Ep. 89 - And The #FakeNews Awards Winner Isā¦Us!
Summary
Time is up for the preening hacks who pretend to be journalists on television and in the press. Time s up for left wing hacks in the mainstream media. After weeks of waiting, President Trump finally presented the highly anticipated Fake News Awards.
Transcript
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Time's up for the preening hacks who pretend to be journalists on television and in the press.
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Time's up for the mainstream news media, which has decayed to become nothing more than the communications wing of the Democrat Party.
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The real winner of the Fake News Awards is, you guessed it, it's us, baby.
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We will analyze the surprising subtlety of this blunt stunt and why it worked so well.
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Then, Fleckis Talks, Austin Fletcher and Philip Wegman join the panel of deplorables
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to discuss how and why Democrats sold Dreamers down the Rio Grande,
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the looming government shutdown, and why PC fanatics think white supremacy is okay.
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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I'm wearing a black tuxedo today because time is up.
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But time really is up for the left-wing hacks in the mainstream media.
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And I don't mean it's up in that they'll go away or they'll stop being left-wing hacks
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or even that they'll stop influencing a lot of people.
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But the time when places like the TV networks, the New York Times, Washington Post, etc.,
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when they could pretend to be objective journalists, hard-hitting reporters,
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just interested in the facts, that actually is over.
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After weeks of waiting, last night, President Trump finally presented
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For months now, political analysts have wondered what the awards will look like.
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Will people wear black tuxedos and little lapel pins and things like that?
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but no one was sure if he was kidding or not or if this was a real event.
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He then announced on January 2nd that the awards would be presented on January 8th.
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Then on January 7th, he announced that the awards would be January 17th.
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And then last night, he tweeted the link to a blog post on the GOP website
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listing 11 news stories that he's already criticized for being fake.
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The conclusion of months of persistent trolling,
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which really was part of years of trolling the news media,
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The mainstream media could have simply ignored this.
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Chrissy Teigen, whom I'd never heard of until last night, hosted a fake, fake news awards
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Former Obama ethics chief announces president's biggest lie of 2017.
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A former Obama administration ethics czar is planning to beat Donald Trump at his own
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game Wednesday, trolling him with the Golden Pinocchio Award for his biggest lie of the
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year on the night the president is expected to announce his most dishonest and corrupt media
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Wow, if President Trump had any idea that former Obama ethics czar Norm Eisen would tweet
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something, then he never would have criticized the mainstream media.
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The Washington Post fumed, quote, Trump's fake news awards were a huge flop.
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The fact that you're writing about the fake news awards, the fact that we're talking about
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the fake news awards, the fact that there are 1,900,000 Google results for the term fake
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news awards, that means that the fake news awards did exactly what they were supposed
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How do people, I actually don't understand how people do not get this, how they still don't
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As for the awards themselves, CNN won the night, taking home four out of the 11 accolades.
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For those who still haven't seen the blog post or weren't able to load it last night, here
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Former Enron advisor Paul Krugman predicted in the New York Times that markets would never
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The Dow Jones, you'll observe, just hit yet another record high.
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ABC News published an entirely fabricated story on Trump-Russia collusion, sending the
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CNN got another story about Trump and Russia entirely wrong.
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Time magazine published a totally fabricated story about President Trump removing the bust
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WAPO lied about Trump's crowd sizes at a rally in Florida.
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CNN lied about Trump overfeeding Japanese pet fish.
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CNN lied about a meeting between Anthony Scaramucci and Russians.
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Newsweek lied about the Polish first lady not shaking President Trump's hand.
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CNN falsely reported that James Comey disputed Trump's claim that he was not under investigation.
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The New York Times published a false story on Trump and global warming.
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Then number 11, of course, the Russia collusion nothing burger, to quote Van Jones.
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There is one last aspect of this that I'd like to point out because nobody's really been
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The mainstream media aren't the only objects of mockery from this stunt.
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The fake news awards, it mocks the fake news media, but it also mocks award shows, precisely
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Formerly glamorous celebrities wearing gazillion dollar gowns receiving gold trophies.
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Just as the fake news awards highlight the irrelevance of the mainstream news media, their total fall
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from respectability, it does the same for Hollywood, which has virtually, and literally, I'll point
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The fake news awards worked because both Hollywood and the news media have become ridiculous.
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And Hollywood and the news media have become ridiculous for the same reason.
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The Hollywood is a bunch of people going on television and pretending to be somebody they're
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And the news media are now a bunch of people going on television pretending to be something
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It's a bunch of Democrat communications advisors, Democrat propagandists pretending to be journalists
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Hollywood and mainstream press have traded their original missions, which is to entertain on
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the one hand and to doggedly pursue the truth on the other for shallow left-wing hackery.
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They're tedious exercises in virtue signaling from millionaires complaining that they deserve
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even more millions of dollars to pretend for a living.
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The mainstream media are no longer respected precisely because formerly journalistic institutions
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have become nothing more than petty propaganda centers.
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If the press and celebrity reactions to last night are any indication, yesterday's fake
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news awards will be the first of many because they still refuse to see why everyone is laughing
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We have Fleckus Talks, Austin Fletcher from Fleckus Talks.
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And Philip Wegman from the Washington Examiner.
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Philip, you look okay, but I got to tell you, Fleckus, wearing that Jersey tank top, you
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We don't have any more time to talk about fake news.
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Democrats have sold the Dreamers down the Rio Grande after an apparently productive meeting
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Dick Durbin alleged that Donald Trump called Haiti a not very nice place to live.
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So Durbin, in doing that, poisoned any possibility of DACA compromise.
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Philip, did Dick Durbin just realize that it's better for Democrats' electoral chances
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And if that means that younger illegal aliens need to be deported, so be it?
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I think what Democrats are realizing right now is that a shutdown, at least in their mind,
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And so they're hoping that going into 2018, a shutdown is actually going to buoy their chances.
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We see this, yes, with DACA, where you have Dick Durbin making this kind of small jab that
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in the larger scheme of things really only throws things off track.
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So he does that to create a controversy, which slows down negotiations.
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But then also we see this with CHIP and the current, you know, continuing resolution.
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And CHIP, by the way, just for people who don't know what it is, CHIP is the Children's
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And so they have been asking for months that this would be included.
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Republicans have put forward a bill that Democrats initially rejected.
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They've put the CHIP funding into the continuing resolution to keep the government funded as
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And now Democrats are suddenly quiet and they're saying, well, we're not going to mess with
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Fleckis, Austin, this seems to me final irrefutable proof, as I've said for many years, that Democrats
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do not give a damn about illegal aliens at all.
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They only pretend to care about illegal aliens when it suits their electoral needs.
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Should the GOP finally talk bluntly about that, cut it out with all of the rhetoric about
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compassion and humanity and these poor people and dreamers and all the other things that
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we now know Democrats do not care about at all?
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I think it's about time that we did, because realistically, the Democrats have always been
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And bigger picture, I think the left, especially the uninformed left that I come in contact with
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at all these protests, they think they can solve global poverty with immigration.
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So they think, oh, the dreamers, oh, like they came here young.
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They're not familiar with the country they came from.
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And then when it actually comes time to make something happen, they self-sabotage and would
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rather shut down the government just to, you know, have a better chance in 2018.
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So, I mean, I thought we didn't negotiate with terrorists, and now the Democrats seem to
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be, you know, getting time with us in our negotiations, and it's not good.
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What's so offensive about it is there are so many awful costs of illegal immigration.
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Something like 40% of young women who cross the border and girls who cross the border illegally
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These people are forced to live in the shadows.
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Obviously, there's the flip side of that, which is illegal immigrant crime and gang membership
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And there are all these really awful, vicious aspects to it for both the illegal aliens and
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And yet they couch it in this language of, oh, we're the ones who care about these people.
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And then you find out when push comes to shove, they don't give a damn about these people.
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They're perfectly willing to let them be deported or let there be some stopgap measure for them
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because for them what it's all about is getting votes.
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And specifically, if they can rely on 80% of votes, if amnesty goes through and these people
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tend to trend Democrat, then they'll do it for that.
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But if the illegal aliens were going to vote for Republicans, they would be the first people
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And I hope that in this era of Donald Trump speaking bluntly and taking away a lot of
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that nonsense PC political talk, that we can speak honestly about this and say, look,
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Democrats, you're dirty, rotten cynics who are using these poor people as political cudgels
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And as long as they sign the pledge, the Michael Knowles show Dreamer DACA compromise pledge,
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which is that they all get amnesty immediately as long as they agree to vote for Republicans
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for 25 consecutive elections, then that's fine.
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Then we can form a deal and these people get to stay.
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Moving on to the government shutdown itself, the White House today has signaled that it
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will sign a one-month stopgap measure to fund the government until a longer military funding
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This seems to me like the win-win reality of Trump.
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Either he's competent and gets good things done, or he's incompetent and the government
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Should Republicans fear a shutdown in this case?
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I will hope there isn't a shutdown just because we need to keep paying the military.
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And if the left is going to have this quid for a quo type thing where amnesty for all,
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we're shutting it down, that's not how this should go.
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And just to touch on the last point you made about the DACA people, the Dreamers coming
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over and the left wanting their votes, the people I come in contact with at the protests
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who are, a lot of the people are Latinos for Trump, a lot of these people came here legally
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because they respect the country and love the country so much, and that's why they tend
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So adding to your last point, the people who are coming here illegally, it makes perfect
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sense that the Democrats want to help them as much as they can, because that's potential
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Democrat voters who aren't really America first ever.
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Of course we should have known that these people would trend to vote Democrat.
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And that's a key aspect of the left-wing coalition.
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Philip, is the White House breaking ranks with Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans who
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have, who they themselves have signaled that they oppose the stopgap measure?
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Or is there some strategy that I'm missing here?
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Well, so I'm not clear on the day-to-day strategy when it comes to conversations between McConnell,
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That's definitely in flux and it's keeping Democrats on their toes.
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One thing that I would point out, though, is I don't think that Democrats should be so
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quick to make that foregone conclusion that somehow they're going to benefit because of
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Yes, Trump keeps changing his mind about DACA and immigration, but he has made some pretty
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significant overtures when it comes to flexibility.
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So I think that, you know, if you're talking about that Latino voter or that dreamer, they're
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going to see that in this CR deal, Trump just is asking for a continuation of government
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funding and they're asking to lock in a couple of different government programs and then deal
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So if this, if we shut down the government and then we're not able to get a DACA deal
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later on, I think a lot of core Democrat supporters, a lot of those young people who are looking
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for dreamer legislation to come through, they're going to be incredibly disappointed.
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And I think they're going to see through, see through this stunt.
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Yeah, I think you're right, especially if we keep hammering them in this way, if we keep
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using blunt language and now that their chief communications wing has cracked, as we saw
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last night in the fake news awards, I think there's a real chance.
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In the old days, the fear was, even if we're right on the facts, we're going to be so blown
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out by the press that it doesn't really matter and we just have to play by their rules.
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During 2016, a bunch of Trump supporters started using the OK symbol and 4chan decided to troll
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people into thinking that the OK sign was a white supremacist symbol.
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So the son of New Jersey's Democrat governor, Phil Murphy, played this game.
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He did a little circle sign during his father's swearing in.
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And so the OK sign has many innocuous connotations.
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Obviously, there's nothing inherently racist about saying, hey, OK, everything's good.
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And there's also this childhood game whereby you make someone look at the little OK sign.
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And then if they look at it, you punch them like they did on Malcolm in the Middle.
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And so anyway, 4chan decided to make this a symbol of their support for Trump or something.
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So now the New Jersey press are calling this kid racist.
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I'm not asking, by the way, if white supremacy is OK.
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But yeah, I mean, leave it to the left to ruin everything.
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Um, they had the same thing with Pepe the Frog.
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The Pepe the Frog was like a meme, a popular meme on 4chan and Reddit.
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And then someone made, I think, a Nazi version of it.
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And now everyone who's ever used the Pepe the Frog meme is a Nazi.
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And it's just leave it to the left to ruin everything.
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They've ruined every, you know, city that they run.
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Um, I just saw a L'Oreal commercial that came out today for a shampoo and the woman in the
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We are now beyond parody where even the OK symbol has become, uh, this Nazi thing or
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Philip, you know, admitted and avowed racists like Richard Spencer, uh, they now use the symbol,
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It seems to me 4chan is trolling PC culture, wherein even the most innocuous of symbols could
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Is someone, are they going to take a picture of this screenshot of me doing the symbol and
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Well, I think, I think that's, uh, generally how it works.
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But I mean, where are they going to come after next?
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Um, and the sad thing about this is that there's going to be some bad actor who eventually
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comes along and starts using this as a racist symbol for real and they're going to ruin
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They're going to start ruining it just as much for the rest of us.
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So we're, uh, you know, we're in trouble from the left and the right.
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But they actually, the, the alt right in there being jerks about this kind of underscore
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the same point for the mainstream media, which is that they don't get to tell me what totally
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The mainstream media doesn't get to redefine the okay sign or the what's the next, the
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And likewise, Richard Spencer doesn't get to do that.
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There are like 50 of these people in the entire world who are actually white to nationalists
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And they don't get to define widespread symbols for me.
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They, they can, I've got two words for those people, the mainstream media and the alt right.
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That is Philip Wegman from the Washington Examiner and Fleckis Talks.
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Before we get to the mailbag, I'm sorry, Marshall, he's cutting me off.
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It's like they're playing me off like at all the other awards shows.
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So if you're on Facebook and YouTube, you have to go over to dailywire.com right now.
00:20:09.240
By the way, the next version of the conversation is going to be me.
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And this Leftist Tears Tumblr, we now have a really wonderful vintage.
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You never can quite tell when a vintage batch is going to come up.
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But it's 2018, and it's all thanks to Cory Booker.
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Because it would be such a shame if you collected all of Cory Booker's salty, delicious, and ridiculous tears.
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And they went bad, and you couldn't drink them in 10 years or 15 years.
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Make sure you store them properly in the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
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You can keep it in a nice dry area, and it will maintain the perfect salty ratio.
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So you can gobble up all of Cory Booker's absurd performance the other day.
00:21:16.760
There's a good Sicilian cake called Casata, but that's Clay Casasa.
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Oh, voice of another kingdom, Knowles, I've loved movies since I was a kid and have started to write screenplays on final draft as a sort of creative hobby.
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I have no delusions about getting into Hollywood on spec scripts, but I would like to make them good enough to submit to contests and see how they do.
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I've enjoyed the throwback to old radio of another kingdom, and I'm wondering if that would be a legitimate way to get my stories to the masses.
00:21:43.460
I'm wary of the artistic trope of starting and stopping and never finishing projects.
00:21:48.880
Would you recommend finishing in the screenplay format or immediately shifting to scripting for podcasts?
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I think that you should immediately start going into podcasts or whatever medium you can control to get your stories out there.
00:22:06.540
You have to ask yourself, what are you doing this artistic endeavor for?
00:22:10.240
If you're doing it just to amuse yourself and see if you have any talent and, you know, maybe some judge will tell you that you did a good job, then submit it to contests.
00:22:20.920
And maybe they'll write you a note and say this was good.
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And actually, if you want to work on your craft and get decent feedback, I suppose that's one way to do it.
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If you are ready to release this material to an audience and you have a clear artistic vision and you just want people to see it, don't waste your time.
00:22:41.220
If you watch this show, you probably are slightly on the right or at least you're right curious and that's going to kill you in Hollywood.
00:22:54.100
There are few screenwriters and novelists who are more successful than Andrew Klavan.
00:22:58.960
And we've been called in for meetings on Another Kingdom with TV producers and people all around town, very big names.
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Then they Google Andrew Klavan the night before and the meetings are icy cold.
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And Another Kingdom has, I think, 17 or 1,800 five-star reviews.
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You know, the trick of Hollywood, you go into any coffee shop and there are 5 million people writing screenplays on their laptops.
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And not a one of them is going to get them made or very, very, very few of them are.
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So do what you can to control your own distribution and you get an audience.
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And it will tell you if you have a future in it, hopefully.
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If you want to work on your craft, work with an editor, maybe submit it to contests.
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But if you want people to see it, do it yourself.
00:23:48.600
From Garrett, Mr. Knowles, when is your book coming out in the audio book version?
00:23:56.400
Second, how do you respond to the opinion that morality is an evolutionarily derived trait which our ancestors used to cooperate with one another so that the race survived?
00:24:09.400
How do we know that morality, really what you're asking is how do we know that morality is real and it's not just some evolutionary tick that, you know, who cares what it is?
00:24:18.740
What this means, what you're suggesting by this evolutionary development, evolutionary morality, is that there is no good or bad.
00:24:29.400
Hamlet talks about this because if there isn't a morality, if there isn't an objective morality which human beings are sensing or intuiting or reasoning their way towards something,
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if there isn't a standard outside of our own little brains, then nothing really is right or wrong.
00:24:45.120
And murdering and raping and pillaging, that isn't really wrong.
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It's just not evolutionarily advantageous to certain groups.
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So, therefore, I guess we shouldn't do it, but it doesn't really matter.
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Hamlet talks about this when he's talking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
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He says there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
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And what you should know about that is that Hamlet is pretending to be insane when he says that.
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It's Hamlet pretending to be mad to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
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So, the other aspect of this, of evolutionary morality, is it's totally unfalsifiable.
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So, you know, we'll say, okay, why have I evolved to if I see a bus coming and there's a young woman in the way,
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why would I risk my life and maybe give up my life to push her out of the way?
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I guess there's an evolutionary advantage to that to groups because then she can pass on her genes.
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You know, that might be the other psychological advantage by natural selection.
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But why, when I see an old woman about to be hit by a bus, do I also have the impulse to give up my life to push her out of the way?
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Why do I have the reasonable understanding that it would be valiant and gallant and courageous for me to push her out of the way,
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And the way that these people who advance this hypothesis explain that away is they say, oh, that's just a secondary trait.
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That's just, yeah, there was a reason for that in your psychology and the way that evolution has made you.
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But that is just a quirk from some other reason for the young woman or something.
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So nobody behaves as though morality, very few people behave as though morality is not real, as if there is no nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
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A lot of people say that that's true, but they don't behave that way because we all know that that isn't true.
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And so whereas there may be many evolutionary explanations to a lot of things, if there isn't that outside of ourselves, if there isn't logic and reason and ideas and morality, moral standards outside of ourselves,
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then we're all just babbling nonsense and nothing that we're saying makes any sense and you can't rely on your own faculties of reason to get along in the world.
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But until we start doing that and we fully decay into just apes grunting at one another, then I don't think anyone is really taking that seriously.
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I grew up in the Foursquare Church raised by my grandparents who are missionaries to Malaysia and they hold no sympathies for the Catholic Church.
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Either you or your grandparents don't hold sympathies.
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I believe your argument that God having come to earth through a particular woman in a particular place and at a particular time should have a particular church is flawed.
00:27:47.920
Jesus chose 12 disciples to build his church, 12 men from every walk of life and every creed, men who on the day of Pentecost were surrounded by people of every nation and every tongue.
00:27:58.220
In other words, Jesus, our Lord and Savior, chose nobody in particular to build his church here on earth.
00:28:03.640
Michael, please tell me why I should be a Catholic or forever hold your peace.
00:28:08.300
One, the purpose of this show is not to convert everybody to Catholicism, though that might be a secondary trait.
00:28:17.680
And just there is one inaccuracy you said that they came from every creed.
00:28:23.780
Part of all of the earth coming to Christ is seen in the story of the Magi.
00:28:28.720
They are supposed to have come from Persia, from other religions, other places.
00:28:31.900
Often they are represented as being one of each race.
00:28:35.140
But even your statement itself, Christ chose nobody, that is clearly not true.
00:28:42.360
So he didn't choose nobody because they weren't nobody.
00:28:47.400
If Christianity were a fable or a philosophy, that could stop there.
00:28:51.260
But Christianity isn't a fable or a philosophy.
00:29:02.160
The birth of this guy, the life of this person that really happened.
00:29:06.320
It wasn't just cooked up in a writer's room somewhere in Hollywood.
00:29:11.980
Christianity is the greatest story ever told, but it isn't fiction.
00:29:15.920
So yes, Peter, Paul, Matthew, Judas, they all represent many things.
00:29:21.120
They are symbols, but they're symbols created by God who lived on earth in space and time.
00:29:29.440
You are in the story, but you're also a real person.
00:29:32.040
The crucifixion and the resurrection and the feeding of the 5,000 and the woman at the well
00:29:35.860
and the walking on water, they all have tremendous symbolic and explanatory power.
00:29:43.560
Your relationship to God is the relationship of Hamlet to Shakespeare.
00:29:49.240
In Christ, the playwright enters into his own story.
00:29:52.880
You cannot abstract yourself from the story of reality.
00:30:05.880
It's also a real thing in time and space with real people.
00:30:09.080
Someday we will slip the surly bonds of earth and throw off this flesh,
00:30:13.560
Christ speaks forever about the importance of time.
00:30:16.980
My time has not yet come, the fullness of time.
00:30:19.460
He speaks of the bread being literally his body.
00:30:29.200
And as tempting as it is to skip ahead, to deny the dramatic tension of our lives in time and space,
00:30:35.100
of the limits of human nature, we shouldn't do that.
00:30:37.980
There is a time for every purpose under heaven.
00:30:41.160
There's a time and a space for every purpose under heaven.
00:30:44.300
This is a real quirk of the modern era of modernity.
00:30:50.200
There's a reason that it coincided with the Protestant Revolution and all that has come after that.
00:30:55.160
It's a quirk of modernity to want to abstract ourselves, to pretend that we are not enfleshed,
00:31:00.620
that we are not in space and time, that the acts of value are not enfleshed.
00:31:05.760
I think a lot of times people would rather it be the ideas of the apostles rather than the acts of the apostles.
00:31:11.520
They would rather pretend that Christianity is just a fable.
00:31:22.660
That's what makes the intersection of heaven and earth, of metaphysics and physics in Christ, so powerfully compelling.
00:31:28.780
It's why it's the greatest story ever told is because it's true.
00:31:32.920
And you should live as though it's nonfiction, as though these things happened.
00:31:36.160
And there is consequence to what you do in time and space in relations to people.
00:31:45.420
Dear Swarthiest Man at The Daily Wire, Mr. Michael J. Knowles,
00:31:49.540
I am a recent economics graduate and have realized that I would love to turn my obsession with politics into a career.
00:31:56.420
As I'm in the New York metro area where it seems like the only available work is with progressive read socialist outlets.
00:32:08.560
My first advice to you, you're an economics major,
00:32:15.360
Go and do something and make a lot of money to get you into politics.
00:32:22.020
There are some Republican candidates there, though.
00:32:23.860
I still regularly advise candidates in the New York metro area on running for office and on their campaigns.
00:32:31.240
It's a little bit of a boutique industry because a lot of times Republicans don't win.
00:32:34.960
But I've been on plenty of winning campaigns in New York.
00:32:38.820
The reason you should make a lot of money right now is so that you don't need politics.
00:32:44.580
All the great politicians in history haven't really needed it.
00:32:48.700
They haven't needed to get reelected, and therefore they don't have to compromise themselves,
00:32:52.280
and therefore they actually achieve really good things.
00:32:55.280
It's also, it'll just make you more of a person.
00:32:57.320
If you spend your whole life working as a staffer in politics or as a, I don't know, as an elected official or something,
00:33:07.580
And it's good to just bring a life experience to politics.
00:33:11.700
So, you know, yesterday I had to miss the show because I was doing a film shoot.
00:33:16.920
Very rarely I still am an actor in Hollywood, and I still get cast.
00:33:22.060
And it really brings a lot to my life to have something outside of politics.
00:33:27.740
Obviously, I spend most of my life with my head in politics.
00:33:31.080
I spend most of my life not writing political books, but it's good to have things outside of that, too.
00:33:37.480
And I think it will just, it'll make you a better politician or a better political analyst
00:33:41.360
or whatever you want to do in politics if you bring something outside of it.
00:33:45.760
That said, you will win any race you want if your name is Mark Levin and you move to the right district.
00:33:53.060
That is how things work, especially down ballot.
00:33:55.140
If you run for Congress or lower, certainly state representative or state Senate,
00:33:59.260
you will win if it's a Republican district and your name is Mark Levin
00:34:05.440
And inevitably, Mark Levin has 100% name recognition among Republicans,
00:34:10.100
and you have his name, and it'll just help you out.
00:34:13.140
So make a lot of money, but do it fast while Mark is still famous and important,
00:34:18.700
You'll almost certainly win unless you run in New York, so you've got to move, too.
00:34:24.700
Dear Michael, king of trolls and champion of deplorables,
00:34:28.300
I often hear conservatives discuss the fact that our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values,
00:34:33.620
but I was wondering what texts or writings support this claim.
00:34:36.900
I want to be able to better defend this claim when I make it to my liberal colleagues.
00:34:41.360
Thanks for all the work you do for all of us deplorables out here, Seth.
00:34:45.860
Okay, so what do we mean by Judeo-Christian values?
00:34:49.980
Those are the values that come through Christianity into the secular and modern world,
00:34:55.620
ideas we get natural law and natural rights and all of that from.
00:35:03.480
Christ is the Messiah from the Jewish people to all the nations of the world,
00:35:07.040
and all of the people who founded this country were Christian.
00:35:10.600
I have dear old Samuel Fuller, Dr. Fuller, my grandfather from the Mayflower.
00:35:18.780
The country was founded up in Plymouth centuries before the Declaration of Independence was signed
00:35:24.380
by very serious Christian religious zealots to be a shining city on a hill.
00:35:30.480
Then, if you want founding documents to read, read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
00:35:38.660
The Declaration clearly states we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights,
00:35:43.740
including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:35:50.520
It is true that some were more deistic and a little less, more abstract in their Christianity.
00:35:56.620
But we know the country was founded as early as 1620 by Christians.
00:36:02.960
So that culture is, the politics is inseparable from that culture.
00:36:10.540
this is a constitution built for moral people and religious people,
00:36:14.420
and it couldn't survive beyond a moral and a religious people.
00:36:18.220
We also know all of them, beginning in the 17th century,
00:36:24.180
and that culture stewed in the United States, and it created this country.
00:36:28.820
So if you want to trace it back, I would trace the founding further back than 1776,
00:36:36.560
This wasn't founded by a Muslim people, for instance.
00:36:42.920
And the people who did that grew in a culture and had their vision of the world
00:36:47.320
formed by Christianity, which is the animating force of the West,
00:36:52.460
the meeting between Athens and Jerusalem, which gave us all of Western civilization.
00:37:01.680
I think this is possibly the most outrageous aspect of this Aziz story.
00:37:06.200
It's that they didn't finish their wine, which probably cost them $67 for the bottle.
00:37:10.400
Well, considering how expensive the restaurant is and how much the wine must cost,
00:37:14.940
would you ever leave a restaurant with wine still in your glass and still in your bottle?
00:37:20.160
I would never leave anywhere with wine still in my glass and still in my bottle.
00:37:28.100
Really, what a decadent culture that this guy's got money to burn
00:37:33.940
It's actually considered bad luck to leave wine on the table among a lot of different Italian regions
00:37:40.540
and that I think they're probably just explaining their own behavior.
00:37:45.000
Was it accidental that today you used the word indiscernible when you clearly meant indistinguishable?
00:37:51.400
Sorry, I know all the world loves a smart R's, but it made me wince.
00:37:55.200
I guess I'd said this about the sexes, that they were indiscernible.
00:37:57.440
I actually did mean indiscernible because I was alluding to a specific philosophical principle,
00:38:03.420
an ontological principle called the indiscernibleity of identicals,
00:38:07.540
that there cannot be separate objects or identities that have all of their properties in common.
00:38:13.800
This is also called Leibniz's Law after the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
00:38:19.040
So this issue with the genders is that people want to say that there are men and there are women,
00:38:27.780
there's feminism, and yet men and women are exactly the same.
00:38:33.680
You couldn't tell the difference because they're identical.
00:38:36.300
But if men and women are exactly the same, then there's no such thing as women
00:38:42.360
If men and women are exactly the same, then there are only men.
00:38:45.160
And this is a minor example of all of feminism, which very often just hurts women
00:38:51.980
because, as Andrew Klavan says, it makes them take on male values.
00:38:55.820
But Descartes actually uses this same point of the indiscernibleity of identicals
00:39:00.800
to prove that he is different from his own body.
00:39:03.560
So it's kind of fun to, I don't know that I totally buy it, but it's very fun to look at that.
00:39:08.800
It's why I use that word when I discuss this issue.
00:39:10.920
It's because if you think about it, even two steps down the road into Leibniz's law,
00:39:16.340
then many of the claims made by feminists appear totally ridiculous.
00:39:22.420
Dear Michael, as Catholics, we're supposed to find spiritual strength and comfort
00:39:27.400
What happens when such resources seem to do nothing for us?
00:39:31.380
I've reached a period in my life where I do not think that I have a close relationship with God
00:39:35.140
that is necessary to live an ethical and happy life.
00:39:38.200
What should I do when Mass, Eucharist, reconciliation, and prayer
00:39:47.020
This is going to sound blunt and mean, but it's just a little tough love.
00:39:56.320
A man wrapped up in himself is a very small package indeed.
00:39:59.140
The sacraments aren't there so that you can feel really nice about yourself
00:40:03.900
I quote it frequently, but it deserves quoting again.
00:40:06.180
C.S. Lewis said, if you look for truth, you might find comfort.
00:40:09.000
If you look for comfort, you will find neither truth nor comfort,
00:40:12.000
only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin and in the end despair.
00:40:16.160
The sacraments are there for the unity of heaven and earth and physics and metaphysics
00:40:21.760
That's what Christ comes into being, to reconcile man to God and to redeem him.
00:40:26.960
There's a gratitude there, which if you just think about it a little bit,
00:40:32.220
Now, of course, not every time you go to Mass are you going to be enraptured
00:40:43.020
The angel Gabriel came down to Mary, appeared to Mary, said,
00:40:47.880
Then he went away and she went on with her life.
00:40:50.520
It's not like every moment was this total rapturous moment.
00:40:53.560
So you partake in the sacraments because they bring you closer to God,
00:41:01.420
And a very subtle thing that begins to happen is once that emotional loveliness goes away
00:41:07.740
or it's not there every time, then you might question God himself.
00:41:11.980
That's your faith being founded in a place where it shouldn't be
00:41:16.520
But you see this in a number of more charismatic Protestant movements.
00:41:21.160
It's all about the feelings and, you know, the emotion of it
00:41:26.160
and the acoustic guitars and waving your hands in the air.
00:41:31.000
Nowhere in the Bible does it show that that occurs all of the time.
00:41:38.160
and certainly he speaks to Abraham at certain times
00:41:40.080
when they're not just hanging out all the time.
00:41:45.000
I don't mean this as a criticism specifically of you.
00:41:53.780
and stop wondering why you aren't so happy all the time.
00:42:00.340
whenever people at the holidays, like New Year's Eve or Valentine's Day,
00:42:14.860
The holidays are miserable for a lot of people.
00:42:16.800
That isn't, stop worrying about why you aren't happy.
00:42:20.120
Stop worrying about why you aren't having pleasure
00:42:22.420
and why you aren't feeling the thing you think you're supposed to be feeling.
00:42:33.000
That's good enough even if you aren't feeling the chill
00:42:43.480
Is there ever an instance where government regulation
00:43:11.100
They give you, I think, six square inches of space
00:43:17.480
but I'm like, you know, obviously on three different people's laps
00:43:34.000
and really broke up a lot of the legacy airlines
00:43:50.520
the cheapest flight possible from L.A. to New York
00:43:56.380
I can get a round trip from L.A. to New York sometimes
00:44:01.500
It means that the things aren't as spacious anymore,
00:44:05.660
they don't serve you prime rib when you're on the plane.
00:44:12.360
There are some airlines that make you pay for water.
00:44:16.700
I don't want to be subsidizing that guy over there his water.
00:44:19.460
I want to have as much consumer choice as I possibly can.
00:44:24.300
if you want to get like economy minus plus seven.
00:44:32.880
and I just want my quick flight back from New York or wherever,
00:44:42.720
and through a mistake of the travel agent and of me,
00:44:55.240
I had to buy a new flight direct London Heathrow to Los Angeles
00:45:08.620
because of all of the competition in the airlines.
00:45:15.680
Whenever you see people complaining because of these things,
00:45:19.740
it's easy to get lulled into how nice and luxurious
00:45:31.140
If the government comes in and starts heavily re-regulating
00:45:40.320
And the reason those lounges and those airlines weren't full
00:45:52.940
a Friday show because we couldn't do it yesterday.
00:45:58.480
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson.
00:46:42.060
We will be doing the same for hundreds of Americans