Ep. 26 - The Battle of Berkeley ft. College Republican Pres. Bradley Devlin
Episode Stats
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Summary
The latest Battle of Berkeley is underway, as UC students demand psychological counseling in the lead up to Ben Shapiro's speech at the craziest university in the country. We ll discuss this year of campus chaos with someone who s been at the center of it all, Berkeley College Republican President Bradley Devlin.
Transcript
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Arms in the man, I sing. The latest Battle of Berkeley is underway as UC students demand
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psychological counseling in the lead up to the Orthodox Jew they call a Nazi, Ben Shapiro's
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speech at the craziest university in the country. We'll discuss this year of campus chaos with
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someone who's been at the center of it all, Berkeley College Republican President Bradley
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Devlin. Then, Allie Stuckey, Ariel Davidson, and Cassie Dillon join the panel of deplorables
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to discuss some criminal rapper's stupid music video in which he lynches a white boy, Swedish
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YouTube gazillionaire PewDiePie's dropping the N-word, and leftist criminals' vandalism
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of New York City's famous Central Park statue of Christopher Columbus. I'm Michael Knowles
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and this is the Michael Knowles Show. Shapiro. Shapiro is making trouble, that notorious Jewish
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Nazi. He is going up to Berkeley right now, I think, as we speak. I imagine they're going
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to call in the National Guard to prevent a conservative writer from giving a speech on
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campus. You know, I am glad that we got him on the show last week because this, they're
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going to be out for blood for this guy. They're going to try to prevent him from giving a speech
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about how bad political violence is. Unbelievable, almost beyond parody. Now, maybe the most incredible
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aspect of all this is that a New York Times opinion columnist penned an article yesterday
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supporting Ben Shapiro. Can we check the weather outside?
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It is truly unbelievable, very surprising. For those who haven't been following, let's go through
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the timeline of the Berkeley chaos, what people are calling the Battle of Berkeley. So this actually
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began in the 60s. Berkeley was the hotbed of the free speech movement, which is incredibly ironic
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because now they are the hotbed of the anti-speech movement. They're trying to do everything they can
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to prevent anybody that they even vaguely disagree with from giving a speech on campus. This began
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in February. February 1st, the conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos went to give a speech
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at Berkeley. The funny thing about all this, I have seen Milo Yiannopoulos speak. I saw him at UCLA.
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I wanted to hear what he had to say. I wanted to see the circus surrounding it. He doesn't have a
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speech. There is no speech. He plays these people like a fiddle. A lot of people on the right do.
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There isn't anything. Basically, what Milo did is he went up there, he bantered a little bit with
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Dave Rubin, and then some screaming, hideous social justice warriors stood up, and Milo made fun of him
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for a little bit. If they had just calmed down, there wouldn't have been a speech there.
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When we're talking about more mainstream conservative thoughtful voices,
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if they just allowed these people to talk on the topics that they want to talk about,
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there would be no chaos. No one would pay attention. There wouldn't be national headlines,
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but they simply can't do it. What did they do when Milo Yiannopoulos went to speak? Let's take a look.
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Well, Anderson, what you're seeing behind me is quite a bit of commotion. This is an event at
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Berkeley where Milo Yiannopoulos, who is known as an internet troll, a self-proclaimed internet troll,
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a very provocative speaker, he was invited here to the campus. And you can see from the reaction,
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I'm going to step out of the shot here. What is happening here is that these are student
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protesters, some anarchists, from what I can gather, trying to breach the building right now.
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They don't look like students to me. I don't know about you, but some of those guys
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are in their 30s, I think. Yeah, they look like students.
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That's true. It depends on the university, I guess. Maybe at Berkeley,
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that's what students look like is just black clad terrorists. So in the aftermath of all this,
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there was $100,000 of property damage. A Syrian Muslim was actually attacked by a protester who
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said, quote, you look like a Nazi. Who knew? I certainly didn't know that. So then fast forward,
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March 4th happens. There's a march for Trump. Lauren Southern was, oh, this was later. Lauren
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Southern is supposed to speak in April. At the march for Trump, seven people were injured. April 15th,
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Lauren Southern's supposed to speak. Antifa sets off bombs and fireworks. 11 people were injured
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there. Six were hospitalized. One was stabbed. Then you fast forward to April 27th. Ann Coulter
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was supposed to give a speech. UC Berkeley canceled it. They would not let her speak. They said,
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we'll reschedule for a time when there are no students on campus. Ann Coulter, gotta love Ann,
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says absolutely not. I'm going to go. I'm going to give a speech. She's not allowed in. Now, tomorrow,
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Shapiro himself is heading into the thick of it all. And we can now bring on a guy who has been at
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the center of all of this. UC Berkeley college Republican president, Bradley Devlin. Bradley,
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you are doing God's work over there. Thanks for coming on. Hey, thanks for having me, Michael.
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You know, I'll tell you, I was a college Republican president not too long ago,
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back in the good old days of 2012. And, you know, I, I very, from time to time found myself
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at the center of the left-wing vitriol on campus, but all in all, it wasn't that bad. I mean,
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nothing like we're seeing here, certainly nothing like we're seeing at Berkeley. Uh, how are they
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treating you over there? Oh, absolutely horrible. Um, it started, yeah, it's laughable almost because
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this hysteria started long before Milo Yiannopoulos. It started when I wore my GOP
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shirt for the first time on campus. And I was looked at and called a racist and a bigot by two
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individuals who engaged in zero conversation. Um, I moved there on election night, the surprise
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win of Donald Trump. My friend got punched in the face at a pizza parlor, uh, for expressing
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excitement. People were in tears in my fraternity house as we watched the election. You're telling
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me that guys in a fraternity were in tears that a Republic, I don't, I really don't understand
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left-wing men. I kind of get left-wing women because women are more nurturing. They're probably
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more compassionate than we knuckle-dragging men are, but you're telling me frat, frat boys were upset
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that Donald Trump won? Well, this might shock you, but he worked for Pelosi over the summer. Um,
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uh, yeah, yeah, there was, um, men and women just in absolute hysteria. Wow. And it, it escalated
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from there. Milo came onto campus and this radicalization that happens in the Berkeley
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area was bubbling up, um, underground and finally came to the surface. Finally, Milo gave them an
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outlet to express their anger. And they did so with a bunch of college students locked in the second
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story. You know, Milo is an interesting case there, I think, because he, unlike Shapiro or
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Charles Murray or Ann Coulter, whoever Milo specifically doesn't seem to have very much to
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say. And I don't even mean that as a knock on him. He himself describes himself as a performance artist
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and provocateur and all that. Is there any hazard to associating ourselves with these kind of
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provocateurs and carnival barkers, or do they, do they serve an important purpose right now
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as the left humiliates itself time and time again? Well, I think Shapiro is filling that gap
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perfectly. You don't need to bring someone who is a provocateur on campus to show the left's own
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insanity. Um, Milo, when he panders to the alt-right or when Bannon panders to the alt-right and gives them
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a legitimate platform, and the left does this as well when they call everyone alt-right. I mean,
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they called Ben alt-right on the news a month ago. Um, when they call everyone alt-right,
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it actually gives these people more of a platform. And associating conservatism with alt-right and the
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unabashed tribalism that follows the alt-right is, uh, very, very dangerous for the conservative
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movement. And we can't, we can't move forward in the Republican party, uh, without, without
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differentiating between the two. And I've talked to a lot of these guys, you know, uh, Richard Spencer
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and I had, uh, James Alsup on the show and people who are playing around with the alt-right. It seems
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to me there are none of these people. It seems to me they are a really small minority. Obviously, it's
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bad ideas and the bad ideas should be refuted. But Hillary Clinton, I think, wants to pretend that
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half the country has suddenly gone Nazi. Do you think the alt-right has gained ground on college
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campuses or is it all a bunch of nonsense? I think that when you label everyone as
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deplorable, who believes a certain ideology, there's going to be people who fall into the
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trap of, oh, the right fights against the scourge of political correctness. Therefore, I am
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associated with the alt-right. I am an internet troll. I am a goofy kid who stays on Reddit and 4chan.
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Yeah. I don't wear Brooks Brothers, but I voted for Trump. So I guess I'm on the alt-right.
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Exactly. I can align myself with the alt-right easily because everyone labels me that. And that's
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a very dangerous scenario because we're actually seeing individuals who can become good constitutional
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conservatives to an ideology that associates your ethnicity with whatever creed you proclaim.
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So are these protests, and by protests I mean riots that include tear gas and fires and things like
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that, are they about the speeches or are they about something bigger, who gets to control who gives a
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speech, or something larger? It is. It's definitely about groupthink. It's about a very Orwellian style
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of thought that has taken over the mainstream left. There should be no reason that Brian Fallon,
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Clinton's spokesman during the 2016 campaign, tweets a picture of allied soldiers invading Normandy and
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say, left-wing demonstrators violating property by having no permit. These are completely different
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scenarios. And it's repugnant of these individuals who are higher up in left mainstream media mainly
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to not condemn Antifa and condemn this violence outright because apparently Antifa preaches tolerance
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in all of these leftist ideologies, but in a very violent, fascistic way. This is very problematic.
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I noticed, Bradley, I've looked for video clips of you setting fires and throwing garbage cans through
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windows, and I haven't found any. And it makes me notice that we as conservatives, we don't protest their
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speakers. Or even if we protest them, we don't shut them down. We don't bar them from entering
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buildings. We don't create violence. What is it about the left and the right in America right now
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that makes them resort to violence to shut us up and has us perfectly willing to let them have a platform?
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I think it actually can be traced back to the left's ideology of creating the state as basically your
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church, as your religion. And anyone who believes that the state is fallible, that individual communities
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and individual rights matter more than an authoritarian state, they find that as an assault
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on their themselves and on their ideology that must be combated with violence and absolutely
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Absolutely right. The fetishization of government or the replacement of what we used to have as the
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foundation of our civilization and our society with the state, it does seem that they've become quite
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tribal. What do you make of this? Berkeley was the beginning of the free speech movement, FSM in the
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1960s. Now they're the opposite of the free speech movement. Is there some bizarre change that's
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happened? Or even in that free speech movement, was it similarly a bit of a misnomer and really just a
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way to advance left-wing goals such as protesting the Vietnam War?
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Well, yeah, I actually have this Shapiro Antifa poster that I wanted to show you.
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This is the free speech movement in 1964 and in 2016. So it's a bunch of cops and riot here in 2016 that
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Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. No, the free speech movement was, yes, to establish free speech
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for individuals who believed Marxist ideologies in the 60s. But nonetheless, they were able to
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espouse their views on college campuses. And now we're receiving that same pushback by a liberal
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administration in the present. And the reason that we filed a lawsuit against the University of
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California, Berkeley, the Young America's Foundation in coordination with Berkeley College
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Republicans is that they have created policies that they apply to restrict conservative ideologies
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and speeches on campus. This is a violation of due process of our constitutional rights of free speech
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and equal protection under the law. These are incredibly problematic when you are thinking about
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it in the long term. What if in the future, it's the liberals who are suppressed by a conservative?
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And that's what I always bring up to liberal students who ask me, why are you suing the
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school? Why are you creating this litigation that's going to waste taxpayer dollars? And I
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always have to retort with, well, what if you were in this scenario? What if you were locked in
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a second story of a ballroom with M80 fireworks being thrown at you? What if your friends were
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But they always, they always nod their head and they reciprocate and they usually sign up for
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a mailing list. Our, we are one of the biggest political organizations on campus. We have over
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14,000 individuals, or 1,400 individuals, sorry, interested, but only a hundred come to our
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meetings. And that's what the left has done. They've made conservatives incredibly ticked.
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Well, that's better than us. Yale, I think we had about 11 members. We were the most written about
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10 person club on campus. But that is really good work that you're doing, Bradley. So I appreciate it.
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Stay safe out there. Don't give those left-wing thugs an inch tomorrow and keep up the good work.
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Now it is time to bring on our all-female panel of deplorables. Bradley, he's a good-looking guy.
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He cleans up well, but we got to get him out of here. So we can have an all-female panel of
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deplorables. Excited today to introduce Ariel Davidson from the Hoover Institution. We have Cassie
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Dylan, and we have the blazes, Allie Stuckey. Ladies, thank you for coming on.
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We'll begin with the most important news out of YouTube. A vicious criminal rapper named
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XXXTentacion just released a music video, if one can call it that, comparing the killing of
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Michael Brown, himself a criminal who reached for an officer's gun, to the killing of Emmett Till,
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an innocent 14-year-old boy who was lynched in 1955. The video shows the rapper placing a noose
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around a little white kid's neck, ostensibly to make some sort of point. XXXTentacion himself
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was arrested last October for false imprisonment, witness tampering, and aggravated battery of a
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pregnant victim. His arrest report reads, quote, defendant punched and kicked victim. Victims'
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both eyes were punched to where both eyes became shut and victim could not see. A hoodie and
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sunglasses were put on the victim in order to get her out of the apartment complex, avoiding anyone
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seeing her. Victims escaped from a new location and contacted the nearest police department.
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All of that is background on this video. Do we have a copy of the video?
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Just like the Brandenburg Concerto, isn't it? Ariel, this criminal possesses no musical talent,
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and he beats up pregnant women. Why does this video have five and a half million views already?
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Well, my first guess would be that this is something that sort of feeds into the identity
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politics intersection of sort of crazy, radical production of media. So I'm thinking, I know it's
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a longer sentence than I intended, but basically I'm thinking of like Kathy Griffin-esque type cry for
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attention. So whenever you produce media that's extremely controversial or violent or at all sort
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of makes people wince, you're immediately going to get the viewership that you're looking for.
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So if you're someone that's incredibly untalented, this might be a wonderful tactic in order to get
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people to pay attention to you. I think that, you know, someone like Kathy Griffin, whose career was
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sliding down the tube, it was great for her to hold up a head of Trump in order to garner more
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attention than she might get on pure talent alone. So, you know, this to me just signals this person's
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probably not worth my time just because they're probably extremely untalented. And this is a way
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for them to get attention. It's grotesque. It's disgusting. It's despicable. But this is how,
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you know, this is how at least modern media is going about ways of, you know, if they don't have
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talent, this is how they're going to do it. Well, thank you for the advice on modern media. Note to
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self, murder marshal on the air. Whoa. Cassie, he is going to trial this guy, XXX, whatever his name
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is. He's going to trial on October 5th for beating up a pregnant woman. What is a just punishment for
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someone who beats up pregnant ladies? Well, it depends. Are you somebody who believes a child
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in the womb is a life or not? Because if it is a life in the womb, then you should be tried first,
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all battery, and two different people. Honestly, he's one of the, probably the worst people who are
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alive right now. It's completely insane that he did that. And I think you're right, Ariel,
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that he's just trying to save his failing career. And by doing so, he's also in the same group of
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people that call Donald Trump very divisive. And then he can make a video like this and just makes
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it even more divisive. So good for him. And I hope this video somehow distracts from his trial, which
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it's not good. And I'm sure in our criminal justice system, which pays little attention to justice,
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I'm sure he'll be put into some rehabilitation program or something like that. Allie, where does
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this terrible culture come from? CNN's Don Lemon says that specifically among young black men from ages 18 to
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25, it's because they grew up without fathers. 72% of black babies today are born out of wedlock.
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Now, Don Lemon's wrong about everything else. So he may as well be about this. Why is, where is this
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terrible culture coming from? Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit tough to speculate because there's evil,
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you know, across the races and across the political spectrum. I think Ariel was right on point when she
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said that this is just a product of identity politics and also a product of a lack of talent.
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I think that intersection explains very well why this video exists. But yes, of course,
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anyone's background has something to do with how they deal with certain political or cultural
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circumstances. He is choosing to make a false equivalency between two things that are not
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historically parallel whatsoever, just in order to get attention. Unfortunately, we see this a lot
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on the left of making parallels, for example, comparing illegal immigrants to slaves, saying
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that it's the exact same thing and that we should legalize them in the same way. It's not the same
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at all. But if you conflate two ideas, knowing the emotional response that it's going to get,
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then you trick people into thinking that they are being successful social justice warriors
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simply by telling history incorrectly. And that's what he's choosing to do.
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Unfortunately, it might be just as effective as he wants it to be.
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Apparently it is. We're talking about it. And we want to talk about a lot more things. But
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unfortunately for you, dear viewer, you have to go to dailywire.com right now if you want to see the
00:20:09.880
rest of the show. We're going to have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. But thank you for
00:20:14.160
everybody who's already subscribing. You help keep the lights on here. And if you go to dailywire.com right now,
00:20:19.440
it costs $10 a month, $100 a year. You get me. You get the Andrew Klavan show. You get the Ben Shapiro show,
00:20:25.140
assuming he stays safe, hopefully up at Berkeley. But forget all of that. None of that matters
00:20:29.260
when you consider the leftist tears tumbler. Oh my gosh. It is a thing of glory. It is the finest vessel.
00:20:36.740
It's going to be overflowing after tomorrow's speech at Berkeley. It will keep your leftist tears hot or cold,
00:20:42.060
always salty and delicious. So go to thedailywire.com right now and we will be right back.
00:20:49.440
Speaking of race relations, Swedish YouTube superstar PewDiePie is in trouble for saying
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the N-word on one of his videos. Here is his apology.
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It was something that I said in the heat of the moment. I said the worst word I could possibly
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think of and it just sort of slipped out. And I'm not going to make any excuses to why it did
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because there are no excuses for it. I'm disappointed in myself because it seems like
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I've learned nothing from all these past controversies. Ariel, similar question to what
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we just asked Ali, but in a totally different cultural sphere. This guy became famous for
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making videos of himself playing video games, which seems like the most boring thing ever.
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Why does PewDiePie have over 57 million subscribers?
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Well, I think, you know, I had to do a bit of research on him myself. I've heard of him,
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but I was curious why he has, he does have almost 60 million subscribers. People love
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watching his videos. And it's not just about video games. He's someone that delivers heightened
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commentary. He talks about the news of the day. He actually did a segment on the gender wage gap.
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So this is, you know, a person that is, it's about video games, maybe at the kernel, but there's more
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to it beyond that. So he's somebody that's sort of tapped into the younger generation's thirst for
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content. And he produces it at a rapid pace. I mean, every day, his day consists of producing this
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content. Um, you know, I applaud him for going on there and being very open with his viewership
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and apologizing. I believe the apology video had almost 6 million views. Uh, so good for him for
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doing that. Uh, I think, you know, it was necessary to do that. He's been sort of embroiled in past
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conflicts. Um, and at least involving like Nazi slurs of some kind. I, I not really sure what else
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he's been involved in. Uh, but I do applaud him for doing that. Those are pretty big ones, I guess.
00:22:53.040
Right. Yeah. I, he's, he's been involved in some other ones as well. Um, but I, like I said,
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I do applaud him for going on and being very open with his viewers and saying, you know, I screwed up
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and I'm incredibly sorry. He has a major influence in terms of, um, how large his viewership is. It's
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global. Uh, and again, he's tapping into the millennial thirst for content and YouTube is, has,
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you know, it's, it's given him a tremendous amount of fame. Uh, and it's also given him an
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incredible income too. I mean, he's earning tens of millions of dollars a year, uh, doing this gig
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and he was originally a hot dog. So, uh, I actually didn't know that that is, uh, this guy makes over
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$10 million a year. That is, that really makes me rethink my life choices. Even, even blank book
00:23:38.920
included that we don't make that kind of money on blank books. Allie, is it ever appropriate for a
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white guy to use that word as an insult or even in common speech? Oh, absolutely not. Um, however,
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I will say that the conflicts and kind of the chaos that we have found PewDiePie embroiled in
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in the past, I've been following him for a while and I really liked him. I don't even like video
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games. Um, but I will say that the chaos that we've kind of seen him in the midst of in the past
00:24:05.720
has been reporters that have gone after him because they don't like the fact. I think that he,
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one is not outwardly liberal or doesn't fit into their narrative. And two has made tens of million
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dollars of dollars off of not being an expert of anything. I think journalists don't like that.
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I've only made tens of dollars out of not being an expert on anything. I've got, he's doing something
00:24:28.660
right. I'm here. Um, and I think that, uh, traditional media and traditional journalists don't
00:24:35.440
like these kinds of people that have such big influence and didn't do things the right way and
00:24:40.520
don't say things the right way. So do I think that what he said was wrong? Absolutely. But I do
00:24:46.260
want to take it with a grain of salt because last time they went after him from a random obscure
00:24:52.340
reference that he had already denounced of Nazis. That wasn't even really a reference to Nazis.
00:24:58.800
And this time, yes, it was pretty explicit. He shouldn't have said it, but I mean, there's
00:25:03.340
conversations about taking down his videos and demonetizing what he's doing and making sure
00:25:08.480
that video games don't partner with him anymore. And to the last conversation that we just had
00:25:13.360
of that horrible rapper and everything he was saying, are we seeing the same kind of pushback
00:25:17.900
there? I, I don't know. No, it seems like a double standard to me. Should he have said it? No.
00:25:24.220
But should he be demonetized and stripped of his influence because of that? No.
00:25:30.260
Cassie, is this a question of political correctness or is this just simply about manners and politeness?
00:25:36.220
I think this is about manners and politeness in this case. I think what he said was wrong. I think
00:25:42.060
there's no need for him to say that. I think he was playing video games and just said,
00:25:46.300
maybe forgot that he was taking a video of himself and said something that he shouldn't have said.
00:25:50.840
But I do think that he is kind of like an edgier person. So that makes the media watch him very
00:25:56.960
closely. And I think here we should just let the free market play and just let people who disagree with
00:26:01.740
what he said to unfollow him, unsubscribe. That's what's going to ultimately get rid of his mass
00:26:06.920
wealth that he's getting from playing video games on YouTube. I guess even if he loses everything now,
00:26:11.640
he could retire like two or three times over. So good on the guy. Good on him for apologizing.
00:26:17.780
Apparently left-wing criminals have vandalized New York City's famous Central Park statue
00:26:22.800
of Christopher Columbus. After Mayor Bill de Blasio, the Bolshevik on Bowery, suggested the city
00:26:28.260
might include it in a list of offensive statues set for removal. How do we fight these bullies
00:26:35.880
who are going to take what they want, democracy, or rule of law be damned? Ariel.
00:26:43.700
How are we going to fight them? That's a big question. Well, I think we, you know, we, we appeal
00:26:48.400
to the people who realize, or maybe haven't spoken out yet about how sort of crazy this is. I think
00:26:54.020
there are plenty of people on the left side of the spectrum who think that this sort of crusade
00:26:59.360
against the statues is absurd. I think that there are plenty of people in the center who would agree
00:27:04.140
with that. So my, you know, my best tactic, at least in conversation, has been to take the leftist
00:27:10.860
logic to its logical conclusion. And so I say, okay, great. Let's, let's say we'll get rid of any
00:27:16.860
semblance of Christopher Columbus. We'll take away Columbus Day as a holiday. We should probably get
00:27:21.840
rid of Columbus Circle. We'll ban meatball hoagies. Right. We'll get rid of the District of Columbia.
00:27:29.260
We should probably rename that too. And then let's go further. Kyle Smith at National Review had a
00:27:34.600
great point. He, he pointed out the District of Columbia, but he also said something about how the
00:27:39.860
Duke of York, James II, was very heavily involved in the slave trade. Okay. So we have to rename the
00:27:45.880
state of New York. We should probably start off with the city as well. So you start to see how this
00:27:51.160
kind of cascades into an erasure. You know, America Vespucci, after whom America is named,
00:27:57.140
he was an Italian. And I don't know if you've studied what the Italians did to Carthage,
00:28:01.280
but it's absolutely despicable. And we have to rename the continent too.
00:28:06.940
Absolutely. We should. And so that, and my point being here is that, you know,
00:28:10.280
American history is not, it's a beautiful thing, but it's also a very bloody thing. And we have a lot of
00:28:15.480
times in our history where we've done horrible things. And I say we, as a collective,
00:28:19.700
you know, nation historically in the past, not we, us personally. But we have to be very careful
00:28:25.680
about when we, we go about destroying any semblance of American history, because we're attempting to
00:28:30.840
erase it. And for better, for worse, those things did happen. And, and, and there were some really
00:28:35.900
horrible things that happened, but getting rid of statues is not necessarily about it.
00:28:40.800
Nobody ever talks about the good things that Christopher, they always talk about the worst.
00:28:45.040
They don't talk about the better, the things that came from Christopher Columbus. This issue bothers
00:28:49.780
me so much because it's so ungrateful and historically ignorant. Without Christopher Columbus,
00:28:56.240
without that guy's courage, none of us would be here today. Without that guy's courage and his gumption
00:29:01.220
to get Spain to pay the tab for his trip, a very Italian thing to do to get the other guy to pay for it.
00:29:06.700
Without that, America, which has been the greatest national force for good in the history of the world,
00:29:11.800
for ourselves and for everyone else on earth, would not exist. We owe it to that man.
00:29:17.560
Ali, where does this culture of willful ignorance and ingratitude come from? Is it endemic to our
00:29:25.520
times right now? Or are conservatives blowing it out of proportion? Is it sort of always this way?
00:29:33.100
I think social media actually plays a really huge part in all of this, just creating the ideological
00:29:38.400
echo chambers that we have and not being able to separate facts from feeling. I mean, that's pretty
00:29:43.320
much what Twitter is. It's just an entire feed of how people feel. And unfortunately, that's where
00:29:49.900
the majority of people get their information. And I think that has a lot to do with it with a lazy
00:29:55.440
populace that would rather believe what they already feel and kind of feed into their own preconceived
00:30:00.960
notions of how they think the world works, rather than be brushed up against or inconvenienced by facts
00:30:06.900
and research. And because that kind of emotional rhetoric is so easily available to us via social
00:30:14.320
media and even is created by an algorithm to only feed us the things that we already think and feel,
00:30:20.920
unfortunately, people have to go out of their way to understand what is true, what is not,
00:30:26.860
and to be challenged in their preconceived notions. And I think people just don't want to do that when
00:30:31.900
it's so easy to believe what you want to believe. That's so true. The hysteria that comes from being
00:30:38.600
constantly fed your own opinions. Facebook will not feed me everyday feminism articles, which is my
00:30:43.980
favorite website on the internet, but it won't feed them because it thinks that I disagree with what
00:30:48.460
must be a conservative satire site. Cassie, where does it end? Was President Trump correct? Will this end
00:30:55.900
with us knocking down the Washington Monument? I think we need to find a middle ground. Now,
00:31:01.740
if people want to remove statues from their own local community, that's fine. As long as they're
00:31:06.140
going through the process to remove it, asking the city council, talking to whoever's the board of
00:31:10.260
trustees of the park or whatever, whatever the statue is, but going and vandalizing a statue in a
00:31:15.220
public place is wrong. It's a crime. It's criminal and it shouldn't happen. I think that, like you said
00:31:20.640
earlier, we'd have to rename a lot of things. I think what we should do instead is call out the people in
00:31:25.260
history who have done bad things, but also talk about the good things they've done too, because
00:31:28.960
everybody has done good and bad, and we should look at both sides. Other than Hitler. I mean,
00:31:33.440
I don't know if Hitler did that many good. I don't know. I guess he was an okay painter. He's a very
00:31:36.680
mediocre painter. But your point is absolutely well taken. We've swung so far in this other direction
00:31:42.400
that all you ever hear about is what a bad guy Christopher Columbus was, this Howard Zinn form of
00:31:47.960
American history where everything we ever did is terrible, and you don't focus on the greatest force for
00:31:52.780
national good in the history of the entire world. Okay, ladies, thank you for being here, especially
00:31:57.900
you, Ariel Davidson, your first time. Also, Allie Stuckey and Cassie Dillon. Can't wait to have you
00:32:03.100
back. And now it is time for the final thought.
00:32:10.380
The left-wing violence erupting on college campuses has nothing to do with what conservative
00:32:15.360
speakers have to say. It has everything to do with who controls what they, and therefore
00:32:20.480
you, are allowed to say. There is no alt-left. There's just the left, which has followed its
00:32:27.080
bankrupt ideas to their logical conclusions, and now, bereft of the civilized argument that
00:32:33.280
defines human society and the reason that defines humanity itself, is left only to grunt and scream like
00:32:39.360
the animals that their destructive ideas have made them become. Chesterton wrote,
00:32:43.680
There is a thought that stops thought, and that is the only thought that ought to be stopped.
00:32:47.740
Let's wish Ben good luck in his speech and hope that the thought that stops thought doesn't stop
00:32:52.260
him first. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. Come back tomorrow. Get your