The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 168 - Happy Birthday To Us!

Episode Date: June 14, 2018

It’s Flag Day, and it’s the President’s birthday, and we’re getting all the presents: on the economy, foreign affairs, standing among the international community, even sports. We’ll observe something conservatives usually hate to acknowledge: things are getting better! Then, the IG concludes the FBI acted tried to help Hillary and hurt Trump. Then, the godking Jeremy Boreing joins the show. Finally, the Mailbag, and a few favorite American flags! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Flag Day and it's the president's birthday. And we're the ones getting all the presents for that birthday. On the economy, foreign affairs, standing among the international community, even sports. We will observe something that conservatives usually hate to acknowledge, which is that things are getting better. Then the FBI's Inspector General concludes James Comey and the FBI tried to hurt Donald Trump and help Hillary Clinton. In other news, the sky remains blue and water remains wet. We will analyze all of those important news stories. And then the God King Jeremy Boring himself will stop by to explain why soccer is a threat to Western civilization.

Finally, the mailbag and a few of my favorite American flags for Flag Day. I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show. So much to get to today. I want to recap a little bit on our talk with Tom Arnold yesterday, too. Before we get to that, we got to make a little money, honey, and thank a great sponsor just in time for Father's Day, Man Crates. So you know this. The trouble with Father's Day is you might know what to get your mother.

your sister, your whatever, your brother or this. You ask your father, what do you want for Father's Day or your birthday or this day? He says, don't get me anything. And then, you know, you get him a tie or something, and he's either disappointed because that's not a good gift, or, you know, you don't get him anything, and then he's sad and feels disrespected. This is all solved with man crates. Man crates is a great gift. You've heard us talk about them a lot.

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So I really love these guys. A great gift. Get your special Father's Day discount today with a 100% satisfaction guarantee at mancrates.com slash knolls, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. This is a limited time offer only for Father's Day. Go today. Mancrates.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, Mancrates.com slash Knowles. So a lot of chaos going on. Also, I'm sorry, before we get to my recap of Tom Arnold and all the birthday presents for the president,

we got to talk about the conversation. The conversation is coming up. It's coming up soon. and the guest is going to be the big boss, Ben Shapiro. Take a look. Hey, gang. On Tuesday, June 19th at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, it's time to tune in for another episode of The Conversation, featuring me, Ben Shapiro.

If you're a Daily Wire subscriber, now's your chance to ask me all sorts of questions like these. What's your favorite kind of movie to see in the movie theater? Because the visuals usually require you to be in a theater. Because you are a movie buff. Do you even like music at all? I like some of the soft rock. I like Jim Crocee. I like John Denver.

Have you ever tasted bacon? No, I've never tasted bacon. I've heard it's fantastic. Is it as good? as they say. I mean, dear God, it's amazing. Are you a fan of any other Chicago team? Yeah, I'm a Bears fan. I'm also a Blackhawks fan. The White Tacks only win the World Series once every

100 years. Is your wife a doctor? So the rumor is that she is. The conversation will be on Facebook and YouTube for everyone to watch, but only subscribers will get answers to their questions. That's Tuesday, June 19, at 5.30 p.m. Eastern. See you then. I hope that he can finally answer that question, is your wife a doctor? I've been scratching my

head for so long about that. So be sure to tune in for that. Now, some of you might have seen yesterday. I had this interview with Tom Arnold. And, well, if you missed it, you should go back and listen, because it actually showed a lot of the differences between the left and the right. But if you just want a quick summary, here is a quick recap of my interview with Tom Arnold yesterday. Freddie, the question of the situation. You did not watchful challenge you and read the caliber of the caliber of the city. Indicate about the presence of pool tape in your place. And my property. May it must say, and my partner say, and my head and I'm going to

tell you right. Your buddy. Your buddy is mine going to tell you, right? You show you face in the broad daylight. I'm telling you. How I feel going to hurt your mind. Don't shoot to kill. Come on. Come on, lay it on me all right. I'm giving you one on account of three to show you stuff or let it be. I'm telling you, just watch your mouth. I know you game. What about you? Well, I say this guy's a limit. And to me, that's really, too. But my friend, you see nothing. Just wait till I get through because I'm bad, come on, come on. Bad, really, really bad. You know, Brad, really bad. You know, Brad, really bad. You know, bad, really bad. Come on. You know, bad, really bad. And the whole world is the answer. Just tell you once again, who's bad.

That, no, that clip was a little bit slower than the way that Tom and I were talking yesterday. But you missed it. You know, I got a lot of mailbag questions about this. I got a lot of tweets and everything about what the interview was like with Tom. It was pretty wild. We're moving pretty fast. I'll give my thoughts on that in the mailbag because I reacted to it actually differently than I think a lot of people think. So we'll get to that later. First, it's President Trump's birthday to celebrate. We're so lucky on this show. We get the best guests, folks. We are going to bring on Marilyn Monroe to sing Donald Trump a happy birthday before an audience of Hillary Clinton supporters. Maryland, take it away.

That's incredible footage. Really well done, beautiful Marilyn and happy birthday, Mr. President. It's Donald Trump's birthday, but we're getting all of the presents, aren't we? Here's a quick rundown before we bring on the God King to explain, to pour a little cold water on all of our happiness in Cofé and explain why soccer is a threat to Western civilization. To begin, on the economy, new jobless claims fell again last week, meaning that the number of Americans on the jobless rolls fell to a 44-half year low. Could you just imagine this? So the labor market right now is at or close to full employment. Unemployment right now is under 4%. It's like 3.8%.

The Fed is predicting it'll drop further by the end of the year. That's why the Fed is finally raising interest rates for a second time this year after not being able to do that because of Barack Obama's stagnant economy. They're saying the labor market is continuing to strengthen, that job gains are strong. The Fed says that economic activity is rising at a solid rate. Layoffs right now are very low. there are signs of worker shortages across all sectors of the economy. 6.7 million job openings in April.

People are receiving unemployment insurance at the lowest level since 1973. There are more job openings in the United States than unemployed workers to fill them. Imagine this. In October 2016, if somebody told you, they said, hey, what do you think the headlines are going to be under a Donald Trump presidency? Say, I don't know. the Western Hemisphere exploding and the Eastern Hemisphere

exploding and I don't know, the core of the earth exploding, right? That is what you would predict and you get these absurdly good economic data points. On foreign affairs, the historic Kim Jong-un summit is a big win for the United States. Michael Goodwin points this out in the

New York Post today. There are plenty of good reasons to be cynical about the Iran deal. Plenty of good reasons. The Kims are murderous and deceptive. There's no reason to believe that This Kim is any better than his father, any less treacherous. The Kims have backed out of plenty of deals that they said they were going to do before, and they've run right out before the ink is dry.

Also, China might not let North Korea denuclearize. Fine. Yep, I get it. There are a lot of reasons to be cynical. Goodwin makes this great point in the post. He writes, quote, Today should be declared a holiday from nitpicking, a time to celebrate what has been accomplished instead of fixating on the possible pitfalls. It's an occasion to look forward.

with hope instead of backward with suspicion. And this is such an important point. Conservatives sometimes forget this because we want to like frown all the time. Cynicism is very stupid. It's very stupid. You know, Norm McDonald, one of my favorite voices in the world, the great voice of our age, yesterday he referred to something called the profanity of cynicism in a tweet. And he's so right.

This is such an astute observation. Cynicism is profane. The cynicism is the crutch of anxious people who can't tolerate uncertainty and they're terrified that they're going to look foolish if they end up being wrong. And so they don't want to have any hope or smiling to begin with. They just want to frown and say everything's going to be terrible. But the world is a hopeful place. There's nothing virtuous about cynicism.

You should be courageous. You should be prudent, certainly. You shouldn't be reckless or stupid. You should be courageous. You should be prudent. You should be manly. Not cynical. That's what the word courage.

comes from. Courage comes from cure, from heart, right? And cynicism is discouraging. Takes the heart out of everything. You should take heart. Could it go wrong? Of course. Are we in the early stages of whatever kind of nuclear deal we're trying to work out? Yes. What are the odds that it works out? Who knows? But there's a good first step. Take heart. On foreign affairs also, and this is right before we'll bring in the God King to pour cold water on everything, we're getting the World Cup in North America. It's going to be this nice alliance between Canada, the United States. Mexico. Donald Trump, by the way, has been lobbying since March to bring the World Cup to North America. Meanwhile, Los Angeles is getting the 28 Summer Olympics as well. So we've got two major international

sporting events that are coming to the United States because of Donald Trump. Everybody predicted that Trump would hurt these bids because the whole world hates him, right? He's, you know, he's humiliating or allies hate us. And instead, he actually helped. Now, look, I do not care very much for the Olympics. I don't watch the Olympics. Other than curling, curling is one of my favorite sports in the world, but other than curling, I don't like it. I also think that soccer basically should be outlawed in the United States, but it is a very good sign nonetheless of this global leadership. The United States has global leadership. President Trump has picked up two major international sporting events. That's a good thing. So say I. Now, I think the God King,

the founder of my feasts and the man who signs my checks, disagrees with me. on this. Can we bring on the God King? Look, it's Donald Trump's birthday. It's flag day. I'm feeling so good. Tell me, bring me down. Well, what's interesting to me is how everyone who supports the president carries water for the president. You can't just be a general fan of the guy. You have to be basically an evangelist for Donald Trump. Prostlatizing co-fever. And so when he says, for example, when he calls Kim Jong-un Rocket Man, all of his fans like, yes, we have always wanted war on the Korean Peninsula. And when he says things like, I really trust him. And everybody's like, yes, we have always wanted peace on the Korean Peninsula. And no one ever knows where they stand with you people.

And this is the greatest example. This is a microcosm of all things, Trump, that one of the great arguments on behalf of Donald Trump is he's going to be a global leader. He's going to rebuild America's supremacy. He's going to salvage Western civilization. Make America great again. Make America great again. He's going to salvage Western civilization. And now you're crowing that he is bringing this bastard sport of soccer to the United States. This is Obama level leading from behind. You call that global leadership? Global leadership is called baseball.

Yes, that's for baseball. Maybe football. Global leading from behind is called soccer. I have to say, when I was reading all the good news today, well, we'll get to the great explanation because I have to say this is the best. Never Trump argument that really sort of compels me. Before we get to this, we got to make a little money, honey. We got to keep the lights on in here. Keep me employed by this guy.

We got to talk about bull and brand sheets. And I love bull and brand sheets. You need to go out there and buy bull and brand sheets, not only because they're so, so good, but because when enough of you buy bowling brand sheets, they'll like me more and send me more bowling branch sheets. And they're the best thing that I've ever slept on. Your job literally depends on how well you can sell these bull and branch sheets.

Not only my job, but also my private life. Is your confidence in the Bowlin Branch sheets such that you would bet your job on it? Oh, I would absolutely bet my job on it because I'll tell you something. There's not a lot that we can all agree on. You know, for instance, we were talking in the Father's Day episode. When it comes to sleeping, sweet little Elisa, Mrs. Knowles and I, we prefer different things. For instance, I enjoy sleeping on like a firmer mattress. She prefers sleeping on a mattress that I'm not on.

But we both love Bowling Branch sheets. They are the best sheets I've ever slept on. They're made from 100% pure organic. cotton, they start out very soft, they get softer as it goes on. I didn't know this. In my bachelor days, you probably know this. You go out, you buy the cheapest sheets. They're made of sandpaper and they're... Well, for people who don't live in L.A., you may not know that we actually buy our sheets in L.A. at gas stations. We do. This is true. People set up tables out in front of gas stations, and they sell sheets, and the thread count is always measured in single digits. Yes, it is.

I love a nice solid eight thread count. Is really strong and firm. So I try these nice sheets. sheets cost like $1,000. Unless you go direct to Boland Branch, they cut out the middlemen. They cost just a couple hundred bucks. Thousands of five-store reviews, Forbes, Wall Street Journal Fast Company, all talking about them. Three U.S. presidents sleep on Boland Branch sheets. Three U.S. presidents, one blank book author, and a God King, sleep on Bowling Branch

sheets. Shipping is free. You can try them for 30 nights. If you don't love them, send them back for a refund, you're not going to send them back. You're not going back to that gas station. Don't do it, baby. Get started. Right now, my listeners, get $50 off your first set of sheets at Bowling Branch

promo code Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L. That's a birthday present for the president's birthday. Bolandbranch.com, $50 off of your set of sheets, B-O-L-L-L-and-B-Ranch.com. promo code, Michael. What's so bad about soccer? What's so bad about soccer? It's like saying, Jeremy, everything was going really well,

I noticed in world history until, like, the late 1930s. What went wrong? Soccer is, listen, I actually don't hate soccer. I think that soccer is a perfectly good sport for the third world. And that's what it is. It's the sport of the third world. Because all you need is something roughly the size of a ball. Doesn't have to be a ball. Doesn't have a human head would work.

And I think that's probably how it all started. And you need a patch of relatively flat earth. And then you need a bunch of people to chase after the rolling object and occasionally fall down as though they had been hit. Yeah. Pretend it hurts. That is soccer. And that's fine because, Everyone needs sports. Yes.

Sports teach children about competition. They teach children about work ethic. They teach children a set of rules and how to succeed within those rules. And sports help adults, too, because they give us an opportunity to play out competitive aggression in a controlled way that doesn't result in violence. Although sometimes at soccer games, the fans actually participate in a greater contact sport than the players. Those hooligans.

The hooligans, yeah. But, you know, they bring us together. They give us a sense of pride. It's a nice distraction from the hardship of life. Everyone needs that. And so I am glad that Ghana has a soccer team. It's good, yeah. I'm glad that the Ivory Coast has a soccer team.

I am offended, however, that Great Britain also participates in this. And I am mortally offended that the United States would condescend to have a soccer team. I tend to agree with you on this. Except for six-year-old children and under. It's good. Yeah, well, it's really good. I wonder at the World Cup, now, because it's going to be hosted by Canada, the United States and Mexico. Who is going to provide the minivans to pick up the players afterward and give them juice boxes and little cracker snacks? Exactly. Tell them, tell them good boy. Listen, it matters. When Great Britain was in her ascendancy, the height of the British Empire, she had the most complex sport in the world, cricket. Cricket. It could take days to play. That's right. No one understands it. The smartest guy on the block doesn't understand it. That is the sport of an ascendant power. America in her ascendancy had baseball, a complex sport, the offense, the defense has possession of the ball.

Infield fly rule. Infield fly rule, yeah. Those are the sports of an ascendant nation. They're complicated, they're intelligent. More importantly, they're expensive. Because our sports reflects something about us. You can't play baseball with just a ball and a piece of flat earth. Right.

The reason little children play soccer is because it's the simplest sport. You basically chase the moving ball. That's all that's required. It doesn't require a ton of training and specialized this and that. That's right. And doesn't require money. Now America as a superpower, our sport really, we don't have to like it, but the truth is it's football. Right.

That is the national pastime. That is the national pastime of our generation. It is the most complex and expensive sport ever conceived. The pads alone would break the GDP of many nations that have perfectly serviceable soccer. That's true. And that's not bad. Again, I'm not against third world nations having soccer. I'm against us saying that that's as good as baseball or football. And I'm against the idea that we need to reach down and play the sport of the world instead of showing actual global leadership and saying, no, the entire world needs to be rich enough and powerful enough to play sports that require you

not only to chase something, but to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars preventing brain damage. That's true. And you know, it's maybe we need like a new Marshall plan. I would be perfectly willing. I'm a fiscal conservative. So are you. If we could invest in the infrastructure required to create booming economies such that these third world countries can buy very expensive and elaborate equipment to play real sports that are civilized. Absolutely. I would do it in a second. I think that absolutely. I agree if Trump were to scratch his infrastructure plan and instead, uh, you know, support the world becoming baseball and football players. Yeah, I'd vote for him for sure for reelection. What I don't like, though, is this game of

equality being a sort of the Thatcher view of equality that, you know, the left, you can be here and poor people can be here and the left thinks it's, the world is a better place if everyone's down here. That's right. That's not me. I think that we should set an example in the world and give people something to rise up to. And that thing is not chasing a rolling human head across a flat patch of her. That is exactly right. And it's so, it is this degrading, going back, and oh, it's bad for

us that we, yeah, it's, and it's not as violent. You know, there's that other aspect. If you're a rich, powerful ascendant company, you can take some hits, you can weather some, you know, you can pay for expensive hospitals. That's right. They used to flood the Coliseum and play

out naval battles from antiquity at the height of the decadence of Rome. I feel like we can do much the same. That's right. And we should. Not only that, but I think that part of the problem with the rise of soccer in America is that you can trace it one to one to the decline of our culture. Right?

When America was putting a man on the moon, were grown adults in the freest country on earth playing soccer? Michael, no, they were not. They were not because all that scrap metal was going to the space shuttle and not to make more minivans to be pickle up people of the field. That's exactly right. And by the way, ever since women started to enter the workforce, Right? That's right. More women in the workforce? Yeah. More soccer fields in the United States of America. Look at that. It's just science. That's a correlation.

That's right. Do you even study science? Do you even study? It correlates with divorce rates. Yeah, I'm sure it does. Someone do the math. You know, you've made a really compelling argument. It is the first anti-Trump argument that has really started to convince me. And listen, I'm not anti-Trump. I'm a Trump skeptic. Trump has done a lot of things that make me very, very happy. This is not one of them. I feel like if previous Jeremy, that's Jeremy from 2016, who was busy expressing all his concerns about the the worst case, what will happen if Donald Trump becomes president? I was worried the Republican party would fracture. I was worried we would lose credibility with millennials who are becoming the

largest voting bloc. I was worried that we would lose our principles in service only of our victories. Yeah, yeah. I never thought that I would see the president of the United States cheering the ascendancy of soccer. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. You make a great point. Mr. President, I hope you're watching. It's been such a good. you know it's been such a good year and a half but please you've got to rethink this you've got to rethink what you're doing mr god king thank you for being here thank you we got to get to the mailback the chief the chief executive dog was here i don't know if anybody got to see him oh the ced is there any way to lift him up get him on camera a little bit got himself stuck back

because this is my real boss right here this would be the chief executive the guy who runs the show yeah he also sleeps on bole and branch that's because we're very wealthy he does too because we're a wealthy ascendant decadent country thank you sir always good to see the god King. All right, do we have time to, we got a little bit of time to wrap up on the FBI before we have to get to the mailbag. Okay, the Investigator General Michael Horowitz, who's the FBI watchdog, he has concluded that James Comey has deviated from a bureau and Justice Department procedures in handling the Clinton probe, which damaged the agency's image. I know you're shocked. Aren't you? We didn't think. We thought they did everything just right. We thought James Comey totally above board, not political at all. turns out that was all alive. They wrote, quote, this is from the IG report. By departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception

of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice. Now, they say that there's no evidence this was politically motivated. What does that mean? What we know is that James Comey treated Hillary Clinton differently than he would have treated other people, and we know that they were trying to, this was during a presidential election. What is not political about that? Anything involving Hillary Clinton is political. That's absolutely absurd. The report also, by the way,

uncovered of previously hidden text messages that the FBI was just not releasing. It was just totally covering up between disgraced FBI agents and saucy lovers. Peter Strzuck and Lisa Page. Page writes, quote, Trump's not ever going to become president, right? Right? To which Struck responds,

no. No, he won't. We'll stop it. It's like the worst saddest soy boy flirting I've ever heard. Also, probably criminal and anti-American and anti-constitutional. He said, Peter Strzok of the FBI, key investigators, saying we will stop Donald Trump from becoming president. What more evidence do you need? What more evidence do you people need?

Now, right now at this moment, the left and the anti-Trump right are trying to lionize the FBI and demonize the president. There are all of these distractions right there. You're looking at this. You're seeing a text from Peter Strzuck. and a key investigator with the FBI that says, we're going to stop Trump from being president. They say, look at Stormy Daniels. I said, what do I care about some porn star?

They said, look, he said naughty words on a videotape. The FBI is saying he's going to stop interfering in presidential election. Beyond the smoke and mirrors, who has the better track record here? Who looks better? Who looks good? Who looks dirty between Donald Trump and the FBI? It's no question. It's no question.

And so it's a happy birthday. Soccer notwithstanding. I guess it's good. we nabbed these international sporting events, and I use sporting loosely. But, you know, we've got to be careful here, folks. We can't let our exuberance get away with us and do things like try to elevate soccer as a sport. Okay, we've got a lot of mailbag to get to. Then I want to talk about my favorite flags for Flag Day. We've got them on my desk right here. So, by now, this is a new announcement. You have surely heard that the Michael Nulls show is available on

Amazon Alexa and the Google Home. So I don't want you to be confused. There was a video going around YouTube that was just an Alexa commercial, but somebody replaced all the sound with clips from my show. So it's just Alexa answering as me like I'd become Alexa. This is sort of like that. I am now on Alexa as well. If you use one of these virtual assistants, you can get my podcast with a simple voice command.

You just have to enable the skill on Alexa or ask Google to talk to the show. For more information, check out our Pinned tweets, DailyWire's pin tweets on Facebook and Twitter. Just starts screaming incoherently. I think that's what starts to put my show on the Alexa app. You got to go over right now. I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube, but I'm still saying hello to Alexa, I guess.

I guess we're still on there. Go to DailyWire.com. Subscribe. You get me, you get the Andrew Claven show. You get the Ben Shapiro show. You get to ask questions on the mailbag. And the next one is the big boss himself. You get to do all of that for $10 a month or $100 for an annual membership.

It is so simple, man. Go over there right now. we're going to get to the mailbag right away. We'll be right back. Ooh, that's, did I forget to mention something? Did I forget to mention what you get when you subscribe? Ooh, you know what that tastes like today? It's got this distinct flavor of 3.8% unemployment. It's got this distinct flavor of 44.5 year low and jobless claims. It's just, hmm. That's really good. I haven't tasted that in a long, long time. Very delicious, though. Let's get to the mailbag before we have to go. From Tyler, dear Knowles.

The smoking jacket in combination with the bow tie was truly a sight to see. My question is, how do you explain the irony of the all-powerful argument in relation to God? For example, can God create an object too heavy for him to lift? Or can he lift anything, meaning he's not powerful enough to create that object from Tyler? Yeah, this stupid question. Sorry, I don't mean to insult you, Tyler. This question is so stupid. So the question is, can God create an object so heavy that he can't lift it?

This was asked in the Father's Day video that God King said, Jeremy Boring, lowercase G, lowercase K, said that, yes, God can create an object so big that he can't lift it, and then he would create a mechanism to lift it. That's a interesting explanation of Christianity. I would put it differently, though, basically the same point. And this is a big difference between Christianity and Islam. in the Christian religion, the Christian God submits himself to logic. He is not a god of infinite, pure, irrational wrath. He's a god of logic. In the beginning was the word, the logos.

And the logos was with God and the logos was God. The logos being the divine logic of the universe. It is a perfectly logical God, a God who submits himself to the own logic that he creates. And so the question, can God? create a rock so heavy that he can't lift it, is basically akin to saying, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, it's like saying parrot, parrot, yellow, elephant, banana, four times green. It is words, like there are words together, but it doesn't have any meaning. It doesn't have any internal logic.

So, in short answer to your question, this God is a god of logic. That's not true of other religions. The god of Islam is not a god that is bound by logic. It is a god that can act very capriciously and do whatever he likes. That's a different god. It's a different object of worship, and it's a different culture that comes out of those things. But Aris is a god of logic, and there is a mechanism by which God lifts that rock that seems so heavy that he can't lift it. And it's God giving his only begotten son to be incarnate and to die for the

sins of man. That's a pretty beautiful, logical way to solve that problem. From Lynn, Dear Michael, I'm listening to your interview with Tom Arnold right now. You deserve an Emmy for keeping your composure. How do you do it? Thanks, Lynn. If you didn't see the interview, it was pretty wild, as Tom Arnold famously is. He's a pretty wild guy. I got to say, though, because some people kind of got it, I think, and some people gave these, we're saying pretty mean things about Tom. I genuinely like Tom Arnold. I really like Tom Arnold. I really like like the guy. I think he's a nice guy. I think he's a genuine guy. He's not, he's really not rude, regardless of what you saw in that interview. I think he's a really nice guy who's a little out there

on some of his premises. So he said something very important yesterday about the difference between the left and the right right now. He was so honest in his answer because I said, Tom, here are the facts. And he said, I don't care about that. I don't care. And I said, but Tom, there's just one reality. Because he said, well, this is how I feel and this is what it seems to me, and if you're a this and that, and I said, but there's one reality. He said, no, there isn't. There are multiple realities. Reality is subjective. There is no such thing as objective truth.

And that is the disagreement between the left and the right. That's the underlying premise that is why the left and the right just talk past each other, is the right is saying there is an objective reality. Without an objective reality, we couldn't communicate. There's no way to communicate between people. There's no way to do anything. There's no way to understand any aspect of the world. And the left says, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, right? It's this radical subjectivism.

This radical willfulness that's born into this modern era that largely comes from Nietzsche. And this radical, but it goes back further than that. It goes back to the early parts of the modern era all the way to the 16th century or prior. It could go back to the 14th century. This rejection of reality. And Tom beautifully and honestly showed that. that the right is living in reality, and the left at its extremes and in its craziness, is denying reality.

And when you deny reality, things don't turn out very well. From Lori. Hi, Michael. I've been thinking about it recently, and I want to know your opinion on the death penalty and when it should be used and when not, and what methods of executing a prisoner are humane and not humane. I think it should be used. I support the death penalty. I think there are medical and health benefits to capital punishment.

People don't talk about this enough. Father Rutler, my friend and priest in New York, wrote a wonderful piece on this. I am quoting Dr. Johnson, who says, you can depend upon it, sir. When a man knows that he's going to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. People should be hanged for crimes. There is justice. This is not an anti-Christian suggestion. It's not anti-Catholic. It's quite clear from the scriptures that capital punishment is a right of the civil authority. and we, so as a result, there is something that's cruel and unusual, I think, about our criminal justice system, which is that people can languish in prison for decades and decades and decades losing their mind. I think that's cruel and unusual. I think that's not humane. In the old days, you could sleep it off at night, or you could be in jail for a short period of time, or you could be in jail turning big rocks into small rocks for five years, or you would be hanged. This, to me, is much more humane, probably. than letting someone languish in isolation for decades upon decades, slowly depriving them of their liberty and their humanity.

And as for the methods, yeah, they should be clean and easy. I think it was Henry VIII who ordered a special guillotine from France that would be extra sharp for his wives. Never let it be said that he was a bad husband, huh? That's in short. This is unpopular today among the touchy-feely people and the people who want to pervert religion to advance their sentimental points of view. but there are plenty of good arguments for capital punishment, and when you let criminals run free, there are plenty of bad things that happen to society.

From Jacob, hey Michael, I guess this will probably have to end on this one if we have... We've got a couple minutes left. Hey, Jacob. Hey, Michael. Am I just having a conversation with my mailbag right now? Hey, Michael, as a conservative college student studying neuroscience and political science,

what advice do you have to make sure I balance my time between schoolwork, fun, confronting leftist campus lies, and also looking into the future for my career. I love the show and hope to see you at U. Michigan soon. That's right. I think I'm coming to U. Michigan soon. We'll have to hash that out. So there are three things you can do in college. I frequently said there's a time and a place for everything and that place is college. There are three things you can do. Work, play, sleep. And you can pick two. I think basically you can pick two. This is what we were told when I was in college. This is basically how I lived in college.

I remember my sophomore year. I slept no more than four hours a night every single night for at least a full semester. I was taking five classes, some of which met every day. I was doing, I think, five plays. I was directing an opera. I was doing a lot of political work, running a campaign, starting a new campaign. I was going out of my mind. I did not sleep.

I was going out frequently, you know, going to parties and things like that. And I don't regret it at all. It's very important. The social aspect of college is very, very important. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. And the academic aspect is very important. And the academic aspect is highlighted by the social aspect because you'll learn something or you'll read something and then you'll talk to your friends and you'll have to argue about that. Or if your classes are total left-wing nonsense, then your friends might say, hey, read this little book. This isn't being taught in your political philosophy class, but read this one. This might change your thoughts. So don't disregard the play at all. You might have to disregard some sleep. Don't be unhealthy about it, but college is a tough time and it's very compact. You're trying to fit in your education into four years. I'm not one of these guys who's anti-college, really. I mean, colleges have been so corrupted and hollowed out by the left that it's very frustrating, but I really believe in liberal education.

I don't think you should just do some trade, you know, and say, okay, if you don't study engineering, it's not worth getting an education. I don't believe that for one second. I think the humanities are basically the essence of, they create the stuff of our consciousness and will really help us to come closer to our politics and to know ourselves and to know God better. So you got to really dive into it

and, you know, don't disregard the party part either. You know, there's a time and a place for everything, pal. Okay, can we get one more question then? Do we have time for one? One more, she says. Okay, from Dean. Hey Knowles, I was curious about what your thoughts were on the Republican Party's stance on things that are objectively bad for the environment, like the Keystone Pipeline and expansion of offshore drilling. Just because things are hard to conserve, does that mean we should not do it?

Furthermore, if you do not believe these things are harmful to the environment and surrounding ecosystems, can you provide information as to why? Many thanks for what you do. My mom and I love your show. Thank you to both of you for watching. even that phrase is giving away the whole premise to the left, harm the environment. Because what environmentalists do is they make the environment, the rocks and the trees and the water, seem like morally conscious actors. So they anthropomorphize things that are not men that don't have moral qualities to them. They say, oh, you're harming the environment. What am I harming?

The earth is a rock. I'm not going to harm a rock. The rock isn't going to start crying because I'm, harmed it. Mother Nature isn't going to weep. That is crazy nonsense. We are here and we have dominion over the earth and over the birds of the air and the fish of the sea and the animals that prowl around the ground and everything else around there. We have dominion over that. We need to take care of it. Why do we have to take care of it so that we can enjoy it? Not because it has some right, not because it is deserving of some natural right or something. It's for us.

We should be good stewards because we love the earth and we love our civilization and our society. I don't see evidence that the advantages to all of humanity and to civilization and lifting people out of poverty and allowing people to do new things and create more wealth and have more opportunity to explore their interests and to explore culture and to explore their God and to have a relationship with their God. I don't think that, which all comes out of the ground in a beautiful little liquid called oil and natural gas, when I don't think that the harming a few delta smelt or something is a reason not to have any of those things. You have to ask yourself, what is the purpose of the environment? What is the purpose of these things?

Is it because it's a moral actor with just as many rights as I have and just the same points of life as I have? No, of course not. Absolutely not. So you have to ask yourself, if the costs do outweigh the benefits, then you don't do something. But I see no evidence of that with an oil pipeline or pumping more oil out of the ground.

Drill baby drill because we're making America great again. And that's a good thing. It's a good thing that will be more prosperous and we'll be able to give more to charity and we'll be able to live fuller lives and to explore both our physical enjoyments and our metaphysical enjoyments. Okay, that's it. We got a lot of good questions. I had a really good one that someone was going to ask me about why Ben and I disagree on

the values of partisanship. We'll just have to get to that next time. We'll have to get to that now. I'll be a team player. It's Flag Day, very briefly, some early American flags. Everybody remembers this one. This is the Betsy Ross flag with the Circle of Stars. That's good.

They say this is the first American flag. That isn't true. The first flag that we know was used by George Washington is this flag. An appeal to heaven. It's the pine tree flag. And on top it says an appeal to heaven. This is referencing John Locke. It's a refutation of the divine right of kings.

and it's saying we're not going to accept the divine right of kings if they're doing a bad job. We're going to appeal to his king, which is an appeal to heaven. That's an interesting first flag that a lot of people don't reference. And then one of my favorite flags, obviously there's the Gadsden flag, which is that symbol of America, the rattlesnake, always a symbol of these colonies. Don't tread on me. A wonderful symbol of that American can do. Get out of here, pal, don't you F with me kind of spirit.

That's a good one. But my favorite one is the Grand Union flag. This was the first national flag of the United States. It looks like an American flag with the stripes, but it's got the Union flag in there, the British flag, in that top corner where the stars are. And I really like this one, and I'm glad it was the first national flag of the United States

because it shows that we're not these radical revolutionaries who are cutting ourselves off from tradition. We're inheriting a tradition from the old world and from the country that helped establish this country. and there's a long institutional history that goes back. And I think it really grounds the American Revolution in something that's different than the French Revolution. We don't start cutting off people's heads or cutting off our king's head

and trying to undo everything and burning down churches and creating new cults of reason. What we do instead is we take from the tradition and we keep what is so valuable about it. We have a continuity with our forebears who were pretty good guys and great guys. Okay, that's our show today. We're out of time. I'm sorry, folks. I got to go and get out of here. So I will see you on Monday. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Have a good weekend.

The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Semia Villa Real. Executive producer Jeremy Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover. And our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Jim Nicol. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production. forward publishing 2018.