The Michael Knowles Show - Michael Knowles DEBUNKS Anti-American Scene

00:00:00.000 Let's get to this clip that producer Jacob pulled.

00:00:02.540 This clip is from the 2012 HBO series.

00:00:04.900 Really cutting-edge stuff, producer Jacob.

00:00:06.380 That's great.

00:00:06.960 2012 HBO series, The Newsroom.

00:00:08.960 Oh, that's that awful show written by that awful writer, Aaron Sorkin.

00:00:13.860 You better lawyer up, asshole.

00:00:15.560 Where one of the characters, Will McAvoy,

00:00:17.260 explains why America's not the greatest country on Earth.

00:00:20.160 It's got 10 million views on YouTube.

00:00:21.680 Okay, take it away.

00:00:22.620 Let's move on to the next question.

00:00:24.200 Go ahead.

00:00:24.560 Hi, my name is Jenny.

00:00:26.400 I'm a sophomore, and this is for all three of you.

00:00:28.620 Can you say in one sentence or less,

00:00:31.600 You know what I mean.

00:00:35.560 Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?

00:00:40.780 Diversity and opportunity.

00:00:43.660 Lewis?

00:00:44.760 Freedom and freedom.

00:00:46.700 So let's keep it that way.

00:00:49.100 Will?

00:00:51.100 The New York Jets.

00:00:54.460 No, I'm going to hold you to an answer on that.

00:00:57.100 What makes America the greatest country in the world?

00:01:03.680 Well, Lewis and Sharon said it.

00:01:05.500 Diversity and opportunity and freedom and freedom.

00:01:10.580 You don't look satisfied.

00:01:12.960 I want a human moment from you.

00:01:15.400 What about the people?

00:01:17.220 Why is America the greatest country in the world, professor?

00:01:19.540 That's my answer.

00:01:20.340 You're saying?

00:01:24.980 Yes.

00:01:27.140 Let's talk about...

00:01:27.940 Fine.

00:01:28.520 Sharon, the NEA is a loser.

00:01:30.520 Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paycheck, but he gets to hit you with it anytime he wants.

00:01:34.320 It doesn't cost money.

00:01:35.200 It costs votes.

00:01:35.900 It costs airtime and column inches.

00:01:37.940 You know why people don't like liberals?

00:01:39.440 Because they lose.

00:01:40.820 If liberals are so f***ing smart, how come they lose so f***ing damn always?

00:01:43.920 This is how you know it's a liberal show.

00:01:46.260 Like they all are.

00:01:47.340 In politics, always.

00:01:48.800 When one is trying to seem like he's being critical of both sides, one criticizes the other side for being evil and wrong and malicious and terrible and criticizes his own side for being ineffective.

00:01:59.240 Very rarely does someone criticize his own side for having some mistaken premises or falling for some bad ideas or even making errors and engaging in sin.

00:02:09.440 Usually what it will be is, oh, you guys are the bad guys and we're the weak guys.

00:02:13.380 We just don't know how to win.

00:02:14.660 So he's framing it this way.

00:02:15.660 He goes, the liberals are our biggest problem.

00:02:17.300 We just lose.

00:02:18.300 We're not strong.

00:02:19.000 What are you talking about?

00:02:19.560 You control the media.

00:02:20.400 You control the bureaucracy, the military, the university, corporate America, everything.

00:02:26.660 You control everything.

00:02:27.780 Oh, we just don't have any power.

00:02:29.820 Why?

00:02:30.160 Because like occasionally Kevin McCarthy becomes the speaker of the house for five seconds and can't really get anything done.

00:02:35.720 High five.

00:02:36.280 Oh, wow.

00:02:37.020 Yeah, you're right.

00:02:37.560 You guys don't have any power.

00:02:38.860 Sure.

00:02:39.120 Okay, keep going.

00:02:40.040 And with a straight face, you're going to tell students that America is so star spangled awesome that we're the only ones in the world who have freedom.

00:02:47.380 Canada has freedom.

00:02:48.520 Japan has freedom.

00:02:49.900 The Canada one didn't really age well.

00:02:51.680 Well, because Canada is now like possibly the most tyrannical worst country on earth where a dictator Trudeau comes in and shuts down those poor truckers and locks up pastors.

00:03:01.460 This did not age well at all.

00:03:03.120 And it didn't age well because Aaron Sorkin is a big lib and doesn't know anything about anything.

00:03:06.540 Thank you.

00:03:07.180 So his predictions don't come true because they're not in accord with reality.

00:03:10.860 But if his criticism is of freedom in the abstract, I'm actually half with him.

00:03:14.980 So keep going.

00:03:15.540 The UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom.

00:03:21.160 So 207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.

00:03:24.880 All right.

00:03:25.200 And yet you, sorority girl, just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there's some things you should know.

00:03:30.700 And one of them is there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world.

00:03:35.720 We're seventh in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality.

00:03:43.820 Sure, whatever.

00:03:44.640 Blah, blah, blah.

00:03:45.540 You've got these statistics.

00:03:46.980 The reason that this rant that you hear not just from the Sorkin character, but from liberals all the time.

00:03:53.400 We're not the greatest.

00:03:54.140 We're the 12th in reading and the 11th in.

00:03:56.000 Whatever, you know.

00:03:56.860 The reason you know that's fake is because we're the most powerful.

00:03:59.400 We control the world.

00:04:00.300 We are, at least for now, the superpower on earth.

00:04:04.400 And we're the country that everybody wants to go to.

00:04:06.920 So that is prima facie evidence that we are the greatest.

00:04:11.180 We have the most greatness.

00:04:13.600 Who do you think you are?

00:04:14.760 I am.

00:04:15.660 It actually goes back to Carl Jung.

00:04:17.380 Carl Jung says that different nations are motivated by different things.

00:04:20.800 Germany is motivated by the idea.

00:04:23.360 France is motivated by glory.

00:04:25.000 England is motivated by the gentlemen, these defining concepts for these nations.

00:04:29.720 And what is America's?

00:04:30.760 America's is greatness.

00:04:32.160 That's why Donald Trump's slogan was make America great again.

00:04:34.280 This is why he took that from Ronald Reagan.

00:04:36.220 Ronald Reagan's like, make America great again.

00:04:38.100 That is the idea.

00:04:39.520 And it has worked.

00:04:40.340 Because generally, people get what they want, what they're after.

00:04:42.840 Now, there are things that are more important than greatness in a terrestrial sense.

00:04:46.960 There's holiness.

00:04:50.000 There's sanctity.

00:04:51.180 There are other things.

00:04:53.360 I'm not saying that America is without faults by any means.

00:04:56.100 But this is just a stupid rant.

00:04:57.800 The fact that we control the entire world and that all the people want to come here and they're flooding across our borders, three and a half million per year, plus another million legally, is the proof that we are the greatest country on earth.

00:05:08.360 That's indisputable.

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00:06:16.660 Third in median household income.

00:06:18.440 Number four in labor force and number four in exports.

00:06:20.660 We lead the world in only three categories.

00:06:23.120 Number of incarcerated citizens per capita.

00:06:25.560 Number of adults who believe angels are real.

00:06:27.680 Can you believe these stupid idiots who believe angels are real?

00:06:30.000 Well, like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine and every smart person who's ever lived, statistically, but not Aaron Sorkin, I guess.

00:06:38.720 Who do you think has a better view of reality?

00:06:40.740 Who do you think's got a little more ticking around in between the old years?

00:06:43.760 Thomas Aquinas, one of the most intelligent people ever in human history, or some Hollywood TV hack writer?

00:06:50.260 I fold like a cheap thing that, you know, that folds really easily.

00:06:55.840 Yeah, we believe that there is such a thing as spiritual reality.

00:06:59.200 One of the evidences for spiritual reality would be the intelligibility of the universe,

00:07:02.860 and the fact that the things that we most care about in the world are not material and physical, but metaphysical.

00:07:08.440 Our loves, our hopes, our dreams are intuitions of an ultimate intelligence that makes the world intelligible.

00:07:13.920 The intuition of a divine logic of the universe, a recognition that some things are not rational, like my Tumblr here,

00:07:22.160 and some things have rational soul and body, are composites of the two, hylomorphic.

00:07:28.540 And then there are other creatures that are not corporeal, but are spiritual entirely.

00:07:32.780 Yeah, no, you're right.

00:07:33.880 You totally debunked all of philosophy and theology, Aaron Sorkin.

00:07:38.020 Great, good job.

00:07:38.740 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies.

00:07:41.940 Now, none of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student,

00:07:44.440 but you nonetheless are, without a doubt, a member of the worst period, generation period, ever period.

00:07:49.940 So when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world,

00:07:52.900 I don't know what the f*** you're talking about.

00:07:55.700 Yosemite?

00:07:58.120 Yosemite's nice.

00:08:00.680 Sure used to be.

00:08:03.380 We stood up for what was right.

00:08:06.480 We fought for moral reasons.

00:08:07.980 We passed laws, struck down laws for moral reasons.

00:08:11.400 We waged wars on poverty, not poor people.

00:08:13.600 There it is.

00:08:14.280 There it is.

00:08:15.900 This is what we used to be great.

00:08:18.200 And when were we great?

00:08:20.240 In the 1960s.

00:08:22.720 All the leaves are brown.

00:08:24.380 All the leaves are brown.

00:08:26.560 And the sky is gray.

00:08:28.680 And the sky is gray.

00:08:31.200 That was it.

00:08:33.200 I'm a boomer Hollywood writer,

00:08:35.560 and that's my thesis.

00:08:37.080 We weren't great in 1620.

00:08:39.020 We weren't great in 1776.

00:08:40.320 We weren't great in the 1860s.

00:08:42.620 We weren't great even really in the maybe starting in the Second World War we start,

00:08:47.520 but it was the 60s.

00:08:49.500 Back when we had the weather underground blowing people up for radical leftist causes.

00:08:53.780 Back when we decided to dismantle a lot of our institutions.

00:08:57.180 And back when we decided to rewrite the Constitution and turn away from God

00:09:01.920 and start just engaging in all sorts of completely debauched behaviors everywhere.

00:09:07.280 And coincidentally, actually, starting at the place where all of those test scores that I,

00:09:11.600 and all of those statistics that I previously cited for evidence of America's decline,

00:09:15.460 right at the very moment that they all started to decline,

00:09:18.220 that was, that was when we were really great.

00:09:21.620 Doesn't add up.

00:09:22.600 We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors,

00:09:25.700 we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest.

00:09:28.740 We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances,

00:09:33.680 explored the universe, cured diseases, and we cultivated the world's greatest artists.

00:09:38.820 Yeah, we never beat our chest.

00:09:40.420 We never, oh no, not Americans.

00:09:41.920 Americans, we haven't always been known for beating our chest,

00:09:45.900 at least starting in the early 19th century, up through Donald Trump.

00:09:50.660 Yeah, no, that's not a defining feature of the American character.

00:09:52.960 Of course it is.

00:09:53.460 That's always been a defining feature.

00:09:54.680 We made the greatest art.

00:09:56.060 Oh yeah, look, man, I'm as patriotic as they come, okay?

00:09:59.260 And I think America actually has made some contributions to art.

00:10:01.980 But, come on, man, you're going to compare Jackson Pollock to Bernini?

00:10:11.160 I don't think so.

00:10:13.040 We reached for the stars.

00:10:17.120 Acted like men. 0.62

00:10:18.520 We aspired to intelligence.

00:10:20.000 We didn't belittle it.

00:10:20.760 It didn't make us feel inferior.

00:10:24.580 We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election,

00:10:27.760 and we didn't, we didn't scare so easy.

00:10:30.540 Put a pause.

00:10:31.020 There has never been a time when Aaron Sorkin did not identify himself

00:10:34.840 by who he voted for in the last election.

00:10:37.540 Never.

00:10:38.180 Never once.

00:10:39.520 We were able to be all these things and do all these things

00:10:41.640 because we were informed

00:10:42.720 by great men, men who were revered.

00:10:49.840 First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one.

00:10:55.460 America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.

00:10:58.800 So what's the better country?

00:10:59.880 I guess that's the answer he's got to give.

00:11:02.280 I totally agree with America's got all sorts of problems.

00:11:04.460 Not the problems he identifies, but America does have all sorts of problems,

00:11:07.460 one of whom is him and his way of thinking and his way of viewing the country.

00:11:11.360 But if you make the claim America's not the greatest country in the world,

00:11:15.480 which I'm totally open to hearing, what's the alternative?

00:11:18.580 Just tell me the country.

00:11:20.900 France?

00:11:22.320 China? 0.73

00:11:25.040 Namibia?

00:11:26.720 If you can't give an answer to that, then the argument kind of falls apart

00:11:29.400 and he can't give an answer.

00:11:30.900 And his argument, I suspect, I feel unraveled from the very beginning,

00:11:36.720 as is always the case with Mr. Sorkin.

00:11:38.340 Okay, that's our show.

00:11:39.920 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:11:40.600 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:11:41.260 The Michael Knowles Show.

The Michael Knowles Show - August 13, 2023

Michael Knowles DEBUNKS Anti-American Scene

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