In this episode of the Michael Knowles Show, host Michael Kinsley is joined by Jeremiah Johnston, an expert on the Shroud of Turin. They talk about the Shroud, and how it relates to white farmers in South Africa.
00:05:13.940This performance was a microcosm of everything you've seen on the South African Afrikaner refugee issue over the past, I was going to say several weeks, really several years or more at this point.
00:05:25.000We say, hey, the white farmers in South Africa are being targeted and raped and murdered, not only by street criminals, but also by some of the biggest political leaders in their country who go to rallies, ANC rallies or economic freedom fighter rallies and say, shoot to kill, kill the farmer, kill the boar, shoot, shoot, shoot.
00:05:46.540And, you know, that seems really bad, don't you think?
00:05:49.360And everyone says, that's not happening.
00:09:39.680I don't really believe in the historical or religious arguments for Zionism as an ideology.
00:09:45.800My broad support of the state of Israel is much more prudential and practical, and it's not really all that ideological.
00:09:52.600But I said, I've tried every way from Sunday to, to make a case for the free Palestine movement, and it just, just doesn't seem coherent to me.
00:10:03.580I just don't really see how you can make an argument that the state of Israel was not justified in going to war against Gaza, and even continuing that war because of the hostage situation.
00:10:13.020And I can't really see how you make an argument.
00:10:15.480If you believe in the principle of the Westphalian system of nation states, generally, I don't see how you can really make an argument against the existence of the state of Israel, which is, I think, the end of all the free Palestine stuff.
00:10:24.880Because that's what the phrase means, free Palestine from the river to the sea, obliterate the state of Israel and get the Jews out of the land.
00:10:29.720So I just don't, I just couldn't make a coherent case for it.
00:10:34.800There's another aspect, though, which I have talked about on this show over the years, but this really drives the point home.
00:10:45.920You need different groups of people who are not going to agree on everything, who don't totally job together, to come together in a coalition to do something.
00:10:53.100And sometimes coalitions make sense, and sometimes they don't make sense.
00:10:59.280And I've tried as best I can to figure out how the conservatives could have a common cause with the free, free Palestine types.
00:26:04.660There were things I wasn't told and I didn't ask.
00:26:06.560I didn't understand just how unregulated the sperm donation industry is.
00:26:10.540In many places, there are no enforced limits on how many families can use the same donor.
00:26:13.920So, you end up in a world in which, you know, in one town you might have 50 half-siblings, which makes dating a little difficult down the road.
00:26:22.220Because, as she says, there's no national tracking system, no centralized registry, no one's keeping count.
00:26:28.440I didn't know that donors can stretch the truth on their applications.
00:26:31.840No one is seriously validating their medical history, education, or identity.
00:26:35.140So, you go there, you say, I want the sperm of Mr. Giga Chad, who's 6'4", blonde hair, blue eyed, graduated from Harvard, medical doctor, and a lawyer, and a triathlete.
00:26:47.380The guy could write it on his application.
00:26:49.280There's really no way of verifying it.
00:26:52.000I wish I had known to listen to donor-conceived adults.
00:26:56.260Many speak openly about the pain, identity struggles, and emotional complexity that can come from not knowing who contributed half of their DNA.
00:27:04.400Even that phrase, who contributed half of their DNA.
00:27:21.720You know, they say, we need more women to be involved in corporate America.
00:27:27.020We need this company to have half of its executives be women.
00:27:31.560We need this company to have half of its employees be women.
00:27:34.400Oh, yeah, well, what about the family?
00:27:35.420Should the family have half of its parents be women and half be men?
00:27:39.760If you think men and women each have something to contribute to the world, don't you think that would certainly be true of the bedrock political institution, the family?
00:27:45.780I love that this woman says, the pain of donor-conceived adults.
00:27:51.080Adults who are people who were conceived with the intent to deprive that person of his natural mother or his natural father.
00:27:59.740These are the closest relationships you're ever going to have, just about.
00:28:03.420I didn't think about the fact that sperm banks are for-profit companies.
00:28:06.340Sometimes money is put ahead of ethics, transparency, and long-term consequences.
00:28:09.180I wish I had understood that when you're using a donor, you're not just making a decision about your future, you're making decisions that will have a lifelong impact on your children.
00:28:20.740Most importantly, my advice is center your future child in every decision you make.
00:28:26.700Good on this woman for looking at the issue, at least somewhat honestly.
00:28:30.580The problem for her last piece of advice is when you conceive a child via a sperm donor, you are immediately denying the needs of your child because your child needs his mommy and his daddy.
00:28:45.640The moment you do that, you are neglecting the needs of your child, denying the needs of your child, putting your own selfish desires before the natural needs of a child.
00:28:56.580You're starting off on the wrong foot.
00:28:58.300And some people do it out of ignorance.
00:29:00.660Many people, I think, do it out of ignorance.
00:31:08.920So Emmanuel Macron, president of France, his political party has called for a ban on young girls wearing the Islamic veils in a new law against Islamist entryism.
00:31:18.320After a government report showed that the Muslim Brotherhood has been waging a multi-generational campaign to infiltrate Western institutions and reshape the West into an Islamic civilization.
00:31:32.200This gets back to my point earlier on coalitions, you know, and taking the side of, like, Islamists.
00:31:40.260Islam has, and I actually have a grudging but reasonable amount of respect for Muslims.
00:31:47.720In many ways, I can speak to Muslims about serious things much more easily than I can speak to Western liberals and secularists and atheists.
00:31:54.800So this is really nothing against the Muslims per se.
00:31:58.980It's not exactly hostile or antagonistic.
00:32:01.700But Islam, as a cultural force, has been attempting to invade and conquer the West for 1,400 years.
00:32:10.240Immediately, immediately after the founding of Islam in the 7th century, they were on the move trying to conquer the West.
00:32:18.280And they made it 150 miles outside of Paris by the year 732, the Battle of Poitiers.
00:32:23.640And only because Charles the Hammer, grandfather of Charlemagne, was able to turn them back, did they not conquer the West in the 8th century.
00:32:32.120They obviously conquered Iberia, controlled Spain and Portugal and all that area, all the way up until the Reconquista in 1492.
00:32:39.640When Ferdinand and Isabella finally put the final nail in the coffin of the Islamic Iberia.
00:32:44.420And then Christopher Columbus went and sailed the ocean blue and discovered America.
00:33:13.380You have to ask yourself, was it good?
00:33:16.160Even if you're a kind of centrist lib, was it good that the West turned Islamic invaders away at the Battle of Poitiers and the Battle of Lepanto and the Battle of Vienna?
00:33:25.560Is it good that we resisted the Islamization of the West at those periods?
00:33:31.140I think most people, even many centrist libs, would say, yeah, that was good that we weren't overrun by Islam and Christianity wasn't blotted off the face of the earth.
00:34:43.560I knew, I anticipated some of this reaction from the liberal and libertarian wonderful people in our audience.
00:34:51.940But I said, in response to the Nancy May story about how we need more privacy everywhere and, you know, you can't, you're not allowed to have a security camera.
00:34:58.900Your boyfriend's not allowed to have a security camera in his apartment.
00:35:01.360I said, well, look, that's one conclusion.
00:35:05.260But if you want to look at the glass half full here, you should recognize you don't really ultimately have privacy.
00:35:12.500Because even if you think that you have privacy, God is watching you.
00:35:15.620Now, I would rather God watch me, God who is merciful.
00:35:18.080I would rather God watch me all the time than have the government watch me all the time or have some private corporation watch me all the time.
00:35:23.460But it is a fact of our culture that we just have cameras on us basically all the time.
00:35:28.340Everyone is a roving cameraman because of their cell phones and there are security cameras everywhere.
00:35:32.940And if you don't want to be caught on a friend or a stranger's security camera, don't walk naked through their apartment.
00:37:05.220A couple weeks ago, I played a clip of Starbucks employees whining and screaming about how they had a new dress code and how this was a terrible violation.
00:41:07.560Democrats have let in a lot of people who are damaging their coalition.
00:41:11.600And Democrats, as a result of that, because you have this incoherent coalition of the radicals, burn it down, abolish prisons, open borders, river to the sea, all this kind of discordant craziness.
00:41:23.440Also with the moderate part of the Democrat party that just can't get along with them at all.
00:41:40.160We're going to give the debate questions ahead of time to Hillary Clinton.
00:41:43.620They're going to have to tighten their grip.
00:41:44.920And so then you have this even clearer contradiction, which is that the Democratic Party undermines democracy within its own party.
00:41:52.640Even their presidential candidates admit it.
00:41:54.740Now, turning to deeper matters, not just mere partisan politics, but to what undergirds all of politics, all of human conflict, which is religion.
00:42:04.120I am very pleased to be joined by Jeremiah Johnston, who you saw on the Michael and episode for the Shroud of Turin.
00:42:13.940It's one of our best performing episodes, I think, when you factor in all of the very media platforms it was on.
00:42:19.500Jeremiah brought in a life-size or, you know, real-life version of the Shroud.
00:43:31.620I was in the eight-day exhibition in Turin, Italy that took placeāyou were just talking about feast days and holy days in the earlier monologue.
00:43:39.080And it was fascinating to me because I'm in the actual tent sponsored by the Carlos Acutis Foundation.
00:43:45.420This isāthere's thousands of people walking through.
00:43:48.080And I finally get to the exhibition with the Shroud, and a stranger literally looks at me across from the Shroud and says,