The Michael Knowles Show - July 03, 2026


GOP Launches A Secret Weapon On Libs： Goth ＂Baddies＂


Episode Stats


Length

42 minutes

Words per minute

176.39

Word count

7,412

Sentence count

502


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:01:00.000 While we all wring our hands over new political winds blowing in the GOP,
00:01:05.540 isolationism, protectionism, nativism, there is a new factional insurgency among Republicans
00:01:11.020 that we should be excited about. And that is the rise of the right-wing goth baddie.
00:01:17.160 We will examine the rising Republican star, the congressional candidate shaking up conservative
00:01:22.740 aesthetics. Then a Democrat campaign staffer calls for a trans jihad and general murder of
00:01:28.340 Republicans. And President Trump swings by the Teddy Roosevelt Library to remind us all how
00:01:32.760 terrible this year would have been with a lib president presiding over America's 250th anniversary.
00:01:38.620 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:01:58.340 Welcome back to the show. James Tallarico, who the polls are showing might be
00:02:03.540 the Democrat senator from Texas very soon. He wants you all to know that his whiteness and
00:02:11.840 his masculinity limits his imagination. That guy, right now, odds on the numbers,
00:02:19.560 very good chance that guy is going to be the senator from Texas. We'll get to that in a
00:02:23.840 moment. First, though, smash that like button and subscribe. Also, check us out on Spotify.
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00:04:06.680 I hate to admit that Mr. Davies,
00:04:11.040 the producer of this show, is sometimes right.
00:04:13.880 I teased this a little bit yesterday.
00:04:15.180 I have to get to it.
00:04:16.740 He has been saying for weeks now
00:04:18.900 that I need to cover the rise of the goth baddie.
00:04:23.340 I said, what are you talking about, the goth baddie?
00:04:25.260 He was saying, no, Michael, my whole social media feed
00:04:28.240 is just being inundated with really good-looking goth girls.
00:04:32.700 It's just, it's a social phenomenon.
00:04:34.380 I said, no, no, no, that's a your feed phenomenon.
00:04:36.780 I said, I don't know what kind of sick,
00:04:38.820 perverted, freakish things you look up on your computer,
00:04:41.800 but I'm not seeing that anywhere.
00:04:43.300 I said, that's not a real trend.
00:04:46.020 And it takes a big, handsome guy
00:04:48.160 wearing a red, white, and blue plaid shirt to admit when he's wrong because the new star
00:04:53.560 GOP congressional candidate coming out of Colorado is, in fact, I think it's fair to say,
00:04:59.440 nothing lecherous in the observation, she's a goth baddie. This is Kelly Dennison. She just
00:05:06.500 won the Colorado second congressional primary, and she is not your typical Republican, at least
00:05:13.300 in the way she looks. She's a 27-year-old massage therapist. Her picture that is being posted around
00:05:20.300 in the news reports of her victory was actually taken in front of St. Joseph Catholic Parish.
00:05:25.460 Great signs. I was in Fort Collins this year. And she probably doesn't have a chance to win
00:05:31.760 the race. I think the district is D plus 20 or something like that. But she won the primary.
00:05:37.140 She has now won the hearts and minds, the fascination of at least many Republicans on
00:05:41.700 the internet. And it made me have to contemplate whether or not Mr. Davies was seeing a trend
00:05:46.820 and why it would be that a goth chick would be a conservative Republican. I've noticed this.
00:05:54.020 You know, I travel around the country, go to a lot of churches when I'm around the country,
00:05:57.560 go to a lot of events. And I've noticed this. I actually, I did not, not on my social media
00:06:01.640 feeds, but in real life, I have been noticing more and more goth girls. Like the kind of thing you
00:06:06.280 saw in the late 90s, white makeup, dark hair, some piercings, black eyelashes, black clothing.
00:06:14.520 I have been seeing them crop up more and more. And you would often imagine them being on the left
00:06:19.440 or maybe even the radical left if they weren't totally politically apathetic. But I've been
00:06:23.280 noticing them more and more on the right. Why is that? In a way, it makes perfect sense because
00:06:28.480 the goth aesthetic rose out of the Victorian era. The best explanation I've heard for the rise of
00:06:34.660 the goth aesthetic, which really took on prominence in America during the 80s, punk,
00:06:39.700 post-punk, then Hot Topic kind of commercialized it. But it comes from the Victorian era because
00:06:44.880 Queen Victoria spent a very, very long time mourning the death of her husband, Prince Albert.
00:06:50.480 So she wore a lot of black, and that's what it draws on. And it draws on other cultural
00:06:55.180 influences from that era, from the 19th century, the gothic novels, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
00:07:00.500 the kind of culture that is about enchantment the kind of culture that is about the supernatural
00:07:10.240 things that are a little uncanny eerie numinous a little bit spooky the kind of culture that takes
00:07:17.220 religion seriously what's interesting about the goth aesthetic is in the goth aesthetic you could
00:07:22.660 see someone wearing a pentagram or a crucifix you know totally opposite religious views but
00:07:27.820 nevertheless taking religion seriously, whether it be in an occult and rather bad religious form
00:07:34.140 or in a good religious form, which is in the form of Christianity. I mean, even the word goth
00:07:39.220 coming from Gothic, the Goths who sacked Rome, but then the great Gothic cathedrals and then
00:07:45.500 into the Gothic novels of the era. And I thought, in a way, this makes perfect sense because
00:07:50.320 we live in this world that has been so disenchanted. We live in this world where
00:07:56.380 everything is so clinical, everything is mediated by technology, where everything seems so clinical,
00:08:02.040 so scientific, so plain, our longings, our desires, our hopes, and our dreams, they're all reduced
00:08:07.600 to chemicals firing off in our brains or some other mechanical processes. And human beings
00:08:12.780 realize that that doesn't really fully explain the world. It doesn't even come close. It doesn't
00:08:17.520 explain the most important things in the world. And so I think we're living in an era, this is
00:08:21.840 also why you're seeing a big return to religion, and especially the more sacramental and traditional
00:08:26.480 forms of religion, the liturgical kind of religion, the smells and bells kind of religion,
00:08:31.300 you're seeing people recognize that we know that the world really is enchanted, and we need to
00:08:36.840 re-enchant ourselves with it. We're living post-stupid new atheism. We're now in a world
00:08:43.820 where we start to take religion and spiritual matters seriously. Even those gothic novels,
00:08:48.860 They're very romantic. It coincides with the romantic era. And we live in a world where we're
00:08:54.760 told we're just supposed to have clinical partnerships. I'm going to propose a marriage
00:09:01.260 to my partner because we're really good. We help each other, and we're all going to just do the
00:09:06.780 dishes, and we're going to be exactly co-equals, undifferentiated, and it's all. It's just so lame.
00:09:14.020 and we want romance. We want to be that couple climbing up the Empire State Building,
00:09:20.420 taking a knee and proposing on top of a needle above New York City. So we are living at a time,
00:09:27.160 maybe I'm reading too deeply into this congressional primary candidate, but I don't
00:09:30.920 think I am. I think it's indicative of a broader trend. We're in a time that calls for enchantment
00:09:36.200 and romance and religion. We are in an age that calls for the return of the goth baddie,
00:09:43.100 and the goth baddie will not be on the left. The goth baddie will be on the side that is looking
00:09:46.500 for a return of those things, and that is conservatives and Republicans generally.
00:09:51.080 Okay, now let's look at the Democrats. What are they up to? This is something that would come out
00:09:55.540 of a gothic novel, a horror novel or a horror movie. A Democrat campaign staffer has just
00:10:02.340 called on followers to, quote, kill your local Republican and commit trans jihad. Trans jihad,
00:10:10.100 two of our favorite things, transgenderism and Islam. Combine them, what could go wrong?
00:10:16.000 They do actually kind of combine in a lot of activism. This person, his name, I guess it's a
00:10:21.800 him, but he thinks he's a girl, is Tija De La Ruel. I don't think that's his Christian name,
00:10:29.720 but that's the name he goes by. He was a volunteer staffer for Wisconsin Democrat Socialist candidate
00:10:36.340 Katrina DeVille. Katrina DeVille. I don't know what Katrina DeVille's real name is because
00:10:41.180 Katrina DeVille is also transgender. This Democrat candidate in Wisconsin, also trans.
00:10:49.700 So this fella, the staffer, was photographed sitting in front of a dry erase board,
00:10:55.360 scrawled with the words, quote, kill your local Republican in black marker. And he says,
00:11:01.100 we're going to make this the moderate position for the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin, which I
00:11:06.740 believe has pushed more serial killers on America than any other state in the country.
00:11:15.000 Now, this is the trans stuff. The trans people are kind of like the er, evil version of the
00:11:22.160 goth baddie. This is like everything goes wrong. This is the villain from the gothic novel.
00:11:27.800 But I guess what's really troubling about all of this, this person calling for a trans jihad,
00:11:33.680 is how not weird he is. I mean, he's weird. Don't get me wrong. He's weird, but he's not
00:11:42.380 weird by the standards of the modern Democrat party. I mean, just listen to the reporting.
00:11:47.140 He was working for another tranny, a tranny who it's now not uncommon for a transvestite
00:11:54.640 to be in public office. There was a time 10 years ago that would have been completely absurd in both
00:11:59.140 parties. Now, there's a transvestite in Congress, sitting in Congress as a member, a Democrat,
00:12:06.160 of course. What the left is going to want to do is say that the trans staffer calling for the
00:12:14.440 murder of all Republicans is an aberration. This is not what we're about. The Republicans are
00:12:21.500 going to pounce on this story, but this is not indicative at all of what the Democrats are.
00:12:26.780 And the problem is, it is. There's a big difference. Think about back in the 90s,
00:12:32.200 we had like David Duke. There's a similar version of that in the mid-20-teens, which was Richard
00:12:37.580 Spencer, who was a kind of more intelligent, more intellectual version of David Duke,
00:12:42.240 but still white identitarian who would say Heil victory and had Nazi leanings. What's ironic about
00:12:50.480 Richard Spencer is Richard Spencer, I think, is now a Democrat because he says the Republicans
00:12:54.160 can't do anything. But whatever. My only point is, whether they were pointing to Richard Spencer
00:12:59.580 or David Duke, the Republicans certainly could say, well, no, we're not about that.
00:13:05.180 They are advancing views that we don't agree with. So much so that Richard Spencer says,
00:13:10.200 I'm done with Republicans. I'm just going to vote for Democrats. At least they're confident.
00:13:13.060 But you could say in the 90s, David Duke would be calling for all these things. And it was all
00:13:17.160 the Republicans would say, no, no, no. We support colorblind meritocracy. No, no, no. We're the
00:13:23.220 party that freed the slaves from those Democrats who own the slaves. No, no, no. We don't have
00:13:26.340 anything in common with this guy. He is not one of us. The Democrats can't say that about these
00:13:31.600 guys. They can't say that about transgenderism. Obviously, there's a trans-identified member of
00:13:35.440 Congress. They've almost uniformly embraced the transgender ideology in recent years,
00:13:39.500 and they can't even run away from it now that it's totally unpopular. But furthermore,
00:13:43.280 a huge swath of Democrats, prominent mainstream Democrats, have embraced political violence as
00:13:48.500 well, including minimizing and excusing and celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk,
00:13:52.600 who was the most mainstream Republican. When it says, kill your local Republican,
00:13:57.020 we're talking about that kind of guy. So they're totally different scenarios.
00:14:02.980 And unfortunately, I'm open to a rebuttal, but unfortunately, it seems to me that,
00:14:08.800 what's this person's name? DeVille, Cruella DeVille, I don't know, whatever the
00:14:12.920 trans staffer's name is, working for the other trans candidate. That has become the norm. And if
00:14:19.120 you get enough drinks, or probably more like hard drugs when it comes to that side, if you got
00:14:24.360 enough drinks into even your mainstream Democrats, something tells me they would start defending or
00:14:32.720 at least minimizing and justifying political violence. Something tells me they wouldn't be
00:14:39.140 so totally opposed to trans jihad. Very, very dangerous. The staffer calling for this violence
00:14:46.800 is at most, I'm being as charitable as I can, is at most an exaggeration of the norm.
00:14:54.160 David Duke in the 90s, that was a contradiction of the Republican platform.
00:14:58.420 This person is at most a slight exaggeration of where normal Democrats are at. Normal Democrats,
00:15:04.520 increasingly a contradiction in terms. Now, speaking of trans liberal Democrats trying
00:15:10.080 to murder Republicans, we have finally gotten the sentencing for the guy who tried to kill
00:15:14.600 Brett Kavanaugh. You remember this? A big story that kind of went away. The person who over
00:15:20.560 Kavanaugh's decision to overrule Roe v. Wade traveled across the country, tried to murder
00:15:24.940 him and potentially his whole family and his house. We have just gotten the sentencing,
00:15:29.900 and it turns out that he too is trans it's always the ones you most expect we'll get to that
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00:16:59.440 The man who tried to murder Brett Kavanaugh
00:17:02.520 has been sentenced to eight years in prison
00:17:05.260 and is now a chick.
00:17:07.500 And what's really, that's not surprising.
00:17:12.780 Transgenderism is an intrinsically violent identity
00:17:15.420 and ideology because it is at odds
00:17:18.660 with one of the most basic aspects of nature
00:17:21.380 that being sexual difference. That is at the heart of distinctions between human beings,
00:17:28.200 much more so than race or ideology or geography or whatever. The distinction between man and
00:17:33.660 woman is core to human identity. And so when you have a problem with that, when you're at odds with
00:17:42.880 that, you are simply inclined, more inclined to be violent. What is somewhat surprising,
00:17:48.820 at least to me, is the way the Washington Post reported on this. The Washington Post,
00:17:53.400 she got eight years for plotting to kill Justice Kavanaugh. Prosecutors want more.
00:18:00.240 The Justice Department is appealing the sentence of Sophie Roski, who pled guilty in the case.
00:18:07.480 There you have it. Most people would remember and say, hold on, I thought it was a guy who
00:18:11.800 tried to kill Kavanaugh. Yeah. And then like a lot of these wackos, whether for sincere psychosis
00:18:17.560 or just for cynical reasons so that he could be housed in prison with women, which would be easier
00:18:23.400 on him, maybe so that he could commit more crimes. Who knows? Regardless, he now identifies as a woman
00:18:28.780 and the Washington Post is going along with it. The she and the Sophie and the her, and
00:18:35.040 we're still doing this. We're still doing this. And as I mentioned at the top, right now,
00:18:43.680 the Republican election chances are looking pretty bad. It looks like the midterms are going
00:18:48.060 to be as bad, if not worse, as some people were fearing a couple months ago. We're still in silly
00:18:52.240 season. Things could change, but the Iran war really hasn't helped the historical fact of the
00:18:58.080 midterm after one party wins the whole government. Things are compounding at this point to not look
00:19:03.240 great for Republicans. And we could be back to 2023 era peak woke like that. Like that. It's
00:19:14.720 happening. The Washington Post wants to do it. The Democrat Party wants to do it. The electeds,
00:19:19.460 the people on TV want to do it. The rank and file Democrats want to do it. They want to bring that
00:19:24.300 back. And there is one guy, there is this catacomb-like figure who is stopping them from
00:19:31.040 doing it. And it's Trump. And I get frustrations with Trump. I get that you wish he had done more
00:19:36.680 on immigration. Some people want him to do less on immigration. Or you wish he had bombed Iran
00:19:40.480 harder. Or you wish he hadn't bombed Iran at all. And I understand. I don't even mean to make light
00:19:44.560 of it. I understand the issues that people have with Trump. He is the only reason that we don't
00:19:52.760 live in a world full of trans jihad and this wacko identifying as a woman and the newspapers
00:20:01.460 calling all the men chicks. It's just him. The only reason that that abated at all was because
00:20:06.880 after the 2024 election, the powers that be got really scared. The cultural powers that be got
00:20:11.940 really scared that Republicans had unified government that were going to come after them.
00:20:14.660 And they saw the popular vote went the way of the conservatives. So that's what they pulled back
00:20:19.660 for now. It could all come back in a second. This is what brings me to President Trump at
00:20:25.240 the Roosevelt Library. A couple days ago, President Trump went to the Teddy Roosevelt,
00:20:29.360 not the Franklin Roosevelt, the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library. It was great.
00:20:32.700 The motorcade had horses. It was very Teddy Roosevelt. There was this great clip of Trump
00:20:37.700 debating or interacting with an AI of Teddy Roosevelt. It's all kind of fun,
00:20:42.700 wacky stuff. We don't have time to get to all of it. But here is just a little bit of his comments
00:20:48.120 days before the 250th official anniversary of the United States.
00:20:54.620 From winning our independence to laying the railroads taming the West and planting our flag
00:21:01.140 on the moon, nothing great that America has ever done has come without staggering effort and
00:21:08.320 it has never come easy. It's been really an unflagging persistence that drove us into
00:21:15.040 greatness we had the persistence of great people great men great women they were persistent they
00:21:22.040 never gave up this country was built on the conviction that just because something is hard
00:21:30.700 to do that only means that americans try even harder and they succeed almost all the time
00:21:38.280 because whatever the obstacle, whatever the challenge,
00:21:42.500 it's no match for American grit.
00:21:45.540 And you have it probably as much or more
00:21:47.480 than any other place there is.
00:21:49.800 You have American grit.
00:21:54.360 Okay, and you love it.
00:21:55.520 You got the guys with the bandanas
00:21:57.160 and the cowboy hats on behind them.
00:21:59.240 And it's just, it's all great.
00:22:00.220 Nice big belt buckles, real Americana.
00:22:02.920 And he's just talking about how great America is
00:22:04.960 and the spirit that built America.
00:22:06.780 He's really invoking the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt, who, maybe until Trump, did this kind of thing, second to none.
00:22:15.760 I mean, there are so many parallels between Trump and Teddy Roosevelt, all the way down to hosting combat sports at the White House.
00:22:22.000 Teddy Roosevelt would host boxing matches, was pre-UFC, but he would host boxing matches at the White House.
00:22:26.840 He would even participate in them sometimes.
00:22:28.960 and there was one time
00:22:31.060 he had to stop participating in them
00:22:32.280 because he was boxing some guy
00:22:34.580 and the guy got him in the head
00:22:36.020 and partially blinded him.
00:22:38.060 TR was partially permanently blinded
00:22:40.120 because he was as president
00:22:41.360 participating in a boxing match
00:22:42.580 at the White House.
00:22:43.440 So a lot of similarities there.
00:22:45.220 But all that could go through my head
00:22:47.160 while I'm watching these great comments,
00:22:49.340 totally normal,
00:22:50.060 nothing all that remarkable
00:22:51.520 about the comments.
00:22:53.340 America's a great place.
00:22:55.000 We've done great things.
00:22:56.020 We should do more great things.
00:22:56.880 what went through my head is what could have been because had trump lost in 2024 let's just start
00:23:04.980 there had trump lost in 2024 some democrat kamal harris would be presiding over the country for
00:23:10.940 our 250th what speech would she have given at the teddy roosevelt library she wouldn't have gone
00:23:16.860 but what speech would she have given at the franklin roosevelt library what speech would
00:23:19.820 joe biden had he been able to pull the drool up from his lower lip and actually stick it out
00:23:24.320 through the campaign. What speech would he have given at the library? Even Biden, who's supposed
00:23:28.860 to be the old school, more establishment, more moderate Democrat. Well, but the party moves so
00:23:33.320 far to the left, all of a sudden Joe Biden's embracing like transing the kids, literally
00:23:37.420 transing the kids. The speech would have been, and America, America, listen, we've had our
00:23:43.500 challenges. We haven't lived up to our ideals. We haven't, we've failed a lot. We've done a lot
00:23:49.340 of bad things. We're racist. The worst, the original sin of America, of slavery, we've never
00:23:54.920 totally gotten past it. This is a place we've gone to wars we shouldn't have gone to. We've
00:24:00.500 oppressed people. We've kept women down. Oh, and don't get me started on the gays. We haven't done
00:24:05.500 enough for the gays and the trans and the trans kids. And man, we suck. We're a terrible country,
00:24:11.160 but we try to be better. And every day we elect another Democrat, there's a chance we could be
00:24:16.000 better, but still a lot of our bitter clinging, hideous, rube, toothless citizens, they want to
00:24:22.120 drag us down into Nazism. They're deplorable politics, but we're going to try so that there
00:24:28.560 will be a chicken in every pot and a trans kid in every garage. That's what the speeches would
00:24:34.660 have been. It would have been a year of that. We're looking ahead, obviously, the 4th of July
00:24:41.500 tomorrow, it would have been a year of that. And we don't have that. Instead, we have big monuments,
00:24:49.940 new arcs going up in DC, big state fair on the National Mall, great speeches, bunting and banners
00:24:56.320 and flags. And at the very least, even in a polarized country where one major political
00:25:00.780 party has collapsed in its patriotism, reflected in every social scientific survey. At least in
00:25:07.440 that country, we got the face of the country, the guy with the bully pulpit saying, this is a great
00:25:11.000 country. And we've done great things. And we should be proud of that. And we should build on
00:25:13.760 that. And then what that got me thinking, final point on this, then we'll get to James Tallarico's
00:25:19.340 struggles with his whiteness and masculinity. But what if Trump had remained in office after 2020?
00:25:27.200 What if the 2020 election had turned out differently? Let's just say, hypothetically,
00:25:33.160 the Democrats hadn't changed all of the rules in the lead up to the election and increased the
00:25:37.240 opportunities for voter fraud inestimably. And what if, just however it shook out, I'm not,
00:25:43.760 what if Trump had remained in office? Well, then he would have been term limited out
00:25:48.760 in 2024. And Mike Pence, I guess, would have been the nominee. And I like Mike Pence.
00:25:57.400 But look, after two terms of any party, it's hard to keep holding on to the power,
00:26:01.760 especially with someone like trump we would have had a democrat and this is the way just
00:26:08.080 it's the silver lining of this one of the silver linings that we have of the suffering that we face
00:26:12.660 is that god and his providence sees a lot more than we do to put it mildly and even we were so
00:26:20.260 disappointed i certainly was disappointed when trump when the election turned out the way it
00:26:24.320 did i can't say trump lost i don't when it turned out the way it did i was really disappointed and
00:26:29.000 yet, imagine, imagine what we'd all be thinking now if we'd had a Democrat in 2025. Okay, before
00:26:34.840 we get to James Tallarico's sexual and racial struggles, I want to tell you about Mount Titano
00:26:40.300 Media. Go to mounttitanomedia.com. As we get closer to America's 250th anniversary, I have
00:26:46.760 been thinking about a simple question. How much of our own history do we actually remember? Not
00:26:50.060 the dates, not the trivia, the words, the speeches, the arguments, the ideas that shaped the country
00:26:54.840 in the first place. Because one of the strange realities of modern education is that Americans
00:26:58.740 are constantly told what to think about their history
00:27:01.080 while spending very little time
00:27:02.800 actually reading the people who made it.
00:27:04.600 That is one reason I'm very excited
00:27:06.760 to be part of a new project from Mount Titano Media.
00:27:10.160 It's called Finding Our Words, Words That Made America.
00:27:12.760 I think I have the book right here.
00:27:16.240 Look at that.
00:27:17.660 This is a great, great book.
00:27:19.300 The book collects some of the most important speeches
00:27:20.920 in American history,
00:27:21.960 many of which have been almost completely forgotten
00:27:24.020 despite helping define the American experiment itself.
00:27:27.080 now there's a new audible edition featuring voices you might recognize spencer clavin who cares
00:27:32.260 andrew clavin yeah yawn bill whittle no i'm not listening to that military leaders educators
00:27:38.400 scholars and yours truly that's the key okay it's a really really great book i just totally love it
00:27:46.580 uh you will get uh contacts from journalist tracy lee simmons and editor allison ellis go check it
00:27:50.920 out right now mount titanomedia.com get your copy of finding our words words that made america mount
00:27:56.180 titanomedia.com what you would have gotten what you would have gotten well you can get a preview
00:28:02.980 of what you would have gotten the kind of speech you would have gotten had a dem been in office
00:28:06.480 for the 250th anniversary from the potential if not likely a future senator from texas james
00:28:13.800 tallarico i should mention you know my imagination is also just limited by my own my own uh background
00:28:22.440 on an identity, right? My own, my whiteness, my masculinity, all those things limit my imagination
00:28:27.180 about what's possible. So I have to continually press against that to try to expand the limits of
00:28:32.580 what I'm dreaming of for our community. And that's where, you know, Dr. Robin, your book
00:28:39.480 helps me do that. And podcasts like this help me do that.
00:28:44.600 His struggle, he has this big struggle. The Germans call it a Kampf.
00:28:48.380 james tallarico's struggle is with his sexuality breaking news it's not not exactly man bites dog
00:28:58.120 story there james tallarico struggles with his sexuality but also with his race his whiteness
00:29:03.580 which limits his imagination now what's so funny about this is at a very basic level i guess i
00:29:13.420 guess we could agree with him. In other words, it is the case, no matter how enlightened and
00:29:19.720 wise we are, and people who are wiser, who have some humility, who have gained in wisdom and
00:29:24.620 knowledge, they can largely transcend the confines of their circumstances. But there's always some
00:29:31.020 limit. That's true. I guess that's true. In a certain sense, we can all say that we're limited
00:29:35.800 by our race by our sex by our socioeconomic circumstances but i guess you could say that
00:29:43.860 but he would never say this about any other race or any other sex so what i here's what i want to
00:29:50.340 hear from james talarico in total charity i say okay you're limited by being white i mean i hope
00:29:56.220 he comes on and does an interview he obviously will not but you say you're limited because you're
00:30:00.600 white white people are limited by their race men are limited by their sex and their imagination is
00:30:05.600 confined because of that. So can you say, hey, hey, blacks, your imagination is confined by your
00:30:12.940 race. I don't think he would say that. Hey, ladies, hey, ladies, I know you're getting a
00:30:19.300 little mouthy here, but just remember, your imagination is confined by your sex, woman.
00:30:24.660 Know your limits, woman. Would he say that? Probably not. So unfortunately, he's making this
00:30:30.380 like really really overstated point because people who have charity who have some goodwill
00:30:36.620 who have reason who exercise their reason and try to grow in knowledge your imagination can go
00:30:43.520 pretty far i actually i can imagine what it's like to be people who are pretty different from me
00:30:48.120 i can even imagine what it's like to be james tallarico i guess i really got a stretch for
00:30:52.420 that one, but I guess I could. But not only is he making this just tedious HR diversity training
00:31:01.680 session kind of nauseating point, but he doesn't even believe it because it's not really a principle
00:31:09.660 he holds because he wouldn't apply it evenly. Okay. Speaking of weird sex stuff, one thing I
00:31:14.480 do want to get to before we get to the mailbag, we have a great mailbag today, but a little positive
00:31:18.260 note before people start to go on their vacations for the 4th of July. I know many people are doing
00:31:22.700 that. There is some good news on a really, one, good news coming out of Texas, not James Tallarico.
00:31:31.060 And two, it's on an actual controversial point that only the real hardline kind of comprehensive
00:31:40.820 conservatives really grasp. I think I predicted a while ago that this issue would grow and grow
00:31:47.480 and grow in the public mind, and people would start to change their minds on it, but it would
00:31:50.520 take some time. But nevertheless, it's happening. We're seeing good moves here. And that's on IVF,
00:31:57.460 on in vitro fertilization and the surrogacy industry. The Texas Republican Party, this
00:32:03.240 happened just about a week or so ago, the Republican Party of Texas voted to add a
00:32:07.840 plank to their platform, citing their desire to, quote, protect fetal life from destructive
00:32:12.360 practices such as IVF and commercial surrogacy. This is despite the fact, as is reported,
00:32:20.000 that 65% of Texas Republican voters support legal and accessible, perhaps even subsidized IVF.
00:32:28.220 So this is actual political courage and moral clarity coming out of a Republican Party
00:32:33.560 organization, which that is a man bites dog story. You do not usually see courage and clarity coming
00:32:39.920 from the party apparatus. And you are getting that in Texas. And this is another example where
00:32:45.380 I would love to say, I hate to say I told you so, because I've been on the IVF drumbeat for a long
00:32:54.100 time now. And when I first started bringing it up on the show, that the idea that actually IVF is
00:32:59.680 bad and surrogacy is bad and commercial surrogate, you know, commercializing and commoditizing human
00:33:04.080 life is really bad. I got a ton of pushback from people. I'm sure there are many people listening
00:33:08.420 now who say, well, I only got my kid through surrogacy. How dare you say there are problems
00:33:12.640 with surrogacy? I only got my grandkid or my niece or my nephew through surrogacy. How dare
00:33:16.500 you say that? Of course, that doesn't hold up as a logical argument. I know people who are
00:33:22.580 conceived as a result of rape, and I love those people, but you would never say, I only got my
00:33:28.500 friend as the consequence of rape. Therefore, rape is good, and we need legal rape, and we need to
00:33:33.220 subsidized rape. No one would ever say that. You would never say that a good end justifies
00:33:39.440 an immoral means. So the question really then becomes, okay, is IVF and surrogacy morally
00:33:45.440 justified? I know people want it. I understand how difficult infertility can be. But is it really
00:33:51.100 justified to hand over to business people and dubious physicians the origin and destiny of
00:34:01.100 human life, to establish the domination of science and technology over the origin and destiny of
00:34:05.400 human life, and to trade people as you would trade baseball cards or any other commodity.
00:34:10.200 Is that really justified? To say nothing of then opening up the prospect of gay couples
00:34:18.620 creating children with the intent to deprive them of their natural mother, father, or all the rest
00:34:23.080 of it. To say nothing of the fact that the vast majority of people who are conceived through IVF
00:34:28.320 are killed, are intentionally killed. This is great. This is really, really great. The Texas
00:34:34.860 Department of Health and Human Services, I'm sorry, no, the National Department of Health
00:34:38.860 and Human Services, their embryo adoption awareness and services program is also now
00:34:44.500 replacing the word embryos in several sections with child, children, and children who already
00:34:47.760 exist. Really important. There's nothing radical about that. Embryo is just a term for a stage of
00:34:53.800 development of a child, of a person. You say fetus, fetus is just the Latin word for offspring.
00:34:58.320 No one thinks it's a platypus.
00:35:00.140 No one thinks it's a desk chair.
00:35:02.040 It's a human being.
00:35:02.840 It's a living human being.
00:35:03.700 So they're just clarifying what it really is.
00:35:06.020 And that's important.
00:35:07.320 It's really important that people are now seeing the reality.
00:35:09.960 And at the time, there were a lot of sort of cynical political people who said,
00:35:13.500 Michael, don't go after surrogacy.
00:35:15.540 Don't go after IVF.
00:35:17.040 You know, it's so unpopular to go after those things.
00:35:19.760 It's going to hurt your ratings.
00:35:21.620 People are going to turn on you.
00:35:23.080 Just don't touch that issue.
00:35:24.300 in much the same way that cynical political operators would say,
00:35:29.680 don't talk about traditional marriage.
00:35:31.360 We lost that battle.
00:35:32.640 Just move on in much the same way that cynical political operators would say,
00:35:36.300 don't talk about abortion.
00:35:37.780 Oh, come on.
00:35:38.360 Just, we lost that battle.
00:35:39.440 Supreme court ruled twice.
00:35:40.760 Just move on public opinion.
00:35:42.960 It's hard to overcome.
00:35:43.520 Just move on.
00:35:44.720 Notice one, we have just scored a major victory in winning the abortion fight
00:35:51.520 and many PR victories on that.
00:35:54.300 but also at the Supreme Court, people thought it could never happen.
00:35:58.320 Already, public support of so-called same-sex marriage has really declined.
00:36:03.880 I mean, you're seeing a real collapse in public support for that.
00:36:06.540 And a time will come when people view IVF the same way.
00:36:09.340 And it's not because we're some, you know, silver-tongued devil
00:36:12.140 who can convince people of anything.
00:36:14.020 It's because people don't know what it is.
00:36:17.400 They don't see it for what it is,
00:36:19.120 which is creating children to deprive them of their natural parents in many cases.
00:36:24.300 creating people most of whom will be killed or frozen indefinitely in virtually every case and
00:36:29.720 commoditizing human life which we all know is wrong that's happening that's already happening
00:36:34.300 even and and some of the people who are thinking about this most deeply are even getting a little
00:36:38.980 bit ahead of the the demos the voting public on that good stuff i like seeing that okay much to
00:36:44.520 get to my favorite comment yesterday is from zach killen who says how many mayflower cigars do i
00:36:50.020 need to get my comment read on the show. You, I don't know how many you've bought. I suspect a
00:36:56.320 bazillion. You know, we sold out of the Mayflower Dawn of America, the special limited edition for
00:37:00.820 the 250th and the tubes and the special edition box. I told you it was going to happen. But for
00:37:05.740 those of you who did not get it, we're trying to order more. We'll see if we can get it done.
00:37:09.000 It's hard. These are, you know, we're using on this seven-year aged true Connecticut, USA,
00:37:13.440 Connecticut tobacco. And it's just, you know, this is a handmade artisanal product. So it's a little
00:37:17.000 tricky to do, but we're, we're working on it. For those of you who did get your boxes,
00:37:20.080 congratulations. Glad you, glad you got them. I'm taking, taking a couple of my own. I only
00:37:24.660 have one box actually. I didn't even hoard them all. I only got one box of the Dawn of America
00:37:28.540 and, but I'm taking two of the sticks to smoke for 4th of July. Okay. Finally, finally, we arrive
00:37:33.660 at my favorite time of the week when I get to hear from you in the mailbag. Mailbag sponsored
00:37:36.140 by pure talk at pure talk.com slash Knowles can WLES to switch to the only wireless company
00:37:40.560 awarded five stars in every category by consumer reports. Take it away.
00:37:44.040 hey michael what are your thoughts on the sspx proceeding to consecrate new bishops without
00:37:49.700 papal authority i know that you love the traditional liturgy but you're also not a
00:37:54.240 vatican and pope hater as some catholics are as with all your other takes i know that you're
00:37:58.980 probably going to have a well thought out and moderate response that'll probably make both
00:38:02.600 sides unhappy which of course makes you correct anyways thanks for everything you do and for the
00:38:07.820 show very precisely worded question and totally accurate uh so for those who don't know there's
00:38:13.340 a group called the Society of St. Pius X, which is a priestly fraternity within the Catholic
00:38:20.920 Church. You know, there's all sorts of groups within the Catholic Church. You have different
00:38:24.080 religious orders, the Dominicans or the Jesuits, so I think technically you're still Catholic.
00:38:28.360 You get priestly fraternities like the Society of St. Pius X, which really exists to preserve
00:38:35.160 the traditional Latin Mass and has qualms with the Second Vatican Council and certainly with
00:38:40.480 its implementation. You have the Precifraternity of St. Peter, which was founded as kind of an
00:38:44.380 offshoot of the SSPX, which does not object in principle to the Second Vatican Council,
00:38:49.140 also preserves the traditional Latin Mass, wonderful, wonderful fraternity in the church.
00:38:54.000 Anyway, this all started because in 1988, was it? In the 1980s, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
00:39:02.640 consecrated bishops without the authority of the Vatican, without the authority of the Pope.
00:39:08.320 So he illicitly consecrated four bishops, and they all immediately incurred automatic excommunications.
00:39:17.180 Now, it meant that they were still validly saying Mass, but it was illicit.
00:39:22.900 It was real.
00:39:23.840 When they consecrate the host, that's the real Eucharist, where they're really saying Mass, but it was illicit.
00:39:29.340 It was done without the permission of the Vatican.
00:39:32.240 And so there's been this power dynamic going on for decades now.
00:39:34.980 At one point, the excommunications of the bishops were lifted. Then one of them was kind of put back
00:39:40.400 on again because the bishop had some impolitic things to say, among other things. And I won't
00:39:45.960 get into all of the details of it. But they've just decided, okay, they haven't come to terms
00:39:50.780 with Rome, so they're going to illicitly consecrate the bishops again. They incur automatic
00:39:54.820 excommunications. It's very sad. The whole thing is very, very sad. I am opposed to schism. I am
00:40:03.480 opposed to, I don't, you know, the ordination of the bishops, it was even kind of dubious in itself
00:40:09.200 because you have to have an apostolic mandate. You have to have a mandate from like the Pope to
00:40:14.920 consecrate the bishops. And they kind of worked around that in the liturgy, which didn't totally
00:40:19.260 persuade me. But in any case, it's very bad. I've never attended an SSPX chapel. I love the
00:40:25.820 traditional Latin Mass. I attend the traditional Latin Mass. But I do have a great deal of sympathy
00:40:31.140 for the SSPX. And one of the arguments the SSPX make is the only reason you get these other groups
00:40:36.180 that are kind of defending the traditional Latin mass is because we're the bad guy. Like they're
00:40:40.180 the good cop, we're the bad cop. And if you get rid of us, then all those other groups are going
00:40:44.300 to go away too. And, you know, now this leads to a scary conclusion, which is that, you know,
00:40:49.840 in a way it's these kind of other groups that save the church rather than the church saving
00:40:53.780 all of us, which I obviously don't agree with. However, I guess what I would say my conclusion
00:40:59.340 from this is not to dunk on the SSPX, where I think most of the people involved have very good
00:41:04.860 intentions. Maybe some are genuinely schismatic, but most have good intentions. I'm not persuaded
00:41:09.260 really by the arguments of the SSPX, but I love what they are trying to do, which is to preserve
00:41:13.940 the traditional Latin Mass. There's so many abuses, liturgical abuses that came about after the Second
00:41:18.520 Vatican Council. And so I have great sympathy. The whole thing makes me very, very sad. I hope
00:41:23.440 the Vatican has seemed to suggest that they want to reconcile, maybe. I pray and I hope
00:41:29.260 that that happens. That's what I'm hoping
00:41:31.180 for here. So yes, I gave you an answer that is almost
00:41:33.020 exactly as you would have predicted. How interesting
00:41:35.060 is that? There's so much more I want to get
00:41:37.120 to. I've got written mailbag questions
00:41:39.300 about love, about romance.
00:41:41.100 We don't have time. We've got to go
00:41:43.180 catch a flight. So, I hope everybody
00:41:45.080 has a beautiful 4th of July.
00:41:47.540 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:41:49.360 See you Monday.
00:41:59.260 Amen.