The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1675 - JD Vance Threatens Europe for Censoring Christians

00:00:00.000 Vice President J.D. Vance lit up the Munich Security Conference on Friday and put all of

00:00:04.620 Europe on notice that if they continue to censor legitimate speech and target conservatives and

00:00:10.580 Christians, the U.S. will hold them accountable, leading Margaret Brennan of CBS News to blame 0.98

00:00:17.740 free speech for, wait for it, the Holocaust. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. 0.97

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to the show. Tom Hanks just did a hilarious bit on Saturday Night Live. You're not

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00:02:52.020 You must be 21 years or older. Some exclusions apply. What did J.D. Vance say in Munich? The

00:02:57.900 Munich Security Conference, big event over in Europe, the newly inaugurated vice president shows up there.

00:03:04.740 Usually, the speeches are about all of the external threats to Europe and the United States.

00:03:11.340 It's all the external threats to our civilization. J.D. rolls up, guns ablaze, and he says,

00:03:16.300 I don't want to talk about the external threats right now. There'll be plenty of time for that.

00:03:20.180 I want to talk about one of the biggest internal threats we face, namely that all of you,

00:03:27.300 you liberal elites that run Europe and until very recently the United States,

00:03:32.260 you, by censoring all of our citizens, by targeting conservatives and Christians and people who 0.86

00:03:40.120 want to protect our borders and protect the integrity of our civilization, you pose a far

00:03:45.680 more urgent threat than any of the bad guys outside of our civilization. J.D. did not hold back.

00:03:52.880 And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some

00:03:59.340 of the Cold War's winners. I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend

00:04:07.040 to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they've judged to

00:04:13.500 be, quote, hateful content. Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens

00:04:21.140 suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, combating misogyny on the internet,

00:04:28.460 a day of action. I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist

00:04:35.220 for participating in Koran burnings that resulted in his friend's murder. The British government charged

00:04:42.480 Adam Smith Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing

00:04:50.440 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes.

00:04:57.940 These are shocking examples. These are egregious examples. And they're just a handful basically off

00:05:06.100 the top of J.D.'s speechwriter's head. Because there are many, many more such examples. These are not

00:05:11.920 aberrations. These are not fringe cases. This happens all the time in Europe and the UK.

00:05:18.320 People just praying inside their own heads, not even right next to an abortion mill, but a little

00:05:25.500 further away from them, will be arrested. Germany will launch midnight raids because people post things

00:05:31.680 they don't like on social media. Seems like a far more urgent threat to Western civilization than the

00:05:41.480 machinations and the Kremlin that Vladimir Putin is cooking up right now. The fact that if you object

00:05:47.820 to a Muslim invasion of Europe, a major, major social problem in Europe, that you will be the one punished 1.00

00:05:55.880 by your own government? If you criticize Islam, if you offend the sensibilities of Muslims, even if it leads to

00:06:04.840 your friend being murdered by aforementioned Muslims, that you will be the one who will get in trouble? 1.00

00:06:10.260 That seems like a real perversion of justice and of our governments in the West. Then J.D. honed down

00:06:17.420 even further on an issue that many Americans probably are not aware of. I know there are a lot of people

00:06:23.640 who listen to this show in Germany in particular, but throughout Europe, who will be aware of this issue.

00:06:28.900 A lot of Americans will not. And it is the issue of the so-called firewall in German and really,

00:06:34.600 therefore, all of European politics. And more and more all over Europe, they're voting for

00:06:40.200 political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. Now, I happen to agree 1.00

00:06:46.560 with a lot of these concerns, but you don't have to agree with me. I just think that people care

00:06:51.040 about their homes. They care about their dreams. They care about their safety and their capacity to

00:06:57.300 provide for themselves and their children. And it is the business of democracy to adjudicate

00:07:03.000 these big questions at the ballot box. I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns,

00:07:09.820 or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the

00:07:15.980 political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.

00:07:23.920 What no democracy, American, German, or European will survive is telling millions of voters that

00:07:30.600 their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of

00:07:37.540 even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people

00:07:44.560 matters. There's no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don't.

00:07:52.100 There's no room for firewalls. He says, what is the firewall? The German firewall is an agreement 0.63

00:07:59.140 that in many ways defines the German political order that political parties will not deal with

00:08:06.320 right-wing parties. It is a way of isolating right-wing parties, even when they're popular,

00:08:12.540 even when the people vote for them, even when the people are demanding that they come into power.

00:08:16.940 It is an agreement that constitutes the bedrock of the present German political order and therefore

00:08:25.300 of the present European political order because Germany leads Europe that says,

00:08:30.560 we will not work with the right-wingers. In this case, the right-wing party, Alternative for Deutschland,

00:08:37.120 which is frequently written about in the press as a far right-wing, Nazi, fascist, extremist party.

00:08:42.240 Really, it's just kind of a libertarian party. In fact, the leader of Alternative for Deutschland

00:08:48.420 is a libertarian lesbian who says that Hitler was a communist during a viral interview with Elon Musk 0.57

00:08:56.360 recently. So to suggest that this is some extremist beyond the pale party, totally crazy. But it's a way 0.99

00:09:03.120 for Europe, for the European elites who are laughing at J.D. Vance, who are mocking him while he's

00:09:07.700 speaking, while he's defending the voice of the European peoples, it's a way for them to lock out 0.94

00:09:14.660 any dissent. And I think after J.D. finished his speech and got off stage, there was a little less

00:09:21.500 laughing among the crowd. In fact, one of the leaders ended up crying, maybe for a different

00:09:26.500 reason, but maybe it was related. Because what they recognize is, one, Germany leads Europe, sure,

00:09:34.200 but America leads Germany. Because America is the global hegemon, certainly the leader of the West. 0.54

00:09:41.520 And so when J.D. Vance shows up and says, hey, there's a new sheriff in town, we're not going to

00:09:45.960 put up with this anymore. We're not going to put up with it in America, we're not going to put up with

00:09:49.340 it in Europe, we're certainly not going to underwrite it. We're the reason that Europe has security right

00:09:53.120 now, and we're not going to tolerate this anymore. What that represents is not just a change in policy

00:10:01.060 in Europe. That represents a fundamental shift in the political order. Ronald Reagan had teared down

00:10:08.840 this wall at the Brandenburg Gate. J.D. Vance had teared down this firewall in Germany, in Munich.

00:10:13.840 That is a fundamental reordering of European politics. And all those liberals in the room

00:10:19.000 who have been governing Europe during the post-World War II consensus, they all should be very,

00:10:23.900 very worried. Because this is a legitimate shift in power in the United States and therefore in

00:10:29.740 the West. So the liberals on both sides of the Atlantic are totally freaking out.

00:10:35.520 And what are they doing? They're going straight for the argument that they always go for,

00:10:39.220 which is, if the conservatives do anything, if we in any way change anything about this

00:10:44.600 desiccated, corrupt liberal order, why? We're going to get Hitler 2.0. If Europe is forced to begin to 0.91

00:10:52.180 pay for some of its own defense, if Europe's not allowed to censor its citizens, if we're not going 0.67

00:10:56.360 to bring the weight of the state to discriminate against Christians and conservatives, why then?

00:11:03.160 We're just moments away from another Holocaust. There's so much more to say. First, though, 0.99

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00:12:33.420 The liberal journalist of the year, Margaret Brennan from CBS News. Margaret Brennan is the one who first

00:12:39.700 went viral because she was interviewing J.D. Vance and she was henpecking him. And J.D. said,

00:12:43.600 you know, I really don't care, Margaret. I really don't care what you have to say.

00:12:47.940 I'm going to fulfill what the voters asked us to do in November. And she just keeps coming up with

00:12:52.900 all these strikeouts. You know, she was interviewing a conservative member of Congress about USAID got

00:12:59.580 totally demolished. And here she's interviewing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and making the

00:13:05.160 head-scratcher claim that free speech caused the Holocaust.

00:13:12.960 Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.

00:13:19.220 And he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties

00:13:27.900 to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it.

00:13:35.640 Look at Rubio.

00:13:36.520 And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right.

00:13:40.640 No, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide

00:13:46.200 was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated 0.51

00:13:51.020 Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they had a list of people they hated, 0.93

00:13:54.880 but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no 0.91

00:13:59.840 opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that's not

00:14:04.460 an accurate reflection of history. Free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.

00:14:12.000 So claims Margaret Brennan of CBS. Now, I don't know if you guys are history buffs or anything like

00:14:16.840 that, but one of the very first things that the Nazis did when they came to power was to drastically

00:14:24.500 curtail free speech. Just 1933 alone, just focus on 1933. There was the editor's law, which said that

00:14:32.980 only Aryans could be journalists. There was the law, of course, against the formation of political

00:14:38.160 parties that turned Nazi Germany into a totalitarian state. There was the Reichstag fire decree, 0.61

00:14:45.400 1933, also severely curtailed civil liberties. What is she talking about? I mean, I think that

00:14:54.920 there are plenty of criticisms about the way that liberals talk about free speech, but this is an

00:14:59.080 extreme example because they clearly just, they don't even know what they are trying to mean by free

00:15:04.120 speech. What, if the Holocaust was caused by free speech, what, what definition of free speech could 0.83

00:15:12.360 you possibly give that would satisfy that claim? I don't think you could give one. Even more important

00:15:18.280 perhaps than this ridiculous nonsense about speech in Nazi Germany. Other things have happened in

00:15:25.280 history beyond the Holocaust in World War II. I know this will be shocking to many liberal journalists

00:15:30.600 and politicians, but there actually have been other events in history to which we can compare present

00:15:36.220 events. Well, maybe they can't compare present events to anything else because they don't know about

00:15:40.540 anything else that ever happened in history. But there is an irony here, which I have found.

00:15:45.400 The people who are most inclined to compare every single present political event to the Holocaust or

00:15:51.480 Hitler or World War II, ironically, don't even know anything about Holocaust, Hitler, or World War II.

00:15:58.020 Have you noticed that? Because there are other events. There are the Napoleonic Wars, for instance.

00:16:02.660 There was the Renaissance. There was the Battle of Vienna. I don't know. I'm just kind of off the top

00:16:11.120 of my head. There are other events that have happened in history. But the ones who constantly say,

00:16:15.600 well, you know, Donald Trump wore a necktie. And you know who else wore a necktie? Hitler. 0.84

00:16:22.080 You think, oh, you don't. Not only do you know nothing about history, you don't even know about

00:16:27.980 Hitler. You don't know anything about anything at all. I think this stuff just does not work anymore.

00:16:36.960 Oh, oh, the conservatives are fascists. Sure. We used to, 15 years ago, we used to say,

00:16:42.380 no, we're not. Marco Rubio still had a little bit of that reaction. No, we're not. We're actually

00:16:47.160 the opposite. The Democrats are the real fascists. They're the real Hitlers. Now I think people make 0.99

00:16:52.860 these stupid claims. And my reaction is just to say, oh, yeah, okay, whatever. We're going to keep 1.00

00:17:00.620 doing what we're doing, all right? You know the thing that the majority of Americans elected us to

00:17:04.120 do? We're going to keep doing that. And you can keep screaming your head off about Hitler and how free 0.58

00:17:10.180 speech caused the Holocaust or whatever. You can just, you can babble your gibberish. We don't really

00:17:15.580 care. We don't really care, Margaret. Okay. Now, speaking of Germany, the German president,

00:17:22.420 Frank Volta Steinmeier, he doubled down after J.D. Vance's audacious speech. He said that he will

00:17:30.740 not allow social media and the open exchange of ideas to threaten his democracy.

00:17:37.900 We Europeans demand that tech companies, just like everyone else, that these companies

00:17:47.100 comply with European law, whether their name be TikTok, X or something else. We cannot and

00:17:56.120 will not allow platforms to destroy our democratic societies or cause serious harm to our children.

00:18:03.540 Now, notice this guy didn't have a huge problem with social media back when it was just liberals

00:18:15.980 running social media uniformly censoring conservatives. The big problem with social media

00:18:22.640 in the eyes of liberals on both sides of the Atlantic occurred when Elon Musk bought the smallest

00:18:28.860 mainstream social media platform and allowed conservatives to speak. Then all of a sudden,

00:18:34.300 social media was a big threat. Social media have been around for, what, 15, 20 years at this point?

00:18:39.960 Now it's a problem. He says he will not allow the open exchange of ideas to threaten democracy.

00:18:50.420 What does he mean by democracy? What do any of these liberals mean by democracy when they can say

00:18:56.460 things like, you know, the popular election of Donald Trump is a threat to democracy?

00:19:02.320 Oh, you know, the popular election of Viktor Orban or of Georgia Maloney or of the Brexit,

00:19:09.320 that that is a threat to democracy. People speaking and sharing their ideas, that's a threat to democracy

00:19:14.860 without fear of the German police coming in the middle of the night and arresting you over Facebook posts.

00:19:20.180 What does democracy mean in that context? Certainly doesn't mean democracy. It means liberalism and

00:19:28.220 liberalism is on the ropes right now. And that's why they're freaking out. Now, speaking of democracy

00:19:34.000 and liberalism and Western identity and the other side of the Atlantic, there is a clip that's just gone

00:19:45.560 viral between Constantine Kislin and Fraser Nelson. Fraser Nelson is a columnist for the Times of

00:19:51.900 London. He was the editor of the Spectator for 15 years. And he just got into a debate with Constantine

00:19:57.820 Kislin over what an Englishman is. Walsh had what is a woman? I think maybe that the European version

00:20:07.000 of that documentary is going to be what is an Englishman? Because Constantine, who's not an Englishman,

00:20:11.660 he knows what an Englishman is. This British columnist and newspaper magazine editor,

00:20:18.000 he doesn't seem to know.

00:20:20.660 This is something that no one wants to talk about, especially in these kind of places. But I,

00:20:25.680 as an immigrant, can say it. At what percentage of the native population does England cease to be

00:20:32.080 England? Is it 50 percent? Is it 40 percent? Is it 10 percent? When there are no English people left, 0.99

00:20:37.520 is it still England?

00:20:38.180 That's right. I mean, do we regard Rishi Sunak as English, for example?

00:20:42.220 I've always said, this is a very unpopular thing, that I'm not English, I will never be English.

00:20:47.140 I don't think Rishi Sunak is English. We're both British, but we're not English.

00:20:50.640 No, you're from, you weren't born here, you were an immigrant. 1.00

00:20:53.480 No, but my son was born here. I don't think my son is English.

00:20:56.640 Right.

00:20:57.180 He's born to a Russian and Ukrainian immigrant.

00:20:59.180 I would say that Rishi Sunak is as English as Tizer and Y-France, right? He is absolutely English. He was born and bred here.

00:21:07.880 And I wouldn't say that the colour of his skin makes him any less.

00:21:11.140 He's a brown Hindu. How is he English? 1.00

00:21:12.820 Because he's born and bred here.

00:21:14.160 So, by being born here, you become English, in your opinion?

00:21:18.160 Yeah.

00:21:19.220 English, because there's a difference, right?

00:21:21.060 I don't think English is national.

00:21:22.820 Look, to take...

00:21:23.740 If your children had been born in Japan, would they be Japanese?

00:21:27.160 If they were born there? Look, you get white Caribbean people, for example. 0.98

00:21:31.420 Hold on, just the Japanese example. Would they be Japanese? 0.98

00:21:35.220 If they were born there and lived their life there, then yeah.

00:21:37.240 Yeah. It depends if you think English has got an ethnic undertone.

00:21:41.560 Of course it does.

00:21:42.560 Well, I disagree.

00:21:44.060 I disagree. What makes you think that English has anything to do with being English?

00:21:51.700 You can tell he's on the ropes because he wants to get off the Japanese example, 1.00

00:21:55.580 and Constantine just hits him on it.

00:21:57.860 He says, hold on. You're telling me your kids, white as the freshly driven snow,

00:22:02.520 are born in Japan? They're just Japanese because they were born in Tokyo? 1.00

00:22:07.240 Yes, I think so. I think they'd be perfectly Japanese.

00:22:09.760 They're basically a reincarnation of Emperor Hirohito.

00:22:14.200 Well, you know who doesn't think that? The Japanese. They don't think that.

00:22:18.280 You're born in Nigeria. Let's say your kids are born in Nigeria. 0.97

00:22:23.120 You, Mr. British man. You, Mr. Fraser Nelson.

00:22:26.120 Your kids are born in Nigeria. That means your kids are Nigerian?

00:22:30.280 Oh, absolutely. Of course. I'm going to name them all Malcolm X.

00:22:34.320 Well, that's not even a Nigerian name. But no, no one would think that your kids are Nigerian.

00:22:38.740 But this shows you one of the big political debates that is finally coming to the fore,

00:22:44.840 which is, how does one deal with racial problems, especially in the West,

00:22:50.440 which has had mass migration and therefore an exacerbation of racial problems?

00:22:53.620 How do you deal with the strife that comes throughout all of history,

00:22:59.500 Aristotle wrote about it, between different groups of peoples living together?

00:23:03.400 Which is inevitable. I'm not saying it's insurmountable, but it is inevitable.

00:23:06.220 It does happen. This has been an observation since classical antiquity.

00:23:09.540 How do you deal with it? And the liberal response is, we deny that race exists.

00:23:14.360 You know who doesn't deny that race exists? Everybody else. In fact, do you know who doesn't

00:23:20.760 deny that race exists? Even the liberals today, which is how we got wokeism and leftism and racial 0.68

00:23:26.560 identity politics. There is an English identity. The English, the word comes from the angles who are a

00:23:35.780 people. It's not just an idea floating in outer space. And it benefits precisely no one to pretend

00:23:44.100 that there's no such thing as racial difference. Of course there is. And so if you want to construct 0.63

00:23:49.860 a society that is harmonious, that protects the legitimate rights of everyone, you have to deal

00:23:54.560 with that reality. But the West, Europe especially, has just had its head in the sand on this for so

00:24:02.220 long. And to the point that British politicians will deny the existence of and legally protect

00:24:09.120 Muslim Pakistani grooming gangs that are raping British children because they're so afraid of 0.99

00:24:17.060 being called racist. They would rather sacrifice their daughters to Pakistani gangs than risk being 1.00

00:24:22.840 called racist. That is a horrifying position, a deeply immoral position, and one that is not going 0.85

00:24:32.560 to be sustainable in the long term. Just ask the voters. So then the Europeans and the British can

00:24:38.540 just suppress the will of the voters when it comes to Brexit, when it comes to anti-mass migration

00:24:44.420 political candidates throughout the European continent and throughout the UK. Or they can grapple

00:24:50.300 with the issue. And you can, it is going to be like pulling teeth to get them to grapple with that

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00:26:48.360 Yeah. Because gay means happy and delightful. No, it means lame and retarded. And that's what that was. 1.00

00:26:57.300 Watch full episode now on the Michael Knowles YouTube channel or subscribe for the uncensored

00:27:12.040 ad-free version exclusively on Daily Wire Plus. Speaking of racial politics, Tom Hanks just took

00:27:19.600 to Saturday Night Live for a hilarious, observant, profound sketch that none of us has ever seen.

00:27:27.300 seen before, in which he accuses right-wingers of being racists.

00:27:34.040 Thank you. Hey, speaking of church, can I say something? If more folks went to church,

00:27:39.840 we wouldn't be in this mess we're in now. You know what? I agree with you, Doug. I'd like to

00:27:44.420 shake your hand, sir. Here we go. Oh, no, no. Oh, no, no. It's just a handshake. Yeah, it's just a handshake.

00:27:50.540 Yeah, all right. You're welcome in Black Jeopardy anytime. Oh, well, all right. Well, 0.67

00:27:53.980 thank you, my brother. Now, maybe I'll start a show for you to come on, and we'll call it

00:27:59.960 Lot Jeopardy. No. We don't need it. We don't need it.

00:28:03.820 Ah, do you get it? The joke is that the Trump supporter is racist. He doesn't like Black people. 0.99

00:28:14.640 You get it? Except, this is the big problem with that joke. President Trump assembled the largest 0.99

00:28:23.640 coalition of Black voters and Hispanic voters, and just kind of racially diverse voters generally,

00:28:29.360 that any Republican has assembled in decades, certainly in my lifetime.

00:28:36.020 So that's the problem with the joke. It's not reflecting reality, and it's just so tired.

00:28:44.860 The thing I really like about this sketch is it shows that Hollywood has learned nothing. I know

00:28:50.200 that SNL is taped in New York, but the broader entertainment industry has learned absolutely

00:28:54.240 nothing. They think, wow, we just got our clocks cleaned. We lost an historic proportion

00:28:59.260 of Black voters, Black male voters that we relied on, and Hispanic voters. We thought we could run

00:29:04.680 really hard on the immigration issue, but it turns out almost half of Hispanics like Trump.

00:29:08.720 We even lost a lot of young women, young women under 30. Yikes. All right, let's just double down on

00:29:16.160 exactly what we were doing. Republicans are racists. Actually, first, we're going to make fun of 0.99

00:29:20.340 Republicans being religious. We're going to make fun of Christians. That'll work. And then we're going to 0.97

00:29:26.800 call our opponents racists, because apparently the majority of Americans, including a lot of Black 0.99

00:29:33.800 and Hispanic people, are racists. Yeah, that's a ticket. And we'll say that they're stupid, too. 1.00

00:29:39.240 That'll work. Okay, great, guys. Keep it up, man. Please keep it up. Let's blast those SNL sketches 1.00

00:29:45.760 all over the country. Now, speaking of our coalitions, speaking of the broader American

00:29:52.680 coalition, American citizenship, beautiful piece in the New York Times, just came out yesterday,

00:30:00.540 I think it was. No, two or three days ago. Trump might have a case on birthright citizenship.

00:30:09.660 Ooh, okay, here we go. Saturday Night Live refuses to be introspective, refuses to learn any lessons

00:30:14.260 from the election. But at least the New York Times editors, running a piece by Randy Barnett and Elon

00:30:20.960 Wurman. Mr. Barnett is a law professor at Georgetown. Wurman is a professor at University of Minnesota.

00:30:29.620 Both conservatives run this really good essay. You know that Trump, he might actually have a case,

00:30:34.820 because Trump ran on changing the interpretation of the 14th Amendment to stop the phenomenon of anchor

00:30:42.100 babies, illegal aliens who cross the border with the help of the cartels, and then immediately have 0.85

00:30:46.480 a kid here. And because of our current interpretation of the 14th Amendment, the kid

00:30:52.340 immediately becomes an American citizen. And for years and years, the left said Trump has no argument

00:30:58.100 here. Even the squish Republicans said Trump has no argument. Birthright citizenship is a sacred aspect

00:31:03.680 of our constitution. And I don't care if you're a face-tattooed gangster from MS-13 or

00:31:09.720 Trendy Aragua. If you spit out a kid the minute you get to America, that child is as American as 0.99

00:31:14.660 apple pie, entitled to all the rights of any American citizen. And people who have even a

00:31:21.260 passing familiarity with constitutional law in American history, they said, well, actually not so

00:31:25.860 fast. It's not totally clear that those kids really are entitled to American citizenship right away.

00:31:33.840 Just a little bit. I'll just read a few lines from the article. I encourage you to read the whole

00:31:38.340 thing. What this falls down to is four words in the 14th Amendment. Subject to the jurisdiction.

00:31:47.900 As it says, people born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,

00:31:54.880 or citizens. Well, what does that mean? As Barnett and Worman write, it is widely agreed that subject to

00:32:01.720 the jurisdiction excluded the children of diplomats, Native Americans subject and with allegiance to

00:32:08.340 tribal authority, though this changed with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, and members of

00:32:12.900 invading armies. So right off the bat from the passage of the ratification of the 14th Amendment,

00:32:20.200 right off the bat, children of diplomats who were born in the United States did not immediately become

00:32:23.980 U.S. citizens. Children of Native Americans who were born within the borders of the United States

00:32:27.720 did not immediately become U.S. citizens. Invading armies that happened to be in Louisiana or

00:32:33.140 something, and one of them gave birth, they would not immediately become citizens of the United States.

00:32:37.400 So there are exclusions to this notion of birthright citizenship. Furthermore, the very notion of

00:32:43.260 birthright citizenship comes from the common law. We inherit that from merry old England.

00:32:46.700 And the notion of use solely. There's use sanguinis, which is the right of blood, and use solely,

00:32:56.180 the notion that the right of the soil, that if you're born on certain soil, you're subject

00:33:00.820 to the responsibilities of citizens, but you all are subjects rather of the king of England in this

00:33:07.440 case, but you're also entitled to certain benefits. But they go on, they say, the common law principle

00:33:13.120 of use solely also excluded these groups. So even that common law principle that we get birthright

00:33:19.660 citizenship from included certain exceptions. And that's the question here. Do the kids of illegal 0.98

00:33:26.260 aliens count among the exceptions? Now, they go further. They say, you know, our present interpretation

00:33:33.160 of the 14th Amendment, which comes from the U.S. versus Wong Kim Ark, it's a Supreme Court case from 1898,

00:33:39.340 says it cannot explain the status of children born to foreigners on foreign public vessels in U.S.

00:33:46.160 waters who were not considered citizens. They don't get birthright citizenship. According to the

00:33:50.400 allegiance for protection theory articulated in the Bates opinion, none of the excluded groups was

00:33:55.780 subject to the jurisdiction of the United States because none of the members of these groups had

00:33:59.840 entered into the social compact with the people of the United States, and none gave allegiance to the

00:34:03.940 United States. So from the Bates opinion, you have this expression, this reinterpretation of the

00:34:11.400 right of the soil and a birthright citizenship from the English context to the American context. The

00:34:15.640 English context is, okay, you're born within the confines of merry old England. Okay, that's fine. You're a

00:34:21.060 subject of the king. So you pledge your allegiance to the king of England, and as a result, you get certain

00:34:25.520 benefits. Here, we don't have a king. So what are you pledging allegiance to? You're pledging

00:34:31.660 allegiance, I guess, to the people of the United States. You're pledging allegiance to the system of

00:34:35.340 laws in the United States, and you get allegiance. You get protection for allegiance. Okay. Well, the

00:34:41.440 question is, in the American context of, you know, joining the social compact or whatever, have these

00:34:47.720 people, the children of illegal aliens, people who their very first action coming into the U.S. is to 0.99

00:34:53.640 break our basic laws, have they really entered into the social compact? Have they really pledged

00:34:58.780 allegiance to the laws and the people of the United States? I don't think so. I don't think so. And so

00:35:03.840 this is an open question. And even with the Supreme Court precedent in 1898, as Barnett and Worman point

00:35:09.620 out, the Supreme Court has never ruled squarely on this question of illegal aliens. Now, if you zoom

00:35:15.380 out a little bit, because I don't want to get too lost in the details here, the 14th Amendment

00:35:19.700 obviously was not ratified to protect the birthright citizenship of the kids of illegal aliens.

00:35:24.380 The purpose of the 14th Amendment, as it was commonly understood, public meaning at the time

00:35:29.780 of ratification, was to bring black people into the American political project. That's what it was

00:35:34.000 about. Freed slaves can be citizens. That is the beginning and the end of the 14th Amendment.

00:35:40.960 So the question is, okay, what about this particular example that's been abused, that's created a major

00:35:44.720 social problem? What is it? The Supreme Court's going to have to rule on this. But there's a broader

00:35:50.720 political point, which is common sense tells us, obviously, these kids should not be entitled to

00:35:58.340 birthright citizenship. This is creating a major moral hazard, a huge perverse incentive for illegal

00:36:05.180 immigration that's threatening the very social fabric of the country, that's threatening the rule 1.00

00:36:10.480 of law, threatening the whole project. Obviously, common sense tells you this is not what the 14th

00:36:16.300 Amendment is about. If your ideology, this is just a broader 50,000-foot view, if your ideology

00:36:24.440 demands that you discard common sense, there's a problem with your ideology. What the liberals will

00:36:32.280 tell us, what the liberal, utopian, pie-in-the-sky theorists whose views are totally disconnected from

00:36:38.760 human nature, what they want to tell you is that when there is a conflict between your ideology

00:36:42.880 and human nature and common sense, choose the ideology. Forget about the common sense.

00:36:49.220 All the way down to a baby's not a baby and a man can become a woman. But I think we all know

00:36:54.460 when there is a conflict between your ideology and common sense, something's going a little wrong with

00:37:02.280 the ideology because human nature doesn't change. Common sense doesn't really change. So you got to

00:37:07.280 tweak the ideology, okay? And that is exactly what the Supreme Court should do. Now, if you're with us

00:37:12.600 for election night or the inauguration, you already know, Daily Wire doesn't just show up. We take over,

00:37:17.380 baby. And now we're headed back to D.C. to do just that at CPAC. Join me along with Ben Shapiro,

00:37:23.680 Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boring, all on stage live Thursday night, February 20th.

00:37:28.420 No scripted talking points, no corporate-approved narratives, just real conversations that matter.

00:37:32.940 streaming live on Daily Wire Plus. We are taking your questions. Do not just watch CPAC.

00:37:38.240 Be a part of it. Live Thursday night, February 20th, Daily Wire Plus. My favorite comment on Friday

00:37:44.020 is from Jush Mumma, who says, these people who are not Christian try to tell us what Christians

00:37:51.280 act like. Yes, I know there's actually a meme about this, which is some smug lib saying, you know,

00:37:57.220 listen, I don't believe your backwards, stupid, ridiculous views, but if I try to articulate them, 1.00

00:38:05.600 maybe I can trick you into doing what I want. So you hear this all the time. You know, these people 1.00

00:38:10.500 who really have no familiarity with the Christian tradition, theological, political, philosophical,

00:38:19.460 or anything in between, they say, you know, that J.D. Vance, he has no idea what he's talking about

00:38:23.520 when he brings up the Ordo Amoris, the hierarchy of loves, the order of charity. This is completely

00:38:27.920 ridiculous. You know, because actually, I one time heard someone talking about the Bible. No, 0.95

00:38:34.540 I've never read it myself, but I heard someone talking about it, and I was told that Christianity

00:38:38.760 just says you should vaguely be nice. So like that J.D., it's like, man, how about, have like a tiny

00:38:45.320 little bit of humility? You have no clue. When your intellectual better, J.D. Vance, is lecturing

00:38:54.620 on scholastic and really ancient philosophy in Latin, like maybe take a beat, you know, consider

00:39:03.580 that maybe he knows more about what he's talking about than you do and entertain those ideas, you

00:39:08.660 know, contemplate them, consider them and see if they do anything. No, no, no. That's not what

00:39:13.340 Christianity. Forget about Thomas Aquinas. I one time listened to a podcast. So let me tell you about

00:39:20.360 Christian theology and philosophy. Yeah, okay. All right, fine. Speaking of President Trump flexing his

00:39:29.300 muscles, I am very pleased to report to everyone that President Trump is posting Napoleon quotes.

00:39:38.020 I really like this. Many have compared President Trump to Caesar, to Cyrus, to many great strong

00:39:46.680 leaders throughout history. But now President Trump himself is drawing a connection between his

00:39:53.580 administration and Emperor Napoleon. And how did he do this? He did this with a quote that is attributed

00:40:01.660 to Napoleon. He who saves his country does not violate any law. Now, I'm especially happy because

00:40:09.980 this is a principle that I described years ago on this show. And I actually caught a lot of flack for it

00:40:15.740 because I pointed out that in the extreme, when the whole of the law is threatened, when the whole of

00:40:21.200 the polity is threatened, then the political rulers are not just tolerated to exceed the technical

00:40:30.280 boundaries of the law. But actually, they must exceed the technical boundaries of the law to preserve the

00:40:36.120 whole law. I articulated this very principle, and I caught a bunch of flack from squishes. But it's totally 1.00

00:40:41.900 right. It was right when Napoleon pointed it out. It was right when earlier political thinkers pointed it out.

00:40:48.260 And it's right when Trump points it out right now. Now, I say the quote is attributed to Napoleon because we

00:40:53.880 don't have a direct citation from Napoleon's writings. I think it comes from a collection put together by

00:40:59.820 Honoré de Balzac, not to be confused with big balls from Elon's Doge, but Balzac. And anyway,

00:41:08.020 it seems like the sort of thing that Napoleon would say, there's decent provenance to it. And as Gladden

00:41:14.240 Papin, a wonderful conservative writer and intellectual and even politician now, has pointed out, this comes

00:41:22.680 from antiquity. Salus rei publique suprema lex. The good or the health or the welfare of the people

00:41:32.460 should be the supreme law. And I love how ancient this political wisdom is because the libs are losing

00:41:42.360 their minds. I think we have some headline here. Oh yeah, here it is. Trump suggests he's above the law

00:41:47.780 with ominous Napoleon quote. This is from the independent UK, but a lot of establishment

00:41:53.900 media quotes about that. But hold on, that's not really what he's suggesting. He's just describing

00:41:58.880 what the law is. He's not saying he's above the law. He's describing what the law is in words

00:42:04.400 attributed to Napoleon, but which go back to Cicero on the laws. That phrase, salus rei publique

00:42:12.700 suprema lex, go to the people should be the supreme law, is actually quoted from Cicero by John Locke

00:42:20.640 as an epigraph in the second treatise of government, as the basic rule of government. In other words,

00:42:28.920 what Trump is posting here comes from an insight that our founding fathers and framers would have

00:42:37.020 been well aware of. Cicero and John Locke, pretty important figures in the American founding. Once

00:42:44.040 again, once again, and there are many such cases, President Trump is articulating truths that come

00:42:52.480 from the very heart of the American political tradition. And the modern libs, who until very

00:42:57.640 recently ran our political order, they're arguing that it is a betrayal of the American political

00:43:04.040 tradition. Because it's a betrayal of the things that they believe. Because what the liberal elites,

00:43:10.880 who until very recently have been running our country, what they have been doing is in itself

00:43:16.480 a betrayal of the American political tradition and the broader Western political tradition.

00:43:20.400 That's what this is about. Once again, Trump exposing his opponents with a bunch of egg on their face.

00:43:28.400 Once again, Trump showing that all of the things that we're told are crazy and kooky and

00:43:33.800 a threat to our constitutional republic that he is proposing actually have far sturdier grounding

00:43:40.560 in the American and more broadly Western tradition than anything that these modern libs are suggesting.

00:43:45.640 I love it. And I love the comparison of Trump to Napoleon. Because Trump in many ways is our Napoleon.

00:43:53.740 In as much as Trump, like Napoleon, is simultaneously a child of the revolution and the undoing of the

00:44:03.580 revolution. That's the comparison. Trump is a product of the modern liberal revolution. The way he behaves,

00:44:12.880 all the business mogul stuff, the playboy lifestyle, the brash big gold letters. He's not some stodgy,

00:44:20.580 stuffy figure wearing a tweed suit with his glass of port talking about the good old days or the middle

00:44:27.920 ages or anything. He's not that guy. He is a pop culture figure. He is a product of the revolution

00:44:35.760 and he's also the undoing of the revolution because he rides this wave of the revolution into power like

00:44:42.520 Napoleon. And then he becomes the enemy of all of these excesses. In some ways, he's really the

00:44:50.360 restorer of tradition. Beautiful comparison. All the more beautiful when Trump himself is making it,

00:44:58.380 when it's a self-conscious comparison. Now, speaking of Trump initiatives,

00:45:02.980 Trump's doge is now poking around in the IRS. Libs are furious about this.

00:45:09.440 ABC News, Elon Musk's doge asks for access to IRS taxpayer data, sources say. If granted,

00:45:19.440 doge would have personal financial details on millions of Americans. Here's what doge's

00:45:24.960 potential access to IRS databases means for you. I'll tell you, too long didn't read. I'll tell you

00:45:30.340 what it actually means for you. It means that your government might become more efficient. It means

00:45:34.380 that your government might stop wasting money or not even just wasting money, but actually using

00:45:40.460 money for malicious purposes to undermine your interests. As we saw in the case of USAID. It's

00:45:46.400 not just that these feckless bureaucrats are wasting your hard-earned taxpayer dollars. No, no, no. It's 1.00

00:45:52.680 much worse than that. They are not feckless. They're actually somewhat clever. And they're taking your

00:45:59.960 taxpayer dollars and laundering them through a system of left-wing NGOs to directly undermine

00:46:06.420 your interests. In one case, I'll give you just one example. USAID taking money, paying the Tide

00:46:11.440 Center, a left-wing organization. Tide Center paying off BLM. BLM then going out with your taxpayer

00:46:17.380 dollars and burning down your neighborhoods and maybe killing you and robbing the stores in your 0.99

00:46:21.820 neighborhood and extorting corporations to further advance radical leftism that you hate, 0.98

00:46:26.940 that undermines your interests. That's what we're talking about here. So that's what's going to

00:46:31.620 happen. But what about, let's take on the real worry head on. The worry is that Elon Musk and Doge

00:46:38.200 are going to be kicking around taxpayer files. They're going to get access to your financial information.

00:46:43.380 Just a reminder, and Elon Musk reminded people of this on X, Elon owned PayPal. Okay, the guy who's in

00:46:51.820 charge of Doge owned PayPal. In 2023, more than 70% of American adults used PayPal at some point.

00:47:04.780 If Elon wanted your financial information, he would have it. First of all, it is perfectly legitimate

00:47:12.460 for the president of the United States, the head of the executive branch,

00:47:15.960 to deputize people, to go in and clean up the executive branch. That is completely legitimate.

00:47:22.520 There is nothing really unusual about that at all. But furthermore, if the guy he deputizes to do it

00:47:29.180 already has or has had access to the financial information of the vast majority of Americans,

00:47:35.520 this is a non-troversy. Okay, what the establishment media, what the liberals broadly are concerned about

00:47:41.520 is not that Elon's going to get access to your social security number or something,

00:47:45.600 or he's going to figure out how much you paid in taxes. What they're worried about is that he's

00:47:49.440 going to take away their power from them, which is exactly why we're all cheering it on.

00:47:55.620 Okay, it is Tee Hee Hee Tuesday. The producers have assembled a collection of bits from a comedian,

00:48:05.580 Christina Mariani. I don't know anything about her, though I do love the idea of an old drink,

00:48:11.340 a drink from about 100, 150 years ago called Van Mariani, which was wine mixed with cocaine.

00:48:16.240 So I don't know if she's anything like that. I'm sure she's great. The rest of the show continues now.

00:48:20.780 You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S,

00:48:23.740 at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:48:41.340 Thank you.

00:48:42.780 Thank you.

00:48:44.160 Thank you.

00:48:54.800 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - February 18, 2025

Ep. 1675 - JD Vance Threatens Europe for Censoring Christians

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