to celebrate the wins when we get them. And to celebrate,
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we'll do something a little special and fun. Something that I usually only reserve for the
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crème de la crème, the inner circle, the beurre de la beurre, the real, you know, the real members.
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We're going to do it at the end of the show. It's Fake Headline Friday. We'll get to that in just a bit.
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First, though, this case, Students for Fair Admissions Incorporated versus President and Fellows of Harvard
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College. What is this group? This is a group that said that they were unfairly discriminated against
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in the admissions processes at Harvard and UNC. And the group pointed to the high test scores of
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Asian students and white applicants who were rejected. If the case were only brought by white
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students, it would have gone nowhere because we live at a time, well, I guess this has just changed.
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We live at a time where you had widespread de jure racial discrimination against white people.
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And we still live in a time where the only group that you are allowed to and encouraged socially
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to attack and insult and malign and mock is white people. So if it had only been white students
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who were affected here, I don't think the case really would have gone very far. But the libs made
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a big mistake. They got a little sloppy and they discriminated against Asians too. And Asians can
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claim the mantle of discriminated against oppressed minority. And so this exposed some of the incoherence
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of the affirmative action regime. After the civil rights movement, the black civil rights movement in
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the 1960s, a lot of other groups on the left realized that they could try to mimic the civil
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rights movement of black people who have a unique role in American history because of the existence
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of slavery and the long experience of black people in America. They realized they could kind of mimic
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that and try to get their own ends to the point that today you even have people who have various
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sexual desires and identities and all this kind of nonsense claiming to be the new civil rights movement.
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And this didn't really work when one of the arguments for affirmative action was that you
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need to protect these poor, aggrieved racial minorities. And then you've got a poor, aggrieved
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racial minority that says, wait, you're discriminating against us too because we're Asians and we work
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very hard and we have high IQs and we're doing well on these tests, but we're not being allowed in
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while people from other racial groups who have lower test scores are being allowed in in our place
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because of racial favoritism in the schools. Okay, so you get it.
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This case overrules a previous case, Grutter v. Bollinger. This was a case that was decided
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23 years ago, I think it was. I think it was a 2003 case. And at the time that Grutter was decided,
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which upheld affirmative action in college admissions, Sandra Day O'Connor, the nominally
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conservative Republican appointed justice who often sided with the libs, she said, we expect that 25 years
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from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary. So already built in to the
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upholding of affirmative action was this idea that it's going to be time limited. And where do you
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get that principle from in the constitution? You don't. And it was just the Supreme Court with the
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libs and the squish conservatives shooting from the hip. But now we're almost exactly 25 years later
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and the court says, okay, time's up. It wasn't just Sandra Day O'Connor who, though a squish was still
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appointed by a Republican, by Ronald Reagan, but it was even the libs. It was even the liberal icons.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the time of Grutter v. Bollinger upholding affirmative action. She still
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said that it can't be used forever, but it's useful for the time being to give us the racial
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outcomes that we want in society. Justice Thomas at the time made a really important point that I
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haven't heard a lot of people talk about, but it shows you why these schools are so insistent on
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upholding affirmative action. They were insistent on it, not just because they're liberal ideologues and
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they hate white people and they want to help other racial groups get an unfair advantage over
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white people or whatever. It's also because these schools want to maintain their prestige and they
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recognize that as racial diversity and inclusion and equity and whatever, all the rest of these
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ideologies become important in American life, that in order to continue to train the elite, the people
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who inevitably will become part of the elite so long as this ideology predominates, they need to
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bring in more people of these racial groups that are not doing as well on the tests and if test scores
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are the only thing that matter, are not going to be admitted to the college in very high numbers.
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So they're trying to maintain their prestige and their hold on American public life. Thomas went even
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further, Clarence Thomas in the Grutter case, and he said that the schools have to pick high standards
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or diversity. That's that. If they're going to exalt high standards, then they need to stop playing
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favorites with the races. If they're going to exalt racial diversity or whatever, sexual diversity or
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all the other kinds of diversity for diversity's sake, then they need to stop pretending that they're
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valuing high standards. It's one or the other. They're mutually opposed here because even if you
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say, well, obviously there are plenty of black people who do very well on tests and who will do very
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well in these schools. I mean, Justice Thomas would be a great example of this. It's about the
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principle that you're enshrining. Is college admissions primarily about high standards or is
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it primarily about diversity and ideology? So today the Supreme Court says affirmative action gone in
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college admissions. And don't forget the Supreme Court reads the polls. Supreme Court reads the newspapers
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and a majority of Americans, 62% overwhelming need, not just Republicans, not just white people,
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but a wide smattering of American people oppose race-based college admissions because they all
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know it seems really, really unfair. So now we've got the opinion. We've got the dissent. We've got two
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dueling opinions in the case. One opinion, one dissent. From the two black members of the Supreme Court
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offering very different visions of race and affirmative action and the Constitution, which we'll get to in
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one second. First, though, before I talk to you about that, I need to talk to you about talking to your
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00:10:03.380
The Libs love Justice Ketanji Jackson. She's the new one. She's the Biden appointee.
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And Ketanji Jackson. She's feisty. They like her because she's a woman. They like her because she's
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black. They like her for all these kind of more superficial, skin-deep reasons, sexual reasons.
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And they like her because she's extremely radical. She didn't know what a woman was. She couldn't
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define a woman at her confirmation hearings. So I didn't have very high hopes for her
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dissent in this case. And my low expectations were proven correct. Here's what she wrote.
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This is the portion of Ketanji Jackson's dissent that all the Libs are sharing around.
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They say, quote, with let-them-eat-cake obliviousness today, the majority pulls the
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ripcord and announces colorblindness for all by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does
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not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country's actual past and present
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experiences, the court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and
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other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America's real-world problems.
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No one benefits from ignorance, although formal race-linked legal barriers are gone. Race still
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matters to the lived experiences. And it's just a blah, blah, blah, lived experience. It's basically,
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my friend Spencer Claven pointed this out. Going in here, the students bringing the case and the group
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bringing the case on behalf of the students saying, hey, we don't want to be discriminated against just
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we're Asian or white. They had the law on their side. They had philosophy on their side. They had
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morality on their side. They had the opinion of the conservative judges on their side. They had the
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opinion of very prominent liberal judges on their side. They had a pretty good case. And on the pro-race
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discrimination side of this case, they had diversity is our strength, the lived experiences
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of the racial oppression. And it's just that didn't, that was not a legally persuasive view.
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And it hasn't persuaded the majority of the American people. The funniest part of Justice
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Jackson's very silly dissent is that first line of this section. Let them eat cake obliviousness.
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Because what that term does is reveals Justice Jackson's obliviousness. We know she's oblivious.
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She doesn't know what a woman is. But she's also oblivious to history. Because that phrase,
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let them eat cake, is a phrase attributed to Marie Antoinette. When Marie Antoinette supposedly
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was told that the peasants didn't have bread to eat, she said, let them eat cake, let them eat
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triosh. But it's a total fabrication. It was made up. The line actually predates Marie Antoinette.
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No great princess said it. It's just fake. It's just total fake news. And the libs fall into their
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fake news all the time. And they are oblivious to history and biology and philosophy and the law,
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apparently. And so it's over. What does Justice Thomas say in response to this? He answers Jackson.
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He says, accordingly, Justice Jackson's race-infused worldview falls flat at each step.
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Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments.
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What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them.
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And their race is not to blame for everything, good or bad, that happens in their lives.
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A contrary myopic worldview based on individual skin color to the total exclusion
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of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism. So true. Two different
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visions of race. One conservative from Justice Thomas, one liberal from Justice Jackson. Thomas is
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a Catholic. You can just tell this in his writing, in the way he speaks. Justice Thomas has
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the Christian view here, specifically a very Catholic view of the world. Justice Jackson,
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again, her religion is just racial grievance and liberalism and whining and pride. Thomas's hard
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work, humility, gratitude. Jackson's envy, resentment, pride, anger, wrath. All the stuff we associate
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with the libs. And as has happened now a couple times from the Supreme Court recently, and what
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happens rarely in our political life, the good side won. Really, really great stuff. Speaking of
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freedom, a big debate has broken out over whether Elon Musk should ban the word cis, C-I-S, from
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Twitter. And it's still raging. I mentioned this on the show a few days ago, but it's still raging.
00:14:23.440
And Brad Palumbo, my debate partner from the University of Pittsburgh, and Brad pinch hit after
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the transgender-identifying professor that I was supposed to debate on issues of gender and sex
00:14:36.100
dropped out at the last minute because he felt that he couldn't do the debate. So Brad comes in,
00:14:41.340
and Brad is a self-described libertarian. And he says, Elon Musk is the worst free speech hero ever.
00:14:51.580
And that's because you should be able to say anything on Twitter. And if you don't, this is
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absolutely terrible. And of course, Brad is wrong here. And I wrote a book about how
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what Elon is doing is fabulous. The book is called Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Wines,
00:15:04.920
number one national bestseller. Thank you very much. This is one of the most encouraging things
00:15:08.680
that Elon has done because it shows a sophistication, not just a sophomoric, very elementary
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vision of politics that is based on modern, incoherent ideologies that have never been put into
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practice effectively anywhere in the world throughout all of human history. But he's recognizing that
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there's nuance here. We support free speech, but when we support free speech, we're supporting a
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tradition, not something in the abstract floating in outer space, but a real tradition with exclusions,
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exclusions like threats, like obscenity, like fighting words, like fraud, like all of these sorts of
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things. And Elon is a great figure in technology and business. But a lot of guys, when they dip their
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toes from their areas of expertise into politics, they sometimes demonstrate a great deal of ignorance.
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Elon here, I think, is demonstrating a lot of sophistication. And you see it actually
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in the case of the affirmative action decision. The whole thing is about standards. And the
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affirmative action case asks, what kind of standards are we going to have in this country?
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And so far, what the judges are saying now is we're going to have something closer to a meritocracy.
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And before that, on affirmative action, you're going to have something closer to a racial hierarchy
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with black people and Native Americans, and I don't know, at the top of it. And then maybe
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Hispanics, they go a little bit lower. And then Asians and white people at the bottom. And if you're
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a member of a favored race, you get special treatment. And if you're a member of a disfavored race,
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you're the scum of the earth and you're going to be discriminated against. That was the view that
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predominated for the last many decades, four or five decades, maybe six decades now, I guess.
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Now, what happened before that? A lot of conservatives want to be a little simplistic
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about this and say, well, before affirmative action, you just had a pure meritocracy. But
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that's not quite true. And we don't just have quite a pure meritocracy now because there are other
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factors at play. There is legacy admissions. Legacy admissions don't favor the highest test scores.
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They favor people with a tie to the university. The pure meritocrats say we need to get rid of
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legacy admissions. But that's not a conservative point of view. You want some continuity. You want
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people to say, no, my family has had a connection to this institution, not just a college, but maybe a
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church, maybe a neighborhood, maybe a community organization, maybe a Senate seat, for goodness
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sakes. Tradition and continuity and the kind of experience that you don't just learn out of a
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textbook or learn on your own for the first time, but that is imbued into you and your family from
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birth. That's a pretty conservative thing. We like tradition. We like things outside of pure
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rationalistic book learning. Okay, there's that. There is the essay. And the college essay is supposed
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to figure out how well you think and how well you write. But that personal statement also says
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something about who you are, what your experiences are. Probably now the people who do want to
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discriminate against white people in college admissions, they will just increase the importance
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of the personal essay. And they will use that as a way to say, okay, if the person indicates that he is
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not white, then we'll give him a little bit more of an advantage here. So that's not just a pure
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meritocracy. And before affirmative action, that's certainly true. There were inherited privileges.
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Obviously, there was a different kind of racial discrimination in the country. And all sorts of
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other little prejudices and all sorts of other little ineffable complications of life that made
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things a little bit different. At the founding of the country, my friend Saurabh Amari pointed this out
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on Twitter just yesterday. The Jeffersonian ideal, which you might say was a pure meritocracy, wasn't
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quite a pure meritocracy. It was this idea that you have a lot of yeoman farmers, that you'd have a lot
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of people who had their own property and their own land, but not grand estates, just relatively more
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modest Republican, lowercase r types of land. So there are all these different views and different
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standards. And I think we just need to be aware of that all the time, because we can fall into the
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same trap of saying, no, the absolutely, totally, purely objective neutral standard is meritocracy.
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No, that's not really totally neutral either. That's an ideology too. The totally, absolutely
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free, unregulated free market, that's the neutral thing. No, that's a standard too. And some people
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might object to that standard. So we need to be a little bit more forthright about it. This is a big
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step in the right direction. We need to be even clearer moving forward. This is such big news. I had a lot
00:19:48.500
of other things that I really wanted to get to today, but we've got a lot to do. We've got Fake
00:19:52.400
Headline Friday. We've got the mailbag that we have to get to. I guess the only, I'm going to give
00:19:56.920
you a little tease and maybe we'll try to get to it next week. Apparently Joe Biden is open to
00:20:01.560
psychedelics, which you might think Joe Biden's psychiatric condition right now couldn't possibly
00:20:06.040
get any worse. So maybe taking a bunch of hallucinogenic drugs might not improve things, but it might
00:20:11.200
not make them worse. But apparently, according to Joe Biden's brother, Joe is open to
00:20:15.760
psychedelics. So I'll leave you for the 4th of July weekend on that image of Joe just
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tripping out on shrooms and LSD. Maybe we'll get to it next week. First, as you're grilling
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promo code Knowles. We're doing something a little different today, folks. I usually just reserve
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this for the crème de la crème, the bleu de la bleu, but you may have noticed over the last week or so
00:21:46.720
there were more restrictions imposed on this show on one of the big tech platforms. And so I'm not
00:21:55.860
going to change really what I'm saying. I'm not going to censor myself. I'm not going to lie. I'm not
00:22:01.560
going to do any of that. So we're just going to have to take out little parts of the show
00:22:04.820
in order to not have the whole channel completely nuked and the episodes fully removed. And we're
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trying to be innocent as a serpent and, sorry, we're trying to be innocent as a dove and wise
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as a serpent. You don't want to be innocent as a serpent and wise as a dove. That's probably the
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worst of all worlds. But if you want the full show, then you've got to go head on over and join
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the Daily Wire, Daily Wire Plus. Become a member of the crème de la crème, the inner circle,
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the bleu de la bleu. You can also get the show right now in total on Twitter at M. Knowles
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Show. So one of the things we do for the crème de la crème is a fake headline Friday where
00:22:38.440
the, oh, we have a stinger that I always forget. So it plays. I just talk to Mr. Davies just
00:22:45.180
to irritate me. He still hits that stinger even though I'm always going to miss it. So Mr.
00:22:49.460
Davies finds all these articles. Most of them are real headlines. One of them is a fake
00:22:55.700
headline that he made up. I have to guess with your help and with the help of the
00:22:59.400
membreum segmentum audience, the crème de la crème, which one is the fake one? So let's
00:23:05.440
see. First one up. Opinion. That gas-powered car you're thinking of buying over an electric
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vehicle won't be as nice in 10 years when you have to explain to your grandkids it's
00:23:14.100
the reason they have no clean air to breathe. There are two types of people in this world,
00:23:19.080
those who only think in the moment and those who think in the future. The problem with this
00:23:24.000
headline, of course, is if your grandkids, God forbid, had no clean air to breathe, you
00:23:27.400
wouldn't have to explain anything to them because we'd all be goners. I think that's
00:23:31.260
a real headline. I think that one's true. Next one. Devil baby born with tail horns and hooves.
00:23:38.760
Of all the hideous human malformations ever heard of in the state, the five weeks old offspring
00:23:44.000
of Charles and Sarah. I was going to say this happened in India because sometimes India,
00:23:48.760
which doesn't necessarily have the greatest healthcare, you'll hear of some birth defects
00:23:55.200
and because of their religion, which has all sorts of eccentric kind of depictions of humanity
00:24:01.260
and various spiritual beings, someone will be born with a deformity and this will be taken
00:24:09.480
as something with deep spiritual meaning. But it's not. Charles and Sarah are not exactly
00:24:13.420
Hindu names. Tail horns and hooves. Goodness gracious. I can't imagine that's real,
00:24:20.180
but it's so insane. I'd say maybe it's real. I'd say maybe. I took in a Ukrainian refugee to live
00:24:24.940
with my wife and me and ran off with her after 10 days. We're in love. Yeah, I bet there's more to
00:24:32.360
this story than just, oh, oops, I took in this really smoking hot young Ukrainian lady refugee and,
00:24:39.720
oh, we just, what do you know? We just fell in love. I'd be, I want to see that guy's search
00:24:43.880
history. A dad of two has run off with a Ukrainian refugee just 10 days after he and his partner
00:24:48.120
welcomed her into their home. Yeah, I kind of believe that. I don't know. Wouldn't be surprised.
00:24:53.100
All is fair in love and war, I guess. No, no, I don't really totally buy that. Palestinians say
00:24:57.620
London's Big Ben was stolen from them. Such lies speak to the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian
00:25:05.160
conflict. It's hard to believe that one, but it's kind of, I don't know, man. This is kind
00:25:14.280
of a hard week. I'd say maybe. Cows lose their jobs as milk prices drop. As 100 dairy cows lumbered
00:25:23.320
over Monday afternoon milking. Farmer Eric Foster pondered his sudden misfortune. Okay,
00:25:27.140
I say this is, that one's real. I say that one's real. I'm going to say devil born with tail
00:25:32.560
horns and hooves. I know this is weird. I'm going to say this one's real. It's just because
00:25:35.880
it's just so outlandish. Opinion, the gas-powered car. I'm going to say that one is real. Two types
00:25:44.160
of people in this world, those who only think in the moment, those who think about the future.
00:25:48.520
Okay, this is my holdup on this one. There is an error. Sometimes there are errors of grammar
00:25:56.500
and punctuation and spelling. This one, the capital T after the colon, that raises my eyebrows.
00:26:05.860
Palestinians say, so producer Jacob is on just a jihad against the Palestinian people. And so I don't
00:26:11.800
think he would include one that was ridiculous about the Palestinians if it weren't true. But this
00:26:19.220
one is pretty outlandish. So I'm going to say, still leaning like kind of no. I took any Ukrainian
00:26:23.880
refugee. This one I do sort of buy. Okay, so it's between these three here. I'm going to say,
00:26:30.480
when I follow my gut on the grammar and punctuation and spelling errors, I'm often correct. So I'm going
00:26:36.300
to say it's the opinion one that's fake. But I don't, I really don't know. And I, all right,
00:26:42.040
let's just see. We'll see. See what happens. Who knows? We're heading into a nice 4th of July weekend.
00:26:46.720
Oh, man. There it is, baby. And it's a meme of Ben Shapiro on memory TV, which is really quite,
00:27:02.880
quite funny. Wow. Big one by the skin of my teeth on that one. It was one capitalization after a colon
00:27:12.000
that got it. So it means that Palestinians believe that Big Ben was stolen from them.
00:27:17.520
What? What does that mean? I don't know what that mean. What mean? What mean, man? Ukrainian
00:27:26.320
refugee, that poor wife. I kind of want to see if there's a picture of the Ukrainian lady that caused
00:27:30.660
this poor schlub to leave his husband, his wife. Devil baby born with tail and hooves. Okay, well,
00:27:38.140
we don't have time for me to read all of these now. Maybe I'll read them after the show. Folks,
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00:28:33.740
My favorite comment yesterday is from Thank You Pete. Or is that Ty Pete? Whatever his name,
00:28:41.740
he says, Sexy Mike, I went to the barber and got my new haircut like yours. My wife says I am crazy,
00:28:48.600
but I think I look fabulous. So I'm honored to hear that. Thank you.
00:28:56.660
I one time was walking in Georgetown, and a guy comes up to me and says to me,
00:29:06.800
hey, you don't know me, but I'm introducing myself, and I just want you to know,
00:29:10.680
I went to the barber last week and showed him a picture of your hair and say that I want to get
00:29:14.200
this haircut. I'm really honored, and I say this with humility, because this haircut, I've had this
00:29:18.240
since I was six, and it's only a slight alteration on the haircut that I had previously when I was
00:29:22.140
five. I've never changed my haircut since then, and it's just the haircut that guys had in the
00:29:27.680
40s. That's all it is. There's nothing really totally different about it, and you can have it
00:29:32.180
too. You can have that too. Now we finally arrived at my favorite time of the week when I get to hear
00:29:36.800
from you in the mailbag sponsored by Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com. Select a plan and enter code
00:29:41.500
Knowles, KennaWLES, to get 50% off your first month. Take it away.
00:29:46.840
Hello, Smokey Mike. This is Julia, your number one fangirl, and I'm sure that you've missed hearing
00:29:51.480
my dulcet tones in the voicemail bag. So I was having a conversation with my brother the other day.
00:29:57.960
His name is also Michael, and I had told him that while I'd never do these things, I had a morbid
00:30:04.520
curiosity for tarot and Reiki and all that witchy stuff. Michael had commented that he
00:30:11.500
had a similar morbid curiosity, but more for the psychedelics. He also noted that a lot of his
00:30:17.360
female friends tend to be into the fortune-telling witchy side of that, and his male friends tended to
00:30:24.800
also have a morbid curiosity for psychedelics. So my two questions to you are, one, do you think that
00:30:32.560
these things are two sides of the same coin? And number two, do you think that maybe one has a more
00:30:38.520
feminine side to it and the other has a more masculine side to it? Thanks. Love to hear your
00:30:44.380
Yeah. Yeah, I do think that. I think that psychedelics are very bad things to do
00:30:51.540
because they open up spiritual portals that are really not great. And this is the reason that
00:30:59.960
the libs today promote psychedelics, is they say, oh man, it just puts you at one in touch with the
00:31:05.480
universe, man. It really helped me overcome, you know, some bad stuff, man. And I know, and I'm sure
00:31:10.220
many people do think that it has helped them. And I do think that it puts you in touch with all sorts
00:31:15.120
of different entities, but I don't think they're great entities. And if you want to hear more about
00:31:19.240
this, you can listen to my interview with a guy who had taken a lot of psychedelics and what he felt
00:31:24.960
that did to him. I have friends who've taken psychedelics and I had a friend, he told me, he said,
00:31:30.480
you know, one thing I love about this particular psychedelic I took is it just, it showed me, man,
00:31:36.440
I was worried about so much stuff I don't need to be worried about, you know, I was really worried
00:31:40.380
about like sin. I had all this guilt, you know, I just got rid of that. I'm not worried about hell
00:31:44.600
anymore. I'm not worried about sin. And his family broke down. He left his family shortly thereafter.
00:31:49.840
It happens, you know, it's not, it's not good. I don't want to seem like I'm saying that everything
00:31:58.460
is demons. There's a demon under every rock, but there are demons who crouch about seeking the ruin
00:32:01.980
of souls, prowling all over the world. And psychedelics seem even to be referenced in ancient
00:32:08.480
literature and in the book of Enoch, for instance, the book of Enoch, which is referred to in the Bible,
00:32:13.480
but it's not a canonical book of the Bible. It's a kind of mysterious old book. It talks about how
00:32:18.820
the demons came down and taught man how to use roots, you know, and use different kind of
00:32:24.260
plants and things like that, which seems to be a reference to psychedelics. So that's true.
00:32:30.140
And why do men like the drugs while women like the weird astrology stuff? Because men are a little
00:32:34.640
more reckless, especially when it comes to their bodies than women are. Men are more likely to take
00:32:39.140
risks with their bodies, you know, jump out of an airplane, drive really fast and do drugs, drink too
00:32:47.160
much. Uh, women, women delve more into other kinds of temptations, you know, gossip, astrology,
00:32:55.060
complaining, all this, they're a little, they're just, I'm not saying women sin more than men or men
00:33:00.780
sin more than women. We just are tempted toward different vices. Next one.
00:33:05.320
Hey, dirty Mike, Mr. Reality again. Uh, I wanted to ask you about lobotomies and trans surgeries.
00:33:13.220
Do you think that trans surgeries are our generation's version of lobotomies? They seem
00:33:19.520
to have a lot in common when I look at them both. They're both a ghoulish surgery. They're both
00:33:24.280
pioneered and expanded by crackpot doctors with the apparent full endorsement of the medical community.
00:33:30.340
They both cause permanent harm to individuals. They're both used to treat mental illnesses and
00:33:37.100
the vast majority of people who get them aren't helped or are made worse off. So my question is,
00:33:42.320
do you think they're almost, uh, sister procedures in a way? And do you think that the trans surgeries
00:33:48.920
will go the way of the lobotomies where eventually everyone will realize it was a terrible idea or do you
00:33:55.200
see it going somewhere else? Thanks. Yeah. People already realize that they're a terrible idea.
00:34:01.780
And the New York Times just reported on this. The New York Times was citing a new study that just
00:34:06.300
came out about the, the transgender phenomenon and how it might not be conducive to human flourishing.
00:34:12.920
Majority of people, uh, and in the end, an increasing vast majority of people don't believe
00:34:19.640
in transgenderism. So people realize this. And yeah, I think the, the comparison is, is apt.
00:34:23.980
Uh, but then there'll just be some other kooky thing that people do. You know, we, we have this
00:34:29.600
idea. I mean, we don't, if you're listening to this show, you probably don't have this idea,
00:34:32.880
but a lot of people do today that in the present, we've basically figured everything out and science
00:34:39.080
is really good. And we're not superstitious and mistaken like those old benighted people in the
00:34:44.840
past. We're really smart and modern and we have science. So we get it, but we don't, it's all the
00:34:50.120
same. It's just witchdoctory. It's just, it's just shamanism all the way down. And science is
00:34:57.460
mostly fake and it's, it's a realm of applicability is extraordinarily narrow. And we still don't even
00:35:03.500
do that all that well. And in many cases, for instance, we know very, very little about the brain.
00:35:08.960
Um, and we know even less, less than perhaps we've ever known about, about human nature and the
00:35:17.320
relation between body and spirit and mind and brain, you know, the physical and the metaphysical
00:35:22.020
and what a human is and what a man is and what a woman is. And so, yeah, yeah, we're, we're,
00:35:28.120
we're engaging in extraordinarily harmful medical practices now. And then once we figure that out,
00:35:34.020
who knows when, when that will be put into practice where we can actually ban these things,
00:35:38.620
then they'll find some other stupid thing to do. So that's because it's a fallen world and that's
00:35:42.300
how it works. Next one. Hey, Michael, Alex here with a mailbag question for you. Love the show,
00:35:48.380
regular watcher slash listener. Anyway, uh, I have to actually have two questions. One,
00:35:53.500
so you had mentioned multiple times that RFK on your podcast is a very anti-second amendment.
00:35:59.940
Um, I, upon research, that isn't true. Uh, his latest comments about that is he is for the
00:36:06.320
second amendment. He is for, uh, all, all second amendment rights and he's also for strong borders
00:36:12.020
and whatnot. So is there something that you know that we don't? And then my second question is
00:36:16.940
in regards to the transgender laws that multiple States are putting into place, banning transgender
00:36:22.020
surgeries for minors, banning puberty blockers, whatnot, multiple rogue judges have been blocking
00:36:27.280
these laws claiming they're quote unquote unconstitutional. So as conservatives, how do
00:36:32.260
we get past that? How do we get past the doom and gloom of you pass these laws, case laws,
00:36:37.160
which are great, but then they're shut down by rogue, uh, far left judges. So love the show,
00:36:42.180
Michael. Thanks. Okay. I'll take the questions in order. I'm glad that RFK has changed his tune
00:36:46.940
on a number of political issues. Uh, but it's a change of tune. RFK Jr. has been a liberal Democrat
00:36:55.100
for his entire life. He's a Kennedy. And I know that now we look at the Kennedys on the right and
00:37:02.020
we say, Oh, Jack Kennedy might've been a Republican had he been alive today, which I don't think is
00:37:06.320
true. Uh, but we say, look, wow, the, he was so much more reasonable than the modern Democrats,
00:37:12.100
which, which is true, but that's just because he was living in his time and ideas have consequences
00:37:17.060
and political movements follow those ideas to their logical conclusions. And, uh, Bobby Kennedy is a,
00:37:22.880
has been a liberal Democrat for his life. I think he now sees that one, the corruption of the political
00:37:28.380
establishment is perhaps even worse than he previously suspected. The way that he has been
00:37:34.320
attacked by that establishment for raising questions about vaccines now for like 15 years,
00:37:38.760
uh, has probably, uh, cemented that view. And after COVID, a lot of conservatives became skeptical
00:37:47.740
of vaccines in the medical establishment. So that attracted conservatives to Bobby Kennedy Jr.
00:37:51.720
and Bobby Kennedy now realizes that his most ardent fans are not on the left, they're on the right.
00:37:56.820
And so he, a politician from one of the most famous political families in the country is probably
00:38:01.980
either playing up to that audience a little bit more or sincerely moving more toward their side of
00:38:08.900
the political spectrum. So great. I'm glad that he's changing on that, but, but you know, you,
00:38:14.520
you can see, you can read his past comments on these issues. Uh, this does represent a change as
00:38:20.720
for the judges striking down good laws and perfectly just laws. It's very, very frustrating. So what we
00:38:26.280
have to do is just keep pushing again and again and again, how many times was Roe versus Wade,
00:38:34.820
uh, upheld? Well, it was most famously upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, but how many times did
00:38:41.580
lower court judges, uh, refer to Roe v. Wade as the settled law of the land? How many times did
00:38:47.460
legal challenges to Roe v. Wade fail and reach a dead end? It just went on and on and on for 49 years.
00:38:53.020
For half a century, the, the courts insisted, no, you're, you don't get to pass your pro-life laws.
00:38:58.760
No, you don't get to challenge Roe v. Wade. And then through amazing circumstance, through
00:39:04.980
Antonin Scalia going to his eternal reward unexpectedly, followed by an improbable
00:39:13.280
world historical figure, presidential candidate winning the election when the genius has told us
00:39:19.900
99% chance he'd lose and then appointing three judges and Mitch McConnell holding Scalia's seat
00:39:27.160
open until you potentially got a Republican president. Then Trump appoints three judges and
00:39:32.080
then the three judges worked to overrule Roe v. Wade. We were prepared and then opportunity came
00:39:36.460
and we were able to affect what we wanted, albeit 49 years later. And I think you're going to see
00:39:42.840
that with the trans issue too. You just got to keep chipping away. You got to play, you just got to
00:39:47.920
play a game of determination and keep up that moral clarity and courage and keep up the fight.
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00:40:23.260
name. Hi, Michael. I'm hoping you can provide me with some advice on women. I'm 26 years old and I've
00:40:29.360
never had a girlfriend. I'm not really sure how to strike up a conversation, approach women or even
00:40:35.180
really a good place to meet them. I have a pretty good job. I go to church and my life is fairly well
00:40:40.320
put together. So I'm not a total loser, but especially over the past few years, I've been struggling with
00:40:46.160
loneliness and was hoping you could help me out here. Thank you. Pal, really sorry to hear about
00:40:51.860
that. It really pains me when I hear about people being lonely. It pains me more than almost any other
00:41:01.440
issue I think of. It's not the most egregious thing. First of all, everybody's lonely sometimes.
00:41:06.880
And it's not worse than say, you know, being murdered or raped or, you know, I mean, there are many things
00:41:12.940
that are worse objectively than being lonely, but being lonely just really feels awful. And it pains me
00:41:19.840
when I think of friends and family of mine who have felt lonely at different times. It just, it's,
00:41:23.860
it really, really pains me. And what's bizarre about the time we're living in is that loneliness is
00:41:30.160
something that many, many people seem to be doing more than in the past. You think that if everybody's
00:41:37.460
doing something, you wouldn't be lonely. When you're lonely, you're the only one doing it. But, but people
00:41:42.100
are just so isolated and so alienated that you might take some comfort in that loneliness as a group
00:41:47.900
activity these days. How do you overcome that? Well, just, here's just a little, quick little tip.
00:41:54.580
This is not a real long-term answer to your, when you're feeling really, really lonely. Crack open a
00:41:58.920
book. Crack open a good book. Reading a book, a good book is the only activity that you can do alone
00:42:05.020
that will make you feel less lonely. But that's just, that's just a Tylenol. You know, that's just a
00:42:09.440
little band-aid. How do you fix the loneliness problem generally? And specifically for you,
00:42:14.480
you don't have a girlfriend or a wife. Well, I would reach out to your family and say,
00:42:22.380
hey, can you introduce me to somebody? Because you're not really alone. You got some family,
00:42:28.120
presumably, and let's say your family's all dead, God forbid. Well, you have a job, right? You have
00:42:31.920
co-workers. Do you ever talk to your co-workers? Maybe you don't. Some people don't talk to you,
00:42:37.160
but I bet you talk to them a little bit where I say good morning or something like that.
00:42:40.160
But maybe you strike up a conversation with a co-worker. Maybe it's a dude. I'm not suggesting
00:42:44.740
that you, you know, lighten up those loafers. I'm suggesting, though, that any real human connection
00:42:49.360
can lead to being able to meet a woman. And you say, hey, you know, I'm looking for a girlfriend,
00:42:55.960
basically. Do you know any cute girls around here? Do you know any? Hey, your wife, you know,
00:43:00.180
does she have a cousin? Does she have this, that, or the other thing? You know, it's kind of like the
00:43:04.680
more you work, the more you work. People think that, you know, the way to have a great career
00:43:09.720
is to just wait for the perfect career to come along. But anyone who's ever had a great career
00:43:12.500
knows that the way that you get it is you just work all the time. Well, it's the same thing for
00:43:16.180
social life. The way that you make really great friends is you just hang out with people, you know,
00:43:22.500
and you just strike up conversations in the elevator, you know. You just talk to your co-workers.
00:43:27.080
You smile a little bit and you ask how people are doing. You're genuinely interested in people
00:43:31.100
and that will do it. I've been really blessed. I've had a great love life and romantic life
00:43:37.880
and marriage life. And I've had great friendships too, but it's exceedingly rare these days. And
00:43:42.460
friendship, I think, is rarer even than romance because we denigrate that now and we say that
00:43:48.020
love is love. You know, we say that all love just has to be romantic or erotic love rather than
00:43:53.820
filial love, you know, rather than the love of God or all of these things. So you're not alone in
00:44:00.720
dealing with this problem, but my solution for you would be to throw spaghetti at the wall.
00:44:08.340
Surely you have some family member somewhere or surely you've got some co-worker somewhere or
00:44:13.140
surely you sit next to someone in the church and maybe you don't make conversation all the time.
00:44:17.200
Well, just make conversation. Say, well, wasn't that a lovely hymn? And make, oh, what a beautiful
00:44:21.580
day it is. You know, any ordinary icebreaker small talk kind of language. You might think it sounds
00:44:28.260
silly because no one likes small talk, but the point of small talk is not to talk about the
00:44:31.700
weather. No one cares about the weather. The point of small talk is to make a human connection and you
00:44:35.700
can do it. You say you're around people, well, talk to them. All right, we've got the written mailbag
00:44:41.600
coming up. Oh no, we don't because we, oh my goodness, this is so, so devastating. We have no
00:44:49.640
member block today. Oh, and I've, okay, well, you know what? I'm going to go over then because I have
00:44:54.440
one, one mailbag that I want to get to. This is from David. It says, I've never seen anyone make
00:45:00.540
ukulele seem as fun as you do. Thank you very much. Kind of an old dog, but I'm interested now.
00:45:05.200
How would you recommend going about learning to play the ukulele? What kind of, what kind would
00:45:08.540
you suggest to start out? Should I just grab a $40 instrument off of Amazon and start strumming?
00:45:12.600
Thanks for all that you do. Yes, the ukulele is my favorite instrument probably. It's the most fun
00:45:17.520
instrument. Four strings. It's very, very easy. The standard tuning is G starting at, not at the top,
00:45:24.240
it's kind of confusing because when we say the top of an instrument, we're talking about the high
00:45:27.180
notes, but the high notes are on the, physically on the bottom of the instrument. But anyway,
00:45:30.780
starting out as you would strum it down, it's G, higher G, then lower down to a C, then E,
00:45:37.060
then A. There we go. I've just taught you how to tune your ukulele. You pull it up on YouTube.
00:45:42.220
How to play You Are My Sunshine. How to play, you pull up some of my videos. I've done some
00:45:46.380
arrangements of little ukatunes. You can just pull them up on Instagram, just mimic what I'm doing.
00:45:50.760
Pull up little chords, learn your chords. It's easier even than guitar, and guitar is a relatively
00:45:55.060
easy instrument to learn. I wouldn't spend $40. I'd spend like $60. You can get Cordova.
00:45:59.660
Cordova instruments are pretty good for beginner ukes. The soprano one is the classic uke sound. It's
00:46:05.140
a little bit small. The concert ukulele is a little bit bigger. Probably a little easier to learn how to
00:46:09.680
fret, though it doesn't quite have that fun, bright, jangly ukulele sound.
00:46:15.560
I had an Oscar Schmidt. I still have it. An Oscar Schmidt by Washburn Ukulele, which is
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relatively quite inexpensive. I paid $60 for it 15 years ago, more than 15 years ago now.
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Goodness, great. Like 21 years ago, probably I got it. Anyway, you can get these things. You can get
00:46:32.640
really expensive ukes, too, but get a cheap one. $100 uke, $60 uke, and pull up some YouTube videos and
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start playing it. You will not regret it. No one's too old, and no one's too musically talentless to
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learn the ukulele. That's our show. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. See you next time.