Michael Knowles REACTS to ANARCHY and ＂The WHITE Pill＂ ｜ Michael Malice
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Summary
After years and years of anticipation, Michael Malice, author of Dear Reader, The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong-il and The White Pill, joins The Michael Knowles Show to discuss his new book, A Cause for Hope in the Declining Ruins of Politics.
Transcript
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Finally, after years and years of anticipation, we're bringing onto the show one of the most
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interesting guys in the political media space right now, Michael Malice, who I've been following
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for a long time, follow him on Twitter and everything. And I said, Michael, I can't believe
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that you're just coming on the show now. And he reminded me that he DM'd me like two years ago,
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and I missed it. Like I miss every DM, like I miss every text, but I'm so pleased that Michael
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could be here today. Michael, thank you for coming on the show. You know, Michael, interesting is
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always a euphemism. You know, do you have dinner with this guy? What was he like? Oh, he was
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interesting. He was interesting. Yes, that's true. You know, one thing, Michael, that I, so I should
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mention, you need no introduction, but you're the author of one of the two best titled books in
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Human History, Dear Reader, The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong-il, that the only other
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book of an equally great title is When Harry Became Sally by Ryan Anderson, the author of The New
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Right, A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics, the author of The Anarchist Handbook, and, and this
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is especially what I want to talk about, the author of an upcoming book about the white pill, a cause
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for hope in our absolute decayed, disgusting, collapsing ruins of politics. What is the cause
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for hope, Michael? Well, you just said it. It's a collapsing ruin. Politics is a disaster. There's
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no possibility for freedom through a political venue. So to watch, you know, the elites basically
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cannibalize themselves, it's very hard for me, whether you're a Republican, Democrat, independent,
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whatever, to look at Joe Biden literally voiding his bowels behind the resolute desk and think to
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yourself, this is a symbol of an empire at its strength. This is someone who really has, is on
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top of things as opposed to, you know, a Weekend and Bernie situation, which we should be looking at
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with a great comedic applause. And that also follows, you know, President Trump. Donald Trump was
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basically a third party candidate. He had no roots within the Republican Party at all. Historically,
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he endorsed Romney, but that barely says anything. And he managed to beat every single Republican
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candidate in the primary. So this just speaks to, in many ways, the complete decaying weakness
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of both of our major political parties, which from my perspective is a very healthy thing for a free
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country. Now, most people would say the collapse in support for the, not just the political parties,
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but for basically every public institution is terrible. It shows you that the country is falling
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apart. I myself am a little worried about it. Although for some institutions, I think,
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bye-bye, don't let the door hit you on the way out. But you're saying from your perspective,
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the collapse of trust in these institutions is a wonderful thing.
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Yeah, I don't think things like the Ivy League and the state are redeemable, the New York Times
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elements like that. And I think what conservatives fail to appreciate is that these institutions have
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been this way for a very long time. There's an argument in conservative circles that Hollywood's
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been taken over by the liberals, but at the same time, conservatives do appreciate that Ronald Reagan
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was president of Screen Actors Guild. And as president of Screen Actors Guild, and previously,
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he was very concerned by the depths of literal communism, and not just communism, Stalinism within
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Hollywood. So at what point wasn't Hollywood a venue of the very hard left? In the 20s when they
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had, they didn't have talkies? Well, yes, I guess if you can't talk, you can't spread leftist ideas.
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But I mean, Woodrow Wilson is another great example. He was a college professor, the first
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college professor became president. He was president in 1912. And he was advocating things far to the
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left of what even Bernie Sanders would advocate for today. So I think conservatives, by and large,
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are supposed to learn the lessons from history. But unfortunately, that seems to not be the case very
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often. And this is why it's a big reason for optimism in the future. Woodrow Wilson is a far
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more nefarious foe, far more talented individual, far more charismatic than what, AOC? I mean,
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there's just no comparison, in my opinion. But there was this sense among the old right,
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you know, I mean, these terms old right and new right, they change every 20 years because you get
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new people and older. But, you know, of what we would have called the old right in, say, the 50s,
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they really were concerned with getting rid of the New Deal. They were fighting against FDR,
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they were fighting against Wilsonianism. And then that just kind of went away. You know,
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over the ensuing decades, the conservatives just gave up. They kind of made their peace
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with the New Deal. In some ways, they adopted a Wilsonian view, at least a foreign policy.
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And so, you know, that to me speaks to the absolute entrenchment of these sort of leftist
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progressive policies. You think, though, maybe they're not so entrenched? Maybe we can upend them?
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Oh, they are entrenched. But let's talk exactly what I talked about. In the 1950s,
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you had the nomination was between Dwight Eisenhower, who no one knew what his political
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resume was at all. Both the Democrats and Republicans tried to recruit him. He was a
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great war hero. And the Republicans had Mr. Republican Robert Taft, who was a conservative
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Republican. Taft got his ass handed to him, partly because of liberal Republicans like New York State
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Governor Thomas Dewey, you know, who ran against FDR twice, who was a Romney Republican before the term
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existed. They later called him Rockefeller Republicans. So I think this idea that the
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Republican Party has historically been a venue for shrinking the state is really kind of an
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ahistorical fairy tale along the lines of the 1619 Project. When push comes to shove,
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they've never really cut budgets at all. The other example to that was 1964 with Barry Goldwater,
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of course, who's a great conservative hero. And he got his butt hand to him in that election,
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which, of course, presedged the Reagan election in 1980. But the relationship between conservative
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ideas or limited government ideas in the Republican parties is far more nuanced than I think a lot of
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people appreciate. True. And actually, going back all the way to the founding of the Republican Party,
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let's not forget, Abraham Lincoln ran on tariffs. I mean, the party was anti-slavery,
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pro-protectionism. So that's not exactly a small government policy. And, you know, even after,
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I don't think anyone would call Abraham Lincoln a small government sort of president. The guy
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suspended habeas corpus, you know, rightly, I think, but still, he did it. And so, yes,
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the Republican Party has not always had this small government ideology, and it very rarely has it
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expressed it even in the 20th century. So then, where do we go from here? If the 20th century
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conservatism was basically a flop with a few nice moments during the Reagan and Trump administration,
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with Trump, I guess, being the 21st century, what's the future look like? Because you have hope,
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You know, it's kind of, I think conservatives are basically like diabetics who are trying to
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choose between Coke and Pepsi and wondering why their feet keep getting cut off. At a certain
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point, you have to realize that if you can't vote yourself free, and Mitch McConnell will always be
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a lot closer to Hillary Clinton than he will be to you and your values. So to stop looking toward
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Washington for answers, and also to start looking to where the toxicity starts. If you're fighting in
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Washington, by that point, it's the fourth quarter, you can only play defense, you're not
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going to win. You need to point your guns toward the universities, because that's where these ideas
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are first promulgated, where they train young people to be the shock troops for the progressive
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militia, who then run Hollywood, who then work in newspapers. And they're the ones who shape the
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ideas of the country, especially for young people. A lot of people frequently invoke 1984 and George Orwell
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with this hard authoritarianism. The book I would recommend people read is Aldous Huxley's Brave New
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World. I totally agree. The persuasion is not, you know, with a stick, the persuasion is go work at
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this crappy job, go home and watch stupid television, we will provide for you, we'll give you food, we'll
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put a roof over your head, don't think and don't question us. And I think that model, the realization
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that the corporate press has not just recently been a mechanism to sell narratives as opposed to
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information and to guide public opinion, but that this has been going on for a very long time. Let
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me give you one example, which I think everyone can appreciate. We're all taught back in the day of
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William Randall first, the Spanish American war, you know, yellow journalism, and that basically that
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led us into war during the McKinley administration. And then there's a record scratch. And the corporate
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press is supposed to be objective and decent that never happened. That's just one of the big lies
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that the media likes to tell about itself. Yeah. Yeah. I certainly agree with that. And,
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you know, this, this sense of, you know, the, the objective media just grew out of this liberal
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establishment that, you know, I guess sort of thrived in the middle of the 20th century
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and increasingly is, is collapsing. I, I totally agree. You know, Orwell was Huxley's student. I think
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Huxley was his French teacher and Huxley wrote to Orwell and said, you know, I like your book,
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but what you're missing here is the subtlety. You're missing how the regime is going to use
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drugs, promiscuous sex is going to use pleasure to enslave people.
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Yeah. And it's not, it's at that point, it becomes kind of like this Greek myth of the
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lotus eaters. Like you're in, you know, one of the terms that, you know, I've popularized,
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which has become kind of loosened in its definition is the concept of the red pill. But if you go back
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to that movie, the matrix, the people who are on the matrix are having a pretty nice life.
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They have food, they have a job, they have a family, they don't have to think about anything
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and therefore they don't have to worry about anything. And it's very useful if I would like
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to be an elite to have a population, which basically I can farm who aren't going to question
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my choices and just do what I like. The problem is at some point people wake up both on the right
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and the left say, this isn't working for me. And then it's the media's job to tell the rest of
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the population how to analyze this and how to perceive it. So one of the things why I'm hopeful
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and I'm positive you'll agree with me on this, after the 2020 election, for the first time in
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my lifetime, and you and I are both fairly young, the Republicans and the right, broadly speaking,
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didn't turn their sights on Joe Biden. They turned it on media outlets. They realized that Biden is a
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symptom of a larger issue, that Biden himself is nowhere near as malevolent as many of these other
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entities. And to realize, okay, these are the people who made something like a Biden happen or
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the lockdowns happen. That I think that healthy analysis of who is against you is a much stronger
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position. I'll just make one more point. If you look at Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, and if you look
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at, let's suppose, the Harvard Law Faculty and the New York Times editorial board, which one of these
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groups really has more contempt for you and your lifestyle. And I think this is a very easy question
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to answer. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're certainly right. The ruling elite involves a lot more than
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just a couple politicians in Washington, D.C. Frankly, they're not even the most important people
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in that equation, right? You've got higher education, lower education, big tech, Hollywood, the media,
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all of these supranational, international organizations. And then you've got doddering Joe Biden,
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who doesn't know which end is up. Absolutely. Now, your answer to this is a very naughty word.
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Anarchism. Freedom? Freedom. Yeah, that's what I just said, freedom.
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Well, now, so I think we've agreed basically on everything thus far, but now I think we're going
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to disagree. What made you come to identify as an anarchist? How would you define anarchism? This is
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notoriously difficult to define, and people have lots of different definitions for it. And what does it
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mean practically if we said, okay, enough of our political system? We're going all in for anarchy,
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baby. Sure. So anarchism can be defined in one sentence. You do not speak for me. Everything
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else is simply application of that concept. It is the idea that political authority is inherently
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illegitimate. And just because a law is passed does not give you any moral impetus to respect or follow
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it in any respect. It also means that when you look at the Republicans and Democrats, you're looking at
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literally two different gangs who are fighting for turf war, neither of which have your interest at
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heart. So the black flag is the traditional symbol of anarchism. And I have the expression,
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the black flag comes in many colors. So the reason I wrote this anarchist handbook is it's different
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anarchist thinkers from the last 200 years explaining what anarchism means to them and how it applies.
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In terms of what that would mean right now, it would mean things like an increased skepticism of
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the police because they are the ones who are forcing you in your home. They are the ones who
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are enforcing gun control laws and every other edict that Gretchen Whitmer, Mario Cuomo, and Gavin
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Newsom put into place. It is having an increased skepticism of concentrations of power, whether it would
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be Jeff Bezos, the Ivy Leagues, or the federal government, as well as state governments. And
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understanding that this idea of, well, you and I disagree, but I'm going to respect your opinion.
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When the person disagreeing with you is a politician and have the ability to enforce their views upon
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your family, you are under no obligation to take them seriously for one second. And you should instead
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regard them with an enormous amount of contempt. Let's take the gun control issue for a second.
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You know, a politician sits forward and says, you know, I'm going to make it harder for you to get a
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gun to protect your home and your family. That's not a time for debate. That's a declaration of war
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and everything else proceeds accordingly. Typically, historically, anarchism is more
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associated with the left than the right. In some ways it's associated on the right. But generally
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speaking, a lot of the people who developed anarchism as a political theory were, some of
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them were communists, some of them associated with communists, trying to work things out in the 19th
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and 20th centuries. So how is it that you, a right winger, you know, quite, quite firmly on the
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right, how do you reconcile that? This movement that came largely from the left is now the movement
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you'd identify with. Well, I don't know that I would call myself firmly on the right, but I think
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also this is an example of when labels and binary thinking fault people. The biggest criticism of Marx,
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and I include the essay in my book, was by Mikhail Bakunin. He was Marx's rival for the early
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kind of leadership of what would become communism. But in 1867, he, 50 years before the Soviet Union
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existed, he was predicting what it would look like and why it would be an enormous disaster.
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Emma Goldman, who was deported by Woodrow Wilson and J. Edgar Hoover to the Soviet Union,
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she wrote a book in the early 20s denouncing how bad the Soviet Union was and warning the left that
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this is even worse than the Tsar and this is not what we're for. So you mentioned Orwell as well
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earlier. Historically, the strongest opponents of the totalitarian state have been these leftist
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anarchists because they realize, guys, and they're arguing from leftist principles. This is not what
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we're about. So we have to have respect. And this also in America, there have been many, Truman certainly
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did his job taking on communism as well. There have been many people who would be on the left who have
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historically been very skeptical of the state and certainly the totalitarian state.
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Now, in America, when anarchists have come to prominence, they tend to be terrorists.
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You might be the one exception. No, there are obviously exceptions to this. But you think the
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most prominent anarchists today are Antifa, some of Antifa, some of them are communists too.
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And Sacco and Banzetti, you know, and some of these terrorists from the early 20th century.
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So if the idea is you dissolve the state, you're all just pursuing your own interests,
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you have totally voluntary associations. I'm obviously oversimplifying anarchism.
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That's a broad, you know, kind of general view.
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What happens when every time anarchism has tried to be put in practice, at least in recent history,
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it's led to lots of violence and terrorism and things like that.
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Anarchism isn't a location, it's a relationship. So you and I are currently in an anarchist
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relationship, even though neither of us is in a position of authority over the other. It's your
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show, so I'm deferential to you because it's your space. But neither of us is, I'm in an opposition
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to tell you, Michael, you have to do this. And you're in an opposition to tell me you have to do that.
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So in fact, the vast majority of our interactions are anarchist in basis. They're voluntary and peaceful.
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This Thomas Hobbes idea that if, you know, if there wasn't a strong government, we'd all be
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raping and murdering each other is absolutely abhorrent. If anyone listening to this asks
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themselves, would you rape someone if you could get away with it? The idea would be unconscionable
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to them. Now, the question is, what do you do about the bad people? And historically, the left
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anarchists that you mentioned, I think, have a weak track record on this because their argument is,
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well, if fewer people were poor, there would be less crime. Okay, that's true. What about the ones who
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are left? You know, what are you going to do about them? So an anarchist system would involve a very
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heavily armed population. It would involve not having a government monopoly on security,
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but encourage voluntary and private security. And it includes having choice for how people can
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protect themselves and their purpose. Antifa is a different example because they do take
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a lot of inspiration from some of these left anarchists. But at the same time,
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they tend to be pro-state and certainly, you know, are much bigger fans of violence than I would be
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comfortable with myself. But in terms of our anarchist relationship, you know, we obviously
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have a voluntary relationship, you and me, but it is mediated by lots of other people. It's mediated
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by producers. It's mediated by the tech giants who could cut us off at any time. And ultimately,
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it's mediated by the state. I mean, you know, you may want to, let's not say commit violence on me,
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but, you know, you might want, let's say you want to make a pass at me, turn our anarchist
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relationship into a sexual relationship. That's mediated by laws. Thank you very much.
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Is that why you're, is that why you're dressed in that modern family shirt, Michael? Is that
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what's going on here? Give me some Cameron. Trying to be really enticing here. You see
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through, I mean, what I mean by this is, you know, to, to use that phrase, true socialism has never
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been tried. One could easily say true anarchism has never been tried. And then someone will point
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to 10th century Iceland or something, which I think is a dubious example, but I agree with you.
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Yeah. I just think, sure. I get this in theory, although I have questions about some of the,
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the assumptions of anarchism, but how do we get there? Other, you know, you say we, we trust the
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police less. Okay. Well, that's fine. But I certainly trust the FBI and the CIA a lot less
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than perhaps I once did. We should be more skeptical of the universities. Yeah, I'm complete. I'm
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basically ready to take a wrecking ball to them. But does this really mean then we dissolve the state
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because we think it doesn't have legitimate authority? Yes. And how we get there is at a
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certain point, the costs of law enforcement become more expensive than the benefits. So it means having
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things like having politicians feel uncomfortable in their person. It means not engaging in political
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discussion with a straight face because it's inherently illegitimate. It means causing existential
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threat to people who would have control over your life and your family. These are just some steps
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that would get you there. And just because, you know, you're making the argument true anarchism
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has never been tried. I mean, you could also easily say that we've never had a true democratic
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republic. We've never had true republicanism. We've never had true democracy. So in one sense,
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yes, there's any ideal is going to be in like some kind of platonic sense, not practical to reality,
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but certainly private arbitration, private security, peaceful interactions between human beings.
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These are not some kind of abstraction. These are, in fact, if not the norm, at least certainly
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something we could wrap our heads around. You know, it's like saying, well, if you can,
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we have to have socialized medicine because a free market of medicine has never been tried. It's like,
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okay, I mean, I think that's kind of an argument you wouldn't make either.
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Right, right. I certainly, I certainly would not. I do think there are degrees here. I think,
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you know, I think states have approximated democratic republics better than the, you know,
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And I'm going to say one more thing. I think certain laws are certainly much more legitimate
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than others. I mean, laws against murder are legitimate, not because they're laws,
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because it's, uh, you cannot violate someone's rights and hurt them. And certain other things,
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like if there's a government program for food stamps, and this is the extent of the state at
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that point, I'll be like, fine, I don't really care. I'm not going to fight this one. I don't want
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people starving and hungry, especially children. And if it's wasteful as well, I'm fine with that too.
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So when you say the law against murder is legit because, not because it's a civil law, but
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because you have a right not to be murdered, you're, you're saying you're, you're drawing a
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distinction between the civil law and the moral law. The moral law is eternal and the civil law is
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But then the, the moral law seems to imply a moral law giver. And would you go that far that it
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implies that God exists? Uh, whatever gets you there, I'm happy with it. I mean, I I'm not an
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atheist at all. Uh, but I think this is such a complicated, very personal issue for a lot of
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people that if they have to have it grounded in this or that, whatever reason it takes for you
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not to be hurting other people, I'm fine with you getting there as long as you agree to live
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peacefully and benevolently with your fellow man. But I suppose the reason I even bring it up
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is not to make lots of arguments for the existence of God, but because if we grant, if we keep
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referring to the moral order and we grant that the moral order implies a moral law giver, then
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we're, we're granting legitimate authority to someone above ourselves. And, and furthermore,
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we are, I, I, I think we can easily infer that we must put some limits on the pursuit of our own
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passions that if God really exists. And if we are creations of God, then we owe something to him.
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We have obligation. We are not merely born with rights, but we actually are not permitted by that
00:21:56.260
moral law to pursue our own passions. We put limits on our, on our freedom in that way.
00:22:01.460
Uh, I don't know that I would use that exact verbiage though. I would agree with the message
00:22:05.420
in between the lines. Uh, I went to yeshiva as a kid. Uh, we went, came here from Russia and I went
00:22:10.720
straight there. And one of the things we were taught about how to look at life in this perspective is
00:22:15.980
under Judaism, the worst thing you could do is kill yourself because God has given you this gift of
00:22:20.880
life. It's this amazing adventure. Uh, the Christian focus on the afterlife is something that, you know,
00:22:26.320
in Judaism is not really a thing because it's kind of like, why are you fast forwarding the tape
00:22:30.680
when you've been giving this most miraculous gift that you should push toward its fullest, uh, and do
00:22:37.160
to the utmost what you can with it. Now, at the same time, that is also in many ways,
00:22:41.900
the ideology of Ayn Rand, who's a violent, uh, atheist, uh, you know, very against the concept
00:22:47.460
of religion and God. So, I mean, as I said, the black flag comes in many colors. My goal is a
00:22:53.800
voluntary, peaceful society. And I think religion for many people, if that's the means to get there,
00:22:59.000
I'm certainly not going to be the one telling them that they're wrong. I'm also not the one telling
00:23:02.640
them that that's the only path towards being peaceful and kind. But I suppose then even taking
00:23:08.820
this further, it creates this problem for anarchism because I'll, I'll just use Christianity as the
00:23:13.560
example, as the dominant religion in the West. Sure. Romans chapter 13, St. Paul says, writing
00:23:19.200
infallibly, right, uh, that, or inerrant, inerrantly that, uh, political rule comes from God. The civil
00:23:27.500
authority is instituted by God. He says explicitly, submit to your rulers. Now, over time there, this
00:23:33.940
has, uh, been, this idea has been developed. St. Thomas Aquinas famously, uh, recognizes some
00:23:40.620
exceptions to this and causes for political revolution, even though they're, they have to
00:23:44.940
be quite extreme. Uh, but, but then if one is a believing Christian and one says, submit to your
00:23:51.520
rulers, one sees that the civil authority is legitimate and instituted by God. How can he be
00:23:57.480
an anarchist? I don't think he can, but if I'll just make two more points. First of all,
00:24:02.240
I don't think the American concept is that the people of Washington are rulers, but leaders.
00:24:06.240
And I think there's a very important distinction to be had there too. If you want to tell me with
00:24:10.380
a straight face that, uh, Bill Clinton was heaven sent, uh, that is a perfectly valid position.
00:24:15.720
And I really have no argument to tell you. I mean, I don't understand how someone could look at,
00:24:20.140
uh, uh, um, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi. I think this is a choir of angels.
00:24:26.340
It makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever, but I will also point out that you, that Christian
00:24:31.860
perspective is not at all, of course, within Christianity universal Tolstoy, who's one of
00:24:36.680
the most prominent authors of all time was a Christian anarchism. And in the anarchist handbook,
00:24:41.320
there is an entire chapter of his views about why his Christianity leads him to have an anarchist
00:24:46.200
perspective. Yeah. No, I think of Tolstoy, you know, he, uh, you wouldn't call him the most
00:24:51.160
Orthodox Christian, but he did, he certainly had Christian views. And, uh, yes, and you see,
00:24:55.840
you do see this develop, especially in the last few hundred years, there have been people who try
00:24:59.660
to reconcile this thing. I mean, there are even people who try to reconcile Christianity with
00:25:02.720
socialism. Although many, many popes say, don't do that. It's very, very bad idea.
00:25:06.800
I don't know if you know this, but what would Jesus do came from Christian socialism. It is a
00:25:11.340
heretical concept, but the guy who put it forward, this is in the 1870s, not only was that he
00:25:16.860
explicitly was for spreading socialism. He also invented cancel culture because if you read that
00:25:22.920
book in his steps, one of the things he points out is if you're running a newspaper, you shouldn't
00:25:27.380
be talking about boxing because Jesus wouldn't like people punching each other. So we should
00:25:31.160
pretend it doesn't exist. So there's a lot of Venn diagrams that we had historically. And I think
00:25:36.200
it's absolutely fascinating how Christianity has been tried to be ported to different ideologies,
00:25:41.020
including many Christians, very disappointingly in the thirties, uh, pastors who are advocating for
00:25:45.960
Stalinism because they thought this was this, uh, ideal of equality, how they wrap their heads
00:25:50.860
around this between like what priests are being murdered and by force, uh, encouraged to denounce
00:25:56.600
their faith. I don't know, but a lot of, I don't have to make excuses for them.
00:26:00.600
Well, you know, so this brings up actually the, the coalition of right, right-wingers call it the
00:26:07.260
new right, call it conservatives. They come from very different perspectives. And so, you know,
00:26:11.560
famously in the kind of Buckley, Frank Meyer fusionist coalition, you had the traditional
00:26:16.440
conservatives, the libertarians and the Warhawk Democrats, and they came together because they
00:26:20.300
all hated the Soviet union to some effect, or they defeated the Soviet union, though they ignored a
00:26:24.960
lot of, a lot of things at home. But you've got then, you've got anarchism, which, uh, you know,
00:26:32.340
as you say, is basically incompatible with Christianity, though there are some exceptions.
00:26:36.200
I did not say that at all. You did you not? I thought you said, I thought you said that if
00:26:39.880
you're a believing Christian who believes Romans 13. No, no, no, no. I said, no, no. If you believe
00:26:43.380
those specific aspects of Christianity, that you have to obey your rulers, uh, and that, uh, and
00:26:48.180
that these rulers are basically God sent, that that is not compatible. But if you're, if you're a
00:26:52.020
Christian, you believe that the Bible is inerrant, unless you're a heretic like Leo Tolstoy or someone
00:26:56.000
else. Well, I, I mean, I would think Tolstoy would regard you as the heretic here. So I mean,
00:27:00.180
but he's wrong. It's the wrong, I mean, you know, neither, neither of us will ever be as great a man as Tolstoy.
00:27:06.120
I think it's fair to say. I think, well, I think we're both much better men than Leo Tolstoy,
00:27:10.280
by the way. He was a, he was a degenerate. He was a very good writer, but he was an absolute
00:27:13.660
degenerative human being. Well, in all fairness, you and I both did hit the number one nonfiction
00:27:18.620
book in Amazon, which I don't think he ever did. So in one sense, we are better writers than Tolstoy.
00:27:24.280
Yes, no, that, that is true. And you know, Tolstoy, he needed all of those words to write. I mean,
00:27:28.320
God, that book goes on and on. And you know, at least my, my first book didn't need a single word at
00:27:33.100
all. So I think, okay, so then you, okay, you've got Tolstoy aside, but, but let's say you've got
00:27:37.920
now in the new right, you've got anarchists such as yourself and other people, and maybe
00:27:42.580
some followers of Ayn Rand or, you know, kind of from that wing. Then you've got traditional,
00:27:47.960
just knuckle dragging to the right of Genghis Khan conservatives that I would, I would place
00:27:52.320
myself in that camp. Thrown an altar, theocratic fascist, I don't know, whatever term they want to
00:27:58.160
use. Then you've got, I don't know, today on foreign policy, I don't even know what would
00:28:02.280
constitute a conservative. My question is practically, you know, I mean, is it, is it
00:28:07.000
the Bush era thing? I don't think it's that. Is it the non-interventionist? Yeah. So how do you get
00:28:11.960
enough people together to, to unite that? Because, you know, for, for all of the many faults that Bill
00:28:17.260
Buckley had as he was trying to build this coalition, he did manage to bring people together
00:28:21.640
and win at least a couple of elections. What, how can we do that now with all these disparate factions
00:28:26.160
on the right? So I don't think that it's a numbers game. Uh, I think if you look at,
00:28:31.220
let's suppose if someone's pro-life, right. Or pro-choice that only took nine people to make
00:28:35.960
that decision. Uh, the anarchist view and Emma Goldman discusses this, uh, you know,
00:28:40.580
in the anarchist handbook is the majority cannot reason. So these vast number of people today will
00:28:46.320
be arguing for, you know, uh, black lives matter tomorrow. They'll be wearing the yellow ribbons to
00:28:51.160
support the war in Kuwait. Uh, they are really not of relevance. They're kind of ballast.
00:28:56.160
And history is always made. There's a book called the Machiavellians with James Burnham,
00:29:00.260
who was a national review writer mentioned. It's always about elites who are making history and
00:29:05.200
making decisions. And if you and I both know the number of people who are making political
00:29:09.940
decisions and choice and moving political thinking in America, it's gotta be under 2000 people.
00:29:15.560
It's, it's actually a much smaller number than people appreciate. If you add in the people,
00:29:19.220
the think tanks, you know, all of Congress and Senate, all the governors and all of us jerks on
00:29:23.720
Twitter, it may be, we're hitting 5,000. So, uh, people tend to, and that explains why you could
00:29:29.720
go from Obama to Trump to Biden and to W before that, this seems to be a vacillation. You realize
00:29:35.480
people are not politically involved necessarily. And even if they are involved, they're just really
00:29:40.240
not, they're going to be able to have perfectly contradictory views. So democracy is not a mechanism
00:29:45.180
toward fear of freedom and is in fact antithetical toward freedom.
00:29:48.420
Yeah. That used to be considered a very conservative view. I mean,
00:29:51.320
that was the view of the founding fathers, even, you know, as they were constructing this
00:29:54.180
constitutional Republic now though, they were terrorists though. Yeah. You know,
00:29:57.940
George Washington has several warrants after his arrest. They were saying we have to hang
00:30:01.540
together. We're going to hang separately. They were ready to kill all those founding fathers.
00:30:05.020
And, and that's right. That's right. They certainly, you know, had they lost the war,
00:30:08.120
they all would have been hanged without question. Oh yeah. But, but now I don't know how this
00:30:12.580
happened, but now we're told that if you in any way question mob rule, you are, or it really,
00:30:18.440
if you in any way question the ruling elite, that you are a threat to our democracy, our,
00:30:23.960
our sacred, by which of course they mean their oligarchy, right? But then our hegemony is what
00:30:29.980
they mean. It all, if you, I had that tweet, if you replace our democracy with our hegemony,
00:30:34.540
everything becomes much more clear. And the reason they need it to be hegemonic,
00:30:38.960
they need to have a monopoly on the microphone because before you and I were born, uh, you had three
00:30:43.920
networks and you had ABC, CBS and NBC. So you had the impression of choice, but these were all
00:30:49.900
strongly left of center anchors presenting things in a strong left of center context. But it gives
00:30:54.860
the illusion that, Oh, I made this decision. I picked B instead of C I'm an independent thinker.
00:30:59.560
This is a big lie. Now they're still apoplectic that Fox news exists, right? And they're trying
00:31:05.960
to regain a monopoly control over cable news. While at the same time, fewer and fewer Americans,
00:31:11.340
especially young people are watching cable news as a means of, uh, getting their information at all.
00:31:16.740
They're turning toward the internet and daily wire and other podcasts and other, uh, resources like
00:31:21.120
that. That's another reason to be enormously optimistic. It's not, people are no longer trying
00:31:25.660
to argue. They're just turning off the television and you're not, if the audience isn't listening to
00:31:30.500
you, it's really hard to control them. Yes. And you know, I, I love your observation about this,
00:31:36.760
this illusory choice. The idea we think, Oh yeah, good. My team won. No,
00:31:40.660
except I'm not getting really anything I voted for. And no, now their team won a way. They seem
00:31:45.220
to just be pursuing. I refer to the phenomenon sometimes as the, the court jester conservative.
00:31:51.060
I think, you know, Romney types who their whole job is to Buckley. Buckley was the court jester.
00:31:58.260
Don't you dare say, okay, make your case. Cause I still like Buckley, but what, what's your,
00:32:02.480
what's the argument? My book, then you're right. Demonstrates why Buckley is the great villain
00:32:07.100
of conservatism because his job was to be the court jester. The national review slogan is standing
00:32:12.980
a thwart history, yelling, stop, right? Well, some of us actually want to stop it. So you can stand
00:32:17.620
there and yell all you want, but that's a declaration of impotence and of powerlessness.
00:32:21.580
And, you know, he had some great lines when he ran for mayor in New York city, they asked him,
00:32:25.800
what would you do if you want? He said, demand a recount. He was very clever and very witty,
00:32:29.820
but at the same time he's putting on this pantomime where he's being completely steamrolled by the left.
00:32:34.880
Uh, and his biggest accomplishments politically in many ways was kicking out people to his right
00:32:41.120
and declaring them on persons. Now he had that power back when media was more tightly managed
00:32:46.400
and controlled, but now, uh, you know, it's very hard for anyone for better or worse. Certainly
00:32:51.140
there's worse aspects as well to have that position to be like, okay, this person no longer exists.
00:32:56.140
Yeah, I do. I do see a lot of the criticisms of Buckley. I, my, my defense of him though,
00:33:01.460
is when you look at basically the Wilson era through 1950, when he comes out with God and
00:33:08.420
man at Yale, conservatives had just consistently lost. Even when we had Republicans, we just
00:33:13.380
consistently lose. And so Buckley comes in and he says, I'm going to stand a thwart history yelling
00:33:18.460
stop. He starts to turn the conversation slightly. He, that first book, he makes a mockery of academic
00:33:24.120
freedom, goes after the institutions, which I love. By the way, there are many conservatives today
00:33:28.140
who will defend academic freedom on leftist terms. Buckley in, in the fifties was realized
00:33:33.300
that was crazy. He, his next book defends Joe McCarthy, which I love. I think that's a fabulous
00:33:38.060
book. He was still defending McCarthy a dozen years later, though he later came to kind of temper it.
00:33:42.700
So I, I agree. It's very sad. A lot of the, a lot of the 20th century was just a process of
00:33:50.000
conservatives losing. But I do think, you know, Buckley, I think he deserves credit for what he did with
00:33:55.620
what he had. And I just, I'm not convinced that there were others who could have done much better.
00:34:01.220
That's possible. I'll just say one more thing. A big difference in me and Buckley is he wants to
00:34:05.460
fix Yale and I want to burn it to the ground. Yeah. So, and I think that is just an ideological
00:34:10.940
difference in, in perspective. Yeah. In terms of goals and values. And by the way, there were,
00:34:15.340
you know, I think of Roger Scruton, the late, late, great conservative philosopher, very famously
00:34:20.040
said, you know, the difference between conservatives and leftists is leftists want to destroy things
00:34:25.620
and conservatives want to just build them. It's harder to build than to destroy. But by the end
00:34:30.080
of his life, Scruton was asked what he thought about academia. And he said, knock it down. You got
00:34:35.180
to, it's irredeemable. It's that when these riots were happening last year, I was like, can't someone
00:34:40.940
toss them a map to Cambridge? Yeah, I know that, you know, and there's also this question of
00:34:47.480
in the 1950s or 60s, was there a chance to try, you know, after, before the conservatives had really
00:34:53.960
been routed on, in every aspect of the culture, was there a chance to say that maybe, or maybe not,
00:35:00.200
maybe it was misguided even to try to do that. But I certainly think now the much more appealing option
00:35:05.800
is knock down these institutions. You know, when, when a house is so rotted out that it's no longer
00:35:12.220
structurally sound, you just got to knock it down and start again. Welcome to anarchism.
00:35:17.480
Michael, I'm glad, I'm glad to have brought you over. So I, you know, knock it down and build
00:35:23.260
voluntary, private, helpful institutions instead. There's, all you're conserving at this point is
00:35:29.660
Woodrow Wilson's accomplishments. Yeah. I, you know, the, the only thing that I would disagree,
00:35:34.500
because I do think we need a far greater focus on localism. I do think that the minute we look at
00:35:40.640
Washington DC, we are losing. Especially for charity. Let's talk about that. Like when you're
00:35:46.260
talking about poor people, there's like at least two kinds of poor people, right? People are criminals
00:35:49.640
and just like lazy. And then people who, through circumstances, maybe they grew up in the wrong
00:35:53.420
neighborhood. They really didn't have opportunities. If you have these programs voluntary, even through
00:35:58.640
the state at a local level, it's a much easier to sift out. Same thing with public schools, right?
00:36:04.540
In the inner city, you have the kids who are, have terrible upbringings. Their parents don't care
00:36:08.620
about them. And then you have the kids who are acting out and violent in school. Why are they locked in the
00:36:13.280
same room together? That is completely antithetical and downright inhumane.
00:36:18.460
But now I, I, I think the difference might be this. If you tomorrow were offered the opportunity
00:36:24.060
to knock down all of Washington DC or to hold political power, somehow the people gave you
00:36:31.480
power and you were able to kick out enough bureaucrats that you actually could wield political
00:36:35.380
power. Which would you take? Would you wield the arm of the state for good?
00:36:39.840
Assault the earth so much, it would look like the Dead Sea. A, A, A, I'm pressing the button so fast,
00:36:46.180
my finger's getting a blister. That's fair enough. I, you know, I, I, I'm sort of of the opinion that
00:36:53.340
the left managed to do a lot of things at once. It managed to destroy Hollywood, take over the
00:36:58.880
institutions, take up and, and wield political power. And, and I, I think that conservatives for a
00:37:04.120
long time have, have tied our hands behind our backs because we've had a lot of procedural
00:37:08.680
arguments about, well, we're originalists, but not conservatives. And we don't actually want to do
00:37:13.060
anything. And we want, we just want to be elected so that we can do less and let the left basically
00:37:18.360
run the government. And I just think if we wielded some political power for the good, the true and
00:37:23.600
the beautiful, if we made these kinds of distinctions, that could be great. But I agree
00:37:27.240
with you practically, uh, that's probably not going to happen anytime soon. And so a focus on local
00:37:33.600
And I would, I would say one more thing. I don't think the left took over these institutions. I think
00:37:37.180
the left built these institutions. If you look at the Ivy leagues, they were designed to train the
00:37:41.940
next generation of elites. Well, this was the progressive model. You know, you have these kind
00:37:46.540
of smart cadres in Washington. You had the brain trust with FDR, which kind of it's apex, and they're
00:37:52.180
the ones who are educated and they know what's best for everyone. And you could see this in example,
00:37:56.320
Dr. Fauci, we can assume for the sake of argument that Dr. Fauci is the most brilliant doctor who's ever
00:38:01.260
lived. This person has not been elected and can't be unelected. So you see how their model isn't,
00:38:07.400
even though they play lip service to our democracy, when push comes to shove, the people who are put in
00:38:12.620
positions are not democratically accountable to anything.
00:38:15.860
But, but are you anti-elite per se? I'm anti-unjust.
00:38:20.420
Right. So, I mean, you know, the fact that Harvard and Yale were seminaries, though, I don't particularly
00:38:24.900
agree with their denomination, but I, you know, it doesn't bother me that they were producing
00:38:28.320
preachers and elites and statesmen. They still are. And they still are.
00:38:32.100
Secular preachers. I mean, I'm not joking. Rachel Maddow is literally a televangelist
00:38:36.180
for her evangelical faith. It's just, she doesn't mention the Bible, but she gives you moral lessons.
00:38:42.600
She tells you who the bad people are, and then you go to your office the next morning and you
00:38:47.520
promulgate the sermon. It's literally a televangelist. But this is, this is my point then. If we're,
00:38:52.300
if we're not anti-elite per se, rather than, you know, just totally demolishing all sorts of
00:38:58.140
hierarchy and institutions and coercive power, but either in civic associations or in the
00:39:02.420
government, why don't we on the right just become the elites? Frankly, I think we already are the
00:39:08.360
elites philosophically and politically or philosophically. And as a matter of, you know,
00:39:13.920
recognizing how a society ought to function, we just don't have the political power right now.
00:39:17.920
So why don't, why don't we just become the elites? Because central planning and political
00:39:21.620
planning is not practical. So even if you're in Washington, you can't design a program that's going
00:39:26.880
to work at all competitively to the market. You're never going to have a, like, if you're
00:39:31.380
saying, well, let's have conservatives run socialized healthcare. No, no, I'm not saying
00:39:35.420
it. No, but I'm saying like any kind of, as, as one example, if they're going to be running
00:39:39.900
any program, that program inherently is not going to be able to work because it doesn't
00:39:43.820
have information that markets provide you. You're not going to have information about supply.
00:39:47.720
You're going to have information about price because you're going to have all these market
00:39:50.840
distortions because the use of force, which is the essential aspect of government is going
00:39:55.620
to cause externalities. No, I agree with that, but I'm saying, why don't we run the universities
00:40:00.960
so that we can, rather than indoctrinate in a bunch of ridiculous nonsense, we can teach good
00:40:05.860
and true things. Why don't we run the courts so that we can have just systems of laws? I mean,
00:40:10.160
so that would be- There's no such thing as just law. It's a complete fallacy. If you read the book,
00:40:14.780
the essay in my book, The Myth of Objective Law by John Hasnas, who's a Georgetown law professor,
00:40:19.980
he talks about how this concept of just law is really nonsensical. And I'll give you one
00:40:25.320
example that you will agree with. It's in the book as well. There's an old lady,
00:40:29.960
and she basically signed a contract with some Samba instructor for $10,000, right? What's the
00:40:35.620
just approach? One can say, the point of law is so people don't get exploited. We have to break the
00:40:41.500
contract. The other person could say, the contract is the basis of law. It's not the court's job to be
00:40:47.320
an activist judge. We have to honor the contract. Both of those are perfectly reasonable,
00:40:52.020
perfectly objective, and demonstrate that no matter who the judge is, they're going to bring
00:40:56.740
their preconceptions to the court system. If you had a decentralized system where you can choose
00:41:04.520
what kind of rules you follow, it will have much more just and efficient and cheaper outcomes.
00:41:10.260
But isn't that only a problem if you believe that the free consent of individuals and maximizing
00:41:18.180
individual autonomy is the end of government? If you really believe that this woman has some right
00:41:23.280
or the Samba instructor has a right to sign a $10,000 contract, whereas if you think that's
00:41:29.040
hogwash and you believe that justice is the end of government and you believe that you don't actually
00:41:33.340
have the right to do wrong and you don't have the right to just pursue whatever whims your will tells
00:41:37.840
you, then couldn't you appeal to a higher authority? Couldn't you say it's immoral, it's exploitative,
00:41:43.400
it violates some aspect of the natural law rather than... So you're in favor of judicial activism
00:41:48.540
when it suits your purposes? No, I'm in favor of the natural law and I'm in favor of justice.
00:41:54.160
If the basis of government is justice, why is it so darn bad delivering it? Let me hold on. If I'm
00:42:00.480
going to go to a restaurant and they're serving sushi and the fish keeps getting cooked, at a certain
00:42:05.700
point this is not a sushi restaurant. Sure, but this is a fallen world. I mean, I suppose this would be
00:42:11.680
one of my divergences from some anarchists or some sort of proto-anarchists. I'm not arguing that
00:42:16.780
the words not fall. I don't think this is a utopia. I don't think utopias are possible. I agree with you
00:42:20.780
that there's a lot of depravity in any country and that is inevitable. So therefore, any system of
00:42:26.920
justice is going to be imperfect. There's no question about that. Sure. So granted all of that,
00:42:32.820
some systems of justice are better than others. Sure. I'm more interested in peace than justice.
00:42:38.160
And if you and I, maybe you invited me out to dinner and then basically you stick me with the
00:42:44.860
bill, justice would be like, I'm going to pitch a fit. But at the same time, I could be like, okay,
00:42:49.480
that's Michael being Michael. It applied both. We're both Michael. So either of us can be the
00:42:53.360
jerk in the situation and we can roll our eyes and not pursue justice. So that's charity.
00:42:57.300
Sure. And I love charity. I've always relied on the kindness of strangers.
00:43:01.300
But I'm also biting my tongue, right? Because you did do me an injustice and you didn't pay for the
00:43:05.760
bill like you promised, right? We all have to have these little compromises in our day-to-day
00:43:10.200
lives. So I think justice as a term is overrated. Let's talk about criminals. I perfectly have no
00:43:15.900
problem with someone who's like an assailant on children or a violent criminal. They void their
00:43:21.100
right to life, right? I have no issue with that. At the same time, my biggest concern isn't
00:43:26.540
retribution. My biggest concern is how do I make sure this person is never in a position to harm
00:43:33.500
people again? That to me is a far bigger priority than seeing justice be had necessarily.
00:43:38.500
But I recognize that temptation. I think it's widespread now to make rehabilitation or deterrence.
00:43:44.500
I didn't say rehabilitation. No, I didn't say rehabilitation. I just said the goal of why prison
00:43:48.560
is important in many cases isn't justice, but like we got to get this guy off the streets because if he's
00:43:54.080
on the streets, he's going to be killing people. But if that is the primary purpose of the prison,
00:43:57.900
then don't you open yourself up to all sorts of moral quandaries. For instance, if, as I believe
00:44:03.900
it is, the purpose of prison is retribution for people who have primarily retribution, although
00:44:08.680
deterrence and rehabilitation are secondary matters, then a guy commits a crime, you bring him up on a
00:44:15.080
trial, you throw him in the can. If the primary purpose of prison is to get bad people off the
00:44:20.480
streets, then couldn't you throw someone in prison before they've committed a crime, right? Because
00:44:24.620
they're very likely to, because some social scientific data set has suggested that they're
00:44:28.840
likely to commit one. Well, that is the progressive mindset, right? That if you follow the science,
00:44:33.240
and I don't think at all, I think you, if someone has to have demonstrably actually done something
00:44:38.920
before they're likely to do something, I don't think that's a, that are, you obviously don't
00:44:43.580
think that that's. I don't either. But I think that if, if you come to the conclusion that you and I
00:44:47.880
have, then you, you must also conclude that the primary purpose, the sort of predicate for criminal
00:44:52.720
justice is retribution rather than some secondary goal. I don't think it's retribution. If the
00:44:58.940
person hasn't done anything, what are you, what are you being retributive? That's what I mean. I
00:45:02.400
don't think you should go to prison if you haven't done anything, but I think that therefore the
00:45:05.640
primary purpose of prisons, for instance, is retribution. That is to say it is justice rather
00:45:10.600
than some secondary aspect of imprisonment. I wouldn't agree that retribution and justice are
00:45:15.720
anywhere near synonymous. And I think a lot of times, again, and my goal, first of all,
00:45:22.400
the prison system's a whole other conversation, which I'm sure you and I could have because there's
00:45:26.300
lots of people who weren't in prison. And the thing you as a Christian certainly would agree is
00:45:30.580
things like the death penalty and innocent people being killed, although you might argue that that's
00:45:36.140
overblown. When that individual is innocent, that is something that is really a knock against
00:45:41.100
the society and something that should not be taken lightly. Camus had this great essay called
00:45:45.080
Reflections in the Guillotine, which I think I would encourage people to read. So this is a
00:45:49.520
very complicated issue. One that knocks against anarchism is that it's utopian, right? And I would
00:45:54.960
argue, and I'm sure you would agree, when you have criminals or accused criminals, you don't want to
00:46:02.000
put away innocent people, and you do want to make sure you get the ones who should be removed from
00:46:05.920
society. So how you get there is not going to be easily answered under any system.
00:46:10.680
Yes, I agree. And I also agree, speaking of this non-utopian stuff, the most important thing
00:46:16.700
right now, you know, this word praxis comes up in a lot of sort of anarchist or communist discourse.
00:46:22.740
And the praxis is very important here, because we actually have to do stuff. And so, you know,
00:46:26.740
I know that there are some conservatives, and Buckley to a degree certainly indulged in this,
00:46:31.380
who punch right a lot of the time. And I just think it is madness right now for people who in any
00:46:36.520
way consider themselves on the right, whether they're traditionalists, religious right, libertarian,
00:46:41.080
anarchist, whatever ism you want to add. There is now a consolidation of power at the level of the
00:46:47.920
ruling class and liberal establishment that is about to prevent us from using PayPal. It's about
00:46:52.360
to prevent us from using, I mean, actually, PayPal made this announcement today. They're teaming up
00:46:56.660
with the ADL. I mean, this is really terrifying stuff. And so I agree, we need to boot utopianism
00:47:03.040
and figure out a way to push back against it. And Michael, you are offering us a white pill.
00:47:08.380
And I'm going to say one more thing. If anyone's listening to me to listen to my advice,
00:47:12.980
focus on government schools, because government schools are literal prisons for children and the
00:47:17.580
only place many people experience violence in their lifetimes. And now that's one of the silver
00:47:22.680
linings of these lockdowns, that increasing numbers of people, regardless of the ideology,
00:47:27.060
realized just how depraved and dangerous these schools are and are taking their kids out. So if
00:47:33.000
conservatives are skeptical of the government, as they say, do not hand your children over to these
00:47:38.220
people to raise them for you and be surprised when they come out despising you and everything you
00:47:43.120
stand for. Yeah. I mean, and you even see the extension of school that went from first through 12th,
00:47:48.140
then they added kindergarten, then preschool, then now subsidized college. They're going to
00:47:52.200
eventually have your kids for like 20 years straight. I kid you not, a relative of mine
00:47:57.320
sent a kid to preschool at like two and a half. I don't even know what that preschool is. And it
00:48:02.920
obviously shapes your child's mind. It educates them, right? It develops who they are. And very
00:48:09.120
important not to give the state that power, to give the ruling elite that power. Michael, you are,
00:48:14.960
seriously, I say this sincerely, one of the most intelligent people out there in the right-wing
00:48:19.160
media today. You haven't convinced me on anarchism yet, but we'll have to save that for next time,
00:48:23.960
perhaps. And thank you for being so interesting. Yeah. Wait a second. Hold on here. Michael Malice,
00:48:29.660
the new book, The White Pill, the other book, The Anarchist Handbook, and then my favorite title,
00:48:34.960
Dear Reader, The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong-il. Michael, thank you for being,
00:48:38.720
where can people find you, by the way? On Twitter, Michael Malice. The White Pill will be
00:48:42.400
out later this year, but anarchishhandbook.com. All right. Look forward to speaking again,
00:48:45.580
Michael. Take care. All right. Good to see you, Michael. Thanks.