The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 191 - Silly Season

Episode Date: July 26, 2018

We’re in the throes of silly season, those delightful summer months when the MSM focus on frivolous news stories. A gay male congressman rants about tampons, a transgender left-wing activist calls the American flag racist, and CNN runs the shock story of that one time President Trump politely asked for a Coca-Cola. Then, Allie Stuckey drops by to discuss fake news. Finally, the Mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're in the throes of silly season, those delightful summer months when the mainstream media focus on frivolous news stories while everybody vacations. Here in the United States, where there's no difference between the mainstream media and the Democrat Party, it's lefty politicians and activists leading the silly season. A gay male congressman rants about tampons, a transgender left-wing activist calls the American flag racist. And so not to be outdone, CNN runs this shock story of that one time President Trump politely asked for a Coca-Cola. They've got him now.

Oh, they've got him now. Unreported as Democrats fizz over silly season, President Trump successfully negotiates a better trade deal with the EU. He avert a trade war. He compels NATO allies to pay their fair share for security. And demonstrably, he begins to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons. But tampons and Coca-Cola. That's the real story, isn't it?

Tampons and Coca-Cola. Then, Ali Stucky drops by to discuss her nefarious fake news satire of batty socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and finally, the mailbag. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is the Michael Knowles Show. So much to get to today. And actually, of the gay male congressman who is focused almost exclusively on tampons,

something that probably shouldn't involve him too much, that guy, I actually know him. I know him very well. I've known him for a long time. We'll get to that all in a second. There's a lot of very important stuff to cover today. Before that, let's talk about yours. security. ExpressVPN. If you're not using ExpressVPN, you should stop whatever you're doing

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the great issue of the century, tampons. Before we load this, we're talking about Sean Patrick Maloney. He's from my home district. of New York's 18th congressional district. I have worked on campaigns against this guy. My company, my political company that I founded,

regularly advises candidates who run against this guy. I'm intimately involved with him. Without further ado, Sean Patrick Maloney. My office recently got smacked down by the powers that be in the house because we had the temerity to offer feminine hygiene products to the women who work for me.

By the way, a majority of my staff is female, and we have a million people come through our office, and we provide things like paper towels or tissues or first aid, like band-aids, supplies that people need. And those are paid for by an office budget, pretty normal stuff. But we were informed a couple days ago that we couldn't buy tampons, and we thought that was crazy. But I was supposed to write a $37.16 check to reimburse the House for those purchases because they were considered inappropriate. And now the House Administration Committee, which makes all these rules, and is controlled by the Republicans is lying about it and saying that's not their policy and I'm making it up.

Sean Patrick Maloney, ladies and gentlemen, tampons. That's the big issue. It's a big issue because there's nothing else that the Democrats can criticize right now. Everything is going too well on domestic affairs, foreign affairs. So they have to make this stuff up. And I bring this up because I have known Sean Maloney since I was, I don't know, 21, 22. When he first ran for Congress, I was working on the campaign of the incumbent Congresswoman. And, And so I got to see him on the campaign trail all of the time. And I got to tell you, I have never seen a slicker politician than this guy. Is there, have you ever seen just from that little video clip?

Have you seen a smarmy or person in Congress? I don't think so. This guy, talk about slick, oily, unctuous New York politics. This guy was staff secretary to Bill Clinton, guarding the Oval Office door well. The interns were flitting about coming and going. Then he worked, as if not to be out done, he worked for the most corrupt politicians in the country. Elliot Spitzer, that creepy-looking former attorney general who was governor of New York and got caught doing really weird things with hookers for just tens of thousands of dollars a night.

Really, really bizarre and sick stuff. He worked for him. Then he worked for another corrupt politician, David Patterson. Then at one point, his company, I think he was advising Enron. That didn't work out very well. Then he goes down. He's in Congress. And now he's in Congress. He's at New York's 18th congressional district and he this year is simultaneously running for two offices at the same time. You know, this is this guy's career. He's running for New York Attorney General at the same time that he's running for Congress in New York, New York's 18th congressional district. And he's just, he's just slick. It's just all smarm and slickness. He's focusing on tampons now because he thinks this is going to endear him to the women voters and to the left side of the Democrat party.

He's running against a few women for Attorney General in New York before he runs for Congress again. And so he thinks this is going to endear him to them. Tampons are not an office product. Right? You don't, pens are an office product. Pencils are an office product. Maybe you need a tissue every now and again. Okay, I can sort of see that.

Tampons are not. And he's making it out that tampons are some extraordinarily expensive thing. People can't afford tampons. Tampons cost, on average, 19 cents per unit. It is 19 cents a unit to have tampons. You know, if the argument here is that people should have access to tampons, they do have access to tampons, if the argument here is that people should have tampons, okay, sure, people should also have lunch.

Are you going to buy everybody lunch? People should have dinner. Are you going to buy everybody dinner? People should have a house. Are you going to buy everybody a house? No, you can, we have a free country. Luckily, people are so prosperous in this country. Unemployment is at record lows.

Prosperity is at record highs. wages are increasing. Things are going very, very well. You can afford the 19 cents for your personal products. There are a lot of personal products that I use that Sean Maloney doesn't pay for, but he's just demagoguing on this because it's silly season. And this guy is desperate for attention, just like all congressmen are. They jump up. I just had a congressman try to jump up in my Twitter mentions, start a little Twitter fight, because they're all desperate for attention. There are so many of them that they need to distinguish themselves somehow. The reason I bring up Maloney too, though, is because unlike virtually all the other congressmen,

Sean Maloney is pretty smart. Most congressmen I met are just vacuous imbeciles. But Maloney is smart. He's not a stupid guy. He is a craven, crass politician. All that he's interested in is his own ambition. You know, I don't remember him raising the tampon issue when Democrats controlled the House.

I don't, maybe his office got free tampons then. Maybe they didn't. Who knows? But he's just so crass and opportunistic. I really, you've got to watch this guy. And it's really fun to watch his race right now because when politicians' ambition gets the better of them, they run for two offices at the same time.

This happens sometimes for president. You'll have a sitting governor or a sitting congressman or a sitting senator, rather, and you kind of understand that the president, you know, it's the most important position. But when these career guys are just jockeying for positions, all they care about is the next move. Because Sean Maloney thinks,

if he goes from Congress to Attorney General, then he can go from Attorney General to Governor and then governor to president. I promise you that's the thinking in his mind. But it's just so slick and pathetic. I can't imagine that it works, except we're in silly season, so it is going to work. That brings us to our next story,

which is the transgender left-wing activist, Huffington Post blogger, who thinks that the American flag is now racist, racist, white supremacist. This is what he said. So Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, has come out finally. The owner of a football team,

he said, players have to stand for the national anthem. They don't get to take a knee. They don't get to sit it out. They don't get to go do jumping jacks down the street. They don't get to go buy a sandwich. They stand, toes on the line for the national anthem. This is enough to make me a Cowboys fan.

I'm going to become like Chris Christie, you know, a native New Yorker, New Jersey, you know, kind of going over and becoming a Cowboys fan because this is American. This is a wonderful thing. You should have to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance when you're playing football. Simple as that.

So this guy, Charles Clymer, who's now, he's transgender, so now he goes by Charlotte Clymer, radical left-wing activist, blogger on the Havian Post, he responds to this. He says, quote, I was raised in Texas. I've always loved football. I've been a lifelong Cowboys fan. And I will never again watch a Cowboys game so long as Jerry Jones is racist, white supremacist pandering took us, is the owner of the team. his conduct is hateful, cowardly, and embarrassing. Whoa! And what is that conduct?

Respecting the flag. That's what's hateful. Now, that's hateful, racist. It's like Cory Booker. This reminds me of Cory Booker, who says, if you put a regular normal judge on the court, you're complicit in evil and you're Satan and it's evil. It's a moral moment.

How exhausting it must be to be on the left. How utterly exhausting it must. be to have everything, because you can't just stop, you can't stay at your regular normal stasis level of outrage. You have to get progressively more outraged. So now, the suggestion is that respecting the flag is racism,

white supremacism, hateful, cowardice, blah, blah, blah, blah. That voting for a judge, which our elected representatives have done for the whole history of the country, that's complicity in evil and Satan and blah, blah, blah. Oh, how exhausting. I will point out

though, because some conservatives get this wrong, this free speech issue on the flag protests at the national anthem. They say, well, if we make the players in the NFL stand for the American flag, then we're just like the anti-free speech people. They should have their free speech and free speech

and free speech and free. Okay, right, right. NFL players, professional athletes, do not have the right to do whatever they want on national television. They don't have the right to break the rules. Athletes play a game that has rules. One of the rules of the NFL is to stand and respect the national anthem and to respect the flag. One of the rules at the Dallas Cowboys is that you don't get to

disrespect the flag. That's the rules. The NFL players don't have the right to go onto the field and play baseball. That would be, but it's their free speech. What if they want to play baseball? It's a free country. No, they don't get to play baseball. They have to do. And by the way, sports are an entertainment event. It's a TV show. The NFL, and it's, at its core is a TV show, right? That's where virtually everybody who watches football watches it, it's on TV. A TV actor does not have his free speech rights trampled on

because the director makes him read from a script. That's not, but I want to say what I want to say. You're not respecting my free speech. No, there's a script because it's a TV show. You can't, that's not what free speech is. So I think conservatives get this wrong a little bit. You have to respect the flag. The other reason you have to respect the flag

is that it's the the flag is the symbol of the country and the country gives you your right to free speech. It undercuts itself. If you protest the country, you're protesting your right to free speech. It's a house divided against itself. As Chesterton said, there's a thought that stops thought

and that's the only thought that ought to be stopped. I've got to move on, but there's a lot more you can say on that topic. Maybe we'll get to it a little bit in the mailbag. Now we've got to get to the most important news story. They finally, CNN, the Washington Post, then we've got the big scoop, which is that one time,

a couple years ago, get ready for, I hope you're sitting there. Are you sitting down? If you're driving, pull over, please. A couple years ago, one time, President Trump politely asked for a Coca-Cola. He did.

He did it. And you know that I'm a defender of the president. He asked for a Coca-Cola politely, folks. That's what he did. CNN, here's the headline. Trump caught on tape. Get me a Coke, please. I kid you.

That's a CNN headline. That's a real headline on their website. Mashable, get me a Coke, please. People are losing it over this moment in the leaked Trump tape. No, they're not. I didn't read the whole article. They're not. I'm willing to bet anything.

They're not. Newsweek, get me a Coke, please. People are losing it over this moment in the trailer. It seems repeated. Doesn't that seems like a similar story? No, that nobody's losing it. He asked for Coke politely. This is really how you know they're desperate.

They can't hit him on anything. They tried to hit them on tariffs. That's over. We'll get to that in one second. On the Coke. In the tape, in the big crazy bombshell tape, at one point he's talking to Colin, and then he says, can you get me a Coke, please? I assume it's his assistant outside.

This is a good example, because what the media do is they take a little joke. We'll talk to Ali Stucky about this. They take little jokes and they take it seriously. They bring it into a scandal. Or they take an offhanded comment, which is nothing like asking for a Coke. They try to make that into a story. Because if you see a news headline, you assume there's a story. You would just assume so.

If it's in a news headline, you'd think it there's a news story, but there isn't. And the most obvious, the most absurd version of this I've seen in the last week at least, is get me a Coke, please. The other thing, by the way, I meant to point this out yesterday, When you listen to that Trump Cohen tape, it sounds like a David Mamet play. I didn't realize how good a playwright David Mamet is. He's the guy who wrote Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, until I heard that tape. But it does sound like it goes, oh, well, we're not talking.

Are we talking? Mike? No, we're not. We're speaking. Is it, hey, and get the, the check and write. And this is, get me a Coke, please. It's one of these just throw off things. They're trying to make it into a crazy story. Meanwhile, meanwhile, while all of this is going on, the tampons and the, and the Coke,

and the flag is a racist or whatever. Meanwhile, here's President Trump and the commissioner of the EU. Here he is. So we had a big day, very big. We met right here at the White House to launch a new phase in the relationship between the United States and the European Union, a phase of close friendship of strong trade relations in which both of us will win. This is why we agreed today, first of all, to work together towards zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, and zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We will also work to reduce barriers and increase trade in services, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical products, as well as soybeans. Soybeans is a big deal.

And the European Union is going to start almost immediately to buy a lot of soybeans. There are a tremendous market by a lot of soybeans from our farmers in the Midwest primarily. So I thank you for that, John Flood. He goes on, by the way. There are also the European Union is going to buy more liquefied natural gas, possibly oil. This is a big hit to Russia. this is what Trump had been signaling for the last few weeks now. It says, why does Europe buy their oil and their gas from Russia?

They should do it from us. And you're seeing the culmination of that in this conference today. This is a huge win. We have been told now for weeks and weeks and months and months from all the smart set from Trump's detractors on the left and the right that President Trump, he doesn't know what he's doing. He's a crazy person. Only a crazy person would threaten tariffs on Europe.

Only a crazy person would threaten our allies in NATO and criticize them and say they should pay more money. Only a crazy person would negotiate with Kim Jong-un and go over and have a summit with the leader of North Korea. Only a crazy person. And yet, what have we seen in the past week? Trade wars averted. They've come to an agreement. They said they're just finalizing, putting the finishing touches, but they've come to an agreement.

No further tariffs. They're going to work to eliminate all of the non-auto tariffs that they're currently are. And the EU is going to buy more soybeans. That's good politically. and it's good for America's farmers, and they're going to buy more natural gas and possibly oil. That's strategically quite important and another big win politically and for American producers. So we've been told that. What else have we been told? We've heard from the Secretary General of NATO that whereas four years ago only three allies, NATO allies were actually paying their fair share,

what they said they were going to pay for defense spending, they're looking forward this year. They expect eight allies to do that. I wonder why. Probably, perhaps, let's say, it's because President Trump had the courage to say, hey guys, you're not paying what you're supposed to pay, and you have to pay. How about in North Korea? Looking over the Pacific right now, you've got Kim Jong-un. We have satellite images demonstrating that Kim Jong-un is dismantling

his nuclear program. Now, we've been told, oh, he's not going to do it. He's faking. Don't believe Kim. It's the worst thing ever to have the American president meet with Kim Jong-un. It's terrible. It's a huge mistake. Looks like it's working. There are analysts now international

intelligence analysts saying that the sites that are being dismantled right now, launch sites, factories, bomb factories, production facilities for space launchers, they're being dismantled. We can see them being ripped apart right now. This is at least a gesture of goodwill and it's a step in the right direction. I told you last time at the summit that we were in inning one. Now maybe we're in inning two, moving in the right direction. All of President Trump's critics who said he's a crazy person, only a crazy person would

do this, they were proven wrong. They've been proven wrong on every front this week. And so I might just suggest that this madman strategy of President Trump seems to be working. You know, this isn't some crazy conspiracy theory. Richard Nixon used the madman strategy. It's to appear volatile, unpredictable, and reckless, willing to, you know, have a credible threat of violence, both economic violence, military violence, political violence, and he has that credible threat, and it's worked. Nicola Machiavelli wrote about this pretty credibly in the discourses on Livy.

500 years ago, 501 years ago, he said I'm paraphrasing, but at times it's quite helpful, it's quite useful, to appear mad, to appear reckless or insane. And we're seeing this work out with President Trump. I wonder when his

detractors are going to get the message, because it's just working so consistently on such a large scale. You would think they'd get the message soon, but they probably won't. Okay, we've got to bring on, speaking of the culmination of silly season, we've got to bring on our very good friend. Ali Stucky, who is being accused of spreading fake news of, she created the

satire video. We played it on the show a couple days ago. Obvious satire making fun of a widely seen clip of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Margaret Hoover's program. And the left has pummeled Ali. They've said, you're spreading fake news. You're making Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look like a fool. Allie, what do you have to say for yourself, young lady? I have to say, I am so sorry and I've learned my lesson. I am never, ever, ever going to tell a joke ever again. And what I realized is that that practice is really only exclusively reserved to comedic geniuses like Michelle Wolf, like Samantha Bee, like Stephen Colbert, all of those people that are so

original and compelling in their comedy, I just don't have what it takes. I've realized that, I've learned my lesson and it's only serious commentary from now on. I'm really glad to hear that because, as you know, only left-wingers are allowed to make jokes. Conservatives are not allowed to make jokes. And when you make jokes, I've been watching a lot of Jimmy Kimmel recently and Michael Ian Black. And you're supposed to not make people laugh. You're supposed to cry. You're supposed to just sit into the camera and cry.

So you clearly got it all wrong. I got to tell you, this blow up from your video is my favorite news story of the week. My real question on this, because the video is obvious satire. posted it with a little winky face. You're in different clothing. It's on a different set. I mean, it is no offense to the production. I think this is part of its charm.

It's a little low production quality. This is not, you know, some great selective editing. And uniformly, the press attacked you. They said this is an unfair attack on Cortez. My question is, are the press and the Democrats being obtuse here intentionally misrepresenting the video? Or are they really that stupid? No, I think that I think that you're right that they're misrepresenting the inner or the satire of the video.

And you made a comment earlier that they take something that they know is a joke and they blow it up into this national scandal in order to discredit any legitimate humor that's in it. Because one, number one, a conservative is not allowed to be funny. If a conservative is being funny, then it's mean. But if Sasha Baron Colin is funny or if he makes fun of someone on the right, then it's hilarious. It's comedic genius. but if a conservative does it, then it's bigoted. And number two, I also think it hit a little bit too close to home for them. Because I think it was a little bit, now that I look back, difficult to distinguish Alexandria

actually making a fool of herself in the PBS interview and us making her make a fool of herself in a satirical interview. So I think the left has tried really hard for the past week to make us forget about that firing line interview to cover up the fact that Alexandria really has no earthly idea what her own agenda is. And this just hit a little bit too close to home. It was too soon for them. And I think that's why they didn't take this joke very well. That's exactly what I think. I think I'm not being a conspiracy theorist when I observe that the left and the Democrats

had this real problem, which is that their superstar girl who won this big surprise election in Queens looked like an absolute idiot. I mean, not only did she not know anything. But she was proudly ignorant. She said, oh, he, he, he, I'm not the expert on this simple thing. You know, she's got a degree in international relations from Boston University. She said, oh, I think people aren't comfortable with politicians who don't know everything. It's not that she doesn't know everything.

She doesn't know anything. And I think the left in the media honed in on this. And they said, shoot, how are we going to get out of this? And say, oh, we're going to, we found this satire video. We're going to say it's her fault. It's Ali Stuckie's fault. that Ocasio-Cortez looks like an idiot on the video. They're basically using you as the scapegoat for why their own candidate looks foolish.

Am I crazy? I think that that's a really good point to make. And what they don't realize is that I have gotten multiple emails from Democrats, from people saying, look, I don't like you. I don't follow you. I don't agree with anything you say. But thank you for doing that because this is not going to be the future of my party. We have a lot of people backing away from the socialist label and backing away from her specifically.

because not only is she a far-left socialist, which I think a lot of Democrats actually oppose, whether they say it or not, but she's a stupid socialist. It would be one thing if she was smart, if she was able to back up what her beliefs are, if she was able to say, well, here's why I think Israel is occupying Palestine,

that, okay, we can deal with that, but she's not even able to do that. So I've actually seen a lot of people from the left come forward and say, thank you so much for doing that. But what we see is the front runners for this, particularly the millennials on the left, they just don't want to play that game. This is their sacred cow.

This is the so-called future of their party. And it's not a joking matter, Michael. Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And I do want to ask about the topic of the satire video itself. This girl doesn't know anything. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She's also a liar. She misrepresents where she comes from.

I know this because I come from almost exactly the same places that she comes from at almost exactly the same time. So I just, I know for a fact, that she's a liar. And I do wonder, how are Democrats going to react here? You know, socialists have relied on useful idiots for the entire history of socialism. Lenin did, Stalin did all the way right up to little Miss Ocasio-Cortez. Is the party going to embrace this leftward lurch, double down on their base, try to bring out the base for the midterms and move it, you know, left of Lenin?

Or are they going to, or is that going to be unsuccessful? Are they going to have to go back to the center and nominate Joe Mansion in 2020 or something like that? Where is the party actually headed? Well, I think that the party doesn't really have a choice. It's where the people say the party is going to go. So millennials are going to be the biggest voting block if they do vote once more baby boomers die. Sorry to be morbid. But I think that they're looking at millennials and saying, okay, these are going to be the voters.

What do they care about? What do they think? And unfortunately, we know that a lot of millennials do lean to the left and a lot of young people in general advocate for things like free healthcare coverage and free college. We know that the Democrats are trying to pass a bill right now that demands free two-year community college. And we know that's just a stepping stone

into the whole free four-year college direction. So I think if that's any indication, it looks like, even though it seems like it's on the fringe, it looks like the entirety of the Democratic Party is going where I think it has to go in order to attract young voters. And I think that is in the direction of socialism. Yeah, they don't have the choice, do they? I always wondered why Pelosi and Schumer didn't try to work with President Trump when he came

into office. President Trump is relatively unideological for a Republican president. I felt they could have maybe worked with him, but their base wouldn't let them. I mean, their voters simply had them in a corner. They couldn't work with President Trump. And this question I have, then I'll let you go. is it wise for conservatives to cheer on the Ocasio-Cortez's say, yeah, guys, nominate the craziest communists you can so we can win the next election? Or is there a danger there? Should we watch

out? Because the more they nominate these people, there are 42 Democratic Socialists of America endorsed candidates running in this cycle. You know, the more that they run these candidates, the more mainstream socialist ideas get. And in the long term, it might hurt us. Which is it? Should we be happy when they nominate these crazy lefties or should we warn against them? Well, so I think that there's a danger here. You have people like Connor Lamb from Pennsylvania, for example, who came across as a moderate, who said, you know, I'm going to be middle of the aisle. We kind of praise this as saying, okay, this is good.

Maybe there are Democrats who actually want a moderate candidate. But I think what we're going to see is that these people that are running moderately are actually going to rule or legislate to the left. And so I would almost rather someone like Accio Cortez at least come out and say, no, I am far left. No, I am a socialist. So we can call out the stupidity beforehand. I just don't think that there is a moderate direction for the Democratic Party. So it's almost like whatever opportunity that we can take to show the stupidity of socialism, the better it is. But you're right. It is going to require us fighting that much harder if we are going to actually show the stupidity of it or else, you know, will just be overcome by totalitarianism unlike every other generation around the world. That's such a good point. The question might not be here for the Democrats between the far left and the centrists.

That ship has sailed. The question is between people who are honest about their ideological points of view and people who hide it. Ocasio-Cortez, she might lie about her background, but she's at least honest about her ideology, whereas someone like Conor Lamb is hiding it. That's a really good point.

Kind of depressing, but you like to at least see the things. Maybe I'm wrong. I could be wrong. I also think there's a generational difference. You did. I heard Maxine Waters. I think it was yesterday or the day before yesterday. We know how crazy she is. But she said, look, we are not the socialist party. We're not the socialist party. We are not socialist. So I do think that you have baby boomers that do fear that word, not just for braiding purposes, but because you've got a lot of people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton that are capitalist. They like capitalism. Yeah. Capitalism has done very well by them, hasn't it? Exactly. So I do think it's a generational difference there, and it's just a matter of whether Democrats are going to say, okay, we have no choice but to head in the direction of millennials or no, we're going to take our party back. We'll see. Yeah, good, good point. All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, All right, Mena. Thank you for forgiving me, Michael and still having me. Grace abounds. I will talk to you later, Ali. Good to see you. Thanks. All right, we've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. Then we have a whole mailbag to get to.

So let's hurry up through that. I'm always late on the mailbag, aren't I? We'll try to run through them today. If you are on DailyWire.com, thank you very much. You help keep the lights on. You keep the leftist tears bubbling up through my cup. And there are a lot of them these days. I've got the Sean Maloney, uh, female hygienic product vintage. It doesn't, it's not, it's not great. It's like, it's like. Frankly, I'd go back and, you know, use the James Gunn Vintage or some other one from this week. But you'll get the Leftist Tears Tumblr. That is the most important thing. Sure, what do you? You get my show, Drew's show, the Ben Shapiro show.

You get to ask questions in the mailbag, which is coming up. You get to ask questions in the conversation. This is what you want. This is the thing, baby. Go to DailyWire.com. We'll be right back with a mailbag. Let's burn through them. We're getting to all these questions today.

Starting with Emmanuel. Oh, come, Ocome, Emmanuel. Hi, Michael. I was wondering. if you could clarify the definition of ideology for me. What is the difference between a system of beliefs and ideology? For example,

I'm a conservative and a Catholic. Why are or aren't they considered ideology? Does it just constitute the amount of passion one has? If so, where's the line? Thanks so much. Love the show. Okay, this is really a tough question. Actually, I pulled some notes out for this one

because people misunderstand this one a lot. I've been reading a lot of Michael Oakshot. He's a great political a philosopher from Britain in the 20th century and very few people read him, but they should read him because he's very good. I'll use his definitions. I'm stealing freely from him. The conservative thought and the Catholic Church and these things are not ideologies. They should not be ideologies. We can lean into ideology sometimes. We can fall into ideology, but we should resist it as much as we can. What is the definition of ideology? In a great essay called rationalism and politics,

Oakshot defines ideology as the formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational truth contained in the tradition, which is a mouthful, but I think it's a pretty good approximation. It's very formalized. It's rationalized. You can write it down in a book. Another definition he gives in a different essay is ideology is a vocabulary of beliefs in terms of which to conduct political discourse. So you can know an ideology by its vocabulary. You know, the left, they say, yes, slay, folks, be an ally.

And then we can go adulting together. And you can tell that there's an ideological point of view there. You know, ideology gives the appearance of a complete system. You use the word system. That's a good place to begin. It's a system. You can fit it all in a book. You can put an ideology in a book or a manifesto or a doctrine.

And they say, this is our ideology now. But you can never fit the totality of knowledge. into a book? Of course not. You always hear there's some guy, you know, so and so is street smart, but he's not book smart. Or he's book smart, but he's not street smart.

Someone can be very book smart and have no idea how to get along in the world. Why is that? Because there are two kinds of knowledge. There's technical knowledge, which you can write down in a book, and there's practical knowledge. The knowledge that is just,

it comes from your gut, it comes from the rituals that you do. It comes from the traditions that you're part of, the institutions that you're a part of. You're born into it and it grows through you as if it's in the air. You can never put that into a book. You know, a good example of this, I guess, is a cookbook, and this is an example

Oakshack gives. I can hand you a cookbook. You will not become Mario Battali because I hand you a cookbook. You will have some technical knowledge in there, turn the thing onto this, you know, use these ingredients, this is what constitutes this dish or whatever. But that won't make you a great cook because there's a practical knowledge that's required too. ideology in the modern sense

also can really be traced back to Machiavelli, the guy who wrote the prince, the prince and discourses on Livy. In the prince, he says, here is a shortcut. Here's a crib to politics. Here is for the new prince, the prince who doesn't have

generations of political education behind him. Here is a cheat sheet, and this will give you some ideological doctrines that you can incorporate in to your political leadership. And, you know, a lot of teenage kids, they read the prince the first time and they say, oh, great, now I can be the president.

You know, now I can be whatever. No. And Machiavelli makes this clear too. He doesn't just offer this book and he says, okay, now you can go govern the principality. He says, here's a book, here's some technical knowledge, but you need me. He offers himself.

He writes the prince in part to get himself a job, right? Because he says, you need someone who has practical knowledge to lead you through it. You know, the teacher can teach from the lecture hall, but that will bring some information over. But you also have internships for a reason to work alongside a master. that he can't tell you, he can't use words or put it into a book,

but you just learn by being in the practice with somebody. It's really important. Ideology, this is another bit from Oakshot, is not the quasi-divine parent of political activity, but the earthly stepchild. The ideology comes after the political activity. We don't comport ourselves as we do in America. We who, you know, love liberty or this or that.

We don't behave as we do in America because we read a doctrine somewhere. That's not where it comes from. The doctrine comes out of the political tradition that you have. The left would like to pretend it's all in a book, but when you pretend that all of knowledge can just be fit into a book, you go totally off the charts. The French Revolution is a good example.

In the French Revolution, they tried to erase all of tradition. They tried to obliterate everything, churches or temples of reason now, and rip up all the neighborhoods and have new neighborhoods. It leads to the guillotine. It leads to the terror because it's just not human. It's just not where we come from. Another good example of this is institutions and traditions. You'll hear conservatives who say we don't want to be ideological.

They'll say, you know, you've got to look to the tradition. One reason why it's very hard to export democracy around the world, why we can't just lift up American ideas and plant them in Iraq and expect it to take hold overnight, is because we think, the ideologues think, that the traditions and the institutions, the Congress and the court and the this and of that, are just expressions.

of our ideas that we wrote down in a book somewhere. But that's not true. Oakshaw puts it very well. He says, we do not first decide that certain behavior is right or desirable and then express our approval of it in an institution. Our knowledge of how to behave well is the institution. In another place, with every step it has taken away from the true sources of its inspiration. The rationalist or the ideological character has become cruder and more vulgar.

What in the 17th century was Lard de Poulé. the art of thinking has now become your mind and how to use it, a plan by world famous experts for developing a trained mind at a fraction of the cost. It's this crude, vulgar rationalism. And you bring up the Catholic Church, this is important here because a break, the beginning of rationalism in politics, the beginning of ideology occurred simultaneously with the Protestant revolution. And that's no coincidence. This idea that you can break away the principles and the doctrines and just have that floating in space without the institution, without the tradition, is an essentially liberal idea. It's a rationalist idea. And you see a lot of its character in

Protestantism to varying degrees. That is why there is a coincidence in the American conservative tradition of Catholics taking the lead, Russell Kirk, Bill Buckley, other writers as well. They take the lead, all of these justices on the Supreme Court, because there is a conservative disposition to institutions that you don't have when people just pretend that you can have doctrines flying up in the air. It's a long answer, it's a complicated answer, but I hope that clears it up a little bit because people abuse the word ideology and fall into that a lot, and conservatives really shouldn't. It's one of the key aspects that separates the left from the right when the right is at its best. Next question. Maybe this one will be a little easier. Oh, it will. From Keegan.

Have you ever checked out the Chrome Extension, Millennial to Snake People? My favorite Chrome extension ever, I install it secretly on every machine I use. I work in IT. You might have fun with it. So I hadn't heard of this until, you know, 20 minutes ago or an hour ago when I read that question briefly in my notes. And you have to get it. You have to go get it right now. It's called Millennial to Snake People.

And what the extension does is every time the word millennial shows up in your browser, it replaces it with snake people. So it'll say, you know, like, you know, millennials like to eat avocado toast. And then it would be like, the snake people like to eat avocado toast. Ten ways you know that you're a snake people. It really is very effective. It brings the truth of online articles and treatises really, really well. So I check it out.

From Jonathan, dear Michael, I really enjoy your show. You're always very funny. Funny how? Funny like I'm a clown. Like I amuse you. I make you laugh. Thank you. Thank you for the compliment.

In Wednesday's episode, you discussed in vitro fertilization and how pro-life groups do not actively oppose in vitro fertilization, often, in spite of the indefinite freezing and selective abortion of many embryos or fetuses involved in it. I'm a grad student in genetics and I'm pro-life. I do not disagree in theory with in vitro fertilization, but I do disagree with the discarding of human embryos that have been produced. For this reason, I view adoption as a better option than in vitro fertilization for couples who are unable to have children. my question is do you think that pro-life groups do not actively oppose in vitro fertilization because it would be unpopular among their supporters because they're focusing on other battles that they feel they're more likely to win. It asks to opposing a Planned Parenthood or because of another reason.

Yes, all of that and I think certainly the latter. You've got to make choices. This actually ties in with the ideology question. The pro-life movement is about preserving life and stopping unborn babies from being killed, slaughtered on mass, a million a year or more in the United States. And so they're going to, they're going to try to save as many babies as they can. One way, if the pro-life movement only focused on the first two days of after fertilization, after conception, you know the morning after pill, if they directed all of their efforts

at the morning after pill, some of which are abortion drugs, some are sometimes abortion drugs and not abortion drugs, it's a little less clear. If they focused all of their efforts on that, they'd be much of. less successful, more babies would die every year. If they focused all of their efforts on IVF, in vitro fertilization, because it discards, it creates a ton of conceived people. It creates a lot of fertilized embryos, and then it discards them. If it focused only on that, they would, many more babies per year would die. It would be much less effective because people go to IVF because they want to have more children. It's a more confusing issue. It's not as clear. It's not as clear cut.

how could I be opposing life when I'm trying to create more life? It's much harder for that. But when you focus on a six-month old baby, unborn baby in the womb, that is so much clearer. You see its little eyes, you see its little fingers, it's moving around, and you see villains who are trying to kill that baby. That is a much clearer issue, and it's much easier to win over. So practically speaking, that's where the pro-life movement should focus its efforts. But we shouldn't pretend otherwise.

There's nothing about having little fingers that, makes your life sacred and not having little fingers makes your life not sacred. And in vitro fertilization, in practice, all the time, creates so many embryos that are discarded. And adoption might be an answer for this, but don't forget if you're going to fertilize eight embryos, if you're going to create eight little sparks of human life, every time you do IVF, that's going to be a lot of kids that you've got to put up for adoption. You've got to find women, surrogates, who would be willing to carry those babies to term. and I don't know that that's a really workable solution.

Conservatives should be, they should focus on the areas they can win, increasingly win on the pro-life movement, but don't pretend that IVF is some simple bioethical problem or that it doesn't pose bioethical problems. It does. It poses huge bioethical problems. And as we keep advancing the pro-life cause, conservatives should think about that.

Good question. I've got time for one or two more. From Josh, dear Michael, owner of Libs, Do you believe Sarah Sanders will do us all a favor and ban sad Jim Acosta from the press pool? And if there was a vacancy and the Daily Wire were invited, who would be the best White House correspondent and why? I must disagree with you, my friend. I would be furious if Sarah Sanders banned Jim Acosta from the press pool. Jim Acosta is one of the best characters in all of politics.

By the way, I've never seen him in the same room as Will Farrell at the same time, which does bring up some questions. It's wonderful. I want Ron Burgundy to be in that press room, and Jim Acosta is there. You know, shutting, Mr. President, he's great. If he were kicked out by Sarah Sanders and the Daily Wire were invited to join the press room,

I would nominate Jim Acosta to be our correspondent in the White House press pool. The guy is great, and I hope he stays on TV a lot more. Let's see if we can do one or two more. Do we have time? One more, she says. Okay, I'll do one more. Dear Michael, I've heard some Catholic.

say that Catholicism is incompatible with the American founding. These critics say that because the Constitution does not mention Christ, the founders failed to recognize that all power is given to Christ. This would include power over nations as well as individuals. These critics also point out America's allegedly Masonic roots. How would you respond to these criticisms? Eh, that's how I would respond. Eh, come on. All right. Were some of the founders and framers freemasons? Yeah. Although there was a big anti-Mason movement too. I think. I think John Quincy Adams led a big anti-Mason movement in the United States. Obviously, the Freemasons don't have a lot of prestige anymore in the U.S.

Sure, the nation was founded in 1776 by Protestants, or it was founded in 1620 by quite zealous Protestants in Plymouth. Although, of course, all of America was discovered by a Catholic, Christopher Columbus, a devout Catholic who said his book of hours and multiple prayers constantly throughout the day. and he was always praying, and so he was quite Catholic. I like that the actual American founding, the first moment that we could say this is the origin, is a rather Catholic moment.

And, you know, America is named after an Italian. Amerigo Vespucci. The name America is an Italian name. So, okay, you know, that's fine. The Protestants obviously were so prominent in the United States, and I think it was Arthur Schlesinger said that anti-Catholicism is the oldest in. deepest bias in the United States. So I don't deny any of that. But I will say it's, I don't think

the United States is opposed to Catholicism in a way that revolutionary France was opposed to Catholicism. Revolutionary France killed priests, you know, revolutionary France knocked down Catholic churches. The U.S. didn't do that. And it gets back to our question of tradition versus ideology. Is there an ideological reflection in the American founding? Of course. We hold these truths to be self-evident. These life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Sure, that's ideological. And ideology is fine to reflect on what you're already doing on occasion. It helps you see what's really going on. But America did not reject tradition entirely.

We built on tradition. Our revolution, to use the idea of Edmund Burke, was evolution, not really revolution. We didn't kick everything apart and start from scratch with a blank slate. We kept what was good. And we remained connected to those traditions. That inherent traditionalism, I think, and reliance on tradition, makes America perfectly compatible or quite compatible with the Catholic Church. And also the observation of Alexander, Alexander, of de Tocqueville, what's his first name,

Alexis de Tocqueville. The observation of de Tocqueville that the United States has these wonderful voluntary civic institutions, people just choose to join them in the civic society, civil society, not just government organizations, but, you know, all these voluntary associations, that's quite compatible with Catholicism, to rely on institutions and traditions, that's quite good. Is America a Catholic country? I don't think I'd go that far. But is it totally relentlessly anti-Catholic?

No way. If it were, it wouldn't have developed in the wonderful way that it did. Okay, that's all. I've got to say goodbye. We've got great questions, but sad. What a great man, sad. Go over to Daily Wire. And, oh, by the way, check out Another Kingdom

because we're starting work on the second season of Another Kingdom. That's Drew's book that he wrote. It's Drew's story that I perform all the roles. soon. So you can still listen to all of Season 1 of Another Kingdom. We've got some really cool stuff planned for season 2, which is coming up soon. So go binge that, and I'll see you on Monday. In the meantime, I'm Michael

Knowles. This is the Michael Noles show. I'll see you soon. The Michael Noles show is produced by Sennia Villa Reel. Executive producer Jeremy Bore. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by

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