The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 The smash hit return of Roseanne to network television, which blew away ratings expectations

00:00:06.000 this week, is excellent news for Donald Trump. I disagree with Ben on this. We will explain why.

00:00:12.420 It is the most important political opinion poll in years. We will analyze what Roseanne's return

00:00:16.800 means for Trump, nostalgia TV, and the American people. Then, the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles,

00:00:22.000 and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 This is all culture today, and it's really, really good news. It also shows a divide among

00:00:35.340 conservatives, and it's a divide that is as old as conservative political thought. So we'll get

00:00:39.680 to that. First, I must say, you'll notice I'm in a different place now. I'm no longer at National

00:00:43.540 Review in the city, in New York. I'm up at Ithaca. I'll be speaking at Ithaca College tonight on the

00:00:48.380 topic, Give Me That Old Time Religion, America's Christian Foundation. I think we'll be streaming

00:00:53.280 that, so look out for that. I think you might be able to find it. It's going to be very controversial.

00:00:57.760 In the old days, this wouldn't have been controversial, the Christian underpinnings

00:01:01.300 of America, probably even 20 years ago. Now, it is so controversial, there have been promised

00:01:07.940 protests. Now, I don't know if they're going to show up. People have said that they're going to

00:01:12.100 protest me, which is really funny, because the most noteworthy thing that I've done is not write

00:01:17.020 a book. Can you imagine what they would do if I did write a book? Can you imagine the sort of

00:01:21.060 protests I would get? So this is, if the protest happens, it will actually be a protest of

00:01:27.700 nothing, but it should be a lot of fun. I'm excited. I just had lunch with some of the Ithaca

00:01:33.920 right-wingers and the people who are bringing me over there, so it should be a lot of fun.

00:01:39.060 Look out for that later on tonight. We'll see. Hopefully, Antifa doesn't smash my head in or

00:01:42.760 something. We need to talk about Roseanne. This is all culture today until we get to the mailbag,

00:01:48.800 but before we do that, we need to make a little money. You know, Roseanne's not the only person

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00:04:24.260 This Roseanne debut is huge, huge news and Hollywood is absolutely shocked by it. The debut of the Roseanne

00:04:32.420 reboot. Do you remember the show from the 90s? I used to watch it as a kid. I don't,

00:04:36.160 I actually assume there are a lot of people who didn't watch it when it was on the first time.

00:04:39.500 This is a great show about a blue collar, kind of lower middle class family and just what they go

00:04:45.760 through. The debut of the reboot was watched by 18 million Americans. To put that into perspective,

00:04:53.860 NBC was leading the rankings up until this point in February with an average of 9.5 million viewers.

00:05:00.460 That is double that. It was a whopper of a debut. Hollywood is already trying to chalk this up to

00:05:06.660 nostalgia TV, but that doesn't really work. You know, people who say, I really liked Roseanne in

00:05:11.340 the 90s, but now, you know, I want to tune in and just relive my childhood. That doesn't really work.

00:05:17.880 The youngest viewers from Roseanne's first run are now at the top or outside of the ad-friendly

00:05:22.920 demographic, right? I mean, I'm watching it at like three years old at the time. I was always very

00:05:28.480 forward thinking on the culture and watching TV, but they're really at the top range of that ad-friendly

00:05:33.740 demographic now. Roseanne's staggering performance in that demographic came from new viewers who were

00:05:39.560 children or not even born during Roseanne's first run. These are new viewers, people tuning in for

00:05:44.580 the first time. The mainstream media are absolutely shocked. Hollywood Reporter reports,

00:05:49.600 Roseanne revival skyrockets with stunning premiere. Roseanne upends the TV industry, proving middle

00:05:56.160 America can help broadcast triumph. Gee whiz, you think? Do you think really that little sliver

00:06:04.320 of America between the two oceans that might be able to help a broadcast premiere? The willful

00:06:12.260 ignorance is so shocking that the vast majority of this country might be able to move the needle

00:06:17.660 one way or the other. And it's because for so long, Hollywood only preaches to coastal elites.

00:06:22.000 It only preaches a worldview shared by relatively few people when you look at the geography of the

00:06:27.820 United States. So when something breaks out of that, it's always shocking. It's so shocking.

00:06:32.500 Washington Post reports that Roseanne premiere was the highest rated sitcom episode in years

00:06:38.560 of any sitcom. Deadline, which is the Hollywood industry outlet. Deadline is actually pretty good.

00:06:46.180 Deadline got it right. The headline read, Roseanne revivals, huge debut, stuns Hollywood,

00:06:52.420 prompts soul searching. Prompts soul searching. Why does it need to prompt soul searching? Because

00:06:58.740 Hollywood has ignored this little tiny demographic of America called the majority of Americans for a

00:07:04.660 long time. And it's part of why their ratings have just slumped. You know, obviously TV is going down

00:07:11.200 in ratings. People are tuning into new media much more frequently, but you can still break out of

00:07:17.160 the pack as Roseanne is showing us. Deadline wrote in their article, while nostalgia was expected to

00:07:22.080 bring in eyeballs, no one predicted such a huge turnout on premiere night for the blue collar family

00:07:27.920 sitcom with a Donald Trump supporting protagonist, especially among the younger demographic. But then

00:07:33.700 few predicted that Trump would become the Republican nominee and would win the presidential election

00:07:37.780 when he first announced his candidacy. This few predicted, nobody knew, nobody could predict.

00:07:42.740 I predicted that Roseanne would be a smash hit when it was rebooted. I did predict that. I knew that

00:07:47.700 would happen. Why? Because I know Roseanne Barr. I know she's very funny. I know she's an astute

00:07:52.480 observer of the culture. She's speaking to people that nobody else is speaking to. And all the other

00:07:57.080 sitcoms coming out of Hollywood are trash. They are unwatchable. So I'm not surprised at all.

00:08:03.340 This is that classic line that you hear in every election when it comes to Republicans. They say,

00:08:07.520 I didn't know anybody who voted for Nixon. Well, most people voted for him. Oh, I didn't know

00:08:12.580 anybody who voted for Reagan. I would hear this from professors of mine, family, friends. I don't

00:08:17.760 know anybody who voted. I don't know anybody who predicted Roseanne would be such a smash hit.

00:08:22.000 And it was a smash hit among younger viewers. So there's this worry. Roseanne Barr has been fairly

00:08:27.320 vocal about her support of Donald Trump. And there was this fear that, oh, well, young people hate

00:08:32.480 Donald Trump. That's it. He's not. Well, not so. Not so. It certainly doesn't appear this way.

00:08:38.080 I want to address Ben's point because Ben has talked about this on his show today and he wrote

00:08:42.060 a good piece on it. He did not like the Roseanne premiere. He said, we have to watch out because

00:08:47.100 people are saying this is a big triumph for conservatism. But Roseanne is not a conservative.

00:08:52.460 The show isn't a conservative. They have a, you know, a little kid. The seven-year-old boy

00:08:56.880 is cross-dressing and that's not addressed sternly. It's sort of just kind of a weird thing and they're

00:09:02.240 indulging in it. And, you know, Roseanne has never been an actual conservative. She just supports

00:09:07.880 Donald Trump. Ben wrote that great book, Primetime Propaganda. He says this might even be some sort

00:09:13.220 of nefarious plot, you know, like they always do in Hollywood to sneak leftist politics in.

00:09:18.580 I'm not really sure about that. The, you know, the show, I suppose, is culturally left-wing in the

00:09:25.100 sense that it's socially left-wing. It doesn't care about the transgender thing. Roseanne is pro-gay

00:09:30.620 rights. She's pro-cultural leftism. And basically his contention is that what the show is saying is

00:09:38.740 the only reason anyone could vote for Trump legitimately is economic. He talked about jobs

00:09:43.560 who's going to make the country better. I don't think that's true. I think it's seeing culture in

00:09:49.920 a narrow way. I think there's more culture to this and it explains a phenomenon that we've seen for a

00:09:54.460 long time. You know, on this seven-year-old boy, Ben says the evidence is that this seven-year-old

00:10:01.520 boy character wears girls' clothing and they don't take it seriously. But people didn't vote for Donald

00:10:07.480 Trump because he clearly explained that transgenderism is delusional. They didn't vote for him for that

00:10:12.680 reason. There was a candidate who did that whose name is Ted Cruz. There were conservatives who were

00:10:17.520 saying this at the time, but Trump actually was pilloried in the 2016 election because he said,

00:10:21.760 I don't care about the bathrooms. Let them use whatever bathroom they want. That was basically

00:10:26.280 always his perspective and it resonated with a lot of Americans. Conservatives, rock-ribbed

00:10:31.960 conservatives and social conservatives, like many of us over here, don't agree with that. We think

00:10:37.100 it's important to make these clear philosophical distinctions. But I don't think that most Trump

00:10:41.600 voters really did that. There's a different kind of cultural conservatism that is at work here and

00:10:46.440 it's called the silent majority. The silent majority of people, Richard Nixon popularized

00:10:51.120 this term in 1969. Here he is explaining it. So tonight, to you, the great silent majority

00:11:00.080 of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support. I pledged in my campaign for the presidency to end

00:11:08.100 the war in a way that we could win the peace. I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me

00:11:15.820 to keep that pledge. The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge

00:11:22.460 can be redeemed. For the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at

00:11:30.420 Paris. Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat.

00:11:41.520 Now this is considered the beginning of the silent majority. It actually isn't.

00:11:47.200 It was coined in presidential politics in 1919 and 1920 to refer to Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding,

00:11:53.540 also both Republicans. The silent majority then as in 1969 as now refers to Americans who don't

00:12:01.500 shriek their politics from the rooftop. You know, all of the people at these marches who wear the hats

00:12:06.280 that are shaped like genitals and all of that, those people are very vocal. It's easy to think that

00:12:10.960 that's the dominant American culture, but it isn't because normal people don't do that. People who were

00:12:16.380 raised correctly and learned manners and self-respect don't go out there and shriek profanities all the

00:12:21.820 time at all of these protests. And that's what refers to the silent majority. But notice in that

00:12:26.060 speech, he says, I talked to the silent majority of Americans. We need to end this war. We need peace

00:12:31.760 and we need a certain kind of peace with dignity and this and that. Dignity and peace are important

00:12:36.920 aspects here. Initially, you know, it was about the Vietnam War. It was about opposing the counterculture.

00:12:42.940 But peace plays a role in this. Some Republicans want to bomb a lot of places. Some Republicans

00:12:47.460 aren't such anti-war activists, but the silent majority seems to have been a little bit that way.

00:12:52.760 You see it with Roseanne. You see it with Donald Trump, too. Donald Trump campaigned as an anti-war

00:12:58.620 candidate. Roseanne ran for president briefly and she was an anti-war candidate. These people are not

00:13:04.500 necessarily conservative politically in a certain ideological way that we think of them.

00:13:10.280 Nixon and Reagan, by the way, ran as anti-war candidates. There was Ronald Reagan's peace

00:13:15.700 through strength and then Ronald Reagan tried to abolish nuclear weapons at Reykjavik with

00:13:20.580 Gorbachev. Their peace through strength is quite different. None of them were campaigning on we

00:13:24.860 need to go bomb all of these countries. Nixon ended the Vietnam War. The cultural conservatism here

00:13:30.420 that I think some conservatives are missing is the deep respect for institutions. Roseanne and Donald

00:13:36.560 Trump don't like to see American institutions disrespected. This is a divide among conservatives that's

00:13:43.220 been a long, a long time. The traditionalists and the more libertarians, the more ideological ones. The divide,

00:13:49.340 you could see it with the NFL controversy. Donald Trump criticized all of those ungrateful, ingrate

00:13:58.420 protesters in the NFL for taking a knee and disrespecting the flag and the national anthem. He attacked them and

00:14:04.560 he said, no, stand up for your flag. Stand up for your country. It's outrageous. It's unpatriotic. And these are our

00:14:09.380 games. Some conservatives like me cheered. I was very happy to hear him say that because it's deeply

00:14:14.820 offensive when a culture hates itself and hates its own institutions and hates the things that have

00:14:20.380 given us so much freedom and so much prosperity and been so charitable to the world. Some more libertarian

00:14:25.680 people or more ideological people were horrified when Donald Trump attacked the NFL players. He said,

00:14:31.040 oh, it's not his place. I don't want the president involved in the culture. This is a little,

00:14:34.800 this, and I sympathize with that, but that's, that is a big difference. And Donald Trump falls into that

00:14:40.840 former category. He is culturally in that sense, quite conservative. He might not care about transgender

00:14:45.640 bathrooms. Roseanne might not care about little boys who are wearing dresses. They might think it's kind of weird,

00:14:50.020 but that is, that is a type of cultural conservatism. Here's Roseanne explaining it.

00:14:56.020 I know you're a, you were a very liberal, socially liberal person in general. I mean,

00:15:01.280 I'm still the same. You all moved. We did. You all went so far out. You lost everybody.

00:15:09.080 I mean, seriously, a lot of your audience and including me, I just want to say this, Jimmy,

00:15:15.200 a lot of us, you know, no matter who we voted for, we don't want to see our president fail.

00:15:21.280 Right. Right. I know. And yet we've seen it over again.

00:15:29.080 You want Pence? You want Pence for the frigging president?

00:15:32.540 No, I don't want him either. Well, then zip that lip.

00:15:39.080 Well, then zip that lip. That's, that's classic Roseanne. Now, look, I wouldn't mind Pence. I'd be

00:15:45.200 pretty happy if Mike Pence were the president. I think he's a great guy. Klavan calls him Mensch.

00:15:49.580 I wouldn't mind that one little bit, but a lot of America is much more the Connors than the more

00:15:56.760 ideological conservative or the conservative who's cares very much about this, these strains of

00:16:03.160 thought and moral frameworks and philosophy and history. A lot of America is much more the Connors.

00:16:08.180 A lot of people that you grew up with, a lot of people that I grew up with, people in my family,

00:16:11.840 people that I'm friends with, they don't think about politics all the time. They don't think,

00:16:15.340 you know, they don't follow all of these websites. They say, but what is Mueller going to do here

00:16:20.740 with this probe? And he's got Gates and Manafort and they don't follow that. Their interaction with

00:16:27.200 politics, blessed are they, is they see a few things in the news sometimes and they live their

00:16:31.480 lives. And that's much better. C.S. Lewis talked about how that's probably a better way of life.

00:16:35.780 You have to focus on politics when the politics is sick, but you can't only focus on politics or you

00:16:40.340 lose sight of what the politics is for, which is the culture. So some conservatives, especially

00:16:45.620 social conservatives might worry, like in Ben's piece, that the redefinition of Trump supporters

00:16:51.880 as these blue collar lefties who are pro gay marriage and pro abortion and pro feminist and

00:16:56.920 pro transgenderism, you know, that, that, that, that is what makes them good. And that the difference

00:17:02.660 between Trump and Hillary voters is economic in nature and not cultural, as Ben says it. There is a fear

00:17:07.900 there, but that isn't just leftism. There is this, this other subtle kind of traditionalist

00:17:13.880 cultural conservatism. Now, Roseanne has been pro Trump for a long time. She's talked about,

00:17:19.700 I don't think it's some nefarious plot on her, certainly not on her part. The reason that Roseanne

00:17:25.200 was such a big hit in the nineties and today is that it accurately observes the culture. It's,

00:17:32.120 it's much more descriptive than prescriptive. So there's this fear if we thought, oh, Roseanne is

00:17:36.860 trying to radically change the culture and push this leftism and all. I don't think Roseanne

00:17:41.600 does that. I don't think she did it then. I don't think she does it now. I think she's observing

00:17:44.660 something. And this is a very upsetting to leftists because the protagonist of this show

00:17:50.060 is pro Trump. She really likes Donald Trump. That Bob drives them crazy. She's always making fun of

00:17:54.820 Jackie, you know, who's wearing the pussy hat and the pink shirt and all of that. I'm with her or

00:17:58.720 whatever. That's frustrating to them. It's also frustrating to social conservatives because

00:18:02.900 people don't wear tweed and smoke pipes and go to church every Sunday and, you know, read

00:18:09.200 wonderful old poetry and talk about Aristotle. That doesn't really happen. There's, there's

00:18:14.340 something else that goes on. And if we can have people who are defending the cultural tradition

00:18:19.260 in any way, that that's fine by me. Roseanne in many ways is the anti Donna Reed. She's the anti

00:18:24.720 father knows best, leave it to beaver type. You think of like, you know, the, the mother taking

00:18:29.940 muffins out of the oven and no honey. Hello. And that isn't Roseanne at all. Roseanne is

00:18:34.380 in many ways the opposite, except in one regard. All of those shows are correctly observing a

00:18:39.920 culture, not to say that America in the fifties was all women taking muffins out of the oven

00:18:45.240 and not to say that the culture in 2018 is all people shrieking with vulgarity, but there,

00:18:51.300 there are broad cultural truths to this. And Hollywood just cannot explain this away. You know,

00:18:57.140 Hollywood wants to say that it's just, Oh, this nostalgia for the nineties. If it were just

00:19:01.720 nostalgia for the nineties, no one would watch it. Some people watch the first episode, not even a

00:19:06.160 lot. And it'd probably Peter out, but it's a correctly observing the culture again. And that's,

00:19:10.900 that is fine by me. I, I, I'd, I'd much rather see the truth in art, even in sitcom, even in an art

00:19:17.100 that's considered lower than some agenda, either right wing agenda or a left wing agenda. Will and

00:19:22.260 Grace, another nineties sitcom had a reboot and the ratings haven't been great. The ratings really

00:19:26.540 haven't been good. They haven't been what people expected. The Oscars are down 20% from last year's

00:19:31.200 nine year low. The Grammys were in the gutter. ABC canceled last man standing, the Tim Allen show,

00:19:36.620 despite good ratings. You see this working in Hollywood, all these shows that they keep

00:19:41.360 pushing to the left, Jimmy Kimmel dragging the Oscars without telling any jokes, forgetting to tell

00:19:46.000 all jokes in there. Those go down. They finally, they get a good show with good ratings. Last man

00:19:50.680 standing, that's conservative. They nix it. Roseanne is in this interesting place because she is sort of a

00:19:56.240 lefty, but she's a lefty who likes America. She has a basic kind of like for America. She wants her

00:20:02.020 president to succeed. She, she's got, that's a level that can't really be rationalized in political

00:20:08.000 analysis. And Trump knows this by the way. And that's why he called her. President Trump called up

00:20:12.760 Roseanne. I guess they've been friends for years and congratulated her on the ratings. He understands how

00:20:17.020 important it is. He understands how important the Conners are. The Conners are not conservatives and

00:20:23.760 we shouldn't demand that they be conservatives. Ronald Reagan knew this. Ronald Reagan knew that

00:20:28.980 we need a big tent coalition. He knew that there were Democrats for Reagan. There were Democrats for

00:20:33.460 Reagan. There are Conners for Trump. That's fine. That's a big tent. Nixon knew it. Reagan knew it.

00:20:38.320 Trump gets it too. It makes us the cool guys. We don't all have to wear tweed. I like wearing tweed.

00:20:43.140 I like smoking cigars. I like reading Aristotle. That's a lot of fun. But we need, you need more

00:20:47.900 than that. If those are the only people who are going to vote for a candidate, you're not going

00:20:51.040 to get elected dog catcher anywhere in the, anywhere in the country. Uh, now the show itself

00:20:57.220 talked about politics a lot. It was very political, much more than it was in the nineties. So you might

00:21:02.960 say, well, that's too bad because political art is usually pretty boring. I think Roseanne has

00:21:08.760 something because she's acknowledging and observing that these are very political times,

00:21:13.340 much more so than normal. I think that's what makes this good popular art is it's correctly

00:21:18.660 observing the time. Jackie wearing the pussy hat, even just a friends and family being divided over

00:21:24.500 politics. We are so politically divided at this moment. It's, it's a little strange. I don't think

00:21:29.680 it's because of deep disagreements. I don't think most people know what the disagreements are really.

00:21:33.840 They don't acknowledge the first principles that they're debating. They don't even acknowledge

00:21:38.600 the different premises. I think it's because the culture is so shallow. You know, Breitbart said

00:21:43.600 politics is downstream of culture and culture is downstream of God. It's downstream of the cult,

00:21:47.900 of what we worship. And now I think it's, we've really perverted this framework because now

00:21:52.720 the culture is just worshiping the politics. It's going in the wrong direction. It gets very strange

00:21:58.380 and very catty. Entertainment these days is politics. That is, this is the age of Trump.

00:22:04.240 We elected a reality TV star who had executive produced and starred in a hit reality TV show

00:22:11.100 for 15 seasons on MS, on NBC. We elected that man president. That, that says something about our

00:22:17.660 entertainment. If Roseanne were to not be political and not talk about politics, I think we'd tune it

00:22:22.760 out. We'd say, well, this just doesn't reflect the reality that I'm seeing around me. She really

00:22:27.700 has her finger on something and we can demand that she become William F. Buckley. We can demand

00:22:32.460 that she hold the line on the checklist conservative issues, but it wouldn't be real. It wouldn't be

00:22:37.440 authentic. It wouldn't tell us something about our politics. And it's very fine for me that

00:22:42.440 independent minded voters and voters who would be the Reagan Democrats or middle America or the silent

00:22:48.480 majority or blue collar, whatever you want to call them. I'm very happy that they're breaking for us

00:22:53.120 right now. That's a win. That's something very good. We shouldn't change our view of the world.

00:22:59.280 We shouldn't lie to people, but we never have. When the Reagan Democrats have broken for us,

00:23:03.940 when the silent majority has broken for us in elections, it doesn't pervert us. It doesn't,

00:23:08.220 we don't suddenly become radical left-wing fanatics. That doesn't happen. That is fine by me. Let's keep

00:23:16.000 winning. Keep the covfefe coming. This is an area where Donald Trump uniquely is capable of grabbing

00:23:22.900 a portion of the electorate that a lot of other Republicans, even Republican candidates that

00:23:26.780 perhaps we would have preferred, just wouldn't have been able to do it. Okay. We've got to get

00:23:30.360 to the mailbag. I've got a lot of mailbag today. Do I have to say goodbye yet or can I get a couple

00:23:33.900 mailbag questions then? I do have to say goodbye. Oh, that's so awful because I've got such good mailbag

00:23:41.060 questions. Sorry guys. Well, maybe you can tune in later. The speech should be a lot of fun. We'll

00:23:46.340 see. At the very least, you can see an Antifa brick getting thrown at my head. Who knows? Maybe,

00:23:50.420 maybe the potential protesters watch the show and I've convinced them to just come and listen.

00:23:55.080 Mirabile dictu. Maybe they'd learn something. Why should you join Daily Wire? Well, if you're on

00:24:01.720 YouTube, I don't believe you get yourself to an insane asylum because you're imagining things. You're

00:24:05.580 having fantasies walking around. If you're on Facebook, you got to go to dailywire.com. You'll get me,

00:24:10.140 you'll get the Andrew Klavan show. You get the Ben Shapiro show. You can watch the back half of those

00:24:13.700 shows. You can ask questions in the mailbag, which we're just about to do. Anybody can watch or listen

00:24:18.960 to the mailbag rather, but only those subscribers can ask questions. Many are called, but few are

00:24:24.040 chosen. You can ask questions in the conversation, but none of that matters. You get the Leftist Tears

00:24:30.960 Tumblr. I don't, I don't think I can overstate the importance of the Leftist Tears Tumblr. Tonight,

00:24:37.920 there are already all these threats on the college campus. I am without one, which means I don't think

00:24:43.440 that I'm going to be offed by some Antifa guy bashing me in the head or anything like that. I

00:24:48.900 think I'm going to drown. I think I could drown because I didn't think ahead to protect myself

00:24:53.980 and all of those guys there to all the Republicans on campus. You don't be like me. Protect yourself.

00:24:59.640 Get the Leftist Tears Tumblr. It's the only FDA approved vessel to store those radioactive,

00:25:04.500 salty, and delicious Leftist Tears. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back.

00:25:19.380 First question from Kyle. Good king of trolls, Michael, what would be a good place to start

00:25:24.860 reading about how the church cleaned up its act after the corruption that is usually associated

00:25:29.220 with it during the Renaissance? We just started talking about Protestantism in my religion and

00:25:34.320 American society class and the corruption at the top of the church has been named as one of the

00:25:39.520 reasons why the Reformation began. Thank you for your insights and have a great weekend.

00:25:44.580 The Reformation is taught so horrifically. The things that aren't outright lies are such gross

00:25:50.560 distortions that you're getting less than half of the history. It's really unfortunate and a lot of it

00:25:56.820 is just not true. Even beginning with the name, the historian Jacques Barzin refers to the Protestant

00:26:02.300 Revolution. He doesn't call it a Reformation. Why doesn't he call it the Reformation? Because it

00:26:06.620 wasn't a Reformation. It actually wasn't a Reformation, right? A Reformation movement, and there have been

00:26:11.920 many in the history of the church. There's one going on right now. Reform the institution. The

00:26:17.080 Protestants rebelled against the institution, broke away from the institution, and started their own

00:26:21.200 thing. That isn't a Reformation. That's a revolution or a rebellion or what have you. There's a

00:26:26.680 Reformation going on right now. After Vatican II, they took all the beautiful liturgy that united

00:26:32.820 people in soul and spirit and listening and mind and took them to a higher place in heaven while

00:26:39.600 listening to beautiful hymns and chanting in Latin, and they replaced it with acoustic guitars and

00:26:44.220 insipid, awful hymns. Now there is a Reformation of the Reformation, and what's going on now is that

00:26:51.980 there's more Latin mass. Younger people are enjoying that more. That's what a Reformation looks like.

00:26:56.700 I recommend, in terms of reading about that time, you should check out How the Reformation Happened by

00:27:02.000 Hilaire Belloc. That was a gift to me from Andrew Klavan, I think mostly so that I can just bother all

00:27:07.860 the other Protestants at the Daily Wire. Drew's a Protestant too, but they want me to have all of that to

00:27:12.220 keep poking them. Catholic Answers is a great resource. Catholic Answers is a website, and

00:27:16.980 they have a lot of media outlets where you can ask any question. You say, I learned this in

00:27:22.180 Protestant history class. Is that true? And then they say no. Usually they say, no, it isn't true.

00:27:26.900 Or they say, yeah, it was true, but they fixed it relatively quickly. If you want to learn a little

00:27:31.460 bit about what the Reformation looked like that you probably won't learn in Protestant history class,

00:27:35.180 you can read Martin Luther's tract on the Jews and their lies. You can read his tract on the

00:27:40.480 murderous, thieving hordes of peasants. And you can read his many writings that sucked up two Muslim

00:27:45.280 invaders, including On War Against the Turk, where he finds common cause with them against the church.

00:27:51.860 Suleiman the Magnificent, who was turned away from conquering Europe by Catholic forces, had actually

00:27:57.500 written warmly to Luther and his followers and received some nice sayings from them. Suleiman said he felt

00:28:05.480 close to them. He said, since they did not worship idols, believe in one God, and fought against the

00:28:11.760 Pope and Emperor, that there was a kinship between the Protestants and the Muslims. You probably won't

00:28:16.000 learn that in Protestant history class. You also probably won't learn that it wasn't the Catholics

00:28:20.040 who were burning witches for the 15 centuries of that institution before the Protestant revolution.

00:28:25.480 The witch trials began only after that revolution. Why is that? All the bloodshed in Europe. You

00:28:30.900 probably won't learn those things. I think it's, I'm not saying this just to say there's nothing

00:28:36.020 worthwhile in Protestantism, that there's nothing worthwhile in these churches, especially how they

00:28:42.420 work in America today. I just mean it to say we are taught an absurdly anti-historical negative picture

00:28:51.340 of the Catholic church over history. And we are taught a whitewashed history of the Protestant

00:28:56.260 revolution, and you should shake yourself of those historical revisions, those unfair revisions.

00:29:04.600 Next question from Dave. Happy mailbag day. Happy mailbag day to you too, Dave. Love the show.

00:29:09.860 I heard you say on a number of occasions that water is clearest in the shallows,

00:29:13.240 meaning that a simple answer may seem clear, but in its appearance of clarity, it lacks depth.

00:29:17.580 That said, I've heard you defend your conservative and Catholic worldviews with both clarity and depth.

00:29:21.820 Thank you. So is there a point where a dive into the deeper waters of conservative

00:29:25.420 and Christian philosophy results in clarity and depth? And if so, what does it take to reach that

00:29:30.160 point? It does. I can't take credit for the line that was Dr. Johnson who said,

00:29:34.080 all shallows are clear, a far better writer than I. I use fewer words than he did, but that's a good

00:29:39.080 line from him. Beauty is a good example of this. Beauty is a good example of profound things being

00:29:45.160 at once not shallow, but being clear and piercing our souls. One has great difficulty explaining

00:29:53.400 beauty. Good luck explaining what beauty is. Thomas Aquinas ventured a guess, but even that's

00:29:59.520 insufficient. He's a pretty smart fella. What is beauty? You can't describe it, or you can't define

00:30:04.660 it rather, but you know it when you see it. It pierces your soul. It's unmistakable. When you see

00:30:08.860 beauty, it doesn't even just change your thought. It moves you physically. You have a reaction to it.

00:30:15.700 Conservative thought, if you want to get clearer on politics, conservative thought will become

00:30:20.280 clearer when you get into first principles. So I can give a lot of reasons why I like tax cuts.

00:30:26.380 I can go on. I can do like a week of shows on all the great parts of tax cuts. But why do tax cuts

00:30:32.660 matter? Freedom. Because of freedom. Because freedom is a good thing. And man is made with dignity. Man is

00:30:39.620 made in God's image. And God wants us to be free. And Christ comes not to judge mankind, but to liberate

00:30:45.680 mankind and to save mankind. Because freedom is a good per se. It's a good in itself. And when you get

00:30:51.380 all the way down the line in public policy, the government not taking an extra three grand from

00:30:56.120 me each year is pretty good. You know, that's a nice thing too. And it emanates from that first

00:30:59.460 principle. I think things become much clearer that way. You'll get less confused and less liable to be

00:31:05.120 taken in by some of the demagoguery that we see on the left. You know, if you don't want to restrict

00:31:11.000 people's civil rights, you want dead children. That's the sort of thing they say. And if you can

00:31:14.780 explain why it's important that we have the right to defend ourselves and defend our liberty, it's

00:31:20.080 much easier to say, oh no, that's okay. Don't worry. No, no, no. You've got it wrong. You keep

00:31:24.140 shrieking. You've got it wrong. That's a very good question. I hope that, I mean, it's an impossible

00:31:29.640 question to answer, but I hope that helps in guiding you along the way. From Bill.

00:31:34.660 Ye of little words, I wholeheartedly agree with you that we should not grant the left's anti-gun

00:31:38.880 premises when discussing violent crime in America. I don't think we should give one inch to the people

00:31:43.860 whose ultimate goal is gun confiscation. And with Republican control of the Congress and the White

00:31:48.320 House, I don't see why we shouldn't be fighting to get some of our lost gun rights back. In the last

00:31:52.840 few weeks, however, we've seen the opposite. After signing the omnibus bill that included anti-due

00:31:56.760 process fix NICS, as well as ordering the ATF to redefine machine guns without an act of Congress,

00:32:02.700 to ban bump stocks, all these other firearm accessories, President Trump has instituted more

00:32:07.040 anti-Second Amendment restrictions than Barack Obama. And yet many on the right, including the

00:32:13.220 NRA, don't seem to care or even notice. Why are so many conservatives apathetic to our rights being

00:32:18.960 eroded under Trump when they would never tolerate such actions under Obama or Clinton bill? It is

00:32:24.800 frustrating. It's very frustrating. It's because he's our guy and he's, and he is better on this

00:32:29.320 generally. Barack Obama proposed a lot of truly horrific anti-gun legislation and only the Republican

00:32:36.540 Congress prevented that from going through. These things that Donald Trump has done are frustrating.

00:32:41.940 You know, it's tightening background checks, which in the grand scheme of gun rights is not really a

00:32:47.040 big deal. The bump stock thing is sort of irrelevant because bump stocks are not a great accessory.

00:32:52.600 They don't, you can, you can simulate the action of a bump stock even without one. And they, you can't

00:32:58.360 aim with them. They're not good for shooting. They wouldn't, when the zombie apocalypse happens or the

00:33:03.160 federal government turns tyrannical, you're not going to use a bump stock. You're going to use your,

00:33:06.640 you're going to aim and use your gun. So I think part of the, part of it is these restrictions

00:33:11.600 aren't the biggest deal in the world. That said, why is he instituting them at all? He's a tough guy

00:33:19.240 to pin down and he is much less ideological and probably less grounded in conservative thought than

00:33:25.660 many other politicians, the vast majority of other Republican politicians in this country.

00:33:30.040 So it's frustrating. Now Obama, you know, he got the social security administration involved in gun

00:33:34.960 control during his presidency. He did tweak things from the executive that I think are going undiscussed

00:33:39.880 right now. But we need, what we need to do is keep, keep pushing Trump to the right. He's been good on

00:33:44.960 us so far. He's our guy. We are partisans. It would be, we would be truly SOL if Hillary Clinton were

00:33:53.500 president right now. And she campaigned on gutting that amendment. Justice Stevens, former Justice

00:33:58.320 Stevens wants to repeal the second amendment. He's a Republican. There are huge stakes here.

00:34:03.320 And if the guy who's basically defending the second amendment and who tweets out all the time,

00:34:07.240 we need to defend the second amendment, we need to respect the second amendment. If that guy is

00:34:11.520 banning bump stocks or something, it's very frustrating. It's incoherent as far as I'm concerned,

00:34:16.740 but he's the best we've got. He's the best guy we've got. And we got to, we have to remind

00:34:22.420 ourselves of that because if we let the perfect get in the way of the good, we're going to lose our civil

00:34:25.720 rights. From Jeffrey, Mr. Knowles, where is your stand regarding the Oxford comma? For it, against

00:34:33.820 it? I'm fascinated at how this debate even arose in the first place. Warmest regards, Jeff. Yeah,

00:34:40.020 certainly the latter. No, I'm, I'm all for it. I'm a deep partisan of the Oxford comma. You know,

00:34:45.440 that's the one in a series, you put one more comma before the and or the but. It's older,

00:34:50.060 it's more traditional, and therefore it is better. It's a description, a valid description of many

00:34:55.160 things in the world. It resolves ambiguity. So somebody could say without the Oxford comma,

00:35:01.280 hey, Michael, consider just this sentence. Hey, Michael, for your bachelor party, we invited the

00:35:07.660 strippers, Ben Shapiro, and Andrew Klavan. Now you heard that Oxford comma in there after Shapiro.

00:35:14.120 Okay, good. Now consider it without the Oxford comma. Hey, Michael, for your bachelor party,

00:35:19.480 we invited the strippers, Ben Shapiro and Andrew Klavan. That's a horrifying result. We cannot

00:35:24.960 allow that to happen. So on those grounds alone, I would defend the Oxford comma. It actually was

00:35:30.160 brought up in a main labor dispute in a case known as O'Connor versus Oakhurst Dairy. The state

00:35:37.400 appellate court was required to interpret a statute that called for the canning comma, processing

00:35:43.720 comma, preserving comma, freezing comma, drying comma, marketing comma, storing comma, packing for

00:35:49.220 shipment or distribution. Now it was unclear. Is it packing for shipment comma or distribution? Or was

00:35:56.960 it packing for shipment or packing for distribution? This was unclear. A judge found that 43 of 50 U.S.

00:36:04.360 states mandated the use of the Oxford comma. Both chambers of Congress warned against omitting it.

00:36:09.480 It did have this effect in this particular case. Keep the Oxford comma. From Brian.

00:36:14.440 Hi, Michael. My wife and I are strong Christian conservatives. In our 30s, we've decided not to

00:36:18.720 have children. The reason being we cannot imagine bringing children into this world where every

00:36:23.980 moment is spent by the left warping, eliminating traditional values. My greatest fear would be to

00:36:29.060 have a son or daughter slowly be warped by attrition that I feel I cannot keep up with in their schools

00:36:33.760 and elsewhere. It's hard enough to constantly be fighting insane worldviews like gender neutrality

00:36:38.200 or the elimination of the Second Amendment. But to have to do it on behalf of my own children

00:36:42.440 every day is almost unbearable. Do you have any advice for us if we do decide to have children?

00:36:47.980 Have children. You should have children. This is a very Catholic answer. You should have children.

00:36:51.820 Yeah, you absolutely should. The church says that a marriage that isn't open to children,

00:36:57.740 that begins without even being open to the possibility of having children, is not a valid marriage.

00:37:04.020 Now, not everyone gets to have children. Some people are physically incapable of that. But if you're

00:37:08.760 intellectually just closed off to the possibility of it, the traditional teaching of the church is

00:37:15.320 that that's not a valid marriage. As for the fear, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it, man.

00:37:20.040 In Second Timothy, it says, for God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.

00:37:24.840 First John, there is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with

00:37:30.460 punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. You know, give a good foundation to the kids.

00:37:36.020 Obviously, we all fear these things. I've actually had this thought myself,

00:37:40.520 but don't worry about it. Let you do your best. God will do the rest. Give them a good foundation

00:37:44.740 and maybe even then hope that they flirt with some of the lefty craziness. I actually think it's a

00:37:50.620 good idea. Like a vaccine, a little bit of the disease inoculates you against its most pernicious

00:37:55.840 effects. This happened to me. I had a great foundation growing up. I had my little flirtation with

00:38:00.380 leftiness in high school, I guess, or late middle school, early high school, something like that.

00:38:05.260 And then I realized, oh no, okay, this is the kind of thought that's appropriate to a 13-year-old,

00:38:10.260 but not to a person who's older than that or has learned more than that. You want strong kids,

00:38:16.060 so maybe that's not such a bad thing at all. I've always been in lefty cities. I've always

00:38:19.800 gone to lefty universities and schools and things like that. I think it's good. It helps you defend

00:38:25.100 your own views and helps you define what you really think as long as you have a good foundation

00:38:30.720 and it sounds like you're going to give them a good foundation. So do it. Get out all these kids.

00:38:34.640 We need more conservatives, more conservative kids. Pump them out, man. Let's do it. From Stephen.

00:38:40.440 Little old Knowles, what is your counter-argument to the walnut brains that use the militia remark

00:38:46.040 in the Second Amendment to deem it antiquated? Thanks. I'm going to use that phrase so much.

00:38:51.440 Walnut brains, that's really good. Yeah, okay. So they say,

00:38:55.560 a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state,

00:38:59.540 the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

00:39:02.560 This is just a little grammar lesson. This isn't even a lesson on constitutional law

00:39:06.320 or justificatory clauses, although one could read those things and realize they all favor

00:39:10.960 the individual right to keep and bear arms. I had Eugene Volokh on The Legal Scholar an episode

00:39:16.640 probably a month ago. You can check that one out because he explains all of that in detail.

00:39:20.800 But just consider the grammar. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is an independent

00:39:26.320 clause. It says what it says. It's contained in itself. A well-regulated militia being necessary

00:39:32.700 to the security of a free state is a dependent clause. It's not a complete clause. It's not a

00:39:37.560 full sentence. It's just a fragment, right? So I could also say vanilla ice cream being very

00:39:44.360 delicious. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. And that statement

00:39:48.940 that I just made is still a complete thought. It's still a complete sentence. And by the way,

00:39:53.580 it doesn't, just because militias are impractical now, as you might, you know, we have a standing

00:39:59.220 army or something like that, that doesn't nullify a civil right. Now you could say, well, I think the

00:40:05.700 best argument to have a second amendment is that there were militias and now there aren't militias.

00:40:10.160 So we should repeal that amendment. That's a coherent thought, not a good thought, but a coherent

00:40:15.060 thought. But you don't just nullify civil rights because technology changes. We, that doesn't,

00:40:21.920 that doesn't get rid of your, your basic rights. You have to go through a process if you want to do

00:40:25.820 that, especially one as important as the right to self-defense. Just give them the grammar, give

00:40:29.620 them a little English lesson. Maybe it will improve their thought process and their use of precise

00:40:33.440 language. From Samuel, what, yeah, this is probably the last one. That's too bad because we have such

00:40:39.060 good questions here. Oh man, too bad. Okay. You know what? I'm actually going to skip ahead to one

00:40:45.320 that I think is really important from John, because this is Stormy Daniels. I haven't talked about

00:40:50.860 Stormy Daniels. We'll try to get to the other questions next week. With respect to the Stormy

00:40:55.980 Daniels issue, do you feel President Trump should go on the attack and say, yes, he did have sex with

00:41:00.140 her and discovered to his dismay, she was lousy in the sack, call it sad, demand an investigation of

00:41:05.480 the porn industry for false advertising. This might trigger Chuck Schumer to tearfully defend

00:41:10.780 Stormy Daniels's boudoir skills and a claim that Trump's statement jeopardizes the mental health of

00:41:16.760 millions of men who depend on the veracity of scenes depicted in porn. Sincerely, John.

00:41:23.140 So out of all of that, what I took away is the question, should Trump come clean about the

00:41:27.800 affair if indeed he had the affair? One thing we learned in recent days is that during her interview,

00:41:34.760 Stormy Daniels was high on sleeping meds. She was high on cough syrup or something, Benadryl.

00:41:41.140 So that doesn't speak well of her. We know that she's lied. She's signed documents saying that

00:41:45.960 this didn't happen. And then she said it did happen and this and that. So her word isn't credible

00:41:50.380 anyway. But let's just say it did happen. Let's say, the thing I found so shocking about the 60

00:41:55.900 Minutes interview is that Donald Trump only did it once. I would have expected that maybe a repeat

00:42:00.560 visit. But again, I think you alluded to that question in your question. No, I don't think

00:42:07.720 Donald Trump should admit this. I don't think he should talk about it. I don't think he should

00:42:10.960 acknowledge it. He shouldn't admit this. This is not a matter of great national importance.

00:42:16.200 It's a good attack, which is why Democrats are using it. Let's make a comparison to Bill Clinton.

00:42:22.740 There really isn't one. But in the case of Bill Clinton, he harassed his 20-year-old intern,

00:42:29.040 his employee in the Oval Office. He got creative with cigars in the people's house.

00:42:34.420 Donald Trump isn't accused of doing that. Donald Trump is accused of having a one-night stand with

00:42:38.360 a porn star 12 years ago, a dozen years ago. So I don't see why he should bring it up. I don't see

00:42:45.120 why he should talk about it. I suppose it would be better if he lived this upright life and, you know,

00:42:49.900 his father knows best and everything. That isn't Donald Trump. It's not the man we elected. We knew

00:42:53.760 it going in. As I suggest, I think the majority of his supporters will say, he only once I thought

00:43:01.460 he was Donald Trump. I thought they would have dragged that out for a while. The reason not to

00:43:05.720 admit this, too, there's an old expression in the Italian-American culture, which is,

00:43:10.120 deny till you die. Denied. Don't admit it. Don't, you know. And I'm not making a moral judgment on

00:43:16.080 that. Obviously, we want the truth above all things. But Donald Trump doesn't need to dignify

00:43:20.600 these stupid questions and these scintillating headlines and attacks with his time and with

00:43:27.400 his speech. People who admit to this type of bad behavior go down. Kevin Spacey is the example of

00:43:32.680 this. He kind of admitted to it, and then they killed him for it. All these other guys, Ben Affleck's

00:43:36.100 accused of it, this guy, that guy, those who are accused of it and are able to just kind of say,

00:43:40.480 nope, I'm not talking about this, pushing it away, they don't go down. So forget about it.

00:43:44.700 This isn't about adultery. This isn't about anything. It isn't about Russia. It isn't

00:43:50.260 about adultery. It isn't about the Women's March. It isn't about guns. It isn't about

00:43:53.580 this. It isn't about this. It's about attacking Donald Trump. It's just about attacking Donald

00:43:57.440 Trump. And they're going to use whatever sorry excuse they can for it. If there were a matter

00:44:02.120 of national importance that really were touched on, then we would demand an answer from Donald

00:44:06.400 Trump. If they're just using the cheapest, grossest attacks they can, talking about spanking and

00:44:12.340 this, like this awful woman, Stormy Daniels, parading herself on drugs on television, don't

00:44:18.200 give it any credence. Don't give it any attention. That is below the office of the president, even

00:44:25.080 for a reality TV star. Okay, that's our show today. I've got to go prepare for this speech

00:44:29.980 in Ithaca. Tune in if you can make it. And I will see you next week back in LA. I'm Michael

00:44:35.080 Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:44:40.940 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production. Executive producer

00:44:46.700 Jeremy Boring. Senior producer Jonathan Hay. Supervising producer Mathis Glover. Our technical

00:44:52.460 producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Alex Zingaro. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup

00:44:58.620 is by Jesua Olvera. Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

00:45:05.080 The Michael Knowles Show.

00:45:08.920 The Michael Knowles.

00:45:12.460 I heard he said he said he said hi, we have the question that is what is him that the

00:45:16.480 mom's hand is añadical for a card name and he says we are referred to the deaf piece of

00:45:21.700 Fred Sieger.

00:45:23.880 He said that we self-disgr antimicronhole when he does not want to be faced for a card name,

00:45:29.200 knowing we determine whether we take him in hell or not when someone knew him to get him to

Ep. 130 - ‘Roseanne’ Is The Silent Majority

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