The Michael Knowles Show - They Just Want to Diddle Kids ｜ Auron Macintyre

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00:00:37.760 Of all of the perplexing questions in politics, and there are a lot of them,

00:00:41.500 sometimes the libs do things that we don't expect them to do.

00:00:44.780 The conservatives do things.

00:00:45.880 We say, why are you doing that?

00:00:46.720 Why aren't you doing this?

00:00:48.060 Politics seems to get more and more confusing each day.

00:00:50.660 But the one issue that I know a lot of us are scratching our heads on is,

00:00:55.660 why are the libs spending so much time and money trying to push weird sex stuff on little kids? 1.00

00:01:04.940 They are. 0.93

00:01:05.480 They're pushing the transgender agenda. 0.99

00:01:08.120 They're pushing pornography in elementary school libraries. 0.99

00:01:12.040 They're pushing all sorts of creepy, weird sex stuff with kids.

00:01:15.660 And people come up with all of these deep, profound, esoteric answers.

00:01:20.600 There's one man who's given an answer that went completely viral.

00:01:23.360 It seems to be the most persuasive one.

00:01:25.600 That is Oren McIntyre.

00:01:27.320 He's a columnist, recovering journalist, YouTuber.

00:01:29.780 And he said, hey guys, it's not that complicated. 0.97

00:01:33.080 They're just perverts and they want to diddle kids. 1.00

00:01:35.320 Oren, thank you for coming on the show. 0.99

00:01:37.480 Oh, no, yeah.

00:01:38.020 Thank you so much for having me.

00:01:39.060 I appreciate it.

00:01:40.660 Before we get into your answer on that question,

00:01:43.340 why do you think that tweet went viral?

00:01:46.500 Yeah, it was pretty wild.

00:01:48.260 You make a meme and you just put it out there.

00:01:50.180 You don't really expect it to kind of do what it did.

00:01:52.360 But I think it's because it kind of spoke to a truth that a lot of us felt,

00:01:56.840 but we didn't say out loud.

00:01:58.520 It wasn't really couched in a lot of academic language.

00:02:03.340 It didn't sound very highbrow and educated.

00:02:06.080 But it broke through a lot of those kind of different layers of abstraction

00:02:09.920 and just kind of said the obvious.

00:02:11.420 And people are so kind of hesitant to do that today that I think it just kind of spoke to

00:02:15.980 something everybody wanted to say but hadn't.

00:02:18.620 I think that tweet might have been the first time I was introduced to you and your work.

00:02:22.680 And so I said, I got to follow this guy.

00:02:24.360 He's really, really cutting through all the, as you say, the jargon and all of that nonsense.

00:02:28.800 And one thing that I have really enjoyed from your writing that I've tried to do myself is

00:02:34.900 you don't only take pot shots at the libs. 1.00

00:02:38.000 You reserve a lot of your ire for conservatives and squishes and all that sort of thing 0.58

00:02:43.160 who in many ways seem to be nothing more than the court jesters in the kingdom of liberalism.

00:02:49.580 That our political problems maybe run a little bit deeper than just Republican versus Democrat.

00:02:55.380 Yeah, when we look at what's going on, it's really easy to get trapped into the frame that's

00:03:01.440 handed to us by the media and even our conservative media, right?

00:03:05.580 And so when we look at that, it's very easy to focus on the day-to-day issues and policy decisions

00:03:11.100 and not ask questions about the wider political scenario.

00:03:15.780 Why do the teams line up the way they do?

00:03:17.820 Why are we so invested in these particular political battle lines?

00:03:21.460 Were there any other points in history where right and left looked different?

00:03:25.720 What are kind of the core things that something like, say, conservatism is actually conserving?

00:03:30.020 Because if we look at it, it doesn't seem like very much.

00:03:33.520 And so kind of as we look a little below the surface, I think that that's kind of where

00:03:37.660 some of my stuff breaks through is we can get outside of that mainstream frame and maybe

00:03:43.260 explore some of those areas and ask, are these opinions something that are organic,

00:03:47.600 that makes sense with our worldview, our religion, our morality, or is it something that's been

00:03:54.080 handed to us and we're defending because we've been told that's the team we're on?

00:03:57.720 And I think that's something that makes a big difference.

00:03:59.820 And then when someone hands you the framework that you're supposed to play in, very often

00:04:04.220 you end up in a situation where it's heads, I win, tails, you lose.

00:04:07.660 And there's really no way that you can have a victory.

00:04:10.620 Even these terms left and right, they refer to the French Revolution.

00:04:14.740 They refer to the National Assembly.

00:04:16.900 And so maybe there's more in our political order.

00:04:19.600 And I guess Donald Trump really brought a lot of this to the surface in 2016, where all

00:04:25.720 of a sudden you had a lot of people who had said they were Republicans.

00:04:28.520 I mean, the Bush family, for goodness sakes, lining up against the Republican nominee at

00:04:33.120 that convention.

00:04:34.620 It was only Bob Dole, was the only living Republican nominee for president who actually showed up

00:04:39.640 to the convention for Trump.

00:04:41.340 And you had a lot of conservatives saying, no, I hate Trump on tariffs.

00:04:46.440 I hate him on trade.

00:04:47.460 I hate him on immigration.

00:04:48.340 I don't agree with this guy on anything.

00:04:50.000 If this is what it means to be a Republican, if this is what it means to be a conservative,

00:04:53.140 I guess I'm not that.

00:04:54.800 And there's been a whole lot of soul searching that's gone on.

00:04:57.640 What does it mean to be a conservative?

00:04:59.300 What does it mean to be a Republican?

00:05:00.760 So I guess then I just ask you, as we're all trying to figure this out, what should conservatives

00:05:06.960 be conserving?

00:05:07.640 Well, and that's a really difficult question, because I think that requires conservatives

00:05:12.740 to look at kind of the core of their ideology that they've been invested in defending for

00:05:17.760 so long.

00:05:18.560 The core of American conservatism is largely classical liberalism.

00:05:23.220 And classical liberalism on boards a lot of assumptions that kind of lead it to lose against

00:05:29.840 the more radical versions of liberalism that are now kind of in vogue in kind of our ruling

00:05:35.520 class.

00:05:36.740 And so because conservatives are always in a mindset of, say, for instance, small government

00:05:42.080 at any cost, they tie their own hands when it comes to implementing agendas that will

00:05:48.760 benefit the family, benefit religious conservatives, benefit other people who are part of their

00:05:54.000 coalition.

00:05:55.120 And so that's something that conservatives really need to do some soul searching on.

00:05:59.440 You know, Patrick Dedean has a book called Why Liberalism Failed.

00:06:02.020 And for those who haven't read it and are kind of interested in it, I think it's a really

00:06:05.380 good place to start, because Patrick Dedean explains that liberalism has been cracked and

00:06:10.080 spread kind of over the two parties.

00:06:12.520 The Democrats got the social version of liberalism, and the Republicans got the economic version

00:06:18.000 of liberalism.

00:06:18.860 And you'll notice that whenever the Republicans are in power, the only thing that gets passed

00:06:22.260 is tax cuts.

00:06:23.000 And when the left is in power, for some reason, none of that redistributive justice or those

00:06:27.760 free college trips actually get passed.

00:06:30.060 It's all the crazy social stuff that gets pushed.

00:06:32.360 It's always these versions, these halves of liberalism that are always being pushed forward.

00:06:36.780 And so that's why you end up in that game like you were talking about, heads I win, tails

00:06:40.300 you lose.

00:06:40.920 So I guess one of the assumptions that both the left and the right tend to focus on and begin

00:06:46.980 with in America, at least these days, is that the basic unit of society is the individual.

00:06:53.860 And you see it play out just as you're describing.

00:06:56.020 The individual gets to shtup pretty much whoever he wants to and gets to engage in whatever personal

00:07:01.460 behaviors he wants to.

00:07:03.020 And for the conservatives, they say, well, the individual should be able to keep all of

00:07:07.740 his own money and make all of his own choices about his personal life.

00:07:12.120 You can do whatever you want, just don't make me pay for it sort of thing.

00:07:15.280 And when I look at that assumption, I say, wait a second, this isn't, that's not conservative

00:07:22.800 at all.

00:07:23.780 Edmund Burke, you know, one of the, considered one of the founders of modern conservative

00:07:27.200 philosophy, and many of the founding fathers for that matter, would be rolling in their

00:07:30.680 graves at that assumption.

00:07:31.660 Because it seems to me that the basic unit of society is the family.

00:07:35.840 You remember when conservatives used to talk about the family?

00:07:38.380 Now we haven't conserved the definition of the family.

00:07:41.000 And we're using all the same kind of individualist language that the libs use.

00:07:44.400 How do we get back to a kind of family-oriented, I don't know, traditional sort of political

00:07:50.960 framework in America?

00:07:52.860 Well, and that's the trick, right?

00:07:54.320 Power always wants to centralize.

00:07:56.880 It always wants to take away power from the periphery and centralize it under its control.

00:08:02.840 And so what's been very powerful for government has been the narrative of the individual.

00:08:08.040 Because what that has done is allowed it to liberate people from what used to be these

00:08:13.660 competing social spheres of obligation.

00:08:15.660 We used to all be part of families and churches and civic organizations and guilds and unions

00:08:22.440 and different things that demanded our loyalty and our money and our time.

00:08:26.540 But over the years, those different intermediate organizations have dissolved themselves.

00:08:32.440 Those bonds that used to bring communities together and hold them together without the

00:08:37.380 interference of the government have been removed.

00:08:40.480 And in their place, the government has stepped in as kind of a weak counterpart, right?

00:08:44.520 That's part of the welfare state.

00:08:46.240 But it's also part of so many other things that the government has involved itself in.

00:08:50.260 It always comes with a promise of liberation for the individual, right?

00:08:54.280 Why do we have to involve the government here to guarantee your right to something else, right?

00:08:58.880 Your freedom in some other area.

00:09:00.780 And so by dissolving those bonds, the government has been able to take on more and more centralized

00:09:05.720 power, sometimes under the idea of collectivism, sometimes under the idea of individualism.

00:09:11.340 But it's always in the service of breaking down those institutions that were competing

00:09:16.020 with the government and centralizing the power back with the state.

00:09:19.640 That's such a great point.

00:09:20.620 I sometimes think if Karl Marx were alive today, mercifully, he is not.

00:09:24.800 He's looking up at us right now and watching us conduct this interview.

00:09:28.500 But if Marx were alive today, I sort of think he wouldn't be a Democrat.

00:09:32.700 I think he would be in the Tea Party or something.

00:09:35.420 I think he would probably describe himself as a radical individualist.

00:09:39.660 I mean, when you talk to radicals on the left, they very frequently use the language of

00:09:44.300 individualism in much the same way as you might hear someone on the American right use that

00:09:49.940 kind of language.

00:09:51.020 But you think of the image of fascism.

00:09:54.220 The image of fascism is what?

00:09:55.760 A big bundle of sticks all brought together.

00:09:58.380 Well, you can only bring the big bundle of sticks together when the sticks have been broken

00:10:02.460 out of all those associations, the family, the community, the churches.

00:10:06.660 Once they've been broken out of all of those structures and then they're just alone as individuals,

00:10:10.360 then you bind them up together in the collective of the state or you see it on the left in communism.

00:10:17.540 So it seems to be one of those two sides of the same coin kind of issue that the opposite

00:10:22.700 of collectivism is not individualism.

00:10:27.360 Those two actually kind of seem to help each other.

00:10:29.640 It's the family and the churches and all those intermediate institutions.

00:10:33.960 So the word you use there at the very top is an important one.

00:10:36.980 You said power, that power is kind of flowing between these institutions.

00:10:43.660 That's a naughty word for a lot of American conservatives.

00:10:46.360 We don't like the idea of power.

00:10:47.740 We want to back away from power.

00:10:49.440 We want to say, look, you just take the power back.

00:10:52.300 I don't want to run your life.

00:10:53.300 You don't want to run my life.

00:10:54.340 Let's just let it go.

00:10:56.460 You're saying that doesn't really work.

00:10:58.680 Yeah, that's right.

00:10:59.300 A lot of, you know, one of the ideas of conservatism, because it's taken this libertarian

00:11:03.480 bent, is the idea that they can take this power, right?

00:11:06.180 They can take the ring of power and they can throw it into Mount Doom.

00:11:09.360 You can destroy the power and then no one has to deal with its consequences.

00:11:13.060 But that's not actually how power works.

00:11:15.960 Sovereignty can never be destroyed.

00:11:17.760 It's always conserved.

00:11:19.260 It can simply just be handed from one to another.

00:11:22.440 It has to be invested in something, right?

00:11:25.640 And so American conservatives, we like to believe that the constitution allows us to

00:11:31.440 basically avoid being ruled because the constitution is this delicate balance of, you know, checks

00:11:37.060 and balances and separation of powers, Montesquieu and all this stuff allows us to basically

00:11:43.660 keep the government under control.

00:11:45.720 We're under the rule of law.

00:11:47.460 And so because we're under the rule of law, we don't have to worry about kind of the people

00:11:50.820 who are in control of our system because we don't actually serve them.

00:11:55.060 We're not actually under them.

00:11:56.580 We rule ourselves.

00:11:57.400 And this kind of objective system operates in the background and make sure that everything

00:12:01.680 is fair, right?

00:12:02.900 But as we're seeing very often today, it's becoming increasingly clear.

00:12:06.880 No one is ever actually governed just by a system.

00:12:09.920 We're governed by people.

00:12:11.440 Laws are really powerless to constrain the actions of an organized minority of people who want

00:12:17.780 to subvert them as long as those people are operating in the correct institutions and

00:12:22.840 positions of power inside the American government.

00:12:26.240 I think that we're seeing maybe even the left see that a little bit with the Supreme Court

00:12:30.880 here recently, right?

00:12:31.860 You see them suddenly losing their minds because they have to deal with the same kind of phenomenon

00:12:37.260 that American conservatives have dealt with for many, many decades, that a small minority

00:12:42.620 can basically change on a dime what has been kind of the reality inside the United States.

00:12:48.900 And so conservatives have to be more comfortable with the idea of power and the use of it because

00:12:55.820 if they're not, I have another tweet that kind of goes around, the team that wants to

00:13:00.800 win always beats the people who just want to be left alone, right?

00:13:04.640 And that's who conservatives are.

00:13:06.120 They just want to grill, man.

00:13:07.560 They just want to go out and enjoy Fourth of July.

00:13:09.980 They got the kids.

00:13:11.020 They got the business.

00:13:12.380 They got the beautiful home.

00:13:13.740 They've got things to do.

00:13:15.500 They don't have time to become professional activists and scream at the heavens every time

00:13:21.540 something happens.

00:13:22.940 But that is not a good tactic.

00:13:25.100 The people who want it are going to win.

00:13:27.700 And you can never live in this kind of fantasy where the government is just going to leave

00:13:32.420 you alone in perpetuity.

00:13:34.520 You have to invest.

00:13:35.780 Every generation has to care about the values that are being inculcated and the things that

00:13:43.360 are then being passed into law and carried forward.

00:13:46.340 You don't just get to kind of put the government on autopilot and let it protect your rights once

00:13:51.500 you set up the system correctly.

00:13:53.220 Unfortunately, we never escape the rule of men and we have to then generate good leaders

00:13:58.500 and put them in positions that will defend our values and our families.

00:14:02.780 We can't just hand it over to the Constitution and hope that it does the job all by itself.

00:14:07.220 But we are at this dispositional disadvantage here that you've totally hit on correctly,

00:14:13.060 which is as conservatives, you'll sometimes see these social scientific surveys go around.

00:14:17.480 They say conservatives are hotter than leftists or something like that.

00:14:21.260 Conservatives are happier than leftists.

00:14:23.020 And whenever I see those, I always think, yeah, duh, we're pretty content with the way things

00:14:30.060 are.

00:14:30.620 We like our lives.

00:14:31.820 We like our families.

00:14:33.780 We're not, we don't dye our hair crazy colors and put in all sorts of mutilations and go

00:14:38.340 screaming and shrieking in front of government buildings all the time.

00:14:41.300 That's what the libs do. 1.00

00:14:42.500 That's what the leftists do.

00:14:43.880 We conservatives, we just, we took the grill pill, man.

00:14:47.100 We just want to stay and grill and spend time with our nice families, often in the suburbs.

00:14:52.540 And I work in politics professionally.

00:14:55.580 This is my job.

00:14:56.640 And even I think, man, can't I just go home and grill up my delicious good rancher's steak

00:15:01.120 and, you know, have a nice drink and have a good life?

00:15:04.280 Conservatives naturally don't want to, don't feel the same burning fire to go out and wield

00:15:11.160 political power.

00:15:11.960 And so that, that is a dispositional issue, but you're so right.

00:15:15.640 It's not, we are not simply governed by letters on a page of a statute.

00:15:20.820 It's against the U.S.

00:15:22.400 code.

00:15:22.720 It's against federal law to protest in front of a judge's house to influence a case.

00:15:26.920 It went on for weeks after the leak from the Dobbs decision.

00:15:30.540 The cops didn't do nothing.

00:15:32.600 The authorities didn't do nothing.

00:15:34.480 Even though you had a Republican governor in Virginia, presumably you had a federal law

00:15:39.640 enforcement that is supposed to enforce these laws and they just, they just don't do it.

00:15:44.120 You, you saw the, the double standards during the, the vying insurrections of 2020 and 2021.

00:15:50.360 You had BLM burn the country down for eight months.

00:15:53.500 Usually the charges were dismissed.

00:15:55.380 In some cases people were arrested and, and the current vice president, the now vice president

00:16:00.360 raised money to bail those people out of jail.

00:16:03.280 Meanwhile, Hornhat guy busts into the Capitol and cracks a Coors Light and they throw those 0.83

00:16:08.840 people into solitary confinement and they practically throw away the key.

00:16:13.160 So the law is not going to enforce itself, certainly not going to enforce itself in a neutral

00:16:18.780 way.

00:16:19.380 I agree with all of that.

00:16:21.260 So how are we supposed to get and wield power?

00:16:24.020 Well, yeah.

00:16:25.700 And that's really the, the million dollar question, right?

00:16:28.240 Is what do you do now?

00:16:29.500 Because what we're seeing so often is the impotence of elected leaders, even somebody who might

00:16:36.040 be more dedicated like Trump, look at like a, a executive order, Trump issues versus an

00:16:42.520 executive order that Obama or Biden issues and the effectiveness of those orders.

00:16:47.120 Trump issues an executive order and his own generals, his own executive branch, they just

00:16:53.040 ignore him.

00:16:54.000 They just completely move forward with whatever they're doing and they just hide it from the

00:16:58.480 commander in chief and they pay him no mind.

00:17:01.160 Barack Obama issues the executive order about genders and bathrooms.

00:17:04.860 And all of a sudden, every organization in the country jumps to attention and follows it as

00:17:11.620 if he just issued some kind of dictate.

00:17:14.160 Including private organizations, not just government organizations, the whole kit and

00:17:17.100 caboodle.

00:17:18.020 Right.

00:17:18.400 And so you have to ask yourself as an American conservative who believes in the constitution

00:17:22.560 and the letter of the law.

00:17:24.000 Both of these men had the same elective office.

00:17:26.420 Both of these men operated under the same rules.

00:17:29.240 Both of these men use the same instrument, but they have decidedly different impacts and

00:17:34.480 different effects.

00:17:35.960 Why is that?

00:17:37.080 That's the key question that you need to understand.

00:17:39.740 And once you understand it, you better grasp where the power sits.

00:17:43.420 What you start to realize is not all of our power is simply in the branches as explained

00:17:48.480 to us.

00:17:48.980 It exists in things like media.

00:17:50.880 It exists in things like our educational institutions.

00:17:53.580 It exists in things like non-government organizations.

00:17:56.040 It exists in things like the permanent bureaucracy that people call the deep state.

00:18:00.240 Far more power resides in those institutions than resides in any one particular man who's

00:18:06.700 sitting in an office.

00:18:08.180 And so while conservatives love to win elections and love to think that one elected official

00:18:13.440 will step in and change those things, they need to understand that the rot is far deeper.

00:18:19.400 It sits well into things like the FBI, things like our university system.

00:18:23.960 And those are things that, if you're going to change things, have to fundamentally be rearranged,

00:18:30.580 possibly dismantled and rebuilt if you're going to see real change.

00:18:33.960 You can't simply just stick someone into an elected office, say, oh, throw out all the

00:18:38.100 bums and we'll get them in the next election. 1.00

00:18:39.900 That doesn't work.

00:18:40.780 And we've seen that time and time again.

00:18:42.560 Because when a Republican is president, even a conservative Republican, even a conservative

00:18:46.700 Republican with his head pretty much screwed on straight, it is just a different thing

00:18:52.000 than when a Democrat is president.

00:18:53.920 I sometimes think of this when it comes to the media, because when I see anonymous reports

00:18:59.320 in NBC or the New York Times, Washington Post about a Republican president, I usually dismiss

00:19:06.100 them.

00:19:06.860 When I see anonymous sourcing in a report in NBC and New York Times and Washington Post about

00:19:12.340 a Democrat president, I'm not so quick to dismiss them.

00:19:15.220 I take them much more seriously.

00:19:16.520 Is this because I'm a hypocrite and I just want to believe whatever is good for my side 0.90

00:19:21.420 and harmful to the other side? 0.83

00:19:23.120 I don't think so.

00:19:24.540 The reason, at least the way that I think about it, is that they're different things.

00:19:31.040 When the left-wing media is going after the right-wing president, that is to be expected.

00:19:36.960 When the left-wing media are going after the left-wing president, that's a totally different

00:19:40.820 relationship.

00:19:41.660 Their access to those sources is way better.

00:19:44.300 It's way more reliable.

00:19:45.480 The incentives are completely different.

00:19:47.520 And so, even though it looks like it's the same thing, because the people are different,

00:19:52.000 because the movements inside of those power structures are different, the way to understand

00:19:56.400 them is different as well.

00:19:58.340 Yeah, there's this guy, Antonio Gramsci, and he was a Marxist, and he wanted a revolution

00:20:04.200 like the one that he had seen in Russia, but he couldn't get it going.

00:20:08.160 He ended up writing a lot in a prison in Italy.

00:20:11.060 I always say this was Mussolini's worst thing that Mussolini ever did.

00:20:14.040 Maybe not the worst thing, but it was up there.

00:20:16.040 He put that man in prison, and not because he didn't deserve it, but then it focused

00:20:20.840 Gramsci's mind, and all of the guy's contributions to philosophy come out of him sitting in prison.

00:20:26.840 Exactly.

00:20:27.380 So you're familiar with the fact that basically Gramsci said, we're not going to get a communist

00:20:31.520 revolution in kind of these Western countries the way we got it in Russia, because they're

00:20:36.240 too affluent.

00:20:36.900 You can't create this deep class divide the way you can in these other countries and kind

00:20:43.020 of get the revolution going.

00:20:44.300 So what we need is this cultural hegemony, right?

00:20:46.840 We're going to march through the institutions.

00:20:48.600 Most people have probably heard the long march through the institutions, right?

00:20:52.340 And that's what's going to gain you power in the West.

00:20:55.740 The fault line is not going to be this class divide of rich versus poor directly, though

00:21:02.280 it ends up spilling out in that way in other permutations.

00:21:06.760 But it's going to be along things like race and gender and these other aspects of society

00:21:12.460 that allow them to create kind of these fulcrums, right?

00:21:16.320 There are a lot of people who are willing to sign up for a revolution that's going to

00:21:19.680 put their ideas first, their priorities first, and subvert kind of the way that your society

00:21:26.240 was constructed before that.

00:21:29.400 And so it is by grasping hold of these different institutions that these kind of ideologies

00:21:35.160 have been allowed to infiltrate.

00:21:36.760 And a lot of what we're seeing has been sitting around for a very long time.

00:21:40.420 A lot of people, especially kind of these IDW, you know, classical liberal type folks, love

00:21:45.980 to think that wokeness is just some kind of descendant, it's a, you know, progressive

00:21:50.080 them just went a little too far, it went off the rails.

00:21:52.560 And if we can just dial things back 10 years, if we can roll liberalism back to the last

00:21:57.060 patch, then things will be fine.

00:21:59.320 What they don't realize is that wokeness is in many ways like a direct descendant of things

00:22:03.840 like the Civil Rights Act.

00:22:05.200 And so this ideology has been built into our system for a very long time.

00:22:10.420 And its implications are simply being felt full force many, many decades after it's

00:22:15.960 been deeply seeded through pretty much every aspect of our society.

00:22:20.240 You're seeing some conversation about that now.

00:22:23.020 I'm reminded of Chris Caldwell's book, Age of Entitlement, came out a few years ago.

00:22:26.440 Yes, great book.

00:22:26.640 So you're starting to see a little bit of this discussion of, huh, maybe wokeness isn't

00:22:31.360 just the last five years.

00:22:33.140 Maybe actually this has deeper roots.

00:22:35.840 So, okay, we've talked about Gramsci, we've talked about cultural hegemony, we've talked

00:22:39.700 about all of these things that are very important from a 30,000 foot view.

00:22:43.580 Now, for people who are listening, before I let you go, people who are listening right

00:22:47.040 now, they're saying, what do I do in the year of our Lord, 2022?

00:22:50.400 What do I do as I look ahead?

00:22:51.960 There's going to be a presidential election in 2024.

00:22:54.120 What do I do as I look past that?

00:22:56.620 What tangibly would you encourage conservatives to do?

00:22:59.880 Yeah, again, this is a really difficult question.

00:23:01.900 First and foremost, because your audience may not like me for this, but I'm not a big fan

00:23:05.220 of democracy.

00:23:06.560 But I don't think that it works very well.

00:23:09.360 And what we have is a fundamentally democratic problem.

00:23:11.980 One of the issues that conservatives have is they buy into this myth of kind of like

00:23:16.740 popular action, right?

00:23:18.600 That if you get enough people together, because we see the left do this, right?

00:23:21.920 They get a bunch of protesters together, they stand outside stuff, they chant, they yell,

00:23:25.860 they scream, things change.

00:23:27.080 And we think to ourselves, that's how things get done, right?

00:23:29.900 That's how that happens.

00:23:31.200 But as we talked about, we see a very different reaction from when a leftist mob shows up to

00:23:35.740 one thing.

00:23:36.520 And then when some right wing protesters showed up, right?

00:23:39.060 Left wing mobs, they have the the sanction of the state, they have the sanction of the

00:23:43.500 media, they get away with everything.

00:23:45.140 They have the vice president bailing them out of jail, right wing people show up and they

00:23:49.640 sit in basically black sites, you know, getting, you know, getting denied food and sleep for

00:23:54.520 in medical care, right?

00:23:55.800 So we do not sit in kind of this even play field where the left can, you know, and the

00:24:02.140 right both can use this popular will to drive things.

00:24:04.800 Whether we like it or not, society is always ruled by an organized minority, right? 0.98

00:24:10.600 It is actually our elites that dictate in large ways what happens in our country.

00:24:16.160 They always need a connection to kind of the popular consciousness and the zeitgeist and the

00:24:20.460 support of the people.

00:24:21.300 But we need to start understanding and focusing on the fact that we need a better class of

00:24:26.700 leaders.

00:24:27.300 We need a class of leaders that is willing to step out there, defend the things that we

00:24:31.560 want them to defend, fight for the things we need them to fight for and have our well-being

00:24:36.200 in mind, not the well-being of other nations or of their own personal patronage, you know,

00:24:43.220 network.

00:24:43.980 Personal enrichment or something, right?

00:24:45.120 Right, right.

00:24:45.720 And to be fair, all elites are going to do that.

00:24:47.720 That's another thing that kind of conservatives need to understand is what we want.

00:24:53.120 Elites will always serve their own interests.

00:24:55.380 That will always be true.

00:24:57.020 What we want are elites that are aligned with our interests, whose well-being is tied to the

00:25:01.700 well-being of the average American worker and the average American family, not to some

00:25:06.900 multinational corporation or some giant NGO somewhere or some super PAC, right?

00:25:12.360 And so in a lot of ways, I think looking at people like Ron DeSantis, right?

00:25:17.980 A lot of people want Ron DeSantis to run for president.

00:25:20.460 And I understand why.

00:25:21.560 But I think that's a mistake because what he is doing is setting up a kind of test run

00:25:27.280 for how regional power can be created.

00:25:31.820 So you're saying you would rather DeSantis stay in Florida and keep building up that power

00:25:36.160 base?

00:25:36.460 I would take 10 more DeSantis as governors before I would take one DeSantis as president

00:25:43.100 because I think that 10 more DeSantis would have a far larger impact on their individual

00:25:48.840 states and regions and their ability to change the values and the structures and the power

00:25:54.120 bases and the things that exist there and also give us a model for how these regional,

00:25:59.260 how federalism was actually supposed to work, right?

00:26:01.460 The idea that the government shouldn't be able to push down vaccine mandates and mask

00:26:06.420 mandates and educational mandates on every single inch of the United States.

00:26:11.560 That's not how our system is supposed to operate.

00:26:14.460 And if we had more people who were conscious of that and willing to step out beyond kind of

00:26:19.480 this federal prison that most of these regional powers have been placed in, I think that would 0.86

00:26:24.260 be a far more effective thing.

00:26:25.860 I think conservatives have a much better chance of changing things on that level.

00:26:29.280 That doesn't mean that things don't need to happen at the national level, but if you're

00:26:32.740 hoping to just like shove DeSantis or Trump into the White House in 2024 and that will 0.66

00:26:38.220 just fundamentally change the direction America is going in, I don't think you've been paying

00:26:41.880 attention to what's been happening in America in the last few decades.

00:26:45.280 That's a really great point.

00:26:46.720 And, you know, you say somewhat provocatively that you're distrustful of democracy.

00:26:50.680 Worth remembering that the founding fathers themselves had a pretty healthy skepticism of mob

00:26:55.920 rule and democracy. And, you know, they constructed a system that has since decayed and been

00:27:02.260 perverted. And there have been all sorts of problems over the ensuing centuries. But they

00:27:06.380 created a system that was in large part designed to rein in the popular passions. And but but to your

00:27:13.980 point, power has moved around in in ways that have have really not been to the benefit of the

00:27:20.800 country. And it's going to take a lot more than one presidential election to fix that. 0.99

00:27:25.400 I really I really love your point, though, on we've got this governor is the most powerful

00:27:28.900 governor, most effective governor I've seen. So I certainly that I see around the country

00:27:33.140 today. What if we what if we stopped playing the game that the libs are handing us? What if we

00:27:38.060 start saying, well, what if we build up more of those kinds of power centers? What if the rules

00:27:41.940 aren't if the rules of the game aren't working for us? What if we change the rules?

00:27:45.440 Really great point. Orin, where can people find you?

00:27:47.200 Oh, absolutely. I've got a YouTube channel. I've got a sub stack where I put out different

00:27:53.620 articles and and podcasts and things. So if people want to find me there, you can just look

00:27:58.920 for Orin McIntyre. I've got a Twitter, which is where most people know me from. And there's

00:28:03.500 a link tree there that can just bring people to where all my work is on all the different

00:28:07.280 sites and that kind of thing. Excellent. Orin, thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate

00:28:10.940 it. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.

00:28:17.200 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - August 07, 2022

They Just Want to Diddle Kids ｜ Auron Macintyre

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