The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1430 - Jon Stewart Explains Why Freedom Makes Everything Suck

00:00:00.000 In recent weeks, we've heard more and more about the degradation of our cities,

00:00:04.100 the filthy, dangerous subways, the drug addict-lined streets, the skyrocketing crime.

00:00:10.500 How did things get so bad so quickly? Do we really have to live this way? Why is this happening?

00:00:17.760 Lucky for us, Jon Stewart has the answer.

00:00:21.420 Right. Because the difference between our urinal-caked, chaotic subways and your

00:00:27.400 candelabra-ed, beautiful subways is the literal price of freedom.

00:00:34.820 Urine everywhere is the price of freedom. It's definitely the price of the liberals' version

00:00:41.180 of freedom. That part's true. The problem with Jon Stewart's argument is that we used to have nice

00:00:47.920 things not that long ago. Our subways used to be cleaner. Our streets used to be mostly free

00:00:54.280 from crackheads and criminals. We used to punish criminals and stop them from gallivanting all

00:01:00.400 over our communities and terrorizing us. That wasn't that long ago. Were we really less free

00:01:06.880 then? We were less free seven years ago? Really? We were less free three years ago? I don't think so.

00:01:14.940 I think we all know that we're all much more free when cops arrest criminals and the streets aren't

00:01:23.260 lined with the corpses of drug addicts, which means that what the libs call freedom is in fact the

00:01:29.040 opposite. And we got to fight that false freedom tooth and nail before it makes us all slaves.

00:01:35.160 I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:56.060 Welcome back to the show. There's a girl on TikTok who is finally clearing up the age-old question of

00:02:02.800 what women want. Once and for all, she figured it out. We will analyze her take on it. But first,

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00:03:13.540 That is Knowles. Text it to 51555, or go to foodforthepore.org slash Knowles.

00:03:20.120 The liberals are very, very confused about what freedom is. If freedom is criminals running around

00:03:26.060 and dudes going into the girls' room and urine and drugs and excrement everywhere, 0.64

00:03:32.360 give me a little more authoritarianism, please. You know, I'll take it, actually. Because,

00:03:38.120 ironically, what the libs are calling freedom is a kind of slavery. It's slavery to the base passions.

00:03:44.140 It's slavery to the irrational impulses of capricious criminals. What liberals are calling

00:03:51.060 authoritarian is much more in line with freedom. It's much more in line with the Founding Fathers

00:03:56.520 conception of freedom. It's much more in line with the classical and Christian conceptions of freedom.

00:04:01.220 Because freedom requires limits, just like a poem requires limits to be beautiful. It needs meter.

00:04:06.120 That rhyme is sometimes helpful. So, too, our societies require some limits.

00:04:12.100 Because there's always just a trade-off. If you give dudes the freedom to go into the women's 1.00

00:04:18.120 bathroom, you deprive women of the freedom to have their own bathrooms. If you give drug addicts 1.00

00:04:23.080 the freedom to shoot up heroin on the street, you deprive ordinary law-abiding citizens of the freedom

00:04:28.620 to walk their streets in peace, unmolested and unaccosted by vagrants and indigents and criminals. 1.00

00:04:35.800 There's always a cost here. There's no such thing as a free lunch. So, what kind of freedom are we

00:04:40.040 talking about? Are we talking about the freedom of the lower passions and the irrational appetites

00:04:44.700 to drive us all completely insane? Or are we talking about true freedom, which involves knowledge?

00:04:50.360 It involves acknowledging reality. Men and women are different. Certain things are crimes. Certain

00:04:55.240 things are not crimes. We do good. We avoid evil. Involves the intellect. And it involves disciplining

00:04:59.940 the will and saying, no, crackhead, don't shoot up or don't smoke your crack on the streets of San

00:05:05.120 Francisco. No, big husky fella, don't go into the girl's bathroom. No, homeless people, don't 0.97

00:05:10.360 defecate on the streets. No, you gotta behave, okay? This comes back to a very basic concept

00:05:18.360 which the liberals have forgotten. And I'm not even just theorizing that the liberals have forgotten

00:05:23.420 this. The libs in one of their big house organs admitted they forgot this. The concept is called

00:05:29.280 The Natural Law. Politico has a big hit piece out on Christian nationalism. That's the new boogeyman 0.79

00:05:37.700 on the left. Christian nationalism is on the rise. Trump allies prepare to infuse Christian nationalism

00:05:43.420 in a second administration. Spearheading the effort is Russell Vaught, president of the Center for

00:05:47.540 Renewing America, part of the conservative consortium preparing for Trump's return to power. Oh no, here

00:05:53.020 comes Christian nationalism. And what is at the heart of Christian nationalism? At the heart of

00:05:58.680 Christian nationalism, they say, is natural law. Now, let's see, where can I find this beautiful

00:06:07.000 definition that they try to, yes, here we are. In 2019, Trump's then Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo,

00:06:16.480 set up a federal commission to define human rights based on the precepts Vaught described, specifically

00:06:21.660 natural law and natural rights. I like how in this, they don't even seem to recognize the phrase

00:06:29.840 natural rights, which is much more common in modern American parlance. Even that they don't understand.

00:06:36.600 And they certainly don't understand natural law. Politico writes, natural law is the belief that

00:06:40.660 there are universal rules derived from God that can't be superseded by government or judges. While it

00:06:46.340 is a core pillar of Catholicism, in recent decades, it's been used to oppose abortion, LGBTQ rights,

00:06:52.840 and contraception. Okay, well, at least they tried. At least, they didn't try that hard, though.

00:07:00.860 Because what's, I mean, I guess ultimately everything's derived from God, because God's

00:07:03.640 the creator of all things that are created. But the natural law is very specifically

00:07:10.360 the law that can be understood universally, purely by human reason, without divine revelation.

00:07:20.540 I guess they actually kind of got the meaning of natural law, which forms a bedrock aspect,

00:07:27.240 not just of theology and philosophy and morality, but also of American jurisprudence and constitutional

00:07:35.460 law and the common law tradition. They just, they couldn't even get it right. They couldn't even

00:07:39.000 Google it. These are the guys at Politico. They're supposed to be the really smart journalists.

00:07:43.360 They're not these just fringe bloggers. They're supposed to be the mainstream guys. They have

00:07:47.020 absolutely no idea what it is. And it's a core of Catholicism. That's true. Catholicism certainly

00:07:51.740 has quite a lot to do with the natural law. But the natural law being the natural law is,

00:07:58.600 well, it's just kind of part of every civilization. All people can recognize this. What the natural law

00:08:06.160 comes down to most basically is do good and avoid evil. This is something that all human beings have

00:08:13.340 an impulse for, an inclination of, purely through our reason. Even that today, though, the libs will

00:08:20.740 look at you like you've got three heads if you suggest that maybe perhaps we should consider doing

00:08:24.500 good and avoiding evil. I'll say, good and evil? How the hell are we supposed to know what that is?

00:08:30.020 Well, because you have reason, and you have something called a conscience, and you're pretending

00:08:35.980 that you don't, but even you do. We all do. That's part of it. In recent decades, the natural

00:08:41.140 law has been used to oppose a bunch of stuff that's crazy and obviously contrary to human flourishing.

00:08:45.600 Yeah, I guess that's true. I guess it does. Very sad state of American politics that not only

00:08:52.940 does the dominant political power deny the natural law, they don't even know what it is. Not so long

00:08:59.840 ago, though, you had really eloquent defenders and articulators of this. There was a great debate

00:09:05.040 when Barack Obama was running for Senate from Illinois. He was running against Alan Keyes,

00:09:11.960 a wonderful Republican candidate who unfortunately did not make it to hold higher office.

00:09:18.120 Alan Keyes, they were debating gay marriage back in those days. There was a debate over whether or

00:09:23.760 not we would redefine marriage, and Alan Keyes argued against it on the basis of natural law.

00:09:30.700 Mr. Keyes, on the Channel 7 debate last Thursday night, you said, and I'm quoting you,

00:09:35.000 where procreation is in principle impossible, marriage is irrelevant. You went on to say it was

00:09:41.680 irrelevant and not needed. What about marriage between people who are well beyond their childbearing age?

00:09:47.160 Irrelevant? Not needed?

00:09:49.280 No, no, it's simply a misunderstanding. The word in principle means relating to the definition of,

00:09:55.900 not relating to particular circumstances. So if an apple has a worm in it, the worm is not part of

00:10:00.540 the definition of the apple. It doesn't change what the apple is in principle. So the fact...

00:10:06.240 It retains its apple-ness.

00:10:06.800 It retains... No, it retains... To act as if concepts are laughable means that you want to be irrational.

00:10:13.640 No, I'm going to put a pause there. Alan Keyes, man, what a prince among men. I really wish this

00:10:21.360 guy had made it to the Senate or higher, because he's looking at the questioner, and you hear this

00:10:26.920 objection all the time. They say, well, hold on, Michael. If you object to radically redefining

00:10:31.100 marriage from what it's always been, just on the basis that a couple of fellows can't have a kid 0.99

00:10:34.700 together, why then? Do you think that women past the age of menopause shouldn't get married? Do you

00:10:41.160 think that couples who are likely to be sterile, if, I don't know, the woman has endometriosis or

00:10:46.540 something, that they should not be allowed to get married? And Alan Keyes is just there. He could

00:10:51.460 probably fall asleep. He's so bored with this idiotic line of questioning. By the way, I'm not 1.00

00:10:57.380 even sure that the questioner holds to it. The questioner is leading Keyes to this great point

00:11:03.920 about the apple-ness of the apple. But Keyes, he just looks, he says, you just don't understand the

00:11:09.660 phrase in principle. Just because the particular circumstances of something might have a defect

00:11:15.460 in this fallen world doesn't change the reality in principle. In principle, the union of a man and a

00:11:23.380 woman is open to life, and marriage is ordered toward the procreation and education of children.

00:11:31.300 Two dudes, they might be the nicest dudes in the world. We got nothing against them.

00:11:35.320 But the union of two dudes is not in principle open to having children. It is not ordered toward

00:11:44.540 the end that marriage is ordered toward. So it just isn't marriage. It's not that we want to keep

00:11:49.700 them from having the right to marriage or anything like that. It just, at the most basic definition

00:11:54.760 of marriage, it is not and can never be that, he goes on.

00:11:58.600 Reason, excuse me, you said it was irrelevant and not needed.

00:12:02.260 Reason, by means of concepts and definition, we also make laws by means of definitions. And if you

00:12:08.580 don't know how to operate with respect for those definitions, you can't make the law.

00:12:12.120 An individual who is impotent or another who is infertile does not change the definition of

00:12:17.780 marriage in principle. Because between a man and a woman in principle, procreation is always 0.99

00:12:24.220 possible. And it is that possibility which gave rise to the institution of marriage in the first

00:12:29.340 place. As a matter of law, excuse me, as a matter of law and government. But when it is impossible,

00:12:36.400 as between two males or two females, you're talking about something that's not just incidentally

00:12:40.380 impossible. It's impossible in principle. And that means that if you say that that's a

00:12:45.200 marriage, you are saying marriage can be understood in principle apart from procreation.

00:12:50.280 Obama just taking notes, completely destroyed by Alan Keyes' argument.

00:12:55.340 ...it's definition in such a way as, in fact, to destroy the necessity for the institution,

00:12:59.680 since the only reason it has existed in human societies and civilizations was to regulate from

00:13:04.880 a social point of view the obligations and responsibilities attendant upon procreation.

00:13:12.700 This is a really good argument. I wish that this had been the debate over redefining marriage. There

00:13:19.240 really was no debate over redefining marriage because intelligent and common sense voices like 0.89

00:13:26.220 Alan Keyes were pushed out of that debate and it just became a dumb debate over who has the right to 0.79

00:13:29.880 do whatever. And really it was a debate not over right. It shouldn't have been a debate over

00:13:34.120 rights. It should have been a debate over definitions. What can we know using our reason

00:13:40.500 from nature? And the answer from the liberals today is not very much at all. The one thing you

00:13:49.120 really learn from this Politico article, not only is that liberals have thrown out even the

00:13:53.780 basic aspects of reasonable argument, but the other thing you learn is Christian nationalism

00:14:00.080 is going to be a huge talking point for the libs in 2024. Here come the Christian nationalists.

00:14:08.460 They want to impose a theocracy or whatever. My rejoinder to them would be if you guys think

00:14:16.460 that Christian nationalism is bad, just wait until you see unchristian nationalism. Trust me, 1.00

00:14:22.040 you're going to like that a lot, a lot less. Christian nationalism, if we live in a nation,

00:14:26.960 our nation's going to be animated by something. It can be animated by paganism. It can be animated

00:14:33.400 by atheism. The worst regimes in all of history have been atheist regimes. It can be animated by, 0.98

00:14:39.280 I guess it could be animated by Hinduism. We don't have that many Hindus in America.

00:14:42.420 Or it can be animated by Christianity. Which one do you think is going to be better? Which one do you 0.71

00:14:46.620 think is going to be more conducive to the flourishing of everybody, Christians and non-Christians

00:14:51.940 alike? I think the answer is pretty clear. There is much more to say. First though,

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00:16:10.440 Speaking of nature, Madonna has fallen off a chair. She's fallen, and she sort of can get up, 0.56

00:16:16.960 at least. She was at some concert. You see her on stage. She's being dragged by one of her singers.

00:16:21.840 And the singer trips, and she goes straight down. Madonna's 65 years old. You do not want to be

00:16:29.240 taking falls at 65 years old. She keeps singing while lying on the ground. One of her backup

00:16:36.360 singers comes to help her up, but she actually gets herself up for most of it, which is pretty

00:16:41.740 impressive. And she gets back on the chair, you know, sitting open-legged and dancing around in a 1.00

00:16:48.280 pretty sultry way. And then she flips around to a slightly more comfortable position, and they kind

00:16:55.480 of recover. Okay. It's very sad. Very, very sad because Madonna is 65 years old and should not be

00:17:02.640 dancing on stage like she's a 21-year-old stripper. But she's doing that. That has been her act. And she 0.99

00:17:08.080 was the best at that act in the 80s when she kind of came onto the scene. And the act has gotten sadder

00:17:15.100 and sadder every year. Not because she's not still good at it. She's actually shockingly good at singing

00:17:19.860 and dancing around and getting up when she falls for a 65-year-old pop star. But it's sad because

00:17:25.140 that's not the sort of thing 65-year-olds are supposed to do. It's a little risque for anyone to dance like

00:17:30.600 that. But it's a lot more normal for a 25-year-old to dance like that than for a 65-year-old.

00:17:39.240 The biggest modern pathology, I think, that affects us is the inclination to deny time.

00:17:48.780 I think this is one of the aspects of liberalism. We want to deny time. We want to deny history.

00:17:53.860 Liberalism is all about denying history. Forget about the past. They were all dumb. They were all evil.

00:17:58.400 They don't know anything. We know everything now. And nothing's ever going to change. No one's ever

00:18:02.200 going to call us immoral. No one's ever going to call us ignorant. No, no, no. We've figured it all

00:18:07.140 out. And now the time and politics is frozen forever in this endless present. You see this

00:18:14.000 in young liberal people. I mean, this is why, in large part, I think millennials in the cities don't

00:18:19.040 want to get married. They don't want to have kids. They want to remain kids themselves forever.

00:18:23.180 This is why you're seeing a perpetual suspended adolescence. This is why you're seeing 35-year-olds

00:18:28.340 brag on social media that they're adulting because they paid a bill or something. It's all about a

00:18:35.640 denial of time. You even see this in some modern forms of religion. A lot of modern religion is

00:18:42.860 very Gnostic. It is inclined to deny the physical world. It's inclined to deny the history of the 0.98

00:18:48.720 religion. It's inclined to deny the great people. It's the great saints of the religion. It's inclined

00:18:56.160 toward, away from worship and liturgy. It's just kind of floating in your head. And we all want to

00:19:04.500 be just floating in the air. That's why people are going to put on the Apple Vision Pro, and they're

00:19:08.140 going to deny the importance of their bodies, and they're going to embrace Gnostic ideologies like 0.99

00:19:11.680 transgenderism or transhumanism. They're going to try to upload their minds to the cloud so they can 1.00

00:19:17.780 deny the reality of time, which has a beginning and a middle and an end, and then you die. And then what

00:19:22.460 happens after you die is something they don't want to think about. It's not particularly new.

00:19:27.960 This is a pathology that's affected us for centuries now. It's not good.

00:19:35.120 The things that were normal for you to do at 20 are not generally normal for you to do at 50

00:19:41.440 or 60 or 70. Boozy and Liss Champagne Brunch. I always attack brunch because brunch is just the

00:19:48.380 sacrament. Brunch is the liturgy of the millennials. But boozy champagne brunch when you're 22 is one

00:19:55.680 thing. Going out every weekend and, you know, that's one thing. Boozy champagne brunch when you're

00:20:02.840 62 is a sadder thing. You should be doing other things. You got to grow. You got to develop. You're

00:20:08.040 going to grow or you're going to die. And we're all going to die someday, even though everyone seems to 0.84

00:20:11.860 be trying to deny that. Now, speaking of growing up, there are a father and a daughter who are sniping

00:20:19.720 at each other on social media. And they're both social media influencers, which means that something

00:20:24.160 has gone terribly, terribly wrong in this family. For any of them to be social media influencers,

00:20:28.440 but certainly for both of them to be. The daughter made a video in which she accused her father of being

00:20:35.340 absentee when she was a kid. What's a piece of trauma that you have that's funny? It has to

00:20:41.660 actually be funny. I'll go first. My dad abandoned my family when I was five years old. That is a wife

00:20:48.720 and four kids. He abandoned us and then pursued amateur breakdancing. And he got really good.

00:20:56.700 He like blew up. Like he became like a D-list celebrity status, like viral breakdancer. He became

00:21:01.260 like the oldest actively competing breakdancer in the world. Then he got a Good Morning America

00:21:05.660 and talk shows and Washington Post wrote about him and he went super viral and he did all these

00:21:09.640 interviews and he danced with Paul Abdul. The worst part, damn it, he's good. He should not be able to 0.98

00:21:16.900 move his body like that. It's like impossible. It's beautiful. Hey, dad. Thank you, Maddie. Like there

00:21:22.980 was no split custody or anything. Like he just like left four kids to do that. He may not have paid for some

00:21:29.120 of my medical bills growing up, but he did give me this breakdancing merchandise. So that's him.

00:21:34.020 He's on his b-boy name because his name is Ben Hart. You know, I'll get texts like this. Happy

00:21:39.280 birthday question mark. And then like links to his, to his breakdancing video. That's true.

00:21:43.680 Funny trauma, like actual funny ha ha trauma. I need to hear it. Okay. So the daughter airs her 0.52

00:21:50.120 grievances. His father, he left me. He wouldn't pay my bills. He forgets when my birthday is. He makes a

00:21:56.100 joke about forgetting my birthday. He wasn't around when I was a kid. But the reason this video is

00:21:59.760 going viral is because the father has responded to her. And I've even seen some conservatives

00:22:04.860 sharing this video of the father as though it's an epic takedown by a father, maybe a right wing

00:22:11.540 leaning father. He's wearing a Bitcoin shirt. It's an epic takedown of this father to his spoiled brat,

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00:23:30.940 Social media influencer daughter goes viral saying, my dad abandoned the family when we were kids.

00:23:36.180 The father then goes viral. Number of conservatives posting him around because he epically,

00:23:41.680 epically destroyed his daughter on social media with facts and logic.

00:23:45.880 First, I can see that as a five-year-old, Maddie would see her dad as having abandoned the family.

00:23:52.880 One day I was living there. The next day, I wasn't. And that will look like abandonment to a child.

00:23:59.140 But married couples do get divorced about half the time in America. And I was just living a mile or so

00:24:04.860 down the street in LaGrange, Illinois. We just weren't living under the same roof.

00:24:09.540 Now, about not paying medical bills, that's just not correct. Here was the financial arrangement

00:24:15.920 of the divorce. Maddie's mom, my ex-wife, got $2 million at the get-go. Out of the gate. 0.99

00:24:23.040 A lump sum payment. Plus, I was paying her $18,000 per month in child support and alimony.

00:24:30.480 This was later reduced to $12,000 per month. And of course, I paid health insurance and out-of-pocket

00:24:36.400 medical costs. I also put $600,000 into the kids' college fund. In all, I paid out about $5 million

00:24:43.380 to my ex-wife to cover costs for her and the kids. And this is in $2,005. So add 50% to account for

00:24:51.800 inflation. In other words, I was not a deadbeat dad at all.

00:24:55.520 I was not a deadbeat dad at all, you see, because I gave my wife a lot of money.

00:24:59.860 Now, he goes on in the video. He has like a 10-minute response here. And he says, yeah,

00:25:04.680 look, the divorce was, it was mostly my fault. It was about 70% my fault. But look, I gave him a

00:25:10.560 bunch of money. And now the kids, most of them have good jobs. So they're making money. So quit

00:25:15.380 complaining. And I thought, not only is that one of the dumbest arguments I've ever heard, not only 0.99

00:25:22.320 does that argument completely miss the point that your daughter was raising, but it's one of the least 0.98

00:25:27.120 conservative arguments I've ever heard. I cannot understand how a conservative would post this

00:25:33.780 video and say that the father is somehow the good guy here. He's saying, yeah, everything you said

00:25:40.180 is true. I did abandon my family. I did pursue my professional breakdancing career. But hey,

00:25:46.720 you got some money. So isn't that all good? Talk about knowing the price of everything and the value

00:25:52.420 of nothing. He doesn't really apologize for the divorce. He says, oh, my wife and I, we were

00:25:58.380 incompatible. So yeah, I traumatized our four kids. And I did. I literally abandoned them. But hey,

00:26:05.000 you know, they got some money. Isn't that fine? Isn't that? What are you talking about, man?

00:26:12.020 Absolutely pathetic. I have no, look, these people are both social media influencers and they're 1.00

00:26:17.880 probably both just absolutely dreadful. But if I had to pick a side here, I'm certainly picking

00:26:23.320 the side of the daughter to say nothing of the fact that this father is taking to social media

00:26:27.560 to destroy his daughter with facts and logic. Are you kidding me for the public, for the amusement

00:26:31.520 of your followers? I don't care how in the wrong you think your daughter is. That is a despicable 0.99

00:26:36.300 behavior. And then it gets even crazier because the daughter responded. Her first video was kind of

00:26:40.520 funny. It was in response to this question, name a funny trauma you have. And I say, here's a funny

00:26:43.960 trauma. My dad abandoned me to become a professional breakdancer and he's actually pretty good.

00:26:47.200 But then her response is, actually, now my father's just lying about everything.

00:26:51.960 But I know my dad posted like a 10-minute video or whatever being like, you know, my daughter's

00:26:56.540 lying. We have a great relationship. I have a great relationship with all my kids. That's

00:27:00.020 just objectively not true. Like, guys, we're all freaking out about this in my family group

00:27:03.480 chat right now. We're being like, he's so unhinged and delusional. We don't know if he

00:27:06.940 actually believes his own narrative or if he's lying on purpose, but he's just like a weird

00:27:11.340 guy. He said he lived down the street from us. That's not true. Or like, if he did, it was only

00:27:15.500 for a few months maybe. But actually, for most of my childhood, he lived in Florida with

00:27:20.700 his new wife. Like, basically, like, I don't want to get into this. Like, again, like, my

00:27:24.800 video was basically like sanitizing the situation and like poking fun at the lightest parts of

00:27:29.700 that childhood trauma. But obviously, in real life, it was a lot more like complicated and

00:27:34.080 traumatic. And it was really hard. He left us, immediately married another woman. We didn't

00:27:37.680 hear from him for years. And then he would visit every few months and we'd go out to dinner.

00:27:41.260 But like, he truly had no hand in raising us at all.

00:27:45.520 Yeah, I'm totally on the girl's side here. This is such

00:27:49.020 late 20th century cope from this father. This is just such nonsense to say, well, look,

00:27:57.320 all that really matters is money. You know, I wrote them a big check, so I can't be blamed

00:28:02.180 for anything. That's an error that not only the left has made, but the right has made as well.

00:28:06.800 But that's the primary function of a father actually is not to make a lot of money. There

00:28:11.080 are very excellent fathers who have not made a lot of money. Primary function of a father is to

00:28:15.060 be a father, to be steadfast, to live up to his vows that he made to his wife and the love between

00:28:21.760 him and his wife that is so real that it actually creates other people. And then to fulfill his

00:28:25.320 obligations to those children. That's his job. And those obligations are a lot deeper than money.

00:28:29.620 So he leaves them and the girl's saying, yeah, you gave us a lot of money, but that doesn't

00:28:35.440 matter. She's obviously screwed up from it. I'm not surprised at all. There is just no excuse for

00:28:41.120 this. No excuse. The rot in our politics goes down probably 93% to this one issue of no-fault

00:28:53.980 divorce. And the reason for that is not just that it screws up kids and it's not just that

00:28:58.380 encourages selfish behavior in adults. And it's not just, it's that the family is the basic

00:29:04.860 political unit. Politics, politics is how we all get along together. Politics is, cannot be an

00:29:11.640 individual thing because it involves multiple people. It's, it's the public life. And the basic

00:29:17.260 unit of that, the smallest possible unit is the family. So if you blow up the family, as you do with

00:29:22.380 no-fault divorce, then you blow up all of politics. And then they justify it with all these

00:29:28.740 totally BS expressions. They justify it by saying, oh, kids are resilient. I don't know, that girl

00:29:33.880 hasn't seen that resilient. In fact, most children of divorce I know, they're resilient. They get by,

00:29:37.860 life goes on. You know, there are tough things in life, but it hurts them forever. Even, I know adults

00:29:44.400 whose parents get divorced when they are adults and it totally screws them up. So no, don't give me that.

00:29:50.340 Or what's the other line? They say, well, it's better for the parents to get divorced

00:29:54.580 if they're unhappy in their marriage. It's much better for the children if the parents totally

00:29:58.800 split up and explode their world, you know, so they can be happy chasing some second or third wife. 0.72

00:30:04.700 Rather than, you know, suppress their feel-feels for a little bit and learn to make their marriage

00:30:08.820 work. Yeah, no, that's not true either, man. It's just so, ah, it's just unbelievable. No one in

00:30:14.720 history has really thought this. No serious society has ever thought this. But a society

00:30:20.180 that totally turns away from the common good and focuses only on personal interest and selfishness

00:30:27.200 is going to believe this kind of thing. And then when the victims of this profound social disorder

00:30:33.860 come out and say, hey, actually, that was bad. And I don't, I wish you hadn't done that.

00:30:38.920 What's the answer? The answer is, ah, shut up. You made a lot of money. Oh, you made a lot of money. 1.00

00:30:43.720 Okay. A lot of money. A lot of money can buy you a cup of coffee, I guess. It certainly won't

00:30:49.560 reassemble society. And now speaking of family, great. Today's a big family and natural law show.

00:30:57.160 I'm just noticing this now. Elon Musk, one of the most influential men in the world,

00:31:02.000 has just come out to destroy contraception with facts and logic. I love it. You know,

00:31:09.340 all of the rich guys basically are big, selfish libs. And Elon Musk is a weirdo who has all sorts 0.98

00:31:16.540 of weird companies and weird ideas. And he is, I'm not, I don't know that he's a rock-ribbed

00:31:20.660 conservative. I have no idea what his religious views are. But he does, oddly enough, keep articulating

00:31:28.200 points that are very conservative and even quite Christian and even, even quite orthodox. You know,

00:31:36.200 I mean, he's basically articulating Catholic sexual ethics here, but he's doing it in a funny Elon way.

00:31:43.060 So he tweets out, or he ex-posts out, he says, hormonal birth control makes you fat, doubles the

00:31:49.480 risk of depression, and triples the risk of suicide. This is the clear scientific consensus,

00:31:53.140 but very few people seem to know it. Thank you. Thank you, Elon. And then he cites the NIH.

00:31:57.620 NIH. So when all the dumb scientific libs show up and they say, um, could you please provide your 0.94

00:32:03.480 sources? Could I please see a study? Which most studies are just nonsense anyway, but Elon indulges 0.98

00:32:09.700 them and he says, okay, here's a study from your favorite institutions. Here you go, the NIH. You

00:32:14.460 all like that, right? Hey, Dr. Fauci works there and you're big fans of him. Anyway, they back up what

00:32:19.000 I'm saying, which is that hormonal birth control is really bad. It makes you fat, doubles the risk of

00:32:22.800 depression, triples the risk of suicide. And he's not even making an argument citing Humanae Vitae or

00:32:27.660 something. He's not citing some bioethical tract. He's just saying, hey, these are the medical

00:32:32.040 consequences that are likely to occur with birth control. Um, and why, so why would you do it?

00:32:38.500 And then this raises the deeper question of, of hormonal birth control, which is why do it? If

00:32:46.960 we know it's got all of these negative effects, if we know that what the libs have told us about

00:32:53.360 contraception for years is not true, and then we say, oh, it's no big deal. It's fine. Yeah,

00:32:57.440 it totally screws up women's hormones for years or maybe decades at a time, but there are no,

00:33:01.760 no negative side effects of that whatsoever. Yeah, absolutely. Put your 12 year old on the pill.

00:33:06.180 Okay. That's all obviously wrong. And Elon is citing the scientific evidence here. So then the

00:33:10.500 question is why use it at all? What's the reason? And the only, the only reason is so that you can

00:33:20.620 have promiscuous sex is promiscuous sex good for you. It may be, it's something you want to do. We 0.93

00:33:26.660 all, we all desire things that are naughty and not, not good for our flourishing, but I'm not,

00:33:30.640 I'm not talking about your lower will here. I'm not talking about that lower app, appetitive kind of

00:33:35.860 freedom that the libs are always trying to foist on us. I'm saying we zoom out here. You're just,

00:33:40.600 you're reading Elon's tweets. Elon is like commander data. He's pretty rational guy a lot of the time.

00:33:45.340 And you're saying, okay, what rational reason do I have to take hormonal birth control or to put my

00:33:51.620 child on hormonal birth control? The only reasons you can really come up with are so that I or she can

00:33:58.900 have a promiscuous sex with random dudes. We hope without consequences. Is that going to be good 0.99

00:34:05.500 for us? Probably not. So that could be as good for us as finding a good guy and settling down and

00:34:10.520 getting married and then being open to life and having kids. Probably not. So, okay. So that's

00:34:14.460 not a good reason. And then maybe even within marriage, there's some married couples who use

00:34:17.920 hormonal birth control, but why, why do they do it? So that they can prevent having children, 0.65

00:34:21.860 but why would they want to not have children? The natural end of marriage, as Alan Keyes was explaining

00:34:26.940 to us earlier, is procreation and the education of children. And when we get married, we give of

00:34:32.200 ourselves, ideally, totally to the other spouse in a lifelong bond that will not be broken, even by

00:34:37.760 absentee dads who want to go breakdance and chase tail. So, so then why wouldn't you want to give of

00:34:44.080 yourself entirely? When you use contraception, you're, you're withholding something. You're 0.64

00:34:48.680 withholding something that's actually very important and you're preventing your love with your spouse

00:34:53.480 from really reaching its fullest potential and becoming so real that it becomes another person.

00:34:58.440 So why would you even want to do that? You might say, well, maybe in some grave circumstance,

00:35:03.280 it would present a mortal threat if, if my wife were to get pregnant or something like that. Those, 0.98

00:35:10.060 those instances are exceedingly rare and there are more bioethically sound ways to, to deal with

00:35:16.500 those circumstances. If you want, that's sort of a separate conversation, but at the very least,

00:35:20.540 if we're talking about 99% of the time, it's because what they say, well, I don't want to have

00:35:25.360 another kid. I don't want to have to wake up early. Kids are loud and annoying and they, you know,

00:35:29.100 they're messy and they tell, okay, that's one reason. Well, you know, okay, man, what else are

00:35:32.680 you doing? Like play fewer video games, go to the bar a little bit less. But yeah, that's true. Kids

00:35:37.200 are a lot of work, but they're worth it. Or they'll say, well, we can't afford a kid right now.

00:35:42.480 Well, I, okay, it's, it's important to be able to pay for your kids, but it's good to have kids to pay

00:35:46.020 for. And I promise you in, on your deathbed, you're not going to be longing for those thousands and

00:35:52.620 thousands of dollars you spent on the kid. You're more likely to regret not having the kid. Kids are

00:35:59.000 worth more than money, but our civilization doesn't seem to understand that anymore. We seem to think

00:36:04.660 that money just solves everything. Not only the materialists on the left, but many materialists on

00:36:10.860 the right as well. Now this President's Day, we honored the great leaders of our nation with

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00:36:59.660 mayflowercigars.com. At the moment, we are very likely to sell out before they actually hit the

00:37:06.820 store again. We upped the order a lot this time, and it doesn't matter because people are still

00:37:10.840 ordering them. If you want Mayflower Cigars, which a lot of you have written angrily to me and told

00:37:16.640 me that you do, you've got to pre-order now. And I wouldn't just pre-order one box or two boxes.

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00:37:46.040 My favorite comment yesterday is from user MP9R, who says, Joy Reid and her culturally appropriated

00:37:53.740 blonde hair. Stunning that people actually listen to this woman. It is so outrageous that that woman 1.00

00:37:58.240 wears Karen face every day. She does. She goes up there. She does a middle-aged suburban white lady 1.00

00:38:06.800 minstrel show with her Karen. She's appropriating a culture that is not hers, and she should be 1.00

00:38:13.620 canceled for it, I say. Speaking of women's issues, a young woman has gone viral on TikTok 0.84

00:38:21.780 for finally cracking an equation that has puzzled men in particular for all of human history.

00:38:32.720 And that is why women break up with them. The question is, what do women want? And this woman 1.00

00:38:40.300 with the aid of some kind of whiteboard, maybe it's just a piece of paper, she has broken it all down.

00:38:46.380 Okay, this is you guys. You guys are in a happy relationship, and now all of a sudden you have

00:38:50.140 one simple, fixable problem. For this example, we're going to use no good morning text. And your

00:38:57.300 girlfriend who loves you, she's really happy with you. She comes to you and she tells you, she's like,

00:39:01.080 hey, do you think we could start doing good morning texts? Like, it'd mean a lot to me if you texted me

00:39:04.980 good morning. So you, her loving boyfriend, agree to give her good morning texts. But something

00:39:09.880 happened, and for whatever reason, you stopped giving her good morning texts, so now we have a

00:39:13.760 bigger problem. She now thinks that you don't care enough about her to send her good morning texts. 1.00

00:39:21.100 So now your girlfriend, who has never picked fights before in her life, starts picking a bunch of 1.00

00:39:25.520 little fights about all these different things because she believes that you do not care enough.

00:39:31.080 Through all of these picking fights with you though, she still loves you and likes you enough to want

00:39:36.200 to be with you, even though you guys have all these little problems now. Until one day these become

00:39:43.100 unattractive to her. She's going to realize that all of these little things that you do that remind

00:39:50.160 her that you don't care about her enough are unattractive. And so now the problem is not these

00:39:55.140 things. It's not even that you don't care enough. It's not even that she never got good morning texts.

00:40:00.980 It's that she literally does not like you anymore. Quod erat demonstrandum. That's breakupology,

00:40:11.540 as she writes at the top of that paper. And I think she's half right. I think she's half right.

00:40:18.480 Her point is that women are kind of crazy and irrational. That's the beginning. The woman 1.00

00:40:24.700 wants a good morning text, which is, I think my answer would just be no. I wouldn't break up with

00:40:31.700 a woman who asked me that. But I would say, no, I don't think so. I'll send you texts when I would

00:40:35.680 like to send you texts. But good morning. I always wish you a good morning. But I'm not going to just

00:40:40.900 be at your beck and call to make any kind of silly show that you like. Some things I'll accommodate,

00:40:46.540 but some things I won't. And the way that I'll come to my conclusion about that is using my reason.

00:40:51.160 No, she's half right that women will make these irrational demands. And where she's especially 1.00

00:40:55.940 right is that if you agree to them and then renege on that, they're going to lose it. They're going to

00:41:00.320 be really angry and might break up with you. But what she's not quite getting here is that what women 1.00

00:41:06.240 also want is for a man to lead them. So the woman makes the demands, sometimes rational, 1.00

00:41:17.220 sometimes irrational. And then the man, demonstrating his care for her, does not merely

00:41:22.800 put himself in a subservient position and say, whatever you want, honey, I'll send you a text

00:41:25.940 anytime today. I'm sorry, my text was three minutes late today. The man says, hey, love you. You're

00:41:31.660 great. That's totally crazy. So we're not going to do that. This thing that you've just requested,

00:41:36.300 that's reasonable. That's true. And actually, you're right. I should do that. And then man's

00:41:39.260 got to keep his word, which is part of leadership and caring and romance and a healthy relationship

00:41:45.780 that we hope leads into a real marriage. But it can't be only one side of that equation. She's

00:41:51.920 just getting it. She's just missing the biggest part of the picture. And people will write in.

00:41:57.700 We've been talking about divorce and splitting up a lot today, I guess. People will write in.

00:42:01.960 They'll say, how does one resolve a conflict in a marriage or even boyfriend and girlfriend?

00:42:09.200 How does one, you know, I want this thing and she wants that thing. And men are from Mars and women 1.00

00:42:14.260 are from Venus. How are we going to come to any resolution? And the answer ties right back to what

00:42:18.480 we were talking about since the top of the show, ties right back to that natural law, ties right back

00:42:21.780 to reason. Your battles are not just duels of irrational will. You know, I want McDonald's

00:42:30.440 for dinner. You want Burger King for dinner. We're just going to, neither of us is going to give an

00:42:33.940 inch and we're going to duke it out until my will dominates her will or vice versa. That's not going

00:42:39.340 to get you anywhere. That's good. That'll lead you to break up. There is such a thing as reason and

00:42:44.880 you both have it. Even the women. They do, actually. They do. Contrary to what Jack Nicholson

00:42:52.120 says in that famous movie, As Good As It Gets. He writes women so well because he just thinks of a

00:42:58.980 man and then takes away reason and accountability. But women do have some reason, you know, and men 0.99

00:43:01.880 have some reason too. And the way that you can resolve a conflict is by saying, okay, what is the

00:43:08.760 principle that's at stake in this debate that we're having, this conflict? And what is good

00:43:14.520 to do? And what is the truth of the matter? And then what is good to do? And some things like

00:43:21.240 Burger King or McDonald's might be a little trickier to resolve. And then in that case,

00:43:25.180 maybe the man just says, honey, you want Burger King? Let's go get some Burger King.

00:43:28.720 But maybe certain issues like what city are we going to live in are a little more reasonable where

00:43:37.020 you say, okay, look, honey, I'm the man of the house and I'm the primary breadwinner and we're

00:43:43.380 following my career and my job took me to a new city. And so we, you just, even though you might

00:43:47.740 not like this city, that I think that's where we're going to go. And I'll try to make this move

00:43:52.880 nice for you and I'll try to accommodate as best I can. And, but this is, I think what we have to do.

00:43:58.460 And then the woman, even if she really likes the place she's living, even if she really doesn't 0.99

00:44:01.440 want to go to wherever you're going to go, the woman can say, well, you're right. You're the head of 0.97

00:44:05.000 our household. And in order to provide for us and have a roof over our head and to have a person

00:44:11.460 actually leaving the family, it is reasonable for us to go, even if it doesn't necessarily satisfy

00:44:15.960 my preferences at the moment. That's, that's reason. And you can apply that. You don't have

00:44:21.180 to just wait until you're married for 10 years. You can apply that even down to your little good

00:44:25.380 morning texts. Now, speaking of women, Nikki Haley is still in the presidential race and the rubber is 1.00

00:44:34.380 about to meet the road, baby, because Nikki Haley's home state primary, South Carolina is on Saturday.

00:44:39.740 The polls are not looking very good for her. They are looking very good for Donald Trump.

00:44:42.920 Nikki is saying, I'm going to stay in to fight through South Carolina. And even if I lose,

00:44:48.240 I'm going to stay in even then. Some of you, perhaps a few of you in the media

00:44:54.100 came here today to see if I'm dropping out of the race.

00:45:01.340 Well, I'm not. We've all heard the calls for me to drop out. We all know where they're coming from.

00:45:07.240 The political elite, the party bosses, the cheerleaders in the commentator world.

00:45:13.960 The argument is familiar. They say I haven't won a state, that my path to victory is slim.

00:45:21.500 They point to the primary polls and say I'm only delaying the inevitable. Why keep fighting

00:45:27.760 when the battle was apparently over after Iowa? That's why I refuse to quit. South Carolina will

00:45:35.620 vote on Saturday. But on Sunday, I'll still be running for president. I'm not going anywhere.

00:45:43.480 Okay. I am not going to voice any opinion on Haley's continuing to stay in the race. You know,

00:45:49.320 I like Nikki very much personally. And so she can stay in the race as long as she wants.

00:45:53.460 This was a bad speech. I don't know who wrote this speech for her. It's not effective.

00:45:57.140 One, she's reminding all of her voters and all of the public that she doesn't have a chance to 0.99

00:46:05.200 actually win the nomination. I thought that was unnecessary. She's suggesting that Donald Trump

00:46:12.400 actually did kind of earn the nomination. If she really wanted to make the claim that this is a

00:46:16.680 totally rigged primary and I'm fighting as the voice of the people, she shouldn't have said it

00:46:20.140 was over after Iowa. She should have said there are many people who think this was over before it

00:46:23.240 began. We know that. They thought it was over before it began. This was a sham of a primary.

00:46:27.460 I'm proving to them it's not a sham of a primary. But she didn't phrase it that way. She phrased it

00:46:31.340 almost in a way to say, yeah, Trump proved that he's going to be the nominee because he won in Iowa.

00:46:35.080 Not effective. And then she goes on and she says, you know, it's the political elite

00:46:40.700 who want Trump. And no one believes that because they know that the elite are trying to put him in

00:46:45.480 prison for the rest of his life. So that's never going to be persuasive. Nikki Haley's lane in the race,

00:46:51.240 and she's been very good at running in that lane, is that she is the candidate of more of the Beltway 1.00

00:46:56.220 crew. She's more the candidate of the centrists and the political establishment, at least as the 1.00

00:47:00.760 Republican nominee. She's got the money from the Koch network. And so I don't know. I'm not saying

00:47:05.980 that's a good thing. I agree. It probably gives her a very narrow lane to win the presidency. 1.00

00:47:10.100 But if that's your lane, run in that lane. Don't change strategy at the end. No one's going to

00:47:14.360 believe, you know, you're the voice of the people. You know, you're the populist leader against

00:47:19.780 establishment Donald Trump. That's just simply not credible. But she, I think, is the one thing

00:47:25.600 she's doing properly here is she's managing expectations. She's saying, yeah, I'm almost

00:47:29.340 certainly going to lose South Carolina, but I'm going to stay in the race anyway and hope that a

00:47:33.780 lightning bolt comes down and takes out Donald Trump. That part, at least, is, I think, a pretty

00:47:38.680 accurate assessment of where the race stands. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to

00:47:43.620 miss it. Become a member. Use code NOLSKINNWLAS. So check out for two months free on all annual plans.

00:47:49.780 Here we go.

00:47:53.600 Welcome.

00:47:55.920 Camden village.

00:47:59.920 Good morning.

00:48:10.700 Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep Jeep

The Michael Knowles Show - February 21, 2024

Ep. 1430 - Jon Stewart Explains Why Freedom Makes Everything Suck

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