The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 40 - Ideologies Are Parasites ft. Jordan B. Peterson

00:00:00.140 Today, we discuss only the big questions on an especially covfefe show.

00:00:05.660 Does God exist? Is ideology a destructive parasite? 0.89

00:00:09.600 Have campus snowflakes and pajama boys destroyed our civilization? 1.00

00:00:13.480 Dr. Jordan B. Peterson will be here to explain the world.

00:00:16.720 Then, Zoe Rachel, Amanda Prestigiacomo, and Jacob Airy join the panel of deplorables

00:00:21.960 to talk Trump's surprise Obamacare smackdown

00:00:24.860 and an American family freed after being held hostage by the Taliban for five years.

00:00:30.360 Finally, the mailbag.

00:00:32.140 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:41.960 I cannot wait to bring on Dr. Jordan Peterson.

00:00:45.140 I'm extremely excited for this show.

00:00:47.160 But before we can, we need to welcome our new sponsor, Policy Genius.

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00:00:55.340 There actually seems to be a certain providence to our sponsors on this show,

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00:02:24.480 Okay, now we have Dr. Peterson.

00:02:26.300 He is a clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.

00:02:31.620 He may be the leading university free speech activist around today, but I actually don't want to talk about that too much

00:02:37.520 because then we would miss all of the interesting speech that Dr. Peterson has to offer.

00:02:42.540 Very often the debate over free speech, it stops right there at the form of the speech.

00:02:48.320 Does someone have the right to say this or that?

00:02:50.620 Should the government, should private institutions censor this or that?

00:02:54.140 Those questions seem simple to me and probably to you.

00:02:57.080 I want to get to the content.

00:02:58.320 I want to get to the this and the that, particularly how ideology is a terrible, terrible thing.

00:03:04.160 Dr. Peterson, thank you for joining us.

00:03:07.040 My pleasure.

00:03:07.720 Thanks for the invitation.

00:03:09.000 Absolutely.

00:03:09.840 So I want to dive right into it.

00:03:11.500 I really admire you and I really admire all of your work and I agree with very much of what you say.

00:03:18.820 Let's begin with ideology.

00:03:21.480 You have said that ideology is a parasite.

00:03:24.120 That's a sentiment with which I thoroughly agree.

00:03:27.060 You've explained the conflict between ideology and traditional strains of thought in the West.

00:03:33.240 I think most people, even on the right, even conservatives, would find that statement startling.

00:03:38.040 What is so bad about ideology?

00:03:40.720 Well, it provides a one-size-fits-all answer to every question.

00:03:45.600 And there's a variety of problems with that.

00:03:47.400 I mean, and it's a one-sided biased, one-size-fits-all answer.

00:03:51.900 And the bias depends on your particular ideological stance.

00:03:56.720 In some ways, biases themselves aren't as bad as you might think because they're not that distinguishable from heuristics, which are simplifications that you need to operate in the world.

00:04:06.960 I mean, we can't operate in the world as in considering it in all of its complexity.

00:04:12.100 We have to simplify it.

00:04:13.700 But there's dangers in the simplifications.

00:04:15.880 And then there's dangers in a consistently biased simplification.

00:04:20.260 And ideologies are consistently biased simplifications.

00:04:23.980 Now, they're right sometimes.

00:04:25.200 You see, part of the reason that the Western democratic systems work is because they allow people who have specified biases to compete in an open market of biases.

00:04:35.940 A liberal exchange of ideas.

00:04:37.360 That's essentially what an election is.

00:04:37.980 Exactly, exactly.

00:04:39.160 So, you know, sometimes the right is right.

00:04:42.160 Sometimes the extreme right is right. 0.59

00:04:44.160 Sometimes the left is right, so to speak.

00:04:46.320 And sometimes the extreme left is right.

00:04:48.220 The extremes aren't correct, let's say, very often.

00:04:51.540 Well, certainly not the extreme left.

00:04:53.540 Sorry, go ahead.

00:04:55.200 But, you know, there are situations that arise where less generally applicable principles may sporadically hold.

00:05:04.380 But anyways, the point is that in an open exchange of ideas, you get the opportunity for multiple people to put forward their biased heuristics, their biased oversimplifications, and to engage in the kind of debate that raises the resolution of the question and answer at hand.

00:05:21.560 And that's necessary because the environment is shifting underneath you all the time.

00:05:26.240 And so what was right yesterday, what was correct yesterday isn't necessarily correct today.

00:05:30.400 And so you have to continually engage in negotiation and discussion to stay in the middle, let's say, in the correct place.

00:05:39.400 Yeah, not to formalize.

00:05:40.400 Yeah, not to formalize too much, not to abridge too much.

00:05:42.460 And you bring up there are ideologies on the right.

00:05:45.960 You know, we see them, they change, some pop up, some fall out of fashion.

00:05:50.180 But there has been a question for a long time that conservatives have debated.

00:05:54.280 Can a real conservative be an ideologue?

00:05:57.360 Or should conservatives ground their view of the world in something more substantive than an ideology?

00:06:07.520 Well, I think genuine thinkers should ground their worldview in something more substantive than an ideology.

00:06:13.040 And one of the things that I've studied for a very long period of time is the relationship between, let's say, ideologies or belief systems, for that matter, to the underlying psychological substructures that the psychologist, psychiatrist Carl Jung described as archetypal.

00:06:29.040 And so you could think of these archetypal substructures as the grand stories by which people conduct their lives.

00:06:37.780 And they're structured in a very particular way.

00:06:41.480 They're very balanced stories.

00:06:43.720 So, for example, in a typical, properly constructed archetypal narrative, you have a representation of nature or chaos or the unknown.

00:06:54.280 Those are symbolic categories that are quite similar.

00:06:57.740 They sort of represent what exists beyond the safety of the campfire and the town and the city and familiar territory.

00:07:04.880 You could think about it as the archetype of unexplored territory.

00:07:08.660 And it's negative and positive at the same time.

00:07:11.460 It's negative because you better watch your step when you aren't where you think you are because you'll die if you're not careful.

00:07:16.760 Right.

00:07:17.160 And that's the negative element.

00:07:18.500 And so nature can be a vicious, brutal force.

00:07:20.980 And everyone who's alive and thinks knows that.

00:07:23.320 But by the same token, it's also the place, the unknown and nature is the place that you can go and explore and find new and wonderful things.

00:07:31.300 Go west, young man.

00:07:32.540 Exactly.

00:07:32.940 That's exactly.

00:07:33.740 Well, that's an interesting one to bring up because we'll return to that.

00:07:37.780 We'll return to that because there's a counter narrative to that.

00:07:40.460 So nature has its positive and negative element.

00:07:43.840 It's often represented with feminine symbols, by the way, mother nature, let's say. 0.87

00:07:47.840 And then culture has the same structure.

00:07:50.160 There's like the tyrannical king and the benevolent king.

00:07:52.600 And the tyrannical king is the part of culture that crushes you and destroys you and mangles you and forces you to be a cog in a wheel.

00:08:00.980 And the benevolent part is the part that educates you and disciplines you and shelters you and teaches you to speak and imbues you with all the facets and traits that a civilized person would have.

00:08:11.740 And again, a story that doesn't involve both of those forces is incomplete, even though they're contradictory.

00:08:18.440 Of course.

00:08:18.860 And then on top of that is the individual.

00:08:21.840 And in an archetypal story, the individual has a heroic element and an adversarial element.

00:08:26.600 And so in Christianity, that's represented by the, say, internal conflict between Christ and Satan, if you're thinking about it psychologically.

00:08:33.940 It's reflected in the story of Cain and Abel as well and in typical hostile brother stories, very common narrative tropes.

00:08:40.660 And so a comprehensive view of the world offers a representation of all of those elements.

00:08:47.300 Whereas an ideology, what an ideology does is slice that representation into a partial formulation.

00:08:53.940 So, for example, when feminists talk about the patriarchy, they essentially assume that the social world is only a negative force. 1.00

00:09:04.660 It's only tyrannical.

00:09:05.900 Well, it is tyrannical, but it's not only tyrannical, right?

00:09:09.580 And that's a very, very important distinction.

00:09:11.300 Try as I might, we cannot force an only tyrannical patriarchy on them.

00:09:14.740 That's right.

00:09:15.220 That's exactly it.

00:09:16.060 There's too much pushback, right?

00:09:17.920 And, I mean, to think about the social structures in the West as fundamentally tyrannical means that you're either, well, ideologically possessed to the degree that's almost incomprehensible,

00:09:29.320 or that you know absolutely nothing whatsoever about history or the current world for that matter.

00:09:34.440 And those may not be mutually exclusive. 0.99

00:09:36.540 You may be ideologically possessed and ignorant. 0.98

00:09:39.500 Well, and you said go West, young man. 0.99

00:09:41.420 Okay, so let me unravel that a bit.

00:09:43.420 So, that's the frontier narrative.

00:09:47.320 So, the frontier narrative is untamed nature, positive culture, positive individual.

00:09:54.380 So, it's the heroic individual spreading the benefits of benevolent culture into the wild, untamed wilderness.

00:10:01.500 Okay, so that's an ideology, and it's a powerful one because it draws on these underlying archetypal symbolic themes that are deeply motivational, meaningful to people.

00:10:10.240 But the counter narrative emerged to that.

00:10:12.860 Let's say that was the narrative that settled the United States.

00:10:16.280 Okay, but the counter narrative emerged, and that's the environmental narrative.

00:10:19.520 The environmental narrative is benevolent nature, toxic culture, adversarial individual. 0.57

00:10:26.120 So, the essential ideological environmental narrative is terrible human beings that are a cancer on the planet are spreading their toxic patriarchy and raping mother nature.

00:10:36.980 And I think it's no coincidence, by the way, that the environmental movement as we see it today really sprung up in the 90s in the wake of the fall of communism.

00:10:47.440 There was the major ideology of the left that crumbled before our eyes, and now this new ideology of environmentalism seems to have largely taken its position of prominence.

00:10:58.360 Well, see, okay, so that's an interesting observation.

00:11:02.060 No, I don't disagree.

00:11:03.040 I don't disagree.

00:11:03.740 And I think it's actually one of the things that really pollutes the argument about environmental sustainability.

00:11:10.320 You know, like, obviously, exploiting the planet, let's say, in a way that produces unsustainable externalized costs is a bad idea, clearly.

00:11:21.900 Now, the time frame matters, but it's clearly a bad idea.

00:11:24.720 The problem is, is that it's almost impossible to engage in a discussion about environmental sustainability without also simultaneously engaging in a discussion that's anti-capitalist.

00:11:37.020 And so, for me, as soon as an environmentalist becomes anti-capitalist, then I can't trust them as an environmentalist because I don't know if their environmentalism, it usually is a cover for their neo-Marxism or another ideology.

00:11:49.140 That's precisely right. 0.99

00:11:50.660 Yeah, it just pollutes the damn problem. 0.99

00:11:52.600 And it's really a bad idea. 0.99

00:11:53.660 Well, because you can make a very strong case for a conservative environmentalism.

00:11:59.960 A conservationism, sure.

00:12:01.600 Yeah, the word is right there.

00:12:03.380 Well, exactly. 1.00

00:12:04.460 And, you know, the conservatives, part of the conservative ethos is try not to do anything too stupid. 0.75

00:12:11.640 You know, whereas you could say that the liberal ethos is try actively to improve things, you know, and that's great. 0.99

00:12:19.220 Act as stupidly as you may, yeah, in order to do it.

00:12:22.780 Well, the problem is that on the liberal end of things, and this is a temperamental problem, is that many ideas that are designed to generate solutions to problems actually generate more problems. 0.99

00:12:35.460 Right, and so an informed conservative says something like, well, yeah, there's a problem there, but let's not get ahead of ourselves and presume that we actually know how to fix it in a way that won't just make it worse.

00:12:50.300 Right, right.

00:12:51.100 And for me, like, I'm kind of temperamentally predisposed to be more on the liberal left end of things from a personality perspective, because I'm high in a trait called openness, which is a good predictor of, say, liberalism and more left-wing thinking, although I'm also high in conscientiousness, which is a good predictor of more right-wing thinking.

00:13:09.060 But what really convinced me to become more of a traditionalist, I would say, was this realization of unintended consequences, is that it's very, very difficult to make alterations to a complex system in a manner that doesn't make the system function worse instead of better.

00:13:26.060 And so I think, generally speaking, that especially when you're perturbing extraordinarily complex social systems, that you should be firmly aware of the limits of your intelligence and the probability of your biased interpretations.

00:13:41.720 Of course, and I love that you've brought up this term traditionalism.

00:13:44.480 I actually made the case a couple days ago that I think Donald Trump himself, maybe counterintuitively, exhibits many aspects of traditionalism in the Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott sort of sense of things.

00:13:57.960 And I wonder if now, as you've noted, channeling Nietzsche, that, you know, at a certain point in our culture, God died for our cultural purposes and ideology replaced it.

00:14:09.960 Where are we now?

00:14:10.980 Are we in a post-ideological age?

00:14:12.960 Is God striking back against Nietzsche and his followers?

00:14:17.820 Well, that's a good question.

00:14:17.840 Well, the thing is, one of the things that's really necessary to note about Nietzsche is that when he made the pronouncement that God was dead, it was by no means triumphant.

00:14:26.800 Of course, yeah.

00:14:28.100 People misunderstand that a lot.

00:14:30.220 Oh, definitely.

00:14:31.060 The full phrase is, I'm paraphrasing, but the full phrase is something like, God is dead, we have killed him, and we'll never find enough water to wash away the blood.

00:14:40.520 Right, right.

00:14:41.100 Right, and that was associated with thoughts he had at the same time, that the consequence of the death of this traditional value structure and the idea of a transcendent moral structure and ultimate moral responsibility would be replaced by two things.

00:14:54.560 One would be a kind of hopeless nihilism, and the other would be a swing, especially into leftist totalitarianism, which he directly predicted, as did Dostoevsky, although that wasn't the only logical totalitarian outcome.

00:15:08.160 Of course.

00:15:08.520 So, I mean, he had that nailed.

00:15:10.620 It's actually one of the most amazing prescient predictions that I've ever encountered.

00:15:17.280 And do you, in any way, do you find a link between that nihilism that came out of the death of God and left-wing totalitarianism and these campus snowflakes and the Peter Pan syndrome and the pajama boys, this apathetic, malaise, whiny, bratty culture that we're seeing among a perfectly luxurious, young, healthy, wealthy generation? 0.56

00:15:42.540 Well, you need a direction, right?

00:15:45.960 And without that, you're bereft, certainly, of positive emotion, but you're also hyper-anxious.

00:15:52.920 You know, that's the thing that's kind of odd about having direction and responsibility, is that it gives meaning to your life because it helps you understand how the small things you do every day are related to crucial and important goals.

00:16:06.020 Without that, it's very, very difficult to orient yourself in the world.

00:16:09.520 And Dr. Peterson—oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

00:16:11.340 Well, it also makes you anxious because there's no limit, say.

00:16:15.620 And people say, especially people who are high in openness and low in conscientiousness, so they're the liberal left types, they say, well, limits are only constraining.

00:16:23.900 It's like, no, no, limits aren't only constraining.

00:16:27.580 Like, fences keep snakes out as well as keep you in.

00:16:31.840 A good example.

00:16:32.960 Walls can work, yes.

00:16:34.680 Yes, well, exactly.

00:16:35.560 And, you know, the funny thing, too, about the radicals on campuses is that they just have no conception of how many walls are protecting them.

00:16:44.480 Of course.

00:16:44.900 Like, they're inside a wall, often actually a literal wall, because many of the campuses are walled.

00:16:50.800 And then they're inside—you know, those walls are inside the city, and the city is inside the state, and the state is inside the government.

00:16:56.860 The government is protected by the military.

00:16:58.580 And there's just—and that's all governed by tradition.

00:17:01.440 There's just wall after wall after wall.

00:17:03.800 And they say, well, I don't see any danger.

00:17:06.800 What's with all the restrictions?

00:17:08.420 It's like, well, yeah, you don't see any danger.

00:17:10.440 You know, you remember in The Lord of the Rings—you may remember this or you may not—the hobbits, you know, they're these little people who are sort of self-satisfied and smug and naive and completely ignorant about the surrounding world.

00:17:26.180 And, of course, there's evil gathering all around them, which is the archetypal state of mankind.

00:17:30.940 And they're protected by the striders, one of whom is Aragorn.

00:17:37.000 And they are the descendants of ancient kings.

00:17:40.180 And they patrol the boundaries and keep the hobbits safe. 0.91

00:17:43.820 And the hobbits know about them, but they just think they're despicable tramps.

00:17:47.860 So it's brilliant, because we are protected by the descendants of ancient kings.

00:17:53.020 Of course.

00:17:53.180 That's what our traditions are.

00:17:54.340 And people who casually violate a tradition have no idea what's behind the wall.

00:18:01.240 They have no idea.

00:18:02.300 They lack a sense of history, and they certainly lack a sense of human fallibility and malevolence.

00:18:07.680 And I must note, you've brought up Tolkien, and I don't want to allow the early brief discussion of Christianity go totally without further discussion.

00:18:16.660 You, in your description of ideology and your description of traditionalism, of symbols, of the symbolized, of the logos as transcendent and divine, if I didn't know any better, I would guess that you were a Catholic.

00:18:32.440 You sound an awful lot like a Catholic, and I wanted to know if you had any thoughts about that description.

00:18:38.100 And if you are not yet a Catholic—

00:18:39.240 Well, it's hard to tell, you know.

00:18:39.560 Well, if you aren't yet a Catholic, can I be your godfather eventually when you do?

00:18:43.640 Well, the Orthodox—I've been contacted by a number of Orthodox Jews who think that I'm pretty much an Orthodox Jew, and a lot of Orthodox Christians who think that I'm pretty much an Orthodox Christian, and also a number of Mormons who think—or no, sorry, not—no, who were they?

00:18:59.120 Jehovah's Witnesses.

00:19:00.660 Jehovah's Witness, was it?

00:19:01.540 I can't remember.

00:19:02.340 No, it wasn't Jehovah's Witnesses.

00:19:04.260 I don't remember.

00:19:04.620 Scientologist.

00:19:05.060 But I mean, it's been funny.

00:19:06.600 It's because I've been contacted by people from a lot of different denominations, and they've said the same thing, which is that I'm putting the finger on what they believe is at the core of their belief system.

00:19:15.300 But, you know, and I've been looking at this primarily from a psychological perspective, like I'm not denying or even commenting on the underlying metaphysical realities, you know, technically speaking, because it's sort of outside of my domain of competence.

00:19:29.840 I'm not denying their existence or making a case for their existence in my public presentations.

00:19:35.440 But one thing I have discovered is that there's something really fundamentally important about the idea of the Logos, you know, because the Logos is the idea that the individual is—the soul of the individual and the value of that soul transcends the value of the state.

00:19:53.860 And that's an amazing proposition.

00:19:55.980 I think that's the central Western proposition, is that the state itself has no final dominion over the individual.

00:20:03.100 Certainly right. We may appeal to heaven, as General Washington once put on a flag.

00:20:09.540 So, and the reason that that's so psychologically significant, as far as I'm concerned, is that the state—and this has been realized by a number of cultures in a variety of different ways—the state has a tendency to become too static, right?

00:20:22.740 And state and static are obviously the same word.

00:20:24.780 And without the dynamic consciousness of the individual continually transforming and expanding the boundaries of the state, the state collapses into a type of totalitarian rigidity, and then everyone dies.

00:20:37.460 So, if you don't keep the state subservient in some sense to the free consciousness, and that's the moral consciousness of the dedicated citizen, then everything goes to hell, and very, very rapidly, and almost literally.

00:20:52.160 Because, I mean, if you look at places like, you know, Stalinist Soviet Union, and especially in the 1930s, and Mao's China, and Cambodia, and these places where these totalitarian systems got the upper hand, I mean, to describe them as hellish is an understatement, I would say.

00:21:08.940 Yeah, it's a world of lies. It's a world of lies that wreaks havoc in hell.

00:21:13.400 Well, that's the other thing that's so interesting, is that the really informed commentators on those totalitarian states have drawn a very direct causal path between the proclivity of the individual citizen to falsify their own experience, so to lie by commission and omission, and the emergence of these totalitarian states.

00:21:33.140 So, what they essentially make isn't an economic case or a political case.

00:21:36.920 They make a psychological and ethical case, and that's especially well documented.

00:21:41.820 Well, Viktor Frankl does a pretty good job of that in Man's Search for Meaning, and Vaclav Havel made the same sort of connection, so did Gandhi.

00:21:50.180 But I think it's been best laid out, well, partly by Tolstoy, who was a huge influence on Gandhi, but most particularly, I would say, by Solzhenitsyn in his documentations of the Gulag Archipelago.

00:22:01.280 Like, his entire 1,700-page case is that the reason that the totalitarian state got the upper hand in the Soviet Union was fundamentally because too many citizens decided that it was in their best short-term interest to lie about everything, including their own suffering.

00:22:19.000 To lie to themselves.

00:22:20.280 I think you put it one way, I may have read this from you or from someone else, that to the utopian, suffering is heresy.

00:22:29.300 The acknowledgement of suffering is heresy.

00:22:31.640 I know.

00:22:32.140 Well, that's a really great definition of hell.

00:22:34.320 Hell is the place where you're in pain and you're punished for admitting it.

00:22:39.200 You can't even admit it to yourself.

00:22:41.100 Of course.

00:22:41.560 And that, there is, we have all these discussions about which pronouns we should use, which bathrooms people can use, and they seem to be really highly politicized for precisely this purpose.

00:22:53.820 They say, it's trivial, it doesn't matter, it's just a little lie that we're telling each other.

00:22:57.840 What's the big deal?

00:22:58.900 But that is the big deal.

00:23:01.040 When we live in enough lies, when we lie even about our own suffering, you end up in a totalitarian state.

00:23:08.280 Well, and you're the totalitarian.

00:23:11.160 And you are, yeah, that's precisely right.

00:23:12.940 You are the oppressor, right?

00:23:14.520 See, I mean, one of the things that Solzhenitsyn documents in the Gulag Archipelago is his realization that he was his own tyrant. 0.53

00:23:21.900 You know, and it's so fascinating because he wrote the Gulag Archipelago when he was in the prison camps, and he basically memorized the book.

00:23:30.360 And that's, you know, to memorize a 1700-page book is really something that is inconceivable, especially a book like that.

00:23:38.620 Right.

00:23:38.820 And he didn't write the book until he was struck very hard by the realization that his ethical faults had directly contributed to the situation that he found himself in.

00:23:50.980 And, you know, interestingly enough, too, he said that he came to that realization in large part, although not solely, by watching the very few people that he saw in the prison camps resist the lie, the demand for lies on the part of their jailers.

00:24:07.320 He said most of those people had a deeply rooted religious faith, and that seemed to enable them to refuse to cooperate with the authorities when that cooperation was demanded, which would also preclude them partaking in such roles as being camp trustees.

00:24:25.420 Because in the Gulag system, interestingly enough, most of the positions of tyranny were held by the prisoners themselves, which is—now, there is a great definition of hell. 0.70

00:24:37.160 Hell is a prison where all the prison guards are prisoners.

00:24:40.500 That's precisely right, which actually, I suppose, is the Christian definition of hell, certainly Milton's definition of hell. 0.85

00:24:47.380 Well, this does bring up another point, which is if we are to look at the man in the mirror and take responsibility for ourselves and recognize that much of our suffering and our oppression is—it comes from within and our own ethical failures, then I have to ask—this has been a meme going around the Internet for a long time—do I really have to clean up my room?

00:25:10.900 Well, you don't have to, but you have to suffer the consequences.

00:25:14.660 That's not—

00:25:15.380 I mean—

00:25:15.700 It's not a great alternative.

00:25:17.380 Well, that's the thing, is that, you know, it's—in many situations in life, you get to pick your poison, right?

00:25:25.700 And that's really worthwhile knowing, because it isn't that there's a pathway that you can take that's going to make your life—well, let's call it simple and happy, because life—whatever life is, it's not simple and happy.

00:25:38.280 It's certainly not those things, right?

00:25:40.400 No, it's complex and tragic.

00:25:42.060 And you can ennoble that with a certain mode of being, and that mode of being has to be associated with a willingness to abide by the truth.

00:25:53.180 And, like, I don't even really think about these things as ethical commandments in some sense, and it's something that's also struck me as I've become more and more familiar with biblical writings, is that most of the time they're simple statements of fact.

00:26:06.060 So, imagine, you know, reality has a structure, it's complex, and you can tell it has a structure because it punishes you very badly when you do some things you shouldn't do.

00:26:15.820 Like, you know, toddlers learn very rapidly not to stand up underneath tables when they're first learning to walk, right?

00:26:21.860 Don't touch the burner on the stove, right?

00:26:23.660 Exactly.

00:26:24.180 And the table is always hard, and the burner always burns.

00:26:28.640 And so you can learn to avoid those things because they're, you know, they're cut and dried, they're walls.

00:26:33.600 But, no, unfortunately, I've lost my train of thought.

00:26:37.480 That's fine.

00:26:38.260 When I imagine the suffering of every time I push the burner, that also makes me lose it as well.

00:26:43.020 I would like to take the—oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

00:26:45.740 Yes, okay.

00:26:46.380 Well, the thing is, is that those elements of suffering are built into the structure of the world.

00:26:51.700 The structure of the world is real.

00:26:53.440 And the problem with lying is that you replace accurate perception of the structure of the world with a wish, an arrogant wish.

00:27:02.180 Like, the wish is that you could have things the way that you want them.

00:27:05.000 On my terms.

00:27:06.160 But the arrogant part—that's exactly it.

00:27:07.640 The arrogant part is on my terms and I'll get away with it.

00:27:10.780 And it's such an absurd proposition because the probability that you can bend the structure of reality in your favor without it having it snap back and hit you in the face,

00:27:20.580 which is, I suppose, in some sense a definition of God in a perverse way, is it's zero.

00:27:27.000 Right.

00:27:27.220 Like, in my clinical practice, and I swear that this is the case, and I would say also in my private life, observing people over long periods of time, I have never seen anyone get away with anything.

00:27:38.740 It always comes back to haunt them in one form or another.

00:27:41.900 And they may not realize or understand the causal connection.

00:27:45.200 Sometimes that's what psychotherapy is about.

00:27:47.080 But the causal connections are there, and that's the sort of thing that Solzhenitsyn detailed in the Gulag Archipelago.

00:27:53.500 You know, it's so weird because he was a victim of Hitler because he was on the front lines, and then he was a victim of Stalin.

00:28:01.160 And, I mean, if you want to make a case for being a victim—

00:28:04.080 He had a rough go of it.

00:28:06.120 That's for sure.

00:28:07.060 Right.

00:28:07.300 But instead, he decided that he was going to take the responsibility on himself.

00:28:12.020 And become one of the greatest men of the century, right?

00:28:15.300 Well, that's the thing that's so incomprehensible, is that that book really was—there was a few death blows to the integrity of the communist system.

00:28:25.120 But from an articulated and verbal perspective, an intellectual perspective, nothing topped the Gulag Archipelago. 0.87

00:28:32.960 It took the substructure out from underneath any moral claim that communism had.

00:28:38.380 Just a glimpse of reality, does it?

00:28:40.260 I do—I know I said that was the last question, but I actually have one more.

00:28:43.020 Do you—this is a very practical question.

00:28:45.700 For young people or people who are wandering around in these shallow ideologies and this sort of nihilism, living in lies, whatever you want to call it, what advice would you give to them?

00:29:00.440 Is it go worship God?

00:29:01.760 Is it read the Bible?

00:29:02.780 Is it accept the tragic fact of life?

00:29:05.580 How can they pull themselves out of the mire and wash all that blood off of us that Nietzsche said we'd never get off?

00:29:12.700 Well, you know, Carl Jung said something that is quite similar to Solzhenitsyn's prescription, which was that with a sufficient moral effort, psychoanalysis was unnecessary.

00:29:24.040 I would say that the best advice that I might give to people is that they try to stop saying things that make them weak.

00:29:34.140 Which is a variant of trying to learn not to lie because if you pay attention, Nietzsche said, who among us has never sacrificed himself for the sake of his good name?

00:29:45.760 And what he meant by that was, well, you know, you're in a social circumstance and you act in a manner that's different than how you actually feel or you refuse to put forward your viewpoint or you can't or, you know, you falsify yourself.

00:29:58.720 And some of that, you know.

00:30:00.720 You know, is akin to being socialized, let's say.

00:30:05.360 But put that aside.

00:30:06.240 I'm thinking about the falsification part.

00:30:08.040 It's like if you watch yourself very carefully, if you watch what you say, and I would include your nonverbal behavior in that category.

00:30:14.560 You'll see that certain things that you say put solid ground under your feet and certain things turn the ground that you're standing on into quicksand.

00:30:22.940 And you can feel that in an embodied sense.

00:30:25.400 It's something Carl Rogers, who's a great psychiatrist, psychologist, realized quite, I guess, probably in the 50s or the 40s and that there was an embodied sense.

00:30:34.200 And in some sense, that would be equivalent to the voice of conscience.

00:30:37.500 And so, you know, when you're betraying yourself, you know, when you're weakening yourself.

00:30:41.080 And if you start to pay attention to that, you can learn to stop doing that.

00:30:46.600 It's interesting because I was just reading Socrates' Apology, which is the description of the trial that eventually ended in his death and his reaction to that, his heroic reaction to that.

00:30:58.140 And he talked about the thing that differentiated him from other people.

00:31:02.560 And he said, well, he had this internal voice, which he called a daemon, which obviously is related to the word demon.

00:31:09.120 But it wasn't that. It's an internal spirit, an internal voice.

00:31:12.800 And he always listened to it.

00:31:14.340 And it never told him what to do, but it told him what not to do.

00:31:19.620 And so if the internal voice objected to something he was doing or saying, he would stop.

00:31:24.680 He would stop doing it.

00:31:25.900 He would stop doing it.

00:31:26.860 He'd reformulate it.

00:31:27.900 And so the reason he didn't defend himself at his trial, interestingly enough, is because his internal voice, and leave, because really they just wanted him to get the hell out of Athens because he was a troublemaker.

00:31:37.720 So they warned him long ahead that he was going to be tried and found guilty, essentially.

00:31:42.280 And his friends told him to leave.

00:31:44.540 And he went and consulted his daemon.

00:31:46.860 And it said, no, don't leave.

00:31:49.320 And he thought, like, well, what the hell?

00:31:52.440 What do I do now?

00:31:53.180 Don't leave.

00:31:54.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:31:54.860 And then he thought it through.

00:31:55.960 And he thought, well, he was getting very old.

00:31:57.880 And maybe the gods had granted him the opportunity to step out of life gracefully and put his affairs in order and so on.

00:32:05.920 You know, I mean, you can think about it as a rationalization, but it was Socrates that we're talking about.

00:32:10.520 So I wouldn't do that too quick.

00:32:11.940 Of course.

00:32:13.040 I must say, my internal voice is telling me not to end this interview for several more hours because it is just so illuminating.

00:32:21.680 And I could talk to you all day long.

00:32:23.640 But unfortunately, the voice of Ben Shapiro in the next room saying that we need to close off the show is the one that writes my check.

00:32:31.200 So unfortunately, we'll have to end it here.

00:32:34.280 Dr. Peterson, thank you so much for coming on.

00:32:37.100 This has been a wonderful discussion.

00:32:38.840 And I hope that we can have you back.

00:32:41.220 Thanks a lot for the invitation and for the discussion.

00:32:43.760 Absolutely.

00:32:44.080 Make sure to everyone who's watching, you go to YouTube and watch every one of Dr. Peterson's videos and listen to his show.

00:32:50.680 It's really, really excellent.

00:32:52.240 Some of the best commentary out there.

00:32:54.080 And we have a whole panel of deplorables and we have the mailbag.

00:32:57.440 There is so much more for you all to see, but you can't see it unless you go to thedailywire.com.

00:33:02.320 I know what you're thinking.

00:33:03.940 You are thinking, I want to watch this on Facebook.

00:33:07.160 I want to watch this on YouTube.

00:33:08.180 Well, it's $10 a month, $100 a year.

00:33:10.880 You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show.

00:33:13.980 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:33:15.300 But look at this.

00:33:16.040 Look at what you get.

00:33:17.120 You get the leftist tears tumbler.

00:33:19.480 This is actually the tumbler out of which Socrates drank the hemlock.

00:33:23.480 The hemlock was those leftist tears.

00:33:25.180 They couldn't take all of his truth bombs, so he drank it like a courageous man.

00:33:28.940 This is the finest vessel for leftist tears out there.

00:33:32.240 You have to go over it right now, and we will be right back.

00:33:40.880 There is some excellent news.

00:33:48.860 Thank you so much, panel.

00:33:50.860 Sorry we took a little bit longer, but I couldn't stop talking to Dr. Jordan Peterson.

00:33:54.840 That guy's like the most interesting guy ever.

00:33:56.700 We have, from The Daily Wire, Amanda Prestigiacomo.

00:33:59.040 From The Daily Wire also, we have Jacob Berry.

00:34:01.760 And then we have the incomparable, one and only Zoe Rachel.

00:34:05.180 Let's get right into the news.

00:34:06.380 President Trump announced today that after Congress's failure to repeal Obamacare, he

00:34:12.260 would now use all of the executive power at his disposal to reduce the regulations and

00:34:17.600 free up American businesses and just take out some of the burden of Obamacare that he

00:34:22.020 can do from the White House.

00:34:23.080 Amanda, is this the sort of bold action that is the reason we elected Donald Trump, or is

00:34:28.680 he overstepping his bounds?

00:34:31.140 No, this is good stuff, and he's doing this with Rand Paul.

00:34:34.760 So he's about as libertarian as you're going to get in Congress.

00:34:37.120 So we know that it's going to be constitutional as well.

00:34:41.120 Basically, he's repealing regulation.

00:34:44.260 And Rand Paul was talking about it today, is that just basically exploiting a law from

00:34:48.400 the 1970s that any president could have done since then.

00:34:52.020 It just allows people to kind of, small businesses, for instance, can now pool together from different

00:34:58.340 states to provide insurance coverage for their employees.

00:35:01.740 And then also, now you don't have to have, like, if you're, I don't know, like a 20-year-old

00:35:07.360 man, right?

00:35:07.960 You don't have to have maternity care. 0.99

00:35:10.420 So it's smart.

00:35:11.060 I'm still going to have it just to be safe, frankly.

00:35:13.100 I just don't want to get caught without it.

00:35:15.080 But it's nice for other men.

00:35:16.420 Yeah.

00:35:16.940 Riskier guys.

00:35:17.720 So it's great.

00:35:18.640 It's great.

00:35:19.040 They just repeal.

00:35:19.720 Like, I just keep repealing as much as they can.

00:35:21.740 Of course, Congress is terrible.

00:35:23.040 So it's kind of, like, led to this.

00:35:24.280 But anything with Rand Paul involved, it's going to be pretty decent.

00:35:28.460 It's going to be, you know, pulling back a regulation that's going to be constitutional.

00:35:31.460 So this is good stuff.

00:35:32.960 I love it.

00:35:33.440 Jacob, what do you think?

00:35:34.480 Is this executive order going to accomplish anything?

00:35:37.380 Some executive orders haven't accomplished that much.

00:35:40.080 Amanda's pretty bullish on here. 1.00

00:35:41.460 What do you think?

00:35:42.160 I agree with Amanda.

00:35:43.320 I think it does accomplish a lot.

00:35:45.160 I noticed that all of a sudden the Rand Paul haters on the Trump train are very silent about this, that they're very on board and excited about it.

00:35:55.300 And I think it does.

00:35:56.620 If Obama used his executive orders to expand Obamacare, I think it's personally reasonable to say, hey, President Trump, you can use the power of the pen to dismantle Obamacare.

00:36:07.740 I don't see a problem with this.

00:36:09.180 And I think it'll help Republicans get in gear finally.

00:36:13.720 And President Trump, he has a pen and a phone, a huge pen and a huge phone.

00:36:18.020 So why won't Congress act?

00:36:20.660 Why are they going to give President Trump all of the credit for repealing all these terrible Obamacare regulations?

00:36:28.500 Oh, man, you know, there's a little bit of an ego trip involved and a little power trip involved.

00:36:32.400 But I think what would be really cool is if they get that wall built and then go ahead and Trump can have his like health care plan.

00:36:38.860 He can like he can contract like a bunch of artists and then just go ahead and like graffiti like his health care plan on the wall.

00:36:45.860 And I think it will make both of which digestible to the to the to the public at large.

00:36:51.280 And that's subtlety in the in the age of Trump, you know, just the largest physical structures in human history with just gigantic words written across them.

00:36:58.640 I believe it on another strange news story.

00:37:01.420 An American woman and her Canadian husband who were held hostage by militants by the Taliban in Afghanistan for five years have been freed along with their children.

00:37:11.640 And we I'm sorry, we worked with Afghanistan and Pakistan on this.

00:37:14.880 So this does raise one question.

00:37:16.660 What the hell were these people doing in Pakistan and Afghanistan with their young children?

00:37:23.380 The woman was pregnant. 0.97

00:37:26.340 Oh, like I said, man, I don't know.

00:37:27.420 I think I hear it's really nice there at this time.

00:37:29.580 The honeymoon is good.

00:37:30.460 Family vacation.

00:37:31.300 The service is good.

00:37:32.460 Yeah.

00:37:33.420 Don't you want to go?

00:37:34.880 Don't you?

00:37:35.360 Well, you know, I got a week between Christmas and New Year.

00:37:37.820 I will say all that blank book money is gone.

00:37:41.220 So if Bora Bora is out.

00:37:42.300 You don't want to miss a beer for Christmas.

00:37:44.080 You do not want to miss a beer for Christmas.

00:37:45.820 It's really heartwarming.

00:37:48.620 It's like a Thomas Kinkade painting.

00:37:50.680 Absolutely right.

00:37:51.960 Jacob, Trump has been pretty good at freeing Americans who have been held hostage overseas.

00:37:56.720 He got Otto Warmbier freed in North Korea.

00:37:59.020 He got an Egyptian-American woman freed out of Egypt.

00:38:01.840 Now this family.

00:38:03.620 Why is he so good at this?

00:38:04.860 Why has he been so successful where Barack Obama has not been?

00:38:08.200 Well, I think it's because Trump says what he means.

00:38:10.860 It's not like President Obama, or I should say former President Obama, where he was like

00:38:15.740 a helicopter parent.

00:38:17.520 I'm going to give you to the count of three.

00:38:19.260 One, two, one, two, over and over again.

00:38:22.520 Trump just goes, one, two, three, bam, and it's done.

00:38:25.560 One, three, boom. 0.93

00:38:26.600 Exactly.

00:38:27.200 And so I think in this case, they realize that he's serious, that they want to, I mean,

00:38:31.920 that Moab bomb dropped on ISIS, that the world heard that.

00:38:35.860 And I think that was one of his greatest plays, because now when he says, you better let this

00:38:39.680 person go, the country listens and he gets, and they get out.

00:38:43.160 And he uses it to his advantage.

00:38:44.840 He plays a little crazier than I think he is.

00:38:47.020 And clearly it's to his advantage.

00:38:48.780 People do wonder if the guy is out of his mind.

00:38:51.580 Amanda, President Trump claimed after this that America is, quote, finally being respected

00:38:57.240 again.

00:38:57.740 Is that true?

00:38:58.420 Is that a fair assessment?

00:39:00.840 Yeah, no, I think that's true, especially if you just look at how we're handling, you

00:39:05.580 know, I mean, ISIS is being obliterated right now.

00:39:07.520 Nobody's talking about that.

00:39:08.560 But like Jacob was saying, I mean, we are taking a stronger front in foreign policy, and

00:39:13.600 we're actually letting our men fight and, you know, lessening rules of engagement and

00:39:17.000 stuff like that.

00:39:17.720 So we actually have, I mean, we have the capability to wipe out ISIS.

00:39:21.720 We just didn't before.

00:39:22.840 So now we're actually doing that.

00:39:24.420 That's one example.

00:39:25.300 So, you know, President Trump kind of, you know, we're not leaving from behind anymore.

00:39:30.580 He's taking action.

00:39:31.920 I think that that kind of helps us with greater standing in the world.

00:39:35.740 Even if President Trump does say things that you want to criticize, like, for instance,

00:39:39.740 his whole Twitter account, like, it doesn't, that doesn't really, that's just kind of noise.

00:39:42.920 I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with this.

00:39:44.380 Why would I want, have you ever seen a skinny person drinking Diet Coke?

00:39:47.920 I don't think so.

00:39:49.040 These are facts.

00:39:49.660 Some of those gems are fantastic.

00:39:51.020 Yeah, I hear that.

00:39:52.700 But it's all background noise.

00:39:54.340 I mean, his actions speak louder, and that's what's making America, America again.

00:39:58.520 It's not his Twitter feed, to be honest.

00:40:00.760 M-A-G-A, folks. 1.00

00:40:02.900 All right, that was a short panel, but unfortunately, I've got to get to the mailbag.

00:40:06.580 Thank you all for being here.

00:40:07.840 An enlightening, illuminating, expert covfefe panel, as always.

00:40:11.960 Amanda Presta-Giacomo, Jacob Berry, and Zoe Rachel.

00:40:15.300 Now we must get to the mailbag.

00:40:20.360 Hey, Michael.

00:40:21.540 Settling a debate here.

00:40:23.600 Do you think modern and future medical advances will allow humans to live as long as sea turtles?

00:40:28.240 And if so, what are the implications that would arise from such expanded lifetimes?

00:40:34.920 Thanks, Bill.

00:40:36.900 I don't know.

00:40:37.600 I suppose so.

00:40:38.220 It might be the case.

00:40:39.120 We are living much, much longer.

00:40:40.840 I think the question that comes out of that is, why would you want to?

00:40:45.680 Are you sure that you want to live forever?

00:40:47.380 Humans have always tried to live forever, tried to discover the fountain of youth and the secrets to immortality.

00:40:53.240 But this is a problem that, as we were talking with Dr. Peterson, comes out of a nihilistic age, out of an age in which God is dead.

00:41:01.640 And you think that when you hit the age of 80 or 85, then you turn to worm food and take a dirt nap and the lights go out.

00:41:10.080 But I certainly don't think that.

00:41:12.260 I think there's everlasting life.

00:41:13.800 And why would I want to be stuck here with Marshall for another 100 years when I could go up and hang out with St. Peter, you know?

00:41:20.300 So we'll see.

00:41:21.520 But I won't stick around too long to see any of it, I don't think.

00:41:25.600 From Brendan.

00:41:27.340 Mr. Still the only good knolls.

00:41:29.440 You have good taste, sir.

00:41:30.780 What is a typical day like for you?

00:41:32.720 From Brendan.

00:41:34.120 Great question.

00:41:35.220 I usually roll over pretty early, about 11, 15.

00:41:38.520 I'll stumble out and I'll have my morning meatballs and my morning whiskey while my fiancée, sweet little Elisa, writes my show for me.

00:41:47.980 Then I'll roll in for a typical work day.

00:41:50.080 I'll punch in about 12, 15.

00:41:52.460 Punch out about 2.

00:41:55.100 Then I guess the rest of the day is followed by some light reading.

00:41:59.620 Season or two of Always Sunny, 15 cigars and a bottle of port.

00:42:04.100 Then I do have to make sure I get my rest.

00:42:06.440 I need my beauty sleep after that.

00:42:07.760 So it's demanding, but you need structure.

00:42:10.160 Otherwise, you're just not going to be productive.

00:42:11.860 So just like Dr. Peterson says, make sure you clean your room.

00:42:15.600 I don't clean my room, but obviously someone does for me.

00:42:18.200 And you'll have a good and productive life.

00:42:21.020 From Mark.

00:42:21.980 Dear Michael Knowles.

00:42:23.340 I really like your interviewing style.

00:42:25.080 Thank you.

00:42:26.140 This became most apparent to me when you interviewed James Alsip about the Charlottesville protest.

00:42:31.300 Do you have any advice or resources on how to give an interview like you did with him?

00:42:35.560 You were relevant and challenging without being overbearing in your opposition.

00:42:38.840 And even when you would cut him off, it was more to keep him on topic and on track than to talk over him.

00:42:44.340 Thank you, Mark.

00:42:44.920 I appreciate the compliment.

00:42:46.480 I actually do somewhat regret cutting James off as much as I did in that interview.

00:42:53.180 You are right.

00:42:53.860 I only cut him off because I felt we had limited time.

00:42:57.040 He was evading certain questions or veering off track.

00:42:59.460 I wanted to keep him on track.

00:43:01.060 But the thing that I really enjoy about interviews is I really like people.

00:43:06.080 I really am curious about people.

00:43:08.260 I'm fascinated by people.

00:43:10.040 That's why I've been an actor and I like politics a lot.

00:43:13.680 So that is the one common thing.

00:43:15.460 You have to like truth and you have to like people there.

00:43:17.540 So there are a couple kinds of interviews.

00:43:19.060 You can do the smackdown interview where you just want to score points.

00:43:23.100 That's a debating style.

00:43:23.800 That was my job interview.

00:43:24.720 Yeah, that's right.

00:43:25.960 That was his job interview.

00:43:27.440 But there's that one where you just want to win the points and smack them down.

00:43:31.880 And I don't have any interest in that.

00:43:33.700 That isn't my personality.

00:43:34.840 I don't stand personally to gain anything from that.

00:43:39.040 The other kind of interview is where you learn something or you convince somebody of something.

00:43:43.160 As I tried to do with James.

00:43:45.500 But I'm interested to hear what people have to say.

00:43:48.500 And I'd like to convince them.

00:43:50.860 So I think if you have an interest in people, a genuine interest in what they have to say,

00:43:57.100 I think your conversations are going to be better.

00:43:59.000 And your debates are going to transform into something that actually is productive 0.99

00:44:03.860 and not a bunch of ignorant jerks yelling at each other on Facebook or something. 0.99

00:44:09.040 From Dave, hey Knowles, I've started reading books more. 1.00

00:44:13.820 You ought to try mine, Reasons to Vote for Democrats.

00:44:15.740 A very nice book, very quick read.

00:44:17.580 I'm worried that it's becoming a waste in the sense that I'm not doing anything practical,

00:44:21.500 especially when I read fictional novels.

00:44:23.520 While I enjoy reading now, I feel like I've wasted time.

00:44:25.920 I could have been doing other things.

00:44:28.460 This is the same feeling I had when I used to play loads of video games.

00:44:31.420 Would like your thoughts.

00:44:32.320 Dave, you should read better books.

00:44:34.560 If you find that there's nothing worthwhile coming out of them.

00:44:38.960 I don't read a lot of fiction myself.

00:44:41.580 I should read more fiction because some of the books that have shaped my view of the world,

00:44:47.260 that have influenced me to the point of really turning into a different person

00:44:53.060 or a more aware person are fiction.

00:44:56.060 Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky, obviously Shakespeare and Dante and Milton.

00:45:02.000 So fiction is really important, but you have to read good fiction.

00:45:06.620 If you read slowly, I read very slowly.

00:45:10.160 Just make sure you pick out decent books.

00:45:12.620 It's the most worthwhile thing you could possibly do because it will,

00:45:17.160 for not a lot of money and for not a lot of effort,

00:45:19.860 totally expand your view of the universe and of physics and metaphysics.

00:45:24.940 Now I have a special offer for you.

00:45:26.440 It's funny that you asked this question today because Andrew Klavan has a new book out.

00:45:30.420 It's really a story called Another Kingdom,

00:45:33.480 and he and I have been working together to record this story.

00:45:36.800 You can't purchase it in hardcover yet.

00:45:38.880 We're releasing it as a podcast, and we're releasing it tomorrow.

00:45:42.040 So we're releasing it on October 13th.

00:45:44.020 You'll be able to get the first episode then.

00:45:46.440 It's really been a lot of fun.

00:45:48.700 It's about a Hollywood schlub who can't catch a break, can't work in show business.

00:45:52.780 I don't know where Drew got the idea to cast me in this.

00:45:55.160 And so he stumbles into another land, another kingdom,

00:45:59.800 with crazy mythological beasts and warlocks and all of these sorts of things. 0.90

00:46:05.280 And I can certainly attest, living here in Hollywood,

00:46:08.100 it is not clear which place is more surreal or terrifying.

00:46:12.200 So check that out tomorrow.

00:46:13.440 And you can mow the lawn or do whatever you like because you'll be listening to it.

00:46:17.620 Don't read books.

00:46:18.560 Have me read books to you.

00:46:20.100 From Lucas.

00:46:20.800 My wife and I are expecting a new baby very soon.

00:46:23.700 Congratulations.

00:46:24.920 And as I have done in the past,

00:46:26.360 I'm buying a box of cigars to give to friends and family to celebrate.

00:46:29.640 We're waiting to find out the sex of the baby.

00:46:31.600 Who knows?

00:46:32.180 It could be years before we know the gender.

00:46:34.260 And I'm fairly well-versed with cigars, but do you have any recommendations?

00:46:37.420 That's wonderful news.

00:46:39.160 For that occasion for you, I would smoke My Father.

00:46:42.520 That's a cigar called My Father by Don Pepin.

00:46:44.660 It's reasonably priced.

00:46:45.700 Very good.

00:46:46.380 Seems fitting.

00:46:46.880 In terms of non-Cuban stuff, I've been smoking a lot of Fuente Gran Reserva recently, Ashton VSG.

00:46:53.920 If you're giving it out to your friends and family, I would, myself, I'd be a huge cheapskate.

00:46:59.700 And I would go, I think the best value for your buck is Oliva Series V in that little Perfecto size or a Toro or a Robusto.

00:47:08.740 Those are excellent cigars and they're pretty reasonably priced.

00:47:11.440 As for Cubans, lately I've been smoking a lot of Monte Cristos. 1.00

00:47:13.560 The 80th Anniversario is one of my favorite cigars.

00:47:17.540 The limited edition 2016 Dante I just had in the UK is very good.

00:47:21.360 The Anyado also very good.

00:47:23.020 But those are expensive.

00:47:24.120 Don't waste those on your buddies.

00:47:25.300 Give them the Oliva.

00:47:26.400 That'll be an excellent cigar and pretty cheap.

00:47:29.060 From Sean, when social justice warriors are triggered on international talk like a pirate day,

00:47:35.560 are they obligated to say, shiver me triggers, just curious on your opinion.

00:47:41.860 Sean, is Jack Sparrow a transsexual? 1.00

00:47:44.400 Duh, the answer is obvious, man, of course.

00:47:47.100 From Bridget.

00:47:48.140 In nomine patris et filiae et spiritus sancti, amen, dear St. Michael Knowles, patron of trolls.

00:47:53.940 Two of my coworkers have recently put signs on their office doors.

00:47:56.680 One of them says, hate has no home here.

00:48:00.040 Probably like love Trump's hate or something like that.

00:48:02.000 Never got that expression, by the way.

00:48:03.220 Seems pro-Trump.

00:48:04.100 They use it as anti-Trump.

00:48:05.340 They don't know anything.

00:48:06.460 In several different languages.

00:48:07.520 And the other is from the campus LGBTQLMNOPIA organization that says the office is a safe space.

00:48:16.600 I would like to troll them back with a sign of my own, but I'm not sure what to get.

00:48:19.600 I work at a state-funded law college, so I don't think anything blatantly partisan would be acceptable.

00:48:24.700 Please send a suggestion my way.

00:48:26.160 Well, if you work at a state law college, what I would do is put up a nice copy of a very scholarly political tome in the window.

00:48:33.220 It's called Reasons to Vote for Democrats a Comprehensive Guide, and that will contribute to the tone of scholarship and seriousness at your office.

00:48:42.920 In general, though, you've got to do something.

00:48:46.020 I don't have the answer for you right now, but this is not the time to be timid.

00:48:50.200 This is not the time to let these guys run over you.

00:48:53.420 We are winning the culture right now.

00:48:55.900 Now, conservatives are winning the culture for the first time in my life, for the first time in a very long time.

00:49:01.160 Don't give them an inch.

00:49:02.580 Don't give them one inch.

00:49:04.000 Don't give them one little lie.

00:49:05.880 Just as Jordan Peterson said, don't give them anything.

00:49:10.320 It was pretty soon one lie turns into a million.

00:49:12.240 You'll be living in lies.

00:49:13.520 Hit them back.

00:49:14.260 We are winning despite the constant negative press.

00:49:17.600 Go Fefe.

00:49:18.860 Absolutely keep going, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

00:49:23.000 Okay.

00:49:23.440 We've got to make sure that you tune in for the conversation.

00:49:26.180 That is going to be next week.

00:49:29.160 It's going to be the Andrew Klavan conversation.

00:49:31.040 You can only submit questions and have your questions answered if you subscribe to The Daily Wire.

00:49:36.740 So everybody can watch it.

00:49:38.000 It's going to be broadcast everywhere, Facebook, YouTube.

00:49:40.720 It's going to be October 17th.

00:49:42.320 Anybody can watch it, but only subscribers can have their questions answered.

00:49:46.800 Drew is just for an hour.

00:49:47.840 He's going to go through all of the questions.

00:49:49.920 So have the pearls of wisdom from the supreme leader of the multiverse be dispensed upon you

00:49:56.400 and tune in for the conversation and subscribe before then so you can get your questions answered.

00:50:01.080 Also speaking of the ruler of the multiverse, Another Kingdom comes out tomorrow.

00:50:05.000 That's that book that Drew and I have been working on.

00:50:07.060 He wrote everything.

00:50:07.980 I perform it.

00:50:09.000 It's going to be out somewhere tomorrow.

00:50:12.360 I'll post the link to my Twitter, Michael J. Knowles, and to Drew's as well and our Facebook pages.

00:50:18.280 But it's finally the cure for the Klavan-less weekend. 1.00

00:50:20.980 There may be a chance that there will not be chaos or mayhem on this weekend for the first since Andrew Klavan started going away.

00:50:28.320 So make sure you tune in for that.

00:50:30.040 That's our show.

00:50:30.640 Come back next week.

00:50:31.440 We'll do it all again.

00:50:32.260 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:50:33.000 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:50:33.960 Thanks for coming.

00:50:39.000 The Michael Knowles Show.

00:50:52.800 Thanks for coming.

00:50:58.280 This was The Michael Knowles Show.

The Michael Knowles Show - October 12, 2017

Ep. 40 - Ideologies Are Parasites ft. Jordan B. Peterson

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