The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 202 - The Devil In The Details

00:00:00.000 I disappear for two days and the world falls apart.

00:00:03.040 Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro graphically and meticulously

00:00:06.720 details decades and decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests

00:00:10.940 against children and teenagers in a grand jury report.

00:00:13.700 The scandal has had effects all the way up to the College of Cardinals.

00:00:17.440 This is a once-in-a-century problem, if not more,

00:00:20.480 and there's going to be a lot more pain.

00:00:21.860 We will analyze why it happened and what can be done about it. 0.98

00:00:24.540 Then, the dumbest article on the internet this week, 0.97

00:00:27.040 Care of Slate. 0.99

00:00:28.060 I'm shocked, totally shocked it was Slate.

00:00:30.780 Then, former Bush administration drug czar John Walters

00:00:33.860 stops by to discuss the opioid epidemic, legalized Haitian oregano,

00:00:38.320 and why libertarians are wrong. 0.75

00:00:40.300 Some of my favorite topics.

00:00:41.880 Finally, the mailbag.

00:00:42.920 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:52.060 Okay, so if you can notice the bags under the bags,

00:00:55.740 under the bags under my eyes,

00:00:56.880 it's because we got in last night pretty late from Phoenix.

00:01:00.340 We were out in Dallas and Phoenix for the Ben Shapiro live shows,

00:01:04.200 and it was so much fun.

00:01:05.760 It was great.

00:01:06.500 I got to meet a lot of people in both cities.

00:01:08.620 People were flying down from Canada.

00:01:10.500 They were flying in from Boston and just all over the place.

00:01:13.220 One guy came from Alaska.

00:01:14.740 So it was really cool.

00:01:15.480 It was so good to meet everybody.

00:01:17.140 One thing that is not surprising,

00:01:20.460 I knew it just from the mailbag and from meeting other people in different cities,

00:01:24.520 is that the Daily Wire listeners and viewers are so much smarter than the average people.

00:01:31.880 Certainly than your average New York Times reader or NBC viewer or CNN viewer or something like that.

00:01:38.240 But they're really smarter.

00:01:40.380 Some of these questions were extraordinarily erudite.

00:01:43.940 The people that I met are interesting people.

00:01:47.220 They've got excellent education.

00:01:48.660 They've got interesting jobs.

00:01:51.680 They work in interesting industries.

00:01:53.000 And they're just really smart.

00:01:54.040 I mean, there were questions about Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and David Hume.

00:01:58.300 And it was really great.

00:01:59.960 I really enjoyed that.

00:02:02.120 And even, you know, we go to college campuses,

00:02:04.380 and you would think that would be the smartest audience.

00:02:06.960 These are people who are in the throes of studying, who are being educated.

00:02:11.940 And really, it was the people at these events,

00:02:14.740 many of whom I've also met on college campuses or am going to meet this fall,

00:02:19.780 who were clearly they've continued their education

00:02:22.760 after they've got out of leftist indoctrination centers.

00:02:26.420 Maybe they've begun their education after that.

00:02:28.360 So it was really nice, great to meet everybody out there.

00:02:30.340 And I hope that we come to a city near you soon,

00:02:32.540 because it was a lot of fun.

00:02:33.700 We've got to get to just the Catholic Church imploding 0.96

00:02:36.660 and all the horrible things that have happened

00:02:38.880 since I've been gone for 48 hours.

00:02:41.300 Before we do that, we could all use a little coffee to get into all of that.

00:02:45.440 I could use a little covfefe, which I think now is legal.

00:02:49.140 Or maybe that's illegal.

00:02:50.380 They're legalizing pot, but they're banning covfefe in Los Angeles.

00:02:54.300 One thing they haven't banned yet is Black Rifle Coffee.

00:02:56.860 If you have ever found yourself wincing at the weak taste of coffee

00:03:01.120 from those left-leaning, straw-banning corporate brands,

00:03:06.160 you know who I'm talking about?

00:03:07.100 Do you have an idea who I'm talking about?

00:03:08.380 You probably thought,

00:03:09.660 I wish they spent less time on meaningless bias training,

00:03:12.700 those racist coffee houses, you know.

00:03:16.460 And you probably wish that they spent less time

00:03:19.060 making the bathrooms acceptable to all 75,000 genders.

00:03:23.880 And, you know, they defy common sense.

00:03:26.340 That's why you need Black Rifle Coffee.

00:03:27.760 I drink Black Rifle Coffee every day.

00:03:30.140 I love it.

00:03:30.800 It is absolutely delicious, which is the most important thing.

00:03:33.600 Because they're great.

00:03:34.680 I've talked to the guys who run it.

00:03:36.340 They are super cool guys.

00:03:37.800 They support veteran causes.

00:03:39.740 They support first responder causes.

00:03:42.140 So your money is going to good things.

00:03:44.720 But frankly, look, we're Americans.

00:03:46.780 We're capitalists.

00:03:47.360 The most important thing is this has to be the best cup of coffee.

00:03:49.580 And it is.

00:03:50.520 It is so good.

00:03:51.820 And you'll feel like a real cool guy when you drink it.

00:03:53.840 They have great coffee.

00:03:54.560 They have great gear.

00:03:55.440 They have a coffee club that makes things really easy.

00:03:57.360 No lines.

00:03:57.880 No running out.

00:03:58.760 Just great coffee shipped right to your door every month.

00:04:00.620 Hassle free.

00:04:02.080 And you get to support good veteran and first responder causes

00:04:04.880 instead of, I don't know, Planned Parenthood

00:04:07.020 or wherever the other coffee companies are donating to.

00:04:10.700 Black Rifle.

00:04:11.560 It's delicious.

00:04:13.520 Go to blackriflecoffee.com slash covfefe.

00:04:17.040 C-O-V-F-E-F-E. 1.00

00:04:18.040 Don't say I never did nothing for you.

00:04:19.740 Get 15% off your first order.

00:04:22.680 I think it might be 15% off any of your orders.

00:04:25.960 But certainly your first one, and your first won't be your last.

00:04:29.420 Go to blackriflecoffee.com slash covfefe.

00:04:31.440 C-O-V-F-E-F-E. 1.00

00:04:32.680 15% off.

00:04:33.780 That's pretty good.

00:04:35.100 Blackriflecoffee.com slash covfefe.

00:04:36.880 C-O-V-F-E-F-E. 1.00

00:04:38.080 You're going to love it.

00:04:38.780 It is superb coffee.

00:04:40.820 Okay.

00:04:41.140 Now that I've got my coffee, I've got my covfefe,

00:04:43.240 I'll take one last sip.

00:04:44.060 So let's get into this absolutely horrific news cycle. 0.86

00:04:50.320 And we'll have to talk about the Catholic sex scandal because it is so egregiously horrific.

00:04:58.620 I was sitting backstage last night for the pre-show in Arizona at Ben Shapiro Live,

00:05:04.140 and I was reading the 1,000-page grand jury report out of Pennsylvania

00:05:08.420 that details decades and decades and decades of just the most horrific abuse you can imagine

00:05:16.020 or that you can't imagine, which is not a great way to get ready for a show.

00:05:19.360 It doesn't really put you in the entertaining spirit,

00:05:22.340 but you've really got to read this.

00:05:25.640 I highly recommend you read this.

00:05:27.680 You can skim it.

00:05:29.040 It's not like War and Peace or something.

00:05:31.020 A lot of this is in legal language, and, you know, these things are really horrific.

00:05:37.320 And it's great work from Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

00:05:41.600 We'll put this in broader context.

00:05:43.520 Everybody knows the sex scandal of the early 2000s.

00:05:47.400 This was the first real breaking of the widespread abuse in the Catholic Church,

00:05:52.900 which should not be taken to mean that there isn't widespread or widespread abuse in other churches,

00:06:01.280 in other denominations, in other religions, or in non-religious institutions.

00:06:05.020 We'll get to that later.

00:06:05.940 But it really broke in the Catholic Church, and it's really horrific.

00:06:08.540 I can speak to this a little bit personally.

00:06:10.380 I always wanted to be an altar boy when I was a kid,

00:06:12.600 and the sex scandal broke around the time that I could have become an altar boy,

00:06:16.360 and I wasn't allowed to become an altar boy, and I wasn't allowed to know why.

00:06:22.060 I mean, it's not like your parents explain this to you when you're 8 or 10 years old.

00:06:26.880 They say you can't because there's this widespread sex abuse problem. 0.70

00:06:30.380 You just said I couldn't do it.

00:06:31.520 And this was a couple years before I became an atheist for a decade,

00:06:35.820 but it did coincide around the same time.

00:06:38.440 And I'm not saying that the sex abuse problem caused my atheism.

00:06:41.300 I certainly had no conscious thought of that.

00:06:43.580 But, you know, evil begets evil.

00:06:45.860 Evil spreads and pervades the environment.

00:06:49.040 So there is coincidental timing there.

00:06:50.760 It has real effects because it turns people against God.

00:06:53.600 It turns people against their church and against God, whole generations.

00:06:56.640 I mean, it's so, so wicked.

00:06:58.620 So that's a little bit of the context here.

00:07:01.140 Last month or a couple months ago, a major cardinal, Cardinal McCarrick,

00:07:05.680 resigned from the College of Cardinals because of sex abuse allegations.

00:07:08.980 And this guy, he was a lefty cardinal, but he was a member of the College of Cardinals

00:07:12.620 and a very well-known figure.

00:07:15.020 And he was kicked out mostly for abusing seminarians.

00:07:19.440 I think there was one or two allegations that he abused an altar boy who was 16 decades ago.

00:07:27.180 But from priest friends of mine, I've talked to them, they knew about Cardinal McCarrick,

00:07:32.240 not about abusing a 16-year-old boy, but about pressuring seminarians and other priests

00:07:36.960 and sexually abusing them.

00:07:38.380 I had a priest pal of mine say that Cardinal McCarrick hit on him when he was a seminarian. 0.67

00:07:43.420 And he didn't know it.

00:07:44.560 These things are a little ambiguous, so you don't know.

00:07:47.260 But it was well talked about that he was, not that he was abusing boys or teenagers,

00:07:53.160 but that he was pressuring priests and seminarians, like the Me Too movement of the church.

00:07:59.760 There have been rumors about this guy for a while.

00:08:02.980 Then they came out.

00:08:04.000 This was the first cardinal to resign from the College of Cardinals since 1927,

00:08:08.220 since a monarchist cardinal resigned for political reasons.

00:08:11.460 It was a once-in-a-century sort of thing, a major incident.

00:08:18.080 And that sets up this past week where we've seen this attorney general report,

00:08:23.360 1,000 child victims, child and teenage victims, over about 60 or 70 years by 301 priests.

00:08:31.900 And the attorney general says they don't think they got all the priests.

00:08:34.340 They clearly got a lot of them, probably most of them or the vast majority, but 1,000 victims.

00:08:40.480 Now, the photos that are described, the rituals that are described, the incidents that are described are so horrific.

00:08:52.360 I'll just give you a few of them because they give you a sense of the character of this.

00:08:58.320 These priests would correspond and collude with one another.

00:09:01.840 In one case, they took a boy and they had him pose naked as Christ on the cross.

00:09:06.680 So it's not just that they had him pose naked and they created child pornography.

00:09:11.120 It isn't just this fleshy thing.

00:09:13.380 And this is the aspect of this that I think a lot of people are not quite registering. 0.98

00:09:18.380 If it's just some sexual deviant priests, some perverts who want to satisfy the flesh, 0.94

00:09:24.080 I can kind of, I can at least comprehend that. 0.98

00:09:27.140 I can understand, okay, there's sexual deviants and they use their opportunity to get what they want.

00:09:33.480 But what's even more horrifying is the spiritual component of it, the utter sacrilege, the satanic character of this.

00:09:42.780 It wasn't enough to take photos of this little boy.

00:09:46.160 They had to take photos of him mocking Christ on the cross.

00:09:49.080 There was one case of a priest who abused a boy and then washed his mouth out with holy water.

00:09:58.000 Didn't use bottled water, didn't use tap water, holy water.

00:10:03.000 And the satanic character of all of this, one priest used a crucifix, a seven-inch long crucifix, to abuse a boy.

00:10:11.300 Why? Why that character?

00:10:14.500 The question of why and the answer to that question gives us an unpopular answer,

00:10:20.800 but it gives us the answer to why this is going on.

00:10:23.120 So why is this going on?

00:10:25.060 First, you know, I always look for the bright side of things.

00:10:27.340 It's hard to find a bright side or a silver lining in this.

00:10:29.540 But if there is to be any good news in this, it's this, that the vast majority of these priests are dead.

00:10:36.580 They're already dead. That's a very good thing.

00:10:38.360 They're dead because I think the headlines make us think that there have been a thousand kids abused in the last few years.

00:10:44.700 This hasn't really happened very much at all in the last few years or even the last decade or two.

00:10:50.500 These incidents go back to 1947.

00:10:53.060 So if a priest abused somebody in 1947, chances are they died a long, long time ago.

00:10:58.040 Many, many of these priests died decades ago.

00:11:01.020 So they, I was talking about this with a friend of mine.

00:11:04.040 He said, so they escaped their punishment.

00:11:05.760 I said, I don't think so.

00:11:06.740 So something tells me they're getting their punishment right now.

00:11:10.440 And you can't, can't predict these things, but I bet those priests knew they were getting their punishment too.

00:11:16.440 So there's a silver lining in that at least that the vast majority of them are dead or, or have been defrocked or whatever.

00:11:24.340 However, these cases also took place in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the majority of them.

00:11:31.540 There were some that were more recent.

00:11:33.200 There were some that were earlier than that.

00:11:34.800 But the big bulk of these were in those decades, those decades around the sexual revolution, which I suppose should not be surprising. 0.94

00:11:41.700 And it's good that they, the vast majority of them happened a long time ago.

00:11:45.700 So what is the issue now?

00:11:47.200 What is to be done now?

00:11:48.340 Now, how do, what do we blame for this?

00:11:51.700 A lot of people want to blame celibacy.

00:11:53.480 This is the kind of, this is the gut-wrenching answer, the simple answer, the intuitive answer that, well, priests can't have sex. 0.99

00:12:00.400 So they're going to become sexual deviants. 0.98

00:12:03.600 This doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

00:12:05.520 All of the social scientific data show that celibacy, not just in the Catholic Church, but in other religions, doesn't have a link to sex abuse against children or against anybody else.

00:12:15.320 There's really no correlation.

00:12:17.840 There have been a number of studies about this.

00:12:19.240 There was a major five-year study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York.

00:12:25.020 Another possibility is that it's homosexuality. 0.98

00:12:28.800 I say, well, there are all these gay priests. 0.99

00:12:31.900 From priests that I've spoken to, there are a lot of gay priests. 0.99

00:12:34.740 I talked to one priest, he said, well, if we just simply get rid of all the gay priests, there won't be any priests left. 0.99

00:12:42.180 We don't have any priests in the church. 0.99

00:12:43.540 And the question, I don't think, is about priests who are attracted to members of the same sex.

00:12:48.500 It's obviously priests who are acting out their sexual desires.

00:12:52.920 There are plenty of girls and women who are mentioned in that report in Pennsylvania, though the majority were boys and young men.

00:13:00.420 So, again, that study and other studies shows that there's not really a link between homosexuality and sex abuse against children.

00:13:09.080 Now, the majority of the victims are boys and teens, but that might, teenage boys, but that might suggest that just there are a lot of gay priests.

00:13:16.960 I don't know.

00:13:17.520 It doesn't seem to me that the answer quite lies there, though the mainstream media want to run with this. 0.82

00:13:21.820 The Washington Post ran a headline, the Catholic Church is enabling the sex abuse crisis by forcing gay priests to stay in the closet.

00:13:28.500 G.K. Chesterton said the Catholic Church, the way he knew it was the church, is because it gets attacked for opposite reasons. 0.95

00:13:33.940 So, on the one hand, they're saying that they force gay priests in the closet.

00:13:37.740 On the other hand, people are criticizing it and saying they're allowing gay priests to be open and to flourish.

00:13:42.300 Again, I don't think that quite gets to the problem.

00:13:47.100 By the way, it's also worth pointing out that there's this question of, is it just something about Catholics? 0.77

00:13:53.560 Is it just something about the Catholic faith that breeds child abuse or pederasty or whatever? 0.96

00:13:59.620 The data don't really back this up.

00:14:02.260 One study shows that this problem of child abuse is no more widespread in the Catholic Church than it is among the general male population.

00:14:10.200 The rates are actually lower.

00:14:11.280 The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children backs this up.

00:14:15.180 They say there's nothing particular about the Catholic faith.

00:14:18.520 They see the same rates of abuse among other religious groups and other Christian denominations.

00:14:23.360 Insurance companies that cover many denominations say that the problem is not especially Catholic.

00:14:30.060 They see it in Protestant denominations.

00:14:31.700 They see it in evangelical churches and denominations as well.

00:14:36.960 So, I guess we can't pinpoint it on that.

00:14:39.820 Also, there was a report prepared a number of years ago for the U.S. Department of Education 0.54

00:14:44.040 that shows that sex abuse by school teachers is a hundred times more prevalent than sex abuse by Catholic priests, 0.84

00:14:52.000 which makes perfect sense. 0.78

00:14:54.000 We see those headlines all the time, although, frankly, the media do focus more on it when it's religious figures

00:15:00.100 and especially when it's Catholics.

00:15:01.220 Okay, but still, shouldn't we expect more of our priests than we do of the general male population 0.79

00:15:06.280 or than we expect of school teachers or something?

00:15:08.940 Of course.

00:15:09.820 And this is worse for reasons beyond that.

00:15:11.640 Why is this so much worse?

00:15:13.920 We just know that this is so much worse.

00:15:16.040 Well, one, certainly, because it breaks people's relationship to God

00:15:19.780 and it breaks people's relationship to their church forever.

00:15:22.460 It poisons people against God for generations.

00:15:26.340 But it's just the evil character of it.

00:15:29.860 It's that it's so wicked.

00:15:31.300 The evil seems so gratuitous.

00:15:33.580 Why does the little boy in the picture have to mock Christ on the cross?

00:15:38.940 Why do the priests make him do that?

00:15:40.440 Why do they have to use holy water?

00:15:42.280 Why do they have to use crucifixes?

00:15:43.320 Why is this so evil?

00:15:46.460 Why is it so sacrilegious and satanic and evil?

00:15:51.020 That's the answer.

00:15:52.340 It reminds me of Ephesians.

00:15:54.640 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, 0.70

00:15:59.600 against the rulers of the darkness of this world,

00:16:01.880 against spiritual wickedness in high places.

00:16:04.800 That's the issue, spiritual wickedness.

00:16:07.400 And this gets to the answer.

00:16:08.720 Father Gabriele Amorth, who was the Vatican's chief exorcist for a quarter of a century,

00:16:13.320 he wrote a number of years ago that the devil resides in the Vatican.

00:16:17.040 And we're seeing the consequences of it now.

00:16:18.560 We are seeing the consequences of it now.

00:16:20.280 What does it mean for the devil to reside in the Vatican?

00:16:22.500 It means that evil exists.

00:16:24.000 Evil has a personality.

00:16:25.380 You know, there was this couple, this American couple,

00:16:28.660 who decided that evil doesn't exist.

00:16:30.780 The boyfriend wrote on his blog, he said, evil is just make-believe.

00:16:35.460 We've just invented evil to describe people who have different values than we do and different opinions.

00:16:40.320 But evil, it's not really real.

00:16:41.920 And they went on this bike tour of the world.

00:16:43.720 And they say, we're going to go to Africa and North Africa and the Middle East.

00:16:47.100 And nobody's going to be evil because it's all so nice.

00:16:49.860 And we're living in Kumbaya land, right? 0.64

00:16:51.920 And on day 369 of their journey, they were going through Tajikistan.

00:16:57.320 And a car passed them.

00:16:58.500 The car did a U-turn.

00:16:59.640 The car mowed them down. 1.00

00:17:01.080 And then Muslim terrorists got out and stabbed both of them to death, 1.00

00:17:04.020 the boyfriend and the girlfriend, stabbed them to death. 1.00

00:17:06.600 Because evil is not make-believe.

00:17:07.800 Evil is real.

00:17:08.600 And most importantly, evil has a personality.

00:17:11.340 Evil has a personality.

00:17:12.820 And that's the devil.

00:17:13.700 That's the person that we call the devil.

00:17:16.620 And people scoff at that these days.

00:17:18.960 Self-styled sophisticates scoff at the devil.

00:17:22.840 Antonin Scalia did this great interview with New York Magazine,

00:17:26.000 this flippant little girl reporter.

00:17:27.700 And she said, oh, gosh, you believe in the devil, huh?

00:17:29.680 That's got to be awful scary.

00:17:30.880 And he said, do you know how out of touch you are?

00:17:32.560 Not only with the majority of America who believes in the devil,

00:17:35.560 but with the majority of people throughout history,

00:17:37.920 everybody's believed in the devil.

00:17:39.080 And here's the money quote.

00:17:40.980 Many more intelligent people than you and I have believed in the devil.

00:17:44.040 Because the devil's real.

00:17:44.980 And the devil resides in the Vatican.

00:17:46.640 Where else would the devil be?

00:17:48.380 If you were the devil, where would you stage your attack?

00:17:51.500 Where else but the Vatican?

00:17:54.320 Scalia was right about many things.

00:17:55.920 It reminds me, he gave this quote to Leslie Stahl one time on CBS.

00:18:00.120 Do we have it of Antonin Scalia explaining his point of view?

00:18:03.040 Anyway, that's my view, and it happens to be correct.

00:18:06.200 My view, and it happens to be correct.

00:18:07.860 That is the view.

00:18:08.740 And if we deny that, if we continue to deny the existence of evil

00:18:12.060 and the personality of evil, we'll never get to this.

00:18:14.140 You're going to hear calls for a lot of reform movements.

00:18:16.480 From the left, you're going to hear calls that 0.98

00:18:17.860 we need to let priests be gay, openly gay and sexual, sexually active. 0.99

00:18:23.180 We need to let priests marry. 1.00

00:18:24.660 We need to let priests whatever, this and that.

00:18:26.780 You're going to hear from the right that we need to just, 0.99

00:18:29.540 just simply getting rid of gay priests, that's going to solve the problem. 1.00

00:18:32.560 Or priests who are attracted to members of the same sex. 1.00

00:18:34.640 Or just getting rid of these bad cardinals would be, 1.00

00:18:38.300 is going to solve the problem.

00:18:39.380 And look, getting rid of bad bishops and cardinals will help the problem,

00:18:42.720 but it won't solve the problem.

00:18:44.060 It won't get to the heart of the problem.

00:18:45.440 Because everybody, especially in modern society, they want some policy.

00:18:49.380 What's the policy?

00:18:50.800 We're going to do one little policy, and then all of this evil is going to go away.

00:18:55.340 That's not how it works.

00:18:56.500 There's no policy.

00:18:57.620 There is no policy to fix it.

00:18:59.520 There can be attorneys general in the states who can follow the lead of Josh Shapiro,

00:19:03.820 and that would be very good for their political careers,

00:19:05.640 and it would be morally good because it would root out these guys who should hang from a rope.

00:19:09.940 That would be good.

00:19:11.000 Or who are already getting their eternal desserts down below.

00:19:15.180 That would be a good thing to happen.

00:19:17.260 But there's no policy.

00:19:18.280 There's no policy that's going to, there's no easy switch

00:19:20.380 if we're treating this as a problem of the flesh.

00:19:22.740 This isn't a problem of the flesh.

00:19:24.180 It's a problem of spiritual wickedness in high places.

00:19:27.160 It's a problem of evil, and it's a problem of the person of evil.

00:19:30.420 It's a problem of the devil.

00:19:31.740 If we deny that, we're not going to not only fail to fix the problem,

00:19:35.940 but the evil is going to fester. 0.99

00:19:37.900 We're running late, so I'm going to have to skip the worst, stupidest article on the Internet. 0.98

00:19:41.140 But I really did want to address that because it's a problem in my church, 0.97

00:19:45.400 so I figured we should talk about it.

00:19:47.300 Let's skip that.

00:19:48.000 Let's get right to another issue going on,

00:19:51.180 which is Americans who want to legalize every drug. 0.63

00:19:54.760 And you hear this from libertarians all the time.

00:19:56.840 They say, legalize everything.

00:19:58.020 And then you hear, I look and I see billboards that say,

00:20:01.560 get Haitian oregano delivered directly to your door.

00:20:04.200 You know, a little Peruvian parsley coming right to your door.

00:20:06.860 Click of an app.

00:20:08.060 And people are celebrating this.

00:20:09.800 And meanwhile, we have an opioid epidemic wreaking havoc all across the country.

00:20:13.140 I got to sit down with a good friend of mine and a former teacher of mine

00:20:16.620 and the former drug czar for the Bush administration, John Walters.

00:20:19.860 He's now the COO at the Hudson Institute.

00:20:21.880 He's the head of the Hudson Political Studies Program.

00:20:24.060 And he's just a brilliant guy all around and especially on matters of drug policy. 0.99

00:20:29.240 So here, John Walters dispels all of the stupid slogans that we hear about drug policy. 0.98

00:20:35.620 Without further ado, I sat down with John Walters. 0.97

00:20:38.780 Mr. Walters, thank you so much for being here.

00:20:41.520 Thank you, Michael.

00:20:42.320 Good to see you.

00:20:42.980 So your skills and your expertise are more in demand now than ever.

00:20:50.220 There's the opioid crisis is taking over the whole country.

00:20:53.060 The statistics are really horrifying, just sort of seemingly random statistics.

00:20:58.080 Pregnant women who are addicted to opioids has quadrupled in the last eight or nine years.

00:21:05.260 You know, it's spread coast to coast and all throughout the middle of the country.

00:21:09.660 From your position, having, you know, shaped so much of national drug policy,

00:21:14.640 what can the government do?

00:21:16.060 What can the government not do?

00:21:17.500 What are the limits of government reach?

00:21:18.860 And where did everything go so wrong?

00:21:20.320 Well, it's, we're in territory we've never been before.

00:21:25.800 There are just, the biggest numbers we have are overdose deaths and those lag in reporting.

00:21:32.460 The last full number we have is 2016, over 60,000 overdose deaths.

00:21:36.780 We've never, we've never had that kind of carnage in this country before.

00:21:41.000 The numbers have been growing at almost 20% a year.

00:21:45.120 And that's just the deaths.

00:21:46.380 That's not the addiction.

00:21:47.420 That's not the use.

00:21:48.700 That's not the overdoses that don't result in death.

00:21:51.640 We're not even tracking that effectively.

00:21:54.020 So we are so asleep at the switch on this, that it's very difficult to craft a response,

00:21:59.540 because you don't know where it is now.

00:22:02.740 You don't know what the magnitude is.

00:22:05.240 And there are things we can do, but we have to do the things at the place where they're

00:22:10.160 going to make a difference.

00:22:11.140 And we're not even measuring that.

00:22:12.720 So this got very bad after the first wave, it was added by, to a second wave, was added

00:22:21.080 to a third wave.

00:22:21.820 The first wave being, in terms of opioids, pain medication that was diverted beginning

00:22:26.400 well over 10, 15 years ago, a failure of medical institutions to properly look at the research

00:22:34.060 and to respond quickly.

00:22:35.460 When I was drug policy director for President George W. Bush, we started to see some of this

00:22:40.700 and we tried to work with FDA to get some control on the misuse and diversion.

00:22:46.940 The argument at that time was pain was a new human right.

00:22:50.520 To be free from pain was necessary.

00:22:53.300 And if we didn't do that by giving people powerful medications, we were doing something

00:22:57.860 immoral.

00:22:59.040 When it became clear, as it should have been earlier, but when it finally became overwhelmingly

00:23:04.340 clear that these were being misused in large numbers, then we began to kind of change

00:23:09.340 the dimensions of some of the threat.

00:23:12.960 But in the absence of that, it was simply more and more people getting sicker and sicker.

00:23:19.640 Added to that was, subsequently, about 2010, a doubling of heroin production in Mexico.

00:23:26.840 Then it continued to grow.

00:23:28.040 That added additional deaths and additional addiction.

00:23:31.500 And then added to that, again, not receding and then added, but added to that was the fentanyl

00:23:36.680 flow into the United States.

00:23:39.500 Most of it coming either directly from China through Mexico or through parcel post.

00:23:45.320 Some of it through precursors that were then cooked in Mexico.

00:23:47.760 So we have simply had institutions that failed, failed to protect us at the border, failed

00:23:55.380 to protect us from foreign sources and criminal networks, failed to protect us with health

00:23:59.800 and treatment data that can be used effectively.

00:24:04.420 We're still not there.

00:24:05.680 And when I talk to government officials here in the administration in Congress, the first

00:24:10.680 thing I tell them is you have to get better information so you can focus resources.

00:24:14.600 Otherwise, the harm simply grows.

00:24:20.000 You focused a lot on the production side of it.

00:24:23.560 And I wonder how much is supply and how much is demand?

00:24:28.100 There's heroin, there's fentanyl coming over from Mexico.

00:24:31.920 There are these apparently lazy doctors or not very conscientious medical professionals

00:24:37.840 who are letting these drugs be misused or they're being overprescribed or they're being

00:24:41.420 diverted.

00:24:41.900 But how much of this is a demand issue?

00:24:45.020 You know, you see suicides skyrocketing in the country.

00:24:48.680 You do see a sort of cultural trouble.

00:24:52.500 There's a cultural issue.

00:24:53.960 It seems like people are anxious and nervous and there seems to be a pervasive subjectivism

00:25:00.040 or nihilism or just some cultural problem.

00:25:03.440 How much of this is being caused by the demand of people who just want to apply themselves

00:25:09.080 with more drugs and how much can we just blame on bad guys and criminals producing more and

00:25:14.540 poisoning our country?

00:25:16.140 I think that's a central issue, Michael.

00:25:18.500 And I think we are obviously in the midst of something where people initiate this by beginning

00:25:26.460 to use drugs, obviously.

00:25:27.820 It starts by use.

00:25:30.940 It continues.

00:25:31.960 This is a disease phenomenon, but it's a disease phenomenon where the victim has to

00:25:36.940 continue to take the drugs in order to be victimized.

00:25:40.160 However, having done this for a long time, and I started out in the Department of Education

00:25:44.440 during the Reagan administration working on drugs with Bill Bennett, I worked in both

00:25:49.760 Bush 41 and Bush 43.

00:25:52.140 I don't think there's a living person who successfully argued for more prevention and

00:25:55.600 treatment money than I have in my lifetime at the federal level.

00:25:58.780 But having said all that, my view now, looking at the terrible situation we are now in, which

00:26:04.260 as I said, is historically without precedent, is we have embedded in our culture a tolerance

00:26:10.500 of this that is impossible for us to eradicate.

00:26:13.760 That is, going back to the baby boomers, my generation, it's now been come kind of accepted

00:26:20.360 that while everybody tells you not to do this, your parents or people at home, you go on the

00:26:25.480 internet, you watch popular culture, you hear what people say, and you're supposed to experiment

00:26:31.920 with this.

00:26:32.380 This is the edgy thing to do.

00:26:34.540 And we actually, I reached to run an anti-drug media campaign when I was in the Bush administration

00:26:40.480 the last time, and we did a lot of surveys of youth, and some of those were for kids to

00:26:45.760 keep track of the messages they got about drugs for a two-week period, write them down

00:26:50.040 every time it happened.

00:26:51.420 Essentially, the findings of that were, it was 12 to 1, use drugs, everybody uses drugs,

00:26:56.480 here's how to use drugs, here's why it's cool, versus don't.

00:27:00.220 So I think the problem we have is, when people say, we have to stop demand, I don't think we

00:27:06.580 have a viable way to stop demand.

00:27:08.180 Moreover, these drugs, these substances can addict anyone.

00:27:13.540 Our biological nature makes it such that these substances can cause addiction and dependency,

00:27:19.840 not only for humans, we know that it does it for monkeys and rats and mice, we addict them

00:27:23.840 for research purposes.

00:27:25.400 So when these poisons, I think it's much better to think about this as a mass poisoning incident.

00:27:31.560 When these poisons are in our culture, they make victims, and they're aggressively marketed

00:27:37.640 by criminal organizations that are network phenomenon, like terrorist networks, they

00:27:42.120 have to be torn down.

00:27:43.660 And in fact, if you look back at the meth epidemic here, when we had small toxic labs, people

00:27:48.900 cooking it themselves, it wasn't until we stopped those labs, it wasn't until we reduced

00:27:53.520 the flow of cocaine out of Colombia when President Uribe was president, that we reduced by 60% cocaine

00:27:58.760 use.

00:27:59.080 It wasn't until we stopped the heroin coming out of Colombia and reduced the heroin coming

00:28:03.400 out of Mexico that we reduced heroin use.

00:28:05.940 It wasn't until now we're controlling some of the prescription diversion that we reduced

00:28:10.960 the prescription victimization, which is still too high.

00:28:13.860 So my argument is, if you look back historically, we've only been able to stop this when we stopped

00:28:19.220 the poison, and we should encourage prevention.

00:28:23.480 We obviously want to treat people who are victims.

00:28:25.180 But this is like, if you say just prevention and treatment, it's like trying to stop terrorist

00:28:30.020 attacks by building shock trauma wards.

00:28:32.520 You're not going to stop them.

00:28:34.360 We need to treat people, but we need to stop the poisoning first.

00:28:38.140 That's a great point.

00:28:39.080 And it injects some reality into the drug discussion and the drug debate.

00:28:43.460 So often it seems to be had at this utterly abstract, ethereal level.

00:28:48.180 But we're talking about real poisons on the ground coming in through real borders and real

00:28:53.180 ports of entry and real places and from real criminal gangs.

00:28:56.880 Now, you're a very busy guy.

00:28:58.480 You've always kept busy.

00:28:59.580 And one of the many things that you do is run the Hudson Institute political studies program.

00:29:04.840 And when I was a student of yours in that program, I remember a lot of young people, libertarian

00:29:10.620 types and conservatives, they would frequently tell you everything about drug policy.

00:29:16.620 They had, you know, they probably hadn't studied it ever.

00:29:19.020 They probably didn't have a lot of experience.

00:29:20.120 They say, no, don't worry.

00:29:21.080 I know this very well.

00:29:22.100 We should legalize everything.

00:29:24.300 Freedom, freedom, freedom, baby.

00:29:26.540 One, why is this view so widely spread on the right?

00:29:30.580 And two, why is it wrong?

00:29:34.720 Well, it's interesting.

00:29:35.560 I was talking to a conservative columnist.

00:29:37.480 I won't name that person because they're known, but at a Fourth of July event.

00:29:42.600 And in the course of it, they mentioned to me that, well, of course, I believe we should

00:29:47.780 legalize drugs.

00:29:48.680 And I said, really, at 65,000 deaths a year and climbing, you think that we need more of

00:29:55.980 this?

00:29:56.900 I said, look, yeah.

00:29:59.600 Young people, because they live in a culture where drugs are pervasive and they see a lot

00:30:04.800 about it, they believe they've seen what they need to make a judgment.

00:30:09.460 Right.

00:30:10.180 In addition, I've smoked pot one time, so now I know about drug policy.

00:30:16.520 Well, and I know people that use it.

00:30:19.080 And look, President Obama used it, used cocaine, said it was a bad habit.

00:30:23.080 He was president of the United States.

00:30:24.520 What's the problem?

00:30:25.640 Well, of course, these are phenomenon where it doesn't harm you every time you use it,

00:30:33.640 but it harms a significant number of people when they use it on a repeated basis or when

00:30:40.160 they use it in the normal course of what use looks like in the United States today.

00:30:45.220 It can start frequently with marijuana, and it does for most people.

00:30:49.300 If the bottom of the funnel is overdose death and the middle of the funnel is addiction, the

00:30:55.280 top of the funnel is experimentation.

00:30:57.240 And most of that starts with marijuana.

00:30:59.460 And the danger that we're facing now is we already have a worse death rate than we've

00:31:05.260 ever had in this country.

00:31:06.440 And we're aggressively expanding the top of the funnel by making marijuana ubiquitous in

00:31:12.220 more and more places at the time when it's being marketed with more potent variety.

00:31:16.440 So I think the precise part of your question is the libertarian position presumes that a rational

00:31:27.380 person should take responsibility for the decisions that they make.

00:31:31.240 The problem with these substances is they impair reason, they impair choice, they make people

00:31:37.200 subject to a chemical dependency that they lose control of their lives.

00:31:42.460 The reality of this, I think if you really want to look at the reality,

00:31:46.440 is look what people do to themselves.

00:31:48.660 Their lives collapse down into using drugs, seeking drugs.

00:31:52.320 They'll do anything.

00:31:53.560 They'll degrade themselves.

00:31:55.780 They'll steal from their own family.

00:31:58.420 They'll become involved in criminal activity for the purposes of seeking these drugs.

00:32:04.040 The power of these drugs over individuals varies.

00:32:06.700 It varies over time.

00:32:07.680 It varies by genetic factors.

00:32:09.160 But everybody could be victim.

00:32:11.340 And those that are, are not rational, independent actors.

00:32:14.600 That's my argument with my libertarian friends.

00:32:17.780 I don't want a nanny state.

00:32:19.320 I've worked a lot in Republican agencies and government administrations to improve education,

00:32:26.160 improve the programs at disadvantage by getting some of the bureaucratic bloat and the enemies

00:32:34.160 of freedom away from the people who are vulnerable.

00:32:38.340 But substance abuse, what my libertarian friends don't seem to understand is,

00:32:43.280 substance abuse takes away the power of freedom.

00:32:47.040 It's the opposite of liberty.

00:32:49.340 It's the opposite of independent self-government.

00:32:52.560 That's such a good point.

00:32:53.920 It creates slavery.

00:32:55.120 And so when the 18-year-old kid says,

00:32:57.020 I've smoked pot one time, I know about national drug policy, they're, they're, they're missing

00:33:02.000 all of the effects of drugs on the person, regular use, habitual use.

00:33:06.980 It just, it does degrade liberty.

00:33:08.880 You can't, you're, you're not, you're not in control of yourself and you're not, not only

00:33:12.680 are you not in control of your faculties, you're not, you're not in control of judgment.

00:33:16.160 You really lose this.

00:33:17.000 Even Jim Morrison, no anti-drug guy himself, you know, lead singer of the Doors.

00:33:21.720 Uh, Jim Morrison did an anti-drug PSA one time and he said, well, when you're, when

00:33:26.080 I'm on this drug, I can't think at all.

00:33:28.220 He's like, well, if Jim Morrison can gather that maybe, maybe other people should too.

00:33:32.300 You know, I, before I let you go, I look around, I'm in Los Angeles, la la land.

00:33:36.800 I see giant billboards for marijuana delivery services come right to your door.

00:33:43.180 There's probably an app for that now.

00:33:45.580 Uh, there are votes all over the country to legalize, decriminalize certainly marijuana.

00:33:50.580 And then, uh, there are pushes for other drugs too.

00:33:53.560 Do you see the culture moving in this sort of, uh, irreversibly pro-drug direction or

00:33:59.340 is there some way to turn the culture around?

00:34:02.500 Um, look, I think you just look at the science here.

00:34:07.520 Um, it's just a biological fact that human beings, if they use these substances enough

00:34:14.160 times become dependent.

00:34:15.720 It's also true.

00:34:16.740 They go from one substance to another substance because they get used to being dependent.

00:34:20.120 You ask about the so-called deaths of despair.

00:34:22.640 I think a lot of that is actual drug use.

00:34:25.100 If you drain the drugs out, I'm not saying nobody will have despair.

00:34:27.920 I'm not saying suicide will drop entirely, but the parallel in the places where this is

00:34:33.340 happening are the places that have been infected with drug use, including marijuana use.

00:34:37.460 All the science about marijuana over the last 15 to 20 years, not when I was young, when

00:34:42.220 people were, were touting this as, Hey, it's just, it's not a reefer madness.

00:34:46.420 It's really harmful.

00:34:48.020 It's natural.

00:34:48.940 It's, it's, uh, it's a way of expanding your consciousness.

00:34:51.700 It's as good as alcohol and, and, uh, and better.

00:34:55.520 Um, all the science has shown greater dependency, serious, causing and triggering serious mental

00:35:01.940 illness, depression, thoughts of suicide, psychosis, regular and heavy use in young adulthood

00:35:08.180 can cause a permanent IQ loss of seven points.

00:35:11.780 Now for smart people that went to Yale and, and, and Harvard seven probably doesn't make

00:35:18.080 much difference.

00:35:18.740 Maybe you could have been an honor student at a state college instead of Harvard or Yale.

00:35:22.160 Although I don't know, Mr. Walters, I don't know if you've looked around the Yale campus

00:35:25.380 these days, I don't know.

00:35:26.360 It's a little dicey.

00:35:27.260 It's a little shaky.

00:35:29.160 Well, for an average IQ, that's the difference between being able to get a reasonably nice job

00:35:34.740 or maybe a white collar job and being somebody who has to mow lawns for the rest of their

00:35:38.900 life.

00:35:39.500 So the consequences for this, we're not even seeing, we're not even measuring what's going

00:35:43.960 on here, but all the science, science that's been done, research, longitudinal studies with

00:35:48.300 twins to control for genetic differences have shown in other countries as well as the United

00:35:52.920 States have shown the dangers here are even greater as we are expanding marijuana and

00:35:58.540 we're expanding cannabis use.

00:36:00.160 We're allowing it in concentrations never seen before, not three, four or five.

00:36:04.740 But 20%, 30% more addictive, more dangerous.

00:36:08.780 So the problem that we have is how many people are going to become victims before we see what

00:36:14.540 we've done and begin to undo it.

00:36:16.760 I think we need to be able to get more information to people right now about what's happening for

00:36:22.420 this.

00:36:22.700 But I am fearful about what's happening in California and other places because I've spent

00:36:29.400 more time in treatment centers than most people talking to the victims here.

00:36:32.540 And I can tell you that the law, I can, I can, I have a sense of the lives that are being

00:36:38.880 put at risk, the families, the futures that are being compromised here and the people who

00:36:43.660 go on to become casualties and statistics and the devastating effect of that.

00:36:50.060 When you go in to places in Ohio or Pennsylvania and other places where this has progressed,

00:36:55.400 where opioid deaths are overwhelming, you know, they don't really want to talk about inequality

00:37:00.400 of income.

00:37:00.900 They don't really want to talk about foreign policy.

00:37:03.040 They don't really want to talk about what happens to deregulation in the United States

00:37:07.120 or what happens to self-freedom.

00:37:09.040 They want to talk about how do we stop losing our neighbors and our family members.

00:37:13.460 So I think that's going to make this come back.

00:37:16.540 And the fact is many of those are battleground states and politicians.

00:37:20.880 And I think both President Trump and I think Secretary Clinton were educated by this, by

00:37:25.560 having to go into those states.

00:37:26.980 But the problem is we have not come to grips with the fact that we need to stop this substance

00:37:31.680 from coming in.

00:37:32.640 And I will say one last thing, the thing that shows you we can and should do something, and

00:37:38.180 this is a failure of institution, is most drugs killing Americans today are coming from 0.98

00:37:42.580 outside the United States.

00:37:43.980 Most of those pass across the southwest border, and most of those pass within six feet of a

00:37:48.520 uniform federal agent.

00:37:49.920 That's a monumental failure of intelligence and operations.

00:37:54.300 And we can do a much better job.

00:37:56.200 I'm not saying we go to zero, but this isn't a needle in the haystack.

00:37:59.300 This is a pickup's truck in a haystack.

00:38:01.000 That is such a good point.

00:38:02.780 And of course, it's an important point from an electoral perspective as well.

00:38:06.860 It's great to talk about reforming entitlements.

00:38:09.140 It's great to talk about all of these things that we really care about.

00:38:11.720 But people are seeing people die.

00:38:13.640 I know multiple people who have been caught up in the opioid crisis and unfortunately died.

00:38:20.100 And I'm from the coasts, you know, and I'm not from the places that are hardest hit

00:38:25.180 by this crisis.

00:38:27.020 Well, it's really important.

00:38:28.160 It's so good to get some actual knowledge on this topic because people are just talking

00:38:33.000 in nonsense and ignorance. 0.72

00:38:34.620 So it's so good to get some expertise.

00:38:36.800 And we're going to have to bring you back because another area where you're working hard

00:38:40.580 to fix the country is in education and supplementing the poor education people are getting on universities.

00:38:46.600 And it worked for me, too.

00:38:48.280 So we're going to we'll have to have you back on to talk about that some other time.

00:38:52.760 Thank you, Michael.

00:38:53.440 I spend half my time on the American dream and half on the American nightmare.

00:38:57.120 Yeah, that's a very good point.

00:38:59.940 Mr. Walters, good to see you.

00:39:01.200 And I will talk to you soon.

00:39:02.420 Thank you.

00:39:02.800 All right.

00:39:05.720 I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.

00:39:07.520 Obviously, we're running very late.

00:39:08.980 I've got like, I don't know, seven or eight minutes left.

00:39:10.860 I want to get through seven or eight questions.

00:39:12.540 So we're going to fly through them.

00:39:13.900 You've got to go to dailywire.com if you want to watch that.

00:39:16.100 By the way, our next episode of The Conversation is almost here.

00:39:18.540 Tuesday, August 21st.

00:39:20.580 21st.

00:39:21.800 August 21st.

00:39:22.700 530 Eastern.

00:39:23.660 230 Pacific.

00:39:24.500 I'll answer all of your questions with our host, Elisha Krause.

00:39:27.360 The live Q&A will be available on YouTube and Facebook for everyone to watch.

00:39:30.340 But only subscribers can ask me questions at dailywire.com.

00:39:33.800 Go there right now.

00:39:35.480 Look, you'll get me.

00:39:36.180 You get the Andrew Klavan show.

00:39:36.940 You get the Ben Shapiro show.

00:39:38.340 You get to ask questions in the mailbag, which we're about to get to.

00:39:40.940 None of that matters.

00:39:41.620 What really matters is the Leftist Tears Tumblr.

00:39:45.340 Look, you know, this is the only, we were just talking with the former drug czar of the

00:39:49.040 Bush administration.

00:39:49.760 This is the only FDA approved vessel for leftist tears.

00:39:52.080 They are overflowing these days.

00:39:53.340 Make sure you go.

00:39:53.920 Dailywire.com.

00:39:54.660 We'll be right back with the mailbag.

00:40:00.340 Hold on to your seats, baby.

00:40:07.920 We are about to fly.

00:40:09.700 I want everyone in the room.

00:40:11.040 Hold on.

00:40:11.600 We're about to fly.

00:40:12.140 If you're driving, pull over.

00:40:13.480 This is going to be a lot.

00:40:14.820 Your heart is going to flutter.

00:40:15.920 First question from Bridget.

00:40:17.120 Michael, I've been chatting with an atheist online about this nation being founded on Christian

00:40:21.300 principles.

00:40:22.060 One of the things he brought up is the Treaty of Tripoli.

00:40:24.060 Oh, here we go.

00:40:24.880 Here we go.

00:40:25.460 May 26th, 1797, Article 11, which states, as the government of the United States of America

00:40:31.060 is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion, as it has in itself no character

00:40:35.060 of enmity against the law's religion or tranquility of Muslimen, that's a word for Muslims, and

00:40:40.340 as the said states never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mohammedan

00:40:44.880 nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions

00:40:48.800 shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

00:40:52.020 He argues this is proof positive that we're not a Christian nation or a nation founded

00:40:56.320 on Christian principles.

00:40:57.460 I believe this is more proof that the founders did not want to ensconce a state religion,

00:41:01.160 but isn't evidence at all against our nation being founded on Christian principles.

00:41:04.160 Thoughts?

00:41:04.740 Yeah, it's not proof of either of those. 0.99

00:41:06.380 It's proof that we wanted Muslims to stop stealing and enslaving our sailors. 1.00

00:41:10.100 That's what it's proof of. 0.97

00:41:11.400 If this were true, if this were really the founding philosophy of the United States, you wouldn't

00:41:16.600 find it in the Treaty of Tripoli, which was to make sure that Muslim pirates off the

00:41:21.300 Barbary coast wouldn't keep just stealing our goods and our people and our ships, you'd 0.99

00:41:27.140 find it in the Declaration of Independence or in the Constitution or in the Federalist

00:41:30.180 Papers.

00:41:30.680 You'd find it somewhere there.

00:41:32.180 You don't find it there.

00:41:33.640 You find it in this treaty, this obscure article of this obscure treaty that was just designed

00:41:38.860 so that this other religion would stop capturing our people. 1.00

00:41:43.520 Obviously, this nation is founded on Christianity.

00:41:46.060 All of the people who founded it were Christians.

00:41:48.040 They came from a Christian culture.

00:41:49.300 Some of them were a little deistic, but even deism, even Enlightenment deism comes out of

00:41:53.780 Christianity.

00:41:54.740 The pilgrims at Plymouth were Christian religious zealots.

00:42:00.280 John Adams said, our country was founded for a moral religious people.

00:42:03.420 It's wholly unfit for anybody else.

00:42:05.320 He's not talking about Muslims.

00:42:06.700 He's not talking about Hindus.

00:42:08.400 He's not talking about Buddhists.

00:42:09.620 He's talking about the religion that they come out of, Christianity, where he's talking

00:42:13.260 about a shining city on a hill.

00:42:14.380 The shining city on a hill that we talk about when we refer to America, the speech is not

00:42:18.760 called a shining city on a hill.

00:42:20.300 It's called a model of Christian charity.

00:42:22.620 Anybody who is citing Article 11 of a treaty to save our ships and our sailors from Muslim 1.00

00:42:28.920 pirates to prove that this country isn't Christian is being disingenuous.

00:42:33.860 They're obviously being disingenuous.

00:42:35.160 Look at all of American history.

00:42:37.300 Next question.

00:42:37.760 Nicholas, dear bestselling author, Michael, my friend is in the process of converting

00:42:41.660 some high school girl to Christianity.

00:42:43.640 Just like a random high school girl.

00:42:44.940 You're just like trolling high schools, cruising high schools to win souls.

00:42:48.860 I guess that's not terrible.

00:42:50.480 It might get a little weird, but not terrible.

00:42:52.620 They are close to accepting Christianity, but they're still having some doubts about the

00:42:57.040 existence of God because they believe that science conflicts with the existence of God.

00:43:01.020 How would you go about explaining that science doesn't disprove the existence of God?

00:43:05.160 Thanks, Nick.

00:43:06.680 It doesn't.

00:43:07.420 I don't know.

00:43:07.700 How are you going to prove that there isn't a giant UFO outside waiting to zap you when

00:43:11.760 you walk out?

00:43:12.340 There's no evidence of that whatsoever.

00:43:14.300 So the burden of proof is on the people who say that.

00:43:16.880 Just ask them questions. 0.99

00:43:17.880 This is the way to deal with people who say stupid slogans such as that, but can't really 1.00

00:43:21.980 back any of that up. 1.00

00:43:23.160 Okay, you say that science disproves God.

00:43:26.120 How so?

00:43:27.460 And then they'll say some nonsense and then you disprove that.

00:43:30.520 It doesn't.

00:43:31.040 It simply doesn't.

00:43:31.820 If anything, natural science speaks to the creator.

00:43:35.880 So it speaks to the creator of nature.

00:43:38.280 So, you know, tell them, you got to give me something, guys.

00:43:40.940 I can't prove to you that there isn't an elephant waiting out to crush me when I walk out the

00:43:45.520 door.

00:43:46.360 But there isn't an elephant waiting out to crush me when I walk out the door. 1.00

00:43:49.040 You can't disprove all the stupid ideas in the world. 1.00

00:43:52.440 It's the burden of proof is on them. 1.00

00:43:54.100 From Benjamin.

00:43:54.600 Hello, Michael.

00:43:55.220 I was wondering what your take is as a religious person on ghosts walking the earth.

00:43:59.040 I used to dismiss the idea of spirits and ghostly events due to silly TV shows and whatnot.

00:44:02.880 I've been rethinking my position, however, after hearing stories from a close friend

00:44:06.000 whom I don't believe to be crazy about his old house.

00:44:08.740 Also, as I become more religious and believe in the afterlife, I'm questioning if there is

00:44:12.700 an afterlife, if it can somehow collide with our life here.

00:44:15.960 What are your thoughts on ghosts and does believing in ghosts contradict Christianity or Catholicism?

00:44:20.980 Thanks, Benjamin.

00:44:21.720 Well, to quote Mr. Shakespeare, there are more things between heaven and earth that are dreamt

00:44:26.700 of in our philosophy.

00:44:27.600 That's certainly true.

00:44:28.560 There's a supernatural world, a metaphysical world, a world beyond just the flesh.

00:44:33.360 Absolutely true.

00:44:34.600 I don't think that ghosts are around here haunting me.

00:44:37.120 But demons are.

00:44:38.180 There are demons.

00:44:39.160 There are devils prowling the earth trying to ruin souls.

00:44:42.920 And this is a traditional explanation for what people would think are ghosts or something

00:44:46.500 like that, is that there's evil.

00:44:48.220 There's spiritual evil in the world that seeks to lie to you. 1.00

00:44:50.500 The devil is a liar and a murderer from the very beginning. 0.97

00:44:53.480 And we're seeing that very clearly these days. 0.99

00:44:57.200 And so that's what I would suspect.

00:44:59.080 I, you know, the devil proscribes going to seances or doing astrology or trying to talk

00:45:06.960 to spirits, not because it's all bunk, but because it's evil.

00:45:10.080 It's evil and compromises your free will.

00:45:12.640 And you're talking to some bad hombres to quote President Trump.

00:45:16.980 I wouldn't try talking to ghosts or anything like that.

00:45:19.060 Talk to God and, and fear not the demons of this world.

00:45:24.100 From William.

00:45:25.060 Michael, my girlfriend goes to Bentley in Boston and is currently helping out there with orientation.

00:45:29.220 For her introduction to new freshmen, she's required to say,

00:45:31.640 Hi, my name is Peyton.

00:45:33.220 My pronouns are she, her, and hers.

00:45:36.220 Well, you're very lucky that those are her pronouns. 0.72

00:45:38.180 I'm pleased to hear that for you.

00:45:40.380 Pronouns are also on the name tag.

00:45:41.640 She isn't comfortable saying this because she believes there are only two genders. 0.97

00:45:44.620 What would your advice be to her?

00:45:45.880 I would never say that.

00:45:46.840 I would, I would just cross it out on my name tag and not say it.

00:45:49.520 But look, I'm pretty honest with my views.

00:45:51.780 She might get some lower grades because she does that. 1.00

00:45:55.760 But I wouldn't do that at all.

00:45:56.860 And if they really make an issue out of it, I'd transfer to a more sane school.

00:46:00.960 That's insane.

00:46:01.900 It's an assault not only on reason but on the English language.

00:46:05.660 And if the English language is being battered at your university without any safe haven,

00:46:10.180 perhaps you should leave that university.

00:46:11.920 I would be very honest.

00:46:13.220 But again, there's a cost to that, especially these days in this culture.

00:46:16.780 So if she doesn't want to deal with that cost, then she's got to toe the party line.

00:46:20.040 But I would sleep very soundly at night if I, if I said no to that and didn't pretend

00:46:26.540 that there are 75 genders.

00:46:28.640 From Aaron.

00:46:29.180 How many more?

00:46:29.580 I'll try to get through a couple more.

00:46:30.960 From Aaron.

00:46:32.200 Dang, Knowles, you viciously excoriated Peter Strzok on your show this week. 0.99

00:46:35.640 While I fully approve, I don't think I've ever seen you hulk out like this.

00:46:39.700 Given the rampant hypocrisy and negative press, covfefe from the left, why was Strzok of all

00:46:44.600 people the one to finally push you over the edge?

00:46:47.020 When can we expect a visit from Hulk Michael?

00:46:49.320 Right now, baby, that's when you can. 0.99

00:46:51.300 Because Strzok is such a little twerp, such a little wimpy, disgusting twerp. 0.99

00:46:55.940 That's why he's, it's so egregious. 1.00

00:46:58.120 Look, do I, he cheated on his wife.

00:46:59.800 A lot of people cheat on their wives.

00:47:00.940 It's not good, but that wouldn't be enough to make me rip my shirt off and turn green.

00:47:04.840 What drives me crazy is that he used a bureaucratic position of the public trust.

00:47:09.560 He abused it to threaten the most obvious example of my freedom.

00:47:13.500 The biggest, most public, most widespread national example of my political freedom is that

00:47:18.780 I get to vote in major elections, like the presidential election, for instance.

00:47:23.040 He threatened and boasted about subverting that from his weaselly little power as a bureaucrat

00:47:30.400 in the administrative state.

00:47:32.260 And, and then he put his hand out.

00:47:33.680 After taking taxpayer money his whole life, he put his hand out to get on the dole again.

00:47:37.540 I don't know.

00:47:37.840 He's probably raised millions of dollars at this point.

00:47:39.820 He kept upping it.

00:47:40.700 The left is giving him a trust fund to own the cons.

00:47:42.780 It's so egregious.

00:47:44.520 But the thing that really got me about him is, is that his weaseliness both abused the

00:47:50.620 public trust and threatens my freedom.

00:47:52.700 And I don't like that.

00:47:53.860 From Matt, Michael, where do you draw the line between being willing to change your mind

00:47:57.000 based on new facts versus standing firm in your beliefs?

00:47:59.400 How can we avoid confirmation by eschewing the way we interpret new information?

00:48:02.500 And is that even a bad thing?

00:48:04.060 I'm always open to new information.

00:48:05.660 That's how I've arrived at most of my views is our views that I didn't hold before.

00:48:09.320 And then someone convinced me I'm always, there is no, there's no, I say, I won't think

00:48:13.580 about this.

00:48:14.180 I'm open to entertain any book, any idea, any argument.

00:48:18.360 And that's how I've arrived at my views.

00:48:20.900 We should be perfectly willing to do that.

00:48:23.100 And you'll become smarter and you'll become firmer in your views to do that.

00:48:27.440 I'm very open.

00:48:28.480 I come to questions with a point of view, with a vision of the world as I see it.

00:48:34.100 So I, I'm honest with myself about that because then I'll do my best to disprove, to argue

00:48:39.740 against my own point of view.

00:48:40.980 If those arguments succeed, then I'll change my point of view.

00:48:43.980 Otherwise I'll keep going and keep being right.

00:48:46.760 Another question from Aaron.

00:48:48.000 Is that the same Aaron?

00:48:49.020 Maybe.

00:48:49.620 Dear Dr. Covfefe, I usually listen to your show on audio only, but today I happened to

00:48:52.760 watch the video and I noticed that you wear your watch on your right hand.

00:48:55.780 Good God, man, are you left-handed? 0.98

00:48:57.280 I am spawn of the devil, absolutely sinister. 0.97

00:48:59.860 And I die two years earlier on average.

00:49:02.360 I'm hoping that's just because of mechanical accidents and not because of something in our

00:49:06.360 handedness.

00:49:07.340 But yeah, it's really rough.

00:49:08.280 I also, the main reason I've been doing it these days, because I've worn my watch on

00:49:11.240 my left before, is it seems too blingy with my wedding ring.

00:49:13.920 It seems like really blingy to have all that stuff on one hand.

00:49:16.400 So I'm balancing it out.

00:49:17.320 I need a lot of balance.

00:49:18.080 We'll do one more than I got to get out of here.

00:49:19.680 Stephen, Michael, do you think Father Rutler would be a good guest for Ben Shapiro's Sunday

00:49:25.800 night interview?

00:49:26.860 Yes, Father Rutler is a national treasure.

00:49:28.520 He is one of the greatest guys in the country and has more insight than virtually anybody

00:49:34.600 I've talked to.

00:49:35.300 He definitely should be on there.

00:49:36.620 And I got to bring him back on my show more as well.

00:49:38.840 Okay, that's our show.

00:49:40.520 I, whew, I'm exhausted.

00:49:42.060 This is what happens when you don't do any work for two days.

00:49:44.100 Then you got to do a lot of work.

00:49:46.020 Great, great to be back, everybody.

00:49:47.520 I'll see you on Monday.

00:49:48.420 In the meantime, by the way, you got to start binging the first season of Another Kingdom

00:49:52.300 because we're recording season two and it is real cool.

00:49:55.620 So in the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.

00:49:57.140 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:49:58.020 I'll see you on Monday.

00:50:03.540 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal.

00:50:07.220 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:50:09.300 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:50:11.120 Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover.

00:50:13.720 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:50:16.360 Edited by Jim Nickel.

00:50:17.880 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:50:20.160 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:50:22.320 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:50:25.940 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Michael Knowles Show - August 17, 2018

Ep. 202 - The Devil In The Details

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