The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1430 - Jon Stewart Explains Why Freedom Makes Everything Suck

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Jon Stewart explains why ugly and disgusting subways are the cost of freedom, 65-year-old Madonna falls off chair at a concert, and Nikki Haley vows to stay in race.   Click here to join the member exclusive portion of my show: https://utm.io/ueSEl   Ep.1430   - - -    DailyWire+:   Get 20% off SITEWIDE during our Presidents Day Sale! Shop here: https://bit.ly/49IrG3w   Unlock your Bentkey 14-day free trial here: https://bit.ly/3GSz8go   Get your own Yes or No game here: https://bit.ly/3X6tlKY     - - -    Today’s Sponsors:   Food For The Poor - Donate Today! Text ‘knowles’ to 51555 or visit https://www.foodforthepoor.org/knowles   GDefy - Get $30 off your order of $150 or more! Use promo code: MK30 at http://www.GDefy.com    HIMS - Start your free online visit today! https://www.HIMS.com/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

In recent weeks, we've heard more and more about the degradation of our cities, the filthy, dangerous subways, the drug addict lines streets, the skyrocketing crime. How did things get so bad so quickly? Do we really have to live this way? Why is this happening? Lucky for us, John Stewart has the answer. Right. Because the difference between our urinal-caped chaotic subways and your candelabrode, beautiful subways,

is the literal price of freedom. Urine everywhere is the price of freedom. It's definitely the price of the liberals' version of freedom. That part's true. The problem with John Stewart's argument is that we used to have nice things. Not that long ago. Our subways used to be cleaner. Our streets used to be mostly free from crackheads and criminals.

We used to punish criminals and stop them from gallivand, everything all over our communities and terrorizing us. That wasn't that long ago. Were we really less free then? We were less free seven years ago? Really? We were less free three years ago? I don't think so. I think we all know that we're all much more free when cops arrest criminals and the streets aren't lined with the corpses of drug addicts, which means that what the Libs call freedom is, in fact, the opposite. And we got to fight that false freedom tooth and nail before it makes us all slaves. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show.

Welcome back to the show. There's a girl on TikTok who is finally clearing up the age-old question of what women want. Once and for all, she figured it out. We will analyze her take on it. But first, go to foodforthepoor.org slash Knowles. It is important to slow down, think about it. how we can lift up others. Luckily, food for the poor helps us do just that. For over 40 years, Food for the Poor has served communities throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Through a network

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Thanks to a meal-for-meal match, a donation of 80 bucks can feed two children for an entire year. Your generous gift today changes how families view tomorrow. Donate now by texting Knowles, KNAW-L-A-S to 5-1-5-5-5, or by visiting foodfor-the-poor.org slash Knowles. that is Knowles, text it to 51, 555,5, or go to foodforthepoor.org slash knolls. The liberals are very, very confused about what freedom is. If freedom is criminals running around and dudes going into the girls' room and urine and drugs and excrement everywhere, give me a little more authoritarianism, please.

You know, I'll take it actually. Because, ironically, what the libs are calling freedom is a kind of slavery. It's slavery to the base passions. It's slavery to the irrational impulses of capricious criminals. What liberals are calling authoritarian is much more in line with freedom. It's much more in line with the founding father's conception of freedom. It's much more in line with the classical and Christian conceptions of freedom because freedom requires limits. Just like a poem requires limits to be beautiful.

It needs meter. That rhyme is sometimes helpful. So too our societies require some limits. Because there's always just a trade-off. If you give dudes the freedom to go into the women's bathroom, you deprive women of the freedom to have their own bathrooms. If you give drug addicts the freedom to shoot up heroin on the street, you deprive, ordinary law-abiding citizens of the freedom to walk their streets in peace, unmolested and unacosted by vagrants and indigence and criminals. There's always a cost here. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

So what kind of freedom are we talking about? Are we talking about the freedom of the lower passions and the irrational appetites to drive us all completely insane? Or are we talking about true freedom, which involves knowledge. It involves acknowledging reality. Men and women are different. Certain things are crimes. Certain things are not crimes. We do good. We avoid evil. It involves the intellect. And it involves disciplining the will and saying, no, crackhead, don't shoot up or don't smoke your crack on the streets of San Francisco. No, big husky fella. Don't go into the girl's bathroom. No homeless people. Don't, defecate on the streets. No, you got to, you got to behave, okay? This comes back to a very basic concept, which the liberals have forgotten. And I'm not even just theorizing that the liberals

have forgotten this. The libs in one of their big house organs admitted they forgot this. The concept is called the natural law. Politico has a big hit piece out on Christian nationalism. That's the new boogeyman on the left. Christian nationalism is, on the rise. Trump allies prepare to infuse Christian nationalism in a second administration. Spearheading the effort is Russell Vaught, president of the Center for Renewing America, part of the conservative consortium preparing for Trump's return to power. Oh, no, here comes Christian nationalism. And what is at the heart of Christian nationalism? At the heart of Christian nationalism, they say, is natural law. Now, let's see, where can I find this beautiful definition

that they try to... Yes, here we are. In 2019, Trump's then Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, set up a federal commission to define human rights based on the precepts

that ought described specifically natural law and natural rights. I like how in this, they don't even seem to recognize the phrase natural rights,

which is much more common in modern American parlance, even that they don't understand. And they certainly don't understand. And they certainly don't understand. And they certainly don't understand. and natural law. Politico writes, Natural law is the belief that there are universal rules derived from God

that can't be superseded by government or judges. While it is a core pillar of Catholicism, in recent decades it's been used to oppose abortion, LGBTQ rights, and contraception. Okay, well, at least they tried. At least, they didn't try that hard, though. I mean, I guess ultimately everything is derived from God because God's the creator of all things that are created.

But the natural law is very specifically the law that can be understood universally, purely by human reason, without divine revelation. I guess they actually kind of got the meaning of natural law, which forms a bedrock aspect, not just of theology and philosophy and morality, but also of American jurisprudence and constitutions. and constitutional law and the common law tradition. They just, they couldn't even get it right. They couldn't even Google it. These are the guys at Politico. They're supposed to be the really smart journalists. They're not these just fringe bloggers.

They're supposed to be the mainstream guys. They have absolutely no idea what it is. And it's a core of Catholicism. That's true. Catholicism certainly has quite a lot to do with the natural law. But the natural law being the natural law is, well, it's just kind of part of every civilization. All people can recognize.

this. What the natural law comes down to most basically is do good and avoid evil. This is something that all human beings have an impulse for an inclination of purely through our reason. Even that today, though, the libs will look at you like you've got three heads if you suggest that maybe perhaps we should consider doing good and avoiding evil. I'll say, I'm like, good and evil. How the hell are we supposed to know what that is? You say, well, because you have reason, you know, and you have something called a conscience, and you're pretending that you don't, but even you do. We all do. That's part of it. In recent decades, the natural law has been used to oppose a bunch of stuff that's crazy and obviously contrary to human flourishing. Yeah, I guess that's true. I guess it does.

Very sad state of American politics that not only does the dominant political power deny the natural law, they don't even know what it is. Not so long ago, though, you had really eloquent defenders and articulators of this. There was a great debate when Barack Obama was running for Senate from Illinois. He was running against Alan Keyes, a wonderful Republican candidate who unfortunately did not make it to hold higher office. Alan Key, they were debating gay marriage. Back in those days, there was a debate over whether or not we would redefine marriage. And Alan Keyes argued against it on the basis of natural law. Mr. Keyes, on the Channel 7 debate last Thursday, And you said, and I'm quoting you, where procreation is in principle, impossible, marriage is irrelevant.

You went on to say it was irrelevant and not needed. What about marriage between people who are well beyond their childbearing age? Irrelevant, not needed? No, no, it's simply a misunderstanding. The word in principle means relating to the definition of, not relating to particular circumstances. So if an apple has a worm in it, the worm is not part of the definition of the apple. It doesn't change what the apple is in principle. So the fact...

It retains its apples. No, it retains. To act as if concepts are laughable means that you want to be irrational. Human beings... I put a pause there. Alan Keyes, man, what a prince among men. I really wish this guy had made it to the Senate or higher. Because he's looking at the questioner.

And you hear this objection all the time. They say, well, hold on, Michael. If you object to radically redefining marriage from what it's always, been just on the basis that a couple of fellows can't have a kid together. Why then, do you think that women past the age of menopause shouldn't get married? Do you think that couples who are likely to be sterile, you know, if, I don't know, the woman has endometriosis or something, that they should not be allowed to get married? And Alan Keyes is just there. He's, he could probably fall asleep. He's so bored with this idiotic line of questioning. By the way, I'm not even sure that the questioner holds to

it. The questioner is leading keys to this great point about the appellness of the apple. But keys, he just looks, he says, you just don't understand the phrase in principle. Just because the particular circumstances of something might have a defect in this fallen world doesn't change the reality in principle. In principle, the union of a man and a woman is open to life and marriage is ordered toward the procreation and education of children. Two dudes, they might be the nicest dudes in the world. We got nothing against them. But the union of two dudes is not in principle open to having children. It is not ordered toward the end that marriage is ordered toward.

So it just isn't marriage. It's not that we want to keep them from having the right to marriage or anything like that. It just, at the most basic definition of marriage, it is not and can never be that. He goes on. You said it was irrelevant and not needed. Human beings reason by means of concepts and definition, we also make laws by means of definitions. And if you don't know how to operate with respect for those definitions, you can't make the law. An individual who is impotent or another who is infertile does not change the definition of marriage in principle.

Because between a man and a woman in principle, procreation is always possible. and it is that possibility which gave rise to the institution of marriage in the first place as a matter of law, excuse me, as a matter of law and government. But when it is impossible as between two males or two females, you're talking about something that's not just incidentally impossible, it's impossible in principle. And that means that if you say that that's a marriage, you are saying marriage can be understood in principle apart from procreation.

Obama, just taking notes, completely destroyed by Alan Keyes' argument. It changed its definition in such a way as, in fact, to destroy the necessity for the institution, since the only reason it has existed in human societies and civilizations was to regulate from a social point of view the obligations and responsibilities attendant upon procreation. This is a really good argument. I wish that this had been the debate over redefining marriage. There really was no debate over redefining marriage because intelligent and unlawful. Common sense voices like Alan Keyes were pushed out of that debate, and it just became a dumb debate over who has the right to do whatever. And really it was a debate not over right. It shouldn't have been a debate over rights. It should have been a debate over definitions. What can we know using our reason from nature? And the answer from the liberals today is not very much at all. The one thing you really learn from this Politico article, not only is that liberals have thrown out even the basic aspects of reasonable argument. But the other thing you learn is Christian nationalism is going

to be a huge talking point for the Libs in 2024. Here come the Christian nationalists. They want to impose a theocracy or whatever. My rejoinder to them would be, if you guys think that Christian nationalism is bad, just wait until you see unchristian nationalism. Trust me, you're going to like that a lot, a lot less. Christian nationalism. If we live in a nation, our nation's going to be animated by something. It can be animated by paganism. It can be animated by atheism. The worst regimes in all of history have been atheist regimes. It can be animated by Hinduism. We don't have that many Hindus in America. Or it can be animated by Christianity. Which one do you think is going to be better? Which one do you think is going to be more conducive to the flourishing of everybody, Christians and non-Christians alike? I think the answer is pretty clear. much more to say. First, though, go to G-Defi.com promo code MK30. Good footwear is about more than fashion. Choosing footwear that provides support for your daily routine is important. And now, thanks to

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Experience the miracle that is G-Dify, where comfort meets innovation. Speaking of nature, Madonna has fallen off a chair. She's fallen and she sort of can get up, at least. She was at some concert. You see her on stage. She's being dragged by one of her. singers. And he, the singer trips and she goes straight down. But Donna's 65 years old. You do not want to be taking falls at 65 years old. She keeps singing while lying on the ground. One of her,

one of her backup singers comes to help her up, but she actually gets herself up for most of it, pretty impressive. Then she gets back on the chair, you know, sitting open-legged and dancing around in a pretty sultry way. And then then she, flips around to a slightly more comfortable position, and they kind of recover. Okay, it's very sad. Very, very sad because Madonna is 65 years old and should not be dancing on stage like she's a 21-year-old stripper. But she's doing that. That has been her act. And she was the best at that act in the 80s when she kind of came onto the scene. And the act has gotten sadder and sadder every year. Not because she's not still good at it. She's actually shockingly good at singing and dancing around and getting up when she falls for a 65-year-old

pop star, but it's sad because that's not the sort of thing 65-year-olds are supposed to do. It's a little risque for anyone to dance like that, but it's a lot more normal for a 25-year-old to dance like that than for a 65-year-old. The biggest modern pathology, I think, that affects us is the inclination to deny time. I think this is one of the aspects of liberalism. We want to deny time. We want to deny history. Liberalism is all about denying history. Forget about the past. They were all dumb. They were all evil. They don't know anything. We know everything now. And nothing's ever going to change. No one's ever going to call us immoral. No one's ever going to call us ignorant. No, no, no. We've figured it all out. And now the time and politics is frozen forever in this in this endless present. You see this in young liberal people. I mean, this is why in large part, I think millennials in the cities don't want to get married. They don't want to have kids. They want to remain kids themselves. forever. This is why you're seeing a perpetual suspended adolescence. This is why you're seeing 35-year-olds brag on social media that they're adulting because they paid a bill or something. It's all about a denial of time. You even see this in some modern forms of religion. A lot of modern

religion is very gnaustic. It is inclined to deny the physical world. It's inclined to deny the history of the religion. It's inclined to deny the great people. It's, you know, the great science of the religion. It's inclined toward away from worship and liturgy. It's just kind of floating in your head. And we all want to be just floating in the air. That's why people are going to put on the Apple Vision Pro, and they're going to deny the importance of their bodies, and they're going to embrace Gnostic ideologies like transgenderism or transhumanism. They're going to try to upload their minds to the cloud so they can deny the reality of time, which has a beginning and a middle and an end, and then you die. And then what happens after you die is something they don't want

to think about. It's not particularly new. This is a pathology that's affected us for centuries now. It's not good. The things that you, that were normal for you to do at 20 are not generally normal for you to do at 50. We're 60 or 70. Boozy and Lishie. champagne brunch. I always attack brunch because brunch is just the sacrament. Brunch is the liturgy of the millennials. But boozy champagne brunch when you're 22 is one thing. Going out every weekend and, you know, that's one thing. Boozy champagne brunch when you're 62 is a sadder thing. You should be doing other things. You've got to grow. You've got to develop. You're going to grow or you're going to die. And we're all going to die someday, even though everyone seems to be

trying to deny that. Now, speaking of growing up, there are a father and a daughter who are sniping at each other on social media. And they're both social media influencers, which means that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong in this family. For any of them to be social media influencers, but certainly for both of them to be. The daughter made a video in which she accused her father of being absentee when she was a kid. What's a piece of trauma that you have? That's funny. It has to actually be funny. I'll go first. My dad abandoned my family when I was five years old. That is a wife and four kids. He abandoned us and then pursued amateur breakdancing. And he got really good. He like blew up. Like he became like a D-list celebrity status like viral break dancer. He

became like the oldest actively competing break dancer in the world. Then he got a good morning America and talk shows and Washington Post wrote about him and he went super viral and he did all these interviews and he danced with Paul Abdul. The worst part, damn it, he's good. He should not be able to move his body like that. It's like impossible. It's beautiful. Hey dad. Thank you, Maddie.

Like there was no split custody or anything. Like he just like left four kids to do that. He may not have paid for some of my medical bills growing up, but he did give me this breakdancing merchandise. So that's him. He's on his guy. That is a nice shirt. This is B-boy name because his name is Ben Hart. You know, I'll get texts like this.

Happy birthday. question mark and then like links to his breakdancing video that's true you have funny trauma like actual funny ha ha trauma i need to hear it okay so the daughter airs her grievances this father he left me he wouldn't pay my bills he forgets when my birthday is he makes a joke about forgetting my birthday he wasn't around when i was a kid but the reason this video is going viral is because the father has responded to her and i've even seen some conservatives sharing this video of the father as though it's an epic takedown by a father, maybe a right-wing-leaning father. He's wearing a Bitcoin shirt. It's an epic takedown of this father to his spoiled brat, Gen Z daughter, supposedly. We'll get to that in one second.

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social media influence her daughter goes viral saying my dad abandoned the family when we were kids the father then goes viral a number of conservatives posting him around because he epically epically destroyed his daughter on social media with facts and logic first i can see that as a five-year-old mattie would see her dad as having abandoned the family one day i was living there the next day i wasn't and that will look like abandonment to a child but married couple of do get divorced about half the time in America. And I was just living a mile or so down the street in LaGrange, Illinois. We just weren't living under the same roof.

Now, about not paying medical bills, that's just not correct. Here was the financial arrangement of the divorce. Maddie's mom, my ex-wife, got $2 million at the get-go. Out of the gate, a lump sum payment. Plus, I was paying her $18,000 per month in child support and alimony. and alimony. This was later reduced to $12,000 per month. And of course, I paid health insurance and out-of-pocket medical costs. I also put $600,000 into the kids' college fund. In all, I paid out about $5 million to my ex-wife to cover costs for her and the kids. And this is in

$2,05. So add 50% to account for inflation. In other words, I was not a deadbeat dad at all. I was not a deadbeat dad at all, you see, because I gave my wife a lot of money. Now, he goes on in the video, he has like a 10-minute response here. And he says, yeah, look, the divorce was, it was mostly my fault. It was about 70% my fault. But look, I gave them a bunch of money. And now the kids, most of them have good jobs, so they're making money, so quit complaining. And I thought, not only is that one of the dumbest arguments I've ever heard,

not only does that argument completely miss the point that your daughter was raising. But it's one of the least conservative arguments I've ever heard. I cannot understand how a conservative would post this video and say that the father is somehow the good guy here. He's saying, yeah, everything you said is true. I did abandon my family. I did pursue my professional breakdancing career. But hey, you got some money. So isn't that all good? Talk about knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

He doesn't really apologize for the divorce. He says, oh, my wife and I, we were incompatible. So, yeah, I traumatized our four kids. And I did, I literally abandoned them. But, hey, you know, they got some money. Isn't that fine? Isn't that? What are you talking about, man?

Absolutely pathetic. I have no, look, these people are both social media influencers and they're probably both just absolutely dreadful. But if I had to pick aside here, I'm sorry. certainly picking the side of the daughter, to say nothing of the fact that this father is taking to social media to destroy his daughter with facts and logic. Are you kidding me for the public, for the amusement of your followers? I don't care how in the wrong you think your daughter is. That is a despicable behavior. And then it gets even crazier because the daughter responded, her first video was kind of funny. It was in response to this question. Name a funny trauma you have.

And I say, here's a funny trauma. My dad abandoned me to become a professional break dancer and he's actually pretty good. But then her response is actually now my father's just lying about everything. I know my dad posted like a 10 minute video or whatever being like, you know, my daughter's lying. We have a great relationship. I have a great relationship with all my kids. That's just objectively not true. Like guys, we're all freaking out about this in my family group chat right now. We're being like he's so unhinged and delusional.

We don't know if he actually believes his own narrative or if he's lying on purpose. But he's just like a weird guy. Yeah, he said he lived down the street from us. That's not true. Or like if he did, it was only for a few months maybe. But actually for most of my childhood, he lived in Florida with his. new wife. Like, basically, like, I don't want to get into this. Like, again, like, my video was basically, like, sanitizing the situation and, like, poking fun at the lightest parts of that

childhood trauma. But obviously, in real life, it was a lot more, like, complicated and traumatic. And it was really hard. He left us immediately married another woman. We didn't hear from him for years. And then he would visit every few months and we'd go out to dinner. But, like, he truly had no hand in raising us at all. Yeah, I'm totally on the girl's side here. This is such late 20th century cope from this father. This is just such nonsense to say, well, look, all that really matters is money. You know, I wrote them a big check, so I can't be blamed for anything. That's an error that not only the left has made, but the right has made as well.

But the primary function of a father actually is not to make a lot of money. There are very excellent fathers who have not made a lot of money. Primary function of a father is to be a father, to be steadfast, to live up to to his vows that he made to his wife and the love between him and his wife that is so real that it actually creates other people and then to fulfill his obligations to those children. That's his job. And those obligations are a lot deeper than money. So he leaves them and the girl's saying, yeah, you gave us a lot of money, but that doesn't matter. She's obviously screwed up from it. I'm not surprised at all. There is just no excuse for this. No excuse.

the rot in our politics goes down probably 93% to this one issue of no-fault divorce. And the reason for that is not just that it screws up kids and it's not just that encourages selfish behavior in adults and it's not just... It's that the family is the basic political unit. Politics is how we all get along together. Politics cannot be an individual thing because it involves multiple. multiple people. It's the public life. And the basic unit of that, the smallest possible unit, is the family. So if you blow up the family, as you do with no fault divorce, then you blow up all of politics. And then they justify it with all these totally BS expressions. They justify it by saying,

oh, kids are resilient. I don't know. That girl hasn't seen that resilient. In fact, most children of divorce, I know. They're resilient. They get by. Life goes on. You know, they're tough things in life. but it hurts them forever. I know adults whose parents get divorced when they are adults, and it totally screws them up. So, no, don't give me that. Or what's the other line? They say, well, it's better for the parents to get divorced

if they're unhappy in their marriage. It's much better for the children if the parents totally split up and explode their world. So they can be happy chasing some second or third wife. Rather than suppress their feel-feels for a little bit and learn to make their marriage work. Yeah, no, that's not true either, man. It's just so, ah, it's just unbelievable. No one in history has really thought this. No serious society has ever thought this. But a society that totally turns away from the common good and focuses only on personal interest in selfishness is going to believe this kind of thing. And then when the victims of this profound social disorder come out and say, hey, actually, that was bad. And I don't, I wish you hadn't done that. what's the answer is, oh, shut up, you made a lot of money. Oh, you made a lot of money.

Okay. A lot of money. A lot of money can buy you a cup of coffee, I guess. It certainly won't reassemble society. And now, speaking of family, great, today's a big family and natural law show. I'm just noticing this now. Elon Musk, one of the most influential men in the world,

has just come out to destroy contraception with facts and logic. I love it. You know, all of the rich guys basically are big, selfish libs. And Elon Musk is a weirdo who has all sorts of weird companies and weird ideas. And he is art. I'm not, I don't know that he's a rock-robed conservative. I have no idea what his religious views are. But he does, oddly enough, keep articulating points that are very conservative and even quite Christian and even quite orthodox. You know, I mean, he's basically articulating. Catholic sexual ethics here, but he's doing it in a funny Elon way. So he tweets out, or he ex-posts out, he says, hormonal birth control makes you fat, doubles the risk of depression, and triples the risk of suicide. This is the clear scientific consensus, but very few people seem to know it. Thank you. Thank you, Elon. And then he cites the NIH. So when all the dumb, scientific libs show up and they say, um, could you please provide your sources? Could I please see a study?

which most studies are just nonsense anyway, but Elon indulges them. He says, okay, here's a study from your favorite institutions. Here you go, the NIH. You all like that, right? Hey, Dr. Fauci worked there, and you're big fans of him. Anyway, they back up what I'm saying, which is that hormonal birth control is really bad.

It makes you fat, doubles the risk of depression, triples the risk of suicide. He's not even making an argument citing Humanevite or something. He's not citing some bioethical tract. He's just saying, hey, these are the medical consequences that are likely to occur with birth control. And so why would you do it? And then this raises the deeper question of hormonal birth control, which is, why do it?

If we know it's got all of these negative effects, if we know that what the libs have told us about contraception for years is not true. And we say, oh, it's no big deal. It's fine. Yeah, it totally screws up women's hormones for years or maybe decades at a time. But there are no negative side effects of that whatsoever. Yeah, absolutely. Put your 12-year-old on the pill. Okay, that's all obviously wrong, and Elon is citing the scientific evidence here.

So then the question is, why use it at all? What's the reason? And the only reason is so that you can have promiscuous sex. Is promiscuous sex good for you? Maybe it's something you want to do. We all desire things that are naughty and not good for our flourishing. But I'm not talking about your lower will here. I'm not talking about that lower appetitive kind of freedom that the libs are always trying to

voiced on us. I'm saying we zoom out here. You're just, you're reading Elon's tweets. Elon is like Commander Dada. He's a pretty rational guy a lot of the time. And you're saying, okay, what rational reason do I have to take hormonal birth control or to put my child on hormonal birth control? The only reasons you can really come up with are so that I or she can have a promiscuous sex with random dudes. We hope without consequences. Is that going to be good for us? Probably not. So that could be as good for us as finding a good guy and settling down and getting married and then being open to life and having kids? Probably not. So that's not a good reason. And then maybe even within marriage, there's some married couples who use hormonal birth control. But why? Why do they do it? So that they can prevent having children. But why would they want to not have children? The natural end of marriage, as Alan Keyes was explaining to us earlier, is procreation and the education of children. And when we get married, we give of ourselves, ideally, totally, to the other spouse in a lifelong bond that will not be broke.

even by absentee dads who want to go breakdance and chase tail. So then why wouldn't you want to give of yourself entirely? When you use contraception, you're withholding something. You're withholding something that's actually very important. And you're preventing your love with your spouse from really reaching its fullest potential and becoming so real that it becomes another person. So why would you even want to do that? You might say, well, maybe in some grave circumstance, it would present a mortal threat

if my wife were to get pregnant or something like that. Those instances are exceedingly rare, and there are more bioethically sound ways to deal with those circumstances if you want. That's sort of a separate conversation. But at the very least, if we're talking about 99% of the time, it's because what? They say, well, I don't want to have another kid.

I don't want to have to wake up early. Kids are loud and annoying, and they, you know, they're messy and they tell, okay, that's one reason. Well, you know, okay, man, what else are you doing? Like, play fewer video games, go to the bar a little bit less. Yeah, it's true. Kids are a lot of work, but they're worth it. Or they'll say, well, we can't afford a kid right now. Well, it's important to be able to pay for your kids, but it's good to have kids to pay for. And I promise you on your deathbed, you're not going to be longing for those thousands and thousands of dollars you spend on the kid.

You're more likely to regret not having the kid. Kids are worth more than money. But our civilization doesn't seem to understand that anymore. We seem to think that money just solves everything. Not only the materialists on the left, but many materialists on the right, well. Now, this President's Day, we honored the great leaders of our nation with Jeremy's razors. Jeremy's razors are made with the finest materials and craftsmanship. They come in a variety of packages to suit your needs. Check out the Founders kit available in Precision Five,

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because people are still ordering them. If you want Mayflower cigars, which a lot of you have written angrily to me and told me that you do. You've got to pre-order now. And I wouldn't just pre-order one box or two boxes. I don't know exactly when the next shipment's going to come in. And if we're going to sell out in the pre-order, just spare my inbox the angry emails.

If you're going to get one box, maybe get two, throw one in the humidor. You're going to get two packs, maybe get four. And then I'm just, or don't, or someone else will order it. But then don't come complaining to me when you can't get your Mayflower cigars. Mayflower cigars.com, 21 years or older to order. Some exclusions apply. My favorite comment yesterday is from user MP9R,

who says, Joy Reed and her culturally appropriated blonde hair, stunning that people actually listen to this woman. It is so outrageous that that woman wears Karen face every day. She does. She goes up there. She does a middle-aged suburban white lady menstrual show with her character. She's appropriating

a culture that is not hers and she should be cancelled for it, I say. Speaking of women's issues, a young woman has gone viral on TikTok for finally cracking an equation

that has puzzled men in particular for all of human history. That is why women break up with them. The question is, what do women want. And this woman with the aid of some kind of whiteboard, maybe it's just a piece of paper, she has broken it all down. Okay, this is you guys. You guys are in a happy relationship.

And now all of a sudden you have one simple, fixable problem. For this example, we're going to use no good morning text. And your girlfriend who loves you, she's really happy with you. She comes to you and she tells you, she's like, hey, do you think we could start doing good morning text? Like, it'd mean a lot to me if you text me good morning. So you, her loving boyfriend, agree to give her good morning texts. But something happened and for whatever reason you stopped giving her good morning text. So now we have a bigger problem. She now thinks that you don't care enough about her to send her good morning texts. So now your girlfriend who has never picked fights before in her life starts picking a bunch of little fights about all these different things because she believes that

you do not care enough. Through all of these picking fights with you though, she still loves you and likes you enough to want to be with you. Even though you guys have all these little. problems now. Until one day these become unattractive to her. She's going to realize that all of these little things that you do that remind her that you don't care about her enough are unattractive. And so now the problem is not these things. It's not even that you don't care enough. It's not even that she never got good morning texts. It's that she literally does not like you anymore. Quoderat demonstrandum. That's breakupology, as she writes at the top of that paper.

And I think she's half right. I think she's half right. Her point is that women are like kind of crazy and irrational. That's the beginning. The woman wants a good morning text, which is, I think my answer would just be no. I wouldn't break up with a woman who asked me that. But I would say, no, I don't think so. I'll send you texts when I would like to send your texts, but you know, good morning.

I always wish you a good morning, but I'm not going to just be at your beck and call to make any kind of silly show that you like. I'm not going. Some things I'll accommodate, but some things I won't. And the way that I'll come to my conclusion about that is using my reason. No, she's half right that women will make these irrational demands. And where she's especially right is that if you agree to them and then renege on that, they're going to lose it. They're going to be really angry and might break up with you. But what she's not quite, why getting here, is that what women also want is for a man to lead them. So the woman makes the demands, sometimes rational, sometimes irrational, and then the man demonstrating his care for her does not merely put himself in a subservient position and say, whatever you want, honey, I'll send you text any time of the day. I'm sorry, my text was three minutes late today. The man says,

hey, love you, you're great. That's totally crazy. So we're not going to to do that. This thing that you've just requested, that's reasonable. And actually, you're right, I should do that. And then man's got to keep his word, which is part of leadership and caring and romance and a healthy relationship that we hope leads into a real marriage. But it can't be only one side of that equation. She's just getting it. She's just missing the biggest part of the picture. And people will write in. We've been talking about divorce and splitting up a lot today, I guess. People will write in, they'll say, how does one resolve? a conflict in a marriage or even boyfriend and girlfriend.

How does one, you know, I want this thing and she wants that thing and men are from Mars and women are from Venus, how are we going to come to any resolution? And the answer ties right back to what we were talking about since the top of the show, ties right back to that natural law, ties right back to reason. Your battles are not just duels of irrational will. You know, I want McDonald's for dinner. You want Burger King for dinner. neither of us is going to give an inch and we're going to duke it out until my will dominates her will or vice versa.

That's not going to get you anywhere. That'll lead you to break up. There is such a thing as reason, and you both have it. Even the women. They do, actually. They do. Contrary to what Jack Nicholson says in that famous movie, as good as it gets. He writes women so well because he just thinks of a man and then takes away reason and accountability. But women do have some reason, you know, and men have some reason too. The way that you can resolve a conflict is by saying, okay, what is the principle that's at stake in this debate that we're having, this conflict, and what is good to do? And what is the truth of the matter, and then what is good to do? And some things like Burger King or McDonald's might be a little trickier to resolve. And then in that case, maybe the man just says, honey, you want Burger King? Let's go get some Burger King. But maybe certain issues like what city are we going to live in are. are a little more reasonable where you say, okay, look, honey, I'm the man of the house and I'm the

primary breadwinner and we're following my career and my job took me to a new city. And so you just, even though you might not like this city, I think that's where we're going to go. And I'll try to make this move nice for you and I'll try to accommodate as best I can. But this is, I think, what we have to do. And then the woman, even if she really likes the place she's living, even if she really doesn't want to go to wherever you're going to go, the woman can say, well, you're right, you're the head of our household, and in order to provide for us and have a roof over our head and to have a person actually leading the family, it is reasonable for us to go, even if it doesn't necessarily satisfy my preferences at the moment.

That's reason. And you can apply that. You don't have to just wait until you're married for 10 years. You can apply that even down to your little good morning texts. Now, speaking of women. Nikki Haley is still in the presidential race and the rubber is about to meet the road, baby, because Nikki Haley's home state primary,

South Carolina is on Saturday. The polls are not looking very good for her. They are looking very good for Donald Trump. Nikki is saying I'm going to stay in to fight through South Carolina. And even if I lose, I'm going to stay in even then. Some of you, perhaps a few of you in the media,

came here today to see if I'm dropping out of the race. Well, I'm not. We've all heard the calls for me to drop out. We all know where they're coming from. The political elite, the party bosses, the cheerleaders in the commentator world. The argument is familiar. They say I haven't won a state that my path to victory is slim. They point to the primary polls and say I'm only delaying the inevitable.

Why keep fighting when the battle was apparently over after Iowa? That's why I refuse to quit. South Carolina will vote on Saturday. But on Sunday, I'll still be running for president. I'm not going anywhere. Okay. I am not going to voice any opinion on Haley's continuing to stay in the race. You know, I like Nikki very much personally, and so she can stay in the race as long as she wants.

This was a bad speech. I don't know who wrote this speech for her. It's not effective because she's, one, she's reminding all of the people. her voters and all of the public that she doesn't have a chance to actually win the nomination. I thought that was unnecessary. She's suggesting that Donald Trump actually did kind of earn the nomination. If she really wanted to make the claim that this is a totally rigged primary and I'm fighting as the voice of the people, she shouldn't have said it was over after Iowa. She should have said, there are many people who think this was over before it began. We know that. They thought it was over

before it began. This was a sham of a primary. I'm proven to them. It's not a sham of a primary. But she didn't phrase it that way. She phrased it almost in a way to say, yeah, Trump proved that he's going to be the nominee because he won in Iowa, not effective. And then she goes on and she says, you know, it's the political elite who want Trump. And no one believes that because they know that the elite are trying to put him in prison for the rest of his life. So that's never going to be persuasive. Nikki Haley's lane in the race, and she's been very good at running in that lane, is that she is the candidate of more of the Beltway crew. She's more the candidate of the centrists and the political establishment, at least as the Republican nominee.

She's got the money from the Coke network. And so I don't know. I'm not saying that's a good thing. I agree it probably gives her a very narrow lane to win the presidency. But if that's your lane, run in that lane. Don't change strategy at the end. No one's going to believe, you know, you're the voice of the people. You know, you're the populist leader against establishment Donald Trump.

That's just simply not credible. But she, I think, is the one thing she's doing properly here is she's managing expectations. She's saying, yeah, I'm almost certainly going to lose South Carolina. But I'm going to stay in the race. anyway and hope that a lightning bolt comes down and takes out Donald Trump. That part at least is, I think, a pretty accurate assessment of where the race stands. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use Code Knowles, KennaWLAS. So check out for two months free on all annual plans.