Prove Me Wrong： Michael Knowles At America Fest
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Summary
In this episode, Pastor Ken Burns speaks at the annual CPUSA convention and answers a question from the audience about public vs. private Christian education and what role does the Bible have in American education? Join us as we discuss all things education, religion, and politics.
Transcript
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Thank you guys so much for being here. It's a great honor to be here.
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What time of the morning? Okay, it's not that early. I don't know, maybe it's just,
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it feels early because I was out at the cigar party last night. It's great to be with all of
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you. Thank you for making it out. I am so, so pleased. I want to give a big thank you,
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a big shout out to TPUSA, the unbelievable team here, who has just done heroic work in keeping
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everything going and growing and advancing, just as I think we all know our friend Charlie would
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have wanted. Just incredible work from TPUSA and incredible work from all of you. Thank you.
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I've never done one of these. You know, Charlie was the king of this and now a bunch of Charlie's
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friends are going to be sitting in all day. So go easy on me, please. I don't, he was, but we,
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but you know, one thing that we all really, really have loved over the years and I think has really
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helped our political movement is that we're willing to have these conversations. People come up,
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no notes, no anything, no rules, ask anything you want and we'll, we'll try to get at the truth
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and we'll try to move on forward together. So who's the first question? Love your hat.
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I love your hat, but I hate your microphone because I can't hear you.
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So my question is, what is your opinions on private Christian schools versus public education?
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I'm sorry. I still hate your microphone and I can't quite hear you.
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So private schools versus Christian run organizations in college education.
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Christian versus public education. So the first thing we have to all recognize is that education
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is not merely a private endeavor. So I love that homeschooling is normalized now. I've been
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homeschooling my children. I think the reason that homeschooling really took up, it's great.
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Of course we do. Of course we do here. The, all of the public school kids are at the like BLM rally
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down the street, but every, all the homeschoolers are here at TPUSA. So I do it. I really love it.
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I think it's great. Part of the reason homeschooling really took off in recent years was because during
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COVID, the students went home, the parents actually got to see what their students were being taught
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and they yanked them out as quickly as they possibly could. So that was a great temporary solution.
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Christian education is a great alternative to the secular public schools, but it's not the final
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stop because education is a public thing. It's a political thing. It creates and shapes whole citizens.
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It shapes whole souls, you know? And so I think that conservatives would make a mistake
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if we merely retreated to the Christian schools, private parochial schools, and homeschooling.
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That's all good. I'm all for it. But we need to go a step further and we need to reassert ourselves
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in the public schools as well. You know, there didn't used to be a difference between Christian
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schooling and public schooling. It was all the same thing because until the middle of the 20th century,
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you were able to, I don't know, read the Bible in schools, you know, the most important book ever
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written without which you can't know anything about anything at all. You know, you were able to pray
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in schools. Our friend Yoram Hazzoni, great philosopher, suggests that taking the Bible out
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of schools, prayer out of schools, was the most catastrophic event of the 20th century in terms
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of our country. So look, I encourage everyone, yes, do the homeschooling, do the Christian private
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schools if you can afford it, if you can find a good one. But let's go further. Let's make more
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demands of our country. Let's make more demands of the public school system. Let's fight the
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bad guys. Let's fight the public teacher unions. Let's go in there. Let's overturn ridiculous
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Supreme Court decisions. And let's restore seriousness to education. It's about raising up whole people.
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It's not just reading, writing, and arithmetic. Great question.
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Thank you, sir, for taking my question. I want to preface that I'm a devout Christian as well as
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not a racist, which feels like something I shouldn't even have to say in America. But my question or
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maybe topic for debate for you today is I do not believe that Islam and those practicing this religion
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are compatible with institutions of the West, considering their long track record and the fact
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that their core book, the Quran, most literally says to, for example, kill the unbelievers, and then
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I don't think you're going to get much debate out of me on that particular question.
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Although there are some who do want to debate that on the right. And I think there are some people
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who think that we can form some kind of enduring alliance with Islam. There can be some synthesis,
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say, between Islam and the liberalism that came out of Christianity and maybe Christian civilization
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itself. And to them, I would just say, seems like wishful thinking, because to your point,
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Christendom, which we now call the West, has been in conflict with Islam for roughly 1,400 years.
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So this began very shortly after the invention of Islam. The first real clash between the Christian
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West, between Europe and Islam took place in 732. And it didn't take place in Arabia. It didn't even
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really take place in the Levant. It took place 150 miles outside of Paris. So Islam has endeavored to
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conquer the West many times over the course of history. The Battle of Lepanto, 1571 is a good example.
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The Battle of Vienna after that. Now we just sort of welcome them all in and allow them to defraud our
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welfare systems and create their religious rituals and buildings all over the world. So, no, it's not
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going to work. What do we do about that? Well, we have to recognize a very important word for
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conservatives. And the word is no. We've had a lot of trouble with the word no in recent years,
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haven't we? Even the conservatives have had trouble. We used to say, look, we want endless
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migration as long as it's legal. Flood the country with totally unassimilable cultures, but make sure
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they fill out the right paperwork before they come in. And that's ridiculous. It's not just the
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procedural norms that matter. It's the substantive goods that matter. We have believed that our country
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is totally open. It's just, some people would say it's just an idea, but what's crazy is some people
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would say it's not even, it's any idea. It's just anything at all. We can close our eyes and be
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whatever we want to be. But of course, a country that's everything is a country that's nothing.
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So we have to circumscribe what we mean. And we need to recognize, when we talk about the migration
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issue, for instance, we need to recognize that the question is not merely legal versus illegal.
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The question is not merely even numbers. You know, we'll take half a million versus two million or
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something. No. The question is, where is the migration coming from? What cultures have the habits,
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the institutions, the beliefs that work for us? I go back to John Adams. John Adams wrote to
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Thomas Jefferson in 1813. A little bit of bad blood between two of our founding fathers,
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but they both agreed in principle on what won the revolution. John Adams says,
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the general principles of Christianity in which all the sects agreed and the general principles of
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English and American liberty are the principles upon which independence was won. It is simply an
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historical fact that we are a Christian nation with a history of tolerating all sorts of deviations
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but nevertheless with a norm. The differences between the Christian and Muslim conceptions
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of God are manifest. In Christianity, God sends his son as a mediator between man and God. In Islam,
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God is wholly transcendent. There is no way to reach him. In Christianity, Christ is the divine logic of
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the universe. In Islam, God is pure will. As Pope Benedict XVI quotes Ibn Hazm, we get some shout-outs for
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Pope Benedict XVI out there. I don't think for Ibn Hazm. According to Islam, if Allah wanted his followers
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to worship idols, he could make them do so. These are radically different conceptions. They've led to
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radically different civilizations, and we can't just paper over those differences. We can be nice and
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kind, but we can't be everything to everyone. We have to be a specific civilization. And for us,
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if our civilization is not animated by the spirit, which has animated us from the beginning, namely
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the Holy Spirit, our civilization will be nothing at all. Thank you, sir, for your time.
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Can I sign that hat? Yes, sure. Throw it up. That's a good throw. Now, can you throw up a pen?
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That's a black hat with a black pen. How am I supposed to sign that?
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All right. Where'd he go? Look at that. I was terrible at baseball as a kid, but I'm glad that
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throw worked. Who's this at? All right. One more. One more. That's it. Now, I got to get back to
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answering these questions, because Charlie was way pithier than me. I'm a little more verbose,
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okay? We got to get through these questions. There we go. All right. Next question.
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Hello. My name is Chelsea, and I'm from New Jersey, and I wanted to ask you, should America
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implement free healthcare just like Canada and the UK? Should America have a universal socialized
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healthcare like Canada? I agree. I agree. No, we should not, though I see why some people want us to,
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because the American healthcare system is really messed up. Worth pointing out that the American
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healthcare system was created almost entirely by Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack
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Obama. So, you know, it doesn't have a great track record on who built it. I'm not surprised it
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hasn't worked out, and yet it's still preferable to what you see in Canada, because the conclusion
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of the Canadian healthcare system is death, and I mean that literally. A huge number of Canadians now
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every single year are killed, I think it's over five percent, are killed through government-encouraged
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physician-assisted suicide, which is contrary to the Hippocratic Oath and leads literally to the
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suicide of the whole country. Furthermore, though, you see a major rationing of care. So women who are
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under the age of 50 have a reasonable chance of getting breast cancer procedures in Canada. Women who
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are over the age of 70 basically do not. Something like 80 percent of women who are waiting for breast
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cancer surgeries over that age just did not get the procedures, because the government said they
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were old enough and they would rather ration the care and let the older women die. That's a ghastly
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kind of system. Furthermore, you have Canadians waiting months and months, years and years, for
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procedures, and many of whom will die because of that. You hear stories coming out of Canada, coming out of
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the United Kingdom, of people who have cancer in particular, who simply will not be given chemotherapy
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by the horrific regimes that have a monopoly on health care up there. And so what are they offered
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instead? They're offered the privilege of killing themselves. This is completely contrary to any sense
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of moral goodness. It's totally inhuman. It is as tyrannical as any government policy could be. I've long
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observed that Canada is America's evil top hat. George Washington did not conquer it for a reason,
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and I think we should leave them be and not adopt their terrible practices. Thank you very much.
00:12:19.160
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get back to the table. Good afternoon, Mr. Knowles, a big fan of your show. I'm a very devout
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Catholic myself. Praise God. My understanding is the only thing I disagree with you on is the one beef
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that you have with Mr. Walsh is I believe in aliens. I couldn't hear you. Is what? I believe
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in extraterrestrial life, that it is possible. Oh no, please. Hear me out. I know I said ask me
00:14:04.080
anything. I should have said ask me anything but this ridiculous new age Gnostic nonsense
00:14:10.220
about the little green man. I'm sorry, go on, go on. Yeah, so it was Kardashev who basically said
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that it'd be kind of ignorant to say that we are the only sentient terrestrial life out there.
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I do believe that God created man for one sole purpose, to inhabit the earth and to follow our
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savior Jesus Christ. Praise God. But I do think that it is possible within, you know, the 14 billion
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years that this universe has existed, that there are other forms of life out there. We just will
00:14:35.200
never know. So what is your rhetoric on that? Do you think it's likely that aliens exist?
00:14:39.580
I think it's likely. I think it's more like Schrodinger's box where it's like until you open the box,
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I mean, it's, you can neither prove nor disprove it and we'll never know the answer.
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That's somewhat more reasonable than Walsh's view that he's been like beamed up to the little
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green man and who knows what procedures has undergone. But no, I just don't buy it because
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the argument from the vast age of the universe or the immense size of the universe does very little
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to me in terms of ascertaining the probability that little green men exist. Because in order to
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ascertain the probability of anything, you need to know something about how the phenomenon came to
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be. And so when we're talking about how life could spring up in a physical sense, how you could go
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from inorganic matter to organic matter, we have absolutely no idea how that happened. Scientists
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have posited all sorts of crazy theories over the decades and none of them have been proven true.
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There's really no evidence for any of them. I mean, I believe that God made man out of clay
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and breathed into his nose and now man had life. And I think that whatever physical precision
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that description lacks, that is without question the clearest, most accurate view of how life came
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to be. So until someone can make a serious argument for abiogenesis, for instance, I see no reason
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to conclude that just because the universe is really big, that it has some other life in it.
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Just like, I have no reason to believe that just because my basement is really big,
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there's a bar of gold sitting somewhere in it. How did the bar of gold even get there in the first
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place? The theological problems that would come from this also come from the specialness of man
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as man, because God is a man. The mystery of the Trinity, which is the central mystery of the Christian
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faith, tells us that we have God the Father and God the Son, God the Son eternally begotten of God the
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Father, true God from true God, true light from true light, who becomes man, who is incarnate of the
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Holy Spirit, conceived by the Holy Spirit, incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and becomes man and ascends bodily
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into heaven. That his humanity is an essential part of Christ, of the Godhead. And there's no room for
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E.T. in there. So I don't know what it would mean for us to discover some extraterrestrial life.
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To me, it's a kind of an amusing thought experiment at best, and a demonic perversion at worst. Not to go like
00:17:20.880
to Alex Jones here, it's a demonic perversion, but I kind of think it is, because I think it's a way for the devil
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to whisper into our ears that man is not that special, which is of course the cause of the angels rebelling in
00:17:36.200
heaven. Them basically refusing to bow down to a man. And so I wouldn't follow it that far. The other
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reason I'm convinced aliens don't exist is because Walsh says they do exist. And so that alone should be
00:17:49.720
reason to conclude it. But in any case, regardless of your very mistaken view on this, live long and
00:18:00.620
Hello, my name is Lorelei. You are awesome. On your show, you had said that you don't believe that
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Christmas decorations should be for all year, and they should only be for around the days of Christmas.
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And I would like to say that I think that we should be allowed to have all the decorations out
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all year, so that you can see and you can celebrate and you can remember every day. And I will say, I don't
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mean like the Christmas tree or any of that stuff, but like Jesus baby, that kind of a thing, out all year
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so that you can see it and you can remember it every day.
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Okay, alright. You saved your point right there at the end. Because I freaking hate when the people put up
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the Christmas decorations. It used to be right after Thanksgiving, which I found preposterous. Then it became
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just before Thanksgiving. So that's Thanksgiving erasure. This is the American holiday. This is erasing the
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legacy of the men who came on the Mayflower, which is a great cigar company, by the way. And then, oh, thank you,
00:19:00.500
thanks. But now, I kid you not, I saw people putting up Christmas decorations the day, you can see how angry
00:19:06.880
I'm getting, the microphones aren't even working. I saw people put up Christmas decorations the day after
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Halloween. I said, this is, this is the problem with modern religion. We used to have first the fast and then the
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feast. Now we have first the feast and then the hangover. It's got to be special. Lent is a penitential
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period. Now, the modern Christians, they say during Lent, you need to meditate on hope and joy and no,
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no. You are traditionally, during Lent, Christians focus on the four last things, death, judgment,
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heaven, and hell. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. Okay? I want penitence. I want one song playing
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during Advent. I don't want to be Feliz Navidad rocking around the Christmas tree. I want that
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song to be, oh, come Emmanuel. Maybe if you're feeling spicy, come thou long-expected Jesus.
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But that's it. And then, I sound like Scrooge. Then you can put up your Christmas tree on the
00:20:09.980
evening of Christmas Eve, and you keep it up through February 8th. Who is that? I'm starting
00:20:14.420
to lose the audience on the Christmas. Okay, all right. I went too far. I went too far.
00:20:18.560
You keep it up through all of Christmas, 12 days, or bring it all the way up to February 8th. So,
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then you get to enjoy. That's what I'm doing on my set. Now, you make one other important point,
00:20:27.580
though, which is, well, look, maybe you don't put Santa Claus up all year, but you do have an image of
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maybe the baby Jesus. I think that's good. I have an image of, I have many images of Jesus in my house,
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one of which is the Theotokos tenderness. It's an Eastern icon of Mary holding the baby Jesus.
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And I think that's very important to put up. You need to have these symbols all over because,
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you know, we're in an age of iconoclasts on the left. They want to tear down our statues. They want
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to tear down our pictures. They want to tear down our whole culture. But we're physical creatures.
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That's the message of Christmas and the incarnation. And we got to see things with our senses in real life.
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We got to see images. Those images color our world. They elevate our mind up to God. So,
00:21:08.840
I totally agree. Keep pictures of the baby Jesus up all year long. But if you put Rudolph up one day
00:21:15.220
before Christmas Eve, I will come to your house like the Grinch and steal it up your chimney.
00:21:21.540
You're the best Obama impersonator on the internet. I'd just like to say that. I also think the GOP
00:21:31.500
should be the party to legalize marijuana federally. What's your position?
00:21:40.140
Listen here. I'm a cigar man, so I like combustible leaves. I'm not opposed to smoking generally. But
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you're not asking me about tobacco, the crop that built our country. No. You're asking me about the
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old sin spinach, the jazz cigarettes. You know what I mean? The Peruvian parsley, the Haitian oregano.
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I'm talking about Mary Jane reefer. I'm talking about pot. Yes.
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Which conservatives have long opposed. Why have we opposed it?
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Because just as we make distinctions between one nation and another nation,
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one culture and another culture, one religion and another religion,
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so too we make distinctions. Just because you roll something up, put it in your mouth and light it
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on fire, doesn't mean it's the same. So let me ask you, before I give you my final anti-pot
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reefer madness diatribe, why? What is the good that is achieved by legalizing pot?
00:22:35.880
Well, first, the economic benefits in Missouri when we legalized it. Immediately, we had
00:22:40.680
dispensaries opening when everywhere else was closed. Kind of weird about the COVID stuff,
00:22:45.040
but that's one. And then two, I think that the liberty of it, it's not as bad for society as
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alcohol is. So I think that we should have it. It's a liberty versus society thing. And I think
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the down effect on society is oversold. It's not as bad as we think it is.
00:23:00.060
Say that last part again. I couldn't hear you over the booze from the crowd.
00:23:02.860
I think that the effects on society are not as bad as we think they are. I think that
00:23:09.200
for the most part, nobody ever gets aggressive off of marijuana. They usually tend to keep
00:23:13.860
to themselves, maybe play too much video games or something, but they're not going to go
00:23:17.760
home and kick the dog because they had too much to smoke.
00:23:20.880
Okay. So to take those in order, the first one says that if you legalize pot, you'll get a new
00:23:29.100
industry, namely selling pot. That's true, though that argument alone could be used to justify
00:23:35.200
legalizing any manner of vice or deleterious activity. It could be used to defend the pornography
00:23:40.900
industry. It could be used to defend widespread gambling. It could be used to defend prostitution
00:23:45.700
or anything else. So we wouldn't say that just because something might make some money,
00:23:50.160
it is there for a good idea and even a conservative idea for us to legalize it.
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Then on the point about alcohol, I would have to push back a little bit. Alcohol can be abused,
00:24:00.300
just like any, I mean, cupcakes can be abused. Anything could be abused. But alcohol, when it's
00:24:04.900
used in moderation, has some good effects. It's a social lubricant. So it makes us more sociable.
00:24:11.340
It's a little bit relaxing. It encourages conversation, sometimes rowdy conversation,
00:24:16.940
as we discovered last night at the Mayflower party here in TPUSA. But it inclines us more
00:24:23.580
toward our human nature because man is a social creature, the political animal who is naturally
00:24:28.700
inclined to live in ordered society. Marijuana doesn't really do that. I'll make a little confession
00:24:34.100
here before all of you. I usually, I'm a Catholic, so I usually make my confessions in a box to a
00:24:39.180
priest, but I'll make it to this gigantic crowd. I might've tried the old left-hand cigarettes once
00:24:46.100
or twice. Okay. I might've tried it. It's not too bad. Unlike Bubba, I may have inhaled. I actually
00:24:51.980
have trouble inhaling because I'm a cigar man. But anyway, the thing I've noticed about pot,
00:24:55.940
anecdotally and personally, is that it does not conduce to socializing. It makes you more
00:25:01.380
introspective. People say it makes you funnier. It doesn't. It makes you much less funny,
00:25:06.440
but it makes everything seem funnier. So it makes you kind of dumber. It makes you kind of slower,
00:25:10.360
makes you hungrier and like fat. And so, you know, I don't see those as being particularly good.
00:25:16.640
And then your point on the social effects of it more broadly. We've been told for years that pot
00:25:22.400
is not addictive. That's obviously ridiculous because we all know potheads who like wake and
00:25:28.600
bake and are vaping all day. And who, if they go one day without their drugs, they start freaking
00:25:32.780
out. Even the fact that, that many people who are into marijuana refer to it as self-medicating
00:25:37.940
tells you that obviously this is a habit forming addictive substance. Furthermore though, yes,
00:25:44.060
you usually don't see fights between potheads at a bar or at a dispensary, but you do sometimes see
00:25:50.240
psychotic breaks. And this is being reported more and more as marijuana has become more normalized
00:25:54.360
and legalized. You're seeing psychiatrists having to deal with people who have overdosed,
00:25:59.200
not just on a few puffs of a joint, but especially on edibles where the doses can be insanely high,
00:26:04.360
where they're very difficult to regulate, to say nothing of car accidents and things like that.
00:26:09.440
So I think the social effects are pretty bad. And then I'll bring it back to both a traditional
00:26:13.320
argument, an argument from tradition and an argument from religion. From, from the religious
00:26:19.040
perspective, Christ's first miracle is turning water into wine for people who have been drinking for
00:26:25.000
like four days. Okay. So that tells you, it's not necessarily a recommendation to drink all day
00:26:31.520
long, but it tells you that wine has an important place, even in our faith that the, you know, Christ
00:26:38.140
says at the last supper, I will not, I will not yet again, a taste of the fruit of the vine, you know,
00:26:43.900
until all is accomplished. So there's this role. And if you believe in sacramental religion,
00:26:47.820
you believe that actually alcohol is necessary to the proper worship of God. Now, if you look from
00:26:55.160
the traditional perspective, we've had wine forever. We've had wine and beer and mead forever.
00:27:00.660
Marijuana is only recently introduced to our culture. So it's kind of a foreign thing. I once
00:27:05.420
spoke to a drug czar for a Republican president and he said, you know, at the bottom of all these kind
00:27:10.780
of libertarian, let's legalize marijuana arguments. My question is, why would it, even if you think
00:27:16.660
alcohol is bad, why would we add another bad thing? What's the benefit to that? So to me, the strongest
00:27:22.080
argument for a legalizing pot is this libertarian idea that we should all be able to abuse our bodies
00:27:29.140
however we want. But I don't think that's true. I don't think you really own your body. I don't think
00:27:32.920
you're chiefly an individual. I think you are a member of a family and a society and a nation. And so I think
00:27:38.080
that argument's bunk and you got to get off the dope kids, not even once. And what you got to do is
00:27:43.820
something much better for you, much more delicious, much more conducive to civilization.
00:27:56.920
Hi, Michael. I'm a Roman Catholic and I want to make sure that my future husband shares my goals
00:28:01.520
of a strong, faith-filled family that is in communion with God. I know there are challenges
00:28:05.780
in mixed-faith relationships. Should I be focusing my prospects on Catholic boys or should I, like,
00:28:13.060
So the question is, you're a serious Catholic, you want to marry a mackerel-snapping papist husband,
00:28:19.060
and you want to know, do you go swimming in the Tiber to find your man or do you go on missionary
00:28:24.180
dating? Do you go, yeah, look, my advice, oh, obviously, yes, I think it would be wonderful for
00:28:33.100
you to have a good, nice Catholic marriage. You can have a small Catholic family of 12 or 14 kids,
00:28:37.900
and that all sounds wonderful. However, when I think about dating, I think I have the least popular
00:28:46.200
take of all. It's a take I don't hear on the right anymore. I certainly don't hear it on the left.
00:28:52.060
I think dating is fun. I think, like, speaking to members of the opposite sex and flirting with them
00:29:00.580
and getting them to like you and going to dinner is, like, fun and should be enjoyable,
00:29:06.540
and you can be guided by attraction. Like, girls are hot, you know? I know it's, like,
00:29:12.740
crazy suggestion these days, but you should follow that a little bit, you know? Don't make it a chore.
00:29:20.540
Don't make it a job interview. Especially the way some Zoomers talk about dating. It's like they're
00:29:25.860
applying to college or something, you know? No, it doesn't have to be that way, man. Girls are fun.
00:29:30.600
And if you're a girl, you know, it's like, I think maybe it's, I don't know, it's probably less fun
00:29:33.500
to hang out with a guy, but I don't know, like, girls seem to like it. And so that's what I would
00:29:37.220
do first. I would allow yourself to be legitimately attracted in ways that are not always conscious,
00:29:44.460
that get to the intangible, ineffable aspects of love. You know, Cole Porter did not sing,
00:29:51.220
let's do it, let's find the ideal partner to have a perfectly flourishing life with. No,
00:29:57.880
let's do it, let's fall in love. So, you know, allow that to happen. Now, you're going to have
00:30:01.560
to weed out some losers or some guys who don't necessarily want to go along with, you know,
00:30:06.060
a conducive life. But you find that along the way. Let, let, I hate to sound like a liberal,
00:30:13.800
but, you know, kind of follow your heart a little bit first, and then when he's just mad about you,
00:30:19.220
and he says, I love you, you're the only thing I ever think about, you say, that's great. You need
00:30:23.460
to sign on the bishop's line right here. We're raising the kids Catholic, and we're having a lot
00:30:28.000
of them. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, throw the hat up. Look at that. I need a, oh no,
00:30:36.620
I have a pen. I stole that pen from whoever it was. Now, I'm a lefty, so don't judge me if this
00:30:49.460
is a bad throw. Yeah, that was a perfect throw. That was, all right, I'll get to the hats after
00:30:55.620
the next question. Hey, Michael. So, I'm pro H-1B visas and pro meritocracy, and it seems like a lot
00:31:02.440
of the right is very against it. You could tell me why that is. Yes, that's true, because that's
00:31:09.000
been a big shift, and I'm not entirely opposed to some version of an H-1B visa program. Obviously,
00:31:16.060
the H-1Bs have been horribly abused, and it's in many ways just a way for corporations to get cheap
00:31:20.740
labor and undercut American workers, but some version of bringing in talent that's difficult
00:31:25.140
to find in America in very small numbers. I'm not totally opposed. I'm a conservative. In practical
00:31:31.440
policy, I generally don't deal in firm absolutes, but it needs to be radically reformed. Your latter
00:31:37.780
point, I think, is more pertinent, which is this belief in meritocracy, because I don't think that
00:31:44.300
meritocracy is a particularly conservative or traditional idea. I believe in rewarding good
00:31:51.160
effort. I believe in justice, giving to people what they deserve. I believe in encouraging people
00:31:56.940
to work hard. I believe in the American tradition of being able to make something of yourself,
00:32:02.740
regardless of your circumstances. But I think that meritocracy takes all of those good virtues
00:32:08.300
totally out of whack, and it makes an idol out of them. That's often what happens with heresies
00:32:13.240
and ideologies, is they take a kernel of a good thing, and they take it so far that it becomes a
00:32:19.360
bad thing. Because in a purely meritocratic country, other virtuous relationships are diminished.
00:32:27.220
If a guy, for instance, has a family business, he's been in business for 100 years, his great-great-grandpa
00:32:33.440
founded it, went to his great-grandpa, his grandpa, his dad, and now it goes to him. And he says,
00:32:38.380
you know, I want to hire my kids for this business and keep the business in the family. But they didn't
00:32:44.040
score well enough on the SAT, so you're all out, kids. Bring me the Indians. We're going to have a
00:32:47.680
new business now. You know, that rings unjust for all of us. That seems kind of silly. The reason that
00:32:54.240
universities have had legacy admissions in the past is not just to award some plutocracy. It's because,
00:33:00.540
in many cases, one of the things that people go to universities for is to pal around with,
00:33:07.140
to form relationships with, people who are from different stratas of society than they are. That
00:33:12.660
it's a way of maintaining traditions, even within institutions. And I think that's a good thing. I
00:33:18.520
think continuity within institutions is wonderful and should be encouraged, even if it crosses against
00:33:24.380
meritocracy. And taken to the extreme, and this is where it goes back to the H-1Bs,
00:33:28.860
it's one thing for Americans to have to compete with people from their high school, say, or from
00:33:35.820
their hometown or county or state. But in an increasingly globalized economy and an increasingly
00:33:42.220
borderless country until President Trump was re-elected, all of a sudden, you're telling
00:33:46.960
American workers that they have to compete against the entire world. And that's not even a level of
00:33:52.520
playing field, by the way, because the American workers have regulations imposed upon them
00:33:57.000
that the, and costs imposed upon them, that the workers around the world do not. And so I don't,
00:34:03.020
it's, I suppose, in a sense, anti-meritocratic for American policy to favor American citizens and
00:34:09.480
exclude other people. But that's what a country is supposed to do. A country is supposed to conduce
00:34:14.180
to the common good of the people in that country. So I would say two cheers for meritocracy. Not three
00:34:21.180
cheers. I would say two cheers for meritocracy. We want our people to be tough, smart, work hard,
00:34:26.240
ambitious, not get lazy, not be on the dole. And we want all of those things. But we also have to
00:34:31.020
recognize these are our people. And we have a special obligation to our people that we don't
00:34:35.640
have to people on the other side of the world. Awesome. Thank you.
00:34:43.580
Hi, Michael. My name is Nella. I'm a student at a college in Indiana. I've been listening to you and
00:34:48.460
Ben Shapiro for like five years now. But I'm a Protestant. I'm like not Calvinist, but I'm Arminian.
00:34:54.380
So I do agree with a lot of like the Catholic traditions. But the one thing that like, like the
00:35:00.100
one thing I disagree with Catholicism is like that you have to, you have to be beholden to the Pope
00:35:06.480
because I just don't think you should do that. Because the Pope is a man that's fallible. Like
00:35:10.140
we're all fallible. And that's like the only thing I have. Yeah, the Pope was a big stumbling block for
00:35:15.700
a lot of people who are, they're Catholic curious, but that's the one issue that they have trouble. In fact,
00:35:20.680
our friend Charlie, you know, quite, quite openly had issues, especially with the last Pope who
00:35:24.800
sometimes made things difficult for, you know, for people given some political statements of his.
00:35:31.080
However, the Pope, the office of the papacy, obviously has developed over time as, as all
00:35:38.520
things do. But I think you see the papacy going all the way back to the apostolic age, I think really
00:35:44.680
even in scripture. That's certainly been the defense of it. And the primacy of the Bishop of Rome
00:35:50.640
goes all the way back to those early ages too. So, you know, the scriptural defense is that Christ
00:35:55.660
says to Peter, Peter, Simon, you are now Peter. And on this rock, I'll build my church. I give you the
00:36:00.980
keys to the kingdom of heaven. What you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. What you loose on
00:36:04.360
earth will be loosed in heaven. This traditionally was understood to be the special appointment of
00:36:10.980
Peter, to have this leading role in the visible physical church on earth. Peter and Paul then go
00:36:16.140
to Rome. And you see this in the writing of the early Christians, the church fathers going back
00:36:21.620
to the apostolic age and shortly thereafter, that when there were divisions between the churches,
00:36:27.100
they would defer to Rome. Rome was understood to have had a special authority because Peter and
00:36:31.660
Paul went there. Furthermore, there's a famous quote from St. Augustine, which is that
00:36:36.460
Rome has spoken, the matter is settled. That when there were disputes, the disputes had to be
00:36:41.860
settled ultimately by someone. And so I think there's a misconception of what the Pope is and
00:36:47.000
does. The Pope is not some like North Korean tyrant who just imposes his will on every matter of life.
00:36:53.800
I think the Pope arises out of, not only out of scripture and the acts of Christ, but out of a
00:36:59.720
logical necessity. That for an institution to have authority and to carry on, someone has to be the
00:37:07.060
ultimate decider when issues cannot be resolved at lower levels. So when you have an issue with your
00:37:12.800
brother, you try to resolve it amongst yourselves. Then maybe you bring in some of the other believers.
00:37:17.760
Maybe you go to your priests, your presbyters, your elders, your bishops. You bring these people in.
00:37:22.360
When there are battles between the bishops, theological questions that have to be resolved,
00:37:25.920
there can be councils. There have been many, many councils throughout history. We see a council in
00:37:29.760
scripture. And ultimately, when you need that clarity, when you need to believe, or rather,
00:37:37.180
when the church needs to speak as a divine institution that really has the authority of God,
00:37:42.200
you need someone to settle that. That has been traditionally the office of the Bishop of Rome.
00:37:47.920
I agree, there have been lots of bad popes over the years, some recent, some older. And so,
00:37:54.120
you know, this is very scandalous. But I often go back to a line from Hilaire Belloc,
00:37:58.200
who is a great Catholic writer, very pugilistic. And Hilaire Belloc said, look, I have to take it as
00:38:04.300
a matter of faith that the church is divinely instituted. But for those who doubt the divine
00:38:09.600
institution, one proof of it is that no other institution conducted with such knavish imbecility
00:38:15.180
would have lasted a fortnight. And I think that is kind of a proof of it.
00:38:21.480
And our Lord, just as, you know, St. Paul tells us the civil authority is there for our good,
00:38:27.720
our Lord sends a spiritual authority. And sometimes we get good popes, and sometimes we get bad popes.
00:38:33.200
And maybe the bad popes are there to chastise us. Maybe the good popes are there to, you know,
00:38:38.960
comfort us in a way. And maybe the bad popes are even there to remind us that the pope is fallible,
00:38:47.840
Thank you so much. It would mean the world to me if I could just get a quick, like, selfie real quick.
00:38:54.380
Nihil Obstot. I say with authority, you can have that selfie. And I'm not even the pope.
00:38:58.000
All right, we have a very brief hat signing pause. Please ask your question while I gather the hats.
00:39:06.180
Don't throw all the hats. No, I'm going to be buried in hats. No.
00:39:10.180
That was entirely my fault. I shouldn't have said that.
00:39:15.600
Hi, my name is Levi Blair. I am a junior high school student at Mountain View High School.
00:39:22.100
Uh, and I just actually, uh, started my own, uh, chapter at Mountain View High School.
00:39:29.320
Um, and I agree with you on just about everything I can think of except for, uh, I have nothing against
00:39:41.960
Catholicism or anything, but I personally believe that, uh, Catholicism and Christianity are two
00:39:48.020
different things, uh, and beliefs. Um, I want to know what your stance is on that and why.
00:39:55.920
Well, I would disagree with that, I would say. Um, though, uh, certainly, uh, Catholicism and
00:40:03.260
Protestantism, you know, have different views of religion and Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy
00:40:07.960
to some degree have different views, though it's, it's much, uh, the chasm is much smaller.
00:40:11.920
So, uh, if, if the premise is that there's Catholicism, uh, which, you know, Catholics are
00:40:18.300
fine, but they're wrong, and, you know, there's, uh, Chris, Chris, true Christianity, which is
00:40:23.120
some, some version of Protestantism, I guess the first question you would have to answer
00:40:27.560
is how it is the case that Protestantism only came about beginning in 1517? Uh, because, uh,
00:40:35.600
what that would suggest is that Christ was on earth, he picked apostles, he said, go make
00:40:41.640
disciples of all nations, uh, he says, you know, you're the rock on which I'll build my church,
00:40:45.720
but it's all going to disappear for the next 1500 years, and then in roughly 1500 years,
00:40:52.300
then the true church will finally emerge. Uh, how could that possibly be the case? That would mean
00:40:58.100
that the great saints, the church fathers, the great Christians of history were all fake, basically.
00:41:03.720
Right. Okay. Yeah, I hear the, I hear the, um, argument that, um, Catholicism, like, typically
00:41:12.620
came before, uh, like, like, you know, Christianity and stuff, and, or, like, as it is defined, uh,
00:41:19.640
uh, with Protestant, uh, Protestant, you know, practices. Uh, but the reason why I, I don't believe
00:41:27.480
that, uh, I reject that argument is because if, by that logic, wouldn't Judaism also count as
00:41:34.080
Christianity, and wouldn't we call Judaism Christianity? You're saying Judaism came from
00:41:40.640
Christianity? No, I'm saying that Christianity was, uh, came after Judaism, and many attribute
00:41:45.940
Judaism. You know, that's also kind of a touchy subject, because that's not really how I see things,
00:41:50.880
you know? The, the church understands herself to be the, the, the new Israel, or the spiritual Israel,
00:41:55.780
that the particular, the, the, the Old Testament Israelites are a particular nation chosen to be
00:42:03.060
the type of all nations. So they tell, there are particular people called out, but they tell us
00:42:08.000
something about all nations, and that the Old Testament prefigures the New Testament, that you
00:42:13.060
can find the New Testament, uh, you know, uh, foreseen in the old and revealed, and the Old Testament is
00:42:19.200
revealed in the new. Uh, so, uh, it would seem to me that, uh, you know, just as St. Paul tells us,
00:42:25.100
previously you had circumcision, now you have baptism. You know, St. Peter says, baptism now
00:42:30.180
saves you. Uh, the, uh, what we see are, you know, hints of the true religion, and it comes out, and
00:42:36.600
the incarnation is the fulfillment that God makes in his promises to Israel. And so, it's not that
00:42:42.200
there's a break, you know, we used to have Judaism, and now we have Christianity. It's that there is a
00:42:46.720
fulfillment of God's promises going all the way back to Abraham, in fact, going all the way back to
00:42:51.200
Adam. So, I, I don't really see that as the issue. Uh, the other distinction, of course, between
00:42:56.060
Judaism and, uh, Catholicism, Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and a few other things in the
00:43:01.700
middle, is that, uh, we believe in Christ. So, you know, I don't, I don't think it's a totally apt
00:43:07.120
comparison. Um, and it just seems to me strange that our Lord would tell us in Scripture, I will be
00:43:13.180
with you always, even until the end of the age. Uh, and then he would say, except for the next
00:43:18.920
1500 years, when I'm going to totally abandon you, but don't worry, I'm coming back at some point.
00:43:23.540
So, I, I think the historical arguments, uh, are, are kind of difficult for that, to say nothing of
00:43:29.220
the theological arguments. And I would point to someone who was just made a doctor of the church,
00:43:33.300
St. John Henry Newman, who was Protestant, and he was extremely anti-Catholic, and he, he wrote, uh,
00:43:39.540
anti-Catholic invectives. And, and then, especially through his acquaintance with the history of the
00:43:44.640
church and church fathers, he, he became Catholic, and he became a cardinal, and then he became a
00:43:49.180
saint. And so, listen, if Jack Newman can do it, that might be the path ahead of you, too. I'm not
00:43:54.080
making any prophecies or predictions, but that might happen to you as well. Okay, thank you. Also,
00:43:59.440
can you, can you sign my Reagan 80, uh, uh, campaign poster? Yeah, let's do it. Look at the stack
00:44:03.860
of signing things I have. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
00:44:09.540
If I fall off this stage signing a, uh, poster, that will be very, that's the only clip that's
00:44:39.920
Um, hi, I'm Phoebe Linney. Uh, I was wondering, do you think you would be, uh, Matt Walsh in
00:44:49.920
I heard, do, do I think I could be Matt Walsh in what?
00:44:59.420
Are you a Walsh plant? Are you a Walsh child? Hold on, what is your...
00:45:08.200
Unbelievable. I love, 10 years old. That's so, that's so great.
00:45:11.220
These, ah, the future, the future is great, because you ask a very important question.
00:45:18.920
You know, at, at DW, I don't know, we're all kind of like moderately sized fellas, with
00:45:23.600
one exception. Matt Walsh, that giant tree. He's like six foot 11. He's a lumberjack
00:45:30.520
of a man. In between shows, he just chops down oak trees. So, what you, what you would
00:45:37.780
suspect is that I, of a moderate Sicilian stature, would be defeated in a physical battle
00:45:44.340
by Matt Walsh. But you would be wrong. And let me tell you why you would be wrong. Because
00:45:49.580
I live, as I alluded to earlier, on a steady diet of caffeine, nicotine, vim, and vigor.
00:45:57.080
We're, we are a clever, crafty people, we children of the Mezzogiorno. The Princess Bride
00:46:03.420
tells us never to go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line. And I am reminded,
00:46:08.980
I am reminded that the tall trees fall the hardest. I would, in fact, defeat Matt Walsh
00:46:18.300
in a battle of brute strength. Very good question.
00:46:24.300
What? What did you say at the last part? Sorry, I missed it.
00:46:28.420
What did I say? Yes, I would beat him. That's what I'm saying. I would totally beat him.
00:46:32.220
Okay. Um, I forgot what I was going to say. But, yeah, can I have my pin back after you're
00:46:38.400
done? Can I have the marker back after you're done?
00:46:43.220
Can someone yell that at me? That's your pen that I've stolen? That's why you had that feisty
00:46:50.500
question. I think Matt Walsh, I think Matt Walsh would come beat you in a fight, Michael,
00:46:54.740
you pen thief. Yes, I can give you this back. Hold on.
00:47:00.260
Last question. At least you have a beautiful sweater for your last question.
00:47:04.080
Thank you. Hi, Michael. I'm Emma. And my question is, is that people love to say that
00:47:08.140
America has no culture. How do we combat the diversity is our strength message and put
00:47:13.740
the focus back on making American values and American traditions back in the mainstream
00:47:21.800
Yeah, well, I guess that would explain why the entire world is trying to come here, actually.
00:47:28.940
Because if you claim that America's a vacuum, perhaps that's why we're sucking up everybody
00:47:34.080
from all around the world. That's one explanation. I think the other one is, we obviously have
00:47:39.240
a culture, and the culture is the envy of the world. And everyone wants, at the very least,
00:47:44.580
to experience the fruits of that culture and benefit from them, even if they don't want to participate
00:47:49.420
in that culture or sacrifice for that culture. So it's totally ridiculous.
00:47:54.760
One way to combat the idea that America has no culture, no identity, it's just an idea or any
00:48:00.800
idea or nothing at all. Come on in, Ilhan Omar. One way to combat that is to travel anywhere else
00:48:07.480
in the world, especially because a lot of us have some immigrant background, maybe a quarter of this
00:48:13.020
or half that. And when you go, well, I'll speak from my own experience, because, you know,
00:48:18.360
a quarter of my family is from England. Some of them came over on the Mayflower, which is a great
00:48:22.520
cigar brand, by the way. And then a quarter of them are, did I mention that? And then a quarter of
00:48:26.780
them are Irish. I don't really look it. And then the other, a quarter Italian and a quarter Sicilian.
00:48:31.500
So I remember I was a teenager. The first time I went to Italy, I said, ah, I'm going to be coming
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home. You know, this will be like visiting my people. And then I go there and I think, wait,
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there's a bunch of foreigners. What are you talking about, my P? I don't know. And I speak
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Italian, by the way. But I said, this is crazy. I went to a sandwich shop. It was the most famous
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sandwich shop in Siena. I go there to get a sandwich at lunchtime. It's closed. I wait there
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45 minutes. The guy rolls up this Italian. He finally opens it. I said, can I buy a sandwich
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here? He says, and no, there's no bread. I said, what do you mean there's no bread? He said,
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no, I don't have bread. I got to go get a bread. I said, well, should I wait? Should I go? He goes,
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I don't care what you do. You wait. I said, well, why don't you have
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capitalism in this country? Why do I have to explain to you? And I realized in that moment,
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if not earlier, I'm an American. You're all, you're all Americans. You are USA.
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Antonin Scalia, the late great Supreme Court justice told this story when he was in school.
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He studied for a year in Switzerland and he went to Switzerland. He goes to Italy. He doesn't,
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you know, he doesn't feel that he goes to England, this big, gigantic Sicilian man. He goes to England
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and he feels more at home in England than anywhere else he had been in the world other than America.
00:49:53.740
Why? Because it's the closest to the American culture because our culture has come from the
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English culture. And so what we have to conclude from that is, despite the waves of mass migration,
00:50:05.900
despite all the nonsense about diversity is our strength and America is a nation of immigrants
00:50:09.920
or whatever, no, America is a real country with a real people, with real traditions and habits,
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many of which we can't even articulate. And that's a special thing. That's what has attracted people.
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And if you want to continue to flourish, if you even want to continue attracting people,
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that's what you have to hold on to. That's a real particular thing. It can't be universalized
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with some dumb slogan. And if people didn't like it or if it didn't really exist,
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the whole world wouldn't be clamoring to get here. Thank you very much. Wonderful to be with all of you.