The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 330 - Assimilation Isn’t Racist

00:00:00.000 The president came out swinging on Saturday, describing the need for immigrants to assimilate

00:00:05.440 and learn the language of the countries that they are moving to. He also explained how

00:00:11.120 there is legitimate fear among native populations over the massive influxes of newcomers. The only 1.00

00:00:17.800 surprising aspect of those statements is that they were not made by President Donald Trump.

00:00:22.060 They were made by President Barack Obama. That's a far cry from the open borders policies

00:00:27.420 of the modern Democrat Party. We will examine what that shift means for the left in 2020.

00:00:33.240 Then, speaking of 2020, Democrat congressman and presidential candidate Eric Swalwell tweeted

00:00:39.240 out yesterday, I am you, which contradicts my previous belief that he was he and I am me

00:00:46.780 and we are the walrus. Goo goo goo joob. Finally, the mailbag. I'm Eric Swalwell and this is the

00:00:52.100 Eric Swalwell Show.

00:00:57.420 I'm having a real identity crisis. This is so difficult with all of these Democrats telling

00:01:05.380 me I am they. Previously, I was Pedro. I think I was Beto for a while. There's a lot of identity

00:01:11.740 crisis. I'm going to be speaking tonight at the University of Missouri, Kansas City on identity

00:01:16.280 crises, on how men are not women. We have a lot to get to. But first, let's make a little money,

00:01:21.500 honey. And let's talk about a very important message paid for by the National Highway Traffic

00:01:27.820 Safety Administration. NHTSA is working hard to combat texting while driving. Cops are writing

00:01:34.280 tickets for people all over the place. Well, if they text while they drive, you drive, you text,

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00:01:45.240 writing tickets for those who do it. Texting and driving isn't just a dangerous problem. It is

00:01:50.380 deadly. In fact, thousands of people die every year in crashes related to distracted driving.

00:01:55.720 That's why cops are out writing tickets for those who text while they drive. And they're doing it to

00:02:00.540 save lives. Between 2012 and 2017, nearly 20,000 people died in crashes involving a distracted driver.

00:02:08.140 And if your own safety isn't enough reason to stop driving while distracted, here's another one.

00:02:12.320 It's also illegal. So remember, if you text while driving, you will get caught. You drive,

00:02:17.700 you text, you text, you pay. Texting and driving isn't just a dangerous problem. It's deadly. And if

00:02:22.420 you drive while distracted, you are three times more likely to crash. Far too many people still

00:02:27.980 don't recognize the dangers. Do you know that when you send or receive a text, you take your eyes off

00:02:32.400 the road for about five seconds? And at 55 miles per hour, that's like driving more than the length of

00:02:36.940 a football field with your eyes closed. It's why cops are writing tickets to anyone caught texting while

00:02:42.180 driving and they're doing it to save lives. Remember, if you text while driving, you will get caught.

00:02:46.780 You drive, you text, you pay. It's very stupid to text while you drive. And how bad will you feel 1.00

00:02:54.740 if you get into some awful accident that hurts you or hurts somebody else because you can't wait to

00:03:02.120 say teeheehee and send an emoji? Don't be stupid. So these comments that came out on Saturday from 1.00

00:03:10.460 the president are provoking shock, consternation at the xenophobia, the bigotry, the hatefulness,

00:03:19.780 the president of the United States saying that we should force immigrants to our countries to

00:03:27.700 assimilate. We should encourage them to assimilate. It is incumbent on them to assimilate, to learn the

00:03:32.320 language. How xenophobic. Doesn't it sound just like Donald Trump, except it's not Donald Trump.

00:03:37.920 It is Barack Obama. Here is him saying it himself. If you're going to have a coherent,

00:03:43.400 cohesive society, then everybody has to have some agreed upon rules. It's, you know, it's not racist

00:03:49.480 to say, ah, if you're going to be here, then you should learn the language of the country that you

00:03:54.360 just arrived at. That's not racist. It's actually true. It's exactly true. What he is saying is exactly

00:04:01.760 right. He opens up, he says, should we want to encourage newcomers to learn the language of the

00:04:06.300 country they're moving to? Of course. It's not racist to say if you're going to be here, you should learn

00:04:11.060 the language of the country you arrived at. Of course. We need to have some sort of common language

00:04:17.160 in which all of us can work and learn and understand each other. Of course, this is simply natural in

00:04:24.200 a republic such as ours, especially in a republic where you have to govern yourselves. You need to be

00:04:29.320 able to talk to each other. And quite literally, you need to share a language. Even if you don't

00:04:35.120 use words in exactly the same way, even if you don't share opinions, even if you don't share a

00:04:39.020 view of the world, you at least need to have the same words and symbols and language that will allow

00:04:45.100 you to communicate. And Barack Obama makes an even better point. He says, reducing fear on the part of

00:04:51.140 people who are already there requires some levels of adaptation from the people who are coming in.

00:04:56.620 There is a legitimate fear. This is natural. It's hardwired into us that when a group of people

00:05:04.120 that's very different, culturally very different, has different practices, speaks a different language,

00:05:08.240 when they come in, you're going to have a bit of fear because it's so unknown. You don't know what

00:05:12.800 they want. They don't know what you want. You don't know how to get along together. You don't know if

00:05:16.620 they're going to try to destroy your traditions or if they're going to adopt them themselves.

00:05:20.100 Obama says, we are still wired to only be able to process knowing about 150 people in our brains.

00:05:29.040 He's referring to aspects of evolutionary psychology, the ideas that come out that really we can only

00:05:35.820 keep a small number of people and acquaintances in our heads at any given time and we really can't

00:05:41.920 expand beyond that. And so he points out, now suddenly we're in cities with strangers we don't

00:05:48.160 know and we're asked to trust them and it goes against some of our impulses. Yes, this is all

00:05:54.900 right. Barack Obama is saying this. This is not just a Democrat, but a very left-wing Democrat.

00:06:02.360 The most left-wing president we've had, certainly since Woodrow Wilson, certainly since FDR, I guess.

00:06:09.560 Very, and in some ways, much more left-wing than they are. And he's just pointing out the obvious.

00:06:14.500 So the Daily Caller went out, they did a man on the street video, and they read Barack Obama's

00:06:19.120 comments to people and they pretended that they were Donald Trump's comments. And they said,

00:06:22.840 what do you think? Do you think that those comments are racist?

00:06:26.040 These are comments from the president about immigration from this weekend. And we're just

00:06:29.320 seeing what people think and you can read it here.

00:06:30.960 That's most definitely a racist idea. I don't know what he's doing. He can just stop what he's

00:06:35.380 doing for real. It's extremely racist for him to believe that English is the only language that

00:06:40.280 we should know. I don't agree with that statement that you have to learn English in order to come

00:06:45.280 to this country. So you're not in favor of any kind of assimilation at all? No, I'm not. English isn't

00:06:50.380 even the dominant language in the world. I'm against the idea of forcing people to learn English or

00:06:55.140 saying that if you don't learn English, you can't get a job here. Do you think people should adopt any 1.00

00:06:59.060 parts of American culture or not really? No, I really don't. I think people should be free to live

00:07:04.780 their life wherever they want to live. Do you think it should be encouraged? Um, I think that

00:07:09.820 the resources should be made available to and accessible to everyone. Are you in favor of open

00:07:14.180 borders as well? Yes. Well, I mean, you should, you should learn the language, but you can't learn

00:07:20.840 it immediately if you don't know it. All right. So of all of those people, just that woman at the

00:07:26.860 end, she says, yeah, you obviously you should learn the language. I guess it's kind of hard to learn

00:07:32.800 it, but you should learn it anyway. Right. Of course you should for, for two reasons, by the

00:07:39.700 way, on the one hand, because you, you should expect to try to accommodate yourself to the

00:07:46.400 culture that you're trying to enter. Nobody asked you to come. Nobody's saying you have to come over

00:07:50.640 here. Please, please come. You wanted to come into this country. You should have the respect to learn

00:07:56.080 the language and engage in some of their cultural practices and traditions. Also, if you don't learn

00:08:03.080 the language, you will not have a successful life. If you come to America and you refuse to learn

00:08:08.580 English or you say, no, I'm going to, you're going to take the advice of this leftists and not learn

00:08:12.880 English. You're going to have a terrible life. You're not going to be able to get a good job. 0.99

00:08:16.960 You're not going to be able to make strong social connections to your community. You're it's just awful

00:08:21.760 advice. It's that classic road to hell is paved with good intentions. The left wants to say,

00:08:28.160 Hey, you, you do you. I don't want to impose my values on you. But the practical effect of that is

00:08:34.480 that you create a permanent underclass of people who can work only the most difficult and low paying

00:08:39.520 jobs and who are totally isolated from the community as a whole. Now, this isn't just a fringe

00:08:46.440 view. This isn't just people on the street. This is the mainstream view of the Democrat party. Don't

00:08:52.760 assimilate. Don't learn the language. Come over open borders. Come on over. Don't pay any respect, 1.00

00:08:58.340 not only to traditions, but to laws. As recently as what, 10 years ago, you had leading Democrats,

00:09:04.520 guys like Chuck Schumer, who were basically saying exactly what Donald Trump is saying on immigration

00:09:10.980 and exactly what Barack Obama is now saying on immigration. Here's, here's just a cut up of Chuck

00:09:15.760 Schumer and Donald Trump. You can barely tell the difference. The American people want their

00:09:20.360 government to be serious about protecting the public, enforcing the rule of law and creating

00:09:27.040 a rational system of legal immigration that will proactively fit our needs rather than reactively

00:09:33.080 responding to future waves of illegal immigration. But we want an immigration policy that's fair,

00:09:39.760 equitable, but that's going to protect our people. What the American people are pleading for

00:09:45.280 is sanity and common sense in our immigration system.

00:09:49.880 So that's it. Now, now, by the way, Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer and all those guys were quite

00:09:56.780 radical in practice on immigration. In practice, they were encouraging open borders. Barack Obama gave

00:10:03.500 a recklessly unconstitutional executive amnesty to illegal aliens in the country. However, in their

00:10:10.880 rhetoric, they were not that radical. In their rhetoric, they were sort of normal. And this gets

00:10:17.740 to this line from Roche-Foucault, who famously said, hypocrisy is the tribute, vice pays to virtue.

00:10:23.880 So they might have taken these vicious actions. They might have had open borders and been encouraging

00:10:28.840 people to come in and not to assimilate. But at least in their language, at least in their rhetoric,

00:10:34.140 they were paying tribute to the virtue of assimilation, of enforcing the law, of making 0.95

00:10:41.220 people wait in line, not letting certain people cut the line just because they're from a country

00:10:44.980 closer by than, say, a would-be American immigrant from Ghana or Nigeria or Southeast Asia. So in the

00:10:53.540 mainstream now, we've gotten rid of even paying tribute to virtue. Nancy Pelosi is saying that physical

00:11:00.380 borders to protect our national sovereignty are immoral and ineffective. Of course, that never

00:11:08.400 made any sense. It could only be one or the other. If it's ineffective, it's not immoral. If it's

00:11:12.360 immoral, it's not ineffective. But to say that it is immoral is to now say, we have no right to an

00:11:20.760 immigration regime. We have no right to expect anything from immigrants who would come to this 1.00

00:11:25.700 country. We have no right to expect, not just that they would learn the language, not just that they

00:11:32.540 would assimilate and take on cultural practices. We don't even have the right to expect that they

00:11:37.600 would come into our country legally. We don't even have the right to expect that they would, in their 1.00

00:11:42.540 first action in the country, respect a fundamental law. How do we know this for a fact? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,

00:11:50.920 when she was not even a congresswoman yet, when she was running, she endorsed the policy of abolishing

00:11:56.980 ICE, abolishing immigration and customs enforcement. A radical policy. And what happened? Did the

00:12:02.800 Democrats laugh at her and push her away? No, they all endorsed her policy. Beto O'Rourke, Kamala 0.96

00:12:08.580 Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Liz Warren. These are people who are now running for president. They all

00:12:16.700 followed suit. They all endorsed abolishing ICE. Now then some of them backed off of it. Kamala Harris

00:12:22.080 is trying to pretend now that she didn't endorse it. She totally did. All of those guys did. We're

00:12:26.440 talking about Senate Democrats. We're talking about presidential candidates. A bunch of congressmen

00:12:30.640 followed suit. The far left wing Democrat mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, followed suit. He said

00:12:36.080 ICE's time has come and gone. We can't have enforcement of our immigration laws. Now, Kirsten

00:12:42.460 Gillibrand, Kirsten Gillibrand doesn't show us very much because she's a completely mediocre candidate 1.00

00:12:48.240 who is probably going to be out of the Democrat presidential race before the first debate. But she's 1.00

00:12:53.440 an interesting case study because she had positioned herself for her whole career as a moderate, as a

00:12:58.640 middle-of-the-road or centrist. We can all work together. She was trying to position herself like Hillary

00:13:03.820 was in the 2000s and she was kind of the next Hillary Clinton. Now she is not only taking a leftward 0.91

00:13:10.800 radical turn. She's actually apologizing for all of her old positions. Here she is at a town hall

00:13:16.460 saying, please forgive me for formerly saying that illegal immigration is a bad thing.

00:13:22.860 So I think part of what Parker is talking about, obviously, is the dramatic change in your position

00:13:27.240 on this issue over time, right? From English, obviously, as a language, official language of

00:13:31.640 the country, not supporting things like benefits for illegal immigrants. That's part of your record 0.63

00:13:35.980 as well. What made you change? Well, when I was a member of Congress from upstate New York,

00:13:41.100 I was really focused on the priorities of my district. When I became senator of the entire

00:13:46.180 state, I recognized that some of my views really did need to change. They were not thoughtful enough

00:13:52.680 and didn't care enough about people outside of the original upstate New York district that I

00:13:57.800 represented. And so I learned. And I think for people who aspire to be president, I think it's really

00:14:03.860 important that you're able to admit when you're wrong and that you're able to grow and learn and

00:14:08.900 listen and be better and be stronger. This is actually a pretty good answer from her. It's about

00:14:14.300 as good an answer as she can give. She's saying, when I held those views, I had local interests that I

00:14:21.120 was representing in the Congress. But then I became a senator and I had broader interests.

00:14:27.520 Okay. Now the problem with this distinction here, the problem with this excuse is that even when

00:14:35.200 you're elected to Congress, you're not just being elected to represent some petty, tiny interest.

00:14:39.080 You're being represented, you're being elected for your judgment, for your judgment to represent a

00:14:43.700 local interest and the national interest. That's why you're in the federal government. But she actually

00:14:49.260 corrects this a little bit too. And I think you're going to be hearing a lot of Democrats giving the

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00:16:25.820 Message and data rates may apply. So Kirsten Gillibrand, this is her excuse. She says, well,

00:16:30.960 I represented a local interest and then I represented a bigger interest and I changed my views.

00:16:34.920 That doesn't quite explain it because basically what she's admitting is I had poor judgment and I was

00:16:40.800 petty and selfish and then I became, I don't know, still petty and selfish, but my circumstances changed.

00:16:46.860 Not a great answer. So she actually does go further and she says, yeah, I realized I was wrong.

00:16:53.880 I was wrong. She says she was wrong to encourage immigrants to learn English, to encourage immigrants

00:17:00.660 to assimilate, to oppose illegal immigration. That she was wrong. I'm sorry. Mea culpa, mea culpa,

00:17:08.480 mea maxima culpa. That's what she's saying. How pathetic. But this is the way that the whole race 1.00

00:17:18.260 is going to go. When you look at these candidates who are like wind, not windmills, what am I? Oh,

00:17:24.100 weathervanes. When you look at the weathervane candidates, like Kamala Harris is one of them,

00:17:28.080 Kirsten Gillibrand is very much one of them, Beto is one of them, a lot of weathervane candidates out

00:17:32.280 there. The ones who say, make me into whatever candidate you want. Shape me however you want to

00:17:38.380 shape me. Eric Swalwell, I am you, Eric Swalwell. For those weathervane candidates, they're telling us

00:17:44.040 which way the party is going. And it is very clear the wind is all blowing in the direction

00:17:48.120 of open borders and illegal immigration. And this creates a big problem for Democrats in 2020.

00:17:52.960 Americans hate illegal immigration. By the way, Americans hate large-scale legal immigration too.

00:18:03.980 There was a study that came out from Harvard Harris at the end of last year. It showed that

00:18:07.960 the majority of Americans want to radically reduce even the number of legal immigrants coming into this

00:18:13.400 country. They want to reduce it by over 50 percent, upwards of 60 percent, down to about half a million

00:18:19.780 per year. We're at about 1.2 million per year right now. So it shows you this isn't just about

00:18:25.480 illegal immigration. This isn't just about people violating our laws at the border. There actually

00:18:30.680 are broader questions here of assimilation, learning the language, integrating people into society so

00:18:37.340 that you don't have permanent underclasses, so that you don't have people isolating themselves.

00:18:41.600 Barack Obama gets this. Barack Obama's talking about that. That's why he's not just speaking about

00:18:46.160 illegal immigration. Sometimes President Trump, he only wants to talk about illegal immigration.

00:18:51.540 And he says, I'm so pro-immigration. I want more people coming here legally than ever.

00:18:56.780 It's kind of missing the point. The point is not just this narrow question of illegal immigration.

00:19:03.240 Poll after poll shows that immigration broadly, not just illegal aliens, is the number one issue for

00:19:10.340 Americans. And this creates a big problem for Democrats in 2020 because they've gone so

00:19:15.580 radical on it. If Barack Obama ran today with his current stated views on immigration,

00:19:23.560 he would not win the Democrat nomination. He could not say what he said on Saturday at his town hall

00:19:31.520 in Berlin and win the Democrat nomination this year. It would not happen.

00:19:36.740 Why have the Democrats gone so radical on this? They've gone so radical because they are reflexively

00:19:45.280 opposing Trump, which is a bad idea. In some ways, it's a good idea because Donald Trump is personally

00:19:50.880 unlikable to a lot of people. A lot of people find him personally offensive. But his policies are very,

00:19:57.880 very popular. I know you can find some poll, oh no, really people hate X, Y, and Z provision of the

00:20:06.120 wall or X, Y, and Z. B.S. They hate the tax law. Okay, fine, whatever. What that is reflecting is

00:20:13.420 people's aversion to Donald Trump's personality. People like his policies, which is why these issues,

00:20:20.940 immigration, illegal aliens, the economy, taxation, that's why they always rank at the top of people's 1.00

00:20:27.700 concerns. Donald Trump knew that. He knew that when he was running for office. He's a very smart

00:20:33.740 politician in many ways. And so he picks these very popular issues and stances that only he is taking

00:20:40.860 that actually oppose the kind of broad political consensus. And he wins on those issues, not on his

00:20:46.560 personality, on his issues. And Democrats stupidly say, well, we're going to reflexively oppose Trump 0.99

00:20:51.740 because he's personally unlikable. And so by opposing him, we're going to oppose all of his 0.99

00:20:56.500 issues, which does what? It backs you into this awful corner where now they've got to defend illegal

00:21:02.920 immigration. They've got to defend not learning English. They've got to defend not assimilating. 0.99

00:21:08.400 They've got to defend open borders. How are they going to be able to defend all of that? Who is going

00:21:13.840 to vote for them? They're going to win some plaudits from pundits and hardline activists.

00:21:21.720 But if Barack Obama today is too conservative to win the Democrat nomination, Barack Obama,

00:21:30.660 then who is going to win it? Who's going to get that nomination? And who do they think is going to

00:21:35.740 vote for that person to be president of the United States? What voters in Wyoming and Pennsylvania and

00:21:41.400 Michigan, Florida, who do they think are going to vote for those people? It's a, I think the reason

00:21:51.500 Barack Obama is making these comments is he's trying to open the door for Democrats to moderate

00:21:57.600 on this issue because he's looking down the path and he's saying, this is electoral suicide for them.

00:22:02.740 The question is, are Democrats going to heed his warning or is Barack Obama old news? And they're

00:22:08.220 moving on. They're moving on to some new candidate. Who are they moving on to? They're moving on to

00:22:13.260 Eric Swalwell. And this is sort of just by definition. Eric Swalwell is a Democrat congressman

00:22:21.840 who is a nobody, but he's decided he's running for president this year because everybody's running

00:22:26.980 for president this year. And Eric Swalwell really is the answer, I think, to this conundrum for Democrats

00:22:34.000 because Eric Swalwell tweeted out yesterday. He said, I am running for president of the United

00:22:38.860 States. I see you. I hear you. I'm for you. I am you. He's me. Okay. But this does solve a problem

00:22:52.900 for Democrats because right now, none of their candidates are going to be elected president.

00:22:58.900 There's no chance. And so if they keep running on this radical platform. So let's say Donald Trump

00:23:06.640 gets reelected. Everybody votes for Donald Trump. If Eric Swalwell is all of us and one of us is

00:23:13.900 Donald Trump, then that means that Donald Trump is Eric Swalwell, which means no matter who wins the

00:23:21.760 election. Eric Swalwell becomes president. Touché, Eric. Very, very well done. Now, the slogan itself,

00:23:32.260 pretty bad. Pretty stupid slogan. Actually, the most tedious and cliché slogan probably in all of 1.00

00:23:40.340 politics because it's so on the nose. I've been saying this now for days. I've been saying this since

00:23:45.860 he announced he was running. Eric Swalwell is not a presidential candidate. He's a parody of a

00:23:50.820 presidential candidate. If there were a presidential candidate on The Simpsons, if there were a

00:23:55.180 presidential candidate on South Park, it would be Eric Swalwell. He's taking this fact of campaigning,

00:24:02.460 which is that you need to show that you empathize with people, and he's just putting it so on the

00:24:08.440 nose. He's saying, I am you. I am you. See, I empathize. It's not believable if you have to say it.

00:24:15.220 It's like so many things. If you have to say it, it's probably not true. The most famous version of

00:24:21.200 this stupid slogan, I am you, comes from one of the most hilariously awful campaigns in modern 1.00

00:24:29.300 political history. This was from the Tea Party wave. I believe it was 2010. Christine O'Donnell was 1.00

00:24:33.880 running for the Senate. There was an accusation out somewhere that she's a witch, and she decided,

00:24:38.980 first of all, she decided to answer this accusation, which was probably not advisable, but then she

00:24:45.480 decided to answer it with this same awkward, awful slogan, I'm you.

00:24:52.200 I'm not a witch. I'm nothing you've heard. I'm you. None of us are perfect, but none of us can be

00:25:01.780 happy with what we see all around us. Politicians who think spending, trading favors, and backroom deals

00:25:08.740 are the ways to stay in office. I'll go to Washington and do what you'd do. I'm Christine

00:25:16.500 O'Donnell, and I approve this message. I'm you.

00:25:21.320 I'm you, and you're a witch, and you're going to cast spells on everybody. So awkward. So now Eric 0.94

00:25:28.920 Swalwell has two campaign slogans. He has, I am you, and the other one that he has, he put it in his

00:25:35.700 video and it's on his materials. Do good. I am you. Do good. Because the writers of The Simpsons are

00:25:47.720 the top campaign advisors to Eric Swalwell, I guess. A parody of a presidential campaign. Norm

00:25:53.480 McDonald, the greatest living comedian, had a great tweet on this. Eric Swalwell tweeted out, he said,

00:25:59.800 I'm running for president. I'm you. And Norm responds. He says, this is fine news indeed. It

00:26:05.860 explains my self-loathing. Bad, bad start for Eric Swalwell. A really bad start, actually, because we

00:26:17.080 ding Kirsten Gillibrand. She's a total mediocrity. She'll probably be out. She's starting out way better 1.00

00:26:21.800 than Eric Swalwell. Joe Biden's starting out a little bit better. Beto, a little bit better.

00:26:26.700 However, you don't want to start out as a joke. And he's starting out as a joke. He can't afford

00:26:32.840 to do that, especially as an unknown candidate. At least if you're a superstar candidate like Joe

00:26:38.860 Biden, you can afford a little bit of being a joke. You can't do that when you're nobody. The only

00:26:44.980 impression people have of Swalwell now is that he's a joke. At least Kirsten Gillibrand is lying low

00:26:50.720 enough to maybe be considered for, I don't know, VP or some position in some Democrat administration.

00:26:56.700 She's kind of a non-entity. Swalwell is a punchline. Hard to imagine where he goes from here. Where

00:27:04.580 will we go from here? We have a lot more to get to. We have got to get to the mailbag. But first,

00:27:09.120 let's say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. You got to go to dailywire.com. Dailywire.com.

00:27:14.520 10 bucks a month, $100 for an annual membership. You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show,

00:27:18.040 you get the Ben Shapiro show, you get the Matt Walsh show. You get to ask questions in the mailbag

00:27:21.200 coming right up. You get to ask questions on the backstage show. You get another kingdom. And

00:27:26.400 you get something much better than this totally faceless white coffee cup that I have in this

00:27:33.460 hotel room. You get the Leftist Tears Tumblr. The Leftist Tears Tumblr is very important because now

00:27:39.500 it's actually doubly important. Previously, the Leftist Tears Tumblr was a great vessel for leftist

00:27:45.660 tears. Nice and salty and delicious and you drink them. But now that Eric Swalwell, who is a leftist,

00:27:51.540 is you, then I guess that means the Leftist Tears Tumblr is a vessel for all of our tears. You've

00:27:58.760 just gotten, it's a twofer. You've doubled your usage of the Leftist Tears Tumblr. You can't afford

00:28:03.340 not to get it. Go to dailywire.com. We will be right back with the mailbag.

00:28:07.220 All right. We have got much more to get to, but first, let's make a little money, honey,

00:28:25.080 with an important message for your safety. I am talking, of course, about who is sponsoring this

00:28:32.700 ad paid for by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. NHTSA is working hard to combat

00:28:38.200 texting while driving. Cops are writing tickets for people who are texting while driving. You drive,

00:28:43.980 you text, you pay. Simple as that. Thousands of people die every year in crashes related to

00:28:49.500 distracted driving and cops are now writing tickets for people who text while they drive. Texting and

00:28:54.460 driving is not just a dangerous problem. It is a deadly problem. In fact, thousands of people die

00:29:01.320 every year in these crashes related to distracted driving. So the cops are out writing tickets to

00:29:06.000 those who text while driving. They're doing it, rather, to save lives. Between 2012 and 2017,

00:29:11.920 nearly 20,000 people died in crashes involving a distracted driver. If your own safety isn't enough

00:29:18.240 reason to stop driving while distracted, here's another one. It is illegal. If you text while driving,

00:29:23.940 you will get caught. You drive, you text, you pay. Texting and driving isn't just a dangerous

00:29:29.360 problem. It is a deadly problem. You are three times more likely to crash if you drive while

00:29:34.700 distracted. That is why the cops are writing tickets to anyone caught texting while driving.

00:29:39.360 They're doing it to save lives. When you send or receive a text, you take your eyes off the road

00:29:43.920 for about five seconds at 55 miles an hour. That's more than the length of a football field that you're

00:29:48.780 driving with your eyes closed. If you text while driving, you will get caught. You drive,

00:29:52.480 you text, you pay. All right, let's get to the mailbag. So we've got so much more to get to,

00:30:03.240 but we're just going to have to wait. Maybe I'll talk about it tonight in my speech. I'm going to

00:30:07.020 be speaking at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. If you are in Kansas City, come on by.

00:30:13.020 The doors are going to open at 730 Central Time. We're going to try to stream that out.

00:30:17.400 The speech will start at 8 o'clock Central. So what is that? 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern.

00:30:24.120 The topic of discussion tonight is men are not women. This should not be a crazy topic,

00:30:29.540 but apparently it's the most controversial thing in the world. So come check it out.

00:30:33.520 On to the mailbag. From Garland. Question. Two questions. First, what would your ideal humanities

00:30:40.840 department look like in a university? Second, do you know of any good studies regarding bias in

00:30:45.920 academia? Thanks a lot. Yeah, I know of about a million studies regarding bias in academia. The

00:30:51.900 most important study is just open your own eyes and you can see it pretty clearly. My ideal humanities

00:30:57.180 department, for the first question, would focus on the core liberal arts. Things like the classics,

00:31:04.960 things like history, things like literature. It would not focus on silly non-academic fields,

00:31:12.200 pseudo-academic fields, ideological fields like lesbian dance studies. I don't know. Women's gender 0.92

00:31:18.000 studies, race and migration studies. All of those studies things I would basically get rid of and I

00:31:23.320 would go back to core aspects of the humanities. Languages, art, literature, history. Those are the

00:31:34.300 things that are really going to form the basis of your education. And this is important for

00:31:38.280 conservatives too. It's not just that we get to spend all our time on our own ideological reading.

00:31:44.360 We should also go back to those classics. That is going to form the best education you can get.

00:31:49.080 As far as these studies go, just a few of them, there was a poll that came out, 61% of all Americans

00:31:55.700 have a negative view of higher education. So that means it's not just conservatives, it's not just

00:32:00.200 Republicans. It's a majority of all Americans. There was an Oxford study in 2018 that identified

00:32:06.140 significant what they called scholar activism in fields such as sociology and poli-sci,

00:32:12.900 highly politicized fields. There was a study from Brooklyn College and George Mason University

00:32:17.700 found that at colleges, liberal professors outnumber conservative professors 12 to 1. It gets worse.

00:32:26.920 In certain departments, like history, very important departments, that number rises to 33 to 1.

00:32:34.080 33 liberal professors for every one conservative professor. The National Association of Scholars

00:32:38.700 found nearly 40% of top-ranked liberal arts colleges have how many Republican professors?

00:32:45.460 Give you a guess. Zero. Zero. 40% of the top-ranked schools. Another study of sociology professors found

00:32:53.100 just 2% identify as conservative. When you add in libertarians, it gets up to 4%. 83% say they are liberal or

00:33:00.780 radical. And there was a study from Queen's University of Charlotte. It found that conservative

00:33:05.620 students self-censor during class discussions. They parrot what their liberal professors say.

00:33:12.220 This was backed up. I think there was another study by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

00:33:17.320 said exactly the same thing. A lot of studies to show this. It's not a conspiracy. I think everybody

00:33:25.160 knows it. I think the majority of Americans know it. And so how do you fix that? It's not that you're

00:33:30.700 all of a sudden going to get super conservative professors. You should just stop the liberal

00:33:35.560 indoctrination. You should stop those ideological majors and ideological pseudo-departments and get back

00:33:41.680 to the classics. At least then that's one way to rein it in. From James. Hi, Michael. Do you have a favorite

00:33:47.420 passage or phrase from the Bible? Thanks, James. Yes, I do. Leviticus 17.7. You shall no longer

00:33:56.240 worship the goat demons after whom you whore. This will be a statute for all times. Also translated as 1.00

00:34:06.920 you shall no longer sacrifice your sacrifices to goat demons after whom you whore. There's just 1.00

00:34:13.200 something about that. The language is very evocative. In, where is it? In Exodus, thou shalt not suffer a

00:34:19.660 witch to live. That's a good one. Or is that Deuteronomy? I don't know. There are many, many good

00:34:24.480 passages of the Bible. But broadly speaking, you should read the Bible as a whole. I'm actually quite,

00:34:30.880 I would caution one against pulling out just one part of the Bible and saying, ah, yes, this is the

00:34:39.700 be-all and end-all. You know, in the parable of the prodigal son, that parable has been described

00:34:48.280 as the gospel within the gospel. John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten

00:34:55.060 son that whosoever believes in him might not perish but might have everlasting life. That's been

00:34:58.760 described as the gospel within the gospel. There are important passages, but really you've got to take

00:35:04.260 it all together. What a lot of shallow-thinking atheists do when they try to debunk the Bible

00:35:11.000 is they say, ah, but how do you defend this line? You defend it in the light of all of revelation,

00:35:18.940 in the light of all scripture, and in the light of sacred tradition, and in the light of natural law,

00:35:23.540 and in the light of philosophy. And so if we don't take that whole view, we're likely to take

00:35:31.140 ourselves down shallow paths. From Logan, dear Michael, I've got an audiobook credit for my

00:35:38.080 Audible account. I need a good American history recommendation or a recommendation on history

00:35:42.160 that leads up to the American Revolution, something along the lines of the great Christopher Columbus

00:35:46.980 or early colonization. Thank you. God bless Logan. Yes, I have two books, both of which will be good

00:35:52.620 on Audible. If you want Columbus, you should read Admiral of the Ocean Sea by Samuel Elliot Morrison,

00:35:58.860 one of the greatest American historians ever, and a fabulous, very long, but fabulous biography of

00:36:05.000 Columbus. And if you're interested in colonization, say, from the time of the Mayflower and the early

00:36:12.220 United States-American experiment, you should read Nathaniel Philbrick's book, Mayflower.

00:36:18.720 Fabulous book. Really good about the voyage on the Mayflower and the early Plymouth colony.

00:36:24.140 And it's very readable. Both of those are very readable books. So highly recommended for both

00:36:28.860 of those while you're driving or working out or whatever. From Sarah. Hello, Michael. I go to a

00:36:33.200 lot of baseball games. I often wear a baseball hat with my long hair tied up in the back. Is it rude

00:36:38.720 not to take my hat off during the anthem or is it different for girls? Love listening to you and

00:36:42.500 Clavin. Thank you, Sarah. I'm sorry to tell you this. You asked the question on etiquette, so I'll give you

00:36:48.400 the answer. You have to take your baseball cap off. The rules are different for women and girls. 1.00

00:36:54.700 Women are, generally speaking, permitted to wear hats indoors or in houses of worship or even when 0.99

00:37:02.960 the national anthem is playing or the flag is being paraded by. Except when it's a baseball cap. Except when

00:37:08.940 it is a unisex cap. In that case, you are expected to take the hat off when the flag passes by in a parade

00:37:15.380 or when the anthem is playing. I don't make the rules. I just enforce them. Take it up with Emily

00:37:20.140 Post. From Joel. Dapper debonair of the Daily Wire. I come to you with a fashion question. Another

00:37:27.500 fashion question. That plagues me whenever a special occasion is upon me. What is the point of wearing a

00:37:33.260 tie? They just seem to be upside down nooses that always want to choke your neck. I never have to

00:37:39.340 dress formally for my occupation and when a special event arrives that warrants me wearing one, I always have

00:37:44.860 to look up how to tie a tie on my search engine. Should this pointless piece of fabric die like

00:37:49.420 powdered wigs? No. Learn how to tie a tie. Act like a man. What's the matter with you? 0.99

00:37:56.980 Ties are very important. Where do ties come from? Ties have a pretty interesting history, actually.

00:38:03.480 Ties come from Croat migrants. Why I know this, I don't know. When Croat migrants came during the

00:38:12.440 Manichean persecution of 1700 or so years, 1800 years ago, something like that. I guess 1700 years

00:38:19.040 ago. They come over into, I guess, what you would call Croatia and they wore to identify themselves

00:38:27.580 handkerchiefs around their necks. So they called themselves Croats. They called themselves Corvats 0.83

00:38:32.920 and this phrase evolved into cravat. In Italian, cravatta is what you say for tie. You wear a

00:38:42.160 cravat. It's a certain type of tie. When did this become popular in the West? It became popular during

00:38:46.780 the Thirty Years' War when Croat mercenaries were used and the young boy king, Louis XIV, took a liking to

00:38:55.600 this style trend, the cravat, and he started wearing one and then like everything Louis XIV did, it became

00:39:01.300 very popular. Ties tie everything together. I don't wear one nearly as much as I should. Highly

00:39:07.720 recommend wearing a tie. The problem in our society is not that we're too casual. That is definitely not

00:39:12.760 the problem. The problem in our society is we're, or I'm sorry, the problem is that we're too casual.

00:39:17.340 The problem is not that we're too formal. We are too casual. We're too casual in our speech. We're too

00:39:23.000 casual in our conversation. We're too casual in our dress. We're too casual in our dancing, in our singing,

00:39:29.060 in our attire. Tie it all together. Act like a man. Be civilized. Wear a tie. From Norman.

00:39:35.480 Hi, Michael. According to his latest book, Ben seems to think that the very essence of paganism

00:39:39.880 is polytheism. Thus, for him, the Greek philosopher's discovery of a single unmoved mover and cosmic

00:39:46.340 telos were an escape from the pagan worldview. Dante, however, famously kept the pagan philosophers out of

00:39:53.400 paradise because, regardless of their heady intellectual knowledge, they still needed conversion through

00:39:58.400 Christ. Who is right? Who is right? Ben or Dante? Dante, buddy. And if Dante, what is it that

00:40:07.120 philosophical pagans still lack that makes them not fully converted to a Judeo-Christian worldview?

00:40:12.480 Thanks, Norm. Okay, a lot here in this question, but it's a very, very good question. So, what Ben is

00:40:19.140 saying in his book is paganism is polytheism. And then the Greeks, like Plato or Aristotle, think of the

00:40:30.720 unmoved mover, the cosmic telos, this idea of a single god. And this escapes them from the pagan worldview.

00:40:39.280 Except Dante doesn't put them in paradise. He puts them in hell. This is sort of true. He actually puts

00:40:46.980 the Greek philosophers, the virtuous pagans, broadly speaking, which included Saladin, a Muslim. It

00:40:54.500 included some Romans. He puts them in the first circle of hell, but it's really just sort of fine. 1.00

00:40:59.460 It's sort of nice. It's called the Elysian Fields. And he puts them there not to punish them for their

00:41:05.960 transgressions. He puts them there because they don't have hope. They're pagans. They don't have hope of 1.00

00:41:12.640 the resurrection. They don't have the hope of Christianity. And actually, you use the phrase 0.93

00:41:18.680 Judeo-Christian worldview here. That's a very apt phrase because Dante doesn't put the Jews in hell.

00:41:25.940 Why doesn't Dante put the Jews in hell? He doesn't put the Jews in hell because the Jews are a messianic 0.98

00:41:30.540 people. They are awaiting the coming of the Messiah. They have hope. But the pagans and the Romans, 0.99

00:41:37.520 by definition, do not have hope. So even if they can recognize the unmoved mover, the cosmic telos,

00:41:43.120 whatever, they recognize these important intellectual aspects of God, they lack a living faith. They lack

00:41:50.620 hope. And so, through their own ideas, they preclude themselves from paradise. That's the difference there.

00:41:59.340 And, fortunately, those who have a messianic religion do have hope. From Scott.

00:42:06.900 Hello, Michael. My two questions for you. First, do you think the left wants to be like the book 1984

00:42:11.880 and Animal Farm with how they are controlling the government and media? Second, do you think the

00:42:17.400 left wants to bring segregation back with intersectionality? Thank you and keep doing great

00:42:22.240 work. Big fan of you and the Daily Wire. Yes, yes, yes. Is that clear enough if they want to do all of

00:42:33.960 those things? Yeah, they do. Of course they do. What do you mean? Do they want to bring 1984 an

00:42:38.700 animal farm? Do they want to have a centralized power associated with the government that controls you?

00:42:45.940 Yes. Not just controls you as a mechanism of politics, but controls you even in your thought,

00:42:53.100 but controls you even in your culture, but controls what you can say, what controls your

00:42:57.060 personal behavior, controls your personal opinions. Yes. They're openly advocating for that.

00:43:03.700 They're openly advocating for that. Now, do they want to bring segregation back with intersectionality?

00:43:09.600 Yes. I mean, they are literally doing that. They are literally segregating campuses and giving

00:43:14.480 black students black only dorm rooms, black only study areas. That is obviously what they're doing. 1.00

00:43:24.780 They might say, we're doing it for the best of intentions. Okay, maybe you are. The road to hell

00:43:28.700 is paved with good intentions. I'm sure people had good intentions when they were segregating the

00:43:35.780 country 50 years ago. Sure, people had good intentions when they were advocating for totalitarian

00:43:41.680 systems. Sure. We judge others on their actions. We judge ourselves on our intentions. The road to

00:43:48.400 hell is paved with good intentions. All right. I got to go finish writing my speech. Come on out

00:43:52.440 tonight. It's going to be a lot of fun at University of Missouri, Kansas City. We will analyze the most

00:43:56.460 controversial, deep, difficult question of our age. Are men women? Come check it out then.

00:44:06.300 In the meantime, I'm Eric Swalwell. This is The Eric Swalwell Show.

00:44:09.420 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Robert Sterling. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior

00:44:19.820 producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover. And our technical producer is

00:44:24.720 Austin Stevens. Edited by Danny D'Amico. Audio is mixed by Dylan Case. Hair and makeup is by

00:44:30.500 Jesua Olvera. Production assistant, Nick Sheehan. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:44:35.880 Copyright Daily Wire 2019. Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, Pope Benedict has emerged

00:44:43.080 from seclusion to discuss the sex abuse crisis. And he has some insights that are true, but also

00:44:49.400 pretty startling. And we'll talk about that. Also, according to a recent report, Google has a

00:44:55.420 running blacklist. And you'll never guess who's on it. We'll discuss. Also, we'll talk about black 0.88

00:45:02.060 holes and the Lion King and biblical end times prophecies. There's a lot to cover on the show

00:45:06.700 today. So come over and check it out.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 11, 2019

Ep. 330 - Assimilation Isn’t Racist

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