The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 706 - Conservatism Uncanceled

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

Merrick Garland comes back from the political grave, Fauci wants masks through 2022, and CPAC cancels a bigot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He lives. We all thought Merrick Garland was gone after Cocaine Mitch kept him off the Supreme Court. But Merrick Garland is back. Long after the left mourned his loss, the Democrats rent their garments and gnashed their teeth. Merrick Garland is back. He is Joe Biden's nominee for Attorney General. And I actually don't mind this nomination all that much relative to some of the other picks because, one, it's kind of funny. Merrick Garland became this meme after he was nominated to the court, and now he's back. It'd be sort of like if Harambe came back to that zoo, you know, everyone would kind of get a kick out of that. But the other reason, the more substantive reason why I wasn't so upset about Garland is he was the most moderate of the Joe Biden prominent nominees. So I thought, okay, we can breathe a sigh of release. At least he's not going with some crazy left winger for Attorney General.

And then Merrick Garland testified on Capitol Hill. He was grilled by a bunch of senators, on his views. Turns out he's not all that moderate. Here is Josh Hawley, Republican Senator, asking a very simple question, Merrick Garland, will you continue to enforce our southern border? And the answer? Pretty weak stuff. Do you believe that illegal entry at America's border should remain a crime? Well, I haven't thought about that question. I just haven't thought about that question. I think, you know, the president has made clear that we are, country with the borders and with the concern about national

security. I don't know of a proposal to decriminalize but still make it unlawful to enter. I just don't know the answer to that question. I haven't thought about it. Will you continue to prosecute on lawful

border crossings? Well, this is again a question of allocation of resources. We will the department will prevent unlawful crossing. I have to admit, I just don't know exactly what the conditions are and how this is done. I just know, it doesn't, well, simple question, Merrick, will you enforce the law at the border?

Well, I, uh, e, uh, uh, oh, uh, e, uh, uh, uh, oh boy, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show. Welcome back to the show. my favorite comment yesterday is from July 24 pictures who says the woke left says be less white, me acts more black. The woke left says, hey, how racist of you to appropriate their culture. Yes, this is the paradox here too with the be less white campaign that you saw from some of these woke corporations. I was associated with Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is kind of not denying it. It's part of Robin DeAngelo's broader anti-racist curriculum that a lot of corporations are buying into. And when you say be less white,

first of all, it's not pot. You can't, you know, you're not going to de-melinate your skin. But even if you lose your own culture as a white person, then what do you do? The only thing, you have to have some kind of culture. You have to have certain behaviors and manners of speaking and things like that. So the only thing you can do is take on the attributes of other cultures. But then the minute you do that, you're accused of cultural appropriation. So there is no win. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. What crazy times. Don't you wish you could think back on all those wonderful Halcyon days going by when things are more normal? Well, you can with Legacy Box. Legacy Box is an ingenious mail-in service to have all of your irreplaceable moments trapped on

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the way most people analyze that is they say, okay, Miragherlin, he's this very serious procedure-focused lawyer who's nitpicking all the minor details and he doesn't want to give a flippant answer to anything. Sure, maybe the first question might lead you to think that. He says, hey, are you going to continue to enforce the law at the border. He says, well, well, and I don't know that there's a way that you could, there's no proposal to keep the border secure, but then not enforce the law and this. And he's getting into all this minutia. Then he says sort of platitudes like, Joe Biden believes this is a country with a border. Oh, he believes it's a country, all countries have borders. So the grand, brave, courageous statement from Joe Biden is America is still.

a country, at least for now. But then, the reason that I don't think you can just chalk this up to Merrick Garland is trying to be really precise is when Hawley pushes him on it. It's a simple question. It's illegal to, it's illegal by definition to enter the country illegally. Will you continue to enforce the law? Merrick Garland changes his approach. So he doesn't just say, well, what do you mean by illegal? And this and it. He then says, well, that would be a matter of allocating resources. It would be a question of where we want to put our resources. So he's totally changed. changing his answer. He's saying, well, you caught me, Josh Hawley. Probably not. Probably I'm not going to enforce the law. Really bad stuff if this is the most moderate guy. Garland is

catching probably most flack right now for saying that refusing to acknowledge that burning down federal buildings is domestic terrorism. I actually think here Merritt Garland is showing a kind of restraint. I actually think conservatives shouldn't totally attack him for his answer, though it didn't sound all too great yesterday when he gave it. Let me ask you about assaults on federal property in places other than Washington, D.C., Portland, for instance, Seattle. Do you regard assaults on federal courthouses or other federal property as acts of domestic extremism, domestic terrorism? Well, Senator, my own definition, which is about the same as the statutory definition, is use of violence or threats of violence an attempt to disrupt democratic processes.

So an attack on a courthouse while in operation, trying to prevent judges from actually deciding cases that plainly is domestic extremism, domestic terrorism, an attack simply on a government property at night or any other kind of circumstances. is a clear crime and a serious one and should be punished. I don't mean, I don't know enough about the facts of the example you're talking about, but that's where I draw the line. One is both are criminal, but one is a core attack on our democratic institutions. So this answer filled with Garland's usual ums and awes and whims and stammering

is a little bit weak in that he's conflating extremism, which is a very vague term. that can really mean anything you want it to with terrorism, which is a much more specific term. But I actually don't think that burning down a federal courthouse, for instance, is necessarily terrorism. And the reason for that is terrorism traditionally defined is specifically the use of violence against civilians for the purpose of achieving political ends. And this is why if you attack a political target, you know, a government target, that is different than attacking an elementary school. Those are different things.

Both very bad, both should be discouraged. But we don't want the definition of terrorism to become overly broad, just as has happened with extremism. Now, the reason this is a bad answer from Garland is the takeaway, technical details aside, and conservatives should pay attention to the details, but the takeaway is he's not going to go after groups like BLM for burning down courthouses and federal buildings and other sort of government buildings. buildings. And that's, that's too bad. But still, I actually think he's getting too much flack for that answer, a much more radical answer, even than the extremism, terrorism answer that Garland gave. And this, this is like sort of the third and final point. Maybe it's worth considering Republicans trying to vote against him. I don't think there's any way to stop this Garland nomination.

I think we already, we already stopped the main Garland nomination. But he gave an answer on the transgender question that to my mind shows he is basically unfit for this job. He was is asked a simple question. Is it right and just and lawful for girls to have to compete against boys? In other words, does the law say that boys can just define themselves in girls for the purposes of, say, playing women's sports, for the purposes of going into the girls' bathroom? This is not a difficult question, but Merrick Marigarland seems to think that it is. In my last 20 seconds, I'm going to ask you if you agree with this statement. Allowing, and I'm not suggesting the answer one way or the other, I just want to know what you believe, allowing biological males to compete in an all-female sport

deprives women of the opportunity to participate fully and fairly in sports and is fundamentally unfair to female athletes. This is a very difficult societal question that you're asking here. I know what underlies. you're going to be Attorney General. Oh, but I may not be the one who has to make policy decisions like that, but it's not that I'm adverse to it. Look, I think every human being should be treated with dignity and respect. And that's an overriding sense of my own character, but an overriding sense of what the law requires.

The particular question of how Title IX applies in schools is one, in light of the Bostock case, which I know you're very familiar with, is something that I would have. have to look at when I have a chance to do that. And there it is. There is the answer. The Bostock case is the case that, thanks to our good friend Neil Gorsuch, the Boston, who's, you know, the ostensibly conservative judge who totally, totally broke with conservatives and redefined sex as gender identity in that case. I'm oversimplifying

a little bit, but that's the takeaway of it. If Garland is saying in light of Bostock, I'd have to revisit it. What he's saying is, yeah, boys can compete against girls and girls can't really say anything about it. When he says, well, this is one of the most difficult societal questions. No, it's not. It's a very simple question. Can men magically become women? That's the question. That's what it boils down to. Can men magically become women? And is there therefore no difference, really, no substantial difference between men and women? Simple question, Merrick Garland doesn't want to answer it. He can answer it, but he doesn't want to answer it. Because he's his answer is radical. When he says, look, I don't know if I'm going to be making policy on this,

if you're the Attorney General of the United States, this is one of the most hotly debated issues, and you are going to have to interpret specifically this kind of law, then it is not only important that you know the answer to that question, but it is your job. So if you're going to, in this sort of cowardly way, say, well, I don't know that I'll have any of course you will. Do you not even know what your job is? Of course you will. But he doesn't want to say. And then he comes out with that very courageous statement. Look, my guiding principle is I think people should be treated with dignity and respect. Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. That's almost as brave as Joe Biden saying, I believe the nation should still have borders for now.

Yeah, sure, buddy. Oh, great. Dignity and respect. We all agree on that. But is it your view that we should force little girls to compete against grown men? I mean physically grown. I suppose they're the same age. But much more grown out. They're bigger. They're stronger. They're faster because men are different than women and lose their scholarships and lose their trophies and by that same principle have to go to the men's changing room in the public pool, or rather have men go into their changing room in the public pool, which destroys the entire concept of men's and women's changing rooms, have to use the bathroom with men. What is your answer? That actually is a radical question. And sadly, I think he gave us our answer. If you want simple answers to complex questions, head on over to rockauto.com. Rockauto.com is a family

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anything and then, you know, they go in the back, they don't have the part, they order it online, probably from rock auto.com, then they charge you twice as much. Why would you do that? When the rock auto.com catalog is so simple to navigate, even I can do it. Go to rock auto.com right now, see all the parts available for your car truck and then write Knowles. KnaW. LAS? In there, how did you hear about this box so that they know we sent you. Speaking of Supreme Court nominees, I guess in this case of successful Supreme Court nominees, unlike Mara Garland, who was an unsuccessful Supreme Court nominee. Justice Thomas is the last tough guy left in America, the last guy with really rock-ribbed moral vision. Honorable mentions

to Alito here, and I suppose even Gorsuch, even though I still haven't forgiven Gorsuch for that transgender decision. The Supreme Court was asked to hear a case, the final case of the 2020 election regarding mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. There were lots of questions about mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania because, probably most importantly, the Supreme Court, or I'm sorry, the Constitution of Pennsylvania prohibits the use of these widespread mail-in ballots that we saw in the 2020 election. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in a very much. very politically motivated decision, just chose to ignore that part of the Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court didn't want to hear about it. Then there was this issue of mail and ballots

coming in after election day, whether or not those can be counted. Supreme Court actually was sort of willing to weigh in on that, but now they're not willing to hear the case regarding the validity of these ballots. Sadly, you got all the libs voting not to hear the case. You also have John Roberts, but I guess I repeat myself. You also have Amy Barrett, voted not to hear this case. You also have Brett Kavanaugh, voted not to hear this case. We fought real hard to get Brett Kavanaugh that seat. We fought real hard to send Merrick Garland into political irrelevance, at least for a few years.

And they went squishy. They went squishy on what should be a very simple answer. Now, Thomas Alito and Gorsuch did think that the court should weigh in on this matter. Thomas most vigorously. So Thomas, in his dissent, said something very important. And it's important for not just this election, because the court, generally speaking, they did say, we don't think that these votes would have changed the results of the 2020 election. However, they could have very serious impact in the future. And so we need to we need to take a look at them.

Thomas said something here that I have been saying since the 2020 election actually I have argued with many conservatives on this point since the 2020 election and Thomas you know how much I hate to say I told you so Thomas seems to be on my side of this question.

Thomas wrote and actually a little footnote in the case he says we are fortunate that many of the cases we have seen alleged only improper rule changes, not fraud. But that observation provides only small comfort. An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence. Also important is the assurance that fraud will not go undetected. This line, I want you to highlight this line. I don't know how you're going to highlight it in the air as you're listening to this in a podcast on the radio or on YouTube, but make note of this line. An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence.

When some of my friends on the right in the days after the 2020 election were demanding, they said, we need the evidence, we need the evidence, we need the evidence. I agreed with them. I said, yeah, you know, the Trump team obviously needs to make the case in court and they're not going to be able to make the case if they don't have evidence. However, this election looks pretty crooked to me, folks. It seems like there was a lot of irregularity going on. And what some of my friends, even on the right would say is, if you can't provide all of the evidence, then we must conclude that the election was totally fine and there were no questions. It was absolutely legit. And I said, no, that's not true. You don't get to, in the weeks and months before the election, change practically all the rules, all of the important rules surrounding election integrity.

You don't get to violate the state constitution, for goodness sakes, in Pennsylvania to give an advantage to Democrats. You don't get to extend election day into election month, thereby diminishing election integrity, and making it more vulnerable to fraud. You don't get to extend the counting of the ballots. You don't get to do all these things that cut at the heart of election integrity and then tell me the burden is entirely on me to prove that there was some shenanigans going on. I'm seeing what you're doing. You're taking away all of the safeguards.

Therefore, it is absolutely my right to raise questions. I, it is absolutely my right to not have much confidence in this electoral process. That's what Thomas is saying right here. Justice Thomas, the man, the man left on the Supreme Court. I like some of the other guys too, depending on the day, especially Alito. But Thomas, Thomas is one of the most clear-eyed conservatives in the entire country. He's making exactly the same point. don't think that there is anything illegitimate or wrong or shameful about pointing out that when

you get rid of a lot of the election integrity measures, people are going to lose some confidence in the election. Speaking of frauds, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Fauci's back. Actually, speaking of frauds and things that I hate to say I told you so about, Dr. Fauci's back. He's really losing his appeal, I think by the minute, even among some people who are more in the center and maybe even on the left. Dr. Fauci of 15 days to slow the spread fame is telling us that we will probably need to wear masks even after the vaccine, after this, after that, until 2022. Why do you think Americans might have to wear masks into 2022? You know, because it depends on the level of dynamics of virus that's in the,

the community and that's really important because that gets back to something again that you said if you see the level coming down really really very low i wanted to keep going down to a baseline that's so low that there's virtually no threat or not no it'll never be zero but a minimal threat that you will be exposed to someone who is infected so if you combine getting most of the people in the country vaccinated with getting the level of a virus in the community very, very low, then I believe you're going to be able to say, you know, for the most part, we don't necessarily have to wear masks. So I love this, the CNN lady is giving me a lot of respect for it.

I don't even know her name, but I am getting some respect for her because she is pushing back on Fauci. She says, well, hold on. We get the vaccine. We get, why do we have to do this? Because, well, you see, because I want the virus to get down to below zero. I want there to be negative virus in the world so that. of course, it can never be negative virus. It can never be zero. So you're always going to need good old

Dr. Fauci. Dr. Fauci's always going to have to tell you what to do. But we'll get a very, very, very low. And then we'll eliminate gems and lives in utopia. That's what I want. Say, how about we just, you know, we just take off the masks then. If that's your argument, let's just take it off. This is the sort of thing that the people who said, many of the people who said, many of my friends, many conservative friends, said from the beginning, they said, just wear the mask. It's not a big deal. And I have said, basically since the very beginning, the masks are not just dumb, but really bad as a political matter. For all of the various left-wing sensors out here, I suppose I need to clarify. I'm not talking about the science, because this isn't really about

the science. This is about the politics. As a political, as a political, I suppose I need to clarify, I'm not talking about the science. I'm not talking about the science. as a political matter, what the people who believe just wear the mask, it's not a big deal. What they thought was, well, if we all wear the masks, we can go back to normal. But the opposite is true. Every minute that we wear the masks is more likely to extend the length of this whole lockdown, this epidemic, this social upheaval. Because the masks are not a source of comfort. The masks are a sign, a visual sign, and a very blatant one to everybody that we are in the midst of something really, really crazy and probably pretty dangerous because we haven't done this before as a society. We've never mandated that we all just put filthy cloth over our mouths

wherever we go and muzzle ourselves, outdoors, indoors, anywhere you go. So it doesn't serve the purpose that the people who said, oh, it's not a big deal, just do it, we'll get back to normal, doesn't serve the purpose that they thought it would. As long as we are wearing the masks, Dr. Fauci is in control because the masks are the sign that we're amid the historic unprecedented public health crisis and all we can do is empower Dr. Fauci our brilliant wonderful leader

who is venerated as an icon in many parts of the left. There's Dr. Fauci Day now on Christmas Eve in Washington, D.C. Do you remember that? The mayor named it Dr. Fauci Day. Didn't acknowledge, you know, this is Christmas Eve. Isn't that a little whiz. kind of a weird liturgical calendar. And Fauci himself sort of admits it. We want to get that number

low, low, low. But it's never totally gone. And Dr. Fauci has never totally gone either as long as we empower him in this way. And as long as we radically change our behavior and our appearance. I mean, the most intimate kind of decisions that we make about how we comport ourselves in the world, as long as we entirely defer to him on that, that little dude is in control. You know, we are going to be hearing quite a lot about the authoritarian left on the march from Mr. Shapiro coming up after this. So go be sure to check that out. Also, we are going to be having our backstage tomorrow, February 24th. It's going to be a ton of fun.

There's going to be a lot of stogies. There's going to be a lot of drinks. It's going to be very, very enjoyable. And we have a new show coming out this Friday featuring our very own Ben Shapiro. There are many narratives going on around hot topic issues. It is very difficult to keep track of all the newest controversy. and non-traversies that the left pretends to be offended by, which is why you're going to want to tune into debunked to see Ben expose leftist

fallacies in 15 minutes or less. This show will be available exclusively to DailyWire members. So if you're not already a member, go to DailyWire.com slash subscribe, use code debunked to get 25% off. The reasons to join DailyWire keep on piling up. I am getting crushed by them. It is an avalanche of reasons. Head on over.

Use code debunk for 25% off today. Head to DailyWire.com. We'll be right back with a lot more. I read a headline the other day. Headlines said, Boy Scouts welcomes first class of girl Eagle Scouts. My first thought was, no, they didn't. They didn't.

The Boy Scouts did not welcome the first class of girl Eagle Scouts. Now, I know that there is an organization called the Boy Scouts, and I know that the Boy Scouts now lets in girls. And I know that there's a designation called the Eagle Scouts, and I know that the Eagle Scouts now have some girls in it. But it is not possible for the Boy Scouts to have girls in the Scouts. Because the Boy Scouts are the Boy Scouts. And the minute they let in a girl, they cease to be the Boy Scouts.

they might pretend to be the Boy Scouts, but they are not. It is not possible. Going back to our friend, old Uncle Aristotle, as we call them around these parts, you cannot simultaneously have a thing and the opposite of the thing and have them be true at the same time. The Boy Scouts can only have boys in them. I can't believe that we have to spend time saying this. But I think the reason we have to say this,

is because we live in a culture that's very open and very liberal and very inclusive. And there are some benefits of this, but it can be taken to absurdities. And even conservatives embrace all this kind of language. We're open-minded. You know, I'm a free speech absolutist. I, yeah, man, I don't want any sort of exclusion or censorship whatsoever. You need exclusion for society. to make sense. I'm not saying unjust exclusion. I don't want that, but you do need just exclusion. For instance,

the men's bathroom must exclude women. Simply for it to be the men's bathroom, it has to exclude women. Same thing is true of the women's bathroom. If the women's bathroom is open and liberal and inclusive of men, then it hasn't become an inclusive, open, liberal women's bathroom. It just stopped being the women's bathroom. The same thing is true of the Boy Scouts. If the Boy Scouts, in the name of liberality and openness and inclusion and diversity accepts women, you haven't created this more open Boy Scouts, you've just abolished the Boy Scouts. There's been a lot of talk about norm, normal. When are we going to get back to normal? We're wearing masks. We're not seeing our grandparents. We're not having Thanksgiving dinner. When are we going to get back to normal?

Norms define normal. We are edging day by day by day that we let this nonsense go on, day by day by day that we wear the stupid masks. We are creating a new normal. It is now normal to wear the masks, and it's abnormal not to wear the masks. And you can't have a society that's free of norms. There's no such thing. I think we like to fool ourselves of that.

The left really pushes this idea that you don't need any norms. There's nothing that we ought to do. We just do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, maybe. And the right has adopted a lot of that same language. Oh, man, I don't care what you do. It doesn't affect me. Live and let live, ma'am. Norms are inevitable.

Norms are inevitable. If you are, I think a lot of us want to pretend that, oh, man, just who cares if the Boy Scouts let some girls and, you know, it's not such a minor issue. Well, I mean, it's, it is and it isn't. It's a minor issue in that I'm not a member of the Boy Scouts, and I have no intention of sending my son to that. the Boy Scouts, but it's a big issue in that we as a society are now saying you're not allowed to have the Boy Scouts. You're just destroying those sorts of things. And if you follow this gender ideology to its logical conclusion, not only do you get rid of the bathrooms and the girls' sports, you get rid of girls' schools, you get rid of sororities, you get rid of fraternities,

you get rid of anything that makes any distinction between men and women. I don't know about you. I find the distinction between men and women to be one of the things that gives life, it's joy. You know, one of the things that makes this world kind of nice, that men and women are different. I like women, you know, it's sort of that men are from Mars, women are from Venus. That's kind of one of the playful aspects of the world, the complementarity between the sexes. But we are now being told you can't have that. And if you want a society that does still have that, you have to stand up for that.

And that's an exclusive claim. Truth claims tend to be exclusive. But the gender ideology is marching onward. My friend Ryan Anderson, Ryan T. Anderson at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, he was with the Heritage Foundation for a long time. He wrote a book with, I think, the greatest title I've ever read on a book. The title is, when Harry became Sally, responding to the transgender moment. Just a tremendous. That guy could have scribbled in crayon in between the covers. He still would have sold a bunch of copies. So a very, very enjoyable book. I highly recommend it. Amazon took it down. Amazon took down when Harry became Sally because, I don't know, because it's politically incorrect. It's hateful. It's bigoted. You've got one of the most respected republic scholars in the entire mainstream conservative movement, Ryan T. Anderson, puts out this, you know, very academic work on transgenderism taken down for hate speech. Meanwhile, I just read from Ryan's Twitter account, Apple I Books is taking it down now. You can't download it. It's going to be banned. I have a book, by the way, I may have mentioned this, coming out on this very topic, why conservatives have gotten this issue so wrong, why every attempt that they've made to fight political correctness has actually helped advance political correctness over the last several decades. I have this book coming out. It's called Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. It is currently up on Amazon. It is.

Amazon. I don't think it's going to stay up on Amazon. I think that when the left understands the thesis of this book and some of the arguments that are made in the book, I think they are going to take it down. So if you want to get it, I would urge you to pre-order it now because I really, I'm not just selling books, though I would like to do that too. But I don't know. If they're going to take down Ryan's book, I can't imagine what the future is from my book or even many other conservative books that dare to talk about anything other than cutting taxes or something, that dare to talk about any cultural issue. And what we're really talking about here is cancel culture, because what you're hearing from some of the squishes who call themselves conservatives,

but also from the left is it's not cancel culture to take down Ryan's book. We don't like that book. Amazon has no obligation, or Apple has no obligation to host a book that they disagree with. Come on, they're private companies. It's a free market, right? That's not cancel culture. I have said, basically from the beginning of this whole thing, this whole show is basically just, I hate to say, I told you so, from the beginning of this whole thing, I have said that I don't think cancel culture is a particularly precise or helpful term because it falls into the classic trap of political correctness, which is political correctness is the instrument by which the left attacks traditional standards. It's just an attack. It's just a criticism.

You've heard of critical theory. It's like that. It just criticizes and criticizes and criticizes and tries to tear down the old traditional order. Then conservatives respond to that either by acquiescing and saying, okay, well, I'll go along. You know, what's the big deal? Right? Sort of the thing on masks. Okay, no big deal. I'll just go along. Or the other way conservatives react is they say, hey, I oppose any kind of standards. I oppose any kind of censorship. I oppose any kind of guardrails on our society. So I'm against cancel culture. And then either way, the left wins because now nobody is defending the old traditional moral standards. I've mentioned this before.

Sometimes you see this on left wing Twitter accounts and things. They'll send these memes around. It'll be a picture of Joe McCarthy and they'll say, you know, conservatives were doing cancel culture before it was cool. Conservatives originated cancel culture. And there's some truth to that. McCarthyism, which until very recently was to, was to do. defended by all the mainstream conservatives, the idea that you could root out communists who are working for foreign governments who were seeking to subvert your country, it's not a particularly

controversial point of view, though it's been revised through various political activists to say that it would be. That's not wild. That's not extraordinary. That's been true since the beginning of the country. We've always had laws against sedition. We've always had laws against fraud. We've always had laws against obscenity, though they're not really enforced much these days. They were still being enforced even a dozen years ago. We still have, or I suppose now, now going on 14 years ago when George Bush jailed a pornographer because the pornography was so obscene. There are always constraints on language and speech. Do you think that if some guy walks into your office, he's got a Nazi armband on, he walks up to the water cooler and starts screaming Zig Heil,

do you think that guy has a right to keep his job? Do you think that if he were, fired for that, that would be cancel culture? No, of course. You absolutely agree, as we all do, that private associations and businesses and even whole societies have the right to determine their standards and their norms. Just by definition, every society does that. So I don't use the term cancel culture. When I use it, when I invoke that term, I'm referring to a very specific thing, which is what we see going on right now. It's when the left targets conservatives for saying perfectly reasonable things. The difference between my definition of cancel culture and the kind of abstract version is I'm talking about a real thing that's actually happening. I'm describing a

discrete specific phenomenon. And the substance of that, it's not just the form that matters. It's not just that people are being censored or ostracized. It's the substance. What are they being censored for? What are they being ostracized for? If some guy has the armband on and he says, Zygile at the water cooler, then I don't think it's wrong to ostracize him from the company. But if another guy walks up to the water cooler and he's got an American flag and he says, I'm a Yankee doodle dandy and he gets fired for that, that I am against. That is the sort of cancel culture that we're seeing right now. People saying perfectly mainstream, patriotic, traditional American things and having their

lives ruined for that. But the substance there really matters. And this brings us to CPAC. The conservative political action conference has been going on for a long time. the American Conservative Union puts it on. It's always a very fun event. I went last year where we did a verdict episode with Ted Cruz. A lot of, I've been going for years and years. I think I went to my first CPAC 10 years ago. CPAC's title this year is America uncanceled, fighting back against cancel culture and fun, fair enough. But they just found out that one of their speakers, this guy, young Pharaoh,

who I don't know what he does, but I don't know. He's like some pop culture guy or something. Young Pharaoh has said some very offensive things about Jews and other people. So what does CPAC do? They cancel them from their roster. Now CPAC is being called hypocrites because they're indulging in cancel culture. I don't think CPAC is being hypocritical at all. I think it is the shallowest, stupidest read of the term cancel culture to suggest that you can never have any standards at all.

I think it is that that kind of a shallow interpretation that has allowed political correctness to advance for decades and decades. And actually, if you believe the argument of my book, it's been advancing for about a century. There is nothing conservative about removing all the guardrails. Think about it like a country. Think about it just like a country. A country needs borders. That was what Merrick Garland finally acknowledged that Joe Biden thinks about.

He says, look, he believes that. He believes that it's a country that has borders. All countries have borders. And what borders mean is some people are in and some people are out. A certain area defines what the country is and things outside that area. That's not the country. The same thing is true in our philosophy. Do you think if CPAC invited someone to speak, forget about, you know, anti-Jewish comments? Let's make it even more basic than that. Some guy gets invited to speak at CPAC and then in between the time you, you know, anti-Jewish comments. Let's make it even more basic than that. Some guy gets invited to speak at CPAC and then in between the time you, he gets invited in the time he speaks, he becomes a liberal Democrat. And he wants to give a speech on how great AOC is and how he can't wait to vote for Joe Biden's reelection, or better yet, Kamala Harris. Do you think CPAC has an obligation? You know, in its opposition to cancel culture, an obligation to put that guy on stage? No, of course not. If anything, CPAC has an obligation to take that guy off the roster, because this is the conservative political action conference. And conservatism stands for something. We're debating what that stands for. But we absolutely must define it. And actually,

the unwillingness, the cowardly unwillingness to define what conservative stand for is what has made us lose many, many, many times over the past several decades. President Trump, one of the few Republicans to win in recent years, though then he, sadly, is no longer president. But he did win in 2016. Trump is going to speak at CPAC, and the reports are that President Trump is going to speak on the future of the GOP. There are some reports that he's going to say he's the presumptive nominee in 24. I don't know. They might just be floating that just to get some buzz or some publicity or something.

But it does seem likely that he's going to be speaking on the future of the GOP. What is the future of the GOP? I don't know. We're going to be debating that. Obviously, I have my preferences. other people have other preferences. But the one thing I know that it's not going to be if the GOP has a future at all is the old GOP of the last 20 years. It's not going to be that because that GOP doesn't win any battles. Even when they win elections, they don't win any substantive battles. You lose

all the important issues. You lose every important issue up to and including the freaking girl's bathroom. You couldn't even conserve that. Whatever the future of the GOP is, whatever the future of conservatism is, it's going to have to conserve something, which brings us to an article in Reason. I just read an article in Reason magazine. Reason is the sort of libertarian website and magazine. And I have a great respect for many libertarians. I am not myself a libertarian, but I have respect for many libertarians. But I don't have respect for libertines. There should be a difference between libertarianism and libertinism, but increasingly, there really is not. The article in reason is, is there a future for fusionism? Fusianism

refers to the kind of conservative coalition that cropped up after World War II and defined the Cold War. And it was put together by guys like William F. Buckley Jr. and Ronald Reagan and National Review and got a man at Yale and all this sort of movement. And Buckley is kind of the central figure. Now, what, I actually think it's worth reading this reason article, even though they're wrong in their conclusion. But they say, the fall of the USSR meant the collapse of the common foe that had sustained the fusionist partnership of the kind of traditional conservatives and the libertarians and the warhawks. It was able to trundle on for a while, powered by a reservoir of goodwill, but it has long been running on fumes. In the last few years, the alliance's inherent

tensions have come to a head. It's increasingly common to hear that whatever value there may have been in cooperation during the 50, 60s, 70s, and 80s, the era of good conservative feelings is over. I agree with that. That's a good take. For many libertarians, this is where it goes off the rails. For many libertarians, the Trump years revealed their traditionalist allies to be hypocrites and opportunists, all too willing to sell out the ideals of fusionism in service of an aspiring dictator. Okay, here we go. Am I reading? What is this?

Is this CNN that I'm reading? The libertarians now are going to sound like MSNBC? Conservatives have commenced a not so slow dissent toward authoritarianism. Oh, if that word could be struck forever from the English language, I would pass a law to do it in my authoritarian abilities. It's what a stupid word. It's basically a meaningless word. And they're not so slow dissent toward authoritarianism. Some in this group suggest, for if the philosophy of liberty is to have a future, it must involve building bridges to the left, not to the right. And there it is. Russell Kirk, one of the great conservative writers and thinkers of the 20th century, long warned that the

alliance between libertarians and conservatives never made any sense that conservatives should be very wary of that because ultimately the libertarians were going to break to the left. And the many, many people who I think call themselves libertarian, but they're not really, they wouldn't agree with Reason Magazine. They're really more conservative than all that. They're going to have to pick aside. They're either going to have to go to the left and sound like MSNBC, like Reason Magazine here, or they're going to have to go and be conservative. What they really misunderstand here is they could change one word in this article and it would make sense. If they changed it to, if the philosophy of license, Is to have a future. It must involve building bridges to the left, not the right. But liberty and licentiousness are very different things. Lord Acton, a man revered by true libertarians, by libertarians of many, many decades and longer. What he said was, liberty is not, as many people commonly think it is, the ability to do whatever you want and pursue your appetites however you and your desires, however you want.

liberty is the right to do what you ought. I know this is a shocking statement for a lot of people. Liberty, freedom is not just the ability to do whatever we want. Because the thing is, if you just pursue your base passions all the time, then you're going to lose your liberty. Let's say, you know, I really want heroin. You're going to go out and shoot up a bunch of heroin and you say, oh, man, I've never been more free. Do you think heroin addicts have a whole lot of liberty? Do you think they're the freest people?

No, they're slaves. They're slaves to their appetites, which gets to the classical, conservative understanding of liberty. The man who sins is a slave to sin. We need liberal education to make sense of our liberty to tame our base passions, to tame our vices, to practice virtue, to develop our and cultivate our reason, cultivate our will, control our will, then we can be really free. This is what all the founding fathers believed. and the more libertine camp that has found itself on the right, that they no longer are like that. Now, I don't think, as some people on the right have said, some conservatives have said, we need to boot out all the libertarians or anything. I think that's a losing battle.

You know, I think that politics is the art of inclusion. You've got to bring people in if you want a winning coalition. So people who say, I'm a libertarian, you know, and they wave their gadden flag, and they say, darn it, I stand for the American tradition of liberty. Yeah, those guys, obviously, those are conservatives. Those are people who I think make common cause with us. But there's another type of libertarian. You know the type I'm talking about. If you've ever spent any time around a college campus or even high school, I guess,

you know those libertarians where the most important political issue to them is legalizing pot. You know, they forget about, you know, foreign policy, immigration, abortion, any sort of economic policy, trade. No, forget about that. The most important thing is that everyone gets to smoke the devil's lettuce, you know, the sin spinach. Those guys, I don't think they really have a future on the right. I don't think, there's nothing really conservative about them. Their understanding of liberty is totally wrong. I mean, those are the kind of guys, I think, that Reason Magazine is talking about right now. But the thing reason gets right, that I think

Trump is getting right in giving the speech at CPAC that all of us are intuiting is that whatever was meant by conservatism in the 20th century up till the end of the Cold War that was great, that worked, that defeated the Soviet Union. And then whatever was meant after that didn't really make a whole lot of sense and when you look back on the Bush years

do you really think like, oh yes, that was the triumph of conservative values in America? It was mostly a period of decline and loss of things that we cherish. So whatever is going to come next, it's going to be different than what it was in the past. For too long now, I think, conservatism has been canceled, to use a fattish and sort of stupid word. Conservatism has been canceled by people who want to make conservatism, basically the same thing as liberalism. And not let us defend any of the things we want to defend and not let us preserve anything resembling the American way of life. We're barely allowed to go outside anymore. And when we go outside,

we have to listen to some technicrat egghead tell us what to wear, even on our faces. No, if we're going to be conservatives in the future, we're going to have to conserve the traditions and the way of life that we've long cherished in this country. I'm Michael Knowles. It's the Michael Knowles Show. If you enjoyed this episode, 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 Walls 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, production manager, Pavel Vidovsky, editor and associate producer, Danny Damiko, Audio mixer, Mike Coramina, hair and makeup by Nika Geneva, and production coordinator, McKenna Waters. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire, 2021. Today on the Ben Shapiro show, Democratic Congress, people seek to purge media outlets that they don't like. Plus, President Biden holds an empathetic commemorative event for 500,000 Americans who died of COVID and the media go-gaga. That's today on the Ben Shapiro show. Give it a listen.