The Michael Knowles Show - Lockdown PRISONS and Destruction of The Church and The West ｜ Lauren Southern

00:00:00.000 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:08.960 It's been a tough couple of years. The lockdowns, the malaise, all the election nonsense that we

00:00:16.400 lose Trump, we get this guy who's half asleep and destroying the world. And it's just been,

00:00:21.960 and one of the worst aspects of it all was the disappearance of Lauren Southern. I always really

00:00:28.480 loved watching Lauren's commentary. And then she made the fair enough decision to go off,

00:00:35.240 start a family, pull back a little bit from public life. I understood she did what she had to do.

00:00:41.000 Well, you know what? She's back. She is back, and she has a unique perspective because she left one

00:00:46.540 hellscape in the Anglosphere, Canada, America's hat, for apparently another one, which is still

00:00:52.500 locked down, even down under. Lauren, thank you very much for coming on.

00:00:56.220 Thanks for having me. I was really enjoying my hiatus, my family, all of it, but you guys

00:01:02.200 really dropped the ball. Things have just gone sideways the last year and a bit.

00:01:08.300 And you felt much like Pacino in Godfather Part 3, just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in,

00:01:14.980 and they did. And so it's gone really crazy. I want your perspective on two stories that I think

00:01:20.620 Americans don't really know very much about. I don't even know where to begin. Let's begin at 0.99

00:01:25.160 America's hat, your former country. They're burning down churches all throughout Canada,

00:01:31.860 and no one's really talking about it. Yeah, other than a brief mention from Trudeau

00:01:38.180 weeks after it started happening. And we're not talking about just one or two churches here.

00:01:42.700 We're talking about dozens of organized arson and vandalism attacks against churches. One evening,

00:01:49.040 there were 10 attacks against churches in one province. And all of this is happening because

00:01:55.960 there have been mass graves that were discovered of indigenous people in Canada. Now, we don't

00:02:03.400 actually have much information on these mass graves. We've just found graves. We haven't investigated

00:02:09.740 why they were there, whether they occurred because there was a disease outbreak. In fact,

00:02:14.700 one of the mass graves found in British Columbia, which resulted in churches being attacked,

00:02:20.420 was discovered to just be an overgrown graveyard that they knew was a graveyard. But the media just

00:02:27.460 went off with it. Mass grave, this is a genocide with no further investigation or professionals looking

00:02:33.860 into it. And of course, people are saying that these attacks are justified. This is revenge against

00:02:40.700 the Catholic Church who ran residential schools that indigenous people went to in the 1800s and

00:02:47.640 earlier 1900s to essentially assimilate them to the English culture when they came over. I don't think 0.88

00:02:53.080 the residential schools were a good thing, but is hate crimes today the right reaction to hate crimes 0.99

00:03:00.480 100 years ago or 50 years ago?

00:03:02.620 Well, I want to pause you there just for people because I'm not particularly familiar with this either.

00:03:05.620 So there were these residential schools that were largely run by the church to assimilate

00:03:11.820 the Native American, not Native American, the Native Canadians, the indigenous first peoples

00:03:17.140 to the dominant Canadian culture. And so I understand that, by the way, in principle. I'm not even opposed

00:03:24.560 to assimilation in principle. If you're going to have a country, you need people to assimilate into that

00:03:28.480 country. But this is somewhat controversial because what? Because of First Nations sovereignty and the

00:03:34.440 the Canadians stole our land. Is that the argument? 1.00

00:03:38.200 Well, the idea that they were forcing them out of their traditional cultures. And of course,

00:03:44.040 there was abuse also found at some of these residential schools, whether it be sexual or

00:03:48.900 physical abuse. But also something that should really be understood by people jumping up and down

00:03:54.380 about this is most boarding schools at that time in history were rife with abuse, no matter who was

00:04:02.480 going there. I mean, I was just reading Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis, and he went to a really wealthy

00:04:07.080 boarding school where he talks about abuse occurring. But I mean, he was a bit too pale for us to care

00:04:12.660 about that. Right. And yeah, so people are burning down churches as revenge. And the shocking part,

00:04:20.960 too, is some of these churches aren't even like Anglo-Catholic churches. A lot of them are on

00:04:27.020 residential indigenous land. So they are actually indigenous churches. So not only did some of these

00:04:33.780 people have to be descendants of family members who were in residential schools, but now they have

00:04:39.240 woke people today burning their churches down to try to, I don't know, save them from past. It makes

00:04:45.740 no sense. It makes no sense. And you have verified checkmark liberals all over Twitter saying they love

00:04:52.540 this, saying they support this. So you have the sort of pro-native Canadian first people's arson

00:05:01.420 against the churches. At the same time, you've got the government going in because of the COVID police

00:05:06.440 shutting down churches, shutting down services. There was a very famously, this Polish-Canadian 1.00

00:05:12.420 pastor, Pawel Pawlowski was his name? Or no, Arthur Pawlowski.

00:05:18.460 You pronounce Polish last names. Yes. No, he, and he was tremendous. And he yelled,

00:05:22.360 he said, get out, you Gestapo. Out of this property, you Nazis. Out. Out. Gestapo is not 0.98

00:05:30.580 allowed here. And there are now suggestions that religious freedom in Canada and the ability to

00:05:37.200 practice Christianity is being threatened as it is in other nefarious countries like communist China, 1.00

00:05:42.720 for instance. So you've got this threat. And I can't help but notice, no matter who the radicals

00:05:48.900 are, whether they're radical indigenous activists, whether they're radical leftists in the government,

00:05:53.780 whether it's the Jacobins, whether it's the communists, whether it's, they always seem to go

00:05:59.180 after the churches throughout history. What's that about?

00:06:05.300 Absolutely. First, I want to point out these radical indigenous activists,

00:06:09.300 in a lot of cases are actually white people claiming they stand up for the indigenous.

00:06:14.240 There have been videos that have come out and it's like 22 year old white women privileged 0.98

00:06:18.160 attacking these churches. It always is, isn't it?

00:06:20.400 Saying they stand for, stand for the indigenous people who are actually the chiefs in Canada are

00:06:25.400 begging people to stop this. But the white kids have to stand up for them and save the day by 0.87

00:06:30.380 burning down their churches, of course. But yeah, it's, it's this attack against Christianity 0.96

00:06:34.960 because Christianity is the antithesis of everything they stand for. In my opinion, 1.00

00:06:40.460 they stand for, uh, absolutely no restrictions on our personal desire, no morality to constrict

00:06:50.260 what we want to do, no matter how sinful or how harmful to other people. They stand for cancel

00:06:56.800 culture so that people should just be cut off from society, cut out, irredeemable. Christ and

00:07:02.960 redemption is quite literally the antithesis of cancel culture. Good point.

00:07:07.900 And they can't have that. They need conservatives. They need Christians. They need these people to be

00:07:13.380 irredeemable, separate from them so that they can be seen as the saints and the heroes. They are the good

00:07:20.120 ones fighting against the irredeemable Nazis in our society. And also they're out of Nazis. I mean,

00:07:25.680 I'm sure they exist somewhere, but they're in swamps in Alabama and they don't have any power in

00:07:30.320 society. So they keep having to find new things to label the ultimate enemy. And right now that is

00:07:36.620 the church and it is the perfect enemy because it is the one thing that is a mirror to their 0.67

00:07:42.560 immorality and a mirror to the wrongdoing they have been inflicting on the West. 0.78

00:07:48.680 It's a great point. And I've long seen this radical leftism as just an inversion of Christianity

00:07:55.860 throughout, even up to its ultimate sacrament, which is abortion, which I think it was Peter

00:08:00.860 Kreeft who made the point, even uses the language of the Eucharist, this is my body, as a way to

00:08:07.480 defend this antithesis of the gospel in the destruction of the baby. This is my body. This is my choice.

00:08:17.620 So I certainly see that inversion. I do have to correct you though, when you say that there are

00:08:21.380 only a few Nazis running around Alabama. That's not, there are very many Nazis. They all work for 0.93

00:08:26.380 the FBI. They're all informants. They're just feds, fed Nazis, spying on other fed Nazis. So it's a

00:08:33.620 totally contrived issue, but there are many of them running around. And so you've got this problem in

00:08:38.700 Canada, obviously part of the Anglosphere, and you fled. You fled Canada wisely, I think. And now you're 0.99

00:08:46.260 down under, you're about as far away from Canada as one can possibly get. I always thought Australia

00:08:51.940 was a good, virile, tough, manly culture, but you inform me the lockdowns there are just as bad as

00:09:00.620 they are anywhere else. Oh, Australia is a lovely country, but I just came at the absolute worst time,

00:09:07.740 apparently. I thought I would be riding crocodiles and fighting off giant spiders, but I've just been

00:09:13.400 locked in my house the entire time because yeah, there are some of the worst restrictions in the

00:09:19.120 world here in Australia. We're in the 700 lockdown at the moment. All the States, um, not allowed to

00:09:27.640 leave your house unless you have to go buy essential goods. And even so it's only one person at a time

00:09:32.800 just today, they banned browsing stores. So if you need to just grab some food and you don't need

00:09:42.100 mayonnaise for that food, you're not allowed to go down the mayonnaise aisle. That is illegal at the

00:09:46.860 moment. Um, only 10 people are allowed at a funeral at the moment. You can't travel interstate. It's

00:09:55.440 masks everywhere. When you go out, you know, we've even had restrictions for the times you can go out.

00:10:02.900 So like from, you can only leave your house from 8am to 8pm in Victoria. Of course, COVID is far more

00:10:09.580 dangerous in, uh, in the middle of the night. We know this. It gets much worse. There's no question

00:10:15.900 about it. It obviously gets worse in the middle of the night, which I should note is when you were

00:10:20.200 talking to me right now because of this time difference. Yeah. A young mother, uh, we are such

00:10:24.620 sadists here at the daily wire that we're, we're having you wake up in the middle of the night and,

00:10:28.480 but greatly appreciate it because I, I think there were a lot of people who believed that the COVID

00:10:35.220 lockdowns were all just about getting Trump out. And I, I think I still largely think that was true,

00:10:39.520 but as a result, they believed that once Trump was gone, once the big bad guy was kicked out of

00:10:44.940 the Oval Office, then everything would, would go away. I started to question that as the election

00:10:50.900 got closer because I thought, you know, this was a big power grab and, and people don't generally like

00:10:55.580 to give up political power once, once they have taken it. So what's going to happen? We're now in the

00:11:01.120 longest 15 days in recorded history. We still apparently haven't slowed the spread. We're going

00:11:06.340 to be slowing it for a long time. What is the end game here? Are we just living in, in mask world

00:11:11.180 for the rest of our lives? Oh, I have been asking this question for a long time, especially if you

00:11:17.080 look at the UK right now that have some of the highest back vaccination rates worldwide. I think

00:11:22.300 they're, they're well over half the population vaccinated at the moment and they're going through

00:11:26.300 a COVID spike. So we know we have been informed. You still have to wear a mask. We still have to

00:11:32.980 do these lockdowns even when you're vaccinated because you can still get COVID when you're

00:11:37.780 vaccinated. So yeah, I guess we're doing this forever. I guess this is the forever lockdown.

00:11:44.880 And you know what, if, if it does get to a point where they realize, okay, we're still having this

00:11:49.840 spread with over half the population vaccinated, they're going to have to make the decision.

00:11:54.860 We have to open up and we have to let it run its course so that we just get herd immunity.

00:12:01.960 And how punishing will that be? How, how many stories for two years will you have a people

00:12:07.220 who've missed their mother or father's death, the birth of their child, the funerals, the weddings

00:12:12.180 that I think there is going to be a reckoning if that happens. And I also think that's why the

00:12:17.480 government have held out this long in doing these lockdown strategies is because it's like

00:12:23.540 chasing bad money. They can't admit they were wrong because if they admit they were wrong,

00:12:29.840 people are going to have a bone to pick. Like everyone, everyone has missed some massive event

00:12:37.180 in their life that has catastrophically impacted their mental health. I actually know more people

00:12:41.960 who have killed themselves this year than have died of COVID.

00:12:45.640 Wow. I suppose I do too. Yeah, I suppose I do as well. I mean, and I, you know, I suspect,

00:12:52.340 I suspect that's true of a lot of people. You've seen deaths of despair spike, not just suicide,

00:12:59.080 but drug overdoses, all of those sorts of things. And the eggheads did it, right? I mean, this was

00:13:04.300 the public health tyrants, Dr. Fauci, the high priest of progressivism, the pontiff of our

00:13:10.160 scientific state. Whatever he decrees seems to go. And this raises a real question of how we fight

00:13:17.480 back because we seem to be arguing on the left's terms. What the left goes out there and says,

00:13:22.840 they say the science mandates that we close all your churches. The science mandates that we keep 1.00

00:13:28.340 the marijuana dispensary open, but we shut down the local church. The science mandates that you're

00:13:33.720 not allowed to go outside, even if you're at statistically like zero risk of facing grave consequences

00:13:39.180 from this virus because of your age and your circumstances. And so the science is mandating a

00:13:44.220 whole lot of things that were formerly held in the realm of the political, you know, that it's

00:13:49.000 actually not up to these eggheads to determine how I would like to make prudential judgments and live 0.99

00:13:53.560 my life. But I notice a lot of conservatives then arguing from those premises and saying, no,

00:13:59.560 the science says this, or no, the science says that. And my view is, who gives a damn what the science

00:14:03.480 says? What does the politics say? What does the ethics say? What do the people say? Because last time I

00:14:08.880 checked, we still had a right to control our country. Right. I think this does touch into that larger

00:14:15.700 question of basically, do we have a right to be completely safe from disease? Do we have a right

00:14:23.080 to be basically in these hamster wheels of protection and, you know, fluff all the time,

00:14:29.300 never facing any harm whatsoever? We have a completely harm averse society. And is that now the government's

00:14:36.860 duty to create that? Because we know that there will be another virus after this, perhaps an even

00:14:41.980 worse virus or less, you know, a less severe virus. But then what what question is it? What degree is

00:14:49.400 it? Because with COVID, everyone said, well, if it just saves one life, if I wear a mask. So now every

00:14:55.140 flu season, do we lock down because that could potentially save just one life? Why didn't we lock

00:15:00.900 down during the swine flu? Why didn't we? There are so many questions of just general philosophical

00:15:08.440 debate, political debate that come from this that I do not think the left have answers for. I do not

00:15:14.520 think the people who have put us through this for nearly two years now have answers to these questions.

00:15:19.700 I really think that another aspect of this, them chasing bad money, I also think is the tail wagging

00:15:26.560 the dog. The media are controlling the government by making all of these politicians terrified of

00:15:33.420 getting a headline that says this politician killed your grandma. This politician is the reason 50,000

00:15:39.500 people died. And so they are only doing these, even though they have numbers, guys, that would tell

00:15:45.520 them this lockdown is going to kill way more people than it's going to save just based on economic

00:15:50.860 follow. Look at the third world. Oxfam put out a report saying literally millions are going to

00:15:56.540 die of starvation due to economic fallout from this. But these politicians know that's not going

00:16:02.500 to be an article during their election season. That's going to be five years from now. So,

00:16:07.360 all right, best thing to do, lock everyone in their houses and save myself from a bad New York

00:16:12.040 Times story. This was terrifying stuff. This was why Trump was in this impossible situation where

00:16:17.540 I think his gut told him, don't lock down. If you're going to lock down, don't let them surpass the

00:16:23.680 two or three weeks. They're never going to give up this power. But he was in this position where

00:16:28.100 had he not gone along with whatever Dr. Fauci told him to do, and he already was blamed for every

00:16:35.040 single death, but every single death of pneumonia from a 99-year-old would have been blamed on him

00:16:41.960 because of his callousness on COVID. So it's a very difficult position and the threat of the media is

00:16:46.300 big here. And I like your point on this philosophical issue. It kind of brings me

00:16:51.140 to a great point that I saw you make just a few months ago. You know, our pal Ben Shapiro has this

00:16:57.980 very famous slogan, facts don't care about your feelings. It's obviously true when you're talking

00:17:02.480 about, say, Bruce Jenner. Bruce Jenner feels like he's a woman, but he's not really a woman. He's a man,

00:17:07.940 and the reality of that doesn't care about his feelings. You made this point in a terrific video.

00:17:13.260 You said, it's also true feelings don't care about your facts, that politics has quite a lot to do

00:17:18.760 with feelings. I actually made the same point in my recent book. It doesn't negate Ben's perfectly

00:17:24.120 obvious observation, but it does add another aspect here. And I think this gets to the problem that

00:17:31.500 conservatives have had for not just a few decades, but actually a few centuries, going back to that 0.78

00:17:36.720 jerk David Hume, where we don't have the confidence any longer to derive moral truths from the world. 0.62

00:17:46.780 We seem not to be willing to say that you should do this and you shouldn't do that. But we're stuck

00:17:53.960 in this scientific culture where the eggheads rule, because all we're allowed to know is that,

00:17:59.780 for instance, this is a Tumblr. And I know that this is a Tumblr, but I'm not allowed to derive any

00:18:05.220 metaphysical truth from the Tumblr. I can't know, for instance, that the Tumblr is for drinking.

00:18:11.020 I can't know, for instance, that my body parts have various purposes and they shouldn't be put

00:18:16.340 to other purposes. We seem to have surrendered the basis of politics. As Cardinal Manning says,

00:18:23.620 all human conflict ultimately is theological. But do conservatives ever make those arguments

00:18:28.580 anymore? No. They only ever seem to defend free speech in the abstract. They never say anything

00:18:32.780 really concrete in theory. And the only thing they ever managed to push for of substance and politics

00:18:37.140 is another tax cut, I guess. But beyond that, we seem to have lost our moral reasoning. And the

00:18:43.560 left sure has. And I see the left making moral arguments all the time. Yeah. You know, a lot of

00:18:48.560 people talk about the fear they have of us becoming these nameless, faceless, genderless, nationless,

00:18:54.780 gray check marks on a government data book if we embrace the leftist theology. But I fear us just

00:19:04.540 becoming breeding, coal mine working, corporate machines, just consumers also just on a business

00:19:12.920 checkbook if we go the way that conservatism is going at the moment. We are human beings with souls.

00:19:18.920 Our purpose is not politics. Our purpose is not conservatism. I've had people, I remember

00:19:24.260 meeting them over the last few years when I was engaged in all of these political events. And

00:19:29.140 the one thing driving them was the cause, whether it be Trumpism or conservatism. And I'm like,

00:19:35.120 that is all wrong. You've got it backwards. I am a mother first. I am a Christian first. I am

00:19:41.540 a part of my community first. And then I am only a conservative because I care about these things.

00:19:47.060 And I think it will make these things better in my life. And I love these things irrationally.

00:19:54.260 I love my child irrationally. I don't care if the odds of saving my son's life were a million to one

00:20:00.880 and I would maybe die if I did something. I would take those odds every time, even though the facts

00:20:05.560 didn't tell me that. We are motivated by feelings. We are motivated by beauty in life and morality in

00:20:11.780 these deeper, non-tangible themes that you were just talking about. And we really do need to tap

00:20:18.160 back into that as conservatives. We need to tap into our artistic side, the side that communicates

00:20:24.880 to the soul. Because there's that great quote, I think it was actually from a billboard advertisement

00:20:29.900 that said, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

00:20:35.340 Yeah. That's a good point.

00:20:37.140 Yeah. We have to show people why they need to care about this data.

00:20:41.320 It's also, yeah, go ahead.

00:20:43.480 By the way, it's not just a subjective feeling. Your calculation, million to one odds to save your

00:20:49.660 son, but you might have to incur some personal risk in that. That's not just a subjective feeling

00:20:54.880 or preference or passion. It is a moral fact that you're talking about. I mean, when you say we're

00:21:01.380 real human beings and we're about more than just consuming random cheap goods made in China,

00:21:06.640 and we're about more than just ticking up GDP for a little bit, that is not merely a passion of yours

00:21:14.100 and a preference and a feeling. That is a fact. And I just think we are understanding as a culture of

00:21:21.120 what is real, what is a fact, what is scientific, has become so shallow and atrophied. And it's not

00:21:28.660 just the left that has done this. The right has given into this as well. And I just think we need

00:21:33.880 a much realer kind of politics, a more authentic politics. We're stuck between these false dichotomies

00:21:41.620 of big government or the individual or a free speech and censorship. And I just think

00:21:49.340 real life is about more than that. It's about standards. It's about purpose. It's about what

00:21:54.620 we're here for. I mean, all the cheap Chinese goods in the world, all the things we can consume in the 1.00

00:21:59.700 world don't mean anything unless we know what they are for. And ultimately, we need to know what we are

00:22:05.080 for as well. Right. Absolutely. And I think that also comes down to a problem with modern conservative

00:22:12.320 pursuit of hyper individualism. We are just the individual. It is just about how much you can achieve

00:22:18.160 and how much money you can earn and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. No, actually, we have a duty

00:22:25.040 to our community. You are born helpless and we die helpless. And I do not want to live in a community

00:22:32.160 where a 90-year-old grandma with no one to help her just dies because she wasn't strong enough to

00:22:37.940 pull herself up by her bootstraps. I believe in a duty to each other. I believe in, and maybe that

00:22:45.300 makes me a communist, a socialist. I don't think it does. I think that's that false dichotomy.

00:22:49.880 Yeah. I think that's that false dichotomy you're talking about where it's not just individualists

00:22:55.020 versus communists. There's complexity. There's living in this tension of facts and feelings,

00:22:59.600 living in this tension of duty to each other, but also personal responsibility. But that's a hard

00:23:05.320 conversation because it's not simple. It's not just a tweet. It's not just a slogan.

00:23:10.620 And it's not clear. You know, my friend, Father George Rutler, has this observation when people

00:23:16.580 say, I want a clear ideology. I want clear religion. And he says, shallows are clear. Shallow thinking is

00:23:23.280 clear. Deep things are profound. They're a little murky. You've got to kind of work with them. And

00:23:28.160 I see in this false dichotomy between, you know, the individualist and the collectivist. I think

00:23:34.420 they're two sides of the same coin. The way that the collectivists collectivize is by breaking down

00:23:38.840 society into a bunch of individuals that they can more easily bundle up together. And really,

00:23:44.580 the opposite of collectivism is not individualism. It's the family. It's community. It's society.

00:23:52.020 Even the way that we talk about our political order, everyone's just talking about rights.

00:23:59.300 You hear the left talking about the positive rights or the human rights to health care or

00:24:03.940 whatever. And you hear the right talking about the negative rights or the natural rights, which is,

00:24:09.600 I think, a more serious conversation. What about that word that you just used, Lauren? What about

00:24:14.940 duty? What about the fact that I'm not just born into this world entitled to a bunch of rights,

00:24:20.240 but I'm also born with duty, duty to my family, duty to my community, duty to my God. And I'm not

00:24:27.480 free in this radical self-ownership to just do whatever I want. That's not even what our founding

00:24:33.340 fathers thought liberty was. They thought liberty was the right to do what you ought to do, not just

00:24:37.920 the freedom to indulge in any sorts of appetites and abuses that you want.

00:24:42.720 Yeah. And I think that's really the core of what we're hitting on here is the both conservative

00:24:49.940 movement and the progressive movements are now based on human selfishness. And we're never going

00:24:56.120 to get anywhere on both sides, just arguing over what do I deserve? What do I deserve?

00:25:02.860 There's a complete and utter moral sickness at the core of both movements, in my opinion. And until we

00:25:09.220 get back, and I know a lot of people won't like to hear this, and it's not an easy thing to say,

00:25:13.460 because there are a lot of wonderful atheist conservatives out there. But until we get back

00:25:17.960 to a core of Christianity that believes in the idea we are a broken world, we are broken individuals,

00:25:23.400 we are not ubermensch or perfectly feeling individuals, and all my feelings are valid.

00:25:29.220 No, no, no. We are broken individuals that need redemption, that need to work towards love,

00:25:34.260 that need to work to support each other and let go of selfishness. And until we do that,

00:25:38.800 the only thing that is going to happen in politics, left and right, is going to be human

00:25:43.960 sickness, corrupting the money given to it, corrupting the platforms we have, corrupting

00:25:48.720 the fame and ego and power. How the power is used if it is entirely based around human desires and

00:25:57.200 selfish desires and nothing higher, because we don't believe in a God anymore. We don't believe in

00:26:01.900 anything higher anymore than just capitalism or socialism. It will all be corrupted. And that's

00:26:08.340 this downward spiral we're in right now. We're just spiraling into oblivion with Twitter arguments.

00:26:15.400 And I truly believe when I look at everyone walking around with masks and everyone just

00:26:19.780 screaming at each other in Twitter, I'm like, did I die and go to hell? Am I in purgatory right now?

00:26:24.860 Well, I forget if it was Moliere or Shaw. I'm getting my quotes mixed up, but who cares? It's

00:26:31.920 one of, it's some old dead guy who said that hell is the place where you have nothing to do but amuse

00:26:37.180 yourself. And that's kind of what you're describing. And this cult of selfishness has really taken hold,

00:26:42.540 not just on the left, it was always there on the left, but it took hold on the right, especially in

00:26:47.220 the 1970s and 80s. Coincidentally, I just managed finally to make it through possibly the worst book

00:26:55.300 ever written, though it gained a lot of currency on the right, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I mean,

00:27:01.400 it's unbearable. It's funny that conservatives came to embrace it to some degree, because when it first

00:27:07.120 came out in National Review, which was the conservative publication at the time, ran a scathing

00:27:12.500 article. Bill Buckley said he had to flog himself to read it. He called it a thousand pages of

00:27:17.780 ideological fabulism. Whitaker Chambers, the ex-communist, one of the great writers of the

00:27:22.060 20th century, he wrote a really tough review, but he didn't just knock the horrific prose and the 0.99

00:27:29.080 stupid ideas. He made the observation that has really weakened the right, I think, because they've 0.84

00:27:35.560 embraced Ayn Rand and those sorts of selfish ideas, selfishness is virtue. He said,

00:27:40.700 Ayn Randian man, like Marxian man, is the center of a godless universe. He puts man at the center

00:27:50.660 where nothing means anything beyond our own pleasure. And so, to give Ayn Rand credit, what

00:27:55.920 she and the defenders of the virtue of selfishness on their right, what they say is, no, no, this won't

00:28:01.460 descend into hedonism. This will be the sort of Nuchean ubermensch. We're going to just pursue our 0.72

00:28:07.480 own excellence and what we want in this higher way. But as I look at reality, that doesn't seem

00:28:14.180 to be what has happened. We just seem to have descended into decadence, not just on the left,

00:28:20.080 but on the right as well. So how, Lauren, in our remaining minute or two, how do we get out of it?

00:28:26.620 Oh, I used to think that book was genius.

00:28:29.380 We all did. We all loved Ayn Rand for a spell and thankfully we woke up.

00:28:34.720 Yes, I grew up. I graduated. I swear by my life and my love of it, I will never live for another

00:28:42.080 man nor let another man live for mine, was the famous quote from that book. And I just know

00:28:47.200 that all, any inclination that that quote might be right disappeared when I looked into my child's

00:28:54.120 eyes. And I think the more, the more people we have, the more young people we have having children,

00:28:59.540 the more they will learn to not be selfish. It is a complete and utter turnaround in your life

00:29:06.140 of just, my life is now about another person and I need to learn to live for other people. And

00:29:13.520 I think just right now, all we can do is promote the family, promote God and hope that we can get out

00:29:20.600 of this hell spiral we are in. And I think you're doing good work on this show with that.

00:29:24.860 Well, thank you, Lauren. I actually just occurred to me as you read that quote, the famous John

00:29:32.380 Galt oath from Atlas Shrugged, I'll never live for another man and no man will live for me.

00:29:36.580 It is an inversion. I mean, so much of that book is an inversion of Christianity, the explicit denial

00:29:42.440 of original sin, the insistence by one of the main characters that money and love of money is not

00:29:48.780 the root of all evil. It's the root of all good, a total, total inversion of Christianity. And so 0.99

00:29:54.340 I'm reminded that Cardinal Manning was right. All human conflict is ultimately theological.

00:30:00.400 And I have to tell you, even though I missed you during your hiatus, I was really pleased to see

00:30:05.380 you do it because I thought, man, I knew this chickie was smart, but she's got her priorities 1.00

00:30:09.860 in order. And I'm glad that you're back now with all of these priorities in order. And I would

00:30:13.500 encourage people to go follow you if they're not doing that already. Where can people find you,

00:30:18.320 Lauren?

00:30:19.700 Yeah, you can find me on the hell site, Twitter at Lauren underscore Southern. Just look up my name,

00:30:25.460 Lauren Southern on YouTube, and I'm around there, Instagram, all those terrible sites that are

00:30:30.020 wastes of your time. But I try to provide a brief break from the chaos on my pages.

00:30:36.080 A brief break where, you know, you go, you worship your Lord, you raise your kids, you do your job.

00:30:41.260 And then there's that, when you do want to dip your toe into politics, you can go follow Lauren

00:30:45.280 there. I really appreciate it. Thank you for staying up all night. Kiss your kid on the head

00:30:49.300 for us and look forward to chatting with you again soon. Thanks for having me. Will do.

00:30:54.380 Bye.

00:31:03.560 Bye.

00:31:04.640 Bye.

00:31:05.660 Bye.

00:31:06.640 Bye.

00:31:07.140 Bye.

00:31:07.480 Bye.

00:31:08.240 Bye.

00:31:08.260 Bye.

00:31:09.220 Bye.

00:31:13.620 Bye.

00:31:16.760 Bye.

00:31:17.200 Bye.

00:31:19.620 Bye.

00:31:20.560 Bye.

00:31:22.160 Bye.

00:31:22.200 Bye.

The Michael Knowles Show - August 03, 2021

Lockdown PRISONS and Destruction of The Church and The West ｜ Lauren Southern

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