Ep. 322 - The Left’s Last Defense： Cry Racism
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Summary
The left's worst week ever concludes with them using the only weapon left at their disposal, calling conservatives bigots. From the Economist to Eric Holder to Ilhan Omar, when the left calls you a racist, you know you ve won the argument. Then Mike Lee gives a highly entertaining Green New Deal performance on the floor of the Senate, David Brooks is wrong, and finally, the mailbag.
Transcript
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The left's worst week ever concludes with them using the only weapon left at their disposal,
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calling conservatives bigots. From The Economist to Eric Holder to Ilhan Omar,
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when the left calls you a racist, you know you've won the argument.
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Then Mike Lee gives a highly entertaining Green New Deal performance on the floor of the Senate.
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David Brooks is wrong in the New York Times. Surprise, surprise.
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And finally, the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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What a week, what a week, but all good things must come to an end,
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and the way that the left is ending their week is by using their last resort, their last ditch.
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When they have no argument, they have no evidence, they have egg on their face for two years,
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what do they do? They call you a bigot. We will get to those very sad strategies,
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Bye. So I've got to give it to him. I held out for a long time, but Ben Shapiro's book,
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The Right Side of History, has topped number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
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We've been going back and forth. We've been talking about this. They say, oh, your book was number one
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on Amazon. Oh, that's good. Mine was number one on Amazon for 11 days, but no, it's okay. No,
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but that's good. That's good. Now we have, I thought there was no way that the New York Times
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was going to give it to him because they hate his guts as we'll see in just one second. But this book
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sold so many copies so fast. It reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list. It is
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selling out like crazy. It is a really good book. I read it when it was in draft form. I've been going
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to college campuses since the book is released. People bring me the book. I say, did you read that yet?
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This is like an entire history of an intellectual history of Western civilization. They say, you
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bet. I read it in two days. Couldn't put it down. Got to give it to the guy. Number one on the New
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York Times bestseller list. It is a huge deal. That is really cool. So go out and buy the book if you
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haven't bought it yet. The other reason you have to buy it is because the left is furious about this
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book. They are so upset. The Economist published a headline today. Quote,
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inside the mind of Ben Shapiro, the alt-right sage without the rage. Ben Shapiro, alt-right sage.
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Now they went inside his mind apparently. They didn't look at his head on the top of which is a
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yarmulke, which is good evidence that you're not part of the alternative right. This is, this has,
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there's a lot going on in this headline. To begin, first of all, it's just not true, right? Ben has
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been very clear in his condemnations of the alternative right. And they just use this smear.
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So Anne McElvoy, I guess, is the editor of The Economist. And she said, Ben, in fairness,
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we said, and then she has some misspellings or something. I think she's saying, you're like a
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figure in alt-right thinking, but that's not really a label. She's saying, we didn't label
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you alt-right. We're just saying it's sort of like you're in the alt-right thinking. So I would like
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to point out that Anne McElvoy is a Nazi pedophile. Anne McElvoy, the editor of The Economist, is a Nazi
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pedophile. But I'm not labeling her a Nazi pedophile. I'm just saying she's a Nazi pedophile. But don't you
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accuse me of labeling her that way? Because this, first of all, that statement, Anne McElvoy
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is a Nazi pedophile, is as much of a label and it's as accurate as The Economist headline that Ben
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Shapiro is an alt-right sage. Now, this thing got ratioed into oblivion. People were both rightly quite
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angry about this and just making fun of them for what shoddy, ridiculously sophomoric journalism they
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made. So they did release a correction. They say, quote, a previous version mistakenly described
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Mr. Shapiro as an alt-right sage and a pop idol of the alt-right. In fact, he has been strongly
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critical of the alt-right movement. We apologize. So there it is. Big headline, big tweet, and then
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hours and hours later when no one's going to read it, they have a little correction down there. That's
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what they do. What's so funny, too, in this is they criticize Ben for using clicky headlines to get
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people to come engage with his content. They did a far more egregious version of that than Ben or the
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Daily Wire or any of us have ever done. But I don't, I'm not saying this to defend, Ben can defend
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himself. He's a big boy and I'm not doing this just to make fun of The Economist. If we were going to do
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that, we'd be here all day long. The reason I bring it up is because this is what the left does
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with language. Ben is an alt-right sage. By the way that the left uses the term the alt-right, I guess
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he is. I guess anybody to the right of Hillary Clinton is alt-right. This is what they do. This is
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why I actually don't use that phrase anymore. I did a PragerU video when the alternative right was
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being brought up as a new topic of discussion just to make clear what the alternative right is,
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why it's wrong, and why we should move on. Then the left took that term and they watered it down to
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mean nothing. So now I don't use the term. I try to be much more precise. I don't use the term racist
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too frequently because what does it mean? It had a meaning, then the left robbed it of meaning. So now
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I try to be more specific. I'll say racially bigoted. Bigotry at least has a meaning.
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For now, at least it still has not been robbed of its meaning. This is what the left does. The
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term alt-right has been robbed of its meaning. And it's too bad because there is an ideology
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that that term once described, an alternative to conservative thought. And what it was really
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specifically being used by, by its biggest proponents, is a politics that essentially boils
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down to race and ethnicity without much regard for, well, on the one hand, without much regard to
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values or traditional civic nationalism, whatever. Okay, that's one side of it. But what, where I
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really object is it's without regard to culture and religion and God. So you're taking all the
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trappings of Christendom, but you're robbing it of the Christ. And so what is that? That's a sick
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perversion. I mean, that's why I, I reject it as I explained in my PragerU video. Now that term
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has been robbed of any meaning. So I don't use it because I'm not going to give the left
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any opportunity. I mean, people say this, I hear this every, everywhere from left-wing commentators,
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they'll use it in passing conversation to dummies on the street. They'll say, this is alt-right,
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alt-right. You don't know what that is. You don't know what that means. So they do it all the time.
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And during the Bush years, they did this with the term neocon. Do you remember? Some of you
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are too young to remember. All you'd hear during the Bush years, neocon, neocon, he's a neocon.
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Neoconservative once had a meaning. It was a movement popularized by Bill Crystal, or Bill
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Crystal, by Irving Crystal, Bill Crystal's father. And it was described as liberals who were
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mugged by reality. Socialists who were mugged by reality. This turn during the 1960s of people
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who would have called themselves liberals, some who were really far left to see the realities of
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communism and international socialism to become more conservative, at least with the approach to
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foreign policy. And many of them came along with a conservative approach to domestic policy as well.
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This was robbed of meaning during the Bush years. And now the term is useless. To call someone a neocon,
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what does that even mean anymore? Now, when they use the phrase, they mean bigoted,
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dead, warmongers, people who want to bomb brown people. What does the term alt-right mean? It means
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anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton is a racist bigot, bigot, bigot, bigot. And this
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brings us to the best week ever for the right, the worst week ever for the left. And the last thing
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they can possibly do, which is call everybody a bigot. You know, in conversations, you'll say,
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yeah, I think we should, uh, I think we should lower the top marginal tax rate, bring it down a little.
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I think that'll be good for the economy. That'll help everybody. They'll say, well, but, but, but,
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and once they finally run out of arguments, they'll say, well, the reason you want to do that is
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because you're a racist. Yeah, I think we should, uh, modify our environmental policy. I don't think
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we should overregulate businesses too much, but, but, but, but, but, but, but you're a racist.
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That's always the bottom of the, of the argument. And that's what you're seeing here. You're not just
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seeing it from the economist, which can't argue with Ben, can't argue with the book.
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So they just call him a bigot. You see this with Eric Holder, former attorney general,
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Eric Holder came out. He was doing an interview on MSNBC and they were talking about the Mueller
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probe, the Russia investigation, DOJ more broadly, and he couldn't defend his legacy. He can't defend
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two years of ridiculous hoax narrative on the so-called Russian collusion. So what does he do?
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He accuses everybody of racism. I'm thinking about the judges who assessed to Paul Manafort.
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Uh, and as you know, there were people who said, oh, well, one of the judges was good and the other
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wasn't, but both judges assessed him as this sort of courtly grandfatherly figure. Judge Jackson
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said that he didn't seem likely to re-offend when Mr. Manafort had re-offended after his charges.
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And I thought, would any judge, and again, I don't want to single a single judge out,
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but would those judges be as likely to say that about a first time young black male offender?
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You know, I don't want to talk about the judges, those judges in particular, but I do worry that
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judges like everybody, all other Americans carry with them implicit biases, and especially in the
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criminal justice sphere. How do you fix it? Well, you certainly have to have training. You have to
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make people aware of the fact that they do carry these biases and make them understand that, you
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know, if you see an African-American defendant in front of you, that's going to probably trigger things
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in your mind unconsciously, subconsciously, and you're perhaps going to treat that person
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differently than somebody who shows up in a tie and has, you know, a great lawyer that they have
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paid for. You're going to maybe cut that person a break that you wouldn't otherwise give to a
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Hispanic or African-American defendant. Implicit biases. This is, this is the great crown jewel of
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smearing people as racist because they can't do anything about it because it's implicit. It's
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subconscious. You can't consciously change it because it's subconscious. Also, by the way,
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if you didn't catch that at the end, Eric Holder says the reason that you, that African-American
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people and Hispanic people are treated unfairly is because if you see somebody wearing a tie,
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you're going to give them a greater respect and credit. Because apparently, according to Eric
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Holder, a black man who is wearing a tie, black people and Hispanic people can't put on a tie.
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You see, it's conflating race and knowing how to dress in a respectful situation. Oh, black people
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and Hispanic, they can't wear ties. Uh, Eric, you're wearing a tie. No, but this old, no, no, no, no,
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nothing to see here. That's your implicit bias that thinks I'm wearing a tie. It's all implicit,
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implicit, implicit. We'll see in just one second why this is the weakest of the racist arguments.
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The implicit biases. This is just, we're not aware of it. We're just kind of robots moving with our
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racial bigotry inside of us. That's why anytime the left loses, it's because of that, because of this
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mythical implicit bias. By the way, the studies on so-called implicit biases, very, very weak. Not a
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whole lot of evidence for this phenomenon. But did you see what Eric Holder said? He said, well,
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how do we combat these implicit biases? He says, well, you need a lot of training. You need a lot
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of training. You need re-education. You need brainwashing. What this means is that in institutions
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that the federal government touches, that the left touches, you are going to have to go through
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mandated re-education and brainwashing of leftist ideology. And you see this everywhere. This happens
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all over. Anywhere that there is an institution in America with any relation to the left or the
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government, they have this. At universities, you have to go through mandatory trainings, diversity
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training, sensitivity training, implicit bias training. In corporate America, the same is true.
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Some of the things I see from my friends in the academy is absurd. You'll see they're constantly
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getting emails about this, constantly getting trainings about this sort of thing. That's what
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he wants. This is the, I mean, this is why the government is always trying to come in K through 12
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education, pre-K education. They want, hey, we'll give you free education. Hey, we'll subsidize your
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student loans. Hey, we'll give universities a ton of money, but come on, we're giving you all,
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you've got to give us a little something. Do this training, do this re-education, do this brainwashing.
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That's what he wants. That's what we're talking about. Why? Because they don't have the argument.
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So they've got to come in. Nancy Pelosi said this the other day, we need to lower the voting age to 16
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so that we can capture them when they're already in our grip in public education.
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And so now we've got Eric Holder. This is not just some wacko elected official or just some wacko
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activist. This is a guy who was the attorney general. This is a major political figure in the
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country. Now we have Ilhan Omar. Ilhan Omar, elected Democrat, freshman Democrat representative,
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doesn't like the Jews very much, has made many comments repeatedly with weak apologies and then
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repeated slurs against Jews. Her communications director, what does he say? He posts on Twitter
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the other day, Jeremy Slevin, quote, anti-seminism is a right-wing force. Anti-seminism is a right-wing
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force. Anti-semitism is a right-wing force. This is what they do. This is the new left thing for
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leftist tweets. They'll either repeat some empty slogan time and time again. They had one planned
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parenthood tweeted out something like, some men have a uterus, some men have a uterus because they
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think if they repeat it enough times, it makes fantasy true. And so they do this here. The other
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one they do is they use the clapping sign. They do the clapping. Anti-semitism is a right-wing force.
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And he's saying this because his boss is an anti-Semite. Again, language has been watered down so much,
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I don't use the term a lot. I don't use it to apply to a lot of people. But she has expressed this time
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and time again. She said Israel has hypnotized the world. She's prayed to Allah to wake people up to
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the evils of Israel. She said the only reason anybody in America would support Israel is because
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they're getting paid off by Jews. She has said that the only, the reason that we have to treat Israel
00:18:17.300
so differently is that Jews in America can't be trusted not to have dual loyalties. They can't be
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trusted to be loyal to their own country. She is an anti-Semite. And what this guy, Jeremy Slevin,
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is trying to do is convince everybody that it's opposite day. You're, I know you are, but what am
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I? That's what he's saying. Because they've had the worst week ever. And for Ilhan Omar, this has been
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the worst month ever. She has, she's been roundly condemned even by her own party. This is one of the
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reactions to the best week ever that we noted last time, which is gaslighting. They're trying to gaslight
00:18:56.320
us. They're trying to say, no, no, no. The Russia probe that wasn't legitimate. It was caused by
00:19:00.940
racism. No, no, no. The bigotry of members of our own party. It's actually opposite day. It's
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actually your bigotry. No, no, no. Ben Shapiro and his book, which is all just about Western
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intellectual history and it's selling and it's number one on the New York times list. It's only
00:19:17.140
number one because he's a big racist and everybody's a racist. La la la. Every, everybody who doesn't agree
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with me is a bigot. Everyone who doesn't agree with me is Hitler. La la la la. That is the only
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conclusion that we could have expected from this week. It's a wonderful way to end the week.
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We knew it was going to happen. So I'd just like to toast all of you who have your leftist
00:19:37.700
tears tumblers out. That is the natural conclusion. When the left calls you a racist, you know you've
00:19:44.960
won the argument. Speaking of race frauds, Jussie Smollett, the guy who gave a good acting
00:19:52.400
performance on Empire and a bad acting performance on the streets of Chicago, you know he just had
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his charges dropped by the crooked Cook County state attorney's office. You know he's trying to
00:20:04.680
say he's been totally cleared now. I mentioned this just a day or two ago. I said this is not the
00:20:10.520
end for Jussie Smollett. They would be crazy to bring him back on that show Empire because he faces
00:20:16.400
federal charges. So okay, he gets off in crooked Cook County. The big issue is he sent himself a hate
00:20:22.880
hoax, a threat hoax. He sent it through the mail. That makes it a federal crime. And I said it the
00:20:28.220
other day, the feds are not going to take kindly to crooked Chicago politics. They're not going to let
00:20:32.940
this off the hook. And looks like I was right. We are now finding out that the feds are not only
00:20:39.440
looking into the deal that was reached in Chicago. They're also looking into federal
00:20:44.120
charges of mail fraud. The FBI is investigating whether or not Jussie Smollett sent the hate mail
00:20:49.780
to himself. This was laced with a white powder. So it was a real threat. And if he is convicted of
00:20:56.800
this, Jussie Smollett could face up to a decade in prison. What do they say? They get called out.
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Jussie Smollett called out as a total fraud, a total hoax. And he, he says, no, no,
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it was, no, it's racism. It's anti-gay. I would never do, I would never do that. And that works
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a little bit. I can work in the short run. It will not work in the long run. Reality eventually
00:21:17.740
reasserts itself. We're seeing it again. And speaking of racial politics, this, this last one
00:21:22.840
might be the most ridiculous part of the whole day. Stacey Abrams, who is a failed gubernatorial
00:21:29.180
candidate in Georgia. Stacey Abrams, whose only job that she's ever had, as far as I can tell,
00:21:34.300
is being in the Georgia state government. That's her only political experience. She is now being
00:21:41.660
heralded by weirdos on the left as a potential 2020 candidate. Here's Andrea Mitchell asking why
00:21:48.900
she's not at the top of the pack. How do you feel about the, some of the white men who are running
00:21:54.540
being asked about a running mate and saying, well, that they would guarantee putting a woman on the
00:22:00.160
ticket? You and Andrew Gillum came way closer to winning your races than Beto O'Rourke did.
00:22:06.940
How do you feel about all the publicity, the campaign that Beto O'Rourke has, has gained by
00:22:13.660
the listening tour, you know, cooking at home, going to the dentist, his online presence, his fundraising?
00:22:20.860
Why Beto O'Rourke and not Andrew Gillum and not Stacey Abrams as, you know, the darling of the media?
00:22:26.980
Yeah. Yeah. Beto's a weirdo too, but why Stacey Abrams? She's nobody. She is nothing. She was in
00:22:34.800
the Georgia state assembly or something. Are you kidding me? That qualifies you to be president?
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She lost an election. She lost her election for governor. She then didn't concede the election.
00:22:51.040
She then finally conceded, but she says it was all wrong. And now there's a rumor that Joe Biden
00:22:56.880
might announce her as his running mate. And oh, the mainstream media are so excited about this.
00:23:02.480
During that lunch with the vice president, let me ask you, did the conversation of a potential future
00:23:07.680
ticket between the two of you with vice president, you being his vice president on the ticket?
00:23:12.980
One quick other piece of political business. You said you've been meeting with and having drinks with
00:23:16.740
everybody who's thinking about running for president. When you drink alone, are you having drinks with
00:23:20.460
somebody who's thinking about running for president? There are a number of women. There
00:23:24.380
are a number of minority candidates running for this democratic nomination. Is this the year one
00:23:28.900
of them ends up being the nominee? I believe so.
00:23:31.200
This is it. This is the, yeah, I believe so. I'm Stacey Abrams. I was in the new, I was in the
00:23:35.000
Georgia state house in the state assembly for like a little while. So that's why I should be president.
00:23:40.000
This is how you know that not just on Russia, not just on Jussie Smollett, not just on Ilhan Omar,
00:23:48.280
this is how you know broadly nationally, the left has lost the argument is the only thing that can
00:23:52.200
play is racism. The fact that this woman who has done nothing in her life is being considered as a
00:23:57.940
legitimate presidential candidate, couldn't even win a governor's race down there, tells you
00:24:02.660
everything. Why is she being considered a serious candidate? Because she's a black woman.
00:24:07.440
There's nothing bigoted about pointing that out. These guys admit it themselves. All of those
00:24:12.980
interviews say, well, but you're, you're a racial minority. You're a woman. Why shouldn't you be
00:24:18.880
considered a candidate? You're, you're better than Beto O'Rourke. Shouldn't you, shouldn't you by virtue
00:24:23.360
of your sex and race become the presidential candidate? And this is really bad because this is
00:24:28.900
always the case. When you only focus on race and sex, when you, when that's the bottom of your
00:24:34.400
argument, you don't have an argument and the Democrats, if they want to win in 2020 need to
00:24:38.980
have an argument. They need to present some reason to the American people to vote for them. They need
00:24:43.320
to say, Trump has done this wrong. We're going to do this right. Here's what we're going to offer.
00:24:47.640
They have nothing to offer. They have nothing to offer other than the green new deal, which Mike Lee
00:24:52.200
came out yesterday and had one of the most hilarious, uh, uh, routines on the floor of the Senate. It's one
00:24:59.160
of the best presentations there ever. He started showing photos of Ronald Reagan shooting machine
00:25:03.800
guns on a velociraptor. He said, this is as serious as the green new deal. And he's right.
00:25:08.580
We've got to get to the mailbag. But before we go, I just want to point something out from David Brooks,
00:25:13.260
David Brooks. This is the real cap to the best week ever. He wrote a piece in the New York times
00:25:19.140
that said, we've all just made fools of ourselves again. We've all made fools of ourselves because of
00:25:24.440
all the Russia stuff and everything. He calls it the awful corruption of scandal politics. He says,
00:25:28.700
quote, maybe it's time to declare a national Sabbath. Maybe it's time to step back from
00:25:32.880
the scandal mongering and assess who we are right now. Democrats might approach this moment with an
00:25:37.340
attitude of humility and honest self-examination. It's clear that many Democrats made grievous
00:25:43.620
accusations against the president that are not supported by the evidence. It's clear that people
00:25:48.220
like Beto O'Rourke and John Brennan owe Donald Trump a public apology. Republicans and the Sean
00:25:54.300
Hannity style Trumpians might also approach this moment with an attitude of humility and honest
00:25:59.840
self-examination. For two years, they've been calling the Mueller investigation a witch hunt.
00:26:04.980
For two years, they've been spreading the libel that there are no honest brokers in Washington.
00:26:09.480
They should apologize for peddling that sort of deep cynicism that undermines our country's
00:26:14.120
institutions. No, no, no, no, you don't get to do this. The left doesn't get to do this.
00:26:21.460
There is no moral equivalence. The left has said for two years, Donald Trump is a stooge,
00:26:29.560
a tool of Russia, a traitor to his country who sold our whole country out. Now we're a satellite
00:26:34.700
state for the Kremlin. That was totally wrong. Every syllable of that was wrong and it was proven wrong.
00:26:42.000
Also for two years, conservatives have said there was no basis for this investigation. We know that
00:26:47.600
it was crooked from the beginning because it was based on a fake dossier funded by Hillary Clinton
00:26:52.100
with massive FISA abuse, massive collusion between the Democrats, the Obama DOJ and FBI and foreign
00:26:59.320
intelligence sources, including in Russia. We said this was crooked from the very beginning. And so we
00:27:05.340
are skeptical of the investigation because of hard evidence, which we still have, which is still
00:27:10.740
demonstrable that this investigation never should have been launched in the first place.
00:27:14.460
There is no moral equivalence. We were right. We were 100% exonerated, not just on Donald Trump
00:27:22.820
being, uh, uh, not being a stooge of Russia, not just on Donald Trump, not obstructing justice,
00:27:28.880
but us, we were exonerated in our deep skepticism and our deep opposition to this Russian hoax
00:27:35.200
investigation because it was wrong. It was a lie. It was a total fiction and fantasy from the very
00:27:41.380
beginning. No equivalence. The left owes an apology to us. We owe an apology to absolutely nobody,
00:27:48.500
including David Brooks. We win, you lose, deal with it. We've got to get to the mailbag. Go to
00:27:54.880
dailywire.com right now. Coming up at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific. Tune into our next episode of Daily
00:28:00.460
Wire backstage where I'm going to smoke a cigar and have a glass of whiskey because I'm a little riled up by
00:28:05.860
this silly equivalence, this ridiculous attempt to say, well, we both did something wrong. Nope.
00:28:13.060
Best week ever for Republicans. Worst week ever for Democrats. Deal with it. We're going to celebrate
00:28:17.560
tonight. It's going to be me, Jeremy, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, and this week's special guest,
00:28:23.420
Matt Walsh. It's going to be a lot of fun. As always, only Daily Wire subscribers get to ask the
00:28:27.400
questions. And if you subscribe during tonight's live stream, you will be automatically entered to win
00:28:32.120
a visit to Daily Wire and sit in on a future episode of Backstage. Meet us, watch the show.
00:28:37.700
We're going to have a great time. Subscribe to Daily Wire tonight during the live stream and be
00:28:42.560
automatically entered to win the sweepstakes. Trust me, we will have a very good time. You know what
00:28:46.940
you get. You get everything. If you weren't already a subscriber, you'd have drowned all week.
00:28:50.600
Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back with the mailbag.
00:29:02.120
Running late as always, but we are going to get through this mailbag from Kamey.
00:29:07.700
Hi, Michael. My husband and I are having a problem in our marriage and would like your opinion.
00:29:12.720
While everything is mostly going well, we cannot decide who is at a greater risk of drowning given
00:29:18.300
all of the latest news. Unfortunately, we only have one leftist here's Tumblr. What should we do?
00:29:24.820
Please help. The obvious answer is to subscribe again. It's the only way to save both of you.
00:29:30.180
If you don't have time to do that, if you're not watching the backstage live stream tonight and
00:29:35.380
you're not subscribing to enter to win a chance to come out here and hang out with us during the
00:29:40.360
next backstage, women and children first. Sir, that's just the upright thing to do, especially
00:29:47.200
in a week like this with so many tsunamis. Next question from Elliot. Hi, Michael. At 29,
00:29:53.620
you have your life together and have achieved a lot more than many liberals do even into their
00:29:59.720
40s. It is true. Not writing a book is a far greater achievement than many of our friends
00:30:04.740
on the left will ever, will ever have while they're whining and screaming for two years
00:30:09.460
straight. What do you think separates you and many other young, successful conservatives from
00:30:15.080
liberals who at 29 are still figuring themselves out, whatever that means, and over 29?
00:30:21.080
It's funny you ask that. When I was a kid, I vividly remember this. I was eight or nine
00:30:28.060
years old and I was watching the wonder years and I heard the phrase about, uh, Kevin's older
00:30:33.460
sister. He said, she's just finding herself. I said, what the hell does that finding yourself?
00:30:39.900
Well, you got to look, you're right there. You got, you can find, find yourself right there.
00:30:43.180
I thought that was when I knew I was really a conservative. And so I appreciate the compliment
00:30:49.880
that, uh, things are, have, have gone well for me. The main reason things have gone well
00:30:55.900
is the holy unmerited grace of God. That's just wonderful providence before which I am awed.
00:31:05.240
That's the main answer. However, in so much as we can help, help ourselves out, God helps
00:31:12.380
those who help themselves. I think a big difference between conservatives and left wingers, we know
00:31:20.440
broadly that conservatives are more content, have more life satisfaction, are happier and
00:31:25.320
more joyful. This is, this is true. It has been seen in many, many social scientific studies.
00:31:31.160
It's not just true in the United States. It's true around the world. There was a huge meta
00:31:34.360
analysis of this taking into account 16 countries, tens of thousands of people, and it remained
00:31:39.120
true. Why is that? I think the main issue is that conservatives see purpose in the world
00:31:47.960
for conservatives who are drawing on the tradition. Even if you would call yourself secular or agnostic,
00:31:54.320
you're drawing on a tradition, which is Christian. And so you see purpose in the world. You are
00:32:01.060
accessing that even by way of your culture and your behavior. And it's, it's a far greater
00:32:08.740
encouragement to live life well or to try to live life well or to try to thrive and to try
00:32:15.620
to flourish if you understand that life has a purpose. And there is a moral law and there
00:32:22.200
is redemption and resurrection. And there is a, a God who created it all, who sees it all. And
00:32:33.420
the alternative view to that is that, as Hamlet says, life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound
00:32:41.880
and fury signifying nothing. That's a pretty depressing, why would you get out of bed? Why would you do
00:32:46.900
anything other than scream at the chaos? Why do conservatives, why are we resilient when we lose
00:32:52.000
elections? And why does the left never concede elections? Because to them, this is just total
00:32:57.660
chaos. This is just total, no, no, ripping their hair out. But for conservatives, we say, well, that's
00:33:04.940
the way of the world. It's a fallen world. These things happen, but ultimately there is a divine justice
00:33:09.800
that prevails. That's probably at the, at the base, the reason you can add on a lot of culture
00:33:17.520
and politics and behaviors on top of that. But I think that's what lays at the base of it. From
00:33:22.340
Peter, question, nickname for Beto, Plato, Beto. He is soft, childlike, and easily manipulated. What do
00:33:33.220
you think? And can you tweet this at the president? I don't have Twitter. It's clever, but it's a
00:33:39.080
terrible nickname. It's not going to work. It doesn't stick. This is what conservatives do a
00:33:43.800
lot. We overthink it. We are too clever by half. Senator Ted Cruz, whom I greatly admire,
00:33:51.920
he's a little too clever by half sometimes. Donald Trump understands not to be. Donald Trump,
00:33:58.840
the reason he's so great at nicknames is he just punches people right in the gut. A great example of
00:34:05.060
this is Elizabeth Warren. The nickname for her before President Trump adopted it was Faux Cahontas,
00:34:12.320
F-A-U-X, Cahontas. This is a play on words. Faux, meaning false, and Pocahontas. It's clever. It's
00:34:21.080
pretty good. Liawatha. That's pretty, it's Lai and Hiawatha. Okay. These are, these are good nicknames.
00:34:28.460
But President Trump didn't go for Faux Cahontas. He went for Pocahontas,
00:34:31.520
which is not a double entendre. It's just, he's just calling her the most famous Indian name,
00:34:38.940
and that's it. But that was the better nickname, even though it's less clever,
00:34:44.200
because that nickname paints a picture. It's direct. It doesn't require that you know what
00:34:49.380
the word faux means. It doesn't require you to put together this, this play on words to look at
00:34:55.680
the juxtaposition of those two words. It's clear. It's right to the point. Play Do-Bedo. Sure, he's soft.
00:35:01.520
He's weird, and he's childlike, but it's not going to go right to the point. We've got to wait for the
00:35:05.960
master of nicknames himself, President Trump, to get to it. From Alyssa. Hello, Michael. Do you have
00:35:12.120
any universities you're planning on speaking at in Texas in the near future? If so, where and when?
00:35:16.520
Yes, I'm going to be down at Texas A&M with none other than Andrew Klavan. We're going to be doing
00:35:22.160
a joint event down there. I think that's coming up in April. I don't have the exact date, but check it
00:35:26.760
out at Young America's Foundation. You can see my whole speaking tour there and figure out where
00:35:32.040
I'll be at a university near you. But I will be down, I think, next month with Drew, so check it
00:35:37.340
out. From Katya. Hi, Michael. I just turned 18 last Monday. I'm super excited because I get to vote,
00:35:44.860
even though I heard your explanation of why voting isn't inherently good. My co-workers, however,
00:35:50.080
think I'm naive because our votes don't mean anything. How would you respond to this?
00:35:53.280
I'd look at the Senate race down in Florida. Look at the governor's race down in Florida. Look
00:35:57.880
at the governor's race that beat out Stacey Abrams down in Georgia. Look at the 2000 presidential
00:36:04.760
election. Sometimes elections come down to hundreds of votes or less. Your vote often does matter quite
00:36:12.720
a lot. Voting is not the be all and end all. We don't have a republic so that we can vote,
00:36:17.380
but we do vote so that we can have a good republic. And if you've got good opinions and you're
00:36:22.960
supporting a good side of politics, you better make sure you go out there and vote. It certainly
00:36:27.040
can matter. And in recent years, it frequently has. From Bryce. Dear Michael, I'm currently writing
00:36:34.140
a book about my experiences as a male domestic abuse victim. And I'm trying to think of a great
00:36:39.180
title that not only will get attention, but will rile up the left. I'm considering naming it
00:36:43.800
hashtag me too. But friends I've discussed this with have given this a stern no. As a bestselling
00:36:49.860
book title author, what say you? I'm open to any and all suggestions. Thank you for acknowledging
00:36:56.640
my expertise. Obviously, I know nothing about writing a book, but I know a lot about writing
00:37:00.400
titles. I would say, I assume they objected to me too because it's so controversial. So I like,
00:37:07.860
keep that idea. I mean, you should be controversial if you want people to take a look at the content
00:37:12.300
and then hopefully you'll have good content. I would recommend not me too, but men too.
00:37:19.140
Hashtag men too. The male victims of female brutality or of sexual assault or something to
00:37:26.640
that effect. I think that's a good title. It would have the controversy. It gets your point across
00:37:32.960
directly. And no one's written it yet. So I think that would be a very interesting book.
00:37:37.560
From Michael. Brother Michael, I need your love guru advice. Two months ago, I started dating one
00:37:43.680
of my friends of three years. She moved to Nashville six months ago and agreed to start a relationship
00:37:48.940
only if I plan to move to Nashville. I agreed to eventually if it worked out. She wants me to give
00:37:54.480
her a date on when I plan to move, but I have so many responsibilities keeping me home. Is it too much
00:37:59.400
to ask of a significant other to move across the country after two months of a relationship? Best,
00:38:04.340
Michael. Man, what has happened to young love? What is wrong with you people? Listen to this
00:38:15.920
language. We agreed to have a relationship. We sat down. Would you have a negotiation? You sat across
00:38:22.540
the table. You said, okay, I'm willing. And then, but you've got to move and you have to give me a date,
00:38:26.100
but I've got responsibilities and I've got, what are you, are you kidding me? I think it was George
00:38:31.580
Will made fun of this one time from the perspective of Cole Porter. Cole Porter didn't sing, let's do
00:38:37.920
it. Let's be in a relationship that we negotiate. And eventually I'll plan to move once my responsibilities
00:38:43.660
are over. No, he said, let's do it. Let's fall in love. Come on, man. I don't know. Do you want to,
00:38:51.200
do you like her? First of all, you haven't been dating for two months. You've, you said your friends
00:38:55.120
were there for three years, three years, you haven't come to a conclusion. I'm not saying you
00:39:01.120
got to move there. I'm not saying you got to move there even to continue dating one another. I've done
00:39:06.920
long distance for a long time. I've done that. And I'm on the road all the time now. So I'm
00:39:11.300
practically long distance for half the week, but don't be motivated by, well, I've got these
00:39:17.320
responsibilities and well, I, you know, it's just really, we were planning and we negotiated and
00:39:21.200
what's the time. Don't do that. Do you, are you moved by a great feeling of love? Do you,
00:39:26.600
do you love the girl? Do you want to go? Yeah, then go do it. Go see her a lot and don't negotiate
00:39:31.600
it out. And if you're not, if it's just some kind of clinical thing and it was a love affair of
00:39:37.480
convenience, then break it off and do something else. But don't approach it in this cold way.
00:39:42.280
That's, that's like leftist rationalist types do this. They're weighing out the pros and cons.
00:39:46.820
Don't do that. Conservatives, don't forget, Edmund Burke inspired
00:39:51.040
all of the romantics. The conservatives were romantics in many ways. Be a romantic.
00:39:56.860
From Timothy, dear Michael, master of brevity, does the 13th amendment prevent us from owning the libs?
00:40:03.880
Regards, Chuck, this is a highly controverted issue of constitutional law. The 13th amendment,
00:40:10.820
which outlaws slavery, may in fact prevent us from owning the libs. This will probably make it up to
00:40:17.720
the supreme court eventually and, and they'll give us a final judgment on it. The one thing we do know
00:40:24.200
though, is that the 13th amendment does not prevent the libs from owning themselves at which they have
00:40:30.240
done all week long. They've done this for over two years. They've done it for longer than two years.
00:40:37.220
They are owning themselves. And I think this will be the great, great defense in this 13th amendment
00:40:45.280
argument over if they can own themselves, we might as well not be left out of the fun. I think that
00:40:53.460
actually would create a discrimination case because if they can own themselves, why can't we own them as
00:40:59.140
well when they're so obviously owned? Great question. Really thoughtful. From Brandon,
00:41:05.040
hey Michael, what would your opinion be about a conservative church as a business?
00:41:09.760
People would pay to hear a sermon and worship God, then learn about ideas and great people like
00:41:14.120
Aristotle. The reason being regular churches can't speak on politics. So they end up being an LGBQP,
00:41:20.940
LMNOP meeting sometimes where the heart of faith and ideology is never discussed because they have to
00:41:27.120
dance around everyone's feelings. I think it's probably a bad idea to turn churches into businesses.
00:41:34.100
I remember reading something about only being able to serve one master and not being able to serve God
00:41:39.500
and mammon at the same time. So that, and frankly, the problem with churches, many churches today,
00:41:46.220
is obviously many Protestant churches, but even many parishes of the Catholic church, certainly in America,
00:41:52.440
is that they are treating it like a business. They're treating it like they're responding to
00:41:57.040
market forces. And if the parish, the congregation, they're not really a congregation. They're just
00:42:03.140
the audience. And we've got to give the audience what they want. We've got to put on a show for them
00:42:06.260
and we've got to tell them exactly what they want to hear. That's the only way they'll fill up those
00:42:10.120
pews. That's the only way they'll fill up that donation basket. The problem is we're treating
00:42:16.380
churches too much like a business. Now, if you want churches to be able to talk about politics,
00:42:20.760
I agree. I think it's absurd that churches can't talk about politics and I hope they change that
00:42:25.660
soon. Hopefully they change it during the Trump administration. That has been bandied about as
00:42:29.840
an idea and I hope they do it. From Kyle, dear big Papa Knowles, is a hot dog a sandwich? Yes.
00:42:38.240
Yes, it is. From Nathan, Knowles, hello. I have recently been interested in the creationism versus
00:42:44.340
theistic evolution debate. Where do you come down on the issue and do you think churches should teach
00:42:48.640
one way or the other? Thanks, big fan of the show, Nathan. I know that the books of the Bible take
00:42:55.380
into account all genres. They're not just written like modern histories are written. That's just a
00:43:02.260
huge interpretive mistake of certain church movements in the last 60 years or so. Mostly,
00:43:09.200
I don't care though because as Cardinal Baronius said, the scripture teaches us how to go to heaven,
00:43:16.820
not how the heavens go. C.S. Lewis was of this opinion. G.K. Chesterton was of this opinion.
00:43:24.220
I mean, I'm interested as a matter of science as to how the human race has come to be as it is. I
00:43:31.720
suppose as a scientific matter, I'm interested. But as a theological matter, it doesn't change one
00:43:36.660
little thing for me. From Eric, hey Michael, you mentioned earlier this week that you believe
00:43:42.200
anarchy to be of the left. I've been trying to think it through and I'm just curious how you would go
00:43:46.680
about arguing that position. Thanks. Well, because anarchy takes on the primary premise of the
00:43:54.180
left, which is that the chief unit of society is the individual. It takes on the idea of social
00:44:01.700
contracts, which is an essentially leftist and rationalist idea with no relation to history
00:44:07.520
whatsoever. And so the anarchists take the idea that because the idol of society, the atomic unit
00:44:15.820
of society is the individual, then we're all just a bunch of individuals and there should be no
00:44:20.040
government whatsoever because we're all just individuals. The flip side of that argument is
00:44:24.500
that the atomic unit of society is all individuals and that's all we have. And there are no other,
00:44:29.780
there's no more atomic unit of society. And so because we're all individuals, we ought to be all
00:44:36.160
swept up together as individuals in the collective with a super collectivist state. Two sides of the
00:44:43.000
same argument. The conservative response to that is that the individual obviously is not the atomic
00:44:47.840
unit of society. We obviously are not born into just thin air from nothing with no bonds tying us to
00:44:56.180
anybody or anything. Obviously we're born from women, from our mothers. And we were conceived
00:45:03.400
because of the love between our mothers and our fathers. And they're not alone either. They've got
00:45:08.240
families as well. And they're in certain places with certain cultures and certain community
00:45:12.000
organizations and bonds of kinship and bonds of loyalty and bonds of patriotism and not just
00:45:17.680
entitlement and not just rights, but duty and responsibility to those things. Because we didn't
00:45:23.060
create our own lives. This is given to us as the greatest gift. And so we ought to be grateful for
00:45:28.780
that. We ought to have veneration for that. We ought to give some credence to the prescription of
00:45:34.040
the tradition, which is not the oldest thing. It's the newest thing because it survived through all of
00:45:38.300
the years. It's not anti-democratic. It's the greatest democracy of all because it's the democracy of
00:45:45.120
the dead that ties us as we are tied to our ancestors and to our future generations. That's the
00:45:51.000
conservative answer to two sides of a rationalist and ultimately left-wing argument. All right.
00:45:58.180
That's our show. We've got a lot more to get to, but too bad. We'll get to it later. Check us out
00:46:01.780
at Backstage Today. That'll be happening later on. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is
00:46:06.760
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Robert Sterling. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior
00:46:17.240
producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover. And our technical producer is
00:46:22.120
Austin Stevens. Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by Dylan Case. Hair and makeup is by Jesua
00:46:28.320
Olvera. Production assistant, Nick Sheehan. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
00:46:35.300
Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, a brutal assault of a pro-life activist by a pro-abortion
00:46:40.740
extremist is getting, of course, no attention in the media, but I want to give it some attention
00:46:45.580
today. And also I want to give some attention to the greater problem, the epidemic of pro-abortion
00:46:51.480
extremists assaulting pro-lifers. It happens all the time. And I will show you some evidence of that
00:46:56.560
today on the show. Also, Vox has come out, perhaps unsurprisingly, in defense of Cardi B, who admitted to
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drugging and robbing men. We'll talk about the double standard there. Also, we have the latest
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on Jussie Smollett. All of that today over on the Matt Wall Show.