The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 America is involved in two major wars. We're being invaded from the South,

00:00:04.240 and we are in the midst of a dramatic presidential race. And no one cares right now,

00:00:09.580 because everyone is talking about the revelation that South Dakota Governor

00:00:13.540 Kristi Noem shot a dog on her farm 20 years ago. The main thing about this story

00:00:20.640 is that it's extremely stupid and insignificant. She is the governor of a sparsely populated state.

00:00:26.920 She's not even close to the leading contender for Trump's running mate,

00:00:30.460 and people put down farm dogs all the time. But that is what paradoxically makes this story

00:00:37.200 extremely significant, because it reveals a lot about how radically American politics

00:00:41.700 has changed. We'll get into it. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

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00:01:53.760 with code DAILYWIRE. Good Ranchers, American meat delivered. Christy Noem, the rise and fall of

00:01:59.740 Christy Noem. The South Carolina, South Dakota governor came out of obscurity in a relatively

00:02:07.580 sparsely populated state, rose to the heights of GOP power on the brink of becoming the running

00:02:14.380 mate for President Covfefe. And then she had to go bragging about shooting her family dog

00:02:20.480 20 years ago in her memoir. And I don't know, I don't know who made, who could have possibly made

00:02:26.760 that book cover. If you're only listening to the show, it's a, it's a, it looks a little bit AI

00:02:31.180 generated picture of Christy Noem walking her dog. Stick to your guns, my life in politics. That's not

00:02:35.400 nice. That's not, I don't, I actually don't even know the real title of the book. I've only seen

00:02:39.360 the experts of it. And here is what she said. I'm just going to read it before you form your

00:02:46.560 opinion. This is what went viral and it probably is going to take out Christy Noem. I hated that

00:02:53.060 dog, Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself untrainable, dangerous to anyone she came

00:02:57.420 in contact with and less than worthless as a hunting dog. At that moment, Noem says, I realized I had to

00:03:01.700 put her down. Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun,

00:03:05.440 then led Cricket to a gravel pit. It was not a pleasant job, she writes, but it had to be done.

00:03:11.000 And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done. Incredibly,

00:03:15.160 Noem's tale of slaughter is not finished. Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that

00:03:20.840 was nasty and mean because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled disgusting,

00:03:25.240 musky, rancid, and loved to chase Noem's children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.

00:03:29.920 Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog.

00:03:34.460 But though she dragged him to a gravel pit, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived

00:03:39.520 the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then hurried back to the

00:03:45.200 gravel pit and put him down. At that point, Noem writes, she realized a construction crew had watched

00:03:50.320 her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus

00:03:56.700 to arrive and drop off Noem's children. Kennedy looked around, confused. Noem writes of her daughter,

00:04:01.120 who asked, hey, where's Cricket? Cricket, I assume, was the dog, not the goat.

00:04:07.180 In what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year,

00:04:10.980 Noem adds, I guess if I were a better politician, I wouldn't tell the story here.

00:04:15.880 Okay. Okay. Three observations here. First one is, this probably was bad politics.

00:04:29.700 Generally speaking, if you are a governor, even if you're a member of Congress, if you have national

00:04:35.580 political aspirations, you should not brag about killing your dog and give all the gory details of

00:04:42.960 killing your dog and then killing that other goat that you don't like. And then your kids show up

00:04:47.580 later and ask, hey, where'd the dog go? Probably not a good idea. So my second observation, which is

00:04:54.380 related, is this was a political miscalculation. But it was a political calculation. It was a

00:04:59.560 miscalculation, but this was a calculated revelation. Kristi Noem did not accidentally put

00:05:05.020 this in her memoir. A lot of people are saying, what a crazy oversight. Why would she leave that

00:05:10.160 detail in? She chose to include this detail because she felt that it would make her look tough

00:05:16.220 because she's a woman politician. And being a woman politician means you have a vulnerability

00:05:21.320 because you're a member of the weaker sex. So in order to bolster your political bona fides,

00:05:27.080 you have to make yourself seem tough. Margaret Thatcher did this very well as the iron lady. That's

00:05:33.180 what we called her. She was so tough. She's tougher than most of the men, right? She had to overcompensate.

00:05:38.020 Same thing here with Kristi Noem. The miscalculation is she thought that the toughness that would

00:05:46.260 come through the pages of her description of killing these animals would benefit her politically.

00:05:54.080 It probably won't because people really like their dogs. And so it makes her seem like a psycho killer.

00:06:00.120 Now, I only somewhat jokingly tweeted. I said, unpopular take here. I know everyone's raking

00:06:05.520 Kristi Noem over the coals, but this actually makes me like and respect her more. And I'm a little bit

00:06:10.720 joking here, obviously, because it's totally politically backfired for her. But what I'm

00:06:15.320 getting at there is I want my politicians to be just tough as nails, cold-blooded killers. Okay,

00:06:21.840 we are going up against a political establishment right now that is throwing us in jail for disagreeing

00:06:27.860 with them. We're going up against a political establishment that is prosecuting for the first

00:06:31.680 time ever. Former presidents, leaders of the opposition that's throwing Midwestern grannies

00:06:36.220 into isolation and solitary confinement because they had the audacity to show up and take selfies

00:06:42.420 in the Capitol Rotunda on January 6th, the worst day in history. The worst insurrection ever in America,

00:06:49.300 even though it was only months after an eight-month insurrection that the Democrats led called BLM.

00:06:53.840 I'm getting so feisty here. I'm smacking my own lamp, but I'm not shooting any dogs.

00:06:57.920 So I somewhat jokingly, but somewhat sincerely like it when our politicians are tough, when

00:07:03.940 they're killers, and obviously that's Kristi Noem. Now, there was context that was missing

00:07:09.560 out of this tale of gore and blood and horror from Kristi Noem, and that's what brings me to my

00:07:16.660 third point. This is the context that was missing right before this account. You hear Cricket,

00:07:23.820 the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like a trained assassin. When Noem finally grabbed Cricket,

00:07:29.560 she says, the dog whipped around to bite me. Then, as the chicken's owner wept, because,

00:07:34.720 more context, Cricket had just massacred a bunch of chickens, had just eaten some guy's property,

00:07:41.000 okay, and then was trying to bite Kristi Noem. As the chicken's owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologized,

00:07:47.500 wrote the shocked family a check for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses

00:07:51.340 littering the scene of the crime. Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was the picture of pure joy.

00:07:56.960 I hated that dog, Noem writes, adding that Cricket was untrainable, blah, blah, blah.

00:08:00.560 Okay, my third point here is, yes, it was politically dumb for Noem to admit this.

00:08:06.220 Yes, her political calculation misfired. I'm mixing metaphors, you get the point.

00:08:10.960 But the third point is, Noem didn't do anything wrong. You might say it wasn't advisable. You

00:08:19.700 might say there were better things she could have done. She could have given the dog up for

00:08:22.620 adoption. She could have tried to train the dog. There is nothing wrong with a human being

00:08:28.700 humanely killing an animal. There's nothing wrong. You're all, not all of you, but many of you are

00:08:34.060 eating meat right now. Very few people live on farms anymore, I guess. It's a little bit different.

00:08:40.040 Maybe if you live in the city, you take your puppy, you take your little cat in a stroller down the

00:08:46.140 sidewalk. I'm not joking. I have friends who have done this in the city. They'll put their animal in

00:08:50.840 a stroller so that the poor little paws of the animal don't touch the dirty sidewalk. And then you'll

00:08:56.460 go and you'll take them to a doctor and you'll pay thousands of dollars to treat the animal for

00:09:00.320 whatever ailment or to try to train the animal psychologically. And sometimes that doesn't work.

00:09:05.380 And then you'll pay even more money to euthanize it. That doesn't happen in the country, okay? That

00:09:09.900 doesn't happen on farms. And sometimes if a dog is threatening people, and if a dog is destroying

00:09:17.380 other people's property, sometimes you got to put the dog down like old yeller. It would be one thing

00:09:22.640 if Christine were torturing this dog like a serial killer or something. That would be wrong. And it

00:09:27.300 would be wrong. It's wrong to mistreat animals, not because the animals have any rights. Animals

00:09:31.840 don't have a rational soul. The reason it's wrong, nevertheless, to mistreat animals is because it

00:09:36.560 deadens our own humanity. C.S. Lewis writes about this extensively. If you are needlessly inflicting

00:09:43.040 pain and suffering to the degree that an animal can suffer on some poor creature, that's deadening

00:09:49.980 your humanity. That's what makes it wrong because you are a rational creature and that's harmful to

00:09:56.100 your soul and it's harmful to society. But there's nothing wrong intrinsically with humanely putting

00:10:02.960 down a farm dog. A bullet to the head is about as humane a way as you can put down any animal.

00:10:09.540 You say, well, Christine Ohm should have given it up for adoption. Yeah, maybe. I don't know.

00:10:12.500 Maybe she should have tried to train it harder. Okay, I guess. What about the chickens though, man?

00:10:16.500 We've got all this sympathy for Cricket, the assassin dog. We've got all this sympathy for this old

00:10:21.880 nasty goat. What about the chickens? Won't somebody please think about the chickens? And

00:10:27.600 more importantly, because I don't really care about the chickens or the goat or like any of these

00:10:30.980 things. Well, I don't wish harm on these animals. I just don't. They're animals though, guys. And I

00:10:37.260 care a lot more about the owner of the chickens. And I care more about the people that the animals

00:10:42.620 can threaten sometimes. We used to think that way. 50 years ago, this political story would not have

00:10:50.440 made anyone in most of America bat an eyelash. And the fact that it does today tells you something,

00:10:57.920 not about the changing morality of putting down a farm animal, but about the changing politics of

00:11:02.960 America. And you saw this reach a fever pitch with the most histrionic reaction that I got to my

00:11:09.380 mild little joke about Kristi Noem's dog. There's so much more to say. First though,

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00:11:51.360 What's your code? I want more Cozy Earth. I want them for the other beds. I said, well, okay,

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00:12:19.220 dropdown menu that follows CozyEarth.com promo code Knowles. The most histrionic, hysterical reaction

00:12:26.160 that I got to my joke about Christy Gnome's poor little pooch comes from Glenn Greenwald,

00:12:31.900 the liberal left-wing journalist who writes, he took a picture of my little joke and he says,

00:12:38.420 now you have the pathetic attention whores who have never once shown bravery or moral courage,

00:12:46.020 thinking it finally makes them tough to say how aroused they are by the shooting of puppies.

00:12:51.540 When did I do that? Gnome herself boasts, am I being too politically incorrect for you?

00:12:56.720 Weak, broken people. Okay. This guy, first of all, seems really fun at parties. I'm sure he's a

00:13:01.860 delight to be around. But second of all, this actually shows you a problem with our politics.

00:13:11.620 Our culture, we don't have children anymore. Our culture, we don't make families anymore.

00:13:18.320 Our culture, we don't pass down our cultural inheritance anymore. We are increasingly a sterile

00:13:27.880 culture. And I don't mean this, I don't mean we're an infertile culture. Some people suffer

00:13:33.480 from that. It's a fallen world. It's a tough life. I mean, we're choosing not to propagate our

00:13:39.240 civilization. We're choosing not to get married. We're choosing not to have children. We're choosing

00:13:44.120 not to educate the children we do have in the great cultural inheritance that we've been so

00:13:48.820 fortunate and blessed to receive. We are a sterile culture increasingly. And sterile people

00:13:55.140 and sterile cultures confuse dogs for children. Look around you. There are many people who are choosing

00:14:05.540 not to have children, not to get married and start families, who are, as they do that, they are

00:14:13.060 much more inclined to treat their little pooch like a baby. And it's very, very disordered.

00:14:20.880 Okay, this point of view, you see reach its apotheosis in the CNN interview of Philip Rines,

00:14:30.320 who was a Hillary Clinton spokesman, a top aide to Hillary for many years. He perfectly articulates

00:14:37.840 this disordered view of the relation of man to the rest of the created world.

00:14:43.920 Everyone's blood is boiling. I am one of these people that not only loves animals and has always

00:14:49.160 had pets, but just prefers them to people. We don't deserve them. That she thought that that was a good

00:14:56.360 idea. I mean, there's a special circle of hell that's reserved for people who mistreat animals.

00:15:01.620 It's a real window into it. I was, as I was leaving, I bumped into my neighbor and his dog,

00:15:07.540 Georgie. Georgie doesn't really like me because he associates me with my two cats. But I jokingly said,

00:15:13.480 Georgie, I'm going to go on TV and I'm going to defend your honor.

00:15:17.520 Yeah, this is how they think. This is how these people think. When it gets down to it,

00:15:23.960 it's not even just about, I have my two cats and I think there's a special circle of hell

00:15:28.040 for people who shoot farm dogs when they're threatening people and property.

00:15:35.460 Don't forget, by the way, this is Philip Rines. This is the guy who supports killing human babies.

00:15:40.600 This is the Democratic Party, which supports killing human babies up until the moment of birth

00:15:44.440 and maybe after birth. No problem. That's a right. We need to celebrate that.

00:15:48.660 But if you humanely put down a farm animal, all of a sudden you're super duper mega Hitler and you

00:15:54.840 deserve to be in the lowest circle of hell. It's that line he says there, I prefer animals to people.

00:16:03.460 I think that's true. I think the libs do prefer animals to people. I think they prefer the delta

00:16:08.240 smelt to people. I think they prefer the rocks and the trees and the oceans to people. And I think

00:16:13.960 they would inflict suffering on people to protect the ants and the polar bears. And because I think

00:16:24.120 they would upend our entire political order to stop the sun monster from threatening the rest of

00:16:29.920 the lower beasts. Very disordered. I like animals well enough. I like looking at them. I think they're

00:16:36.820 pretty. They're great. They're here for our enjoyment. Okay. We're not here to serve the animals.

00:16:43.040 The animals are here for our enjoyment. We ought to be good stewards of our environment. I'm all for

00:16:49.440 that. But the I prefer animals to people. Yes, you do. Because you're histrionic on television

00:16:54.360 about a woman putting down her untrainable farm dog. But you're gleeful about women killing little

00:17:01.060 children, killing human children. You obviously do prefer animals to people. All of the people who

00:17:07.040 choose not to have children, who choose to treat their little pooch like it's a child.

00:17:13.040 They obviously prefer animals to people. And that's very, very disordered. Because as cute

00:17:19.440 and fun as animals are and as pets can be, they're not human beings. They're not made in the image and

00:17:28.520 likeness of God. They don't have rational souls. They don't have abstract conceptions of justice.

00:17:32.760 They can't reason. They can't love because love is reasonable. Because love has to do with desire

00:17:41.760 and intellect. It's not... You can't have a civilization of puppies, guys. Okay? And the

00:17:48.080 left wants to get... Philip Raines... I keep mispronouncing his name. I keep pronouncing it

00:17:51.940 differently every time. Hillary Clinton, the left broadly, and the sentimentalists and the

00:17:58.120 secularists on the so-called right, they seem to think we can have a civilization of puppies.

00:18:05.100 We can't. If we don't have kids and if we make an idol out of animals and we take them out of their

00:18:11.340 proper place, we're not going to have much of a civilization at all. I'll put a final point on

00:18:17.260 this here. Even Pope Francis agrees that the idolatry of puppies has gone way too far. Pope Francis often

00:18:26.860 considered a liberal pope. And yet he comes out and said, today we see a form of selfishness. We see

00:18:34.760 that some people do not want to have a child. He's not criticizing people who can't have a child. Many

00:18:39.080 people can't have a child. And that's very sad. And they suffer and they bear their cross. Saying,

00:18:43.640 we see that some people do not want to have a child. Sometimes they have one and that's it. But

00:18:47.560 they have dogs and cats that take the place of children. This may make people laugh, but it is a

00:18:51.680 reality. The practice, quote, is a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us,

00:18:57.340 takes away our humanity. It absolutely does. Now, moving on from the pooches,

00:19:03.100 but sticking with Pope Francis. Pope Francis has just come out. He has weighed in on the Israel-Gaza

00:19:10.560 war and the Ukraine-Russia war and has said, a negotiated peace is better than a war without end.

00:19:16.960 And I've got to say, I think the Holy Father is absolutely right in the case of these wars in

00:19:22.900 particular. And the reason I say that is not because I don't think that it's good sometimes

00:19:28.040 in war to have a clear victory. If you can have a clear victory, then sometimes that can secure the

00:19:33.960 peace for a much longer period of time after that. Sometimes that can save more lives. It can do more

00:19:38.780 good. So I'm not saying we just need to end all war immediately. All we are saying is give peace a

00:19:43.740 chance, kumbaya kind of stuff. But in the case of the Israel-Gaza war, what is the end of the Israel-Gaza

00:19:51.080 war? The end of the Israel-Gaza war happens one of two ways. The true end without a negotiated peace,

00:19:57.740 it ends one of two ways. Israel gets rid of all the Palestinians, all the Gazans at least,

00:20:03.300 half of the Palestinians, or the Palestinians get rid of all the Israelis. That's pretty much it.

00:20:08.640 The state of Israel has said Gaza run by Hamas is an unacceptable security risk. So the rational

00:20:17.660 political desire there is ethnic cleansing in Gaza. And the Gazans, for their part,

00:20:24.260 they're not even implicit about it. They write in Hamas's charter that their explicit goal is the

00:20:29.780 abolition of the state of Israel. So the rational, and at least in the case of the Palestinians,

00:20:35.600 the stated explicit political goal is the ethnic cleansing of the other. So the only way that you

00:20:41.360 can avoid either of those things, which I think most people would find morally unacceptable,

00:20:44.500 is a negotiated peace. Same thing with Ukraine and Russia. Do you think Ukraine is going to beat

00:20:49.600 Russia? Do you think it's desirable for America and the West to get into a hot war with Russia,

00:20:57.520 a former superpower, a nuclear power that's got missiles aimed at us? We avoided it for 70 years

00:21:03.380 during the Cold War. Well, I guess 50 years during the Cold War. Since then, some decades have elapsed

00:21:08.280 of a slightly kinder, gentler relationship with Russia, but descending once again back into Cold

00:21:16.480 War. You think that's in our interest? No. You think that Ukraine is actually going to defeat Russia

00:21:22.260 militarily, reclaim all of its conquered territory? No, nobody seriously thinks that's going to happen.

00:21:27.300 So all we're doing, the U.S. grand strategy is just dragging this out to kill more Russians.

00:21:31.420 Okay. And more Ukrainians as a result. Wouldn't we say that ultimately a negotiated peace would be

00:21:40.760 better here? I'm not saying in all conflicts, but in these conflicts, it seems that the Holy

00:21:45.720 Father is totally right. There is so much more to say. First though, go to jpcatholic.edu

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00:22:44.640 slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, that is jpcatholic.edu slash Knowles. Speaking of religion, big news,

00:22:57.220 Russell Brand, the comedian, actor, guru, podcaster, celebrity, has just announced that he

00:23:05.720 is being baptized.

00:23:07.500 Die and be reborn. This Sunday, I'm taking the plunge. I'm getting baptized. At the moment,

00:23:16.880 I'm very curious as to what you who have been baptized feel about it, what your expectations

00:23:24.020 are of the event prior and what it's actually like. What's been explained to me is it's an

00:23:29.580 opportunity to die and be reborn, an opportunity to leave the past behind and be reborn in Christ's

00:23:37.340 name, like it says in Galatians, that you can live as an enlightened and awakened person.

00:23:43.960 Sometimes I think of non-Christian perspectives on it, like Marcus Aurelius saying, you are already

00:23:48.840 dead, now live the rest of your life properly. Or the Buddhist saying, put down the corpse.

00:23:53.540 All of these things seem so inviting and beautiful. I know a lot of people are cynical about the

00:24:01.460 increasing interest in Christianity and the return to God. But to me, it's obvious as meaning

00:24:07.500 deteriorates in the modern world, as our value systems and institutions crumble, all of us become

00:24:12.920 increasingly aware that there is this eerily familiar awakening and beckoning figure that we've

00:24:19.700 all known all of our lives. And then he did it. Russell Brand just put out a video just a few

00:24:26.720 hours ago, I think, where he says he was baptized. And he goes on about how he's done all these drugs in

00:24:33.160 his life, but he was always disappointed because they didn't deliver the spiritual transcendence that

00:24:39.220 they had promised. But with baptism, he said, he goes, it's only been a few hours, but I felt

00:24:44.880 something turn on in me. I just felt something change in me. And he did a full immersion baptism

00:24:52.340 in the River Thames. So I don't know. I would imagine Russell Brand was not baptized in a Catholic

00:24:57.980 church. Although the other day, Russell Brand prayed the rosary on air. So I don't know, really.

00:25:05.880 And then more broadly, we are seeing a major series of conversions to Christianity, specifically,

00:25:15.360 disproportionately among them to the Catholic church. Candace, for sure, but many other people

00:25:20.680 too. Now Russell Brand. And what is this about? What is going on? I'll tell you exactly what this

00:25:26.240 is about. Past all of the political analysis and sociological analysis, what this is about is that

00:25:35.760 the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. That's what it's really about. If you

00:25:40.160 want the macro historical view, that's what it's about. Thads come and go. Ideologies come and go.

00:25:46.460 Heresies come and go. But for 2,000 years, the church stands strong. And since the beginning,

00:25:53.500 the experts and the geniuses and the elite classes have been predicting the imminent demise of the church.

00:26:00.700 And then we see their demise. Their individual demise, because we're all mortals and we all die

00:26:09.120 eventually. We see the demise of their institutions, their silly little heresies, their fads, their all

00:26:16.080 of it. That all goes away and the church remains. It is the enduring institution in our civilization and

00:26:24.980 in all civilizations. It is the turning point of history. I believe that as a matter of faith.

00:26:32.420 But if you don't believe that as a matter of faith, if you're not a Christian, if you.

00:26:38.360 Just the historical fact that the church remains and continues, even when it looks like all hope is

00:26:43.840 lost. You know, 20 years ago, the new atheists are on the rise. Religion is a punchline. No one wants

00:26:48.760 to. There are scandals. There's knavish imbecility in the conduct of the church. And then what happens?

00:26:56.200 Everyone just starts converting again because the Holy Spirit is real and God is real and the

00:27:03.140 Trinity is real. You know, God, the Father, God, the Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit,

00:27:07.160 the whole and the church, the visible expression of God's people. It's real. That's my take on it,

00:27:14.480 at least. And if you don't agree with me, okay, how do you explain it? How do you explain it? At this

00:27:19.620 moment, Jordan Peterson, Jordan Peterson's wife, Tammy, just converted weeks ago to the faith.

00:27:28.180 Many, many people. Jordan, if you had asked Jordan five, 10 years ago, Jordan, do you believe in God?

00:27:35.120 He would have said, well, you know, it depends on what you mean by the definition of God and

00:27:38.420 believe and all. And, and, but now I think he's clearly on a journey to all is the biggest public

00:27:46.260 intellectual in the world. Probably all it just, how do you explain it? How on earth do you explain

00:27:54.020 it to me? It's very, very clear. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. Now there is

00:28:01.520 a political analysis to be made here and it comes from Alexei de Tocqueville. Alexei de Tocqueville

00:28:06.080 wrote Democracy in America. It's probably the most famous and most important critique and observation

00:28:12.840 of America, certainly of early America. Tocqueville travels all around America, all those little

00:28:18.080 towns in New England. And he, he writes his observations as a European, as a Frenchman.

00:28:24.180 And those, they're enduring observations. They've been proven true in so many ways.

00:28:29.600 One lesser discussed aspect of his book, Democracy in America, talks about America's religion.

00:28:34.300 And he says, America, it's kind of weird, you know, because it's a ostensibly Protestant country,

00:28:39.960 but Catholicism seems to grow here in a weird way, even though there's kind of overt top level

00:28:48.180 hostility to it, it grows. There's fertile ground for that. And Alexei de Tocqueville makes a prediction.

00:28:54.060 He says, over time, Americans are going to become more Catholic or they're going to leave Christianity

00:29:00.980 entirely. Now, many wonderful Protestants out there in the audience, some wonderful Protestants

00:29:05.620 in my family. So, you know, I'm not saying this has all happened overnight, but it is simply an

00:29:10.940 historical fact. America has become much more Catholic over the years and America has become

00:29:16.500 much more atheist. And the people who are converting that, they're not all converting to Catholicism,

00:29:20.440 but a lot of them are. Maybe most of them are. And there's a lot of growth of atheism. And maybe,

00:29:28.080 maybe Tocqueville was right. And maybe that old ancient institution, ever ancient, ever new,

00:29:36.920 maybe we're seeing the continuation of what has been 2,000 years of history so far continue to play

00:29:44.780 out, even here in America. And even, even over there in England with Russell Brand and the other

00:29:49.700 people who are finding faith. You know, folks, you can subscribe to the Michael Knowles YouTube

00:29:54.320 channel right now. You can smash that subscribe button, ring the bell so you never miss an episode.

00:30:01.420 Speaking of the state of America, we just had the White House Correspondents Association dinner.

00:30:05.800 This, this dinner's existed for many, many years. It got a lot of play during the Obama years.

00:30:11.420 And I don't think it's even so much because of Obama as it's, it's because the political

00:30:16.440 journalists had decided to really make celebrities of themselves because those were the early days of

00:30:21.240 social media. And one thing I'm happy about, I don't want to just complain about Washington.

00:30:26.160 One thing I'm happy about is they've stopped calling this dinner nerd prom. That's what they

00:30:30.360 used to call it, nerd prom for a period in the early 20 teens, which I always found so offensive

00:30:35.680 to nerds because these political journalists aren't nerds. They're not particularly

00:30:41.300 intelligent. They're not particularly educated. They're not particularly studious. They're not,

00:30:46.160 they're flattering themselves. They're not nerds. They're generally political sycophants. And they

00:30:51.460 go there and then the Democrat president comes out and torches his, his enemies and they give him

00:30:58.020 more glowing coverage, which is all they do. They just exist to be the propaganda arm for the liberal

00:31:03.300 establishment. So this year was no different. Well, it was no different in the room, but it was a

00:31:07.980 little different outside the room. In the room, presidents, even when they don't know their own

00:31:12.140 name, generally do pretty well because other people write their jokes. So they hire top

00:31:16.480 comedians to write their jokes. I felt Joe Biden's set played pretty well.

00:31:20.980 Well, Donald's had a few tough days lately. You might call it stormy weather.

00:31:25.880 What the hell? Trump's so desperate. He started reading those Bibles. He's selling.

00:31:38.940 Then he got to the first commandment. You shall have no other gods before me.

00:31:45.520 That's when he put it down and said, this book's not for me.

00:31:48.780 Okay. Ha ha ha. It's fun. These jokes are fine. They're fine, acceptable, generally inoffensive

00:31:54.840 political jokes. It's certainly less offensive than when Barack Obama came out at the White

00:31:59.640 House Correspondents' Dinner and talked about how he was going to start droning Justin Bieber or

00:32:03.060 whatever, the Jonas Brothers or something. That was a little much, a little too real, pal.

00:32:08.660 But these jokes, they're fine. And the jokes don't even really land a punch on Trump because what

00:32:13.580 is the upshot of the jokes? The upshot of the jokes is Trump is extremely confident,

00:32:18.600 very sure of himself, and he is famously a playboy. Yeah, that's true. I mean, Trump would

00:32:25.780 have bragged about that himself for most of his life. So yeah, okay, that's fine. Whatever. No big

00:32:31.180 deal. And then all the fancy political journalists in the room, they're all laughing and it's all just

00:32:36.080 a lovely night. But outside, outside, it was a different story. Outside, there was a protest and

00:32:42.420 not just a small protest. There was a huge protest from the Palestine Liberation Movement.

00:32:52.760 Free Palestine, Biden's legacy is genocide. Free Palestine. And it's not, this isn't just a

00:33:01.020 handful of people. This is a long ceasefire now. This is a long, huge group of people. Lots of cops,

00:33:10.000 lots of signs. Seems to go pretty deep. I can't even see the end of the protest. This thing is

00:33:15.240 going on and on for streets and streets and streets. And what are they protesting? Well,

00:33:20.500 if they're protesting the White House Correspondents Association dinner, that means

00:33:23.580 they're not just protesting Biden. They're not just protesting the president. They're protesting

00:33:28.260 the journalists, the journalists who they accuse of covering up a genocide. Again, I'm not saying I

00:33:34.980 agree with these guys. Obviously not. You look at them out there waving the Palestine flag and

00:33:40.040 all this talk, you know, all this kind of left-wing language. And you realize if you're an American

00:33:46.060 conservative, you say, that ain't our people. That's not the right-wingers. Right-wingers generally

00:33:53.240 don't wave the flags of Palestine. Okay. Right-wingers generally don't wave non-American flags

00:33:58.940 at rallies. Maybe we'll wave like a Trump flag or something, but that'll also be in red,

00:34:03.160 white, and blue, and it'll just be a riff on the American flag. We ain't waving Palestine flags.

00:34:06.880 Those ain't our guys. Those are leftists protesting the left-wing president and the left-wing journalists.

00:34:15.420 That's a big problem for Joe Biden. And it's a problem for the credibility of the establishment,

00:34:19.840 the so-called journalists who are the propagandists for the White House.

00:34:23.240 That's a big problem because it means they've lost the people. Joe Biden has won over the ruling

00:34:30.460 political class. He's got them. He's had them in his pocket for many decades now.

00:34:35.720 That's not a problem. And the journalists in that room, they've won over the bureaucracy. They've won

00:34:41.460 over the deep state. You know, they've won over the lobbyists and the corporations. But the thing that

00:34:47.280 neither of them have is the people, and not just our people, not just the conservatives obviously don't

00:34:52.440 like Joe Biden or the journalists at all. Their own people, they have increasingly lost their own

00:34:57.900 people. And this is why a third-party candidate like a Bobby Kennedy, who's a protest vote for

00:35:01.520 leftists, that's a big problem for them. This is why a Marianne Williamson, for goodness sakes,

00:35:07.140 would probably be something of a problem for them. This is the big political weakness.

00:35:13.480 They've got all their entrenched political power, but they don't have the people. And the people

00:35:17.980 increasingly are inclined to support conservatives, not because they're flag-waving right-wingers,

00:35:24.360 far from it, because they view themselves as having a common enemy. Which is why, you know,

00:35:30.620 I hate to say I told you so, but this is why I predicted from day one that Bobby Kennedy would

00:35:35.240 prove a bigger threat to Joe Biden than to Donald Trump. Because the left is in a period of major

00:35:43.360 division right now. And for all the talk we hear about, the insurrection is January 6th,

00:35:47.700 Donald Trump, the greatest threat to democracy. Many discontented left-wingers who ordinarily would

00:35:54.780 vote for Democrats who are liberal people, they are far angrier at Joe Biden, far more fearful of

00:36:02.400 what Joe Biden can do to the country than they are of Donald Trump. The Daily Wire is launching its

00:36:07.440 first animated series, Mr. Burcham, premiering for free on May 12th, exclusively on Daily Wire+.

00:36:11.520 Our friend Adam Carolla is the creator of the series and the voice of Mr. Burcham, a traditional,

00:36:15.320 straight-talking junior high teacher facing down the absurdities of the education system

00:36:19.100 and the culture wars. Alongside his friend Gage, Mr. Burcham is a true old-school hero in a new

00:36:24.620 school world. We rallied an unparalleled lineup of talent for the series, including Megyn Kelly,

00:36:30.520 Roseanne Barr, Sage Steele, Danny Trejo, Kyle Dunnigan, Patrick Warburton, Tyler Fisher,

00:36:37.040 and our very own Brett Cooper, and a whole lot more. Take a look at the official trailer.

00:36:40.380 Just tell me what you need. Jumping in the first one. Rolling. Speed. Action. Sawbuck's looking a

00:36:47.720 little chubby-wubby. So I bought him some new food. It's organic and vegan. Dogs are supposed to eat

00:36:54.180 meat. They're descendants of wolves. You ever see a vegan wolf on the Nature Channel? I'm a vegan.

00:37:02.460 Coffee is for closers, ladies. Listen up! Hey, don't make this a prison hug. I'm a heteronormative,

00:37:08.500 cisgendered, white male. For which I apologize. I'm black, and that used to be enough, but I'm

00:37:14.980 also bilingual, and I'm non-binary. We're the army! We drink more before 9 a.m. than you Navy

00:37:20.980 pukes do all day. He rubbed all the fur off his emotional support ferry. The damn thing looked like

00:37:26.160 a four-legged penis!

00:37:32.640 Charity and work. Two words that should never go together. Like women and opinions.

00:37:38.640 I want a burly man. They're salty and make me dizzy.

00:37:41.280 Sorry, just need to find a thingy to fix my gaming chair.

00:37:44.480 When I was on the construction site, my chair was a five-gallon bucket. It was also my toilet.

00:37:50.640 Hey, I'm done. I'm going back to bed. Thanks a lot.

00:37:58.080 Prepare for the razor-sharp comedy that only Adam Carolla and The Daily Wire can deliver.

00:38:06.720 Do not miss out on the series premiere streaming free exclusively on Daily Wire Plus on Sunday,

00:38:11.840 May 12th. My favorite comment on Friday is from Diego Calva for 14, who says,

00:38:18.560 Joe has worked more jobs than Homer Simpson by this point. It's amazing. Just like any group that Joe

00:38:24.240 Joe Biden's talking to, he shares their experiences and knows their struggle and feels their pain.

00:38:30.880 It's so weird. It's almost like the man is a totally empty suit and just shapeshifts to

00:38:38.720 fit whatever group he's talking to. Really, really weird. You bet I was driving an 18-wheeler, Jack.

00:38:44.320 Me and Corn Pop. All those little kids with my hairy legs. Okay. Now, what do the people think?

00:38:52.480 Biden's lost the people. The liberal journalists have lost the people. What do the people think?

00:38:57.600 The people believe, they were just asked by The Economist and YouGov, so it's kind of a left-wing

00:39:01.600 poll, what the top issues are. The top issues in this election, inflation and immigration.

00:39:10.320 Inflation or prices, 24%. The second most popular choice was immigration at 14%.

00:39:17.440 97% of respondents tabbed inflation as important. So statistically, everybody says inflation is

00:39:25.680 important. 77% said very important, more than three-quarters of respondents. 85% consider

00:39:31.920 immigration important. 56% say very important. And Biden is more than 30 points underwater on both of

00:39:39.760 these issues. 29% of people approve Biden's handling of inflation and prices. 62% disapprove.

00:39:48.640 Biden on independence, 17% approve of how he's handled inflation. 29% of people approve his handling of

00:39:57.120 immigration. 61% disapprove his handling of immigration. Biden is in big trouble. Big, big trouble. So the

00:40:06.320 only thing he can do, if the two most important issues, he is that far underwater, there's no way

00:40:11.600 to make up that ground. There's no way to, I mean, I guess he could fix the problem in that he could lock

00:40:15.600 up the border. It's only April, so there's still a little bit of time before the election. Maybe he could

00:40:19.980 start to turn that around, but then he would alienate his base, his base, which wants open borders. His

00:40:25.460 establishment doesn't totally want open borders, or they at least don't want to deal with the social

00:40:29.400 consequences of it. But his base does want open borders. Most of the American people don't want

00:40:33.720 open borders. His base wants free money and student loan forgiveness and all the rest of the Democrat

00:40:40.140 giveaways. Most people, virtually everyone, doesn't want to deal with the consequences of that.

00:40:46.560 So what does he do? He's stuck. The only political strategy available to him is to distract. The only

00:40:53.860 political strategy available to him is to say, Donald Trump wants to ban all abortions and punish

00:40:59.720 women. Donald Trump, his ally killed her puppy once. We like puppies, don't we? Even though, actually,

00:41:07.580 Joe Biden's dog keeps biting Secret Service agents. That's another one. Maybe we need to get

00:41:12.280 Kristi Noem in there. Take Joe Biden's old pooch out to the gravel pit and deal with him the way

00:41:19.540 that we would deal with someone who bites the Secret Service. Anyway, I'm not calling for that.

00:41:24.300 Just saying if Kristi Noem does visit the White House, maybe worth, you know,

00:41:28.320 yoink an old yeller Biden there. The dog, not the president. I'm digging myself a deeper and deeper

00:41:34.980 gravel pit the more I even talk about this. But that's all Biden can do. That's all he can do

00:41:40.960 is distract. Oh, look over there. Look at that butterfly. Republicans are so racist. It's an

00:41:47.220 insurrection. They have to even speak in these really nebulous kinds of terms, these metapolitical

00:41:53.140 terms. Oh, the Republicans are a threat to democracy. Why do they have to talk in this metapolitical way?

00:41:59.020 The threat to democracy and freedom and equality. Because if you get to the nitty gritty of any particular

00:42:04.080 aspect of our actual way of life, Biden has really, really messed up the country.

00:42:10.160 So he can't point to those. He's got to speak in the abstract. Liberalism does really, really well

00:42:14.220 in the abstract. Freedom, equality, liberation. It does really poorly in the concrete reality

00:42:20.560 because it's disconnected from reality. It assumes a false anthropology, a false understanding of human

00:42:27.160 nature, a false relation of man to the rest of the creatures and to our creator. Liberalism denies a

00:42:34.020 original sin in a way, intimating the perfectibility of man on earth. It's just wrong. It's just got a

00:42:44.060 whole host of problems. So they got to speak in the abstract, concrete reality. No bueno for them.

00:42:50.500 So speaking of our national future, economic and otherwise, how will you die? When will you die? And

00:42:57.720 how rich will you be? There is a new app that can apparently predict that. This new app, I'm not

00:43:04.000 even going to name it because it's bad for you. And there are some warnings about it. It was created

00:43:10.660 by scientists in Denmark and the US. The people who created this fed the app data from Danish health and

00:43:19.460 demographic records for 6 million people who were between the ages of 35 and 65. Half of the

00:43:25.840 participants died between 2016 and 2020. It's pretty bad. Between 35 and 65, half of these guys died.

00:43:32.400 What's going on in Denmark? I don't know. Researchers found that this app predicted who would die and who

00:43:38.300 would live with an accuracy of 78%. 78%. It's pretty good. Now, what data did the AI just use data pertaining

00:43:49.460 to your health? No. They used information such as income, profession, and medical history to determine

00:43:54.800 how long people would live. They used information pertaining to social life events. And they predicted

00:44:00.880 social life events that they might experience in years to come. And according to a professor at the

00:44:05.020 Technical University of Denmark, lead author of the study, it could predict health outcomes. It

00:44:10.620 could predict fertility or obesity, or you could maybe predict who will get cancer, who doesn't

00:44:14.900 get cancer. But it could also predict if you're going to make a lot of money. People are warning now,

00:44:20.920 don't try this app out because there are a lot of copycat apps and they might hack your information

00:44:24.380 and it's just not a good road to go down. But even if there weren't copycat apps that were trying to

00:44:29.300 steal your financial information, you still shouldn't use this app. And the reason you shouldn't use

00:44:33.140 this app is the same reason that the Bible tells you not to consult astrologers. A lot of people

00:44:41.160 misunderstand why the Bible says don't consult astrologers. They think in our modern scientific

00:44:45.640 age that it's because astrology is silly and it's not real. That's not why there's a commandment.

00:44:52.500 Hey, don't do this thing that's really silly and pointless. The reason behind not consulting

00:44:57.800 astrologers is because we don't want to compromise our free will. And that's exactly what's going on

00:45:03.880 here. It's not because it doesn't work. It's because it kind of works, or at least it works

00:45:08.380 on the individual person and warps our perception of ourselves and compromises our free will.

00:45:12.880 I will quote on this, not some modern egghead scientist guy. I will quote an older,

00:45:19.500 wiser person, Tatian the Syrian, who says, such are the demons. These are they who laid down the

00:45:26.460 doctrine of fate. Their fundamental principle was the placing of animals in the heavens as

00:45:31.480 constellations. These dignified with celestial honor in order that they might themselves be

00:45:39.680 thought to remain in heaven and by placing the constellations there might make to appear rational

00:45:44.800 the irrational course of life on earth. Thus the high spirited and he who is crushed with toil,

00:45:49.840 the temperate and the intemperate, the indigent and the wealthy are what they are simply from the

00:45:54.440 controllers of their nativity. It has nothing to do with their free will. It has nothing to do with

00:45:58.520 how they behave. It has nothing to do with moral responsibility. They don't have any of that. It's

00:46:01.520 just in the stars. He goes on for the delineation of the zodiacal cycle is the work of the gods,

00:46:07.480 but we are superior to fate. And instead of wandering demons, we have learned to know one Lord who

00:46:13.960 wanders not. This is in Tatian the Syrian's address to the Greeks. And it's really, really important

00:46:18.460 here. In our culture, when we buy into the new age astrology, and when we buy into the scientific

00:46:27.640 determinism, and when we buy into everything in between, we diminish human beings. We deny our reason.

00:46:37.400 We deny our ability to have any effect on our surroundings. We deny our moral responsibility.

00:46:42.700 We deny our difference and distinction from the lower beasts. We become no different from a dog

00:46:49.320 or a goat or a rock or a tree. We're just moving along, bobbing along on fate. Christians believe

00:46:58.840 something different. We believe that there is a providence, that God's all-ordaining providence

00:47:03.420 that controls the flow of history, and that we also have free will, and we can make moral choices

00:47:08.980 because we have a rational soul. We are made in the image and likeness of God. We have intellect,

00:47:13.640 and we have will. And we can use that for good and conform it to God's plan for history and for our

00:47:19.080 own lives. Or we can abuse it. But we have the ability to abuse it. We have the ability to turn

00:47:23.640 away from God's grace. We have the ability to do very evil things. And that is an awesome power.

00:47:29.640 And we can't just blame everything on the stars. And we can't just shirk moral responsibility.

00:47:36.080 We are human beings. That can be a very, very dignified thing, or that can be a very,

00:47:41.040 very degraded thing. And it depends on which way we individually and civilizationally look

00:47:47.660 where we are ordered toward. The rest of the show continues now. It's Music Monday.

00:47:53.700 Today, we have a song. I'm very excited because I just interviewed for King and Country. And now

00:47:59.900 we have a song from for King and Country. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss

00:48:03.660 it. Become a member. Use code NOLSKNWLS. Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

Ep. 1478 - Wars Rage, And One Dead Dog Dominates The News

Summary

Transcript