Ep. 956 - The Collapse Of The Civilized World
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Summary
Average U.S. gas prices have hit their highest levels since 2008 and are on track to hit $4.73 a gallon. Gas prices have been on the rise because of the ongoing war in Ukraine, and President Trump says we should stop buying Russian oil to pay for it.
Transcript
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Gas prices are through the roof. The national average for a gallon of gas is now $3.73,
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according to data collected by AAA. For the first time ever, average gas prices have surpassed
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$5 per gallon in multiple American cities. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Napa, San Luis Obispo,
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a couple others as well. Oil spiked to more than $116 per barrel earlier this week,
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the highest it's been since 2008. And that number is only poised to go up as the war in Ukraine,
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a war largely of Joe Biden's own making, rages on and disrupts global oil supplies.
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So what does the White House plan to do to give Americans relief at the pump? Why buy oil from
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Russia, of course. During those years where it would take to bring down prices, as you're saying,
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we should just continue to buy Russian oil? Well, again, Jackie, I think you're familiar
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with a number of steps we've taken, a historic release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
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Well, we can, well, let me finish. What we can do over time, and what this is all a reminder of in
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the President's view, is our need to reduce our reliance on oil. The Europeans need to do that.
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We need to do that. If we do more to invest in clean energy, more to invest in other sources of
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energy, that's exactly what we can do to prevent this from happening in the future.
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We welcome any Republicans from joining us in that effort. Go ahead.
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As long as we're buying Russian oil, though, aren't we financing the war?
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Well, Jackie, again, it's only about 10% of what we're importing. I've not made any announcement
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about any decision on that front. But our objective here and our focus is making sure that any step we
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take maximizes the impact on President Putin and minimizes it on the American people.
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So just to recap, Russia invaded Ukraine because Joe Biden gave the go-ahead to Putin's Nord Stream 2
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oil pipeline, which gives Russia direct access to the European oil market and took away all of
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Ukraine's leverage. Conservatives knew this would happen and have been talking about it for years.
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For years, Ted Cruz warned that this would happen, and he successfully got sanctions placed on the
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pipeline under the Trump administration, during which time Putin did not invade Ukraine until Biden
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took office and removed the sanctions, at which point Putin did invade Ukraine. Even the liberal
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New York magazine admits that this is true, that Biden's green light of the pipeline led to the
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invasion, which, by the way, Biden himself literally encouraged when he assured Russia that America
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wouldn't retaliate against any invasion if it were only a quote-unquote minor incursion. So Russia
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invaded Ukraine because Biden gave the go-ahead on the Russia oil pipeline. At the same time,
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Biden shut down American oil pipelines in the name of fighting climate change. Apparently,
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Russian oil doesn't harm the climate. Russian oil doesn't anger the sun gods like American oil does.
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Now, Americans are still consuming the same amount of oil. So the only practical effect of crippling
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the American energy industry is that now we need to import the oil from overseas, including from our
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enemies, including from Russia, which relies on oil exports to fund the war in Ukraine, which means
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that Joe Biden's stupid energy policy not only started the war in Ukraine, but is currently funding it
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with your taxpayer dollars. Dollars that you now need to stretch because his stupid energy policy
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is also emptying out your wallet at the pump. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Louis Shemilton, who says,
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I'm starting to feel bad for Michael. He keeps having to say, I told you so.
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It has to be taking a toll on him. It is. Look at me. I'm exhausted. I'm worn out from being this
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right. I am, as Donald Trump said, sick and tired of winning. I'm winning on the predictions. We're not
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winning politically. We're losing politically because of bad leadership in Washington. You got to do
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slash K-N-A-W-L-E-S for 25% off. That's their answer. Their answer to the American oil and gas
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problem is buy it from overseas, including from our enemies. We didn't need to buy it from overseas.
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We didn't need to buy it from our enemies. We could just make it ourselves. That's what we were doing.
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Things were looking great on the energy front during the Trump years.
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And then the Libs voluntarily shut down American energy. And they did so because they said that if
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we continue to produce energy and really to consume energy, then we're going to harm the environment
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and get the sun gods really angry at us. And they're going to shower us with all sorts of plagues
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to punish us for the sin of driving automobiles. So they attack the American energy industry.
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They go after coal. They go after gas. They go after oil. But the thing is, we still need all that stuff.
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So nothing changed in terms of what we're emitting and polluting and driving and moving around.
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We just, instead of making it ourselves, we now import it at a premium from overseas,
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including from our enemies who are using that money then to fund wars that oppose American interests.
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And they're not just talking about buying oil from Russia, which we're doing. I love Jen Psaki.
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She says, no, no, no, don't worry. It's only 10% of our oil imports. 10% of the American oil imports
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are coming from this country that relies almost exclusively on energy to fund its imperial wars
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that we're now also kind of fighting in. Are you kidding me? Oh, good. It's okay. I was worried it was 15%.
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Okay, it's 10% though. That's fine. They're not just talking about Russia. They're now talking about
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buying oil from Iran. There was a, some left winger, blue check named Ryan Cooper tweeted out, quote,
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Iran has 103 million barrels of oil loaded up on tankers and ready to go. CC Joe Biden.
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As if to say, look, we don't do business with state sponsors of terror and people who chant death to America.
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Yeah, well, but they got the oil ready to go. And Iranian oil doesn't cause climate change.
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It's, it's got the magic of the Russian oil. They've got magic genies over there in the Middle
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East and the magic Iranian oil that doesn't have carbon emissions. Only the American domestically
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produced oil does. Okay. It's not just Ryan. It's not just these random leftist blue checks
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who are trying to buy oil from our enemies. And Pete Buttigieg, our, our transportation secretary,
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I think he's back from paternity leave. His C-section scar has healed up very nicely. And the energy
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secretary or the transportation secretary rather is, is back at work. He, he goes on to MSNBC. He's
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asked about what we're going to do to give relief to people at the pump. And he says, look, all options
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are on the table, but we don't want to be too hasty. We don't want any permanent solutions.
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Could the president possibly consider authorizing the Keystone pipeline, uh, working something out with
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Iran? I mean, uh, look, the, the president has said that all options are on the table, but we also need
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to make sure that, uh, uh, we're not galloping after permanent solutions to immediate short-term
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problems where, uh, more strategic and tactical actions in the short term can make a difference.
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So he says, yeah, maybe we'll, okay, Keystone, except the White House already shut that down.
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They said, no, Keystone pipeline, that's going to take too long to build in America. So that's off the
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table. And he says, what about buying from Iran? Yeah, that's on the table.
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Okay. I'm not surprised when Democrats want to buy oil from our enemies. What does surprise me
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though, is that second part, the philosophical part that Buttigieg put in there. Because Buttigieg,
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say what you will about him. He's a fairly intelligent guy. He's got all the credentials,
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checks all the boxes, brand name, brand name school, rather worked at McKinsey, very polished,
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right? He's got, he knows all the hip, cool lingo that all the elites are using. But then he says,
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we don't, we don't want to find a permanent solution to short term problems.
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Why not? So first of all, the energy issue is not a short term problem. It is exacerbated
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at different periods. Sometimes it's a lot worse than at other times. Right now with war breaking
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out in Europe, yeah, it's pretty bad, but it's a, it's a problem generally. We don't want to be
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reliant on our enemies for our energy consumption. Why wouldn't we want a permanent solution? I want
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a permanent solution. Give me, oh, here's a permanent solution. Produce American energy.
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And what the Buttigieg's of the world and the Jen Psaki's of the world and the Joe Biden's of the
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world, what they say is, well, that's what we're going to do. But we're not going to do it from coal
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and we're not going to do it from oil and we're not going to do it from gas and we're not going to do
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it from nuclear for some reason. So we're going to do it from windmills. We're going to do it from
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solar. We're going to do it from, from the hopes and dreams of unicorns prancing around the plains.
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That's where we're going to get our energy from. We're going to get American energy for the world's
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superpower for now, for a country of 330 million people with effectively a global empire for now.
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We're going to get energy from windmills. But you're not. You're not. That's never going to
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happen. The so-called green sources of energy are extraordinarily inefficient. They're extraordinarily
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ineffective. They're also not great for the environment, by the way. That's the secret.
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I forget the comedian's name. There was a comedian many years ago who made the point. He said,
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okay, you're all switching from gas cars to electric cars. Do you know where electricity comes from?
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It doesn't come from magic, okay? It comes from dirty, filthy energy sources. And even so,
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the production of the batteries is very bad for the environment. Even so, it's not, that's not an
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answer. So really what the answer is, is we don't have an answer. The answer is shrug your shoulders.
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We don't want a permanent solution. We're just going to keep buying oil from our enemies. We're just
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going to move from crisis to crisis to crisis. Then we're going to create some more crises. And then
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we're going to respond to the crises that in many cases we created. And we're just going to keep
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doing that and keep everyone on the edge of their seats at our beck and call in perpetuity. That is
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the Democrat liberal way of governing. Not a good way to govern. These people who are working for the
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administration, they are not the best. They are not the brightest. They are not very competent.
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slash K-N-O-W-L-E-S. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. One of the many unique aspects of this war
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in Ukraine, as I have noted and gotten in trouble for noting, this is the first major war to break out
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in my lifetime between civilized nations. That's why it's a little different than the various
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minor conflicts and wars of empire that we've seen around the world in the last quarter century.
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One of the strange things about this war is military maneuvers matter. And I think we forget that
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because the wars have been, for instance, the war in Afghanistan. The United States,
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the world superpower, goes into a backwater of largely illiterate goat herders. I
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really don't mean to be offensive, but we're talking about asymmetries of power here that are
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basically unimaginable. And we just dominate it. We conquer Afghanistan in five seconds.
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And then politically speaking, we don't know what to do with it. We don't know whether to hold it.
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We don't know whether to make it imperial territory. We don't know whether to try to prop up some fake
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Afghan army and government that's really just a client state for the United States. And then we've
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got a lot of domestic political pressure to pull out. And then we just voluntarily give up the
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thing. It's not as though they were, the Afghanis, the Taliban were actually going to take it back
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until we signaled that we're going to pull out. And then they reconquered it in two seconds. We
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forget that the physical matters, battles, places, military tactics. Here, you've got a Ukrainian army,
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which is fighting back reportedly quite strongly. And you've got the Russian army, which is not nearly
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as strong as a lot of the world expected it to be. And they're in a little bit of a stalemate right
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now. I think that Vladimir Putin probably thought this entire military operation would be over by
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now, would have been over within 72 hours. And it really hasn't been. The Russian army seems to be
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stuck a little bit. And they're calibrating some of what they're doing to not incur too much
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international condemnation. Now that they've got the condemnation, they seem to be ratcheting up
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the attacks. And it's really, it's a bloody mess. But we here in the West, I think these days,
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we don't think that space and time really matter all that much. We think our bodies don't really
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matter. That's what transgenderism is. We think the community doesn't really matter. That's why
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we're all working from home on our laptops. If you're part of the laptop set, right? That's why
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the ruling elite said, oh, who cares about the pandemic? You can all just telecommute to your
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consulting job on your laptop, right? It's not a big deal. No one needs to be in person. That's we're
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all, we're all going to go live in the metaverse, right? We forget. No, actually borders matter.
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Land matters. People, peoples matter. Okay, this is something our ruling elites,
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they think that America is just an idea. The West, it's just kind of an idea, right?
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It's not a people. It's not institutions. It's not real rituals and customs. It's all just kind
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of floating in the ether, man, except it's not. It's not. And Americans have woken up against that.
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And this is a large backlash against the Davos, globalist, liberal, cosmopolitan set.
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We forget that. Now, one update from Ukraine that is pretty astonishing, it's from Elon Musk.
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Elon Musk is apparently single-handedly providing internet to parts of Ukraine right now. Elon Musk
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has this Starlink system. He's got lots of satellites up in the sky. The satellites are able to provide
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internet almost anywhere. And so he's got Starlink set up to provide internet to Ukraine. So after
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the Russians went out and hit some Ukrainian telecoms, Starlink is just providing that.
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And Musk sent out a tactical warning. He said, important warning, Starlink is the only non-Russian
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communication system still working in some parts of Ukraine. So probability of being targeted is high.
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Please use it with caution. Turn on Starlink only when needed and place the antenna away,
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as far away from people as possible, place light camouflage over the antenna to avoid visual
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detection. Because not everything just turns on with a flip of a switch in the smart world.
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Tactics matter. Placement matters. Geography matters. That's what's playing out. And it's shocking
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the world. We are seeing the collapse of the post-Cold War order of relative peace and stability,
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at least in the civilized world, at least in the Western world. It's all set. It's all good.
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No more big wars. We're just going to have wars of empire. Well, not so much. And if the Bidens of
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the world are in charge, if the liberal establishment that led us to this point is in charge,
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we are headed in a very different direction. And we are headed for much more conflict,
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much more strife, a place in which traditional nationhood and tactics and militaries are going
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to matter. Some good news from overseas, better news from overseas, is France is suspending its
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COVID passport. France has just said, Emmanuel Macron, who is the liberal technocrat who runs
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France, he said that now, even though the passport was only introduced in January, the pass system
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is now going to be done away with. The vaccine pass system dates back a little earlier. It had been
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floated. It actually first went into effect on the last day that I was in Paris last year.
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So the implementation kind of got stalled and muddled and paused and rolled out. But so when it
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first went into effect, I actually didn't know if I was going to be able to go to France
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because you were going to have to show your medical papers, basically, anywhere you went.
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And then they delayed it, delayed it, delayed it. The first day it went into effect was as I was
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flying back out of France. And a lot of people said, why do you want to go to France? Those crazy
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French, they just, they're so COVID nuts. They're all afraid. They're neurotic about it. That's not
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true. The French government was neurotic about it. The French people were not. The French people
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were chiller about COVID than most American people I talked to, certainly in the big cities.
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The Parisians, they didn't care. I'd get into a cab, I'd say, do I have to wear the stupid mask?
00:19:25.740
They'd say, well, no, that's why I have the vaccine. I have vaccine. I don't care. You do
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whatever you want. I do not need, oh, oh, oh. Pep and Le Pew were my drivers, actually, in Paris.
00:19:36.340
No, the French people were pretty normal about it. There was a big gulf, just like we see here in
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America. Frankly, perhaps even more so. There's a big gulf between the French people and the
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government. The government's finally waking up to this and they're saying, okay, no more,
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show me your papers when you try to go get a croissant in Paris. You're seeing this spread
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throughout the West. The West's ruling class, by which I don't just mean whatever party happens
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to be in power, but I mean the whole edifice. We talk about the deep state, the transnational,
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international institutions. They're losing their grip on the common sense and they're losing their
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grip on power. A lot of what you're seeing happening right now in Eastern Europe is a
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reflection of that. There's a huge chasm between the elites and the people, specifically over this
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issue that I was just talking about, this issue of nations being real places with real borders
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and borders really do matter. People fight over borders, by the way, and there are wars over borders
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and there are wars between peoples who view themselves distinctly with different language and
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different customs. And not everyone is just replaceable. Okay? Not everyone, it's not just
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that you can swap out the people of one country and replace them with a totally different people and
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it's going to be the same country. Okay? But that is what elites in our country have been experimenting
00:20:52.080
with for a long time. Elites in the Democrat and Republican parties. This is the effect of mass
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migration. Mass migration. Over the past 60 years or so, we've seen what, 60 million some odd people
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move from other parts of the world into the United States. This is the largest mass migration of
00:21:13.760
people ever, ever in the history of the world. Last year, it was three million immigrants came into
00:21:20.280
America. Two million illegal immigrants came into America last year, just last year, just in the first
00:21:26.840
year under Joe Biden. Sometimes the libs, they get upset. They talk about the great replacement
00:21:32.540
conspiracy theory, which is a heinous white supremacist neo-Nazi conspiracy theory. Well,
00:21:40.200
what's the theory? The theory is that liberals are using mass migration as a political tool
00:21:46.160
to alter the voting demographics in a country in their favor. Not only is that obviously true,
00:21:51.700
but the liberals have been bragging about this for 10 years. So they're doing it, they're saying
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they're doing it, and then they're telling you that you're not allowed to say that they already
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told you that they're doing it. And it's not just Democrats. I've got here a letter to Nancy
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Pelosi, to Schumer, to McCarthy, the Republican leader, to Mitch McConnell, calling for more
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migration. The Alliance for a New Immigration Consensus. And who signs it? You got a bunch of
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lib groups that sign it, sure. But then you've got the George W. Bush Institute. You've got
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Koch-backed enterprise. The Koch brothers were a big force behind the Tea Party. They're usually
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considered more on the right, but they do support mass migration. You've got the U.S. Chamber of
00:22:40.520
Commerce, used to be sort of right wing. Now it's really more considered firmly on the left.
00:22:49.060
According to the last Gallup poll, only 9% of Americans say they want more immigration. 9% of
00:22:59.260
Americans. According to that poll, 35% said they want less immigration total. There have been other
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polls. There was a Harvard-Harris poll now four or five years ago, showed that when you actually get
00:23:10.120
down into numbers on immigration, the vast majority of Americans want to drastically reduce all immigration,
00:23:15.300
legal and illegal. And yet the elites from both parties want to increase it. That is wrong. It's
00:23:23.160
wrong to do that, first of all. It's wrong to flood a country with foreigners against the will of the
00:23:26.800
people, especially in a self-government where the people are supposed to rule and where citizens can
00:23:32.100
vote and those votes determine who rules. That's wrong. That's wrong to do. And it's completely tone
00:23:38.340
deaf. I think that Kevin McCarthy has finally realized this is no good. He said that the Chamber of
00:23:42.700
Commerce is no longer a Republican group. It's firmly on the left. We need to get that right
00:23:49.060
ourselves. People who are backing this sort of thing, the elites, they're not on our team. Okay? The
00:23:57.420
people are on our team. If we're going to have a team at all, it's got to be a team with the people.
00:24:02.140
He who pays the piper calls the tune or should. This is a general rule of politics. This is why we get
00:24:10.340
so worried when we find out that corrupt Ukrainian energy companies are paying off members of the
00:24:16.800
Biden family or the Clinton Foundation. We get a little worried because that implies a certain
00:24:22.800
degree of corruption. When individual donors make huge donations, then they start making demands of
00:24:29.680
politicians. That's why we have laws about donations in politics. And when people who want mass
00:24:37.340
migration are the ones paying for all the conservative activities, what's going to happen?
00:24:42.040
Those conservatives are going to go soft on immigration. That's what happened for decades
00:24:45.160
and decades. Now, there's only one area where he who pays the piper has not been able to call the
00:24:52.040
tune. And that would be an immigration or an education rather. We pay for the education system.
00:24:58.280
We, the taxpayers, pay for the education system. It is administered by the state in most cases.
00:25:03.540
And yet, even when it's conservatives who are voting and paying and administrating,
00:25:09.580
administering, for some reason, the left dominates these schools. And we got to stop that. There's
00:25:14.820
great news that came out of Wyoming. The Wyoming Senate just passed an amendment to the state budget
00:25:21.280
that would defund the University of Wyoming's gender and women's studies program. This amendment will
00:25:26.860
be sent to the House for approval. Republican State Senator Sherry Steinmetz was responsible for this.
00:25:30.780
Good on you, Sherry. This is awesome. The Wyoming Republicans should totally get behind this.
00:25:35.860
Is this cancel culture? Sort of. But as we've said in the past, cancel culture is a wonderful thing
00:25:41.060
when it's applied to cancel that which is false and ugly and evil. We want all societies cancel.
00:25:48.340
All societies have taboos and standards and things that are off limits. That's inevitable. That's
00:25:54.240
always going to be the case. The question is, what is off limits? What's bad? What do we ostracize?
00:25:58.080
What do we censor? What do we cancel? And conservatives have adopted this kind of
00:26:02.080
neutral-sounding language of, oh, I'm for all ideas. I'm for, don't censor anything. But it's
00:26:06.140
BS. It's not true. That is language from the left in the 1960s, which they too knew was instrumental
00:26:12.240
and not real. The minute they got power, they implemented their own standards. We would too.
00:26:16.940
That's just the nature of politics, okay? And so when you look at a department like women's and gender
00:26:22.540
studies, really all of the critical studies departments, you realize this is not about a
00:26:27.400
classical liberal education. This is about radical political indoctrination. It's really bad. We
00:26:32.760
shouldn't be paying for it. It has no place at a university and you got to cancel it and you got
00:26:37.020
to kick it out. Speaking of canceling teachers, there's a fourth grade teacher in Indiana who was
00:26:41.500
just exposed for owning a satanic temple. Fourth grade teacher teaching little nine-year-olds
00:26:49.440
is a practicing high-level Satanist. Now, look, I'm tolerant. I'm a tolerant guy and everything,
00:26:59.120
and we should be tolerant. But I think that's a little too far. I think the Satanists teaching
00:27:05.140
your nine-year-old, that's too much. But Michael, some people would say, what about freedom of religion?
00:27:10.580
Religion. That's not what freedom of religion means, okay? Freedom. First of all, freedom of
00:27:19.460
religion, as we understand it, really refers to the First Amendment, which says that the federal
00:27:23.480
government will not have an established church. Okay, that's a very different thing from saying
00:27:27.620
Satanists can teach your nine-year-olds, right? And frankly, one of the reasons that there was no
00:27:32.320
state established church at the federal level is because there were established churches at the
00:27:36.780
state level for decades after the Constitution was ratified. I don't think the founding fathers,
00:27:41.920
if they found out that their words and documents were being used to defend Satanists teaching nine-year-olds,
00:27:47.620
I don't think that they would applaud this as some wonderful blessing of liberty, you know,
00:27:51.820
hold a parade for this woman. Probably they wouldn't even argue about it. They would be too busy
00:27:55.780
gathering kindling to burn her at the stake, okay? This is not the sort of thing that is acceptable.
00:28:02.700
And the school's defending her. They say, we do not ask our teachers or any employees about their
00:28:06.340
religious beliefs. Well, yeah, but if you're worshiping the dark lord of the underworld,
00:28:11.820
that's a little bit too far, okay? Religious liberty, too, has limits. I'll give you an example of
00:28:19.100
this. If a teacher at a, certainly at an elementary school, but even at a college, were found to be a
00:28:25.760
Nazi, that teacher would be fired in two seconds and everyone would support it. What does it mean to
00:28:31.260
be a Nazi? It means you hold certain political views, I guess, but those views are a little deeper
00:28:36.040
than just politics, right? They're kind of cultural. They're actually kind of religious.
00:28:40.720
Their views about the nature of man and the nature of races and the human dignity and worth of
00:28:47.100
different races. Nazism, when you really follow it down to its bottom, has a deeply occult element to
00:28:54.480
it. All of the leading Nazis were practicing some, to some degree, paganism or occult rituals.
00:29:01.580
It's religious. At bottom, all politics is religious, okay? We have, in the last few decades,
00:29:11.300
gotten to a place where we will tolerate Satanists teaching our kids. I won't. I won't do that. I will
00:29:16.960
not send my kid to be instructed by Satanists. I will not send my taxpayer dollars, if I have any say
00:29:21.620
of it, to have Satanists teach our kids. This is a wonderful use of the political power of parents
00:29:28.640
to shape their students' education. Before we go, I do want to get to Katanji Brown Jackson.
00:29:38.560
I've been meaning to get to her all week and we just haven't had time to do it. She is the Biden
00:29:42.760
Supreme Court nominee. The reason I want to call her to your attention, we'll go more into her next
00:29:50.060
week, but she's a formidable Supreme Court nominee, okay? I don't think we can just, people were going
00:29:55.280
to write her off as a diversity hire because Joe Biden said she was going to be a diversity hire,
00:29:59.120
but this is a bright woman and she's very, very clever. She's a double Harvard person,
00:30:04.600
Harvard undergraduate and Harvard Law School. Not that that's necessarily a recommendation these days,
00:30:08.900
but at least it used to be. She was a judge on the US District Court for DC and the Court of Appeals
00:30:14.680
for DC. She was put on the Court of Appeals for DC one year ago, less than one year ago. She's a big
00:30:20.380
lib. She's had her decisions reversed even by left-wing courts, but she's very clever. She had an exchange
00:30:30.500
with Senator Ted Cruz. Again, maybe we'll be able to get to the clips of this next week. Maybe,
00:30:37.000
maybe not. We'll see. We'll see how, we'll see how well you behave over the weekend. Maybe we'll
00:30:40.700
try to get to that. But what she, what she said here, she was asked, do you believe there's a
00:30:45.260
living constitution like all the liberals do? Or do you believe the constitution means what it says
00:30:49.080
it means? And she was able to evade the question. She told Senator Cruz, well, you know, look, I haven't
00:30:53.960
had to make any decisions in that regard in the lower courts. And then she said, well, I believe the
00:30:58.880
constitution's an enduring document. She did very well. She did very well. She's a very convincing
00:31:03.720
candidate. I doubt that Republicans are going to be able to shoot down her nomination. On the one
00:31:08.580
hand, I guess you want intelligent people on the Supreme Court. On the other hand, I don't know that
00:31:13.420
I want a very intelligent, liberal, radical judge on the Supreme Court. In many ways, a dumber liberal
00:31:21.340
judge would be better because it would be easier to undermine that sort of person's jurisprudence.
00:31:28.200
It's not just the intelligence we're after. It's where you want it aimed. It kind of gets back to what
00:31:32.460
we were talking about. You want that intelligence used for good things that are edifying, that will
00:31:37.580
build up the country. Some of the greatest saints in history could have been the worst sinners in the
00:31:42.780
world, such as the power that they've got. The question is, are you going to use that power for
00:31:47.180
good or for evil? Mark your calendars, folks. March 10th, the premiere of our latest film,
00:31:52.540
The Hyperions, is out. It's not woke. It doesn't have any underlying pedantic political message.
00:32:00.380
It's just an excellent film. When it comes to entertainment, that's really what we're after.
00:32:15.180
This Titan badge can grant an individual superhuman power.
00:32:19.480
Perhaps it's time for someone else to take on the responsibility.
00:32:35.820
We will be streaming the film once and for all on March 10th for everybody on YouTube.
00:32:43.100
But then that's it for everybody. That's the last time we're going to premiere that movie
00:32:47.440
on YouTube. So be sure, if you want to watch the movie after that, that you head on over to Daily
00:32:52.220
Wire's YouTube channel. And then head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe so you can become
00:32:57.380
a member, watch that movie, our whole growing cache of content that we've got to offer. Also,
00:33:02.080
we've got a great book coming out with Jonathan Isaac. Terrific patriotic basketball player.
00:33:06.700
Really nice guy. Go pre-order that today. It's on his political stances, his career,
00:33:13.060
his religious beliefs. The book is Why I Stand. It's available for pre-order at Amazon.
00:33:17.600
Reserve your copy today. We will be right back with the mailbag.
00:33:20.000
Welcome back. My absolute favorite time of the week when I get to hear from you,
00:33:36.480
answer your pressing questions in the mailbag. First question up is from Miguel. Hola, Miguel.
00:33:42.160
He says, Hey, Michael. So I just got into a small debate recently about abortion and my opponent brought
00:33:47.980
up a very good point that has caused me to lose the debate overall. Okay. It's very complicated and
00:33:53.720
with a lot of nuance and such, but simply put, with the non-religious view of the world and humanity,
00:33:58.940
there is no way to justify intrinsic human value or even objective morality. I tried going through
00:34:05.360
all the small nuances like asking when a human has value or where morality stems from, and he had an
00:34:10.100
answer for everything. He said that the way he sees it, the fetus becomes valuable enough not to kill
00:34:14.900
once it has received sentience. And in the case of someone not being sentient, they had previous
00:34:20.900
sentience, so they do still have value. How do I, a Christian, debunk this view in a secular sense?
00:34:26.860
It's hard to debunk it because it's so stupid and incoherent. It doesn't, the first part that he said
00:34:35.580
is coherent. And so I guess that's where I would begin. He said that, or you said maybe summarizing
00:34:43.020
his point, that if the world were such that God did not exist and morality does not exist and,
00:34:51.320
you know, if reality were completely different than it is, then you couldn't say that human
00:34:56.040
beings have value and so you couldn't argue against abortion. That's true. So in that world,
00:35:01.560
in that bizarro world that is not real, not the world that we actually live in, that's true. You
00:35:07.800
couldn't argue against abortion. You also couldn't argue against murder laws. And you also couldn't
00:35:13.280
argue, or argue for murder laws rather, and you couldn't argue for laws against armed robbery. And
00:35:18.120
you couldn't argue at all actually because the world would not have logic and so it would not
00:35:23.040
have meaning or truth and you couldn't convey anything to anyone else. So that would be difficult
00:35:27.860
to make any sort of argument at all. Now, your friend has said that he believes that human life
00:35:34.000
gets value when it becomes sentient. And he believes this because, I don't know, why does he
00:35:43.820
believe that? He would have to make an argument for that. You're saying that he made the argument that,
00:35:50.160
you know, you shouldn't kill people in a coma, for instance, because they were previously sentient,
00:35:54.180
but now they're not. But because they were previously sentient, you shouldn't kill them
00:35:59.240
because why? Because he says so. Well, okay, but you need to make an argument as to why
00:36:04.120
human life becomes valuable with sentience. That is not self-evident. He's just stating that as a
00:36:12.000
premise and then coming to a conclusion from his own premise. But speaking of premises,
00:36:14.880
sometimes people ask me this, they say, Michael, I want you, can you make a totally secular atheist
00:36:21.360
argument for pro-life or for anything else? And I say, well, no. Why, or even if I could, I mean,
00:36:30.040
you can't really make an atheist argument for anything because, because the very fact that our
00:36:35.780
language has meaning implies that God exists. But moreover, why would I? Well, why would I,
00:36:42.240
why would I make an argument from the basis of my opponent's wrong premises? That would seem to be
00:36:50.300
a very foolish thing to do. But we say this on the show all the time. All human conflict ultimately
00:36:57.400
is theological. So you are going to have to get down to first principles. And if his first principle is
00:37:01.920
that God doesn't exist and human life doesn't have any value, and I'm just going to say completely
00:37:06.460
arbitrarily that life, that I value life that is sentient, but not, but, and then some life that's
00:37:11.480
not sentient when I feel like it, well, okay, then I guess that's that. But the premise is off. We do,
00:37:17.620
life does have value. Human beings do have value. There is a moral order. The fact that we have civil
00:37:22.540
laws and that we recognize that it's wrong to commit murder and wrong to commit armed robbery
00:37:26.180
and wrong to kill babies when we're being honest with ourselves, the reason we recognize that is
00:37:30.680
because we, there is objective truth and a moral order. We have faculties of reason and moral conscience
00:37:35.840
that allow us to make some sense of that. And we are valuable creatures made in the image of God.
00:37:41.340
That's why. And so if you say, well, make an argument, but without any of those beliefs,
00:37:46.240
well, I'm sorry. You're out. You know, if, if my aunt had cojones, she'd be my uncle. You know,
00:37:50.400
if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. If I had some ham, I'd have a ham sandwich. If I had
00:37:54.340
some bread, you get the picture. If I had ifs, if, ifs, ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a
00:37:58.700
Merry Christmas. But the premises are wrong. And so you should begin with correct
00:38:02.660
premises always from Alex. Dear Michael, I'm a freshman in high school and I love the show.
00:38:08.540
Thank you. I'm having some love troubles and I'm looking for advice. I went to a school dance
00:38:12.680
recently and was flirting with a girl who I like. We were already friends after the fact. I found out
00:38:17.720
that she already has a boyfriend, but she was still being perfectly amicable toward me. So I wanted to
00:38:22.560
ask, where do I go from here? I don't know how to proceed because I really like this girl,
00:38:26.320
but want to respect her relationship. Thanks for the advice.
00:38:28.940
Just because there is a goalie, my friend, does not mean you cannot score. Very important advice.
00:38:38.860
Now look, if you were in your 20s or 30s, if this girl that you had a crush on were married,
00:38:44.460
I would say back off. Respect the marriage. You're 14 years old. This girl presumably is a teenager as
00:38:53.340
well. She's got a little teenage fling and she's obviously thinks you're attractive.
00:39:00.800
Make it happen, Buster. When, you know, sweet little Lisa and I were high school sweethearts.
00:39:05.220
We've known each other since we were 10 or 11 years old. And when I was in, I think we were in
00:39:11.300
eighth grade, sweet little Lisa had a crush on me, but I had a different girlfriend. She was very
00:39:16.980
upset. When we were in ninth grade, I had a big crush on her. She had another boyfriend. I was very
00:39:22.780
jealous. I was very angry. I thought, oh no, this is awful. But you know, you just kind of,
00:39:27.500
you stick around. You maybe put on your, to quote the former Italian prime minister,
00:39:32.780
Silvio Berlusconi, you put on that, the playboy charm. You know, you, you chatter up. Don't do
00:39:37.400
anything immoral, but you know, chatter up, maybe be a little flirtatious. The rest is history.
00:39:43.840
Best of luck. Do not, you don't need to be overly scrupulous here, my friend. The girl is not
00:39:48.460
married. You're in high school. She's talking to boys. Feel free to woo the girl. From Megan,
00:39:55.740
dear Michael, I'm a woman in my early twenties. I've been venturing this barren landscape we call
00:40:00.600
the dating world. I know that you should be yourself when dating and look for a good man,
00:40:05.140
but I'm curious if there are any major turnoffs that guys, to guys that are easily avoidable
00:40:09.300
early on while going on dates with someone would love any advice you may have. Feminism is the one
00:40:15.200
thing I will say. Feminism is a major turnoff. If you're listening to this show, something tells me
00:40:19.080
that you have not been infected by that particular disease, so I wouldn't worry too much. If you're
00:40:24.220
worried about, you know, little behaviors that you do or kind of quirks of your personality, don't,
00:40:29.740
don't, you don't worry about that too much. One, because women pretending to be someone that
00:40:35.320
they're not is unattractive all the time. At least if you're looking for a long-term sort of
00:40:41.460
relationship, love affair, marriage, that sort of thing. But, but also you'll be in a situation where
00:40:49.340
you'll go on a date with a guy and you're going to be yourself and the guy's just not going to like
00:40:53.560
you and maybe you're not going to like him and you're just not going to click. There are girls
00:40:57.400
that are objectively gorgeous that I would not be able to date for more than two seconds because I
00:41:06.520
would put a drill in my head. It would just be, the personalities just wouldn't clash. It would clash.
00:41:11.940
We're just not made for each other. You know, sweet little Elisa and I, you know, go together like
00:41:18.160
salt and pepper. You know, I don't know, we go, we go together very well, not only because, you know,
00:41:24.140
she's the whole package, right? She's a hot, foxy lady, but also because of her personality. Now, some guys
00:41:30.260
might not like her personalities because she's very funny. She's very, very shrewd. She's very,
00:41:37.620
she's got a very conservative perspective about things. And so that might be a turnoff to people
00:41:43.320
who might want more of a bobblehead or something like that. I understand people are attracted to
00:41:47.860
different things, but I wouldn't try to pretend to be someone that you're not. I don't, I don't think
00:41:52.260
that's going to work for the guys that wouldn't like the real you. And I don't think that it would
00:41:56.820
work for the guys that would like the real you either. From Sam. Hi, Michael. As I've gotten
00:42:01.620
older, I realized I struggle with anxiety. I don't believe in taking pills unless it's utterly
00:42:05.560
necessary. And I'm beginning, I'm, I am looking into going to therapy, but want to see if you have
00:42:10.540
any advice on how to deal with generalized anxiety and overthinking all the time. Thanks and love the
00:42:14.420
show. I agree with you. I think pills should be a last resort. I think therapy can be a very good
00:42:19.360
thing if you get a good therapist. You know, if you get a therapist who sees the world in the wrong way,
00:42:24.620
who doesn't recognize certain basic truths about the world in the human person, then that therapist
00:42:30.220
probably isn't going to be very good. But a good therapist can be great. I mean, Drew Klavan says
00:42:34.460
that his life was saved by a good therapist. When you get a therapist too, also make sure there's an
00:42:38.480
end date. Some people go to their therapist for years and years and decades and decades and then
00:42:42.780
never stops and they never get cured. Make sure you, there's an end here, you know, and then that's it.
00:42:47.660
I do think also, not denying there are certain physical psychological problems. I'm not denying
00:42:55.700
that there are other psychological problems that are more easily treated with therapy. But a lot of
00:43:01.460
what we would call psychological problems, like anxiety, can also be philosophical and ultimately
00:43:07.760
can be theological. If you are laboring under a really confused philosophy and theology,
00:43:18.540
I could understand why that would induce a great deal of anxiety. If you are really struggling
00:43:24.260
with who you are, what your identity is, whether you're going to just turn to worm food when you
00:43:28.900
die, what the purpose of life is, I mean, that can lead to a great deal of anxiety. I'm not saying
00:43:34.160
that accounts for all or even a majority of cases of clinical anxiety, but I think it accounts for some
00:43:39.100
of it. And so I would also recommend you try to treat the philosophical and theological aspects too.
00:43:45.680
I don't think you're going to cure yourself. Just as you've got to take care of your body,
00:43:49.880
you do also have to take care of your soul and your mind. And you're not going to be able to
00:43:56.400
treat your whole person because you're not just a body. You're not just a meat bag. So you're not
00:44:00.860
going to be able to treat your whole person if you ignore your mind and your soul. So I would recommend
00:44:05.320
a little philosophical and theological inquiry as well, as well as finding a good therapist. I think that
00:44:11.660
could be a good idea. From Jesse, hi, Michael. My whole life, I thought it was better to be more
00:44:16.200
on the modest side and not simply flirt to get everything you want. I'm seeing a trend here
00:44:19.840
today. Sure, use your personality to accomplish things, but not soft core pimping themselves out
00:44:24.700
like girls who wear low cut shirts to get more views on their YouTube channel. Have I just not
00:44:28.900
been using my assets as a woman as much as I should have? Or is it better to be a bit more demure?
00:44:33.680
Sincerely, maybe I should have flirted my way to the top.
00:44:35.780
There's a difference between flirting and stripping. So you think about the Victorian era.
00:44:45.680
The Victorian era on the surface, very buttoned up, but brimming with sexuality. And that's
00:44:52.240
where you see jokes about the Victorian era. A woman would show her ankle and men would start
00:44:57.820
sweating. They'd be so turned on. Why is that? That really did sort of happen. It's because
00:45:02.380
seduction and attraction and flirtation is not just about our naked bodies. You'll notice
00:45:09.800
most people don't look great naked, okay? But this is why people wear lingerie. The point of
00:45:15.740
lingerie is not what it shows, but what it covers up. And this is true. I'm not suggesting you wear
00:45:20.220
lingerie in the workplace. I'm saying quite the opposite, actually. You can be quite flirtatious
00:45:25.000
in what you withhold. A well-placed smile or remark or glance even can be far more attractive than
00:45:35.780
just some hussy parading all of her jiggly bits out for everyone to see. From Chris,
00:45:41.620
Michael, propaganda has been a huge theme this week, not only on your show, but also in the media
00:45:46.160
more broadly. Reminds me of the story of Nathan Hale's alleged last words. I only regret that I
00:45:50.880
have but one life to lose for my country. Some say that Washington used this as propaganda and
00:45:55.720
that the quote was plagiarized from Joseph Addison's play Cato. How beautiful is death
00:45:59.820
when earned by value? Who would not be that youth? What a pity it is that we can die but
00:46:04.360
wants to serve our country. Isn't propaganda just the mythology of the victors? Sure. And at the
00:46:10.140
moment, it's the mythology of both the victors and the losers. I mean, there's plenty of mythology
00:46:14.900
surrounding the losers in war. So you think in the case of the Civil War, in the American South,
00:46:19.840
there's a mythology that's grown up around that too, just like there is among the victors.
00:46:23.580
You're right about Nathan Hale. He almost certainly never said that phrase. I think there's basically
00:46:27.220
zero evidence he ever said it. I think his last comment on the scaffold was something to the
00:46:32.100
effect of it's good for officers to do what their commander in chief tells them to do. So I,
00:46:37.860
yeah, that is part of the mythology of war. I don't begrudge the Ukrainians or the Russians for
00:46:45.160
that matter, their own propaganda. That's what happens. But I strongly recommend that we,
00:46:48.840
who are trying to understand the conflict and who may well be, be pulled unwittingly into this
00:46:53.560
conflict. We need to be able to discern between propaganda and reality. And that's very, very
00:47:00.040
difficult when virtually all of the media are, are propagandists themselves. I'm Michael Knowles
00:47:06.620
this is The Michael Knowles Show. Have a good weekend. I'll see you on Monday.
00:47:08.940
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies.
00:47:38.000
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Our technical director is Austin Stevens.
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Supervising producer, Mathis Glover. Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky. Editor and associate
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producer, Danny D'Amico. Associate producer, Justine Turley. Audio mixer, Mike Coromina.
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And hair and makeup by Cherokee Heart. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
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Hey everybody, this is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. You know, some people are
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depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon's turned
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to blood. But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started. So come on over
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to The Andrew Klavan Show and laugh your way through the fall of the republic with me, Andrew Klavan.