The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 286 - Indoctrination 101： Conservative Teachers Censored

00:00:00.000 A high school teacher in suburban New York, the only openly right-leaning teacher at his school,

00:00:04.760 has been suspended without pay for showing a Fox News documentary about due process on college

00:00:10.140 campuses in class. The story has been gaining media attention over the past week, and it has

00:00:14.920 a personal dimension for me because he was my teacher. He was the teacher at my school. We will

00:00:20.100 speak with Mike Poplardo about his suspension and what it means for teachers and students around

00:00:25.340 the country. Then more stolen valor from Nathan Phillips emerges. A CNN contributor compares

00:00:31.100 a MAGA hat to the KKK hood. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proves herself to be the only

00:00:37.560 honest radical. Finally, the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:48.380 This is a really, really personal day to me. You know, it's one of these moments where you're

00:00:53.560 reading the news, and I was actually going through news on the Daily Wire. Oh, gosh,

00:00:58.840 a teacher was suspended for having the audacity to show a documentary from Fox News. Oh, I wonder

00:01:04.580 who that... Oh, and it's my teacher. Okay, and it's the one conservative. It's not like the guy was,

00:01:10.000 you know, wearing a Make America Great Again hat in school. He just showed both sides of the political

00:01:16.120 aisle, which frequently does not happen in education. We'll speak to him. I can't wait to bring him on.

00:01:21.420 What they're doing to him is awful, and it's not just him. This is happening to teachers around the

00:01:25.620 country, and it leaves students poorly educated when teachers with different views of politics

00:01:33.700 and history are kept out. It leaves them poorly educated. It also leaves them feeling as though

00:01:39.540 their political views could get them lower grades, could hurt them in school, could make them face

00:01:46.060 punishment. It's a really, really serious thing. So he'll come on. First, let's make a little bit of

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00:03:21.640 Before we get to my teacher, Mr. Poplardo, just a little bit of news. We've covered the Covington

00:03:26.800 boys, giving you updates every day, and we called it on the show. We said, the guy said he was a

00:03:33.400 Vietnam Times veteran, that Native American man, Nathan Phillips. He said,

00:03:38.240 it sounds like he didn't serve in Vietnam, even though all the mainstream media outlets said he's

00:03:42.580 a Vietnam veteran. How dare these kids harass a Vietnam veteran? So it turns out he didn't serve

00:03:48.860 in Vietnam. He was in the Marines, but he was never deployed. He never saw combat. He never went

00:03:55.260 overseas to Vietnam. Now, the mainstream media then defended him and said, well, he never said he was a

00:04:00.260 Vietnam veteran. He never said that he went overseas. He said he was a Vietnam Times veteran,

00:04:05.220 which is technically correct. That is. Except he's also claimed to be a veteran who was in

00:04:10.220 the theater in Vietnam.

00:04:11.560 I'm a Vietnam vet. You know, I served in Marine Corps 72 to 76. I got discharged May 5th, 1976. You know,

00:04:23.300 one of the, I got honorable discharge, and one of the boxes in there, they talk, it shows if it was

00:04:34.340 peacetime or, or, or, or, or, um, what my box is, is that I was in theater. Um, I don't talk much about my

00:04:45.460 Vietnam times.

00:04:46.520 He doesn't talk much except on every television station that will let him talk about it. He

00:04:51.340 doesn't talk, except when he's on Facebook, then he talks about it. He does seem to talk about it a

00:04:54.500 lot. It turns out that he was not in the theater, though he claims that he was. He, he's clearly,

00:05:00.820 this is a clear example of stolen valor. He's not just claiming he was a veteran. He's not just

00:05:04.660 claiming he was a Vietnam veteran. He's claiming he was a Vietnam veteran in the theater, in combat,

00:05:09.900 which is demonstrably not true. He's elsewhere said that he was a recon ranger. Uh, actually he was a

00:05:16.060 refrigerator repairman. I'm actually not disparaging refrigerator. Look, the military needs refrigerator

00:05:22.000 repairman. That's honest work. And he did serve his country. What I'm disparaging is the lying, the lying

00:05:28.380 about it, the stealing valor. And even beyond that, look, this is a crazy person. This is an insane guy, 1.00

00:05:34.420 Nathan Phillips, who lies about his past, lies about his military service, tries to bust in and break up 0.96

00:05:39.940 Catholic vigil masses, starts banging drums in the face of 16 year olds. This is a bizarre man who clearly

00:05:46.040 has a lot of problems. The real target of my ire is the media, the mainstream media who ran with

00:05:53.820 this. They, oh gosh, he, he's a, he's a hero. He's an Ameri, he's a frail old hero who's minding his 0.97

00:06:01.400 own business. And then the kids came and harassed him, those evil Catholic kids. They, they use their 1.00

00:06:06.600 assault smirks. They pulled out that off the weapon of mass destruction, the 16 year old smirk. Oh,

00:06:12.940 how awful to inflict that on him. And it's not true. So the mainstream media get it wrong.

00:06:18.840 Okay, fine. The mainstream media always get it wrong. And that's fine. People make mistakes.

00:06:22.680 It's hard in reporting sometimes. What I have noticed, however, is that every time the mainstream

00:06:28.800 media gets something wrong, they get it wrong to favor left-wingers. They never get it wrong to favor

00:06:35.420 right-wingers. They never get the narrative wrong such that it reflects well on conservatives.

00:06:40.060 It, they always get it wrong in a way that reflects very well on the left and very well

00:06:44.680 on Democrats. And then they don't really apologize when it turns out it's fake news. They just move

00:06:49.600 on and misreport another story. They just move. Oh, well, whoops, too bad. The mainstream media

00:06:55.700 constantly tell us that they deserve our respect. They're, they're so important. They're defending

00:07:02.160 democracy. They're, they're on the front lines and they are the most wonderful people in the whole

00:07:06.620 world. They have none of my respect. None, not one iota, not one ounce. Certainly the American 0.98

00:07:11.960 political media, some, obviously some reporters around the world, wartime reporters. They have

00:07:16.340 a lot of my respect. A handful of reporters in the United States. Sure. The vast majority,

00:07:22.220 statistically 100% of these journalists have zero of my respect. That's fine. The reason they don't

00:07:28.600 have my respect is because they lie. The way that this will all make sense to you is when you realize

00:07:32.760 that the people on CNN and MSNBC and the Washington Post and the New York Times or wherever, they are

00:07:39.220 not journalists. They are Democrat political operatives. That's it. I think we've been saying

00:07:45.080 this for years. Some people think we're speaking hyperbolically. We're not. They're, they're just

00:07:50.060 operatives. They're just hacks. And when you realize that, when you realize George Stephanopoulos

00:07:55.140 was the Clinton communications director, when you realize that Chris Cuomo's brother is Andy Cuomo,

00:08:00.080 who just made infanticide legal in New York and whose father was Mario Cuomo, who created the I 0.66

00:08:05.920 oppose abortion personally, but I want it to be legal line, which now all of the moderate Democrats 0.67

00:08:12.380 have to tout. When you realize that they come from political operations, it will all make a lot more

00:08:19.480 sense. This is the line that we're hearing now between the mainstream media story and the reality

00:08:26.440 is that, oh, there were competing narratives. Oh, wow. Look, people see things differently through

00:08:31.960 different perspectives. And you know, maybe we rushed a little to push our perspective and some

00:08:38.700 people had other perspective. They're just different perspectives. No, that isn't true. That isn't true.

00:08:44.280 There are two narratives. There's the mainstream media narrative and there's the truth. Those are the

00:08:48.300 two and they're diametrically opposed to each other. Certainly in this circumstance, what they're trying

00:08:53.620 to do to excuse their awful behavior is push a tyranny of relativism to say, well, who can really say

00:08:58.960 what happened? Who knows? I mean, yeah, look, okay. So there are two hours of video footage showing that

00:09:05.160 the Covington kids behaved admirably and with great maturity and showing that Nathan Phillips is a lying 1.00

00:09:11.120 lunatic and showing that the black Israelites are horrible racists screaming at these white kids. 1.00

00:09:15.700 Okay. There's a video. That's one perspective, but I don't want that to be true. That's actually, 1.00

00:09:22.540 I mean, some of these columns they posted, they said, look, okay, the video shows one thing,

00:09:26.420 but we know what we saw. No, you didn't. Look, I know what they saw too. What they saw was what

00:09:31.800 they wanted to see, but they didn't see the truth. It's this tyranny of relativism, this hysteria,

00:09:37.800 and this primacy of feelings, emotivism, rather than looking at objective reality. Nowhere is this

00:09:44.220 clearer than on CNN. On Chris Cuomo's show, he had a CNN contributor, Angela Rye, come on to compare

00:09:50.680 the MAGA hat to the KKK hood. But this make America great again hat is just as maddening and

00:09:57.460 frustrating and triggering for me to look at as a KKK hood. Like that is the type of hatred that his

00:10:03.740 policies represent. And until we can have common ground and understanding about that, that it's

00:10:08.760 that triggering, we're going to continue to have problems. It's very triggering for her.

00:10:13.680 She thinks of the MAGA hat as the KKK hood. She says, as long as that's the case, we're going to 0.96

00:10:21.160 have problems. Right. There is a problem, but that's a you problem. That's an Angela Rye problem. 0.99

00:10:27.720 That's a left problem. It's not my problem that Angela Rye lives in a fantasy world. That's not my

00:10:34.860 problem. Angela Rye's feelings are not my problem. The fact is a MAGA hat is not a KKK hood in part because

00:10:42.760 the MAGA hat represents the Republican party and the KKK hood represents the Democrat party.

00:10:48.300 There's nothing racist about making America great again. It's been a Republican slogan now for 40

00:10:55.500 years. Nixon used it. Reagan famously used it. She says that she can't be friends in this clip with

00:11:02.780 some, or in this interview rather, she can't be friends with certain conservatives. If people wear

00:11:07.820 the hat, she can't be friends with them. That's a you problem. Sorry, darling. Okay. I mean,

00:11:12.440 grow up. I can't make you grow up. I can't resolve your daddy issues. Okay. That's not

00:11:17.520 up to me. I can't, I, not only am I unwilling to do it, I can't do, I actually can't do it. You can't,

00:11:24.860 people will order themselves toward virtue. They will order themselves toward discipline. They will

00:11:31.200 order themselves toward recognizing a moral standard, or those standards will be imposed

00:11:37.080 from above by the government or by, or by some giant oppressive force. That's the way it's going

00:11:43.460 to happen. The, the, all of the founding fathers wrote about this, especially John Adams and Hamilton

00:11:49.460 and some, and a lot of the federalists. They wrote about how if the people loses its maturity,

00:11:56.600 its sense of discipline, its virtue, its moral understanding, its religiosity, its humility,

00:12:02.440 if the people loses that, it's all sunk. We're all sunk. We just end up with this.

00:12:07.220 I can't argue with Angela Rye's feelings. They're her feelings. I can just point to reality. And when

00:12:13.220 you look at the reality of that video, those 16 year old Catholic school kids were not the KKK.

00:12:20.380 They're not. I'm sorry. I'm, if maybe Angela Rye needs to talk it over with her therapist or

00:12:25.040 something. I'm not a therapist. I just, I just talk about politics. I just, I just try to advance a

00:12:31.060 conservative agenda, which, which is based in reality. It's not, it's based in objective reality,

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00:14:10.760 You might think that the world is ending. You might think that we're living in an upside down

00:14:18.980 world. I have to give a compliment to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the only

00:14:25.160 Democrat to vote against reopening the government. That's the headline. All the Democrats voted for it

00:14:31.200 other than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She voted against it because it funds immigration and customs 0.51

00:14:37.800 enforcement. And she said she doesn't want to fund immigration enforcement. She wants to abolish

00:14:43.360 immigration enforcement. And so she voted against it. At least she's honest. At least she's the only

00:14:50.980 honest radical in the Democrat party. They, look, Nancy Pelosi and all those other Democrats didn't

00:14:57.040 really vote to reopen the government. President Trump has been clear. You have to fund with $5 billion

00:15:01.660 out of a budget that's over $4 trillion, nearly $4.5 trillion, $5 billion for border

00:15:07.700 security. You've all already voted for the border wall. Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama,

00:15:13.300 all these major Democrats voted for the border wall 12 years ago. Now they're saying it's immoral,

00:15:17.840 it's ineffective, it's costly. It's not. None of that is true. We already have the wall. We know

00:15:22.540 that the wall works. We already have parts of the wall. We know that the wall works dramatically.

00:15:25.760 It reduces illegal crossings by upwards of 90% where it's been implemented. It's not very expensive.

00:15:32.680 The Democrats voted not to reopen the government in practice. If they won't include five measly

00:15:38.700 billion dollars, then they voted against it in practice. But they were being deceptive.

00:15:43.180 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is going a step further. She's saying, look, abolish ICE, 1.00

00:15:47.140 abolish immigration enforcement. Democrats backed off that. That's their problem. We need to abolish it. 0.88

00:15:51.700 We need open borders. We need borders are immoral. Immigration enforcement, law enforcement is 0.92

00:15:57.160 immoral. That's a radical position. But at least it's honest. And at least you can have an honest

00:16:01.040 debate on it. My kudos to her for being honestly insane. We got to bring on my teacher, Mr. Poplardo. 0.98

00:16:08.600 Mike Poplardo is a veteran teacher from Fox Lane High School. That is my high school. That's where I

00:16:13.900 went to, where I grew up, K through 12 in Bedford Central School District. He was my teacher. He taught

00:16:20.100 economics and government while I was there. One thing, having been one of the few conservative students,

00:16:25.640 I noticed that Mr. Poplardo was one of the few openly right-leaning teachers. That's not to say

00:16:31.280 he was very conservative, you know, talking about the Republican Party all the time or anything.

00:16:37.260 But one thing I loved about his class is he would listen to both sides. He would present both sides

00:16:42.700 of an issue, which all too often in our educational system doesn't happen. Now, that open-mindedness,

00:16:49.340 teaching an economics and government class, that open-mindedness has gotten him suspended.

00:16:54.220 for one month without pay, and maybe they're going to try to do even more to him. This is all over

00:17:00.800 showing a documentary produced by Fox News, which talked about due process on college campuses and

00:17:07.700 what college students are going to face when they go there. We bring on now Mr. Poplardo. Mr. Poplardo,

00:17:12.100 thank you for being here. Thank you for having me, Michael. I got to tell you, I didn't know this

00:17:18.380 was happening. It's, you know, we haven't talked in a number of years now. I didn't know this was

00:17:23.320 happening until I read about it on my own website. One of our reporters at the Daily Wire wrote about

00:17:28.300 this, and I am on a, as a matter of principle, I'm so outraged that this is happening to any teacher

00:17:34.780 in the country. But on a personal level, it really pains me because I love that school district. I know

00:17:41.160 you love the school district. I was as involved as any student was in, you know, all of the student

00:17:47.320 body president while you were the advisor, class president, all of the, you know, band, orchestra,

00:17:52.760 chorus, top of the class, all these sort of things. I love the district, and they are acting

00:17:57.320 so outrageously. What is this suspension about? All right, first, I'm so glad that you started

00:18:03.640 with that because I want to make it clear that I love the families and students at the Bedford

00:18:08.580 National School District. They are great. I've appreciated every one of my 21, 29 years

00:18:13.540 working as a Foxwood High School teacher, and this really just comes down to a small group of people

00:18:20.640 that have grabbed a hold of the reins of the school district and are making some really bad judgment

00:18:25.980 calls here. So, uh, um, so you want to get into the details of the actual story? I do because what,

00:18:33.840 from what I read on, on the Daily Wire, from what I read in your class, you played part, a documentary

00:18:40.160 that was produced by Fox News on what students can expect on college campus, due process, some of

00:18:46.460 these questions that are really in the news, they're really affecting our politics today, and then some

00:18:52.000 of the political forces at Fox Lane High School are punishing you for that. Correct. As a matter of fact,

00:18:58.260 we probably have to go back about six years ago to truly understand what's happening. So about six

00:19:04.360 years ago, I went from being a closet conservative, secretly listening to Rush and Hannity, and

00:19:09.620 occasionally using Fox News programming as an instructional device, um, to become an outed,

00:19:15.620 so to speak, because I was now serving as the Fox Lane High School Republicans Club advisor. That's when

00:19:21.620 the way I was treated by some and relatively few Bedford Central School District and Fox Lane High

00:19:27.520 school leaders started to change, uh, the way they treated me. So fast forward to, you know, to last

00:19:35.520 May, and what we have is we have, uh, 12th graders getting ready to leave Fox Lane High School, and as

00:19:42.300 I and many other teachers often do, uh, in late May with only a few days left to the school years,

00:19:47.880 class days, that is, uh, we start planning what some of us, including me, called bridge lessons,

00:19:53.060 the types of things that will get kids to be able to make the transition from the Bedford bubble

00:19:57.340 to the next part of their life, which is likely going to be college, the military, uh, the world of

00:20:03.460 work, uh, and that plan, that type of lesson is not very uncommon. I've been doing it for

00:20:11.900 27 years. What changed this time, however, was a few things. One, it was, I think the two-day lesson

00:20:21.440 included a Fox News documentary. Two, there's a new superintendent that had not yet even finished

00:20:26.760 his second year in the school district, and in my opinion, had not yet assimilated into the Bedford

00:20:31.220 Central School District family culture. Three, there was a new principal that also was, uh, new to the

00:20:37.640 school district and had not yet completely assimilated into the Bedford Central School District.

00:20:42.520 As a matter of fact, those two gentlemen that I just spoke are still commuting, uh, to Bedford.

00:20:47.100 They haven't moved their family into the district. So they're just coming in from outside somewhere. 0.95

00:20:52.120 And cause this, what surprised me so much about this story is at least when I was there, I guess

00:20:55.880 I just hosted my 10 year high school reunion. I guess when I was there, I felt I was obviously

00:21:01.220 much more conservative than anyone in the district, but I didn't feel that it was some oppressive

00:21:06.100 environment. I didn't have a chip on my shoulder. I didn't feel that people were out to get me or

00:21:10.100 anything. But what you're saying is the new leadership has just come in and they're, they're, uh,

00:21:16.020 clearly just if you look at the timeline, they're what precipitated some of this change.

00:21:22.140 Yes, absolutely. Uh, it's kind of a perfect storm. You add into the fact that we have some,

00:21:27.480 um, new to the district commuters, uh, spending their professional time on campus, but their

00:21:34.600 personal time far away from campus. Add to that, that there was a conservative teacher at the center

00:21:40.300 and boom, we have an explosion and the explosion is charges drawn up against me demanding a six

00:21:47.520 month paid, unpaid suspension from Fox lane high school in what would be my 30th year,

00:21:55.160 just one year away from me being eligible to fully retire and collect my full pension. It's,

00:22:00.980 it's absurd, uh, that that was what they demanded. Again, the, the alleged crime, uh, is showing a Fox

00:22:09.760 news documentary to 12th grade students and providing a 60 minute discussion period to debrief

00:22:17.780 that video. I wonder what would have happened if you showed a documentary from CNN, or I wonder what

00:22:23.220 would have happened if you were the advisor to the young Democrat club in that high school? I think

00:22:27.720 they probably would have given you a raise. Uh, I think I wrote, at least get a flap on the back

00:22:32.360 and maybe a picture on the website. That's amazing. It's unbelievable. And it's, it's such an outrage.

00:22:38.280 I was just thinking, you know, when I was in your class, all of these students really liked you

00:22:45.300 left and right. I mean, I think I was one of three conservatives, maybe that. So most are on the left,

00:22:49.920 obviously, but what's so astounding about this is the parallel that you see at colleges now,

00:22:55.120 because, uh, we all know that the college campuses have really decayed into a politically toxic

00:23:00.660 environment. And a lot of it is because they're bringing in these outside deans and assistant deans and

00:23:06.060 deputy assistant, deputy deans of inclusion and political ideology. And they come in and they

00:23:12.240 stir up trouble and they try to be politically divisive and push their own political agendas.

00:23:17.900 We know that happens, but you, it's rare that you hear stories about that happening in high school.

00:23:23.820 Uh, I mean, what, what is the shift here? What is the fallout going to be? I just actually,

00:23:29.720 since I tweeted about this, I've gotten a lot of messages from Fox lane high school alumni and some

00:23:36.140 parents saying, please cover this, Michael, this is such an outrage what they're doing to Mr.

00:23:40.840 Poplardo, but you're actually fighting back. They, they, did they offer you any kind of deal or

00:23:46.360 is this now sort of out of everybody's hands?

00:23:49.640 I'm so glad you, you, you brought that up because the superintendent issued a two page

00:23:54.920 press release and in it, he lied about the settlement that was offered, uh, and challenged

00:24:02.020 or implied to the public that I refused to take what was a reasonable settlement offer. So let me

00:24:08.140 describe what the real offer was and why I refused it. So first of all, the real offer was that I would

00:24:13.280 agree that removing me as a JV girls soccer coach should not be challenged, that that was the right

00:24:19.180 thing to do because of this Fox news documentary. Number two, that I should be, agree to be removed

00:24:23.860 from the JV softball coach, be agreed to be removed as, uh, the advisor to two clubs. Uh, so agree to all

00:24:32.300 that, waive or release the district from pending or future litigation. And, uh, and, and that was

00:24:41.760 absolutely unacceptable. So they're, they're saying basically shut up and take a huge, cause when

00:24:46.800 you're coaching club, uh, coaching sports or you're advising clubs that comes with some money. 0.88

00:24:52.300 So they're saying take a pay cut and, and shut up and maybe we'll let you keep your job.

00:24:56.980 Yes. And it's even worse than that. The reason they knew, and they should have known immediately,

00:25:01.320 there was no way I was going to accept that is because anyone that knows me knows that I'm a

00:25:05.620 person that's, that's unyielding with my, with my, my sense of, of morals and ethics. I wasn't going

00:25:11.220 to agree to something that would change me and make me a different and weaker person.

00:25:14.920 As a matter of fact, the morning I left for the first hearing, my wife said to me something that

00:25:20.180 I'll never forget. And let me just paint the picture. So I'm getting dressed to get ready to

00:25:24.620 go to this thing, thrown on a suit and a, and a, and a tie, which I hate wearing. And my wife's 0.65

00:25:29.540 getting ready to go to work. And she says to me, Mike, you're a good man. You did nothing wrong.

00:25:35.140 Don't let them break you. We all love you. I am not going to let them break me. And I wasn't going

00:25:42.120 to agree to that ridiculous settlement because doing so would have broken me. They are continuing

00:25:46.220 to try to break me, but I'm unbreakable.

00:25:48.380 Well, that's what it is. They, they basically, they say, here's the settlement. Here's the

00:25:52.080 Faustian bargain, sell your soul. And maybe we'll let you continue to teach here as a shell of,

00:25:57.800 of a, a teacher. It, you know, they, this is what happens when leftist ideologues come in

00:26:05.920 and try to stir up trouble and try to push their agenda. They fight so dirty. And this is as dirty

00:26:12.080 as I've ever seen anyone do it. It would be one thing to go after a first or second year teacher

00:26:16.920 or an unpopular teacher or a teacher who's not involved in the school or a teacher who's,

00:26:22.740 you know, pushing his politics as the only politics or anything. You're none of those things. The school

00:26:29.260 knows that you're none of those things. The alumni know that you're none of those things. And the reason

00:26:33.320 I bring it up other than this personal issue is I think that you're not the only person that this

00:26:38.820 has happened to around the country. You might be the only person whose former student has a podcast

00:26:43.820 where you can talk about this, but I think that this is, is probably happening in a lot of other

00:26:48.560 places. And if you give up, if you took a settlement like that, where you're saying, I, I'm sorry,

00:26:53.920 mea culpa, mea culpa. I showed a documentary from a non left-wing outlet. I'm sorry. I'll never do it

00:27:00.580 again. Take my money, take my coaching, take my school spirit, take it all the way. Please,

00:27:04.760 please. If you did that, it would be so demoralizing to other teachers who are facing this problem.

00:27:10.300 And moreover, it would be demoralizing to students who maybe are independent or right-leaning or

00:27:16.500 conservative. You were advising the young Republican group. What is the sense among the students?

00:27:22.100 All right. This is a very touchy question because the students are outraged. And I, I, I do not want to

00:27:29.120 put students in the middle of a conflict, uh, but it's unavoidable. And the, the, not just the

00:27:35.660 young Republican students, but students, you know, at large are really trying to reach out and support

00:27:40.460 me. They're doing it in a number of different ways. And, uh, they're actually, uh, a comment on

00:27:45.320 the Facebook page today actually said, I'm not the Facebook page, the GoFundMe page actually said,

00:27:50.200 I'm trying to quote it. I don't know. Well, that's right. I should, I should point out. I did see this

00:27:53.600 on Facebook. Somebody else set up a GoFundMe page because you're now being suspended without pay.

00:27:58.920 And I actually saw that you wrote somewhere on it. You said, guys, I'm a conservative. I feel

00:28:03.980 really uncomfortable taking money from people if I'm not doing work, which I thought was like the

00:28:09.280 perfect distillation of your political views. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I'm putting together

00:28:14.820 some plans to earn the money that's coming in through that, uh, GoFundMe page. More importantly

00:28:19.580 than the money, the comments are amazing. They're heartwarming. And you're exactly right. When this

00:28:24.700 whole thing started, it was, it was a struggle to defend my family and my integrity. But now I see

00:28:30.820 comments coming from Texas and South Carolina. One person said, Mr. Pappalato, I don't know you,

00:28:35.520 but we need people like you. Please move to Texas and teach my kids. This, you're right. This is now

00:28:41.620 becoming, and not, not my, I didn't intend it to obviously, but a struggle to not only defend myself

00:28:48.800 and my family, but to defend some important principles that all teachers, uh, fair-minded

00:28:55.780 teachers should respect. That's absolutely right. Unfortunately, we're out of time, but I'm, I'm so

00:29:00.100 glad that you could come on today and, and bring this up a little bit. Uh, what I love that district.

00:29:05.880 I mean, I love my high school. I was involved in it as much as anybody possibly could be. And I am so

00:29:11.780 outraged as to what the Bedford Central School District is doing right now. I'm outraged that this

00:29:17.640 new superintendent would allow this to happen or would instigate this. I personally am going to

00:29:22.460 give him a call to express my views as an alumnus of the school. And, uh, I encourage other people

00:29:27.800 to, to express their outrage at, at the obvious injustice that's being done against you. Uh, I'll,

00:29:36.380 obviously I'm going to be following this and, um, I'm really sorry it's happening to you, you know,

00:29:40.620 because obviously it's hurting you and it's hurting your family and it's hurting your students.

00:29:44.260 But, uh, I, in a, in a sense, I'm glad that some light can be shed on this problem and,

00:29:50.560 and the sort of degradation that people who want to inject political ideology and just to stir up a

00:29:56.740 school district, the sort of degradation that they're doing to their, to education and to their

00:30:01.320 districts. Mr. Pablardo, it's great to see you and I'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much.

00:30:06.340 All right. We got to get to the mailbag, but first, if you are on Facebook or YouTube,

00:30:13.940 go to dailywire.com. Check it out. Uh, it's 10 bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership. If you

00:30:19.140 already subscribed, thank you very much. You keep the lights on. You keep Covfefe in my cup. If you

00:30:23.880 don't, uh, head over there, you get the Andrew Klavan show, the Ben Shapiro show, my show, the Matt

00:30:28.440 Walsh show backstage. You get to ask questions in the mailbag. You get to ask questions backstage. You get

00:30:32.380 another kingdom. You get the leftist tears tumbler. This is so important. This tumbler.

00:30:39.840 Mm. That's really, that's the Angela rye. That's a nice Angela rye. It tastes, it's not a scotch. It's

00:30:45.820 not an Angela bourbon. It's not, it's not, it's an Angela rye. Mm. So delicious. Mm. Yep. Tastes like

00:30:53.620 pretty sordid fantasies and really strange personal issues. Go over to dailywire.com. We'll be right back

00:30:59.340 with the mailbag. All right. We're getting through them today. I always take too long. So I'm going

00:31:12.840 to try to fly through them from Paula. Listen, Michael, I don't usually bother to write to anybody

00:31:18.180 about this, but I like you. And I think you can go far in life. It's the students are all right.

00:31:24.660 Two words. Not the students are all right. A-L-R-I-G-H-T. X-O, X-O, X-O. I did an episode

00:31:32.940 a few days ago called The Kids Are All Right. A-L-R-I-G-H-T. You're correct about how to spell 1.00

00:31:39.560 the word all right. However, where you are incorrect is that the reference that I was making is to a song

00:31:45.860 by The Who called The Kids Are All Right, which spells the word, albeit incorrectly, A-L-R-I-G-H-T.

00:31:53.940 I appreciate your concern and your attention to grammar, but the reference was to pop culture,

00:32:01.260 which so often gets language wrong. From Nicole. Hi, Michael. Do you have any opinions on the

00:32:06.720 drinking age in the U.S.? I'm currently in college, and I see 18 to 20-year-olds go to outrageous parties

00:32:11.920 constantly putting themselves in dangerous situations simply because they want to drink.

00:32:16.140 Most friends I ask say they would prefer to have a safer night drinking with a close group of friends

00:32:20.580 if they were able to just buy alcohol themselves. Would you argue for a drinking age of 18,

00:32:24.880 or do you think the drinking culture in America is not suitable for an age that young? Thanks.

00:32:29.040 I 100% support a drinking age of 18. I think it's absurd that the drinking age is 21. I certainly

00:32:36.140 drank at 18. I know everybody else that I knew drank at the age of 18. Just about, you can serve your

00:32:42.220 country at the age of 18, but you can't have a drink. That is so absurd. And if you were going to all

00:32:48.120 those outrageous parties where people are putting themselves in dangerous situations, you may have

00:32:51.920 seen me there. I don't know when you were in college. If it was around the same time, maybe we

00:32:55.180 saw each other. I'm sorry if I was drinking too much. I like beer. I still like beer. And more

00:33:00.240 importantly, it's important to teach kids how to drink responsibly. I come from an Italian family.

00:33:06.620 Italian families let you have wine at dinner sometimes from when you're like seven years old

00:33:11.200 onward. And what this teaches you over time is how to drink responsibly, what your limits are,

00:33:17.380 how to drink so that you don't get drunk. If you do get drunk, to know how to stop and be safe about

00:33:22.220 things like that. And that's very important. When I got to college, a lot of the people there,

00:33:28.040 a lot of my friends had never been allowed to drink even a sip of alcohol in their lives.

00:33:32.560 They're the ones who went to the hospital. They're the ones who went to the health centers. They're the

00:33:36.860 ones who got into a lot of trouble. Whereas if you've had some experience and you know your limits,

00:33:42.520 maybe you push your limits a little too far sometimes, but you're able to just be a little

00:33:46.280 more safer and a little more mature. I also have the opinion that if you raise kids with respect and

00:33:54.080 you raise them with expectations that are mature and expectations of people to behave in a civilized

00:34:00.900 and adult way, they're more likely to rise to that expectation. I've just seen that anecdotally.

00:34:05.700 So you bet. 18 year old drinking age. Cool for me. From Austin. Hello, Michael. I recently watched

00:34:12.680 your panel from Politicon and at one point you were accused of being inconsistent because you're

00:34:16.700 pro-life and for the death penalty. Do you think it's inconsistent to hold both of those views at

00:34:21.900 once? How do you feel about the current death penalty system in the US? Yeah, this one actually

00:34:26.600 really bothers me because I only saw this after the fact on the tape. The panel you're talking about,

00:34:32.400 I was with a few liberal guys from YouTube and Charlie Kirk was there and that CNN guy,

00:34:37.840 what's his name? Bakari Sellers. And so we're sitting there. The hole was so gigantic that you

00:34:44.700 couldn't really hear anybody on these panels. So one guy, I guess at the very end said that I was

00:34:50.080 being hypocritical for opposing abortion but supporting the death penalty. And I just couldn't

00:34:55.480 hear it so I couldn't give him a snarky response but I will now. There is no disagreement whatsoever.

00:35:02.220 There is no hypocrisy. There is no contradiction. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that the state

00:35:07.060 has the authority to impose capital punishment which has been widely believed for all of human

00:35:13.300 history which has great scriptural, legal, theological, moral, ethical foundation. And also it's wrong to

00:35:21.660 kill babies. In New York State now, you can kill a baby on the day he's born. Just right before he 1.00

00:35:27.160 comes out of the womb, you can snip snip and you can kill that baby. You can commit infanticide in 1.00

00:35:31.960 New York. That's obviously very wrong. The reason that this is wrong is because it's an innocent

00:35:36.460 little baby. And an innocent little baby is very different than a convicted murderer who has had the

00:35:41.180 right to due process. But if you're looking for just some little legal mechanism, due process would

00:35:46.280 be one of them. You can kill people with, the state at least, can kill people with due process. That 0.97

00:35:51.420 innocent little baby hasn't committed any crime. He certainly hasn't had a trial by a jury of his

00:35:56.080 peers. He hasn't been convicted. He hasn't been given any sort of due process. But of course, beyond that,

00:36:03.280 we know that capital punishment has three purposes. Retributive, which is just punishing it,

00:36:10.520 punishing the criminal because he's committed an injustice. Then there's the deterrent effect to deter

00:36:15.640 people from committing future crimes. And then there's the rehabilitative effect. This obviously

00:36:21.200 starts to go away when you're talking about killing the criminal. However, as Dr. Johnson famously

00:36:27.960 observed, hanging concentrates the mind. When a man knows he has to be hanged in a fortnight,

00:36:32.500 it concentrates his mind wonderfully. There is a little rehabilitative effect, at least, to that.

00:36:38.700 Retribution is the purpose of criminal justice. It's about justice. It's not just about

00:36:44.160 rehabilitation. That's what it's about. They've committed a crime and now they are able to be

00:36:49.780 killed. Only the left could confuse a convicted murderer, convicted rapist with an innocent little 0.99

00:36:57.540 baby. They confuse it because they're being obtuse, because they want to confuse it, because they want

00:37:02.700 to put their heads in the sand. But it's absurd. And I think the reason that you see the left using all

00:37:08.100 of these euphemisms for abortion is, they say, women's reproductive health, women's right to

00:37:13.280 choose. They never talk about abortion or killing per se. The reason they use those euphemisms is

00:37:18.380 because they do understand the distinction and it makes them very uncomfortable. From William,

00:37:23.320 Michael Knowles is a critic of modernity, a history buff, and a staunch papist. What is your take on

00:37:28.100 monarchism? The Catholic Church has canonized several kings, such as Stephen of Hungary and Fernando III,

00:37:34.040 while the famous Catholic philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas, concluded that monarchy was the best form

00:37:38.760 of government. Perhaps it is true. After all, our Lord is himself the King of Kings. As an American,

00:37:43.720 a Republican, and a Catholic, what do you make of monarchism? Thanks in advance. Depends on the

00:37:48.740 monarchy. I don't know. Which monarchy are we talking about? Politics is very important in its

00:37:56.100 particulars, in its tradition. We don't have a tradition of a monarch in America. It would be very

00:38:01.000 strange to impose a tradition of a monarchy. Now, some of the Federalists wanted a monarchy when the

00:38:06.000 country was being founded. Perhaps they could have done that. Perhaps that would have not succeeded.

00:38:11.300 James II of England is a great monarch. I support that monarch. Certain monarchs gain monikers like

00:38:18.460 the Terrible, you know, Ivan the Terrible or whatever. Those might not be great monarchs at all.

00:38:23.680 The form of government depends on history and tradition and the culture of the people.

00:38:28.960 There are some political universalists who say a particular form of liberal democracy is the only

00:38:37.800 legitimate form of government that has to exist in every single place. And if any government differs

00:38:44.000 in any way, if England has a constitutional monarchy or any other country, then that is somehow unjust and

00:38:49.240 wrong. That's absurd. I mean, that is just leftist, rationalist nonsense. One reason why it's probably

00:38:55.360 good we don't have a king in America is because we have such an ethic of liberalism and democracy and

00:39:02.340 egalitarianism that, I don't know, if we made Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez our queen, I'd probably

00:39:07.960 finally move up to Canada and then Elizabeth would be my queen. But people who take that universalist

00:39:15.000 approach to politics are being too simplistic about it and they're being too narrow, both as a matter of

00:39:20.920 time and as a matter of political philosophy. From David, hail the king of trolls. Given the

00:39:26.580 controversy surrounding the Covington Catholic students, what would your reply be to one of the

00:39:30.920 protesters' words that the white students go back to Europe? Oh, that's right. One of the guys with

00:39:36.760 that Indian phony, Nathan Phillips, he yelled, go back to Europe. My reply would be no. I'm not from

00:39:45.140 Europe. I was born in America. America is my native land. I'm a Native American. I'm just as much a

00:39:52.180 Native American as any of those guys are. This issue of stealing land, this is the new line, 0.98

00:39:59.180 America's stolen land. Stolen from whom? Who's it stolen from? I guess technically, most immediately,

00:40:07.100 it was stolen from the British and then the British stole it from the Dutch. And then, I don't know,

00:40:13.640 the Iroquois stole some land from a lot of their neighbors. The Comanches stole land from the Apache. 0.90

00:40:19.180 The Lipan Apache stole land from the Cheyenne. I don't know, the Aztecs expanded pretty quickly.

00:40:25.620 Who did they steal land from? Whose land is it? That's absurd. That's a ridiculous question. Nathan

00:40:30.620 Phillips standing there in the middle of our nation's capital saying, this is our land. Go back to

00:40:36.520 Europe. I'm not from Europe. You go back to Europe. Enjoy Europe. Have a good time. See if they deal with

00:40:41.420 your Looney Tune drum banging in their face. Go move to Italy. See what happens if you bang a drum

00:40:46.620 in the face of some Italian guy. Not going to end well. From Andrew. Hey, Michael. Right now, 0.98

00:40:52.480 if the pro-life movement were to succeed, would we not have a major problem on our hands dealing with

00:40:57.540 underage girls getting pregnant from failing with safe sex? Which I think is the lead cause of all or 1.00

00:41:04.660 at least most of the abortions in this country. No, we wouldn't. And no, that is not the lead cause of

00:41:09.400 abortions in this country. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which is a pro-abortion 0.98

00:41:14.440 research institute. It used to be part of Planned Parenthood. The vast majority of abortion patients

00:41:20.640 are in their 20s or higher. So over 50% of them are in their 20s. 34% of abortion patients are aged 20 to

00:41:30.840 24. I think about 27% of that are 24 and above. The people who are aged 17 or younger, so what you're

00:41:43.200 talking about, underage girls or minors, that makes up just 3.2% of abortions. About 97% of abortions

00:41:52.540 are taken by girls who are not minors. It's just another one of these myths, legends of the pro-abortion 0.84

00:42:02.100 movement. See, oh, it's all just these poor underage girls who don't know any better, who are 1.00

00:42:07.480 desperate. No, that's not true. It's mostly just people in their 20s who don't want to have a child

00:42:12.900 and so they'd rather kill it than have it. That's a sad fact, but it's important to name these

00:42:17.940 statistics. Since Roe v. Wade, 60 million kids have been killed, unborn babies, 30 million of whom

00:42:23.420 roughly are women. It's important to point out the reality of abortion versus the myth. They say, oh,

00:42:29.980 gosh, before Roe v. Wade, 5,000 to 10,000 women a year would die from back alley abortions. That's not 1.00

00:42:36.720 true. The guy who came up with that statistic, who was the founder of NARAL, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, admitted

00:42:42.940 that was a total lie. The actual number, which we have from the CDC, is that 39 women died that year

00:42:47.880 from illegal abortions and 24 women died that year from legal abortions. And statistically speaking,

00:42:54.180 because abortion was still illegal in 30 states, it was just as dangerous to get a legal abortion as

00:42:59.280 it was to get an illegal abortion. A lot of lies. The pro-abortion movement is made up of lies. It's

00:43:05.380 based on lies and it's advanced by lies. And I think those lies are finally being exposed. They're

00:43:11.120 being exposed by the sonogram, most importantly, and they're being exposed by statistics. From Michael.

00:43:15.820 Hi, Michael. Hi, Michael. Like another subscriber said, I came for Ben, but stayed for Michael.

00:43:21.080 That's very nice. In your podcast about the State of the Union, I got the impression that you don't

00:43:24.740 like Thomas Jefferson. Was my impression correct? If so, why aren't you so enamored of him? Thanks for

00:43:30.540 all your free labor at the Daily Wire. My pleasure. It's not that I hate Thomas Jefferson. I like Thomas

00:43:36.940 Jefferson perfectly well. He's a complicated man and obviously a genius. But Thomas Jefferson does

00:43:42.520 represent the beginning of the American left. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, the anti-federalists,

00:43:50.860 they represent basically the early stages of the American left and the American right are

00:43:57.560 represented. The conservatives in America are represented by John Adams, probably most importantly,

00:44:03.920 and Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, the people who wrote the federalist papers, of course.

00:44:09.760 That is a distinction. And when you hear of Thomas Jefferson writing about how we should have a

00:44:14.760 revolution every dozen years and how the tree of liberty must be quenched in the blood of patriots

00:44:20.360 and tyrants, when you hear him writing all of these Tom Paine-like screeds, you just think that this

00:44:26.740 is a guy who has gotten lost in the ideology of rationalism. This is a guy who supported the French

00:44:33.420 Revolution, which of course led to the guillotine, led to the terror. He's a guy who just went a little 0.66

00:44:40.540 bit wrong in his ideology. So I still love him. He's still a father of the country. But as far as the

00:44:46.760 philosophical founders of the country, of our constitution, and of the good parts of American

00:44:55.000 philosophy and our doctrines, that goes to the federalists. Okay, we got a lot more to talk about,

00:45:00.440 but unfortunately we're out of time. Have a good weekend. Enjoy. Check out another kingdom. We got

00:45:06.180 the audio book of that coming out soon. In the meantime, I will see you on Monday. I'm Michael

00:45:09.460 Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:45:30.440 Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, we're going to talk more about that terrible abortion law 0.90

00:45:43.900 in New York, and I'll explain why the arguments made in favor of that law could apply just as easily to

00:45:50.760 post-birth abortions, which maybe is where we're headed next. Also, why hasn't Andrew Cuomo, the

00:45:56.020 governor of New York, and other Catholic pro-abortion politicians been excommunicated? We'll discuss

00:46:01.780 that as well over on the Matt Wall Show today.

The Michael Knowles Show - January 24, 2019

Ep. 286 - Indoctrination 101： Conservative Teachers Censored

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