The Michael Knowles Show - Michael Knowles Guest Appearance for The Washington Journal on CSPAN

00:00:00.000 All week at this time we've been featuring political podcasters. Joining us now is Michael

00:00:04.840 Knowles. He is the host of The Michael Knowles Show, which you can find on The Daily Wire.

00:00:09.320 Mr. Knowles, thanks for joining us this morning. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

00:00:13.160 How do you describe your podcast to people? Well, the traditional distinction is that we cover

00:00:18.460 politics and culture, but I think increasingly that distinction is a little bit blurry.

00:00:24.040 Certainly after the presidency of Donald Trump, that distinction is quite blurry.

00:00:29.620 So we cover that angle, but Russell Kirk had an important observation, which is that

00:00:36.980 culture is downstream of religion. We often hear of Andrew Breitbart, the patron saint of

00:00:41.440 Hollywood conservatives, who says that politics is downstream of culture. Culture is downstream

00:00:45.660 of religion. These questions are not so easily separated. Cardinal Manning famously said that

00:00:51.220 all human conflict is ultimately theological. And so we like to go everywhere from the headline

00:00:56.540 all the way down to the philosophical and theological premises that, that undergird those issues.

00:01:02.260 Give an example of a headline you're looking at in today's things that you cover. And what are the

00:01:07.100 cultural underpinnings there? Oh, well, the clearest example probably is this transgender issue. 1.00

00:01:12.740 You saw the governor of Arkansas last night did not do a very good job defending his position on

00:01:18.300 television. He tried to make the argument that it is somehow conservative to give little children

00:01:24.300 cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers. And so at the top level, you see the headline that there are

00:01:30.620 these people and children specifically who have confusion about their sex and they boys feel like

00:01:37.420 they're little girls and girls feel like they're little boys. Then there is a cultural issue here of what

00:01:41.460 this means, how this relates to, I don't know, pride parades, the broader LGBT movement, what the

00:01:48.620 premises that undergird this are, you know, for the, for, for most of the history of the gay rights

00:01:53.340 movement, we've been told people are born this way. And, you know, if, if you're a boy and you're

00:01:58.100 born and you have attraction to other boys, then, you know, society should be more tolerant of these

00:02:03.660 views. But then immediately after that, we're told that according to transgenderism, there is no such

00:02:08.220 thing as biological sex. And if you're a boy, you can actually become a girl. So those are premises 0.88

00:02:12.460 that contradict one another. And ultimately there's a religious question here, which is what is the

00:02:16.940 nature of man? You know, the traditional view in the West is that man is hylomorphic to use the

00:02:22.800 technical term. So we're body and soul. And these are inextricably linked as long as we're here on

00:02:27.600 earth. And my body has something to do with who I am. And so does my soul. According to the

00:02:32.140 transgender movement. Now, our bodies have absolutely nothing to do with who we are. So 0.58

00:02:36.680 I can look like a man. I can have an Adam's apple. I can have a deep voice. I've got all the various

00:02:41.760 appendages, but if on some deeper metaphysical level, I feel as though I'm a woman,

00:02:46.480 then actually I am a woman. It's not even complicated. I simply am a woman. My body has

00:02:52.240 nothing to do with that. And that is an ancient heresy called Gnostic dualism. It's cropped up

00:02:57.640 repeatedly over the course of Western civilization. So I think if you want to understand that issue,

00:03:03.020 which is about as sensational and topical as they get, it really helps to see all the layers all the

00:03:09.780 way down so that one can have a more informed view on it. When you talk about these kind of issues,

00:03:14.260 what do you hear from perhaps people who support you? And do you have an avenue to for those who

00:03:18.960 maybe disagree with you on these issues? And what are you hearing from them?

00:03:22.480 Well, from what I hear from people who support me, they like having this extra context. I think

00:03:28.140 they enjoy pursuing these issues down to the bottom so that, you know, despite all of the emotion and

00:03:34.140 all of the passion that often accompany these things, increasingly probably in our politics,

00:03:38.980 one can use their faculties of reason. They can really think through these things

00:03:43.980 and come to a decision on how they feel about this. I certainly do have an avenue to people

00:03:49.660 who disagree with me. I didn't realize I had such an avenue, but then I look at my inbox every day on

00:03:54.500 my email and my Twitter feed. And typically what I would hear from them is, is a more impassioned

00:04:01.320 argument. And I don't mean to caricature my political opponents, but usually what, what those

00:04:08.640 criticisms involve are just some comments that you are a racist or a bigot or a thisist or a thatist.

00:04:15.020 And I think that when, when our, our political opponents engage in that kind of evidence-free

00:04:21.200 invective, it's a good, good bit of evidence that you've won the argument. Michael Knowles joining us

00:04:25.940 until 845. And if you want to ask him questions, 202-748-8000. One for Republicans, 202-748-8000

00:04:32.320 for Democrats and Independents, 202-748-8000. Two, you can text us too at 202-748-8000. Three,

00:04:39.440 how do you describe yourself politically and what shapes what, how you believe politically?

00:04:45.200 I suppose my friends have sometimes described me as slightly to the right of Attila the Hun,

00:04:49.940 but I think this is somewhat unfair actually, because I think that the, the right and the left,

00:04:55.300 first of all, they're, they're terms that come out of the French revolution. So they're, they're

00:04:58.900 at relatively modern terms in politics. I don't know that they totally correspond to the way that

00:05:04.600 our politics works right now. And I think that there are a lot of problems on the right. And so

00:05:10.080 I'm, I wouldn't call myself a leftist, but there, there are a lot of issues on the right right now.

00:05:14.180 This is actually the topic of my upcoming book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.

00:05:19.360 It really takes more issue with the right, because I think that conservatives, self-described

00:05:24.360 conservatives have fallen for traps that have been laid for them by political correctness

00:05:28.880 or cancel culture or wokeness or use whatever term you want. And so I think very often that

00:05:34.220 they have not succeeded in conserving very much of anything. And the, the governor of Arkansas's

00:05:39.120 performance last night on television, arguing that, that conservatives ought to chemically castrate 0.86

00:05:44.180 kids. I think it proves that very well. So I, I would like there to be not just this tense battle 0.78

00:05:50.960 forever where the, the left and the right hold their positions and just yell at one another.

00:05:55.120 I would like to bring that conversation forward a little bit by taking the leftist intellectuals

00:06:00.760 who have brought that side of the aisle to where, to where it is right now. I want to take them

00:06:05.140 seriously. I want to see if they know something that perhaps the conservatives have, have unfairly

00:06:09.860 dismissed or overlooked. And I think they can. I actually think one of the conclusions I reach in my,

00:06:15.200 in my book, Speechless is that while the right likes to pride itself on this idea that we understand

00:06:21.540 free speech so much better than, than the left does. And they're just snowflakes who hate free

00:06:26.980 speech. Actually, I think the left understands free speech and censorship far better than the right

00:06:32.360 does. And I think that's how they've been able to amass and wield political power so effectively

00:06:37.880 through political correctness. And now it's derivative cancel culture.

00:06:41.640 One of those issues that have come up in the last week or so is this, uh, major league baseball

00:06:46.020 decision, considering it's all-star game. This connects to Georgia's voting laws. This is

00:06:50.920 something that the president referenced yesterday at the white house. I want to play a little bit

00:06:54.500 what he had to say about that decision and then get your response to the topic.

00:06:58.640 Do you think the masters golf tournament should be moved out of Georgia?

00:07:01.920 I think that's up to the, uh, the masters look, uh, you know, um, it is reassuring to see that,

00:07:16.660 uh, for profit operations and businesses

00:07:20.600 are speaking up about how

00:07:25.180 these new Jim Crow laws 0.96

00:07:28.660 are just

00:07:30.000 antithetical to who we are.

00:07:32.620 There's another side to it too.

00:07:34.880 The other side to it too is when they in fact move out of Georgia,

00:07:39.140 the people who need the help the most people who are making hourly wages sometimes could hurt the

00:07:47.060 most. I think it's a very tough decision for a corporation to make

00:07:51.560 or group to make, but I respect them when they make that judgment and I support whatever judgment

00:07:58.660 they make, but it's the best way to deal with this is for Georgia and other states to smarten up,

00:08:05.380 stop it, stop it. Mr. Knowles, the president from yesterday, what's your reaction?

00:08:11.340 That's quite the change in tune because just a few days ago,

00:08:14.560 president Biden was absolutely encouraging major league baseball to move the all-star game

00:08:19.780 out of Georgia, which has led to an ironic consequence. Uh, MLB has now moved the all-star

00:08:26.200 game to Colorado, uh, in the name of racial justice and voting rights. But of course, Colorado is a much

00:08:33.960 whiter place than Georgia and Colorado has more restrictive voting laws than Georgia,

00:08:38.940 even after this much maligned voter bill. So that obviously backfired, uh, people of Georgia,

00:08:44.580 including Georgia Democrats are furious, furious at president Biden. And so now he's trying to

00:08:49.300 reverse course and say, Hey, hold on other sports. Please don't move your, your games out of here.

00:08:54.940 The issue with Joe Biden, and I say this actually with all due respect is that I don't think Joe

00:09:00.580 Biden has very many beliefs of his own at all. I think he wakes up in the morning. He licks his

00:09:05.100 index finger, puts it in the air and figures out which way the wind is blowing. He, he has been this

00:09:09.920 way for his entire political career. So he, he will change his positions according to the prevailing

00:09:14.760 political winds. And I think he thought that he was catching the zeitgeist. He thought that he was

00:09:19.880 with his base, but then when the practical effects of that came in, a hundred million dollars leaving

00:09:24.060 Georgia because of MLB, he realizes that he's, he's got a reverse course right now. It raises this

00:09:29.260 question of, on issues such as the woke corporations or immigration or voter ID, the democratic party

00:09:39.300 right now, all the way up to the leadership are pursuing a very unpopular policy. Uh, the majority

00:09:45.120 of Americans want a border that is secure. The majority of Americans support voter ID. The democratic

00:09:49.720 party does not do that. Why are, why do they not do that? And why do they get away with it? I think

00:09:53.540 the reason is that they have waged for the last a hundred years or so, a war of position to use the

00:09:59.380 term of the radical theorist, Antonio Gramsci. They have attained positions of power and influence

00:10:05.400 throughout the culture. And as a result, they are wielding that power now. So we can talk until we're

00:10:12.160 blue in the face and the American people can respond to survey after survey after survey and say,

00:10:15.980 we oppose this sort of thing, but they, they lack the political power to, to actually effect those

00:10:21.940 policies. So I think that probably, you know, they'll, they'll recalibrate a little bit in the

00:10:26.140 democratic party, but they're probably going to keep up the radicalism. Our first call for you

00:10:29.620 comes from New Jersey. This is Mitchell Democrats life for Michael Knowles of the Michael Knowles

00:10:34.400 show, show Mitchell. Go ahead. You're on with our guest. Uh, good morning, Pedro. Good morning,

00:10:40.920 Mr. Knowles. Uh, I'm not familiar, uh, with, uh, um, Michael show. Uh, but just a couple of comments

00:10:50.000 on what I basically hear from conservative, uh, uh, columnists and conservative talk show hosts

00:10:57.800 is that, uh, there seems to keep to gravitate towards a lot of emotional wedge issues. You know,

00:11:07.420 your guests started talking about sexual identity, uh, and what have you, and, um, also started to go

00:11:15.960 towards the border. I'm not saying that these aren't real issues, but I don't think they're ones of

00:11:22.380 major import for most of us. A couple of thousand kids at the border is certainly, uh, a serious

00:11:30.340 situation, but it's not one that's changing our lives. LGBTQ issues where, uh, you know, uh, are,

00:11:38.400 are, are men getting involved in women's sports or, uh, are women, you know, using the wrong bathroom 0.97

00:11:44.780 now that they've changed their sexual identity or things that generally don't impact us on a daily

00:11:50.540 basis. And my point is that these issues are being brought out to kind of, uh, get people to act,

00:11:59.280 get people on the right, uh, to act with some, one of a cognitive dissonance and acting against their

00:12:06.460 own best interests. Uh, you know, serious issues in this country, uh, like, uh, of climate change,

00:12:15.340 the way we respond to the pandemic, uh, and not trusting, uh, science, uh, the insurrection at the

00:12:24.980 Capitol and, and what that really means, you know, in terms of, uh, maintaining our democracy.

00:12:31.580 Okay. Uh, Mitchell, we'll leave it there. We'll let our guests respond to it.

00:12:35.060 You know, I think that Mitchell sounds a lot like the, uh, putatively Republican governor of

00:12:39.940 Arkansas on television last night, where he says, we need to stop talking about these issues like,

00:12:44.860 you know, immigration or the enforcement of our, our national border, or whether grown men should

00:12:50.660 be able to follow little girls into the changing room at the public pool. We need to talk about

00:12:54.320 things that people actually care about, like marginal tax rates. Well, I have to tell you,

00:12:59.440 not only do I not wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night thinking about marginal tax

00:13:03.760 rates, I don't think anybody else does either, but these, these egghead technocratic

00:13:08.940 considerations that, that people would rather us focus on carry with them a lot of political

00:13:14.960 premises. I think that what, what Mitchell is implying here is that, look, we've already

00:13:20.240 solved all the, the basic, uh, social questions and political questions. So now we're just trying

00:13:25.920 to make trade a little bit more efficient. You know, we're just trying to get that GDP up just

00:13:30.160 a little bit more and okay. It's yeah, we're pumping kids full of hormone blockers and destroying 0.63

00:13:34.900 their biochemistry, but look, come on, that's just progress. That's just going to happen.

00:13:38.540 We just have to trust the science because the science works. This is the progressive vision

00:13:43.060 of government. Woodrow Wilson, our most consciously progressive president laid this out very well in

00:13:49.680 an essay called what is progress. Woodrow Wilson said under the old constitutional system of government,

00:13:55.820 we lived under the laws of Isaac Newton with, with fixed laws of the universe. And therefore we have a

00:14:01.840 fixed human nature and we need to have checks and balances and balance power out and, and make

00:14:07.880 deliberative decisions as a body politic. But that's all bunk. That's all over. We're now living

00:14:13.420 in the age of Darwin. Nothing is fixed anymore. We are simply evolving toward progress. So ironically,

00:14:18.520 what the effect of this is, is that everything becomes political. Our chicken sandwiches are

00:14:23.740 political. Our sneakers are political. Every, our Coca-Cola is political. Everything is political,

00:14:29.400 except for politics, which Woodrow Wilson argued has to be outsourced to bureaucrats and administrators

00:14:35.660 who are beyond the scope of legitimate political debate. You see this most notably during 2020

00:14:41.340 with the rise of the exalted Dr. Fauci, peace be upon him, our great national leader. Dr. Fauci says,

00:14:47.940 look, I've never had a political view in my life. I'm just doing what works. Well, in order for

00:14:52.740 something to work, it has to have a purpose. A lawnmower works when it cuts lawn, right? You need to know

00:14:58.960 where you are going, what you want to do. And that is certainly beyond the scope for someone like

00:15:04.320 Anthony Fauci or the public health apparatus. But I think, I think the premise here in the,

00:15:08.520 in the question or in the comment from Mitchell is that we've already decided all that. Yeah,

00:15:13.020 there is no fixed human nature. All those things we were talking about earlier about whether or not

00:15:17.160 body and soul are linked or whether or not a nation should even be able to decide who,

00:15:20.560 who comes into the country and who has the right to vote and who has the right to access government

00:15:26.000 services. Look, that's just not for you to decide you puny little American people, 0.90

00:15:30.660 you peasants. You, you don't have, have the right to your political process. We're going to

00:15:35.400 outsource that to the experts because they can run our lives better for us than we can run them

00:15:40.040 ourselves. And I, I simply can't go along with that. I, I don't think that those eggheads in 1.00

00:15:45.760 Washington have much of a sense of the American way of life. I don't think they're particularly

00:15:51.720 philosophically sophisticated. And frankly, a lot of the time, I don't think they have my best interests

00:15:56.720 at heart. So I would prefer for we, the people of the United States of America to exercise the

00:16:02.040 political authority that was given to us in the constitution that a lot of people want to take

00:16:06.160 away. So here, let's hear from Brick, New Jersey, Kevin, Republican line. Go ahead.

00:16:11.940 Good morning, senior. I'm a huge fan of yours, Michael. I've been a long time viewer and

00:16:19.200 I'm a daily wire subscriber. Um, my question is, um, as a young conservative, um, what do you think,

00:16:27.960 how do you think we can take back the, uh, our media and, um, academia? Um, I think those are the

00:16:34.340 two biggest problems right now in, um, for our country. Um, I'm, you know, I'm just don't know

00:16:41.600 how we can do that. Um, do you recommend conservatives go into, um, teaching and, um,

00:16:47.500 media? Um, do you recommend they try to apply to CNN or, um, work for Harvard, go to Harvard

00:16:54.980 and teach there? Or do you think we should start our own, um, our own, uh, colleges and media?

00:17:02.620 I would not be so much of a sadist as to suggest that you should work for CNN or Harvard or something

00:17:07.560 like that, but it's a very important question. And it's actually something I detail at, at great

00:17:13.260 length in my upcoming book, Speechless. The left focuses on the media certainly, and especially

00:17:20.820 on academia. This is where you saw the rise of political correctness much earlier than you saw

00:17:26.220 it in, in other parts of the culture. And, and why is this? It's because this is how you take a hold

00:17:32.820 of the common sense. You know, uh, Gramsci, that, that radical theorist, he, he understood that the

00:17:38.620 reason that a Marxist revolution did not succeed is that the allegedly oppressed classes, the 0.84

00:17:44.180 proletariat didn't feel all that oppressed. They, you know, that the radicals had their, their theories,

00:17:50.420 but the common people didn't really like those theories very much. And so the, the left undertook

00:17:54.920 a sophisticated and well thought out plan to take over academia and to take over systems of mass

00:18:01.720 communication and they've done it rather effectively. So we're starting from a real

00:18:06.120 disadvantage here. Uh, and now how do we do this for a long time? You've heard conservatives say

00:18:11.960 like Andrew Breitbart said, politics is downstream of culture. Therefore forget about the political

00:18:16.500 questions. We've just got to go out there and make good stuff and make good podcasts and make our own

00:18:22.180 companies. I think that's very important. I think absolutely we should do that. Obviously that is,

00:18:26.360 that is what I do for a living. So I, I think that's a very important side of it. We also need

00:18:32.420 to wield political power. We also need to, and you're seeing some Republicans waking up to this.

00:18:38.700 You're seeing Ron DeSantis waking up to this. Mitch McConnell even is waking up to this saying

00:18:42.680 that we can't just let woke corporations and allegedly private industries completely undermine

00:18:48.080 our culture. The reason that conservatives have become allergic to wielding the political power

00:18:53.360 that the people give them under the constitution over the last, I don't know, 20 or 30 years is

00:18:58.000 because they've fallen for a trap that the radical left through political correctness leaves for

00:19:03.960 them. And the, and the trap is this political correctness is designed to undermine traditional

00:19:11.060 standards. It is a purely negative campaign. It engages in what, what Marx would call the ruthless

00:19:16.780 criticism of all that exists from that. You saw the, the academic movement of critical theory and

00:19:21.820 it's recent derivations that are very much in the news, like a critical race theory.

00:19:26.160 It's just out to destroy the old order and conservatives traditionally react in one of two

00:19:32.080 ways. You have the squishes who just go along with it and they say, oh, okay, well, you're going to

00:19:36.880 pump kids full of cross sex hormones. Yeah, that's fine. You know, we want to broaden the party after 0.96

00:19:40.760 all, like the governor of Arkansas. But then even the more ornery obstinate conservatives will come out

00:19:47.600 and they'll say, look, I'm not going to go along with political correctness because I'm a free speech

00:19:52.660 absolutist or I'm a free market absolutist or some other kind of absolutism that only exists in the

00:19:58.980 air and has never existed in the actual political tradition of the United States. And as a result of

00:20:05.440 that, they will eschew standards altogether. The, the irony here is that either way you do it, either

00:20:11.560 if you give into the left's new standard or you eschew standards altogether, either way, the left

00:20:17.120 gets what it wants, namely the obliteration of the old standard. So I think, yes, as a shorter answer

00:20:22.300 to your question, it's very important for conservatives to go into teaching. It's very

00:20:25.900 important for conservatives to go into media, but that is not sufficient. We also need to recognize

00:20:31.040 that these entities exist within a broader political landscape, a broader political framework,

00:20:36.680 and we need to be willing. We need to have the courage to wield that political power when we have

00:20:41.680 it. You know, uh, president Trump, I hope he lives a long life. And then I hope when he goes to his

00:20:46.680 eternal reward, he donates his body to science and his spine to the GOP. Because if they would only have

00:20:52.940 courage, which is the prerequisite for all the other virtues, I think that, that we could tackle this

00:20:58.280 problem much more effectively. It's much too early, but I'm sure you'll be asked or have been asked

00:21:02.420 if president Trump should run again for another term of president. It is much too early. I would

00:21:08.140 agree. I'm not sure. I'm, I'm a supporter of president Trump. I think he, he was a tremendous

00:21:13.000 president, best president of my lifetime. Uh, however, he himself has said that Republicans

00:21:17.660 have a deep bench of good candidates. So to me, especially if it's president Trump making that

00:21:23.900 comment, that would signal that he's probably not going to run. I'm not sure, but there are, uh,

00:21:30.220 there are a lot of great candidates out there. I'm, uh, partial certainly to Senator Ted Cruz

00:21:35.380 with whom I host a podcast and I, I have encouraged him to run. I think obviously Ron DeSantis in

00:21:42.600 Florida looks like he is eyeing a run and he's doing a very good job. You've got other governors

00:21:47.300 and senators around the country who seem to be interested in it. So I'll take president Trump

00:21:51.960 at his word. I think if there is a deep bench, he could probably play a very significant role

00:21:56.660 in determining who is going to get that nomination. And he may end up running himself.

00:22:02.200 He obviously still has a ton of political support, but I just, you know, if you were to think in 2013,

00:22:08.960 who will the Republican nominee be? I think very few people would have said Donald Trump will be

00:22:13.300 the nominee. And so it's simply too early at this point. We're all just sort of a wish casting.

00:22:18.040 I think. Uh, here's Michael in New York and Syracuse Democrats line. Good morning. I'd like

00:22:25.200 to say that, uh, dips down is the worst thing that happens in this country. And you are ignorant for 1.00

00:22:32.400 thinking that any, any other way. Goodbye. You know, I have to tell you that was not the most 1.00

00:22:40.020 persuasive argument I've heard, but it is among the more articulate arguments that I've heard from

00:22:45.400 the left. I suppose though, that I am damning with faint praise. You spend a lot of time on

00:22:49.620 college campuses talking about these kinds of issues. What responses do you get? Cause I understand

00:22:53.440 that you were hit by a water gun at one of these events. I was, I wasn't, I don't know what was in

00:22:58.560 that water gun. It was not water. Uh, fortunately it wasn't any, any particularly noxious substance.

00:23:04.000 Uh, so the, the only casualty of the day was my blazer, but it's funny. I have a speaking tour

00:23:10.980 before COVID we spoke at 10, 20 schools every year around the country. And I called it the men are not 1.00

00:23:18.600 women and other uncomfortable truths tour. It's, it's actually the reason that I answered your

00:23:23.300 question earlier as to what, what is one of the most controversial issues, you know, that has deep

00:23:27.920 philosophical premises. Believe it or not, it's the idea that men are not women. I gave other speeches

00:23:32.780 on this tour. I said, uh, babies are people. I said that, uh, uh, cancel culture is bad. I don't know.

00:23:40.080 I had sort of various truths. And the one that really got everybody, uh, was that men are not

00:23:47.640 women. And so I walked into this room. It was at the university of Missouri, Kansas city.

00:23:51.860 And immediately, I don't know, a third of the audience were these eccentric looking, uh, young

00:23:57.620 activists. And they started screaming at me at the top of their lungs. You couldn't really hear it on

00:24:01.960 the, uh, on the video feed because my microphone was feeding directly into the camera, but in the room,

00:24:06.860 you really couldn't hear the speech. So I went on undeterred. I had,

00:24:10.080 prepared my speech anyway. So even with, with what they were screaming, I could still continue to

00:24:14.380 read it. Then eventually they tuckered themselves out and they went to leave. And one of them went

00:24:19.860 behind the podium, opened up a fire door and some mass clad lunatic comes in and sprays me with some 1.00

00:24:28.040 sort of chemicals. And the police did a great job of taking that guy down. He seemed shocked that he

00:24:34.040 would face any consequences for his actions. And then eventually everyone was led out of the room.

00:24:40.040 And what's really bizarre is that the following day, the chancellor of the university wrote a letter

00:24:45.020 apologizing, not to me, but to the students that I was invited in the first place and suggesting that

00:24:51.080 the idea that men are not women is not a value of the university. And it was, it was really through

00:24:56.540 the looking glass. I really felt as though I was in, in wonderland at that point, but that is the,

00:25:01.760 the usual response I get. I, there have been a handful of times on these campuses that there

00:25:06.080 have been really thoughtful leftist responses, which I love. I mean, you know, that's, that's,

00:25:11.840 that's what I wrote my recent book on is thoughtful leftists and taking their ideas seriously. But,

00:25:17.000 but unfortunately you don't get a lot of that. And I think part of the reason why the conservatives

00:25:21.240 on campus tend to be much more thoughtful and articulate than the leftists is a circumstantial

00:25:28.100 matter, which is that if you're a conservative on campus, the culture is completely against you.

00:25:33.080 You are constantly having to defend your beliefs, think through your beliefs, perhaps discard some

00:25:37.620 of your beliefs, maybe deepen others. Whereas if you are in the left these days, your ideas are rarely

00:25:43.100 challenged. They're not challenged at work. They're not challenged at school. They're not challenged in

00:25:47.240 the broader culture. And they're certainly not challenged in the political realm. So, so, uh, you know,

00:25:52.220 I, I just think they're, they're at a real disadvantage here. And if there are intellectual

00:25:56.820 and thoughtful and articulate leftists, I've got speeches coming up this year. So I look forward

00:26:01.060 to seeing you on campus. Please don't ruin any more of my blazers. Uh, this is Michael Knowles of

00:26:05.820 the Michael Knowles show on the daily wire. It's part of our political podcast series this week,

00:26:10.700 Maria in Westville, New Jersey, independent line. Hi. Good morning, Pedro. Um, your guest has a very

00:26:18.580 arrogant mind and I appreciate that, but I'd like to get back to something else he said. I think it 0.82

00:26:24.440 was Jefferson who said, eventually our country will be saved by the people. And I feel that we can't

00:26:31.320 wait for all these elections where most of our, uh, government, uh, are foreign agents, to be honest

00:26:37.620 with you. Is there a way to have petitions to really recall most of them right now? And the second

00:26:43.740 point I wanted to make is, uh, there's an $11 trillion shortfall at the Pentagon, which has not

00:26:50.120 been accounted for. Nobody's auditing them. We're in secret wars all over the world. So, and we're with

00:26:56.980 five eyes, which gives Britain and the Commonwealth and Israel all our secrets. So I think, um, it's nice 0.96

00:27:04.700 to talk about party versus party, but I think now it ought to be citizens of the United States against 0.96

00:27:10.560 the globalists. And I think that the battle has to start in earnest now and I'd like his opinion.

00:27:15.720 Thank you. Maria, those are a bunch of great questions and comments. You know, what a lot of

00:27:21.760 people are going to say when they listen to you is they're going to say, Maria, this, these are crazy

00:27:25.780 conspiracy theories that you're talking about. There is no way that a foreign spy could ever

00:27:30.940 influence the U S government. And of course you might point them to Alger Hiss, a top ranking state

00:27:35.480 department official who was working for the Soviet union during the cold war. This was detailed in,

00:27:40.160 in Whitaker Chambers is excellent book witness, uh, which, which was one of the books that moved

00:27:44.540 Ronald Reagan from the liberal camp to the conservative camp. You mentioned that the

00:27:48.640 bureaucracy seems to be unaccountable to the American people. This is obviously the case.

00:27:54.240 This, I remember Antonin Scalia. I had the privilege of meeting him a couple of times before he died.

00:27:58.980 He said that the greatest threat to Liberty in the United States is the administrative state

00:28:02.940 because it has had such a mission drift. It has become so unaccountable as well to the

00:28:09.740 American people. So, uh, you know, the degree to which these issues are affecting our day to day

00:28:14.980 might be disputed, but certainly there, there are a lot of problems here. You mentioned these,

00:28:20.400 these wars that we seem to seem to crop up all the time. I remember the old joke in 2008 was they

00:28:26.080 told me if I voted for John McCain, we'd start another war in the middle East. And they were right.

00:28:29.780 I voted for John McCain and we started more wars in the middle East. So these problems are,

00:28:33.940 are really frustrating. Um, however, the, the way that I think that the conservative way that one

00:28:39.460 would begin to address them. And frankly, the way that, that the left has addressed them to great

00:28:44.280 effect is, uh, through evolution, not revolution. I don't think that we need to go kick the doors in

00:28:51.280 at some administrative agency and say, you're all fired. You all need to get out of here.

00:28:55.100 One, it wouldn't work. And two, it probably wouldn't, uh, wouldn't have much of the political

00:29:01.860 effect that you're hoping for. What you need to do is, um, uh, have incremental change. So you need

00:29:07.700 to be able to identify the Republican office holders who are not, uh, fulfilling their campaign

00:29:13.360 promises, who are not pursuing a particularly conservative policy. And you need to get them

00:29:18.560 out through the old fashioned electoral process. Then when we have political power, you need to wield

00:29:24.400 that power to fire a lot of bureaucrats who are undermining the administration. I'm not saying this is

00:29:29.840 easy. President Trump faced, uh, a lot of pushback at this. I mean, you, you consider just one

00:29:36.260 department in the government, the department of Homeland security. I think the department of

00:29:40.200 Homeland security alone has upwards of quarter million employees. So this is a huge problem.

00:29:45.160 And, and one or two elected officials are not really going to, uh, change that, but, but it's why

00:29:51.220 you need that steady, steady incremental change. The left for the last 100 years, as I, as I detail in

00:29:57.540 the book, speechless for a hundred years, they amassed that sort of power. And it reminds me

00:30:04.520 of Ernest Hemingway's description of going bankrupt in the sun also rises. Question is,

00:30:10.060 how'd you go bankrupt? And the answer is gradually then suddenly. And I, I think the left has amassed

00:30:15.640 power in this country gradually. And then they, they exercise it rather suddenly. That's what's

00:30:20.800 happening right now. And I think conservatives would do well to learn a lesson from that strategy.

00:30:25.180 Uh, from East Syracuse, New York, Ellie Democrats line. Good morning.

00:30:30.200 Good morning. Yes. Mr. Knowles, I find you offensive your pompous way. The conservative party has done

00:30:40.280 nothing for America, but divide us and your book. I probably would purchase it to read it.

00:30:49.660 Um, I don't agree with anything you're saying. Check out history. I am a history buff and I read

00:30:58.440 history and I was an independent all of my life until 2008. And I realized that I sided more with

00:31:08.360 some of the ideas of the Democrats. You have conservative. Uh, what about the, um, conservative

00:31:17.360 movement in 1953, pushing religion, right? Did you see the documentary, the family, how they,

00:31:27.280 I haven't seen that documentary. Well, I think you should watch it because it's very telling

00:31:33.220 and it tells you all about how a certain set of Republicans, conservative, religious, which

00:31:42.140 is in the constitution, no laws written. Okay. Freedom means freedom to practice your religion

00:31:49.860 that way you want. If you want freedom means if you are a lesbian, a gay LPGQ, whatever you call it, 1.00

00:31:58.940 that's your right. Right. Uh, okay. Well, okay. Hold on, Ellie. We'll, we'll let our guests respond. 0.79

00:32:09.140 Uh, so, uh, all interesting points. I, uh, appreciate your willingness to buy and read my

00:32:14.900 book, even if you suspect that you won't agree with it. Um, to your point on religion, you say

00:32:21.880 that the, the United States does not have any religious underpinning and you should be free to

00:32:26.740 have whatever religion you want. Let's not forget, uh, religion factors into the declaration of

00:32:31.640 independence, the declaration of independence, the entire American revolution is premised on the idea

00:32:36.200 that there is a God, our creator who endows us with certain unalienable rights. So that idea,

00:32:44.140 which is a very Christian idea is the basis, the, the philosophical basis of the entire country.

00:32:49.700 And if you were to posit a religious view that would undermine that religious basis,

00:32:53.560 that would seem rather incoherent. Beyond that, all governments, all regimes have some kind of

00:33:00.820 religious basis. This is inevitable at the ratification of the constitution. By the way,

00:33:05.580 this is very misunderstood, but the first amendment is ratified. There's no established

00:33:09.660 church at the national level. One of the reasons for that is that there were many established

00:33:14.020 churches at the state level. And those, those church establishments at the state level persisted

00:33:18.560 for decades after the ratification of the constitution. We have a state religion now that the state

00:33:24.220 religion now is secular progressivism. We are now being told that it is unacceptable in this

00:33:29.300 culture to question the idea that a man can become a woman. Well, that is enshrining in our 0.99

00:33:35.480 law, the, the Gnostic religious idea of dualism that, that our bodies and our souls have nothing

00:33:42.160 to do with one another. And we really are our souls, as we discussed earlier in the show to

00:33:47.080 quote the great political philosopher, Bob Dylan, everybody's got to serve somebody. There's no

00:33:53.320 question about that. And then you raise this point on freedom and liberty, which I think is so

00:33:57.040 important because it's misunderstood, not only on the left, but it's misunderstood on the right as

00:34:01.540 well. There were two conceptions of liberty here. There is the modern, call it liberal idea of

00:34:06.820 liberty, which is that liberty is the ability to do whatever you want at any time and to pursue your

00:34:11.860 own desires, whatever they may be. And this is an idea that's held by the left, but, but by a huge

00:34:16.740 portion of the right as well. Then there is the classical idea of liberty there, the idea of liberty

00:34:21.080 held by our founding fathers, held by Christianity, held by the pre-Christian philosophers. And that idea

00:34:27.360 is that liberty is not the, the ability to do whatever you want at any time, but it is the

00:34:32.120 freedom to do what you ought to do. So just to bring that down to earth, what that means is

00:34:37.400 according to the modern idea of liberty, the heroin addict is the most free person in the world

00:34:43.280 because no one's, especially in states where that drug is legal, because that person is not being told

00:34:49.420 he can't do something. If he has the desire to shoot up heroin, why gosh darn it, he's going to do it. 0.86

00:34:54.540 And as long as he's got a couple of bucks in his pocket, gosh, could you imagine a person any more 0.64

00:34:58.720 free? Of course, we all know that guy is not free at all. He's a slave. He's a slave to his base

00:35:04.360 passions and his appetites and his sin. This is why in the traditional understanding of liberty,

00:35:09.800 as Christ says himself, the man who sins is a slave to sin. In the pre-Christian philosophical

00:35:18.000 Greek understanding of, of liberty, the way that we become free is by practicing the virtues,

00:35:23.480 by cultivating our minds and disciplining our wills. This is the purpose of liberal education.

00:35:29.360 The idea of liberal education is that we will come to make sense of our liberty, of our freedom,

00:35:34.200 and be able to exercise it so that we can tamp down those base passions that we don't want to

00:35:38.420 follow that compromise our, our will and our intellect and be able to pursue these higher

00:35:42.500 things. This is what the founding fathers knew. This is why they wrote at great length,

00:35:46.400 and I detail this at great length in my book, Speechless, about the difference between

00:35:49.920 liberty and licentiousness. In the modern era, in the modern age today, the left and the right both

00:35:56.200 seem to think that liberty and licentiousness are the same thing. What our founding fathers knew and

00:36:01.640 what wise people throughout history have known is that liberty and licentiousness are actually polar

00:36:06.600 opposites, that licentiousness totally undermines liberty. It's, it's what you're seeing around us

00:36:13.060 right now, and it reminds us of John Adams's warning that our constitution, our republic,

00:36:17.540 is built for a moral and religious people, and it's unfit to the governance of any other sort of 0.97

00:36:22.440 people. This is not just some Sunday school scolding that he's giving us. He's just, he's telling us a

00:36:27.320 fact about liberty. If we can't tamp down our base passions, we are not going to be able to govern

00:36:32.300 ourselves. Mr. Knowles, there's a viewer who writes in about the transgender topic and writes this, say,

00:36:37.660 I am a, quote, leftist who believes that transgender issues are personal medical procedures and are as much

00:36:42.960 my business as a person who receives a kidney transplant. I just don't need or want to have

00:36:47.420 power in someone else's medical procedures. Sure. Well, it's funny. Very often the people

00:36:52.920 who tell us that we need to stay out of their medical procedures are also calling for greater

00:36:57.480 government influence in the medical industry, in our healthcare decisions, people who support

00:37:03.140 socialized medicine, for instance. But of course, this is not the case. And I think Republicans are as

00:37:09.820 guilty of, of this misunderstanding as the left is. This idea that politics is this really, really

00:37:17.840 narrow realm and that the private sphere is, should be totally opened. On the right, they want to

00:37:24.540 pretend that, that politics has nothing to do with how the economy should work. So we should have just a

00:37:30.280 totally free market and I should be able to trade whatever I want and build whatever I want. On the

00:37:35.740 left, they take this idea and they apply it to the social realm. So I should be able to sleep with whoever I

00:37:40.380 want. I should be able to mutilate my body however I like. And politics has nothing to say about this. But of 0.62

00:37:45.620 course, politics has quite a lot to say about this. At the very most basic level, our political institutions

00:37:51.780 should be able to protect people, should be able to protect vulnerable people, should be able to protect the

00:37:56.700 most vulnerable people like children. And so if a political regime says you are not permitted to mutilate

00:38:03.420 children and chemically castrate them, that is going to be one kind of polity. And if the political 0.99

00:38:08.220 regime says you have a right to chemically castrate children, if they give their consent, which is a

00:38:15.060 dubious concept in itself, because children are not able to give informed consent. That's why we have

00:38:19.280 age of consent laws that say that children are not permitted to engage in certain behaviors below the

00:38:24.100 age of 17 or 18. Those are very different polities. And we can pretend that those are questions that we

00:38:32.000 should ignore or push to the side. But indecision is a certain kind of decision here. It creates what

00:38:37.660 you might call the permissive society with horrible effects for, well, horrible effects for

00:38:42.700 constitutional government and also for these kids who's, who's, who are being mutilated because of

00:38:47.620 the fashionable ideologies of radicals.

00:38:50.800 Uh, from New York, Republican line, Samuel, you are next.

00:38:56.640 Um, hi. Uh, first of all, I say, I like to say I'm a big fan and I think it's really cool that I'm

00:39:01.900 talking, talking, that I'm talking on the line too. But besides that, uh, I like to ask the question

00:39:07.880 about like, in terms of the culture, it's like, I think about a lot, it's like, we used to have,

00:39:13.140 there used to be like slavery and crow and then, but then this changed.

00:39:17.260 Caller, Caller, I'm going to have to pause you a little bit. Could you step back a little bit

00:39:20.420 from your phone only because you're becoming muddled? Can you try again?

00:39:24.160 Uh, yeah. Um, I just like to ask a question about like, in terms of like culture, like,

00:39:29.700 you know, we used to have a lot of, uh, bad moral systems. You used to have slavery, 0.82

00:39:33.900 you used to have all these things and then the culture changed, the laws changed and all,

00:39:37.780 like there's no real opposition to it that's significant and everyone agrees on it. And I was just

00:39:43.160 wondering if you say, if you think there really will be a day where, where that becomes the case

00:39:48.840 for say the whole transgender fight with stopping these kids, like, like they're trying to do in

00:39:54.580 Arkansas and let's say abortion, because I really want for a day where that happens. 1.00

00:39:59.820 Okay. We'll stop you there only because you become muddled, but Mr. Knowles, if you want to take

00:40:03.540 anything from that, go ahead. That's a great question. And an even greater compliment. I thank you

00:40:07.700 for the, for the compliment at the top of that question. Uh, what you're pointing out is that in the

00:40:11.800 past, things used to be bad, but now in the present things seem to be better. And this is of

00:40:16.960 course true in certain issues, but in other issues, this is not true. So notably we no longer have

00:40:23.260 legal slavery in the United States. That's great. Good. Totally for that. Uh, unfortunately we kill 0.93

00:40:29.740 a million babies a year through abortion. Well, that's bad, you know, so we, so some things got

00:40:35.020 better, some things got worse. What the progressives will tell you is that the arc of history is long,

00:40:40.640 but it bends toward justice and things are always getting better. And the past is always worse. And

00:40:44.960 the present is always a crisis and the future is always going to be terrific. This is in part why

00:40:49.360 the left always needs to tear down the statues, even statues of people they once liked because

00:40:54.000 the, because the past is always bad. And we here in the present who are standing on the shoulders

00:40:57.660 of giants think that we're flying and this is urgent and it's a crisis. And it's why we've got to

00:41:02.360 get into that utopian future. And the utopian future is utopian precisely because it doesn't exist.

00:41:07.220 That progressive view of history is not going to get anywhere. Now I think sometimes conservative

00:41:13.460 criticisms of the progressive view of history are a little bit dishonest. I myself am a Catholic.

00:41:19.940 I have in a certain sense, a progressive view of history. I think that, uh, to quote the creed,

00:41:25.760 Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end. So, 0.90

00:41:29.660 you know, isn't that, I guess that's kind of a progressive view of history, right? But it's a

00:41:33.180 little bit different than the one that is espoused by people on the left. Namely, I think things are

00:41:38.080 going to get a little bit worse in, in the meantime, there's a great line, a priest friend

00:41:42.460 of mine uses. He says that the difference between a Scottish optimist and a Scottish pessimist is a

00:41:47.780 Scottish pessimist says things can't get any worse. And the Scottish optimist says, oh yes, they can.

00:41:52.840 And I think that the same might be said of conservatives as well. So yes, I think that in some ways,

00:41:58.300 issues may get better like, like slavery. And I think in some ways issues might get worse like

00:42:04.160 abortion. I hope notably that abortion issue does get better and people realize the absolute moral 0.69

00:42:09.520 horror of what we as a society are doing. But I do not hold out a utopian hope that it's all going

00:42:15.260 to be Kumbaya and the big rock candy mountain anytime in the near future. I think we should have

00:42:21.140 political humility. We should improve what we can improve with deference to the tradition that we've

00:42:27.160 inherited. Uh, but I, I don't think that we should, uh, should hold out hope for any utopia on earth.

00:42:31.980 It just ain't going to happen. Uh, Michael Knowles joining us, uh, for this conversation at the

00:42:37.020 Michael Knowles show, the Michael Knowles.com is the website that you can find it on. How often do

00:42:43.140 you, uh, produce a podcast and what other things do you do aside from the podcast? Well, I will correct

00:42:49.400 you just slightly because there's a, there's a writer and an actor, I think who has Michael Knowles.com

00:42:54.140 and he never forwards me my emails, but you can find all my stuff at Michael J. Knowles.com.

00:42:58.880 Correct. Apologies.

00:43:00.220 Not at all. Just, I just don't want his inbox to be flooded. Uh, so you can find there my show at

00:43:06.580 the daily wire. You can subscribe to the daily wire to watch the Michael Knowles show. It goes up

00:43:10.180 five days a week. Uh, you can watch my show, the book club at Prager U. Um, you can watch my show

00:43:15.260 with Senator Ted Cruz verdict with Ted Cruz. Uh, you can order my new book, speechless, controlling words,

00:43:20.000 controlling minds. You can order my previous blank book reasons to vote for Democrats, uh, a

00:43:24.920 comprehensive guide. And so you can find all that stuff at links for all that at Michael J. Knowles.com.

00:43:31.860 And, uh, you, you can also please do write in social media in the mailbag. Cause I, I was so

00:43:36.200 pleased to be able to come on this show today because I do love speaking to callers all around

00:43:40.580 the country. So I really appreciate that opportunity. Mr. Knowles. Thanks for your time today.

00:43:44.940 Thank you.

00:43:45.260 Thank you.

00:44:15.260 And, uh, it, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you. And so if you.

00:44:15.720 Thank you, you, you. You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you. You, you, you, you, you, me, you, you, you. And I,

00:44:24.980 you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you.

00:44:26.180 You, you, you. You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you. You, you, you, you, you, gonna, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, them, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, ...

The Michael Knowles Show - April 10, 2021

Michael Knowles Guest Appearance for The Washington Journal on CSPAN

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