A CNN contributor posts the stupidest tweet of the week, Patrick Madrid joins the show to discuss how to approach politics as a Christian, and then we have the mailbag. Thanks to Blinds for sponsoring the show.
00:01:27.620And that's because the future is so bright out there, folks, that you need blinds to put in your windows so that it doesn't just shine in and keep you up all night.
00:02:22.800They will send back custom recommendations from a professional for what will work with your color scheme, your furniture, your specific rooms.
00:03:42.820Because of the guilty and the this and the campaign finance.
00:03:47.360Now, mind you, legal scholars are saying that it's far from clear whether Donald Trump could have even committed a crime with regard to the Michael Cohen testimony.
00:03:56.720Even if Donald Trump instructed Michael Cohen, his lawyer, to make a payment regarding Stormy Daniels or any of these other girls coming out of the woodwork,
00:04:06.700a number of lawyers say that that would not be a crime, including Alan Dershowitz, including one of the great legal scholars of this generation and the past generation.
00:07:33.820Like in the sitcom version of all of this, in the TV version, which is really what we're living through, there, you know, the president's lawyer, the guy's lawyer would come out and, you know, say, you're a criminal and you're going to be impeached.
00:07:44.400And then the main character, his punchline would be, well, if you want a lawyer, I don't recommend you hire this guy.
00:09:39.100So, for those of you who are only listening who can't see, this is President Trump standing alone just outside the White House, just in front of a camera.
00:09:46.740And he's going on about this killing of Molly Tevitt's, killed by an illegal alien, talking about the wall.
00:09:53.360He's got a little dig in there about the family separation crisis scandal, manufactured scandal at the border.
00:10:00.160He said, this girl has been forever separated from her family.
00:10:09.040The Molly Tevitt story has already come out.
00:10:11.280It's come out for over the past few days.
00:10:13.280He's hitting this because this is one of his most popular points, his most popular rhetorical points.
00:10:18.060And it was central to his campaign, Build the Wall.
00:10:20.500It's very popular because the mainstream media are going to try to convince you that a payment to a porn star two years ago is worth taking down this entire presidency.
00:10:31.540And he's going out there, and he's going to hit you really hard.
00:10:34.720But he's not just stopping with Tibbetts.
00:10:36.620He then goes on, and he suggests that his critics owe him an apology because of how great the country is going.
00:12:35.280He tweeted about the longest bull run in American history.
00:12:37.780He tweeted about an illegal alien killing Molly Tippetts, the economy, Hillary, the South African farm expropriation that's going on right now, right now in South Africa.
00:12:47.000The government has voted to steal farms from white farm owners on the basis of their race.
00:12:54.300They're saying that this is a white nationalist talking point, even though the government of South Africa has said this and has said that they're going to do this.
00:13:02.200Apparently now it's facts or racism or something like that.
00:13:09.080He's tweeted about repealing Obamacare, deregulation, and, of course, the rigged witch hunt.
00:13:13.700He's tweeted about all of these things in the last 24 hours.
00:13:16.140What we're seeing here is Donald Trump hard charging.
00:13:20.360This is the superpower of Donald Trump.
00:13:22.820It is the reason that it is good that he got elected over many of the other more qualified, more politically experienced candidates who were in that field.
00:13:32.060Because Donald Trump does not just play defense.
00:13:35.700He plays strong offense in a way that a lot of other politicians, especially Republicans, don't do.
00:13:52.960This reminds me of the Rosie O'Donnell thing.
00:13:55.180Rosie O'Donnell said that Donald Trump was bankrupt.
00:13:57.560Donald Trump went on a holy jihad for the next five years, calling her every name in the book and trying to ruin her life, all the way up to the debate stage in 2016, a decade later.
00:18:37.440I think the issue here is that lefties must feel immense guilt because their reckless, lawless, immoral advocacy of open borders and not supporting border laws is leading to Americans being murdered time and time again.
00:18:53.860There's a name for the mothers, angel mothers, of mothers whose kids have been killed by illegal aliens.
00:19:13.800However, immigration enforcement would have stopped all of these murders.
00:19:18.960If we actually enforce the law, detained and deported illegal aliens in this country, none of the people killed by illegal aliens would have been killed by definition because they wouldn't be here.
00:19:30.640I understand why they feel guilt about this, but it's really horrific.
00:19:35.980I mean, she's getting some blowback about this all over the Internet, and she really should.
00:19:40.380That's a really vicious way to politicize a death and to try to wipe the blood off her hands, but she probably won't be able to.
00:19:47.320Let's bring on Patrick Madrid so that we can talk about politics and Christianity and how to deal with this absurd political climate as a Christian.
00:20:01.260You will know Patrick Madrid as the host of the Patrick Madrid Show on Relevant Radio.
00:20:05.820He also has hosted a bunch of shows on EWTN.
00:20:08.800He's an author and an all-around very smart guy and has a great Twitter account.
00:20:12.880Patrick, we could talk about any number of subjects.
00:20:17.100What I really want to talk about is how to approach politics in this political moment as a Christian without delving into a lack of charity or something like that.
00:20:28.180I saw a few tweets from pastors around the country in the past few days.
00:20:32.440One of them talked about this kind of wacky church where it's at a brewery and they talk about how Jesus was a Palestinian and he was killed by white supremacists and they donate their proceeds to Planned Parenthood.
00:20:48.460And then this other pastor guy who said that, he said, Jesus wasn't white.
00:22:15.140We don't want to do what so many people on the other side do to us routinely.
00:22:19.560But at the same time, you have to stand and engage these people.
00:22:23.900And what I found, Michael, as I know you found, is that as soon as the ideas get exposed in the public arena and people can actually see them for what they are and they can analyze the logic behind these beliefs, clearly we have the better arguments.
00:22:38.360But it has to be done in public and it has to be done vigorously.
00:22:41.580That's right, because, you know, I really admire your show.
00:22:59.120And so then I guess I'll ask on the religious aspect, too.
00:23:02.540So much of what strikes me about political confusion, religious confusion is that people are largely ignorant.
00:23:09.840They're ignorant in a way that past generations were not ignorant of basic concepts of either conservative politics, left wing politics, Christianity, the Catholic Church.
00:23:20.400They're ignorant of these basic things.
00:23:22.080In light of that culture where an education system has failed a whole generation of people, how do you advance any aspect of instruction or commentary from apologetics all the way to politics?
00:23:36.980How do you how do you advance that in a culture with such a low degree of knowledge?
00:23:42.040Yeah, you've pinpointed one of the real serious problems of our generation.
00:23:45.460And I would argue that it's probably three generations worth now that academia has failed in terms of teaching basic concepts like critical thinking skills and and not that we should always be critical, but we should have clear thinking.
00:23:58.160We should be able to think clearly about these issues.
00:24:00.320So what I do and you'll hear it on the program and I'm happy to know that you listen.
00:24:04.780What I do is I as often as possible, I use the Socratic method with callers who want to joust or they want to promote a view that I disagree with.
00:24:12.760And as you know, the Socratic method is by by interrogating the other person, you're asking him the questions and he may not even realize that the burden of proof remains firmly on his shoulders, which is where it belongs typically in arguments like this.
00:24:26.800So because people don't think critically anymore, they've resorted to bumper stickers and slogans and thought stopping epithets like racist and homophobe and nonsense like that.
00:24:38.140The only way to get past those thought stopping slogans is to ask questions.
00:24:43.440Well, if that's true, what about this?
00:24:47.460And without them realizing what you're doing, you're actually picking apart their ideas.
00:24:51.480But they're doing the heavy lifting for you.
00:24:54.120And to the extent people can can see this on Facebook or Twitter or on the radio, for example, it has great effect, I find that that's that is a very good point.
00:25:03.100And every time that I engage in that just in my personal life, even or at a speech or something, it's always much more effective, I find, because if your debate opponent can come to the idea on their own, then it's more likely to stick, I think.
00:25:17.600One thing, speaking of the education system failing whole generations of people, one of the aspects of that is that the religiously unaffiliated, the nuns, the so-called nuns, have exploded, especially among millennials.
00:25:33.260And I know so many millennials who were raised not just in a religious tradition that they reject, but without any religious tradition or religious education at all.
00:25:41.760So a lot of people will write into this show.
00:25:43.660I think a lot of viewers of this show are agnostic or they haven't really thought about it before.
00:26:19.220I figure if guys like you and I can get the person at least to start thinking about it.
00:26:24.940And I'm not at all surprised to know that you have atheists and agnostics and others who listen to your program.
00:26:29.920The same is true for my program on relevant radio.
00:26:32.460And what I find from them is they listen because there's something they don't agree with it, but there's something about it that they find at least worthy of their time to listen to.
00:26:40.820And I'm content if I can just get that, if they'll just listen.
00:26:44.640And if we listen in dialogue long enough, I'm hopeful that those ideas will become clear to them.
00:27:03.960I don't think it's useful to appeal to the things that we would appeal to if we were speaking, let's say, to a person who did believe in God but wasn't Christian.
00:27:12.100Rather, I think our task is to use pure reason and demonstrate on the basis of the strength of the rational proofs for the existence of God that are ultimately unanswerable, I would argue, by the atheist worldview.
00:27:33.580Those kinds of logical, rational evidences for the existence of God are key.
00:27:39.040Now, some examples, if we have a moment, would be, you know, the classic question, why does anything exist at all?
00:27:45.900And if we take a metaphysical approach to the question, we don't have to use the term metaphysics because that's scary for some people, but just raise the question of being.
00:27:53.560You know, what does it mean to be and how do things come into being?
00:27:57.380Can something come into being on its own?
00:28:01.220It can't give itself being, but it receives being.
00:28:03.580And if it received being, it received being existence from something before it, but that had to receive existence from something before it.
00:28:11.300It's almost like the caboose on a train.
00:28:13.500It's only moving because the car in front of it is moving.
00:28:16.480But that car is only moving because the car in front of it is moving.
00:28:19.220And so we logically know, we assume, even if you don't see it, there must be an engine at the front of the train that doesn't need to be pulled because it's pulling everything.
00:28:29.340And if it weren't there, nothing could move.
00:28:30.840And so in a similar sort of way, even things like change in motion and being and all these things, they have evidences that believers really need to become more proficient at understanding how to explain it to an audience that has lost touch with so much of this patrimony that we used to know.
00:28:47.620This is such a good point because the first chink in my armor, I know you were a cradle Catholic.
00:28:53.480I also was a cradle Catholic, but I had a nice little 10-year saunter through the atheistic and agnostic landscape.
00:29:01.820By the time I was 13, it was right around my confirmation, and I chose Thomas as my confirmation name because I was doubting.
00:31:10.580It must be named and it must be condemned publicly.
00:31:13.960And thankfully, there are people who are doing that.
00:31:17.140It is shocking, but it's not surprising, honestly.
00:31:20.220I look back over the history of the church for 2,000 years and we've seen other epics where clerical corruption has been through the roof.
00:31:27.800And so, although it's new to us and it's shocking to us in the near term, this is not the first time it's happened.
00:31:33.900Now, that doesn't excuse it, certainly doesn't minimize it.
00:31:36.420It doesn't, I don't say that to suggest that there's, well, it's okay, we can just get along.
00:31:41.120It's a serious problem, but it's not the first time the problem has arisen.
00:31:44.720So, I take from that a great deal of encouragement that we Catholics would have destroyed this church many times over if it were not something that had a divine beginning,
00:31:56.800which is what we believe that it was founded by Jesus Christ.
00:31:59.740And so, it's all the more reason that it's shocking that Catholic priests, cardinals, bishops have done this kind of thing.
00:32:06.660So, I'll leave you, since I know we have to go, but I'll leave you with this thought.
00:32:09.820I'm always comforted by that passage in Scripture that describes the storm that came up on the lake when the apostles were sailing on the Lake of Galilee.
00:32:19.280And we have a little detail in the story that Jesus was asleep in the back of the boat,
00:32:23.980and the storm was getting so bad that some of these apostles who were seasoned fishermen,
00:32:28.860and they knew from being on a lake with a storm, they thought they were going to die.
00:32:32.720And we're told that they were so beside themselves that when they woke up Jesus, they said,
00:32:37.260Lord, you know, we're about to die here, can you help us?
00:32:41.640And he calms the storm, and he says, why did you doubt, you have little faith?
00:32:45.180So, personally, I think of that when I look at these headlines, because it seems, A, like this is a storm that will sink the ship,
00:32:52.900and B, it kind of seems at times like Jesus is asleep.
00:32:55.660But I know he's not, and so I'm trusting in what he said to the apostles,
00:33:00.500and that would be my respectful suggestion to all people of goodwill,
00:33:04.620those who believe in Jesus anyway, to consider that as they're facing these kinds of problems and headlines.
00:33:10.720That is a tremendous point, and you've made me feel better.
00:33:14.040This is the main purpose of me inviting guests on the show,
00:33:17.960is so they can make me feel better about the world and the culture and everything.
00:38:23.560You know, if there is any distinction to be made, I don't use any distinction.
00:38:27.520We're going to have an excellent author, Yoram Hazoni, on the show in a couple weeks to talk about the virtue of nationalism, which is his new book.
00:38:35.860If there is any distinction, it's just this.
00:38:38.540When people say patriotism, they're talking about the appropriate love of country.
00:38:41.660When they talk about nationalism, they talk about the inappropriate or idolatrous love of country.
00:38:47.220I think it is a totally false distinction.
00:38:49.920People should not make an idol out of their country.
00:38:51.900Even America, which is the greatest country in the history of the world, they shouldn't make an idol out of it.
00:38:55.660That's not the only thing that we're serving.
00:38:57.860We're serving God, country, and our communities in that order.
00:39:05.760You wouldn't have America without the divine providence of the American founding and the metaphysical ideals to which America aspires and in many ways on which it was founded.
00:39:16.080But you can't just abstract the ideals and not have the real thing.
00:39:21.820And usually when people do that, it's because they don't like one person's version of patriotism and they prefer a different version of patriotism.
00:39:30.220So they try to draw a distinction without much of a difference.
00:39:38.040Michael, I have been meaning to read the work of the great religious minds like Chesterton and Thomas Aquinas and also C.S. Lewis outside of the Chronicles of Narnia that I read as a boy.
00:39:47.720And also some classical philosophers like Aristotle that I was never made to read in school.
00:39:52.080What are some books to start with that are the closest to the source material as possible?
00:39:58.040Well, what sort of material are we talking about?
00:40:01.340The source material for Aristotle is Aristotle.
00:40:04.040The source material for Lewis is Lewis.
00:40:06.240The source material for what Lewis is writing about is the Bible or Aristotle or whatever.
00:40:11.100I would say, it is true, often now you're not really taught, made to read Aristotle or Plato, basic things that you should read in school.
00:40:19.040Well, just because of the order that you listed those in, I would say start with Lewis.
00:40:24.920Never let it be said that I'm too popish, that I'm too much of a papist.
00:41:39.400If we kicked all the foreigners working in Hollyweird out of the country, how many people would be left?
00:41:44.280Why do you think we import all these actors when there are thousands of out-of-work American actors with equal talent and appeal?
00:41:50.280Well, as a former out-of-work American actor, I can speak to this pretty directly.
00:41:54.500The reason is that the rule of thumb in Hollywood is write Yiddish, cast British, which is you get Jewish people to write the shows, and then you cast Brits to act in them.
00:42:12.140They're disproportionately represented in comedy writing, and Brits are disproportionately represented in American film.
00:42:18.560There is a reason for this, and it gets to Hollywood itself.
00:42:20.900One thing I noticed, having been in New York and L.A. for long periods of time, New York actors, generally speaking, are much better than L.A. actors.
00:44:23.800I'm a public high school teacher, and a female student identified themselves as transgender and asked me to refer to them by male pronouns and a masculine name.
00:44:34.960I need some advice on how to handle this situation.
00:45:35.380So, especially as a public school teacher, even as a private school teacher probably, certainly as a public school teacher, you'll lose your job.
00:45:43.320So, this presents a real problem for you.
00:45:47.160Are you going to go out there, take this moral stand, die on the hill, as the expression goes?
00:45:52.400Or do you think that you can pick your battles and have to fight this one another day and try to affect the culture in another way?
00:46:00.580I can't answer that for you because this will certainly cause financial and personal turmoil for you and your family if you do the thing that is clear, which is to call a boy a boy and a girl a girl.
00:46:12.120I can't answer that for you because you've got to feed your family.
00:46:16.520I will say I don't think it's total cowardice to go along with the PC line because there are other ways that you can work within the system and really try to reform that.
00:46:25.300And there's nothing honorable exactly about seeding the fight and leaving the field.
00:46:31.640So, there's nothing wrong about being a little crafty.
00:46:35.980But you're going to have to pick that for yourself.
00:46:37.840If you think there's no way to fix this and we're going inexorably down this path and you've got to get out of that environment and that job, then you can call a boy a boy and a girl a girl.
00:46:47.700But if not, then you might have to play along in some ways with the PC culture and try to change it from within.
00:46:55.540From RT, Dear Mr. Michael Knowles, please explain what we should know and think about Gnosticism.
00:47:19.900There are lots of different types of Gnosticism.
00:47:22.040It refers specifically, capital G, to these beliefs around the time of the life of Christ and the early Christian church which denied that Christ was a human, that he was just God.
00:47:33.360He was just an illusion that he was a human or denied that Christ died.
00:47:36.860Or suggests that matter itself is evil.
00:47:39.500Or suggests that God, the creator of matter, the God of the Old Testament, is evil.
00:48:09.380But this also ties into our politics, which is that Gnosticism rejects the tangible and the material and the flesh in favor exclusively of the metaphysical, of the ideas, of the secret knowledge.
00:48:32.280It isn't just that we're soul and our body is evil, like the Albigensians thought.
00:48:38.640It isn't just that we don't have a soul and that we, or that our soul is physical and we're just, you know, machines and robots like a lot of modern atheists think.
00:49:03.460I was wondering, since there has been so much coverage about how the Russian bot Facebook ads must have swayed the election, could an argument be made that preemptively deplatforming Alex Jones and Gavin McGinnis could be construed as election interference?