The Eric Metaxas Show - Michael Knowles

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

Michael Knowles talks a lot about "Speechless," his best-seller that explores how the Left's creation of new words and phrases is controlling the thought process and downward spiral of America.

Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Oh, hello. I didn't see you sneak in. Welcome to the Eric Metaxe show. I'll be Eric Metaxe, and I'll be talking to a guest. My guest today, for example, is Michael Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. He's written a book called Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. Candice Owens writes,

single American needs to read Michael Knowles' book, Speechless. I don't mean read it eventually. I mean, stop what you're doing and pick up this book, Candice Owens. Now, Candice Owens has never said anything like that about any of my books. So Candice, if you're listening, you're dead to me. Do you understand? You're dead to me. Michael Knowles, welcome. Thank you for having me, Eric. I will relay the message to Candace. Yeah, you tell her. But you know what? Don't even bother because she's dead to me. That's it. I'm done. I'm done. Do you understand? I'm done. That's fair. It's harsh but fair. You understand. You understand. I were together in Tampa at the Turning Point USA gathering. And I was under the impression I was going

to interview you there in the maelstrom. There's like people talking and why it's just crazy. So I'm actually glad that didn't work out and I can interview you in your home in Nashville. It is pure chaos down there at those events. I have to tell you, though, Charlie Kirk, that guy deserves credit for putting on the greatest show in conservative. He brings in, during the, you know, pandemic and all the lockdowns, he has brought in now twice in the last six months, something like 5,000 conservative students all into a place, all these conservative leaders, commentators, hosts, authors, politicians. And just they're saying, no, sorry Fauci, sorry progressive liberal bureaucracy. We're not going to let you shut us up. So it was great, but I agree.

A little chaotic. Is that it's a super spreader event and half of them are dead. Let's be honest. They're dead. It's sick. It's sad. As Candace is to you. Yeah, exactly.

Equally dead. Equally. 10% more. Okay, so seriously, though, you, I want to talk to you about your book, speechless, controlling words, controlling minds. We're serious people. We have serious conversations. But sometimes we goof around.

I was told by a little birdie in the other room, be sure to ask Michael Knowles about his book. But be even sure to ask him about his Anthony Fauci impression. Can anybody really, I can't even think of what he sounds like, maybe because I block it out of my mind to be mentally healthy, I have to block these things out. But do you, can you say anything in the voice of, you know, the public enemy number one, Anthony Fauci? Gladly, because you see, if Dr. Fauci is such an adept politician, in part. because he has these very elitist views, but he couches them in this good old New York, Brooklyn. Now listen, you, you pigs, you slabs.

Put your mask on unless I tell you not to wear your mask and do whatever Dr. Vouchy says. Wow. Because he's... That hurt. You know, Eric, so I am channeling, this is not a joke, a friend of the family, a Jewish woman from Queens. that I am I am channeling these kinds of voices because, you know, the Italians and the Jews in New York, they have a certain way of talking kind of like this.

And that's why when Fauci has this extremely elitist, globalist point of view, everyone thinks, oh, there's Dr. Fauci, sure, we can trust him. Right. Exactly. And here's the irony. Not only can't you trust him, but don't even think about trusting him or you're insane. Yeah. I wanted to end that segment on a positive note, and I think I succeeded. Well, so, the book's speechless. First of all, Michael, before we get into your book, because you write books, but you have a podcast. Do you call it a podcast? What do you call it? Yes, it is a podcast. It's actually syndicated now to terrestrial radio. Okay, it's the Michael Knowles show. So you're like me. Yeah. It's you're Michael Knowles and it's the Michael Knowles show and it's very creatively title. The Daily Wire. The Daily Wire, that's Ben Shapiro,

isn't it? It's Ben Shapiro along with Andrew Clayman, Jeremy Boring, Matt Walsh, Candice, who is, we'll kick her off now that you've declared her dead, fatwa, she's gone. Are you kidding me? Please. The fact that she praised your book and she didn't say one thing good or bad about my book. I know. Candice, I'm just telling you. Don't ask me for any more favors, all right?

Enough. Enough. Enough. Okay, so you have a podcast. You've been doing this for a while. You do the book club at Prager, you. you do kinds of wonderful stuff. So what led you to write this book,

speechless, controlling words, controlling minds? Well, before I had any of the podcasts at Daily Wire with Senator Cruz or Prager or anything, before I had a book with words, it all began because I had a book without any words, which was called Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a comprehensive guide, 250 blank pages. And unexpectedly, I only wrote it,

or I didn't write anything, but I only published it to irritate my Democrat friends and relatives, but it became a number one bestseller on Amazon. So I thought there was a... Wait, this is so crazy. I just want to say, I'm a writer. I'm an author. I've written a lot of books.

I think I have five New York Times bestsellers. The idea that you wrote a book that had no words and it became a bestseller, hard for me to like you, Michael Knowles. It's a good thing. I love you as my brother in the faith because the idea, I mean, it's hilarious. But this is true. When did that come out? So that book came out in 2017.

And very shortly thereafter, I had publishing companies say, okay, we want you to write another book. And I said, hold on. The word another is a little strange. You're using that word a little liberally. Nothing about what I've done should give you any indication that I could write a book with words. But I thought it would be ironic for my first book with words to make it about words themselves. And also because I think that the manipulation of language to redefine reality is the primary tool by which leftist radicals have upended society. more than by immigration, more than by various sorts of economic policies, for instance. The manipulation of language does it because if you can control the speech, then as good old Uncle Aristotle tells us, you're controlling politics, particularly in a self-governing republic.

So, you know, it's good for book sales that this issue of censorship and free speech is the number one issue right now. It's very bad for the country, but it's good for book sales. And I think that the problem that I saw was that for third. 30 years we've been fighting against PC. It's been going on, I think, for more like 100 years, as I detail in the book. But what's strange about PC is that the harder we fight against it, the more ground we seem to lose. And I think it's because political correctness lays a trap for conservatives, whereby you got some conservatives who react to it by going squish and just going along with the new words and calling Bruce Jen or she and pretending that babies aren't babies or whatever they do. Obviously, that advances political correctness.

But then even the more stalwart conservatives, the ones who say, I'm not going to go along with your new standard, very often they will abandon standards entirely. And they might do this in the name of free speech absolutism or whatever fine principle they have. But the problem is either way, the traditional standards are abandoned. The new woke standard takes its place and we keep losing ground. You know, Michael Knowles, you're a bright guy. It's not like they say. honestly, I have thought about this a lot. I've not thought about it as deeply as you,

and I've not written a book about it, but I've thought about this a lot because I'm all about words being an actual author of books with words in them, several books, not just the most recent one. But I have thought about this. Whenever anyone uses a word, a neologism, a new word, I cringe because I know that this is George Orwell

talking about Newspeak in 1984, you do control. I mean, the only way that we can perceive reality is through words, through the, that's just who we are as human beings. So when somebody says he was unpersoned or de-platformed or triggered, these are all words, literally five years ago, no one heard of these words. They're made up. The idea of being transphobic. I remember when homophobic was coined, and I thought, that's stupid homophobic.

Homo means the same. Phobic. You know, in other words, somebody is sort of making this awkward, what are these words? What are they called portmanteau words? They're just ugly and they're made, but they're used as cudgels to shut people up. So if somebody says something, you can just say, you're homophobic, you are transphobic, you're this, you're racist, you're that. In other words, you don't have an argument, so you use words as cudgels. And that's basically where we are.

And it works. People, if they call you something, you're like, I'm not a racist. I'm not, you know, like it sort of becomes, well, it is a form of violence in a sense. You know what? Lucky for you. We're at a time in this segment because I was going to take you to task for writing a book without words, but I run out of time. We'll be right back. We're talking to Michael Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.

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It works. Check it out. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Michael Knowles. He is the host of the Michael Knowles show. They couldn't get anybody else. And he's written a book called Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. Now, Michael, I forgot that you and I both graduated from Yale. You're much younger than I am. But honestly, we learned to speak the language of the cultural elites. So people think, like, I'm bragging that I went to Yale. On the contrary, I have, you know, tremendous scorn for these institutions, but every once in a while, by the grace of God, somebody like you or me or John Smirak sneaks out of there and manages to see what we've learned, and we want to use it for God's purposes and for the purposes of truth. But it is a strange thing that the universities have been totally overtaken by what you write about in your book, Speechless. They certainly have.

And there is this one advantage that can come from being educated in a very, very leftist, atheist sort of place, which is you encounter all the best arguments from their side. Either they completely transform you or you kind of knock them down and get deeper in your own beliefs. So that might be an evidence of, you know, God's providence using difficult things for good. And so I have a great debt of gratitude to Yale for that. They did the same thing to Bill Buckley, who wrote God and Man at Yale, his first book, you know, obviously about those same problems. But you've really hit on it. I mean, you mentioned earlier this word transphobic or homophobic and these kind of silly words because what they've done by coining or redefining homophobia is they've redefined a sort

of traditional religious moral opprobrium for certain sexual acts as an irrational fear that's bigoted and terrible. And with transphobia, they've redefined the plain observation that men are not women as an irrational fear and bigoted hatred of somebody else. I mean, it's a magnificent lie. Like, it's a magnificent lie. It's, it's an extraordinary thing. And that the, the normal repulsion one feels for,

for something that's deeply confusing to any of us as a human being is, is labeled, you know, some kind of a neuroses, right? And there's irony in that because I would argue that many people, who are having these gender issues, they are deeply wounded and mentally, emotionally, deeply, deeply wounded and confused. And I don't say that to make light of it. My heart breaks, frankly, for somebody struggling with that. But yeah, the idea that suddenly you're called, you're transphobic.

Like, really? Like, that's the best you can do. You made up a word. And now you're going to beat me over the head with it. And a lot of people will say, oh, oh, I didn't realize. I'm sorry. I'll take it back. Well, of course, there's something that's gone a little haywire if you're a man who thinks that he's a woman, but now, you know, we can't say that. And I think it's important for conservatives to recognize that political correctness is not just a battle between, you know, pure free speech on the one hand and pure censorship on the other. It's really about competing sets of standards in many ways. So even when PC uses euphemisms, they'll, you know, they'll say we can say,

some things, they'll say we can't say other things. So does chivalry. So does every society, every society has taboos. But when PC uses euphemisms, they'll say, you know, rather than calling a woman of a certain age, a woman of a certain age, instead of an old hag just to be polite, right? I mean, that is softening the reality, but it's not undermining the reality. It's just how we are polite. What the left will do is they'll call a criminal a justice-involved person. Now, that's not just watering down the re that is inverting the reality the one thing you cannot call a criminal is a justice

involved person because what defines the criminal is that he's involved in injustice and so I think it's this way to manipulate language not to soften reality or be a little polite it's to invert reality it's called lying in case you're just tuning in it's called lying and misrepresenting

truth and we have to be clear about that because I think sometimes people think it's cute or something well it can be cute it can also be part of a very, very dark, destructive project to harm people. And that's often the case. I mean, we know what's happening today, but we know similar things happened in Germany, in the 30s. If you hear often enough a certain term, intermension, that they are under men, not supermen, but they are beneath where men and they are the intermension, it becomes a thing.

it becomes a thing. And you go, yeah, oh, I get it now. The Slavs and the Jews, they're that category because you've heard it. It's completely made up, but it's a term. And if it's used often enough, and that's the power of words. And in the Bible, the power of words is clear. God speaks a word and the universe comes into existence. This is very powerful. So what you're talking about is kind of a deep spiritual reality. We're talking about it, you know, on the linguistic level. But there's a reason. that people are using words to accomplish horrifying things on mass because it's words are powerful. Right. We know from old uncle Aristotle that speech is politics and politics is speech, especially in a self-governing republic. So the idea of our society is that words refer to reality. And you and I, we speak roughly the same language and we can use those words to discuss our perceptions of reality. and figure out how to all get along in this political society. But what the left seemed to have adopted in the middle of the 20th century was the idea that words don't refer to reality.

Actually, reality will be transformed simply by the words that we use. You know, when Hamlet is asked by Polonius, what are you reading, my lord? Hamlet says, words, words, words, when he's pretending to be insane. Now our culture actually has gone insane. You have radical thinkers like Jacques Derry Don to other. other thinkers of the radical left in the 60s and 70s, who said, no, there's nothing outside the text.

There is no, it's all just words, everything socially constructed, your sex, your relationships, your whole society. And that isn't true. So you're seeing this now in critical race theory. You're seeing this in transgenderism, which is just an old gnostic heresy. It's the same old thing we've seen many times in civilization. If we do not stand and defend the idea that some things are true, others are false, some are good, others are bad.

If we don't have something to say in practice, then free speech in the abstract isn't going to mean very much. And so I think those procedural defenses have manifestly failed and they've given the left the whole game. You know, Michael Knowles, you're a sharp guy. It's not like they say. I'm here to say some of those people they're wrong. You're talking about some deep stuff.

I just want to underscore. This is deep stuff. What Derry Dach and the deconstructionists did, is, I would argue, ultimately a satanic project. It is a very sophisticated way to deconstruct God's reality to say, this isn't true, is it? And we're going to sort of, we're going to deconstruct it into nothingness. Words don't mean. It's just, you know, nothing means anything.

Ultimately, that's what we're talking about. Nothing means anything. There's no such thing as transcendent meaning or truth. It's all just words. you just said that, you know, referring to Hamlet's response. But I think we have to be clear that we are talking about insanity. When somebody says, when a man says, I am a woman, it's very, you know, it's like an arsenic and old lace when, you know, so-and-so thinks he's President Teddy Roosevelt. And they all humor him because it's the polite thing to do in a way.

And I feel that way. I feel sorry for people that they're convinced, I'm Napoleon Bonaparte. I am Jesus. There are people like that. And for a man to believe he is a woman, I don't know how the culture can allow that or encourage that. That's to me where we become complicit in this. But it is a really a hard thing.

And you do want at least to be gracious in a sense that if I were to meet Bruce Jenner, I'll go along and I'll call him Caitlin because I don't want to freak him out. I want to be polite. Right. But amongst those chickens here, I think we have to be clear. this is in almost all cases, this is a deep issue and we're refusing to look at it. We are because we've adopted a radical radical skepticism that the left actually foisted on us, I think is just a tactic in the middle of the 20th century.

Now the right believes it to be true. I mean, the great example of this, I think, is the debate over Drag Queen Story Hour. You know, there's an author, a self-styled conservative, who came out and said that Drag Queen Story Hour is one of the blessings of liberty. And that sound error is James Madison. Who said that? Oh, that would be, I hate to name him, but it would be David French. So David French, who is, you know, longsteen. He said that Drag Queen's Story Hour was one of the blessings of liberty?

Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, this wouldn't be the only thing that he's gotten wrong. He and I have debated other issues. But I see where he's coming from. I think he's wrong there. But I understand where he's coming from. And it's okay to at least understand how he gets. there, but there are times when

lines are crossed. And in the case of drag queen's story, I would say to David French and to anybody, that it does cross a line. There's something deeply violating about the way some of these drag queens dress and present stuff, and children, because children are so innocent.

Yeah. We can steal ourselves against all kinds of things, but children cannot. But there, you know, even to use Madison's line, I don't think any of the founding fathers would have recognized this is a blessing of liberty. I don't think liberty is licentiousness, but even beyond David's point on drag queen's story era specifically, my issue is with the radical skepticism,

because to be as charitable to his argument as I can be, what he's saying is if we tell perverts they can't jiggle for kids at the library, why they'll tell us that we can't go to church on Sunday. And the simple fact is, they're already telling us we can't go to church on Sunday a lot of places. This is too deep. Folks, we're going to hit pause. We'll be right back with the author of Speechless, Michael Knowles. Folks, I'm talking to the author of speechless, controlling words, controlling minds, Michael Knowles. We were just talking Michael about the issue of David French talked about drag queen story hour, and he sort of couched it in the idea that this is part of liberty or something.

And revisit that. How is he mistaken? So I want to be as charitable as I can to David's view, because I think a lot of people share that view. And it's that if we tell perverts that they can't twerk for toddlers in schools or at the public library, well, then they'll turn around and tell us that we can't go to church on Sunday. Okay. That makes no sense. And everybody knows that makes no sense. And you've got to be a reader of National Review or some kind of intellectual to even entertain this preposterous notion in my mind because everybody knows that's silly. But go ahead. Yeah. So I think intuitively we all know that these things are in no way comparable. But I think it has become a part of the conservative sensibility over the last 15 or 20 years to get rid of all standards entirely and embrace a sort of radical autonomy and embrace liberty as licentiousness. And so you get very confused about these things.

But wait, wait, wait. But doesn't it all come from people being unable to think beyond free market good? No, no, there's a point at which free market not good. If I am getting cheaper goods from somebody who's using slave labor, suddenly that's the end of the free market. If you have any morality and humanity, you have to say the best thing in the world is not getting cheaper goods and making more money. I have to say no because slave labor is being used. If somebody is being exploited in another way, sexually, I have a moral obligation to take these things seriously. I can't simply think about the free market and freedom in such an incredibly sloppy, almost binary way.

I mean, isn't that at the heart of this issue? Well, the moral obligation is the real key here because I think what we need to redefine or we need to define our terms as they properly are understood. Namely, what is liberty? The modern liberal idea of liberty is that liberty is the ability to do whatever you want. And so the example of this would be the heroin addict who's got a couple bucks in his pocket. he goes and buys some dope and he shoots up gosh isn't he free no that's the libertarian view that's that's what we would call a libertarian view and there's a reason that you and i don't agree with that it's not because we're anti-liberty i would say it's because we're actually pro-liberty that we disagree

with that right because the classical understanding of liberty as articulated by oh i don't know uh the pagan greek philosopher is jesus christ and lord acton so you got a broad uh base here what they would say is that liberty is the right to do what you ought to do. So this is why in the American free speech tradition, there's no First Amendment protection for obscenity. Absenity, I guess you could try to make an argument that it's speech, but it's not really speech. It's just an appeal to the prurion interest. It actually undermines liberty by arousing the base passions. And so true liberty requires limits. Our founding fathers were extraordinarily clear about this. And if we as conservatives do not recognize there will be some limits, there will be some standards.

There is a good that we are actually aiming toward. Then we're going to descend into the same kind of nihilistic, skeptical licentiousness. Okay, but you and I were just at Turning Point USA in Tampa. And some woman who is a porn star, and even when we use the word porn star, what is sadder than a woman doing that? There's nothing sicker and sadder. So calling her a star, I want to cry. But this sad woman wanted to show up there and say, like, hey, I'm pro-America. And so, like, I'm a patriotic porn, whatever.

And Ben Dominant, how did we say his name? Ben Dominic. Dominic. Now, he's somebody that I know and I value his thinking, but he was deeply troubled. that Turning Point USA said, uh, no thank you. There's like, you know, this is, this is for young people and our tent is not big enough for a patriotic porn star to show up. And we act like, hey, who are we to judge? I mean, obviously, most people would say like, yeah, what's the big deal? But there are people like Ben Dominic, Dominic, forgive me, who seem like David French to

somehow disagree with drawing that line in that case. I mean, this just happened a couple of days ago. Well, I think there's kind of a third position to be had here because I get, I get Ben's impulse, which is we want more voters and we want to be nice and welcoming to people. And then I get the, obviously, the traditional opprobrium on this and saying, no, porn stores have no place in the conservative big tent. But I think the third position here is the way that you can kind of reconcile these things, which is, if this lady's going up and she's using her porn name and she's trying to get people to subscribe to her channel, then that's really bad. And that will and obviously needs to be led off the premises immediately.

If, and we don't really know the details of a lot of these things, if she were going incognito, she were not promoting herself, and she were just trying to go and listen because she was interested in these arguments. Nobody would even dream of telling her she can't come in. Anybody can come in. Nobody knows who you are. But yeah, if you're coming there to promote your really vile thing, I mean, it's vile because I think it's vile to all women, frankly.

Why would you think you would be welcome? for that, but there are people making that case. There are people making that case, and I think that's so misguided, because the key to the big tent is not that you get rid of all of your standards and you have, you know, born stars and all sort of transvestites leading your party and guiding things. The idea of the big tent is you bring people in and then persuade them to adopt your principles, your standards, you know, the idea of the standard is that you use it to elevate people's political views.

And so, yeah, of course, the radical libertarian view that we need to be led by porn stars, which, you know, there are some people who hold that view. That's madness. But how is it any different than saying we want, we want racist, we want KKK? Come on in. We're a big tent. Suddenly, oh, you have standards. We'll be right back talking to the author of Speechless Michael Knowles. Hey, folks, I'm talking to Michael Knowles.

The book is speechless, controlling words, controlling minds. So Michael, how do we get ahead of this? I mean, we framed the problem. But so what is your solution to, you know, how do we deal with the situation in which we find ourselves? Well, Eric, you made a great point in that last segment, right? Just one there was just one. All the rest. It was total fluff.

But there was this one really good point. The point was the big tent part, the people who talk about a big tent party are not inviting in Nazis. They're not inviting in terrorists. How hypocritical. And how exclusivist is wrong with them. We need everybody. Come on in, Nazis. Come on in.

So this is the point that Bill Buckley made in God and Man at Yale. He said all this talk about a perfect, total academic freedom. It's BS. Yale would never hire a Nazi to teach sociology, nor should it. Yale has a point of view. It has a mission. There is the good, the true, and the beautiful, and we're going to orient ourselves toward that. And so obviously, we need to acknowledge these things.

And I really believe that the porn example is a pretty good one. I think there's broad agreement here that we need to curtail the spread of ubiquitous high-speed pornography in our culture. There were two laws passed for this in the 1990s with a Republican House and a Democrat Senate and Democrat President. The Communications Decency Act, which we actually argue a lot about now because of its Section 230 provision for big tech, and the Child Online Protection Act. The CDA was gutted by the Supreme Court, and the COPA, the Child Online Protection Act, was held up in the courts as well. But there was overwhelming support for this. I talked to a lot of young conservatives, as do you. Young conservatives in particular really want to curtail this stuff.

And I think beginning with obscenity as a way to finally have some limits, some standards here, is a great way to begin. There's no First Amendment protection for it. And it's a recognition that liberty requires the suppression of certain appetites. And liberal education requires the cultivation of certain virtues. And a conservative society needs prudence. we need to be able to say, yeah, words mean something. We can kind of know things and we can kind of guide how we're going to govern ourselves.

And if we really can't tell the difference between drag queen story hour and church on Sunday or a porn star and political speech, then we really can't tell the difference between anything and we can't govern ourselves. But I'm just fascinated that really sharp people, whether David French or Ben Dominic, that they would fall for this. I mean, it seems to be a kind of pure libertarianism that in seconds falls apart. I mean, we just said it, right? You know, if you want to bring it, let's bring in the racist.

We want it to be a big tent. I don't have to agree with them, but bring them in. No. Listen, speaking of Buckley, when he founded National Review in the 50s, he specifically said that we're not going to let the John Birchers in. He understood that there, there. or we want it to be as big a tent as can be, but we have to draw the line. If people can't do that, everything falls apart. And we're seeing conservatives, I guess, who don't, I don't know why they would be uncomfortable with this.

Is that they, maybe are they afraid of being perceived as uncool? I just can't really figure out why somebody goes to that length. They're always afraid of that. And they also don't, they don't have a substantive moral vision. So the only thing conservatives have been able to agree upon for the last quarter century is to cut taxes a little bit temporarily. But on the other issues, they really don't have a solid foundation. The left is in an advantage here because they, following Karl Marx's famous phrase, are aiming at the ruthless criticism of all that exists, from which we get critical theory, critical race theory, and all the rest of it. But for conservatives, we need to actually stand for something.

We need to be willing to say, this is good, and we need to enforce that standard. but the adoption of this kind of radical skepticism that is, I think, defensive because we don't want the left to wield government against us. But the simple fact is they are doing that. All society is going to have some standards. And so I'd prefer it on the happy occasion when the people give us political power that we wield it for the good. Well, again, you know, when I was writing my book, If You Can Keep It About America, it's when I stumbled on some of these ideas that I hadn't thought of before. But, you know, for example, if somebody makes an idol of the free market, I mean, if you're just a sloppy conservative, then you can't really be bothered to think carefully. So you go, free market, good.

You say, hey, free trade, great. So we're just going to trade with China. And how long does it take? It's like about another half a sentence that, yes, but if they're oppressing their people in grotesque ways, I mean, should we trade with Nazi Germany? Listen, should we build the ovens to burn the Jews? Somebody's going to do it. Who are you to judge? Let the free market decide.

We all make those decisions. We say, no, we won't do that. No, we won't do that. Because you're a human being, and you always have standards. So this idea that, well, if there's enough money to be made, we'll relax our standards. And we're going to get cheaper Nike and cheaper Apple. And we're going to do whatever we need to do, NBA. We're going to make a lot of money.

And oh, by the way, we'll use the money for something good. So, you know, if you're torturing and murdering Uighur Muslims, you know, we'll look the other way because we'll do something even better than that is bad. How can we not be having this conversation in America today? We have given China the store. We have. And again, this is Republicans who have made the left got sucked into, you know, most favorite nation status and China because they are naive about evil. Conservatives are typically not naive about evil. but they're naive about what the free market can do. And we've had, you know, 20 plus years to say that,

oh, by the way, China didn't turn into the 51st state, so maybe we got it wrong. But for the past half century, both the left and the right have embraced deregulation and individualism. The left has done that on the social side with regard to who you can sleep with or whatever, and the right has done that on the economic side. And the problem is neither of those are a sufficient political vision. Ultimately, we do need to live together. We do need to state that some things are true and others are false. The romantic poet on the Supreme Court, Anthony Kennedy famously said in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that you have a constitutional right to define your own concept of existence. And the thing is, you don't. There is a reality, and it will assert itself upon you. And we need

to make decisions of how we're all going to live together. Isn't it fascinating? I mean, it's fascinating to me that one of the finest legal minds theoretically in the nation could be that sloppy, could be so sloppy that you and I could see the preposterousness of what he has said. It's horrifying, actually, and it's a reason for Americans to take really seriously being involved in your culture, in your government, because some of these people can get it very wrong. That's a classic example. We'll keep talking to Michael Knowles. The book folks is speechless, controlling

words, controlling minds. This is the Eric Metaxus show. Please go to Eric Metaxus.com. Sign up for the newsletter or else. I'm not kidding. You know what, Alba and I decided we should do another fun segment right now. We did ask Metaxus.

We should now do a Mr. Postman what's that song, Mr. Mr. Let's just call it. Let's just call it a listener rights. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, and now a segment of a listener writes. A listener rights.

You know what, Albin? I just got a letter from a listener. Really? Could I give his name? No. Well, it rhymes with Jack Conley. I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I wouldn't say it. Okay.

It's, I'll just say the initials are J.C. Okay, Jack, can we use your name on the air? But it says, this is incredible. You know, I get stuff in. sometimes it's very funny. The next letter is very funny. This letter is really serious, and it really moved me to tears. It says, dear Eric, I just completed your biography of Bonhoeffer. Thank you for such a provocative, inspiring, challenging read. I'm a Catholic priest and so deeply appreciative of your work. I assure you, writing and preaching will be different now. You have opened my

eyes, thanks. John, I'm not going to say the last name, but it's a C. I want to tell you, folks, when I get something like this, you know, you write books. I prayed so hard when I was writing the Bonhofer book that God would use the book for his purposes. But 11 years later to get a letter like this, this is a priest saying that his writing and his preaching will be different as a result of reading this book. Now, I know it's not my book.

It's the life of Bonhofer, but the idea that I had the privilege of writing the book. So if you're looking for a good book, let me recommend my biography of Bonhofer, not because I wrote it, but because it's kind of the best summation book. If you're going to read a book, you want his whole life. And just to be clear, you don't have to be a priest or a minister to read it. It helps, but, okay, here's a letter. Now, this letter is serious, but I found it so funny, I said I've got to read this on the air. I'm not going to mention the guy's name, but let's just say it's Joe L.

This is a real letter. The title in the email was, your selection of only men is short-sighted. And then it says, Dear Eric, after enjoying your seven men book, graduates edition, I had misgivings about approving,

recommending, or gifting it, and wondered why your picks lacked diversity as the number of women is zero. It's unlikely seven. men will inspire female graduates. Your selection of only men is short-sighted. Man, that hurts. Yeah, it does. So I had to respond to Joe L. And I wrote this. I'm not joking. That's the letter I got, and this is my response. Dear sir, perhaps you will find my seven women book more diverse. here is a link for you to purchase that book.

But I must warn you up front that seven women does not include any men. I'm not sure what can be done at this point, but I thought you should know. Thanks for your email, sincerely, Eric Metaxus, author. That's a real letter. Somebody was upset that my book Seven Men, Graduates Edition, didn't include women. And I don't really know how to respond to that because it hurts. It stings because seven men, it's a fact, folks. I'm not going to deny it.

You know, when you're, when you're wrong, you're wrong. Seven men has no women in it. I'm guilty. You are. And seven women, to double down on my non-diversity, seven women has no men in it. Oh, what are you going to do? The books are printed. They're published.

People are buying and reading them and being blessed by them. I'm sorry. But you're a big man to admit all this. I must say. Thank you. Thank you. My next book is coming out, seven drag icons. Joan Collins.

We got share. It's unbelievable. All right. Let me be clear. Nutrametics.com, 30% off if you use the code, Eric. That's this week only. They extended it this week. Not joking.

Jump on it. Nutrametics.com, 30%. Use the code, Eric. And we're done.