The Michael Knowles Show - November 28, 2023


Ep. 1379 - Libs Accuse A Kid Of "Blackface" During NFL Game


Episode Stats

Length

45 minutes

Words per Minute

162.4072

Word Count

7,416

Sentence Count

632

Misogynist Sentences

10

Hate Speech Sentences

23


Summary

The Libs are trying to cancel a kid at a Kansas City Chiefs game for allegedly wearing blackface. But there's nothing inherently wrong with blackface, and it's just a fact. Plus, my Media Matters highlight of the day: Sarah Silverman doing a blackface minstrel impression.


Transcript

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00:00:37.700 The Libs are trying to cancel a kid at a Kansas City Chiefs game for allegedly wearing blackface.
00:00:44.120 Yesterday, Deadspin demanded, quote,
00:00:48.820 the NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in blackface native headdress.
00:00:55.500 They're doubling up on racism, the outlet wrote.
00:00:59.380 Are you going to say anything, Roger Goodell?
00:01:02.500 Now, the fan in question was a little kid.
00:01:05.360 And while the picture that the outlet used showed him in profile with black paint on his face,
00:01:11.300 a picture from the front shows that he had painted his face half black and half red.
00:01:18.040 That is, in the team's colors.
00:01:21.920 He also wore a headdress because it's the Kansas City Chiefs.
00:01:28.500 The journalists who ran this are obviously totally awful, despicable little left-wing cretins for picking on this kid.
00:01:37.320 But the conservatives are missing something, too.
00:01:41.700 Because the conservative defense of this kid thus far has largely been confined to the observation that he wasn't actually wearing blackface.
00:01:50.940 That is weak sauce.
00:01:52.940 Because the deeper error in the Libs' attack is that, contrary to what the left selectively argues today,
00:02:00.260 there is nothing inherently wrong about blackface at all.
00:02:04.000 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:02:25.180 Welcome back to the show.
00:02:26.340 This episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers.
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00:02:36.740 Mitt Romney would rather vote for a Democrat than for Trump or Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:02:40.400 We'll get to that in a second.
00:02:41.280 First, though, I don't want to move on too quickly from what is almost guaranteed to be my Media Matters highlight clip of the day,
00:02:48.100 which is that there's nothing inherently wrong with blackface.
00:02:50.480 And it's just a fact.
00:02:51.780 And I think it's ridiculous that anyone even pretends to contradict this today.
00:02:58.440 You don't need to take my word for it.
00:03:00.340 Here is proof that there is nothing inherently wrong with blackface care of, I don't know,
00:03:07.320 the last however many decades you can possibly remember from Hollywood.
00:03:12.860 Sammy.
00:03:14.620 Sammy, great to see you.
00:03:15.540 There we go.
00:03:16.100 There's Billy Crystal as Sammy Davis Jr.
00:03:21.000 And a bon chica chica.
00:03:23.220 Great impression.
00:03:24.360 Man, I got to tell you, babe.
00:03:25.800 My body is my temple.
00:03:26.960 There's Jimmy Kimmel as Oprah.
00:03:30.500 I've seen who wants to be a millionaire, and guess what?
00:03:33.280 Not a lot of black folks on the show.
00:03:35.160 Jimmy Fallon as Chris Rock.
00:03:36.360 Hilarious.
00:03:36.860 That's a great impression.
00:03:38.000 You know why?
00:03:38.780 Because black folks don't like to answer questions.
00:03:40.900 You seriously don't know.
00:03:42.240 One of the great performances ever.
00:03:43.700 Robert Downey Jr.
00:03:44.580 Everybody knows you never go full retired.
00:03:46.360 I look like the beautiful queen.
00:03:47.800 Sarah Silverman, not as great a performance, but she's doing a blackface kind of joke there, too.
00:03:52.060 You're a genius, Eddie.
00:03:55.160 John Slattery in Mad Men doing a full-on Swanee blackface minstrel performance.
00:04:00.400 It's summer, and the darkies are gay.
00:04:06.980 And then Dan Aykroyd.
00:04:08.140 There's enough spears on the train for me.
00:04:10.060 With Eddie Murphy.
00:04:10.780 Nenge!
00:04:11.780 Nenge Yomboko, from Cameroon.
00:04:14.440 Do you remember me?
00:04:15.720 It's Lionel Joseph.
00:04:16.680 Lionel!
00:04:20.260 So, a lot of times, conservatives will point to these clips.
00:04:23.420 Whenever some lib calls us racist, we point to these clips, and we say,
00:04:28.580 so, no, you're the real racists, because you did blackface.
00:04:31.240 But I actually don't see anything wrong with any of those performances.
00:04:35.740 Any of them.
00:04:36.740 Not one.
00:04:37.180 They were all fine.
00:04:37.860 Even from the libs.
00:04:38.760 Even Jimmy Kimmel making fun of Oprah.
00:04:40.280 That was funny.
00:04:41.540 Even Sarah Silverman, which is the edgiest one there,
00:04:43.660 because she's doing actual, like, grease, blackface minstrel show performance.
00:04:48.140 It's obviously ironic what she's doing.
00:04:51.200 She's obviously making a commentary on it.
00:04:53.960 It's totally fine.
00:04:55.840 Now, people draw a distinction.
00:04:57.440 They will say, well, there's a difference between doing an impression of an actual black person
00:05:01.340 and doing blackface in the old minstrel tradition.
00:05:04.920 And I agree, and certainly, Jimmy Fallon doing an impression of Chris Rock
00:05:09.520 is much more easily defended than someone doing, you know, an old Al Jolson number.
00:05:14.020 But I wouldn't even write off the Al Jolson numbers so quickly.
00:05:17.800 Here's why.
00:05:18.380 But most people who attack blackface do so in a really convenient way to score some cheap
00:05:26.180 political point like they're trying to attack a kid at a Kansas City Chiefs game.
00:05:29.600 But how many know the actual history of it?
00:05:32.340 People think that blackface was merely a performance of white people to make fun of
00:05:36.860 caricatures of black people.
00:05:38.060 That isn't true.
00:05:39.400 So if we're going to cancel blackface, even the most difficult to defend,
00:05:43.380 the old minstrel theatrical tradition, are we going to cancel Billy Cursans?
00:05:49.040 Billy Cursans is a name, if you've ever heard it, you've probably only ever heard of it on this show.
00:05:54.360 Billy Cursans was one of the most famous minstrel performers ever in American history,
00:05:59.300 and he was a black guy.
00:06:00.800 And he did blackface, but he was a black guy.
00:06:04.000 And very successful thespian, writer, comedian, performer.
00:06:07.960 He came up with the Aunt Jemima character, which also got canceled later on by liberal white people
00:06:12.920 because they said it was racist or something.
00:06:14.960 Canceled a black character portrayed by a black woman written by a black comedian.
00:06:19.560 No, it has to go away because the white liberals don't like it anymore.
00:06:22.920 Should we cancel Billy Cursans?
00:06:25.180 Should we cancel an entire major form of the American theatrical tradition?
00:06:30.060 Are we going to cancel the jazz singer?
00:06:31.440 It's the first talkie ever starring Al Jolson because it has a blackface performance in it.
00:06:36.960 Now, let's say that you're a big lib and you want to do that.
00:06:40.140 You say, okay, yeah, well, we actually do have to cancel that whole genre of character,
00:06:43.980 including the black performers who put on a kind of blackface show because it's offensive
00:06:49.860 and portrays negative stereotypes and whatever.
00:06:56.180 Are you going to cancel Tracy Morgan?
00:07:00.720 Tracy Morgan, great comedian.
00:07:02.720 His characters throughout the years have been hilarious.
00:07:04.740 One of the great characters on 30 Rock, which is one of the great sitcoms.
00:07:09.340 You're going to, he is effectively doing a minstrel performance.
00:07:13.120 And in fact, they even allude to that on a later episode of 30 Rock where Alec Baldwin as a white guy
00:07:19.560 does a performance of Tracy Morgan's family, which is largely in the minstrel tradition.
00:07:25.940 Are we going to cancel that?
00:07:27.220 Maybe they're probably going to cancel that episode.
00:07:29.040 We're going to cancel Tracy Morgan.
00:07:30.220 How about a lot of those shows in the 1970s that were great shows, but which were sometimes
00:07:37.520 accused of minstrelsy?
00:07:39.500 Shows like Good Times, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son.
00:07:43.020 Are we going to cancel those?
00:07:45.040 I don't know.
00:07:45.540 Just seems to me kind of crazy.
00:07:46.960 One time I was in a Cadillac Uber in LA and it was a Cadillac.
00:07:53.960 So I had a feeling the driver was a conservative and that the driver was a black guy.
00:07:57.820 And there was one of these controversy, non-troversies over blackface that came on.
00:08:03.620 And it comes on the radio or whatever he was listening to podcast.
00:08:06.760 And he said, oh man, that's, that's crazy.
00:08:09.440 And I said, what's crazy?
00:08:10.580 Wearing blackface?
00:08:11.220 He goes, oh, black, oh, blackface is fine, man.
00:08:13.440 It's fine.
00:08:13.940 As long as it's all in good fun.
00:08:15.220 I don't care.
00:08:16.200 You want to dress up like some other guy of the opposite race?
00:08:18.660 Who cares?
00:08:19.140 That's all fun.
00:08:19.720 As long as it's in good, good spirits.
00:08:22.480 And I think that's actually the distinction here.
00:08:25.820 But the libs are not doing anything in good spirits or good faith.
00:08:28.560 They're attacking a little kid for wearing his team's colors to a football game.
00:08:33.400 A football game that's already going to have a lot of cameras on it because Taylor Swift's
00:08:37.160 boyfriend plays for the team.
00:08:38.720 Absolutely despicable.
00:08:40.460 Speaking of sports journalism, Sports Illustrated is in hot water.
00:08:45.420 However, Sports Illustrated is in hot water because Futurism, another outlet, has just
00:08:52.680 done an investigation and accused Sports Illustrated of publishing articles generated
00:08:59.000 by AI.
00:09:01.180 That's right.
00:09:02.740 Futurism then asked Sports Illustrated about the alleged AI written articles, and then they
00:09:08.800 deleted everything.
00:09:09.800 Ooh, they got them, right?
00:09:12.160 It's a long expose.
00:09:13.380 I didn't read the whole thing.
00:09:14.200 I don't really see why I would.
00:09:15.420 Because I don't see why I would care.
00:09:18.960 I hate to defend Sports Illustrated.
00:09:20.700 Sports Illustrated has gone super lib.
00:09:23.880 Why do I care if some computer wrote up content?
00:09:28.100 If I like the content, I probably don't.
00:09:29.920 I don't read Sports Illustrated.
00:09:31.560 But if the content itself is fine, why do I care if it was written by a computer or by
00:09:38.620 a human being?
00:09:39.600 I'll go further.
00:09:40.460 I bet that AI is capable of writing much more interesting, instructive, edifying articles
00:09:50.680 than many so-called journalists today.
00:09:53.520 Many so-called journalists are just effectively inferior robots.
00:10:00.480 What do they get?
00:10:01.280 They get their talking points.
00:10:02.680 They were indoctrinated in some lib school, and they know five things, and they repeat
00:10:08.080 the same tired cliches, and they just use whatever phrases are fashionable on the woke
00:10:14.240 left, and they ram it all in there into some stupid article.
00:10:17.560 Well, okay, if I'm going to read robot-generated journalism anyway, why wouldn't I go for the
00:10:23.520 real robot that's got the latest AI rather than the robot who was churned out of some liberal
00:10:27.260 university?
00:10:28.260 I see no problem with it whatsoever.
00:10:32.700 I almost could maybe start to see a problem if we're talking about some great work of literature.
00:10:37.380 Even there, I don't really care that much.
00:10:39.300 But if we're talking about some magazine that you read in the dentist's office, why do I care?
00:10:42.820 Why is this some big expose?
00:10:45.620 It's going to put liberal journalists out of work.
00:10:48.940 Awesome.
00:10:49.520 Great.
00:10:50.100 Three cheers for AI.
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00:12:00.180 Speaking of robotic narratives, Kevin McCarthy was just giving some debate.
00:12:05.220 I don't know.
00:12:06.520 I guess this was at the Oxford Union Society.
00:12:09.440 I guess that makes sense.
00:12:11.060 He's wearing a tuxedo, bow ties a little askew.
00:12:13.860 But he made an argument that is the sort of thing you've heard from every Republican
00:12:21.320 congressional candidate for your whole life.
00:12:24.020 This is the sort of thing that they teach you in how to be a young Republican school.
00:12:29.780 And it's an argument that former Speaker McCarthy made with great passion.
00:12:33.720 The problem is it's not true.
00:12:36.180 Peace without freedom is meaningless.
00:12:40.600 Think for one moment.
00:12:42.580 It is human nature that we all crave peace, but we never attain it unless we have freedom.
00:12:48.280 In every single war that America has fought,
00:12:52.900 we have never asked for land afterwards except for enough to bury the Americans who gave the
00:13:00.460 ultimate sacrifice for that freedom we went in for.
00:13:05.420 No thing.
00:13:07.340 No thing.
00:13:10.760 But the basis of their definition is wrong.
00:13:15.560 Intervention is not just military.
00:13:18.200 You see, I believe the greatest strength of America is not the aircraft carriers.
00:13:24.920 It's not the precision weapons.
00:13:27.460 America is more than a country.
00:13:29.400 America is an idea.
00:13:31.860 Okay.
00:13:32.540 We've all heard this.
00:13:34.640 This is very strong 2010, 2011 energy.
00:13:38.560 But we've heard this for many decades now, especially from members of Congress.
00:13:44.380 And the problem is it's obviously false.
00:13:47.020 America has fought many wars for land.
00:13:49.700 We fought our first war from land.
00:13:51.440 We took this land from the Brits.
00:13:54.200 Then we fought subsequent wars for land.
00:13:56.240 We fought wars for land against the Indians.
00:13:59.120 We've, I think, totally justifiable wars.
00:14:01.960 We fought a war against Spain.
00:14:04.520 And then we got a lot of land from Spain as a result of that.
00:14:08.800 We've fought war.
00:14:10.140 We've fought a lot of wars for land.
00:14:12.100 Okay.
00:14:12.380 And I'm actually going to be going into that tonight.
00:14:14.980 I'm going to be speaking at Vanderbilt right here in my own town.
00:14:19.180 If you're around, I think the speech is at eight o'clock central.
00:14:22.780 It'll also be broadcast on the YAF YouTube channel.
00:14:25.640 So you can go check that out as well.
00:14:26.720 But if you're in Nashville, come on by.
00:14:28.620 We are going to be defending such wars.
00:14:32.440 And we're going to be defending something that's really under attack these days.
00:14:37.800 And it's the notion of colonialism.
00:14:40.200 The notion of settlement.
00:14:42.140 We just celebrated Thanksgiving.
00:14:43.660 I celebrated it.
00:14:44.400 You celebrated it.
00:14:45.140 A lot of libs did not celebrate it.
00:14:47.340 Thanksgiving is when we give thanks to God for his many blessings.
00:14:50.920 And we commemorate a time when settlers came over here and settled this country.
00:14:57.280 And took land from people in some cases.
00:15:00.700 And set up important alliances.
00:15:04.060 And fought wars in some cases.
00:15:05.820 And then got the land.
00:15:06.880 And that's the country that we have today.
00:15:09.060 The reason that McCarthy's speech is frustrating here.
00:15:13.800 Is one, it's so saccharine.
00:15:16.440 We've never taken one square inch of land from anyone.
00:15:20.240 Other than to bury our dead for the totally selfless wars that we've fought every single time.
00:15:24.960 That's, it's a little saccharine.
00:15:27.740 It's a little overstated.
00:15:30.240 But the other reason that this is frustrating is because if this is really what conservatives believe about our history, then we're sunk.
00:15:39.780 Because it means not only does the left misunderstand history, but the right does as well.
00:15:45.480 And so, you then have no party in America that's actually grappling with history.
00:15:52.340 And that means also that you're not grappling with reality.
00:15:55.740 And if you're not dealing in reality, ultimately you're not going to win.
00:15:59.980 You're not going to be able to defend against left-wing attacks on colonization and settlement and this-ism and that-ism.
00:16:09.520 You won't be able to do it.
00:16:11.380 In a way, the left understands history better than the conservatives do.
00:16:15.900 Because the left has, for better or worse, their own intellectual leaders who, I guess just for worse, where I'm talking about communists.
00:16:28.100 I'm talking about people like Angela Davis.
00:16:29.480 I'm talking about Herbert Marcuse.
00:16:30.560 I'm talking about the Frankfurt School.
00:16:32.160 I'm talking about Antonio Gramsci.
00:16:33.340 I'm talking about even more recent people like Saul Alinsky.
00:16:37.220 I'm talking about all the leftists who dominate the universities.
00:16:42.120 Do you want to talk about history?
00:16:43.480 I'm talking about Howard Zinn and the so-called people's history of the United States.
00:16:47.960 That's revisionist history.
00:16:49.420 It's a bunch of nonsense in the words of Mitch Daniels, former governor of Indiana, then president of Purdue.
00:16:57.440 He said it's a bunch of execrable trash that should be banned from classrooms.
00:17:03.460 True.
00:17:03.660 But in order for Howard Zinn, in order for the leftists to rewrite history as they have, they had to at least have some inkling of the real history in the first place.
00:17:13.760 And when we repeat platitudes, nonsense, fantasies, like Kevin McCarthy is saying here, we've never fought any war for any land whatsoever, then we are absolutely vulnerable to the left-wing intellectual attacks.
00:17:31.760 We are defenseless.
00:17:32.640 We have no way of fighting them off.
00:17:36.100 When the libs come in and they say, America, you've just taken a bunch of land from other people.
00:17:40.540 And the best the conservatives can muster is, no, we can't.
00:17:42.940 America's not even a land.
00:17:44.040 It's just an idea floating in outer space.
00:17:46.920 We're a pure abstraction.
00:17:48.540 How dare you?
00:17:49.460 And then the libs can say, well, okay, you're completely wrong.
00:17:52.300 Hey, how about the Spanish-American War?
00:17:54.860 How about the King Philip's War?
00:17:56.320 How about the Battle of Little Bighorn?
00:17:58.780 What happened after the Battle of Little Bighorn, guys?
00:18:00.820 Did you just give the Black Hills to the Lakota Sioux or did you take it?
00:18:03.940 Oh, you took it, right?
00:18:04.700 Okay.
00:18:05.040 How about this war?
00:18:05.780 How about that war?
00:18:07.200 Oh, yikes.
00:18:08.480 Hmm.
00:18:09.780 Well, never mind then.
00:18:13.760 Hey, guys, if America's just an idea, why do you want to build a wall on our southern border?
00:18:18.220 Hmm.
00:18:18.840 Humana, humana, humana.
00:18:20.120 You won't have an answer to it.
00:18:22.120 It's too bad.
00:18:22.600 I don't mean to knock McCarthy.
00:18:23.680 He seems like a nice guy.
00:18:24.840 And this is just what they teach you in How to Be a Congressional Candidate School.
00:18:27.620 But it just isn't true.
00:18:30.020 Really, really weak sauce.
00:18:31.820 Now, speaking of schools, by the way, and speaking of not knowing anything, the Education
00:18:35.180 Secretary, Mikel Cardona, has just stepped in it by quoting a Republican president, but
00:18:43.220 getting the quote just a little bit wrong.
00:18:45.360 You know, we're going to set up follow-up calls with every governor we met with to make
00:18:49.000 sure we're available.
00:18:49.920 As I think it was President Reagan said, we're from the government.
00:18:54.120 We're here to help.
00:18:56.520 There are resources there.
00:18:59.180 There's technical assistance there.
00:19:00.340 And there's a playbook that could support the work you're doing.
00:19:03.120 Count on us as a partner in this.
00:19:04.900 Our students are waiting.
00:19:06.020 Thank you.
00:19:06.360 Was that the quote?
00:19:09.180 Did Ronald Reagan say, we're from the government and we're here to help?
00:19:13.040 Or did Ronald Reagan say, it's probably one of the most famous Reagan quotes.
00:19:17.980 Did Reagan say, the nine most frightening words in the English language are, I'm from
00:19:24.640 the government and I'm here to help?
00:19:26.880 I think it was the latter.
00:19:27.660 The meaning of which is obviously the opposite of what the education secretary said.
00:19:34.540 And a politician getting a quote wrong, even perfectly, totally wrong, a politician not
00:19:39.720 knowing anything is scandalous enough.
00:19:42.880 But it's especially scandalous and ironic when it is the head of the Department of Education
00:19:50.800 that tells you everything you need to know about the state of American education.
00:19:55.840 By the way, this guy wasn't just some random know-nothing congressman who got elevated by
00:19:59.960 Biden as a political favor, which sometimes happens.
00:20:02.440 This guy was previously the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Education.
00:20:07.020 Before that, he was an elementary school principal.
00:20:10.320 He's been in education his whole life.
00:20:12.780 He's got four degrees.
00:20:14.600 He's got a bachelor's, a BS, an MS, an SYC, which is apparently some education specialist degree,
00:20:21.180 and a doctor of education, an EDD.
00:20:23.600 And he exhibits a stunning ignorance.
00:20:29.680 And I don't want to attack him too much.
00:20:31.900 It's probably not his fault.
00:20:32.840 He got all these silly degrees.
00:20:34.200 The degrees don't mean anything anymore.
00:20:35.620 He went to a bunch of schools.
00:20:36.800 The schools don't really mean anything anymore.
00:20:38.940 And he's running a department that hasn't done anything productive basically ever.
00:20:44.340 And now people are making fun of him because he doesn't know anything about anything.
00:20:48.220 The Reagan quote was the opposite of what he said.
00:20:51.380 But Reagan was also somewhat wrong in his quote.
00:20:56.360 That's that for a cliffhanger.
00:20:57.200 We'll get to that in one second.
00:20:57.960 First, though, I've got to talk about my friends over at PragerU.
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00:22:15.600 I love Reagan.
00:22:18.180 I've visited the ranch.
00:22:20.440 I have read the Reagan books.
00:22:22.920 I quote Ronald Reagan regularly.
00:22:25.360 I have a Ronald Reagan belt buckle.
00:22:26.680 I love the guy.
00:22:27.560 Okay, please don't.
00:22:28.500 I have strong Gipper bona fides.
00:22:31.220 But the man did get a few things wrong.
00:22:34.800 Okay?
00:22:36.300 And in his defense, he lived at a different time.
00:22:39.360 He was fighting a different enemy.
00:22:40.800 He was a cold warrior.
00:22:42.420 Now, we live in a different time, and we need to recognize that we can't just dig up the corpse of Ronald Reagan, try to reanimate him like a zombie, and have him solve all of our problems.
00:22:51.720 And one thing, one little bit of Ronald Reagan wisdom that, if it was sufficient in the 80s, is no longer sufficient, is this quote that the Biden education secretary was trying to repeat unsuccessfully.
00:23:05.060 And the nine most frightening words in the English language are, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.
00:23:11.800 Not necessarily.
00:23:17.340 Government is not always bad.
00:23:20.300 Government exists for a reason.
00:23:23.360 Government exists.
00:23:25.060 It's a natural institution.
00:23:27.560 A man is the political creature.
00:23:30.000 We're a social animal.
00:23:30.980 It exists to enforce justice and to facilitate our all living together.
00:23:38.920 And the purpose of government is not merely to just totally leave us alone.
00:23:45.360 That would be called anarchy.
00:23:47.140 That would be the negation of government.
00:23:48.600 The purpose of government is to do good and avoid evil.
00:23:53.280 It's just like our own individual purposes.
00:23:55.420 And government can overstep.
00:23:56.920 This is why we have another principle called subsidiarity, which is the notion that decisions ought to be made at the most familiar and local level possible, where they can be efficiently and properly made and done.
00:24:09.240 But there is a role for government.
00:24:12.080 Okay?
00:24:12.260 And the fact that conservatives have treated this funny little Reagan quip as, you know, the gospel truth, as the 11th commandment or something, is one of the reasons why we've lost.
00:24:23.840 Because we've ceded the political power to the left.
00:24:27.380 And then the libs wield that political power, and we stand on the side, and we snicker.
00:24:31.380 And we say, you libs, you unprincipled, tyrannical libs.
00:24:36.660 You think the government's going to solve your problems?
00:24:39.180 Yeah, the government's solving their problems.
00:24:40.780 We're their problem.
00:24:41.600 The conservatives are the liberals' problem.
00:24:43.760 And their use of the government is solving their problem by kicking us out of the public square, and harassing us, and surveilling us, and taking away our rights, and showing up at our homes, and arresting us for nonsense.
00:24:57.120 Yeah.
00:24:58.260 The solution to that problem is to wield government properly with justice, and not just cede the whole public square to the libs.
00:25:08.600 Now, speaking of limits on government, there's a clip that just went viral of some lady in Ireland.
00:25:13.880 This would be Irish Green Party Senator Pauline O'Reilly discussing the battle between good, on the one hand, and freedom, on the other.
00:25:28.820 When you think about it, all law, all legislation is about the restriction of freedom.
00:25:35.920 That's exactly what we're doing here, is we are restricting freedom, but we're doing it for the common good.
00:25:41.260 You will see throughout our constitution, yes, you have rights, but they are restricted for the common good.
00:25:47.820 Everything needs to be balanced, and if your views on other people's identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace,
00:26:04.380 then I believe that it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms for the common good.
00:26:10.360 Okay. Obviously, conservatives recoiling at this woman who is ultimately totally wrong, but let's not allow her wrongness to lead us into another error, which is to reject the common good.
00:26:28.580 We hear this. We say, oh, no, here comes some left-winger with their common good talk.
00:26:33.900 The common good, it's totally bogus. We need to forget about the common good.
00:26:37.280 We just need freedom, freedom. Ayn Rand, freedom, baby.
00:26:42.140 No, no. The error that this woman is making is not in suggesting that we ought to recognize a common good and pursue it.
00:26:52.640 The error that this woman is making is not recognizing that some limits on our choice ought to be placed by the government in service of the common good.
00:27:05.400 That's been true in every state ever throughout all of human history.
00:27:08.940 The error that this woman is making is in believing that freedom, true freedom, and the common good, the true common good, are in opposition to one another.
00:27:18.500 They are not. They are not in opposition to one another.
00:27:22.620 True freedom is, as Lord Acton has said, and I've mentioned it many times, even Lord Acton, beloved of the libertarians, has pointed out that true freedom is not the ability to do whatever you wish, but the right to do what you ought.
00:27:39.480 But Donozo Cortez, the counter-revolutionary philosopher, has pointed out that true freedom consists in the perfect will, being able to perfectly will something.
00:27:54.520 And being able to perfectly will something, which is in a way to do what you want, is contingent upon perfect intellect, perfect knowing.
00:28:08.880 This is why, this definition, which is probably foreign to a lot of people who went to Kevin McCarthy, how to be a young Republican school, which leads people into all sorts of errors, unfortunately.
00:28:20.600 This definition is probably a little bit foreign, but it's obviously the right one.
00:28:24.600 Because, as Donozo Cortez points out, if freedom is merely the ability to choose between opposites, without any prejudice or preference whatsoever, with total neutrality, and total, as like that lady would be using it, total freedom to choose.
00:28:43.500 If that were what freedom really were, then God would not be free, because God cannot sin.
00:28:49.100 So, that is obviously not what freedom is.
00:28:53.760 It's certainly not what we in the West have thought that freedom has been, for the vast majority of our history.
00:29:01.760 Only God is perfectly free, because only God has perfect, the perfect ability to will, contingent upon perfect intellect.
00:29:12.060 Only God has that.
00:29:13.520 We can get a little closer to that.
00:29:16.620 That's through something called sanctification.
00:29:18.400 But this understanding of freedom is what explains that famous John Adams quote.
00:29:23.680 When John Adams says, our Constitution is only built for moral and religious people, this is exactly what he's talking about.
00:29:30.360 Our Constitution, which secures for us the blessings of liberty, only works if we are moral and religious.
00:29:38.260 That is to say, if we have disciplined our will, which is contingent upon educating ourselves and increasing our intellect as much as we can.
00:29:52.000 Of knowing the right things, of knowing the right things, and thereby, subsequently, doing the right things.
00:30:02.140 That's the only way we can have freedom.
00:30:04.040 Without that, our Constitution is totally worthless.
00:30:07.080 So says John Adams.
00:30:08.700 So say our founding fathers.
00:30:10.660 What this woman is really trying to say, this Irish woman, she's trying to say that we need to, or the good version of what she's saying is, we need to limit licentiousness in pursuit of people flourishing.
00:30:25.300 Which is obviously true.
00:30:27.080 The error that she is really falling into here is, she is saying, we need to limit actual rights that people have to support a vision of the common good that is totally wrong.
00:30:39.700 Namely, stopping, I don't know, transphobia or something.
00:30:43.500 Whatever the new liberal hobby horse is.
00:30:45.860 In order to preserve error, in order to allow people to further degrade themselves in society, and fall into fantasy and confusion, we need to limit your actual rights to learn, to know, to speak, to live in the right way.
00:31:07.700 That's what's wrong.
00:31:08.840 She's got it completely upside down.
00:31:10.800 But the principle that there are limitations on our ability to choose that must be placed in service of a good which is worth seeking in a political community, that part is obviously true.
00:31:22.920 We do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
00:31:26.380 It's amazing how sometimes a half-truth can come out to a total wrong, as that woman is proving.
00:31:31.240 Now, here's a good example of using the government to fight back.
00:31:33.440 Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has survived a major impeachment attempt on him, has just initiated an investigation into my publicists over at Media Matters.
00:31:46.680 This following allegations of potential fraudulent activity related to the Media Matters hoax that it perpetrated on X and Elon Musk that could very well take down the whole social media platform based on a lie that Media Matters promoted.
00:32:02.140 Now, the moment that that hoax came out, Elon Musk said, I'm going to file a thermonuclear lawsuit on Media Matters.
00:32:12.580 And I tell you I'm torn on this because, well, Media Matters is obviously in the wrong, and they've probably violated the law.
00:32:18.560 They also publicize a lot of my best content, so, you know, I'm torn here.
00:32:22.920 We'll see.
00:32:23.560 Maybe I can just directly hire my Media Matters assignees, and they can just work here out of the Daily Wire office.
00:32:30.480 I love that Ken Paxton is doing this because he's showing that politicians are not just going to rely on private businessmen to fix political problems.
00:32:46.160 The total domination by the left, by the unaccountable activist, largely private sector left, working hand in glove with the Biden administration so that the liberal establishment can have the private entities, so-called private entities, do their dirty work, like we found out in the Facebook files.
00:33:08.820 And thanks to Elon Musk's releases when he took over then Twitter.
00:33:14.080 Okay, that is a political problem.
00:33:16.380 And the conservatives who have followed the usual three bullet points of how to be a young Republican school that leads you into all sort of historical and philosophical error, they say, well, we just, we don't want to get the government involved.
00:33:32.700 Can you imagine?
00:33:33.980 If we use the government, then the left might also use the government to attack us.
00:33:38.320 Yeah, gee, you think?
00:33:39.600 You think they'll do that?
00:33:40.480 Wow, what a scary hypothetical, if that had not already been happening for 60 years.
00:33:46.380 Yeah, that would be scary then, wouldn't it?
00:33:48.760 But I'm not worried about that hypothetical because it's been happening for a long time.
00:33:53.180 So I think maybe we should fight back.
00:33:57.080 The option is not between, you know, mutually assured destruction and not mutually assured destruction.
00:34:07.260 They're destroying us.
00:34:08.780 That's happening already.
00:34:10.340 The question is only, are we going to fight back or not?
00:34:12.900 I really like this.
00:34:15.280 Ken Paxton doing this is a great corrective to something that we'd heard for a long time.
00:34:20.560 You know, we hear this phrase, politics is downstream of culture, which is popularized by Andrew Breitbart.
00:34:24.640 And there's a lot of truth to it.
00:34:25.520 And that's why the Daily Wire, we live that out because we're in the private sector.
00:34:30.820 And so we make movies, and we make cigar companies, we make razor companies, we attack left-wing corporations, and we rally, and we persuade the public to get laws changed and to elect different people.
00:34:44.540 And so we do all that from the culture, absolutely.
00:34:47.700 But unfortunately, that phrase has been used in recent decades by lazy, cowardly Republican politicians to shirk their duties.
00:34:55.180 The Republicans, they get elected, and they say, hey, no, politics is downstream of culture.
00:34:59.780 You all fix everything, not me.
00:35:01.160 Hey, buddy, what did we elect you for?
00:35:02.900 Just to sit in an office and collect a decent salary and do nothing and tell us that we need the private sector to fix everything?
00:35:09.740 I don't think so, Buster.
00:35:11.000 Elon Musk is doing his part.
00:35:12.620 He's filing the thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters.
00:35:15.420 He bought Twitter for $44 billion.
00:35:17.900 Yeah, he's done a lot, okay?
00:35:19.580 The least that the politicians can do is follow up and investigate and use their government agencies in the pursuit of justice to help out the private sector, which is leading the way.
00:35:29.480 That's the very least they can do.
00:35:30.780 And Ken Paxton's doing it, and I want to see the rest of the Republican politicians do it, too.
00:35:35.520 Okay, we got to clear the air.
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00:36:11.800 By the way, I went on the road for Thanksgiving.
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00:36:50.880 My favorite comment yesterday is from Jeremy Smith, 8825, who says,
00:36:54.860 My great, great, great grandchildren will still be watching the Michael Knowles show just as he looks and sounds right now.
00:37:00.940 Thank the Lord for AI.
00:37:02.300 It's true.
00:37:02.900 You can be thankful for AI.
00:37:05.100 Also, you should be thankful for GenuCell.
00:37:07.120 That is going to be the real reason why your great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will see me looking just as I do now.
00:37:13.980 GenuCell.
00:37:14.540 This stuff really works.
00:37:15.980 Now, turning away from conservatives who get it toward conservatives who have not gotten the memo,
00:37:21.640 Mitt Romney says that he would prefer to vote for a Democrat than two Republican presidential candidates.
00:37:29.120 Who do you like in the Republican field?
00:37:31.860 Anybody.
00:37:32.260 Anybody, you know, I would, I'd be happy to support virtually any one of the Republicans, maybe not Vivek, but the others that are running would be acceptable to me, and I'd be happy to vote for them.
00:37:43.780 I'd be happy to vote for a number of the Democrats, too.
00:37:46.020 I mean, it would be an upgrade from, in my opinion, from Donald Trump and perhaps also from Joe Biden.
00:37:53.980 Look, I like President Biden.
00:37:56.280 You know, I find him a very charming, engaging person.
00:37:59.500 There's some places I agree with him, but most places I disagree with him.
00:38:03.520 I think he's made all sorts of terrible mistakes, but I would like to see someone else run.
00:38:10.800 Okay.
00:38:11.380 He's done.
00:38:11.900 He's done.
00:38:12.420 Okay.
00:38:12.640 That's good.
00:38:15.500 Mitt Romney, former GOP nominee for president.
00:38:18.800 We nominated this guy for president, and he says that he would consider voting for a Democrat over two of the candidates, including the leading candidate in the GOP field.
00:38:33.360 He says, look, I like all the candidates in the GOP field except Vivek.
00:38:36.320 I wouldn't vote for him.
00:38:37.820 But then he adds another candidate there.
00:38:40.340 He says, and I think a lot of Democrats would be preferable to Trump.
00:38:45.460 Trump's the leading candidate.
00:38:46.560 Whether you like Trump or not, he's clearly the likely nominee.
00:38:51.380 And so is Mitt Romney here saying that he will vote for a Democrat over Donald Trump?
00:38:55.160 Maybe he is.
00:38:55.980 I wouldn't be surprised by that at all.
00:38:57.740 And a lot of people are trying to figure out why.
00:38:59.500 Why is Mitt Romney such a squish?
00:39:02.140 Well, in part, he's from Massachusetts.
00:39:04.260 Do you remember when he ran in the 90s against Teddy Kennedy for that Senate seat, and he renounced Ronald Reagan?
00:39:10.520 He said, I wasn't a Republican during the time of Reagan-Bush.
00:39:14.180 I was an independent during the time.
00:39:15.980 I don't want to return to Reagan-Bush.
00:39:17.480 You know, and he did that, and he invented Obamacare.
00:39:20.700 And, you know, he's certainly a liberal.
00:39:22.440 His father was a liberal Republican, George Romney.
00:39:24.880 And so he comes from that strain of things.
00:39:28.360 But does that explain it?
00:39:31.420 Does that really totally explain it?
00:39:33.240 Donald Trump, in many ways, is much more conservative than any Republican we've seen in my lifetime.
00:39:40.340 But he's also a rich guy from New York who has certain liberal positions.
00:39:44.820 And you would think it's not totally out of the realm of possibility that Mitt Romney could vote for him in the abstract until you remember that Mitt Romney hates Donald Trump because Donald Trump made fun of Mitt Romney.
00:39:57.120 Don't forget, Mitt Romney endorsed Donald Trump in 2012.
00:39:59.740 Rather, Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012.
00:40:02.220 And Romney was thrilled to have Trump's endorsement.
00:40:04.660 He said, well, I just end up doing Phil Hartman's impression of Ronald Reagan when I try to do Mitt Romney.
00:40:09.720 But in any case, Mitt Romney said, you know, Donald, you're a more successful businessman than I am.
00:40:15.900 Ha, ha, thanks for your endorsement.
00:40:17.280 Ha, ha, ha.
00:40:17.760 And then, fast forward, he says, Donald Trump's the biggest threat to America.
00:40:23.700 He's awful.
00:40:24.260 He's the worst guy ever.
00:40:25.160 We can't vote for him.
00:40:26.000 Don't vote for Donald Trump.
00:40:27.520 Why?
00:40:27.920 I think what this actually boils down to is one never gets over losing the presidency.
00:40:36.180 I think that's it.
00:40:37.200 I don't usually get into psychobabble, and I admit that Romney is kind of a lib anyway, so maybe that explains it.
00:40:42.120 But I think there is just this fact that one never gets over losing the presidency.
00:40:48.140 One time when I was a student, I got to meet Michael Dukakis, who ran for president against George H.W. Bush in 88.
00:40:57.580 And we chatted with him a little bit.
00:41:01.540 I was going to ask him what it was like to be governor.
00:41:03.020 We were going to ask him just what it's like to have a career in politics.
00:41:06.040 And right away, he starts talking about losing the race.
00:41:09.880 And it was clear it still bothered him deeply.
00:41:12.740 And what would have happened, how much better the country would have been had he beaten Bush in 88.
00:41:16.720 And things would have been so much different.
00:41:19.020 Bill Clinton ended up beating him in 92, wasn't it?
00:41:21.480 And George H.W. Bush was kind of liberal.
00:41:23.380 It wasn't the end of the world here, was it, for the liberals?
00:41:27.380 But I just think you never get over it.
00:41:31.680 You never get over that kind of a loss.
00:41:35.000 In some cases, it's not justified.
00:41:37.160 I think these guys have to move on.
00:41:39.340 But in some cases, it is justified.
00:41:40.740 Like if you're a woman and you compete against a man in a woman's sporting event,
00:41:46.720 and the man wins, I wouldn't get over that so quickly because it's so deeply unjust.
00:41:52.580 Which is why The Daily Wire has a new movie coming out.
00:41:56.100 Perhaps you saw the trailer yesterday.
00:41:57.360 If you did not, here it is.
00:41:58.520 In a world where women's sports is being transformed,
00:42:07.080 The Daily Wire calls foul with the most triggering comedy of the year.
00:42:13.480 Guys, this is serious.
00:42:24.980 Sports can be your pathway to a better life.
00:42:27.200 What, like yours?
00:42:28.820 Please don't steal my catalytic converter again.
00:42:31.020 Winning matters.
00:42:31.780 It's the key ingredient in becoming a winner.
00:42:34.060 Maybe you should try it sometime.
00:42:35.060 Are you going to move?
00:42:37.700 I am not.
00:42:41.200 Let's cut to the chase.
00:42:42.640 I know you're not a woman.
00:42:43.960 Hey, you don't know how he identifies.
00:42:46.280 If you can beat them.
00:42:47.300 What do you know about the U.S. Opens for the global games?
00:42:49.900 You want us to compete as women.
00:42:51.880 $5,000 prizes.
00:42:53.240 My lover says you were a great coach back in the day.
00:42:55.480 Join.
00:42:56.060 This is the way the world is now.
00:42:57.740 So I don't know how we kept a lid on this.
00:42:59.960 There were a couple news reports that came out,
00:43:02.820 but we filmed this movie about six months ago
00:43:06.280 and I can't believe how quickly the editors
00:43:10.080 were able to put it together.
00:43:11.940 Jeremy sent me the script whenever it was,
00:43:14.020 seven, eight months ago,
00:43:14.920 and I read it and I instantly said,
00:43:16.760 I said, hey man, this is a masterpiece.
00:43:20.420 This screenplay is a masterpiece.
00:43:23.840 It's just so out there.
00:43:26.280 People, the libs are going to lose their minds
00:43:29.060 over this movie.
00:43:30.380 I said, no, this has never been done.
00:43:32.360 I mean, this reminds me of like all those great comedies
00:43:34.980 of the mid-2000s that you don't see anymore
00:43:37.260 because everyone's so offended by everything
00:43:39.180 and no studio will put it out.
00:43:40.980 And he said, exactly.
00:43:41.820 We're the only people who can put it out.
00:43:43.440 So we got to put it out.
00:43:44.440 So we did this movie.
00:43:45.740 You'll see some familiar faces in there.
00:43:48.000 It's a masterpiece.
00:43:49.760 I don't know how else to put it.
00:43:50.760 It's a masterpiece.
00:43:52.060 It will be premiering for us in person on Wednesday.
00:43:58.340 I'm very excited to see it in a little theater.
00:44:00.260 It will be, I haven't, I haven't seen the whole cut yet.
00:44:02.560 I've seen little dailies and things like that.
00:44:04.160 I've obviously read the script.
00:44:04.960 I'm in the movie, but I can't, I'm going to see it myself
00:44:07.240 on Wednesday and then all of you will get to see it
00:44:10.220 at the live premiere event exclusively on Daily Wire Plus,
00:44:13.820 Friday night, 8 p.m. Eastern.
00:44:15.540 Join Daily Wire Plus.
00:44:16.420 Get 50 bucks off your new membership right now.
00:44:19.580 Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe
00:44:22.580 to sign up for exclusive access.
00:44:24.740 This is, to my mind, the most Daily Wire thing
00:44:29.160 that Daily Wire has ever done.
00:44:32.280 And it's going to be an absolute blast.
00:44:34.420 So check it out.
00:44:35.120 You have to be a member.
00:44:36.520 Subscribe.
00:44:37.440 We also need you to subscribe
00:44:38.600 so that you can give us your money
00:44:40.000 so we can keep making movies like this
00:44:41.980 and keep doing all the stuff
00:44:44.560 that we're doing in the culture, which is not cheap.
00:44:46.400 And we very much appreciate all of you
00:44:48.200 who have funded that and allowed this thing
00:44:50.120 to really, really grow
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