Ep. 870 - Is Woke America The Real Global Enemy？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
179.71663
Summary
Dave Chappelle has been accused of being a racist and a misogynist by a bunch of lunatics for his comments about the WNBA and the transgender community. I explain why this matters and why it's not so bad.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
In recent years, the United States and our allies in Western Europe have peddled lots of far-left
00:00:05.840
causes onto the rest of the world, from climate change hysteria to transgender ideology to other
00:00:13.140
radical social movements. But it turns out the rest of the world, countries in Africa,
00:00:18.720
in Asia, and elsewhere, don't really like those leftist hobby horses all that much.
00:00:25.180
Increasingly, they're turning to our geopolitical adversaries, including China and Russia,
00:00:30.700
for help and leadership in stopping the tide of radicalism. All of which is leading American
00:00:36.600
conservatives to an unsettling question. Have we become the baddies? I'm Michael Knowles,
00:00:42.260
this is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday from
00:00:52.140
MCL Black, who says, funny, the WNBA parade looks about like a Biden press conference.
00:01:00.060
No, that's not fair. It looks like a Biden campaign rally. At the press conferences,
00:01:04.840
at least there are usually some people there. They don't get any answers and Biden runs away.
00:01:08.520
But at the Biden rallies, that's where really you can see the tumbleweed just start to roll
00:01:13.520
past the screen. The political instability is enough to make you want to hedge your investments,
00:01:19.280
which is why I would strongly recommend you check out Acre Gold. I have really enjoyed
00:01:23.720
investing in physical precious metals in my life, especially in gold. But I know what people
00:01:30.200
are thinking. They're thinking, Michael, gold is expensive. I can't afford physical gold,
00:01:36.020
Michael. All right. I didn't write a blank book, Michael. I don't have, okay, calm down. You don't
00:01:40.340
need to make this personal. Do you have $30? If you have $30, you can start investing in physical
00:01:45.160
gold. You're a liar, Michael. No, I'm not a liar. I'm not. Acre has figured it out. For as little
00:01:50.000
as $30 a month, you can invest in physical gold. You send in your $30 a month. When your gold stash
00:01:56.360
reaches the price of Acre's gold bars, they will discreetly ship physical Acre Gold to your house.
00:02:01.940
Recently, they've introduced a new $100 a month subscription to a five gram gold bar if you want
00:02:06.180
to up the ante. It ships directly. It's really great stuff. Visit getacregold.com slash
00:02:13.120
Knowles. Start investing in physical gold today. Make sure you go to that URL because Acre is giving
00:02:18.460
away a gold bar to qualify for the giveaway. Tweet or post why you should be the recipient and mention
00:02:22.900
at get underscore Acre. That is getacregold.com slash Knowles. Thank you, Acre Gold, for supporting
00:02:29.000
the show. They're going after Chappelle. They're going after Chappelle. I know this story broke about
00:02:34.760
a week ago and I just haven't had time to get to it. And, you know, left-wingers going after a
00:02:41.060
politically incorrect comedian. That's nothing new. That's not exactly a news story. But I think
00:02:45.780
it ties in with a lot of the other things we're seeing on the world stage now. Countries outside
00:02:51.720
of America and Western Europe are starting to push back against some of the radical, kooky,
00:02:56.760
lunatic ideologies that we are exporting, the woke ideologies that we are exporting to the rest of
00:03:02.360
the world. And Dave Chappelle just came under fire because he stood up against it. Initially,
00:03:09.080
the CEO of Netflix defended Dave Chappelle. Then he got a ton of backlash from lunatics,
00:03:17.440
many of whom worked at his own company. And now he's sort of apologizing for defending
00:03:22.860
Chappelle. So the first question, I actually haven't seen the Chappelle special yet. Not
00:03:26.600
because I don't want to. I like Chappelle well enough. I really like that he's got a little
00:03:29.960
tribute to Norm MacDonald at the end of it. I just, I just haven't had time. So I haven't watched.
00:03:33.740
I finally, I said, what did this guy say to lead to all of these protests? And it turns
00:03:39.320
out what Dave Chappelle said is that, is that, I can't, I can't believe we got to do another show
00:03:47.940
She said gender was a fact. And then the trans community got mad as shit. They started calling
00:03:55.000
her a turf. I didn't even know what the fuck that was. But I know that trans people make up words to
00:04:01.660
win arguments. So I looked it up. Turf is an acronym. Stands for trans exclusionary radical
00:04:13.540
feminist. This is a real thing. This is a group of women that hate transgender. They don't hate
00:04:19.260
transgender women, but they look at trans women the way we blacks might look at blackface. It
00:04:23.760
offends them like, Ooh, this is doing an impression of me. I'm team turf. I agree. I agree, man.
00:04:35.900
Gender is a fact. You have to look at it from a woman's perspective.
00:04:41.820
It's a fact. It's a simple statement. Dave Chappelle is not a right winger. He's not a conservative. I
00:04:47.500
don't think he's a Christian. He and I probably disagree on many, if not most things, but we do
00:04:54.320
agree on this. And this shouldn't be the shocking kumbaya moment that it has become. Until about five
00:05:01.620
minutes ago, everyone agreed that men are not women. And then starting, I don't know what, like 2017 or
00:05:07.260
something, the left in this country lost its mind and now pretends that men are women. But what's
00:05:13.480
interesting to me is not the argument Dave's making. We all know that that's true. What's
00:05:17.100
interesting is the reactions. The CEO comes out. He initially said, quote, while some employees
00:05:22.600
disagree, we have a strong belief that content on screen does not directly translate to real world
00:05:28.920
harm. I'm glad that he defended Chappelle. I'm glad he didn't at least initially give in to the kooks
00:05:38.360
and the lunatics at his own company protesting him. But what he said is not true. Conservatives
00:05:45.860
don't believe that that's true. He said, we don't believe that the content on screen translates to
00:05:50.940
real world harm. So what you're saying is you don't believe that cultural products have real world
00:05:57.360
implications, right? That's kind of the broader version of what this guy said. But that's not true.
00:06:04.000
For how long have conservatives said politics is downstream of culture? For how long have
00:06:08.340
conservatives said we need to take back Hollywood and take back the academy and take back the press
00:06:13.020
and take back the publishing? And how long have we said that? We say that because we believe that
00:06:18.740
cultural content does have real world implications. You know, this is parodied as this idea that in the
00:06:25.600
nineties, mothers were very concerned that kids would start shooting up schools because they played
00:06:30.640
violent video games. And the right was kind of split on this. Yes, the video games matter. No,
00:06:35.780
the video games don't matter. Oh, it's cool. You know, you see this with the debate with porn.
00:06:40.400
Well, just because kids are watching a ton of porn doesn't mean they're going to have disordered
00:06:43.300
sexual relationships. No, come on. But if you believe in any way that politics is downstream of
00:06:49.760
culture, or if you at least believe that culture kind of matters in politics, then surely
00:06:54.560
what this CEO of Netflix said is not true. So the lunatics protesting him knew that that was not
00:07:01.560
true. And they kept going after him, kept going after him. Now he says, I screwed up the internal
00:07:05.060
communication. I did that. I screwed it up in two ways. First and foremost, I should have led with a
00:07:09.380
lot more humanity. I had a group of employees who were definitely feeling pain and hurt from a
00:07:13.500
decision we made. And I think that needs to be acknowledged upfront before you get into the nuts
00:07:17.320
and bolts of anything. I didn't do that. And then he goes on to point out, yeah, there are real
00:07:20.560
world implications from cultural products. First of all, he led with humanity. Okay. What the left
00:07:25.480
is saying here that is not true is that it's inhumane and cruel to tell deluded men that they're
00:07:31.700
not really women. Okay. Their argument is that it's not nice and compassionate to tell people the
00:07:38.660
truth if they happen to be confused. And that's not true at all. It's actually very disrespectful and
00:07:42.640
cruel to lie to people. So what Dave Chappelle did and what the Netflix guy did, at least initially,
00:07:47.180
was very humane. It was very compassionate. It was very respectful to tell people the truth.
00:07:53.220
Now he's going squishy because that's what happens. There are three takes on the Chappelle
00:07:58.020
fiasco. I notice on a lot of news stories, there were three takes that one really can have. There's
00:08:05.500
the lib take, the far left, I'm sorry, the leftist take, which is that Dave Chappelle needs to be silenced
00:08:12.540
and shut up and Netflix should never have done this and they should delete the comedy special now.
00:08:16.500
Then there is the kind of lib libertarian take, which is Dave Chappelle has the right to say
00:08:23.800
whatever he damn well pleases. And how dare you squash free speech and engage in censorship?
00:08:30.440
He should be able to say whatever's on his mind. Then there is the conservative take,
00:08:35.960
which is that Dave Chappelle absolutely has the right to say true things. I don't think Dave Chappelle
00:08:42.540
has the right to say whatever he wants. I don't think Dave Chappelle has the right to threaten
00:08:46.300
people. I don't think Dave Chappelle has the right to engage in fighting words. I don't think
00:08:51.080
Dave Chappelle has the right to slander people. I don't think Dave Chappelle has the right to
00:08:55.760
engage in obscenity, to engage in obscene speech. He certainly doesn't have the right to do any of that
00:09:00.920
sort of stuff. He does have the right to say the truth and he did just tell the truth here and the
00:09:06.100
truth is that men are not women. So he has the right to do that. So the libertarians and the
00:09:12.560
conservatives are on the same page with regard to whether or not to take down the Dave Chappelle
00:09:16.560
special. But really the conservatives and the woke people are on the same page when it comes
00:09:22.460
to the observation that there are limits to speech. And what the woke people want to push
00:09:29.500
is they say that you have the right to say false things and you don't have the right to say true
00:09:34.120
things. And the conservatives say you have the right to say true things, but you don't necessarily have
00:09:38.320
the right to say false things. And the libertarians and the squishes in the middle refuse to distinguish
00:09:43.120
between true and false or good and bad or right and wrong. How has that worked out? We have taken
00:09:49.220
the libertarian squish approach for the last 30 or so years. How has that worked out? Not looking great
00:09:55.460
by my lights. The fact that we even have to debate this, the fact that this is even controversial
00:09:59.640
that men are not women, shows you that the squish libertarian approach has not worked.
00:10:05.080
So now you have two choices. You either go with the woke approach, which insists upon lies and bans
00:10:10.800
the truth, or you get the conservative approach, which insists upon the truth and is not so polite
00:10:15.900
to lies. And that requires us to have the conscience and the reason to be able to discern truth from
00:10:22.660
falsehood. And it requires us to have the intestinal and spinal and maybe some other kind of anatomical
00:10:29.640
fortitude to actually stand by the truth and enforce it. Dave Chappelle is a turf. He's a turf
00:10:36.500
because he said a thing that's true. You're seeing this right now on the right. It's not just me
00:10:43.740
pushing it. I may have been among the voices crying out in the wilderness
00:10:48.800
on this particular issue before, but I think now this is kind of the mainstream view and you're
00:10:54.720
seeing it playing out at the level of the governors and the senators. And the more willing
00:11:00.280
conservatives are to make a distinction between true and false and right and wrong and actually
00:11:04.700
wield government power, it seems the better positioned they are for 2024. If I asked you right
00:11:09.420
now, which governor at least is best positioned for the 2024 presidential race, it wouldn't take you
00:11:16.300
two seconds. It's Ron DeSantis. And it is no coincidence that Ron DeSantis right now in Florida
00:11:21.560
is not just reciting the same old shallow false platitudes from late 90s Republican pamphlets that
00:11:30.960
say that we should never use government power and we should just let rich woke people do whatever they
00:11:35.780
want. Ron DeSantis is willing to use the government for good ends. When people are in the midst of this
00:11:44.920
social and political craziness, they want to keep their money safe, which is why I would strongly
00:11:49.160
recommend you check out Alto IRA. Alto IRA gives you a better way to invest in crypto. A lot of people
00:11:56.700
think cryptocurrency might represent the future of money. It's one of the most exciting investment
00:12:01.340
opportunities to come around for some time. But what about taxes? All right. When you want to do
00:12:07.120
anything in life, there's one way to do it. And then maybe there's a smarter way to do it. Okay.
00:12:11.300
So you might already be investing in crypto, but did you know that you can trade Bitcoin,
00:12:15.440
Ethereum, over 80 other cryptocurrencies in a tax advantaged IRA? With an Alto crypto IRA,
00:12:22.220
you can trade crypto like Bitcoin and avoid or defer the taxes. Get into investing in crypto and do it
00:12:28.500
in a tax advantaged retirement account. You can create an account in just a few minutes. You can start
00:12:32.860
investing with as little as 10 bucks, zero setup charges. There are a bunch of ways to fund your
00:12:38.500
account. You can do it with a cash contribution, transfer cash from an existing IRA, rollover an
00:12:43.560
old 401k, a lot of ways to do it. Open an Alto crypto IRA account with as little as 10 bucks.
00:12:50.400
Go to altoira.com slash Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L. That is A-L-T-O-I-R-A.com slash Michael,
00:13:02.960
I think the first or certainly one of the first states to reopen after the COVID lockdowns,
00:13:11.080
he gave businesses a lot of liability protection in order to do that, right? He said, look,
00:13:18.040
we're open for business in Florida, but you can't go around suing people if you catch COVID,
00:13:21.700
right? The businesses are open and the business owners really liked that, right? But now they're
00:13:27.400
getting some pushback from the woke people. They're getting some pushback from the Biden
00:13:30.800
administration. And so they are not willing to offer that same courtesy to their customers or to
00:13:38.580
their employees. Right now, there are businesses in Florida that are mandating that the employees
00:13:45.300
get these experimental drugs about COVID. And Ron DeSantis is using the government to punish
00:13:53.620
businesses and to disincentivize businesses from doing that.
00:13:58.020
What we're going to be doing, in addition to mounting aggressive legal challenges to federal
00:14:05.460
mandates, we're also going to be taking legislative action to add protections for people in the state
00:14:13.520
of Florida. And that's something that cannot wait until the regular legislative session next year.
00:14:19.080
It needs to happen soon. And so we will be calling the legislature back for a special session.
00:14:24.640
And we're going to be pursuing a number of protections for employees. First of all,
00:14:31.420
if you think about it, if anyone has been forced to do an injection and has an adverse reaction,
00:14:37.400
that business should be liable for that. Any damages, there's just, you have to do it because
00:14:42.940
that's on them. It wasn't an individual choice. Once again, there are three positions here. There's
00:14:48.540
the woke position, which is, yeah, let's, let's use OSHA and the federal government and the businesses
00:14:53.820
to make the businesses mandate that the employees get the vaccine, right? Yeah. Anything to inject
00:14:57.980
you with the Fauci ouchie. Then there's the libertarian view, which is, well, it's a private
00:15:01.940
business and the business can do whatever it wants. And it's bad if the government injects you with the
00:15:06.360
drug, but it's not bad if the business injects you with the drug and, you know, just start your own
00:15:10.060
corporation or whatever. And then there's the conservative view, which is this experimental
00:15:16.140
drug has side effects, some of which have been pretty serious. It does not have any long-term
00:15:22.240
data to go along with it. There are some studies that suggest that there could be really negative
00:15:27.060
consequences for groups of people who take it. The virus itself does not pose a particularly grave
00:15:32.160
danger to the vast majority of people. And there are a lot of questions about natural immunity
00:15:37.520
and people's own risks here. So because of that, we're going to take the cautious prudential
00:15:43.120
measure to not using dubious legal mechanisms and power companies to zap you full of an experimental
00:15:50.140
drug. It's a long way of giving the conservative point of view, but I just want to point out how
00:15:54.180
reasonable and prudential it is. That's what DeSantis is doing. Okay. DeSantis is saying, I'm not any
00:16:01.440
happier about having my rights and way of life taken away if it's taken away by a corporation than it is
00:16:07.420
by the government. The ideologues on the squish kind of libertarian-ish side, they're the ones
00:16:15.460
who say, yeah, I don't care. Shoot me with the Fauci out. You just don't let it be the government.
00:16:20.480
All hail big corporations. The conservative view, no, we're not going to do that. So just as
00:16:26.120
Ron DeSantis gave businesses a huge amount of freedom in the early part of the COVID lockdowns,
00:16:32.660
now he is prudently wielding the government to protect the freedoms of employees and of the
00:16:39.180
people and to have just government. Really good stuff. Very good use of state power. And of course,
00:16:45.460
he's going to be called an authoritarian. That word, more than almost any other word, I would strike that
00:16:50.940
word from the English language because I don't think it really means anything anymore.
00:16:53.960
By the current use of authoritarianism on the left and on the right, Thomas Jefferson would be an
00:17:01.280
authoritarian. John Locke would be an authoritarian. What does that mean? If you have any limits at all
00:17:07.920
to people's individual autonomy, to what? To do drugs, to sleep with whoever they want, to force your
00:17:14.320
employees to take experimental shots, to what? Everything. Anything I don't like is authoritarianism
00:17:21.540
in today's day and age. Well, they're calling DeSantis an authoritarian. Speaking of authoritarians
00:17:26.320
looking overseas, I'm turning to Russia for a moment. And I notice that while Boris Johnson,
00:17:34.740
the allegedly conservative prime minister in the UK, is pushing for a massive climate change
00:17:41.140
summit where they're going to push a bunch of crazy hysteria about the sun monster and the US is for
00:17:47.440
it and a lot of Western Europe is for it. Vladimir Putin in Russia says, I'm not going to go.
00:17:53.900
Now, we on the conservative side were accused of collaborating and colluding with the Russians
00:17:58.100
some years ago. We were accused of that by the deep state and liars in our federal agencies
00:18:05.640
and based on nothing. But now I'm starting to think maybe we should start colluding with these
00:18:09.800
Russians. You know, maybe these Russians, at least on the topic of the sun monster, they seem to have a
00:18:13.900
better idea. And the power grab being pushed by Boris Johnson and other Western leaders,
00:18:18.680
including our own. I think Putin probably has the right idea here. Putin apparently just funded this
00:18:25.020
cathedral. There's an amazing military cathedral just opened recently in Russia. It's beautiful,
00:18:29.560
beautiful architecture. It's probably the one example of new beautiful architecture with, you know,
00:18:36.740
a deep cultural and religious basis. The minute I saw it, I said, maybe we got to start colluding
00:18:41.240
with these Russians. Because they got the right idea. I don't think the Russians exactly have our
00:18:46.060
interests at heart. You know, I wouldn't. But I would like it maybe if our leaders here in the woke
00:18:51.700
West took a couple notes perhaps from Putin. Even more authoritarian than Putin, Xi Jinping,
00:18:58.420
the leader of China, is also ditching this ridiculous summit that Boris Johnson is putting on. And people
00:19:06.420
in other countries around the world who are resisting the tyranny of, you know, the sun monster
00:19:12.580
technocracy. First, you had the COVID technocracy. And now they're trying to maintain their recently
00:19:19.880
acquired power by pretending that the new existential threat is the sun monster. A lot of other countries
00:19:24.700
are looking to other nations for leadership now. Where they once might have looked to the United States,
00:19:29.560
they're looking to other nations because they don't want to import these kooky, woke ideologies like
00:19:33.760
transgenderism or climate hysteria. You see this right now in an article from the AP.
00:19:40.480
AP just came out with an article. Across Africa, major churches strongly oppose LGBTQ rights. And when
00:19:47.380
they say LGBTQ rights, they mean redefining marriage in a way that, you know, marriage for all of human
00:19:52.320
history everywhere in the world involved sexual difference, right? Maybe some places tolerated polygamy.
00:19:57.380
Some places in the Christian West did not tolerate polygamy. But sexual difference was thought to have
00:20:04.900
maybe something to do with marriage. Now, five minutes ago in the West, we decided that isn't
00:20:08.640
true. And we still, we really don't know what marriage is now anymore. We've settled on this idea
00:20:12.960
that it's a monogamous, well, no, not necessarily, because there's polyamory and all of this sort of
00:20:17.660
stuff. But that it's a union of two people of any sex who love each other. But they don't love each
00:20:22.880
other the way that siblings love each other. And they don't love each other the way that friends love
00:20:26.040
each other. They love each other in this more romantic way. But it's, but for some reason,
00:20:31.120
it's only two people for now, but maybe it'll be three people. And if we don't really know what it
00:20:34.940
is. So the, the article begins in Ghana, home to a diverse array of religions, leaders of major
00:20:42.540
churches have united in denouncing homosexuality as a perversion and endorsing legislation that would
00:20:46.980
impose anti-LGBT policies. And then they go through all of these play. Nigeria is not down with
00:20:54.520
redefining marriage. And in other African countries, bishops aligned with the worldwide
00:20:59.660
United Methodist Church are preparing to join an in the works breakaway denomination so they can
00:21:04.900
continue their practice of refusing to recognize same-sex marriage or ordain LGBTQ clergy. And it
00:21:11.760
goes on to complain about how these Africans won't accept woke Western secular ideologies.
00:21:16.620
You'll notice here, they don't, they don't talk about the Catholic Church because the Catholic
00:21:20.000
Church has not changed its view because the Catholic Church cannot change its view on marriage or,
00:21:25.540
or these sorts of things. But a lot of Protestant churches have, and some Protestant churches are
00:21:30.400
holding up. So another way to read this article is African countries try to, to maintain their own
00:21:41.060
culture and try to resist Western imperialism. In this case, the imperialism of the pride flag,
00:21:48.800
or the progress flag, or what, or it's even beyond the marriage issue. You see it with abortion. The
00:21:54.320
West pushes abortion on Africa and a lot of countries that don't want it, or the West pushes
00:21:58.600
all sorts of things, contraception even too. You would think that the woke people would be in favor of
00:22:06.700
the Africans keeping their own culture and opposing Western imperialism and hegemony, but they're not.
00:22:12.260
Because what we're seeing here is that liberalism is, is really not so much about you do you and I'll do me
00:22:18.640
in live and let live. It's not that at all. Liberalism actually appears to be a fairly totalitarian
00:22:24.260
ideology. This is why we focus on the rainbow flag as the kind of new flag of the United States.
00:22:30.880
Is the flag of the United States, the stars and stripes, is a national flag that talks about the
00:22:35.640
nation of America, which is a bounded concept. The LGBT, the rainbow flag is an imperial flag. It's a
00:22:42.820
universal flag that the claims of the rainbow are just as true in Tibet as they are in Detroit, right?
00:22:48.300
This is a flag for all people at all times throughout history. And the State Department is pushing this
00:22:53.220
imperial ideology. The State Department just yesterday tweeted out its support of International
00:22:59.260
Pronouns Day. State Department tweets out yesterday, quote, today on International Pronouns Day, we share why so
00:23:08.200
many people list pronouns on their email and social media profiles. Read more here. That's great. We
00:23:14.820
really support pronouns and people and men pretending to be women, right? This is what it says actually
00:23:20.940
underneath. You can read it in the post. Read on to learn why it matters what pronouns you use to refer
00:23:25.680
to people and how the United States embraces sharing pronouns. So there are two questions here or two
00:23:31.800
possibilities, I guess, to the question, why is America sharing this? Is it because America is just
00:23:38.180
oblivious to how radical this idea is that men can be women and it's important to pretend that men are
00:23:42.740
women in some cases? Or is it because the U.S. State Department knows that this is a poisonous but
00:23:49.720
very effective ideology and the United States is weaponizing it to increase our power and influence
00:23:56.480
around the world? I don't know. I don't know. I suspect it's some combination, actually. I suspect that
00:24:03.480
most of the pawns who are pushing this just think it's just true. It's just true that men can be
00:24:08.180
women. It's just good to do that. And I suspect a lot of people at the top recognize that it's a
00:24:12.840
powerful ideological weapon. It's an information weapon. Either way, though, it is authoritarian.
00:24:19.080
It is an imperial ideology. And people do have the right to resist it. You know, back when the United
00:24:26.040
States stood for truth, justice, and the American way, back when we were a Christian nation in our
00:24:32.140
self-understanding, back when the West broadly was Christendom, I think a lot of us could get on board
00:24:38.620
with sending that overseas. I mean, that was the point of Columbus's voyage. That was the point of
00:24:43.660
Western exploration, to share the good news of the gospel and the civilization that Christianity created
00:24:48.460
to the rest of the world. And I'm on board with that. Yeah, let's do it. Let's go. Let's bring the good
00:24:53.700
news, man. Let's do it. As a great civilization, let's share it with people.
00:24:56.480
But now, if the empire is going abroad to share transgender bathrooms and climate hysteria and fear
00:25:06.960
of the sun monster, I'm not on board with that. And I have a great deal of empathy, actually, for the
00:25:14.020
nations in Africa or Asia or wherever else that want to resist it. People are resisting it here. The ALCS
00:25:21.240
was on TV the other night. You've got A-Rod and Big Poppy were on Fox Sports discussing
00:25:27.460
the game. And the crowd decided to start chanting a very well-known expression, a variation on the
00:25:35.600
phrase, let's go, Brandon. Guys can come in like a chess in the queen or a rook on the chessboard,
00:25:41.260
right? These people have routines. But I think Ivaldi's the one guy he can get away with.
00:25:45.860
I thought Ivaldi kind of let his hair down a little bit. He threw two
00:25:49.260
those unbelievable split fingers for strikeouts for our f***ing two. When Laz Diaz, by the way,
00:25:54.980
missed 21 calls tonight, right? The average is eight or nine for an umpire. 21 is a great deal.
00:26:01.720
When he f***ed that call, I thought he lost his concentration and f***ing he hung the split.
00:26:06.620
Kudos to A-Rod for not breaking his commentary. He keeps pushing right ahead. But you can hear,
00:26:15.280
and it's not let's go Brandon that they're chanting. It's the real, the real version of
00:26:19.080
that. That took place outside Fenway Park. That took place, it wasn't in South Carolina. It wasn't
00:26:26.420
in Texas or Tennessee. That was in Boston. It's become a meme. And also Joe Biden has a very low
00:26:33.740
approval rating, even in places that might've voted for him. I think the oppressed masses
00:26:38.900
yearning to be free want political leaders to free us from the shackles of this libertine,
00:26:46.420
woke, progressive, liberal madness. Okay? And I think that politicians, Republicans who run
00:26:53.120
on the old squish way of things, I'm thinking of Asa Hutchinson in Arkansas, or any number of those
00:26:59.140
squishes, who run and they say, if you elect me, I won't do anything. I'll never impose my views on
00:27:05.040
anybody. I'm going to defend the neutral order. You know the neutral political order of transgender
00:27:10.000
bathrooms? You know the neutral political order of completely redefining marriage? You know the
00:27:14.580
neutral political order of this, that, and the other thing? No. I think what people recognize is
00:27:19.500
there is no neutral political order. All polities have some view of what's good and wrong and bad.
00:27:24.500
And we want our leaders to have a spine. Okay? And we want them to fight for us. You're seeing
00:27:31.240
this right now, speaking of sports. In Texas, Governor Abbott just banned boys from playing
00:27:37.120
in girl sports. Okay, cool. Makes perfect sense. The White House is furious. This is what the White
00:27:41.180
House said. Quote, this hateful bill in Texas is just the latest example of Republican state lawmakers
00:27:46.140
using legislation to target transgender kids whom the president believes are some of the bravest
00:27:51.640
Americans. You know, they're just storming Iwo Jima in order to score political points.
00:27:56.700
These anti-transgender bills are nothing more than bullying disguised as legislation and undermine
00:28:00.980
our nation's core values. You know, Thomas Jefferson's core value, Abraham Lincoln's core
00:28:05.640
value of letting dudes go into the girls changing room. You remember that? Amazing how fast that
00:28:11.320
happened. Okay, it's amazing how quickly. In 2012, 2011, Barack Obama opposed, and Joe Biden and everyone
00:28:21.900
else opposed, redefining marriage. Today, if you oppose letting Husky Hank go into the girls changing
00:28:28.480
room with your daughter, you're a bigot. Amazing how fast that happened. Conservatives used to say,
00:28:33.100
oh, don't worry about these woke people. Oh, don't worry. Common sense will get the better of them. I don't
00:28:37.520
think that's true. Common sense will only be around if people defend it and embrace common sense and
00:28:43.120
enforce common sense. Which brings me to another favorite politician of mine since I was a kid.
00:28:50.340
But he's getting criticized right now. It's Rudy Giuliani. He gets criticized because sometimes he
00:28:54.420
does things that are eccentric. So Rudy just posted on social media this image of him, this video of him
00:29:00.840
as a kind of face-swapped Abraham Lincoln talking about Terry McAuliffe in Virginia.
00:29:05.840
Virginia, vote against the man who dishonored our past by selling my bedroom hundreds and hundreds of
00:29:17.080
times to scoundrels in a pay-for-play scheme. In my time, we had a name for men who sold bedrooms for
00:29:26.640
one night. In your time, the name is Terry McAuliffe and the Clinton flees once and for all.
00:29:36.900
I love this. I love it. I love it. People are making fun of him and they're saying,
00:29:40.400
Rudy seems crazy. And what are you doing? Oh, no, please stop. No, I don't. I'm not a Rudy
00:29:44.280
Republican. I think it's great. I think it's hilarious. I think it's like Clint Eastwood talking
00:29:47.460
to the empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention. I think we need more of this in our
00:29:52.380
politics. A little levity, a little humor. Trump was obviously the king of this. I don't want to
00:29:58.080
hear any more nitpicking of Republicans who are doing a good job and who are basically have their
00:30:02.180
heart in the right place and are basically doing the right stuff. Okay. I don't, Marjorie Green is
00:30:06.580
kooky. Yeah, whatever. I don't care. Is she doing like good stuff? Is she not doing evil stuff? And is
00:30:11.760
she doing good stuff? And is she trying to go in the right direction? Okay. That's fine by me. Rudy.
00:30:16.100
Rudy. Yeah. Rudy, man, he's America's mayor. That's great. Got to recognize what the stakes
00:30:21.080
here, folks, and cut it out with the squishy stuff. All right. We got to get into the mailbag.
00:30:25.020
First though, you know, Drew is going to be talking about this cold civil war that we appear to be in.
00:30:30.100
He's going to ask if it is going to turn hot. You can check that out today. Also check out the
00:30:35.700
Morning Wire. Subscribe and start listening to Morning Wire on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your
00:30:40.420
podcasts. Leave a five-star review if you like what you hear. We'll be right back with the mailbag.
00:30:46.100
Did you know that over 85% of grass-fed beef sold in U.S. grocery stores is imported? That's why I
00:31:02.300
buy all my meat from GoodRanchers.com instead. Good Ranchers products are 100% born, raised,
00:31:07.800
and harvested right here in the USA from local family farms. Plus, there's no antibiotics ever,
00:31:12.840
no added hormones, and no seed oils. Just one simple ingredient. That's meat. Best of all,
00:31:18.440
Good Ranchers delivers straight to your door for added convenience. So lock in a secure supply of
00:31:22.620
American meat today. Subscribe now at GoodRanchers.com and get free meat for life and $40 off with code
00:31:28.060
DAILYWIRE. That's $40 off and free meat for life with code DAILYWIRE. Good Ranchers, American meat
00:31:33.520
delivered. Welcome back to my favorite time of the week, the mailbag. First question up from Asher.
00:31:38.980
Michael, my name is Asher. I'm 16, and I have a little philosophy question for you.
00:31:44.460
Imagine you live in a world where you had everything possible that you wanted. Wealth,
00:31:48.940
you had a perfect family. Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney voted using conservative values.
00:31:54.860
All SCOTUS justices ruled like Scalia and Thomas. And most importantly, everyone used a ring alarm system.
00:32:01.840
But in order to live in this world, one person has to be humiliated and suffer every single day.
00:32:08.220
You have the option to leave this perfect life, but if you do, everything you have is not guaranteed
00:32:13.100
to be the same. Would you leave this perfect life where all of it is predicated on one person being
00:32:17.900
tortured every day? Thanks. Love your show. I would leave that world. I do not want to live in a world
00:32:22.980
where I benefit, but only at the expense of someone being ruthlessly, needlessly tortured.
00:32:31.860
Okay? This is a thought experiment that does come up sometimes. And the just answer is that,
00:32:38.940
yeah, you would not accept a world where you get good stuff, but only by inflicting torture
00:32:46.800
constantly on somebody. And then sociopaths say they would just live in the world,
00:32:51.680
and who cares about the person being tortured. What's interesting about this thought experiment
00:32:56.180
is its relationship to Christianity, right? Because this is a fallen world. This is a broken
00:33:03.600
world. And because of original sin, sin and death pervade the world. And the consequence of that is
00:33:08.460
our mortality. So we're born and we have this wonderful, fun time and some free will, but we're
00:33:13.380
going to die, right? And that is the consequence of original sin. But there is good news. And the good
00:33:20.980
news is that Christ dies on the cross and is crucified and redeems us and is resurrected and
00:33:28.140
redeems us. Our savior lives. Oh, happy fault that one for us so great, so glorious, a redeemer.
00:33:32.180
So in a way, our eternal happiness, which is provided for through no particular help of our own,
00:33:41.820
this eternal happiness does hinge on the torture, the sort of infinite suffering of Christ on the
00:33:54.640
cross. The idea that God himself, the eternal logic of the universe would be crucified, but would then
00:34:03.960
conquer death, right? So the greatest imaginable suffering, but would then actually conquer death
00:34:10.340
death on the cross. So there is a real theological depth to that question. But if you're asking as
00:34:18.380
an ethical matter, would you, you know, chain someone up to the radiator and torture them
00:34:22.940
forever so you could have a good life? No, not a good idea. From Nick, good morning, Michael. The
00:34:27.680
nature of news reporting in the original sense has shifted dramatically in the past decade, so much so
00:34:31.920
that younger people tend to take their news from influencers on social media, not traditional news
00:34:36.500
sources. As a result, influencers who have almost no credentials in news media cannot be held
00:34:42.100
accountable if and when they boast an influential opinion, which produces the same results traditional
00:34:46.440
news media produce. The effect of this is that in the war for culture, the liberal media has claimed
00:34:51.920
enough influencers to take the cultural tide, and the only current way for conservatives to win the
00:34:56.000
war is to garner more influencers on social media than the left, something that is actively being
00:34:59.500
suppressed. My question is, is there a way governmentally to run around the problem, to rein in
00:35:04.320
influencers with the same rules? And long story short, can social media be saved from the libs
00:35:08.340
via government intervention? Sincerely, Nick, the happily married one. Well, I think you're
00:35:13.980
overestimating the credibility of journalists before this happened. You know, someone like Walter
00:35:21.640
Cronkite, the most trusted journalist in America, was a gigantic lib and a world federalist who probably
00:35:26.440
lost us the Vietnam War. So frankly, if it's between, I don't know, Nicki Minaj, you know, or Kanye West,
00:35:34.060
tweeting something and Walter Cronkite having a monopoly on credibility. I'm with Kanye. You know,
00:35:41.240
I don't want to go back to a world where Walter Cronkite is trusted, or Dan Rather, my goodness,
00:35:47.300
Dan Rather is a liar. He's a lib liar, but he was trusted by many people for a long time. I don't
00:35:52.040
want to go back to that world. I say this as an influencer. I don't have a journalism degree.
00:35:57.420
I've never worked as a reporter. I have worked as a journalist for a long time, and I've written
00:36:02.640
books, and I've done shows and things like that. But I guess I'm an influencer. But I would rather
00:36:08.660
my influence be in the politics than that of Walter Cronkite. Now, for the suppression of the right-wing
00:36:16.000
influencers on social media, can the government be used to help? Yeah, totally. I asked Bill Barr this.
00:36:20.760
I said, how do we do it? Do we do it through claiming that the left is, that the big tech
00:36:26.860
companies are violating their Section 230 responsibilities, you know, from the Communications
00:36:31.100
Decency Act, that they shouldn't be protected from liability? Should we do this by saying,
00:36:35.180
you know, they're really publishers, not platforms? Should we do this by saying that
00:36:40.200
they're a monopoly? Should we do this by saying that they're committing fraud? And he said, yes.
00:36:44.640
All of the above, but we should do it. Because if you control speech in a republic, you control
00:36:49.940
the whole political order. So yeah, we should use the government against our political opponents
00:36:55.120
who have a lot of political power in big tech. That's just common sense. From Caitlin. Hey,
00:37:00.220
Michael, question for you. How many kids is too many? I'm the youngest of four kids. Our parents
00:37:04.040
are divorced. In the hustle of shuffling between mom and dad, the consistency of always having my
00:37:08.180
siblings was comforting. I was talking about this with my sister somewhat recently. She's the eldest
00:37:12.380
sibling. And she shared that she has some resentment for having to take on parenting
00:37:16.460
roles while still a child herself. Both of our parents worked. And so she had to fill in the
00:37:20.580
gaps, especially with me. I'm now married and have two children. My husband and I have always
00:37:24.260
had the good old Catholic approach. However, many children the good Lord will bless us with. I want
00:37:28.080
to make sure I am available to provide for emotional and physical needs. And they don't need to get that
00:37:32.860
from their siblings. I'm not saying I want to be like 19 kids and counting, but I don't want to be
00:37:37.000
done at two. Sincerely, I don't want to be the reason my kids need therapy. Yeah. Keep
00:37:42.300
having kids. Be open to life. It's great. It's great. You know, why not? The problem that you
00:37:48.380
and your siblings had is not that you had too many siblings. I mean, you said that's a great,
00:37:52.380
great comfort. The problem is that your parents got divorced. And actually the number of siblings
00:37:57.400
was a great comfort for you. So I would, I would do it. I would say more. There are going to be some
00:38:01.080
downsides. You won't be able to pay as much attention to every kid and you won't be able to buy
00:38:05.020
them Christmas presents that are quite as expensive. But so what? You have a good big family. And if you
00:38:10.660
keep the family together, it's a great, it's a great gift you can have. You know, I have a small
00:38:18.700
family. I come from a small family myself. Sweet little Elise and I are working on growing our
00:38:24.100
family. You know, it's a great, great deal of fun to work on that sort of thing. And we'd like to,
00:38:28.000
and we're just going to remain open to life and have as many kids as we can. But my father comes from
00:38:31.860
a big family. You know, he's got five siblings and which used to be considered a small Catholic family.
00:38:38.340
Now it's considered a gigantic family and it's great. And it's just a wonderful thing. And I think
00:38:43.560
the siblings are all really grateful for one another. And we, you know, who are in the next
00:38:48.020
generation are really grateful for it. It's, it's, it's worth a lot more than, you know, nicer Christmas
00:38:53.180
presents or something. I think you really can't, can't put a price on how wonderful it is to have
00:38:56.820
a big family. From Allie, my dearest favorite podcaster. My question to you is in regard to female
00:39:02.080
sports. After the laughable WNBA parade, I had to ask, what are your thoughts on the low viewership
00:39:07.780
of female sports? Mostly basketball because the other ones are all right to watch.
00:39:13.120
But specifically, do you think that networks like ESPN shoving them down our throats is hurting them
00:39:17.680
at all or not affecting it because they're lame on their own? The WNBA will never be popular.
00:39:22.060
So do you think it should just cease to exist or should we just allow them to play and ignore the
00:39:25.560
left's attempt to make it equal to men's sports? Sincerely, they need to stop trying to make fetch
00:39:29.800
happen. Yeah, it's not cool at all. And the only reason you hear about it even is because
00:39:35.960
they make a big political stink about it and force the NBA to subsidize it. And then as you say,
00:39:40.300
the networks try to push it on you. But even so, no one shows up to the parades, right? So
00:39:44.340
yeah, sports are for physical excellence. So generally as a rule, people are only going to
00:39:54.040
watch men's sports. There are some exceptions to this. They're going to watch women's gymnastics,
00:40:00.080
right? They're going to watch women's ice skating. They're going to watch, there are certain sports
00:40:03.600
that I don't know. Do you even call that really a sport? It's certainly an athletic feat. So you're
00:40:08.520
going to watch things where you're watching the greatest displays of physical excellence. And so
00:40:14.740
in some cases that can be women, but in the vast majority of sports, it's going to be men.
00:40:19.480
And I guess the one exception I would say to this is in tennis, but I think that's really just because
00:40:23.680
of the celebrity of the Williams sisters. I don't know that people would really care that much
00:40:27.560
about women's tennis. If not for them, they really became a big celebrity couple. Not a couple like
00:40:35.460
they're dating, but the two of them really helped popularize that sport. But yeah, in general,
00:40:39.620
people are not going to pay attention to it. So I couldn't name WNBA players and I don't pay any
00:40:45.020
attention to it at all. And I say this as someone without really a dog in the fight because I've
00:40:48.900
never been the most athletic fella in the world. But if I am going to watch sports, I want to watch,
00:40:53.380
as everyone does, we want to watch the best and the strongest and the fastest. And just as a fact
00:40:59.840
of biology, that is going to be men. From Quaid. Hello, Smokey Mike. Hello. Hello, Quaid. I was
00:41:07.080
wondering what your opinion on how secularization in Europe from 1500 onward contributed to society.
00:41:13.600
My one university class is requiring a final paper on how secularization was what drove the success of
00:41:18.640
Europe. I got permission from my professor to argue that it was not secularization, but rather
00:41:23.320
the fulfillment of Judeo-Christian values that drove the success of Europe and that secularization
00:41:28.620
was what led to the atrocities of the 20th century and the decline of Europe.
00:41:33.000
I was wondering what resources you would recommend to best argue my position thanks to a Canadian
00:41:36.680
who escaped to Florida. Well, I think your position is a little confused because you're talking about
00:41:41.660
the great success of Europe after 1500. But you're then focusing, then you have to explain away
00:41:49.060
the lack of success. Then you have to explain away the atrocities. So I guess the first question you
00:41:54.620
have to ask is, is Europe's great success post 1500? I don't really think it is. I think that
00:42:03.740
this is a line of argument that is argued by woke people and secularists and liberals and Protestants
00:42:11.520
to some degree. Because you'll notice what happened in 1517 was the beginning of the Protestant
00:42:15.760
revolution. And so I think as a result of that, first Protestants and then liberals and then
00:42:22.100
secularists had to rewrite history to say that everything before 1500 was really bad. And it was
00:42:26.260
filled with the dark ages and people who didn't know anything. And a lot of that was just completely
00:42:31.380
made up. But you think about the greatest works of art and the greatest contributions to Western
00:42:38.540
civilization. Well, I don't know. Thomas Aquinas, that was before 1500 by a lot, right? St. Augustine,
00:42:44.680
that was a long time before 1500. Dante Alighieri, that was a long time before 1500. And, you know,
00:42:51.860
there were a lot of wonderful artistic developments afterward, but I don't think they were a major
00:42:56.960
break from the civilization before 1500. Actually, a lot of it comes from the counter-reformation,
00:43:03.060
right? A lot of it comes from artists like Caravaggio or Rainey or, you know, other people who created
00:43:07.620
so much of the art and the beautiful cathedrals and the things that we think of when we think of
00:43:11.660
Western civilization. So I would maybe make the argument that secularization, which I do think,
00:43:20.060
you know, actually does trace itself to the Protestant revolution because it cracks up the
00:43:25.480
confidence of Europe to make truth claims and leads to liberalism, which then led to secularism,
00:43:33.040
which has led to wokeism. I think that you might make the argument that secularization led to Europe's
00:43:39.600
downfall. And I think you might make the claim that Europe was actually a great deal stronger
00:43:43.800
before secularization began. From Kathy, hi, Michael. Love your show. Thanks for all the great
00:43:48.980
work you do. I have a question about a situation that's come up at work recently. My company is
00:43:53.780
requiring that I participate in an interactive unconscious bias training. I want to be better
00:43:59.120
about speaking up in a way that's authentic and true rather than staying quiet or worse, equivocating.
00:44:03.320
Not sure if this is the forum for this, but do you have any tips for how to articulate reflections
00:44:09.200
on this topic from a conservative point of view? I'm a very facts first person, so it's hard for me
00:44:15.040
to think about how to do this in what is sure to be a feelings oriented conversation. Thanks.
00:44:21.740
Sure. It depends what they bring up to you. The issue with unconscious bias is if their argument is
00:44:29.940
that you have these unconscious biases, but then once they become conscious, you can cure them,
00:44:34.220
then you can say, then you can just judge them on the merits. Is, you know, are they really bringing
00:44:40.460
up unconscious prejudices? I have, are those prejudices bad and what should I do to fix them?
00:44:46.100
But usually what they say is everyone has these unconscious biases and prejudices and everyone's
00:44:50.980
racist. All the white people are racist, but no other people cannot be racist. You can be a white
00:44:55.240
person who doesn't hate people on the basis of their race. You can be a black person who does
00:44:59.760
hate people on the basis of their race. The white guy will still be the racist and the black guy will
00:45:03.740
still not be the racist or the anti-racist or whatever. So if that's the case and they say,
00:45:09.200
well, yeah, you can, we can talk about these unconscious biases, but you can never fix them.
00:45:13.220
Then I would say, well, then what's the point of the training? If there's nothing we can do about
00:45:17.100
it, then what's the point of the training would just be to instill a sense of racial guilt,
00:45:22.600
you know, an irredeemable racial guilt. So I would, I would avoid that. And then I would stand up
00:45:29.040
against the claims that you find false. And I would be firm about them. You don't need to be
00:45:33.460
flamboyant, but you, you, I would be firm. And I think you mostly need to be aware that that could
00:45:39.260
have professional consequences for you. And I, I think you ought to have the integrity and the
00:45:43.160
courage to stand up for them and do it in a way that's prudent and, you know, wise as a serpent
00:45:48.380
and innocent as a dove. But you might have to face consequences for it. Increasingly, we all might
00:45:53.440
have to face consequences if we want to stand up for what is good and true and beautiful.
00:45:57.600
I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you on Monday.
00:46:27.600
Hey everybody, this is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. You know, some people are
00:46:56.480
depressed because the Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moons turn
00:47:01.060
to blood. But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started. So come on over
00:47:05.740
to The Andrew Klavan Show and laugh your way through the fall of the Republic with me, Andrew Klavan.