Ep. 286 - Indoctrination 101： Conservative Teachers Censored
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Summary
A high school teacher in suburban New York has been suspended without pay for showing a Fox News documentary about due process on college campuses in class. The story has been gaining media attention over the past week, and it has a personal dimension for me because he was the teacher at my school. We will speak with Mike Poplardo about his suspension and what it means for teachers and students around the country. Then, more stolen valor from Nathan Phillips emerges. A CNN contributor compares a MAGA hat to the KKK hood, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proves she is the only honest radical. Finally, the mailbag.
Transcript
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A high school teacher in suburban New York, the only openly right-leaning teacher at his school,
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has been suspended without pay for showing a Fox News documentary about due process on college
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campuses in class. The story has been gaining media attention over the past week, and it has
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a personal dimension for me because he was my teacher. He was the teacher at my school. We will
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speak with Mike Poplardo about his suspension and what it means for teachers and students around
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the country. Then more stolen valor from Nathan Phillips emerges. A CNN contributor compares
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a MAGA hat to the KKK hood. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proves herself to be the only
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honest radical. Finally, the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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This is a really, really personal day to me. You know, it's one of these moments where you're
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reading the news, and I was actually going through news on the Daily Wire. Oh, gosh,
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a teacher was suspended for having the audacity to show a documentary from Fox News. Oh, I wonder
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who that... Oh, and it's my teacher. Okay, and it's the one conservative. It's not like the guy was,
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you know, wearing a Make America Great Again hat in school. He just showed both sides of the political
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aisle, which frequently does not happen in education. We'll speak to him. I can't wait to bring him on.
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What they're doing to him is awful, and it's not just him. This is happening to teachers around the
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country, and it leaves students poorly educated when teachers with different views of politics
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and history are kept out. It leaves them poorly educated. It also leaves them feeling as though
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their political views could get them lower grades, could hurt them in school, could make them face
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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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Before we get to my teacher, Mr. Poplardo, just a little bit of news. We've covered the Covington
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boys, giving you updates every day, and we called it on the show. We said, the guy said he was a
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Vietnam Times veteran, that Native American man, Nathan Phillips. He said,
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it sounds like he didn't serve in Vietnam, even though all the mainstream media outlets said he's
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a Vietnam veteran. How dare these kids harass a Vietnam veteran? So it turns out he didn't serve
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in Vietnam. He was in the Marines, but he was never deployed. He never saw combat. He never went
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overseas to Vietnam. Now, the mainstream media then defended him and said, well, he never said he was a
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Vietnam veteran. He never said that he went overseas. He said he was a Vietnam Times veteran,
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which is technically correct. That is. Except he's also claimed to be a veteran who was in
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I'm a Vietnam vet. You know, I served in Marine Corps 72 to 76. I got discharged May 5th, 1976. You know,
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one of the, I got honorable discharge, and one of the boxes in there, they talk, it shows if it was
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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
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He doesn't talk much except on every television station that will let him talk about it. He
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doesn't talk, except when he's on Facebook, then he talks about it. He does seem to talk about it a
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lot. It turns out that he was not in the theater, though he claims that he was. He, he's clearly,
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this is a clear example of stolen valor. He's not just claiming he was a veteran. He's not just
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claiming he was a Vietnam veteran. He's claiming he was a Vietnam veteran in the theater, in combat,
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which is demonstrably not true. He's elsewhere said that he was a recon ranger. Uh, actually he was a
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refrigerator repairman. I'm actually not disparaging refrigerator. Look, the military needs refrigerator
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repairman. That's honest work. And he did serve his country. What I'm disparaging is the lying, the lying
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about it, the stealing valor. And even beyond that, look, this is a crazy person. This is an insane guy,
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Nathan Phillips, who lies about his past, lies about his military service, tries to bust in and break up
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Catholic vigil masses, starts banging drums in the face of 16 year olds. This is a bizarre man who clearly
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has a lot of problems. The real target of my ire is the media, the mainstream media who ran with
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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
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own business. And then the kids came and harassed him, those evil Catholic kids. They, they use their
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assault smirks. They pulled out that off the weapon of mass destruction, the 16 year old smirk. Oh,
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how awful to inflict that on him. And it's not true. So the mainstream media get it wrong.
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Okay, fine. The mainstream media always get it wrong. And that's fine. People make mistakes.
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It's hard in reporting sometimes. What I have noticed, however, is that every time the mainstream
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media gets something wrong, they get it wrong to favor left-wingers. They never get it wrong to favor
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right-wingers. They never get the narrative wrong such that it reflects well on conservatives.
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It, they always get it wrong in a way that reflects very well on the left and very well
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on Democrats. And then they don't really apologize when it turns out it's fake news. They just move
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on and misreport another story. They just move. Oh, well, whoops, too bad. The mainstream media
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constantly tell us that they deserve our respect. They're, they're so important. They're defending
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democracy. They're, they're on the front lines and they are the most wonderful people in the whole
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world. They have none of my respect. None, not one iota, not one ounce. Certainly the American
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political media, some, obviously some reporters around the world, wartime reporters. They have
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a lot of my respect. A handful of reporters in the United States. Sure. The vast majority,
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statistically 100% of these journalists have zero of my respect. That's fine. The reason they don't
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have my respect is because they lie. The way that this will all make sense to you is when you realize
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that the people on CNN and MSNBC and the Washington Post and the New York Times or wherever, they are
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not journalists. They are Democrat political operatives. That's it. I think we've been saying
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this for years. Some people think we're speaking hyperbolically. We're not. They're, they're just
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operatives. They're just hacks. And when you realize that, when you realize George Stephanopoulos
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was the Clinton communications director, when you realize that Chris Cuomo's brother is Andy Cuomo,
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who just made infanticide legal in New York and whose father was Mario Cuomo, who created the I
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oppose abortion personally, but I want it to be legal line, which now all of the moderate Democrats
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have to tout. When you realize that they come from political operations, it will all make a lot more
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sense. This is the line that we're hearing now between the mainstream media story and the reality
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is that, oh, there were competing narratives. Oh, wow. Look, people see things differently through
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different perspectives. And you know, maybe we rushed a little to push our perspective and some
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people had other perspective. They're just different perspectives. No, that isn't true. That isn't true.
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There are two narratives. There's the mainstream media narrative and there's the truth. Those are the
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two and they're diametrically opposed to each other. Certainly in this circumstance, what they're trying
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to do to excuse their awful behavior is push a tyranny of relativism to say, well, who can really say
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what happened? Who knows? I mean, yeah, look, okay. So there are two hours of video footage showing that
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the Covington kids behaved admirably and with great maturity and showing that Nathan Phillips is a lying
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lunatic and showing that the black Israelites are horrible racists screaming at these white kids.
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Okay. There's a video. That's one perspective, but I don't want that to be true. That's actually,
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I mean, some of these columns they posted, they said, look, okay, the video shows one thing,
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but we know what we saw. No, you didn't. Look, I know what they saw too. What they saw was what
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they wanted to see, but they didn't see the truth. It's this tyranny of relativism, this hysteria,
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and this primacy of feelings, emotivism, rather than looking at objective reality. Nowhere is this
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clearer than on CNN. On Chris Cuomo's show, he had a CNN contributor, Angela Rye, come on to compare
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the MAGA hat to the KKK hood. But this make America great again hat is just as maddening and
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frustrating and triggering for me to look at as a KKK hood. Like that is the type of hatred that his
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policies represent. And until we can have common ground and understanding about that, that it's
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that triggering, we're going to continue to have problems. It's very triggering for her.
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She thinks of the MAGA hat as the KKK hood. She says, as long as that's the case, we're going to
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have problems. Right. There is a problem, but that's a you problem. That's an Angela Rye problem.
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That's a left problem. It's not my problem that Angela Rye lives in a fantasy world. That's not my
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problem. Angela Rye's feelings are not my problem. The fact is a MAGA hat is not a KKK hood in part because
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the MAGA hat represents the Republican party and the KKK hood represents the Democrat party.
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There's nothing racist about making America great again. It's been a Republican slogan now for 40
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years. Nixon used it. Reagan famously used it. She says that she can't be friends in this clip with
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some, or in this interview rather, she can't be friends with certain conservatives. If people wear
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the hat, she can't be friends with them. That's a you problem. Sorry, darling. Okay. I mean,
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grow up. I can't make you grow up. I can't resolve your daddy issues. Okay. That's not
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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,
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people will order themselves toward virtue. They will order themselves toward discipline. They will
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order themselves toward recognizing a moral standard, or those standards will be imposed
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from above by the government or by, or by some giant oppressive force. That's the way it's going
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to happen. The, the, all of the founding fathers wrote about this, especially John Adams and Hamilton
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and some, and a lot of the federalists. They wrote about how if the people loses its maturity,
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its sense of discipline, its virtue, its moral understanding, its religiosity, its humility,
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if the people loses that, it's all sunk. We're all sunk. We just end up with this.
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I can't argue with Angela Rye's feelings. They're her feelings. I can just point to reality. And when
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you look at the reality of that video, those 16 year old Catholic school kids were not the KKK.
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They're not. I'm sorry. I'm, if maybe Angela Rye needs to talk it over with her therapist or
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something. I'm not a therapist. I just, I just talk about politics. I just, I just try to advance a
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conservative agenda, which, which is based in reality. It's not, it's based in objective reality,
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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
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Democrat to vote against reopening the government. That's the headline. All the Democrats voted for it
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other than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She voted against it because it funds immigration and customs
00:14:37.800
enforcement. And she said she doesn't want to fund immigration enforcement. She wants to abolish
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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
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really vote to reopen the government. President Trump has been clear. You have to fund with $5 billion
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out of a budget that's over $4 trillion, nearly $4.5 trillion, $5 billion for border
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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
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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,
00:15:47.140
abolish immigration enforcement. Democrats backed off that. That's their problem. We need to abolish it.
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We need open borders. We need borders are immoral. Immigration enforcement, law enforcement is
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immoral. That's a radical position. But at least it's honest. And at least you can have an honest
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debate on it. My kudos to her for being honestly insane. We got to bring on my teacher, Mr. Poplardo.
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Mike Poplardo is a veteran teacher from Fox Lane High School. That is my high school. That's where I
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went to, where I grew up, K through 12 in Bedford Central School District. He was my teacher. He taught
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economics and government while I was there. One thing, having been one of the few conservative students,
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I noticed that Mr. Poplardo was one of the few openly right-leaning teachers. That's not to say
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he was very conservative, you know, talking about the Republican Party all the time or anything.
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But one thing I loved about his class is he would listen to both sides. He would present both sides
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of an issue, which all too often in our educational system doesn't happen. Now, that open-mindedness,
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teaching an economics and government class, that open-mindedness has gotten him suspended.
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for one month without pay, and maybe they're going to try to do even more to him. This is all over
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showing a documentary produced by Fox News, which talked about due process on college campuses and
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what college students are going to face when they go there. We bring on now Mr. Poplardo. Mr. Poplardo,
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thank you for being here. Thank you for having me, Michael. I got to tell you, I didn't know this
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was happening. It's, you know, we haven't talked in a number of years now. I didn't know this was
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happening until I read about it on my own website. One of our reporters at the Daily Wire wrote about
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this, and I am on a, as a matter of principle, I'm so outraged that this is happening to any teacher
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in the country. But on a personal level, it really pains me because I love that school district. I know
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you love the school district. I was as involved as any student was in, you know, all of the student
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body president while you were the advisor, class president, all of the, you know, band, orchestra,
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chorus, top of the class, all these sort of things. I love the district, and they are acting
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so outrageously. What is this suspension about? All right, first, I'm so glad that you started
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with that because I want to make it clear that I love the families and students at the Bedford
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National School District. They are great. I've appreciated every one of my 21, 29 years
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working as a Foxwood High School teacher, and this really just comes down to a small group of people
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that have grabbed a hold of the reins of the school district and are making some really bad judgment
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calls here. So, uh, um, so you want to get into the details of the actual story? I do because what,
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from what I read on, on the Daily Wire, from what I read in your class, you played part, a documentary
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that was produced by Fox News on what students can expect on college campus, due process, some of
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these questions that are really in the news, they're really affecting our politics today, and then some
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of the political forces at Fox Lane High School are punishing you for that. Correct. As a matter of fact,
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we probably have to go back about six years ago to truly understand what's happening. So about six
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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
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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
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May, and what we have is we have, uh, 12th graders getting ready to leave Fox Lane High School, and as
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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
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27 years. What changed this time, however, was a few things. One, it was, I think the two-day lesson
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included a Fox News documentary. Two, there's a new superintendent that had not yet even finished
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his second year in the school district, and in my opinion, had not yet assimilated into the Bedford
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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.
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As a matter of fact, those two gentlemen that I just spoke are still commuting, uh, to Bedford.
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They haven't moved their family into the district. So they're just coming in from outside somewhere.
00:20:52.120
And cause this, what surprised me so much about this story is at least when I was there, I guess
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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
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environment. I didn't have a chip on my shoulder. I didn't feel that people were out to get me or
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anything. But what you're saying is the new leadership has just come in and they're, they're, uh,
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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,
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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
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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,
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it's absurd, uh, that that was what they demanded. Again, the, the alleged crime, uh, is showing a Fox
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news documentary to 12th grade students and providing a 60 minute discussion period to debrief
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that video. I wonder what would have happened if you showed a documentary from CNN, or I wonder what
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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
00:23:49.640
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.
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
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
00:25:48.380
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
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
00:35:27.160
comes out of the womb, you can snip snip and you can kill that baby. You can commit infanticide in
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
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
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,
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.
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,
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
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
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
00:42:02.100
movement. See, oh, it's all just these poor underage girls who don't know any better, who are
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
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
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
00:45:30.440
Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, we're going to talk more about that terrible abortion law
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