The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 157 - Nationalism： From D.C. To Jerusalem

00:00:00.000 As the mainstream media continue to provide cover and propaganda for Palestinian terrorists,

00:00:05.860 another nation, Guatemala, has followed American moral leadership and moved its embassy in Israel

00:00:11.320 to Jerusalem. We will analyze why President Trump's embassy move has so infuriated Democrats

00:00:17.920 and the mainstream media. This is about much, much more than just Israel. Spoiler alert.

00:00:22.960 Then we will speak to an actual Jerusalem resident, Yoram Hazani, Dr. Yoram Hazani,

00:00:28.820 about his forthcoming book, The Virtue of Nationalism, and why conservative and classical

00:00:34.320 liberal don't actually mean the same thing, even though everybody says they do.

00:00:37.940 Finally, on this day in history, amid Little Rocket Man's idle threats, we analyze how past

00:00:43.580 presidents have handled communist dictators and collapsing peace talks. I'm Michael Knowles,

00:00:48.340 and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:49.400 You can probably hear in my voice, I'm still sick and tired of winning. All of the winning of the

00:01:02.360 past two weeks has kept me literally sick and tired and probably given me a sinus infection,

00:01:07.120 but that's okay. Nevertheless, I persisted, so we're going to keep trucking on. This morning,

00:01:11.380 I had the great pleasure, by the way, of attending Miracosta High School to give a speech about gun

00:01:17.140 rights, why conservatives support the Second Amendment, what the Second Amendment means,

00:01:20.500 and why we need to protect it. I'm going to be streaming this from the Daily Wire. We're not

00:01:25.340 quite sure when it's going to go up, but we're going to try to stream it either later today or

00:01:27.980 tomorrow. Be sure to look out for this. I have got to tell you, these kids were so smart. First of all,

00:01:34.520 it was incredibly courageous of the faculty and the staff and the student groups there in the

00:01:38.520 administration to have a speaker come in and defend gun rights at a high school. This was brought

00:01:44.160 to us by the YAF organization at this high school. All of the students were incredibly smart,

00:01:50.180 incredibly sophisticated, both the Democrats and the Republicans. There was no crazy protest. There

00:01:54.940 was no shouting, just really thoughtful students on both sides. I go to these schools and they make me

00:02:00.880 worried about the future of America because of all these yelling protester types. Then I go to this

00:02:05.760 high school, Miracosta, and I think, oh man, the future is bright. This is pretty good. Really,

00:02:10.520 really sophisticated students. So we'll have that out for you. It was a really fun time. Good talk,

00:02:15.660 good questions. So look out for that. Before we get into nationalism, this is going to be a really

00:02:22.340 good topic today because the media, they're screaming, the Democrats, they're all arguing,

00:02:26.660 but they're not getting to the actual problem they have, which is nationalism. We're going to discuss

00:02:31.340 with an expert. Before we do that, we've got to thank Honey. We've got to thank Honey,

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00:03:51.700 slash covfefe, C-O-V-F-E-F-E. Very, very covfefe. I've been ODing on covfefe recently. That's

00:03:58.200 why you can hear it in my nose, but it's been too good not to. The mainstream media

00:04:03.220 are absolutely furious about President Trump's relocating the American embassy in Israel to the

00:04:09.800 capital of Israel. Here is just a quick rundown, a quick supercut of all of the reporting on that

00:04:15.040 embassy opening from CNN, Vox, Washington Post, the New York Times. Here it is.

00:04:18.800 Donald J. Trump is now President of the United States.

00:04:26.380 What a great honor to be able to introduce for the first time ever, anywhere, the 45th

00:04:34.560 President of the United States of America, Donald J.

00:04:39.380 There it is. That was Jim Acosta at the end, I think. That was really, basically sums up their

00:04:49.100 response. They're so upset. And it is really bizarre when you think about it, because the

00:04:55.360 mainstream media should not have been caught by surprise by this. Every president of the United

00:04:59.780 States, practically every presidential candidate over the last several decades, and certainly every

00:05:04.560 president has promised to do exactly this, to widespread applause in both parties. In case

00:05:10.480 anybody forgot, here's just a quick montage of every president promising to do this.

00:05:14.580 Jerusalem is still the capital of Israel and must remain an undivided city accessible to all.

00:05:20.620 As soon as I take office, I will begin the process of moving the United States ambassador to the

00:05:25.580 city of Israel as chosen as its capital. I continue to say that Jerusalem will be the capital of

00:05:32.520 Israel. And I have said that before, and I will say it again. And Jerusalem will remain the capital of 0.59

00:05:38.300 Israel, and it must remain undivided. We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the 0.99

00:05:46.860 Jewish people, Jerusalem.

00:05:48.440 Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of

00:06:05.460 Israel. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver.

00:06:14.520 Could you, could you spot the difference between, between all those guys? Clinton promises that

00:06:20.220 Bush promises, Obama promises, they all promise. Then Trump promises and actually does it. It's not

00:06:26.080 like the mainstream media haven't heard this before. They just didn't believe it because in the old

00:06:29.860 days, politicians would just say certain things and we knew they didn't really mean it. And they knew

00:06:34.060 that we knew that they didn't really mean it, but it's just kind of political talk. Then Trump says

00:06:37.640 he's going to do something and he does it and everybody loses their minds. So why are the

00:06:42.500 mainstream media so angry about this? Ben had an excellent piece on this up today. He's absolutely

00:06:47.760 right. It's because Jerusalem is a pillar of the West. What this says is that Jerusalem is a pillar 0.89

00:06:52.900 of the West. The West is made by Jerusalem and Athens, a revelation and Greek reason. And they come 0.99

00:06:59.580 together and they form the West. And what President Trump's moving the embassy there has said is the

00:07:04.520 capital of Israel is Jerusalem. This is a pillar of the West. It's going to remain that way. 0.97

00:07:08.680 It's not an Eastern city. It doesn't belong to various Arab groups that want to claim Jerusalem.

00:07:14.940 It belongs to Israel. It belongs to the West. They can't handle this. The mainstream media

00:07:20.100 despises Israel. They despise Israel because they despise the West and they despise the West

00:07:24.680 because they despise themselves. This is an essential aspect of the left. This self-hatred manifests as a

00:07:31.980 hatred of their own culture, of their own institutions, of their own religious longings,

00:07:37.620 and of their own God. It comes out in all of those ways. The second reason that the mainstream

00:07:42.240 media are so angry about this is because of nationalism, because this is a manifestation

00:07:47.720 of true nationalism. What Donald Trump is saying is that Jerusalem is part of Israel and therefore

00:07:53.620 it is not part of the country of Palestine. The country of Palestine, by the way, we've talked about

00:07:59.160 this on the conversation yesterday. The country of Palestine is to the West of Wakanda and to the East of

00:08:03.500 Narnia if you're trying to locate it on a map anywhere. But what they're saying is that Jerusalem,

00:08:08.860 this city, is in this country. It's not in another country. Deal with it. Countries have borders.

00:08:14.000 The Westphalian system of nation states still exists. It still defines the world order. And we're going

00:08:19.080 to keep it that way. This is a huge affront to the mainstream media's project of erasing national

00:08:24.560 boundaries, of blurring national distinctions, and having just, you know, peace and love and hippy

00:08:29.680 man. This is an affront to that because we're saying, no, the nation state still exists. It still

00:08:34.760 has capitals. There was a Washington Post op-ed about this by Kathleen Parker. This is how they,

00:08:40.680 Kathleen Parker reported this. Quote, Monday started the week with a jolt in Jerusalem where the United

00:08:47.020 States and Israel celebrated the U.S. embassy move from Tel Aviv. Television spectators around the world

00:08:52.300 watched as the two nations officials gathered inside a large white tent, a metaphorical bubble that seemed

00:08:58.380 to protect them from the tragedy unfolding 50 miles away in Gaza. There, Israeli soldiers opened fire

00:09:04.400 on Palestinian protesters. Those quotes are from me, not from her. Protesters killing at least five

00:09:10.780 dozen and wounding thousands more. Vox got even better with this. Vox said, Israelis are celebrating 1.00

00:09:16.800 the U.S. embassy move. Palestinians are dying. Vox went on, just 60 miles away in the starkest contrast

00:09:23.800 imaginable. Israeli soldiers were firing on Palestinian protesters at the Gaza border to

00:09:29.960 protest the embassy move. Demonstrations that were part of a protest wave. You notice how they keep

00:09:35.600 using that word? Protest wave ongoing since March. Most of the protesters were unarmed, though some

00:09:41.640 threw rocks at Molotov cocktails. But anyway, it's okay. We won't talk about that. The Israeli military 0.94

00:09:45.580 reported at least one attempt to detonate a bomb at the border during a demonstration. By the way,

00:09:51.680 this is what they keep using. They keep saying, the Israeli military reported. Granted, they reported

00:09:58.420 the truth. We know they reported the truth. But they say, okay, yeah, some of the protesters were

00:10:03.360 throwing rocks at Molotov cocktails, but the rest were really peaceful. But hold on, what about the

00:10:08.280 ones that were throwing bombs at Molotov cocktails? Surely that's not firing on peaceful protesters.

00:10:13.920 There were 40,000 Palestinian Arabs marching, throwing rocks at Molotov cocktails. Out of all of the 1.00

00:10:19.540 40,000 marching, 50 Arabs so far have been killed. We've seen huge videos of people throwing Molotov

00:10:26.000 cocktails, trying to detonate bombs, burning things to the ground. So not good. We don't want to see

00:10:30.660 bloodshed in that area, especially to protest something so reasonable as moving an embassy

00:10:36.120 to the capital of a country. But 50 out of 40,000 could have been a lot worse. Patrick Gailey from AFP News

00:10:43.640 posted this tweet. It was two pictures. It said, left Jerusalem, right Gaza. You know, and they were

00:10:50.500 all smiling in Jerusalem, and then there was all this bloodshed in Gaza. Pictures taken at the same

00:10:55.260 time this afternoon. Vox went on and said, the contrast between the events is jarring. And it is

00:11:01.080 jarring. It is jarring. But maybe not for the reason that Vox thinks. It's jarring because you're seeing two

00:11:06.900 cultures, two different cultures. Mitt Romney talked about this in 2012, the difference between the

00:11:12.200 Palestinian Arab culture and the Israeli Jewish culture. And he got pilloried for this because

00:11:16.620 they said it was Islamophobic or whatever made up word they decided to use against Mitt Romney.

00:11:22.120 These are jarring pictures because they're different cultures. And you see what sort of societies these 1.00

00:11:27.900 two different cultures produce. A peaceful United States ally, working democracy in Israel, and people

00:11:35.920 throwing Molotov cocktails and trying to detonate bombs and burning tires in the Arab territories,

00:11:41.480 in the Gaza Strip. Listen to how CNN reports this. This is the headline. Quote,

00:11:47.040 Dozens of Palestinians killed in Gaza clashes as U.S. Embassy opens. Now, okay, dozens of Palestinians 1.00

00:11:55.280 killed. That's not good. But it doesn't say how that were they killed just randomly. Some Israelis 0.96

00:12:00.500 were walking down the street and said, we want to kill some Palestinian Arabs today. No, they were 1.00

00:12:05.180 killed, but they were killed because the Israelis were acting in self-defense. Watch how the media

00:12:10.200 twists this in an absurdly Orwellian way. The article opens up. It says, quote,

00:12:15.380 Palestinian officials accused Israel of committing a horrific massacre and called on the international

00:12:21.400 community to immediately intervene. So that's how it opens. The first part is, Palestinians say it's a 0.99

00:12:25.920 horrific massacre. Look how awful this is, right? Only later in the article does it say,

00:12:29.460 the military said the protesters threw Molotov cocktails, burned tires and stones at Israeli

00:12:35.520 soldiers positioned along the fence. Now, okay, it says the military said this. We know that the

00:12:41.560 protesters threw the Molotov cocktails and burned tires. How do we know? CNN has video of it on the

00:12:47.160 same page as this article is written. Here's the clip.

00:12:58.620 We see it very clearly. We see all the tires burning, people hurling these things over.

00:13:11.480 But CNN can't admit the reality. So CNN, even though it's right there and say, don't believe

00:13:17.120 your lying eyes. That's just the military said. No, you said, well, you didn't say you just showed

00:13:21.240 it with the video. By the way, none of this coverage is helping Palestinian Arabs. None of

00:13:26.000 this fanning the flames. These violent protests, they've been going on for two months now. And the

00:13:30.820 mainstream media, they're fanning the flames. They say, you deserve a country. You should have,

00:13:34.300 granted, these are people who are not living in a legitimate nation state, people who in their own

00:13:39.580 elections, their last election, elected Hamas, a terrorist organization, to govern them. They're 0.64

00:13:45.160 fanning the flames and saying, Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel. We know that Jerusalem was the 1.00

00:13:49.600 capital of Israel. Now, contrasting this, also in Jerusalem, today marks the opening of the

00:13:55.420 Guatemalan embassy there. They too, Guatemala has moved the embassy two days after the United States.

00:14:00.620 Pretty interesting because Guatemala is also the second country to recognize Israel in 1948. And the

00:14:07.180 lesson we can take here is that other countries are following American moral leadership. There were

00:14:13.240 a lot of embassies in Jerusalem before 1980. In 1980, the UN Security Council denounced Israel and they

00:14:19.620 called on countries to move their embassies to Tel Aviv. But the US today still possesses moral

00:14:25.320 leadership. We don't need to tiptoe around terrorists. People will follow us if we lead. In 2006,

00:14:31.100 the Palestinian people, that imaginary country, elected Hamas. We do not need to pretend that there is 0.99

00:14:36.700 equal moral footing here. We don't need to pretend that there is equal moral footing between the

00:14:40.520 leaders of Hamas and between the duly elected prime minister of a country, a successful functioning

00:14:48.140 democracy in the Middle East. The leaders of Hamas and Bibi Netanyahu. Not true. The United States can

00:14:53.000 lead. People can follow or they can fall in line. We don't need multinational, open borders, world

00:15:00.520 federations to accomplish these things. In fact, very often those institutions hamper

00:15:05.840 progress and hamper security. It is amazing even today where nationalism is a bad word. It's amazing

00:15:12.080 how well the nation state still works. That product of the Westphalian system of the world order. It

00:15:18.000 still works very, very well. On that point, let's bring on our guest, Dr. Yoram Hazani is an Israeli

00:15:24.160 philosopher, Bible scholar, and political theorist, president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem,

00:15:29.160 and the author of the forthcoming book, The Virtue of Nationalism. Dr. Hazani, thank you so much for

00:15:35.220 being here. Great to have you. So, Dr. Hazani, you're a bona fide Jerusalem resident. What is

00:15:43.600 the significance, just from your own perspective, for Israeli citizens of having the United States

00:15:48.780 recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? It's huge. It's historical. It's a massive thing.

00:15:58.080 I mean, the United States, as you were saying, the United States still possesses immense moral

00:16:05.020 leadership. But more important than that maybe even is it possesses immense power. And Israel is still a

00:16:12.820 small country. Thank God it's growing. It's probably in a better position now than it's been at any point

00:16:18.480 since its founding. But when the entire world, when all of Europe and all of Asia and America is beating on you and 0.80

00:16:29.160 saying, you're an occupier in your own capital. Look, that's an extremely difficult, extremely difficult. People in

00:16:37.100 Israel are grateful. My wife and I were at the reception for the moving of the embassy on Monday

00:16:44.360 night. And I can't tell you, people were crying. It was unbelievably moving to have this vote of

00:16:52.300 confidence and of faith from the greatest power on earth. It's incredibly important to us.

00:16:59.280 And it's amazing how long it took. It's amazing how murky politicians have been able to make this

00:17:05.820 clear moral issue. There's a reason that all of these presidential candidates over time have promised

00:17:10.800 we're going to move the embassy to Jerusalem. Jerusalem's the capital of Israel. And then they

00:17:14.660 don't do it. They say, oh, well, you know, it's complicated. I don't know. And this guy comes in and

00:17:20.000 he says, no, this is the capital. The nation state is a legitimate construct. And this brings us to a

00:17:26.600 second point. You've written extensively recently in excellent articles. I'm a huge fan of your

00:17:31.840 writing, criticizing what we could call the new world order, the open borders, the European Union,

00:17:38.380 the world federation type liberalism. And you've been defending what I'll call the old new world order,

00:17:45.260 which is to say nationalism, the Westphalian system. In a word, in a phrase, what is so great

00:17:51.740 about nationalism? Nationalism is, as you know, a biblical vision, the idea that people should be

00:18:00.160 free. What does it mean for a people to be free? It means today we use words like sovereignty. We've

00:18:06.920 got all these technical terms. But in Hebrew scripture, the vision of the prophets is that

00:18:13.000 Israel and other nations will have borders. They'll govern themselves. And they'll be independent of 0.89

00:18:19.420 of the Egyptian empire, the Babylonian empire, the Assyrian empire. All these empires had

00:18:24.100 had a clear vision for how to bring peace to the world by conquering it. And scripture,

00:18:31.820 the philosophy of the Hebrew Bible is in fact, this idea that justice depends on people's being able to

00:18:38.540 be free. That's such an important point because we hear now, we think of the nation state as this

00:18:43.920 modern construct because the world order is being totally divided into apparent nation states. That

00:18:50.700 comes relatively in the modern era. But the idea of the nation is certainly not a modern concept.

00:18:55.800 You're right. It comes relatively in the modern. I mean, there are harbingers in medieval Catholicism,

00:19:04.640 but the big push is definitely with Protestantism. Protestantism reads Hebrew scripture in some respects

00:19:12.600 with new eyes and says, this is a roadmap to how to bring justice to our world.

00:19:18.440 Right. That's exactly right. And that point is frequently lost. Another point that is frequently

00:19:22.580 lost, and it's why I really like your writing. I've recently been buffing up again on my Edmund Burke

00:19:28.260 and Michael Oakeshott and some of those conservative writers.

00:19:31.700 I saw that you tweeted out Michael Oakeshott.

00:19:34.580 I did. I did. I think you're the only person probably who appreciated that.

00:19:38.780 You know, there just aren't that many of us.

00:19:41.820 But this is a real problem because we frequently hear, you know, even on the right,

00:19:47.320 that conservatives, they're actually classical liberals. Those are the same thing. Bill Kristol

00:19:52.940 said this recently, as I think you noted. He said conservatives should rebrand as liberals.

00:19:58.340 We're the real liberals. But you point out that there is a difference. What is the difference

00:20:02.700 between conservative thought and classical liberalism?

00:20:06.380 I just want to add on the point you're making. At some point in the last generation,

00:20:12.940 you start to, we've reached this point where you talk to somebody who's a conservative

00:20:16.660 and you say, well, can you tell me what you stand for? And it takes them about seven seconds

00:20:22.020 before they start telling you how liberal they are. And no, seriously. So I believe in freedom.

00:20:28.400 I believe in freedom of speech. I believe in limited government. And I believe in free markets

00:20:33.760 and then maybe, maybe freedom of immigration. And I'm like, okay, well, I believe in those things.

00:20:38.840 Those are good things. But what makes you conservative? It's like, oh, no, no, no. Conservatism

00:20:42.960 is, is liberalism. This is, this is like, no, this is, this is like a monstrous confusion. I,

00:20:49.100 I don't want to just play semantical games because, you know, playing words with, with labels,

00:20:53.260 but, but there really are two extremely different historical, um, uh, worldviews that, that clashed

00:21:01.440 over many, many centuries. And, and what's happened is that in, in, in the conservative

00:21:06.400 movement, movement today, there's, there's kind of like this, you know, you, you, you're just not

00:21:11.420 supposed to talk about, you know, I don't know if they're talking about paleo or this or that,

00:21:15.860 or Russell Kirk. It's, it's just, look, it's just not that long ago. Uh, we're talking about,

00:21:19.880 uh, I was in college in the 1980s. Ronald Reagan was president and Margaret Thatcher was prime

00:21:25.120 minister in, in, in, in the UK. And we, we had, you know, like a conservative movement.

00:21:29.300 We founded a conservative magazine. Uh, Irving Kristol had this organization that inducted

00:21:34.800 us into the conservative movement. And we knew what we, we, we stood for. Of course we were for

00:21:39.500 free markets, but, but Kristol, Kristol taught us, Irving Kristol, that conservatism was built on

00:21:45.620 three things, right? And I'm, I'm, I'm quoting on religion, on nationalism and on economic growth.

00:21:51.300 Right. And he emphasized repeatedly, not just him, this, everybody understood this, that,

00:21:55.940 that freedom is, is, is a, is a wonderful thing, but it's also, it's also corrosive. It may,

00:22:01.900 right. It's, it's, it opens up a space, but it's also corrosive. Anybody who raises children knows

00:22:07.220 you can't just give them endless freedom. You can't, there have to be boundaries. And those boundaries

00:22:12.040 are drawn by religious tradition, national tradition to be a conservative has always been

00:22:17.700 to balance those things. And the Anglo American conservative tradition is a, uh, is a, is a

00:22:25.300 balancing, a common sense balancing, uh, among nationalism and religion and all of these crucial

00:22:32.100 freedoms that this, this tradition is, has developed. So they're liberals today. Fine. You want to be a

00:22:37.440 liberal. Go ahead. I, I respect that. I know lots of really bright people are liberal.

00:22:42.640 But do we have a right to be a conservative too? I really think that's a question today.

00:22:47.060 That, that is such a good point because you see these writers, even relatively recent writers like

00:22:51.960 Russell Kirk, for instance, and they, they, they, they're sort of pushed to the side. So now it's

00:22:56.120 very cool to be on the left. And it's even sort of cool to say, I'm no longer on the left,

00:23:01.060 but I'm a classical liberal. I def, okay, that's okay. But the minute you bring up Edmund Burke or

00:23:06.140 Russell Kirk or, uh, Oakshot or those guys, they say, oh no, they've been written out. That's no,

00:23:11.460 no, no, no. We're all, I have, yeah, they've been written out or, or I have, I have an alternative

00:23:16.780 for you. A lot of people saying these days, no, you'll, you'll hear it in the movement. You'll

00:23:20.480 hear this. Oh, Burke, Burke grew out of John Locke. Burke grew out of liberalism. Burke, Burke

00:23:27.240 believed in freedom and freedom is liberalism. So, so Burke is really just a liberal. I can't tell

00:23:31.800 you how many times I've heard this. I don't know. It's like invasion of the body snatchers. What are you,

00:23:36.820 what are you talking about? I wonder, I wonder if it comes because, you know, conservatives,

00:23:42.140 we tend to be this very sort of timid in modern political conservatism, self-flagellating. You

00:23:48.760 say, no, I'm really a liberal. No, all of my forebears are really liberals. And this gets to

00:23:53.940 another historical misconception, which you've written about very well. Everyone today, all you

00:23:58.500 see everywhere is just how great the enlightenment was. There's that Steven Pinker book about how great

00:24:03.200 the enlightenment was. Every, every good thing in history had to come from the enlightenment and

00:24:08.100 everything before that were in the big, bad old times. And you write and say that the enlightenment

00:24:13.100 wasn't really all that great. Uh, but didn't, you know, these people who, uh, who extol the virtues

00:24:19.580 of the enlightenment, they say it gave us modern science, modern medicine, technology, modern philosophy,

00:24:24.780 liberty, political order. What do you say? I say, well, look, these are sincere people. I don't,

00:24:30.120 I don't mean to challenge. No, I, I, I really like and respect Steve Pinker as a scientist and,

00:24:35.240 uh, as a person and, and Jonah Goldberg, and there's all sorts of people pushing this enlightenment

00:24:40.180 line now. And I, I really just unfortunately think that, that, that what it's kind of a historical

00:24:48.360 sleight of hand. What they do is, is, uh, they, they take all of these, these, um, uh, great scientific

00:24:54.600 figures like, uh, like Newton or Boyle or Harvey, you know, they say, Oh, look, they were free thinkers.

00:25:00.200 Therefore they were liberals. And there isn't, I mean, there isn't even like a shred of truth to

00:25:05.380 this. Uh, it's just, it's just false that there were no, uh, open-minded creative people, uh, all

00:25:12.620 through history and a modern science and medicine was, was created by those people, but it doesn't mean

00:25:17.880 that they were liberals. They had, they had plenty of opportunity to adopt fundamental enlightenment

00:25:23.820 principles and to declare them. And they, they didn't because they were one kind or another of

00:25:29.840 conservative, right? So what, what, what are enlightenment principles? Let me quick, quickly

00:25:33.740 name, name, name them. I think everybody knows them, but it's worth naming them. Enlightenment means,

00:25:37.940 uh, uh, number one, um, all human beings are born free, born perfectly free, Locke says,

00:25:45.260 and perfectly equal, whatever exactly that means. They're perfectly free and perfectly equal from

00:25:50.520 birth. Number two, number two, you, you don't receive, you don't take on, uh, any moral obligation

00:25:58.860 unless you've freely chosen it, unless you've consented to it. Okay. And number three, every human

00:26:05.420 being all through history has had the power of reason that if they only exercised it, Locke says,

00:26:10.540 if they only exercised it, they would all come to the same answer about what the, what the

00:26:15.040 exactly right constitution is. So it's actually this, this extremely rigid set of, uh, of, of

00:26:21.980 axioms. And that's not the same thing as science. That's not the same thing as modern medicine. It's

00:26:27.980 not even the same thing as the American constitution, but what it is, is the foundation for dogmatic

00:26:35.200 doctrinaire liberalism of the kind that brings people to say, well, really we don't need any of

00:26:43.240 the traditions that were handed down by our, by our forefathers. We don't need biblical tradition.

00:26:47.020 We don't need the national state. We don't need religion. We don't need God. We don't even need

00:26:50.660 the traditional family because I've got reason and I can take on moral obligation according to my

00:26:57.220 consent. And John Locke told me, so I don't need anybody else. That's a different. Yeah.

00:27:02.800 That's absolutely right. You can look at all of those premises and say, no, I don't remember being

00:27:07.900 born perfectly free without any obligations to family or culture or institutions. And now there

00:27:14.660 seems to be this big battle waging. There was this big burst of nationalism, the Brexit, the election

00:27:20.640 of Donald Trump in many ways. And it's so funny to read, as you said earlier, Irving Kristol's words

00:27:26.360 that the three pillars of modern conservatism or religion, nationalism, and economic growth. Do you

00:27:31.900 think that, do you, not to ask you to make predictions, you're not Nostradamus exactly,

00:27:38.080 but as you look around the political scene, are we moving in the right direction or is this just a

00:27:43.620 random blip, a random little resurgence of religion and nationalism and good economic growth for the

00:27:49.500 last year? And, or are we inevitably going to fall back into liberal malaise?

00:27:55.060 Look, all the forces, all the forces of, as you know, the, the, the, the, the forces are not in

00:28:07.720 the good direction, right? Liberalism as distinct from the old conservative American or British

00:28:17.320 religious nationalist tradition of freedom. Let's just arbitrarily say that since,

00:28:24.360 since World War II, um, what, what, what we're calling liberalism has kind of pushed, um, the,

00:28:33.000 uh, pushed the old conservative tradition, they used to call it Republican in America,

00:28:38.320 the old Republican tradition has pushed it aside. And we've had pretty, pretty much 70 years,

00:28:44.380 I think you could say, of dismantling, um, any kind of public commitment, one, one piece after

00:28:54.020 another to religious tradition, first to the family, then to the national state. And, um,

00:29:01.100 we're at this point, we've reached a point where, um, if, if you go to an excellent university,

00:29:07.800 um, and you want to study conservative thought, you basically can't find somebody to teach it to you.

00:29:14.000 And I'm including, and I'm including the token Republicans that some college campuses have,

00:29:18.680 because they'll tell you, well, uh, here, I'm going to teach you conservatism here. Let's,

00:29:22.040 let's study liberalism. So we're, no, seriously, we're at the, at the point where people don't

00:29:26.820 even know, they don't even know that they don't know what the old conservative tradition was.

00:29:31.340 So if you add that to, you know, the overwhelming, uh, liberalism, uh, or further left in, uh, in,

00:29:39.580 in the media and Hollywood, I mean, the entire public sphere is, is flooded with anything but

00:29:45.140 conservatism. So, um, uh, people who complain, you know, uh, Brexit, Brexit isn't pretty. It's not

00:29:55.060 led by the right people. You know, the Trump movement, it's not pretty. It's not led by the

00:29:59.160 right people. Maybe they have, you know, maybe, maybe they have a point. Maybe, maybe, maybe if

00:30:04.780 you let it, it would look a little bit more, but, but, but guess what? You didn't lead it. I didn't

00:30:11.420 lead it. Right. So it was, it was left to people who are, that they're not the educated, you know,

00:30:17.940 the most educated, they're not the most polished. They're not, they're not the people who, you know,

00:30:22.340 uh, went, went to Ivy league schools like some of us did and, you know, studied, uh, you know,

00:30:26.740 exactly how you're supposed to speak and exactly what you're supposed to say. And not only that,

00:30:29.740 but they kind of, uh, they're kind of sick and tired of all of that. Right. And, and I understand

00:30:35.420 that. I really do. I love that point that I love that point that, you know, they say, Oh,

00:30:41.980 it shouldn't be that guy. Oh, it should, it'd be better if it were this guy leading. Oh,

00:30:44.940 blah, blah, blah. But they aren't, we have what we have. The Brexit was led by the people it was led by

00:30:49.640 Trump. The Trump movement is led by Donald Trump and he doesn't hold his Chardonnay glass in the

00:30:55.020 correct way, but he seems to be doing something that is distinct and different and hopeful from

00:31:01.060 what we've seen recently. I, I, I agree with that. But, and, and, and I'd add, um, he's he and the

00:31:08.480 Brexiteers, they, they've opened up a space for other people are, I mean, if, if you want to step

00:31:15.320 forward and, uh, now and, and, uh, describe an intellectually articulated, uh, conservatism, uh,

00:31:22.660 that harkens back to the, you know, to the, to the great Anglo American tradition, um, you, you're

00:31:27.620 free to do that. Uh, the, the space is open wide to do that, except for the fact, I mean, we'll, we'll

00:31:35.140 see when this book on nationalism appears, whether people are going to be willing to talk about it

00:31:39.260 because, you know, I do here, I'm bringing you all the footnotes. I'm, I'm following all the

00:31:43.600 conventions. I'm, I'm not going to say anything that's, that's the wrong thing to say. Let's see if

00:31:48.360 people can actually put up with it. I, right. I don't know if they can. I, I really, I really

00:31:52.600 don't know. We might be, you, you asked what's gonna, what's gonna happen. Well, I, I definitely

00:31:57.440 don't know. But when I, when I, when I look at the field, I just think people are, are, are so

00:32:03.240 people, um, who are my, uh, historic friends, even in the conservative movement, not just, not,

00:32:10.680 not just, uh, Democrats, Republicans. And in Britain, it's the same thing. People are so afraid and

00:32:17.920 they're so angry and they're so upset that, I mean, you can barely talk to them about anything.

00:32:23.620 So I, you, you guys stay, you stand for reason. So I want to reason. And they're like, shut up.

00:32:28.800 You know, you, you, you, you're, you, you're trying to reason, but not about that. Cause it's 0.95

00:32:32.920 not liberalism. And I, I'm like, I, I never said I was a liberal. I never did. Never, never.

00:32:39.380 You made me say, yeah, you want me to say that you want me to say I'm a liberal so I can be part

00:32:43.980 of your show, but, but I was never a liberal, right? And I'm not, I was never a fascist either.

00:32:49.520 I'm a conservative. Now, can you deal with that? I love that. There is such a thing.

00:32:54.140 I love that point. It just an open conservative, articulating conservative thought and saying,

00:33:00.180 I'm not part, you can't put me into this box. There is a tradition. It's a tradition that isn't

00:33:04.460 taught and there might be a glimmer of hope. You know, there, there, obviously it might be part of

00:33:09.040 the conservative disposition to, uh, say things aren't looking great. You know, best days are

00:33:14.820 behind us, but maybe there's a glimmer of hope and worst case than the conservative point of view

00:33:19.460 is right. Um, Dr. Hazani, thank you so much. This is such a good, such a good talk. So good to talk

00:33:25.540 to you. Uh, I've taken up way too much of your time and we'll have to have you back when the book comes

00:33:29.740 out. I, I, I love that. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Yoram Hazani. How smart is that

00:33:36.040 guy? I love nobody is saying what he is saying and it's so important to conservatives. Okay.

00:33:41.340 I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. We're running late as it is. Uh, but be sure to

00:33:45.720 tune in to that Mira Costa high school speech. We're going to get that up tomorrow and you'll

00:33:51.140 be really impressed with these kids. Maybe if Dr. Hazani sees it, he'll have some more hope for the

00:33:55.120 future. Uh, right now, go to dailywire.com. Do it, do it, walk, run, don't walk. Uh, we thank you

00:34:02.580 for everybody who's already there. You help keep the lights on. Really appreciate that.

00:34:05.600 Keep covfefe in my cup. I've obviously overdone it a little on the covfefe in the last few days.

00:34:10.620 If you're on Facebook or YouTube, you got to go over there right now. Why? What do you get? You

00:34:13.940 get me at the Andrew Klavan show. You get the Ben Shapiro show. You have to ask questions in the

00:34:16.960 conversation. Next up is the big boss himself, Ben Shapiro. None of that matters.

00:34:23.440 This is the really special, this is a religious vintage. This could be used as the wine of a ritual,

00:34:30.020 the wine of religious observance, because this is the special embassy in Jerusalem

00:34:34.820 vintage of leftist tears. And it's really, it's salty. They're always salty, but these are sweet.

00:34:40.140 These are sweet as well. They're so good. Go over to dailywire.com, get your leftist tears

00:34:44.800 Tumblr. We'll be right back.

00:34:45.760 I could talk to Dr. Hazani all day. I could go on with that guy for three hours. His perspective is

00:35:02.920 so important for conservatives. It's totally overlooked these days on both the left and the

00:35:07.940 right. I really urge everybody to go out and read his articles, his op-eds and his books.

00:35:12.820 Before we get to this day in history, we'll just mention this day in history a little bit. I have

00:35:16.800 to say, I gave this talk at the high school today on the virtues of gun ownership. And it was really

00:35:21.340 brave of the school to invite me because now the whole thing at high schools is if you support the 0.98

00:35:27.020 second amendment, you want to kill kids. That's the narrative by the mainstream media. As I was speaking 0.53

00:35:32.360 at this high school, a news report broke. Unfortunately, I didn't get it on my phone that a police

00:35:37.660 officer at Dixon high school was able to shoot and wound a student who started to open fire

00:35:43.740 today. So an old student shows up, a graduated student shows up to graduation practice, 19 year

00:35:49.740 old former student, and just starts firing several shots outside the gym. Fortunately, they had an armed

00:35:54.620 police officer there and that cop took him out. And it gets even better because he didn't even kill

00:36:00.000 the kid. He shot the student. The student was then taken to the hospital with non-life threatening

00:36:05.320 injuries and he will hopefully face trial and have to pay for what he did. This could have been a

00:36:10.380 massacre. This could have been an absolute disaster if that school were a gun-free zone. But that school

00:36:14.680 isn't a gun-free zone because a cop had a gun there and the cop wasn't a coward like the Broward

00:36:19.000 County Sheriff's Office. That cop went out there and he started shooting and he saved a lot of lives.

00:36:23.600 This is tremendous stuff and it's a perfect articulation of one of the great reasons to have

00:36:30.140 our second amendment and to preserve our right to keep and bear arms. Because ultimately it's about

00:36:34.940 preserving liberty from tyranny. But it's also about preserving our life and liberty in very

00:36:38.960 particular circumstances. At a high school, at what could have been a gun-free zone. Get out there,

00:36:43.480 save a lot of lives. Really, really good stuff. And it really underscores why we need to keep our

00:36:48.680 guns. You can see the rest of the speech tomorrow on this day in history. I want to get to this day in

00:36:54.760 history because it's deja vu all over again. Those people who don't learn from the past, they're bound to

00:37:00.820 repeat it. It seems like, what is the other quote? History repeats itself. First is tragedy, second is

00:37:07.060 farce. Well, we're seeing the farce with Little Rocket Man right now because on this day in history,

00:37:11.020 1960, American negotiations with a crazed communist dictator broke down after an American military

00:37:17.460 exercise ticked off the Red Menace. This is exactly what is happening today. Deja vu all over again.

00:37:23.840 On May 1st, 1960, Soviets took down a U-2 U.S. spy plane. So Khrushchev, the head of the Soviet Union,

00:37:31.600 tore into Eisenhower. They were at a summit meeting in Paris and he tears into him. And let me tell you

00:37:37.360 something, nobody talks to Ike Eisenhower that way. No way. It totally doomed the summit because they

00:37:42.600 were able to shoot down the spy plane. At first, Eisenhower denied that the U-2 plane was being used

00:37:47.980 to spy. He said, oh, that old thing? No, that obvious spy plane? No, that's a weather plane. We just

00:37:53.460 wanted to figure out the weather in Moscow. We were really nervous. We hope you guys didn't get too

00:37:58.300 much rain. But what he didn't realize is the Soviets had captured the plane and the pilot,

00:38:03.300 Gary Francis Powers, who admitted what was going on. Ultimately, President Eisenhower had to admit it.

00:38:09.920 This was followed then by another public dressing down by Khrushchev and the negotiations were off the

00:38:16.180 table for a while. We're seeing hints of this right now, but we're seeing it as farce. We're not

00:38:21.580 seeing it as tragedy. We're seeing it as farce. Anything involving Little Rocket Man is usually a

00:38:25.540 farce. Little Rocket Man over in Korea is threatening to cancel the long-promised peace 0.68

00:38:30.480 talks that are supposed to take place June 15th, I believe, in Singapore. He says the U.S. and South

00:38:37.640 Korea, they're conducting regular military exercises and I don't like it. They have to call it off or we're

00:38:41.660 going to cancel the summit. This is the big wrench in the peace talks. Sarah Sanders, the greatest press

00:38:48.500 secretary ever. She's so good. She handled this perfectly. She said, quote, if they want to meet,

00:38:54.580 we'll be ready. If they don't, that's okay too. This is something that we fully expected. And of

00:39:00.080 course they expected it. Of course we knew that this crazed little dictator was going to try to 0.99

00:39:05.420 throw a wrench in things at the end and try to trick us and get a leg up on the United States. 0.87

00:39:09.700 That's fine. They can do it. We don't need this. We don't actually need these peace talks.

00:39:14.700 Donald Trump doesn't need these peace talks. He doesn't, you know, Barack Obama had absolutely

00:39:19.240 no legacy. He knew that his legacy was going to be erased by the end of his presidency. So he pushed

00:39:24.340 for that Iran deal so hard because he needed something. He needed that legacy. He was dead.

00:39:28.600 Even if it means we fly airplanes full of cash and free up sanctions and give them a path to a

00:39:33.500 nuclear weapon. Even if it means all that, just give me a legacy, give me a deal. Trump doesn't need

00:39:37.300 that. He's already got a lot of accomplishments and we're not going to make a bad deal. We're not going to

00:39:41.100 say, okay, we're not going to make Iran deal part two. No way. Uh, absolutely not. Because by the

00:39:46.560 way, the Barack Obama doesn't have the Iran deal now anyway, he just has zero legacy. He's just like

00:39:51.540 a gaping hole in presidential history. Just a vacuum of light just, you know, goes in. It goes

00:39:57.380 from Clinton to Bush to something that used to be here and then to Trump. So Donald Trump doesn't

00:40:03.900 need it. If Kim Jong Un is serious about canceling the talks, that's fine. We're no worse off than we

00:40:10.140 were before. We have a few options. We can either continue to use strategic patience or we can go

00:40:16.540 in and take him out, take care of him. And that will assess various risks to Seoul. That will assess

00:40:22.960 various military risks. That's exactly where we were before these peace talks. Or Kim Jong Un could

00:40:27.320 take the only step that's in front of him, which is to try to engage the United States. But he's not

00:40:31.800 going to get one over on the, on the American, uh, the administration that's currently in charge.

00:40:37.360 He might've gotten one over on the Obama administration. He isn't going to get one

00:40:40.680 over on John Bolton and Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump. It just isn't going to happen. So we'll,

00:40:45.380 we'll see what happens here. Uh, we won the cold war. The peace talks broke down in 1960. We won the

00:40:50.500 cold war. It's a, it's okay. It might take a little longer, but American resolve will not, uh, should,

00:40:55.720 certainly should not crack here. And I think it will not crack because we've, we've seen this coming

00:41:01.000 out of the white house. We've seen wonderful strength from Sarah Sanders, Pompeo, Bolton, and Trump. I hope

00:41:05.860 we continue to see that. And I think we will. This is very good news. That glimmer of hope that the

00:41:10.640 generally sort of dour conservative disposition is looking at good things all around. Okay.

00:41:17.300 This is our show. That's our whole show on, on nationalism, on the nation state. Maybe we'll

00:41:21.280 end up taking a nation state away from North Korea. We'll see. Uh, in the meantime, I'm Michael

00:41:25.340 Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show. Check out that speech that's coming up tomorrow. I will see you

00:41:29.220 them. The Michael Knowles show is produced by Senia Villareal. Executive producer, Jeremy Borey.

00:41:40.780 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover. And our technical

00:41:45.800 producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Jim Nickel. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is

00:41:52.600 by Jesua Olvera. The Michael Knowles show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production.

00:41:57.040 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Michael Knowles Show - May 16, 2018

Ep. 157 - Nationalism： From D.C. To Jerusalem

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