The Michael Knowles Show

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00:00:37.560 I have been very fair to Joe Biden during this Afghanistan debacle. I have made a point not

00:00:45.160 to attack him for things that I would not have attacked Trump over. I have made a point not to

00:00:51.440 blame Joe Biden in particular for the broader mishandling of this war that went on for 20 years.

00:00:56.260 I have made a point to acknowledge that any American withdrawal was going to be messy, okay?

00:01:02.160 I have not taken cheap political shots, even when basically everyone else on the right has.

00:01:08.500 So I think that I have some credibility to point out now, Joe Biden has screwed this thing up beyond

00:01:15.960 anyone's wildest imagination. Barack Obama was very, very correct when he said,

00:01:23.220 never to underestimate Joe's ability to F things up. There are thousands of Americans currently

00:01:31.220 stranded in Afghanistan. The administration is now refusing to guarantee that it will get them out

00:01:38.780 before America fully leaves the country.

00:01:41.120 The mission is not complete by August 31st, and there are Americans and Afghan allies who remain there.

00:01:48.860 Will U.S. troops stay until everyone is out, or will they leave?

00:01:54.100 So I'm not going to comment on hypotheticals. What I'm going to do is stay focused on the task at hand,

00:01:57.960 which is getting as many people out as rapidly as possible, and we will take that day by day.

00:02:02.500 So you can't commit to bring back every American?

00:02:05.040 Jamie, can you offer any guarantee to the Americans and Afghan allies that if they remain there

00:02:12.800 past the end of the month, U.S. troops will help them evacuate past the end of the month?

00:02:18.480 Weesha, our focus right now is on doing the work at hand and on the task at hand,

00:02:23.360 and that is day by day, getting as many American citizens, as many SIV applicants,

00:02:28.520 as many members of a vulnerable population who are eligible to be evacuated to the airport and out on planes.

00:02:35.060 In other words, no, we won't guarantee it. Don't worry, though.

00:02:37.960 While the Biden administration is stranding Americans in Afghanistan,

00:02:41.860 our leaders are preparing to open the door to tens of thousands of Afghan refugees

00:02:46.260 because this is not a serious administration, and this is not a serious regime,

00:02:51.720 and this is no longer a serious civilization.

00:02:54.700 In the time we have left before China finally invades and puts an end to this circus,

00:02:59.560 we will try to make sense of it all. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:03:04.640 Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Carol M., who says,

00:03:14.560 Death to America? Hey, that's Biden's slogan. What a coincidence.

00:03:19.060 That's what you're going to see. Biden-Harris, 2024. Death to America!

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00:04:39.680 I tried to be as fair as I possibly could. I truly believe, not to toot my own horn, okay?

00:04:44.700 I think I was fairer to Biden on this thing than just about anyone else. But he is absolutely

00:04:50.920 blowing it. It's outrageous. Even, even on the left wing news channels, when the left wing newscasters

00:04:58.720 are trying to flack for him, even that isn't working. And the guests on those channels are

00:05:04.980 calling it like it is. I'm curious to hear your reaction of this consequential speech by the American

00:05:11.920 president. Didn't run from it. He owned it. He owned his decision. He owned the fact that as he put it,

00:05:17.920 the buck stops with him. I hope he gets to own their deaths, too. I don't, I feel like I watched

00:05:25.320 a different speech than the rest of you guys. I was appalled. There was such a profound, bold-faced

00:05:30.240 lie in that speech. The idea that we plan for every contingency. I have been personally trying to tell

00:05:36.040 this administration since it took office. I've been trying to tell our government for years that this

00:05:41.320 was coming. We sent them plan after plan on how to evacuate these people. Nobody listened to us.

00:05:48.140 They didn't plan for the evacuation of our Afghan wartime allies. They're trying to conduct it now

00:05:52.900 at the 11th hour. The thing that they were most concerned about was the optics of a chaotic evacuation.

00:05:58.400 Well, they got exactly what they were most concerned of by failing to do what was right when we could

00:06:02.700 have done it. So this army veteran guy was working on, on these sorts of issues, just right to Brian

00:06:09.720 Williams's face. I don't know what you're talking about, man. I'm appalled. And frankly, there have

00:06:14.480 been people in the mainstream media, even on NBC and other left-wing outlets who have said, this is

00:06:19.360 really bad stuff. It was weak sauce in the speech because he avoided the main question. And now you're

00:06:25.900 seeing, you're seeing this madness of straining thousands of Americans there. Meanwhile, it's not

00:06:32.180 just the left that's pushing to, before we get the Americans out, just try to resettle all the Afghan

00:06:38.360 refugees. It's the Republicans, George W. Bush. George W. Bush, obviously who began the war in

00:06:45.900 Afghanistan, is now demanding that the Biden administration take in as many refugees as

00:06:51.220 possible. He says, quote, the Afghans now at greatest risk are the ones who have been on the

00:06:55.880 forefront of progress inside their nation. President Biden has promised to evacuate these Afghans along

00:07:01.380 with the American citizens and our allies. The United States government has the legal authority

00:07:05.100 to cut the red tape for refugees during urgent humanitarian crises. We have the responsibility

00:07:09.400 and the resources to secure safe passage for them now without bureaucratic delay. So this is the sort

00:07:14.840 of thing that you always hear from the left in America, but also from the liberal establishment

00:07:21.180 right, which is you've got to take in all of the world's refugees. I'm not denying, by the way,

00:07:28.820 that people in Afghanistan are going to suffer under the Taliban. Make no mistake about, I'm not,

00:07:33.360 I'm not saying it's going to be rosy for them. I'm just asking what is the limiting principle?

00:07:39.820 Because women suffer in many, many countries on earth. The people broadly suffer in many,

00:07:46.100 many countries on earth. There are a lot of, a lot of bad countries, spithole countries like

00:07:52.380 President Trump might say. Are, are we morally obligated to take in all of those people?

00:07:59.300 Even if you're just limiting it to countries that we've had military interventions in,

00:08:02.720 we've intervened militarily in basically every country on earth. So are now, are we obligated

00:08:07.140 to take in all of the world's people who don't like their societies? Can we even do that?

00:08:14.620 Obviously we cannot do that. George W. Bush was modest compared to some politicians in the

00:08:19.820 United Kingdom. Rory Stewart, who's a British politician, he's actually now at Yale's Jackson

00:08:23.860 Institute. He went further. He said that, that the West broadly has got to take in millions of

00:08:28.800 refugees. He said, I predict that there will be millions of Afghan refugees, but it will be over

00:08:34.560 many years and the US, UK, and all the NATO allies should share the burden between them.

00:08:39.340 Do you ever notice that, that we're the ones always expected to share the burden? Why is that?

00:08:49.160 Why is it that there, there are many, there are some countries in the Middle East that do take

00:08:52.580 in refugees and there are many other countries that do not take in refugees. They take in barely

00:08:56.660 any refugees. So the country's nearest to these hot zones, these zones with civil war, very often they

00:09:02.580 don't take in refugees. But then we fly these people to the other side of the world to come to the

00:09:07.180 good old US of A or to the United Kingdom or to Europe. You heard Macron yesterday in France saying

00:09:13.960 we have got to resist the influx of migrants. We just can't take it. Our societies are already on

00:09:20.080 the brink of collapse here in the United States. Just to remind you of something, we have violence

00:09:26.560 in the streets. We have people burning down federal buildings. Even the left says we have insurrections

00:09:32.280 left and right. I think, I think the insurrections are more on their side than on our side. But,

00:09:36.860 but regardless, we have insurrections in the country and we haven't been able to conduct

00:09:42.740 a presidential election where the overwhelming majority of Americans believe it was conducted

00:09:49.540 freely and fairly in a very long time. Obviously the 2020 presidential election remains contested,

00:09:56.800 including by the candidate who is not the president right now. But let's not forget the 2016 election

00:10:03.760 remains contested, including by the candidate who lost. Everyone's saying that Donald Trump

00:10:08.180 is threatening democracy because he won't accept the results of the election. Hillary Clinton still

00:10:11.760 does not accept the results of the 2016 election. And actually the, the, the disbelief in the legitimacy

00:10:18.060 of that election has been much more widespread than disbelief in the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

00:10:24.300 How about we get our own house in order before we flood this country and others with millions

00:10:29.680 of immigrants who come from a totally foreign land and a totally foreign culture and do not,

00:10:36.680 do not have a blazing American civic spirit in the spirit of democracy. I mean, isn't that the

00:10:43.040 problem in Afghanistan is some people naively thought that we could democratize the country in 10 years.

00:10:48.200 And it turns out that actually the process of democratization takes at least, oh, I don't know,

00:10:52.120 seven, 800 years. So now we're just supposed to open the floodgates. Why do we do this?

00:10:59.200 Why do we seem to be the only civilization that ever takes the side of victims? We seem to

00:11:05.940 intrinsically take the side of victims. There's actually, there's actually a very important answer

00:11:11.880 here. I think it gets to the heart of our culture. I think it's what unifies our experience on

00:11:16.220 migration, on our own national history, on tearing down the monuments, and frankly, on our popular

00:11:25.180 culture as well. The West uniquely takes the side of the victim. Yesterday, I mentioned this,

00:11:33.860 there was this clip of Lizzo, who's a sort of famously hefty singer. And she was dancing around

00:11:39.160 somewhat scantily clad along with Cardi B, who was also scantily clad. And then she posted a video and

00:11:44.400 she was very upset. And she said, people are making fun of me because of my weight.

00:11:48.280 And in the video, she's claiming this is fat phobia. And so on the one hand, we think, well,

00:11:53.960 we shouldn't be exalting unhealthy lifestyles as though they're wonderful and terrific and everyone

00:11:59.500 should model themselves after that. But also we feel really bad. We don't want people to be mean to

00:12:04.020 one another. So what is the answer to this? Why is the West uniquely so focused on victimhood?

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00:13:29.180 or other civilizations on earth, the West uniquely takes the side of the victim. We've done this from

00:13:35.060 our earliest days just about. Socrates famously says in Plato's Gorgias, he's arguing with these

00:13:43.700 rhetoricians. And Socrates, the philosopher says, it is better to be harmed than to commit harm.

00:13:52.320 It is better. Now, most people, for most of everywhere else in the world, for most of history,

00:13:58.020 have believed it's much better to be able to harm other people than it is to be harmed yourself.

00:14:02.360 It's much better to be the victor than to be the victim. But Socrates says no. It is because if you

00:14:08.460 harm somebody unjustly, you are degrading yourself. You're committing an immorality. It's much, much

00:14:13.320 worse. And you see this also with the animating story, the animating fact of our civilization,

00:14:20.380 which is Christ. All throughout history, groups come together and they find a scapegoat and they

00:14:25.680 attack the scapegoat and they commit human sacrifice and they exile people. This is the fact

00:14:32.340 of human nature. All civilizations begin with a death, right? Romulus kills Remus. It begins with

00:14:39.080 Cain kills Abel. This is a fact of human nature. And the French writer who died not that long ago,

00:14:47.980 René Girard, points out that this is the way societies work. And Christianity inverts that.

00:14:54.600 Only in the Bible and to its fullest extent in the New Testament, do you see, instead of

00:15:00.500 everyone taking the side of the mob against the one victim, you see God taking the side of the

00:15:06.160 victim. In the case of Christianity, that's what you have. You have Christ himself who is the ultimate

00:15:11.660 scapegoat, the ultimate victim, who is killed by the mob in this perfectly natural way that humans

00:15:18.480 interact with one another. And then he conquers that death. And so we, I think, actually, René Girard

00:15:24.220 goes on. He thinks this is where our victim culture comes from. He thinks this is where political

00:15:28.100 correctness comes from. The idea that victimhood carries currency because of Christianity. Now,

00:15:35.240 the way that we use victim culture today and political correctness is a perversion of that,

00:15:41.040 right? It's, you know, even Satan knows how to quote the scripture to his own devilish ends.

00:15:47.080 But this is where it comes from. This is why you only see this kind of thing in the West. And so

00:15:52.300 we're aware of that. That's good. I think that's obviously one of the wonderful features of our

00:15:57.400 civilization. But we can take that to such an extreme of self-destruction. Yes, we want to take

00:16:03.040 in the orphan. Yes, we want to take in the refugee. Yes, we want. And we do that to a greater degree

00:16:07.540 than anyone else on earth ever in the history of the world. But you can't just fling the doors open

00:16:12.540 to everybody because then you don't have a civilization anymore. Then you don't have a

00:16:16.880 country. And then you don't have the ability to spread your charity, which is, I think, what a lot

00:16:20.900 of these sort of messianic liberals in America seem to misunderstand. Now, speaking of Lizzo,

00:16:29.000 speaking of women who have struggled publicly with their weight, speaking of misunderstanding

00:16:34.500 the real victims here, Kirstie Alley just made a great point. Kirstie Alley, who is a terrific

00:16:39.840 actress, she just tweeted out on this phenomenon of breastfeeding and chestfeeding and the whole

00:16:45.520 transgender craziness. She said, quote, breastfeeding is what women do. Women also bottle feed. Men

00:16:53.440 bottle feed too. We do not have to buckle to the insanity of the minuscule minority of lunatics who

00:16:57.880 make us feel guilty for not sharing their insanity. Chestfeeding? Human milk feeding? WTF? Stop it.

00:17:06.560 Yes, this, as our public health geniuses and our ruling class decides to erase women from society.

00:17:13.540 They're now redefining breastfeeding as chest feeding. They're not going to call it breast

00:17:18.320 milk. They're going to call it human milk because it's not only women who can breed. It can be men

00:17:24.000 because some women think that they're men and some men think that they're women. And the reason that

00:17:28.440 we're going along with this insanity, this lunacy, as Kirstie Alley rightly calls it, is because we have

00:17:34.560 taken the good Christian Western impulse to take the side of the victim, to stick up for the victim and

00:17:41.180 not to just scapegoat people. We have taken that to an insane conclusion to deny reality itself.

00:17:49.420 That's not a good idea. Nobody is going to benefit. As we've been saying, since this ideology cropped up,

00:17:56.400 no one is going to benefit from denying reality and from indulging people's crazy delusions. And

00:18:03.640 actually, and this is something we forget, there are going to be victims of this too.

00:18:07.700 So when we take the side of the marginalized, of the man who thinks that he's a woman or people who

00:18:13.940 have various other sexual confusions, we are erasing women. We're erasing women from sports,

00:18:20.800 right? We're erasing women from, we're taking away women's privacy in their bathrooms and in their

00:18:25.580 changing rooms. We're erasing women from our very consciousness, from society. That's a bad thing.

00:18:30.540 When we take the side of the victim of the economic migrants or the refugees or the people who want to

00:18:36.260 come from bad countries to our good country, that's a wonderful thing. But if you do it to a limitless

00:18:42.600 degree, there are going to be victims here in the United States. There are going to be victims

00:18:46.400 economically. There are going to be victims of crime. Afghan migrants in particular commit crime at

00:18:51.580 very high rates. That's just a statistical fact. There are going to be victims of cultural madness,

00:18:59.020 political discord, even religious and racial discord. That happens sometimes. So you've got

00:19:06.560 what we have to, I think, channel our wonderful impulse to take the side of the victim. We've got

00:19:10.960 to, we can't be so narrow-minded about this and only focus on one aspect of society. When you think

00:19:17.500 politically, you're supposed to think about the public. You're supposed to think about everybody.

00:19:21.820 Speaking of things that women do very well, that men are not very well suited for,

00:19:29.460 this is going to be politically incorrect, but I just, I just have to say it. I know very,

00:19:34.340 even many so-called conservatives don't want to talk about this because they want to go along with

00:19:38.880 the liberal establishment and they don't want to be called haters and meanies and various phobes and

00:19:42.880 everything. But I have to talk about it. Pete Buttigieg is having a baby. Pete Buttigieg and his

00:19:50.300 partner, Chaston, are having a baby. Now you might say, Michael, you know, I took seventh grade

00:19:56.560 biology class and that doesn't, I don't think that's how it works. That doesn't make a whole

00:20:02.080 lot of sense to me. Well, they're having a baby. They haven't explained how they're having a baby.

00:20:06.060 They just say, quote, for some time, Chaston and I have wanted to grow our family.

00:20:09.820 We're overjoyed to share that we've become parents. The process isn't done yet. And we're thankful

00:20:15.040 for the love, support, and respect for our privacy that has been offered to us. We can't wait to share

00:20:19.480 more soon. Respect for our privacy is the key here. They're not going to say, is this baby being

00:20:23.480 adopted? Is this baby being concocted in a laboratory? You know, is this baby being concocted

00:20:32.200 in this very clinical way where Pete and Chaston go and find a woman and then basically just buy her

00:20:38.560 eggs and then go to another woman and rent out her womb and then they just create this baby for their

00:20:43.420 own edification, who will be deprived, his own natural mother? Or is the baby being adopted?

00:20:49.700 Well, if the baby's being adopted, don't forget there are 32 couples in the United States for every

00:20:53.520 one baby that is being put up for adoption. So the baby is being denied a household where

00:20:59.500 there's a mother and a father if the baby is being adopted to Pete and Chaston. Now, if it weren't a

00:21:06.540 baby, if this were someone who were older and in the foster care system, I think the calculus might

00:21:10.340 change here because there are not 32 couples willing to adopt everyone in the foster care system.

00:21:14.840 There are very few actually. And single mothers, for instance, will take in foster children often.

00:21:21.260 And so I think, I do think the calculus there changes a little bit and I'm not going to touch

00:21:25.100 that topic. But in terms of Pete and Chaston making a baby or adopting a baby or somehow, we understand

00:21:34.200 why everyone is celebrating this. Because Pete and Chaston are marginalized. They're marginalized

00:21:41.580 because of their sexual desires, because they have these unusual sexual desires. And in a previous

00:21:46.180 age, this would have opened them up to much criticism and ostracism. And today, that isn't

00:21:51.680 so much the case. But still, they have a natural desire to have a baby, but they don't have the

00:21:55.580 biological capacity to have a baby. And so now this is a way around them. And because they want that,

00:21:59.980 we want them to fulfill their desires. And you're a meanie, awful, terrible, homophobic,

00:22:05.900 terrible bigot if you suggest that that's not a wonderful thing. What about the baby?

00:22:12.720 What about the baby? Does a baby have the right to his mother? If the baby's being made in a

00:22:20.720 laboratory, for instance, does a baby have the right to his natural mother? I look at my little baby.

00:22:24.500 I see the way my little baby interacts with my wife, his mother. It's different. It's just

00:22:30.600 different than the way the baby. I'm not saying I'm a bad father, but it's just different, okay?

00:22:34.900 Because men and women are different. Because mothers and fathers are different. And babies

00:22:38.140 react differently to them. Because there's no such thing as chest feeding and human milk. It's

00:22:42.780 breast milk. It's breast feeding. Because there's a difference here. Even if it's an adoptive baby,

00:22:47.700 does the baby have a right to a mother and a father who are different? But Michael,

00:22:53.460 you see some men are just basically like, in some couples, some men are just basically

00:22:57.760 like the women and some men are just like the men. Yeah, sure, there are gender stereotypes and

00:23:02.640 roles and things and people. Some of it is socially constructed, but there's just a difference.

00:23:06.540 And so when we consider the victim, I'm not casting any aspersions on Pete and Chasen and all the other

00:23:12.060 sort of thing. I'm just asking, what about the other people here who deserve some consideration,

00:23:18.200 like the baby? What about that? What about reality? What about the real distinctions between

00:23:28.080 the sexes and the natural family? What about those things? We're not allowed to take that

00:23:32.640 into consideration. Even some prominent right-wingers were celebrating this because they're afraid

00:23:36.580 to make these sorts of observations. I think sometimes our natural wonderful impulse to take

00:23:43.520 the side of the victim can get a little bit perverted. We do this with abortion too. The

00:23:47.600 poor woman who doesn't want to raise the baby. And then you think, well, what about the baby?

00:23:51.420 That's another case of what to think about the baby. Easy to forget about. We've got to,

00:23:55.940 when we think politically, we've got to think about everybody. Right now, you can subscribe and start

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00:24:22.160 fast. That's dailywire.com slash subscribe. Get 25% off with code VIP. We'll be right back with a lot more.

00:24:28.340 We've got a whole lot of sexual confusion in our society. We've got chest feeding. We've got babies

00:24:46.960 drinking human milk. And we have on the economic front, a major she session. And the only cure for

00:24:54.680 a she session, you know, is a she-covery. Just ask Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.

00:25:00.240 It is exactly the example of the kinds of things you need to do to counter the she-session and turn

00:25:08.900 it into a she-covery. Fact is, the Conservatives don't talk about that in their lengthy platform.

00:25:17.420 You're right, Justin. The Conservatives, as far as I know, they have never talked about the she-session,

00:25:22.580 and nor have they talked about the she-covery. You got us there. You got us there. So I thought this

00:25:29.260 was fake when I first saw the clip. I said, no, this must be a deep fake or something like that.

00:25:33.860 No, he really said it. And the point he's making is even more ridiculous than the phrases that he's

00:25:41.680 using. The point he's making is that the economic recession has disproportionately put women out of work.

00:25:49.420 So the point he's making is that ultimately, we need all the women to be working outside of the home.

00:25:59.700 Obviously, women are going to work in whatever they're doing. But we need the women to be working

00:26:03.740 outside of the home. This is another very radical idea that was once only pushed by the left. Once it

00:26:10.740 was not pushed by either the left or the right, then it was pushed by the left. And then even the right

00:26:13.980 has adopted it too. You saw President Trump talk about this. He said, women's unemployment is at an

00:26:18.020 all-time low. And I thought, is that a good thing? Is that necessarily a good thing? Is that something

00:26:24.180 we have to celebrate? We insist that all women go out and work for the widget factory or something

00:26:28.500 like that? What if a woman wants to stay home? What if a woman wants to raise her family and keep a

00:26:33.840 house and watch the kids? That's bad because that would be the she-session because then the women's

00:26:40.400 unemployment rate would be high. I mean, they're not actually unemployed. They're doing the most

00:26:43.280 important work on earth around which all the other work revolves, but that is not understood or

00:26:51.380 recognized or valued in our modern liberal society. Liberal, not just on the left, but on the right

00:26:57.220 as well. Why can't women do that? You know, there was a famous debate between the American feminist

00:27:03.160 Betty Friedan and the French feminist Simone de Beauvoir. And Betty Friedan said something,

00:27:08.140 and I think a lot of people would agree with. She said, you know, if women want to go work,

00:27:10.660 that's fine. And if women want to stay home with the kids, that's fine too. And Simone de Beauvoir said,

00:27:15.020 no, no, no, no. You cannot give women a choice because if you give women a choice to stay home

00:27:21.520 and raise the kids, they'll take it. And we can't have women taking that choice because that is not

00:27:26.240 conducive to liberation. So you've got to force women to go to work. And then you get into this

00:27:31.940 strange sort of economy now where men pay other women to raise their children so that their wives can go

00:27:40.300 work for another man and get a paycheck so that you can pay the babysitter to wife. It gets a little

00:27:44.520 bit strange sometimes because women are not really given the choice. They're given sort of the illusion

00:27:49.560 of that choice. But all of the political forces, all of the cultural forces are telling women,

00:27:54.460 don't stay. If you stay home, you're a loser. If you stay home, you're wasting your life and your

00:27:59.440 education and all that great critical race theory that you learned in school and all those crazy

00:28:04.020 gender theories. That's an illusion. That's an illusion of choice. Pretty strange. Pretty

00:28:11.700 strange stuff. Kind of, it's like we're, it's like we're misunderstood. It's like our best impulses are

00:28:16.320 leading us to misunderstand certain things. Chest feeding, human milk, she session, and she

00:28:23.900 recovery. This is not a serious civilization. This is not a serious chivalization.

00:28:28.360 The chivalization. Chivalization. It's a chivalization if you ask me. And China knows

00:28:34.080 that. So China is already threatening the United States. China is doing this directly in response

00:28:40.760 to what happened in Afghanistan. Chinese state media tweets that quote, from what happened in

00:28:46.900 Afghanistan, those in Taiwan should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island's

00:28:51.080 defense will collapse in hours and the US military won't come to help. As a result, Taiwan will quickly

00:28:56.580 surrender. Ouch. I mean, in, in part, I'm sure the Chinese state media are pushing this out there

00:29:03.960 right now, not just to send a message to Taiwan, but also to troll the United States. And so that

00:29:09.200 people like me will repeat it on air, but it worked because they're making a point because the, the

00:29:13.240 argument that they're making here is probably true. Do you really think that the American people

00:29:16.940 want to go to war for Taiwan? I don't. I don't think so. And it's not just the fault of the selfish,

00:29:25.160 naive, ignorant American people. It's the fault of the ruling class. What's the argument for going

00:29:31.640 to war in Taiwan? The argument is that it's a way to contain China. Sure. Taiwan's an independent

00:29:37.240 country and yeah, we have a good relationship with Taiwan and yeah, it's the right thing to do.

00:29:41.420 But the national interest, strategic reason to go to war for Taiwan is to contain China,

00:29:47.200 which is now our chief rival on the global stage. What was the argument for staying in Afghanistan?

00:29:52.560 I do think there was one argument. I'm not saying I agree with this argument, but it was the only one

00:29:56.680 that it was even plausible. The argument for staying in Afghanistan was that it gives the

00:30:00.980 United States a base from which to check the ambitions of China, from which to check the

00:30:07.400 ambitions of Russia and from which to kill terrorists. Now, again, I'm not sure that this

00:30:12.200 was sustainable. Very often you'll hear people talk about how there haven't been combat deaths in

00:30:16.460 many, many months in Afghanistan. We could have just held it with 2,500 troops forever. I'm not

00:30:21.220 convinced that that's true. The only reason we were able to maintain that peace, I think,

00:30:24.340 with so few troops is that the Taliban knew that we were leaving. I think if we reverse that

00:30:28.100 withdrawal, probably there would be another uptick in violence. Probably you'd have to send more

00:30:31.300 soldiers over there as is happening right now. So again, I'm not sure it's a strong tactical

00:30:36.060 argument, but I get the strategy. Yeah, we need to do that to contain these other world powers. Okay.

00:30:41.300 But that's not the argument that the ruling class made. The argument that the ruling class made

00:30:45.580 was first that we need to go get Osama bin Laden, which I guess eventually we did,

00:30:49.720 even though it took 10 years and we actually did it in Pakistan. But that was the most plausible

00:30:53.200 argument. Then they said, we need to spread freedom everywhere on earth. And if any government

00:30:58.640 is not a Madisonian democracy anywhere in the entire world, then it poses an existential threat

00:31:03.040 to the United States. That was George W. Bush's second inaugural. It was ridiculous. It was insane.

00:31:08.020 So I don't think that persuaded anybody. Then it changed to, we need to nation build in Afghanistan,

00:31:12.820 even though initially we were not going to nation build. That was never going to work.

00:31:16.520 Then it was, we need to send women to college or something. I don't even mean to downplay it. I'm

00:31:22.780 sure it would be nice for the women to be able to go to school, but that we're going to, we're going

00:31:26.480 to send Americans to go die overseas. We're going to, we're going to spend two and a half trillion

00:31:29.560 dollars to improve the educational outcomes of women in this one particular country and no other

00:31:36.080 countries. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Then it actually became LGBT rights. Do you remember

00:31:40.240 this? They raised the pride flag over, over the embassy in Kabul. You might love the pride flag. You might

00:31:45.760 love LGBT rights, but does anybody really want to go send thousands of Americans to die overseas and

00:31:51.880 trillions of dollars for the pride flag? The pride, the pride flag last I checked is not yet our national

00:31:57.660 flag. We still have the stars and stripes. Pride flag might be our imperial flag, but it's not our,

00:32:02.520 not our national flag. So what was it? What were we doing? None of those arguments were persuasive.

00:32:07.760 And if they try the same arguments in Taiwan, it's just not going to work.

00:32:10.640 A serious civilization would be able to ascertain its interest, defend its own interest and,

00:32:17.060 and be willing to sustain that for some period of time. But I think it comes back to this victim

00:32:22.400 thing because we here, we don't like ourselves very much. We don't like America. People are toppling

00:32:30.900 statues, not just of the bad guys from history, but all the guys from history of George Washington,

00:32:36.220 of Thomas Jefferson, of, of Abraham Lincoln, for goodness sakes. He freed the slaves and they're

00:32:41.720 toppling his statues. We're being taught in our schools. We're teaching our children's and civics

00:32:46.340 classes that America is a rotten, terrible place. And you, if you are an American, and especially if

00:32:51.840 you're a white American, you're a terrible person. So why would anyone want to go project American

00:32:56.460 power overseas? Why would anyone want to even defend America's own interests? We don't like ourselves.

00:33:00.820 Actually, this author I was mentioning earlier, Rene Girard, makes this point,

00:33:08.080 discussing this victim mechanism, that Jesus addresses the preening, sanctimonious people

00:33:16.700 who today say, we are so much more moral than George Washington, than Abraham Lincoln,

00:33:23.420 than Christopher Columbus, the horrible people in our past. We're so much more moral. We would never

00:33:27.860 have killed the Indians. We would never have enslaved people. We would never have conquered

00:33:32.080 or purchased lands. We would never do that. We're going to build honors to all those conquered peoples.

00:33:37.360 Jesus does this in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. He says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees.

00:33:42.960 Woe to you, you hypocrites, who put honors upon the prophets that your fathers killed.

00:33:49.860 You will kill them too. You will do it. You are just as bad as them. Woe to you. All these things

00:33:56.820 will pass in this generation. I think that what is needed, what comes from all of our issues on

00:34:04.880 immigration, on the economy, on domestic issues, which are obviously very confused,

00:34:09.940 on the way that different groups in America relate to one another, on our imperial presence

00:34:13.580 overseas, is a healthy dose of reality. Just a healthy dose of reality. I don't think we need to say

00:34:21.180 that immigration is important and necessary and we need to open the borders completely,

00:34:24.480 or we need to completely close off immigration forever. It's a terrible thing.

00:34:29.600 What if we recognize that permitting people into this country can be a good thing, but it has to

00:34:34.840 be in balance? What if we recognize that projecting American power overseas is not always wonderful or

00:34:40.240 always terrible, but is sometimes a fine thing to do in measure, in balance, in moderation, which is a

00:34:46.260 virtue? What if we recognize that there are many victims in the world and there are many

00:34:49.660 perpetrators of violence and many victimizers? And we need to, thinking politically, take all of

00:34:54.760 them into account and balance these things out when we're debating what to do in Afghanistan or what to

00:34:59.620 do right here at home? But it's hard for us to do that because we're no longer a serious civilization,

00:35:06.520 which is why we now have our teachers, the people who are supposed to be educating our students,

00:35:10.540 crying on video, on the internet, because their students might cough on them.

00:35:19.500 If I die, who's going to take care of my children? And if I end up in a hospital, how am I going to pay

00:35:28.880 those bills? And if I give COVID to my students or my own children and they die, how am I going to live

00:35:40.980 with that? And I want you to ask any teacher how they feel this year, and I'm sure that they will tell

00:35:49.540 you that they have never experienced anxiety like this because it is like we are trying to protect our

00:35:55.500 students from a mass shooting that we know is coming but cannot do anything about, except we can do

00:36:02.340 something about it. It's just that not everyone agrees that wearing a mask will stop the onslaught

00:36:08.920 of students and staff who are likely to become sick, and that makes me sick.

00:36:14.280 I think this lady is making a pretty good argument for the she-session. She's making a pretty good

00:36:19.420 argument against she-covery because this lady should not be working in public. She is not

00:36:25.060 psychologically fit to do it. If you're crying over the prospect that one of your students might

00:36:30.760 cough on you and might spread the germs that statistically you have virtually no chance of

00:36:39.100 facing serious complications from a minuscule infinitesimally small chance of facing serious

00:36:43.840 complications from, and your students have an even lower chance, you are not fit to be, certainly not

00:36:49.720 to be teaching anybody, but probably not fit to even be in public life. This is a fragile, broken,

00:36:56.860 deluded person. And she says that, first of all, first of all, children die of the flu. Children face

00:37:04.100 serious complications sometimes from the flu. This woman, assuming she's taught in the years before

00:37:09.160 COVID, has gone to school during flu season without a mask, without bottles of Purell everywhere,

00:37:15.860 the unholy water of our new religion, our religion of public health. She-she's done that and it's fine.

00:37:22.340 And she hasn't-she hasn't been waking up in a cold sweat under the-the horrible thought that

00:37:27.480 she might've given the flu to her student or vice versa. Now, with the coronavirus, which is around us,

00:37:35.160 she-she says she can't-the thought that you would go to school without a mask, it's terrible. Because

00:37:38.680 if we just wear a mask, then the virus won't spread. Except we found out the virus spreads even with

00:37:43.020 the mask. The virus spreads even with the vaccine. The virus spread. It's a virus. That's what happens.

00:37:52.940 We had very serious lockdowns in this country. The virus continued to spread.

00:37:57.940 Actually, beyond our country, I should give this lady a break because she's not even the kookiest on

00:38:03.860 this topic. If you go down under, or if you go to the little island right next to the land down under,

00:38:09.220 if you go to New Zealand, that nation is going into a full countrywide lockdown

00:38:16.440 because of COVID, because of a surge. Do you know how many people got COVID in this surge?

00:38:26.180 What do you think it was? Do you think it was 100,000 people? 10,000? 1,000? 100?

00:38:33.500 100. One person. A single case of COVID was confirmed in New Zealand. They're locking down

00:38:41.560 the entire country. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has authorized the nationwide lockdown

00:38:50.620 after a single case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Auckland, telling citizens not only that they had to

00:38:57.780 stop going about their normal business, but they actually had to stop speaking to their neighbors.

00:39:05.000 So a 58-year-old man tested positive for the virus. He didn't die. No reports that he's gotten even

00:39:11.840 particularly sick, but he just tested positive. This is now triggering week-long lockdowns in Auckland

00:39:19.300 and Coromandel, coastal town that he had visited. It's triggered a three-day lockdown for the entire

00:39:25.700 nation. This will be a level four lockdown where schools, offices, and businesses are forced to

00:39:33.020 close with the exception of essential services. This is not a serious civilization. You know what I

00:39:41.860 noticed? Of all the horrific videos coming out of Afghanistan, the one thing I noticed is there's

00:39:48.120 not a ton of masking going on. There's masking of the women, I suppose. There's full burkas for the

00:39:52.960 women. But for the men who are taking over the country right now, the men who are trying to escape,

00:39:59.280 they're not concerned really about the mask or social distancing or the rapid spread of COVID or

00:40:06.660 anything like that. Because they're focused on important things. They're focused on things that

00:40:12.700 matter. They're focused on things that will shape souls and state. They're focused on adult matters.

00:40:20.240 And we here in our civilization are terrified of the cough and living our lives in fear and crying

00:40:29.280 because students might cough on us and wringing our hands over whether to call it chest feeding,

00:40:35.380 breast feeding, or anything else. I'm sure there will be some new politically correct terms soon enough.

00:40:42.020 Be ready to mask up for many more months. I know you thought it was 15 days. I know you thought maybe

00:40:52.460 we've reached peak craziness, haven't we? We haven't. According to the AP, the Associated Press,

00:40:59.280 quote, if you're flying on a plane or taking a train, be ready to keep wearing that face mask for a few more

00:41:03.500 months. The Transportation Security Administration says it will extend the face mask rule on public

00:41:08.360 transport until January 18th. January, just a few more months. Just a few more months, we promise.

00:41:18.960 Just a few more. Huh? How many more months? Just a few more days, just a couple more weeks to slow

00:41:26.760 the spread. Obviously, you can't believe any of this. These people have no credibility, but it doesn't

00:41:31.200 matter because they wield power in whatever capricious, lunatic ways that they want. Speaking of the AP,

00:41:36.700 not just the Associated Press, but the advanced placement course. This is a great leak. Just came

00:41:42.200 out from an AP government practice exam. This is an exam that high school students take if they're in

00:41:47.380 the really special smart classes distributed by the college board. It asks these sorts of questions.

00:41:53.440 These are the questions. This is not just a lesson about your opinion. This is not a lesson about

00:41:58.540 different views of a political matter. This is what you were being taught is the correct answer or the

00:42:03.900 incorrect answer to get a good grade so that you can get into a good college so that you can advance

00:42:08.520 in the society. Here's the question. Based on the infographic, which of the following claims would

00:42:12.240 an opponent of state voter ID laws most likely make? They give four answers. The correct answer is

00:42:19.480 voter ID laws are likely to decrease turnout among African-American voters because they are less

00:42:25.200 likely to have government issued IDs. So the question is, what would an opponent of voter ID

00:42:31.900 hypothetically say based on this infographic that we're giving you here? And the answer is that

00:42:37.080 they're racist and that people who are pushing these laws are racist. There's no flip side to

00:42:42.840 that. It's not as though the college board is saying, okay, and now what would the other? No,

00:42:45.860 it's just, here's the thing. Here's the question, voter ID laws. If you want to get the correct answer

00:42:51.040 on this exam, is it racist? Yes, it is racist. Here we go. Thank you. Next question. Based on the

00:42:55.680 infographic, which of the following strategies would a group seeking to increase voter turnout likely

00:43:00.120 pursue? And the correct answer is they would lobby state legislatures to overturn voter ID legislation.

00:43:07.900 This is, this is the way that our students are being educated. And I know that conservatives for

00:43:16.100 at least a decade or two now have thought, no, no, no, we shouldn't do that. We shouldn't have

00:43:18.940 students being indoctrinated in the leftist point of view, but we shouldn't have them being

00:43:22.600 indoctrinated in conservative views either. We just need a perfectly neutral point of view.

00:43:26.720 There is no neutral. There is no neutral. There's no, there's never been neutral in education.

00:43:35.800 There are true things and false things and good things and bad things and right things and wrong

00:43:42.240 things. And conservatives are either going to develop the cojones, I don't know what the new

00:43:48.180 gender neutral term for that is, to stand by the true and the good and the beautiful and the right and

00:43:53.920 the just, or we're just going to cede all of that moral ground to the left. There is a group in

00:44:01.200 Minnesota of 162 school principals and assistant principals that just issued a public letter for

00:44:07.220 quote, decentering whiteness and dismantling practices that reinforce white academic superiority

00:44:14.400 while claiming that their efforts mean that they're making a sacrifice for their children.

00:44:22.920 You see, white children, in a way they're the victims of this because they don't even know

00:44:28.180 how racist and bigoted and terrible they are. And they don't even know the sort of oppression that

00:44:31.780 they're foisting upon the world. So what we need to do is tell them that it's bad to be white and it's

00:44:38.600 bad if they were born white and we've got to de-center whiteness and dismantle whiteness or whatever that

00:44:44.840 means in the classroom. We're focused right now on the religious fanatics of the Taliban and the

00:44:53.900 theocracy that they are instituting in Afghanistan. No doubt they're doing that. These people here,

00:45:02.940 these American leftists, are just as religious as the Taliban. They are just as religious and they

00:45:11.200 are just as dead set as instituting a theocracy in this country, a theocracy that makes lots of

00:45:17.000 kooky claims about the metaphysical, spiritual, moral world, including the idea that your body has

00:45:23.700 nothing to do with who you are. And if you're a man who thinks he's a woman, you actually really are a

00:45:27.200 woman, including the idea that race connotes certain spiritual characteristics. And if you're white,

00:45:32.060 spiritually, you are lesser than other people, including the idea that victimhood carries

00:45:39.820 currency, not when the victim is innocent, not when the mob is wrong, but just in all cases at all

00:45:46.360 times, such that you must destroy your very civilization, that it is good and right to do that.

00:45:50.920 That is a pretty crazy theocracy that we're living in, folks. And maybe before we take a look overseas

00:45:57.580 and try to solve everyone else's problems, maybe we ought to figure out how to solve our own

00:46:02.680 problems here. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles. We'll see you tomorrow.

00:46:04.800 If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the

00:46:15.280 word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on

00:46:20.460 Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the

00:46:26.160 other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt

00:46:30.940 Walsh Show. The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies. Executive producer, Jeremy Boren.

00:46:36.240 Our technical director is Austin Stevens. Supervising producer, Mathis Glover. Production

00:46:41.220 manager, Pavel Vidovsky. Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico. Associate producer,

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00:46:52.980 Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2021.

00:46:56.440 The clamoring has begun to accept thousands of Afghan refugees. Meanwhile, our own people,

00:47:01.940 thousands of them, are still trapped in Afghanistan, and the Biden administration is not

00:47:05.080 guaranteeing that all will be rescued. Also, a top vaccine official in Tennessee said that she was

00:47:09.080 mailed a dog muzzle as a threat from anti-vaxxers. Turns out that wasn't exactly true. Also, New Zealand

00:47:14.980 goes into full lockdown over one COVID case, just one. And Australia has now instructed its people that

00:47:20.440 they must not drink outside without a mask, but they can drink with a mask. And finally,

00:47:24.080 Carrie Underwood has sparked controversy by liking one of my tweets. A very important story we'll

00:47:28.220 talk about today and so much more on The Matt Walsh Show.

Ep. 824 - Biden Abandons Americans Behind Enemy Lines

Summary

Transcript