The Michael Knowles Show - The Conversation Ep. 18： Michael Knowles

00:00:00.000 That's it. We're live with our newest episode of The Conversation. I am your host, Elisha Krause, and with me is the ex-cribble? 1.00

00:00:06.820 Excellent.

00:00:07.780 I don't know about that. Michael Knowles will be taking your questions live for an entire hour.

00:00:17.560 All right, so please remember, you remember this, right? We've been doing this for like 18 months now.

00:00:21.320 We've done this for a little bit, but remind me of the rules. What happens?

00:00:23.880 So everyone is perfectly clear. Our conversation is streaming for everyone to watch, but only subscribers get to ask the questions.

00:00:31.000 Be sure to click the link in our video description if you want to ask a question or become a Daily Wire subscriber.

00:00:36.840 And if you become a Daily Wire subscriber for the whole year, you get that amazing Leftist Tears Tumblr that Michael just sipped some delicious L.A. Leftist Tears from.

00:00:44.960 There's been a lot of L.A. Leftist Tears lately. We've had a ton of rain.

00:00:48.780 Right, that's true.

00:00:49.600 I think it's all the Leftist Tears from everything that's been happening in politics recently.

00:00:53.600 That high-speed rail just got shrunk to about three feet somewhere in Bakersfield.

00:00:57.600 I know, Gavin Newsom did that.

00:00:58.280 I think that produced a lot.

00:00:59.060 I know.

00:00:59.620 He induced his own Leftist Tears.

00:01:01.560 I know. This is what happens.

00:01:02.960 It's incredible. 0.96

00:01:03.160 They're masochistic. 0.82

00:01:04.180 And don't worry, folks. Next month's episode of The Conversation will be much, much better.

00:01:08.480 And we have some exciting things in store because it will be with our very own Ben Shapiro.

00:01:13.300 And there's going to be some really cool audience interaction on that episode of The Conversation that we haven't done before.

00:01:19.060 But I can't reveal any more secrets or otherwise I could get into it.

00:01:21.820 I don't even know about this. What's going to happen?

00:01:23.420 I can't say anything.

00:01:24.140 Okay.

00:01:24.540 My lips are sealed.

00:01:25.740 Sad.

00:01:26.280 Sad.

00:01:26.800 So, you know who's sad? You've made some people very sad and mad this week.

00:01:31.220 I saw that.

00:01:32.180 And Tifa plans on showing up tomorrow night or Thursday night. You'll be at Notre Dame.

00:01:37.580 I'm going to be at Notre Dame on Thursday. It's because at Notre Dame, the president of that university has decided to cover up murals of Christopher Columbus.

00:01:47.080 Because Christopher, he is one of the greatest men in all of history. And the left has just decided that Columbus is the devil incarnate.

00:01:54.660 So, mostly because they're moral idiots and historically ignorant. So, I'm going to be explaining why Christopher Columbus is one of the greatest men in all of history. 1.00

00:02:02.520 And apparently, Antifa is upset about that. So, a bunch of losers in black masks have decided they're going to come yell at me. But they're going to get learned once they listen to my speech. 0.98

00:02:11.920 Do you think they'll actually listen? Do you think they'll come in to the lecture hall and hear you out?

00:02:17.000 I don't know if they're capable of listening. I know because those stupid masks, I think, cover up their ears too much. They got some like cotton in your ears. 1.00

00:02:23.820 It's cold in Indiana.

00:02:24.380 It's very chilly. So, we'll see what happens. I think a number of them have already, they've RSVP'd to the Antifa group. I don't think they've RSVP'd to come listen to my lecture.

00:02:33.400 But they should because they would probably learn a thing or two.

00:02:35.440 And I think the title of the lecture is Columbus, Hero Not Heathen.

00:02:39.540 That's right. That was the most politically correct one that I could come up with. There were a few others that got rejected in the drafting folder.

00:02:46.060 And it's going to be streamed on all of our Daily Wire and over by our buddies at YAF who are sponsoring it.

00:02:52.220 Yeah, it's going to be part of the AFT tour. It's going to be a lot of fun. And people are going to learn a thing or two.

00:02:56.860 They're going to unlearn a lot of leftist anti-historical nonsense that they think they know about Columbus.

00:03:02.520 And they're going to learn what a wonderful man he was.

00:03:04.480 All right, we got our first question. This one comes from Jonathan. He says,

00:03:07.400 Hi, Michael. What status do you think that illegal aliens brought to the U.S. as miners should have or have available to them?

00:03:13.700 Well, the first question is not what status they should have. The question is what status do they have.

00:03:19.700 And the status is not legal. They're not American citizens. They are foreign nationals who were brought to this country illegally. 0.99

00:03:27.920 So they are foreign nationals and they should be dealt with as foreign nationals. 0.94

00:03:32.280 And their criminal parents certainly should be dealt with as foreign nationals. 1.00

00:03:36.020 Now, the question is if you were to come up with some deal as to building the wall, closing the border, dumping a lot of money into border security,

00:03:45.440 deporting a lot of other people who shouldn't be here, who are here illegally and should not be here, 0.93

00:03:50.500 if as part of a deal on that you were to say that part of the compromise is that we would have to give some plausible legal status

00:03:59.740 to people who were brought here under the age of 18, I might be willing to consider that.

00:04:04.700 But without building the wall, without deporting a ton of other people, without deporting all of the criminals who are populating our jails as illegal aliens,

00:04:12.340 without those components, I'm not even remotely interested in hearing any arguments about giving amnesty to the so-called dreamers, 1.00

00:04:20.420 many of whom are like 40 years old at this point.

00:04:22.360 And by the way, they try to present this group of people as they're all going to MIT, they're all joining the military, they're all serving their country.

00:04:31.260 If they are, can we replace them with all the Americans who aren't? 1.00

00:04:32.840 Yeah, right. That's great. I mean, in that regard, I'm very happy to do that.

00:04:36.740 But the studies show that simply is not the case.

00:04:39.420 They have lower educational attainment, so they have higher access to welfare services.

00:04:45.340 So to have a serious conversation about that, you first need to close the border.

00:04:49.320 Because, as has been shown by Fusion, by Amnesty International, reported by the Huffington Post, upwards of...

00:04:55.500 All conservative outlets, by the way.

00:04:56.420 All of those conservative institutions. 0.88

00:04:58.560 Between 60 and 80 percent of the illegal aliens who are women and girls that cross this border illegally are raped and sexually assaulted on the journey.

00:05:05.640 That is just one example of one of the horrific consequences of illegal immigration.

00:05:10.380 And by giving amnesty to millions of so-called dreamers, you create a huge, perverse incentive to continue that awful, degraded, inhuman process of crossing this border illegally.

00:05:23.440 So I'm not interested in any sort of amnesty for those dreamers until that border is locked down. 1.00

00:05:28.720 All right. This question comes from Mick.

00:05:30.320 He says,

00:05:30.640 Yeah, that's referring to John Maynard Keynes, who is really misrepresented, I think, in the culture.

00:05:47.160 John Maynard Keynes is an interesting thinker and an economist.

00:05:49.660 But all we ever think of him for is pumping money into the federal government, pumping the economy full of money.

00:05:58.120 We think of him as relating to FDR's policies.

00:06:02.360 The idea being that the government should be the driver of economic growth.

00:06:05.700 That's how Keynes is used in popular economic arguments.

00:06:09.240 But, of course, the government is not productive.

00:06:12.080 By definition, the public sector is not productive.

00:06:15.300 The only productive part of the economy is the private sector.

00:06:18.220 That's where the government gets all of its money from.

00:06:20.420 So eventually, as is always the problem with socialism, and by the way, I'm not giving some sort of sophisticated academic dissertation on John Maynard Keynes.

00:06:29.820 I'm describing him as he is used in popular arguments.

00:06:33.620 The problem with those arguments is the problem with socialism, as Margaret Thatcher observed, which is eventually you run out of other people's money.

00:06:41.900 And it might take a very long time.

00:06:44.600 And the people might not feel when they run out of money.

00:06:46.620 And you actually might just borrow money from China to run up that debt.

00:06:49.980 You might be able to run up $22 trillion of debt.

00:06:53.240 But eventually, the jig is up, and you realize that you do not have any of that money.

00:06:58.860 And we can try to think of all these cute little ways around the fact that in order to produce wealth, you need to produce anything at all.

00:07:06.620 But ultimately, the way to wealth is the productive sectors of the economy, not the government borrowing or printing or taxing more money.

00:07:13.960 All right.

00:07:14.240 Next question.

00:07:15.060 Another Jonathan says, dear master of covfefe.

00:07:17.980 Do I say that right?

00:07:18.920 You're saying it right.

00:07:19.840 President Trump actually says it wrong, but you're saying it right.

00:07:21.980 I say it totally right.

00:07:23.400 Can you explain some of the greatest accomplishments of Calvin Coolidge and why you think of him as one of the best U.S. presidents?

00:07:29.460 He shrunk the government.

00:07:30.540 That's it.

00:07:31.000 It begins and ends there.

00:07:32.440 Calvin Coolidge.

00:07:32.920 He also had a pet raccoon.

00:07:34.440 That's cool.

00:07:34.960 That's a cool story.

00:07:35.840 They're mean, though.

00:07:36.640 They are.

00:07:37.080 They're not really supposed to be kept as pets.

00:07:38.660 I had one kill a cat one time.

00:07:40.300 Really?

00:07:40.920 Yeah.

00:07:41.080 Well, I kind of like that.

00:07:41.960 You know, I mean, really, like, taking a strong, firm stand as president.

00:07:45.240 He shrunk the government.

00:07:46.220 That's why.

00:07:46.660 That's why conservatives love Calvin Coolidge.

00:07:49.180 No other president has shrunk the government.

00:07:50.920 Ronald Reagan tried to shrink the government.

00:07:52.480 The Democrats wouldn't let him.

00:07:53.920 President Trump, I don't know that he's really tried to shrink the government.

00:07:57.180 He's reduced some waste, some inefficiencies.

00:07:59.600 He's shrunk some departments.

00:08:00.560 But all of the conservative ideologies that have cropped up over the last hundred years,

00:08:08.500 starve the beast, shrink the government.

00:08:11.320 The larger the federal government, the smaller the citizen.

00:08:14.360 The government is best which governs least.

00:08:16.700 All of those you actually see come to fruition in Calvin Coolidge.

00:08:20.200 He came to office after Warren Harding, another very maligned president who actually was not too bad.

00:08:25.720 And for the last hundred years, we haven't had anybody shrink the government.

00:08:30.680 It would be nice if we did, but I'm not holding my breath.

00:08:32.880 Only Silent Cal was able to do it.

00:08:34.920 Cheers.

00:08:35.460 All righty.

00:08:36.080 So you celebrated him on President's Day?

00:08:38.080 I celebrate Coolidge, yeah.

00:08:38.820 Since now President's Day is about all presidents apparently?

00:08:41.400 I don't even use the term.

00:08:43.280 I mean, you know, the federal holiday is Washington's birthday.

00:08:46.320 Yes.

00:08:46.520 We do not have an official holiday of President's Day.

00:08:49.540 I do not want to celebrate Franklin Pierce or Millard Fillmore.

00:08:53.140 I'm not celebrating the office of the president.

00:08:55.320 We don't have Congress Day.

00:08:56.640 We don't have Supreme Court Day.

00:08:58.620 I am celebrating George Washington, the greatest president, all-time champ, never getting beat,

00:09:05.340 and all the rest of those guys, you know, fine, whatever, but you don't get a day.

00:09:09.360 I celebrate the sales.

00:09:11.080 The sales.

00:09:11.820 Yeah.

00:09:12.000 That's right.

00:09:12.380 You can buy betting.

00:09:13.480 Apparently, if you need a mattress and a car, President's Day weekend is the time to go, folks.

00:09:18.260 Like, that's what advertising tells me anyway.

00:09:20.380 Yeah, but, you know, if we're just celebrating sheets on President's Day, I guess we're only celebrating the Democrat presidents, 0.52

00:09:25.880 if you know what I'm saying.

00:09:27.340 Catch that?

00:09:28.680 Moving along.

00:09:29.220 It's not nice.

00:09:29.860 Anyway.

00:09:30.560 Mick says, Michael, what is the reading or strategy technique that you use because you're able to recall and remember

00:09:35.980 and explain so succinctly and explain the philosophies of numerous writers and numerous philosophers?

00:09:40.840 Stop it.

00:09:41.380 You're going to make me blush.

00:09:43.480 It is very important to make time to read every day.

00:09:45.980 I actually don't succeed at it every single day.

00:09:48.020 I always try to leave at least an hour to read, and some days I just run out of time.

00:09:52.800 So you have to just read 30 pages a day.

00:09:56.160 If you can set aside time to read 30 pages a day, you don't have to speed read.

00:10:00.740 You don't have to just read those 30 pages.

00:10:02.980 Even if you don't understand everything, just push through.

00:10:05.120 You will retain a lot.

00:10:06.240 The other thing that has helped is I have worked as an actor in my life, and you do learn how to memorize things very quickly for the short term and the long term.

00:10:16.760 This does help.

00:10:17.820 Work on your memorization.

00:10:19.440 You don't need to be an actor.

00:10:20.540 You don't need to work and give speeches or anything.

00:10:22.940 Work on it just for yourself.

00:10:25.160 One great way to do this is to memorize poems.

00:10:27.880 In the old days, people would memorize poems in school from the time they were a kid to graduating high school.

00:10:33.960 Or in the Bible Belt, we have the Bible memorization clubs.

00:10:37.580 Bible memorization, memorizing psalms.

00:10:39.980 This is really helpful.

00:10:41.860 You should do both.

00:10:43.120 I mean, there are poems that I learned in seventh grade that I can recall word perfect.

00:10:46.380 There are monologues I learned as an actor that I can recall word perfect, and it really helps.

00:10:51.780 I think in our modern culture, we're in cell phone land, so we don't memorize anything.

00:10:57.220 The curricula now tell you, don't memorize facts.

00:11:00.020 Don't memorize biographies.

00:11:02.120 Just, you know, learn how to think.

00:11:04.440 Learn broad trends.

00:11:05.800 But if you don't learn the facts, then you won't learn how to think.

00:11:08.140 That's the little secret they don't tell you.

00:11:09.620 I think even as an adult, take a moment, memorize a poem, memorize a psalm, memorize Bible verses, whatever.

00:11:17.260 That will help you retain more when then you set aside an hour every single night to read philosophy or history or novels or whatever you're going to read.

00:11:26.200 And so your anniversary is?

00:11:28.260 Like my wedding anniversary?

00:11:30.200 Yeah.

00:11:30.520 Well, you just said that you're such a great person at memorizing things, so I'm just checking in for your wife.

00:11:35.060 It's somewhere in 28th, June or July or June 2nd, thank you very much.

00:11:41.320 October 24th is her birthday.

00:11:43.040 Just checking in for Mrs. Knowles.

00:11:45.040 And if I got either of those wrong, by the way, we're going to need to fix that in post before sweet little Elisa sees this. 1.00

00:11:49.560 This is live.

00:11:50.140 No!

00:11:51.260 Oh, no.

00:11:51.640 By the way, babe, if you're watching, 10 years coming up, so.

00:11:54.700 All right, this question comes from Norm.

00:11:58.040 How and why was Andrew Jackson a great president?

00:12:00.220 Uh, he, you know, look, a lot of conservatives bash Andrew Jackson and they say he was a terrible president.

00:12:07.600 I don't do that.

00:12:08.700 He was the hero of New Orleans.

00:12:10.460 He was a strong man, a good military leader, not a terrible president.

00:12:15.680 He is harangued because he was a big populist.

00:12:20.540 So he was, he let everybody into the White House and they trashed the place and broke all the china, poured booze everywhere. 1.00

00:12:28.040 He instituted the Trail of Tears.

00:12:30.160 He was a little harsh on the Native Americans.

00:12:32.680 Elizabeth Warren's people.

00:12:33.780 Elizabeth Warren's people.

00:12:35.160 He sent Elizabeth Warren's great, great, great, great grandfather packing.

00:12:38.840 That was not so nice.

00:12:40.880 He showed very little deference to the court.

00:12:46.440 He famously, I believe it was Andrew Jackson who said, the chief justice has issued his opinion.

00:12:53.040 Now let him enforce it.

00:12:54.820 So he had a more expanded view of the presidency.

00:12:58.120 These are reasons that conservatives attack him.

00:13:00.740 I think a little bit of it is unfair.

00:13:03.180 I think they go after him because he's the founder of the modern Democrat Party.

00:13:06.500 And so we were all willing to take cheap shots at him whenever we want.

00:13:09.980 His expanded.

00:13:10.640 Those don't sound like cheap shots, though.

00:13:11.800 Well, some more than others.

00:13:12.940 The expanded view of the presidency, I don't think that that's necessarily terrible.

00:13:17.680 I think a lot of conservatives take an overly broad view of the powers of the legislature.

00:13:22.640 As for the populism, I think a lot of elitist conservatives who want to have their nose in the air and never relate to practical politics take a dismal view of the people.

00:13:32.500 But I like the people.

00:13:33.400 I think it's perfectly fine in a democratic republic to appeal to people, and Andrew Jackson did that as well.

00:13:39.160 So he's actually a mixed bag. 0.95

00:13:41.340 I know this is going to irritate the left and the right, but his presidency, I think, needs to be considered on the whole.

00:13:47.160 And on the whole, he did some great things, and he did some bad things.

00:13:49.840 Like most presidents.

00:13:51.080 Yeah, that's true.

00:13:52.160 You know, some.

00:13:52.820 I mean, Millard Fillmore was just a bad president.

00:13:54.780 Yeah.

00:13:54.980 Franklin Pierce was just a bad president.

00:13:56.640 Also, Woodrow Wilson.

00:13:58.200 Woodrow Wilson, he was just a bad president.

00:14:00.360 Jimmy Carter.

00:14:01.300 Jimmy.

00:14:01.600 Actually, now Andrew Jackson is really rising in my estimation when I consider all of these guys.

00:14:06.020 Yeah, especially Jimmy.

00:14:07.480 Dear Lord.

00:14:08.520 Matt says, Michael, are you working on a new book?

00:14:10.700 And if so, what is it going to be about?

00:14:12.220 I actually am.

00:14:13.680 I'm sorry to say.

00:14:15.580 Is it a sequel?

00:14:16.540 Well, I've got the revised and expanded edition of Reasons to Vote for Democrats coming out in 10 years.

00:14:20.980 Okay.

00:14:21.240 But I actually am working on a book with words, but I'm not going to speak about it publicly.

00:14:25.540 One, because I don't want you to steal my book.

00:14:27.420 And two, because writing a book with words, it turns out, is a very tedious task.

00:14:32.740 And so I don't want people to put me on a timeline.

00:14:35.720 But I find that sometimes when you project, like, what you're doing, then it holds you, publicly, it holds you accountable.

00:14:41.680 Yeah, I hate accountability.

00:14:42.640 Are you kidding me?

00:14:43.520 I don't want any accountability or responsibility.

00:14:46.280 Isn't, like, religion accountability? 0.57

00:14:48.160 Yeah, but that's. 0.80

00:14:48.780 Like, real life accountability?

00:14:49.700 Yeah, that's to the big guy, and he already knows what I'm doing.

00:14:52.100 You know, he, I can't, it's very tough to fool that guy.

00:14:54.260 Yeah, it's true.

00:14:54.980 But you, I can fool, so.

00:14:56.700 Jimmy says, Michael, is atheism a defensible or valid worldview?

00:15:00.780 Nope.

00:15:01.500 Next question.

00:15:02.220 No, it's not.

00:15:03.760 It's not defensible.

00:15:04.840 It's not valid.

00:15:06.500 But I've held that view for a long period of time, especially when I was younger. 0.99

00:15:11.800 And dumb. 0.99

00:15:12.240 When I was young and dumb, yeah. 0.99

00:15:14.360 But no, between the ages of 13 and 23, I would have called myself an atheist or an agnostic. 0.56

00:15:19.140 I think a lot of precocious 13-year-olds are attracted to atheism.

00:15:23.420 I think precocious 13-year-olds are exactly the right temperament for atheism because it appeals to intellectual pride and ignorance.

00:15:32.580 There's a reason why the greatest geniuses throughout all of history have believed in a very similar concept of God, all the way from the ancient Greeks through the present.

00:15:42.380 There is no really good argument for atheism.

00:15:46.560 The best argument for atheism is suffering.

00:15:49.480 The fact that there is suffering and injustice in the world.

00:15:52.380 However, I think that actually ends up being an argument for God.

00:15:57.900 There are many very good arguments for God from the ontological by Anselm of Canterbury through the Thomistic arguments for God.

00:16:05.620 The cosmological argument is very popular.

00:16:07.600 So if you want to appeal to your own intellectual pride, all of the arguments for God are far better than the arguments against God.

00:16:19.980 Ultimately, though, these arguments are just arguments.

00:16:23.080 And all meaningful speech depends upon the ultimate meaning and the ultimate truth with a capital T, which is God.

00:16:30.240 So those arguments actually sort of beg the question.

00:16:33.640 Ultimately, we're talking about faith.

00:16:37.360 We're talking, reason can get you to a certain point, and then there is faith that enters in.

00:16:41.500 There is revelation.

00:16:42.420 Revelation is very important as well.

00:16:44.520 For my process back to God, I relied on intellectual arguments.

00:16:49.000 Then I read a lot of good writers about this.

00:16:51.560 Then I looked throughout history.

00:16:53.960 I was delving into philosophy.

00:16:55.240 And only at that point did I arrive at what would be called the numinous or religious experience.

00:17:00.840 For some people, it's exactly the opposite.

00:17:03.740 Maybe it's better for it to be exactly the opposite.

00:17:06.280 It kind of goes in a little faster.

00:17:07.720 For me, I was very stubborn about it.

00:17:09.840 But regardless of which way you're going to enter, if you're entering from an emotional view, a spiritual point of view, an intellectual point of view, historical, philosophical, through any way,

00:17:20.200 the arguments for God are far better than the arguments against God, which I think are basically just fantasies.

00:17:29.020 People say that believing in God is wishful thinking.

00:17:31.600 I don't really buy that.

00:17:32.840 I think atheism is wishful thinking.

00:17:35.080 Some people wish that they won't be held accountable for what they do.

00:17:38.600 Some people wish that life doesn't actually have meaning, that there's not a transcendent moral order, that there isn't virtue, that there isn't telos, that there isn't purpose in your life,

00:17:47.400 because it allows you to be decadent at whatever you're doing right now.

00:17:51.180 But that's wishful thinking, buddy.

00:17:52.860 And it's not a great thing, ultimately.

00:17:55.180 You know, C.S. Lewis said, it's one of my favorite lines on the subject,

00:17:58.740 if you look for truth, you might find comfort in the end.

00:18:02.280 But if you look for comfort, you will not find truth or comfort, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

00:18:10.440 So put the truth above all things, and I think that will lead you to the truth and the way and the life.

00:18:15.820 I mean, talk about the memorization skills with that quote at the end there.

00:18:20.360 You know, Winston Churchill said, maybe apocryphally, but I think he actually said this one,

00:18:24.620 that it is good for a young man who is uneducated to read a book of quotations.

00:18:29.800 And that's, I think, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:18:33.180 Evan says, Michael, congrats on 300 episodes.

00:18:37.280 There you go.

00:18:37.820 I actually had forgotten that.

00:18:39.240 I had my 300th episode today.

00:18:41.020 And you're still here.

00:18:41.920 That's 100 times the number of episodes that Ben initially had signed up for.

00:18:47.940 I never thought that Ben could fail at anything except apparently at firing you.

00:18:53.060 Sorry, Ben.

00:18:54.920 Evan wants to know, being that you are so extraval, could you please tell us how your show got the green light?

00:19:00.880 How being as I'm so excellent?

00:19:02.420 I don't know.

00:19:02.900 I mean, I think that shows are given to excellence, and excellence is rewarded by getting a show.

00:19:07.960 You know, I've often wondered this myself.

00:19:11.140 How did it get the green light?

00:19:12.420 Because, you know, famously on my set, I have a check from Ben for $400 framed because he and I made a bet about the presidential election.

00:19:23.300 And then I won the bet, and he had to give me the check, and he was very upset about this.

00:19:26.700 Then I published a blank book, and I sold more books with no words than, Ben has probably written a dozen books, and I sold more books altogether.

00:19:34.720 And Ben was very angry about this, and then he helped me promote the book, and then he helped me, got me a literary agent, all these things.

00:19:40.280 So I think what it is with Ben is that he's got, in all of his brilliant broadcasting, he's got this deep masochistic core.

00:19:52.000 And I think it's this essential masochism that got him to green light my show and has led him to keep it around for 300 episodes.

00:20:00.200 Let's be honest, though.

00:20:01.460 How many cigars did you buy The God King?

00:20:04.420 Oh, well, there's no question of it.

00:20:06.080 I mean, I pay my, every penny that I get from Ben, I just have to constantly bribe back to Jeremy, the God King, not to cancel my show.

00:20:13.140 But I assume that's just a cost of doing business.

00:20:14.960 It's cyclical.

00:20:15.520 That's right, yeah.

00:20:16.180 It goes right back in.

00:20:17.640 So, yeah, I don't, are we back in Keynesian economics?

00:20:20.100 I don't know.

00:20:20.760 I'm not sure.

00:20:21.320 John says, what is the best way to approach the study of history outside of the classroom?

00:20:25.320 And do you think that there are any areas of history that are underrated?

00:20:28.980 Oh, well, of course, where to begin?

00:20:30.640 The way to approach the study of history outside of the classroom is to read the history that interests you.

00:20:35.680 That's the only way that you can do it.

00:20:37.660 I don't think you can convince yourself to be interested in some period of history if you're not.

00:20:43.040 And you're not going to take that time, which would be your leisure time, and study something that doesn't interest you.

00:20:49.020 So just go exactly where you want to go.

00:20:51.640 Go for the dessert first.

00:20:53.120 Skip the salad.

00:20:53.860 Go right for the thing that most interests you because that will open up a lot of other historical understanding to you for eras and periods and people and places that you might not have even known existed.

00:21:06.380 And then you'll sort of find a path down there.

00:21:08.740 The most underrated era of history are the Middle Ages, which some people persist in calling the Dark Ages. 0.99

00:21:15.760 This is a ridiculous epithet that was developed during the Renaissance by people who thought that they were better than all of those ignorant idiots that came before them. 0.87

00:21:25.440 You know, like Thomas Aquinas or Dante or the greatest thinkers in all of history. 0.97

00:21:31.200 That period is hugely underrated and misrepresented, and it provides a lot of terrifically interesting history, to say nothing of philosophy, poetry, all of literature, theology.

00:21:44.920 I really like to focus there on medieval British history, medieval continental and Italian history and literature.

00:21:54.880 You know, Dante is my favorite poet, greatest poet ever in all of history.

00:21:59.560 So I really like to focus there.

00:22:01.540 But if that doesn't interest you, go where whatever interests you.

00:22:05.020 Reading any history will open you up and expose you to much, much more.

00:22:11.220 You'd be a good homeschool parent.

00:22:13.120 Hey, how about when Ben finally fires me, I can be a homeschool parent.

00:22:16.140 Because, well, first you have to be a parent.

00:22:18.140 That's true, yeah.

00:22:18.940 I mean, come on, it's almost a year.

00:22:20.260 I know, I've got to get more Catholic about things.

00:22:22.480 But that would be a very, like, homeschool parent answer of what is your child interested in, and then take that and that's how you educate them.

00:22:29.080 And I would say the same thing about reading, whether it comes to politics or history or any topic.

00:22:34.080 Right.

00:22:34.380 I mean, obviously there are some parameters.

00:22:36.920 You need to cover certain things.

00:22:39.200 But if they're really pushing back against it, you might not want to belabor it.

00:22:45.060 You might maybe go and allow people to follow intellectual paths that they want to follow.

00:22:50.760 I've always kind of decided my own course of education.

00:22:56.080 I've always, from the time I was 10 or something, pushed in certain directions, followed certain paths.

00:23:02.380 And to try to stop a kid from doing that is probably futile.

00:23:05.580 And to try to divert them to another path also probably not going to yield much in the way of results.

00:23:10.900 True.

00:23:11.540 David says, who is your favorite philosopher?

00:23:13.440 You just told us that Dante was your favorite poet.

00:23:15.900 Certainly.

00:23:16.580 How can you pick a favorite philosopher?

00:23:18.340 There's no way to do that.

00:23:19.560 And what is a philosophy?

00:23:20.460 George W. Bush was asked this question and he said, Jesus Christ, because he changed my heart.

00:23:26.100 But Jesus isn't a philosopher.

00:23:28.020 He's a savior.

00:23:28.780 He's God.

00:23:29.360 He's the divine logic of the universe.

00:23:31.020 So, I don't know.

00:23:32.120 If that answer suffices, then I guess that would be my answer.

00:23:35.300 Who are some great philosophers?

00:23:37.920 Aristotle and Plato probably figured out just about everything.

00:23:42.500 And there hasn't been much to say since then.

00:23:46.000 Thomas Aquinas does Aristotle better than Aristotle does.

00:23:49.840 And Alistair MacIntyre, who's a more modern philosopher, recognizes this and has a terrific modern book, After Virtue.

00:23:56.620 So, I really like him.

00:23:57.720 I'll just throw out a few names other than Aristotle and Plato.

00:24:00.980 Kind of like a top five.

00:24:02.180 Yeah, a top five.

00:24:03.500 I mean, we all know, obviously, everyone loves the Enlightenment philosophers who I think are very overrated.

00:24:09.060 But just a few names that maybe you haven't heard of might be worth reading.

00:24:13.020 Alistair MacIntyre's book is very good.

00:24:14.720 One of my favorite books written in the last hundred years is Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield.

00:24:20.320 It's a study of meaning and a theory of knowledge.

00:24:22.800 Does that sound a little bit in the clouds?

00:24:25.520 It is.

00:24:25.900 It's a very difficult book to get through.

00:24:27.380 But it is tremendous reading.

00:24:29.300 It is a must-read for conservatives and Christians alike.

00:24:33.740 That guy's name is Owen Barfield.

00:24:35.340 He was an inkling along with C.S. Lewis and his friends with Chesterton, too, I believe.

00:24:41.400 As for those guys, Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, C.S. Lewis, kind of modern philosophers and writers.

00:24:47.600 Those are terrific guys to read.

00:24:51.020 Yeah, we'll stick with that for now.

00:24:53.100 That's a lot of reading.

00:24:54.180 That's a lot of reading.

00:24:54.880 I explicitly don't want to cover all of those Enlightenment philosophers.

00:24:57.900 Because I just, you know, guys, people had thoughts before John Locke, okay? 0.69

00:25:03.620 The Locke worship in this country is so ridiculous.

00:25:06.920 Don't knock Locke. 0.92

00:25:07.560 I'm perfectly willing to knock Locke.

00:25:08.860 I don't think you need to knock Locke.

00:25:10.260 I just have to counterbalance.

00:25:11.900 I'm a fan of Aristotle, but just to be a fan of Aristotle doesn't mean that you have to knock Locke.

00:25:16.620 Maybe it doesn't.

00:25:18.060 No, I mean, they're all fine within their...

00:25:20.560 They're trying to work through things.

00:25:22.560 Kant is trying to work through things.

00:25:24.360 These more modern philosophers are trying to work through, basically, the collapse of the Western mind.

00:25:31.400 And so they're doing their best, but come on, you know, there's more to life than that.

00:25:35.940 Another modern philosopher who is an answer to all of those guys that you should read is Michael Oakeshott, a British conservative.

00:25:42.720 He has never read anymore, but you should read him.

00:25:46.680 I'm sorry, but my brain, every single time I hear Kant now, goes to that amazing TV show, The Good Place.

00:25:52.880 Mm, yes, that's true.

00:25:55.040 Like, it's sad that that's where culture is, and I'm like...

00:25:59.240 That's a good show.

00:26:00.100 It is such a good show.

00:26:00.580 It's a very thoughtful show.

00:26:01.500 It's so well written, and it's so good.

00:26:03.260 John wants to know, totally switching topics here.

00:26:05.880 We went from poems and philosophers, now to sports.

00:26:09.920 Do you know about sports?

00:26:10.980 I've heard of the sports.

00:26:12.120 You've heard of the sports.

00:26:13.040 I like the Yankees.

00:26:13.920 My entire knowledge of sports is the New York Yankees.

00:26:16.400 Are you a fan of the New York Rangers?

00:26:18.680 Because this guy has a question.

00:26:19.860 John wants to know, what are your opinions about The Miracle on Ice, or just hockey in general?

00:26:24.320 Is that some new ice dancing show?

00:26:25.780 The Miracle on Ice story?

00:26:27.240 Is that...

00:26:28.000 No, that's the Soviet thing, right?

00:26:29.640 I think he's the U.S. 0.53

00:26:29.860 Yeah, no, that's great.

00:26:31.000 Kurt Russell was in a Disney movie about it.

00:26:32.500 I know.

00:26:32.680 No, that's great.

00:26:33.540 I mean, I'm only feigning some of my ignorance there.

00:26:38.740 That's great.

00:26:39.460 I really like sports when they involve, like, nuclear war. 0.99

00:26:43.180 So when it's the United States and this damn Russian communist... 1.00

00:26:47.240 For embarrassing Hitler. 1.00

00:26:48.220 I mean, that was really great.

00:26:49.240 That's right, yeah.

00:26:50.680 I'm all for that.

00:26:51.740 I think that's great.

00:26:53.080 This is actually the reason why kneeling for the flag in football is so wrong, is because

00:26:58.020 sports are a national game.

00:27:01.560 Sports embody a certain kind of politics, and you shouldn't be disloyal to your country

00:27:07.140 in sports.

00:27:07.640 That undermines the whole purpose of sports, and Miracle on Ice is a good example on this.

00:27:12.500 Hockey is fine.

00:27:13.540 I don't watch it very much.

00:27:14.860 You know, when I get invited to go see a game, I'm happy to, and it's kind of fun.

00:27:19.160 But the most fun part, of course, is when they take off the gloves and start punching

00:27:22.380 each other in the face.

00:27:23.340 So I guess what I really like is boxing.

00:27:25.240 But hockey is good, too.

00:27:26.500 It's a good substitute.

00:27:27.980 Boxing can be fun.

00:27:29.400 Boxing?

00:27:29.800 Yeah.

00:27:30.060 It's fun to watch.

00:27:30.880 Yeah.

00:27:31.180 It's not...

00:27:31.520 I don't think it's great to do.

00:27:32.560 I know nothing about sports, and I once went on a date with a guy, and he brought me to

00:27:37.040 a Rangers versus Islanders game, and I didn't realize it was like a rivalry.

00:27:41.040 World War III.

00:27:41.380 And let's just say I just wore white, and it was probably good.

00:27:44.060 I wore white.

00:27:45.080 I think their colors are similar, but it was interesting.

00:27:47.240 Right.

00:27:47.320 So we're going to get back to more questions.

00:27:49.640 There's some questions about your taste in music coming up.

00:27:52.300 Oh, gosh.

00:27:52.700 I got a preview of those.

00:27:53.680 That'll be really fun.

00:27:54.640 And people are watching right now.

00:27:56.240 They're able to watch on all of our platforms, which is really cool.

00:27:58.720 But they might be saying, hey, how do I get to ask a question?

00:28:01.680 Well, only our incredible Daily Wire subscribers get to do that.

00:28:05.040 So be sure to click on the link in the video description to ask those questions, or sign up

00:28:09.400 to be a Daily Wire subscriber.

00:28:11.020 And don't forget, tune in for next month's episode featuring our very own Ben Shapiro,

00:28:16.980 who has yet to fire this month's edition of The Conversation.

00:28:20.660 Now, we don't know what happens between now and the next month, so we'll see.

00:28:24.180 We'll see.

00:28:24.520 You might have some more questions for it.

00:28:25.740 My birthday is this weekend, and Ben knows what I want.

00:28:29.160 Grant wants to know, dear King of Covfefe, do you enjoy Queen's music, and do you have

00:28:34.340 a favorite song?

00:28:36.480 I love Queen.

00:28:37.800 You know, I don't listen to a ton of modern music.

00:28:40.600 You know, I'm like good and appropriately stodgy like conservatives.

00:28:44.660 There are a few exceptions.

00:28:46.820 Love Van Morrison.

00:28:48.100 Oh, good.

00:28:48.640 Love Queen.

00:28:49.420 I love Queen.

00:28:50.120 I've loved Queen since I was like three or four years old.

00:28:52.980 Because as far as pop music goes, those guys are so musical.

00:28:58.480 They were always so musical.

00:28:59.880 I love that it was big.

00:29:01.260 It was operatic. 1.00

00:29:02.360 It wasn't this wimpy, stupid, modern, like wah, wah, apathetic rock music. 1.00

00:29:08.700 It was huge. 1.00

00:29:09.400 Hey now, don't get on Led Zeppelin.

00:29:11.420 You're doing that wah, wah noise.

00:29:13.060 I'm like, you're trying to be like Robert Plant there for a second.

00:29:15.720 I was about to go fisticuffs with you. 0.99

00:29:17.600 I just mean all that like whiny hipster stuff today. 0.97

00:29:20.400 Basically, everything from Green Day to the present is just so like, meh, meh, I hate my dad. 1.00

00:29:26.940 You don't want to be an American idiot? 1.00

00:29:28.240 Yeah, I mean like, oh, give me a break. 1.00

00:29:30.000 Whereas Queen had this beautiful theatricality, beautiful musicality to it. 0.98

00:29:34.760 I don't know where to begin.

00:29:35.820 I love all their stuff.

00:29:37.240 I love...

00:29:37.400 Do you have a favorite?

00:29:39.920 Yeah, what's the...

00:29:40.980 I love Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy.

00:29:44.040 I love...

00:29:44.460 I mean, I love...

00:29:45.580 I thought you were going to say Fat Bottom Girls. 1.00

00:29:47.220 I love Fat Bottom Girls. 1.00

00:29:48.520 I mean, I love the disco song.

00:29:50.720 What's the...

00:29:52.400 Another One Bites the Dust.

00:29:55.360 Great song.

00:29:55.880 Obviously, Bohemian Rhapsody is the greatest pop song probably ever written.

00:29:58.440 Do you have a Queen karaoke song of choice?

00:30:00.760 Well, Bohemian Rhapsody is the obvious one.

00:30:03.160 The trouble is that Freddie Mercury had like a 17 octave range and I have about four notes

00:30:07.720 that I can vary between.

00:30:09.160 I love The Show Must Go On.

00:30:10.520 I love Flash.

00:30:11.960 I love...

00:30:12.200 Man, I just love...

00:30:13.160 I just love Queen. 1.00

00:30:14.540 I love...

00:30:15.240 I'm in love with my car.

00:30:16.520 They just had such whimsy.

00:30:17.980 They didn't take themselves too seriously, but they took pop music seriously, much more seriously

00:30:23.180 than other bands.

00:30:24.120 Yeah, they're great.

00:30:24.680 Great example of a good contemporary band.

00:30:27.380 So along the lines of Queens, we have a very special episode of Backstage coming up on

00:30:32.680 Monday and Bohemian Rhapsody is up for some nominations.

00:30:37.260 I thought you were calling us all Queens in our tuxedos, but that's good. 1.00

00:30:40.200 You're referring to the movie about Bohemian Rhapsody.

00:30:42.620 I'm saying that next week on Backstage...

00:30:44.400 Uh-huh, that's good.

00:30:45.560 ...something will be discussed that's going to be a lot of fun and I'm sure Bohemian Rhapsody

00:30:49.740 will come up.

00:30:50.380 That's true.

00:30:51.020 Did you see the movie and are you a fan of the movie?

00:30:53.320 Loved the movie.

00:30:53.920 I thought it was terrific.

00:30:54.980 I think the campaign against the movie and trying to wrap Ryan Singer around their necks 0.89

00:30:59.660 is pathetic and absurd and it's from envious people in Hollywood who don't want that movie 0.91

00:31:05.120 to win the Oscar. 0.97

00:31:09.500 Was it the greatest movie of all time?

00:31:11.200 Is it going to change your life?

00:31:12.180 No.

00:31:12.380 But as far as popcorn movies go that tell you a little bit about the band, it was excellent,

00:31:17.460 highly entertaining.

00:31:18.340 It dealt seriously with the complexity of Freddie Mercury's sexuality.

00:31:22.580 A lot of people just want to make Freddie Mercury into this gay icon and he never even kissed

00:31:27.480 a woman.

00:31:28.320 Freddie Mercury had a very complex sexuality.

00:31:30.340 He was a complex man.

00:31:31.700 He had a very complex inner life.

00:31:33.640 And the film deals seriously in that.

00:31:36.000 I think kudos to them.

00:31:37.100 They did a terrific job.

00:31:38.380 Queen and Adam Lambert are going to be performing at the Oscars.

00:31:41.700 Ooh.

00:31:42.180 Ooh la la.

00:31:42.720 So we'll see how that goes.

00:31:44.300 All right.

00:31:44.560 I have yet to see the movie.

00:31:45.460 I need to just like run it when it comes out on iTunes.

00:31:47.740 All right.

00:31:48.140 Moving on.

00:31:48.980 Evan says, Mike.

00:31:50.060 You get called Mike?

00:31:51.620 On occasion.

00:31:52.140 You get called Mike?

00:31:52.720 I'm a real tough guy.

00:31:53.600 Okay.

00:31:53.880 Back when I'm in the neighborhood with Alex from the Bronx.

00:31:55.900 Yo, Mike.

00:31:56.820 He wants to know your position on tattoos.

00:31:59.140 But what do you think of a religious one like Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro's alter ego?

00:32:04.440 Wait.

00:32:04.900 He just called Matt Walsh Ben Shapiro's alter ego.

00:32:06.960 I could see that.

00:32:07.640 That is hilarious.

00:32:09.260 Ben is pessimistic and Matt is very pessimistic.

00:32:12.800 That's the alter ego.

00:32:13.880 So he talks about Matt Walsh's tattoo and he says that it's on the inside of his forearm.

00:32:17.860 Right.

00:32:18.180 So is that okay?

00:32:19.040 He has the Cairo.

00:32:19.820 My position on tattoos is that only Marines and criminals are allowed to have tattoos

00:32:24.200 and nobody else is allowed to have them.

00:32:25.740 Navy SEALs?

00:32:27.320 Yeah.

00:32:27.580 Army Rangers?

00:32:27.920 That's fine.

00:32:28.840 I guess broadly speaking.

00:32:30.000 Well, yeah.

00:32:30.760 Definitely SEALs.

00:32:32.160 Definitely the sea-based branches of the military.

00:32:36.920 But I guess we can extend it to the Army and the Coast Guard as well.

00:32:39.500 People who are in the military service are allowed to have tattoos and maybe should have tattoos.

00:32:44.340 Convicts also.

00:32:45.600 Why?

00:32:46.280 Because there's something brutal about tattoos.

00:32:48.700 And it's something that we want our warriors to have and it's something we expect from real tough guys out on the street alike.

00:32:55.240 I'm not saying that there's a moral quality to the tattoos.

00:32:57.920 I'm saying that is the physical connotation of them.

00:33:01.500 There's a brutality to it.

00:33:03.000 There's a real toughness to it.

00:33:05.000 And obviously in the case of servicemen, toughness is used for good.

00:33:08.180 In the case of criminals, toughness is used for bad.

00:33:10.700 What I don't like is when these hipsters get random tattoos. 0.99

00:33:15.080 I saw somebody the other day had a tattoo of citrus fruit on each of her kneecaps. 1.00

00:33:20.500 Just giant oranges or something or grapefruits.

00:33:23.920 That is not good.

00:33:25.580 One, because very often it makes pretty girls look less pretty. 1.00

00:33:29.900 And that is upsetting to me. 0.99

00:33:31.260 It makes silly hipster millennial guys look even sillier and more hipster and more millennial. 0.99

00:33:38.220 And that is upsetting. 0.99

00:33:39.580 But then the philosophical problem is some tattoos, maybe it's really meaningful to you.

00:33:44.680 You know, it's some psalm or something or it's a Cairo format.

00:33:48.160 Okay, I can get that a little bit.

00:33:51.020 The ones that I really don't like are the nihilistic ones.

00:33:54.240 The ones, and I see this, people will have a sleeve of just random nonsense.

00:33:59.160 I saw a guy at the Apple store once.

00:34:00.780 He had a tattoo here of a little mustache.

00:34:03.200 And then he had a tattoo here and it said a bad word, which in French is mailed, cray.

00:34:11.180 S-H, asterisk, asterisk, cray.

00:34:15.040 With a little tiny mustache.

00:34:16.460 That is meaningless.

00:34:17.800 And it is a celebration of meaningless.

00:34:19.660 And what it says is my flesh is meaningless.

00:34:21.820 And my life is meaningless.

00:34:23.280 And we're all just going to turn to dirt and nothing makes any sense.

00:34:27.100 S-H, star, star, cray.

00:34:29.720 That's what that means.

00:34:30.660 I hate those.

00:34:31.560 That's very inhuman.

00:34:34.220 I guess of all the non-criminal, non-military tattoos, a giant Cairo on your arm is pretty good.

00:34:42.660 But that's about as far as I'm willing to go.

00:34:45.460 Folks, you tune in to the conversation to see what they really think.

00:34:48.580 There you go.

00:34:50.040 GB says,

00:34:50.660 Michael, will conservatives ever be fairly represented in mainstream media or universities?

00:34:55.520 We were just talking about this earlier.

00:34:58.100 And what will the end game of their leftist bias and propaganda be?

00:35:01.780 I don't think we'll ever be represented fairly in the mainstream media.

00:35:07.820 We've been trying to do it now for 70 years and it hasn't worked out.

00:35:12.400 And actually, the only way that we've gotten our voices out is through the new media, through building our own setups.

00:35:18.260 No giant corporate entity owns us, owns the Daily Wire, owns my show.

00:35:24.020 So we get to say whatever we want.

00:35:25.620 That would not be true if we were working for any of the major networks.

00:35:29.860 So I don't really see that happening anytime soon.

00:35:32.760 I won't hold my breath for it.

00:35:34.540 In the universities, what has happened to the universities over the last 50 years has been criminal.

00:35:40.060 I'm not saying that universities will ever have a conservative bias or a right-leaning bias.

00:35:46.700 I don't think that will ever happen.

00:35:48.040 I think they will always lean left.

00:35:49.780 What they have done now, though, for the last 50 years is hollowed out education itself.

00:35:55.820 You've had people marching through the universities saying, hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.

00:36:00.660 At Notre Dame, they are now covering up artwork of Christopher Columbus, like the Taliban. 1.00

00:36:06.220 At least they haven't knocked down the walls yet.

00:36:08.220 But they are covering up artwork because they are so afraid of exposing their students to art and history because the facts might offend them.

00:36:17.560 Truth might offend them.

00:36:18.800 That is horrific.

00:36:20.800 And universities that have given into that nonsense should first try to fire their presidents and their administrators and the deputy assistant, deputy assistant, deputy assistant dean of inclusion and diversity.

00:36:30.360 And assistants and deputies.

00:36:31.760 They should first try to do that.

00:36:33.240 If that doesn't work, they should knock it down with a bulldozer and try again because there is nothing left.

00:36:39.580 They are already in ruins philosophically and physically they should match that as well.

00:36:44.780 Not a rosy outlook.

00:36:46.400 And I'm a defender of media.

00:36:50.020 And one way that we can fix that is we have our own media.

00:36:52.320 I'm a huge defender of liberal education.

00:36:54.520 Not just trade schools.

00:36:55.800 Not just STEM.

00:36:56.840 Not just majoring in something useful or practical.

00:36:58.900 I love liberal education.

00:37:01.060 It is the only way that a society can make sense of its freedom.

00:37:04.440 That's the point of the liberal arts.

00:37:06.240 In your freedom, in your free time, in your leisure, how do we make sense and earn the freedom that has been given to us?

00:37:12.800 How do we govern ourselves, for instance?

00:37:14.500 How do we comport ourselves in our daily lives?

00:37:17.240 That has been hollowed out from within by the left.

00:37:20.180 And conservatives need to figure out a way to provide that.

00:37:24.460 And saying trade school, skip college, go get a job.

00:37:28.140 That is not a bad idea, but that is insufficient.

00:37:32.140 The universities aren't doing it, so we need to create our own version of the university explicitly to defend liberal education.

00:37:40.360 Or we will not be able to maintain our freedom.

00:37:43.120 All right.

00:37:43.620 Samantha says, hey Michael, have you been made aware of the Twitter account of your pet fish?

00:37:49.700 You know that there's also one for Matt Walsh's car?

00:37:51.760 There's one for Ben's yarmulke.

00:37:53.160 I just found out about this the other day.

00:37:55.720 And I think Drew's beard.

00:37:57.440 Do they?

00:37:57.940 Which let's say, hashtag team beard.

00:38:00.580 Do you run that account or do you know the person who does run it?

00:38:04.340 No, I don't.

00:38:05.360 It's no one at our office.

00:38:06.260 No, I don't run it.

00:38:07.860 I don't know who does run it.

00:38:09.240 I also can't figure out if that account likes me or not.

00:38:12.560 I saw it pop up the other day.

00:38:14.360 I guess that I had, in passing, referred to my pet goldfish or something.

00:38:18.880 So this account pops up.

00:38:20.600 But I can't tell if they like me or not or if they're criticizing the show.

00:38:25.600 Anyway, it's very funny.

00:38:26.580 I get a kick out of it and I retweet it sometimes.

00:38:28.340 Especially when your fish and Matt Walsh's car get into fights over who's the favorite.

00:38:34.300 Over Turf Wars.

00:38:35.100 I think it's my cross-conspiracy corner for a moment.

00:38:38.380 I think it's the same person that's doing all of these accounts.

00:38:41.560 I guess that would make sense.

00:38:42.700 And it has to be like a massive Daily Wire fan, even if they're hate-watching your show.

00:38:46.900 Maybe.

00:38:47.440 Or just the insanity has spread, you know?

00:38:49.560 Different people are running all the different accounts.

00:38:51.640 That's great.

00:38:52.160 I get a kick out of it.

00:38:53.460 The entire internet is basically designed for whimsy, weirdness, and frivolity.

00:39:00.980 And definitely all of those accounts check those boxes.

00:39:03.540 So great.

00:39:04.160 They're doing the internet right.

00:39:05.100 Love it.

00:39:05.880 Philip says that he has a family who doesn't see an issue with taking advantage of government programs.

00:39:10.960 And how can he convince them that it is bad for their character?

00:39:14.500 This is a tough one.

00:39:16.000 Because sometimes people need assistance.

00:39:18.700 I mean, our economy is built such that there is unemployment built into it.

00:39:23.620 Not long-term unemployment, but short-term unemployment is built into the system itself.

00:39:27.800 And so you pay into unemployment insurance.

00:39:30.800 You should be able to access it when you need it.

00:39:33.160 No problem with that.

00:39:34.500 The trouble is that social safety nets can become spider webs.

00:39:38.540 They can entrap you in them.

00:39:39.040 They can entrap you in them.

00:39:40.140 And they can make you dependent.

00:39:42.060 And they can make you lazy.

00:39:43.320 And they can make you unambitious.

00:39:45.000 And they can make you depressed.

00:39:46.500 And they can make you have a bad life.

00:39:47.940 And this is built into the system, too.

00:39:50.560 And you have to be very careful.

00:39:52.300 I don't begrudge anybody who's having a tough time for a short period of time to use those programs.

00:39:57.400 And I'm not telling you to watch out for them because I don't want to pay.

00:40:01.240 Or I don't want taxpayers to have to fund you.

00:40:04.420 That's not why.

00:40:05.320 It's for you.

00:40:06.680 It is all for you.

00:40:07.800 It corrodes your ambition.

00:40:09.280 And a good example of this, I think Dinesh D'Souza made this point a few years ago.

00:40:15.340 If I'm walking by a bum on the street and I'm eating a sandwich.

00:40:18.940 And the bum says, hey, I'm hungry. 0.98

00:40:21.320 Can I have some of that sandwich?

00:40:23.400 I could give him that sandwich.

00:40:25.260 That's a moral transaction.

00:40:27.200 I have given charity.

00:40:28.960 That's a good thing.

00:40:30.160 The bum is getting the food.

00:40:31.760 I guess that's a good thing.

00:40:32.940 The bum feels gratitude to me because I've done him a favor. 0.99

00:40:37.580 Now, if the bum asks me for the sandwich and then Barack Obama rides up on a white horse with a gun in his hand and he points the gun at me.

00:40:45.820 He says, give him the sandwich.

00:40:47.540 That is not a moral transaction.

00:40:49.760 I resent Barack Obama for making me, for stealing my sandwich and making me give it away.

00:40:55.300 Barack Obama has done nothing here.

00:40:57.260 It costs him nothing. 0.97

00:40:58.380 He's just a bully making me give away my sandwich. 0.96

00:41:00.580 And the bum doesn't feel gratitude to me. 0.82

00:41:02.500 He feels entitlement to my sandwich because the long arm of the state has just come up and told him that he is entitled to my sandwich.

00:41:11.640 That is not my sandwich.

00:41:13.020 You didn't build that.

00:41:14.040 That isn't yours.

00:41:14.720 That feeling of entitlement, that feeling of self-pity, that feeling of ungratefulness, ingratitude is a huge danger.

00:41:25.820 And the longer you are on these government programs, on the dole, taking handouts, it is inevitable that that is going to seep in.

00:41:33.940 And you will not feel gratitude.

00:41:35.760 You will feel resentment.

00:41:37.000 You will not be helped back on your feet.

00:41:38.920 You will be pushed lower and lower and be stuck in that spider web.

00:41:43.440 It is death to character, and you've got to get out as soon as you can.

00:41:47.600 All righty.

00:41:48.080 Ryan wants to know, what's your opinion on in vitro fertilization?

00:41:51.840 I oppose in vitro fertilization.

00:41:53.940 This is a dividing line in the pro-life movement.

00:41:57.720 The reason I oppose in vitro fertilization is that in vitro fertilization entails abortions.

00:42:03.660 It entails the creation of lines of embryos, which are individual human lives.

00:42:08.060 They are little babies that you can't quite see yet, but it is the creation of individual human life that are then discarded.

00:42:15.020 They are either thrown away or they are destroyed or they are implanted, and then you have four or eight kids, and then some are selectively aborted.

00:42:25.160 A couple examples of this have happened where it hasn't entailed abortion.

00:42:31.440 The greatest example is Octomom.

00:42:33.460 She went through this.

00:42:34.920 She ended up having the eight kids all stick, you know, and as a result of that, because I guess she's pro-life, she wouldn't kill any of them and made this heroic choice to have all eight kids.

00:42:46.540 Most people don't do that.

00:42:47.580 You might say, well, why don't you just create one baby and just implant one and see if it works?

00:42:53.780 That can't happen because it's extraordinarily expensive.

00:42:56.660 So if somebody is going to go through the effort of doing this, they can't take that risk.

00:43:01.020 It's a very high risk that the fertilized egg doesn't implant.

00:43:05.400 So in practice, when you're doing IVF, you're always going to be creating more embryos, and you're going to be discarding them.

00:43:12.300 This is an offense to human dignity.

00:43:13.680 This is an offense to bioethics, and I know it seems for pro-lifers like, well, we just want more life.

00:43:22.060 It's not like abortion.

00:43:23.200 We want more life, but this is one of those tough subjects where the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I think it would, well, we obviously have to fight the abortion battle. 0.81

00:43:33.540 We're killing a million babies a year in the United States. 0.99

00:43:35.460 We also should work into our pro-life message that even those who have the opposite intention, not to destroy life but to create life, can have that unintended consequence, and we cannot accept the premises of IVF because the premises of IVF are the premises of abortion.

00:43:51.660 I think especially, like, it's a little Brave New World, too, when you start to hear, maybe that's the wrong analogy to use, Chrissy Teigen and John Legend or Kim Kardashian West and Kanye, that when they do do that, they choose the gender.

00:44:08.100 Well, this is the thing.

00:44:09.640 And it's, I don't typically like slippery slope arguments, but if that's the top of the slope, it's going to be real slippery.

00:44:18.180 Polls show that huge portions of Americans would favor sex-selective abortions.

00:44:23.220 Just to use one example, they would, at this point, if you've got eight kids that you can choose from, you can choose your baby, designer babies, and you even hear the language, you see this all throughout the literature, of balancing our family.

00:44:38.000 We already have two daughters, so we're going to balance our family by having a boy.

00:44:42.780 What that means is you're killing the girl in the womb. 0.98

00:44:44.780 You're selecting against the girl to balance your family. 1.00

00:44:48.020 What that means is discarding your child and killing your child.

00:44:51.720 It's very Brave New World-y, of course, and as we see the rise of gene editing, gene-edited babies in China now, which affects not just that baby but the whole genetic line all the way in perpetuity.

00:45:03.280 These are bioethical questions that, unfortunately, our society, which is now increasingly a scientific materialist society, is actually unequipped to answer.

00:45:15.120 They have such a degraded and shallow view of ethics and moral discourse that they're not equipped for these challenges, which are hurtling toward us if they're not upon us already.

00:45:26.540 All right, Obby, I hope I'm saying your name right. Sorry if I'm not. He says, Michael, I have an urgent question. What is your favorite color?

00:45:33.840 Green.

00:45:35.360 What shade of green, though? Because I'm a girl, so there's lots of green.

00:45:38.500 Forest green is the crayon in the box. It's my favorite.

00:45:41.160 Oh, my gosh.

00:45:41.860 That's all.

00:45:42.320 Do you still color?

00:45:43.500 All the time.

00:45:44.400 Do you have an adult coloring book?

00:45:46.300 They have these now. Oh, it's so sad. They have adult coloring books.

00:45:49.800 Some of them are really intense.

00:45:51.060 I'm sure they are. I'm sure. Good job, 39-year-old millennial living in your parents' basement. You colored inside the lines.

00:45:57.480 With the mustache tattoo.

00:45:58.540 With the mustache tattoo and says, S.H. Star Star Cray. S.H. Star Star Cray with your adult coloring books.

00:46:04.380 All right, David has a really interesting question. Who is your favorite Democratic president?

00:46:09.460 Andrew Jackson. I can't think of a better one.

00:46:12.580 That was real easy.

00:46:13.380 He is. If, you know, Thomas Jefferson, Democrats try to claim him, but he doesn't really count.

00:46:20.640 How do you, is he a federalist? Is he an anti-federalist? Is he a Republican? Is he Jeffersonian?

00:46:25.280 Is he, it's, it's.

00:46:26.440 So you don't think he would count as a Democrat?

00:46:27.840 No, no. It's totally disingenuous to call him a Democrat.

00:46:30.620 Interesting.

00:46:31.080 It, uh, I guess Andrew Jackson, I, really, I would trace the Democrat party to Andrew Jackson, and he's, it's only gone downhill ever since him, so I guess he's, by default, he's my favorite.

00:46:42.320 All righty. Ryan says, Hi, Michael.

00:46:43.980 Do you think there's a link between the decline in religiosity in America and the rise in the opiate crisis in America?

00:46:50.640 Of course. Of course it is. And not just the, the opioid crisis. The opioid crisis is tied directly to the decrease in the life expectancy of Americans, which has decreased now for two years, for the first time in 50 years.

00:47:05.720 Why is it decreasing? It's not decreasing because our nutrition is getting any worse. It's decreasing because of drug overdoses and suicide.

00:47:13.240 And why are people killing themselves, and why are they giving themselves drugs and overdosing on that?

00:47:19.000 It is because of a decline of religiosity. Religiosity has plummeted. The number of people who have been raised without a religious tradition has skyrocketed.

00:47:27.960 The people who are religiously unaffiliated, or who call themselves spiritual but not religious, has exploded. 0.77

00:47:34.680 Spiritual but not religious, by the way, means I refuse to contemplate God, but I find myself very interesting, so they use this ridiculous term.

00:47:42.680 Spiritual but not religious maybe can be a way to be led to true religion, but you've got to start taking it seriously.

00:47:49.040 And it has been said ad nauseum, I don't even know who first said it, that all political problems are theological problems.

00:47:58.240 St. Andrew Breitbart said politics is downstream of culture. Culture is downstream of religion.

00:48:03.420 Culture and cult are etymologically related.

00:48:05.440 What a culture worships defines that culture.

00:48:09.060 And our culture is starving for purpose, starving for meaning. 0.99

00:48:13.260 They've bought this lie peddled by cynical fools like the new atheists who say that life is meaningless. 1.00

00:48:19.820 It's a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. 1.00

00:48:23.260 We turn to warm food and we take a dirt nap when we die. 1.00

00:48:25.740 That just isn't true.

00:48:27.480 There's very little evidence for this.

00:48:28.980 There's just enough evidence for it to convince people who have only thought in a shallow way or who are only viewing the world in a shallow way.

00:48:36.540 But it isn't true.

00:48:38.620 And you'll find it out one day.

00:48:41.320 It is not true.

00:48:43.320 And as a result, you see studies that come out that millennials, more than other generations, are looking for meaning and purpose in their careers, in their daily lives.

00:48:52.380 They're looking for it because they don't have it.

00:48:54.620 They don't have a sense of it.

00:48:55.760 They've been robbed of that by their parents and by their teachers and by a culture. 0.60

00:49:00.020 And frankly, by their religious leaders who have watered down the faith into nothing, into meaningless.

00:49:04.820 Don't even get me started.

00:49:06.220 I mean, it's a real problem throughout, certainly in the Catholic Church and throughout, as far as I can tell from a distance, throughout the Protestant churches as well.

00:49:16.200 That is a terrible crisis.

00:49:17.720 And so for conservatives who are atheistic or irreligious or agnostic, I want you in the tent. 0.51

00:49:24.640 I love your help.

00:49:26.040 We should all be allies.

00:49:28.340 However, we will not fix even one single political problem for very long if we don't fix the question of religiosity and irreligiosity in the country.

00:49:40.060 And that problem doesn't show any signs of slowing down.

00:49:42.880 All right.

00:49:43.700 Jacob says, with the current climate of gun control, what are your views and is there a way for you to see an idea which could solve this problem in American politics?

00:49:53.760 I always practice gun control. 0.93

00:49:56.000 I use both hands.

00:49:57.100 That's my entire view on gun control.

00:49:59.260 I love the right to keep and bear arms.

00:50:02.320 I exercise my right to keep and bear arms.

00:50:04.720 I recommend that you all do it too.

00:50:07.260 It's the closest opinion I have to feminism because it's the only thing that has ever been devised on this earth that can make a woman as physically strong as a man is having a gun and knowing how to shoot that gun. 1.00

00:50:20.100 The left is trying to grab our guns because they want to take away our liberty.

00:50:24.360 There is no other way to describe it.

00:50:26.260 That's all it comes down to.

00:50:27.600 It has nothing to do with protecting people.

00:50:30.320 None of the major shootings over the last 10 years would have been prevented by any of the gun control proposals over the last 10 years.

00:50:37.920 The left always harps on the AR-15 because they call it an assault rifle, which it's certainly not.

00:50:43.760 They call it an assault weapon, which is a ridiculous made-up term.

00:50:46.420 Also, assault weapons, the AR-15, kills relatively very few people per year.

00:50:54.020 Handguns are used in killing many, many more people every year.

00:50:58.660 Multiples more people than assault weapons.

00:51:01.800 Via suicide.

00:51:03.080 And two-thirds of that is just via suicide, and it's mostly middle-aged white guys.

00:51:07.960 Why does the left focus on the assault weapon?

00:51:10.020 Because it's not about saving lives.

00:51:11.620 It's about taking away your weapons, your right to protect yourself.

00:51:15.860 Why?

00:51:16.120 We saw this in the Green New Deal when they showed the Green New Deal proposal.

00:51:20.180 You think the Green New Deal is just about protecting the natural environment.

00:51:23.900 No, it's about a universal basic income.

00:51:26.160 It's about federal takeover of a bunch of industries.

00:51:28.200 It's about a socialist health care regime.

00:51:30.280 It's about taking away your rights as a patient.

00:51:32.280 The same thing is true of gun control legislation.

00:51:36.000 They say, oh, it's just about protecting people.

00:51:39.060 No, it's not.

00:51:39.780 It's about all of those other things.

00:51:41.060 It's about more government control and less liberty.

00:51:43.620 We should push back against it, fight back at every single step.

00:51:48.000 There is no conciliation.

00:51:49.540 There is no meeting halfway.

00:51:51.320 There is no compromise.

00:51:52.880 We keep our guns.

00:51:54.060 Moulin la veille.

00:51:55.000 Come and take it.

00:51:56.240 Tyler says,

00:51:57.000 Hey, Michael, do you have any suggested readings about debunking the myths of Columbus or the left's perpetual guilt of colonialism?

00:52:04.600 Yes, I recommend you read the advertisement for my speech at Notre Dame on Thursday, and then you watch it.

00:52:10.060 Just tune in.

00:52:10.520 And tune in, because I'm going to be going through for half an hour or an hour debunking the myths surrounding Christopher Columbus and going through the true history of him.

00:52:19.620 I also highly recommend a peerless biography of Columbus, Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

00:52:25.900 There are also a lot of basically contemporary biographies of Columbus written by people who were there with him at the time.

00:52:33.820 So you can look at those.

00:52:36.440 There are other, I mean, there's Columbus and the quest for Jerusalem.

00:52:40.360 I mean, there are just wonderful biographies on him.

00:52:42.660 They're not all conservative, by the way.

00:52:45.260 You can even read, most of them, I would say, are probably left-leaning.

00:52:48.900 But they give you the facts.

00:52:50.640 The woman, I think it was, who was it? 0.89

00:52:52.880 Carol Delaney, who wrote Columbus and the quest for Jerusalem.

00:52:56.460 She, I don't think she would be considered some arch right-winger. 1.00

00:53:00.720 And she said, the trouble with the modern attack on Columbus is that they are blaming him for things that he never did.

00:53:07.820 They're blaming him for things that other people did, that never happened in the first place.

00:53:12.400 And so even in a left-wing biography of Columbus, you're at least going to get the facts.

00:53:16.300 With these people, the statue topplers, the ones who want to take down the murals of Columbus, what they are dealing in is fantasy, unreality that even a leftist biography will refute.

00:53:28.540 But to begin, read Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

00:53:30.440 It's a wonderful read.

00:53:31.480 It's kind of thick, but it's a wonderful journey.

00:53:34.240 It tells you a lot about him.

00:53:35.220 All right.

00:53:35.520 Lauren says, Michael, who is your favorite founding father and why?

00:53:39.320 My favorite is George Washington because he is peerless.

00:53:42.240 He is the best one.

00:53:43.200 He is, as George III, King George III is claimed, is said to have said of George Washington, he is the greatest man in the world.

00:53:52.480 He was just, there was no comparison.

00:53:54.280 Some people try to pick a favorite of, well, Hamilton was smarter or Adams was a better lawyer.

00:53:58.700 That's just because he has a Broadway play now.

00:54:00.640 That's right.

00:54:01.160 That's just because he's a rapper.

00:54:03.260 But Washington is on another level.

00:54:06.900 He is just in another echelon.

00:54:08.360 Of the people who are still down at earth, probably John Adams.

00:54:14.200 He's up there with Alexander Hamilton.

00:54:16.400 Both of them were just terrific, terrific founding fathers.

00:54:20.700 Jefferson comes after those two guys.

00:54:23.640 I like Jefferson.

00:54:25.000 I don't mean to be too mean to Jefferson.

00:54:26.560 But really, you have to look first at Adams, Madison, Hamilton, maybe even throw Jay in there.

00:54:35.540 And then you get to Jefferson, who is also wonderful.

00:54:38.580 But the guys who wrote The Federalist, the second president of the United States, those were unbelievable, sophisticated thinkers who, through their genius, were able to keep us from turning the way of France and having what ultimately, what Edmund Burke might call a conservative revolution, rather than the Jacobin radicalism that destroyed France and nearly destroyed the entire European continent.

00:55:02.260 Can you believe that we're almost to the end?

00:55:03.940 No.

00:55:04.620 Thank God.

00:55:05.240 I've been blabbing for so long.

00:55:06.760 All right, Wesley has our final question for today.

00:55:09.940 She says her husband and her, she are big fans of your show, and they got to meet you in Dallas, you know, when you, like, ran out on stage.

00:55:17.960 I had to fly all around the country for a 60-second gag at the top of Ben's show.

00:55:22.600 But it was very fun, and I got to meet a lot of nice people.

00:55:24.600 So she says, thank you so much for your work. 0.77

00:55:26.700 And then she wants to know if the Jussie Smollett problem will lead to the mainstream media asking AOC serious questions about her dumb statements. 0.99

00:55:34.820 We saw Kamala Harris got asked a question, and then she, like, pretended that she didn't tweet it or something.

00:55:39.300 Well, that was so sad.

00:55:40.380 I mean, in Kamala Harris's defense, maybe she didn't tweet it.

00:55:43.920 It was some communications director.

00:55:45.100 With the look on her face, she was like, ah, ah.

00:55:47.900 At least Nancy Pelosi had the good sense to delete the tweet. 1.00

00:55:50.620 Yeah.

00:55:50.900 And never issued an apology.

00:55:52.260 No, the mainstream media won't ever ask a serious question of Ocasio-Cortez.

00:55:55.840 The only way that they ever would is if the darling of the socialist wing of the Democrats ever falls out of favor with her party more broadly. 0.91

00:56:05.000 But they'll never ask her a serious question because conservatives point out that she's a liar and a fraud, and she doesn't know anything about anything, and she's a radical who would destroy the country. 1.00

00:56:14.200 They'll never ask her a serious question. 0.97

00:56:16.240 They'll never apologize for the Jussie Smollett thing.

00:56:18.720 They will never apologize.

00:56:19.840 They'll find a way to present the two Nigerian men that Jussie Smollett allegedly paid to beat him up.

00:56:27.700 They will find a way to portray them as white men.

00:56:29.960 The way that they'll do it is they'll probably say that it was Ralph Northam and Mark Herring, governor and AG of Virginia, in the most elaborate blackface costume that has ever been worn in all of human history.

00:56:40.720 And then they'll say, as they already did, that the governor of Virginia, who's a Democrat, is secretly a Republican.

00:56:46.020 That is the way that they will cover it.

00:56:48.060 They won't apologize.

00:56:49.160 They never do.

00:56:50.240 This is why Rush Limbaugh calls them the drive-bys, is they wreak havoc.

00:56:54.560 They spread total nonsense, fake news, outright lies and calumny and smears, and then they move on.

00:57:02.280 They're never held to account, and they won't hold any of their own, like, AOC to account either.

00:57:06.840 All right.

00:57:07.200 It's a sad note to end on, but that's why you've got to come over here to places like us where we can break through that wall of the mainstream media.

00:57:13.600 And that's why you've got to tune in for next month's episode of The Conversation, because, you know, Ben is always super chipper and upbeat.

00:57:20.620 Thanks for joining us.

00:57:21.260 Maybe he's rubbing off on me.

00:57:22.380 Thanks for joining us, everyone.

00:57:25.020 And don't forget to subscribe to TheDailyWire.com now and join us for next month's episode of The Conversation, featuring our very own editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire and the host of the fastest-growing conservative podcast in the nation.

00:57:36.140 Fastest-growing conservative podcast in the nation?

00:57:37.440 Ben Shapiro from the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:57:38.560 The fastest-talking conservative podcast in the nation, too.

00:57:41.000 Seriously.

00:57:41.860 And then also next week, backstage, it's going to be super-duper fun.

00:57:45.260 Lots of special things.

00:57:46.140 Be sure to tune in.

00:57:46.940 I'm Elisha Krause.

00:57:47.960 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:57:48.940 We'll see you next time.

00:57:49.720 We'll see you next time.

The Michael Knowles Show - February 20, 2019

The Conversation Ep. 18： Michael Knowles

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