Ep. 1690 - Trump Deports Pro-Palestine Columbia Student
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Summary
At a time of tectonic political shifts, what is the correct conservative American take on what do we believe? On this episode of The Michael Knowles Show, Michael talks about the pro-Israel and pro-Palestine protests that took place on the Columbia University campus last year.
Transcript
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On Saturday night, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil,
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a former Columbia graduate student who led pro-Palestine demonstrations on campus last year.
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Yesterday, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from deporting Khalil
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until a meeting on Wednesday. Leftists are arguing that Mahmoud should stay because they
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hate Israel and support Palestine. Some on the right are arguing that Mahmoud should stay
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because they think his protests are protected free speech, regardless of what they think about
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Israel or Palestine. I, for one, think Mahmoud should be deported, not because I care all that
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much about the Israel-Palestine conflict, but because he's a Columbia graduate student and all
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Columbia graduate students should be deported, even if they're American citizens. At a time of
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tectonic political shifts, what is the correct conservative American take?
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What do we believe? I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. You want to talk about ideological confusion. There is a funding bill
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that is before Congress right now that President Trump is in support of. You got a member of
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Congress and Thomas Massey says he's going to vote no on the bill. And you got President Trump
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comparing Massey, who is arguably the most right-wing member of Congress, to Liz Cheney and saying that
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he's going to primary him. So which side are we on? What do we believe? What are we doing? I know one
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Before we move on from this Columbia grad student or former Columbia grad student, I should say,
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what do you think? I bet there are many of you in the audience who are so certain about your
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political views. Whenever you see a news story, you say, I immediately know this side is right,
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this side is wrong. These people are going to be on this side, those people are going to be on that
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side. But this one is dividing people, even on the right. You have some who are saying, look, this guy,
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he supports a terrorist group. He is not an American citizen. Get him out of here. Who cares? Even some
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people say, I really support Israel. Israel is one of my most important issues. And this guy hates
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Israel, so deport him for that reason. But there are going to be some people who say, look, well,
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there are going to be some people on the right who say, I don't like Israel. And so I actually like
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this guy that he's pro-Palestine. He should stay here. There can be some people who say, even though
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I'm the most ardent pro-Israel supporter in the whole world, I think this man has a right to free speech
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and he can lead protests, even if they're disruptive, even if they threaten students,
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even if they cause all sorts of problems. I'm a little bit simpler about it, I guess.
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I try not to get too lost in the ideology of constantly talking about rights and in the
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ideology of liberalism and in the ideology of free speech and academic freedom and this-ism and that-ism.
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I look at it, I say, okay, is this guy, he's a citizen or he's not a citizen?
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Oh, he's not a citizen. Okay. He's not even a student anymore. He graduated in December. Okay.
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So he's not a citizen, which means he has no right to be here in the United States.
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I look at the protests that he was involved in. I don't know. I mean, the Israel-Palestine conflict,
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I guess, is complex, but I don't know. You're supporting the side that's run by Hamas. That's
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a little sus to me. And those protests were quite nasty to Jewish students, in particular at Columbia.
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And I don't really care all that much about the Israel-Palestine conflict. And I do wish
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that we in America were as muscular at tackling anti-Christian discrimination as we are at tackling
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anti-Jewish discrimination, anti-Muslim discrimination, anti-this-ism, anti-that-ism.
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But Christianity is the one religion that we are allowed to and actually encouraged to
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mock in public and denigrate and push to the side. So all of those things considered,
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yeah, yeah, sure. But my chief question for immigration is,
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what benefit are these people to America? In some cases, in rare cases, we take in refugees
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out of the goodness of our heart because it's gracious and charitable, and we were strangers
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in the land of Egypt. That's a relatively small aspect of what we're talking about here. When it
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comes to immigration, the primary question, at least to my mind, is, do these people benefit
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America? In fact, that's how our immigration laws are written. That's how basically all immigration
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laws everywhere in the world are written. Does this person benefit the country? Do they do a job,
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for instance, that people in the country can't do? Do they offer some special benefit? If they do,
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let them in, maybe. And if they don't, don't let them in. So I look at this guy, I say, okay,
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his political ideology is pretty whack, and he doesn't seem to be contributing all that much
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to the country. And he's a Columbia graduate student, which means his views are almost certainly
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horrible, and he's very unlikely to support America. So I don't know, to me, it's a little
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bit more of a practical prudential question. I'm not going to lose sleep over Mahmoud Khalil being
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deported after leading a bunch of his fellow Columbia grad students, one of the most left
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wing of the Ivy League schools, which are already left wing. I'm not going to lose sleep over that.
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Now, speaking of ideological conflict and immigration, for that matter, a clip has gone
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viral from Jubilee's Surrounded show. This is the show that I was on a month ago. It's the show where
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one person surrounded by 20 or 25 people who disagree with him, and he's got to just debate
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them successfully. So it was me versus 20 or 25 LGBT LMNOP activists. That was an hour and 40
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minutes. You can go watch it over at the Jubilee channel. This week's episode was with a left-wing
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political commentator named Sam Sater. And Sam Sater showed up, and he was surrounded by, I guess,
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20 or 25 conservatives. They were debating all sorts of questions, one of which was religious
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fundamentalism. We'll get to that in a moment. The other of which was immigration. And so he's
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sitting down next to this right-wing journalist, Sarah Stock, and they're just getting down to brass
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tacks on immigration. And Sam Sater cannot believe the things that she is saying. Take a listen.
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What's the problem with xenophobic nationalism? Don't you think that's better for Americans in
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general? To be xenophobic, nationalism is better? We should have a coherent culture. Everyone should
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be a part of the same culture. We should have assimilation. Do you get to choose what the
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culture is? We already have a dominant culture based on European and Christian values and identity.
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That is the dominant culture. It's rooted in European identity.
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White, so your argument is that... That has been the dominant culture.
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Just to be clear. And we're not letting people assimilate to that. We're saying you should keep
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your culture, and this is why our culture is so divided. Your argument is that Trump is good for
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those who want a dominant white European culture. I mean, that is what America is. It's rooted in
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European identity and Christian values. That's what it has been. Would you really disagree with that?
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What is it then, if that's not the identity of America?
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For the majority of time, America's been a country. You don't think that's been the identity?
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Well, actually, no. I think actually the identity of America has been, you know...
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Okay, let's put a pause right here before he gets into what it means. I love how he's stalling.
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He doesn't know how to respond to her. Well, no, actually, but actually,
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actually, what's her argument? She's using a provocative slogan, no doubt.
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Xenophobic nationalism. This is a scare phrase used by the left, and so she is
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provocatively throwing that phrase back at the left. But what's she saying?
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Xenophobic, meaning preferring one's own countrymen to foreigners, and nationalism,
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meaning preferring the nation to a kind of borderless liberal globalism.
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Well, that's what most American voters voted for in November. Not exactly in those terms,
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not in such sensationalist rhetoric, but that is what people voted for.
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And then Sam Sater says, well, hold on. You're telling me you think there's a dominant culture
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in America? She says, of course there's a dominant culture. There's a dominant culture
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in any polity. Of course there is. Culture is defined by something, and whatever it is defined
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by is the dominant aspect of the culture. Okay, well, you're telling me that America traditionally
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has been defined by European culture and Christianity? She says, yes. But could you disagree
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with that? Would anybody seriously disagree with that? In 1960, she says, it has been, at least until
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very recently. In 1960, 93% of Americans were Christian. In 1960, just under 90% of Americans
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were white, so descended from Europeans. America, really, whatever view you take of the Mayflower,
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great cigar brand, and the American founding, the Revolutionary War, and the 19th century up
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through the 20th century, can you really argue it didn't come from European values, European institutions?
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We were a British colony. What is your argument? The American Revolution was influenced by the European
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Enlightenment, for better and worse. The founding of America at Plymouth Colony was a separatist
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movement from England. America doesn't just exist in outer space or something like that. It's not
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just floating through the ether. It comes from historical movements developed by real people
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from real places. You might say, well, that's terrible. I hate Europe. Or you might say,
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that's terrible. I hate Christianity. I wish America weren't like that. You can make that argument.
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The left makes that argument all day long. But if you're this guy, if you're the liberal guy on this,
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are you really going to be confused by the idea that America comes from Europe and that the
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religion that has dominated in America has been Christianity? I mean, John Adams says
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the principles on which the revolution was won were the principles of Christianity.
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John Jay goes further. He says, thank God that we all descend from the same stock and that we all have
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the same religion and we all believe basically the same stuff. And you can find similar writings
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threat many, many other founding fathers and framers of our constitution. And you can just
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look at the demographics, religious, ethnic, national, all the rest. We didn't have mass
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migration of the sort that we're looking at today until the mid-1960s. So things start to change.
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But even still, most Americans are at least vaguely Christian. And I guess the majority of Americans
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are still white. That's 60%. So it's obviously much lower than you. So I don't know. Regardless of
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whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, how could this liberal guy be confused by
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that? He's really that ignorant of not just what his opponents believe, but of American history?
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There's so much more to say. First, though, go to puretalk.com slash Knowles. If you're with
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Jubilee podcast surrounded Lib Sam Sater versus conservative Sarah Stock. Keep going.
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The identity of America has been, for better or for worse, a melting pot in that regard.
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Yeah, maybe since the 1960s. Even then, even we had this idea of a melting pot literally means
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assimilation too. It means melting. It means you're assimilating to the dominant culture. Is that not
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what melting means? Okay, so he says, no, no, it's a melting pot. And she says, yeah, yeah,
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that's how we view it since the 1960s. It goes back a little earlier. The term melting pot comes
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from a play by a playwright named Israel Zangville in 1908. And curiously, Teddy Roosevelt went to see
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this play and loved it so much. He said, Mr. Zangville, this is a great play. I love this play.
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And the notion of America being this melting together of different identities goes back
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earlier than 1908. So it had been building for some time. But then she hits the real point there,
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which is, well, hold on. A melting pot means assimilation. A melting pot is not a salad bowl,
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for instance. It's not that you keep your distinct identities. The tomatoes over here and the cucumbers
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over here and the lettuce is over here. The melting pot means you all melt together.
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And Zangville, who wrote the play, The Melting Pot, actually explained this five years after it was
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first produced. He said, the process of American amalgamation is not assimilation or simple surrender
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to the dominant type, as is popularly supposed, but an all-around give and take by which the final
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type may be enriched or impoverished. So he's saying, it's not that you totally give up your
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identity. When the Italians came here, for instance, they didn't totally give up their identity. When
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the Irish came here, they didn't totally give up their identity, but they largely did. To the point
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that, just use the Italians, partially my people as an example, you can no longer predict an Italian
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American's political views and behaviors based on their ethnicity. You get Nancy Pelosi on the left,
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you get Antonin Scalia on the right. You get Andrew Cuomo on the left, you get Michael Knowles,
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who that's the English name from my father's side, but you know, I got a lot of Italians on the other
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side, on the right. You can't tell, the Italians have assimilated and they've added to American
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culture. You know, mob movies are a big part of our popular entertainment. People really love pizza,
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you know, certain Italian expressions have gained traction, but they've also surrendered a lot of
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of Italian stuff. So what Sarah Stock is saying here, the point she's making is, is almost entirely
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correct. She says, yeah, it's a, even look, we're not just a melting pot. Like we come from a real
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culture, but even if we were a melting pot, that means that you do at least largely give up your
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identity. You contribute a little bit, you give up your identity to assimilate to this new kind of
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identity, which is the American identity. And then they conclude on the, on the biggest head
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scratcher. And now instead we're saying there's something wrong with xenophobia.
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No, I mean, look, I got to be honest with you. Like I, you and I have a fundamental disagreement.
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We will never see eye to eye on this. It's a choice. And people, I think what you're expressing
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though is really what the, the, the Trump, uh, uh, movement at its heart is about. And I think
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that's problematic. I mean, I disagree. I don't think Trump's like anywhere close to being a
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Christian nationalist. That's ridiculous. Like Trump's basically a Democrat from like 15 years
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ago. I love this point. And I think president Trump would agree with that. I think a lot of
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Trump voters would agree with that. It's a, yeah, he's like waving the rainbow flag. You know, Trump
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is, he doesn't care that much about, you know, hard right-wing traditionalist social conservatism.
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That's, that's how he got people like Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard and Joe Rogan
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and most voters to vote with him is he's, he's the center. Trump is the center. Trump
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is the mainstream. It's the left that is extreme now, but Trump is, you know, he's not Sam
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Sater saying, well, you know, this kind of extreme right-wing rhetoric, that's why people
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vote for Trump. She goes, what are you talking about? He says, that's, I just disagree with
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you. I got to be honest with you. Whenever someone says, I got to be honest with you as
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a preface to their statement, what they are admitting is that they are regularly not honest
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with you. They previously have been dishonest with you. So he says that he says, well, I got
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to be honest with you. I just don't agree that America, what that America has a religion.
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You don't agree. You don't agree. We have in God, we trust in our national anthem and on our money.
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We were founded by people who called themselves pilgrims. Okay. We, the founding fathers and the
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framers wrote extensively about the importance of Christianity to their country. And you're,
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you're telling me we'd all, we don't have a religion. We don't have a founding stock of
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people. No, it's not England. It's not the Dutch. It's not, no, no, it's not. It's Martians. I don't
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know what it is. It's no, it has not, there's no religion. There's no founding stock. There's no
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traditions. There are, there's no common morality. There's really no geography. So what is America?
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Matt Walsh asked this question yesterday. It's probably going to be his next movie. That's going
00:19:32.740
to complete the trilogy. What is America? But the answer from the libs on the left and the right is,
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well, America's an idea, merely an idea floating in outer space in the ether. Except when they say
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that, they say America's an idea. You say, okay, what's the idea? At least the people who say that
00:19:52.200
on the right, well, they'll say, well, it's the idea of individual liberty and it's the idea of free
00:19:56.760
association. And they'll give you some answer from late 20th century libertarian readings of the
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American founding. And it might be right. It might be wrong, but at least they'll give you an answer.
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You ask the left, what's the idea of America? They won't give you an answer because the left-wing
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liberal project is about surpassing all limits. It's about maximizing individual autonomy.
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It's about breaking down anything that might circumscribe choice. So if you say, well, what's
00:20:26.340
the idea? America is just an idea. Okay. What's the idea of America? They can't tell you because to say
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America is this idea is simultaneously to say that America is not that idea, which contradicts this
00:20:37.600
idea. And they can't do that. It's America's got to be everything to everyone for all times.
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America, the idea would have to contradict Aristotle's law of non-contradiction because
00:20:49.120
it would have to be, it would have to include every idea. So to the left, America is not even
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just an idea. America is an idea of an idea. It is so radically abstract that it's nothing. And in
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practice, when the left governs, America is nothing. It has no border. It has no tradition.
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It has no common language. It's nothing. It's just, it's a vacuum. Now, you know, nature abhors a
00:21:17.060
vacuum and will fill it up. I suggest you fill up the air in your home with the smells and bells
00:21:22.120
candle from the candle club. Go to the candle club.com slash Michael. Get that beautiful
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smells and bells candle today. Okay. I will, I will move on from this Jubilee episode, but it was,
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it was fascinating. And this guy in particular was a really interesting guest on the Jubilee episode
00:21:41.280
because the format it has seemed to be is you get one conservative to debate two dozen libs.
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The first guest was Charlie Kirk. Ben Shapiro went on there. Lila Rose went on there. I went on there
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and without, I have no false modesty here. Generally seems to be the rule that the conservative is
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surrounded by two dozen libs and the conservative beats all the libs. That's, it seems to be the
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structure of the show. Okay. I'm not, listen, false modesty is a form of pride. And so I will admit,
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not just for me, but for, for the other three conservatives too, they generally won pretty,
00:22:18.820
pretty decisively. In this case, the lib facing off against the 20 conservatives,
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he lost. He didn't come, even if you're a big fan of this guy or whatever you fought,
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I don't follow his stuff at all, but I've heard of him at least. I know he's a liberal commentator
00:22:33.380
and he did not do as well as the conservatives did against the libs. You saw the exchange with
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Sarah Stock. Here's another exchange. I wish I had this guy's name. I just started following him
00:22:44.580
on X yesterday, but I don't have his name off the top of my head. Another conservative comes up
00:22:48.500
to debate religious fundamentalism. And here, Sam Sater's ideological confusion becomes,
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or philosophical confusion, becomes even more manifest.
00:22:58.820
Hey. It's nice to meet you. Okay. So I would like to touch on the religious fundamentalist
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aspect. Are you an atheist? I'm a reformed Jew. I don't, I, my, I don't have a, a, a strong belief
00:23:13.440
in the existence of God, but I don't think that religion in and of itself is bad. Okay. So what's
00:23:18.820
wrong with religious fundamentalists? So like when you said, you said trans rights and women's rights
00:23:22.780
or something like that? Well, I, the problem I have with religious fundamentalists and really more,
00:23:27.680
I guess it's really, uh, uh, theocrats is that they want to impose their, uh, morality that comes
00:23:35.400
from their religion on the rest of us. And I don't, I don't, but morality from your view is going to be
00:23:40.980
a preference, right? It's not morality. It's a preference. What's the, so morality without a
00:23:46.340
foundation is going to reduce you to a preference. Well, I have a foundation for my morality. Which is
00:23:50.060
what? It's a humanist vision of, of what basically, uh, creates as little suffering as possible for as
00:23:58.460
many people. Okay. So you're like a consequentialist utilitarian. I, uh, I, I don't really, uh, bother
00:24:07.500
myself with, with being a consequentialist or utilitarian. Okay. What, what is remarkable about
00:24:14.660
this exchange is not that Sam Sater is a leftist or that his interlocutor is a conservative. What is
00:24:22.120
remarkable about this exchange is that the leftist taking on the two dozen conservatives
00:24:27.920
doesn't know what he himself believes. What's, what's remarkable about this exchange. It's not
00:24:36.540
that the leftist doesn't understand what the conservatives believe that we expect. The leftist
00:24:41.540
doesn't understand the basic premises of his own arguments. He says, look, I don't, I don't like
00:24:51.220
religious fundamentalism. He never really defines it. He's obviously confused about it. I don't like
00:24:56.140
theocrats. He clearly doesn't know what a theocrat is because a theocracy is government by religious
00:25:00.640
clerics. But here he's using theocracy to mean government by people who have religious views,
00:25:05.980
which is all governments for all time. And certainly our, we have a self-government we,
00:25:09.460
and we're a people that have religious views. So he, he's totally confused about what theocracy
00:25:13.880
means. But, but so the interlocutor says, what, what is the basis of your morality? Is it just
00:25:20.820
preference? Just whatever you feel like, which is sort of what it seems like. And Sater says, no,
00:25:24.720
no, it's not that it's, and he's kind of stumbling around. He says, it's a, I want to reduce
00:25:29.860
suffering for the greatest number of people possible. Okay. Now that is a moral view.
00:25:35.200
That is the view of Peter Singer, for instance, uh, who is a professor at Princeton. And the
00:25:41.600
interlocutor rightly says, he said, okay, so you're a consequentialist in it. Your, your ethics is a
00:25:46.740
consequentialist ethics. And Sater looks really confused. He says, uh, uh, hum and a hum and a
00:25:52.020
says, you know, utilitarian, utilitarianism is a subset of consequentialist ethics. And Sater looks
00:25:58.100
and he says, uh, I'm not, I don't really, I don't, I don't think about, I'm a consequentialist
00:26:03.860
or utilitarian, but he, it wasn't like really a question to him. You, the interlocutor was helping
00:26:10.420
him. He was saying, no, you, the thing you've just described by definition is a form of utilitarian
00:26:16.980
ethics, specifically one advocated, not even just by John Stuart Mill or Jeremy Bentham, but most
00:26:22.020
recently by Peter Singer. That's your view. And so the question then becomes, okay, well, why is that
00:26:26.880
your view? You know, I guess the grounding of my ethics is that good is to be done and evil is to
00:26:32.160
be avoided. That's different than the utility, his utilitarianism, which is, uh, just minimize
00:26:37.820
suffering for the greatest number of people possible. It reveals a great distinction between
00:26:42.580
classical political philosophy and liberal political philosophy, classical political philosophy,
00:26:48.100
pursuing the greatest good, the sumum bonum, the common good, recognizing that there is such a
00:26:52.580
thing as a common good in society, liberal political philosophy, beginning with, with Thomas
00:26:56.760
Hobbes saying that basically there is no common good. We can't really understand, uh, a greatest
00:27:01.980
good. The only thing that we could even define as a common good is peace to save us from the war of
00:27:07.200
all against all in which life is nasty, brutish, and short. And so really what we're after is not
00:27:12.360
pursuing the greatest good, but avoiding the greatest evil, which is, which is death, suffering
00:27:17.980
and death. That's where, that's kind of where that comes from. So it's an interesting political
00:27:20.920
divide. And it could have been an interesting conversation, except the left, this guy showed
00:27:27.260
up. He's, he's supposed to be one of the better people on the left to articulate his views. He
00:27:31.480
doesn't even know what he believes. Also, it's not like this guy's 22 years old. I think this guy's
00:27:36.640
pushing 60. Okay. This guy's had a long time to figure out what he thinks. He doesn't even know
00:27:41.680
what he thinks. I think this is true broadly with the left and it's why our political debates are
00:27:47.780
largely fruitless. And this is backed up by social science, by the way. I think Jonathan
00:27:50.880
Haidt did a paper on this. It's not just that we're speaking past each other. It's not just that,
00:27:55.700
you know, we have an irreconcilable first principles or something like that. It's,
00:28:00.760
it's even more basic than that. The right understands the left and the left doesn't understand the right.
00:28:07.260
And so when the left, the left is simply making arguments from ignorance, the, the bases of which
00:28:14.760
they themselves don't understand. Now, speaking over confusion on what we believe, that's all.
00:28:19.720
It's a great, you got to watch the Jubilee episode. It's, it's fabulous. Speaking of confusion over
00:28:24.460
what we believe, Dylan Mulvaney, he's back. He needs, he needs a little press. He'd been out of
00:28:30.760
the news for a year or so. And so he's got a book. We covered the book on the show a week or two ago,
00:28:35.640
a little bit from the first part of it. Now he's doing the media tour. He goes on The View
00:28:39.400
and forget about Dylan Mulvaney, even forget about the transgenderism issue, which I'm sick
00:28:44.460
of talking about. Just pay attention to how Whoopi Goldberg, a chief spokesman of the American
00:28:51.700
left in pop culture, because she has the seat on The View for many years. Notice how little she
00:28:58.420
understands about the view that she is proposing. I'm not sure what's going on or why this is an issue.
00:29:07.100
The same for me as when people say, oh, you know, I don't know how I feel about you.
00:29:14.300
You do. God doesn't make mistakes. And the challenge is not to the trans people,
00:29:20.320
it's to the people who are not trans. That's what God is looking to see how you treat people.
00:29:29.660
The argument is transgenderism is true. Men can be women.
00:29:37.100
Men should be permitted to behave as women. Men should be permitted to undergo mutilations,
00:29:42.920
to radically change their bodies, chemical procedures, psychiatric treatment,
00:29:49.600
perhaps all the way down even to little children. They must be permitted to do that
00:29:55.400
because God doesn't make mistakes. You catch the contradiction there? Listen, Johnny, you're a boy,
00:30:08.560
you got all the boy parts and the boy DNA, and you've been Johnny your whole life. But now you say
00:30:13.840
that you're Sally. And you say you were born in the wrong body. And your true identity doesn't match
00:30:21.680
the body in which you, the true you, were born. And so you must undergo very expensive, very painful
00:30:28.580
medical experiments to change your body to better align with your perceived understanding of yourself
00:30:38.660
God doesn't make, if you want to take the God doesn't make mistakes, obviously God in principle
00:30:46.320
doesn't make mistakes, though that doesn't really tell us about the point Whoopi's trying to make
00:30:50.320
here. But if you say God doesn't make mistakes, then you would say, yeah, transgenderism's fake.
00:30:53.940
God doesn't make mistakes. You're a boy. Now, what is needed here is really is just a more thorough
00:31:01.740
and coherent anthropology. Because God does not make mistakes. God does not do evil. And yet,
00:31:11.200
mistakes are made in the world. And evil exists in the world. So how do we account for that?
00:31:17.660
Whoopi's confusion, a lot of the left's confusion in political philosophy, by the way,
00:31:22.160
comes from their inability to understand original sin. The fact that they took original sin,
00:31:28.200
the Christian concept, Christianity, which built our civilization, and they just throw it out.
00:31:33.740
They don't like the idea of original sin. But original sin is not some prescription about people.
00:31:40.340
It's a description. It's just a fact of the world. It's a fallen world. So how do we make sense of
00:31:44.080
that? Even little babies, they don't commit any personal sin, and yet bad things happen. And they do
00:31:50.400
bad things, even though they're not totally aware of it. How do you make sense of that? Well,
00:31:53.140
there is original sin. Okay? So if you can make sense of original sin, where does original sin come
00:31:59.780
from? It's because human beings have abused their free will. So it's not God doing the evil. It's not
00:32:04.060
God making a mistake. It's man abusing his free will. And in the Christian understanding, then,
00:32:11.120
you would say, well, look, maybe God didn't make a mistake in the evil that pervades the world.
00:32:14.360
But he definitely made a mistake in creating the world, because he created a world in which
00:32:18.240
human beings would abuse their free will. And so that itself was a mistake, right? No.
00:32:23.920
Christianity accounts for this too, in the fact of the incarnation and the atonement.
00:32:29.280
That perhaps this is, in fact, the greatest possible world, because a world in which God
00:32:33.820
himself takes on flesh and dwells among us, in which God sends his only begotten son,
00:32:38.840
to be crucified for our sins and to be resurrected on the third day is an even better world than a
00:32:45.280
world in which man had not abused his free will and fallen. You might say, well, that's all crazy,
00:32:49.460
Michael. I don't believe in any of that. I'm not a Christian. I'm not saying you have to be,
00:32:52.240
though I recommend it. I think you should be. I'm just telling you, Christianity accounts for that.
00:32:57.560
Our traditional understanding of ourselves and our culture accounts for that. It makes sense of
00:33:02.260
the world. Liberalism does not. Leftism, random humanist utilitarianism, whatever the guy,
00:33:10.560
whatever Sam Sater on the Jubilee show says, it doesn't. Whoopi Goldberg's understanding of
00:33:15.480
transgenderism, it doesn't make sense of the world, even on their own terms. So you can tell me, well,
00:33:21.600
I find Christianity unsatisfying and insufficient. Okay. What's better? Give me a better alternative.
00:33:28.560
You can't. You can't. And that's where a lot of our confusion comes from. We threw out the systems
00:33:35.020
that did make sense and that allowed our civilization to flourish. And we said, we know better. We can
00:33:40.240
recreate the world out of our tiny stock of reason. But it turns out we're not that good at it. And
00:33:44.700
things begin to decay as a result of that. Now, at The Daily Wire, we bring you the facts. No filter,
00:33:50.240
no spin, no corporate leads. Join the live chat during our daily shows, 100% uncensored and ad-free
00:33:54.640
and packed with fans who actually think for themselves. Get the news the way it should be, honest,
00:33:59.100
fearless, and without an agenda, other than my own agenda, which I'm open about. Your voice matters.
00:34:04.340
Be part of it. Join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. My favorite comment yesterday actually didn't
00:34:10.120
come from YouTube. It came in an email from a young man who hosted me one evening after I spoke
00:34:16.700
at a university and had a really enjoyable dinner after this university speech. A number of the
00:34:23.340
students and people. But anyway, he wrote this in. He said, Michael, I briefly wanted to push back on
00:34:28.280
your outlook of boozing and Zoomers. While I do partially share your sentiment, the rebellion against
00:34:34.140
the system or your parents, which Joe Rogan points to as a reason young men have flocked to
00:34:37.900
conservatism, I fear the problem is far more serious. We live in a recorded, judgmental,
00:34:43.300
digital world where a foolish night out sees young men faced with allegations that strip them
00:34:46.700
of their dignity and where men do not even wish to approach women for fear of being seen as creepy
00:34:51.180
or weird. A shocking 45% of men my age, 18 to 25, have never asked a woman out in person. That's a
00:34:59.780
crazy number. I wasn't aware of that number. Meanwhile, online alternatives mean no more drinking in
00:35:05.620
the parking lot before a movie, after the football game, or at a casual bar. Less hookups, good. Less
00:35:12.300
drinking, neutral. And less eudaimonia, less happiness, less human flourishing, bad. A great point.
00:35:21.200
A great point. Because my view was, it's hip to be square. The Zoomers aren't drinking because,
00:35:27.420
you know, they're on the straight and narrow or something. But that's a great caveat to it.
00:35:33.120
And it takes a big, handsome, wise, delightful man to admit when he's missed something. And that's
00:35:42.120
a very good addition. Getting back to some practical politics for a second, we got a fight going on,
00:35:49.000
baby. This actually does link in with everything we've been talking about today, because it gets
00:35:54.060
to ideological confusion. This time, not on the left, but on the right. House Republicans have a
00:36:00.740
continuing resolution before them. A bill that would avoid a government shutdown and fund the
00:36:05.680
government through September. President Trump supports this bill. The vast majority of Republicans
00:36:13.100
in Congress support this bill. All the Democrats oppose it. I think every single one. Maybe either
00:36:17.820
one or two straights, but I think every single one opposes it. The Republicans overwhelmingly support it.
00:36:23.840
Three Republicans are either, are no or maybe no on it. And there's, and one of those Republicans is a
00:36:31.740
hard no. Thomas Massey. What's really interesting about this is Thomas Massey is regularly considered
00:36:38.640
one of, if not the most right-wing member of Congress. But he says no. So first, what's in the bill?
00:36:46.340
The continuing resolution increases defense spending by $6 billion. It decreases non-defense
00:36:55.200
discretionary spending by $13 billion. So non-defense discretionary spending excludes things like
00:37:02.720
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, which the libs have been fear-mongering on for decades at this
00:37:07.940
point, saying Republicans want to throw granny off a cliff and kill your Social Security.
00:37:11.400
Some Republicans have been open to it. Trump, though, consistently for his entire political career,
00:37:15.480
has said we're not going to touch entitlements. We're not touching Social Security. We're not
00:37:19.160
touching Medicare or Medicaid. Now, that's non-discretionary spending. That's money that
00:37:22.300
just has to be spent. So the $13 billion that's being decreased is out of money that is not spent
00:37:29.340
on defense, and it's not mandatory spending. There is not a single earmark in this bill.
00:37:36.600
Pork barrel spending, community projects, which is how members assent to give their vote to a lot of
00:37:43.120
bills is they'll say, well, look, I'll give you my vote, but you got to build a $10 million bridge
00:37:46.620
in my district. It doesn't even need to go anywhere. It could be a bridge to nowhere, but you got to
00:37:49.500
build it. And so there's a lot of federal spending there. As a portion of the federal budget, it's not a
00:37:53.880
huge deal. John McCain made it a big deal during the 2008 presidential campaign because he was a
00:37:59.940
Republican who supported bigger spending projects, not just on defense, but also on
00:38:05.000
entitlements. So the way that he could seem like he was tough on spending was to go after earmarks,
00:38:09.840
which were a relatively small portion of federal spending. But in any case, this bill doesn't have
00:38:13.580
that either. Immigration Customs Enforcement spending is slightly up to $10 million here.
00:38:19.320
So my read on it is, as far as continuing resolutions go, it's pretty good. It freezes
00:38:26.200
spending at 2024 levels, so the spending is at least not going to increase. And it reduces spending in
00:38:32.160
certain areas, which is good. And then Trump and Elon are reducing spending in the executive branch
00:38:36.860
through their own power, not through the legislature. So all in all, it's pretty good.
00:38:40.700
If I were a member of Congress, I would vote for this. However, I understand why some members might
00:38:47.020
say, well, it's still a lot of money. And so you got Tim Burchett and Corey Mills, two Republicans
00:38:51.160
are saying, I don't know, I'm on the fence. But the one who says, no, I'm a no, is Thomas Massey,
00:38:56.180
who is a huge fiscal hawk. He's kind of like Rand Paul in that way. Rand Paul in the Senate votes
00:39:02.600
against a ton of stuff, just kind of reflexively. Both of these guys are from Kentucky,
00:39:06.180
must be something in the water. But in any case, it's a principled stand. I don't know that I agree
00:39:09.680
with it, but it's a principled stand. And Trump is furious. Trump is now threatening to primary
00:39:14.000
Thomas Massey. He says, thank you to the House Freedom Caucus for just delivering a big blow to
00:39:19.900
the radical left Democrats and their desire to raise taxes and shut our country down. Because the
00:39:23.540
House Freedom Caucus, which is usually the impediment, they usually obstruct these kinds of bills.
00:39:27.900
They've agreed, okay, we're going to support it. The Democrats hate America and all it stands for.
00:39:32.980
True. That's why they allowed millions of criminals to invade our nation. Sometimes it
00:39:36.500
takes great courage to do the right thing. Congressman Thomas Massey of beautiful Kentucky
00:39:39.700
is an automatic no vote on just about everything. That's kind of true. Despite the fact that he's
00:39:45.380
always voted for continuing resolutions in the past, he should be primaried, all caps,
00:39:49.560
and I will lead the charge against him. He's just another grandstander who's too much trouble
00:39:53.740
and not worth the fight. He reminds me of Liz Cheney before her historic record-breaking fall,
00:39:58.580
parentheses, loss. I like how he has to give you a synonym. He does to define what her fall was.
00:40:05.340
It's a loss. She lost. The people of Kentucky won't stand for it. Just watch. Do I have any
00:40:09.580
takers? All caps, three question marks. Anyway, thank you again to the House Freedom Caucus for
00:40:14.260
your very important vote. We need to buy some time in order to make America great again,
00:40:18.060
greater than ever before. Unite and win. Okay, this is notable, not because Trump is threatening to
00:40:23.840
primary or Republican. That's happened before. He's threatening to primary one of the most right
00:40:30.880
wing Republicans. How is the Republican base going to take this? Say what you will. Thomas
00:40:37.840
Massey is no Liz Cheney. He's got some real right wing bona fides. Will the GOP base take this? This
00:40:44.820
will be a test of how much Trump dominates the GOP. I suspect in a fight between Trump and Massey,
00:40:55.940
even though Massey's a real tough guy, I think Trump's going to win. I think he just dominates
00:40:59.480
the GOP that much. But there's a real question. What do we believe? What do we want? What are we
00:41:09.300
fighting for? Whose side are we on? What defines conservatism? What defines our politics? The Trump
00:41:16.120
election, certainly the Trump re-election, signals a seismic shift, a tectonic plate shift in our
00:41:24.980
politics. The shift from Reagan to Bush to Clinton to Obama, sorry, to Clinton to Bush to Obama, it
00:41:31.260
wasn't all that big. They all kind of basically agreed the same stuff. The shift to Trump was a big
00:41:38.380
shift. Okay. The shift from Eisenhower and Nixon to JFK and LBJ, and then certainly into the LBJ
00:41:47.040
administration, that was a big shift. The shift into FDR's administration, certainly the shift into
00:41:52.320
Woodrow Wilson's, that was another big shift. It wasn't just moving deck chairs around. That was
00:41:59.120
an actual change. We're seeing a change here. And so the question is, what will define the right at
00:42:05.000
American politics moving forward? This battle between Trump and Massey is a pretty good example
00:42:09.460
of that. Okay. There's a story I really want to get to. I don't know if I have time though.
00:42:15.820
Well, I'll get to it. I'll get to it really quickly. The Financial Times has a woman's guide
00:42:21.320
to wearing ties. Woman's guide to wearing ties. FT, women should wear ties. The latest female power
00:42:27.000
dressing flex is women wearing long neckties. I can get to this story very quickly because my advice
00:42:33.760
is very simple. Don't do it. It makes you look like a lesbian. Neckties are good. Men should wear
00:42:39.140
more neckties than they do. I'm guilty of this. I don't wear a necktie on this show. I probably
00:42:43.100
should. Neckties look good. It completes an outfit for a man, but it's for a man, not for a woman.
00:42:47.880
The FT is admitting this when they say it's a power dressing flex. And power is traditionally
00:42:53.500
understood as more a male virtue than a female virtue. Women have plenty of power in their own
00:42:58.380
right, but it's a little bit different. When the women try to be the girl boss in the boardroom,
00:43:04.120
that is women consciously taking on virtues that are traditionally ascribed to men, not to women.
00:43:11.860
Neckties for women are nothing new. They have popped up for over a hundred years, but it's always
00:43:17.900
by women who are trying to be more like men and who are probably disproportionately lesbian if we're
00:43:24.340
being totally frank about it. Okay. It's the suffragettes, for instance, wore neckties. Feminists
00:43:29.180
of 150 years have worn neckties. Ladies, don't do it. You have real power in your own nature.
00:43:37.120
You don't need to. I'm not saying you can't go work in public. I'm not saying you can't do this.
00:43:41.660
I'm not saying you can't do plenty of things that men do that you want to do. But trying to be a man
00:43:48.020
is not expanding your power. It is limiting your power by saying that the only kinds of virtues
00:43:54.360
that are to be pursued, that have any value, are the virtues that naturally attain to men.
00:44:02.700
Okay. No. You're a woman. I can't be a woman. Men are dressing like women. Women are dressing
00:44:10.120
like men. It's very confused. Ideologically very confused. Anthropologically very confused.
00:44:14.940
It's Tee Hee Hee Tuesday. The rest of the show continues. Now, you do not want to miss it.
00:44:18.220
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