The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 314 - Beto’s Rendezvous With Destiny

00:00:00.000 It's official. Beto O'Rourke is running for president, baby.

00:00:05.440 The definitely white, possibly straight, arguably male, failed senatorial candidate

00:00:10.120 has brought a smile to the face of every fawning mainstream media reporter in the country.

00:00:15.500 The only question that remains is whether even one person outside of NBC headquarters actually cares.

00:00:23.020 Then, are Democrats signaling a willingness to moderate?

00:00:26.380 Possibly. I'm not holding my breath, but there are some moves happening.

00:00:30.900 Republicans block President Trump's emergency declaration.

00:00:34.080 Gavin Newsom, governor of California, blocks the death penalty.

00:00:37.080 And finally, the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:47.420 The moment we were all waiting for. Finally, finally, a completely unaccomplished congressman

00:00:54.600 and failed senatorial candidate is running. And he's really weird. Yes, finally.

00:01:02.240 This is the bridge to the future. We will get to his announcement. We'll get to his strategy.

00:01:07.360 We'll get to the reaction. We'll get to whether or not this signals that the Democrats are willing

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00:02:48.980 Finally, Beto O'Rourke is running for president. We all knew he was going to do it. He's been

00:02:53.720 angling to do it ever since he failed to beat Ted Cruz for the Texas Senate race. Then he went on

00:02:59.780 his little weird adventure where he was posting these bizarre diary entries that was like a seventh

00:03:04.600 grader reading Jack Kerouac or holding Caulfield or something. It was not a good look. Here,

00:03:11.360 I'll just let you see it unvarnished, his announcement video. Then we can react

00:03:17.580 to how he looks, how he launches, and what his strategy is going to be for 2020.

00:03:23.300 Amy and I are happy to share with you that I'm running to serve you as the next president of the

00:03:27.780 United States of America. This is a defining moment of truth for this country and for every single one

00:03:34.560 of us. The challenges that we face right now, the interconnected crises in our economy,

00:03:39.140 our democracy, and our climate have never been greater. And they will either consume us or they

00:03:44.740 will afford us the greatest opportunity to unleash the genius of the United States of America. In other

00:03:50.480 words, this moment of peril produces perhaps the greatest moment of promise for this country and for

00:03:56.780 everyone inside of it. That's right. That's why Beto, that's why Beto is running. Beto is running for

00:04:02.520 president and he's going to throw his arms up in the air and he's going to do the monkey and he's,

00:04:07.840 I don't know what he's going to do. It's a very awkward physicality that this man has. I have to

00:04:13.320 admit, I don't like him. I don't, I'm going to admit that this is largely subconscious. This is not a

00:04:21.580 precisely rational dislike. I don't think I've ever had a more viscerally negative reaction to a

00:04:29.180 politician in my life than this guy. Regardless of what they say, regardless of what they propose,

00:04:34.340 just the way they look and move and talk. I don't like him. I don't trust him. He is unctuous. He is

00:04:40.580 weak. He looks like a little slick, that feminist man in college who's like the creepiest guy that

00:04:47.220 you've ever seen. That's Beto O'Rourke. I, I don't understand. I guess this is probably why the

00:04:53.480 mainstream media like him so much. But this is the problem. Harvey Mansfield wrote this book on

00:04:59.180 manliness called manliness. And he writes in that, that men just naturally really don't like effeminate

00:05:08.480 men. And you can sort of come over this. This is not to say gay men. This is not to say even gender

00:05:13.920 confused men. There's a difference between being effeminate as a man and wearing a dress. I guess

00:05:21.600 Beto O'Rourke does both. So that's a little confusing because Beto O'Rourke, when he was in

00:05:26.400 some rock band in his twenties, he, he would actually wear a dress. But what I mean by effeminate is just

00:05:31.480 his, just his mannerisms. He's just so, he's just so earnest. He's just so saccharine. He's just so

00:05:39.360 scripted. He's just so, I'm just a, I'm a nice guy. Hey, come here. Let's talk. Your boyfriend sounds

00:05:46.200 so mean. Come here. Let's talk about it. You know, I just, this is the, but, and by the way, this

00:05:51.780 matters because facts don't care about your feelings, but politics exclusively cares about

00:05:57.100 your feelings. So it doesn't really matter what he's proposing. People are going to get a first

00:06:02.740 impression. People are going to react to him in this way. And I don't think that any self-respecting

00:06:08.840 man in the entire country could look at this guy and think this is a good candidate. I just don't see it.

00:06:14.880 But you've, what is the campaign going to be? If this 30 seconds is any indication, it's going to

00:06:20.860 be saccharine. It's going to be scripted and it's going to try to be centrist. That's going to be

00:06:26.560 Beto. It's all, this is the earnest. This is why he's doing these crazy arm gestures. He's trying to

00:06:31.840 say, I'm really earnest. Come on guys. Come on, get, let's get together guys. Come on. It's so annoying.

00:06:39.380 Also, it's very scripted. He's reading off the prompter for this, which is fine. Reading off the

00:06:43.980 prompter is no big deal, but he's reading off the prompter in what should be an impromptu

00:06:48.360 announcement. He's on his couch with his wife. It's 2019. So in 2019, authenticity, impromptu,

00:06:57.200 off script is way better. It just plays better. HD video, it just plays better. I mean, this is why

00:07:03.940 Beto was live streaming him getting his teeth cleaned a few months ago. This is why AOC live

00:07:10.660 streams are cooking dinner. No script. It just seems more authentic. This seems disingenuous.

00:07:16.240 He's trying to appeal to centrists. So he's, he's this kind of, I don't know, manufactured

00:07:22.400 product. He's, he's this kind of, he's just built by the mainstream media, but he's trying to appeal to

00:07:30.060 centrists. He's trying to appeal to the extreme left. He's trying to appeal to everybody. And it just,

00:07:36.380 just doesn't seem quite genuine. I mean, despite all of the glowing media coverage,

00:07:42.840 Beto O'Rourke is making this claim that he is going to have a grassroots campaign.

00:07:47.780 And I invite you to join us in a kickoff for this campaign. But even if you cannot be here on March

00:07:53.960 30th, I still want your help organizing where you live, bringing in friends and family and neighbors

00:08:00.800 to the greatest grassroots campaign this country has ever seen.

00:08:05.460 The greatest grassroots, the greatest grassroots campaign this country has ever seen was probably

00:08:09.240 Trump 2016. That was genuinely grassroots. He had the entire party establishment, the entire

00:08:14.580 conservative movement, capital C, capital M, and the entire media against him. He had everybody

00:08:20.360 against him. It was only people who liked him. That's what grassroots is. He didn't raise any money

00:08:25.980 from other people. Really? He was self-funded. This is not grassroots. I mean, this, the mainstream

00:08:31.380 media have been fawning over this guy since he started running for Senate in Texas. And he didn't

00:08:36.620 even win. And then they kept saying, well, if he doesn't win, he'll still win. And Vanity Fair is

00:08:41.220 this beautiful cover of him. This is how the Today Show, the Today Show, this is not, not the new media,

00:08:47.800 not a grassroots rally. This is how the Today Show on NBC breaks the news. They're so excited.

00:08:53.520 Breaking news. It's official. The high profile Democrat announcing his presidential bid this

00:08:58.860 morning. The big name in the Democratic Party making his White House run official this morning.

00:09:04.680 So what's with all the buzz behind Beto O'Rourke? After months of hinting at a presidential run in 2020,

00:09:12.120 former Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke just made it official. He is in. Beto O'Rourke's

00:09:17.920 announcement that he's entering the 2020 race will shake up the Democratic primary. Beto O'Rourke,

00:09:23.340 making it official. The former Texas Congressman announcing he's running for president. O'Rourke

00:09:28.500 saying the interconnected crises of the economy, the climate and the nation's democracy have never

00:09:34.040 been greater. The latest hint O'Rourke was ready to run coming in a glossy Vanity Fair spread overnight

00:09:39.900 captured by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. O'Rourke saying, I'm just born to do this.

00:09:45.680 Grassroots. Grassroots. I don't know that one single person who is not in the mainstream media

00:09:54.160 is excited that Beto O'Rourke is running, but all of the media are doing it. I mean,

00:09:59.220 Vanity Fair can be pretty brutal. They did a profile on, they've done a couple of profiles on us,

00:10:03.840 actually. And they did one on all these people in politics and government and the media and all of

00:10:09.700 them, all the Democrats have these beautiful photos. And then they did a photo of Ben, which is,

00:10:16.420 I don't know how they even got this look. Ben never has this look on his face, but it's this,

00:10:21.860 it's not a good look. They just use the worst possible photo they could find. But then for

00:10:26.540 Beto O'Rourke, oh, he's standing in Texas. He's got his blue jeans, nice blue shirt. He's casual,

00:10:34.640 but he's not too casual. He's ready to work. I'm in it. I was born for this. This is the

00:10:42.660 grassroots of Beto O'Rourke. Now, obviously that's ridiculous. He's going to have to eventually appeal

00:10:49.420 to voters. How's he going to appeal to voters? What we see from this video is that he's trying

00:10:53.460 to position himself as a centrist. Look, he's still got his left-wing orthodoxy and he still

00:11:00.440 talked about the climate. He's still making this a key aspect of his campaign because it is not

00:11:05.820 possible to run in this Democrat primary without talking about the climate. The climate is the

00:11:10.220 left-wing religion now. The climate is, especially in a time when there are no real tangible issues,

00:11:16.180 the economy is doing very well. We have relative peace. We have record high employment. You can't

00:11:21.340 talk about any tangible issue. So it's the climate. You're talking about essentially a religious issue

00:11:27.060 for the left. So he gets that in there, but he's trying to appeal to all Americans. He's talking

00:11:31.360 about farmers bringing everybody together. He's talking about how we need to help the American

00:11:38.680 worker, dignified work, all this sort of stuff. He's so centrist in this video. He even mimics

00:11:44.300 Ronald Reagan. I think a lot of people didn't quite pick up on this, but he is paraphrasing Reagan

00:11:49.060 very closely. I want to leave you with this. The only way for us to live up to the promise

00:11:56.680 of America is to give it our all and to give it for all of us. We are truly now more than ever,

00:12:04.420 the last great hope of earth. At this moment of maximum peril and maximum potential, let's show

00:12:12.140 ourselves and those who will succeed us in this great country, just who we are and what we can do.

00:12:18.460 Okay. So you hear this. We're the last great hope of earth. This is, we've got to show them.

00:12:23.960 So from Ronald Reagan's probably most famous speech, A Time for Choosing, he is taking this

00:12:30.460 line from Ronald Reagan and he's changing it just a little bit. Here's Reagan.

00:12:35.340 Winston Churchill said the destiny of man is not measured by material computations.

00:12:40.460 When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits, not animals.

00:12:44.880 And he said there's something going on in time and space and beyond time and space,

00:12:48.740 which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

00:12:55.280 We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth,

00:12:59.680 or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

00:13:03.100 So he, this is intentional, by the way. I mean, this speech from Ronald Reagan is one of the most

00:13:08.960 famous American political speeches ever. That line is one of the most famous American political lines

00:13:14.540 ever. And Beto O'Rourke is using that. He wants to have that Reagan-esque appeal,

00:13:19.240 but he changes it a little bit. You hear Ronald Reagan says that the United States is the last best

00:13:24.720 hope of man on earth, of man on earth. What does Beto O'Rourke say? He says, this is the last great hope

00:13:31.040 of earth. It's a subtle distinction, but what Ronald Reagan is doing is putting man at the

00:13:37.980 center of politics. He's saying politics is about men. This is a normal ordering of things. He looks

00:13:43.560 up to providence. Then we have politics, the affairs of men, and men have dominion and stewardship over

00:13:49.800 the earth, over creation. We need to be stewards for us. What Beto O'Rourke does is flips it in the

00:13:56.040 way that the environmentalist left flips it, where he says, we're the last hope of earth. So it's the

00:14:00.860 earth that we are serving, not the men on earth, not all the men who long for freedom behind the

00:14:05.840 iron curtain, not all the men who long for a world order, who long for global peace and prosperity.

00:14:12.660 No, no, the earth itself, the rocks and the trees and the deer and the rabbits. That is the

00:14:18.620 environmentalist leftist aspect of it. But it's that same Reagan, it's, it's sort of the difference

00:14:25.460 between the traditional order of things, the order of things that tells us that we are not

00:14:30.600 just animals. We're not just flesh. We are different than the animals. We have a spiritual

00:14:34.980 dimension. Ronald Reagan quotes Churchill. He says, when great forces are on the move in the world,

00:14:40.340 we learn we're spirits, not animals. What Beto O'Rourke is talking is in material terms.

00:14:46.120 It's just the earth. It's the dirt. It's the farmers. It's the this. It's just all material.

00:14:53.160 It's all stuff. There's no spiritual component to it because the left lacks a spiritual component to

00:14:59.660 it. Now he's running as Obama. I mean, that's going to be the Beto move. He's going to run as Obama

00:15:06.920 and see if that can work a second time. The trouble is he's not Obama. Barack Obama was much better,

00:15:13.480 much more likable than Beto O'Rourke. The trouble with Beto O'Rourke is that he actually is a beta

00:15:18.620 male. I don't, I'm saying that sort of to joke about him, but I mean that just as a pure observation.

00:15:25.520 He's not a manly man. He wore dresses with a serious face in his twenties. He, he, he's always

00:15:34.540 dressing down. He's always, I'm a sensitive guy. Yeah. And when he gets overly excited, he loses

00:15:42.300 control of his emotions. So his arm, instead of his arm sort of going this, you know, this,

00:15:46.900 that just as a matter of rhetoric and oratory, his arm goes like, he just loses control of himself.

00:15:53.460 He loses control of his voice, of the volume of his voice, of the tone of his voice. He just

00:15:59.480 is a beta male. I don't know how else to put it. He, he's a wimp. He's weak. Barack Obama,

00:16:06.120 at least in his campaigns, didn't come off that way. Barack Obama did project a strength,

00:16:11.160 a certain, there's no red America. There's no blue America. I love you back. I mean,

00:16:16.140 there was a real confidence to Barack Obama. I mean, he would go limp wristed when he was talking

00:16:20.160 to dictators, but he actually on the campaign trail had a real confidence that Beto lacks.

00:16:26.160 Also, you can't just relive history. You can't be, I mean, this is what Republicans have sort of

00:16:32.400 tried and failed to do for 30 years. You can't just run as Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was very

00:16:37.820 successful. Ronald Reagan was the best Ronald Reagan ever. And Ronald Reagan was a cool guy.

00:16:43.100 You are not Ronald Reagan. You can't run as him. You can't relive his career. You can't

00:16:47.700 just have somebody else's career. You have to be you. All of the American presidents,

00:16:54.480 certainly all of the notable ones have been pretty original. Donald Trump, certainly an American

00:17:00.300 original. Barack Obama, he's an American original. Where else but in America could that man become

00:17:07.880 president? George W. Bush, a very different man from his father. These guys, they have their distinct

00:17:16.580 voice. They have their distinct agenda. Beto O'Rourke doesn't have that. He's just a politician.

00:17:23.520 He's just a guy who was, what was he, on the El Paso City Council or something. Then he was in

00:17:27.800 Congress where he accomplished basically nothing. Then he tried to run for Senate and failed.

00:17:32.440 And then, this is the issue, he's running for president and he tells Vanity Fair,

00:17:37.500 I want to be in it. Man, I'm just born to be in it. There's no draft Beto movement.

00:17:47.220 There was no draft Obama movement. These were guys who didn't need any convincing. They want to be in it.

00:17:53.280 This is a very stark distinction from the traditional

00:17:57.800 statesman who reluctantly goes and accepts power, who just is going to serve the people and then go

00:18:06.460 back to his farm or something. No, this is an ambitious guy who all he ever wanted was political

00:18:11.120 power. So when he says, I want to run to serve you, it just doesn't, you don't buy it.

00:18:16.780 Now, we see, I mean, the fact that he's running as a centrist tells us something

00:18:22.300 about what the campaign is going to look like. Because I guess he's running as a centrist now.

00:18:28.320 Right now, he actually said, he came out and he said, quote, I'm a capitalist. I don't see how we're

00:18:31.880 going to meet any of the fundamental challenges that we have as a country without in part harnessing

00:18:36.080 the power of the market. So he says, I'm a capitalist on the one hand. Then he's talking to a bunch of

00:18:41.240 reporters and he says, I'm in favor of the Green New Deal. I think we only have 12 years before the

00:18:48.000 world is going to end. So it's this bizarre, schizophrenic Democrat primary. One minute,

00:18:55.180 they're super conservative. I'm sorry, they're not super conservative at all. One minute,

00:18:59.260 they're super left-wing, super radical. The next minute, they're trying to appear moderate and

00:19:03.640 centrist. But they're going to have to pick a side. And the more you flip-flop back and forth,

00:19:08.580 the tougher chance you're going to have of convincing the voting public that you're earnest,

00:19:14.760 that you actually stand for something, that you're not just a cynical politician.

00:19:19.480 This raises the question, are the Democrats ultimately, by the end of 2020, going to moderate,

00:19:24.760 or are they going to go all the way to the left? Elizabeth Warren gives us a little hint into this,

00:19:29.480 but I will say before we move on from Beto, I do want to make one side point.

00:19:32.680 His name's not Beto. His name is Robert Francis O'Rourke. If he entered this race as Robert O'Rourke

00:19:40.440 or Bob O'Rourke, nobody would be talking about him. He wouldn't get a Vanity Fair profile. He

00:19:45.600 wouldn't be touted on MSNBC. He wouldn't, none of those things. But because he adopted a Spanish name,

00:19:53.360 because he's pretending to be a Hispanic, people love him and they treat him as though he's Hispanic.

00:19:58.180 This is why words really matter. This is why the sound of words matter, is you can look at the most Irish guy

00:20:03.380 on the face of the earth, and you can hear that his name is Beto, and then you can say,

00:20:08.100 oh, all right, I guess he's the Mexican guy. Wow, how inspiring. How great. So this has led me.

00:20:13.480 I'm not running for the Democrat nomination for president. I have no intention of doing it,

00:20:18.060 even though everyone else in the country is. However, just in case I want to, I've decided from now on,

00:20:24.980 I am requesting that everybody exclusively refer to me as Pedro.

00:20:31.160 Michael Pedro Knowles, or just Pedro is what I would prefer. Just look at me, all of this,

00:20:39.400 Pedro. Pedro, no, people have been calling me Pedro for years. Pedro, that is the only way

00:20:47.080 as intersectional identity victim politics advances. I think that's really the only way that we're going

00:20:53.840 to be able to have a say in our politics. So I'm just going to start it now. If the whitest guy in

00:20:59.400 America can pretend to be a Mexican, I think I can do it, too. Pedro Knowles, now in the future.

00:21:03.860 We're going to have to change the name of the show, too. Elizabeth Warren is showing us that possibly

00:21:08.780 the Democrats want to moderate Nancy Pelosi, too. But first, We the People Holsters. Oh, yes.

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00:22:32.460 K-N-O-W-L-E-S, promo code Knowles at checkout for $10 off. Elizabeth Warren, of all people,

00:22:39.780 is coming back as the voice of reason and moderation in the Democrat party. I've seen it

00:22:46.200 all, but between her, between Beto, between Nancy Pelosi, perhaps it is the case that AOC

00:22:53.380 has peaked, socialism has peaked, and the establishmentarians are coming back to take back

00:23:01.140 their party. How do you explain where you are on the question of capitalism, socialism,

00:23:05.800 and where do they marry each other? So, look, I believe in markets. I see the benefits that

00:23:13.000 markets can produce. I love the fact that there are a zillion people out there developing new apps

00:23:19.220 or starting new businesses or trying a second line. I think that's fabulous.

00:23:24.900 She thinks that's fabulous. She loves markets. She's a huge fan of markets.

00:23:28.640 What? This woman was the furthest left voice in the Democrat party, not five, six years ago.

00:23:37.480 Now, today, all of a sudden, she's become the conservative. I mean, this is, these are the

00:23:43.480 two poles. This is a fight for the soul of the Democrat party. I know that sounds like a

00:23:48.140 contradiction in terms, the soul of the Democrat party, but that's really what this is.

00:23:51.680 You've got AOC and Bernie Sanders talking about the virtues of bread lines. Bernie Sanders actually

00:24:02.680 said bread lines are a good thing because then people get bread eventually, maybe. And then you've

00:24:09.600 got Elizabeth Warren, of all people, defending markets. This is an important battle to be having.

00:24:16.600 It's sort of like the Iran-Iraq war in the sense that I hope they both lose. I don't really

00:24:21.640 care who wins this because if the leftist crazies win, we're going to have a much easier time

00:24:27.600 winning in the general election in 2020. And if the centrists win, you've pushed off socialism

00:24:33.440 through the main vessel of socialism in America, which is the Democrat party, for at least a little

00:24:38.640 while longer. Who is going to win? I highly suspect that the socialists are going to win.

00:24:46.120 I do. I know there are a lot of polls out that show socialists are not very popular as presidential

00:24:52.940 candidates or this or that. I don't buy that because you just are fighting this inevitable

00:24:59.280 tide as generations like millennials become the majority of voters. You're going to see that that

00:25:06.680 generation, the majority of whom now identify with socialism, are going to be pushing for those

00:25:11.200 candidates. And especially when you have a polarizing president like Donald Trump who fights

00:25:15.880 back, who triggers the left, who just drives them so crazy. They are going to demand a fighter on their

00:25:23.700 side. It's not going to be Liz Warren. I mean, she is done. The Indian heritage fraud has killed her

00:25:30.380 campaign. She is a dead woman walking. But for the other people who are blowing in the wind, Kamala Harris,

00:25:37.680 one day she is a socialist, the next day she is a capitalist. Beto O'Rourke, one day he calls himself

00:25:43.160 a capitalist, the next day he wants the Green New Deal to take over private industry and institute 80%

00:25:48.580 taxes. You're going to see the people who fight, the people who get a little more extreme are going

00:25:56.560 to be the ones who have a bit of help. These are the ones who are going to win actual grassroots

00:26:02.620 support and not just fake Vanity Fair support. You know, Vanity Fair, the mainstream media,

00:26:07.480 always seem to pick the worst candidates. They're always rooting for candidates who just don't win.

00:26:14.540 You've seen this in Republican and Democrat primaries. I think that's what's going on with Beto. I think

00:26:19.580 he's a whole lot of nothing. Certain polls put him at the top of the race along with Biden and Bernie

00:26:26.760 Sanders. I think that's just a matter of name recognition. I think as other candidates get more

00:26:31.220 name recognition, you're going to see them beat them down. You're going to see this even in the

00:26:35.440 debates. This smooth Obama-Bedo, I think he's going to let his emotions run away with him.

00:26:39.780 In debates, he's just not going to look strong enough. I mean, probably the manliest candidate

00:26:44.220 in the race right now is Amy Klobuchar. And I assume that if Beto starts going off on his wimpy

00:26:49.380 tangents, his Holden Caulfield stuff, she's just going to pull the debate podium up and throw it at

00:26:53.720 his head on the stage. So the question is, can he identify a campaign theme? Stop playing the field.

00:27:02.620 Stop trying to be everything to everybody. Stop trying to be a typical politician before it's

00:27:07.320 too late. Nancy Pelosi, same thing. Nancy Pelosi came out the other day. She said, I'm not for

00:27:13.740 impeachment. She said, this is news. I'm going to give you some news right now because I haven't

00:27:18.460 said this to any press person before since you asked. I'm thinking about this. Impeachment is so

00:27:22.720 divisive to the country that unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan,

00:27:27.740 I don't think we should go down that path because it divides the country and he's just not worth it.

00:27:36.940 She's trying to moderate too. She's starting to think, hmm, maybe we shouldn't go down this

00:27:41.700 socialism train. Now she has different incentives than the presidential candidates do. She's in

00:27:46.720 Congress. Voters expect different things of these guys. But it is leading these two sides of the

00:27:53.880 Democrat Party to a fight, to a brutal confrontation. That confrontation is going to occur during the

00:27:59.700 2020 Democrat primary. Get your popcorn. It's going to be a blast. We've got a lot more to get

00:28:04.140 to. We've got to get to the mailbag. First, it's almost time for our next episode of The Conversation.

00:28:08.220 On Wednesday, March 20th at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific, we're going to be changing things up with

00:28:12.760 a live book signing of Ben's new book, The Right Side of History. For this episode only, you get to ask

00:28:18.800 Ben questions if you have purchased a copy of his book. So what are you waiting for? I read the book

00:28:23.760 when it was still in draft form. It's a very important book. As far as all these popular

00:28:28.500 books go about the culture, this is by far the most important one that's come out recently.

00:28:33.740 You got to check it out. So make sure to stay tuned. Participate in Ben's live book signing

00:28:37.980 Wednesday, March 20th at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific on a special episode of The Conversation.

00:28:43.580 Go to dailywire.com. Ten bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership. You get me, you get the

00:28:47.940 Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Matt Walsh show, you get to ask questions

00:28:51.140 in the mailbag. Coming up, you get everything and you get the Leftist Tears Tumblr.

00:28:57.100 Mm-hmm. Ooh, that's really good. That's that South of the Border, El Paso, Beto edition.

00:29:02.600 Make sure you get yours before the Democrat 2020 primary drowns you. We'll be right back with the

00:29:08.940 mailbag in one second.

00:29:17.940 First question from Grant. Dear Michael from the block, what is your opinion on a political

00:29:26.500 science degree? Many people seem to think that it's useless. Yes, it is. Ben was a poli-sci

00:29:34.020 major. He says the degree is totally useless. And it is. However, I would like to make this point.

00:29:40.000 The problem with a poli-sci degree is not that it is just professionally useless. The liberal arts

00:29:48.140 are supposed to be professionally useless. That is the point of liberal arts. They are not supposed

00:29:55.960 to train you for any particular professional skill. They are not supposed to get you a job.

00:30:00.840 That is not, that is explicitly not what the liberal arts are for. And the liberal arts are still very,

00:30:05.900 very important. The liberal arts, the word liberal is the key to the liberal arts. The liberal arts

00:30:12.320 exist to help us make sense of our freedom, to help us earn our freedom, to help us be free

00:30:18.520 citizens. When the liberal arts go away, free society goes away. It's as simple as that. It's

00:30:23.920 how you learn about your civilization. It's how you learn about the ideas that have shaped your

00:30:28.280 civilization. It's how you learn about politics, how you learn about philosophy, how you learn about

00:30:33.640 culture, literature, mathematics, how you learn about God, the nature of metaphysics and divinity.

00:30:40.620 It is hugely important. In the traditional academic structure, there were the liberal arts and the

00:30:48.900 mechanical arts. That's the difference. Mechanical arts are professionally useful. Liberal arts are to

00:30:54.100 help you understand your freedom. So the mechanical arts traditionally were tailoring or weaving,

00:30:59.140 agriculture, agriculture, farming, if you go to farm school, architecture, warfare, the military,

00:31:06.280 military training, trade, today we would call that a business degree, cooking, and blacksmithing.

00:31:12.200 Those are mechanical arts. Those are training for jobs. The liberal arts, on the other hand, are grammar,

00:31:18.960 logic, rhetoric. That was called the trivium. And then arithmetic, geometry, music theory, and

00:31:23.960 astronomy. Astronomy. That's the quadrivium. The liberal arts as we talk about them now include

00:31:29.520 a degree in English or a degree in history, as I have, or a degree in philosophy. Those are the

00:31:34.960 liberal arts. Whenever somebody tells you that your liberal arts degree won't train you for a job,

00:31:40.140 you should tell them, yes, of course it won't. That's the purpose of liberal arts is not to train

00:31:44.740 you for a job. Then you can go get a hard skill after you have gotten a liberal education to help you

00:31:50.900 understand your freedom. The problem with political science is that it doesn't today really fulfill

00:31:57.620 the qualities of a liberal education. Because if you were studying political philosophy, for instance,

00:32:05.760 then, okay, you could have a sense of the great thinkers, the great ideas that have shaped your

00:32:10.080 world. Why you think what you think. Why we do what we do. What our past is. What our future is going

00:32:15.280 to look like. Unfortunately, today, political science is often just a lot of statistics and

00:32:21.060 some ideology mixed in and weak social science. That doesn't really fulfill that. So I think that's

00:32:29.140 why it's particularly useless. But if you studied history or philosophy or whatever, that is good.

00:32:38.060 That is a positive good. It is essential to a free society that we have thriving liberal education

00:32:43.820 for some people. Not everybody needs a liberal education. Just some people. The evidence of

00:32:48.520 this is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She graduated with a degree, with honors, in economics. She went to a

00:32:56.880 school that costs $70,000 a year to attend. And she doesn't understand basic economic concepts.

00:33:03.740 What a bank does. What a tax incentive is. She doesn't understand any of that. She's governing us.

00:33:09.900 She doesn't understand our freedom. She doesn't know how to make sense of freedom and liberty.

00:33:16.660 So if we have a whole Congress full of AOCs, we're not going to have that liberty very long. We're not

00:33:22.140 going to have a free society very long. Now, once you get that degree, once you have that liberal

00:33:26.720 education, then you can go to law school, which is basically a trade school. You can go to business

00:33:31.180 school, a trade school, medical school, a trade school. You can learn these hard skills to prepare you

00:33:36.400 for jobs. But I break with so many conservatives on this because I think so many conservatives get

00:33:42.340 this totally wrong. The liberal arts are essential. Society is not just a bunch of automatons making

00:33:49.820 widgets. There is a dignified aspect to society, too. That is civilization. That is what gives us all

00:33:55.660 the things that we really care about in this world, which are metaphysical. Our freedom, our joys,

00:34:01.320 our loves. That's how we make sense of that. If you lose that, you're going to have a very crude,

00:34:06.260 rough, ugly society. From Brett.

00:34:09.460 Dear Michael, lately I've been texting a Christian girl who went cold after we talked about LGBT

00:34:13.980 marriage. I said that while I don't recognize marriage outside of a man and a woman,

00:34:18.540 the government should not be in the business of marriage and try to make it illegal.

00:34:22.700 She believes gay marriage should just be illegal. Who is right? Yours, Brett. You're both wrong.

00:34:27.320 This is not a question of being legal or illegal. The question is, what is marriage?

00:34:34.160 This is why the left gets us so wrong. Either they misunderstand us or they're intentionally

00:34:39.060 slandering us. Because they say, you don't like gay people because you don't want to redefine

00:34:44.880 marriage. What are you talking about? The point that we're making is that marriage

00:34:50.300 requires sexual difference. For all of human history, marriage has implied sexual difference.

00:35:00.680 If sexual difference does not matter to marriage, then what is marriage?

00:35:07.360 If marriage, which has always been the union of a husband and wives, at least one wife, sometimes

00:35:13.960 more than one wife, if marriage is not that, and it loses the sense of creating family, it loses the

00:35:21.080 sense of sexual and spiritual and emotional complementarity, if it loses the sense of a

00:35:25.200 household, if it loses that sense, and it's just any loving association between people of any sex,

00:35:33.060 then, I don't know, I love my friends. I love my male friends. Is that not a marriage?

00:35:37.540 Marriage? Well, you don't have sex. Okay. Well, people have sex with a lot of other people. That's

00:35:41.940 not marriage. What makes marriage? Now, I think what nice conservatives want to do is they want

00:35:48.660 to say, well, I oppose gay marriage because it is a logical impossibility, but I have a lot of gay

00:35:56.660 friends and I don't want them to think that I'm some sort of bigot, so let's just get the government

00:36:00.700 out of it. Do you want to get the government out of the definition of murder? I don't know. Do you

00:36:06.520 want to get the government out of the definition of taxes? Do you want to get the government out of

00:36:11.100 the definition of township? I mean, the government has to recognize the meaning of words, and marriage

00:36:18.760 is the fundamental building block of society. If the government is out of the business of the

00:36:24.740 fundamental building block of society, then what does the government do? What's the purpose of the

00:36:29.420 government? I mean, how does the government relate to society? This is, I think, an essentially liberal

00:36:33.620 argument, because what liberals and the left want us to do is to treat society as just a mass

00:36:39.180 of random individuals, all atomized. They have no relation to one another. They're fundamentally

00:36:45.060 isolated one from another, parent from child, husband from wife, cousin from cousin, friend from

00:36:52.060 friend. There's no relationships other than the individual and the government, but that isn't true.

00:36:57.780 Free society exists when we recognize the family as the building block of society, and then the

00:37:02.480 relationship of families to other families, the relationship among civic institutions, as Alexis

00:37:07.320 de Tocqueville points out, the relationship of the municipality to the state and the state to the

00:37:11.740 federal government. Those are ways to check the tyranny of one overpowerful government and a way for us to

00:37:20.580 preserve our liberty and preserve our traditional society. The government has to be involved one way or the

00:37:26.900 other, especially when it comes to who can adopt kids, looking over the welfare of kids, so on and so

00:37:34.620 forth. The government is going to have to be involved in some way, and we can either pretend that a word

00:37:39.480 that has a very clear meaning doesn't have a meaning, or we can acknowledge reality and say, you don't need

00:37:48.340 to be mean to gay people to acknowledge that marriage is marriage. A toaster is a toaster. A toaster is not

00:37:55.700 a note card. A cloud is not a Honda. These words have meaning. That's essentially the disagreement that

00:38:04.700 you and your girlfriend are having, but you should make it without any sort of animus. I mean, you should

00:38:10.740 just make it on a very clear-minded, logical plane. From Taylor, Michael, what is the protocol for when

00:38:18.620 a woman attempts to open the door for a man in public? Does one accept? Does one refuse to enter

00:38:22.780 until the door closes? And can one open it for himself? Thank you, Taylor. Here is the protocol.

00:38:29.160 When you are walking up to a door, open the door, allow the woman to go in. If you walk up to the door

00:38:34.460 and the woman opens the door first and points to you, you point back to her and you say, oh, please,

00:38:39.340 after you. If she at that point insists that you go first, then you go first. Because a gentleman has

00:38:45.900 to be gracious. You want to be chivalrous. You always want to give women the advantage. You always

00:38:51.380 want to give women a bit of grace. But you have to be gracious yourself. The purpose of a gentleman,

00:38:56.740 his first role, is to put other people at ease. And so you don't want to get into some match. No,

00:39:02.800 you go first. No, you go first. No, you. No, you. No, you. You go first, then you close it,

00:39:05.860 then I'll open it again. No. You offer, you are chivalrous, and then if she insists, you relent.

00:39:12.320 That's how you do it. From Sean, a game where the, a video game, I guess, where the player is a rapist

00:39:18.420 was, I think rightly, banned from Valve, a video game distributor. How do we decide when to ban

00:39:24.680 something like this? Or do we allow it to be released and hope the market kills it?

00:39:28.620 Seems like a pretty terrible video game, and it should be banned. Absolutely. Now, it seems in

00:39:36.300 this case, the market killed it. Because Valve is the market. It's not the government. Valve is going

00:39:42.080 in there and saying, oh, this is going to be bad for business. We're not going to allow this thing

00:39:45.860 that's in terrible taste to go out to the public. So the market worked in that respect. Where it gets

00:39:51.880 a little further down the line is, should the government be able to, for instance, imprison

00:39:58.600 particularly violent pornographers for obscenity? I think the answer is obviously yes. George W. Bush

00:40:04.880 did this during his administration. The government absolutely has a right, and really, you have a

00:40:11.480 right through your government to ban obscenity. Obscene things are not protected by some perfect

00:40:21.660 free speech. That is not what the First Amendment does. That is not a way to have a particularly

00:40:27.580 civilized society. We've had laws against obscenity for a very long time in this country. In a lot of

00:40:33.400 places, you can't go out and strip naked and run around naked all over the streets. Well, isn't that

00:40:37.680 your free speech? No, it's obscene. It's creating a public nuisance. And we can't only think of ourselves

00:40:44.480 in this narrow ideological way. Where the left goes so wrong is the left is so ideological. But

00:40:50.700 we cannot allow ourselves to become ideological and make an idol out of libertinism or of totally

00:40:59.120 free markets without the government regulating them at all. No, of course not. What sort of society do

00:41:05.820 we want to live in? Are we, a people who are self-governing, going to allow ourselves to create

00:41:14.860 and craft that society? Certainly we should. Traditionally in America, we should. And

00:41:19.360 ideologues on either side shouldn't tell us that we can. Okay, that's our show. So much more to get

00:41:24.120 to, but alas, we'll have to wait until Monday. Have a good weekend. In the meantime, I'm Michael

00:41:27.540 Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:41:28.920 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Robert Sterling. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:41:39.020 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover. And our technical

00:41:43.520 producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by Dylan Case. Hair and

00:41:49.320 makeup is by Jesua Olvera. Production assistant, Nick Sheehan. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily

00:41:54.320 Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019. You know, conservatives are always saying

00:41:59.220 conservatism is under attack, but I think it's liberalism that's under attack by the left.

00:42:04.580 Leftism has become the philosophy of racism, the philosophy of censorship, the philosophy of hate.

00:42:09.820 I'll talk about it on The Andrew Klavan Show. I'm Andrew Klavan.

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The Michael Knowles Show - March 14, 2019

Ep. 314 - Beto’s Rendezvous With Destiny

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