Ep. 1472 - The Best Biden Gaffe Of The Year
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Summary
A political gaffe is a phenomenon whereby politicians accidentally say what they really mean. President Joe Biden is prone to them, and he just fell into perhaps the biggest one of his career: Are you ready to choose freedom over democracy?
Transcript
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A political gaffe is a phenomenon whereby politicians accidentally say what they really
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mean. President Joe Biden is prone to them, and he just fell into perhaps the biggest one
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of his career. Are you ready to choose freedom over democracy? Because that's America.
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That's America. You're ready to choose freedom over democracy? Many on the left and the right
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will say that he misspoke. I think this perfectly sums up what the liberals are pushing.
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We know that they don't care one little bit about democracy. The way that we know that
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is that every time they lose an election, they say it's a threat to democracy,
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which makes no sense because democracy is government by the people. By definition,
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whatever the people vote for is a triumph of democracy. But when the liberals say democracy,
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they don't really mean democracy. They mean liberalism. When liberals say democracy,
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democracy, they really mean freedom, or at least their own specific modern perverted
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conception of freedom. They don't mean the classical conception of freedom, which is the right to do
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what we ought to do. Mumford and Sons summed up the classical understanding of freedom in their song,
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The Cave. I need freedom now. I need to know how to live my life as it's meant to be.
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The liberal conception of freedom explicitly rejects living life as it is meant to be.
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It's not about conforming to a norm. It's about deviating from it. That is what the liberals are
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pushing, whether voters like it or not. Most voters want to stop transing kids. Democracy says
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we must transing kids. Liberal freedom says we must trans kids. Guess which side Biden goes with?
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Biden sides with transing the kids. Most voters want to secure the border. Democracy says shore up
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the border. Liberal freedom says we shouldn't have a border. Biden opens the border. Most people want
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secure elections. Democracy says we need election integrity. Liberal freedom does not care about
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elections at all. Biden and the liberals gut election integrity. Lots of conservatives,
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by the way, would also choose freedom over democracy. Not the fake freedom that the liberals offer,
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but real freedom. Natural rights kind of freedom. Voters want to overturn the Second Amendment. Well,
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most conservatives aren't going to care. We are still going to defend our rights. We're still going to
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defend our freedom. Which makes this Biden gaffe perhaps the strangest one of his career.
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Because everyone is pretending that his statement is totally crazy. But everyone's answer to Biden's
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question deep down is yes. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. Can a sexless marriage be a happy one? That's what the libs are asking in an
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Not to put too fine a point on the liberal preference for freedom, their version of freedom, over democracy.
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Some Princeton professor, Eddie Glaude, just went on MSNBC and explained that if Donald Trump is
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elected, if the people choose Donald Trump to be the next president, then democracy is over.
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Democracies require certain kind of people to work. And we just got to be better, better people.
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So we have to understand who we are, right? And what I'm looking for is a politics of tending.
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A politics of tending, where we tend to each other's everyday ordinary lives on the ground,
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close to the ground, Nicole. I'm looking for a coalition of the decent, a coalition of the
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loving and caring. Folk who want to finally whip us away, you know, finally untether us from this
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nonsense that has produced this. I feel like the other part of it is there's no more sort of private
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itself. Right? Like everything that you do is this desperate, I think, need to connect to other
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people who want to be part of what you just call the coalition of the decent, right? Because we're
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racing against time. It feels like this election will be decisive if we can come back from this.
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Yeah. If, you know, if Trump wins, I think democracy is a wrap in the country.
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Okay. So that statement from a Princeton professor, supposedly, is nonsensical. It's,
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of course, a contradiction in terms. What the people vote for cannot be the undoing
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of democracy. It necessarily has to be the triumph of democracy. If you're electing a democratic leader
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who is, even if the democratic leader is not the preference of the liberals. So they're talking
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about liberals here. But then the whole rest of this segment, it sounds like a late night,
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freshman year pothead bull session. You know, man, I just want a coalition of the decent man
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to untether us from all the, the, the, the, the stuff, the nonsense, man. I know. I feel you,
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professor. We need, it's a race against time for the, you know, in the private and the public and the,
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my inner self and my outer self and without going out of my mind. You're waiting for the sitar to
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come in. What are they talking about? The point that I think the Princeton professor is trying
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to get to is that democracies and republics require virtuous citizens, but he can't use the
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language of virtue because that's the language of the conservatives. If that's the case, then we
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should, we should allow the conservatives to shape our democracy. So he has to use this liberal
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hippie language. You know, we need to be kind and empathetic and big, big libs basically.
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And then I, Nicole Wallace, I have no idea what she's even talking about,
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but the upshot of everything they're saying is the problem is not that we have too little democracy,
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but too much because Donald Trump might actually get elected. The people might actually get their
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wish and they might be able to make this man the president again. And that would be really terrible.
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So the, the, their, their complaint here is not that our democracy is crumbling. Their complaint
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is that we have a democracy and they don't like the American people and they don't want the American
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people to get what they want because what the American people seem to desire right now is something
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that is more conservative and not particularly liberal. So they would, they would happily just
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choose the liberal freedom regardless of what the people want. So what does the liberal freedom look
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like? Uh, viewer discretion advised. This, this is a report from the publica. A gay politician in Spain
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has abruptly resigned from his post after photos began to circulate showing him eating his own excrement.
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This is a Daniel Gomez del barrio. He was a counselor with the governing left-wing party. You'll be shocked
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to hear he's a left winger. It's always the ones you most expect, isn't it? And, but the story actually
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isn't even that this guy has a weird sexual fetish and he's resigned his position. Uh, the story is the
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people who are defending him. So Peter Boghossian, you might remember Peter Boghossian. He's been on this
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show before. Uh, Peter is an atheist and a philosophy teacher and he really came to prominence because
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he and James Lindsay put out the grievance studies hoax. And it was really, really funny. James Lindsay,
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mathematician who now is a political speaker as well. Uh, they, they made up a bunch of fake
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grievance studies, academic papers, you know, but on total nonsense and then got them published in
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peer reviewed journals to show what a farce academia had become. It was really, really funny. So that's,
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that's how Peter Boghossian got onto the radar of a lot of conservatives. But Peter is not a
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conservative. Peter is a, an atheist for one and, uh, is a liberal. He might call himself a classical
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liberal or a, not exactly a progressive modern liberal, but he's still a liberal. And it's stories
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like this that show the huge chasm between the so-called classical liberals and the actual
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conservatives. Boghossian responds to this story about the excrement eating left-wing politician
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in Spain and says, unpopular opinion, mind your own business and leave the guy alone.
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Leave him alone. Who cares if our elected representatives, uh, film themselves eating their
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own excrement. That's none of your business. Stop, stop policing other people's behavior.
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You know, get, get out of other people's bedrooms. I don't know. I don't know, man. I, I, I agree.
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We're not going to send the purity police around to look into people's windows, but
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if a, if a, if a, if a statesman is eating his own excrement, that would seem to be a sign of lunacy.
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It would seem to be a good sign that he should not be representing me, that he's not fit for that job.
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And so some people pointed this out in the comments and Peter doubled down and he said,
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the comments here are not merely authoritarian. They demonstrate pervasive normative rigidity
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that comes from Christian fear of judgment, the downside of Western supremacy mindset.
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So this is, this is not only authoritarian. It shows you what happens when you have a Christian
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society. You know, these Christians, the moment that you give them a little bit of power, all of a
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sudden they're going to outlaw eating your own excrement on camera. Well, they might not even
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outlaw it, but they won't even let you sit in the house of parliament. If you film yourself
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eating your own excrement, these Christians, they need to loosen up, you know, man, live and let live
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a little bit. That is classical liberalism for you. It is a reminder that, that even the American right
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is still kind of stuck in the language of the mid to late 20th century, when liberals tricked all of
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us into thinking that America was a liberal democracy. That's when that term really skyrocketed
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in usage. That's when we started to describe ourselves that way. George Washington would
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not have described America as a liberal democracy. Andrew Jackson would not have described America as
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a liberal democracy. That is a second half of the 20th century kind of thing. And it's convinced
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even a lot of right wingers. So we say we're the true liberals. We're the real liberals. Okay. Those
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leftists, those progressives, they've betrayed liberalism, but we're not, we're the true liberals.
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I ain't a liberal. I'm not an old liberal. I'm not a new liberal. I'm not a middle of the road kind
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of liberal. I'm a conservative. I don't, I think liberalism is wrong. I think it's got a false
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anthropology. I think it has a false conception of freedom that is totally in contradiction
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of the classical conception of freedom, which will actually set you free because the classical
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conception of freedom, the Christian conception of freedom is grounded in truth and the acknowledgement
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that we can tell the difference between good and bad and right and wrong. And we have a political
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freedom, not just an individual freedom, but, but a political freedom to live in a flourishing society.
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And that means stopping our politicians from eating their own excrement. Okay. It's like,
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it's weird because this is a literal thing that has happened. It's a, it's a real fact of a news
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story, but it's such a great, it is such a great analogy for how our politicians leave today.
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Which way, Western man, classical liberalism or something other than liberalism? Maybe,
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maybe a real kind of freedom. There's so much more to say. First though,
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Speaking of disordered romantic lives, this is the most important article I've read all week,
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and I meant to get to this yesterday and the day before, but I have to get to it now because it is
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the most important story of the week. Can a sexless marriage be a happy one? This is a very,
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very lengthy article. It's really pretty good journalism, actually. I recommend you go check
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it out. It's trending on all sorts of news sites all over the internet. It's about the increasing
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fad of not having sex with your spouse. Just a few little passages. Will and Rose, this is the first
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line of the story. Will and Rose met online 10 years ago. His screen name was Professor Parsley,
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and he looked the part, tall and thin, with glasses, features that Rose found attractive.
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On their first date, Rose learned that Will was a college student living with his mother,
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and his handle came from a nickname given to him by child at an art camp where he worked.
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They laugh about it now, as they do most things. Rose was drawn to how stable Will seemed,
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so unlike the other men she had dated who dreaded commitment. Their relationship survived multiple
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moves, about a year of long-distance dating, and the challenges of finding time to be together
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while living with parents and roommates. Now, here's the rub. As much as Will grounds her,
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Rose feels that the familiar calm of their relationship also shuts her down sexually.
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They go months without sex, but they don't lack intimacy. Hold on. I think we might be hearing Rose's
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perspective here a little much. I don't, something tells me that if we were talking to Will
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about going months and months without having sex with his wife, he might say that their intimacy
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is a little bit lacking. But what's going on? The story goes on. Rose's mother, now divorced,
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of course, felt obligated to have sex with Rose's father once a week. That's not the kind of
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relationship Rose wants. To get into a sexual mood, Rose relies on a set of rituals to help build
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anticipation. Blah, blah, blah about the rituals. Will doesn't need to do anything to feel ready for
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sex, and Rose sees this as another way in which they're different. Over the years, they have accepted
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that this is what their sex life looks like and will look like if they want to be together,
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which they do. Oh, man, poor, poor Will, and poor Rose for that matter. They've just accepted this.
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No, no, no. They haven't accepted anything. Rose is denying her husband sex, and her husband is going
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along to it because he is being nagged to death and sort of cuckolded by his wife. Not really cuckolded
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in that she's not sleeping with other men, but she's denying him the marital right. So this poor
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guy just can't stand up for himself and say, hey, lady, I think we should do the things that married
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couples do. And she says, no, no, that's what my father said to my mother, and she divorced him for
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that because my father wanted to sleep with his wife once a week, for goodness sakes. And I just don't
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think in this modern day and age that spouses need to sleep together. How did we get to this point?
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How on earth? I guess in this modern day and age, probably most people don't think that married
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couples have to sleep together because we don't know what marriage is anymore. We've so divorced
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marriage from its purpose, which is the begetting and education of children and also the mutual support
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of the spouses. We now deny both of those facts. Now we say marriage is about two people who live
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together. Well, you don't, if you're two people who live together, you don't necessarily have to be
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married. Increasingly, people are just concubines or cohabitating. And if you're married, you don't
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necessarily have to live together anymore, actually. But so I don't know. I actually don't really know
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what modern people think marriage is. And you certainly don't have to be the opposite sex from
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your spouse. And you don't, you don't have to have kids and you don't really have to support each
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other. And it's not a lifelong commitment. And so we don't know. Marriage really doesn't mean
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anything at all in the public conception. But marriage is a natural institution and it does
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have a meaning. And part of the meaning of marriage is you sleep with your spouse.
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Where did this error come from? I think it comes from the first sentence.
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Will and Rose met online 10 years ago. They met online, meaning their bodies did not really have
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anything to do with how they came together. It was just virtual. It was just, they were just kind of
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ideas to each other. And increasingly, we live in a disembodied virtual world.
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So is it any surprise that we downplay the importance of the body to the relationship?
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Not at all. So no, we don't need to actually be physically intimate. We're just avatars. He's
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Professor Parsley. He's not my husband. He's Professor Parsley. He's just a, he's a screen name
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and gives me a sense of comfort. But I don't have any obligations to him.
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And he doesn't have any obligations to me. He has an obligation to put up with not having sex if
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he doesn't want me to divorce him. Because if our marriage is going to work, if our marriage is,
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if we want to be together, that's what is going to happen. No. Women. Women. You know, I love women.
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There are some people on the right, they don't love women. They are misogynistic. That's not me.
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That's not me, ladies. You know, I love women. Women, you need to sleep with your husbands.
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You have to. You have to do it. Unless there is some grave reason. I'm not saying there aren't
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grave reasons sometimes why you got to go a while with that. Unless there is some grave and unusual
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reason, you have to sleep with your husbands. And husbands, you have to sleep with your wives.
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The rest of this article goes on. All these other couples, how they just, you know, they look at porn
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separately now and they don't really, they don't have to be together. They just, you know, cultivate their
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lusts for other women and men and they just do things separately. And I guess they're under the same roof a lot
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of the time. But that's not, that is not marriage, man. The term that used to be used, you're not
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allowed to even mention this anymore, is the marital debt. The notion that when you get married, you
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have a right to sex. The man has the right to request sex of his wife and the wife has a right
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to request sex of her husband. And in fact, there was, I forget where I was reading this.
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There was actually a case made during the Middle Ages, during the Crusades, that a wife could
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prevent her husband from going on crusade by claiming the marital debt. Say, look, I'm, we
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married, we got married, we signed a contract and you owe me sex, husband. So you're not going to
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the Holy Land. Sorry, you're not going to go out fighting. Where does this come from? It comes from
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1 Corinthians chapter 7. And the full verses are, for fear of fornication, let every man have his own
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wife and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render the debt to his wife
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and the wife also in like manner to the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the
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husband. And in like manner, the husband also hath not power of his own body, but the wife. So the
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libs and the feminists are going to say, this is misogynistic. No man has the right to demand sex
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of his wife. It's her body, her choice, you know, but no, that's not the classical conception.
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That's not the Christian conception. And it's, it's not just one way. It's not just that the
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man can claim the woman's body. It's that the woman can claim the man's body too. It's that
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you become one flesh and you, you no longer just have your total individual autonomy. That's the
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point of marriage is that man is a coupling creature and we come together and form the
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basic unit of society, which is not one person, but two with a love that's so real that it produces
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people, or at least it used to when we had sex with our wives and with our husbands. Have I put too
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find a point on it? Can a, can a sexless marriage be a happy one? Well, barring some grave reason,
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it can't really be a marriage. That's a pretty, we used to understand back when we knew what marriage
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was, we knew that, you know, the thing that married couples do was a pretty important part
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of it. Now, who knows? You take that away. What's a marriage? I don't know. Maybe that'll
00:22:57.520
be the next Daily Wire blockbuster documentary. What is, what is marriage? It's been two years
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Mr. Knowles is right. I always, those are always my favorite comments. Mr. Knowles is right. Nobody can be
00:23:59.820
impartial to Trump. Yeah, of course. We now have a jury in the Trump trial in New York, but no one's
00:24:06.460
going to be impartial. And it's not even just Trump. People have strong opinions about Trump, but no one
00:24:10.600
can be impartial to any president. Obama, Bush, Clinton, when you're the president, everyone has a strong
00:24:17.960
opinion of you. That's one of the reasons why for the first 250 years of American history, we did not
00:24:25.320
prosecute presidents until the liberals blew up that aspect of our constitutional order. Speaking of men
00:24:32.400
and women, there's a clip going viral right now and everybody on the internet is dunking on it. This is
00:24:39.360
from some church somewhere. I don't even know where the church is or remember what the name of it is.
00:24:43.920
Uh, it's the stronger men's conference. The, these kinds of events have been cropping up in recent
00:24:49.940
years, conferences for men, hundreds, thousands of men to go to and just become more manly and learn
00:24:57.720
the art of manliness. And before I comment on it, I'll just play the clip for you so you can form your
00:25:04.860
own opinion. Welcome to the stronger men's conference. When you're in the presence of
00:25:13.920
the Lord, powerful things happen. God, whatever you have for me, I want to hear it. Help me to grow
00:25:19.840
because I want to be a stronger man. That was crazy!
00:25:30.240
What God did in your life, it's meant to impact the world around you. It's meant to be multiplied.
00:25:39.560
We can change and impact the world because we serve the strong man, Jesus Christ. He says,
00:25:45.200
I will go with you. Behold, I'm with you always. I'm going to give you strength.
00:25:49.340
Never leave any warfare the same way as you entered it because you've been through something
00:25:53.720
with Jesus. You've had an encounter with the most high God. He's changed you and transformed you
00:25:59.600
and renewed you. Okay. Everybody is dunking on this clip and on this conference. I am not going
00:26:11.560
to join the ruckus of dunking on it. Some of it might look a little bit cheesy. Some of it looks
00:26:18.060
pretty fun, though. I don't know. I'd like to go see boxing. That looks kind of cool and it's great
00:26:22.520
to pray. And, you know, as some of the speakers, Josh Hawley was there. It's kind of cool. And
00:26:26.600
the monster trucks might be a little overboard, but the problem with this to me does not seem to be
00:26:34.940
any of the particular acts, which is really what most people are dunking on. The problem with this
00:26:41.480
to me is not even with the notion that men need to have some instruction in manliness. They do.
00:26:48.100
They do. We have a dearth of manliness. The popular culture is attacking manliness. The problem is not
00:26:53.900
that this is connected to a church. In fact, that's probably the best part of it of all,
00:26:57.820
because true manliness is rooted in God. That's, you know, God made man and God is I am that I am.
00:27:06.840
And so when you ground your identity in God, then you know who you are. And when you don't,
00:27:10.320
you have no idea who you are. So all of that in principle is fine.
00:27:17.880
is that the appeal of it is entertainment. It's really entertaining. This is crazy, right? The appeal
00:27:27.440
of it is its kind of informality. Just people kind of moshing around with monster trucks and,
00:27:35.120
you know, bands playing and, you know, just having a casual fun time.
00:27:39.460
Is that really what we're lacking in our culture? We're lacking for entertainment. We're lacking
00:27:46.460
casualness, informality. No, no, no, no. We are drowning in entertainment. Everything is
00:27:55.320
entertainment now. The education is entertainment. The college is like Disney World. News is entertainment.
00:28:03.580
Everything. It's all around us. We're saturated in it. The moment that you're not watching a TV show
00:28:11.360
or, you know, playing some kind of game in your, what should be an educational institution,
00:28:16.540
you're just on your phone being entertained again. We need sobriety, I think, is what we need.
00:28:22.900
We need study is what we need. We need seriousness. Is the problem with our culture that we're too
00:28:29.020
stuffy and formal? No, we're not formal at all. We've lost all sorts of formality.
00:28:32.940
And a facility with formality is a part of manliness. You need to know how to address
00:28:38.740
people the proper way. You need to know how to dress properly. You need to know how to behave.
00:28:45.300
You need to know how to comport yourself. You need to connect with some of the traditions in your
00:28:49.680
culture that built up a flourishing culture before we tore it down in large part through informality.
00:28:55.540
That to me seems to be the problem. It's not that this conference, I would go to this conference.
00:29:00.040
I would show up, at least go to the boxing match, probably be kind of fun.
00:29:05.140
The only real problem I see with it is it's not addressing the real heart of the crisis of
00:29:11.920
manliness, which is that right now men are too silly and soft and flabby and frivolous and informal.
00:29:21.860
So we need a new men's conference that's grounded in something a little sturdier and realer. If we
00:29:29.560
want our men to be like the men the men used to be, the men who built this civilization.
00:29:35.220
Now, speaking of men and family, 15 members of the Kennedy family have endorsed Joe Biden in
00:29:44.220
Philadelphia. Very awkward because one of their family members, one of their most prominent family
00:29:49.240
members, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is running for president himself against Joe Biden. Here's
00:29:53.980
what the Kennedys had to say. My name is Kerry Kennedy, and I am the seventh child of Robert and Ethel
00:30:01.640
Kennedy. I'm joined here today with my sisters, Kathleen and Rory, with Joe and Chris and Max.
00:30:24.720
Okay, so that's that's Bobby Kennedy's sister coming out saying, I'm not endorsing my brother.
00:30:31.300
I'm endorsing this corpse who calls himself the president, Joe Biden. And I'm here with all these
00:30:35.680
other members of my family. And we, the Kennedys, we're endorsing Biden, not Kennedy.
00:30:41.160
Kennedy. Who cares? Who is this woman? Kerry Kennedy. And she's one of the few Kennedys whose
00:30:50.680
names I even recognize. I couldn't have told you what she looked like. Couldn't have told you what
00:30:53.660
she sounds like. All these other Kennedys behind her, I can't name a single one of them. I can name
00:30:59.260
some of the other Kennedys, like Carolyn Kennedy, a couple of her kids, I recall. But I can't name any
00:31:07.700
of these guys. Because the only Kennedy who matters these days is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It ain't 1965
00:31:14.300
anymore, lady. The Kennedy name is kind of passed a little bit. It has prominence. The name Roosevelt
00:31:23.980
has prominence. But the day of the Roosevelt's dominating Democratic politics is kind of over.
00:31:32.000
And the day of the Kennedys really dominating Democratic politics is kind of over. We've had
00:31:39.120
new dynasties since then. The Clintons, for one. And Obama came in. We'll see if any of the other
00:31:45.000
Obamas run for office. But it's kind of, there's one Kennedy who still matters. There's one Kennedy
00:31:51.000
who's still relevant in politics. And it's Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Love him or hate him? He's the one.
00:31:58.840
He's the one challenging the political establishment. He's the one who Joe Biden
00:32:03.560
is really afraid of. That's why he's trotting out all of Kennedy's relatives to endorse him
00:32:07.180
over their own flesh and blood. But it doesn't really matter. Do you think that's going to move
00:32:11.460
one single vote away from Bobby Kennedy? I do not think so. Now, speaking of threats to Democrats,
00:32:19.280
House Democrats from the January 6th Committee are really, really worried that Donald Trump is going
00:32:25.960
to put them in jail. The January 6th Committee, not just the House Dems who were on it, but also
00:32:31.400
people who testified. This DC cop, Michael Fanone, who testified before the committee. And now he works
00:32:39.020
for CNN. He told CBS News, quote, Trump's going to weaponize the Department of Justice and use it to go
00:32:45.260
after people like myself. He's telling us exactly what he's doing. Well, why would Trump go after the
00:32:51.660
January 6th Committee? Well, because they lied. We now know that the January 6th Committee lied by
00:32:57.220
omitting testimony that President Trump did in fact request troops to protect the U.S. Capitol on
00:33:02.280
sorry. January 6th, the worst day ever in the history of any republic ever. So we know that he did
00:33:10.300
that. We know that witnesses testified to the J6 Committee that this happened. And we know that
00:33:15.140
the January 6th Committee covered this up. Liz Cheney covered this up. We know that it was a big
00:33:22.040
farce, a big hoax. We saw the tapes from January 6th after the fact that were suppressed by the
00:33:26.980
committee. So is Trump going to throw these people in prison? Probably not, but maybe he should. I
00:33:35.840
don't know. That's what they're doing to him. Is Donald Trump going to weaponize the Department of
00:33:40.960
Justice against his enemies? Probably not. He probably won't. But maybe he should. That's what
00:33:45.760
they're doing to him. Why are they accusing him? There's no evidence whatsoever that Trump would
00:33:50.540
ever do anything like this. Barack Obama weaponized the agencies against his enemies. Joe Biden has
00:33:55.600
weaponized the agencies against his enemies. The agencies themselves have weaponized themselves
00:34:01.280
against their enemies, the conservatives. There's no evidence that any right-wingers,
00:34:07.280
least of all, Trump would do that. So why are they accusing him of that?
00:34:13.060
Because they have a guilty conscience. And when you have a guilty conscience, you start
00:34:16.180
suspecting people of doing the very things that you have been doing. That's what this is about.
00:34:21.700
This is pure projection. It shows us their own guilt. And it reminds us that maybe Trump actually
00:34:27.800
should do these things, even though he almost certainly will not. Our mailbag is sponsored by
00:34:32.600
PureTalk. Go to puretalk.com slash nolesk, N-W-L-E-S, because right now, right now, our listeners
00:34:37.220
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00:34:42.880
Hi, Michael. RJ here. I enjoyed your speech at the University of Illinois on Tuesday. I ended up
00:34:47.360
being too far back in the line to ask my questions. So here it is. I'm 21 now, but when I was 18,
00:34:53.300
I ran for city council in Newton, Illinois, and won while I was still in high school. I mentioned this
00:34:58.940
because you frequently stress the importance of prudence and wisdom, and not just politics,
00:35:03.500
but in life. What is your opinion on young politicians? Obviously, young people should
00:35:08.660
get involved in politics where they can, but should they be politicians? Would it be better
00:35:14.040
to leave the actual act of governance to wiser, older people? By the way, Ben Davies,
00:35:19.900
thanks for the picture. As always, huge fan of the show. Thank you.
00:35:24.000
Great question. Yeah, generally speaking, you should. It's okay. For some local race,
00:35:28.720
maybe it's okay just to, you know, where the stakes are relatively low, you know, cut your teeth
00:35:34.140
in politics. Maybe. It's true. The founding fathers were rather young, but, you know, also,
00:35:39.800
it was a different age. They were much better educated than we are today, both in the moral
00:35:43.840
virtues and in the intellectual virtues. So I don't think it's really comparable. Yeah, people should
00:35:50.700
accumulate some wisdom, book learning and practical learning, and then run for office.
00:35:57.560
I was approached when I was in college to run for the city council seat. There was one city council
00:36:02.760
seat that usually went to a student in New Haven, and I was approached to run for it as a conservative,
00:36:09.960
so the odds that a Republican could ever win in New Haven, very, very low. But I considered it,
00:36:14.640
I strongly considered it, and I ultimately decided against it because I didn't feel the juice was worth
00:36:19.860
the squeeze. There wasn't enough that I could get done to make it really worth going out there on a
00:36:27.020
limb at such an age when I was so green, when I didn't quite yet know totally what I thought,
00:36:31.240
when I didn't quite have the political skills to do the job very well. I just felt it wasn't really
00:36:36.300
worth it, even for a job that often did go to a student. So, no, I think wisdom is good. We often
00:36:41.780
now mock the idea that politicians are kind of old. People mocked Reagan for that, and Reagan said,
00:36:48.500
you know, I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I will not exploit for political purposes
00:36:53.160
my opponent's youth and inexperience. And it was a good line, and there was a lot of truth to it.
00:36:59.540
Hello, Michael. Before I started listening to your show, my wife and I did IVF, and we were very
00:37:03.880
successful. We now have several cryopreserved babies that we pay for annually. Since listening,
00:37:09.060
I found your comments on IVF to be quite compelling. I'm now seeking some advice. The way I see it,
00:37:14.460
there are only three options on how to deal with our offspring. Destroy, which to me is morally
00:37:19.700
unacceptable. Donate, which legally speaking, my wife needs to agree to, and she refuses to bury another
00:37:25.600
child or give them to someone else. The only other option I see is delay, paying the annual cost of
00:37:32.160
cryopreservation. Although I don't understand the spiritual implications of a baby being cryopreserved
00:37:37.480
indefinitely, this seems like the most prudent option to honor my wife. She has said that she's
00:37:44.160
open to the eventual possibility of donating to one of our own kids who may struggle with infertility in
00:37:48.320
the future, or even donating them to a Christian adoption agency upon our deaths. I'd love to hear your
00:37:53.800
thoughts. Thanks. Really good question. I'm also really gratified to hear that I persuaded you
00:38:01.980
on this issue, especially because you had already done it. You know, sometimes, obviously it speaks to
00:38:09.000
your reasonableness and maturity, but for a lot of people, if they've done something that they then come
00:38:16.520
to believe is wrong, they can't admit that it was wrong. They just can't bring themselves to do it.
00:38:21.640
Even if they strongly suspect that they can't, they just feel such guilt from their own actions,
00:38:26.080
and we all have done terrible things that we regret, that they can't bring themselves to admit
00:38:29.880
the thing that their intellect sees to be the truth. So hats off to you. That's great. What
00:38:35.920
should you do? Well, you're right. It would be wrong to kill the kids. And in terms of the donation,
00:38:42.620
in terms of either your wife having another one, or especially donating it to someone else,
00:38:51.740
it's bioethically and morally dubious. So I think you're right. I think you just delay. This is a
00:38:58.020
relatively novel bioethical issue. It's only come up in recent decades. And so I would just keep paying
00:39:04.580
the fee and wait for some bioethical ruling to come down from a serious authority. There's no way to
00:39:14.900
totally fix it. The bad thing has been done. And you did it presumably somewhat innocently.
00:39:23.680
You didn't realize the implications of what you had been doing. But now you do. And so we're just
00:39:29.820
trying to do our best in a broken world in a tough situation. So I think your intuition is probably
00:39:36.480
right. We delay until a better answer becomes clear to us. Next question. Hey, Michael, I hope
00:39:43.980
you had a great Easter. And regarding your religion, because you guys at the Daily Wire talk about
00:39:48.580
religion a lot, but you have some disagreements. So of course, I know Ben Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew.
00:39:54.740
And I'm wondering if you ever talk about religion with him and ever tried to talk about the gospel
00:39:59.440
with him and try to evangelize. Do you think Ben might ever become a Christian? Do you pray for
00:40:04.700
Ben's salvation? And another person might be Jordan Peterson. I don't know how often you talk to Jordan,
00:40:10.660
but his spiritual journey is pretty interesting. From what you know from him, where is he at his
00:40:15.560
spiritual journey? How close is he to knowing Jesus? What do you think?
00:40:19.800
Well, his wife, Jordan's wife just converted to Catholicism. So that's very exciting. I don't know.
00:40:25.000
I have seen Jordan a fair bit relatively recently, but I'm not sure exactly where he is. He certainly
00:40:30.820
seems to be more religious today than he was when I first met him years ago. Years ago, I interviewed
00:40:36.820
him and I said, okay, Professor Peterson, do you believe in God? I said, well, you know, it depends
00:40:42.520
on the meaning of the word believe. And what do we mean? Do we believe in and in God? And now I think
00:40:51.320
he probably would say, yes, he does. And his, you know, it's all he ever talks about is religion.
00:40:57.080
So he's clearly moved a bit. As for Ben, yes, we have talked about religion many times over the last
00:41:03.200
decade and talk about it all the time. You know, a whole lot of the time. Certainly would pray for
00:41:08.940
Ben's salvation and I do. There was one time he and I were on an airplane and I forget how it came
00:41:15.040
up, but I was going on about incarnation and the importance of incarnation to religion. And Ben starts
00:41:20.980
rolling his eyes and Ben's taking it seriously. He's read St. Thomas Aquinas and I think St. Augustine
00:41:25.540
and C.S. Lewis and all sorts of writers. And he said, oh, Knowles, here we go. I'm going to have
00:41:28.960
to hear a lecture for the rest of this flight about incarnation. And I said, and, you know,
00:41:33.540
enfleshment and all that. And I said, okay, all right, I'll lay off Ben. But if we hit a little
00:41:39.220
bit of turbulence, I had a cup of water. So if we hit a little bit of turbulence, you know, I might
00:41:44.060
have to, I might just to be safe for you, I'm going to maybe do a little splashing. And we left it at that.
00:41:49.300
So, you know, at some point, maybe, who knows, I was an atheist for 10 years.
00:41:53.960
Ben is not an atheist. He's got a different religion, but who knows, you know,
00:42:01.980
Hi, Michael. I had the privilege to attend your talk at U of I. I hope to ask you in person,
00:42:08.140
but you talk a lot about issues of the American college and university system. But you also
00:42:13.340
mentioned how that age group impacts change in our culture. What are some practical ways,
00:42:18.020
if there are any at this point, that conservative students like myself can make some impactful
00:42:22.880
changes in such a liberal culture? I am fed up with feeling silenced on campus about my Christian
00:42:28.120
beliefs and conservative views. I look forward to hearing your response. Thank you.
00:42:33.460
What can you do? And we already said at the top, don't run for office. Or, you know,
00:42:37.700
only in rare circumstances should you run for office. What could you do? Well, start out just by
00:42:42.500
talking to your colleagues, your classmates, rather. When I was a freshman, I came into college
00:42:49.700
an atheist. My randomly assigned freshman year roommate convinced me that God exists. That was
00:42:55.340
a pretty big change in my life. That was pretty significant. That was a conversation over a drink
00:42:59.860
in the dorm. Okay. Especially when you're that young, your conversations with your classmates can have
00:43:07.140
huge life-lasting effects. That's probably where I would begin. You know, we have obligations
00:43:12.040
in order of charity. So you have more obligations to the people closest to you than the people further
00:43:18.860
away from you. And especially when you're 18 and you don't have a huge platform and you're not
00:43:23.760
established in the community, that's a good place to start. All right, let's get to some written
00:43:27.460
mailbag before we move on to the member of segmentum. From Jeff, King Puff, my question is about
00:43:33.860
family devotions. In an effort to destroy the lib notion that teaching your children is an endless
00:43:37.960
conversation and simply teaching them how to think and not what to think, I am starting to develop
00:43:44.880
regular patterns of spiritual formation in my own family. For now, I have a four-year-old and a one-year-old
00:43:49.320
and we read and discuss a story Bible every night, or Bible story probably, as well as having family
00:43:56.680
meetings at dinner where we discuss spiritual, moral, biblical issues my four-year-old can understand.
00:44:00.520
I want to implement a more official family devotion time at the dinner table every night.
00:44:04.960
Do you have recommendations on where to start or how you have done something like this? Or is there
00:44:10.620
a book guide you have seen to reuse yourself? Keep it creamy, brother. Yes, I do have thoughts.
00:44:15.800
It's good to teach your kids stuff. You should do that in your actions. You can do that explicitly
00:44:21.900
through lessons. But it's really important for your kids to see you learning.
00:44:30.520
Not just you as the teacher, not just you as the master, but you as the student,
00:44:34.820
you learning, and you on your knees praying. So I think actually probably the best spiritual
00:44:38.220
exercise you could do is all pray together. Preferably on your knees, I guess.
00:44:45.080
One of the best ways that you can instruct your students is by you getting on your knees and
00:44:51.280
attending mass or some kind of church service. I don't know exactly what your religious background
00:44:56.360
is. It would be you in a position of prayer and supplication and of being willing to listen
00:45:04.340
to a spiritual authority, be it a priest or deacon or whoever. That can be very, very helpful
00:45:10.280
because it shows that you're living it out. You're not expecting him to do something that you will not
00:45:18.380
do. You're not in fundamentally different positions here, but you're both sinners who need grace and
00:45:29.100
who turn to God with your prayers. Miserere nobis. Have mercy on us sinners.
00:45:37.600
From Jordan, Michael, big fan here. I'm writing to find out if you have yet heard of the court case
00:45:42.060
Tickle versus Giggle. As ridiculous as the names of the opposing parties may be, the subject matter
00:45:47.320
is quite serious. Essentially, a transgender woman named Roxy Tickle is suing a website named
00:45:51.980
Giggle, which operates as a women-only platform for refusing to allow a biological man into the
00:45:56.620
community. It appears the implications of the case outcome could be significant, even internationally,
00:46:01.360
as the case will attempt to define the word woman legally for the first time. I would love to see
00:46:06.240
you follow this case. Thanks again from a loyal parasocial fan. Tickle versus Giggle. I absolutely
00:46:14.120
love it. I had not heard of the case until now, and I look forward to following it. I will give you
00:46:20.960
the best reporting on Tickle versus Giggle I can muster. The rest of the show continues now. You do
00:46:25.620
not want to miss it. It is Fake Headline Friday. I need your help to discern the fake headline.
00:46:29.500
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