The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1306 - The FBI's Attack On Catholics Was Worse Than We Thought

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

The FBI gets caught lying about the breadth of its surveillance of Catholics, the media spin into major damage control to cover for the Bidens’ foreign bribes, and a once-great conservative judge says Trump killed the GOP.   Ep.1306    - - -     Click here to join the member exclusive portion of my show: https://utm.io/ueSEl   - - -    DailyWire+:   Get 20% Off Select Jeremy’s Items: https://bit.ly/3ObQOqg   Become a DailyWire+ member to gain access to movies, shows, documentaries, and more: https://bit.ly/3jJQBQ7   Get your Yes or No game here: https://bit.ly/3X6tlKY    - - -    Today’s Sponsors:   Good Ranchers - Get $30 off with promo code KNOWLES at checkout. https://bit.ly/43G8p0P    Helix - Get up 20% off + 2 FREE Pillows with all mattress orders at http://www.HelixSleep.com/KNOWLES.   Hillsdale - Enroll for FREE today at hillsdale.edu/knowles    - - -   Socials:   Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3RwKpq6   Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3BqZLXA   Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3eEmwyg   Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3L273Ek Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. Hey, remember when the FBI got caught spying on Catholics, whom the agency referred to as potential violent extremists? That was back in February when an FBI memo leaked, smearing us mackerel snappers as terrorists. in waiting and encouraging agents to infiltrate churches and even go so far as to get priests to rat on their flocks. It was pretty egregious, even by the standards of the extremely

corrupt Biden Justice Department. So when FBI director Christopher Ray was grilled on that memo by Jim Jordan, Ray did not even attempt to defend it. What's the difference between a traditional Catholic and a radical traditional Catholic? I'm not an expert on the Catholic orders. Well, your FBI wrote a memo talking about radical traditional Catholics. I'm just wondering if you can define it for us. Well, what I can tell you is you're referring to the Richmond product, which was a single product by a single field office,

which as soon as I found out about it, I was aghast and ordered it withdrawn and removed from FBI systems. You were aghast, then why won't you let us talk to the people who put it together? We are working on finishing an internal review into what happened here. to wait, we, the Congress, and the American people have to wait until you do an internal review. It's not a criminal investigation going on here. An internal review before we can talk to the people who wrote this? When we finish our internal review, which will be very soon, we will come back before the committee. Any idea how many Catholics in America?

Provide a briefing on what we found. Well, we appreciate the briefing, but we want to talk to the people who wrote it. Jim Jordan's so good. He just knows exactly what the guy's going to say. He's anticipating all of it. And Christopher Ray doesn't have much of an answer. Other than to say, look, it was just one office. Just one office, okay? That is what the FBI director said. Just one memo from one field office, which Ray rejected the moment he saw it. And then guess what happened next? You guessed it. Turns out that Christopher Ray's claim, like so many FBI and DOJ claims in recent years, was a big, fat lie. Turns out that that one FBI field office coordinated with multiple field

offices all across the country to smear normal practicing Catholics as domestic terrorists. Will Ray be investigated for perjuring himself? Probably not. Will Biden be investigated for wielding the state to target and harass his innocent enemies? Probably not. But will conservatives recognize the pattern here? I hope so, because this is a pattern that crops up throughout all of history. when radical leftists really want to seize power, they always go after the Catholics. Always. I know America's not a majority Catholic country. It doesn't matter. They go after the Catholics, always. The very term leftist comes from the French Revolution where the Catholics sat on the right of the National Assembly and the people who wanted to behead the priests and nuns and king and queen

sat on the left. Who did the communists attack with special vigor in the Spanish Civil War? It was the Catholics. Priests, nuns, as well as ordinary laypeople. Who did the Bolsheviks attack in their revolution? There aren't that many Catholics in Russia, so they attacked the closest thing. They attacked the Russian Orthodox Church. And they didn't just incidentally attack them. They did so in the most gruesome of ways. Lenin crucified priests poured molten lead down their throats in a mockery of Holy Communion, particularly gruesome, specific, hideous attacks on the most traditional Orthodox Christian people you could find. Now, you might not be Christian. You might not be Catholic. You might not think that the persecution of parishes here in the United States affects you.

Maybe it doesn't yet, but it will. Radical revolutionaries, they don't start out by targeting some corporation. They don't start out by targeting ordinary people's homes and businesses. They don't start out by attacking the gym or the concert hall. They always start with the churches first because the church has always been their foremost enemy and obstacle. I'm Michael Noles. This is the Michael Nolz show. Welcome back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers. Get great meat at a secure price and 30 bucks off your order with My Code Knowles. K&WLAS. Go to good ranchers.com, use code Knowles today. Hey, big news, we've got potential proof of alien life. We'll get to that. We'll get to that in a second. Well, we will get to it. First, though,

I don't want to move on from the corruption of the Biden administration so quickly. We got a new update to the Joe and Hunter Biden corruption spin. You remember, I'll just take you on a little whirlwind tour of what they've said. Joe says, I never knew anything about my son's business dealings overseas. never knew anything about it, never heard about it, and then Hunter accidentally tells a magazine that he and Joe talked about his business dealings. So then the story becomes, well, okay, we did talk about it.

But I didn't really know anything. I wasn't involved. It was just in passing. Then we found out Joe Biden actually got on phone calls with Hunter's corrupt business partners over 20 times. So the story was, okay, yeah, he knew about it. Okay, yeah, he told. talked to the crooks about it, but they only talked about the weather. Then we got a letter,

a handwritten note that Joe Biden sent to Devin Archer, Hunter's business partner in this corrupt scheme. And the note said, hey, thanks for coming to this lunch with the president of China today. Sorry, I couldn't hang out with you too much, but really glad you and Hunter are working together. Can't wait to see you with Hunter again. Keep hanging out with Hunter, signed Joe Biden. Okay, so now he knew about it. He was on the phone calls with the crooks. He talked with Hunter about it. He talked with the business partner about it. He encouraged the business. Now, the update is he had dinner with these guys. Joe Biden showed up to dinner with these guys. And they weren't just taken $80,000 a month here, $100,000 over here. It wasn't even just the $5 million bribe to Joe and the

$5 million bribe to Hunter that was reported on. Now, new bank records show $20 million in foreign payments to the Biden's while Joe was VP. We've got pictures. of Joe dining with some of the oligarchs who paid off Hunter Biden. We've got a Russian billionaire, Yelina Bacherina, who's the wife of former Moscow mayor, both linked to Putin, who wired three and a half million bucks to Hunter and Devin Archer's Shell Corporation, Rosemont Seneca Thornton, three and a half million bucks in February 2014. So this is while Joe is still VP. The Ukrainian Burisma company sent a million dollars in yearly payments to Hunter and DeVos.

an Archer for their positions on the board of Burisma, which of course they knew nothing about. There's a Kazakhstan-Illigarch, Knaez-Rakishev, who used his Singaporean company, Novotis Holdings, to wire Hunter's Shell Corporation $142,300. Now, that's a weird amount. Why would this Kazakh oligarch wire $142,300 to this totally legitimate corporation called Rosemont-Seneca Holdings? Why would he do that? Oh, because that just so happens to be the exact cost of a sports car that Hunter Biden bought the day after the wire transfer landed. They're barely even hiding it. He could have at least sent the guy 150 grand or 140 grand. Hunter's got to cover the extra two Gs. No, it's the exact amount for the sports car that Hunter buys the very next day. We've got major spin mode here from the White House and from

Politico, the liberal establishment. Here's how Politico covers it up. They say, GOP House Oversight Chair, James Comer, rolled out a new memo identifying over 20 million bucks in payments from entities or individuals in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan to Biden family members, but here's the but. But the memo doesn't show a direct payment to Joe Biden. Oh, you don't say. Wow, great investigative work there, Sherlock. Wow, you're telling me, this is it. So then it's over. Forget about it. Move on. There's nothing to see here because the family that we know makes extensive use of shell corporations, the family that has bragged in text messages about how they're never going to find the money, the direct link of

the money, because it goes through so many shell corporations, you're telling me that that family laundered money? That's great. Someone should spring Al Capone out of prison. You never saw any direct payments to Al Capone? Someone, hey, how about the heads of those five families in New York? How about John Gotti? There's no direct payment to John Gotti. So there you go. There's no such thing as money laundering, right? If only we had some evidence.

If only we had some evidence that the money that was going to Hunter's Shell Corporation was somehow making it to Joe Biden. If only we had a text message from Hunter Biden that said, I love you all, this is to his daughter. I love all of you, but I don't receive any respect, and that's fine, I guess. Works for you apparently. I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family. for 30 years, it's really hard, but don't worry, unlike Pop, I won't make you give me half your

salary. If only we had evidence, if only we had text message evidence of 10% going to the big guy. Well, I guess that's what we need to investigate. Was it 10% or is it half? The White House communications director retweeted the Politico article with that quote. There is no evidence. The memo doesn't show a direct payment to Joe Biden. It's Kate Burner, the White House Communications Director. But it was such a preposterous defense against so much overwhelming evidence that Joe Biden is a crook on the take who's taken millions and millions of dollars by selling American influence overseas. Just total outright seven figure, eight figure bribes.

It was so embarrassing that Politico deleted the tweet that the White House retweeted. So now the White House has a total egg on its face. Because even Politico, even this liberal hack outlet that they were pointing to is the, see, here's the exonerating evidence. Even Politico said, okay, you're right. That was too much. That spin was too much. All right, we're out of here. The corruption is just through the roof. And at least one Republican is focusing most of his presidential campaign on that. That would be Donald Trump, who points out now, he can't even really campaign. He certainly

campaign as he should because his calendar is now being taken up with all of these court dates because he's being prosecuted by his opponent. How can my corrupt political opponent, crooked Joe Biden, put me on trial during an election campaign that I'm winning by a lot, but forcing me nevertheless to spend time and money away from the campaign trail in order to fight bogus, made-up accusations in charge. That's what they're doing. I'm sorry, I won't be able to go to Iowa today. I won't be able to go to New Hampshire today because I'm sitting in a courtroom on bullshit because his attorney general charged me with something.

Terrible. There he is looking around, smiling. Thank you very much for that chain of Bull, S-H-I-T. Bull-S-H-I-T. But you know what's not Bull-S-H-I-T? The great sleep that you can get with Helix. Right now, go to helixleep.com slash Knowles. With everything going on in the world right now,

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with Helix. Better sleep starts right now. You know me. I don't. I don't like to use blue language. I don't like to go blue, okay? Noddy language. I like, this is a family show. I try to keep it a little elevated. I don't like it when my

politicians and statesmen use naughty language. But I think there's a place for it every now and again. There's a rhetorical use for that kind of language. If there ever were a use for that kind of language, this would be it. Because Joe Biden is behaving in a way that is so egregious, that is such a violation of standards and norms of the American political order, that it has called for a response in kind. This isn't not the kind of thing that suggests that we ought to play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules. Joe Biden is prosecuting his chief rival, the political opposition.

This is total banana republic stuff. It's over nothing. It is over BS. And Trump is calling that out. And this is the core of the Trump campaign. And this is what I think is driving Trump's primary opponents a little bit crazy, especially Ron DeSantis because he's the number two guy. The DeSantis supporters are saying, Desantis is better at wielding power. DeSantis has a more conservative record. DeSantis has a more coherent political vision. Desantis has more discipline, rhetorically and politically. DeSantis hires better people. DeSantis does this, does this, this, not going to weigh in on the merit of those claims, but let's say they're all true. sure, but Trump is a wrench in the system. Trump is a rejection of the whole system. DeSantis, right now, as his campaign is being run, represents maybe the sleekest, fastest, cleanest, most efficient way to play within the system. Trump, the way his campaign is being run, represents a rejection of the system. That's the difference. That's why his supporters in that

room. We're chanting BS. Bull, S-H-I-T, Bull-S-H-I-T. And there's Trump there and he's kind of smiling. He goes, yep, thank you. Thank you. That's what it is. It's not well when you really think about it. Trump probably shouldn't have, he shouldn't have given that speech that day on January 6th. And when you actually, when you look at the U.S. Code, you know, he wasn't supposed to have that particular document. And even though other presidents have done it, his was, it was form 37258, instead of which you're not really supposed to have instead of this. It's like, shut up. No, it's BS. It's a banana republic political prosecution. This is Joe Biden, a crook, throwing his chief rival, his chief political threat in the can, like they do in dictatorships and silly,

illegitimate countries around the world. And so the response to that is not, well, actually, look at this special legal argument. The answer to that is this is BS and, you know, I got two words for you that aren't happy birthday liberal establishment. That's the answer. That's why the Trump campaign continues to be strong and continues to grow. And this is why Trump says I'm one indictment away from winning the election. And so if any other campaign wants to compete with that, I think they're going to have to get a little bit clearer in their rejection of this obviously BS system. When, and it's maybe an impossible spot because Trump kind of has that market cornered. So if you're going to run against Trump, you have to run against the claims that Trump is making.

if you run against the claims that Trump is making, you are necessarily going to be more inclined to legitimize the political order. So it might just be an impossible situation even for the greatest politician in the world. But that is why people are drawn to the campaign. Trump keeps making this point. He keeps going back. This is what's driving a lot of more establishment type Republicans, and even some non-establishment Republicans crazy, is Trump keeps going back to re-litigate 2020, which a lot of people are saying, we don't want to hear about 2020. We want to hear about 24. Trump keeps returning to this theme. Only a party that cheats in elections would make it illegal to question those elections.

That's the only ones that would really make it difficult. If you can't challenge a rigged election, think of it. We're not looking to do it. We want, you know, they don't go after the people that rigged the election. They go after the people that want to find out what the hell happened. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace. Now, the geniuses, the total geniuses in the GOP consulting and chattering class, they say that any Republican nominee, especially Trump, if he wants to win in 2024, it needs to move on from issues like election integrity.

has to move on. Stop talking about the last election. Oh, quit going, that doesn't poll well in the suburbs, they tell us. I don't know. That is not going to happen. That is not going, especially if the nominee is Trump, especially if Trump continues to dominate in the polls. That is not going to happen because the chief reason to vote for Trump is that you think that things are so bad that we need a rejection of the system. The chief reason to vote for Trump is because it is not because you have this particular view on immigration or that particular view, this particular view on trade or that particular view, it's because you think that the system is so corrupt that you can't even trust the integrity of the elections. The reason to vote for Trump is that they rigged it in 2020. That's one of the main

reasons to do it. The reason to vote for Trump in 2016 is because the Republicans and Democrats had been working together as a unparty to advance the same unpopular and wrongheaded policies on trade, immigration and on foreign policy, no matter which party got into power. Didn't matter which party got into power. You always had a lot more immigrants. You always had a lot more foreign wars. You always had a lot more outsourcing of jobs and materials and manufacturing and a lot more neglect of America's heartland, the forgotten men and women, the deplorables, the irredeemables. And so it was a rigged game. And Trump came in and he said, it's a rigged game and I'm not going to play by it. It's the same thing here with a particular focus on election integrity. If you don't think that, if you think that Trump's

just a sore loser and things aren't really that bad and we're all being hyperbolic, then you're not going to vote for Trump. You're probably going to vote for DeSantis. Maybe you're going to vote for Vivek. Maybe, I don't know, if you're, if you really want to return to the mid-2000s, you'll vote for one of the other candidates. But if you are inclined to vote for Trump, you particularly want to talk about 2020 and election integrity. And if that is going to lose you the general, maybe that's the tragedy of it. I don't. Maybe that will lose the general. Maybe that's, that doesn't resonate with voters. But there's no incentive for Trump to stop talking about that. That is the raise on debt of his campaign. Now, when I want to make myself feel a little bit better, what do I do? I remember that

politics is always a little bit crazy. I try to calm down. Maybe I go for a walk in a sit down for a nice, delicious plate of Good Ranchers. Right now, go to Good Ranchers.com, use promo code Knowles, I don't know about you, but this summer heat in Nashville feels hotter than it's been in years. Thanks to inflation, we're feeling the heat in more ways than one, am I right? The one thing that I'm not sweating this summer, though, is my meat price, thanks to good ranchers. Good ranchers has this insane program where they lock in your price of meat for two years, which is crazy. It's an amazing deal. You should sign up for it right now. I don't know how they're doing it. Good Ranchers also has just the best quality meat out there. It's so freaking good. I eat it

multiple times a week. I love the stakes. They've turned me into a rib-eye guy. They now have pork, very excited for the Broughtwurst bundle. The burgers are the best I've ever had. It's just an amazing product at a ridiculously low price, and you can lock in that low price. I don't think I need to say anymore. Go to Good Ranchers.com right now. Use code Noles. K&W. L-E-S. You get 30 bucks off any box. This is 100% American meat, extremely high quality. You're saving a ton of money. Good Ranchers.com. Promocode Knowles. Good Ranchers.com. American meat delivered. Are you planning to send your kids off to college this year? Condolences. Now, I've been on campuses for a long time. I travel to many of them every single year and

I've done it for many years. I've seen firsthand how liberal ideology has infiltrated and polluted these once-great universities. Give your kids a fighting chance by sending them off with Jeremy's razors. Right now, get up to 20% off select razor and men's care bundles, such as shampoo, body washing conditioner, all paraben-free, sulfate-free, woke-free, and made in the USA. Get your boy a precision-five racer with welded steel blades and flipback trimmer that will groom his face, not his worldview. Help your son escape academia's leftist indoctrination by more than just a close shave. Go to jeremy'sracers.com for major deals and give Jeremy's back-to-college bundles a full ride today. This is all too much for some Republicans. The focus on election

integrity, the insistence that we defend a guy who's under multiple indictments for all manner of evil that Joe Biden is flinging at him. This is too much. Even for some people who have long been considered conservative Republicans, Judge Ludig is a pretty big figure on the right in the judiciary. He's been a big feeder for conservative Supreme Court justices, for clerks. He's been a major figure. Even if he's been a major figure, even if he's been. He's been a major figure. haven't heard of him. He's had a big influence on the right. He's just come out on CNN and he said there's basically no Republican Party anymore. Do you think he is still a clear and present danger to American democracy? I do, Poppy, more so today than he was last summer when I testified before the

Congress of the United States. The trials of the former president now will become together. with the events of January 6th, the singular, infamous events in American history. Just to remind our viewers, you are a conservatives, conservative. Trump is winning by a mile in the polls. Republican officials are lining up behind him. What do you think has happened to your party? I'm not a political person, Poppy, and frankly, I don't care about the Republicans. party at all, except to the extent that the two political parties in America are the political guardians of democracy. Today, in my view, there is no Republican Party to counter the Democratic

party in the country. And for that reason, American democracy is in grave peril. There it is. Trump drove Judge Ludig, as he's driven many people, completely insane. Completely insane. And so CNN does this thing that they often do. Says, now, listen, we just want to be clear for our viewers, you're a conservatives conservative. And usually when the liberal media say this, it's not true. Usually they're saying it to Liz Cheney or Adam Kinsinger or Jeff Flake or some big squishy lib who's practically a Democrat who occasionally votes to cut taxes. And they say, well, you're a true, conservatives, conservative. That's almost never true.

In the case of Lutig, it's almost true. I don't want to downplay the role that Judge Lutig has played on the right. He has been considered one of the more conservative figures in the country over the past number of decades now. But he is not today the conservative. conservative, obviously, he spends all his time whining about Donald Trump. You heard what he said right there. He said, I don't care about the Republican Party. That tells you a lot. That tells you a lot about the shallow, weakened type of conservatism that has predominated over the last 20, 30 years. He says, I don't care about the Republican Party. I just want there to be two strong parties. I want there to be two strong parties in America, and we just kind of duke it out a little bit,

but we basically maintain the status quo. That's the implication. I don't want to win substantive victories necessarily as much as I want to maintain certain procedural norms, procedural norms that have redounded to the benefit of the libs for the past 70 years. This is the kind of the distinction you hear between conservative jurists and say originalist or textualist jurors. There's a lot to recommend originalism and textualism, but it's a distinction here because originalism is concerned with a procedural norm, a certain interpretive principle, not with substantive goods. These judicial philosophies that have predominated on the right for the past 50 years or so have

stated we don't really care what the substantive end is, we're not necessarily referring, we're not focusing on the background principles of justice that undergird our legal system. We're just focusing on exactly what the positive text of the statute was understood to mean at the time of its passing, which is fine and tactically sometimes that can redound to our benefit. But it's kind of weak sauce. And the conservative movement today is much less concerned with maintaining the precise procedural norm. of 1972, and we're much more concerned with substantive goods. We're much less concerned with defending, I don't know, free speech in the abstract than we are with defining what the inevitable

standards and constraints of our speech will be. What we want to say, this is the point I'm made in my book, speechless, which is that, where's that bell? Thanks guys. There we go. Which is that free speech in the abstract doesn't mean anything to people who have nothing to say. I'm not a conservative because I want to maintain the exact status quo and just have a lot of fun debate in the allegedly free marketplace of ideas. I want a good society. I want a good, normal, sane place to be where I can be free and the true sense of freedom and that I can flourish, not just become enslaved to my appetites and to the predations of bad people who are doing bad things. That's a big shift. and conservatives who really came of age in, I don't know, the 90s, early 2000s, they don't like,

all this talk about good and bad and true and false and beautiful and ugly. They don't like that kind of talk. But that's where we're at. And so we're going to lose people who are not ready for that fight. Speaking of politicians of a certain age, Diane Feinstein has been hospitalized. She is the Democrat senator. She's quite aged. She's a woman of a certain age. She is a 90, I think now. She had shingles earlier this year, all sorts of health problems that came from that. She's in a wheelchair. She seems to have some cognitive issues. She had a fall. She was briefly hospitalized. She then returned home. And people are calling on her to step down. Democrats are calling on her to step down. And oddly enough, Republicans seem even more focused on making her step down.

And I just don't see why. I don't see a single good reason why we should call on Diane Feinstein to step down. I see why Democrats want her to step down. They want her to step down because there's a Democrat governor in California and he can appoint some very young, robust, far-leftist senator to replace Diane Feinstein, who by the standards of the Democratic Party is relatively moderate today. I get why they want her to. Why do we want her to? Because she's old. We don't need all these old people anymore. Come on. It's embarrassing how old she is. Let's go. Get her out of here. That's it. that is the degree of strategic and tactical sophistication on the right, I'm sorry to say, for a lot of the establishment Republicans. What good is done by replacing her right now?

Nothing. What bad is done? You get a younger, more energetic, more radical senator who's doing more stuff. So why would we do that? Well, because just don't you think we shouldn't have old people? First of all, the Senate comes from the word senex, which means old, old man. So I don't have a problem with old people. Maybe she is a little over the hill and should retire. But, okay, we've got to cut it. We conservatives need to cut it with the rosy, idealistic nonsense about politics and start seeing power a little more clearly. I'm not saying we behave in a way that's immoral or a way that's unjust. I would never encourage that. But we need to stop engaging in politics as though we're living in 1952 and nothing has changed. And we're all just dealing in good faith. And the Democrats

aren't prosecuting the political opposition leader in the country? No, they would never do such a thing. Come on, let's just all come together. We kind of, we basically agree in the end, don't we? No, we don't, man. They're trying to imprison the former president, the leader of the opposition. They're trying to, they're spying on Catholics. They're lying about spying on Catholics just for going a mass. They're calling parents domestic terrorists. They're trying to imprison pro-life advocates for protesting infanticide. They're giving awards to the infanticidal maniacs. And they're trying to throw the pro-life advocates in prison for 10 years. 11 years. We're not in 1952 anymore, guys. The procedural norms are gone. The only people

who are playing by the old procedural norms are their conservatives. And we're going to be playing by them all the way to the gulags. No reason. I'm endorsing Diane Feinstein for three more terms. Speaking of power, shifting gears a little bit here. Olivia Newton-John, you know, the actress Olivia Newton-John. She died a little while ago, and her family has been describing paranormal experiences of seeing her after her death. And I bring up this story because a lot of people have these kinds of stories. I'll say, oh, my mother died. And, you know, I saw something out of the glint of my eye or I saw this odd little sign. And I knew that was, I knew that birdie was my mother. Or I knew that weird image that I saw. That was my mother. Or I felt my mother around me.

And that's what they're describing. They're saying, two weeks after she passed, my phone accidentally took a picture of my dog. And there floating by his head was a little blue orb, the same color as this. And this is Olivia Newton-John's daughter saying this. Mom and I had talked years back. We'd watch these paranormal shows, and I'd say, you got to show up for me. And she was like, I'll show up as one of those orb things. What do you know? The phone goes off and look, there's a little orb. See, that's mommy. I don't mean to drag anybody for grieving. Grief is very hard to do. A lot of people think this is harmless, this kind of fantasy. A lot of people think it's comforting. Oh, who cares? I don't think that's, I don't think the orb is Olivia Newton John.

And a lot of people say, oh, it's, it's comforting to think that maybe, you know, your mother's there. I don't think it is comforting. And as our culture has lost religion, we've become much more superstitious. You see this in a lot of the most prominent ideologies these days, some of which I'm not allowed to talk about on YouTube, but you know which ones I'm talking about. A lot of bizarre superstitions that we're engaging in today. About the nature of the soul, all sorts of weird stuff, new age-e kind of stuff. It's not comforting, though. What is comforting is systematic theology. It is. I know it doesn't sound comforting. It sounds kind of cold and clinical, but it is. I know a lot of people want to say, I'm spiritual. I'm not religious. I don't believe

in organized religion. I don't believe in dogmas. I don't believe in all that rigidity. That's all man-made. That's not. I believe in spirit, man. you know. Spirituality is not comforting. Religion can be comforting. It is comforting in that it gives you strength. Sometimes it's a little disruptive of what you're doing if your religion tells you you're on the wrong track.

That can be distressing, but it'll get you back on the right track. But the reason that the orb stuff, the new agee spirituality, is not comforting, is because it raises more questions than it answers. If my mother is a little blue orb, what the hell does that mean about the soul. What does that mean? What happens after we die? We all just float around as little orbs. Is she conscious? Is she in heaven? Is she in hell? Is she in another dimension? Or I guess she's in this dimension? Or are there just ghosts everywhere? Is there God? Is there justice? What does that mean? I have a view of what happens, which is that when you die, you go to heaven

or hell. And you might need a period of expurgation, you know, if you're not in a perfect state to enter into heaven. But that's it. That's what happens. And then there will be a final judgment and a resurrection of the dead and a new heaven and a new earth. That's what I believe. That's the Christian view. That's what Christians believe. We say this kind of thing in the creed. I believe there's a cloud of witnesses of saints. I believe this is expressed in the book of the apocalypse where the saints are praying for us. They've got little baskets, which has incense coming out of it, which you see reflected in the mass. And that the incense in the buckets, it's the prayers of the saints that they're praying for us. that God loves us and wants us to be with him. And I believe all that. So when there are little

coincidences, you know, if you're grieving and you see a little birdie fly out the window or you see a little orb and you see a little orb and you look at that. I don't think that's my mother. I don't think that's my dearly departed person. But I do think, well, there's a providential order to the universe. Things make sense. There is ultimately justice. And that is comforting. But it's comforting because the rigor of logic has been applied to spiritual intuitions. That is what theology is. Theology is faith-seeking understanding. spirituality is just BS that you try superstitious nonsense that you try to tell yourself to comfort yourself. But as CS Lewis points out, if you look for truth, you might find comfort in the end.

If you look for comfort, you'll find neither truth nor comfort, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin. And in the end, despair. Now, when you're seeking understanding, you ought to check out Hillsdale College. Right now, go to Hillsdale.edu slash Knowles. Are you a few years or maybe decades out of school and wondering, what the heck did I even learn? And what was the point? You might think to yourself that you don't have the time to learn something new. Well, if that's you, then know that you're not alone and it's not too late. Since 1844, Hillsdale College has been providing education and faith, freedom and character. They've taken some of the core classes

they teach on campus, made them available for free online to anyone who wants to learn. That's right, for free. There are 39 free courses to choose from, ranging from the U.S. Constitution, the book of Genesis, to free market economics. They're easy to follow and they're self-paced, so you can start whenever you want. In fact, you can start right now. It's everything you need all in one place with no long-term commitment. Let Hillsdale College be your guide. Learn when and where you want. Hillsdale is absolutely terrific, loved visiting, and you can bring that right now to your home through your computer and through your phone. Go to Hillsdale.edu slash Knowles to enroll. No cost. It's easy to get started. Hillsdale.edu slash Knowles to register. Hillsdale.org.org. My favorite comment yesterday is

from Erica H.L. My favorite transition by far, she says, is Michael talking about diet pills, then moving immediately to a clip of Chris Christie? That's not nice. That's not nice. Why would you shouldn't say that? Who would do that? It's not nice at all. I don't endorse that. Okay. Speaking of supernatural things, some new alien nonsense just dropped. It's our weekly alien distraction. Here we go. The new alien nonsense comes from some scientist who claims that he has proof. possibly, of alien life. This object was moving very fast, faster than 95% of the stars near the sun, and it also had material strength tougher than all the rocks we had seen over the past decade in the NASA catalog.

So there is a chance. I wouldn't quantify it. I would just say it's quite possible that it's different than a rock. And what we are doing now is analyzing the composition of the molten droplets that fell off this object when it was exposed to the fireball that it created as it moved through the air. And we are getting some interesting results, but I cannot detail them until we've put them together in a paper, scientific paper that we hope to make publicly available to everyone. It would mean that we have a neighbor, that we are not alone, just like realizing that, you know, when you go out to your backyard and you find a tennis ball that was thrown by a neighbor, you realize, yes, I do have a neighbor.

that's the basic change to our perspective about our place in the universe and it will inspire us to explore space. It may make us better instead of fighting with each other. Perhaps it will be a wake-up call for us to realize that there are more important things in life than fighting with other people. There it is. There is my evidence that this is BS. Well, there's a lot of evidence that's BS. But this is the tell for me. So first, it's the usual story. Oh, I've got all this great evidence. I can't tell you about it.

Yeah, but I got, man, this is some really great strong evidence. We are not alone. We have neighbors. It's so clear. Yeah, I don't have a paper yet or anything. But just take my word for it. Well, I'm going to do a paper in the future. And then I hope I can make it publicly available.

But anyway, before I do any of that, I just want to go on TV and I want to let you know. there are totally aliens. Totally. And my proof is you should take my word for it. Okay. It's always the same old story. Oh yeah. I found a thing. And actually, my friend's cousin's brother found a rock in his yard. And we know somehow that it means that there's E.T. out there. And so, but he told me, I wish he could be here right now. He could tell you himself, but it's just me. So anyway, take my word for it. And don't pay any attention to the imprisoned. of the opposition leader in the U.S. Don't pay any attention to your churches being spied on. Don't pay any attention to the prospect of World War III in Ukraine. Don't pay any attention to the haphazard economy that we've got under Biden. Don't pay any attention to the millions of foreigners crossing your borders.

No, no, no, there's, I'm promising you, man. There's stuff in outer space that would complicate, if not undermine your entire traditional cosmology and your place in the universe. But the tell, okay, that's all the preface to say, the tell to me that this is a sciop, is, he says there at the end, he goes, well, you know, what this would mean is that, look, we don't occupy the place that we think we occupy in the universe. Now, we traditionally think that we occupy the center of the universe, that the universe is basically made for us, that there are non-rational creatures and there is God, you know, and pure spirit, and that we're right there, right in the

middle of it. We're at the meaning of those two things. the world was made for us, and we're stewards of that world. We're made in the image and likeness of God. And he's saying, yeah, we're going to disrupt all that. And maybe then we'll stop fighting with each other. And then maybe we'll just come together. And then maybe we'll just all cooperate all the time. And maybe, oh, okay, so now, after all the BS, here,

my cousin's brother's friend totally has proof of aliens, you get to the point of it, which is a political point. We're going to change our political order. we're going to stop fighting. We're going to have to cooperate. We've got these, we're going to unite because we got this alien invader. And we're going to stop, we're going to have some political changes, which something tells me is what this whole UFO nonsense has been about from the very beginning. Speaking of things that aren't real, Wayne Brady is a pansexual. What's a pansexual? I don't know. It's kind of funny that he opens his video in which he expresses his pansexuality. in the kitchen. So there's no pans though. He's washing a dish. He is a great performer. There's some guy there, some gal there, some rainbow flag, dude, and Brady with a nice pink suit. Okay, so that's his video. And he comes out and says, in this post, this is the text of his post.

He goes, as someone who gets to bring joy to others daily on TV, it's been ironic that I don't experience it as much as I'd like. I advocate mental health for all, and a part of that is self-transparency. In doing my work, I've come to see a few truths, one of them being that I want to be free to love whomever I want. This truth makes me pan and part of the LGBTQ family. Scary as hell to say it out loud, but there it is. People I admire most are the ones who are brave enough to be themselves unapologetically, and I'm going to be happy. A real man in my eyes isn't afraid to be honest and happy. I'm going to be living my best life. And then he tags a bunch of people, including his ex-wife, Wayne Brady has been married twice, actually married, like to a woman, and has a child.

And he's decided now, in his middle age, that he's a pansexual. And what is pansexual? He describes it. He says, pansexual is like bisexual with an open mind. And he get more open-minded than bisexual. I think it means that you are bisexual, but you're open to dating trannies or something. I actually think that's what it means. I don't really know, but that's what I've inferred that means. And he says, I just want to be happy. He said, I advocate mental health for all. When someone prattles on and on and on about mental health, you can know that this person is in a bad state and is certainly a liberal. Because mental health is the new slogan that is used by people who are ignoring spiritual health, who have usually, maybe they have some psychological

problems, but at a deeper level, they almost certainly, almost 100% of the time, have spiritual problems. And they don't want to acknowledge that because they're materialists. And so they instead say, well, if I can just stoop something else, then I'll feel better. But of course, that won't happen. That will only make the issue worse. And to bring his wives into this and to have them pretend to celebrate this, it's very, very sad. I don't mean to knock Wayne Brady. I think he's a very talented guy and very, very funny. He's one of my favorite performers of the 90s and 2000s. But this is really sad because he's obviously unhappy. He's

seeking happiness in this perverted form of liberation. He thinks that just being able to do whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do, whenever I want, that's going to make me happy and it won't. That's the lie. That's the lie not just of radical leftism, it's the lie not just of LGBTism or the set.

It's the lie of liberalism. The lie that your happiness will be in the expression of your individual sovereignty. That's the lie that's Satan tells himself in Milton's Paradise Lost. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. The mind is its own place and it can make a hell of heaven and heaven in hell. But it isn't true. Your exercise of your own individual will and your sovereignty can feel, in modernity, we feel as though that's the highest good. It's not. That's just a means to an end.

It's just a, it's just a procedure. It gets to what we're talking about with Judge Ludick. It's just a procedure. The question is what is the substance that you're aiming at? What choices are you making? How are you using your will? What are you using your will for? What is good? Putting the cart before the horse. And now, Wayne Brady is going to be attracted to all sorts of things. Men, women, carts, horses, and probably everything in between. Today's theology Thursday, baby. The rest of the show continues now. We have Rabbi Pincas Tail. on two kids. We've had a Protestant, we've had a Catholic, now we have a Jew to talk about all sorts of weird, mysterious, esoteric kind of things, like aliens and demons, which is what they really are. So become a member right now. Use code Knowles at checkout for two months free

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