The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 609 - Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Episode Date: September 3, 2020

Liberal elites double down on white guilt, Nancy Pelosi attacks the salon owner who caught her breaking lockdown rules, and Bill Barr exposes the truth about mail-in voting. If you like The Michael Knowles Show, become a member TODAY with promo code: KNOWLES and enjoy the exclusive benefits for 10% off at https://www.dailywire.com/knowles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The left is very, very upset about privilege these days. Specifically, they say white privilege. And when you look into the specific examples they give of white privilege doesn't seem to be very convincing. But there is a privilege going around. And it's a privilege that the left does not want to destroy. They're doing everything they can to maintain it. I think a perfect example of this came from Hillary Clinton the other day.

Or no, I'm not sorry. Not Hillary Clinton's daughter, who for some reason, is in public life. She has famous parents, and so now for some reason, she's in public life. Chelsea Clinton was on a Women for Biden panel with the radical Democratic representative Ianna Presley, the Ringo of the squad. And she described and lamented her terrible white privilege. 40% of Americans with disabilities report that they have real challenges voting in person. And so in states where there haven't been kind of no excuse absentee voting or where there, you know, hasn't been the introduction of early voting yet, you know, it still isn't kind of easy,

fair, or equal for many Americans to vote. I think it's really important that my children understand that. And I think it's particularly important that they understand that as white children are privilege because I want them to erode that privilege throughout their lives to ensure more people are enfranchised and that equality isn't just. an ideal. So none of that is true, and no parent has ever said, I want my child not to have any privileges. Yes, I want my child to be disadvantaged. And Chelsea Clinton's not saying that either. What she's doing is tying this idea of universal mail-in ballots, which is a way the Democrats are

trying to steal the election, with this idea of privilege. You know, we've basically got to destroy all of our election security in the name of fairness and equality. And of course, it's all lies. It's lies about mail-in ballots. It's lies about race. It's lies about her family. This is not about ending a system of white privilege. This is about preserving a system of liberal elite privilege. And on this show, we will attempt to tear down that system of oppression.

I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Nulls show. Oh, we are dismantling oppression today, my friends. My favorite question or comment rather from Joe yesterday, If Joe Biden goes to Ancestry.com, I don't think he would find anything. After all, he's been running for president since Pangea existed. That is true and great reference to Pangea. Very few people list the global continent in their political jokes.

But well done. Also have to thank our friends over at Legacy Box. Speaking of family histories and maintaining those traditions. I love Legacy Box. So Legacy Box, very simple concept. But you've got old photos, you got old videotapes, you got old slides, you got all this old physical material. And, you know, sometimes they fade overtime.

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Legacybox.com slash nobles save 50% while supplies last. Lots of talk about privilege. Everyone, especially racial privilege. That's especially white privilege. That's what the left is getting everyone to focus on right now so that you ignore the actual privilege that is being, hung over you. A professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science just tweeted out the other day. This is a blue checkmark on Twitter and

she's a professor. She said that all white people have been deputized to kill us, us being black people. That professor's name is Tressie McMillan Kottom. She's in the, she's a professor at this university, and she was tweeting this in response to some Republicans supporting Kyle Rittenhouse, who was that kid, who was attacked by Antifa, and who fired back and stopped the felon and the pedophile and the armed guy from killing him. All white people have been deputized to kill us. I think if you've been watching the BLM riots for the past four or five months now, you would believe that. You would believe that there is this scourge in America, this epidemic, of a virus, but of white people, racist whites, just slaughtering innocent black people, right? You've

probably heard that. Demi Lovato, who I'm told as a singer, says that she hates her skin color because she shares her skin color with all these killers. She said, quote, all I knew was that I hated that I shared the same skin color as the people accused of committing heinous crimes against Amad Arbery, Brianna Taylor, George Floyd, and many, many other black lives, capital B, Now we're capitalizing these colors. So is this true? Should one feel this intense white guilt, this guilt that white people are slaughtering black people all over the place?

The statistics don't bear that out. And we're going to get to statistics a little bit later in the show. Because I made a provocative point yesterday on statistics, and some people were upset about it. But we will get to that. But I will name these statistics now. In 2019, do you know how many black people were murdered in the United States? 2,925, total number of black people in the United States murdered.

Do you know how many of those were murdered by white people? 234. 234 out of 2,925. Do you know how many of those black people who were murdered were murdered by other black people? 2,600. 2,600 out of 2,925. That means that 8% of black people murdered last year were murdered by white people.

89% of black people murdered last year were murdered by black people. But you would not know that statistic. You would not know that fact if you were watching the mainstream media or listening to our political leaders or listening to the activists. Because for some reason, those statistics don't seem to matter. They're so interested in science. They're so interested in looking into the precise scientific analysis of white supremacy and all this sort of thing. But those statistics don't seem to matter. You're given a very different picture.

We'll get to why, as I said a little bit later. This doesn't just even stop at the political level. This goes all the way up to the religious level. Even the most traditional institution in the Christian West, the Catholic Church. The cult of white guilt has infiltrated the Catholic Church. parishioner, I suppose, recorded this homily. I don't know if you could call it a homily from a priest at St. Xavier Catholic Church in New York City who is now engaging in the liturgy of wokeness. Do you support racial justice, equity, and compassion in human relations?

Yes. Do you affirm that white privilege is unfair and harmful to those who have it and to those who do not. Yes. Do you affirm the white privilege and the culture of white supremacy must be dismantled wherever it is present? Yes. Do you support racial equity, justice, and liberation for every person? Yes. Do you affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person? Yes. Therefore, from this day forward, will you strive to understand more deeply the injustice and suffering, white privilege, and white supremacy cause? Yes. Will you commit to help transform our church culture to one that is actively engaged in seeking

racial justice and equity for everyone? Yes. Will you renew and honor this pledge daily knowing that our church and our community, our nation, and our world will be better places because of our efforts? Yes. I can't say I've ever heard that system of vows in a Catholic church. church. What this is, of course, I mean, for individual aspects of that, nobody would disagree. Yeah, be nice to people, don't be mean to people, be a good person, don't be a bad person, right?

But what this is really describing is a new and separate and replacement theology for Christianity. This is now the theology of wokeness. You're replacing what may appear to be one's baptismal vows with now being baptized into the waters of wokeness. saying that there are these things, white supremacy, white privilege, haven't seen those anywhere. I don't know exactly what the priest means by this. I know that we have one matter of legal racial discrimination in our country. There's only one matter where it is legal to discriminate by race. That is called affirmative action.

It benefits black and Hispanic applicants for jobs. It disadvantages white and Asian applicants for jobs. That's it. Show me the other legal white supremacy. or any legal white supremacy for that matter. Show me the legal racial discrimination other than affirmative action. Where is it? Nowhere.

It doesn't exist. So what is this priest talking about? He has fallen prey to the same thing that I think a lot of our country has, which is a distraction. It's not even that all this talk about white supremacy or white privilege or whatever, all the racial division that seems to be, conveniently ginned up every four years is, it's not even that it's in good faith. It's not even that, you know, maybe some people who have good intentions are mistaken. It is a distraction to distract you from a genuine system of privilege and inequity in this country, which is liberal elite privilege, liberal elite privilege, which manifests itself in the media, in politics, in the universities,

in education for that matter, in Hollywood, in big tech. There is a liberal established apparatus that plays by a completely different set of rules than you and I play to. And it doesn't matter what color our skin is. It doesn't matter what matters is this political distinction here, which we can get to a little bit later in the show. I'll give you a real example of privilege here. Think about how crazy it is that BLM,

an avowedly Marxist organization that seeks to destroy the nuclear family, has now taken a foothold in a Catholic church in New York. Think about how sick the society must have become that a Catholic parish in New York is spouting the Marxist idiocy of Black Lives Matter. But the people who are ginning up this kind of tension are very good at it. Only occasionally do that get caught. Like Nancy Pelosi. We talked about this yesterday.

Nancy Pelosi, big supporter of the lockdown saying Donald Trump is killing people because he didn't totally lock down the country. Nancy Pelosi gets caught on a camera, on a security camera, walking into a hair salon that she wants closed without a mask that she wants everybody to wear because she's Nancy Pelosi and she can do whatever she wants. You can't because you're not. a member of the elite liberal establishment, but she certainly can't. So she gets called out for it. What does she do? Does she take responsibility? No. She blames the salon owner. We'll get to that in one

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Go get it. Ring.com slash knolls. That is ring.com slash knolls. So Pelosi gets caught. Pelosi gets caught breaking all the rules that she says she believes in because she wants her haircut. Makes sense. A lot of other Democratic politicians have done this. Bill de Blasio did this in New York.

Lori Lightfoot did this in Chicago. So Nancy Pelosi finally holds a press conference to address this problem. What does she do? She goes on the attack. I take responsibility for trusting. the word of a neighborhood salon that I've been to over the years many times, and that when they said, well, we're able to accommodate people one person at a time and that we can set up that time, I trusted that.

As it turns out, it was a setup. So I take responsibility for falling for a setup. And that's all I'm going to say on that. I take responsibility that the salon owner was such a jerk. typical example, which I've noticed my liberal friends tend to do more than the conservatives where they say, look, I'm really sorry if you got really offended by something. Say, no, you can't be sorry if I feel something. You've got to be sorry for something that you did.

And what Nancy Pelosi did is she violated the rules that she said for everybody else because it was convenient to her. Now, she's a brilliant politician. You have to hand it to her. And she probably gave the most politic response to this you could imagine, which is she feigned ignorance of the law. Now, that's no excuse, of course, but particularly now it's implausible. You're telling me that the single most important political issue, that you, Nancy Pelosi, have been a part of constructing. You didn't know about you, didn't know that the hair salons are closed?

How did you, how could you not know that? No, of course she knew that. But then she said, no, it was a little gray area because I didn't know if one person comes in, if then it could be open. And that's almost a plausible excuse. until you realize, wait a second, hair salons are by definition one-on-one, right? It's one hair, one hairstylist per one customer. So if the hair salons were not, you know, we're open for one customer at a time, then

the hair salons would just be open, but they're not. So the owner of this hair salon, Erica Kios, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, went on Tucker Carlson, of course, of course Tucker got her on that night, and explained that she did not set up Nancy Pelosi. She had called the stylist or her assistant did and made the appointment. So the appointment was already booked. So there's no way I could have set that up. And I've had a camera system in there for five years.

I mean, I didn't go in there and turn cameras on as soon as she walked in to set her up. So that's absolutely false. But Erica, what about Pelosi's excuses? Are you telling me that Pelosi's excuses don't make any sense? As a hairstylist, I see clients one-on-one. So that would mean I would be open, right? Yes. Of course it would.

Of course that's what that means. The left always has to be the victim. The left always has to play the victim card here. So Nancy Pelosi institutes these draconian stupid rules, Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party broadly, institutes these stupid lockdown rules that haven't done any good and have done a lot of harm. to put it bluntly, and then she breaks them because it's not convenient for her.

And then when she gets caught, what does she do? She pretends that she is the victim, the victim of a setup. Even if it were a setup, by the way. And what do we mean by setup? We mean, let's say the salon owner doesn't like Nancy Pelosi and wants to show that she's been violating her own rules. That's still Pelosi's fault. What's the setup? The setup is basically, hey, Nancy Pelosi, do you want to be?

want to violate all your own stupid rules? She goes, yeah, absolutely. Say, okay, well, I caught you on tape saying, yeah, absolutely. She goes, that's a setup. No, it's just exposing what you're doing, what you've been doing. It's exposing your own character, what you think about these things. But you see this. If Nancy Pelosi can pretend to be the victim over breaking her own lockdown rules, then the left can feign victimhood over anything. And they do. They feign victimhood over affirmative action. The left which instituted affirmative action now also claims that affirmative action is racist and leads to a racist country because now some people think that if you, you know, if a black person is in a job that perhaps affirmative action helped. And that isn't, that's an

ugly assumption to have. Clarence Thomas wrote a whole, not a whole book about this, but he wrote about this extensively in one of his books, which is that he hated the stigma of affirmative action because he knew that he was intelligent enough and more intelligent than most of his classmates, but because of the stigma of affirmative action that took away from his accomplishment. Of course, but you can't have it both ways. For the promoters of affirmative action, they want to have the advantages of affirmative action, but not the stigma associated with it. Clarence Thomas points out, that's not possible.

The left, they don't even buy, rather, what they are selling. They don't even believe what they are saying. Obviously, Nancy Pelosi with their haircut. Also members of the mainstream media who know that the mainstream media is vicious and dishonest. There was a hidden tape just came out of Chris Cuomo speaking to Donald Trump's now imprisoned former attorney Michael Cohen, that turncoat. Chris Cuomo apparently is friends with Trump's old attorney. He describes how the media are just a bunch of animals. You know, I'm always careful when I talk to media, you know?

Right. Do you know how many phone calls I've gotten from people at ABC who say that reporters are calling and lying about things they heard about me to try to get stories about me when I was at ABC? Guys calling and saying, I heard he was the Charlie Rose of ABC used to invite women to the hotel and open his bathroom. Do I look like the kind of guy who's got to do that? Sure, why not? But you're saying so. I already have a good source that says that he forced one woman to have sex. I just want to know if you've ever heard anything like that.

There is no woman. There is none of that. So here's the problem. Women who do work there saying, oh yeah, you know, some of these men and naming me with other guys, you know, we bumped to each other once in the elevator, and he put his hand on my shoulder and he made me really uncomfortable. I mean, what the fuck? It's a problem.

And now... So I'm careful with the media always. Right. I've always told you the media is not your friend. No. The media is not your friend. Now, what is significant about that conversation? One, it's kind of funny that Chris Cuomo is getting advice from Trump's former attorney that they're all, they all have attacked for many years.

But Chris Cuomo here is pointing out, one, there's no journalistic integrity out there, and the media are just trying to push an agenda, and not even he trusts them, but he's a member of the mainstream media. There's a big difference between the mainstream media and alternative media sources. We do need some kind of journalism, right? We do need some kind of political commentary. But what we know is there's a big difference between, say, this podcast or conservative alternative media and CNN. One difference is usually we get better ratings in alternative conservative media,

but CNN is part of the established media, right? Most of CNN's ratings come from airports. It's just on an airport TVs because that is considered to be authoritative and very serious news. And Chris Cuomo goes out there every night and says, yes, we're very serious news. And yet, in his heart, he knows that the media are full of it. They're not objective in any way. They're not even interested in the truth. They're liars and they're rats.

His brother, Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, is now threatening Donald Trump. Andrew Cuomo in New York says this about the president. he better have an army if he thinks he's going to walk down the street in New York. New Yorkers don't want to have anything to do with him. He can't have enough bodyguards to walk through New York City. People don't want to have anything to do with him. So this is a direct threat from a Democratic governor and the Democratic governor who handled coronavirus worse than any governor in the country against the president of the United States. Can you imagine if a Republican governor said this about Barack Obama? He would be put on trial. He'd be sent to the Hague. He would be called a racist and a

vicious monster and a terrible person. There would be calls for him to be kicked out of office. With Andrew Cuomo saying this, directly threatening the life of the president, saying he better not come here. He's going to need an army because otherwise he's going to get killed. What happens to him? Nothing. Now, is that a racial privilege?

No. I don't think it's a racial. I don't think the Italians get any particular privilege. Do I think that the fact that if the situation were flipped and it was Barack Obama's president, any Republican governor? Do I think that's a black privilege? No, I don't think it's that. I don't think it's, I think we're looking at privilege all the wrong way.

I don't think it's a matter of racial privilege at all. I think it is a matter of political privilege. Liberal establishment elite privilege, which totally exists, and it's why this story is going to get totally buried. It's going to get totally buried. As the Democrats, as the liberal establishment tries to steal this election and make no mistake, they are actively attempting to steal this election. Now, you might not know that if you, you might not know that if you, watch the mainstream media because the primary method right now that they're using to steal

this election through fraud is this universal mail-in ballot issue. And the mail-in ballots are highly unreliable. They can be harvested. They first of all, just often don't get there in the mail, right? There have been experiments done where 3% of mail-in ballots don't even end up in the hands of the recipients. Forget about where they came from first. So they're trying to steal that, but they're trying to tell you there's no such thing as mail-in ballot fraud. There's no such thing as trying to steal elections when the Democrats are doing it. When Republicans are looking like they're in a good position, all of a sudden all we hear about is election fraud. We're told that if you have to present an ID to prove you are who you are, that you're committing election fraud and stealing an election.

But now that the Democrats are trying to harvest ballots from senior citizen homes, all of a sudden, no such thing. Wolf Blitzer at CNN took this liberal position, tried. to smack down Attorney General Bill Barr, the Honey Badger, who was bringing up all of these issues. Bill Barr wouldn't let him have it. He explained in excellent detail the nature of voter fraud in the United States. The bipartisan commission, chaired by Jimmy Carter and James Baker, said back in 2009 that mail-in voting is fraught with the risk of fraud and coercion. Until this had been... No, sorry.

They haven't proved it. Let me talk. Yeah, please. And since this, since that time, there have been in the newspapers, in networks, academic studies saying it is open to fraud and coercion. The only time the narrative changed is after this administration came in. But elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion. For example, we indicted someone in Texas, 1,700 ballots.

collected, from people who could vote, he made them out and voted for the person he wanted to. Okay? That kind of thing happens with mail-in ballots, and everyone knows that. Of course everyone knows it. And look at how the narrative changes. That's the key there. He says, what about this commission chaired by Jimmy Carter and Jim Baker that found that there is substantial fraud in mail-in.

You were all talking about that until the day before yesterday. gets into that. All of a sudden, Wolf Blitzer tries to cut him off. Bill Barr won't let him do. He says, no, I'm not going to let you do this today. I'm going to explain to you how it works. So then Wolf Blitzer moves on to the next Democratic talking point. First is there's no fraud whatsoever in the mail. The next talking point is okay. And they always say this whenever you cite any case of actual voter fraud. They'll say, okay, that's one individual case. But there's no widespread problem. Bill Barr shuts that down to. There are individuals cases, but as far as widespread fraud, we haven't seen that since. Well, we haven't had the kind of widespread use of mail and ballots as being proposed.

We've had absentee ballots from people who request them from a specific address. Now what we're talking about is mailing them to everyone on the voter list. When everyone knows those voter lists are inaccurate, people who should get them, don't get them, which has been one of the major complaints in states that have tried this in municipal. elections, and people who get them are not the right people. They're people who have replaced the previous occupant, and they can make them out. And sometimes multiple ballots come to the same address with several generations of occupants. Do you think that's a way to run a vote? Well, the only thing I'm saying is that so far we haven't seen widespread fraud.

So far, we haven't tried it. It's like Wolf Blitzer has nothing left. It's like he's that non-player character meme. He's like he's a robot, just beep, boop. He's got the pre-programmed line, which is, well, we've seen it on an individual level, but we haven't seen it on a widespread level. Bill Barr gives a great answer. He says, right, we've never tried it on a widespread level. We've never tried this universal mailing thing. We've done absentee, which is not only different in degree, but it's different in kind from what's being proposed. Because with absentee, you have to specifically request it to a specific address. Here, we're just going to mail them out to wherever. You

remember how that cat that's been dead for 20 years got an absentee ballot, a couple of couple of months ago. There was a, I forget which state it was in. A couple came on. They said, yeah, our cat, who's been dead for 20 years, got an absentee ballot. And I just think, I don't think that dead cats should vote. That sort of thing is happening. People who have moved out of homes, they'll get the ballot to the old address. So Bill Barr completely strikes that down. Wolf Blitzer's got nothing left. He says, yeah, but it just seems individual, not widespread. Bill Barr says, right, I just explained to you why that is. We've never tried widespread. What's going to happen then? Wolf Blitzer keeps pushing so Bill Barr makes the biggest point of all,

which is we're an uncharted territory and we're playing with fire. The point is, but a lot of us, there are several states that only have mail-in voting, including a Republican state like you. Well, this is playing with fire. This is playing with fire. We're a very closely divided country here. And if people have to have confidence in the results of the election and the legitimacy of the government, And people trying to change the rules to this methodology, which, as a matter of logic, is very open to fraud and coercion, is reckless and dangerous. And people are playing with fire. Of course, he's absolutely right. And of course, he strikes this down.

And the liberal elite privilege is not having to answer that for now the several years they've been trying to push this sort of thing. But unfortunately, they made the mistake of inviting the Honey Badger on CNN, and he wouldn't let them get away with it. Some good news in the presidential front. Trump right now is leading Joe Biden by two points in North Carolina, 49 to 47. This is according to a poll released on Tuesday by East Carolina University. Polls in other places are tightening up. And you know, I don't pay a ton of attention to polls. Public opinion polls are a relatively recent invention of the social sciences, which I'm highly skeptical of anyway. Polls famously were pretty wrong in 2016. Some people still try to defend the polls in 2016. But the fact is, all of the meta analysis of all these polls showed Hillary had a 99% chance of winning. And then when she lost, they said, no, they weren't wrong. It's just that the 1% turned out to be true. And this is the problem with not just polls. Let's go back to something else that's a little bit older, but it's still a very recent invention. Statistics. Lies, damned lies and statistics. I got in trouble yesterday on the show because I made a point that conservatives, generally speaking,

should shun statistics, because statistics were created very recently by and for the liberal progressive establishment. What has evolved into the liberal progressive establishment? Even using the word evolved kind of plays into that narrative. Now, people were shocked. They said, Michael, what are you talking about? We need statistics. No, we don't. We can use statistics when they help us, but we've got to be very, very careful about statistics. Because I think some people, when they heard me say that, conflated statistics with facts. That's how deeply embedded this problem has become. But statistics are not facts. Statistics in many ways are the opposite of facts. What does statistics mean? It's a new concept, relatively new concept. It refers to the state, data for the state.

And as statism has come into its current form, statistics have taken on a very important role. The word statistics comes from the late 18th century German word, statistic. I don't know how to pronounce. I don't have a great German accent. Yeah, yeah, statistics. Late 18th century. This is derived from the new Latin, Statisticum Collegium, Council of State and the Italian word statista, right? Statist.

This word, statistic in German, first introduced by Gottfried Achenwal in 1749, designated the analysis of data about the state, specifically the science of the state. And around this time, you see the advent of what you would call political science, the social sciences, economics, sociology, political science, which was a new concept as opposed to political philosophy. The idea here being that there is a science not only to biology, well, even biology is a relatively new one, a science to physics, for instance, or a science to precise things that we can measure under a microscope. There's not just that kind of science, but there's also a science to society. There's also a science to history.

There's a science to human affairs and politics, and that you can measure, once you understand the science, you can know with scientific certainty how society should be governed. You can know how history will progress. You can know the end of history. You can know the right side of history. You can know all of these sorts of things by applying the methods of physical science to society and the questions that were previously explored by philosophy and by the philosophy of politics rather than a science of politics.

So what social science does is it comes in and says, okay, we've got to separate the administration of society from politics. Politics is usually just all people arguing and trying to persuade one another and deciding how we want to live. Yeah, that's too messy. So what we've got to do is separate the way that society is actually governed by the administrative bureaucracies from politics. So ironically what happens is that everything gets politicized. My cup of coffee gets politicized. My choice in clothing.

My choice in sneakers gets politicized. Everything is politicized except for politics. The political questions are actually taken away and decided by these headless bureaucracy. and how do the bureaucracies create these policies? They use data given to them by another aspect of the liberal establishment, which is the university. And what does the university give you? Statistics.

So they just, right, they say, you've heard this, the whole coronavirus pandemic. This is actually the best time to think about this point. We've been told, look, I don't want to hear from politicians, meaning I don't want to hear from our duly elected representatives, meaning I don't want to hear from how citizens want to govern themselves. I just want to be governed by science and data. The trouble is the idea that there is a science of society is complete BS. It is a lie used by liberals or progressives or leftists or use whatever words you want

to take political power away from you, grab it for themselves, and never have it threatened. Because they say, well, we're just, we're just deferring to science. We need the Green New Deal. We need to redistribute trillions of dollars. to our favored groups away from the groups that we don't like. Why do we have to do that? Oh, science. Yeah, we need to lock you all in your homes forever,

and we need to have the Federal Reserve print up lots and lots of money, and we need to borrow trillions of dollars, and we need to give it out to favored groups. Why? Oh, because of science. Show me the science. I don't see the work there. And the raw material that goes in and is used to justify these kinds of policies,

is statistics. Okay, but statistics can be abused. I'm not saying that you can't count certain things and have data. Of course you can do that. But statistics can be abused. We'll give you an example. Let's say 60% of America likes chocolate ice cream, 40% likes vanilla ice cream. You can come in and say, look, 60% of America likes chocolate ice cream.

That's a majority of America. We just need to mandate chocolate ice cream for everybody. That's statistics. That's just science. but you can make the exact same argument say, wow, 40% of America likes vanilla ice cream. Oh my gosh, 40% of America. Gosh, that means we need to have an abundance of vanilla ice cream available. Now, this is kind of a silly example.

Who knows what the applicability of that would be. It is only to say that the statistics, the numbers, can be used to make any number of arguments. And we know that. I mean, we've seen this threat, not just the coronavirus, but even in just the number of recent decades. We've seen how statistics are always used sometimes to make opposing arguments. And I'm just giving an example where we can actually rely on 60% like this, 40% like this, 60% do this, 40% do this. Sometimes it's not even that clear. And by the way, where do these statistics come from? Usually it's, they come from some scientific paper, social scientific paper, so

not actually a scientific paper. And the statistics have been compiled. They've been put into models that are obviously very fraught. That's why you might have noticed the models did not work out during this coronavirus pandemic. They often don't. The models about global warming have not turned out to be true. The models about any number of these things don't turn out to be true. Because as Dr. Fauci said, the models are only good as the statistics that you put into them. But who puts in the statistics?

It's some grad student who never has their work checked. Who, I don't know, maybe they have some weird methodologies. Maybe they don't even. It's a way of manipulating you. And Edmund Burke, the great conservative philosopher, said, the age of chivalry has gone that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded it, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. We cannot be those economists, sophisters, and calculators. We shouldn't be these egghead statisticians manipulating data and pretending that

authentically political questions really should just be decided by a couple of eggheads and lab coats who pretend that they know the entire science of history and of politics and of society. that is not only profoundly anti-conservative, not only does that feed this kind of liberal established elite privilege. It totally undercuts the concept of self-government and the political traditions that we so cherish. It's my last defense of throwing statistics out the window. I head on over to the Michael Null Show YouTube channel, subscribe, we appreciate it.

Also, you get the Daily Wire app on Apple TV and Roku so you can watch us on the big screen. Head on over. We got a lot more with the mailbag coming up. We'll be right back. All right. First question from Gabby. Just heard your story about Michelle Obama and the ice cream shop.

So this story, in case you missed it a couple days ago, was that Michelle Obama went into an ice cream shop when she was first lady and someone cut her in line. And that's how she showed that there was such a thing as white supremacy. And she's so oppressed and everyone should feel bad for Michelle Obama. That's the story. When as first lady did Michelle Obama ever just go out to an ice cream shop without the Secret Service in tow? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Yeah, the story is obviously proposes. even if she had, even if she told the Secret Service to wait around the corner, which probably they would not have done anyway. She's Michelle Obama. She's one of the most famous women in the world. So the situation that she is presenting as she's waiting in a shop and then someone cuts her in line and then she says, hey, stop cutting me in line. And then the person goes away and doesn't look at her and doesn't pay proper obeisance to the wonderful one Michelle Obama. may have been the case that this other person walked into the shop. You're not quite sure where the line is, who's waiting,

who's already put in their order, who's just now off to the side waiting to get their ice cream. And then Michelle Obama was very rude to him. And then this person was intimidated because you're talking to the first lady of the United States and was quiet. Two different ways to read that situation. Which one do you think is more likely?

Do we think that Michelle Obama, one of the most popular women in America, is really just the victim of horrible oppression. Do we think America, America, which elected her husband president twice? For some reason, elected her president, utterly unqualified to be president, but they elected him twice. It's just because of how horrible and racist and bigoted it is? I don't think so. From Mitch, hey Michael, I remember learning about how Louisiana and the great state of Texas were the last two states in the union to change the legal drinking age to 21. This was only after the federal government threatened to cut federal funding of

of some programs, highways, I believe. Since these liberal states and cities are shirking any and all sense of responsibility in an effort to signify their wokeness, could the federal government employ a similar tactic? We've already seen the mayor of Minneapolis ask President Trump for a federal bailout from the riots, which the president quickly shot down.

But couldn't he take it a step further? I do not wish to signify intent to cause harm or demolish the way of life in those areas, but wouldn't a simple ultimatum of clean your mess up or prepare to lose whatever benefit the city is receiving. Thanks for your time. Hail to the exalted Dr. Fauci, peace be upon him. I suppose they could. They are actually attempting this in certain places. They're saying we're going to cut federal funding to cities for various programs if you don't clean up your cities.

The question is, is it going to have any teeth? When you look at something like trying to change the drinking age or other programs that the federal government has tried to push on the states, they often succeeded during periods of some bipartisan consensus, and that does not exist at all now. I mean, anything that Trump says or does, the Democrats will oppose. Trump could support giving lollipops to orphans, and the Democrats would say that's a terrible thing, no candy for the kids. So it would seem difficult now because, you know, the federal government could threaten it, but at least the elected power of the federal government could change. at any given time. And actually what this does, even this kind of partisan division, is empower

as the topic we've been talking about all day, which is the liberal elite establishment, which governs through the bureaucracy, which shapes public opinion, which then permits these changes, shapes public opinion through the mainstream media and through Hollywood and through the universities. That establishment is just going to keep on governing and doing whatever it wants. And maybe sometimes Republicans get elected, but it's not a fair fight. It's not an elected Democrat against an elected Republican, it's an elected Republican against the entire apparatus of the state. From Cameron. Hi, Michael. I've recently been struggling with solipsism. I've suffered from OCD since I was 12 and because of this, I'm now hyper-focused on this concept.

Life seems less colorful and I'm starting to withdraw from friends and family. I was wondering if you had any ideas on how to cope, disprove this idea from an agnostic standpoint as everything I've read on the matter says it's impossible to argue against. Thank you in advance for taking taking the time to answer my question. My pleasure. So solipsism for those who don't know is the belief that it is not possible to know that the external world exists. Meaning, it's that I cannot know for certain that anything other than my own consciousness exists. And sometimes this is just used as a synonym for egotism or narcissism or, you know, self, obsession. And in some ways it is, right? You're just so enthrall of yourself. I once bandied

this solipsistic idea around. First, when the concept was introduced to me, when I was a teenager, I started thinking about it. I said, oh, gosh, you're right. I guess I can't prove that the outside world exists. But so what then? This reminds me of these questions of, does free will exist? Well, the only way that I could prove that free will exists is by freely using my rational faculties that I can rely upon objectively, or to at least perceive objective reality, and then come to a conclusion. But that would beg the question. Because I would, and by beg the question, that doesn't mean to ask a question, that means

to assume my own conclusion. Because by doing that, I'm implicitly asserting that free will does exist, because I'm freely choosing to use my rational faculties to grapple with the question of free will to come to a conclusion. So I'm already doing that. So I can't answer that. My answer to people who say to me that free will does not exist is to punch them in the face. Now look, I'm a fiery but mostly peaceful podcaster, but I would punch them in the face. And I would say, ow, Michael, stop punching me in the face. I'd say, well, I'm not punching you in the face. I have absolutely no control. There is no moral culpability at all. I'm, you know, we're just predetermined.

bags of atoms and and as the blood starts pouring down on their face in my knuckles, I'll take a towel, maybe I'd say, look, it's not, I wish, I wish that I could stop, but I don't even exist in any proper sense of that term because I have no free will. And then when my friend is a bloodied, mangled mess, he will have gotten the point. He will have gotten the point. It's also interesting that you ask me, you say, I want you to prove this to me from an agnostic point of view. So not only are you denying that I in the external world exist, but you're tying my hands behind my back. You're saying I have to prove something from the standpoint of not knowing something. Agnostic means not to know. So that's obviously impossible. That's a game

that's set up to fail. I would take another angle here. Rather than trying to prove with certainty that the external world exists, I would look at the history of the concept of solipsism, where it comes from, I would look at the history of self-described solipsists, and then I would look more broadly at our philosophical tradition. It seems to me much clearer, or much harder to argue that the external world does not exist, than that the external world, or rather, yes, that the external world does not exist, than the external world does exist. It seems to me that the burden of proof is on the one who denies all that we can perceive and then form concepts of through our rational faculties. Now, of course, you can't, I mean, the way the question is set up, you couldn't prove it.

But where does that leave you? I suppose that could leave you in a place where you can't rely on anything and every single thing is an illusion. And then what? Then we might as well sit quietly in the corner. But assuming you're not going to do that, assuming that that seems irrational, inasmuch as you can trust your own rational faculties, I would do it.

I would move on and see just from the practical effects of it, what gives you a view and an action of life that is, that conduces to human flourishing. Just try that out. Leave the philosophical theorizing aside for a second and look to the practical aspects of life. See what that does. From Kevin.

Morning, Mr. Knowles, from the great welfare state of Minnesota. I have been told by a retired government worker that the reason the government's like abortions is because it is a smaller investment than having another person added to welfare and keeps the lower class population in check, which to me is disgusting. But at the same time, also gives me a reason

why none of the conservatives in office ever actually do anything is it would cascade down a route that would guarantee that they wouldn't get voted back in, which, if that's the case, is also disgusting that this decision would put their career before the life of the defenseless. Please let me know your thoughts on this as I respect your knowledge and opinion.

Well, the first part's true, and the second part, I think, is not true. The first part, we know for a fact, the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger said she wanted to get rid of poor people and deficient people and people who can't take care of themselves because that would be a drain on, well, it would be a drain on the state, in part. And Margaret Sanger is writing at a time when the state had a really central role in basically every ideology. And this was at a time when you saw the rise of not only liberalism, which existed, but fascism and communism, all of which are totally concerned with the state. So that part's obviously true.

I don't think that conservatives are afraid of fixing abortion, for instance, because they think they're not going to get voted back in. You know, it's not that the rich people vote for Republicans and the poor people vote for Democrats. Actually, it's kind of the opposite, right? Wall Street tends to go for the Democrats. Most billionaires in America vote Democrat. The liberal established elite votes Democrat.

And actually, it's deplorable, irredeemable people who tend to vote Republican. Republican Party at various times, but especially right now, is much more of a working class party than the Democratic Party. So I don't think that's the case. I think the reason Republicans are hesitant to do anything on abortion is because they raise a lot of money on it. That's actually why I think that a lot of elected Republicans don't really care. One is probably because they don't care about it much themselves. And then they realize there's a great fundraising benefit to the pro-life issue, which is disgusting, too. but that's a different reason

than they worry about not getting reelected. All right, last question from Tim. What is this? This involves a note that gave me. A note on white privilege. Okay. This was posted on Facebook by a former homeschooler whose child was just started

at St. Paul's Catholic High School in Bristol, Connecticut. Overall, it's a decent school. However, this handout was given out in a school-wide assembly yesterday. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on woke politics, infiltrating even private Catholic schools.

This is on white privilege. There's a number of bullet points, 26 bullet points. I'll just go through a few. So I guess it's explaining what white privilege is. I can, if I wish, arranged to be in the company of people of my race most of the time. I think a lot of people can do that. You can see self-segregation in neighborhoods and social circles, so everybody can do that if they wish. I can be sure that my neighbors in a location that I move to will be neutral or pleasant to me. I can't assure that. And not just because I'm a little swarthy or something. I think that, I mean, there are BLM signs in every yard in every city or

suburb in all of America. So I think it's not a racial issue. But I can't assure that when I move into a neighborhood, people will be pleasant to me. The minute they find out my politics, they hate my guts. Because if you're a conservative in America today, you are countercultural. You have a politics of dissent from what we've been talking about all show, this liberal establishment. So that actually, that backs up my thesis, right? That backs up my, that the real privilege is kind of liberal elite privilege, not a racial question. I can turn on the television or open the front page of a newspaper and see people of my race widely represented. There's a ton of entertainment for black people and Hispanic people in this, right?

You've got TV stations, you've got magazines, you've got outlets, you've got websites, that's crazy. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege. Well, you can because it's a liberal. But it's not because of your race. First of all, getting books published is hard, but you could get this dribble published anywhere, couldn't you? It is. It's published in every liberal outlet on the internet.

Okay, blah, blah, blah. Posters, cards. Oh, here we go. Oh, here's one. This actually ties right in to the top of the show. Number 22, I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race. That's the privilege.

So even affirmative action is actually a way to disadvantage white and Asian people by law. And they make all these arguments for it. But that is it, right? It's to racially discriminate against white and Asian people. And even that now is taken as a symptom of white privilege because if you do get a job in your white or Asian, you can at least be said to think that you got what you deserve, except the whole ideology of white privilege says that nothing you have is something that you deserve. A total incoherent drivel.

It's very sad that a Catholic school would do that. Catholic schools are supposed to be more conservative than the insanity at the public schools. But the rot runs very deep. Runs very, very deep. It's not just Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. It's not just a couple elected politicians. It runs all the way down through the media, through Hollywood, through technology, through the schools, through the Catholic schools, through the Catholic Church, through.

And when I say the Catholic Church, I just mean that as an example of the most conservative institution. It goes throughout all of the Protestant denominations. nations all over the West. That is a deeply embedded privilege. How do we reform that system of oppression? We will leave that to next week. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Nulls show. If you enjoyed this episode and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro Show,

the Andrew Claven Show, and the Matt Wolls Show. The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring. Our technical director is Austin Stevens. Supervising producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling. Assistant Director, Pavel Wadowski, editor and associate producer Danny Demico, audio mixer, Robin Fenderson, hair and makeup, Nika Geneva, and production assistant, Ryan Love. The Michael Null Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.

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