Ep. 288 - You’re Not “Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal”
Summary
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is almost certainly running for president, exciting the precisely 0% of Americans who actually consider themselves fiscally conservative and socially liberal. We will examine that empty slogan, as well as Howard Schultz s empty campaign. Then, Comrade Bernie dances shirtless with the Soviets. Oh, my eyes. Oh my eyes, oh my eyes! A Catholic Cardinal won t excommunicate New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for killing babies, and some good news on culture.
Transcript
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Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is almost certainly running for president,
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exciting the precisely 0% of Americans who actually consider themselves
00:00:12.380
We will examine that empty slogan as well as Howard Schultz's empty campaign.
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Then, Comrade Bernie dances shirtless with the Soviets.
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A Catholic cardinal won't excommunicate New York Governor Andy Cuomo for killing babies
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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There's a story I'm going to try to get to later on today about how your iPhone is spying on you,
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Before we get to all of the weird stuff that you're doing on the Internet today
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and how people can spy on you using your iPhone and all these other nefarious security breaches,
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let's talk about the greatest story of the 2020 election.
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I'm talking about the Howard Schultz independent Democrat bid for the presidency.
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I am seriously considering running for president as a centrist independent.
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And I wanted to clarify the word independent, which I view merely as a designation on the ballot.
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Don't help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire a*****.
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Howard Schultz is saying, I'm really seriously thinking about running.
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But I'm not going to run in the Democrat primary.
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Why? Because he couldn't possibly win the Democrat primary.
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So I'm thinking about running on a third party as an independent.
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And then you just hear this obvious Democrat voter in the audience.
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Don't throw the election to Trump, you egotistical billionaire jerk.
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In the greatest surprise of all, this Howard Schultz possible candidacy,
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the idea of running as an independent Democrat,
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the emotions expressed by that left wing protester in the audience,
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they have all conspired to make the New York Times publish an accurate op-ed today.
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The New York Times published a spot-on, absolutely gets it right op-ed by Michelle Goldberg.
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Howard Schultz, Please Don't Run for President.
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it's not just because he's going to throw the election to Trump,
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although one hopes that he would run and that he would throw the election to Trump.
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But what it really gets down to is this ridiculous slogan and label that people use,
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well, I'm a fiscal conservative, but a social liberal.
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Schultz appears to share the conviction, endemic among American elites,
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that the country hungers for a candidate who is socially liberal, but fiscally conservative.
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After all, if you're rich, you probably know a lot of people like this.
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I'm a social liberal, fiscally conservative centrist who would love to vote for a rational Democrat
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A chief executive of a major bank who wanted to remain anonymous recently told Politico,
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lamenting Michael Bloomberg's poor odds in a Democratic primary.
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But this frustrated executive's politics aren't widely shared by people who haven't been to Davos.
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In a 2017 study, the political scientist, Lee Druttman, plotted the 2016 electorate along two axes,
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one dealing with social issues and identity, the other economics and trade.
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Only 3.8% of voters fell into the socially liberal, economically conservative quadrant.
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Actually, more people identified as socially conservative and fiscally liberal,
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like seven or eight times as many people identified as socially conservative and fiscally liberal
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than identified as fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
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you know, the ones who grew up in apartments on the Upper West Side
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and they go to very fancy schools and they know how to drink Chablis.
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Well, I'm fiscally conservative, but I'm socially liberal,
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which means I don't believe in anything, but I do like money.
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And some college conservative types fall into this.
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The reason I bring it up, the reason it strikes so close to home,
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is that I would have called myself a fiscal conservative and social liberal
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for a long time, probably from the time I was 16 until, I don't know, 21, 22, 23, something like,
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This is just the natural course for libertine people who are not economically stupid.
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Because what fiscal conservatism means is I've taken an economics course at some point
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and I think that we should efficiently distribute goods throughout an economy.
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The, you know, the elitism of this, there was an episode of 30 Rock
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where Liz Lemon's awful boyfriend, Dennis, you know, he just always says things that are so awful.
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And he says, oh, I would say I'm a social conservative fiscal liberal.
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And this was a joke because for anybody who wrote on 30 Rock,
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this was exactly the opposite of what they thought.
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But it's the cry of the elites on both the left and the right.
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I've talked to a lot of big GOP donors, a lot of big party muckety-mucks,
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They say, oh, gosh, I wish we would give up on all this abortion and gay marriage stuff.
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Maybe we can reform entitlements and let people do whatever they want in the culture.
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Um, and this is a classic example of trying to sever effect from cause.
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You know, one of the hallmarks of the left I always find is they want the appearance of the thing,
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They, they want all of the niceties of civilization,
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but they don't want any of the discipline and the virtue and the culture of civilization.
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So, uh, when I was a fiscal conservative social liberal in college, as, as many people listening
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to this might be, I, one time Ann Coulter came to college and so I was talking to her
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and she said, listen, kids, I know that a lot of you are social liberals,
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but if, if all you care about is lowering taxes and you've got two politicians in front of you,
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one who is pro-life and one who is pro-abortion, vote for the pro-life politician.
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And this is a really wise words because on the one hand you think, well, what does one
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What does the way people think about babies or the way people think about gay marriage or
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what, what does that have to do with lowering taxes?
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What it means is that fiscal conservatism flows naturally from social conservatism.
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But social conservatism does not flow naturally from fiscal conservatism, not necessarily.
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Uh, I think of this as a stage of conservative development, so I'm not too harsh on college
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kids who would say I'm fiscally conservative, socially liberal, but I am harsh on CEOs of
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Starbucks because that guy's just probably beyond hope at this point.
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I mean that he has reached the stage of I'm a billionaire.
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I like to keep my money, but I don't care about anything other than myself, basically.
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Um, I think the reason this is popular among a lot of people, the billionaires and the college
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It's so easy to make the argument, I should keep my money.
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Economies where people have secure property rights are really efficient.
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It's much more uncomfortable, especially on college campuses today, to explain why gay
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Because then people accuse you of you don't like gay people, or you hate gays, or you're
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Of course, they're the ones who are sexually obsessed.
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But then you have to explain to them the complementarity of the sexes.
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You have to explain how men and women are actually different.
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You have to explain to them that our views come from a realist epistemology, that we're
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describing objective truth, not merely subjective experience.
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You have to, you go down this whole rabbit hole, and for a lot of people, they haven't thought
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It's easy to say, I made this money, I want to keep this money.
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But to understand why objective reality exists, why men and women are different and complementary,
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why we shouldn't kill babies in the womb even if we can't see them, it actually does
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It requires some real depth of thought that, unfortunately, the vast majority of people
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in our culture today don't have, all the way from billionaire CEOs all the way down to
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The really tangible issue with fiscal conservative social liberal is it doesn't work in reality.
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What really successful politicians in all of history have been fiscal conservatives and
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Can you, one basically you could name, which is Bill Clinton.
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Bill Clinton was a big government left winger until he lost his midterm elections in 1994,
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and then he moderated because he doesn't really believe anything and he just wants to be popular.
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But 94 to 2000, you get the Bill Clinton fiscal conservative social liberalism, right?
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Other than him, and I don't know that anybody wants to replicate Bill Clinton.
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I don't think when people are thinking, gosh, I want to go into public service.
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I just think of the pipe dreams of billionaires who are sitting, drinking their brandy and
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their studies on the Upper East Side saying, oh goodness, if we would just get rid of all
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this little riffraff abortion business, then we'd finally win elections.
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Republicans do a great job of winning elections when we appeal to the culture.
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You raise tax rates a little, you lower tax rates a little, okay.
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If you find yourself in the position where you're a fiscal conservative and a social liberal,
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ask yourself, why are you a fiscal conservative?
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Are you a fiscal conservative because you like money?
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Money, we all like money, and money is not the root of all evil, but the love of money
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Okay, is it because you think it's efficient economics?
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You say, look, economies work better, society works better when people get to keep more of
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Those businesses can invest in both capital and labor.
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They've got incentives because people are driven, at least in part, by self-interest,
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and you can align incentives, and everybody's happy.
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That's a sort of utilitarian view of the world that we get from Jeremy Bentham.
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But it doesn't really encapsulate the whole of the world.
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I mean, those two guys, Bentham and Mill, were so opposed to the father of modern conservative
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thought, Edmund Burke, so opposed to the people that we draw our conservative thought from,
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They don't like little tabulations and saying, oh, we can increase GDP X percent if we just
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They're drawn by awe, by wonder, by tradition, by prescription, by all of these wonderful
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things that we have that you can't put down on tablets.
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One of the great quotes from Reflections on the Revolution in France, he says,
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That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished
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And I think those people who say, I'm a fiscal conservative social liberal because it's really
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efficient in an economic sense, they are the age of sophisters, economists, and calculators.
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Who cares how the economy is going if you don't have the glories of our society, the glories
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Now, one other reason, which is the correct reason to be a fiscal conservative, is because
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fiscal conservatism comes naturally from your thoughts on politics and the culture.
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Let's not forget, I know these days, some Catholic people like to talk about how great
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The Catholic Church has condemned socialism multiple times in multiple papal encyclicals.
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John Paul II did it in an encyclical called Centesimus Anus.
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He said free markets are the most efficient way to organize economies, but he doesn't end
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This draws from Pope Leo XIII, who had encyclicals called Rerum Novarum and Quod Apostolici Muneris,
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I think it was called, where he condemns socialism.
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He says socialism is totally inhuman, anti-human, and it's opposed to the natural order.
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Our ideas about free markets, about free economies, which is now where we have modern capitalism,
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Our ideas of natural rights, we should have security of our property.
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That comes from the natural law, and the natural law comes from considering the natural law
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It is perfectly natural to get that fiscal conservatism out of what we would now call
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social conservatism, tradition, our sense of the culture, our sense of religion.
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But if you try to flip it, you don't make any sense at all.
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We've been talking a lot on the show recently about how the left always inverts the culture.
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They think that injustice is justice, and they call it social justice.
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And it's a product of a culture that is dominated by the left.
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It would be such an instructive candidacy if Howard Schultz would run.
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First of all, it would fill up my Tumblr right up to the brim.
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But what it would do is also expose the absurd lie to both the left and the right of fiscal
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And it would cause us to stop just arguing around the margins, arguing over, oh, this
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It would actually get us to talk about the culture, which is what all of our discussions
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It's a frequently cited political truism, which has been variously attributed to a lot of
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different authors, that all political battles are really theological battles.
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You're not just talking about how trade policy can affect wines and cheeses or this or that.
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What you're really talking about is what does it mean to be a person?
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What does it mean to be a person living in society?
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How should we relate to one another and how do we ground how we relate to one another?
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Those are the real profound questions of politics.
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And Howard Schultz, in a candidacy that is already immolating, it is already just spontaneously
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combusting as leftist protesters are calling him a jerk within 90 seconds of his quasi kickoff.
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It would be very instructive for the country and it would be a lot of fun to watch, which
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is really, really what I care about in politics.
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It's not a question of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism, of course, when it comes
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He is a fiscal totalitarian and a social totalitarian.
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So we knew that Bernie Sanders has an affinity for dictators.
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We know that he has an affinity for communist slave states.
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He actually took his honeymoon in the 80s in the Soviet Union.
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But it wasn't until today that this beautiful little gem popped out.
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Bernie Sanders traveling to the Soviet Union in June of 1988, shirtless, drinking, singing
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This Land Is Your Land, a song by an American communist named Woody Guthrie.
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For those of you who can't see, there is Bernie looking just like Bernie, talking to some Russian-accented
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He's got his crazy-looking hair, completely shirtless, slumped over because he has bad posture.
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The things that have ridden of my ways, I saw the bees right in this dry ways, I saw below
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Chin, chin, I guess I'll raise my glass of leftist tears.
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I would like this video to put to rest forever the left's ridiculous hypocrisy on Trump
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colluding with Russia. The American left has colluded with Russia
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beginning in 1917 all the way up to the present. The American left has colluded,
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and not just with the modern Russians, who are relatively sort of nice guys compared to the old
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Russians, who were Soviet slave state, dictator, totalitarian, murderers, thugs, the worst people
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on the face of the earth. Bernie Sanders chooses to have his honeymoon there, to sing, to drink,
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to be shirtless for some reason, don't know what they're doing, don't really want to know what
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they're doing. How absurd to say they're now colluding with the Russians. Barack Obama just
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a few years ago was sitting next to the head of Russia, Medvedev, the fake head of Russia,
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because Putin was really the head of Russia. And he said, let them know I'll have more
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flexibility after my next election. And then you hear Medvedev lean in and he says,
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duh, I will transmit this information to Vladimir, duh, and then I vow to suck your blood.
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He actually colluded on a hot mic with the Russians. Bernie Sanders here. So you say,
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okay, if colluding with the Russians is so bad, how come the left did it for a hundred years?
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If colluding with the Russians is so bad, how come Bernie Sanders had his honeymoon there?
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Of course, it's crazy. Now, the other thing this tape reminds me of is that Bernie Sanders is this
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lovable old coot. Isn't he? Oh, he's so lovable. He's got that crazy hair and that silly Queens
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accent and he's got his glasses and all he's so lovable and old. And then you think about this
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and then you see that video, you know, uh, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other socialist,
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proud socialist. Oh, she's young and pretty and bubbly. Okay. And that, well, and then you think
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about this because after all the funny, bubbly, crazy hair, ah, ha, ha, Bernie, what they are doing
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is supporting wicked ideas and not just wicked ideas, but the embodiment of those wicked ideas
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in wicked regimes. Here is Bernie Sanders partying with Soviets in the 1980s. Partying loves it, can't
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get enough of it. One of the worst nations, one of the worst states ever to exist on the face of the
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earth. As a matter of this, of the scale of human misery, Soviet, the Soviet union under Stalin was
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worse than Nazi Germany. Just as a matter of scale, there might be a difference in wickedness,
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which, which gives Hitler the edge over Stalin, but really you're talking about arsenic and cyanide.
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This is a wicked, wicked slave regime. And that's what they support. That's what they said with the
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entire American left supported the regime in Venezuela that turned it into a, an awful starving
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slave state where people are eating rats in the streets. The American left, Sean Penn cheered it
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on. The American left loved Hugo Chavez, socialist Venezuela. And what it's led to is unspeakable
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misery down there. It's, it's very confusing. It's really hard because what we see on TV
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is cute old Bernie Sanders, cute little Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Oh, it can't be that bad.
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You got to watch these videos. I mean, this is where president Trump really has a sense of politics
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and it's where the culture is so much more important than little accounting books for the
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fiscal conservatives, which is the culture dominates. What you see is what, what affects you.
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When I see Bernie Sanders crazy on a stage, what, what do I really care? When I see him cheering and
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dancing half naked for some reason, along with Soviets in the eighties, that really puts it into
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perspective. And this is how Hollywood always manipulates our politics is on any issue. They
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should, whenever it's their issue, it's the sunniest, rosiest, most wonderful. They can make abortion
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look glamorous and they do make abortion look glamorous, but what about the conservatives?
00:24:11.860
What about, did you see the movie Vice? Vice, which just lied. It patently lied. Just one example
00:24:19.500
in the movie Vice about Dick Cheney. They have an entire scene where Dick Cheney orders his chief of
00:24:26.440
staff, Scooter Libby, to leak the identity of Valerie Plame. We know that didn't happen. We know that didn't
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happen because of an investigation, which showed that the leak came from the State Department,
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not from the office of the Vice President. Doesn't matter. They lie. They turn, Cheney starts
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soliloquizing like a Shakespearean villain. They, they're just these awful, contorted, terrible,
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and that's what you see. And that's what you think of. I mean, that's what you believe. Also,
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just a little side note, where did they get this video? How did Hillary Clinton not have this video
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of Bernie in 2016? Maybe they thought it would have helped Bernie among the Democrat electorate,
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but this video was leaked by the head of the draft Beto campaign, which almost certainly,
00:25:10.360
I've been around a lot of draft candidate campaigns. Very often they're being encouraged by the
00:25:15.880
candidates. And so I'm sure Beto is basically working with these guys. And so the Beto team dug up
00:25:21.560
this video of Bernie Sanders from the 80s. Where was Hillary Clinton on this in 2016? Just another
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example of a terribly run presidential campaign. And it's not just Bernie, by the way. It's not just
00:25:32.720
Bernie and AOC. Kamala Harris too is, is embracing socialism. And this should send up a warning sign
00:25:39.760
for everybody because Kamala Harris is the calculating politician. She is the, there was a story that came
00:25:48.560
out yesterday. A San Francisco mayor said that he dated her and she willingly dated this guy who was
00:25:54.560
20 or 30 years older just to advance her career. She's the cold calculator. She's the Hillary 4.0.
00:26:00.620
I guess you couldn't be Hillary 2.0. And she is trending towards socialism. This is going to
00:26:04.640
dominate the Democrat primary. We'll see what she has to say. Then we'll get to whether or not we
00:26:08.600
should excommunicate the governor of New York over abortion. And then there actually is some good
00:26:12.500
news about the culture. But first, if you were on dailywire.com, thank you. You keep the lights
00:26:18.700
on. You keep Covfefe in my cup. If you are on Facebook or YouTube, go to Daily Wire. It's 10
00:26:24.680
bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership. You get me. You get the Andrew Klavan show. You get the
00:26:28.440
Ben Shapiro show. You get to ask questions in the mailbag. You get to ask questions backstage,
00:26:31.680
which we're doing a lot now. You get to see another kingdom. You get the Matt Walsh show. You get
00:26:34.520
everything. 10 bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership. None of those things matter. This is what
00:26:41.400
matters. The Leftist Tears Tumblr. It's going to be a long 2020 campaign. You're going to see a lot
00:26:46.980
of videos of shirtless Bernie Sanders. I don't know specifically if you're going to see that.
00:26:51.300
You're going to see a lot of similar videos. You're going to see videos along that line. You are going
00:26:55.820
to need your Tumblr. Otherwise, you will drown. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:27:11.400
So from the fiscal socialist, social socialist wing of the Democrat Party, which is the whole
00:27:18.800
Democrat Party, we now have Kamala Harris, who's on CNN. She's speaking with Jake Tapper, and she gives
00:27:25.060
her explanation of a problem that Democrats have had to think about for a while now. The question was,
00:27:31.020
if you have a government taking over most or all of our healthcare system, then how does the patient
00:27:36.820
get to keep his choice, his choice of insurance, his choice of doctor? How did the insurance
00:27:41.740
companies get to maintain their choice and their liberty and their competition to keep cost? How do
00:27:48.200
you get to keep choice in the system if the government takes over healthcare? Kamala Harris has her new
00:27:54.520
answer. Just to follow up on that, and correct me if I'm wrong, to reiterate, you support the
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Medicare for All bill. I think initially co-sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders. You're also a co-sponsor
00:28:03.840
on it. I believe it will totally eliminate private insurance. So for people out there who like their
00:28:09.900
insurance, they don't get to keep it? Well, listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical
00:28:15.980
care, and you don't have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them
00:28:21.500
give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require. Who of us has not
00:28:26.480
had that situation where you've got to wait for approval, and the doctor says, well, I don't know if
00:28:30.520
your insurance company is going to cover this. Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on.
00:28:35.620
Let's eliminate all that. Let's move on. Look, let's eliminate the greatest healthcare regime
00:28:40.620
in the history of the world that basically single-handedly provides healthcare innovation
00:28:45.800
to the entire world, the place that everybody goes when they want medical care. Let's eliminate it.
00:28:51.860
You know, like, what did that ever do for us other than be the greatest achievement of healthcare
00:28:58.340
science ever? Other than that, come on, move on. This is the sign of the radical and the sign of
00:29:06.840
the reformer is they will bulldoze centuries of work on a whim. They don't care. They have no respect
00:29:15.560
for anything. They are utterly filled with pride. And so they say, whatever, I don't love it. So yeah,
00:29:22.840
I just don't love it. So just bulldoze it. Who cares? Well, we'll probably be able to recreate
00:29:27.240
the culmination of centuries of science in like a day, right? And add onto it something that has
00:29:33.180
never succeeded ever, which is government control of healthcare. Yeah, let's, whatever. I don't know.
00:29:38.880
Who cares? It's only a sixth of the economy and the healthcare of 300 million Americans,
00:29:43.340
whatever. How ridiculous, how flippant, what an unserious person to say that sort of thing.
00:29:49.920
Also, it's a lie. Everybody has access to medical care in the United States. She can't answer it
00:29:56.520
because you're right. People won't get to be able to choose their doctor. They won't be able to get
00:29:59.760
to choose who provides their healthcare. So she has to answer a different question. She says, yeah,
00:30:04.880
okay, well, but everyone is going to have access to medical care. Everyone in the United States has
00:30:09.200
access to medical care. Illegal aliens in the United States can access medical care whenever they want.
00:30:13.840
She is right that the system is terrible. She's right. It is. It's like that Churchill quote about
00:30:19.600
democracy. Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of the others that have been tried.
00:30:24.000
The American healthcare system is the worst form of healthcare other than all the other systems that
00:30:29.260
have been tried. That's true. It's so frustrating. I go to the doctor once every 50 years and I, so I go
00:30:35.960
get a checkup or something and I'll get random bills for this and it really costs $10,000, but you're only
00:30:42.020
paying three installments of $28 and somebody is paying this and you're done. It's all, all of the
00:30:48.640
costs are hidden from both the providers and from the customers. So you're not really making decisions
00:30:53.460
based on any sort of market incentives. It's wide, full of corruption, full of abuse, full of
00:31:01.460
inefficiency and fat. That's all true. Kamala Harris's idea is worse. Government healthcare is worse.
00:31:07.380
It's true. Our current system has a lot of bureaucratic paperwork. Do we really think that a
00:31:11.600
government takeover of healthcare is going to result in less paperwork? Have you been to the DMV? Have
00:31:19.300
you been to, oh, the social security office? That's sort of the crown jewel of government
00:31:25.600
paperwork. When has the government ever reduced paperwork? You know, at least when I get some
00:31:31.240
weird bill or something from my insurance provider, I can call up my insurance provider. I can call up
00:31:36.060
the medical office that I go to. Now there are a lot of little boutique medical offices. Now there are
00:31:41.040
certain things where you pay a little bit of money and then you get to this and that. Okay. And you
00:31:45.260
get to at least tailor it more toward your tastes. While still we have a very robust social safety net
00:31:52.160
that takes care of everybody. We have a very generous Medicaid system to take care of the poor.
00:31:57.380
We have a very generous Medicare system to take care of the elderly. We have emergency rooms for
00:32:03.100
people who aren't even US citizens. We just give them medical care. We have a basically wonderful
00:32:08.340
healthcare system with a lot of inefficiencies that you could fix or make a little bit better
00:32:13.680
gradually, mind you, not all at once, not ripping it to the ground like this lunatic reformer Kamala
00:32:21.140
Harris, but gradually instituting reforms that would make costs clearer, that would free up some of these
00:32:27.880
markets, that would allow for a little bit more competition in certain places, that would lift some
00:32:32.100
regulations that would include tort reform so that you don't have crazy malpractice laws where doctors
00:32:39.980
are afraid to do anything, ordering a zillion tests. There are a lot of reforms that you could make
00:32:44.840
gradually to make the system even better than it is. Or you could take the Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
00:32:51.860
Democrat Medicare for All approach, which is to bulldoze the greatest healthcare system ever on which the
00:32:57.620
entire world relies, and then just cross your fingers and hope that a system that has consistently
00:33:03.440
failed will work here just because. Those are your options. Those are your two options. We'll see which
00:33:10.060
one they do. There's an important observation here. I guess it plays on the radical reform ideas of Kamala
00:33:18.280
Harris. It was first made by George Canning. The observation is that all simple forms of government
00:33:23.480
are bad. That's it. In our society, which is increasingly egalitarian, increasingly democratic,
00:33:30.760
increasingly simple, increasingly leveling, all we want is just simple, simple, simple. It's just this.
00:33:38.460
Is healthcare a right or a privilege? We're just going to fill out one form. We're just going to do
00:33:41.800
one thing. One size fits all for everybody. All 50 states. It's all simple. That's always bad. That's
00:33:47.580
what the French Revolution was. It was really simple. Really, really simple, wasn't it? Oh, we're all
00:33:52.580
going to just have quadrants of a country and no neighborhoods, no states, no natural boundaries,
00:33:58.640
no ties of kinship or family, no private relationships between insurance contractors and
00:34:04.340
medical doctors, no personal relationships between you and your doctor. Nope, no more of that, guys.
00:34:09.260
It's just going to be simple, and it always fails. It always leads to misery because life isn't simple.
00:34:16.020
You say, well, it's going to be really clear. All shallows are clear. Shallow systems are clear.
00:34:22.580
They're clearly wrong. They're clearly bad. They're clearly ineffective.
00:34:28.760
All shallows are clear. Nobody benefits because life is not simple. Life is not clear. Life is
00:34:38.560
complex. It is rich. It is diverse. It is beautiful. It is terrible. It is awesome. It is awful. It is all
00:34:45.740
of these things. Are relationships to one another? I have a relationship. Do I have a relationship to the
00:34:51.980
federal government and that's it? Is it like during the Obama 2012 campaign, the life of Julia, where it
00:34:58.400
tracked this American woman, Julia, from cradle to grave, and the only meaningful relationship that
00:35:04.560
she had in that entire process was with the federal government? Is that what life is? No, that's a
00:35:11.460
horror. That's a nightmare of what life is. What are the relationships that we, I have a relationship to
00:35:17.380
my producers? I have a relationship to my leftist here's Tumblr. It's kind of a romantic relationship,
00:35:22.000
frankly, and it gets a little inappropriate sometimes, but it's complicated. And I think
00:35:26.060
the Tumblr would say the same thing. I just love it so much. I have a relationship to my employers. I
00:35:32.200
have a relationship to my friends. I have a relationship to my wife, my family, my extended
00:35:36.560
family, my mayor, my congressman, my senator. I have finally the federal government. I have a
00:35:42.940
relationship to my church. I have all of these relationships. That's what's rich. That's not
00:35:48.480
simple. That's very complicated. I can't write it out in a little pamphlet. I can't make it some
00:35:52.800
doctrinaire ideology. I can't put it into a manifesto, but that's life. And when you can put something into
00:35:58.580
a little ideology, a little manifesto, a little Kamala Harris quote, Medicare for all. Or can people
00:36:05.540
choose? No, they can't choose anything. Simple. That's how you know that something has gone horribly
00:36:11.880
wrong. So for 2020, what this means is Democrats are going all in on socialism. This is why Schultz
00:36:17.720
can't run in the Democrat primary, even though he is a Democrat. He's a lifelong Democrat. He just would
00:36:23.320
never get elected. He is not a socialist. He actually came out and said it, that Kamala Harris's
00:36:29.900
Medicare for all idea is un-American. And it is. It's un-American and anti-American.
00:36:33.960
Um, but Kamala Harris is the future of the Democrat party. Maybe she's not. She might
00:36:39.300
get wiped out in the primaries, but her ideas are, her approach is, she's a weathervane. She's a
00:36:44.680
calculating politician. When she sees that things are moving in the Bernie direction, they're not
00:36:49.960
moving in the Bill Clinton direction. She's going to go that way. And you're going to see that everybody
00:36:54.040
is going to follow her. It's, it's a total extremism. And you see the extremism, not just on the fiscal
00:36:59.420
front or, or on things that emanated from that, not just on healthcare. You see it on social issues
00:37:06.640
as well. You see it on life. You see it in New York. We talked about that crazy abortion law in
00:37:11.480
New York. Uh, Andrew Cuomo, the governor there, uh, signed this law a week or two ago, which now
00:37:19.160
makes it legal to kill an unborn baby up to one minute before it's born. If the baby is due to be
00:37:26.440
born at 1203, at 1202, you can go in and rip that baby apart. That's perfectly legal now in New York.
00:37:34.620
Actually, it goes even further. That law reforms the penal code. So it, it now in the old days in New
00:37:40.900
York, if a, if a murderer goes up and kills a pregnant woman, a woman who's more than 24 weeks
00:37:46.880
pregnant, that guy would be charged with double homicide. Naturally so. I mean, this was always an
00:37:53.780
issue that pro-lifers would bring up. We'd say, wait a second. So if a murderer goes and kills an
00:37:59.400
unborn baby, that's murder. But if a mother kills an unborn baby, that's a choice. And that's not
00:38:04.180
murder at all. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, we were hoping that they would
00:38:08.380
resolve that contradiction in the favor of life. Unfortunately, Andrew Cuomo and the Democrats
00:38:14.000
are resolving it in the favor of death. They've now removed a protection for an unborn baby.
00:38:18.660
Now, one minute before birth, you can kill that baby. A murderer can kill that baby. Won't be,
00:38:24.160
won't be charged with killing it. Obviously, Andrew Cuomo is nominally a Catholic. Sometimes he
00:38:31.560
pretends to be a Catholic. And so this has raised some questions. Should the Catholic church excommunicate
00:38:38.300
Andrew Cuomo? He is now enabled babies to be killed one minute before they're born. This would seem
00:38:46.580
worthy of excommunication. Here are some, here's a bishop, Bishop of Albany, discussing it on Fox and
00:38:53.000
Friends. Bishop of Albany, the most reverend Edward Scharfenberger joins us now. Reverend, so first of
00:39:00.500
let's get your reaction to this new bill. Well, as you just said very well, it was a celebration
00:39:07.080
of abortion, which to me is a celebration of death. It's a dehumanization of a whole class of human
00:39:15.220
beings in our society. The child in the womb, who clearly is a human subject from the moment of
00:39:23.160
conception. All the science proves that. So even though it has been advertised as a bill that brings
00:39:31.400
more equality to women, it excludes a certain class of women. The unborn, half of all abortions
00:39:37.360
are females. So I do not see it's something that I would celebrate. As a matter of fact, it extends,
00:39:45.140
actually, it takes away protections that previously we had. So Bishop Scharfenberger, being very diplomatic
00:39:51.540
here, said, well, you know, it allows you to slaughter babies wholesale. So it's not something that I would
00:39:57.760
celebrate. That's a very measured way to put it. But he's right. He's right on that point. And he was
00:40:03.540
asked if Andrew Cuomo should be excommunicated. And he says, well, basically, he says that he's
00:40:10.080
excommunicated himself, that Cuomo probably is not in a place where he can receive the communion.
00:40:15.280
Just for those of you who don't know, those who aren't Catholic, or frankly, those who are Catholic
00:40:18.980
and don't know, to be excommunicated means that you are not in communion with the church. And very
00:40:24.120
practically, it means you can't receive the communion. You can't receive the Eucharist, the host,
00:40:28.480
because you are not in communion. So he, if you've got mortal sins on your soul that you haven't
00:40:36.340
confessed, you are not supposed to take the Eucharist. You are not in communion. What the
00:40:41.760
bishop is saying is Cuomo probably is in that place right now. Unfortunately, the cardinal in New York,
00:40:48.820
Cardinal Dolan, is refusing to excommunicate Andrew Cuomo. There are other bishops here, Bishop
00:40:53.940
Richard Stika of Knoxville, Tennessee, and Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, called for Andrew
00:41:01.240
Cuomo to be excommunicated. But Cardinal Dolan, a very powerful cardinal, and the cardinal of New York,
00:41:07.620
doesn't want to. He says it's not appropriate by canon law. He says that excommunication shouldn't be
00:41:13.320
used as a weapon out of anger and frustration, and that it would be used as ammo by abortion activists.
00:41:18.840
That doesn't really hold water to me. I mean, I defer to greater experts on canon law, but we're not
00:41:27.260
using excommunication as a weapon. I mean, in a sense, it is a weapon. It is recourse by the church
00:41:33.960
to correct its flock who are erring gravely. And what is a more grave error than allowing countless
00:41:42.500
babies to be slaughtered a minute before they're born? If that's not a grave error, what is? If that's
00:41:48.300
not worthy of the weapon, so-called, of excommunication, then what is? It's not out of
00:41:52.600
anger and frustration. It's out of care for these babies that are about to be slaughtered.
00:41:57.340
And then to say it would be used as ammo by pro-abortion activists, who cares? Who cares what
00:42:02.680
they think? I don't answer to them. Who takes them seriously? It would be used as ammo. They've got
00:42:08.240
plenty of ammo. They use ammo all the time. They're constantly attacking conservatives, Catholics,
00:42:14.640
Christians broadly. Who cares? Why would you cater to them and say, well, I don't want to give them
00:42:22.700
an excuse to not like the church? They don't like you. They don't like you anyway. You can't make
00:42:27.400
them like you. You can't suck up to them a little bit and then they'll like you. It's just not going
00:42:31.100
to happen. I understand the real prudential questions of this. The Catholic church, the church
00:42:39.040
has always had some relationship to the state and Cardinal Dolan is the cardinal in the state
00:42:44.720
that Governor Cuomo is the governor of. This would be a massive deal if the Cardinal of New York were
00:42:50.660
to excommunicate the governor of New York. It would require an immense amount of courage. It might result
00:42:55.720
in some serious retribution against the church in New York. Yeah, that's all possible. But if you're
00:43:01.860
not going to muster up some courage on this issue, on the issue of the wholesale slaughter of babies a
00:43:07.920
minute before they're born, then what's the point? What's the point of having that authority? What
00:43:13.000
are you doing? If you're not going to use it now, then why do you have it in the first place?
00:43:18.960
Why do you have that authority? And what is the purpose of that authority? And why,
00:43:22.180
if you don't correct this action, what will you correct? There is a good side of the abortion
00:43:28.420
debate though, which is on the political front, the Democrats are going insane. They've been so
00:43:32.660
triggered by the culture. But on this show, Shameless, which is a show with Bill Macy on Showtime,
00:43:37.800
I think. It's a really good show. He's there and he's, it's a scene between him and Katie Seagal,
00:43:44.860
who played Peg Bundy on Married with Children. And it's a scene dealing with abortion. And it
00:43:49.460
actually deals with abortion in a very honest way.
00:43:52.880
Well, with my superior genetics, why would you try?
00:43:59.580
What? What's going on? Oops. Oops. What? What's oops?
00:44:03.620
Well, it looks like six of them have hunkered down in there.
00:44:09.420
Embryos. I don't usually place all the fertilized embryos in at once, but at your advanced age,
00:44:14.260
most women's uteruses aren't as accommodating. We're going to have to terminate a few of them.
00:44:22.640
It's a safety issue. Carrying six embryos to term poses a major health risk to the mother.
00:44:33.440
You know what? Let's just, let's just keep one. It's the safest route, I think. Right, Doc?
00:44:44.820
Engie. We want as many little Frankies and Engies running around as possible. That's obvious.
00:44:51.340
But do you really think we can afford more than one?
00:45:08.520
That's an amazing scene. That's a really powerful scene. You've got the doctor. You've got the woman who's clearly right here. She's got the babies inside of her. She has motherly affection. She's done IVF. She's got six babies in there. She says, I'm not going to kill my babies. And the doctor says, no, no, no, no, embryos.
00:45:26.540
You realize, well, what distinction is that? They're babies. Then you've got this awful character of Bill Macy, played by Bill Macy, and he says, let's kill five of them. And it's really dark humor, because it's happening, unfortunately. But it's dark humor that is making a really true point. And then she says, well, no, you've got to kill three of them.
00:45:44.900
And then Katie Sedol is haggling, because she wants to keep her babies. It's normal to want to keep your babies. It's good to want to keep your babies. It's haggling over it. Really, this reminds me of a Louis C.K. bit. Louis C.K. did a bit in his act before he had his career destroyed, where he did this line. He said, listen, abortion, look, it's just like going to the bathroom, okay? Right? It's just, you know, look, it's going to the bathroom. You go, you do it. It's a physical act. That's all it is.
00:46:12.680
Or it's killing a baby. Right? And it was this amazing turn. He got into some trouble for it on the left, because that's what it is. It's either you can haggle over your babies and kill them and pretend they're not babies. It's just going to the bathroom. It's just a typical procedure. Or it's a baby. It's a human life. And I think we know which one it is. That's our show today. Come back tomorrow. We've got a lot more to get to. Get your mailbag questions in for Thursday. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. I'll see you tomorrow.
00:46:43.460
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Robert Sterling. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover. And our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by Dylan Case. Production assistant, Nick Sheehan. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
00:47:07.300
Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, Kamala Harris does her big town hall. Howard Schultz preps his presidential run. And Democrats talk up Marxism. That's today on The Ben Shapiro Show.