Ep. 2008 - GOP Launches A Secret Weapon On Libs： Goth ＂Baddies＂
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
16
sentences flagged
Toxicity
30
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Hate speech
52
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Summary
While we all wring our hands over new political winds blowing in the GOP, isolationism, protectionism, nativism, there is a new factional insurgency among Republicans that we should be excited about. And that is the rise of the right wing goth baddie. We will examine the rising Republican star, the congressional candidate shaking up conservative aesthetics, then a Democrat campaign staffer calls for a trans jihad and general murder of Republicans, and President Trump swings by the Teddy Roosevelt Library to remind us all how terrible this year would have been with a lib president presiding over America s 250th anniversary.
Transcript
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While we all wring our hands over new political winds blowing in the GOP,
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isolationism, protectionism, nativism, there is a new factional insurgency among Republicans
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that we should be excited about. And that is the rise of the right-wing goth baddie.
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We will examine the rising Republican star, the congressional candidate shaking up conservative
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aesthetics. Then a Democrat campaign staffer calls for a trans jihad and general murder of
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Republicans. And President Trump swings by the Teddy Roosevelt Library to remind us all how
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terrible this year would have been with a lib president presiding over America's 250th anniversary.
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I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. James Tallarico, who the polls are showing might be
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the Democrat senator from Texas very soon. He wants you all to know that his whiteness and
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his masculinity limits his imagination. That guy, right now, odds on the numbers,
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very good chance that guy is going to be the senator from Texas. We'll get to that in a
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moment. First, though, smash that like button and subscribe. Also, check us out on Spotify.
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where you can download full episode audio and video to watch or listen whenever you want
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without using your data. Do not miss an episode. Before we get to anything, I want to tell you
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I hate to admit that Mr. Davies, the producer of this show, is sometimes right.
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he has been saying for weeks now that I need to cover the rise of the goth baddie. I said,
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what are you talking about, the goth baddie? He's saying, no, Michael, my whole social media feed
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is just being inundated with really good-looking goth girls. It's a social phenomenon. I said,
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no, no, no, that's a your feed phenomenon. I said, I don't know what kind of sick,
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perverted, freakish things you look up on your computer, but I'm not seeing that anywhere. I
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that's not a real trend. And it takes a big, handsome guy wearing a red, white, and blue
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plaid shirt to admit when he's wrong because the new star GOP congressional candidate coming out
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of Colorado is, in fact, I think it's fair to say, nothing lecherous in the observation,
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she's a goth baddie. This is Kelly Dennison. She just won the Colorado second congressional
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primary. And she is not your typical Republican, at least in the way she looks. She's a 27-year-old
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massage therapist. Her picture that is being posted around in the news reports of her victory
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was actually taken in front of St. Joseph Catholic Parish. Great signs. I was in Fort Collins this
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year. And she probably doesn't have a chance to win the race. I think the district is D plus 20
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or something like that. But she won the primary. She has now won the hearts and minds, the
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fascination of at least many Republicans on the internet. And it made me have to contemplate
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whether or not Mr. Davies was seeing a trend and why it would be that a goth chick would be a
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conservative Republican. I've noticed this. I travel around the country, go to a lot of churches
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when I'm around the country, go to a lot of events. And I've noticed this. I actually,
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I did not, not on my social media feeds, but in real life, I have been noticing more and more
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goth girls, like the kind of thing you saw in the late 90s, white makeup, dark hair,
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some piercings, black eyelashes, black clothing. I have been seeing them crop up more and more,
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and you would often imagine them being on the left or maybe even the radical left if they
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weren't totally politically apathetic, but I've been noticing them more and more on the right.
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Why is that? In a way, it makes perfect sense because the goth aesthetic rose out of the
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Victorian era. The best explanation I've heard for the rise of the goth aesthetic, which really
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took on prominence in America during the 80s, punk, post-punk, then Hot Topic kind of commercialized
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it. But it comes from the Victorian era because Queen Victoria spent a very, very long time
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mourning the death of her husband, Prince Albert. So she wore a lot of black, and that's what it
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draws on. And it draws on other cultural influences from that era, from the 19th century.
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The gothic novels, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The kind of culture that is about enchantment,
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the kind of culture that is about the supernatural, things that are a little uncanny,
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eerie, numinous, a little bit spooky, the kind of culture that takes religion seriously.
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What's interesting about the goth aesthetic is in the goth aesthetic, you could see someone wearing a pentagram or a crucifix.
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You know, totally opposite religious views, but nevertheless taking religion seriously.
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Whether it be in an occult and rather bad religious form or in a good religious form, which is in the form of Christianity.
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You know, the goths who sacked Rome, but then the great gothic cathedrals and then into the gothic novels of the era.
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And I thought, you know, in a way, this makes perfect sense because we live in this world that has been so disenchanted.
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We live in this world where everything is so clinical, everything is mediated by technology, where everything seems so clinical, so scientific, so plain.
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Our longings, our desires, our hopes and our dreams, they're all reduced to chemicals firing off in our brains or some other mechanical processes.
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And human beings realize that that doesn't really fully explain the world.
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It doesn't explain the most important things in the world. And so I think we're living in an era.
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This is also why you're seeing a big return to religion and especially the more sacramental
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and traditional forms of religion, the liturgical kind of religion, the smells and bells kind of
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religion. You're seeing people recognize that we know that the world really is enchanted and we
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need to re-enchant ourselves with it. We're living post-stupid new atheism. We're now in a world
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where we start to take religion and spiritual matters seriously. Even those gothic novels,
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you know, they're very romantic. It coincides with the romantic era. And we live in a world
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where we're told we're just supposed to have, you know, clinical partnerships with our, you know,
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I'm going to propose a marriage to my partner because we're really good. We help each other,
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and we're all going to just like do the dishes, and we're going to be exactly co-equals,
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undifferentiated and it's all, it's just like so lame. And we want romance. We want to be that
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couple climbing up the Empire State Building, taking a knee and proposing on top of a needle
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above New York City. So we are living at a time, maybe I'm reading too deeply into this
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congressional primary candidate, but I don't think I am. I think it's indicative of a broader trend.
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We're in a time that calls for enchantment and romance and religion. We are in an age that
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calls for the return of the goth baddie. And the goth baddie will not be on the left. The goth
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baddie will be on the side that is looking for a return of those things, and that is conservatives
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and Republicans generally. Okay, now let's look at the Democrats. What are they up to?
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This is something that would come out of a gothic novel, a horror novel or a horror movie.
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A Democrat campaign staffer has just called on followers to, quote, kill your local Republican
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and commit trans jihad. Trans jihad. Two of our favorite things, transgenderism and Islam.
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Combine them, what could go wrong? They do actually kind of combine in a lot of activism.
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This person, his name, I guess it's a him, but he thinks he's a girl, is Tija De La Ruel.
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I don't think that's his Christian name, but that's the name he goes by. He was a volunteer
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staffer for Wisconsin Democrat socialist candidate, Katrina DeVille. Katrina DeVille. I don't know
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what Katrina DeVille's real name is because Katrina DeVille is also transgender. This
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Democrat candidate in Wisconsin, also trans. So this fella, the staffer,
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was photographed sitting in front of a dry erase board, scrawled with the words,
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kill your local Republican in black marker. And he says, we're going to make this the
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moderate position for the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin, which I believe has pushed more
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serial killers on America than any other state in the country.
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Now, this is the trans stuff. The trans people are kind of like the er, evil version of the
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goth baddie. This is like everything goes wrong. This is the villain from the gothic novel.
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But I guess what's really troubling about all of this, this person calling for a trans jihad,
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is how not weird he is. I mean, he's weird. Don't get me wrong. He's weird, but he's not
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weird by the standards of the modern Democrat party. I mean, just listen to the reporting.
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He was working for another tranny, a tranny who it's now not uncommon for a transvestite
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to be in public office. There was a time 10 years ago that would have been completely absurd in both
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parties. Now, there's a transvestite in Congress, sitting in Congress as a member, a Democrat,
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of course. What the left is going to want to do is say that the trans staffer calling for the
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murder of all Republicans is an aberration. This is not what we're about. The Republicans are
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going to pounce on this story, but this is not indicative at all of what the Democrats are.
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And the problem is, it is. There's a big difference. Think about back in the 90s,
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we had like David Duke. There's a similar version of that in the mid-20-teens, which was Richard
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Spencer, who was a kind of more intelligent, more intellectual version of David Duke,
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but still white identitarian who would say Heil victory and had Nazi leanings. What's ironic about
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Richard Spencer is Richard Spencer, I think, is now a Democrat because he says the Republicans
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can't do anything. But whatever. My only point is, whether they were pointing to Richard Spencer
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or David Duke, the Republicans certainly could say, well, no, we're not about that.
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They are advancing views that we don't agree with. So much so that Richard Spencer says,
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I'm done with Republicans. I'm just going to vote for Democrats. At least they're confident.
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But you could say in the 90s, David Duke would be calling for all these things. And it was all
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the Republicans would say, no, no, no. We support colorblind meritocracy. No, no, no. We're the
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party that freed the slaves from those Democrats who own the slaves. No, no, no. We don't have
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anything in common with this guy. He is not one of us. The Democrats can't say that about these
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guys. They can't say that about transgenderism. Obviously, there's a trans-identified member of
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Congress. They've almost uniformly embraced the transgender ideology in recent years,
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and they can't even run away from it now that it's totally unpopular. But furthermore,
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a huge swath of Democrats, prominent mainstream Democrats, have embraced political violence as
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well, including minimizing and excusing and celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk,
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who was the most mainstream Republican. When it says, kill your local Republican,
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we're talking about that kind of guy. So they're totally different scenarios.
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And unfortunately, I'm open to a rebuttal, but unfortunately, it seems to me that,
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what's this person's name? DeVille, Cruella DeVille, I don't know, whatever the
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trans staffer's name is, working for the other trans candidate. That has become the norm. And if
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you get enough drinks, or probably more like hard drugs when it comes to that side, if you got
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enough drinks into even your mainstream Democrats, something tells me they would start defending or
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at least minimizing and justifying political violence. Something tells me they wouldn't be
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so totally opposed to trans jihad. Very, very dangerous. The staffer calling for this violence
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is at most, I'm being as charitable as I can, is at most an exaggeration of the norm.
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David Duke in the 90s, that was a contradiction of the Republican platform.
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This person is at most a slight exaggeration of where normal Democrats are at. Normal Democrats,
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increasingly a contradiction in terms. Now, speaking of trans liberal Democrats trying
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to murder Republicans, we have finally gotten the sentencing for the guy who tried to kill
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Brett Kavanaugh. You remember this? A big story that kind of went away. The person who, over
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Kavanaugh's decision to overrule Roe v. Wade, traveled across the country, tried to murder him
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and potentially his whole family and his house. We have just gotten the sentencing, and it turns
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out that he too is trans. It's always the ones you most expect. We'll get to that momentarily
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that personnel is policy, that the people matter much more than some stated ideology on the back
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made i remember i had a professor in college teaching con law and i noticed in the summer
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he got out of the kind of northeast and he would go teach at pepperdine because i don't know some
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The man who tried to murder Brett Kavanaugh has been sentenced to eight years in prison
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Transgenderism is an intrinsically violent identity and ideology
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because it is at odds with one of the most basic aspects of nature
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that being sexual difference. That is at the heart of distinctions between human beings,
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much more so than race or ideology or geography or whatever. The distinction between man and
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woman is core to human identity. And so when you have a problem with that, when you're at odds with
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that, you are simply inclined, more inclined to be violent. What is somewhat surprising,
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at least to me, is the way the Washington Post reported on this. The Washington Post,
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she got eight years for plotting to kill Justice Kavanaugh. Prosecutors want more.
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The Justice Department is appealing the sentence of Sophie Roski, who pled guilty in the case.
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There you have it. Most people would remember and say, hold on, I thought it was a guy who
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tried to kill Kavanaugh. Yeah. And then like a lot of these wackos, whether for sincere psychosis
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or just for cynical reasons so that he could be housed in prison with women, which would be easier
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on him, maybe so that he could commit more crimes. Who knows? Regardless, he now identifies as a woman
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and the Washington Post is going along with it. The she and the Sophie and the her, and
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we're still doing this. We're still doing this. And as I mentioned at the top, right now,
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the Republican election chances are looking pretty bad. It looks like the midterms are
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going to be as bad, if not worse, as some people were fearing a couple months ago.
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We're still in silly season. Things could change, but the Iran war really hasn't helped
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the historical fact of the midterm after one party wins the whole government.
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Things are compounding at this point to not look great for Republicans.
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and we could be back to 2023 era peak woke like that, like that. It's happening. The Washington
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Post wants to do it. The Democrat Party wants to do it. The electeds, the people on TV want to do
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it. The rank and file Democrats want to do it. They want to bring that back. And there is one
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guy, there is this catacomb-like figure who is stopping them from doing it, and it's Trump.
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I get that you wish he had done more on immigration.
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Some people want him to do less on immigration.
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I understand the issues that people have with Trump.
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He is the only reason that we don't live in a world full of trans jihad and this wacko
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identifying as a woman and the newspapers calling all the men chicks. It's just him.
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The only reason that that abated at all was because after the 2024 election, the powers
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that be got really scared, the cultural powers that be got really scared that Republicans had
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unified government that were going to come after them. And they saw the popular vote
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went the way of the conservatives. So that's what they pulled back for now.
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It could all come back in a second. This is what brings me to President Trump at the Roosevelt
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Library. A couple of days ago, President Trump went to the Teddy Roosevelt, not the Franklin
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Roosevelt, the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library. It was great. The motorcade had horses.
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It was very Teddy Roosevelt. There was this great clip of Trump debating or interacting with an AI
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of Teddy Roosevelt. It's all kind of fun, wacky stuff. We don't have time to get to all of it.
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But here is just a little bit of his comments days before the 250th official anniversary of
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the United States. From winning our independence to laying the railroads, taming the West and
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planting our flag on the moon, nothing great that America has ever done has come without
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staggering effort. And it has never come easy. It's been really an unflagging persistence that
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drove us into greatness. We had the persistence of great people, great men, great women. They
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were persistent they never gave up this country was built on the conviction that just because
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something is hard to do that only means that americans try even harder and they succeed
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almost all the time because whatever the obstacle whatever the challenge it's no match for american
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grit. And you have it probably as much or more than any other place there is. You have American
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grit. Okay. And you love it. You got the guys with the bandanas and the cowboy hats on behind
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him. And it's just, it's all great. Nice big belt buckles, real Americana. And he's just talking
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about how great America is and the spirit that built America. He's really invoking the spirit
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of Teddy Roosevelt, who, you know, maybe until Trump, did this kind of thing, second to none.
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I mean, there are so many parallels between Trump and Teddy Roosevelt, all the way down to hosting
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combat sports at the White House. Teddy Roosevelt would host boxing matches, was pre-UFC, but he
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would host boxing matches at the White House. He would even participate in them sometimes.
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And there was one time he had to stop participating in them because he was boxing some guy and the
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guy got him in the head and partially blinded him. TR was partially permanently blinded because he
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was, as president, participating in a boxing match at the White House. So a lot of similarities
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there. But all that could go through my head while I'm watching these great comments, totally
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normal, nothing all that remarkable about the comments. America's a great place. We've done
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great things. We should do more great things. What went through my head is what could have been
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the old school, more establishment, more moderate Democrat. Well, but the party moves so far to the
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left, all of a sudden, Joe Biden's embracing like transing the kids, literally transing the kids.
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The speech would have been, and America, America, listen, we've had our challenges.
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We haven't lived up to our ideals. We haven't, we've failed a lot. We've done a lot of bad
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things. We're racist. The worst, the original sin of America, of slavery, we've never totally
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gotten past it. This is a place we've gone to wars we shouldn't have gone to. We've oppressed
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people. We've kept women down. Oh, and don't get me started on the gays. We haven't done enough for
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the gays and the trans and the trans kids. And man, we suck. We're a terrible country, but
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we try to be better. And every day we elect another Democrat, there's a chance we could
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be better. But still, a lot of our bitter, clinging, hideous, rube, toothless citizens,
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They're deplorable politics, but we're going to try
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so that there will be a chicken in every pot
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We're looking ahead, obviously, the 4th of July is tomorrow.
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Instead, we have big, big monuments, new arcs going up in D.C., big state fair on the National
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Mall, great speeches, bunting and banners and flags. And at the very least, even in a polarized
00:23:58.560
country where one major political party has collapsed in its patriotism, reflected in every
00:24:04.000
social media, every social scientific survey. At least in that country, we got the face of the
00:24:09.180
country, the guy with the bully pulpit saying, this is a great country and we've done great
00:24:12.020
things and we should be proud of that and we should build on that. And then what that got me
00:24:16.240
thinking. Final point on this, then we'll get to James Tallarico's struggles with his whiteness
00:24:20.400
and masculinity. But what if Trump had remained in office after 2020? What if the 2020 election
00:24:30.180
had turned out differently? Let's just say, hypothetically, the Democrats hadn't changed
00:24:34.420
all of the rules in the lead up to the election and increased the opportunities for voter fraud
00:24:38.700
inestimably and what if just however it shook out i'm not what if trump had remained in office
00:24:46.600
well then he would have been term limited out in 2024 and mike pence i guess would have been the
00:24:53.960
nominee and i like mike pence but look after two terms of any party it's hard to keep holding on
00:25:01.380
to the power especially with someone like trump we would have had a democrat and this is the way
00:25:37.940
I want to tell you about Mount Titanomedia. Go to mounttitanomedia.com. As we get closer to
00:25:45.160
America's 250th anniversary, I have been thinking about a simple question. How much of our own
00:25:48.740
history do we actually remember? Not the dates, not the trivia, the words, the speeches, the
00:25:52.760
arguments, the ideas that shaped the country in the first place. Because one of the strange
00:25:56.660
realities of modern education is that Americans are constantly told what to think about their
00:26:00.800
history while spending very little time actually reading the people who made it. That is one reason
00:26:05.820
I'm very excited to be part of a new project from Mount Titano Media.
00:26:10.080
It's called Finding Our Words, Words That Made America.
00:26:19.400
The book collects some of the most important speeches in American history,
00:26:22.060
many of which have been almost completely forgotten,
00:26:24.580
despite helping define the American experiment itself.
00:26:27.760
Now there's a new Audible edition featuring voices you might recognize.
00:26:35.820
that. Military leaders, educators, scholars, and yours truly. That's the key. Okay. It's a really,
00:26:44.780
really great book. I just totally love it. You will get contacts from journalist Tracy Lee
00:26:49.320
Simmons and editor Allison Ellis. Go check it out right now. MountTitanomedia.com. Get your
00:26:54.320
copy of Finding Our Words, Words That Made America. MountTitanomedia.com. What you would
00:26:59.540
have gotten, what you would have gotten. You can get a preview of what you would have gotten,
00:27:04.260
the kind of speech you would have gotten had a Dem been in office for the 250th anniversary
00:27:07.960
from the potential, if not likely, future senator from Texas, James Tallarico.
00:27:15.760
I should mention, you know, my imagination is also just limited by my own background and identity,
00:27:23.460
right? My own, my whiteness, my masculinity, all those things limit my imagination about what's
00:27:28.300
possible. So I have to continually press against that to try to expand the limits of what I'm
00:27:33.760
dreaming of for our for our community um and that's where you know dr robin your book helps
00:27:40.040
me do that and and uh and podcasts like this help me do that his struggle he has this big struggle
00:27:46.560
the germans call it a conf james tallarico's struggle is with his sexuality breaking news
00:27:55.680
it's not not exactly man bites dog story there james tallarico struggles with his sexuality
00:28:00.640
but also with his race, his whiteness, which limits his imagination.
00:28:07.240
Now, what's so funny about this is at a very basic level, I guess we could agree with him.
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In other words, it is the case, no matter how enlightened and wise we are, and people who are
00:28:20.860
wiser, who have some humility, who have gained in wisdom and knowledge, they can largely transcend
00:28:28.080
the confines of their circumstances. But there's always some limit. That's true. I guess that's
00:28:33.200
true. In a certain sense, we can all say that we're limited by our race, by our sex, by our
00:28:40.480
socioeconomic circumstances. But I guess you could say that. But he would never say this about any
00:28:47.160
other race or any other sex. So here's what I want to hear from James Tallarico. In total charity,
00:28:53.340
I say, okay, you're limited by being white. Man, I hope he comes on and does an interview. He
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00:28:57.400
obviously will not. But you say you're limited because you're a white person. White people are
00:29:01.580
limited by their race. Men are limited by their sex. And their imagination is confined because of
0.99
00:29:06.680
that. So can you say, hey, hey, blacks, your imagination is confined by your race.
1.00
00:29:15.340
I don't think he would say that. Hey, ladies. Hey, ladies. I know you're getting a little
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00:29:19.500
mouthy here. But just remember, your imagination is confined by your sex, woman. Know your limits,
1.00
00:29:25.540
woman? Would he say that? Probably not. So, unfortunately, he's making this really overstated
00:29:33.140
point because people who have charity, who have some goodwill, who have reason, who exercise their
00:29:39.700
reason and try to grow in knowledge, your imagination can go pretty far. Actually, I can
00:29:45.300
imagine what it's like to be people who are pretty different from me. I can even imagine what it's
00:29:49.960
like to be james tallarico i guess i really got a stretch for that one but i guess i could
00:29:53.740
but not only is he making this just tedious hr diversity training session kind of nauseating
00:30:05.000
point but he doesn't even believe it because it's not it's not really a principle he holds
00:30:10.080
because he wouldn't he wouldn't apply it evenly okay speaking of weird sex stuff one thing i do
00:30:14.740
want to get to before we get to the mailbag we have a great mailbag today but a little positive
00:30:18.340
note before people start to go on their vacations for the 4th of July. I know many people are doing
00:30:22.800
that. There is some good news on a really, one, good news coming out of Texas, not James Tallarico.
00:30:31.160
And two, it's on an actual controversial point that only the real hardline kind of comprehensive
00:30:40.920
conservatives really grasp. I think I predicted a while ago that this issue would grow and grow
00:30:47.580
and grow in the public mind, and people would start to change their minds on it, but it would
00:30:50.620
take some time. But nevertheless, it's happening. We're seeing good moves here. And that's on IVF,
00:30:57.580
on in vitro fertilization and the surrogacy industry. The Texas Republican Party, this
00:31:03.340
happened just about a week or so ago, the Republican Party of Texas voted to add a
00:31:07.940
plank to their platform, citing their desire to, quote, protect fetal life from destructive
00:31:12.460
practices such as IVF and commercial surrogacy. This is despite the fact, as is reported,
00:31:20.100
that 65% of Texas Republican voters support legal and accessible, perhaps even subsidized IVF.
00:31:28.320
So this is actual political courage and moral clarity coming out of a Republican Party
00:31:33.660
organization, which that is a man bites dog story. You do not usually see courage and clarity coming
00:31:40.020
from the party apparatus. And you are getting that in Texas. And this is another example where
00:31:45.480
I would love to say, I hate to say I told you so, because I've been on the IVF drumbeat for a long
00:31:54.200
time now. And when I first started bringing it up on the show, that the idea that actually IVF is
00:31:59.780
bad and surrogacy is bad and commercial surrogate, you know, commercializing and commoditizing human
00:32:04.180
life is really bad. I got a ton of pushback from people. I'm sure there are many people listening
00:32:08.520
now who say, well, I only got my kid through surrogacy. How dare you say there are problems
00:32:12.740
with surrogacy? I only got my grandkid or my niece or my nephew through surrogacy. How dare
00:32:16.600
you say that? Of course, that doesn't hold up as a logical argument. I know people who are
00:32:22.700
conceived as a result of rape, and I love those people, but you would never say, I only got my
00:32:28.600
friend as the consequence of rape. Therefore, rape is good, and we need legal rape, and we need to
0.55
00:32:33.320
subsidized rape. No one would ever say that. You would never say that a good end justifies
1.00
00:32:39.540
an immoral means. So the question really then becomes, okay, is IVF and surrogacy morally
00:32:45.540
justified? I know people want it. I understand how difficult infertility can be. But is it really
00:32:51.200
justified to hand over to business people and dubious physicians the origin and destiny of
00:33:01.220
human life, to establish the domination of science and technology over the origin and
00:33:05.120
destiny of human life, and to trade people as you would trade baseball cards or any other
00:33:09.700
commodity? Is that really justified? To say nothing of then opening up the prospect of
00:33:16.520
gay couples creating children with the intent to deprive them of their natural mother or father
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00:33:22.200
or all the rest of it. To say nothing of the fact that the vast majority of people who are
1.00
00:33:27.660
conceived through IVF are killed, are intentionally killed. This is great. This is really, really
0.97
00:33:34.240
great. The Texas Department of Health and Human Services, I'm sorry, no, the National Department
00:33:38.720
of Health and Human Services, their embryo adoption awareness and services program is also now
00:33:44.600
replacing the word embryos in several sections with child, children, and children who already
00:33:47.860
exist. Really important. There's nothing radical about that. Embryo is just a term for a stage of
00:33:53.900
development of a child, of a person. And you say fetus, fetus is just the Latin word for offspring.
00:33:58.780
No one thinks it's a platypus. No one thinks it's a desk chair. It's a human being. It's a living
00:34:03.240
human being. So they're just clarifying what it really is. And that's important. It's really
00:34:07.740
important that people are now seeing the reality. And at the time, there were a lot of sort of
00:34:12.080
cynical political people who said, Michael, don't go after surrogacy. Don't go after IVF. You know,
00:34:17.320
it's so unpopular to go after those things. It's going to hurt your ratings. People are going to
00:34:22.460
turn on you. Just don't touch that issue. In much the same way that cynical political operators
00:34:29.200
would say, don't talk about traditional marriage. We lost that battle. Just move on. In much the
00:34:34.820
same way that cynical political operators would say, don't talk about abortion. Oh, come on,
00:34:38.480
just we lost that battle. Supreme Court ruled twice. Just move on. Public opinion, it's hard
00:34:43.240
to overcome. Just move on. Notice, one, we have just scored a major victory in winning the abortion
00:34:51.340
fight and many PR victories on that. But also at the Supreme Court, people thought it could never
00:34:57.260
happen. Already, public support of so-called same-sex marriage has really declined. I mean,
00:35:04.140
you're seeing a real collapse in public support for that. And a time will come when people view
00:35:08.560
IVF the same way. And it's not because we're some, you know, silver-tongued devil who can
00:35:12.780
convince people of anything. It's because people don't know what it is. They don't see it for what
00:35:18.960
it is, which is creating children to deprive them of their natural parents in many cases,
00:35:24.460
creating people, most of whom will be killed or frozen indefinitely in virtually every case,
00:35:29.500
and commoditizing human life, which we all know is wrong. That's happening. That's already
00:35:34.100
happening. And some of the people who are thinking about this most deeply are even getting a little
00:35:39.080
bit ahead of the DEMOS, the voting public on that. Good stuff. I like seeing that. Okay.
00:35:43.980
Much to get to. My favorite comment yesterday is from Zach Killen, who says,
00:35:47.760
how many mayflower cigars do i need to get my comment read on the show you i don't know how
00:35:55.140
many you've bought i suspect a bazillion you know we sold out of the mayflower dawn of america
00:35:59.020
the special limited edition for the 250th and the tubes and the special edition box
00:36:03.040
told you it was going to happen but for those of you who did not get it we're trying to order more
00:36:07.700
we'll we'll see if we can get it done it's hard these are you know we're using on this uh seven
00:36:11.600
year aged true connecticut usa connecticut tobacco and it's just you know this is a handmade artisanal
00:36:16.000
product. So it's a little tricky to do, but we're working on it. For those of you who did get your
00:36:19.680
boxes, congratulations. Glad you got them. I'm taking a couple of my own. I only have one box
00:36:25.460
actually. I didn't even hoard them all. I only got one box of the Dawn of America, but I'm taking
00:36:29.800
two of the sticks to smoke for 4th of July. Okay. Finally, finally, we arrive at my favorite time
00:36:34.460
of the week when I get to hear from you in the mailbag. Mailbag sponsored by PureTalk at
00:36:36.880
puretalk.com slash Knowles, Ken W-L-E-S to switch to the only wireless company awarded five stars
00:36:41.800
in every category by Consumer Reports. Take it away. Hey, Michael, what are your thoughts on the
00:36:46.860
SSPX proceeding to consecrate new bishops without papal authority? I know that you love the
00:36:52.100
traditional liturgy, but you're also not a Vatican and Pope hater, as some Catholics are.
00:36:56.840
As with all your other takes, I know that you're probably going to have a well-thought-out and
00:37:00.800
moderate response that'll probably make both sides unhappy, which of course makes you correct.
00:37:05.780
Anyways, thanks for everything you do and for the show. Very precisely worded question and
00:37:10.560
totally accurate. So for those who don't know, there's a group called the Society of St. Pius
00:37:15.760
X, which is a priestly fraternity within the Catholic Church. You know, there's all sorts
00:37:22.460
of groups within the Catholic Church. You have different religious orders, the Dominicans or
00:37:25.960
the Jesuits. So I think technically you're still Catholic. You get priestly fraternities like the
00:37:30.680
Society of St. Pius X, which really exists to preserve the traditional Latin mass and has
00:37:37.880
qualms with the Second Vatican Council and certainly with its implementation. You have
00:37:41.980
the Precifraternity of St. Peter, which was founded as kind of an offshoot of the SSPX,
00:37:45.720
which does not object in principle to the Second Vatican Council, also preserves the traditional
00:37:50.200
Latin Mass, wonderful, wonderful fraternity in the church. Anyway, this all started because
00:37:56.380
in 1988, was it? In the 1980s, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated bishops without the authority
00:38:05.440
of the Vatican, without the authority of the Pope. So he illicitly consecrated four bishops
00:38:10.980
and they all immediately incurred automatic excommunications. Now, it meant that they
00:38:18.620
could still, they were still validly saying mass, but it was illicit. It was real. And when they
00:38:24.200
consecrate the host, they're really, that's the real Eucharist, you know, when they're really
00:38:27.280
saying mass, but it was illicit. It was done without the permission of the Vatican. And so
00:38:32.560
there's been this power dynamic going on for decades now. At one point, the excommunications
00:38:37.140
of the bishops were lifted. Then one of them was kind of put back on again because the bishop
00:38:41.980
had some impolitic things to say, among other things. And I won't get into all of the details
00:38:47.460
of it. But they've just decided, okay, they haven't come to terms with Rome, so they're
00:38:52.600
going to illicitly consecrate the bishops. Again, they incur automatic excommunications.
00:38:55.840
it's very sad the whole thing is very very sad uh i i am opposed to schism i am opposed to
00:39:04.340
uh i don't you know the the ordination of the bishops it was even kind of dubious in itself
00:39:09.300
because you have to have an apostolic mandate you have to have a mandate from like the pope to
00:39:15.020
consecrate the bishops and they kind of worked around that in the liturgy which didn't didn't
00:39:19.160
totally persuade me but in any case i it's it's very bad i've never attended an sspx chapel
00:39:27.900
But I do have a great deal of sympathy for the SSPX.
00:39:32.400
And one of the arguments the SSPX make is the only reason you get these other groups
00:39:36.280
that are kind of defending the traditional Latin mass is because we're the bad guy.
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00:39:40.040
Like, they're the good cop, we're the bad cop.
1.00
00:39:41.620
And if you get rid of us, then all those other groups are going to go away too.
00:39:45.040
And, you know, now this leads to a scary conclusion, which is that, you know,
00:39:49.940
in a way it's these kind of other groups that save the church rather than the church saving all of us.
00:39:58.560
my conclusion from this is not to dunk on the SSPX,
00:40:08.560
I'm not persuaded really by the arguments of the SSPX,
00:40:13.400
which is to preserve the traditional Latin mass.
00:40:17.140
that came about after the Second Vatican Council.
00:40:22.780
I hope the Vatican has seemed to suggest that they want to reconcile. Maybe, you know, I pray
00:40:28.980
and I hope that that happens. That's what I'm, that's what I'm hoping for here. So yes, I gave
00:40:32.400
you an answer that is almost exactly as you would have predicted. How interesting is that? There's
00:40:36.400
so much more I want to get to. I've got written mailbag questions about love, about romance. We
00:40:41.300
don't have time. We got to go catch a flight. So I hope everybody has a beautiful 4th of July.
00:40:47.460
I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you Monday.