The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 130 - ‘Roseanne’ Is The Silent Majority

Episode Date: March 29, 2018

The smash-hit return of Roseanne to television, which blew away ratings expectations this week, is great news for Donald Trump and the most important political opinion poll in years. We will analyze what Roseanne’s return means for Trump, “nostalgia TV,” and the American people. Then, the Mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The smash hit return of Roseanne to network television, which blew away ratings expectations this week, is excellent news for Donald Trump. I disagree with Ben on this. We will explain why it is the most important political opinion poll in years. We will analyze what Roseanne's return means for Trump, nostalgia TV, and the American people. Then the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is the Michael Knowles show. This is all culture today, and it's really, really good news. It also shows a divide among conservatives, and it's a divide that is as old as conservative political thought. So we'll get to that. First, I must say, you'll notice I'm in a different place now.

I'm no longer at National Review in the city in New York. I'm up at Ithaca. I'll be speaking at Ithaca College tonight on the topic. Give me that old-time religion, America's Christian Foundation. I think we'll be streaming that, so look out for that. I think you might be able to find it. It's going to be very controversial. In the old day, this wouldn't have been controversial, the Christian underpinnings of America,

probably even 20 years ago. Now it is so controversial, there have been promised protests. Now, I don't know if they're going to show up. People have said that they're going to protest me, which is really funny because the most not noteworthy thing that I've done is not write a book. Can you imagine what they would do if I did write a book? Can you imagine the sort of protests I would get? So this is, if the protest happens, it will actually be a protest of nothing.

But it should be a lot of fun. I'm excited. I just had lunch. with some of the Ithaca right-wingers and the people who are bringing me over there. So it should be a lot of fun. Look out for that later on tonight. We'll see. Hopefully Antifa doesn't smash my head in or something.

We need to talk about Rosam. This is all culture today until we get to the mailbag. But before we do that, we need to make a little money. You know, Roseanne's not the only person who's making money. She had this big smash hit show. But we need to thank a new sponsor, Lending Club. This is a really great sponsor. sometimes you just need a little bit of money.

You're, you know, you've got some big expense that's come up. The roof is leaking, the this or that. And you just, it's the responsible thing to do to take care of that now and not wait until you don't have it. A good example of this was when during the 2016 election, I won a bet on the race with Ben. You know, I don't know that Ben, he gave me odds on this. It was a pretty big bet. Maybe if he was in a pinch then, he would have had to go and borrow money. And when you do it, you should do it very easily.

You should do it at the lowest possible rates. You should do it through Lending Club. Lending Club is really great. It gives you access to low rates on loans of up to $40,000 for almost any purpose. Taking control of your debt, financing a major purchase, lowering those high interest credit cards, you know, paying off some of them, making some home improvements, or, of course, paying off an election bet with your friend and colleague. It is easier than going to a bank. It offers lower rates than credit cards. People use credit cards so stupidly.

Credit cards have high interest rates. So when you start using them for purchases that you don't need to, you're just wasting money. You're throwing it away. Don't do that. You can go to Lendingclub.com, enter how much money you need, see if you're approved within minutes.

So it actually only took me seconds to not be approved, obviously. But most people can get their notification within minutes. And if they're less financially irresponsible than me, then, you know, they'll probably get approved. You can pick the offer that's right for you and the money can be in your account in just a matter of days. It is that simple. You don't need to go down to the bank and wait to see if you're approved for this loan. You can just do it right there on the internet. It's 2018.

Make it very easy for yourself. For more than 10 years, Lending Club has helped millions of people with over $31 billion in loans. Billion with a B. Take charge of your finances today. Join Lending Club. Go to Lendingclub.com slash Knowles, K-O-W-L-E-S. You will check your rate for free. Don't say I never did nothing for you.

This also won't impact your credit score. A lot of times people don't want to go and do these financial checks because it'll actually knock your credit score down. This will not. There is no cost to doing this. That is Lendingclub.com slash Knowles. Lendingclub.com slash knolls. All loans made by Webbank member FDIC equal housing lender.

Lendingclub.com slash knowles. Check it out. It's really, really great service. This Roseanne debut is huge, huge news in Hollywood is absolutely shocked by it. The debut of the Roseanne reboot, do you remember the show from the 90s? I used to watch it as a kid. I actually assume there were a lot of people who didn't watch it when it was on the first time. This is a great show about a blue collar, kind of lower middle class family and just what they go through.

The debut of the reboot was watched by 18 million Americans. To put that into perspective, NBC was leading the rankings up until this point in February with an average of 9.5 million viewers. That is double that. It was a whopper of a debut. Hollywood is already trying to chalk this up to nostalgia TV, but that doesn't really work. You know, people who say, I really liked Roseanne in the 90s, but now, you know, I want to tune in and just relive my childhood.

That doesn't really work. The youngest viewers from Roseanne's first run are now at the top. or outside of the ad-friendly demographic, right? I mean, I'm watching it at like three years old at the time. I was always very forward-thinking on the culture and watching TV. But they're really at the top range of that ad-friendly demographic now. Roseanne's staggering performance in that demographic came from new viewers who were children are not even born during Roseanne's first run. These are new viewers, people turning in for the first time. The mainstream media are absolutely shocked. Hollywood Reporter reports Roseanne Revival sky rockets

with stunning premiere. Roseanne upends the TV industry proving middle America can help broadcast triumph. Gee whiz, you think? Do you think, really, that little sliver of America between the two oceans that might be able to help a broadcast premiere?

The willful ignorance is so shocking that the vast majority of this country might be able to move the needle one way or the other. And it's because for so long, Hollywood only preaches to coastal elites. It only preaches a worldview shared by relatively few people when you look at the geography of the United States. So when something breaks out of that, it's always shocking. It's so shocking. Washington Post reports that Roseanne Premier was the highest rated sitcom episode in years of any sitcom. Deadline, which is the Hollywood industry outlet, deadline is actually pretty good.

deadline got it right. The headline read, Roseanne Revival's huge debut, stuns Hollywood, prompts soul searching. Prompts soul searching. Why does it need to prompt soul searching? Because Hollywood has ignored this little tiny demographic of America called the majority of Americans for a long time, and it's part of why their ratings have just slumped. You know, obviously TV is going down in ratings.

People are tuning into new media much more frequently, but you can still break out of the pack as Roseanne is showing us. Deadline wrote in their article, while nostalgia was expected to bring in eyeballs, no one predicted such a huge turnout on Premier Night for the Blue Collar Family sitcom with a Donald Trump supporting protagonist, especially among the younger demographic.

But then few predicted that Trump would become the Republican nominee and would win the presidential election when he first announced his candidacy. This few predicted, nobody knew, nobody could predict. I predicted that Roseanne, Roseanne would be a smash hit when it was rebooted. I did predict that. I knew that would happen. Why? Because I know Roseanne Barr. I know she's very funny.

I know she's an astute observer of the culture. She's speaking to people that nobody else is speaking to. And all the other sitcoms coming out of Hollywood are trash. They are unwatchable. So I'm not surprised at all. This is that classic line that you hear in every election. When it comes to Republicans, I say, oh, I didn't know anybody who voted for Nixon. Well, most people voted for, oh, I didn't know anybody who voted for Reagan.

I would hear this from professors of mine, family friends. I don't know anybody who voted. I don't know anybody who predicted Roseanne would be such a smash-it. And it was a smash-it among younger viewers. So there's this worry. Roseanne Barr has been fairly vocal about her support of Donald Trump. And there was this fear that, oh, well, young people hate Donald Trump. That's it.

Well, not so. Not so. It certainly doesn't appear this way. I want to address Ben's point, because Ben has talked about this on his show today, and he wrote a good piece on it. he did not like the Roseanne premiere. He said, we have to watch out because people are saying this is a big triumph for conservatism, but Roseanne is not a conservative. The show isn't a conservative. They have a little kid, the seven-year-old boy is cross-dressing, and that's not addressed sternly. It's sort of just kind of a weird thing, and they're indulging in it. And, you know, Roseanne has never been an actual conservative. She just supports Donald Trump. Ben wrote that great book, Primetime Propaganda. He says this might even be. be some sort of nefarious plot, you know, like they always do in Hollywood, to sneak leftist politics in. I'm not really sure about that. The, you know, the show, I suppose, is culturally

left wing in the sense that it's socially left wing. It doesn't care about the transgender thing. Roseanne is pro-gay rights. She's pro cultural leftism. And basically, his contention is that what the show is saying is the only reason anyone could vote for Trump legitimately is economic. talked about jobs who's going to make the country better. I don't think that's true. I think it's seeing culture in a narrow way. I think there's more culture to this. And it explains a phenomenon that we've seen for a long time.

You know, on this seven-year-old boy, Ben says the evidence is that this seven-year-old boy character wears girls' clothing and they don't take it seriously. But people didn't vote for Donald Trump because he clearly explained that transgenderism is delusional. They didn't vote for him for that reason. There was a candidate who did that, whose name is Ted Cruz. There were conservatives who were saying this at the time. But Trump actually was pilloried in the 2016 election because he said, I don't care about the bathrooms, let him use whatever bathroom they want. That was basically always his perspective, and it resonated with a lot of Americans.

Conservatives, rock-ribbed conservatives and social conservatives, like many of us over here, don't agree with that. We think it's important to make these clear philosophical distinctions. But I don't think that most Trump voters really did that. There's a different kind of cultural conservatism that is at work here, and it's called the silent majority. The silent majority of people, Richard Nixon popularized this term in 1969. Here he is explaining it. And so tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I asked for your support. I pledged in my campaign for the presidency to end the war in a little bit of the war.

way that we could win the peace. I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that pledge. The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed. For the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris. Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. Now this is considered the beginning of the silent majority. It actually isn't. It was coined in presidential politics in 1919 and 1920 to refer to Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding, also both Republicans. The silent majority then, as in 1969, as now, refers to Americans who don't shriek their politics from the rooftop. You know, all of the people at these marches who wear the hats

that are shaped like genitals and all of that. Those people are very vocal. It's easy to think that that's the dominant American culture, but it isn't, because normal people don't do that. People who were raised correctly and learned manners and self-respect don't go out there and shriek profanities all the time at all of these protests. And that's what refers to the silent majority. But notice in that speech, he says, I talk to the silent majority of Americans. We need to end this war. We need peace, and we need a certain kind of peace with dignity and this and that. Dignity and peace are important aspects here. Initially, you know, it was about the Vietnam War, was about opposing the counterculture.

But peace plays a role in this. Some Republicans want to bomb a lot of places. Some Republicans aren't such anti-war activists. But the silent majority seems to have been a little bit that way. You see it with Roseanne. You see it with Donald Trump too. Donald Trump campaigned as an anti-war candidate. Rosanna ran for president briefly,

and she was an anti-war candidate. These people are not necessarily conservative politically in a certain ideological way that we think of them. Nixon and Reagan, by the way, ran as anti-war candidates. There was Ronald Reagan's peace through strength, and then Ronald Reagan tried to abolish nuclear weapons at Reykivik with Gorbachev. Their peace through strength is quite different. None of them were campaigning on we need to go bomb all of these countries.

Nixon ended the Vietnam War. The cultural conservatism here that I think some conservatives are missing is the deep respect for institutions. Rosanne and Donald Trump don't like to see American institutions, institutions disrespected. This is a divide among conservatives that's been a long, a long time, the traditionalists and the more libertarians, the more ideological ones. The divide, you could see it with the NFL controversy. Donald Trump criticized all of those ungrateful, ingrateers and the NFL for taking a knee and disrespecting the flag and the national anthem. He attacked

them and he said, no, stand up for your flag. Stand up for your country. It's outrageous. It's unpatrile. and these are our games. Some conservatives like me cheered. I was very happy to hear him say that because it's deeply offensive when a culture hates itself and hates its own institutions and hates the things that have given us so much freedom and so much prosperity and been so charitable to the world. Some more libertarian people or more ideological people were horrified when Donald Trump attacked the NFL players. He said, oh, it's not his place. I don't want the president involved in the culture. This is a little, and I sympathize with that. But that's, that is a big difference. and Donald Trump falls into that former category.

He is culturally, in that sense, quite conservative. He might not care about transgender bathrooms. Roseanne might not care about little boys who are wearing dresses. They might think it's kind of weird. But that is a type of cultural conservatism. Here's Roseanne explaining it. I know you were a very liberal, socially liberal person in general. I'm still the same.

You all moved. We did? You all went so far out. You lost him. I mean, seriously, a lot of your audience, and including me, I just want to say this, Jimmy, a lot of us, you know, no matter who we voted for, we don't want to see our president fail. Right. You know?

Right. I know. And yet we've seen it. Over again. Are you? You want pants? You want pants for the freaking president? No, I don't want him either.

Well, then zip that lip. Well, then zip that lip. But that's classic Roseanne. Now, look, I wouldn't mind Pence. I'd be pretty happy if Mike Pence were the president. I think he's a great guy. Claven calls him Mench. I wouldn't mind that one little bit.

But a lot of America is much more the Conners than the more ideological conservative or the conservative who cares very much about these strains of thought and moral frameworks and philosophy and history. A lot of America is much more the Connors. A lot of people that you grew up with, a lot of people that I grew up with, people in my family, people that I'm friends with, they don't think about politics all the time.

They don't think, you know, they don't follow all of these websites. They say, but what is Mueller going to do here with this probe and he's got gates and Manafort? And they don't follow that. Their interaction with politics, blessed are they, is they see a few things in the news sometimes and they live their lives. And that's much better. CS Lewis talked about how that's probably a better way of life. You have to focus on politics when the politics is sick, but you can't only focus on politics or you lose side of the politics is for, which is the culture. So some conservatives, especially social conservatives, might worry, like in Ben's piece, that the redefinition of Trump supporters is these blue-collar

lefties who are pro-gay marriage and pro-abortion and pro-feminist and pro-transgenderism, you know, that that is what makes them good and that the difference between Trump and Hillary voters is economic in nature and not cultural, as Ben says it. There is a fear there, but that isn't just leftism. There is this other subtle kind of traditionalist cultural conservatism. Now, Rosanne has been pro-Trump for a long time. She's talked about, I don't think it's some nefarious plot on her, certainly and not on her part. The reason that Roseanne was such a big hit in the 90s and today is that it accurately observes the culture. It's much more descriptive than prescriptive. So there's this fear if we thought, oh, Roseanne is trying to radically change the culture and

push this leftism and all. I don't think Roseanne does that. I don't think she did it then. I don't think she does it now. I think she's observing something. And this is a very upsetting to leftists because the protagonist of this show is pro-Trump. She really likes Donald Trump. That drives them crazy. She's always making fun of Jackie, you know, who's wearing the pussy hat and the pink shirt and all of them. I'm with her or whatever. That's frustrating to them. It's also frustrating to social conservatives because people don't wear tweed and smoke pipes and go to church every Sunday and, you know, read wonderful old poetry and talk about Aristotle. That doesn't really happen. There's something else that goes on. And if we can have people

who are defending the cultural tradition in any way, that's fine by me. Rosanne in many ways is the anti-Donna Reed. She's the anti-father-nows-best, leave it to beaver type. You think of like, you know, the mother taking muffins out of the oven and, oh, honey, hello. And that isn't Rosanne at all. Rosanne is in many ways the opposite, except in one. regard. All of those shows are correctly observing a culture. Not to say that America in the 50s was all women taking muffins out of the oven and not to say that the culture in 2018 is all people shrieking with vulgarity. But there are broad cultural truths to this. And Hollywood just cannot explain this away. You know, Hollywood wants to say that it's just, oh, this nostalgia for the

90s. If it were just nostalgia for the 90s, no one would watch it. Some people would watch the first episode, not even a lot, and it'd probably peter out. But it's correctly observing the culture again. And that is fine by me. I'd much rather see the truth in art, even in sitcom, even in an art that's considered lower, than some agenda, either right-wing agenda or a left-wing agenda. Willing Grace, another 90s sitcom, had a reboot. And the ratings haven't been great. The ratings really haven't been good. They haven't been what people expected. The Oscars are down 20% from last year low. The Grammys were in the gutter. ABC canceled. Last Man's. standing, the Tim Allen show, despite good ratings. You see this working in Hollywood. All these shows

that they keep pushing to the left, Jimmy Kimmel dragging the Oscars without telling any jokes, forgetting to tell all jokes in there. Those go down. They finally, they get a good show with good ratings, Last Man Standing, and it's conservative. They nicks it. Rosanna's in this interesting place because she is sort of a lefty, but she's a lefty who likes America. She has a basic kind of like for America. She wants her president to succeed. She's got, that's, that's, that's, that's, That's a level that can't really be rationalized in political analysis. Trump knows this, by the way, and that's why he called her. President Trump called up Rosanne.

I guess they've been friends for years and congratulated her on the ratings. He understands how important it is. He understands how important that Conners are. The Conners are not conservatives, and we shouldn't demand that they be conservatives. Ronald Reagan knew this. Ronald Reagan knew that we need a big tent coalition. He knew that there were Democrats for Reagan. There were Democrats for Reagan.

There were Connors for Trump. that's fine. That's a big tent. Nixon knew it. Reagan knew it. Trump gets it too. It makes us the cool guys. We don't all have to wear tweed. I like wearing tweed. I like smoking cigars. I like reading Aristotle. That's a lot of fun. But you need more than that. If those are the only people who are going to vote for a candidate, you're not going to get elected dog catcher anywhere in the country. Now, the show itself talked about politics a lot. It was very political, much more than it was in the 90s. So you might say, well, that's too bad because political art is. usually pretty boring. I think Roseanne has something because she's acknowledging and observing that these are very political times, much more so than normal. I think that's what makes this good popular art is it's correctly observing the time. Jackie wearing the pussy hat, even just friends and family being divided over politics. We are so politically divided at this moment. It's a little strange. I don't think it's because of deep disagreements. I don't think most people know what the disagreements are really. They don't acknowledge the first principles that they're debating. They

don't even acknowledge the different premises. I think it's because the culture is so shallow. You know, Breitbart said politics is downstream of culture and culture is downstream of God. It's downstream of the cult of what we worship. And now I think it's, we've really perverted this framework because now the culture is just worshipping the politics. It's going in the wrong direction. It gets very strange and very catty. Entertainment these days is politics. That This is the age of Trump. We elected a reality TV star who executive produced and starred in, hit reality TV show for 15 seasons on NBC.

We elected that man president. That says something about our entertainment. If Roseanne were to not be political and not talk about politics, I think we'd tune it out. We'd say, well, this just doesn't reflect the reality that I'm seeing around me. She really has her finger on something. And we can demand that she become William F. Buckley. We can demand that she hold the line on the checklist conservative issues.

But it wouldn't be real. It wouldn't be authentic. It wouldn't tell us something about our politics. And it's very fine for me that independent-minded voters and voters who would be the Reagan Democrats or Middle America or the silent majority or blue collar, whatever you want to call them, I'm very happy that they're breaking for us right now. That's a win. That's something very good. We shouldn't change our view of the world. We shouldn't lie to people.

but we never have. When the Reagan Democrats have broken for us, when the solemn majority is broken for us in elections, it doesn't pervert us. It doesn't, we don't suddenly become radical left-wing fanatics. That doesn't happen. That is fine by me. Let's keep winning. Keep the Cof-Fefi coming. This is an area where Donald Trump uniquely is capable of grabbing a portion of the electorate that a lot of other Republicans, even Republican candidates that perhaps we would have preferred, just wouldn't have been able to do it. Okay, we've got to get to. to the mailbag. I've got a lot of mailbag today. Do I have to say goodbye yet or can I get a couple of mailbag questions then? I can get a call. I do have to say goodbye. Oh, that's so awful because I've got such good mailbag questions. Sorry guys. Well, maybe you can tune in later. The speech should be a lot of fun. We'll see. At the very least, you can see an Antifa brick getting thrown at my head. Who knows? Maybe the potential protesters watch the show and I've convinced them to just come and listen. Mirabili, Dictu, maybe they'd learn something. Why should you join Daily Wire. Well, if you're on YouTube, I don't believe you, get yourself to an insane asylum

because you're imagining things. You're having fantasies walking around. If you're on Facebook, you've got to go to DailyWire.com. You'll get me, you get the Andrew Claibon show, you get the Ben Shapiro show. You can watch the back half of those shows. You can ask questions in the mailbag, which we're just about to do. Anybody can watch a mail, or listen to the mailbag, rather, but only those subscribers can ask questions. Many are called, but few are chosen. You can ask questions in the conversation, but none of that matters. You get the leftist tears tumbler. I don't think I can overstate the importance of the leftist tears tumbler.

Tonight, there are already all these threats on the college campus. I am without one, which means I don't think that I'm going to be offed by some Antifa guy bashing me in the head or anything like that. I think I'm going to drown. I think I could drown because I didn't think I had to protect myself. And all of those guys there to all the Republicans on campus, don't be like me, Text yourself. Get the leftist tears tumbler. It's the only FDA approved vessel to store those radioactive, salty, and delicious leftist tears.

Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back. First question from Kyle. Good king of trolls, Michael. What would be a good place to start reading about how the church cleaned up its act after the corruption that is usually associated with it during the Renaissance? We just started talking about Protestantism in my religion in American society class. And the corruption at the top of the church has been named as one of the, the reasons why the Reformation began. Thank you for your insights and have a great weekend. The Reformation is taught so horrifically. The things that are in outright lies are such gross

distortions that you're getting less than half of the history. It's really unfortunate and a lot of it is just not true. Even beginning with the name, the historian Jacques Barzen refers to the Protestant Revolution. He doesn't call it a Reformation. Why doesn't he call it the Reformation? Because it wasn't a Reformation. It actually wasn't a Reformation. Right. a reformation movement, and there have been many in the history of the church. There's one going on right now, reform the institution. The Protestants rebelled against the institution, broke away from the institution, and started their own thing. That isn't a reformation. That's a revolution or a rebellion or what have you. There's a reformation going on right now. After Vatican II,

they took all the beautiful liturgy that united people in soul and spirit and listening and mind and took them to a higher place in heaven while listening to beautiful hymns and chanting in Latin, and they replaced it with acoustic guitars and insipid awful hymns. Now there is a reformation of the reformation. And what's going on now is that there's more Latin mass, younger people are enjoying that more. That's what a reformation looks like. I recommend in terms of reading about that time, you should check out how the reformation happened by Hilaire Belloc. That was a gift to me from Andrew Claven, I think mostly so that I can just bother all the other Protestants at the Daily Wire. Drew's a Protestant too, but they want me to have all of that to keep poking them.

Catholic Answers is a great resource. Catholic Answers is a website, and they have a lot of media outlets where you can ask any question. You say, I learn this in Protestant history class. Is that true? And then they say, usually they say, no, it isn't true. Or they say, yeah, it was true, but, you know, they fixed it relatively quickly. If you want to learn a little bit about what the Reformation looked like, that you probably won't learn in Protestant history class. You can read Martin Luther's

tract on the Jews in their lies. You can read his tract on the murderous thieving hordes of peasants. And you can read his many writings that sucked up to Muslim invaders, including on war against the Turk, where he finds common cause with them against the church. Suleiman the Magnificent, who was turned away from conquering Europe by Catholic forces, had actually written warmly to Luther and his followers and received some nice sayings from them.

Suleiman said he felt close to them. He said, since they did not worship idols, believe in one God and fought against the Pope and Emperor, that there was a kinship between the Protestants and the Muslims. You probably won't learn that in Protestant history class. You also probably won't learn that it wasn't the Catholics who were burning witches for the 15 centuries of that institution before the Protestant Revolution. The witch trials began only after that revolution. Why is that? All the bloodshed in Europe. You probably won't learn those things. I think it's, I'm not saying this, just to say there's nothing worthwhile in Protestantism, that there's nothing worthwhile in these churches, especially how they work in America today, I just mean it to say we are taught an absurdly anti-historical negative picture of the Catholic Church over history, and we are taught a whitewashed history of the Protestant Revolution, and you should shake yourself of those historical revisions, those unfair revisions. Next question from Dave. Happy Mailbag Day.

Happy Mailbag Day to you too, Dave. Love the show. I heard you say on a number of occasions that water is clearest in the shallows, meaning that a simple answer may seem clear, but in its appearance of clarity, it lacks depth. That said, I've heard you defend your conservative and Catholic worldviews with both clarity and depth. Thank you. So is there a point where a dive into the deeper waters of conservative and Christian philosophy results in clarity and depth?

And if so, what does it take to reach that point? It does. I can't take credit for the line, though. It was Dr. Johnson, who said, all shallots. are clear, a far better writer than I. I use fewer words than he did, but that's a good line from him. Beauty is a good example of this. Beauty is a good example of profound things being at once, not shallow, but being clear and piercing our souls. One has great difficulty explaining beauty. Good luck explaining what beauty is. Thomas Aquinas ventured a guess,

but even that's insufficient. He's a pretty smart fella. What is beauty? You can't describe it, You can't define it rather, but you know it when you see it. It pierces your soul. It's unmistakable. When you see beauty, it doesn't even just change your thought. It moves you physically. You have a reaction to it. Conservative thought, if you want to get clearer on politics,

conservative thought will become clearer when you get into first principles. So I can give a lot of reasons why I like tax cuts. I can go on. I get to like a week of shows on all the great parts of tax cuts. But why do tax cuts matter? freedom, because of freedom, because freedom is a good thing. And man is made with dignity, man is made in God's image, and God wants us to be free. And Christ comes not to judge mankind, but to liberate mankind and to save mankind.

Because freedom is a good per se. It's a good in itself. And when you get all the way down the line in public policy, the government not taking an extra three grand from me each year is pretty good. That's a nice thing, too. And it emanates from that first principle. I think things become much clearer that way you'll get less confused and less liable to be taken in by some of the demagoguery that we see on the left. You know, if you,

if you don't want to restrict people's civil rights, you want dead children. That's the sort of thing they say. And if you're going to explain why it's important that we have the right to defend ourselves and defend our liberty, it's much easier to say, oh, no, that's okay. Don't worry. No, no, no. You've got it wrong. You keep shrieking. You got it wrong. That's a very good question. I hope that, I mean, it's an impossible question to answer, But I hope that helps in guiding you along the way. From Bill, ye of little words, I wholeheartedly agree with you that we should not grant the left's anti-gun premises when discussing violent crime in America.

I don't think we should give one inch to the people whose ultimate goal is gun confiscation and with Republican control of the Congress and the White House. I don't see why we shouldn't be fighting to get some of our lost gun rights back. In the last few weeks, however, we've seen the opposite. After signing the omnibus bill that included anti-due process fix NICS, as well as ordering the ATF to redefine machine guns without an act of Congress, to ban bump stocks, all these other firearm accessories, President Trump has instituted more anti-second amendment restrictions

than Barack Obama. And yet, many on the right, including the NRA, don't seem to care or even notice. Why are so many conservatives apathetic to our rights being eroded under Trump when they would never tolerate such actions under Obama or Clinton bill? It is frustrating. It's very frustrating. It's because he's our guy, and he is better on this.

Generally, Barack Obama proposed a lot of truly horrific anti-gun legislation, and only the Republican Congress prevented that from going through. These things that Donald Trump has done are frustrating, you know, tightening background checks, which in the grand scheme of gun rights is not really a big deal. The bumpstock thing is sort of irrelevant because bump stocks are not a great accessory. You can simulate the action of a bumpstock even without one, and you can't aim with them. They're not good for shooting. They wouldn't, when the zombie apocalypse happens or the federal government turns to ranical,

you're not going to use a bump stock. You're going to use your, you're going to aim and use your gun. So I think part of it is these restrictions aren't the biggest deal in the world. That said, why is he instituting them at all? He's a tough guy to pin down, and he is much less ideological and probably less grounded in conservative thought than many other politicians, the vast majority of other Republican politicians in this country. So it's frustrating. Now, Obama, you know, he got the Social Security Administration involved in gun control during his presidency.

He did tweak things from the executive that I think are going undiscussed right now. But what we need to do is keep pushing Trump to the right. He's been good on us so far. He's our guy. We are partisans. We would be truly S-O-L if Hillary Clinton were president right now. And she campaigned on gutting that amendment. former Justice Stevens wants to repeal the Second Amendment, he's a Republican.

There are huge stakes here. And if the guy who's basically defending the Second Amendment and who tweets out all the time, we need to defend the Second Amendment and need to respect the Second Amendment, if that guy is banning bump stocks or something, it's very frustrating. It's incoherent as far as I'm concerned. But he's the best we've got. He's the best guy we've gotten. We have to remind ourselves of that.

Because if we let the perfect get in the way of the good, we're going to lose our civil rights. From Jeffrey, Mr. Knowles, where is your stand regarding the Oxford comma? For it, against it, I'm fascinated at how this debate even arose in the first place. Warmest regards, Jeff. Yeah, certainly the latter. No, I'm all for it. I'm a deep partisan of the Oxford comma.

You know, that's the one in a series you put one more comma before the and or the butt. It's older, it's more traditional, and therefore it is better. It's a description, a valid description of many things in the world. It resolves ambiguity. So somebody could say, without the Oxford comma, Hey Michael, consider just this sentence. Hey Michael, for your bachelor party, we invited the strippers, Ben Shapiro, and Andrew Claven.

You heard that Oxford comma in there after Shapiro. Okay, good. Now, consider it without the Oxford comma. Hey, Michael, for your bachelor party, we invited the strippers, Ben Shapiro and Andrew Claven. That's a horrifying result. We cannot allow that to happen. So on those grounds alone, I would defend the Oxford comma.

It actually was brought up in a main labor dispute. In a case known as O'Connor versus Oakhurst Dairy, the state appellate court was required to interpret a statute that called for the canning, comma, processing comma, preserving, comma, freezing comma, drying comma, marketing comma, comma, storing comma, packing for shipment or distribution. Now, it was unclear. Is it packing for shipment, comma, or distribution? Or was it packing for shipment or packing for distribution? This was unclear. A judge found that 43 of 50 U.S. states mandated the use of the Oxford comma. Both chambers of Congress warned against omitting it.

It did have this effect in this particular case. Keep the Oxford comma. From Brian. Hi, Michael. My wife and I are strong Christian conservatives. In our 30s, we've decided not to have children. The reason being we cannot. imagine bringing children into this world where every moment is spent by the left warping, eliminating

traditional values. My greatest fear would be to have a son or daughter slowly be warped by attrition that I feel I cannot keep up with in their schools and elsewhere. It's hard enough to constantly be fighting insane worldviews like gender neutrality or the elimination of the Second Amendment, but to have to do it on behalf of my own children every day is almost unbearable. Do you have any advice for us if we do decide to have children? Have children. You should have children. This is a very Catholic answer. You should have children. Yeah, you absolutely should. The church says that a marriage that isn't open to children that begins without even being open to the possibility of having children is not a valid marriage. Now, not everyone gets to have children. Some people are physically incapable

of that. But if you're intellectually just closed off to the possibility of it, the traditional teaching of the church is that that's not a valid marriage. As for the fear, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it, man. In 2 Timothy, it says, for God gave us a spirit, not of fear, but of power and love and self-control. First John, there is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. You know, give a good foundation to the kids. I obviously, we all fear these things. I've actually had this thought myself, but don't worry about it. Let you do your best, God will do the rest. Give them a good foundation and maybe even then hope that they flirt with some of the lefty craziness. I actually think it's a good idea. Like a vaccine,

a little bit of the disease inoculates you against its most pernicious effects. This happened to me. I had a great foundation growing up. I had my little flirtation with leftiness in high school, I guess, or late middle school, early high school, something like that. And then I realized, oh, no, okay, this is the kind of thought that's appropriate to a 13-year-old, but not to a person who's older than that or has learned more than that. You want strong kids, so maybe that's not such a bad thing, at all. I've always been in lefty cities. I've always gone to lefty universities and schools and things like that. I think it's good. It helps you defend your own views and helps you define what you really think as long as you have a good foundation and it sounds

like you're going to give them a good foundation. So do it. Get out all these kids. We need more conservatives. More conservative kids. Pump them out, man. Let's do it. From Stephen. Little old knolls. What is your counterargument to the walnut brains that use the militia remark in the Second Amendment to deem it antiquated. Thanks. I am going to use that phrase so much, walnut brains, that's really good. Yeah, okay, so they say, a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. This is just a little grammar lesson. This isn't even a lesson on constitutional law or justificatory clauses, although one could read those things and realize they all favor

it the individual right to keep and bear arms. I had Eugene Volick on the legal scholar. an episode probably a month ago. You can check that one out because he explains all of that in detail. But just consider the grammar. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is an independent clause. It says what it says. It's contained in itself. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state is a dependent clause. It's not a complete clause. It's not a full sentence. It's just a fragment, right? So I could also say vanilla ice cream being very delicious. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. And that statement that I just made is still a complete thought. It's still a complete sentence. And by the way,

it doesn't, just because militias are impractical now, as you might, you know, we have a standing army or something like that, that doesn't nullify a civil right. Now, you could say, well, I think the best argument to have a Second Amendment is that there were militias and now there aren't militias, so we should repeal that amendment. That's a coherent thought, not a good thought, but a coherent thought. But you don't just nullify civil rights because technology changes. That doesn't get rid of your basic rights. You have to go through a process if you want to do that, especially one as important as the right to self-defense. Just give them the grammar, give them a little English lesson. Maybe it will improve their thought process and their use of precise language.

From Samuel, what, yeah, this is probably the last one. That's too bad because we have such Good questions here. Oh, man. Too bad. Okay, you know what? I'm actually going to skip ahead to one that I think is really important from John, because this is Stormy Daniels. I haven't talked about Stormy Daniels. We'll try to get to the other questions next week. With respect to the Stormy Daniels issue, do you feel President Trump should go on the attack and say, yes, he did have sex with her and discovered to his dismay? She was lousy in the sack, call it sad, demand an investigation of the porn industry for false advertising. This might trigger Chuck Schumer. to tearfully defend Stormy Daniels' boudoir skills

and a claim that Trump's statement jeopardizes the mental health of millions of men who depend on the veracity of scenes depicted in porn, sincerely, John. So out of all of that, what I took away is the question, should Trump come clean about the affair if indeed he had the affair? One thing we learned in recent days

is that during her interview, Stormy Daniels was high on sleeping meds. She was high on cough syrup or something, Benadryl. So that doesn't speak well of her. We know that she's lied. She signed documents saying that this didn't happen. And then she said it did happen and this and that. So her word isn't credible anyway.

But let's just say it did happen. Let's say, the thing I found so shocking about the 60 Minutes interview is that Donald Trump only did it once. I would have expected maybe a repeat visit. But again, I think you alluded to that question in your question. No, I don't think Donald Trump should admit this. I don't think he should talk about it. I don't think he should acknowledge it. He shouldn't admit this.

This is not a matter of great national importance. It's a good attack, which is why Democrats are using it. Let's make a comparison to Bill Clinton. There really isn't one. But in the case of Bill Clinton, he harassed his 20-year-old intern, his employee in the Oval Office. He got creative with cigars in the people's house. Donald Trump isn't accused of doing that. Trump is accused of having a one-night stand with a porn star 12 years ago, a dozen years ago.

So I don't see why he should bring it up. I don't see why he should talk about it. I suppose it would be better if he lived this upright life and, you know, his father knows best and everything. That isn't Donald Trump. It's not the man we elected. We knew it going in. As I suggest, I think the majority of his supporters will say he only, only once, I thought he was Donald Trump. I thought they would have dragged that out for a while. the reason not to admit this too there's an old expression in the italian american culture which is deny till you die denied don't admit it don't you know and i'm not making a moral judgment on that obviously we want the truth above all things but you don't he don't don't trump doesn't need to

dignify these stupid questions and these scintillating headlines and attacks with his with his time and with his speech people who admit to this type of bad behavior go down Kevin Spacey is the example of this. He kind of admitted to it and then they killed him for it. All these other guys, Ben Afflex accused of it, this guy, that guy, those who are accused of it and are able to just kind of say, nope, I'm not talking about this, pushing it away. They don't go down. So forget about it. This isn't about adultery. This isn't about anything. It isn't about Russia. It isn't about adultery. It isn't about the women's march. It isn't about guns. It isn't about this. It's about attacking Donald Trump. It's just about attacking Donald Trump. And they're going to use whatever sorry excuse they can for it. If there were a matter of national importance that really were touched on, then we would demand an answer from Donald Trump. If they're just using the cheapest, grossest attacks they can, talking about spanking and this, like this awful woman, Stormy Daniels, parading herself on drugs on television, don't give it any credence.

Don't give it any attention. That is below the office of the president, even for a reality TV star. Okay, that's our show today. I've got to go prepare for this speech in Ithaca. Tune in if you can make it, and I will see you next week back in L.A. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production. Executive producer Jeremy Boring. Senior producer Jonathan Hay. Supervising producer, Mathis Glover. Our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Alex Zingaro. Audio is mixed by Mike Coramina. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Overa.

Copyright Forward. 2018.