Ep. 1650 - Mel Gibson Preaches To Joe Rogan
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Summary
As the fires continue to destroy the city, the California Governor and former future Democratic presidential nominee Gavin Newsom is asking the White House for help. I ask you, we ve got to deal with this misinformation. There are hurricane force winds of mis- and disinformation. People want to divide this country. And we're going to have to address that as well.
Transcript
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Get ready. In exactly one week, we will be live on the ground in Washington, D.C. for Donald
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Trump's inauguration. Watch live. Join the fight at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
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As the Los Angeles fires continue to destroy the city,
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the California governor and former future Democrat presidential nominee Gavin Newsom
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is asking the White House for help. I ask you, we've got to deal with this misinformation.
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There are hurricane force winds of mis- and disinformation lies. People want to divide.
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This country. And we're going to have to address that as well. And it breaks my heart
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as people are suffering and struggling that we're up against those hurricane force forces as well.
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And and that's just a point of personal privilege that I share that with you because it infects real
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people that are out there. People I meet every single day, people the mayor has been meeting with
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and they're having conversations that are not the typical conversations you'd have at this time.
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And you wonder where this stuff comes from. And it's very damaging as well. But but we're here
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to get the job done. Did you catch that? The governor of California is not asking the White House to help
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protect his constituents from the historic fire that's still raging. He is asking the White House
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to protect him from his constituents criticism. A desperate and disgusting plea from a politician
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whose presidential ambitions have just gone up in smoke. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. Mel Gibson was just preaching the gospel to and on
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the Joe Rogan Show. It was really beautiful. There's so much more to say. First, though,
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That is T-R-Y-A-R-M-R-A.com slash K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Go there, write N-O-W. Collapse happens gradually,
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then suddenly. I'm not the first person to observe it. An LA fire lady has gone viral over
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the past few days before mocking the idea that a woman, a woman firefighter, a concept basically
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unheard of until about 50 years ago, that a woman firefighter would struggle to carry a big burly
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man out of a burning building. You want to see somebody that responds to your house, your emergency,
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whether it's a medical call or a fire call, that looks like you. It gives that person a little bit
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more ease, knowing that somebody might understand their situation better. Is she strong enough to
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do this? Or you couldn't carry my husband out of a fire, which my response is, he got himself in
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the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire. You know, if I have to carry your husband
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out of a fire, out of a burning building, he's in the wrong place. Yeah. Usually people in burning
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buildings would describe their position as the wrong place. It's not the right place. It's not
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the place they want to be. That's why we have firemen. And nobody wants that lady responding
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to their burning building. She says, well, you know, when your house is on fire, you want to make sure
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that the fireman who shows up looks like you. I'm sorry, the fire men or fire lady who shows up
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looks like you. That is not true. I am a perfectly average-sized, not particularly athletic,
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swarthy fella. I don't exactly care about the race of the man who shows up, but I definitely want it to
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be a guy. I want the guy to be huge. I want him not only to be above average in size, I want him to
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be very much above average in size. I want him to be very athletic so that he can carry me down
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flights of stairs. I want him to be a big, brawny dude. I don't care if he's a white guy. I don't
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care if he's Hispanic. I don't care if he's a black guy. In fact, black guys are pretty strong.
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They're pretty athletic. Maybe I would even sort of prefer him to be a big, giant black guy,
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which is not me. He wouldn't resemble me, but I would feel a lot better if that were the case,
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because I would believe that he is likely to save me from the burning building.
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But if a lady of any sort, straight, lesbian, white, black, if a lady shows up,
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I'm going to start sweating even more than I already was with the building on fire.
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It should go without saying, but I think it actually has to be said now.
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Women should not be firefighters for a whole host of reasons. One, because they're physically
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weaker than men. Just a fact. Two, because it is a disordered society that sends women
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into burning buildings to save men. That's just wrong. It's the same kind of society that sends
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women to the front lines of combat to catch bullets from jihadis. It's a bad idea because women are
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physically weaker than men, but it's also just disordered. What kind of a sick society,
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what kind of a perverted society sends women to go catch bullets to protect men? That's just wrong.
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That's a society that doesn't know the difference between men and women.
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And I'm not just talking about the people who fall in prey to the transgender ideology. I'm
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talking about many people who would even call themselves conservatives, because I know what the
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answer is going to be. There are going to be people who think that they are conservative,
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who think that they are on the right wing, and they're going to say, well, look, sure, Michael,
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well, usually women should not be firefighters. Usually women should not fight in combat in the
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military. But some women can do it. Really, it should just be about whoever can pass the physical
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fitness test. And if you can pass the test, then be my guest. First of all, what happens when you
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subject everyone, regardless of sex, to that kind of standard is the standards just get lowered.
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That's what happens in police departments. That's what happens in the fire department. That's what
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happens in the military. But even beyond that, do you see the logical conclusion of that thinking?
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This is the thinking that gave us transing the kids. This is the thinking that gave us the
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sexually confused society. This is the thinking that ripped apart any semblance of chivalry or
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serious definition of family. Listen, women can be fire. Usually they won't be, but women can be
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firefighters so long as they pass the test. Okay, why not? That's fine. Of course women can fight in
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combat. You know, if they pass the test, if they're as physically strong as men. Of course we should
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support same-sex marriage. People should have any kind of rights that they want. It doesn't bother me.
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Just don't make me pay for it. Of course. And look, adults, if adults want to put on dresses,
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if they want to chop up their bodies, that's their right. They're individuals. That doesn't affect me.
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But transgenderism in school curricula, that's crazy. Do you see the problem with that?
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Of course women should be permitted into men's typical spaces. They should be permitted into
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the military academy, and the police academy, and the fire academy. But transgenderism, that's crazy.
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You've already accepted. By accepting the logic of same-sex marriage, by accepting the logic of the
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LGBT movement, by accepting the logic of feminism, you have accepted the premises that inevitably bring
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you transgenderism. And it's all absurd. And when we see the lady fireman admitting this,
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on camera saying, yeah, I probably can't pull a man out of a burning building, but it sounds like a
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him problem, doesn't it? Why is he relying on me? I'm a lady. I shouldn't be pulling him out of a
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building. She's even admitting that men and women are different, that this is absurd.
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But when even the conservatives accept these absurd premises, well, you end up exactly where we are.
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Now, there are still some amazing things happening in LA. James Woods, great actor and a conservative
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actor, one of the few conservative actors. James Woods was posting on X the other day.
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Well, he's always posting on X. He's a very prominent tweeter. But James Woods was posting and said,
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basically, that his house was up in flames. His house was right where the fire is. And he said,
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it's gone. I'm evacuated, but it's almost certainly gone. Then he posted this a couple days later.
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A miracle has happened. We managed to get to our property in our home that we were told is gone
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forever, is still standing. In this hellish landscape, standing is relative, but smoke and
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other damage is not like the utter destruction around us, the view from our deck area. And then he
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posts from his deck, posts a little video, and everything is just wiped away. It's just totally
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gone. Then Woods points out, he says, one side untouched, the other utter destruction.
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While we rejoice to find our house intact in the midst of a hellscape like this,
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you can only think of your neighbors. I think we have the video of both sides of the street.
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Somewhere we have the video. Somewhere hidden in the control room, we have the video.
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I was so certain that our house was gone a day ago, but the fickle finger of fate decided
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otherwise. Now, the fickle finger of fate is an interesting phrase. That's not exactly the
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phrase I would use to describe what's going on, but it is crazy. You've seen a lot of videos like
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this. One side of the street, totally fine. The other side, absolutely destroyed. But this is not
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the only story we've seen like this. There's another group of people who had all their property
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burned down. One thing remained. We have video of that too. A statue of the Virgin Mary,
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specifically of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is the apparition of Mary, the mother of God,
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in the Americas, converted millions and millions of people. Everything burned down. This statue of
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Mary is still standing. It's enough to give you goosebumps. Even if you're the most hardened
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materialist who thinks that all of these kind of numinous phenomena are pure coincidence,
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it's enough to give you goosebumps. Add on top of that, in the Palisades, there was a property
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that survived. It's a property owned by Rick Caruso. It's one of the most beautiful properties
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in LA. It's the Palisades Shopping Mall. Now, in the case of Rick Caruso's property, he's the
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Republican who ran for mayor. In the case of Rick Caruso's property, he appears to have brought in
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some private firemen help to help keep the fires off of his property. So that was a little less
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providential, perhaps, but Rick Caruso clearly cooperating with the resources he had.
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But then I have one more story. This one was really crazy. A friend of mine, he's a conservative
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guy. He's a friend and colleague of many years. He has a property in Malibu. And we were looking at
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the spread of the fire. And I didn't want, I was texting him, but I didn't want to say, man, your
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property is gone. And I was asking for updates every so often. And he showed on the map his
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neighbor's houses, just X, property gone, X, property gone. Virtually all of his neighbors had
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their houses burnt to the ground. And then a day or so later, he texts me a picture of his property,
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completely untouched. Palm trees on his property, completely untouched. He had a box, a cardboard
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box of wood on his deck, completely untouched, not a hint of smoke. I was seeing footage from his
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neighbor's ring camera of sparks flying by the property. The fire got so close to his house that
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two windows exploded the property. Otherwise, totally, his stuff is fine.
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I am not saying we have to read into this all that much. You know, it's a wicked generation that
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seeks after signs and wonders and the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. However, as a
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priest friend of mine observes, it's a stupid generation that ignores signs and wonders. And one
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sees significance in a lot of things like a statue of the mother of God standing amid
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all the ruins or certain houses survive, certain houses don't. It's providence is tightly knit and
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imbued with meaning. It's just eerie, I guess is all I'm saying. There's so much more to say.
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Go to donewithdebt.com. Now, someone whose house did burn down, who is a good right-winger,
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is Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson, while his house was burning down, was not crying over it. He wasn't
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weeping. He wasn't pulling his hair out in Hollywood. He was doing the Joe Rogan show while
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this was happening. He was laughing with Joe Rogan, and he was dropping a lot of truth bombs. He was saying
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some things that were a little eccentric, but he was dropping a lot of truth bombs. For instance,
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he was on the biggest show on the internet, drawing a direct link between what the Libs
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call reproductive rights, reproductive freedom, and pagan infant sacrifice.
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How close are we to collapse? And what are the things that lead to collapse? You know,
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it's environmental stuff. It's human sacrifice.
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When you find out medications are killing people, and they keep prescribing them.
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Yeah, and Gibson's going on. He talks about abortion. It's abortion. That's what we do.
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When he's got that Mel Gibson look in his eyes, he says, we do it. And we do it to the tune
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of 1.2 million babies per year. We do it. We do it on a scale that the Aztecs or the Hittites
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or the Canaanites couldn't possibly have imagined. We sacrifice many, many, many more babies to Moloch
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than any ancient, devilish, pagan tribe ever. And that's in the strongest country in the history of the
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world. Gibson then doesn't just leave it there talking about natural law and, you know, the rights of
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babies or anything. He speaks directly about Christianity. He answers some criticisms of
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Christianity that, you know, it's too rigid or it's too judgmental or something like that. Mel Gibson
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says, on the Rogan show. This isn't EWTN. Okay, this isn't the 700 Club. He's on the Joe Rogan
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experience. And he says, hey, do you know who the first saint was? The first canonized saint.
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You know who it was? No. The first ever confirmed canonization as a saint was Dismas. You know who
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Dismas was? No. He was the thief on the cross next to Jesus. Oh. And he says to him,
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you're going to be okay this day. You'll be with me. Unbaptized, criminal, all that stuff. So.
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The lawmaker is above the law. So there's a lot of mercy.
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So he's mentioning this. I think a lot of people have an idea of Mel Gibson or some arch right-wing
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traditionalist type of Catholic person or even Protestant Christian as being really judgmental
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and exclusive and overly legalistic. And here's Mel Gibson. What does he say to Joe Rogan's audience?
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He says, you know, the first saint was the criminal on the cross, the good thief. He was probably a
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murderer, unbaptized. He had baptism of desire, clearly, but unbaptized. Did all sorts of awful
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things, but he was given a grace by Christ. He accepted Christ's grace. And he's the first
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canonized saint. It's a message that Mel Gibson is bringing to Joe Rogan's audience of mercy.
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An audience that, well, like all of us to some degree, but maybe especially needs mercy,
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is maybe not aware of this notion of mercy and grace. And then Gibson had the line,
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I think this was the grand slam of the whole. The whole interview is worth watching,
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but this to me was the best bit that Gibson had to speak directly to Joe Rogan's audience about
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the truth of Christianity. Well, I regard the Gospels as history. It's a verifiable history.
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Some people say, oh, it's a fairy tale. He never existed, but he did. And there are other accounts,
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verifiable historical accounts outside the biblical ones that also bear this up that, yes, he did exist.
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And, and, and, and the other aspect of that is that the, all the evangelists, the apostles who went out
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there, every single one of those guys died rather than deny their belief. And nobody dies for a lie.
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Nobody. Right. So that's part of what I'm doing. It's like showing nobody dies for a lie.
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Yeah. Well, the resurrection is the one that is the most difficult for people to swallow. Yes.
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That is the one that requires the most faith, the most faith and the most belief. Yeah. Resurrection. Yeah.
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Who, who, who gets back up three days later after he gets murdered in public,
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um, who gets back up under his own power? Buddha didn't do that.
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Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. I definitely do. For all the reasons I just mentioned, you know,
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the 11 guys going willingly to their deaths for something that they, uh, either saw or, you know,
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uh, saw at least this just before and just after effects. And St. John is the only one who,
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who actually isn't martyred, uh, but he saw it firsthand. And, uh, then the, the apostles who saw
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the resurrected Christ with their eyes, Thomas actually touching his wounds. Uh, yeah. I said
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500 eyewitnesses to the resurrection. And yeah, I believe it. And guess what? Buddha didn't do that.
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S-H-I-T. Not to be nitpicky. It's a venial sin to, to use naughty language. Uh, but it was used
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for clear rhetorical effect here. Had Gibson chose his target really well here to speaking to the Joe
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Rogan audience because the Joe Rogan audience is normal people, normal people who live in our normal
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culture or normal culture, which has been influenced by all sorts of kind of wacky religion,
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especially by Buddhism or a kind of Western conception of Buddhism. There's even a term in
00:20:33.860
New York in suburban New York, where I grew up, which is the Jew boo people who are raised reformed
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Jews, kind of like secular Jews who become vaguely Buddhist in their spirituality, man, you know,
00:20:43.920
and it's not just reformed Jews who were subject to this. It's a, it's a ton of people, you know,
00:20:48.520
they're spiritual, but not religious, man. They don't like that organized religion. You know,
00:20:51.900
they just kind of want, they just want to be in touch with the vibes, you know, in the universe,
00:20:57.400
man. And they're all kind of vaguely Buddhist. And Gibson goes right to the heart of that. And he
00:21:02.060
says, yeah, Buddha didn't do that. Buddha didn't, Buddha wasn't executed publicly and he didn't
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rise from the dead three days later of his own power. Only one person has ever done that. And that
00:21:13.520
is our Lord Jesus Christ. That, that is evangelism. Okay. That is preaching the gospel. It's not
00:21:20.940
the neatest, uh, most formal kind of rhetoric. Mel Gibson, even he's speaking a little loosely,
00:21:29.040
like when he says all the apostles died. Well, they all died eventually, but you know,
00:21:32.400
they weren't all martyred St. John was, but it sort of doesn't matter to me, what Mel was doing here.
00:21:39.100
Now Mel Gibson has a few theological problems, which is why I won't call him St. Mel. I'll just
00:21:43.280
call him the venerable Mel Gibson. But what he does here is exactly what St. Paul tells us to do when
00:21:48.580
he says to be all things to all people. In 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 9, St. Paul says,
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for whereas I was free as to all, I made myself the servant of all that I might gain the more.
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And I became to the Jews, a Jew that I might gain the Jews to them that are under the law,
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as if I were under the law, whereas myself was not under the law, that I might gain them that
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were under the law to them that were without the law as, as if I were without the law, whereas I was
00:22:12.440
not without the law of God, but was in the law of Christ that I might gain them that were without the
00:22:17.140
law. To the weak I became weak that I might gain the weak. I became all things to all men that I
00:22:23.300
might save all. And I do all things for the gospel's sake that I may be made partaker thereof. This is,
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I think, a brilliant strategy of evangelism. I think Mel Gibson has done more for evangelism
00:22:36.920
than basically anyone walking around today. Not, maybe not, he's definitely in the top 10, okay?
00:22:41.680
And this strategy, I think, is a great strategy. This is meeting people where they are.
00:22:47.140
This is being all things to all men. This is finding the way in, keeping the end goal in mind,
00:22:52.700
which is conversion, bringing people to Christ, bringing people within the mystical body of Christ.
00:22:58.280
What Mel Gibson did on the Joe Rogan show, especially that clip at the end, that is a masterclass.
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Now we turn from some good preaching to some bad preaching. Jimmy Carter is dead. He's still dead.
00:23:53.220
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. So is Jimmy Carter. However, there's one bit from his
00:23:59.500
funeral that is making the rounds on the internet. And it's cringy, but it's important to take note of
00:24:06.600
it. At Jimmy Carter's funeral, this was the music that was played.
00:24:10.840
Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. They're in a big church.
00:24:34.940
No heaven below us. There's a choir right next to this guy in a liturgical bar.
00:24:54.620
Oh man, that was my reaction. Why are you playing this atheist communist gobbledygook
00:25:09.360
in a cathedral at the funeral of a supposed Christian? Many people say that Jimmy Carter,
00:25:19.120
whether you liked him as a president or not, no one can doubt his deep Christian faith.
00:25:22.800
I don't know. I'm not here to judge Jimmy Carter's supposed faith.
00:25:29.360
But that is not the song that is played at the funeral of a Christian.
00:25:33.740
Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. John Lennon writing about how wonderful it would be
00:25:37.680
if there were no heaven and we could all just live for today like pagans and communists.
00:25:42.980
If we could just get rid of all this Christianity, you know, and just live like animals,
00:25:48.500
like materialist, communist, pagan animals. Wouldn't that be so great? And this is the song.
00:25:55.440
Who selected this? Did Jimmy Carter select this in his preparations for his funeral? I certainly hope
00:26:00.560
not. His family did. I don't know. People say, you know, Jimmy Carter's a Southern Baptist. I believe
00:26:05.880
he left the Southern Baptist Convention. He joined some squishy, squishier version of Baptist
00:26:11.680
Protestant Christianity. I don't know. Whatever that funeral was, that was not a Christian funeral.
00:26:18.020
Though a lot of people don't really have Christian funerals these days.
00:26:21.420
Even down to the eulogy. I've given a couple eulogies, so it happens. I know it's popular.
00:26:27.800
But a eulogy is not a traditionally Christian practice. A eulogy is a pagan practice. A eulogy to
00:26:36.480
sing a song of praise to the dead. That's ancient Greece. That's paganism. The traditional Christian
00:26:44.700
idea is not that the funeral is a song of praise to the dead. The idea is that the funeral mass
00:26:53.300
is a mass of prayer for the dead. It's a praise of Christ. It's a praise of God for the dead,
00:27:02.060
for their soul, for the repose of their soul. When we say requiescat in pace, that is a prayer for
00:27:07.680
the dead. We say, may he rest in peace. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, requiem eternam dona
00:27:14.120
ei, dominat lux perpetuolo cetae, requiescat in pace. It's a prayer to God for the dead. Now we get
00:27:20.480
everything all jumbled. So I hope Jimmy Carter had a sincere Christian faith. I hope he lived it out.
00:27:26.960
But whatever that funeral was, it was not Christian. Turning from a former president to the next
00:27:32.000
president. President Trump was sentenced. Did you know that? Did you catch that little news story?
00:27:37.860
Everyone's preparing for him to reenter the White House. And yet the libs are still trying to pretend
00:27:43.200
that he's a criminal who could go to prison. Now, even the judge in this case, this is the New York
00:27:51.180
case over falsifying business records for supposed hush money that he supposedly paid to a porn star,
00:27:58.080
even though the whole case was ridiculous from the outset. Because if President Trump committed
00:28:03.520
this crime of falsifying business records, it would have been a misdemeanor that was
00:28:09.060
past the statute of limitations years ago. So the only way that they could raise it to a felony in
00:28:15.040
New York was to say that he falsified business records in furtherance of some underlying crime.
00:28:19.640
But the prosecution never even proved what the underlying crime was. In fact, they told the jury,
00:28:24.180
don't worry about identifying the underlying crime. As long as you think there might have been some
00:28:27.520
crime there at all, then that suffices. The whole thing was just totally preposterous.
00:28:32.460
And yet, Trump was found guilty in that kangaroo court, and then he was sentenced.
00:28:38.920
Now, with the sentencing, the judge realized he's not going to put the president of the United States
00:28:43.500
in jail. So he said, okay, Trump has an unconditional discharge. It means he will not be punished with
00:28:49.160
prison time or fines or community service. Trump is going to be engaging in community service for
00:28:55.480
the next four years when he's president of the United States. So he has no jail time. He can still
00:28:59.680
vote because the states in which President Trump resides permit felons who have paid their debt to
00:29:05.720
society to vote. However, because of the sentencing, Trump will need to give New York a DNA sample,
00:29:13.420
and President Trump cannot own a gun. This to me is the most absurd part. The man who in seven days
00:29:22.740
will have the sole authority in the country to authorize a nuclear strike, that man can fire a
00:29:31.360
nuclear weapon, but he can't fire a pistol. Does that make sense to you? It does not. And what the
00:29:37.980
Libs will say is, yeah, and that's why he shouldn't be president. Hold on. Our constitution is very clear.
00:29:42.480
We have a mechanism for choosing a president. Trump satisfied all of those conditions. The
00:29:49.300
American people voted for him, not just through their representatives in the electoral college,
00:29:53.580
but actually the majority of Americans voted for him. And then he won in an electoral college
00:29:58.320
landslide, and he is the president. There's no provision of the constitution that says that a man
00:30:03.720
has to win the majority of the electoral college, and then he can be president unless some judge in New
00:30:08.600
York doesn't like him, unless some crooked politicians in New York decided to trump up
00:30:13.760
charges and illegally prosecute him. That's not what the constitution says. He's the president.
00:30:21.600
So where did the error occur? Obviously, it makes no sense that a guy can fire nuclear weapons,
00:30:26.920
but not a pistol, not a Glock 19. So where did the error occur? Was it in making him president,
00:30:33.300
or was it in prosecuting him? It's clear as day. The error, the threat to our political system,
00:30:40.440
the absurdity lies in prosecuting Trump. That was the problem. So, okay, he's got to give a DNA sample
00:30:48.100
to New York. The embarrassment continues. I hope there are consequences. Once the Republicans have
00:30:53.520
unified government, I hope there are consequences for these dastardly liberal politicians in New York
00:30:59.140
who would make such a mockery of our political order. Now, how did Trump get sentenced in the
00:31:03.900
first place? It only happened because the Supreme Court allowed the sentencing to go on. President
00:31:08.600
Trump's team requested an emergency stay to block the sentencing in New York. And the good judges on
00:31:18.180
the Supreme Court, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh even, they said, yeah, okay, we should block the
00:31:26.380
sentencing. This is absurd that we're going to sentence a president of the United States for
00:31:30.400
this nonsense in New York. However, Chief Justice Roberts, a little bit of a squish, and Amy Barrett
00:31:37.020
both sided with the court's liberals to let the sentencing go on. Now, President Trump's response
00:31:43.060
was surprising. He didn't just invade against Roberts and Barrett. He said, I respect the court's
00:31:47.300
opinion. I think it was actually a very good opinion for us because you saw what they said.
00:31:50.740
And they invited the appeal, the appeal of the whole case, the appeal of the whole conviction
00:31:55.800
in this nonsense case in New York. And the appeal is on the bigger issue. So we'll see how it works
00:32:01.640
out. Okay. Trump might have the last laugh, but also we need to rethink what kind of judges we're
00:32:08.060
putting on the court. Okay. Maybe Roberts and Barrett are playing interdimensional 7D chess here,
00:32:14.520
and it's actually going to give Trump a bigger victory. And they were all being very
00:32:17.700
strategery, strategeric, you know, or something like that. But this happens too often with conservatives
00:32:25.980
that we appoint judges and they disappoint us. They act in ways, they rule in ways that contradict
00:32:35.280
how we understand their judicial philosophy. That never happens for the left. The left judges
00:32:42.600
basically never disappoint their presidents and the people who voted for their presidents,
00:32:49.100
the presidents who would go on to appoint them. That never happens. It does happen for us.
00:32:53.880
Maybe we need new metrics by which to judge potential judicial candidates. Right now we have textualism,
00:33:02.620
we have originalism in its older form and in its Scalia form. Okay. Maybe we need, I don't know,
00:33:09.960
a little, a little bit of a sturdier rule of thumb by which to measure these judges so they don't disappoint
00:33:16.320
us and side with the libs too often. Meanwhile, turning to our current president, Joe Biden is leaving
00:33:24.100
office with the claim that he is leaving America. This is, I'll use his exact words. I don't want to misquote
00:33:29.040
him. The economy I'm leaving America is the best in the world and stronger than ever for all Americans.
00:33:36.460
Fact check. Is that true? A lot of conservatives are saying this is totally preposterous. This is
00:33:42.680
insane. The economy's in the gutter. That's not exactly true either. And Biden's using clever
00:33:48.880
language here. He says stronger than ever for all Americans. So what he could say is when you point
00:33:53.300
to other periods of a much stronger economy, say the 1990s clearly, or just after the second world war
00:33:59.840
when America was the last superpower in the world, matched a little bit by the Soviet Union,
00:34:05.200
but we were still stronger. Joe Biden could say, yeah, but back then, you know, there was racism
00:34:10.180
or something, or there was sexism. So it wasn't stronger for all Americans. But again, to be
00:34:15.240
stronger for all Americans, I don't know, you can't point to our present economy, I think, and say,
00:34:22.680
well, maybe it's more equal in some measure. It's actually not. Actually, the wealth disparities are
00:34:27.820
greater than ever. And COVID-19, the lockdowns, gave us the biggest transfer of wealth from the lower
00:34:32.840
classes to the upper classes in history. So actually, you couldn't even say it's more equal.
00:34:36.940
But even if it were just all equal, Harrison Bergeron style, handicapping, you know, leveling
00:34:41.680
to the bottom, you still wouldn't say that that's better for all Americans. So how does the economy
00:34:45.880
look? I think a fair view of it, an objective view of it, is the economy is not terrible, but it's
00:34:51.760
certainly been better. GDP is relatively high, but GDP growth is relatively weak compared to other
00:34:59.420
periods. Unemployment is fine, but it's not the best we've ever had it. Manufacturing is weak.
00:35:06.160
It's not the worst it's ever been, but it's pretty weak. You know, America had a much stronger
00:35:09.460
manufacturing base earlier, and that was probably better for our national security and for the
00:35:13.960
health of our whole society. The economy has been really financialized, so it's, I think, overly
00:35:19.200
reliant on financial markets. We don't actually produce physical goods and stuff, and that really
00:35:24.300
harmed us, mentioning COVID-19. That harmed us when our supply chains were all interrupted. So I don't
00:35:28.680
know the economy, it's kind of a mixed bag, but it's looking pretty weak. And in some ways,
00:35:32.600
the economy is absolutely terrible. By the end of the Biden administration, our national
00:35:37.320
debt will be $34.7 trillion. That's about 125% of GDP. That is egregious. That's really
00:35:43.880
bad. Empires fall for that kind of thing. So it's not that we have the worst economy imaginable
00:35:50.480
and there's nothing to recommend it. That would be false. That statement would be false, and it
00:35:55.560
would give liberals an opening to call us kooks and hacks. But I think any fair assessment
00:36:02.300
of the economy is, it's pretty weak. It's looking pretty bad, and it's looking pretty
00:36:08.120
bad in no small part because of the disastrous policies of Joe Biden, though the policies that
00:36:14.180
led us to this point have gone back decades. Okay, speaking of fairness, my favorite comment
00:36:18.820
on Friday is from Tofu9107, who says, in fairness, it is possible to be a parent to a 20-year-old
00:36:26.880
and a grandparent, to be a parent at 20, and then a grandparent at 40, and then a great-grandparent
00:36:33.520
at 60. You're right. This is a point that sweet little Elisa made with me last night. She said,
00:36:39.260
Mac, I'm listening to your show, and you said something wrong. You said that great-grandparents
00:36:44.760
should not be president, and that's not true. I said, how do you figure? She said, well, back when
00:36:49.580
we had a good society, people would have kids younger, and then you could be a great-grandparent
00:36:55.320
by 60. If you keep having kids at 20, and even you have a little leeway. Maybe one a year down the
00:37:01.140
line has a kid at 25. All right, 65, that's pretty good. Even two down the line have kids at 25,
00:37:07.740
and then you're president at 70. You could be president at 70. And she's right. She's right.
00:37:12.320
Because I was saying, in our decadent society, where people don't have kids until they're 30,
00:37:20.040
35, 40, 45, I don't know, if they have kids at all, then to be a great-grandparent probably puts
00:37:26.000
you in your 80s or 90s. But you're right. If we lived in a good society, great-grandparents can
00:37:31.620
and probably should be president because they could be 60-year-olds. Good point. Good point,
00:37:35.960
Alisa, and good point, Mr. Tofu. Speaking of dubious political analysis coming from Joe Biden,
00:37:43.740
we now turn to dubious political analysis coming from the supposed far right-wing leader in Germany.
00:37:48.860
This is the leader of the Alternative für Deutschland, the alternative for Germany,
00:37:54.780
Alice Weidel, who had an interview with Elon Musk and made the claim that Adolf Hitler was a communist.
00:38:02.040
Since I'm an economist, I would like to shed some light on the idea, when we talk about Hitler,
00:38:14.560
on the idea of the national socialists. Back then, during the Third Reich, the national socialists,
00:38:23.500
as the word says, they were socialists. Yeah, very much so.
00:38:27.580
They nationalized industries like crazy. Yes, absolutely. He was a communist and he considered
00:38:35.520
himself as a socialist. And the biggest success, the biggest success after that terrible era
00:38:44.380
in our history was to label Adolf Hitler as right and conservative. He was exactly the opposite.
00:38:54.880
He wasn't a conservative. He wasn't a libertarian. He was a communist, socialist guy. So, full stop,
00:39:05.380
no more comment on that. And we are exactly the opposite. We are a libertarian, conservative party.
00:39:12.200
Okay. So, what this woman has said is literally not true, but there might be a reason why she said it.
00:39:22.900
But on the surface, what she said is extremely dumb. Not true. Hitler, we have Hitler's words. He
00:39:28.860
actually wrote a lot. Hitler said, communism is not socialism. Marxism is not socialism. The Marxians
00:39:35.040
have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take socialism away from the socialists.
00:39:38.880
So, he did call his party a socialist party. This was at a time when every intelligent person
00:39:44.280
seemed to be a socialist. Socialism is always unintelligent and evil and terrible and stupid,
00:39:48.940
but it was a very popular term. And so, he says, well, I'm a real kind of socialist. Not you Marx
00:39:54.580
influenced socialists. I'm a different kind of socialist. And so, he certainly was not a communist.
00:40:00.600
He was not a socialist in the sense that we understand socialism. He also, as she says,
00:40:04.780
was not a libertarian. That's certainly, Hitler was not a libertarian. And it's difficult to place
00:40:10.880
Hitler on the left-right spectrum because the terms left and right come from the French Revolution,
00:40:15.820
from the National Assembly, when the Catholic monarchist traditionalists were on the right
00:40:20.840
side of the assembly hall and the atheist liberals, Republicans, were on the left side of the hall.
00:40:28.000
So, was Hitler on the right or on the left? In some ways, he hearkened back to tradition.
00:40:35.260
In some ways, he was quite modern and modernist. And he was certainly a statist and practically an
00:40:40.120
atheist. So, you know, I don't know. Where does he fall? Probably that spectrum does not fit all of
00:40:49.980
our modern political ideas. In large part because, practically speaking, everyone in politics today
00:40:55.780
is, would have been on the left of the National Assembly. They are practically atheists or secularists.
00:41:03.940
They are liberals. They embrace the views that come with the so-called enlightenment. They're either
00:41:09.660
liberals of the left or liberals of the right. They're either progressive liberals or libertarian
00:41:15.320
liberals or classical liberals, but they're all kind of liberals. And they're all basically
00:41:18.760
Republicans, lowercase r, either advocating democracy or a more representative form of democracy
00:41:27.140
or power to the people or whatever. They're all basically that. You will be hard-pressed to find
00:41:32.940
traditional Catholic monarchists in mainstream politics today, you know, shouting their views
00:41:38.620
from the rooftop. So, this is in part why the left-right paradigm doesn't quite work. Then you think
00:41:44.660
about this woman, the leader of the far right, we are told by the media party in Germany, they keep
00:41:52.920
comparing this woman to a Nazi. She is a lesbian libertarian. That's the furthest right you've got
00:42:00.940
in Germany right now, is a lesbian libertarian who thinks that Hitler was a communist.
00:42:05.900
If that's the far right, I think that the terms left and right have lost basically all of their
00:42:14.320
meaning. Now, I want to be fair to this woman because I'm not totally opposed to AFD or these
00:42:20.580
sort of right-wing movements coming up in Europe. What she said is literally false and at first glance,
00:42:31.020
quite stupid. But at a deeper level, there's probably a great deal of wisdom here because
00:42:36.120
in our modern political order, Hitler just means the devil. Hitler just means evil, just means bad.
00:42:44.280
In our modern political mythos, even Hitler wasn't Hitler. In the traditional understanding of
00:42:49.940
politics, you have the incarnation of absolute good in Christ. And in our traditional understanding
00:42:56.040
of politics and theology and philosophy, evil does not have an existence of its own. We get this from
00:43:03.220
Plotinus and the Neoplatonists and up through the Christian tradition. Evil does not have an existence
00:43:07.560
of its own. Evil is merely the privation of good. Okay? So we don't live in a dualistic Manichaean
00:43:14.540
society where there's the good force and the evil force and they're just always fighting. No, no.
00:43:18.440
There is God. God is sovereign. God creates everything. God is good. God does not create evil.
00:43:24.480
So evil is merely the privation of the good. And we have the incarnation of absolute good in the
00:43:28.400
person of Christ. That's the, even if you're not Christian, that's just, that's how our society has
00:43:32.520
understood good, evil, justice, politics for a couple thousand years now. In liberalism, as
00:43:42.200
Christianity has waned in public, it's been replaced by this new kind of mythos that you have the
00:43:46.800
incarnation of absolute evil. There's no such thing as good, man. The incarnation, that can't be real.
00:43:52.000
And God probably doesn't exist. Well, I don't know if there's any such thing as good, but there's
00:43:55.700
definitely evil. We all know evil. We all know sin. And so in recent historical events, the incarnation
00:44:01.180
of absolute evil is the person of Hitler. The literal Hitler, quite a bad fellow, but the mythical
00:44:09.780
representation of Hitler, it takes on this religious significance. He is the kind of response to
00:44:14.560
Christianity. He's the absolute incarnation of evil, which is why in politics, whenever you want to
00:44:20.020
attack somebody, you just compare them to Hitler. It's why when you want to say the opponents are
00:44:24.900
bad, you say they're like the Nazis. People on the left call the right-wingers Nazis. People on the
00:44:30.100
right call the left-wingers Nazis, just like the leader of AFD is doing in Germany here. But American
00:44:35.220
Republican conservatives do that too. When Joe Biden launches his presidential campaign, he compares
00:44:39.600
Trump to Hitler. That's how you do it. We don't talk about Satan anymore. We don't, we certainly don't
00:44:43.940
talk about God all that much, as much as we should, but we talk about Hitler. So at a deeper level,
00:44:48.980
what the leader of AFD, I think, is doing is basically just playing the hand she's dealt.
00:44:54.500
She's playing within the circumstances that currently dictate how politics is conducted.
00:45:00.920
She's saying, okay, well, we can't really have recourse to discussion of absolute good,
00:45:04.520
and we can't really use the language of traditional morality because people don't understand it anymore.
00:45:08.820
But you know what they do understand? Hitler, especially in Germany. So if you want to win an
00:45:12.700
election, you just got to say that the other guy is more like Hitler than you are.
00:45:16.400
And so that's what she's doing. Is it, it's shallow. It's, I think, ridiculous. I think it's a false
00:45:22.780
way of viewing the world. But from a practical politics standpoint, it's probably, people are
00:45:29.940
making fun of her for being stupid. It's probably a little smarter than people are giving her credit
00:45:33.320
for. Today is Music Monday. The rest of the show continues. Now, you do not want to miss it.
00:45:37.000
Become a member. Use code Knowleskin at WLES at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
00:45:42.700
I've often said that gender-affirming care is health care. It is mental health care and it can
00:46:03.860
actually be suicide prevention care. I think I'm gonna take some medicine so I can kind of like
00:46:11.520
transform into a boy, get surgery. After the surgery, I didn't really feel any better.
00:46:18.320
When it stopped being a thing for adults and it started to be a, let's teach this to kids.
00:46:26.040
Please stop. He's a boy, not a girl. How could she do this to my son?
00:46:30.000
What they're talking about is hormonal therapy or sex reassignment surgery on children.
00:46:36.260
I thought fixing me externally would fix me internally. But of course I was wrong.
00:46:42.000
The fact that the state thinks that they're more important and have a better say in what
00:46:45.720
happens to your child over the actual parent's opinion is egregious.
00:46:49.540
Puberty blockers, surgeries, big money makers for hospitals, for physicians.
00:46:53.580
All I want to do is hold my son. Are you asking me to lie to parents? And he said, yes.
00:47:01.940
This is an weaponized use of a parent's sympathy and caring and concern by the left to destroy your
00:47:09.420
child. Let's tell kids that maybe they can be the opposite sex. Maybe they actually are the opposite
00:47:15.360
sex. It is an evil thing to tell children that happiness lies on the other side of puberty blockers
00:47:22.660
or double mastectomies. The left so badly wants to blur these lines.