Ep. 210 - The Virtues (And Vices) Of Selfishness
Summary
When is selfishness good? When is it bad? And when does it make us look ridiculous and degrade our humanity? On this day in history, George Washington shows the difference between pride and dignity. Finally, the mailbag.
Transcript
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iPhones, millennials, and the sacrament of self-love have infected every aspect of society
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from Alex Jones' browser history all the way up to the White House and even the Vatican.
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We will discuss the virtues and vices of selfishness.
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Then, on this day in history, George Washington shows the difference between pride and dignity.
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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There's so much to get to, beginning with Alex Jones' browser history.
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The question here is selfishness, because this is something that cuts across conservatives and leftists.
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I remember when I was 17 years old, I was introduced to Ayn Rand, the author of The Fountainhead,
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and what's that other one book that nobody's read, Atlas Shrugged, and The Virtue of Selfishness.
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And I, like every other 17-year-old who reads Ayn Rand, immediately bought it.
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This is a phase that I think every 17-year-old boy has to go through,
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Some people still, like, really love her forever and ever.
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When is selfishness, when can it be used to a better purpose?
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And when does it make us look ridiculous and degrade our humanity?
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Here is Alex Jones explaining why, in a videotape of his cell phone browser,
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he had what appeared to be transgender pornography coming up.
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And also, what about the trans porn on your phone, Alex?
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You know, I saw a couple news articles about that.
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I was, like, looking up some reporter we're trying to hire today
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and punched in some number, and it popped up porn on my phone.
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Everybody's had porn pop up on their phones hundreds of times.
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So I'm sitting there with a phone on air showing it to everybody
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It wasn't the news blurted out because there was nothing there.
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They blurted it to then say something was there.
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I probably had porn menus pop up 500 times on my phone.
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There's two types of people, people that look at porn and people that lie about it.
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I don't take phones on air that I look at porn on.
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I mean, if I respond to half the attacks on me, it's absolutely ridiculous.
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The Amazon ads, the Viagra ads, the weird non-plastic bag ads are taking my iPhone over.
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iPhones didn't used to be that bad like Androids.
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Note to self, never show cell phone screen on the air ever.
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I actually don't really want to beat up on Alex Jones for this
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because I felt the same way when Kurt Eichenwald,
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When he got caught looking at tentacle porn on the internet,
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there's this sub-genre of pornography where it's tentacles.
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And he got caught looking at it and he gave some bogus excuse where he said,
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And which is, he was obviously looking at tentacle porn.
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And I sort of feel this way with Alex Jones because he's exactly right.
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People who have looked at pornography on the internet and liars.
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There are, like, statistically in the United States,
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100% of men have looked at naked ladies on the internet.
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have looked at men who look like naked ladies on the internet
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because perhaps Mr. Jones was drinking the same water
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that the frogs have been drinking for the last few years.
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So, I said I wasn't going to make any jokes about it, and I did.
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especially for the generation of people like my age and younger
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Like, a full 100% of people have seen porn on the internet.
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It isn't about judging people for looking at porn on the internet.
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It's not about judging Kurt Eichenwald or whatever.
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But this is very important because it shows porn usage for what it is.
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Like, there's a reason that he's embarrassed by this.
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It's a shameful thing to look at tentacle porn or whatever.
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about how sex is a dirty, shameful, filthy thing
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And his evidence for this is that when you go into your room to have sex,
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put a camera there, broadcast it to all your friends.
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even Alex Jones, who is a master of just exposing himself,
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See, and I don't know, even he can't spin this yarn.
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Even Kurt Eichenwald says, oh, this wasn't true.
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So people say, oh, well, it's a harmless activity.
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You know, a lot of studies have been done on this.
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It's overuse of porn and high-speed internet porn and video porn
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It's caused guys to stop wanting to sleep with their wives or girlfriends
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You know, we talked a little bit about this, I think, yesterday.
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Obviously, people, when the lights are out and the walls are closed
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and the window's down, people do things that they're not proud of.
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But this is a lesson that we shouldn't do that, you know.
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a character is what you do when you think nobody's watching.
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So, you know, if you're looking at transgender tentacle porn
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It's ultimately selfish to just sit in a room and pleasure yourself.
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It's not gratifying because you're not doing anything.
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you know, staring in the mirror and admiring yourself or whatever.
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I mean, that's like the extreme example of selfishness.
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Anytime you're just doing something for your own pleasure,
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and ultimately you're not going to be fulfilled.
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because he's got an ego like all the rest of us
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And he knows that he can't be the greatest president
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So it's something that he's going to work towards.
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Well, let me go with you the next time you go to the White House.
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which is Donald Trump doesn't want to offend the black vote.
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there were all these rap songs about how cool it was to be Donald Trump
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because Donald Trump was this billionaire playboy.
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He wants to channel his self-interest for black people.
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he's thought through the ideals of the American founding
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and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights
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because that comes from the natural law and the natural creator.
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He gives a much straighter argument that I think everyone can believe,
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which is that he wants black people to like him
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I think people on the right, conservatives mock this sometimes.
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They say, oh, he's so narrow, he's so shallow, Trump.
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You can channel lower passions toward a public good.
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I mean, there is a selfishness there that's a good thing.
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If Donald Trump can be a good president for everybody,
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help everybody succeed, put black unemployment at historic lows,
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put the economy at historic highs, market highs,
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If he does that because he read the Federalist Papers one day
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or if he does that because he just wants the history books to be nice to him,
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Either way, the black unemployment rate goes down.
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You know, we don't need to treat the presidency like it's a religion.
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We don't need to treat it like it's the Vatican.
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Nowadays, we might have to treat the Vatican like it's the presidency,
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We don't have to treat it in these exclusively idealistic terms.
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If he's using his selfishness to become a good president,
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And this applies not just to the individual players in politics.
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This is an absurd story, but it shows you where the logic of this ends up,
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especially for the left, and it shows you why you do need self-interest
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From the Washington Post, this is the headline, quote,
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U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border,
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They say, here's my birth certificate, here's whatever, I want a U.S. passport.
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But if they were born along the southern border,
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the State Department is saying, hold on a second,
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Some dum-dum on Twitter was comparing Trump to Hitler because of this,
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which, by the way, you remember Donald Trump deported that Nazi
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That should buy him some he's-not-Hitler cred for a little while,
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Here is what the piece goes on to say in the Washington Post, quote,
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His official American birth certificate shows he was delivered
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by a midwife in Brownsville at the southern tip of Texas.
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But when Juan, 40, applied to renew his U.S. passport this year,
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In a letter, the State Department said it didn't believe
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There's a guy who served his country, 40 years old,
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and they said they don't believe he's an American citizen.
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Why don't they believe he's an American citizen?
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So despite the headline, despite the first scare paragraph,
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the article actually goes on to explain all of this,
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because this goes back to the first sentence of the article.
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shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville.
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The government alleges that from 1950s through the 1990s,
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some midwives and physicians along the Texas-Mexico border
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provided U.S. birth certificates to babies who were actually born in Mexico.
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In a series of federal court cases in the 1990s,
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several birth attendants admitted to providing fraudulent documents.
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So just listen, even when they're admitting that this is a totally legit thing,
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the Washington Post can't quite give it to them.
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the birth attendants admitted to providing fraudulent documents.
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because the people who did it admitted it years ago.
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This isn't the government trying to pull a fast one.
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Is this a brand new policy that's never happened before?
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Trump's just using it as an excuse to deport people he doesn't like
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or to discriminate against people he doesn't like
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because that's what's being alleged by the left.
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But the same exact piece in the Washington Post goes on.
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the State Department during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations
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denied passports to people who were delivered by midwives
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not only during the last Republican administration,
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but even during the previous Democrat administration under Barack Obama,
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are trying to use it as a cudgel against Donald Trump.
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So they're going to dig up something that was barely reported on,
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is not just to beat up on the mainstream media,