Ep. 274 - Oh No! Everything Is The Same!
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Summary
The government is partially shut down and everything feels exactly the same. What does that tell us about the dysfunction in Washington? Plus, the first two Muslim women elected to Congress take the oath of office on a Quran belonging to Thomas Jefferson. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo makes an early 2020 presidential endorsement, and abortion activist defends killing children.
Transcript
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The Democrats officially take control of the Congress and the government remains partially
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shut down and everything feels exactly the same. Hmm, what should that tell us about
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congressional Republicans and the federal government? We will analyze. Then, the first
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two Muslim women elected to Congress take the oath of office on a Quran belonging to Thomas
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Jefferson. Apparently, they didn't read the terrifying things Thomas Jefferson wrote about
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Islam. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo makes an early 2020 presidential endorsement and
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abortion activist defends killing children to children. And finally, the mailbag. I'm
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Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Oh, the horror, the horror of everything being exactly the way it was a month or two ago.
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package. Expressvpn.com slash Michael to learn more. Oh, what a crazy start to the new year,
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isn't it? Everything's different. The federal government is shut down. The Democrats just took
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control of the Congress and nothing feels different at all, does it? Does it? This is
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the very good news. This is a wonderful thing to find out. What has changed in this government
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shutdown? I was actually thinking, I woke up today, I asked sweet little Elisa, I said,
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what should I talk about today on the show? What's big in the news? She said,
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Mac, you should do the government shutdown. And I said, well, I would, except there's nothing to talk
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about. What has changed in your life during this government shutdown? First of all, it's not a
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full government shutdown. Only part of the government is shut down. But here's what's shut
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down. The IRS is partially shut down. Is anybody shedding a tear for the IRS being partially shut
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down as we approach tax season? I don't think so. The EPA is partially shut down. So now, I don't know,
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the Delta smelt might not be able to get their spa treatments every week. They'll only be able to get
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them every month. Except that's not even true because the states are funding environmental
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protection as well. I can't really name anything else that's actually shut down. Is our military
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shut down? No, of course not. Is law enforcement shut down? No, of course not. What is being shut down?
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Are our embassies shutting down around the world? No. What is remaining open? Social security?
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Medicare? Medicaid. Biggest drivers of our debt and deficit, biggest portion of the federal budget,
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all remain open. The thing that actually could drive people crazy, if senior citizens were not
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able to get their social security checks, then maybe you would see a political push to end the
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shutdown, but not going to happen. The Mueller investigation remains open. If we're going to shut
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down the government, shouldn't we shut down the Mueller investigation? Maybe then that would be
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pretty motivating for half of the country. Air traffic control. I was just flying all around
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the country between Christmas and New Year and all of that. I had my TSA pre-check shut down one time
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for one flight. And frankly, it was enough to get me on the phone to call President Trump and say,
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do it, cave. I don't care about the wall. Let me get my pre-check. Other than that, everything's
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running fine. Air traffic control. All the flights are going great. Veteran benefits? Veterans are still
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getting all of their benefits. Food stamps remains open. Child nutrition programs remain open.
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Even Native American food subsidies for reservations, all remaining open. The Violence
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Against Women Act expired during the government shutdown. This was a big, they thought this was
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going to be a big political issue on the left. Even those programs are still funded. Even in the
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thing expired, they're still all being funded through the Justice Department, through Health and
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Human Services. The shutdown isn't changing anything. It doesn't matter. And therefore, the longer the
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shutdown goes on, the better. Why? Because what are the headlines? There's no headline about the
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shutdown. But what we can say, we can point to the shutdown and say, look, such and such percent of
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the federal government was shut down for weeks. I don't know, maybe a month, maybe a month and a half.
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And nothing about your life changed. This is what Ronald Reagan was talking about when he said
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that you will never, you will always be surprised at how much government you won't miss.
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You could lose 30, 40 percent of the federal government. You wouldn't miss it at all.
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You could fire half of the bureaucrats in this country. You would miss no government. There's
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no suffering to this shutdown. You know, Barack Obama, when he shut down the government during his
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administration, he tried to make it really mean. He tried to make it really hurt. He would shut down
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veterans memorials just as veterans groups were trying to see them. He was really trying to make it
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painful. National parks largely are not shut down right now. They still have some funding. People
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are still working, some without pay, some with pay. It's fine. It's going just fine. Keep this
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shutdown going on. Even if we get the border wall funding, keep it, keep it shut down. This is going
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just fine. And it underlines this very important conservative position, which is that all of this
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government that the left tells us without this bureaucrat, without this agency, the country will fall
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apart. Children will starve. People will die. Nope. No, no. Just shut it down. It's all fine.
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Life is going on just fine. Maybe we can make, you know, we always talk about making tax cuts
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permanent, making this law permanent. Maybe we can make this partial government shutdown permanent.
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I think it would go a long way to advancing our agenda. Maybe that's the 4D chess that President
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Trump has been playing all along. The other big news, the other shocking news of the day,
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the Democrats officially retake Congress. Oh, here we go. Nancy Pelosi rising up, becoming the new
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Speaker of the House. The blue wave. It was really sort of a purple puddle, but never mind that.
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They are taking the Congress and nothing is going to change. Nothing is going to change. What could
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change? Right now, one representative, Brad Sherman, is making moves to file articles of impeachment on day
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one. That's cute. He's not even going to get Democrats in the House to support that. Not yet,
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not before the Mueller investigation is over. And even if they did magically get all the Democrats
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to vote to impeach, which they won't get to do, at least in the near future, they still wouldn't
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get a conviction in the Senate. So none of that will change. It's just a grandstanding Democrat
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making a fool of himself. Fine by me. Nothing new about that. What will happen now as a result of
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the Democrats having the Congress? We won't get more tax cuts, probably. Frankly, though, maybe we will
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get some tax cuts. Barack Obama was able to cut certain taxes or maintain certain tax cuts for
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people, although he did raise taxes on others. We won't get entitlement reform. That's true. But we
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were never going to get entitlement reform anyway. President Trump has made it a key aspect of his
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platform that he wasn't going to touch Social Security, wasn't going to touch Medicare or Medicaid.
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So that, I think, was probably always more of a pipe dream for conservatives. What legislative
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accomplishments that we could have gotten are we not going to get now? Are we going to repeal
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Obamacare? We had our chance to repeal Obamacare and John McCain shut it down. So a nominally
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Republican senator voted to kill Obamacare repeal. Didn't get that. Are we going to get the wall?
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We had the House and the Senate for two years. We didn't get the wall. Maybe we'll try to get some
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wall funding now because of this government shutdown. But the Democrats taking the Congress,
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that doesn't change anything. Actually, one of the few major pieces of legislation we were able to
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get through when we had the unified government was letting a bunch of prisoners out of prison.
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That was the big, the first step act. This was major legislation signed into law or passed rather
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just before this government shutdown. Whoop-dee-doo. Great. Oh, I'm so glad we elected a conservative
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Republican and we elected Republican congressmen so that we can let a lot of prisoners out of prison.
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That's what we want. That's the number one on the conservative agenda. Let a bunch of criminals
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out of prison. Great. Okay. Good. I'm glad. I hope. And that was also, by the way, a bipartisan law.
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So we'll get that anyway, unfortunately. What changes though? So if the legislative stuff doesn't
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matter, President Trump, all of the good governance that he's given us, which is excellent governance and
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much better than most of his predecessors, all of that was from the executive. That was from
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judicial appointments aided by Mitch McConnell in the Senate. That was on issues of foreign policy.
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That was on issues of the executive bureaucracy and the executive agencies. So, okay, we lost one
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house of the Congress. Woo. Whoop-dee-doo. Okay. That's fine. Now though, President Trump has an
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adversary. Now, President Trump has Nancy Pelosi. This is pretty good. When Donald Trump has total
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control of everything and no one's fighting him, he does fine. He's okay at maneuvering,
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but he really shines. His best moments are when he has an adversary. You know, just today,
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after Liz Warren announced her exploratory committee to run for president yesterday,
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or two days ago rather, was it? Oh, it might've even been earlier than that. Oh gosh,
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all the days are running together. But we covered it at least yesterday. President Trump sent out this
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tweet today, which was the meme that we at the Daily Wire came up with of Elizabeth Warren's
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campaign. And it says one slash 2020th. And, uh, President Trump tweeted that out with our little
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Daily Wire watermark on it, which was just terrific. Excellent job, Mr. President. That is when he
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shines. He shines when he has an adversary that he can just pummel into the ground like Jeb Bush or
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Marco Rubio. Unfortunately, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton. He's just, he really shines when he's got an
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adversary and he's going to have one now in Nancy Pelosi. Good. Okay, fine. It means we don't lose
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that much on the legislative side, but maybe we pick up a little bit more in exuberance and looking
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forward to 2020. That's a win for me. Um, there is something new in that we now have, uh, the first
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two Muslim Congresswomen being sworn into office. And this is being heralded by the left as such a
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wonderful moment because the left loves Islam. The left doesn't know anything about Islam.
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The Islamic religion opposes essentially so many tenets of the intersectional left, but they don't
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care because they view Islam as contrary to Western civilization and they view themselves as contrary to
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Western civilization. And so they will unite in an intersectional hierarchy to oppose intersectional
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civilization, or pardon, Western civilization, the man, the straight cisgendered white male, whatever,
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the guy with the mustache. They're going to oppose big daddy. And this is why they're heralding this.
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These two Muslim Congresswomen, Ilan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are now being sworn in on a Quran that was owned
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by Thomas Jefferson. And the left loves this. They think, oh yeah, see all those Christian Americans,
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they think of the founding fathers as Christian or deistic, but really Jefferson owned a Quran.
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Ha ha. You see, how about that? Islam is just as essential to the American founding as, uh,
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Christianity. Now the, of course the left doesn't know anything about history. So the irony here is
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really enjoyable. I'm very glad that these two Congresswomen, uh, were sworn in on Thomas Jefferson's
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Quran because, uh, Thomas Jefferson had his Quran to learn about the Islamic religion, which was our
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first, uh, war when he was president. Our first war as a country was against the Barbary pirates,
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against Islamic states. And it was because they were seizing our ships and seizing our goods and
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seizing our sailors. So in 1801, uh, the, just before, uh, President Jefferson ascended into power,
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the Congress gave them the authority to, uh, wage war and to attack these Barbary pirates.
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And then he went in and sent ships in to stop them. And he refused to pay tribute to the Barbary
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pirates. And his comments about the Quran, they could not be more explicit. He wrote to John Jay,
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quote, it was written in their Quran that all nations who should not have answered their authority
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were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them whenever they could be found.
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And to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners. And that every Muslim man or Muslim
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who should be slain in battle was sure to go to paradise. Fair enough. Okay. That's true. So he has
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these notes written down and, uh, and actually even at the founding of our country, uh, Christopher
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Hitchens pointed this out in an excellent essay for city journal in 2007, uh, at the earliest moments
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of our country, uh, Thomas Jefferson, uh, in the first draft of the declaration of independence
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wrote, uh, he condemned the slave trade and quote, the Christian King of great Britain for engaging in
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this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers. He condemned the slave trade in this early
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draft of the declaration of independence for not, for being un-Christian and for, he was condemning
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the hypocrisy of the Christian King, George III, comparing it to the slave trade, which continues
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to exist throughout the Muslim world and which certainly existed at that time and which existed
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for a millennium before that. Uh, this is the actual founding history. This is the founding history
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that you see in that Quran owned by Thomas Jefferson, which the left is now touting to swear in the first
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to Muslim Congress women. And lest you think I'm Islamophobic, I would never want to be accused
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of being Islamophobic. I actually don't know what that word means, but if someone could tell me what
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it means, even if they can't, I don't want to be accused of it. Uh, these people are quite radical,
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Ilan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Ilan Omar, this new Minnesota representative, a tweeted quote, or yes,
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Israel has hypnotized the world. May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil
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doings of Israel. Hashtag Gaza, hashtag Palestine, hashtag Israel. She tweeted this in 2014 during a
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particularly hot moment of Israel's hostilities with Hamas, Hamas, the terrorist organization.
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Uh, she supports the boycott, divest and sanction movement against Israel. She wants to starve Israel,
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cut it off from the rest of the world and prevent it from continuing in, in the international order
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as a state. How does the New York Times react to these women? The New York Times writes quote,
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that the election of Ilan Omar and Rashida Tlaib is quote, a vehicle for the hopes of millions of
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Muslims and others who feel touched by her life story and for the fears of those who feel threatened
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by her. Now they're trying to make this, this big inspirational story and an indictment of the West
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and all of these things. Just look at these people like Ilan Omar, Somali immigrant, gets elected to
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Congress at the age of 36. What a wonderful country would do that. What an incredible country.
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What other country on earth in the history of the world could such a thing happen?
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Oh wait, name me any. Of course, what a wonderful, that's a wonderful thing to say about this country.
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They're, they're trying to use it however, as an indictment and it's, it is all, it is not based on
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reason. We talked about this a little yesterday with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Often on the right,
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you'll hear conservatives say, well, we should point out to the intersectional left that the
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Islamic religion is harsh on gay people or is harsh on women or it's illiberal or it's intolerant or it
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calls for non-believers to have their necks chopped off or it goes, no, it doesn't matter. It doesn't
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matter if you point that out. That's not what it's about. It's not about Islam. It's not about
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women's rights. It's not about women. It's not about racial minorities. It's not about helping
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any of those people. It's not about supporting any of those things. It's about attacking Big Daddy.
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It's about attacking the top of the ideological ridiculous pyramid that they have constructed
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in intersectionality, which is the man who is white, who's probably Christian, who thinks that
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he's a man, who's straight. He's, he's attracted to women. It's all about going after that one person.
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Logic be damned. It's not logical. You're not going to, uh, to attack them in this way. This is why
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there was an article that I was, I did an interview for the Washington Examiner and they were asking what
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the best way to go after the left is in, in this day and age. And the best way to do it is humor.
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That's the best way. You're not going to get them and show them the error of their ideological ways
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by just debating them, by just pointing out history or philosophy or theology or whatever.
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You're not going to get them that way. But one thing that is irresistible is humor. You can't help
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but laugh. Even the most humorless people, if you hit their funny bone the right way, they can't help
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but laugh. Laughing is an involuntary response to, uh, to reality. And we could go on for hours and
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hours about what makes something funny, what theories of humor are. But to use just one example,
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when you see incongruous things, when you see juxtaposition of absurdity and reality of fantasy
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and reality, it does provoke laughter if it's, if it's delivered in the right way. This is the way
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that we attack them. This is the way that we hit them on this because it, they're so ideologically far
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gone. They're so enraptured with their own fantasy world. You're not going to get them in an earnest
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way. You got to make them laugh. And, and we are going to get so much laughter out of this new
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Congress. I'm actually fairly happy. And this is why I can't be so upset. Nothing is really going
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to change on the legislative front. You're going to get more investigations of Donald Trump. Okay.
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We knew that was coming. You're going to get threats of impeachment. You're going to get all this
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kind of crazy stuff. You are going to see infighting. You are going to see craziness. You
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are going to get 30 second Twitter video clips. You are going to get great stuff from this new
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Congress. They're already fighting. There was a big move led by the farthest left faction of the
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incoming congressional class to attack the rules being made by Nancy Pelosi herself. It is going to
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be a lot of fun. Enjoy it. Don't complain. This is just fine. It's all, I'm like the bay or the
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little dog where everything is on fire around him. It's fine. It's going to be fun. Look at that
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fire around you and light your cigar on it. We're going to have a good time. Uh, speaking of looking
00:19:32.340
ahead to 2020, there is a new presidential endorsement that's come around. So Liz Warren
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makes her really pathetic announcement. She does that really pathetic beer swilling a video that was
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going around the internet. She goes, hello, hello, regular people. I'm a regular person. Glug,
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glug, glug. I'm Liz Warren, a regular person. Glug, glug, glug. It was just pathetic. And everyone is
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mocking her candidacy. Uh, Donald Trump obviously sent out the daily wire meme about it. One,
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one, 20, 20th. Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York has a different idea for 2020. And I have to
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say, kills me to say it. He's half right. I think, uh, of all the names that are out there,
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I think Joe Biden has the best case. I think Joe Biden has the best case because he brings
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the most of the secret ingredient ingredient you need to win for a Democrat, which is credibility.
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You know, uh, where this country is, is they don't believe anyone. Trump was elected
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as a rejection to the entire system. They just don't believe the Democrats. I'm going to do this.
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I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. You haven't done anything. And every idea you've come
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up with has backfired. And what have you done to help me in my life? You know, you don't hire an
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airline pilot who has never flown a plane. Uh, where is the credibility in your argument?
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Joe Biden can say, I was there. Okay. I was not the president, but I was the second seat.
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Okay. Okay. This is actually half right. It's funny because Cuomo starts to undermine his argument.
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He says, look, you're not going to hire an airline pilot who hasn't flown a plane.
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Like, well, Joe Biden hasn't flown. Well, yeah, but he was there. He was there. He was,
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he was there. He was in like row five. He was in economy plus comfort. Okay. He,
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maybe he hasn't flown a plane, but he paid $150 more to be an economy plus. And he got a little
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extra leg room and he got free booze on the plane. So, okay. I mean, it's a muddy argument,
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but he's, he's making the case that Joe Biden has a lot of experience and he does have a lot of
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experience. He was chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, Senator for a long time. He ran for
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president about 75,000 times, vice president under Barack Obama, fairly popular as vice president.
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And that's true. He points out that Donald Trump was a rejection of the system. Also true. One of
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the reasons, there are many reasons why Donald Trump won, but one of the reasons why he beat
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out 16 regular old Republicans and beat out Hillary Clinton is they were fed up with lying politicians
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who talk like politicians, who look like Mitt Romney, who sound like Mitt Romney, who turn around and
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switch their positions and have no ideological core like Mitt Romney, who stabbed their allies in the
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back like Mitt Romney. Can you tell I'm still a little upset about this Mitt Romney, Washington
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post op-ed yesterday, just a little bit, but it was a rejection of that. You know, Mitt Romney was our
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previous GOP nominee. And we looked around at this guy and we said, we, we said, not him, anything but
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that. Can we have the opposite of that, please? Can we, and we got, and you get Donald Trump and the
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general election turned out that way too. They said, we don't need Clintons. No more Clintons. Stop.
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We don't want you. We want Donald Trump. That's true. He was a rejection of the system.
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Unfortunately, Joe Biden is the system. He's been in the system now forever.
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Andrew Cuomo is right that Democrats have no credibility. What sort of credibility do they
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have? They, they, I mean, what if I, I'm trying to think of, you can't think of a negative. That's
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the trouble. What have they done? What was the legacy of the Obama administration? Part of Obamacare?
00:23:17.700
Because even, not even all of Obamacare exists anymore. The mandate's gone. The central feature of the,
00:23:22.600
of Obamacare is gone. What, what did the Obama administration do? It was like eight years just
00:23:27.800
vanished, vanished before my eyes. What does that mean? I mean, what, who cares? And they don't,
00:23:33.940
they no longer like the Clinton administration because he was too conservative and because he's
00:23:38.560
been accused of rape and because he's a, he was a sexual predator. So they don't like that. So where
00:23:44.480
is, what have they done? I mean, what credibility do Democrats have over the last 30 years? Not very
00:23:50.720
much. So you've got Joe Biden. Okay. You've got some credibility there and the credibility is that
00:23:57.400
he's got experience. The trouble is experience doesn't really matter. Was Donald, is Donald Trump
00:24:04.180
experienced in politics? No. What office did Donald Trump hold before? Not, nothing, no, no office at
00:24:11.720
all. And experience doesn't really seem to matter to the voting public. They picked Trump over Hillary.
00:24:17.300
Hillary way more experienced. Trump won. Good thing Trump won. They picked Barack Obama over John
00:24:22.720
McCain. McCain way more experienced. Barack Obama still won. They picked George Bush over Al Gore.
00:24:29.560
Al Gore was more experienced. He was in the number two seat. He was the vice president before he ran for
00:24:34.720
president in 2000. And they picked Bush and good thing that Bush won. Obviously George H.W. Bush was more
00:24:40.920
experienced than Bill Clinton. That goes without saying. Jimmy Carter was more experienced than
00:24:48.100
Ronald Reagan. We don't care about experience. Richard Nixon was much more experienced than John
00:24:53.020
F. Kennedy. We actually, I think the experience thing is just a total canard. I mean, it's just a
00:24:58.560
total farce. It's one of those things in politics that we think should be true, but it isn't true. We don't
00:25:04.320
care. If anything, experience might be a disadvantage in politics. And so that's really going against Joe Biden.
00:25:09.560
He's also four years older than Trump. Trump is already not young to be the president. And so
00:25:15.660
Biden is already that much older. And the big issue, we were talking about intersectionality,
00:25:20.960
Joe Biden is big daddy. He's a straight white guy who's been in power forever and he's old. And he just
00:25:26.700
really, it's really going to be hard for the left, which has put all of its money on intersectionality
00:25:33.540
to then nominate and vote for a straight white guy who's old. It's just, I can't really see it
00:25:39.180
happening. I agree with Cuomo. Biden would be the best candidate right now that the Democrats have,
00:25:44.600
but they're not going to nominate him. I just don't, I mean, maybe Barack Obama tries to come
00:25:51.340
out and convince everybody to do it. It's just going to be really hard. They've set themselves up to fail
00:25:56.420
and they've set themselves up to fail with their best candidate. We've got a lot more to get to.
00:26:00.540
The most disturbing video I've seen in a very long time. And then of course the mailbag,
00:26:04.640
but first you've got to go to dailywire.com. It's 10 bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership.
00:26:09.440
You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get to ask questions
00:26:14.460
in the mailbag, you get to watch the backstage and ask questions in the backstage. That's coming up
00:26:19.600
today. Don't miss it with Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Alicia Krauss, Daily Wire God King,
00:26:24.600
Jeremy Boring, and little old me. We'll be ringing in the new year while drinking tumblers of melted
00:26:29.460
leftist snowflakes. So be sure to tune in as always. Only Daily Wire subscribers get to ask
00:26:34.180
the questions. So make sure to subscribe today and then you can catch all of your delicious
00:26:39.020
snowflakes in the leftist tears tumbler and giddy up. You're going to need these. Otherwise you will
00:26:44.440
die in the avalanche brought up by the new Congress. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back
00:26:49.600
with both the mailbag and the most disturbing video I've seen in a long time.
00:27:03.460
So there's this woman named Amelia Bono and she started a movement called the Shout Your Abortion
00:27:09.580
Movement. This is a turn in the left's ideological language. Some of us are old enough to remember
00:27:16.380
when Hillary Clinton in 2008 running for president says abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.
00:27:23.300
Now of course this doesn't make any sense. If abortion is morally similar to murder then it
00:27:27.700
shouldn't be legal. If abortion is no different than getting your tonsils taken out then it shouldn't
00:27:31.800
be rare. But this was her line and hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue and at least
00:27:36.740
she was acknowledging that there is a moral gravity to an abortion even if she's saying we should have
00:27:42.360
them anyway. Fast forward to now and you've got the Shout Your Abortion Movement being pushed by
00:27:47.200
this woman Amelia Bono and she is has just released this video of her talking to little children about
00:27:54.180
why abortion is great and why logically and if you follow it to the logical conclusion their parents
00:28:00.880
should have had the right to kill them. Do you think that sometimes it's not okay to have an
00:28:04.260
abortion? I want to say if like if you're being reckless if there's nothing wrong going on. I don't
00:28:18.900
When you have an abortion what exactly do you do to like have the abortion?
00:28:22.440
You go to the doctor and they put this little straw inside of your cervix and then inside of your
00:28:31.280
uterus and then they just suck the pregnancy out and it was like a crappy dentist appointment or
00:28:38.000
something. It was just like ah this is like a body thing that's kind of uncomfortable but then it was
00:28:44.200
over and I felt really just grateful that I wasn't pregnant anymore. I felt really really great. Can't you
00:28:52.700
see how great I feel to bet? That's why I'm I have to talk about it all the time is because of how
00:28:57.040
great I feel and it's not that my soul is being ripped to shreds from within me. No I feel great
00:29:03.540
kids. I feel great. Don't you want to be like me? That's you know there's this I can't believe they
00:29:08.660
actually included it in there. They included the reaction of a little girl talking to this woman
00:29:12.740
and she said what's what happens in abortion? She said well you know you stick a tube in there
00:29:16.880
and you suck the pregnancy out. What is the pregnancy? It's the baby of course and she says
00:29:22.620
suck the pregnancy out and you'll and it cuts to the little girl and the little girl goes that
00:29:25.840
yeah of course that's what we all did. You actually it's pretty dark humor but you it actually prompts
00:29:32.340
laughter because you see that the little kid has it right and this woman is deluding herself
00:29:38.480
to pretend that abortion is okay. What that little kid has is something called the wisdom of
00:29:44.080
repugnance. There are some things that just the when you just look at the sight of it something
00:29:48.640
disgusting something awful something grotesque a dead body whatever you look at it and you just
00:29:54.640
immediately withdraw it's so disgusting to you. That's the wisdom of repugnance and that little
00:29:59.020
girl is showing that when we're talking about killing a baby in the womb which is abortion and I'm not
00:30:04.860
going to attack this woman Amelia Bono. I mean she's she should put out more videos. It's the best
00:30:10.360
advertising the pro-life movement has ever had. Also because this is clearly a deeply disturbed
00:30:15.400
woman. We saw we did a video on this show we played it a little while ago of a woman who was
00:30:21.880
at a pro-abortion rally and she was talking about how when she was about to kill her baby she had this
00:30:29.000
vision of the baby singing a lullaby to her and then she sang the weird lullaby about how it was okay
00:30:35.780
for the mother to kill her. She talked about her religious views of how death is not different from
00:30:40.260
life and it was really creepy. I mean it was really creepy and sick and twisted and that's what this
00:30:46.180
woman has going on. I mean that's why if if you're confident in a point of view you probably don't need
00:30:54.560
to go out and sit down with a bunch of children and try to get little children to affirm your point
00:30:59.040
of view and fail at it actually and not really because all of the kids said well weren't you a little
00:31:03.820
reckless? I mean maybe you shouldn't maybe you shouldn't do that. Maybe that's not a great idea
00:31:07.840
and so I really feel for this woman. It's it's pretty sick and twisted stuff but this is the
00:31:14.420
logical conclusion. When you wipe away all of the euphemisms of this sucking out the pregnancy the it's
00:31:21.460
a weird little body thing. It's like an unfun dentist appointment. When you take out all of the
00:31:26.620
euphemisms you can always judge how true something is by how many euphemisms and how much jargon is being
00:31:32.320
used to describe it. When you take all of that away what do you have? You have a woman trying to
00:31:36.560
justify two children why she killed a child and and you look at the kid's reaction and they know it's
00:31:43.020
wrong and they can they know innately that it's wrong intuitively that it's wrong and she knows
00:31:47.880
that it's wrong too and she's trying to justify it with lies and she's failing and I think she's
00:31:52.080
probably failing even to herself. The lady doth protest too much methinks she's trying to wipe out
00:31:57.140
that damned spot like Lady Macbeth. I don't know how many more Shakespeare allusions I can use.
00:32:02.040
She knows that it is wrong. It is gnawing at her. It is keeping her up at night and she can change
00:32:07.200
her mind. It's not too late. Sometimes when people go down paths of sin and paths of evil and paths of
00:32:14.460
terrible decisions they say I'm so far gone I could never possibly come back. You can. You could do it in
00:32:20.320
two seconds. You have free will. It's a new day. We live in time. You can do it in two seconds but
00:32:26.440
it's hard for people to admit that they're wrong. It's hard for people to turn around even though it's
00:32:31.060
totally open for them. Let's get to the mailbag from Grant. Hi Michael. I'm 25 years old and I've
00:32:37.220
had intercourse with two women in my life. My current and my ex-girlfriend. I ostensibly regret doing so
00:32:44.180
with my ex because I've recently come back to serving God and Jesus in my life and I plan on
00:32:49.660
marrying my current girlfriend of four years after I graduate from university. Should I be feeling
00:32:54.440
regret for the first time with my ex? What is your stance on no intercourse before marriage? I'm deeply
00:32:59.920
in love with my current girlfriend. We talk about marrying each other often. Love your work. Thank
00:33:03.860
you for expanding my knowledge. Helping get me on the track to Jesus. P.S. Came for Ben. Stayed for
00:33:08.080
Michael. Yeah. Good man Grant. Cheers. Okay. Should you regret having sex with your ex-girlfriend?
00:33:15.060
Do you? Do you regret it? I think you do in part. You seem to in part. I mean I can't tell you if you
00:33:23.520
regret something but you're writing to me. This is kind of bothering you. Okay so you clearly regret it
00:33:28.160
in part but then you said use this word ostensibly. Apparently. It seems to be that you ostensibly
00:33:35.540
regret having sex with your ex-girlfriend. What do you mean by that? I actually know exactly what you
00:33:43.200
mean by that. You know I was an atheist for about 10 years and I know and and some of the great saints
00:33:49.340
in history know exactly what you mean by this. St. Augustine wrote but I miserable young man supremely
00:33:54.960
miserable even in the very outset of my youth had entreated chastity of you and said grant me chastity
00:34:01.320
and continency but not yet. Lord make me chaste but not yet. What you're saying is that in a spiritual
00:34:09.340
and intellectual way you regret having sex with your ex-girlfriend because you know that it's wrong
00:34:13.800
and yet in a physical way in a way that satisfies the the very real passions that you feel in your
00:34:20.060
very real physical body you don't regret it because it felt awesome and you really liked it and it was a
00:34:24.680
lot of fun. That's what you're saying. Okay yeah right that's that's my opinion. That's exactly right.
00:34:30.440
That doesn't the fact that you enjoyed having sex with your ex-girlfriend in a very physical way
00:34:36.880
does not change the fact that in an intellectual way you regret having sex because you realize
00:34:42.900
it may have demeaned certain relationships and it would have been better if you had waited to have
00:34:47.100
sex and you it you might have used somebody just for sex rather than for some better relationship
00:34:52.620
and it also doesn't change the fact that intellectually you know that it is wrong to have sex outside of
00:34:59.100
marriage. Doesn't change that at all. I don't know if it should keep you up at night. That is the human
00:35:03.980
condition. We are always striving against our flesh which is which has appetites that our intellect
00:35:09.240
doesn't have. So you did it and now you want to get married and you know that it's wrong. Okay life goes
00:35:16.240
on. The one thing you should not do and you should really seek to avoid but our culture does it all the
00:35:20.980
time is we say my body desires one thing and so I need to change my mind to agree with the lusts of my
00:35:28.140
body or else I'm a hypocrite. That doesn't make you a hypocrite because you think it's wrong to have
00:35:33.180
sex outside of marriage and yet you had sex with your ex-girlfriend. It makes you a human who's
00:35:38.580
fallen and has desires and can't always control his desires. That makes you human not a hypocrite.
00:35:44.400
Now if you're constantly going out and carousing and doing it anyway then you know if you make a
00:35:48.600
habit of it then then you you would be a hypocrite but it would be far far worse to to change your mind
00:35:55.420
and say no because I had sex before marriage it's okay to have sex before marriage or outside of
00:36:00.880
marriage. That would be the wrong thing and that would be the most dishonest thing because something
00:36:04.760
tells me that your intellect is thinking more clearly than you know a young man's body speaking
00:36:11.200
from experience. That doesn't young men's bodies don't always think in the clearest kind of way.
00:36:16.040
From Eric. Dear Michael aka dapper lib triggering troll. Can you explain the key differences between
00:36:22.760
conservatism and as Dave Rubin would say classical liberalism? Yes this is a excellent question.
00:36:31.580
Well done. This is confusing because in the United States conservatives largely seek to preserve a
00:36:38.560
classically liberal tradition and and the classical liberals would call these universal truths. I as a
00:36:46.100
conservative would not call these necessarily universal truths. I would call it a classically liberal
00:36:50.180
tradition. The difference here is that conservatives like Alexander Hamilton or like Edmund Burke while
00:36:57.920
defending a classically liberal tradition remain skeptical of those universal truths and prefer a
00:37:04.220
series of trial and error whereas classical liberals are so enthusiastic about it and they they are they
00:37:10.960
embrace it entirely. This I think would be a difference. It's a subtle difference but a major one.
00:37:15.100
Classical liberals tend to talk about the enlightenment as if history began in the late 17th century.
00:37:23.220
History began just after Thomas Hobbes and all of history that matters has happened in the modern era.
00:37:28.840
They are thoroughly modern whereas conservatives think there's a lot more to history and to the world
00:37:35.560
than that. There's a lot more than just John Locke. John Locke is not the be-all and end-all of political
00:37:40.620
philosophy. We've had many more things that matter. Institutions matter. This is another difference
00:37:46.780
between the classical liberal and the conservative. The classical liberal tends to always speak
00:37:50.720
in rationalist terms. He's always standing for something and it's only about principles usually
00:37:56.200
universal principles and in institutions be damned and who cares about candidates or elections or dates
00:38:02.760
or times or political parties or that none of that matters. All that matters are the ethereal
00:38:08.200
rationalist abstractions and ideologies that stand up here and they just kind of float in the air and
00:38:13.940
whenever you try to touch them you corrupt them. Whereas the conservative would say hey buddy look
00:38:18.940
down here come here come back to reality. There are institutions that transmit these ideas and we can
00:38:24.740
arrive at some of the same conclusions. Classical liberals and conservatives especially in America
00:38:29.420
arrive at many many of the same conclusions but we do so because we say these ideas have been
00:38:34.860
transmitted through time, through the tradition, through constant trial and error on the local
00:38:40.960
level, on the state level, on the federal level, in religious institutions, in the military, in all
00:38:46.080
everywhere, all around the culture and they have been tested, they've been tried, they've been refined
00:38:50.720
and they have lasted and they've endured and perhaps they've endured for a reason and therefore we can
00:38:55.260
support the idea but we remain skeptical of pure rationalist abstractions. You can tell which side of
00:39:01.920
this I come down on. I come down on the conservative side not the classical liberal side but I think
00:39:07.840
that a lot of the anti-Trump stuff, the schism on the right between the never-Trumpers and the people
00:39:13.940
who either reluctantly or enthusiastically embrace Trump, I think it's about this argument because
00:39:20.560
a lot of classical liberals will tell you that all that matters, there's no difference between
00:39:25.400
conservatism and classical liberalism but there is. You'll hear some people say I'm a conservative
00:39:30.300
because I'm a liberal, I'm a real liberal. Bill Kristol, who is the probably the leading
00:39:34.600
never-Trumper, says we should rename the Republican Party the Liberal Party and we should just have a
00:39:38.680
Liberal Party. That's fine for liberals, for classical liberals but for those of us who think that history
00:39:45.160
began before the late 17th and 18th century, who like other ideas, who have other senses of things,
00:39:51.660
who don't want to just float in the abstract, who like institutions, who like the ideas that are
00:39:57.880
embodied in them, who like culture, who like the things that can't be written down in a philosophy
00:40:04.020
textbook. That's not going to cut it and we're not totally married to rationalism and so I endorse
00:40:13.560
conservative thought over classically liberal thought but it's confusing in America because
00:40:17.380
when you just look on the surface, it's very often almost the same thing. Dave Rubin and I,
00:40:22.620
if you look at precise political issues, don't disagree on too much. We disagree on some things but
00:40:27.620
not probably we agree on more than we disagree on but when you look at the foundations of those
00:40:32.120
thoughts, they're probably quite different. From Mary, hey Michael, as a Catholic, why do you
00:40:37.080
believe in the death penalty? Don't you agree with the Catholic catechism updated version even before
00:40:43.380
Francis that says it is immoral unless in extreme circumstances in which the public is at risk
00:40:48.000
if the person is not killed, it est, if jail systems are insufficient, etc. No, not at all and the
00:40:53.380
catechism doesn't say that. The catechism even still refuses to say that the death penalty is
00:40:59.020
intrinsically evil. Pope Francis has all but said that. He's said that it's an attack on the inviolability
00:41:04.660
of the dignity of the human person or some such language but that isn't true. That's just wrong.
00:41:10.940
It is certainly the tradition of all of Christendom that the death penalty is perfectly fine and
00:41:17.160
defended. St. Paul defends it in his letters. It is, it's defended in the gospels as the civil
00:41:26.620
authority, having civil authority is defended in the gospels. In fact, our salvation comes through
00:41:30.520
the crucifixion which is an example of the death penalty being instituted by a civil authority.
00:41:37.860
Thomas Aquinas defends this. The church fathers defend this endlessly. The point I'll make on this
00:41:44.500
is that all shallows are clear. So you, a lot of people look today and they say, oh, the death
00:41:49.160
penalty seems bad. And a couple popes, one pope has said it's really, really bad. So therefore it's
00:41:54.780
bad. No, it goes a little deeper than that. You have to think a little bit more deeply. All shallows
00:41:59.400
are clear and profound things are murky and a little more complicated sometimes, but that's their nature.
00:42:05.520
From Brett. Oh, kofefe sensei. Oh, su kofefe sensei. In my endless debates with a family member of
00:42:13.600
mine who identifies as a democratic socialist, I stumbled upon a hurdle I cannot quite clear.
00:42:18.760
The military, police, and border security are all socialist programs. And if we do not have a
00:42:23.520
problem with these socialized programs, and more than that, we love them, then why am I so staunchly
00:42:28.640
opposed to the socialist healthcare and socialism in general? Thanks, Mike. Well, I wouldn't call them
00:42:34.140
socialists. They're for the common defense. Everything you name is for the common defense,
00:42:38.340
our military, border security, law enforcement. And that's the purpose of the government. We have a
00:42:43.060
government to defend law and order and to defend us from threats outside and threats inside.
00:42:49.000
And they do it well, but there are mistakes. The left constantly is talking about how awful the
00:42:53.920
military is, how awful the police are. They want to demilitarize the police, meaning they want the
00:42:59.100
police to be even less like the military. So it's a little disingenuous for them to then come around
00:43:03.580
and say how great the military and the police are. The point is that when you give the government that
00:43:08.220
power, it's very hard to get it back. You can't really take it back from them. And the police and
00:43:13.360
the military make mistakes, too. I mean, we give them that power, and they do a wonderful job for
00:43:17.500
us, and they protect us, and they defend our liberty. But we only want to give the government
00:43:21.260
the amount of power that is minimum to protect us and to protect our liberty and to protect our
00:43:27.320
civilization. Why would we give them any more than that? The government isn't very good at doing
00:43:32.480
things. The government isn't very good at managing huge bureaucracies, and huge power on the national
00:43:37.840
scale especially can really corrupt people. So if you give the government control over your health
00:43:42.940
care, all of a sudden, in a very practical way, you're going to see quality go down and the costs
00:43:47.140
go up. But in a spiritual way and in a matter of political rights, you're going to see that you're
00:43:54.760
not going to have as much control over your body, over your family, over your liberty, over your life.
00:43:58.780
You're going to have, like in England, you're going to have parents begging to take their little baby
00:44:03.200
and get medical care outside of the UK. The Pope interjecting on the baby's behalf and saying,
00:44:08.980
bring him to this hospital. The United States saying, bring him to this hospital. And the
00:44:12.660
government saying, no, we own your baby. We own your life. Deal with it. You gave us that power.
00:44:16.940
That's why you have to stay away from socialism. One more before we go from Augustine. Michael,
00:44:22.420
I have been talking to a girl for a while now. We're finally ready to go on our first date.
00:44:25.740
We've not yet discussed politics. I was curious of how you brought up the topic with Sweet Little
00:44:31.100
Elisa and any other dating tips you have. Well, when I first met Sweet Little Elisa, I was 11
00:44:38.620
years old. So it didn't come up right away. I mean, I did come out of the womb smoking a cigar
00:44:44.900
and reading Edmund Burke. So there is that parting my hair. But it didn't come up right away. No,
00:44:49.200
we talked about other things, certainly when we were 12. And politics comes up when you talk and
00:44:55.880
you talk about culture and you talk about personal things, you talk about whatever.
00:44:59.220
But I never made a point about it. I wouldn't worry about it. I mean, here's my main advice on
00:45:05.200
dating. You should enjoy it. It's very fun. It is a great pleasure and privilege to be in the company
00:45:12.160
of a woman, having a drink, having a meal, what do you know, going on a walk. So this is a wonderful
00:45:17.840
thing. This is one of the great joys of life. Enjoy it. Talk to her. Find out what she thinks.
00:45:25.760
Find out what her points of view. Make her laugh a little bit. Show her something she hasn't seen.
00:45:30.760
That could be taken in a very bad way. I'm talking about a sunset or something. Be, you know, be
00:45:35.200
romantic. Be charming. Enjoy. If you're not enjoying the date, she's not enjoying the date. I promise you
00:45:40.260
that. And don't make it. It's not a job interview. You're not like, okay, are you going to be my wife?
00:45:44.680
Are we going to get married tomorrow? Okay, do you check this box? No, come on,
00:45:47.700
man. She's a human being. She's a woman. This is one of the great consolations of life.
00:45:52.540
Enjoy it. Have a good time. If you don't, let me know how it goes. Then I'll try to give you more
00:45:57.240
advice. All right, that's our show. We've got a backstage coming up, so I got to get out of here.
00:46:00.780
But tune in for that. It's going to be a lot of fun. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is
00:46:04.720
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
00:46:15.500
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover. And our technical producer
00:46:20.940
is Austin Stevens. Edited by Jim Nickel. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is by
00:46:27.540
Jesua Olvera. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production. Copyright
00:46:32.540
forward publishing 2018. Hi, this is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. The new senator
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from Utah, Mitt Romney, is auditioning for John McCain's slot as a media darling by attacking
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Donald Trump. We'll look at the implications of that on The Andrew Klavan Show. I'm Andrew Klavan.