The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 324 - Killing Babies, Saving Murderers

00:00:00.000 The left launches a crusade to murder innocent babies in Georgia while simultaneously doing 0.95

00:00:06.060 its best to overturn the death penalty for rapists and murderers. We will examine the

00:00:10.680 left's inverted judgment and why good judges matter. Then a new study shows that assault

00:00:16.140 weapon bans do not reduce homicide. Finally, Dorothy Parker describes all the ways to kill

00:00:21.640 yourself on this macabre way to kick off National Poetry Month. I'm Michael Knowles and this is

00:00:27.040 The Michael Knowles Show. Today's show is all about death. Beginning to end, it's all about

00:00:38.920 death because there was a very important decision that just came down from the Supreme Court

00:00:43.580 thanks to Justice Gorsuch and I guess thanks to Justice Kavanaugh because this was a 5-4 decision

00:00:50.320 on the death penalty and Kavanaugh was the one who replaced Anthony Kennedy. He was that swing vote

00:00:56.240 and he sided with the conservatives. This is very important and it's funny I say sided with the

00:01:00.600 conservatives because a lot of people who were conservative or libertarian or in the conservative

00:01:05.340 movement oppose the death penalty. They hate the death penalty. They're very wrong about this

00:01:10.620 and we'll examine why. Judge Gorsuch was the one who gave this opinion. The case was Bucklew v. Preseth,

00:01:19.200 the director of the Missouri Department of Corrections et al.

00:01:22.840 The case was all about cruel and unusual punishment. The case was all about evolving

00:01:28.860 standards of decency. The case was basically about whether we can outlaw the death penalty

00:01:36.740 by making up imaginary things in the Constitution. That's really what it's about. Whether you like

00:01:42.300 the death penalty or you don't like the death penalty, what this case is really about is whether

00:01:46.060 a bunch of robed justices or benevolent bettors or self-appointed elites can outlaw the death penalty

00:01:52.940 simply because they imagine something in the Constitution that isn't there. We'll get to the

00:01:58.060 specifics of this in just a second. But first, let us make a little money, honey, with candid

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00:03:40.780 off the price of your modeling kit, candidco.com slash cofefe. What was this Supreme Court decision

00:03:47.920 about? Bucklew versus Praseth, director of the Missouri Department of Corrections. This guy,

00:03:54.640 Bucklew, he's a convicted murderer, convicted rapist. He's on death row. He has blood-filled 0.99

00:04:01.920 tumors on his neck, and I told you this show was going to be really tough. It's a little grotesque,

00:04:06.840 a little tough to listen to, but very important decision that came out. He's got all of these

00:04:11.740 blood-filled tumors, and what his lawyers are arguing is because of this medical condition,

00:04:17.100 it could make lethal injection painful. Now, I know what you're thinking. The guy's going to be

00:04:22.180 dead in 30 seconds. If he has a little pain, what's the big deal? The question in this case

00:04:27.520 that ostensibly the judges were looking at is whether the possibility of this guy having a

00:04:33.780 painful execution makes the execution itself cruel and unusual punishment and therefore

00:04:39.500 unconstitutional. And Justice Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and all the conservatives came out and said,

00:04:46.220 of course, this does not, because you have a tumor on your neck, this does not mean that the state

00:04:53.100 can't execute you. This does not mean that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment.

00:04:58.360 The Constitution does not ensure you a painless execution. That's one of the main takeaways from

00:05:05.940 this decision. By the way, it was a total cheap trick, total BS. This guy, Bucklew, had faced the

00:05:12.140 death penalty for 18 years. He was waiting on death row. And then 12 days before he was scheduled

00:05:18.660 to be executed, all of a sudden he said, oh no, I've got this medical condition and we have to

00:05:26.980 file appeals. So they filed appeals. This led to five years of litigation. The appeals ran out last

00:05:32.820 year. So he was finally going to be killed. It was on death row for 18 years. Then another five years 0.93

00:05:37.760 of litigation. You're looking 23 years down the line. And just as he's about to be killed,

00:05:41.240 the justices halted the execution when Kennedy sided with the liberals. So some of the fears

00:05:49.620 with Kavanaugh being appointed to fill Kennedy's spot is Kennedy sort of liked him. He clerked for

00:05:54.600 Kennedy. Kennedy sort of picked him. And there's this fear that Kavanaugh is going to side with the

00:05:58.420 liberals. But on this case, on this exact case, you saw Kavanaugh siding with the conservatives while

00:06:06.660 his predecessor, Kennedy, had sided with the liberals. You are seeing a change in the shift

00:06:11.420 of power on the court. So thank goodness for Kavanaugh. Thank goodness for Neil Gorsuch. Thank

00:06:16.900 goodness for the election of Donald Trump, because you wouldn't have had any of those things had

00:06:20.760 Hillary Clinton won. So to the actual meat of the case, I guess the question is, why do we need to

00:06:25.980 kill this guy? Because we're only arguing over these points of the Constitution. We seem to forget that

00:06:31.520 there is a criminal here who has committed serious crimes, crimes serious enough to merit execution in

00:06:38.040 an age where we don't like killing people very much. This is what Gorsuch wrote.

00:06:44.320 The people of Missouri, the surviving victims of Mr. Bucklew's crimes and others like them,

00:06:49.960 deserve better. Under our Constitution, the question of capital punishment belongs to the people and

00:06:56.040 their representatives, not the courts, to resolve. Now listen to this. Adam Smith used to say, he wrote

00:07:03.140 down famously, mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. And we think, all we think about is

00:07:09.760 this poor murderous rapist, Bucklew, who's got some tumor on his neck and it might hurt when he gets 1.00

00:07:15.460 lethal injection. That's what we think about. We don't think about the victims of his crimes, which we'll 1.00

00:07:21.840 get to in a second. Most importantly of all, the people that we always forget about are the citizens,

00:07:29.380 the people of Missouri. Now listen to how Gorsuch begins this. The people of Missouri, dot, dot, dot,

00:07:36.360 deserve better. Why? Why? He didn't murder the people of Missouri, not more than a couple of them. He

00:07:42.020 didn't attack the people of Missouri. He did. Because crime is an assault on the country, on the

00:07:50.000 community, on justice. And therefore, the civil authority has to enforce justice, has to bring us

00:07:57.640 justice. Because it affects all of us. This is the point of criminal justice that we always forget.

00:08:04.520 We remember the criminal part. We remember rehabilitation. We remember deterrent. We forget

00:08:08.760 about the justice part of it. And this is important and this affects all of us. And we all demand it.

00:08:15.360 Then, of course, Gorsuch gets to the point here. The question of capital punishment belongs to the

00:08:19.840 people and their representatives, not the courts, to resolve. Okay, obviously, at the time of the

00:08:26.860 ratification of the Constitution, nobody thought that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment.

00:08:34.080 The death penalty was basically the definition of a felony. There was the death penalty everywhere

00:08:39.980 when the Constitution was adopted. Nobody thought that was cruel and unusual punishment. Now today,

00:08:47.700 some people think it's cruel and unusual to kill criminals for committing crimes.

00:08:55.320 It's becoming increasingly unusual because these courts and these judges have taken away the power

00:09:00.940 of the people to decide this. But let's say we don't like the death penalty anymore. Society has gone

00:09:05.520 soft. We don't want to kill criminals anymore. Whatever the reason. Say you don't trust the state to carry

00:09:10.740 it out. You think there's too much corruption. Okay, there are a lot of arguments against the death

00:09:14.640 penalty. If you don't like the death penalty, then convince your fellow citizens and pass a law

00:09:19.260 outlawing the death penalty. You can do that. That's what a self-governing people is allowed to

00:09:24.720 do. What you shouldn't do is have attorneys general or DAs or governors or presidents or judges just

00:09:34.020 waving their hand and saying, oh, pish posh, forget about the law. We don't need the law. Who cares what

00:09:39.480 the people want? I know in my infinite wisdom. I know better than everybody else. I know better than

00:09:44.660 all the citizens of this country, the citizens of this state, the framers of the constitution.

00:09:48.960 I know better than everybody. And so I'm just going to pretend that the death penalty is

00:09:53.760 unconstitutional. It's not unconstitutional. It's very constitutional to kill criminals.

00:09:58.620 But if you don't like it, fine, convince your fellow citizens and pass a law. However,

00:10:03.900 remember that these guys are pretty bad hombres. Remember that these victims deserve justice.

00:10:11.600 Remember that a civilized society deserves justice for the victims, on behalf of the victims,

00:10:18.780 on behalf of justice generally, and for the perpetrators. This guy Bucklew, now 20 years ago,

00:10:26.780 23 years ago, I guess, went on a rampage in 1996 after his girlfriend tried to break up with him.

00:10:33.900 Where are the feminists on this? Where is the Me Too movement? This guy goes on a violent rampage 1.00

00:10:39.200 as his girlfriend tries to break up with him. She flees to a neighbor's house. He goes over there

00:10:43.920 and shoots and kills the neighbor. He then beats this woman with his gun and rapes her. 1.00

00:10:50.600 Then the police come and he gets into a shootout with the police. Finally, thankfully, he's arrested. 0.92

00:10:56.200 He's sent to jail. He escapes from jail and then he goes and attacks the girlfriend's mother with a

00:11:00.960 hammer. This guy needs to be put down. He needs to be taken out back and put down like old yeller 1.00

00:11:06.480 for all reasons. For all three reasons that we have capital punishment and criminal justice as a

00:11:15.180 deterrent. And we would have a much better deterrent effect if we had taken this guy out back and put

00:11:19.780 him down like old yeller in 1997, right after it happened, not 23 years later. We have to do this

00:11:26.820 for the retributive effect because this demands justice. Justice demands to be satisfied.

00:11:34.000 And even as a matter of rehabilitation, I don't think any amount of therapy is going to turn this

00:11:39.180 guy around. I don't think going into a therapy session and hugging each other and saying,

00:11:43.880 oh, hey, let's talk about our feelings. Oh, daddy didn't go to your baseball game when you were a

00:11:48.760 kid. Oh, okay. They're there. Now you're reformed. I don't think so. The only chance this guy has at

00:11:53.260 rehabilitation is to stare down the gallows and say, well, I'm about to meet my maker in an hour. I

00:11:58.960 guess I had better start taking these things seriously and I better throw myself on the ground

00:12:03.700 and ask for forgiveness. That's the only, that's the closest to rehabilitation this guy's ever going to

00:12:09.560 get. So what's the bottom line from this case? We're talking about cruel and unusual punishment.

00:12:14.980 We're talking about the eighth amendment to the constitution in the bill of rights. And this is

00:12:20.260 what Gorsuch writes. The eighth amendment has never been understood to guarantee a condemned inmate,

00:12:27.560 a painless death. That's a luxury not guaranteed to many people, including most victims of capital

00:12:34.160 crimes. This is a great point, by the way, for the vast majority of people on earth, for all of human

00:12:41.120 history, no one can expect a painless death. We all sort of hope, we think, you know, when my day

00:12:48.780 finally comes, I hope that I can go out in my sleep or, you know, smoking a cigar on a beach

00:12:53.640 somewhere. You say this, oh gosh, I just like a painless death because for the vast majority of human

00:12:59.440 history, we've had very painful deaths. Now he makes that point about everybody. Then he makes

00:13:06.540 the point of the victims of capital crimes because Bucklew's girlfriend didn't have a pain-free

00:13:14.200 experience with him. His, his girlfriend's mother didn't have a pain-free experience. That

00:13:20.120 neighbor just in the very moment of that incident didn't meet a pain-free death and Bucklew can't

00:13:26.260 expect to meet a pain-free death either. Now Neil Gorsuch goes on to clarify what he means. Does

00:13:31.880 this mean that we should torture the guy? Does this mean that we should give him an intentionally

00:13:35.440 painful death? No, of course not. Gorsuch writes, what the eighth amendment does guarantee is a method 0.99

00:13:42.540 of execution that's not cruel and unusual. And ever since the founding, people have understood that

00:13:48.600 the only way to tell if the method is cruel is to compare it with other known and available

00:13:53.400 alternatives to see if the state is inflicting substantially more pain than necessary to

00:13:58.940 carry out its lawful sentence. So we're not, we don't want cruel and unusual punishments. It goes

00:14:05.320 in, in the opinion here, they talk about other punishments that at the time of the ratification

00:14:10.400 of the constitution were done away with. Drawing and quartering people, disemboweling them,

00:14:18.180 those sort of things would be cruel and unusual. They were understood to be cruel and unusual at

00:14:23.680 the time. And so even as the constitution was adopted, you couldn't inflict that sort of capital

00:14:30.400 punishment on somebody. But how about today? This is the question that the court's liberals bring up.

00:14:36.160 I mean, why are we having this discussion? It is so obvious that the, that capital punishment is not

00:14:41.420 unconstitutional. And yet a lot of people are pretending that it is. Why? Because of this one man,

00:14:48.320 Chief Justice Earl Warren, in 1958, coined the term evolving standards of decency. He did it in this

00:14:57.860 case, TROP versus Dulles. Evolving standards of decency. This is a very funny statement because we like to

00:15:08.740 flatter ourselves. We moderns, we people living in 2019. I said, gosh, we're just such decent people.

00:15:14.640 We're just so good. We would never do barbaric things like kill murderers and rapists for their

00:15:21.920 heinous crimes. We would never do awful indecent things like enforce justice and bring about justice

00:15:29.960 for the victims of violent crimes and for the society at large. Oh, that would be so indecent.

00:15:35.440 Oh, hey, let's go kill a million babies a year. Hold on. I'm sorry. I'm just, 1.00

00:15:40.600 I'll be right there. I'm going to go kill a million babies a year. I'm going to go boycott Georgia 1.00

00:15:45.020 because they don't want to kill a million babies a year. But hold on one second. I just have to

00:15:48.660 finish my lecture on decency, but I'll be right there. And then we can go kill all of those babies. 1.00

00:15:53.000 I'm sorry. Where was I? Oh yes. I was talking about our evolving standards of decency and how much 1.00

00:15:57.960 more decent we are today than those awful people in the past who enforced capital punishment for violent

00:16:04.280 criminals and also didn't kill a million babies a year. Decency. So Gorsuch basically goes right at

00:16:13.300 the jugular of this stupid idea from Earl Warren. And he says, quote, the Constitution allows capital 0.99

00:16:20.920 punishment. In fact, death was, quote, the standard penalty for all serious crimes at the time of the

00:16:28.860 founding. It was the definition of a serious crime. You hang. He goes on, nor did the later

00:16:34.840 edition of the Eighth Amendment outlaw the practice. On the contrary, the Fifth Amendment

00:16:39.740 added to the Constitution at the same time as the Eighth expressly contemplates that a defendant may be

00:16:45.420 tried for a capital crime and deprived of life as a penalty so long as proper procedures are followed.

00:16:53.420 It is manifestly clear that the Constitution permits the state to deprive criminals of life for serious

00:17:02.340 crimes. This is an argument also for originalism because, especially on this case, because conservatives

00:17:11.720 are divided about this. Pope Benedict said this when he was still Pope, which is that there can be

00:17:18.840 legitimate disagreement among Catholics as to the question of the death penalty. He's recognizing 0.99

00:17:25.360 Catholics are very split on the question of the death penalty. This new Pope wants to pretend that

00:17:31.720 there can't be legitimate disagreement, but there can be. And the same is true for the conservative

00:17:36.800 movement. I totally get the arguments against the death penalty. I don't think they're ultimately

00:17:42.040 convincing. I don't even think they're really that good. But they're legitimate arguments. I think there

00:17:46.940 can be totally legitimate disagreement among conservatives about the death penalty. However,

00:17:52.940 there cannot be legitimate disagreement over the constitutionality of the death penalty.

00:17:58.860 The death penalty is obviously, repeatedly, manifestly constitutional. And even if you don't like the death penalty,

00:18:08.900 even if you wish that there were some prohibition of the death penalty in the constitution, you still

00:18:17.940 should defend originalism. You still should defend what the constitution means. You still should defend

00:18:25.320 the constitutionality of the death penalty. Why is that? Because what is the alternative?

00:18:32.400 Even the liberals should defend originalism. Even the radicals, even the radical reformers.

00:18:40.640 Because what is the alternative? I got to ask Justice Scalia this when I was still in college. I got to meet

00:18:48.140 him twice before he died. And one of the questions that was asked was, shouldn't this method of

00:18:58.020 constitutional interpretation? Originalism, shouldn't this just be taken in the context of all the other

00:19:03.800 methods of constitutional interpretation? And he said, what other method? At least originalists have

00:19:11.440 a clear interpretive scheme. At least originalists have a clear interpretive methodology. What's the

00:19:19.440 constitutional interpretive methodology of Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Sonia Sotomayor? It's willy-nilly. What is

00:19:29.380 the clear method of constitutional interpretation of Earl Warren? There isn't one. It's whatever little

00:19:36.260 fancies pop into his head. Who is to decide evolving standards of decency? Earl Warren, I guess. Just

00:19:45.440 whatever they want. They say, you know, those framers obviously allowed for the death penalty. But

00:19:50.940 today, I, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, don't like it. And so I'm going to pretend it's unconstitutional.

00:19:55.520 Okay. Well, I think, I think when the framers wrote the constitution, I think what they really meant

00:20:02.940 was that in 2019, Michael Knowles should get a lifetime supply of Chick-fil-A sandwiches.

00:20:08.320 I'm pretty sure that's what they meant. That's just what I feel because,

00:20:12.920 because that would form a more perfect union for me. So I think they wrote, we the people,

00:20:19.220 in order to form a more perfect union, obviously my having free Chick-fil-A sandwiches for the rest

00:20:25.040 of my life would make the union more perfect, definitely to me. So give me my Chick-fil-A.

00:20:30.340 It's there. Look, it's just evolving. It's just an evolving understanding. I know what you're

00:20:34.560 going to say. There wasn't Chick-fil-A at the time of the ratification. Right, right. But because

00:20:39.440 of evolving standards of decency, because of evolving standards of taste and deliciousness,

00:20:46.280 I think it's manifestly clear that in order to form a more perfect union, you need to give me free

00:20:50.740 chicken sandwiches for the rest of my life. What the liberals on the court are saying is not in any

00:20:56.480 way less ridiculous than the statement that I just made. And I really am waiting. I know a few 0.90

00:21:03.520 liberals, left-wingers who would call themselves textualists and originalists because they see

00:21:09.300 that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. They see that either you accept the meaning

00:21:15.740 of the constitution for what it is, or you don't have a constitution. Either you accept what the

00:21:22.720 words mean, and then if you don't like them, you amend the constitution, or if there's more wiggle room

00:21:27.900 in the law, you just pass a law, or you don't have law, or you don't have the constitution.

00:21:33.680 This reminds me of that Bible analogy. When people say, they start quoting the Bible out

00:21:40.440 of context. Alyssa Milano does this a lot. We'll get to that in a second to defend the indefensible. 1.00

00:21:45.820 But when people say, well, in the Bible, it says this, and that's why, and then they go form all 0.90

00:21:50.600 these crazy conclusions from it. Looking at the Bible without context, without a knowledge of

00:21:59.340 history, and trying to draw grand theological conclusions from that is like looking down a deep,

00:22:06.380 dark well, and all you see is your own reflection on the surface. This is why there are 30,000

00:22:14.820 denominations of people who all have the one true interpretation of the Bible, and it was finally

00:22:22.000 discovered in 1967, and finally, oh, after 2,000 years of darkness, finally, random Joe Schmoe has

00:22:28.360 figured out the true meaning of the, okay, fine, whatever. The same thing about the constitution.

00:22:33.880 When you look down at that profound document, with all that profound history and tradition that it

00:22:38.360 represents, and all of the tradition that's come from it, and you look down at it, and you take it

00:22:42.860 completely out of context, completely out of the context of what the words meant by the people who

00:22:48.240 wrote them, and what they were commonly understood to mean at the time of ratification, you are just

00:22:53.620 looking down a deep, dark well, and all you see is your own reflection on the surface, your own

00:22:59.500 evolving standards of decency, or in this case, indecency. Excellent decision from Judge Gorsuch,

00:23:06.040 excellent decision from Kavanaugh, and Alito, and Roberts, and Thomas, all the good conservatives.

00:23:10.680 Well done, guys. Really glad we won that last presidential election, so we got those two

00:23:15.180 judges to make a very good decision. Speaking of death, there is an evolving indecency standard

00:23:23.820 from Alyssa Milano, who now is leading the charge in Hollywood to boycott Georgia. Why, you ask?

00:23:32.340 Because Georgia doesn't want to kill as many babies. This has become the crusade. Now Alyssa Milano is 1.00

00:23:38.120 invoking God in her quest to kill more babies. We will analyze Alyssa Milano's very suspect theology. 0.96

00:23:46.540 Then, news that the assault weapons ban doesn't lower homicide. Then, a poem about suicide to kick

00:23:53.460 off National Poetry Month. But first, go to dailywire.com. You have to do it. You have got to do it.

00:24:00.480 Listen to the headline today from Think Progress. This was after that decision came down from Judge

00:24:06.900 Gorsuch. Gorsuch just handed down the most bloodthirsty and cruel death penalty opinion of

00:24:14.140 the modern era. Get your tumblers out. You need the tumbler, or the tears will get all over your

00:24:23.300 computer, or your phone, or your... And it will all break apart. All your electronics will fizzle, and then

00:24:31.220 you will drown. So go get the Leftist Tears Tumbler. Ten bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership.

00:24:36.300 You get everybody at The Daily Wire. You get to ask questions in the mailbag coming up Thursday, so make

00:24:40.080 sure to get your questions in. We'll be right back with a lot more.

00:24:43.040 Alyssa Milano is invoking God to kill more babies. Okay, so why is this? The background 0.98

00:25:01.680 here is that Georgia is trying to pass a heartbeat bill. This is the idea that you can't kill babies 0.85

00:25:08.240 down the line. Now, we know that 80% of Americans oppose late-term abortion. We know that two-thirds

00:25:12.940 of Americans who identify as pro-choice oppose late-term abortion. The vast majority of this

00:25:18.920 country opposes late-term abortion. But Hollywood loves late-term abortion. And the Democrat Party

00:25:25.440 loves late-term abortion. And the Democrat governor of Virginia loves abortion after the child's

00:25:31.440 already been born. And the governor of New York loves abortion while the child's being born. And

00:25:35.800 all of the Democrat senators love taking away protections from babies who survive abortion.

00:25:40.860 They've just gone crazy on the question of abortion. So now, Georgia's trying to pass this 0.98

00:25:45.980 heartbeat bill to save some babies. And Hollywood is up in arms. Because a lot of TV and film is shot

00:25:54.060 in Georgia. This has been going on for years now. Georgia had a lot of tax incentives for Hollywood

00:25:58.800 to come out there. And so it's brought a lot of the industry out to Georgia. Now, Hollywood is

00:26:03.220 threatening to take it all away if they don't let them keep killing babies and serving them up to 0.99

00:26:06.940 Moloch for dinner. So Alyssa Milano is leading the charge, of course. Alyssa Milano, the voice of

00:26:12.500 her liberal generation. Alyssa Milano has somehow become the most articulate spokesperson on the 0.99

00:26:19.320 left. It's her and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And she's leading Amy Schumer, Judd Apatow, Alec Baldwin,

00:26:25.680 all threatening to boycott if Georgia doesn't keep killing babies. Also, for those last two guys,

00:26:32.540 Judd Apatow and Alec Baldwin, how creepy is it when men are pro-abortion extremists?

00:26:40.240 It is the creepiest thing. It's creepier than Beto O'Rourke. Well, I guess he's just an example

00:26:45.660 of that. Never mind. It's so, so creepy. It's creepy when women do it, too. But it's especially 1.00

00:26:50.240 creepy when men do it. This is what they wrote, quote, we cannot in good conscience continue to

00:26:56.140 recommend our industry remain in Georgia. Now, Hollywood brings a lot of money to Georgia.

00:27:01.580 Hollywood brings a lot of work to Georgia because a lot of people now have gone to Georgia, worked in

00:27:06.380 the industry, working around the industry, working downstream of the industry. So Hollywood is now

00:27:12.760 literally offering to Georgia a deal with the devil. They're saying, ooh, hey, do you like all

00:27:19.060 that mammon that we keep bringing you? Do you like how we keep satisfying all of your lusts and greed

00:27:24.300 and giving you a lot of money? Do you like that? Okay, we'll keep doing that. But you have to keep

00:27:31.240 feeding us all of those babies of yours. You have to keep giving us all those babies. 0.62

00:27:35.860 Listen, here's, it's a really simple tax incentive structure. You just give us a little bit of a tax

00:27:40.780 incentive and you pour an endless stream of babies down the gullet of Baal to satisfy his demonic 0.98

00:27:46.880 urges. And then we'll keep bringing you the jobs. Come on, it's no big deal. We hash these out all the

00:27:52.000 time. I'll get my agent from CIA on the line. We'll hash it out. You'll give us all your babies and 0.96

00:27:56.360 we'll eat them. And it's all good, right? Okay. That is what a deal with the devil is. So it's no

00:28:01.460 surprise that Alyssa Milano is now invoking God to justify killing babies. Here's what she wrote. 0.90

00:28:08.300 I love God. I believe in God. But I don't believe my personal beliefs of which we can't confirm

00:28:16.720 should override scientific facts and what we can confirm. Okay. Then she goes on to quote John 3, 12,

00:28:26.040 but I'll just obviously try to get past the incoherent grammar and syntax. She says,

00:28:33.100 I love God. I believe in God. That's interesting. I didn't know that she believed in God.

00:28:37.200 I take her at her word. So she believes in God, but I don't believe my personal beliefs,

00:28:44.580 which we can't confirm, should override scientific facts and what we can confirm.

00:28:49.120 So she doesn't believe in God. Because what she's saying is that God is a personal belief that she

00:28:57.260 can't confirm. And God is not a fact. The existence of God is not a fact. So she's saying the existence

00:29:04.340 of God is not knowable. She is not claiming that God exists. She's not claiming that the statement God

00:29:10.960 exists is true. What she's really saying is I sort of have this personal feeling about God. I just have

00:29:16.780 the feels. You know, sometimes I imagine certain things and I guess one of them is God, but it's

00:29:23.700 the existence of God is not a fact. So I prefer scientific facts. What scientific facts is she talking

00:29:32.520 about? We know that unborn babies are babies. We know that they're alive. They're not dead. They're

00:29:42.480 not rocks. They're living. We know that they're humans. They're not giraffes. They're not platypuses.

00:29:49.640 They're not goldfish. They're humans. So they're living human babies. That's a scientific fact.

00:29:57.580 Now, taking God out of it for just a second, it's very, I don't know what her personal beliefs

00:30:06.700 really are on God. She hasn't really explained that very much. We do know the personal belief

00:30:11.660 that she's really pushing here is that it is morally acceptable to kill babies. But then look 0.98

00:30:18.120 at what she just said. She said that personal beliefs that we can't confirm should not override

00:30:25.040 scientific facts that we can confirm. Babies are babies. That's a scientific fact that we can

00:30:33.460 confirm. It is morally acceptable to kill babies and murder them in the womb. That is a personal 1.00

00:30:41.640 belief that we most certainly cannot confirm. Even if you believe that it's true, even if you think

00:30:47.440 it's perfectly fine to kill babies in the womb, at the very least, you would have to admit that is a 1.00

00:30:53.380 personal belief and we can't confirm it. You can't confirm that to me, right? Okay. So if it is the

00:31:00.100 case that we should not allow personal beliefs that we can't confirm to override scientific facts that

00:31:05.220 we can confirm, then we most certainly should not be killing babies in Georgia or anywhere else for

00:31:11.940 that matter. She actually makes the case for the opposite of the thing that she thinks she's making 1.00

00:31:16.920 the case for. And then she goes on and quotes John 3.12. If I have told you earthly things and you do not

00:31:25.620 believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? Again, just a total, total self-own, just a total

00:31:34.840 colossal attack on her own argument. Here is an earthly thing. Babies are babies. 0.66

00:31:42.340 That's an earthly thing. And you do not believe that. So how can you possibly believe if you're told

00:31:51.740 heavenly things? Really bad argument, really weird obsession, really out of line with the vast

00:32:00.120 majority of Americans who oppose killing babies in the womb. That's Hollywood for you. 0.55

00:32:06.780 No wonder people aren't going to their movies. That's so weird. It doesn't make any sense,

00:32:11.760 does it? No wonder Unplanned, a pro-life movie, one of the first ever made, made on a shoestring

00:32:19.540 budget, cut off from social media, savaged by the mainstream critics, became the number five movie

00:32:25.840 in America over the weekend. 94% audience score. It's a huge, when you look at it, you know,

00:32:36.540 their Vox.com is finally admitting. They finally say they went crazy with the Russia thing. It was

00:32:42.860 Matt Taby from Rolling Stone said, in purely journalistic terms, this is an epic disaster.

00:32:48.180 Sean Illing from Vox said, a lot of people simply did not want to believe that Trump was a legitimate

00:32:53.760 president. That someone this vulgar and this dishonest to win the election. And I think that

00:32:57.440 disbelief and the emotional devastation of his election colored a lot of our judgments. Basically

00:33:01.960 taking a mea culpa and saying, you know, we all went crazy. Gosh, wasn't that crazy how for two years

00:33:08.640 we all convinced ourselves that Donald Trump, the guy we've all known for 40 years, tabloid star,

00:33:14.420 reality TV star, that that guy was actually a super secret double agent spy working for the Kremlin.

00:33:20.080 Wow, what a crazy self-induced psychosis we've just lived through. That's what we're seeing with

00:33:25.720 abortion. We're going to look back on this, or future generations are going to look back and say,

00:33:32.040 do you know that the most famous people in the country, people who were in movies and TV,

00:33:39.240 they were totally obsessed with killing babies? And they, do you know, they made arguments

00:33:47.000 invoking the name of God himself to justify killing babies? How on earth did that happen?

00:33:57.640 It's a self-induced psychosis. And the way you know it's a psychosis is it's basically only believed

00:34:03.680 by these small numbers of lunatics in Hollywood. That they are not representative of the American 0.83

00:34:12.560 people. They're not representative of Democrats. They're not representative of liberals. They're

00:34:18.620 not even representative of people who support abortion. Even people who support abortion,

00:34:26.620 two-thirds of them oppose late-term abortion. These guys cheer on abortion up until the baby's being

00:34:34.100 born and some of them thereafter. That is a self-induced psychosis. And they're all going to look

00:34:41.900 very foolish in the coming years. They already look foolish, I guess. But it's a very dangerous 1.00

00:34:49.380 game to be invoking God on these things. They might have consequences beyond just public opinion.

00:34:54.420 Speaking of death, again, there was a new study that came out. You know, we've been told by all

00:35:01.800 these same people, we need to ban the AR-15. We need to ban large capacity magazines. We need to ban,

00:35:09.340 we need to do something. Do something. David Hogg is going to go on television and call senators

00:35:16.980 murderers and terrorists. All those kids from Parkland who decided to try to get famous off

00:35:23.920 of a tragedy. They go on TV. If you don't stop taking money from the NRA, if you don't ban the AR-15,

00:35:32.320 if you don't ban high capacity magazines, you're a murderer, you're a terrorist, you have blood on your 0.98

00:35:36.520 hands. Turns out none of that's true. There was a study that came out. It's called The Impact of

00:35:41.100 State Firearm Laws on Homicide and Suicide Deaths in the USA, 1991 to 2016, a panel study. This study

00:35:48.440 looked at four states. It looked at 10 different types of gun control. It concluded high capacity

00:35:54.920 magazine and assault weapons bans do not lower homicide rates. Period. Punto e basta.

00:36:03.560 Now, I sort of say these things in a, with a little bit of a sarcastic voice or I'll put them in quotes

00:36:11.780 when I write it. Because what is a high capacity magazine? I think in California these days, it's

00:36:17.060 like if you can have 11 rounds, that's high capacity. What is an assault weapon? Assault weapon is a made

00:36:22.080 up term. What's the difference between a regular hunting rifle that you can think of and an AR-15

00:36:29.560 assault weapon? Practically, basically no difference at all. A lot, but the reason that they use these

00:36:35.360 terms, the reason that activists invented these terms is because they create a false image in your

00:36:40.180 mind. When you hear assault weapon, you think of an assault rifle. You think of a fully automatic

00:36:44.720 rifle. You think of a machine gun. You think of people going into war, pulling the trigger once and

00:36:49.720 having a spray of bullets come out. You think of Al Capone with a Tommy gun. What is an assault weapon

00:36:55.840 though? It's just a gun. You pull the trigger once and one bullet comes out. Fully automatic weapons

00:37:02.460 have been outlawed for a very long time. Heavily, heavily regulated. Pull the trigger once, one bullet

00:37:10.400 comes out. And the people who are pushing gun control laws are so disingenuous. This study is not going to

00:37:16.760 change their mind. It was never about preventing homicides. It was never even about preventing mass

00:37:21.760 shootings. We know for a fact that many, many, many more people are killed every year from handguns

00:37:28.380 than from AR-15s and actually any rifle all put together. Order of magnitude and multiples more

00:37:35.240 people killed from handguns. More people are killed from hammers and baseball bats than are killed from

00:37:40.380 AR-15s. And yet they go after the AR-15. One, because the AR-15 is a very popular rifle. And two,

00:37:47.680 because they know they can trick people. Because it looks scary. It's not really much more lethal.

00:37:53.640 It just looks really scary. And they know that they can. It's totally disingenuous.

00:37:58.200 All a gun grabbing law. So this is a good statistic to have to be able to cite. But it's not going to

00:38:03.940 change anybody's mind. It's not going to, it's not really going to change the discourse other than

00:38:12.260 giving the people who want to protect our rights and our liberties and our constitution a little more

00:38:17.760 ammo, so to speak. But it doesn't matter. The arguments over gun control are not going to be won

00:38:24.460 on statistics. Very few arguments generally are won over statistics. I was just talking about this last

00:38:30.200 night at Drew University, which is, I was giving a talk last night on identity politics there. And at all

00:38:37.360 these schools, the students will come up and ask, how can I make more compelling arguments to the

00:38:42.480 left? And I say, stop being an egghead. Stop using statistics. Statistics are all fine. They're all well and 0.94

00:38:48.820 good. They're sort of impressive. They're also easily manipulable, and especially in the social sciences. So

00:38:54.760 that's fine. Cite a few statistics. But arguments are not won and lost on statistics. You have to make a moral

00:39:00.200 argument. You have to make a qualitative argument. You have to say the reason that we need the Second

00:39:06.180 Amendment is to protect our liberty. The framers of the Constitution knew this. We need to have the

00:39:12.140 Second Amendment in case the government ever turns tyrannical and tries to take away our Second

00:39:16.180 Amendment. Democratic governments have turned tyrannical many, many times throughout the West

00:39:20.940 in recent history. Happened all throughout Europe. It hasn't happened here yet. Good thing. One of the

00:39:25.840 reasons that it very, very likely will never happen here is because we have the right to keep and bear

00:39:30.420 arms. The right to keep and bear arms is not about hunting. It's not about target practice. It's about

00:39:36.120 protecting me and my family and my friends and my property. That's in a very personal, tangible

00:39:44.580 way. In a broader sense, it's about protecting my community. It's about protecting my liberty. It's

00:39:50.820 about protecting my way of life. It's about protecting my traditions. It's about protecting our system of

00:39:57.760 governance in the United States. That's what it's about. Oh, and also, assault weapon bans don't do

00:40:04.580 anything to change the homicide rate. It's a little addendum there. Even if you could make a good

00:40:11.100 moral argument, you lefties, you're also making a completely stupid argument because the thing that 1.00

00:40:18.020 you're proposing doesn't achieve the thing that you say will achieve. But it's not inefficiency that 0.99

00:40:24.360 is the cause of the argument being bad. It's the premises themselves. It's the arguments themselves from

00:40:30.260 the left that are bad, and we should discuss them on those terms. Do we have time to talk about Biden's

00:40:37.660 second accuser? Oh, I really want to talk about it, but I think we're out of time. So instead,

00:40:43.380 I will end, oh gosh, it's so good though, because I have to defend Joe Biden again. I have to do it.

00:40:48.660 I guess we'll have to do it tomorrow. More people coming out of the woodwork. Looks like Bernie Sanders

00:40:53.120 is behind a lot of these hits, and it's just a totally BS, disingenuous attack. We'll get to it

00:40:58.040 tomorrow. Before we leave today, it's National Poetry Month. Poetry is basically dead. Nobody

00:41:02.940 reads poetry anymore, but conservatives should read poetry. Don't be an egghead. Make good arguments. 0.91

00:41:10.160 People forget. We think of conservatives in this day and age as these sterile, cold, clinical,

00:41:15.700 calculating economist types. When Edmund Burke began what we would call modern conservative thought,

00:41:22.820 he said, the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded

00:41:27.960 it, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Edmund Burke and the conservatives

00:41:32.060 who follow in his tradition are not sophisters, economists, and calculators. Actually, the people

00:41:38.420 who followed right after Burke were the romantics. They were romantic poets. Coleridge, those guys.

00:41:43.920 And so it's National Poetry Month. The left has sort of alienated conservatives from poetry because

00:41:49.700 they've written horrific poetry for a century. So when you think of poetry, you think of some schmuck 1.00

00:41:53.920 wearing a black beret in some club downtown saying, like, fish, I saw my dad in the hallway. 0.97

00:42:03.800 Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. Hamburger. And they think that that's a poem. You know, as the literary critic

00:42:10.860 Harold Bloom said, slam poetry is the death of art. But good poetry is a wonderful thing, and it enriches

00:42:17.320 our lives. And, uh, and it, there can be light poems, there can be funny poems, there can be profound

00:42:23.380 poems, there can be, you know, poetry is just a wonderful art form. It's too bad that it died.

00:42:27.480 So to begin, in keeping with our theme today, I'm, I wanted to read a very mediocre poem, but sort of

00:42:34.460 funny nonetheless, by Dorothy Parker called Resume, and I'll try to, try to bring up some more poems as they occur

00:42:40.120 to me throughout National Poetry Month. Resume by Dorothy Parker. Razors pain you, rivers are damp,

00:42:48.460 acids stain you, and drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful, nooses give, gas smells awful,

00:42:56.740 you might as well live. That's our show. I'll be back tomorrow. See you then. In the meantime,

00:43:00.640 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:43:02.640 Today on the Ben Shapiro,

00:43:32.640 Is the Democratic Party ready to break with Joe Biden and Barack Obama? That's today on The Ben

00:43:37.640 Shapiro Show.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 02, 2019

Ep. 324 - Killing Babies, Saving Murderers

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