The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 153 - Spiritual, But Not Religious

Episode Date: May 9, 2018

1/5 of Americans and 1/3 of adults under 30 describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” which is to say, they don’t care very much about God, but they find themselves very interesting. We will discuss this postmodern theology with Tyler Blanski, author of “An Immovable Feast: How I Gave Up Spirituality for a Life of Religious Abundance.” Then, President Trump secures the release of three American hostages from North Korea, our National Guard protects our border, and last night’s GOP Senate primaries show good signs for Republicans in November. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One fifth of Americans and a full third of adults under 30 describe themselves as spiritual, but not religious, which is to say they don't care very much about God, but they find themselves very, very interesting. We will discuss this postmodern theology with Tyler Blansky, author of the excellent book, An Immovable Feast, How I Gave Up Spirituality for a Life of Religious Abundance. Then, in a bunch of news stories that the mainstream media are doing their best to hide, President Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo secure the release of three American hostages from North Korea. Our National Guard is actually protecting our national border. What a concept. And last night's GOP Senate primaries show good signs for Republicans in November. I'm Michael Knowles

and this is the Michael Knowles Show. It just won't stop. Can't stop, won't stop. More incredible news. One day after Donald Trump burnt down Barack Obama's entire legacy, he has now gone over over to that legacy's grave and relieved himself on the ashes. Well done, Mr. President. So we recall now, we recall auto-warm beer, this poor American student who was taken hostage by the North Korean regime during the Obama administration. The Obama administration couldn't get him out. President Trump, we know now, has secured the release of three American hostages who had been held in North Korea. Do you remember when Donald Trump, he would send those angry tweets to North Korea. He called Little Rocket Man short and fat. Because little rocket man, Kim Jong-un,

said that Donald Trump is old and crazy. And an American president would have responded to say, well, that's not very nice. Don't do that. Normal, you know, Barack Obama. No, no, no. And what does Donald Trump say? He says, how dare he? I would never call him short and fat. He's like, yeah, he's got a button on his desk. I got a bigger button and my button works. The whole mainstream media freaks out. They say he's going to plunge us into World War III. We're going to have. We're going have a nuclear holocaust. He doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't know. Oh, he just secured the release of three American hostages. Oh, Kim Jong-un is now doing what we tell him to do. This is a major diplomatic feat. Let's tune into the mainstream media to see all of their coverage

of this incredible diplomatic feat. But if the president insists on keeping a stormy silence, he's got to hope that 60 minutes doesn't become 60 days. More details from Stormy Daniels. We still stay a little on the stormy side down to New York. Good evening tonight. Breaking News in the Stormy Daniels story will bring you the latest legal development. We'll also show you my full 60 minutes conversation with Daniels tonight, along with portions not shown on last night's broadcast. Her attorney joins us as well. So does Michael Cohen's lawyer to discuss new legal developments late today. I actually wanted to see the clip. Yeah. So I want to see the clip of North Korea coverage. Because we've seen, you know, we've gotten a lot of Stormy Daniels coverage. So let's just see the mainstream media reporting on this great.

great North Korean diplomatic feat. Porn star stormy Daniels sues the president's lawyer for defamation, accusing Michael Cohen of calling her a liar. As Daniels goes public about her alleged affair with Donald Trump and says she was threatened, the White House says the president still denies an affair and rejects her claims. I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in the situation room. This is CNN breaking news.

That's not the breaking news. I want, the breaking news is that Donald Trump secured the release of three hostages from North Korea. Just show me that coverage. Michael Cohen's first statement about the Stormy Daniels payment was on February 13th. All right, that's enough. No more, I don't know. No more mainstream media. Turn it off. I don't want any more of this. Stupid mainstream media. This is, by the way, those clips could have been taken from any moment in the last five months. Those are just any day. Breaking news. That porn star is still talking. That porn star who wanted to run for Senate as a Democrat five years ago or however long ago,

she's still talking about it. And she doesn't like Trump and breaking, breaking news. So anyway, on the actual story where Donald Trump secured the release of three American hostages in North Korea, the New York Times, the New York Times, this is really the failing New York Times. This is the epitome of the failing New York Times. As Mike Pompeo, as the Secretary of State is in North Korea, personally securing the release of American hostages there. The New York Times runs a headline.

At key moment, Trump's top diplomat is again thousands of miles away. And they're saying at the key moment because the Iran deal was ripped up yesterday. But they had already done that. That was already a fait accompli. So Mike Pompeo was busy securing the release of Americans who were being held hostage in North Korea. New York Times runs, where is he? What's he doing? He's probably on a beach somewhere in Boka, you know.

But what's really weird about this, you can't even chalk it up to just total ignorance on the New York Times as part as you frequently can because the caption, a photo in that article, said that Pompeo was busy in North Korea trying to deal with the hostages. So did the headline writer just not read the article? Did you just not see the photo?

It's certainly incompetence. It's certainly ignorance. It's certainly terrible journalism. But that's the New York Times. This, by the way, is the argument for Twitter. Some of the, I don't know how this is still the case, but some of the sophisticated conservatives and Republicans, they say, well, Trump is doing good.

I like Trump, but we need to take away his Twitter. His Twitter is ruining him. Twitter is the whole thing. Twitter is the whole presidency. Without Twitter, none of this happens. Without Twitter, that's what we get. Without Twitter, it's just the Stormy Daniels presidency. You wouldn't even hear about the North Korean hostages.

No, it's just stormy. LA, let's have, we've only had, Mike Avenatti, the Stormy Daniels lawyer on 15 times today. We still have a couple hours left in the day. That's what we would get. So, let's hear it from Donald Trump himself. Call it a confidence building measure, a good will gesture. You could describe a number of different labels to it, but the bottom line is three Americans who have been detained for some time in North Korea are on their way home right now, and the president very happy about it. Tweeting just a few minutes ago, quote, I am pleased to inform you that Secretary of State Mike

Pompeo is in the air and on his way back from North Korea. with the three wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting. They seem to be in good health. Also, good meeting with Kim Jong-un, date and place of the summit with President Trump set. The president also suggesting he's going to be up late tonight. Secretary Pompeo and his guests will be landing

at Andrews Air Force Base at 2 a.m. in the morning, the president tweeted, I will be there to greet them very exciting. It's why I love these tweets, because you get the words from Trump himself. He tweets it out, but then his tweet tweets become the news. The fact of his tweeting is the news. And as Fox News just said, that is the bottom line. The bottom line is that Donald Trump secured this release, that Mike Pompeo secured this release, that the Republican administration secured the release of hostages, which the Obama administration was not able to do. That's the bottom line. And that's a, that's a really good thing.

It cuts through all the stormy, whatever other nonsense they're talking about. And look at how Donald Trump is handling this. He's, that, that tweet you saw. out right there. He's positive. It's engaging. It's positive. It's grateful. And it's a TV show. It keeps, stay tuned. Stay tuned for what's going to happen. We've got this character going over here. This is happening. And he says, I'm going to meet them. They're getting in at 2 a.m. I'm going to meet them there. This is an important aspect of this whole announcement. Meeting them at 2 a.m. is a signal from Donald Trump to Kim Jong-un to the international community. It's as much for them as it is to score points on domestic politics because what he's saying is I'm a vigorous guy. I'm paying attention. I am personally

involved in what's going on. I don't need sleep. I've got a button on my desk that actually works. What he's saying, this is like when Reagan met Gorbachev for the first time. He was, you know, he's an older man. Gorbachev was supposed to be this young, vigorous leader. And it was winter in, it was still chilly in Washington, D.C. So Reagan was going to wear his big overcoat. And at the last minute, either his advisors or he decided to take off the overcoat, and he trotted down those stairs, not wearing a coat, just wearing his suit jacket and, you know, light little suit jacket, and Gorbachev was all buttoned up, and he's plotting slowly. It was this great display of vigor. And Gorbachev actually brought this up to Reagan. He said, next time, tell me

if we're wearing the coats or we're not wearing the coats, because it was a total PR win for Reagan. And you see the same thing happening with Trump. Trump is doing this. Trump is not a young man. Trump is one of our older presidents, but he's saying, I'm going to stay up late, I'm going to be tweeting, I'm going to be vigorous and informed. It was really, really good. He also announced that this summit, this possible summit with Kim will not take place in the demilitarized zone, in the DMZ. We don't know where. He said he'll announce it within three days. There's the reality TV.

Stay tuned, stay tuned. Don't miss the next episode. Very optimistic, but he keeps saying everything could be scuttled. So keep playing nice, Kim, because if Kim doesn't play nice, they'll keep. cancel the whole meeting, and there it goes. Now, forget the tweets. Here is a clip of Donald Trump on video describing this feat himself. You deserve the Nobel Prize, do you think? Everyone thinks so, but I would never say it. You know what I want to do? I want to get it finished. The prize I want is victory for the world,

not for even here. I want victory for the world, because that's what we're talking about. So that's the only prize I want. I think he's being serious here. We'll get to why this is so important what this shows us about politics. But before we do that, I've got to thank a wonderful sponsor, Lending Club. Love Lending Club. We all need a helping hand sometimes, whether it is unexpected repairs or medical expenses or credit card debt. Sometimes a little bit of money can make a big difference.

You can get it at Lendingclub.com. I've had this at some points in my life. When I was much younger through a series of unfortunate events, I inherited my house. and the thing that any homeowner knows is that houses are money pits, especially if they're older houses or whatever, and at the time didn't have a lot of cash in houses, you just need repairs all the time,

the roof leaks, this leaks, that, this leaks, that, and sometimes you just need a little money to get you buying a pinch. Lending Club gives you access to low rates on loans of up to $40,000 for almost any purpose. You can take control of your debt, you can finance a major purchase, you can finally make home improvements. Just go to LendingClub.com,

enter how much money you need, and see if you're approved in minutes. Pick the offer that's right for you. The money can be in your account in just a matter of days. It's that simple. For more than 10 years, Lending Club has helped millions of people with over $31 billion, billion with a B, dollars in loans. Take charge of your finances today with Lending Club.

Go to Lending Club.com slash Knowles, K-O-W-L-E-S, to check your rate for free. This won't impact your credit score. It's really easy. It's the way to do it. You don't have to go to a bank. You do not have to use high-interest credit cards. It's really simple. Lendingclub.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.

Lending club.com slash knolls all loans made by Web Bank, member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender. You'd be foolish not to do it. Go check it out today. So Donald Trump, he says, the reporter asks him, are you going to get a Nobel Prize? Should you get a Nobel Prize? He says, people keep saying that. I wouldn't. Look, I wouldn't say it.

Everybody's talking about it. But when he says, what I care about is that it gets done. I want victory for the world. I don't care about the prize. I care about the victory. I think he's being serious. I don't think that's false modesty. With other politicians, it would be false modesty.

With Barack Obama would be false modesty. With him, I actually don't think he cares. What we know from Donald Trump is he doesn't really seem to care about accolades from other people. Now, that's not to say he doesn't care about accolades. He loves accolades. He slaps his name on everything that he's ever been a part of. But he does it himself. He doesn't beg and say, oh, please, you give me this or you do this or can you.

It's always him putting his own name in lights. He's already won the biggest prize in the world. He's the President of the United States. Nobel Peace Prize doesn't does not matter after that. But what he wants is to accomplish the thing. He wants to do the thing. This is a major difference between the right and the left. The right likes the thing itself.

Securing a denuclearized North Korea at the biggest end of it, or at least bringing into the Korean War, bringing American hostages back home. They like the thing itself. What the left likes is the appearance of the thing. They just like the appearance, just the glitz and the glamour, but not the substance. the husk, not the real thing.

So Barack Obama, he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. He won the Nobel Peace Prize. He won the Nobel Peace Prize something like eight and a half months after entering office. He was nominated, I think 12 days after entering office very quickly. But what did he do to deserve it? Absolutely nothing. He certainly doesn't deserve it. Even the left admits that now.

Donald Trump wants the real thing. That is what the right should focus on, the real thing. Forget all the mainstream media articles and the, the polls and the this and the awards and how nice and the dinners. No, just do the real thing. Get the real thing. It's much more gratifying. Speaking of the real versus the superficial, let's talk about being spiritual but not religious. This is one of my favorite. You hear everyone says it now today. Well, I'm spiritual, but not religious. I'm joined now by Tyler Blansky. Tyler is an author, musician, and record producer. He is the author of When Donkey's Talk,

a quest to rediscover the mystery and wonder of Christianity, and most recently is the author of an excellent book that I highly recommend, An Immovable Feast, How I Gave Up Spirituality for a Life of Religious Abundance. Tyler, thank you for being here. Hey, Michael, it's so wonderful to be here. Thank you. Tyler, I can't, is this just a Catholic thing? You look like you're in Matt Walsh's set. You're broadcasting from your car. Are all Catholics required to broadcast from cars or broom closets like I am? You know, I hope not. I was actually going to go use the public library. I'm on the road today, and I got all set up in kind of like most government programs. It didn't work. The Wi-Fi was cheap. I couldn't get cell phone reception, so I came running out here to my car. Thanks for your patience.

I'm shocked. Not at all. Not at all. If we knew you were using government facilities, we would have given you even a bigger buffer of time to go use the private stuff instead. So, Tyler, you're a major heretic. You are a huge. huge heretic, and I'm not talking about religiously, religiously are quite orthodox, but I live in Los Angeles. And out here, you would be a total heretic man, because it's all about spirituality, man. None of those bad religious feels, you know. It's just about spirituality. To begin, before we get into it, I really, really enjoyed your book, and I think everyone should go read it. What does it mean to be spiritual, but not religious? Great question. I think my experience of, even with myself of identifying as being spiritual but not religious was that I wanted authentic relationship with God.

And for a lot of folks, that means just with the divinity or the good or the force that might be with you or not. The universe. You hear that a lot out here, they say the universe, even though that is truly heresy because that is a creation rather than the creator. But I think they're getting it the same thing, the energy, the divinity, the God spirit. Yes. Yeah, now, of course, as a Christian, being spiritual but not religious, I always thought that for me meant being authentic, a truly deep personal relationship with God that didn't involve any obligations or rules or morals that might impose themselves on me and direct my life, right?

So for me, being spiritual but not religious was about this personal relationship that allowed me a wide breadth of beliefs and practices, even if they contradicted each other. I totally understand that. I, having been raised a Catholic, although I went away from that for a long time, I did always enjoy St. Augustine's entreaty to Lord Make Me Chase, but not yet, which is a version of that. And as a kid, as you write in the book, you spurned the ritual, religious ritual. It was all about faith not works, that sort of, that dichotomy that we hear so much in popular religion. You were a thoroughgoing antinomomom it seems. Jesus saves, your free will has nothing whatsoever to do with it. And when I look around, though, at this idea of the performance, the performance of ritual, it seems to me spirituality is at least as performed or enacted as religion, and usually more so. So what is it that convinced you that this popular theology was wrong? You know, what I found out just through trial and error. It's kind of funny when an immovable feast finally arrived, you know, bound and looking beautiful. I was like, oh, Brittany, to my wife, I was like, are you going to read it? And she's like,

oh, no, I'm not going to read it. And she's like, are you? And I was like, no way. Because I kind of like, the pigs out, I kind of tell too many stories. And they're really like, through trial and error, through a lot of hard one lessons, I learned that spirituality, being spiritual but not religious, almost always ends in disappointment, if not loneliness. I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said that if we won't obey the 10 commandments, we'll obey the 10,000 commandments, right? Where if we don't have the real thing, we'll end up making 10,000 replicas. And being spiritual but not religious, I totally did that. I would invent, I'd be very religious about things that weren't religious, whether it was my diet,

eating organic eggs or drinking wheatgrass or yoga, or just kind of being dogmatic about being spiritual but not religious. Right. That's such a good point. You write one of my favorite sentences in the book is, the Catholics are condescary. intent with a single pope and that he is only infallible when he speaks ex-cathedra. But I gladly accepted popes by the dozen and they were infallible when they stood in the pulpit or in their Birkenstock sandals.

So you get this sense, and from the quote that you say too, that everybody's got to serve somebody, that if you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything. Is there any way, as you see it, to escape the strict boundaries imposed by some religion? You know, I actually, I think it's deep, deep in our nature, just as human beings, as men and women, to end up becoming religious. We need to live a life that has patterns, that has structures that make sense to us. And all of us are telling stories to make sense of the world. We can't help it, right? We think in story.

Whatever story you're telling yourself, whatever patterns and rituals you're creating around your daily rhythms and your relationships, that is your religion. whether you admit it or not, you are choosing to conform to something that is hopefully bigger than yourself, to some degree, whether it's politics or, you know, some kind of environmental issue or social justice issue. We tend to get religious. We can't help it. The question is, are you being religious in a good way? And are you being religious about what's actually true and good and beautiful? And it's the culture. It's in the culture. As you quote Russell Kirk making an observation that we talk about on this show all the time, that there's no culture without the cult. Cult and culture come from the same word.

And the spiritual but not religious types, they spurn cults in religious organization. Does this explain why the spiritual but not religious types are usually such cultural Philistines that they have a sort of narrow culture? I think so. I have very good memories of being in college, but also memories that I've been able to reflect on of where with so many of us, you know, so many of us were Christians, we had so much in common or should have. We should have been able to worship together on Sunday morning. But we couldn't because we disagreed. We were Christians without a culture. And yet every Friday night we could party together. And it's because we all spoke the same entertainment, Billboard Top 100, Hollywood, newspeak, right? That was the common denominator. That was the cult that actually tied us together. And that, to me, is tragic. I wish that there was a way we could, and I'm working towards this, right? With the book and immovable feast, how can we recover a sense of culture that's truly rooted in a cult that makes sense? That's rich and beautiful and true.

That's such a good point. What is your cult? What are the things that bind you to other people? What is the common language? If most of us are being honest, it's the popular culture. Whenever you get three Christians in a room of perhaps some different denominations or sects or whatever, they'll disagree about everything, but we can all agree on going out and getting a drink or something like that. That's a really good point. And the Catholics especially can agree on going out and getting a drink. Now, you have been a Protestant evangelical, fundamentalist, it seems, just from perusing the book,

Catholic now. I find that all of, when I have a lot of friends who are Protestants and they're still Protestants, but they say they're not Protestants or evangelical or whatever, I find all of the non-Catholics or non-Eastern Orthodox, and in some cases the Anglicans fall into that Anglo-Catholic sphere too, but all of the fundamentalist types are frequently quite hostile to the saints and to the Virgin Mary. They're not simply indifferent to them, They're outwardly hostile. They say, why would you ever pray to a saint? Or why would you ever venerate the Virgin Mary?

Why is that? Where does that hostility come from? Well, having once been quite hostile myself, I think it comes from a frustration that people keep bringing into what should be a private relationship between you and Jesus, an actual community, a community that seems to almost threaten the purity of being spiritual but not religious. So, for example, a big epiphany for me in just discovering, you know, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the communion of saints was realizing, you know, when Jesus talks about the first and second commandments, you know, love the Lord your God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself. These two commandments aren't in competition, right? Even in heaven, the second commandment will be like unto the first, where even in heaven we will love the saints and intercede for the saints on earth just as we love Christ, right? In heaven, the second commandment, will be like unto the first, where even in heaven, the saints. We will love the saints. And in heaven, the saints, the saints, the saints to what Jesus is doing, which is loving God and loving neighbor. And we see evidence of this, especially in Revelation. Now, good luck to anybody who can tell me precisely what revelation means, but we see the saints holding the prayers, worshipping God and holding prayers.

Who are they praying for? They're praying for those of us who need the prayers. And that point is so important. We're talking about a city of God. We're talking about a community that binds us to people who are not dead, but who have everlasting life. Some will say, why do you pray to dead people? I say, the saints aren't dead. They're the only people we know for sure or alive, as a matter of fact.

Absolutely. That distinction. Yeah, sometimes it can be lost. And people say, well, it's not clear. It's very opaque. But Dr. Johnson told us all shallows are clear. All shallow thinking is clear. Now, this has all been too enjoyable. So I want to bring in some terrible news, and you can try to convince me that this is not true. all of the data show us that religiosity is on the decline. Now, on the flip side of that, you know, people like Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro or Andrew Claven or other people who explain about God, either explicitly or implicitly, those guys are more popular than ever.

The people who are talking about meaning in life. They're selling a lot of books and a lot of young people are listening to them. Is this the triumph of spiritual but not religious? religious or on the bright side, is this the darkness before the dawn of a religious revival being led by those people who are talking about God in a, I think, a mostly explicit way? You know, I think what it is is kind of like the suburban sprawl of spirituality. It's become popular. It's so ubiquitous. Everyone is spiritual, but not religious. And it's just beige. And it looks like when you drive through suburban sprawl, it just looks like everyone is living in the suburbs and there's no hope. for humanity when in fact I think in the midst of that there will be urban renewal you know there'll be a renaissance for farming that kind of thing I think the same goes for being religious is there is actually I think a deep hunger and a longing especially in young people today for religious moorings for

something that's beautiful and for a story that's bigger than themselves that they can participate in and true religion not not phony religion right now when you're being a big fake show but true religion rooted in history and in revelation, that goes deep. And people are longing for those old liturgies and traditions that are actually perennial. That's so true. I will say, especially speaking of the liturgy, there are, you know, all of the churches I find that have this watered down liturgy and, you know, they're all the acoustic guitars or whatever, those are emptying out. The pews are emptying out. And you see more Latin masses and more traditional masses, even masses in English, but they have some chanting.

Those are cropping up all over the place, and the houses are packed. So, yeah, I do see, I certainly see a sign for hope there. What I must tell you, you know, I read a ton of books to prepare for the show. I especially loved an immovable feast. So everybody should go out and read it. It is a really good book.

I'll put the link on my Twitter and Facebook as well. Tyler, thank you so much for being here. Tyler Blansky, An Emuvable Feast, how I gave up spirituality for a life of religious abundance. Probably not going to make it to the Oprah Book Club anytime soon, but you can get it here. No. Tyler, thanks for being here. Michael, thank you.

Thank you so much. It was such a joy. All right. Speaking of the spiritual but not religious, a Catholic university has now opened a sex-segregated prayer space to accommodate Muslim students. It's a true story. We have a little bit of time to get into this. I can't let this story go without mentioning it. St. Ambrose University in Davenport has now opened up a prayer service.

space yesterday that designates separate areas for male and female worshippers. Okay, this prompts a few questions, I'm sure. It prompts a litany of questions. To begin, why does a Catholic university have a Muslim prayer space? I don't think Islam is a version of Catholicism or a denomination of Catholicism. This is a serious question. Now, you might say, well, it's a university. why can't they have one?

Right, it's a university. It's a Catholic university. There are plenty of secular universities in America. Nobody is forcing Muslim people to go to Catholic universities. Nobody is forcing atheists to go to Catholic universities. Virtually every university in America is secular these days. Most of the top universities, most of the big brand name universities. Why can't the Catholic university be Catholic?

Well, you say, what's the big deal? What's the big deal? If they want a prayer space, that's fine. If they want to keep the men and women apart when they're praying, who cares? Why can't they do that at a Catholic university? Because it's anti-Catholic, because it's anti-Christian. We know that Christianity is a religion. Christ is a person wherein there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave, nor free,

nor male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus. What Islam says is, no, well, let's not go that far. split those two biological sects apart. So what is the Catholic teaching on Islam? That's another question to ask. Oh, why can't they have a prayer space? Because Catholicism rejects Islam. Islam began, actually, as a Christian heresy,

and it developed into its own separate religion. But there are major differences here. Not just that in one, there is neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ, and in the other men and women have to be kept apart to worship, but also Islam denies the cross of Christ. And St. Paul writes, there are many walking now, and I tell you even weeping, who deny the cross of Christ. The Quran states, they crucified him not.

They crucified him not. That's a major difference. What the Catholic University is teaching here is what we were just talking about with Tyler, spiritual but not religious. Be spiritual, but not religious. Now, this is not to say, by the way, that we should go out of our way to offend people or to insult people who have different religious views. but certainly we should not compromise our own faith to appease those people. It doesn't make any sense.

It's ridiculous. That's why this is a news story. It is absurd that a Catholic university has sex segregated prayer centers for a religion that denies the cross of Christ. We know that that's ridiculous. That's the reason people are reporting on it. When you water yourself down, this is the lesson that is beyond just a religious discussion or whatever. This is true broadly. you water yourself down, when you water your mission down, you do not become better or bigger.

You become nothing. That's what happens. When you try to broaden out to encompass everything, you don't become broad and big and all encompassing. You become nothing. There's a story now, the Boy Scouts have become the Girl Scouts because the Boy Scouts are allowing girls in. They've actually changed their name. The program is now called Scouts. Scouts BSA. They took the boy away. Well, what happened? The Mormon Church has ended its century-long relationship with the Boy Scouts. The Mormon Church has been a huge supporter of the Boy Scouts for 100 years. Mormons represent almost 20% of every person in the Boy Scouts organization. 18.5% of the 2.3 million people involved in Boy Scouts.

Now they're gone. Now it's over. They're out of there. This is the same thing that happened to churches. When the Catholic Church watered down its liturgy, watered down its teaching, the pews emptied. They didn't water down doctrine, but they watered down the practice of it and the liturgy. the pews emptied. Same thing happened with all of the mainline Protestant churches.

Do those still exist anymore? Are there still mainline Protestant churches? I think they're ghost towns. You just see tumbleweed going through them on Sundays. The same thing happens to politicians. When politicians try to be everything, to everybody, they lose their base. They lose the people who supported them in the first place. Just look at John McCain or Jeb Bush or John Lindsay.

These liberal Republicans who want to appease everybody, they end up like low-energy Jeb. You've got to stand for something. You have to stand for something or you will fall for anything. We've got a lot of news to get to before we get to it. I'm sorry. I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. If you are on DailyWire.com, thank you very much. You help us keep the lights on.

You keep Cofife in my cup. And by the way, I need this cup. The last few days, man, I've almost drowned on several occasions. If you're not there, please go to DailyWire.com. You will get me. You'll get the Andrew Claven show. You get the Ben Shapiro show. Do you hear it?

Do you hear that right now? I can hear it. It's like birds chirping, bells chiming. It's because it's almost time for the next episode of The Conversation featuring me, Little Old Me, Michael Knowles. On Tuesday, May 15th at 5.30 Eastern, 2.30 Pacific, I will be taking all of your questions and easing your anxiety by answering all of your questions live on air.

Every query that has burned in your hearts will be resolved. Best of all, it's an extra hour-long dose of Little Old Me, which, you know, what more could you ask for? I almost certainly will not be wearing pants. That just has sort of become the rule for the conversation. Alicia Krause will be there too. You like her. That'll be nice.

This month's episode will stream live on DailyWire's YouTube and Facebook pages. It will be free for everyone to watch. Only subscribers can ask questions. To ask questions as a subscriber log into the website, DailyWire.com. That should be your homepage anyway. Head over to the conversation page. Watch the live stream. After that, just start typing in the DailyWire chat box,

and I will answer questions as they come in. for an entire hour. Once again, get those questions answered by Little Old Me. Tuesday, May 15th, 530 Eastern, 2.30 Pacific. Join the conversation. Again, none of that matters. All that matters is this. The John Kerry vintage, the Obama vintage, the Hillary's AIDS vintage. They're all tweeting. They're all so, so sad. They're all so, go to DailyWire.com. We'll be right back. All right, now we've got to get to all of the stories that the mainstream media just doesn't want to cover. That they just, they refuse to cover. got to some of them. Do you remember, you probably don't remember this because it hadn't been the news that much, when President Trump deployed the National Guard to the border? So he says,

I'm going to deploy the National Guard because there are all these people coming through and they won't let me build the wall yet. So I'm going to send them there and they're going to keep these illegal aliens from breaking into our country and invading our country. It's working. It turns out it's working. That's why you haven't heard about it. If it wasn't working, you would have heard about it all the time. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers have apprehended an extra There's 1,600 people who have attempted to illegally enter this country since April 15th in just the last couple weeks, and that's thanks to the National Guard troops on the border. So what are they doing?

They're guarding. That's in their name. You might expect that. They're not arresting people. They're not performing law enforcement roles, but they are freeing up customs and border protection officers to do all of the arresting. There's increased surveillance. There's increased communication.

That's a lot of extra people, 1,600 extra people. They also caught an extra 451 people who were turned away at the border before then trying to enter illegally. This is really good. Now, the trouble is we need actual immigration reform. And I don't mean that in the Marco Rubio way. I mean that in people can't enter our country illegally because otherwise, they're just going to be caught and released. They're just going to go through the system. It's going to be this long thing.

We need actual reform. And in the meantime, isn't this what the National Guard is for? this is pretty good. The National Guard is to guard the nation. And that's what they're doing. They're guarding the nation. People are trying to invade the country. And the National Guard is there and saying, nope, go back. No, no, no, no, no, thank you. This is really good. This is a good use of the National Guard. I'm glad that President Trump was able to do it and we should keep it up. Because also it keeps these things in the news and it keeps clear how many people are crossing into our border constantly and why you need to send them back. We have a country or we don't

of a country, as the campaign said for a long time. You have borders or you don't have borders. You have democratically enacted, legitimately enacted immigration law that's enforced, or you don't. It's a nation of laws or a nation of men. We're a nation of laws. We're supposed to be anyway. And so this is great stuff. Also, before we go, I've got to, I've got to get to the excellent electoral news from last night. Oh, the mainstream media. They are so, um, that I could taste a hint of the Washington Post because the GOP did very well in last night's Senate primaries. So how do you think the Washington Post reported that? How do you think?

You say, GOP did really well. This is really good news. Great sign for November. No, they reported, quote, in Senate primaries, Republicans avoid their worst fears. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me, people? Because they used to be at least a little bit clever about how they would attack Republicans. and how they would try to spin everything

to put Republicans in the worst light. Now they don't even do that. They're so much less sophisticated than they used to be. So the Washington Post reports, quote, their battles did not hinge on policy since all the candidates basically agreed with the course set by Trump. They swung on attitude, style, and outsider bona fides.

That just isn't true. They're trying to make it out like these are these crazy, wonky characters, and really all the voter wanted was blood and red meat and craziness. That isn't true at all. In West Virginia, Patrick Morrissey won there. He beat the Kooky candidate, Don Blankenship. Patrick Morrissey is the attorney general. He's a completely normal, well-spoken, educated politician. And the kooky guy was Don Blankenship, this guy who's an ex-con, he's a coal baron. He called Mitch McConnell cocaine Mitch. He referred to Mitch McConnell's father-in-law being a Chinaman and why that would make McConnell.

not like him or something like that. That's the kooky guy. They didn't go for him. Morrissey was a totally normal candidate. He's sitting office holder. It's very good. This is a big win for Trump too. Because Trump said ahead of the election,

he said, vote against Blankenship. He didn't say who to vote for. He said, don't vote for Blankenship. Vote for Morrissey or Jenkins. And he gave his explanation. He said, don't vote for blankanship because he won't win in November. The last time Donald Trump said this in Alabama, people didn't listen to him.

They voted for Roy Moore in the primary and then more lost. So we actually kind of have to thank Steve Bannon today. It's a very hard thing to lose Alabama as a Republican. Steve Bannon managed to do that for us. And it really scared people into thinking, oh, yikes. All right, maybe we shouldn't go that crazy and pick candidates who are unreliable. So what else happened? State Representative Mike Braun.

He's a self-funder. He raised $5 million. DC outsider. He beat Congressman Todd Roquita and Luke Messer in Indiana. That's pretty good. There actually is an outsider. He's not some kooky outsider. He's a self-funder. He can raise a lot of money. And he's a state representative. Good candidate. In Ohio, Representative Jim Ranachi won. That's great. Ranachi also was endorsed by Trump. So these are all good signs. But what's the big takeaway? This is good news because it means that Trump's support matters and it helps. Now, we shouldn't expect that in this off-year election.

We shouldn't expect that in these midterms. If we believe the mainstream media, we would think that Trump would be poison. Trump's endorsement would be total poison, and voters would do the opposite of whatever he wants. But that isn't the case. Actually, all of the polling suggests that Trump is quite personally popular. His approval ratings have been varying between the 40s to the low 50s. The daily approval rating has been between 47% and 51%.

we also know that 57% of Americans think the U.S. is headed in the right direction. The majority of Americans say the country is going in the right direction. That's the highest percentage of the population who thinks that since 2007, since before Barack Obama, since before the financial crash.

That is a great sign. And by the way, the Democrats have nothing. They have nothing. They have Stormy Daniels. That's why they play it all day long on CNN and the Washington Post. There isn't an issue for them to run on. What can they run on?

They ran the government for 10 years, and everything went to hell. Went to hell in a handbasket. Then Donald Trump comes in, and 15 minutes later, everything is getting better. So what can they run on? We might get peace in North Korea, for goodness sakes. They have nothing to run on.

So it's just tawdry, tabloid trash like Stormy Daniels. What will we see here? We know that Donald Trump is going to be campaigning in races where he can help. That looks like it'll be a lot of races. And that will help. We know that two of the so-called toss-up seats currently in the House of Reperper, They're held by Democrats, and they're in districts that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump. So, are we really confident that Democrats are going to win those seats?

I'm not confident of that. We know that a total of 12 House seats currently held by Democrats are in districts that voted for Trump. Now, they're not listed as toss-ups, but that's a dozen seats total. That they voted for Trump in 2016. They're currently held by Democrats. What's going to happen? The question you have to ask yourself, history is working against us. voter engagement theoretically should be working against us, although in practice I'm not sure it is.

If they voted for Trump in 2016 and everything has gotten better and all of his numbers have risen since then, which votes has he lost? Which votes has Donald Trump lost? There is one gaffe that Democrats really tried to seize upon to cut away some of his support. And that was his comments in Charlottesville early in the presidency. He said there were good people on both sides and they twisted this to say that he was anti-black or supporting Nazis or whatever, which isn't true and it was totally blown out of proportion. But even so, he didn't speak artfully and so they were able to seize upon it. So that should be it. Those should be the votes that he lost, right? Wrong. We would expect the votes that he lost there to be among black people, right? Because Donald Trump was being

portrayed as this anti-black politician. Donald Trump's support among black men has doubled in the last two weeks. Literally doubled. Which votes has he lost? This is really good news. You shouldn't get complacent. We should remain engaged. You've got the entire mainstream media apparatus against us, the Democratic Party against us, much of the federal bureaucracy against us, and some of the Republican Party. So conservatives need to watch out. That's a lot of people against you. You've got to go out to the polls. Things are looking good. There is hope on the horizon. And if we can maintain that hope and go out there and actually vote, you could be in for a surprise in November. Okay.

And we should pray about that, too. I don't even mean that glibly. There are serious policies here. People do get hurt when Democrats win elections. To say nothing of the unborn, we're talking about a huge, zealous, pro-abortion Democrat Party. You're talking about people losing their jobs. You're talking about people making less money. You're talking about people not being able to provide for their families.

You're talking about people who won't take the opioid epidemic seriously. There actually are real consequences. But mostly, I just want to tie it back into that spiritual but not religious line. Go out and read a Tyler's book, an immovable feast. It's really, really good. And by the time you're done reading that, I'll be back on the air tomorrow. So make sure you tune in. Get your mailbag questions in so we can answer all of them.

In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. I'll see you tomorrow. The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Sennia Villa Reel, Executive producer Jeremy Boree, senior producer Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover. And our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Jim Nickel.

Audio is mixed by Mike Coramina. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. The Michael Knoll Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production. Copyright Forward Publishing, 2018.