The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1472 - The Best Biden Gaffe Of The Year

00:00:00.000 A political gaffe is a phenomenon whereby politicians accidentally say what they really

00:00:05.240 mean. President Joe Biden is prone to them, and he just fell into perhaps the biggest one

00:00:11.060 of his career. Are you ready to choose freedom over democracy? Because that's America.

00:00:16.440 That's America. You're ready to choose freedom over democracy? Many on the left and the right

00:00:23.440 will say that he misspoke. I think this perfectly sums up what the liberals are pushing.

00:00:30.380 We know that they don't care one little bit about democracy. The way that we know that

00:00:34.820 is that every time they lose an election, they say it's a threat to democracy,

00:00:38.960 which makes no sense because democracy is government by the people. By definition,

00:00:44.420 whatever the people vote for is a triumph of democracy. But when the liberals say democracy,

00:00:49.940 they don't really mean democracy. They mean liberalism. When liberals say democracy,

00:00:54.540 democracy, they really mean freedom, or at least their own specific modern perverted

00:01:00.540 conception of freedom. They don't mean the classical conception of freedom, which is the right to do

00:01:05.760 what we ought to do. Mumford and Sons summed up the classical understanding of freedom in their song,

00:01:10.440 The Cave. I need freedom now. I need to know how to live my life as it's meant to be.

00:01:15.480 The liberal conception of freedom explicitly rejects living life as it is meant to be.

00:01:22.380 It's not about conforming to a norm. It's about deviating from it. That is what the liberals are

00:01:27.500 pushing, whether voters like it or not. Most voters want to stop transing kids. Democracy says 1.00

00:01:34.080 we must transing kids. Liberal freedom says we must trans kids. Guess which side Biden goes with?

00:01:42.980 Biden sides with transing the kids. Most voters want to secure the border. Democracy says shore up 1.00

00:01:49.620 the border. Liberal freedom says we shouldn't have a border. Biden opens the border. Most people want

00:01:57.740 secure elections. Democracy says we need election integrity. Liberal freedom does not care about

00:02:03.080 elections at all. Biden and the liberals gut election integrity. Lots of conservatives,

00:02:10.360 by the way, would also choose freedom over democracy. Not the fake freedom that the liberals offer,

00:02:16.460 but real freedom. Natural rights kind of freedom. Voters want to overturn the Second Amendment. Well,

00:02:22.460 most conservatives aren't going to care. We are still going to defend our rights. We're still going to

00:02:26.820 defend our freedom. Which makes this Biden gaffe perhaps the strangest one of his career.

00:02:33.080 Because everyone is pretending that his statement is totally crazy. But everyone's answer to Biden's

00:02:39.940 question deep down is yes. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:03:03.080 Welcome back to the show. Can a sexless marriage be a happy one? That's what the libs are asking in an 1.00

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00:05:05.160 Not to put too fine a point on the liberal preference for freedom, their version of freedom, over democracy.

00:05:12.480 Some Princeton professor, Eddie Glaude, just went on MSNBC and explained that if Donald Trump is

00:05:21.920 elected, if the people choose Donald Trump to be the next president, then democracy is over.

00:05:30.400 Democracies require certain kind of people to work. And we just got to be better, better people.

00:05:36.260 So we have to understand who we are, right? And what I'm looking for is a politics of tending.

00:05:40.860 A politics of tending, where we tend to each other's everyday ordinary lives on the ground,

00:05:46.780 close to the ground, Nicole. I'm looking for a coalition of the decent, a coalition of the

00:05:52.080 loving and caring. Folk who want to finally whip us away, you know, finally untether us from this

00:05:58.420 nonsense that has produced this. I feel like the other part of it is there's no more sort of private

00:06:05.160 itself. Right? Like everything that you do is this desperate, I think, need to connect to other

00:06:12.100 people who want to be part of what you just call the coalition of the decent, right? Because we're

00:06:15.380 racing against time. It feels like this election will be decisive if we can come back from this.

00:06:20.420 Yeah. If, you know, if Trump wins, I think democracy is a wrap in the country.

00:06:24.940 Okay. So that statement from a Princeton professor, supposedly, is nonsensical. It's,

00:06:30.920 of course, a contradiction in terms. What the people vote for cannot be the undoing

00:06:35.840 of democracy. It necessarily has to be the triumph of democracy. If you're electing a democratic leader

00:06:42.880 who is, even if the democratic leader is not the preference of the liberals. So they're talking

00:06:48.800 about liberals here. But then the whole rest of this segment, it sounds like a late night,

00:06:54.920 freshman year pothead bull session. You know, man, I just want a coalition of the decent man

00:07:05.100 to untether us from all the, the, the, the, the stuff, the nonsense, man. I know. I feel you,

00:07:14.360 professor. We need, it's a race against time for the, you know, in the private and the public and the,

00:07:22.800 my inner self and my outer self and without going out of my mind. You're waiting for the sitar to

00:07:31.640 come in. What are they talking about? The point that I think the Princeton professor is trying

00:07:37.240 to get to is that democracies and republics require virtuous citizens, but he can't use the

00:07:43.220 language of virtue because that's the language of the conservatives. If that's the case, then we

00:07:47.120 should, we should allow the conservatives to shape our democracy. So he has to use this liberal

00:07:51.720 hippie language. You know, we need to be kind and empathetic and big, big libs basically.

00:07:58.360 And then I, Nicole Wallace, I have no idea what she's even talking about,

00:08:02.960 but the upshot of everything they're saying is the problem is not that we have too little democracy,

00:08:09.960 but too much because Donald Trump might actually get elected. The people might actually get their

00:08:16.880 wish and they might be able to make this man the president again. And that would be really terrible.

00:08:23.020 So the, the, their, their complaint here is not that our democracy is crumbling. Their complaint

00:08:28.140 is that we have a democracy and they don't like the American people and they don't want the American

00:08:32.480 people to get what they want because what the American people seem to desire right now is something

00:08:38.740 that is more conservative and not particularly liberal. So they would, they would happily just

00:08:44.720 choose the liberal freedom regardless of what the people want. So what does the liberal freedom look

00:08:48.580 like? Uh, viewer discretion advised. This, this is a report from the publica. A gay politician in Spain 0.96

00:08:59.080 has abruptly resigned from his post after photos began to circulate showing him eating his own excrement.

00:09:07.340 This is a Daniel Gomez del barrio. He was a counselor with the governing left-wing party. You'll be shocked

00:09:16.080 to hear he's a left winger. It's always the ones you most expect, isn't it? And, but the story actually

00:09:22.220 isn't even that this guy has a weird sexual fetish and he's resigned his position. Uh, the story is the

00:09:31.460 people who are defending him. So Peter Boghossian, you might remember Peter Boghossian. He's been on this

00:09:36.760 show before. Uh, Peter is an atheist and a philosophy teacher and he really came to prominence because

00:09:43.140 he and James Lindsay put out the grievance studies hoax. And it was really, really funny. James Lindsay,

00:09:48.800 mathematician who now is a political speaker as well. Uh, they, they made up a bunch of fake

00:09:55.220 grievance studies, academic papers, you know, but on total nonsense and then got them published in

00:10:01.880 peer reviewed journals to show what a farce academia had become. It was really, really funny. So that's,

00:10:07.240 that's how Peter Boghossian got onto the radar of a lot of conservatives. But Peter is not a

00:10:12.300 conservative. Peter is a, an atheist for one and, uh, is a liberal. He might call himself a classical

00:10:20.960 liberal or a, not exactly a progressive modern liberal, but he's still a liberal. And it's stories

00:10:26.620 like this that show the huge chasm between the so-called classical liberals and the actual

00:10:32.140 conservatives. Boghossian responds to this story about the excrement eating left-wing politician

00:10:40.400 in Spain and says, unpopular opinion, mind your own business and leave the guy alone.

00:10:46.480 Leave him alone. Who cares if our elected representatives, uh, film themselves eating their

00:10:51.920 own excrement. That's none of your business. Stop, stop policing other people's behavior.

00:10:58.180 You know, get, get out of other people's bedrooms. I don't know. I don't know, man. I, I, I agree.

00:11:04.160 We're not going to send the purity police around to look into people's windows, but

00:11:07.060 if a, if a, if a, if a statesman is eating his own excrement, that would seem to be a sign of lunacy.

00:11:16.260 It would seem to be a good sign that he should not be representing me, that he's not fit for that job.

00:11:20.900 And so some people pointed this out in the comments and Peter doubled down and he said,

00:11:25.620 the comments here are not merely authoritarian. They demonstrate pervasive normative rigidity

00:11:31.680 that comes from Christian fear of judgment, the downside of Western supremacy mindset.

00:11:38.580 So this is, this is not only authoritarian. It shows you what happens when you have a Christian 1.00

00:11:42.920 society. You know, these Christians, the moment that you give them a little bit of power, all of a 0.99

00:11:49.080 sudden they're going to outlaw eating your own excrement on camera. Well, they might not even

00:11:54.300 outlaw it, but they won't even let you sit in the house of parliament. If you film yourself

00:11:59.800 eating your own excrement, these Christians, they need to loosen up, you know, man, live and let live 1.00

00:12:06.220 a little bit. That is classical liberalism for you. It is a reminder that, that even the American right

00:12:14.420 is still kind of stuck in the language of the mid to late 20th century, when liberals tricked all of

00:12:21.120 us into thinking that America was a liberal democracy. That's when that term really skyrocketed

00:12:26.520 in usage. That's when we started to describe ourselves that way. George Washington would

00:12:30.280 not have described America as a liberal democracy. Andrew Jackson would not have described America as

00:12:34.700 a liberal democracy. That is a second half of the 20th century kind of thing. And it's convinced

00:12:40.180 even a lot of right wingers. So we say we're the true liberals. We're the real liberals. Okay. Those

00:12:46.380 leftists, those progressives, they've betrayed liberalism, but we're not, we're the true liberals.

00:12:51.700 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

00:12:56.840 of liberal. I'm a conservative. I don't, I think liberalism is wrong. I think it's got a false

00:13:01.880 anthropology. I think it has a false conception of freedom that is totally in contradiction

00:13:07.900 of the classical conception of freedom, which will actually set you free because the classical

00:13:14.160 conception of freedom, the Christian conception of freedom is grounded in truth and the acknowledgement

00:13:19.240 that we can tell the difference between good and bad and right and wrong. And we have a political

00:13:23.340 freedom, not just an individual freedom, but, but a political freedom to live in a flourishing society.

00:13:29.600 And that means stopping our politicians from eating their own excrement. Okay. It's like,

00:13:34.960 it's weird because this is a literal thing that has happened. It's a, it's a real fact of a news

00:13:40.680 story, but it's such a great, it is such a great analogy for how our politicians leave today.

00:13:46.960 Which way, Western man, classical liberalism or something other than liberalism? Maybe,

00:13:54.820 maybe a real kind of freedom. There's so much more to say. First though,

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00:15:01.380 Speaking of disordered romantic lives, this is the most important article I've read all week,

00:15:05.360 and I meant to get to this yesterday and the day before, but I have to get to it now because it is

00:15:10.120 the most important story of the week. Can a sexless marriage be a happy one? This is a very,

00:15:17.840 very lengthy article. It's really pretty good journalism, actually. I recommend you go check

00:15:21.840 it out. It's trending on all sorts of news sites all over the internet. It's about the increasing

00:15:30.620 fad of not having sex with your spouse. Just a few little passages. Will and Rose, this is the first

00:15:38.600 line of the story. Will and Rose met online 10 years ago. His screen name was Professor Parsley,

00:15:45.200 and he looked the part, tall and thin, with glasses, features that Rose found attractive.

00:15:50.540 On their first date, Rose learned that Will was a college student living with his mother,

00:15:54.760 and his handle came from a nickname given to him by child at an art camp where he worked.

00:15:58.800 They laugh about it now, as they do most things. Rose was drawn to how stable Will seemed,

00:16:03.280 so unlike the other men she had dated who dreaded commitment. Their relationship survived multiple

00:16:07.720 moves, about a year of long-distance dating, and the challenges of finding time to be together

00:16:11.740 while living with parents and roommates. Now, here's the rub. As much as Will grounds her,

00:16:17.320 Rose feels that the familiar calm of their relationship also shuts her down sexually.

00:16:22.720 They go months without sex, but they don't lack intimacy. Hold on. I think we might be hearing Rose's

00:16:30.080 perspective here a little much. I don't, something tells me that if we were talking to Will

00:16:33.640 about going months and months without having sex with his wife, he might say that their intimacy

00:16:38.280 is a little bit lacking. But what's going on? The story goes on. Rose's mother, now divorced,

00:16:43.280 of course, felt obligated to have sex with Rose's father once a week. That's not the kind of

00:16:48.780 relationship Rose wants. To get into a sexual mood, Rose relies on a set of rituals to help build 1.00

00:16:54.660 anticipation. Blah, blah, blah about the rituals. Will doesn't need to do anything to feel ready for

00:17:00.520 sex, and Rose sees this as another way in which they're different. Over the years, they have accepted

00:17:05.240 that this is what their sex life looks like and will look like if they want to be together,

00:17:09.040 which they do. Oh, man, poor, poor Will, and poor Rose for that matter. They've just accepted this.

00:17:17.080 No, no, no. They haven't accepted anything. Rose is denying her husband sex, and her husband is going 0.94

00:17:23.400 along to it because he is being nagged to death and sort of cuckolded by his wife. Not really cuckolded

00:17:33.320 in that she's not sleeping with other men, but she's denying him the marital right. So this poor 0.79

00:17:38.780 guy just can't stand up for himself and say, hey, lady, I think we should do the things that married 0.94

00:17:43.200 couples do. And she says, no, no, that's what my father said to my mother, and she divorced him for

00:17:48.360 that because my father wanted to sleep with his wife once a week, for goodness sakes. And I just don't

00:17:55.260 think in this modern day and age that spouses need to sleep together. How did we get to this point?

00:18:03.320 How on earth? I guess in this modern day and age, probably most people don't think that married

00:18:09.500 couples have to sleep together because we don't know what marriage is anymore. We've so divorced

00:18:13.820 marriage from its purpose, which is the begetting and education of children and also the mutual support

00:18:21.460 of the spouses. We now deny both of those facts. Now we say marriage is about two people who live

00:18:31.020 together. Well, you don't, if you're two people who live together, you don't necessarily have to be

00:18:36.120 married. Increasingly, people are just concubines or cohabitating. And if you're married, you don't

00:18:41.180 necessarily have to live together anymore, actually. But so I don't know. I actually don't really know

00:18:45.100 what modern people think marriage is. And you certainly don't have to be the opposite sex from

00:18:48.980 your spouse. And you don't, you don't have to have kids and you don't really have to support each

00:18:52.820 other. And it's not a lifelong commitment. And so we don't know. Marriage really doesn't mean

00:18:56.320 anything at all in the public conception. But marriage is a natural institution and it does

00:19:00.380 have a meaning. And part of the meaning of marriage is you sleep with your spouse.

00:19:05.220 Where did this error come from? I think it comes from the first sentence.

00:19:10.080 Will and Rose met online 10 years ago. They met online, meaning their bodies did not really have

00:19:18.580 anything to do with how they came together. It was just virtual. It was just, they were just kind of

00:19:24.120 ideas to each other. And increasingly, we live in a disembodied virtual world.

00:19:29.820 So is it any surprise that we downplay the importance of the body to the relationship?

00:19:35.220 Not at all. So no, we don't need to actually be physically intimate. We're just avatars. He's

00:19:40.420 Professor Parsley. He's not my husband. He's Professor Parsley. He's just a, he's a screen name

00:19:44.800 and gives me a sense of comfort. But I don't have any obligations to him.

00:19:48.800 And he doesn't have any obligations to me. He has an obligation to put up with not having sex if

00:19:54.000 he doesn't want me to divorce him. Because if our marriage is going to work, if our marriage is,

00:19:58.960 if we want to be together, that's what is going to happen. No. Women. Women. You know, I love women. 1.00

00:20:07.100 There are some people on the right, they don't love women. They are misogynistic. That's not me.

00:20:12.560 That's not me, ladies. You know, I love women. Women, you need to sleep with your husbands. 1.00

00:20:18.080 You have to. You have to do it. Unless there is some grave reason. I'm not saying there aren't

00:20:23.240 grave reasons sometimes why you got to go a while with that. Unless there is some grave and unusual

00:20:27.560 reason, you have to sleep with your husbands. And husbands, you have to sleep with your wives. 1.00

00:20:31.600 The rest of this article goes on. All these other couples, how they just, you know, they look at porn

00:20:35.860 separately now and they don't really, they don't have to be together. They just, you know, cultivate their

00:20:40.920 lusts for other women and men and they just do things separately. And I guess they're under the same roof a lot

00:20:45.360 of the time. But that's not, that is not marriage, man. The term that used to be used, you're not

00:20:51.180 allowed to even mention this anymore, is the marital debt. The notion that when you get married, you

00:20:59.020 have a right to sex. The man has the right to request sex of his wife and the wife has a right 0.99

00:21:06.720 to request sex of her husband. And in fact, there was, I forget where I was reading this.

00:21:12.360 There was actually a case made during the Middle Ages, during the Crusades, that a wife could

00:21:17.900 prevent her husband from going on crusade by claiming the marital debt. Say, look, I'm, we

00:21:24.380 married, we got married, we signed a contract and you owe me sex, husband. So you're not going to 0.90

00:21:29.500 the Holy Land. Sorry, you're not going to go out fighting. Where does this come from? It comes from

00:21:34.600 1 Corinthians chapter 7. And the full verses are, for fear of fornication, let every man have his own

00:21:42.300 wife and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render the debt to his wife 1.00

00:21:46.600 and the wife also in like manner to the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the 1.00

00:21:53.340 husband. And in like manner, the husband also hath not power of his own body, but the wife. So the

00:21:59.500 libs and the feminists are going to say, this is misogynistic. No man has the right to demand sex 1.00

00:22:03.180 of his wife. It's her body, her choice, you know, but no, that's not the classical conception.

00:22:09.320 That's not the Christian conception. And it's, it's not just one way. It's not just that the

00:22:12.680 man can claim the woman's body. It's that the woman can claim the man's body too. It's that

00:22:16.500 you become one flesh and you, you no longer just have your total individual autonomy. That's the

00:22:22.380 point of marriage is that man is a coupling creature and we come together and form the

00:22:25.320 basic unit of society, which is not one person, but two with a love that's so real that it produces

00:22:30.520 people, or at least it used to when we had sex with our wives and with our husbands. Have I put too

00:22:37.220 find a point on it? Can a, can a sexless marriage be a happy one? Well, barring some grave reason,

00:22:43.760 it can't really be a marriage. That's a pretty, we used to understand back when we knew what marriage

00:22:48.940 was, we knew that, you know, the thing that married couples do was a pretty important part

00:22:53.140 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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00:23:49.540 generation razor today. My favorite comment yesterday is from Chris Brooks, 6965, who says,

00:23:55.580 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.

00:25:35.480 That's the plan of God for you.

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.

00:27:13.420 What seems unfortunate about this event to me

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 0.79

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.

00:30:12.880 And with my hero, President Joe Biden.

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 0.98

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 0.87

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 0.96

00:34:37.220 get an additional 55-0% off their first month. Take it away.

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. 0.99

00:36:57.700 Next question.

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 0.87

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,

00:41:59.120 crazier things have happened. Next question.

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 0.93

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 1.00

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 Become a member. Use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:46:36.240 used AMAZON K-N-W-L-E-S!

00:46:46.140 Amen.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 19, 2024

Ep. 1472 - The Best Biden Gaffe Of The Year

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