The Michael Knowles Show - Queen Elizabeth II Has Died | A Life To Remember

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

Queen Elizabeth, longest-reigning British monarch, dies at 96. "The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon," Buckingham Palace said in a statement Thursday afternoon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest reigning monarch, has died after 70 years on the throne at the age of 96. And it is somehow even sadder than a lot of us thought it would be. So sad that I had to come back on and do a bonus segment. I've already done my show for the day. I'll have another show tomorrow. But this is world historic news and news that people not just in the the United Kingdom, but people all around the world can't take their eyes off of. The fact that this very nice, very aged German lady, actually, of German extraction, and although she was the Queen of England, that she died at a ripe old age, is leaving people so, so sad. And it's not, I think, just because she was a very nice lady who did a very nice job for a very, very long time. I don't even think it's just because she lived such an extraordinary life. The first prime minister over whom she reigned

was Winston Churchill. The first American president whom she met as Queen of England was Harry Truman. That's not even that, I think, is why. I think the reason why people are so affected by her death is because it feels as though she was the last one, the last connection to, to, to, to, Western civilization at its height, the last connection to a generation that is gone, a generation that puts service above personal interest and a generation that valued and exemplified and put into their very lives the heights of Western culture and civilization. That's what it feels like to me at least. I think that's what it feels like to a lot of of people. Service was at the heart of this woman's life. She never retired. She never quit her job.

She kept working right up until the very end. She just received the Britain's new prime minister just days ago. An absolutely amazing work ethic. And it's what she promised at the very beginning of her reign. When Elizabeth was, I believe, 21 years old, she promised. this would have been in 1947, she promised that she would give her absolute utmost in service of her country and of her country and of her God. On my 21st birthday, I welcome the opportunity to speak to all the peoples of the British Commonwealth and Empire, wherever they live, whatever race they come from, and whatever language they speak.

I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and to the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong. But I shall not have strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do. I know that your support will be unfailingly given. God help me to make good my vow. And God bless all of you who are willing to share in it. It's one thing for a 21-year-old woman who becomes the queen seemingly accidentally. It's not as though she had always been in line to the throne. In fact, she only became the Queen of England because her uncle Edward VIII abdicated.

and her uncle Edward VIII abdicated because in many ways he was the opposite of Queen Elizabeth. He prioritized his own personal preferences. He prioritized his own leisure and his own lower desires. He wanted to marry an American divorcee. This was not possible because the monarch in England is not only the head of state but also head of the Church of England. This was not permitted, certainly not at the time. And so when he chose, when he had to choose between his personal preferences and his lusts and his desires and his duty, he chose his personal preferences. And then Elizabeth's father comes to the throne, George the 6th. Then when he dies, she becomes the queen. And it's easy to say when you're 21 years old, I dedicate myself to service. I will never

stop serving my country. But to actually do it is what is so amazing. To actually do it. Not in the spotlight all the time, not constantly receiving applause. Of course, the queen was admired for her entire life. But that's not where that sort of work happened. That's not where, forget even the work, the commitment, the sacrifice, the duty, every second of this lady's life in service of her country. Any time there was any conflict between her personal choices and her duty, this woman chose her duty. She did it in those quiet moments, the quiet and steady and deadly. determined and constant service. That is a far more difficult thing. And Queen Elizabeth elaborated on these themes in one of her most famous addresses ever. That would have been

10 years after her promise of service in 1957, in her first Christmas broadcast, which was broadcast on television, Queen Elizabeth put the matter of duty and service and the monarchy and the whole British form of government and the whole body politic in Britain, put it into the context of this rapidly changing world where you had rapidly changing technologies like the television,

but you had rapidly changing social mores, new perspectives against the monarchy, against tradition, against the British nation, as it was known. You've come out of the Second World War, and their Queen Elizabeth explains how to make sense of it all in the modern world. I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct.

It's inevitable that I should seem a rather remote figure to many of you, a successor to the kings and queens of history, someone whose face may be familiar in newspapers and films, but who never rarely touches your personal lives. But now, at least for a few minutes, I welcome you to the peace of my own home, that it's possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us. Because of these changes, I'm not surprised that many people feel lost and unable to decide

what to hold on to and what to discard, how to take advantage of the new life without losing the best of the old, but it's not the new inventions which are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery. They would have religion thrown aside. Morality in personal and public life made meaningless. Honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint. At this critical moment in our history, we will certainly lose the trust

and respect to the world if we just abandon those fundamental principles which guided the men and women who built the greatness of this country and Commonwealth. Today, we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in battle, but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics. And I think this is another reason why people are so affected by this woman's death all over the world is because our culture is just mired in cynicism. Our culture is just mired in this distrust of anything high or noble, any claims of truth, any

kind of dignity at all. We just live in such an undignified, shameless culture now. When you think of the way that people speak in public life on television, the way that people speak even from high political office. The sorts of things, I don't even want to sally this moment in which we're talking about Queen Elizabeth's life and legacy by discussing the present troubles in the American government. But you think of the kinds of people running the American government, the shameless, debauch, disgusting things that they do, and that they do publicly, not even that they're caught in a scandal. They post photographs of all sorts of disorder. You think, in that culture, you had a handful of people, and probably most notable among all of them, Queen Elizabeth, who stood there as a reference point to say, no, it doesn't have to be this way.

You actually can conduct yourself with dignity. You can aim at something higher. That line from that Christmas speech, the trouble is caused. It's not caused by the technology. It's not caused by the technology. It's not. Not that we're saying that we conservatives or we traditionalists or we, I don't know, these days you might say we normal people who just think things have gone a little bit wrong and we'd like to recover some of what we've lost. It's not that we want to just freeze time in the past. It's not it. It's not even that we hate technology, that we're Luddites or something. You can use technology to some good. It can be used for evil, but it can be used often to some good. Queen Elizabeth gave us that speech on television. That's the reason we can watch it right now.

Now, that's not where the trouble lies. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery. It's so common today to hear glib, flippant, shallow people say, what, you still believe X, Y, and Z idea? Come on, man, it's 22. Come on, it's 2022. And the very fact that chronology has progressed must mean that you can't believe such a thing anymore, as though there were no eternal truths. You still believe in marriage and family and country and God and responsibility before all of those things. Come on, man, it's 2022. No, some ideals are ageless. And Queen Elizabeth made clear what she must. by those ageless ideals, she said that these people, these unthinking people who carelessly throw

away the ageist ideals, they would have religion thrown aside. Morality in personal and public life made meaningless. Honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint. Queen Elizabeth was not some partisan. She was a true head of state, a queen of the whole country. It's difficult for those of us who don't have such a figure to really make sense of. We think, well, you know, was she a conservative or a liberal? Was she a Democrat or a Republican? What is she? Well, these problems are not just the problems of the left.

The left causes a lot of these problems. There's no question about that. In the very term, the left comes from the French Revolution. And the people who sat on the left of the National Assembly were the ones who wanted to get rid of the king and attack the church. So, yes, the left drives a lot of these problems, but not all of them. Those who would have religion thrown aside, I know plenty of people on the right who would have religion thrown aside, who at least wouldn't take it seriously. Those who would have morality and personal and public life made meaningless. How many people who call themselves conservative, who call themselves in the right wing,

do you know, who say, well, we can't legislate morality? Well, you're, what you think is good, maybe someone else thinks is bad. We can't, we can't get the government. involved. No, no, we can't say anything about morality. It's not just the left doing it. It's the right sometimes, too. Honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint. I know plenty of people, especially in the kind of business-first right-wing. You know, the people who only care about GDP don't care about anything else. The ones who want to get rid of the social issues, ignore the social and cultural issues. They're the sort of ones who say, well, I'm just in it to get my own profit. Self-interest. Greed is good. That kind of nonsense. That's a right-wing problem, too.

Not just a left-wing problem. It's why people are so affected by this woman's death. It's because we know that what she stood for and exemplified and personified is largely lost. Not just on one side of the political aisle or the other. It's just kind of lost. People don't have it anymore. Now, I think there is an inkling, the very fact that people are so moved by her life, so affected by her death, I think reminds us that there is a longing for this. The fact that you're seeing trends of younger people going back to churches and going back to churches that are specifically Orthodox, lowercase oh, you know, that take the religion seriously, that are traditional. I think that tells you that we look back and we say, huh, maybe all this change.

wasn't so good necessarily. At least not all of it was good. I think this is probably going to be Elizabeth's lasting legacy. To make people think in our shallow age, to make people think twice, this shallow age we live in where we're convinced that all monarchy is terrible. All monarchy is terrible. All democracy is good. Then you look around some of our democracies. The very people who are so quick to invoke our democracy, they seem like some of the worst rulers of them all. And very often what is called a democracy is very often just an oligarchy in disguise. We look at someone like Elizabeth and we say, huh, maybe that, I was told monarchy was so bad, but that lady seems to be ruling a lot better than some of the people in our so-called democracy.

Maybe it turns out that when you get rid of one set of elites, you don't get rid of elites, period. you get a different set, and sometimes a much worse set of elites. Maybe people have to think twice, beyond a monarchy. Just a tradition. We live in this glib age where we say, oh, that's the past. We hate the past. Come on, we're in the new future. We have cool little gadgets on our wrist, and we can get our emails on our wrist.

We're so much better and smarter. Everything's gotten better. We look around and we say, well, I don't know. Anyone living right now, would you say that anyone, yourself included, are you living a life as good as Queen Elizabeth? No, you don't have castles, you don't have palaces, you don't have guards, but so what? I'm saying in your personal comportment, money aside, money can't buy class, and very often the wealthiest people in the world are the most miserable. They're the ones who die early of all sorts of drug overdoses and degeneracy,

so money's not going to fix it. Would you say right now that there are people who are living a life as good is that woman? Probably not. Probably not. Why is that? Because we live in the modern world, and we say the modern world is so much better, you know, because we can, like, have sex all the time with whoever we want, and we can do whatever drugs we want, they're all getting legalized, and we don't need to really work all that hard, you know, and we can get, we can just kind of get whatever we want on demand without really waiting or patience or any virtue. Is that making for a better world? No. No, I don't think it is. I don't know that the world in 2022 is so much better than it was in 1957 or 1947 when Elizabeth gave those speeches. In many ways, the world is much worse.

I think this might be her lasting legacy. Just this thought that maybe everything old isn't bad, everything new isn't so great. And maybe there is a way to age gracefully. The woman aged so gracefully. And she didn't get the constant nip-tuck and she didn't try to turn herself into a Kardashian. She physically aged very gracefully. And she aged gracefully in her entire person. And she embodied her role, her role as queen, her role as mother, her role as grandmother, her role as great-grandmother, her role as head of state, or a role as head of the church, the Church of England. She did all of these things with grace, and she accommodated herself to the world as it is. She didn't just live in the past. You didn't have to dust her off,

okay? She wore modern clothing with dignity, with class. She, after the September 11th attacks in the United States, she bucked a 600-year-old tradition. She had the good, guard outside the palace, play the star-spangled banner. It's quite revolutionary. Well, not really. No. There's something deeper there. It's sort of the way that if you want to be an avant-garde artist, you need to know how to paint first. You know, when young people, they don't want to actually learn anything about a craft or an art form. So they say, no, I'm just going to be free form in avant-garde. You'll say, well, before you become avant-garde, maybe you become guard, you know, maybe figure out how to paint first, and then you can become more abstract. And because Elizabeth was so reverent toward the tradition, so she had a perspective, not of resentment for her ancestors, but of gratitude to the people who came before her, came before her, and to the people who were her subjects, because she was so steeped in tradition, and so reverent toward the tradition, she could recognize when circumstances,

is called to buck a tradition. And that was an organic sort of change. And it meant quite a lot to the people of the United States. I remember it. I remember it when it happened. I was a little kid, but I remember it. That is a lasting legacy. That is something that we don't see anymore.

And the antipathy toward the royal family as such, there have been all sorts of royals who have had all sorts of, done all sorts of terrible things. In many ways, it makes Elizabeth even more admirable because she withstood them. And the most emotion she ever showed, as she had all of these awful scandals of her children and the divorces and the terror attacks in her country and all these awful things. She referred to it as the Anus Oribilis. Even when she's expressing emotion, she does it in Latin. This woman just had courage and this woman had dignity.

and had a stiff upper lip. Now today, you think of young people who, you know, a random person they meet on the street won't refer to them by their imaginary pronoun and they break down in tears. Meanwhile, you've got this woman who has lived through and led her country through major tragedies. Keeps a stiff upper lip and remains grateful. And the kind of reflexive antipathy, I think,

that a lot of people have, especially some Americans have, for the royal family. I think that's a mistake too, because it comes from a, I think, an undue elevation of the meritocracy. We say, well, the only people who should have privileges are the people who earn those privileges. And there's something to that. Obviously, you want people to accomplish things. You want people to earn things. You don't want an unfair, unjust system. But meritocracy is a really slippery, tricky thing, and it gives way very easily to pride. And at the most basic level, there can be no such thing as a pure meritocracy, because we are all given such privilege. The fact that you were born in the United States, if you were listening, people listen from all

over the world, I suppose, the very fact that you were born in the West, let's say, wherever you were born. The very fact that you were born at all is a privilege. You could have been killed in the womb, as many people are. The fact, if you had some parents, that's quite a privilege. Two parents married together and you grew up in their household, that's an amazing privilege. If you were raised by anybody at all, that's a privilege too. The people that you chance to meet along the way, the helpful priest, I don't know, the nice guy at the deli counter that you meet, who gives you some advice, who gives you some encouragement. Someone in your life who gave you a break, gave you a lucky break maybe, in your career. And yes, you earn things, you work hard, true.

But we shouldn't allow the fact that we have earned certain things and accomplished certain things to give us a swell head and to make us lose sight of so much that we have been given. Because then we will discard it. We will cast it away. And that's what we are doing with our cultural inheritance here in the United States. Queen Elizabeth was born royal. And then because of happenstance, because of the twists of fortune or providence maybe, she came into the line of the royal throne, and then she ruled her country. She was given immense privileges. Of course, palaces, castles. And she fulfilled the duty that came with those privileges. When we, in this imagined pure meritocracy that we all flatter ourselves that we're living in,

when we deny the real privileges that we have all been given, then it's much easier to deny the duty as well. And we do deny that duty. We frequently do. We talk only from the perspective of rights. The left in America talks only from the perspective of rights. That you have a right to, I don't know, you have a right to be called whatever fake pronoun you make up. You have a right to someone else's money.

You are right to this, you are right to that. But the conservatives do this too. The conservatives view politics very often through the lens of rights. I have my right to my gun. I have my right to my this. I have my right to my that. Yeah, sure, we do have some rights. Whatever happened to duty, whatever happened to sacrifice,

whatever happened to the natural bonds of loyalty that we have the very moment we're born into this world, born into a family and into a community and into a country and into, and all underneath the providence and the kingship of our creator. The duty that we have to our God. What happened to that? You don't hear people talk about that anymore. One of the last people you heard talk about that was the lady who died today. And I think it's one of the reasons that people feel that they will miss her so much and that people are so affected by her death. the woman finished the race.

She did what she was called on by her country and by history to do. And she said a very good example, and she endured that whole time. She was, I think, far and away the noblest and most admirable public figure in my lifetime. I think we all fear that there will not be another like her, that she is. the last of her breed, or at the very least that there won't be another like her for a very long time. We can pray that there will be. We can pray for the repose of her soul. Requehs Scott in Pache. We can observe, this was an amazing, this was reported by the British journalists. There are some photos of it, I think, on Getty images. As she lay dying at Balmoral in Scotland,

a double rainbow appeared over Buckingham Palace. And then at the very moment, after she died, when they lowered the flags to half-mast, another rainbow appeared over Windsor Castle. It reminds me of a line from my priest, Father George Rutler, who quoting scripture says, it's an evil generation that looks for signs and wonders, but it's a stupid generation that ignores signs and wonders. And when you see these little signs, they're little hints of providence, I think.

A little bit of sort of God peeking out behind the curtain. To remind people that there are things that are higher. We're not just meat. We're not just flesh. We're not just our lusts and our appetites and our interests. We're not just atomized individuals clubbing each other to get a little bit more of an advantage. But there is a transcendent moral order to the world. There is such a thing as justice.

There is such a thing as goodness and rightness and truth. And we ought to live our lives in accordance with those things. And it might not always be the most celebrated, and we might go through all sorts of travails and troubles. In fact, we will. We will do that. But it will be worth it. And we can recognize it.

Even the ones of us who want to deny that those things exist. You look at a life well-lived like that in service to others, and you recognize that dignity, and you admire it. And would that we could all live so admirable a life. Rest in peace to the queen, long live the king, and we'll see you tomorrow on the show.