Ep. 987 - The Mask Regime Has Fallen
Episode Stats
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Summary
A federal judge strikes down the TSA's mask mandate for public transportation. It's a bittersweet moment, because it shows just how far our country has fallen, and how much power the ruling class has taken from us.
Transcript
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Finally, 441 days after the CDC implemented a federal mask mandate for public transportation,
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a federal judge has struck down the stupid rule which was set to expire yesterday before the
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bureaucrats decided to extend it for another two weeks. Two weeks, where have we heard that one
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before? District Court Judge Catherine Kimball Mizell ruled that the extended mandate, quote,
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exceeded the CDC's statutory authority, improperly invoked the good cause exception to notice and
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comment rulemaking, and failed to adequately explain its decisions. I actually got a text
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from a friend of mine when this came out. He was 30,000 feet traveling on a flight, and he said,
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wow, you're not going to believe it. The captain just came over the loudspeaker and said that the
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mask rule is no longer in effect, and almost everyone took their masks off. Other people got
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videos of this happening on flights around the country. Take a listen.
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The Biden administration announced that the Transportation Security Administration
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will no longer enforce the federal mandate requiring masks in all U.S. airports and on-board aircraft.
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Effective immediately, masks are optional for all airport employees, crew members,
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customers, and customers inside U.S. airports and on-board aircraft.
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Effective immediately, and everybody is very, very excited about this because this judge
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found that the good clause exception did not hold here. The good clause exception is a provision
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of the Administrative Procedures Act that allows D.C. bureaucrats to break the rules for rulemaking
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when compliance would be, quote, impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.
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So if an emergency required an agency to act with haste, it would be permitted to cut corners.
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But we're more than a year and a half into this nonsense. If there ever was an emergency that permitted
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this kind of power grab, we are certainly long past it. This is great news. As you can see,
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the people are so excited there in that video on the flight. I've got a flight on Thursday to Boston.
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I'm giving a speech at Boston University. I look forward to testing the rule. Perhaps I can become
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the Rosa Parks of airplane muzzles. But the ruling is bittersweet. If all those people on that airplane
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were so happy to take the mask off, as we know that they are, as we know that we all were when we
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were flying around and taking public transportation, why didn't we just all do it? Why did it take
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4441 days? This is a bittersweet moment because it shows us just how far our country has fallen.
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It shows us just how much the ruling class, our crooked ruling class, has taken from us.
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We are 109 weeks into two weeks to slow the spread. And we're celebrating that our rulers
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might now finally allow us to breathe again. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Vita Tipple, who says,
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Michael, I'm getting worried for you. Your show was so hard hitting and so on the money
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that you're likely to make some very powerful people very cross. I hope you've got a good
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security team around you. Thank you very much for your concern. We do have good security here
00:03:36.180
at The Daily Wire. And most importantly, I haven't been revealing too much information on the Clintons.
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So I think my health is secure. I've been going after a lot of the crooks here in our country and in
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our world, not just Biden, but the corporate leaders, not just the corporate leaders, but
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the institutional investors. We were going yesterday after BlackRock, after State Street,
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some of those big investors that are pressuring the regular corporations to become woke corporations
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with regard to Twitter, with regard to all of these other political issues. But as long as I don't go
00:04:14.820
too hard after Bill and Hillary, I hope that I will not be suicided anytime soon. I think that I can
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20% off through the end of April. I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, guys. I'm really excited.
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I am. I hate those stupid masks. Every time the stewardess walks away on the flight,
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I take the dumb mask down. I've been cheating at these things from the beginning. I don't wear
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the masks in the airport, but sometimes they'll get you. They'll say, sir, you will not be allowed
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to board the flight if you don't put your stupid mask on. And then they've got you. Either you cancel
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the trip or you put the dumb mask on. And in not all, but in most cases, I felt it's worth doing
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the trip, speaking at some liberal place, speaking and talking about how dumb the masks are. I felt
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that was worth the cost. But is this really what we've come to? I would bet 97% of people who take
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airplanes wanted to lose the dumb masks over a year ago. And we all just kind of went along with it.
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I would bet you 90% of stewards and stewardesses, except for the insane power trippers who love the
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masks, but probably 90% of them hate the dumb masks. There was one stewardess I saw a few months ago who
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was wearing a mesh face mask. I thought it was great. I bet you 100% of the captains don't want to
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wear the dumb masks. And they probably don't up in the cockpit. And yet we all just went along with
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it like little sheep. Even though we knew it was preposterous as a medical matter, we knew it was
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completely ridiculous almost from the beginning. And as a political matter, it was absurd as well.
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And yet we went along with it. And now it takes one judge. I love this judge. She's phenomenal.
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She's a Trump appointee. She was put on the bench just a couple of years ago. She's 35 years old.
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So she's got a long career ahead of her, we hope. And so I'm glad. But what? This is what we've come
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to in America as our basic freedoms, our basic way of life, the ability to breathe freely
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is now contingent on the whims of a judge. That's not a great situation to be in.
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It's a good start. I don't want to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory. I'll take the win when I can
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get it. But we have a long way to go. News report out today. Just to show you, this is completely
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unrelated to the masks, but it shows you the depth and severity of the political problem in the United
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States. Florida passed this parental rights and education law, which prohibits weird sex education
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in elementary schools. Florida just in general has gotten a little bit tougher on keeping the radical
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leftist ideology out of the classroom, getting back to the ABCs, not the LGBs or the CRTs. And so as a
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result of this, Florida has, here's the NPR headline, Florida has rejected 54 math books from the classroom
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because they say critical race theory appeared in some of those books. This is 54 math textbooks in K
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through 12 classrooms. That is a 41%, that's 41% of the 132 books that were submitted for review to the
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Florida Department of Education. And the Libs are reacting to this. They're saying, this just proves
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how crazy how crazy the Florida conservatives are. They're banning books. Look at how, what an
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overreach this is in Florida. That's not my reaction. My reaction to this is, wow, what the hell were they
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teaching in those classrooms? What were, 54 books, 41% of the books in math class, we're not talking about
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history or civics or literature. Math, 41% of the books were teaching critical race theory and similar
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sorts of concepts. I'm not even, I'm not even really surprised when I reflect on it. Yesterday, we read a
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math assignment from Pennsylvania that was given out in 2017, so five years ago now, in which to get the
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right answer to the math question, you had to know facts about the radical leftist author Maya Angelou's
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life. So really, very little surprises me these days. But when I see this, Florida bans 54 math
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textbooks, you know what that says to me? That says it's a good start. Good start. There's probably a
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long way to go, though, because I bet there are a lot of books being taught in history, in civics.
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They probably don't even have civics anymore, in English, in possibly in the hard sciences,
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that are radical and leftist, and they need to be booted out of the classroom.
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And there's nothing anti-American about that, or illiberal, or contrary to education, or whatever.
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A seventh grade classroom is not a thriving free marketplace of ideas where new scientific
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discoveries are going to be found. There's no broad academic freedom in middle school,
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or high school, for that matter. Parents have a right, the political community has a right
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to have a say in what its children are being taught, because the purpose of K-12 education
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is to form good citizens. The purpose of K-12 education is to educate and give people a good,
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solid foundation so that they can go and continue their studies and their vocational training and go on
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and become good, upstanding citizens. And when you teach kids that America is evil and white people
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are evil and boys are really girls, when you teach them that, you're harming their education.
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There is a long way to go. I strongly suspect there are a whole lot more books we need to ban
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from the classroom, because those books are not educating students. They are poisoning students'
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minds and poisoning our country. And if kids want to read them, they can read them on their own time,
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but they're not going to read them in taxpayer-funded classrooms.
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The libs always go back to this contradictory argument. They say, these books are not being
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taught, these ideas are not being taught in K-12, and it's really important that they are.
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And thank goodness for my favorite Twitter account, libs of TikTok, certainly in my top five favorite
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Twitter accounts. Thank goodness for them, because libs of TikTok is exposing the corruption
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that we're seeing in the schools. These kooky school teachers, at the same time that the left-wing
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politicians are saying, this stuff isn't being taught, you crazy conservatives are tilting at
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windmills. At the same time that the liberal politicians are making that argument, the kooky
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teachers are going on to TikTok and saying, yeah, I do want to trans my five-year-olds, but unfortunately,
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the parents in Florida aren't letting me do it.
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It's, this is really elemental stuff, okay? Boys are different than girls. Right is different from
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wrong. Death is different than life. When we want to inculcate a culture of life, we got to check out
00:12:33.080
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00:12:39.380
to be a whole lot more in the news, because the Supreme Court might overrule Roe versus Wade. There's a
00:12:44.440
very strong chance that they will. You need to know the arguments, okay? The arguments are all
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on the pro-life side. The scientific arguments, the ethical arguments. It's funny that the libs,
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which always say they want to follow the science, do not follow the science on one of the most
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important issues, which is abortion. You need the best arguments you can get, which is why you've
00:13:06.440
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00:13:44.320
wherever you live. Thanks to our friends at Libs of TikTok. We know that a middle school teacher
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in Florida is very, very furious because in Florida it is increasingly frowned upon to try to trans little
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kids. My state decided that it was a good idea to ban the use of the word gay in the classroom.
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Educators can now not, are not allowed to say gay in the classroom anymore. This is a life or death
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issue. Why do I say that? One of the most important statistics that I use in my curriculum when teaching
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anti-oppression specifically about LGBTQIA issues is 72%. You decrease the likelihood of a young trans person
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of wanting to commit suicide if all you do is use the proper pronouns for that person.
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72%. You can save a life by using one often two-letter word for a person. Misgendering someone
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can have them go on a spiral where they don't want to live anymore. And now we're not allowed to say
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gay, even if we are gay, even if we have an openly same-sex relationship, even if we're openly non-binary
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or trans. As educators, we cannot talk about who we are. We exist. I've got one really important statistic
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for you to know when you are watching Libs on TikTok. And that statistic is 420%.
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420%. 420% of the statistics that Libs on TikTok cite are completely made up. 420%.
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You can reduce your risk of losing IQ points 420% by not watching Libs on TikTok. I obviously don't
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believe this statistic this woman is citing that 72. If you don't call boys she and girls he,
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then you are going to encourage them to commit suicide. And if only you call them by the wrong
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pronoun, then you'll decrease their suicide, suicidality by 70 plus percent. I just don't
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believe that. And one of the reasons I don't believe that is because this woman is saying a
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whole lot of things in this video that I know for a fact are not true. Like you're not allowed to say
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gay in classrooms in Florida. That's just not true. That just isn't true at all. That's completely
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made up. It's nowhere in the Florida education bill. And it's just not the case. The woman is
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saying that she is non-binary. Well, that's not true because that's not possible. That's not a real
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thing. So she isn't that. So she's wrong. I'm not saying she's a liar, but she's certainly mistaken.
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She says that she teaches anti-oppression in the classroom. Where does that fit in in the school day
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schedule? So you have homeroom in the morning. Then you've got social studies maybe. Then math
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class. Then anti-oppression. And then English language and arts. Is that in literature? Is
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that what you've got? I don't know. Where is anti-oppression? No, this woman is a radical
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political activist who is using taxpayer dollars in Florida. I think that's the state that she's in,
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right? Yeah. She's using taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate little kids into her radical,
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weird, leftist ideologies. She says, I'm not even allowed to be open about my same-sex
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relationships in the classroom. You certainly shouldn't be. Yeah, I don't want you teaching
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that in the classroom. That's weird. Don't talk about your sex life in the classroom. Period.
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Now, I don't think you should be talking about your sex life in any grade, but certainly not in K
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through three or pre-K until third grade. Certainly not. If only you use the wrong pronouns,
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then you will save a life. Even if it were true, I know it's not true, but even if it were true,
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it would still be wrong. This kind of emotional blackmail is the way to madness because it actually,
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this is kind of a strange connection and it ties in with another creepy weird sex thing.
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But when I was at Yale with Senator Cruz last week, we were asked a question by this kid who obviously
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just wanted to get some headlines and tell a joke. He said, if it would end world hunger,
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would you perform a certain sex act on another man? And it was funny and people laughed in the room,
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but it's actually not a complicated question. The answer is no, I wouldn't do that.
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No, it wouldn't end world hunger. No, calling kids the wrong pronoun isn't going to reduce their
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suicidality or depression or anxiety. It's probably going to increase it by hardening their gender
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dysphoria. But no, I wouldn't do that because that's called consequentialism. That's called the
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ends justify the means. That is a morally idiotic way of viewing the world. That's called it takes a
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few broken eggs to make an omelet. That logic that by committing an intrinsically disordered evil action,
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you might achieve some good end. That has been used to justify the worst crimes in history.
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And it's morally incoherent and it doesn't lead to good outcomes anyway. This kind of stuff is what's
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being taught all over the place. And it's not even just in San Francisco or LA or New York. Florida is a
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pretty red state. And this kind of stuff is being taught in even redder states. I was in Kansas.
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I was in Kansas to give a talk at Washburn University just a few weeks ago. Last I checked, Kansas is
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pretty conservative. Not exactly San Francisco or Chicago. And before I gave my talk, the president of
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that university, Jerry Farley, condemned me. He personally signed the contract inviting me to come
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speak. I was invited to speak on how boys and girls are different. And then he condemned me and he said my
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views were terrible. This president of a public university said that the statement that boys and
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girls are different is terrible, horrible. We think this is awful. I'm sorry the guy's invited.
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And I didn't back down and I went and I spoke anyway. And it was a totally packed out house.
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I invited the president of the university, Jerry Farley, to come. He could share the stage with me.
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He could present his alternative thesis to my very controversial one, the boys and girls are
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different. We could debate it. We could have a civil and open exchange. I didn't hear back from
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President Farley. He was much too cowardly to actually stand by his calumny against me and his
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defamation. And so he just hit up in his ivory tower. And I went there and I gave a speech about
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what a jerk that guy is and why my views are right. Felt it was respectful, but forceful. And then
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just saw this news story yesterday. And I'm not, I'm not saying I did this. I'm not totally taking
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credit for it, but I'm not, I'm not here. Well, here's the headline. Washburn President Jerry Farley
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to retire. I like that. Washburn University announced Monday afternoon during a news conference
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that Farley will retire on September 30th of this year. There he is.
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Is it because probably the worst scandal of Jerry Farley's career occurred just a few weeks ago
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because of little old me? Is it because Jerry Farley, a man who, who dines on the taxpayer dollar,
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who runs an educational institution, doesn't know the difference between boys and girls and actually
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condemns people who says that there are basic distinctions in biology and human nature?
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Might it have something to do with that? That he would smear, not just me, I'm a big boy with thick
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skin, but smear half of the, half of the country and a huge portion of students of his university
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who are conservative as hateful, misinformers, bigots, that sort of thing? Is it because he smeared
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what I would suspect is the vast majority of parents paying tuition who know that boys and
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girls are different? That he smeared them as hateful and bigoted and spreading misinformation?
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I don't know. But one thing I will tell you is I'm really happy that he is stepping down.
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He is not fit to be the president of a university. A man who behaves in that way, a man who's that
00:22:20.200
confused sexually, intellectually, morally, whatever. That man has no business running a university.
00:22:29.420
And frankly, it's scandalous that he ran it this long if that's the kind of cowardice
00:22:33.420
and intellectual decay that he is demonstrating. And we need to see a lot more of that.
00:22:38.140
We see that Florida law or the consequence of various Florida laws to say 54 math textbooks
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have been kicked out of the classroom for being too radical. Yeah, that's a good start.
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Jerry Farley stepping down. He's not the only one. And he's not even close to the worst of the
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offenders at these universities. He's being booted out of the school or he's stepping down or however
00:22:57.020
it's happening. I don't really care. I'm just glad it's happening. That's a good start. That's a good
00:23:01.760
start. When I spoke a few years ago at University of Missouri, Kansas City. Actually, it was not far from
00:23:10.560
Washburn University. And the chancellor of that university, Chancellor Agrawal, also,
00:23:17.440
after I was physically attacked there, he came out and he smeared me. And it was the same sort of
00:23:21.760
thing. He said that this is not in accord with our values here. We don't believe that men and
00:23:26.400
women are different. That guy should be gone too. It's a scandal that he still holds that job.
00:23:32.880
A lot of these guys, we have to get tougher. The modern conservative movement was launched with a book
00:23:39.480
called God and Man at Yale, subtitled The Superstitions of Academic Freedom. And the point of the book was that
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academic freedom is a total lib psyop. It's not real. It has no, it has, it has meaning in as much as
00:23:54.080
scholars are free to pursue their own interests in their studies. But it doesn't mean that wackos are free
00:23:59.640
to teach whatever nonsense they want in a classroom. That is never what academic freedom was supposed to
00:24:04.880
mean. And even when it did sort of make sense, you don't have the right to do that. And the point of that book
00:24:11.080
was basically that we need to fire bad teachers. We need to fire radicals. In Buckley's idea,
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radical atheists and radical socialists in the classroom, in university classrooms, much less
00:24:21.500
K through 12. Got to do that. Folks, there are some true radicals on campus. At the university level,
00:24:31.120
there is a professor at the University of New Hampshire who is coming out and saying that it is
00:24:38.460
ineffective to call all sexual relationships between children and adults predatory. Speaking
00:24:48.200
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you will save 10%. It's super duper easy. So right now, go to epicwill.com. This is the most
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important five minutes that you are going to spend all day. You know, sports are not supposed to be
00:26:04.640
the place for radical, aggressive political speeches and virtue signaling. So NBA star Jonathan
00:26:11.420
Isaac is one of the few professionals that knows that fact very well. Isaac faced heavy criticism from
00:26:17.580
the media for not buying into the political theater over the past few years, and he still
00:26:22.320
stood strong. That's why I'm super duper excited to announce that Jonathan is writing a book with
00:26:28.460
The Daily Wire called Why I Stand. Jonathan's book will be about the rise of his basketball career,
00:26:33.920
his journey into faith, and his strength to stand alone in the face of immense pressure.
00:26:38.060
The book is available for pre-order right now on Amazon. Reserve your copy today. Also,
00:26:42.960
we got a great new short series that we're going to be releasing somewhat regularly. I was out giving
00:26:50.080
a speech at Washburn University. There was a protest organized against me. And so my producer
00:26:54.580
decided to just walk outside with a camera and get some video and see what was going on. And then my
00:26:59.500
producer actually invited the girl who organized the protest against me to come cross her own picket
00:27:05.720
line, sit down, watch my speech. And then she and I sat and spoke to one another for probably,
00:27:10.240
I don't know, 15 or 20 minutes after the speech. Go check it out. It's on my YouTube channel right
00:27:15.200
now, the Michael Knowles YouTube channel. We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:27:30.620
There's a professor at the University of New Hampshire who is quite insistent that we should
00:27:37.040
not call all adult child sexual relationships predatory. This would be Professor David Finkelhor.
00:27:46.480
He is the director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center. He was giving a virtual talk
00:27:52.020
called Sex Crimes Against Juveniles Involving Elements of Voluntary Participation,
00:27:57.920
Implications for Prevention and Response. Without further ado, take it away, Professor Groomer.
00:28:04.540
Also, if young people are initiating sexual activities with adults or enthusiastically involved,
00:28:11.420
we can't be effective in working with them if we assume that all such relationships start
00:28:18.200
with a predatory or criminally inclined adult. As we've seen in the discussion, young people bridle
00:28:25.760
at being forced into this box of being seen as being the victim of a predator. And so there are
00:28:36.680
reasons for learning about what the dynamics are and how to talk about them so that we can
00:28:42.820
better help the young people who are in these situations.
00:28:47.720
Just to clarify here, this professor is not talking about a relationship between, I don't know,
00:28:56.780
a 16-year-old and a 20-year-old. We're not talking about a relationship where
00:29:04.180
maybe or maybe not it violates the law, but maybe you can tell they're sort of within an age range that
00:29:14.240
seems somewhat reasonable. They both could have been in college at the same time. They both could
00:29:17.540
have been in high school at the same time. Sometimes these types of relationships are
00:29:20.960
covered by what's called Romeo and Juliet laws. That's not what this guy's talking about.
00:29:26.080
This guy's talking about relationships between kids, little kids, and old adults.
00:29:33.820
We're not talking about 16 and 19. We're talking about like 12 and 40. We're talking about the whole
00:29:44.040
spectrum here of child or younger than 12 and adult, maybe older than 40, sexual relationships. And his
00:29:53.460
claim is, well, we shouldn't begin with the premise that all of these relationships begin with a predatory
00:30:01.600
adult. No, I think we can. I'm pretty sure we can begin with that assumption. I think
00:30:07.680
that is always the case. I don't think there's any exception to that at all. And I think that this kind
00:30:15.540
of logic is illogic is really creepy and dangerous. But it's, I don't even just mean to beat up on this
00:30:24.960
professor. He's frankly a symptom of a much larger social and philosophical problem. We're all focused
00:30:31.320
on the will, on what the child wants, the child's desire. Traditionally in this country, we have
00:30:40.200
age of consent laws. We have age of consent laws because we believe that kids cannot give mature,
00:30:47.820
informed consent on a whole host of issues. This is why you're not allowed to get a tattoo until you're
00:30:53.260
18. This is why there are limits to sexual activity that you can engage in until you are
00:31:00.300
a certain age. This is why little kids have to do what mommy and daddy tell them to do because they're
00:31:07.940
not old enough to give consent. Now, as conservatives have said for years, you're going to see these laws
00:31:16.040
eroded and you're going to see kids victimized. And it's a slippery slope, but we're slipping right
00:31:20.640
down it. Now, we're being told that five-year-olds not only have perhaps the right to engage in a
00:31:28.340
sexual relationship. They actually have the right to totally change their sexual biochemistry. They
00:31:33.320
have the right to take cross-sex hormones. They have the right to mutilate their bodies and their
00:31:37.380
genitals. That's what we're being told because, well, they know deep down that they're sexual
00:31:44.220
creatures and we need to stop them from going through puberty so that their true sexual nature,
00:31:49.200
which is contrary to their bodies, can come out. And it's just bogus. It's weird. It's creepy.
00:31:55.600
The left has been peddling this stuff for a hundred years. Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders
00:31:59.940
peddled all this kind of weird child sexuality that kids need to explore their sexuality. He
00:32:05.900
peddled this in essays in the Vermont Freeman for years in the 1960s. It's nothing new, but it is
00:32:13.520
wrong. And what a lot of this derives out of is our now social refusal to say that anything is right
00:32:21.220
or anything is wrong intrinsically. So everything has to be about consent. Hey, if two consenting
00:32:27.880
people want to do X, Y, and Z, they're totally free to do that. And I have no right to infringe
00:32:33.580
on that. Who's to say what's good or bad or right or wrong? As long as people consent.
00:32:38.980
But then, so when you apply that to an adult with say transgenderism, if an adult consents to call
00:32:47.040
himself Sally and put on a dress, that's his right and I have no right to infringe that. Well, then,
00:32:52.460
then you are granting the possibility that the man could in some deep sense become a woman. And if
00:32:57.040
that's the case, then certainly you should start that before puberty. Certainly you should do that
00:33:02.040
before the secondary sex characteristics of a man set in. That'll make it a whole lot worse if those
00:33:06.900
secondary sex characteristics set in, if transgenderism is true. The child is not consenting
00:33:12.080
to puberty. That's the argument for putting the kids on puberty blockers. And there is some kind
00:33:17.200
of logic to that. If you believe that consent is the be all and end all and exclusive criterion for
00:33:24.900
determining whether an action is good or bad, but it's not. We can know beyond consent, whether,
00:33:31.380
whether this creepy professor says that the child is consenting to a sexual relationship with an adult
00:33:36.420
or not. Maybe the child is, is going up to bars and he's sneaking past the bouncer or she's sneaking
00:33:42.660
past the bouncer and going up to adults and saying, Hey, toots, let's get out of here. Even so the
00:33:47.540
child, whatever you want to call that consent, pre-consent, sort of quasi pseudo consent, it doesn't
00:33:54.900
matter. It's still wrong. It's just intrinsically wrong. And we can say that. Okay. We can have the
00:34:01.760
confidence to say, Nope, that's wrong. And you get punished. And I don't care if you're consenting to it.
00:34:05.400
You don't get to do it. Period. You're seeing this push all throughout the country at Georgetown.
00:34:11.760
There, there is a panel that's taking place this month on abolishing the sex offender registry.
00:34:17.880
There's a panel. It's a Georgetown defenders presents a panel on abolishing the sex offender
00:34:22.880
registry moderated by professor Abby Smith virtual event, April 21st. I guess it's happening in a couple
00:34:30.300
of days. RSVP here. I looked up this professor, Abby Smith. I thought maybe it's going to be a
00:34:36.100
professor who says, no, we should definitely not abolish the sex offender registry. It's really
00:34:40.400
good to know when you've got child molesters in your neighborhood, we need to protect people. No,
00:34:45.460
this is a professor who has serious problems with the sex offender registry, who wants to keep more
00:34:50.480
and more people off of the sex offender registry because it's not fair to them. It's not fair to those
00:34:55.380
poor people. If you are, this is the professor's argument in certain articles that I've read by
00:35:01.420
the professor. If someone finds himself on the sex offender registry, that's going to really,
00:35:07.760
really harm his life. He's going to have a harder time in society. He's going to have a harder time
00:35:13.500
holding a job. He's going to have a harder time fitting into a neighborhood. That's true.
00:35:18.860
That's true. Because he is a rapist or a child molester. That's why. It's not because of the
00:35:27.800
awful society and the unfair stigma around child rapists. It's because he committed that act and
00:35:34.860
the society wants to protect itself from those people. Yes, that individual is stigmatized.
00:35:42.020
Rightly so. By the way, maybe that individual has gone through a lot of therapy, has paid his debt to
00:35:47.340
society, has reformed, has totally turned his life around. Maybe. I wish him the best. I hope he does
00:35:52.680
that. I hope he has repented and goes to heaven someday. But we in society still have the right
00:35:59.500
and the obligation, frankly, to protect ourselves from the real likelihood that that person could
00:36:05.960
re-offend. I have one and a half kids. I got one kid out into the world. I got another kid on the
00:36:13.060
way. I demand to know if there are sexual predators anywhere near my kids. I just demand it. That's my
00:36:23.060
right. It's not even because I hate the individuals who have committed these crimes. I hate them and I
00:36:29.040
want to punt. We just need to protect ourselves, okay? And what the left has done here is has so taken
00:36:36.500
the side of criminals to the total neglect of victims. The left has so bought into the idea of
00:36:44.800
indoctrinating little kids in weird sexual ideologies and normalizing all sorts of sexual
00:36:50.620
disorders and, frankly, cultivating those disorders in children. In grooming the kids, let's call it what
00:36:58.660
it is. That they are neglecting the safety of the kids. That's what they're doing. You see this point
00:37:07.180
on the will, this point on desire, on consent. I know it's a little abstract. I know it's a little
00:37:12.940
pie in the sky. Here's an example that I think can drive it home. And it actually comes from PETA.
00:37:19.380
PETA tweeted out the other day, animals don't want to be eaten. And they did that thing that libs do now,
00:37:26.460
which is just they repeat the same sentence five or six times. They said, animals don't want to be
00:37:30.280
eaten. Animals don't want to be eaten. Animals don't. And I saw this and I thought, well, animals don't
00:37:35.720
want. They just don't want. They don't have a rational will. So yeah, no, they don't want.
00:37:44.960
And PETA responded to me. PETA said, other animals are thinking, feeling beings who have wants and needs
00:37:53.740
just like you. You should want to be a kind person and make the world a better place.
00:38:00.400
So there are, even from those first two words, they say other animals. Like you're just an animal,
00:38:05.380
Michael. You, human beings, you're just animals, just like the cheetah, just like the insect.
00:38:11.260
You're just, and you all have wants and needs just like each other. And that's not true.
00:38:16.160
And I chalk it up to ignorance from PETA, but it's not true. I chalk it up to the extreme
00:38:22.320
degradation of our understanding of the world today, but it's just not true.
00:38:29.120
The misunderstanding comes from a misunderstanding of the human will. And so a heroin addict wants to
00:38:35.660
shoot up heroin, right? Because it feels good. But a heroin addict also doesn't want to shoot up
00:38:41.100
heroin. At a higher level, the heroin addict wants to quit heroin because the heroin addict,
00:38:46.140
heroin addict knows that heroin is bad for him. When St. Paul says, the things that I want to do,
00:38:51.820
I don't do. And the things that I don't want to do, I do. He's describing the conflict between his
00:38:56.640
two wills. The two wills are the lower will, which we call the appetite, and the higher will,
00:39:03.040
which is the rational will. And traditionally understood, the rational will mediates between
00:39:08.040
the lower will, the appetite, and the divine will. So to bring that back down to earth here,
00:39:15.380
we have a moral conscience. We can know certain things that are good and bad and right and wrong
00:39:19.980
and true and false. And so even when our loins and our stomachs and our lower animalistic desires
00:39:27.180
tell us, go eat the 10th taco, drink the 10th drink, sleep with that woman who isn't your wife,
00:39:37.420
go do whatever your appetite is telling you to do. Your higher will says, nope, don't do that.
00:39:43.100
That's wrong. You're going to have a stomach ache. You're going to have a headache tomorrow. You're
00:39:47.580
going to be in real big trouble with your wife. Don't do that, even though part of you desires to
00:39:52.260
do that. Animals don't have that higher will. So when animals see the food, they just go and eat it,
00:39:58.080
and they're going to go eat it until they get sick. They're just going to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat.
00:40:02.120
Animals don't go courting. Animals don't have much of a sense of monogamy or fidelity. They
00:40:08.600
generally just stoop whatever's out there. Animals pursue their instincts and their appetites. This is
00:40:15.200
why we don't put animals on trial. If an animal goes and bites a human being, we might kill that
00:40:21.100
animal. We might put that animal down, but we don't put that animal down because of justice or to get
00:40:27.000
revenge. We don't put that animal down because we're even angry with the animal. We put the animal down
00:40:31.980
to protect human beings. What we for sure don't do is charge the animal with a crime and put the
00:40:37.360
animal on trial and have the animal defend itself. We don't accuse the animal of committing an immoral
00:40:42.460
act because the animal doesn't have any moral conscience. That wouldn't make any sense.
00:40:47.260
We are stewards of animals. We want to be good stewards of all of creation, but not because the
00:40:53.900
animals want it, not because the animals will it. We do that because God wills it, and we have a moral
00:40:59.400
conscience so we can understand these really basic things. When it comes to parents, the job of a
00:41:06.820
parent is not to just give in to every little child's disordered desire or will. It's not to
00:41:13.760
say, eat as many cookies as you want. Of course, it's your will. I have no right to infringe upon
00:41:19.040
your ... No, we say no, enough cookies. Get your hand out of the cookie jar, kid. When a little boy says,
00:41:24.360
I think I'm a girl because my pervert teacher in kindergarten told me I am. It's not the job of
00:41:29.360
the parent to say, well, if that's your will, if that's your desire, then I ... No, the parent says,
00:41:35.340
no, you're not. You're not. I'm your parent, and you're in my care, and it is my responsibility
00:41:40.760
to teach you the difference between true and false and right and wrong and good and bad.
00:41:45.300
But these people, because we've lost any ability to make those moral distinctions,
00:41:49.680
and morality in 2022 pretty much is just, if it feels good, do it. It's turned us all into animals.
00:41:56.260
It's turned our civilization into a much more animalistic, bestial society. Because of that,
00:42:02.800
we just boil it down to this incoherent conversation about consent.
00:42:09.060
Speaking of consent, consent is back in the news for a completely different reason,
00:42:12.620
not for the animals, not for the groomers. It's because of Colin Kaepernick.
00:42:17.320
It's because if I ... Every two or three months, this guy is back in the news. If I never heard
00:42:24.540
the name Colin Kaepernick again, it would be too soon. This perfectly mediocre professional
00:42:29.720
quarterback who's made a big spectacle of himself and many, many millions of dollars,
00:42:34.440
he's whining again that he doesn't get to play in the NFL. Colin Kaepernick, six years now,
00:42:42.740
is it? Since he made a big spectacle of himself and said that America's evil and disrespected the flag
00:42:48.120
and was booted from the NFL and then made a lot more money selling hatred of America through
00:42:55.080
sneakers than he ever would have made in the NFL. Colin Kaepernick is back begging, begging to be let
00:43:03.320
back into the NFL. Are you willing to do what Carmelo Anthony did if an opportunity presented
00:43:08.980
itself today and they said, we want to bring you in as the backup? Would you take that?
00:43:17.880
So, yeah, if I have to come in as a backup, that's fine. But that's not where I'm staying.
00:43:23.920
And when I prove that I'm a starter, I want to be able to step on the field as such.
00:43:30.060
I just need that opportunity to walk through the door.
00:43:32.900
He just wants that opportunity. And he's willing to even go through some hardship for that. He knows,
00:43:37.820
look, he knows it's really valuable for a person to be able to play in the NFL. And he knows he's
00:43:43.000
been out of it for a little while. And so he's going to, he'll work as, he'll do a little bit of grunt
00:43:46.560
work. He'll be the backup quarterback. And then he's going to work his way up because he needs to
00:43:50.880
get back. He just wants so deeply. His desire, his will is to get back into the NFL. This from Colin
00:43:57.360
Kaepernick, the same man who, what, a year or two ago said that playing for the NFL is like working
00:44:02.880
as a slave on a plantation in the antebellum South. What they don't want you to understand
00:44:08.880
is what's being established is a power dynamic. Before they put you on the field, teams poke,
00:44:17.620
pride, and examine you, searching for any defect that might affect your performance.
00:44:37.960
Come on, boy, hurry up. Look at that shape there. Look at this.
00:44:43.780
Mr. Farmer, I got your bid. 30, James. 30 to you. 100.
00:44:47.800
So, next one coming up, best one we got. 500, 600. Look at this here. Come on, who wants this?
00:45:03.700
700. There we go now. 1,000. 1,000. I'm telling you what I want.
00:45:09.700
Here we go. There are the shackles. Well, Colin, you're free. You're free, Colin. You were previously
00:45:19.840
enslaved by the NFL. You had that awful slavery of being really rich and famous and getting to do
00:45:25.740
the thing that you trained your whole life to do. And now you're free from that. You're free and you
00:45:31.420
get to be a clown. You're free to, you're liberated into clowndom. The guy, he looks like a clown. He talks
00:45:37.440
like a clown. He is a clown. That's what he does now. Please, no, let me go back into slavery. Oh,
00:45:43.200
you don't really think it's slavery. You just, you're very confused. He's a very confused man.
00:45:47.560
And actually, though he is not aware of this, this does speak to our misunderstanding of liberation.
00:45:55.420
The way we understand liberation today is that you don't have any obligations.
00:45:59.840
You are not bound by any limits whatsoever, be they political, cultural, or even natural.
00:46:10.000
So you're not even bound by the limits of your own sex. You get to just do whatever you want,
00:46:14.080
whenever you want to do it. Colin Kaepernick wants to go out there and make a big clown of himself and
00:46:18.540
disrespect America and the flag and the fans. And he wants to, and there's not going to be any
00:46:23.680
consequences for that, right? No. Because by the way, sporting events have always had a connection
00:46:29.420
to patriotism, going back to ancient Greece. So no, now the consequence is he's out.
00:46:36.320
But no, I don't, I don't, please, can I have the slavery again? No, you don't. I'm sorry, Colin.
00:46:41.020
There's actually, you will find far more freedom in limits. The heroin addict breaks all of the chains,
00:46:49.720
breaks all of the limits. He can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to do it, except he can't.
00:46:53.260
And he's just a slave to sin. Then he's just a slave to vice.
00:47:00.560
Speaking of live performances, speaking of things that some people may or may not find
00:47:06.700
entertaining, such as football. And speaking of airplanes, actually, getting to our first story,
00:47:12.040
there's a video that I have to get to. It's from Easter Sunday on an airplane at 30,000 feet,
00:47:17.180
a group of Christian singers and a guitarist got up in the middle of an airplane and started playing
00:47:28.260
I love the idea of this. I really love this in theory, in practice,
00:47:54.940
not, not the greatest music. It's a little hokey. It's not, not exactly Bach's Mass in B minor,
00:48:03.780
you know, not great. If it were Gregorian chant, we'd be somewhere, but I don't, can't say I love the
00:48:08.420
musical stylings here. And if I were sitting on the airplane, I'd probably say, you know how about
00:48:12.220
just sit down and pray your rosary and don't, we don't need to. But I do like the idea of a public
00:48:17.940
acknowledgement of Easter. And Ilhan Omar was really upset about this. Ilhan Omar tweeted out,
00:48:23.240
she said, I think my family and I should have a prayer session next time I'm on a plane.
00:48:28.160
How do you think it will end? Well, Muslims play on airplanes all the time. Probably not in the
00:48:33.640
middle of the aisle. That would be a little strange, but it would be strange because America
00:48:37.640
is a Christian country. And so that would be unusual to have Muslim prayers, say during Ramadan
00:48:42.800
on an airplane. Certainly on, I mean, it's Easter, it's Easter Sunday. Just like if I were in a Muslim
00:48:47.980
country, if I were in Saudi Arabia and I got up and started playing Christian music, that would
00:48:53.160
probably be weird and probably be frowned upon because they're different things. And what the
00:48:58.920
point that the libs are making here is Christianity should have no special place in America. This is a
00:49:05.540
totally secular country. Get there. By the way, they would never make any problem about a Muslim
00:49:11.440
getting up and praying on an airplane. They're only doing it because they don't like Christianity.
00:49:14.260
Christianity. But that's not really the American tradition. America has viewed itself for the vast
00:49:19.540
majority of its history as a Christian country. They used to light up the big buildings in New
00:49:23.940
York and Chicago with crosses on Easter Sunday. There used to be religious Christian proclamations
00:49:31.660
from the White House because we're a country with standards, with norms, with a view of itself
00:49:38.180
that's entire understanding of what it even means to be a country, to hold truths, to be self-evident,
00:49:43.200
that all men are created equal with certain unalienable rights, comes from Christianity.
00:49:48.860
And we have a right to those standards. And we have a right to those norms. And we have a right
00:49:52.860
to that traditional way of life. And we have a right even to do certain things at 30,000 feet,
00:49:57.400
notably at the very least, to breathe the free air as of yesterday.
00:50:01.820
I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. See you tomorrow.
00:50:03.820
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies.
00:50:32.900
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
00:50:37.700
Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky. Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico.
00:50:42.660
Associate producer, Justine Turley. Audio mixer, Mike Coromina.
00:50:49.300
Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2022.
00:50:53.040
Hey there, this is John Bickley, Daily Wire editor-in-chief and co-host of Morning Wire.
00:50:58.560
On today's episode, a federal judge strikes down the airline mask mandate,
00:51:02.840
the latest from Ukraine, and crime is on the rise in L.A.'s wealthier neighborhoods.
00:51:08.520
Join us and get the facts first on the news you need to know with our show, Morning Wire.