Ep. 1804 - WE WON: Cracker Barrel Abandons Gay Millennial Rebrand

Remember a couple weeks ago when the libs were furious because President Trump was going to remove art from the Smithsonian?

Well, the Daily Mail has a list of the art that the president reportedly wants to remove.

And now I'm furious too, because after taking a look at a few of these examples, I cannot believe that President Trump wouldn't promise to burn them as well.

I'm Michael Knowles.

This is the Michael Knowles Show.

Welcome back to the show.

There's a lot of scuttlebutt right now that the president could imminently go soft on Haitian oregano, reschedule the old marijuana.

You know what I'm talking about?

The Peruvian parsley.

You know, do you dig?

You know, the Colombian cumin.

You know what I'm mean?

I'm talking about jazz cigarettes, talking about the sin spinach, the devil's lettuce.

I'm talking about pot.

Well, anyway, there are a lot of reasons that have been coming to light recently as to why I think it would be wise for the White House to ditch this because I think it would be playing into the Democrats' hands.

We'll get to that in one second.

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This This art, it's too good.

It's too good.

So the Daily Mail is reporting on some of the art that President Trump wants to remove from the Smithsonian.

So many layers to this.

First of all, what the White House went out to do was to examine not just the art at the Smithsonian, but even the way the art was presented.

Because like all of the other cultural institutions and government institutions and educational institutions over the past several decades, the Smithsonian has been pushing a very left-wing view of America, which is anti-American, which is contrary to the truth, which gives a partial view of history that is actually contrary to the broader story of the country.

So, as we enter the bisesquicentennial, the 250th anniversary of America, it's time to re-examine that.

There's nothing wrong about this.

There's nothing authoritarian about this.

There's nothing Philistine or uncultured about this.

This is part of the job of the president, is to lead the country, to help tell the story of the country.

The president was elected not only with the Electoral College, but also by the popular vote.

So the people are asking for a correction to the errors of the past recent years and of the past recent decades.

And that doesn't just mean white papers and policy wonkery.

That also means cultural aspects.

That also means the self-conception of America.

This is what the people voted for, and they have the right to President Trump doing his job.

So

what kind of art are we talking about?

Here's one example.

This one is

by Rigoberto Gonzalez, and it's a family climbing up a ladder to cross the border wall, the Mexican border wall.

And it's a lady with a kid,

like a big baby, like a big mannerist looking baby, and then an illegal alien guy, and then another kid.

And

I guess it's a Mexican family.

I don't know.

The artist here, Rigoberto, says, my work is political, and that painting in particular was questioning the anti-immigrant sentiment of the time.

To be clear here, the painting isn't just about immigration.

It's specifically about illegal immigration, so clearly about illegal immigration, because it's the guy crossing the border wall.

Illegally, he's not at a checkpoint.

He's not flying over on an airplane.

He's illegally crossing a border wall.

So the Smithsonian, get this, the Smithsonian, the National Museum,

is promoting subverting one of the most basic laws about America.

Now,

I don't care how lib you are.

Certainly you would grant that the National Museum in the nation's capital funded by taxpayer dollars, surely you would grant.

that that museum should not be actively promoting subverting the most basic of laws.

There's something discordant about that.

Surely you would admit that, right?

Then on top of that, the painting sucks.

It's just not good art.

I don't know.

It's not the worst art I've ever seen,

but it's not good.

The guy ain't Caravaggio, okay?

So it's a fine, like, like if you had a friend in high school who was a pretty decent illustrator or painter,

this is about on that level.

Forget about the subject matter for a second.

This art just simply isn't good enough to go into the Smithsonian.

It was obviously only put there because, as the artist says, my art is political.

And this is what happens with so much of modern art.

Is

not only is the political message in your face and abhorrent, but often the political message is a kind of clever trick to get around the fact that the quality of the art, the technical skill involved in the art, just isn't that good.

So this is garbage.

And I'm not saying it has to be burned.

I'm not saying it has to be thrown in the trash, but this should be sold at TJ Maxx or something.

This should be in some kitsch section of a discount store that you can put next to your live, laugh, love sign in your living room.

This has no place at the Smithsonian.

It should be kicked out for reasons of taste and reasons of politics.

Next one,

in the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

A museum that itself should be removed for two reasons.

One, because the architecture is hideous and it's a mar on the National Mall, which has otherwise beautiful monuments on it generally.

But two, it's offensive to black people because it says that blacks aren't part of regular American history.

So there is an American history museum, and they say, no, no, no, blacks need their own museum because they're not part of regular American history.

So

for two levels, they should get rid of the whole museum.

But

within the museum, there is the monumental work by Mr.

Ibram X.

Kendi.

And that is how to be an anti-racist.

Ibram Kendi just lost his slush fund institute at Boston University.

He is a race hustler par excellence.

His career was effectively ended along with that of Robin DiAngelo by my friend Matt Walsh in his movie, Am I Racist, available exclusively on Daily Wire Plus.

This book,

it's not just that I disagree with the book.

I disagree with Capital by Karl Marx.

I don't think necessarily we should burn Capital.

I think it's worth reading to have an understanding of how political philosophy has developed.

There are plenty of books I disagree with.

I disagree with

many of the feminists.

I disagree with Mary Wollstonecraft.

I don't think we should burn Mary Wollstonecraft's book.

I don't think we should necessarily take her books out of museums.

I disagree with a lot of people.

Ibram Kennedy's book is illiterate drech.

It is absolute trash.

And it...

It really should not be in any self-respecting bookstore.

Perhaps it can be in the library as a kind of ironic inclusion, like as part of a clown show or something.

And it certainly should not be in a museum of the Smithsonian.

It's not that its political views are too radical.

Mein Kampf should be in libraries.

It's an important piece of historical

documentation, I guess.

It's an important piece of history.

It's an important piece of the development of ideologies to see how ideologies go off.

Communist Manifesto, you could say the same thing.

The works of Antonio Gramsci, you could say the same thing.

Plenty of things that we would all disagree with.

But this is trash.

It doesn't even rise to the level of good, villainous work.

And then finally, look, I could be here all day talking about this, but one last piece I want to show you.

This one actually has not yet made it to the National Portrait Gallery.

And in fact, its appearance at the National Portrait Gallery was canceled by the artist because of fear of reprisal from the Trump administration.

It's called Transforming Liberty.

Hold on, before, can you guess what it is?

It's the statue of Liberty, but as a giant drag queen.

A big black drag queen.

Transforming liberty.

And it's this big,

like doodle.

It's like a big doodle that my four-year-old could have done.

Except my four-year-olds would have been more sophisticated.

On a fuchsia background,

in this kind of ebony figure with big pink hair, a Lewinsky-esque blue dress,

standing unpersuasively on a light purple backdrop.

This is by Amy Sherrold.

It was not going to be at the National Portrait Gallery after Trump's election, and now it never will be.

Because

a few reasons.

One, the art is bad,

which is an important fact.

Two,

because the message is bad.

Three, because it's boring, because we've seen so much of this.

It's not even subversive.

I don't think all art should be subversive.

That itself is a very modern concept, but it's not even that.

It even fails by the standards of modern art.

It's boring and ugly and gross and it's just bad.

A reminder that,

you know, for a long time in Hollywood, we had something called the Hays Code, and this was Hollywood self-censoring.

And

eventually this was done away.

It was really Irish Catholics who were pushing this.

And then it was eventually done away with in the name of free speech.

The Hays Code produced the greatest movies, virtually all of the greatest movies ever made in Hollywood.

After the Hays Code, you saw movies go downhill.

Before the Hays Code, you had creepy, weirdo, voyeuristic movies like Freaks.

You know, there's a famous scene of one of us, one of us, Google gobble, Google gobble.

It's like weird, creepy stuff.

Then when Hollywood imposed limits on itself, you got good movies.

And then afterward, you still got some good movies every so often, but the concentration of them was greatly reduced.

My last point on the Smithsonian saga.

This is the ultimate vindication of my book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available wherever.

Thank you for my bell.

This is the vindication of this, because at the time I published that book, which was now four years ago,

the right was saying that we wanted just limitless expression.

That was the conservative value.

Censorship is of the left, but the right just wants limitless expression.

That was not true then.

That has never been true.

That was a total psyop by the left that the right fell for.

Conservatism.

I'll speak for myself.

I, a conservative, do not stand for limitless expression.

I think that's hippie and stupid and incoherent and lib.

I think that there's no difference between limitless expression and the ignorant braying of the lower beasts, okay?

Whatever the word conservative means, in my view, it does not stand for that.

My understanding of what conservative means involves taste.

and class and order and propriety.

That's what we want.

Okay.

We don't want, we're not anarchists.

We're not hyper individualists.

We're not relativists who say we can't know the difference between beautiful and ugly, good and bad.

We're not any of those things.

That's for the libs.

That's for the weirdos.

That's for the freaks who refuse to acknowledge reality.

We are civilized people.

We establish museums.

What for?

To help cultivate something

in people.

That's what culture does.

It cultivates something.

What are we cultivating within people?

Are we cultivating perversions and hatred of country and delusions?

That's what a lot of our, what passes for pop culture does now.

That's not what I want to cultivate.

I don't want my tax dollars going to that.

I don't, I would, I'm ashamed if my country puts that out in the Smithsonian.

Taste, class,

propriety, order, beauty.

These are things that museums are supposed to, the truth.

These are things that museums are supposed to conserve and promote trump once again ahead of the curve on this totally totally right okay i'm gonna sleep easier at night knowing that that garbage won't be in the smithsonian one way you can sleep better at night is by sleeping on a helix mattress go to helixsleep.com slash knolls i'm you notice i've been looking a little worse for wear recently you know a little uh the under eye bags seem to have under eye bags well that's because i've been on the road i've been traveling and when i travel there are so many great things that come from travel One of the real downsides, I don't get my comfy little mattress.

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Speaking of culture, the story is a couple days old now, but I have to get to it.

There's just been obviously too much going on.

Cracker Barrel totally folded.

I mentioned when I was at the White House the other day that Cracker Barrel started to fold at Cracker Barrel.

They at least responded to the people.

They said, look, no, we're going to, Uncle Herschel's going to be back, but we hear you.

Thank you for your feedback.

And we're going to keep listening to you as we move ahead.

I said, that's not enough.

That's not enough.

The whole value of Cracker Barrel is that you don't change.

That's your product.

It's not your dumplings.

It's not even your peg game.

What you are selling is not changing.

And the fact that the glasses lady who runs your company decided that what Cracker Barrel really needed was a big change shows that she fundamentally misunderstood what the company is.

That's why there was a backlash.

That's why the president weighed in.

Cracker Barrel folded.

They said there will not be a new logo.

We thank our guests.

After their first non-apology apology, they finally, they surrendered, waved the white flag, you know, the flag of the French army.

They said, we thank our guests for sharing your voices and love for Cracker Barrel.

We said we would listen and we have.

Our new logo is going away and our old timer will remain.

At Cracker Barrel, it's always been and always will be about serving up delicious food, warm welcomes, and the country, kind of country hospitality that feels like family.

As a proud American institution, our 70,000 hardworking employees look forward to welcoming you to our table soon.

Okay, good.

I think this is a signal with a little bit of face saving that the whole thing is done and probably the CEO is going to be fired.

Certainly should be fired.

I think this is a signal.

In case it's not, I'm going to say it's not just about how you need to listen to us.

It's not just about how interested we all are.

Remember that first non-apology said, oh, what this has really shown us is people really care about Cracker Burl.

And we really, oh, that's so nice how much you care.

So passive aggressive.

And finally said, all right, all right, all right, we'll give you the old logo back.

But it's not just about the old logo.

You need to re-redesign the interiors.

You bring back the old interiors.

I want the wooden tables with the wooden chairs.

I want the saws and the banjos on the walls.

I want it to be kind of disorganized and take a little while.

I want it to be Cracker Barrel, which is an old country store, which was founded in 1969 amid a tumult of cultural change in order not to change, in order to preserve something.

I don't want it to be Panera.

I don't want it to be a hospital cafeteria.

I don't want your sterile clinical fruitless modernity.

I want my old country store because I want my old country is what I want.

You get me?

I think they got the message.

I think they're just going to ditch the entire redesign because it was so catastrophically awful that it's the one thing that got the Republicans and the official Democrat Party to agree on, all saying we think the redesign sucks too.

The President of the United States weighed in on it

and some evidence that it's going in the right direction.

Got to give a hat tip to Robbie Starbuck here.

Not only did Cracker Barrel delete the new logo and probably the new interior, they deleted their Pride page.

They deleted their Pride page.

Cracker Barrel had,

until, I don't know, a few days ago, this big bringing the front porch to Pride.

This year, Cracker Barrel's focus was to be a part of the Pride experience.

We had two locations in the Pride Park, and we did Pride.

It's all this gay stuff.

This was very strange for Cracker Barrel because Cracker Barrel historically has not been totally down with the LGBT LMNOP.

In 1991,

Cracker Barrel had a rule that said that workers who failed to demonstrate, quote, normal heterosexual values could be fired just for that.

It was the 90s.

Well, it wasn't even that long ago.

Throughout the 90s, the company was regularly attacked by activists for being anti-gay.

In 2002,

Cracker Barrel received a score of zero from the first ever Corporate Equality Index.

But

19 years later, the Human Rights Campaign, which is this preposterously named LGBT activist organization,

they had a score of 80 from the HRC.

So they ramped up.

They were pretty...

Down with traditional sexual ethics for all of its history.

Then in the last four four or five years, I guess, just like the rest of the country, they ramped up the rainbow.

Now that's over because that pride page has now changed to culture and belonging.

Everyone feels it cracker barrel.

No, ain't no rainbows.

This is a brown and white back, black, you know, very muted background.

Basically all the colors that are not on the pride flag.

They don't want any part of it.

This is good.

This is right.

This is the thing.

We don't want people to be unjust or cruel.

No one's suggesting we, you know, boot homosexuals out of helicopters or anything like that.

Everyone could be cool.

Everyone could be normal, but we don't.

We don't go to Cracker Barrel for weird sex stuff.

There's plenty of weird sex stuff elsewhere in the world.

We don't want that.

We don't, you go to Cracker Barrel because you want your old country.

And people these days want their old country, okay?

Speaking of the munchies and subverting tradition, there's been this idea floating that the Trump administration, with all of its huge successes on the border, on diplomacy, especially, on the economy,

overturning all of the economists' expectations, there's been this weird thing that's come out that the president is going to go soft on drugs.

He's getting tough on crime, but he might go soft on drugs.

I don't know.

I think this is being pushed by corners of the White House that haven't gotten the message.

This feels very much like one of the few aberrations of the first term.

This feels like Kim Kardashian energy.

Did Kim Kardashian sneak back into the White House?

I hope not.

But this feels, I don't know, this feels very liberal to me.

I don't think this would be Trump's gut naturally.

Just having observed the man for a long time, I don't know.

This is, but reportedly, the rumor mill is saying that the White House might reschedule marijuana, which is to say they're going to weaken their stance on it.

They're going to lump it in with a bunch of other drugs that we don't take all that seriously.

And the practical effect of that is going to be a decriminalization and an encouragement of marijuana around the country.

And I just think this is a bad idea.

I think it's a bad idea from the sign of the times.

I think this is a bad idea in a partisan way.

I think this is playing into the liberals' hands.

And I don't think this is going to help.

I don't think there's going to be any real benefit to it.

You know, the rescheduling of marijuana

was a Biden initiative.

This is not a conservative initiative.

This This isn't a Republican.

This isn't a MAGA initiative.

This is a Biden initiative.

And in fact, last year when Biden was really pushing this, it was applauded by the ACLU.

Now, look, I'm not saying that this rule of thumb is dispositive 100% of the time in politics, but it is a good rule of thumb.

If all the bad people are on one side of an issue, probably you should be on the other side of the issue.

So Biden wanted to do this.

It was promoted by the ACLU.

It was led by, you know who led the reclassify, reschedule marijuana initiative?

It was the transvestite assistant health secretary, Richard Levine.

He was leading the charge.

What's it being pushed by in the private sector?

There's usually some money behind this stuff.

It's being pushed by corporate drug dealers.

And it's being pushed by them, not for any cause of social justice, but because if they reclassify marijuana, these corporate drug dealers, who are the bad guy,

who have attracted the ire of Maha, of a big part of the Trump coalition, of reasonable people, they get a $2 billion tax break.

Did we vote in November for a $2 billion tax break for drug dealers?

I didn't.

Absolutely not.

Furthermore, on the scientific front,

we sometimes hear, well, marijuana is really actually fine for you.

It's much better than alcohol or tobacco or something.

You've never seen a violent pothead.

No one gets into a fight after smoking pot.

They get into a fight after a drink a bottle of whiskey, but not smoking pot.

But even that isn't really true.

There was a study just last year out of the NIH that does show a relationship between marijuana use and violent behavior.

And at a practical level, we know that the cities that have decriminalized marijuana have gotten worse.

They've gotten dirtier.

They've gotten disorderly.

They've gotten violent.

I'm not saying it's because they're smoking on the jazz cigarette that they go through reefer madness and they start chopping people's heads off.

I'm just saying.

The kinds of people who are really into this stuff tend to be the kinds of people who are disorderly, who make our cities worse, and who get violent, who are criminals.

At the same time that we got President Trump cleaning up these cities in a magnificent action of one-nation conservatism, one-nation Trumpism, this would be discordant.

This would cut against that.

Finally, on the political front, my last point on the jazz cigarettes.

There was a Gallup poll out last year showed that public support for marijuana, which had been rising, dropped significantly.

So this is what I'm talking about when I say the sign of the times.

You got to pay attention to the sign of the times.

Two years ago, it looked like we were all going to be trans.

Two years ago, it seemed like we were all hurtling toward a kind of futuristic techno-communism.

Two years ago, it seemed like everyone wanted to legalize drugs.

But this ain't two years ago.

Two years ago, it seemed like everyone was going to be an atheist eventually.

And then those trend lines turned around.

And President Trump was a big part of it turning around.

He's not only a symptom of this cultural discontent,

he's advancing a new cultural vision.

And you're seeing that pay off.

10% drop drop in support for marijuana.

The majority of Americans now say marijuana is bad for society and bad for most people who use it.

That's a big shift.

So why would we be behind the ball?

We're ahead of the curve on so many issues.

Why would we be behind the curve on this one?

And Republicans especially hate it because the poll says that just 5% of Republicans say that marijuana has very positive effects on society.

I would say,

I get that there are people pushing this in the administration.

I get that there are people, especially on social media and definitely in this comment section, who are going to be into promoting pot and everything.

I would just say to the White House, I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze here.

And even if you've floated this idea before, to me, it's kind of like the IVF mandates.

President Trump floated a mandate to expand IVF.

It was

probably not the best considered policy.

I don't think it would have had a good effect.

And it was just kind of sidelined.

It was just kind of, which is fine.

It's okay.

Politics is a little bit messy.

That's how it works.

You know, Bismarck says, you don't want to see how the sausage is made.

But on this, I would say

I see a lot of downside.

I see a huge amount of downside.

I see increasing downside because of where the momentum's going.

I don't really see the upside.

You're going to make Kim Kardashian happy?

Okay.

To me, that's not an upside.

I'd say, look, move on.

There's so much other good stuff to be doing.

There's so much other stuff to be focusing on.

Move on to that stuff where you're going to get a real benefit for society.

and politically.

Okay.

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My favorite comment yesterday is from Sigurd Holbarki.

Is that?

Is that like an Icelandic name or something?

Iceland is one of my favorite countries in the world.

Says,

we can always rely on Michael to give the deepest and most correct takes.

That's very kind of you.

I appreciate that.

That's what I endeavor to do.

Okay, speaking of Trump plans, really smart plan, President Trump, it's kind of weird though, raised a lot of eyebrows.

Trump floated yesterday

a

Republican national convention before the midterm elections.

We do, there's an RNC before presidential election.

We've never seen a big party convention before the midterms.

What's this about?

Trump says, the GOP is doing really well.

Millions of people have joined us in our quest to make America great again.

We won every aspect of the presidential election.

We're poised to win big in the midterms.

We've raised far more money than the Democrats who are destroying the country.

I'm paraphrasing a little bit just to get through it.

The results are incredible, record-paced, and light.

I'm thinking of recommending a national convention to the Republican Party just prior to the midterms.

It's never been done before.

Stay tuned.

Donald J.

Trump, President of the United States of America.

This is a weird idea, but you know, look, Trump shakes things up.

That's been his raise on debt in politics for largely, largely his reason for being the argument to do this

is that conventions give parties a bump don't they

that's why the national parties always want to have their convention closest to the general election because the parties enjoy a bump after the convention so if they get a bump after the conventions why not give them a bump in the midterms in the midterms historically the party that has just won the white house loses a lot of support in the midterm elections so if they could use a bump anyway why not do it?

Well, it's never been done before.

Yeah, well, okay, why not do it?

This is kind of like with Trump.

For basically my entire lifetime, the GOP ran openly on cutting entitlement programs.

And they did this because the GOP was fiscally responsible.

They were budget hawks.

There are all plenty of good reasons to do it, but it was always a loser.

It gave Democrats such an opportunity to attack the Republicans.

And finally, Trump comes in.

He says, I'm not going to cut entitlements.

And the Democrats said, what?

He said, yeah, I'm not going to cut them.

If anything, maybe I'll expand them.

I don't know.

I'm all about entitlements.

I'm not cutting one penny of your Medicare or Social Security seniors.

And the Democrats said, no, you can't say that.

And all the squishes.

They said, what?

You can't say that.

And I get, look, I get the arguments for entitlement reform.

Trust me, I get the arguments.

I recognize that we need fiscal reform.

But if you're constantly losing elections, running on something, playing by the established rules, then you got to change the rules.

That's one of Trump's observations.

The argument against it is a convention would cost a bunch of money.

It would cost some time.

I just think it might be worth it because one of the reasons that the party in the White House loses the first midterm election is because

there's no top of the ticket.

The president's not on the ballot.

And if the president's popular and he just won the presidential election, he's the draw.

And the candidates down ballot, they're not really the draw, so they don't get the support.

So

they're less likely to win.

Well, if that's the case, then why wouldn't you hold a big convention and put the effectively put the president back on the ballot?

That's what that would do.

The midterm elections are often a little decentralized.

There's not necessarily a national message.

It's more local.

There's no big kahuna.

There's no top of the ticket.

This would centralize it all.

This would make these more local elections national.

That's where our politics has been heading.

That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Alexander Hamilton predicted this and encouraged this actually in the Federalist Papers.

This idea, this vision goes back that over time, the United States would have less of a focus on the states and more focus on the United.

We would gather more of a national identity.

And for the GOP right now,

which has been in a period of realignment,

Trump has redefined the party.

And he's done it in a popular way.

He's more popular than the other guys.

Why wouldn't you have a national convention?

I think it's really smart.

Okay.

Speaking of party platforms, Pope Leo, love this.

Pope Leo just came out.

He was speaking to a group of French politicians.

He called on the French politicians to promote the natural law and to oppose anti-Catholic party directives.

Now that you might say, okay, the Pope says you should promote Catholic teaching.

This is deeper than that.

Because in America, since at least Mario Cuomo,

father of Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York, both of them were governors of New York.

Mario Cuomo, they wanted him to run for president.

He was a big Democrat.

His party is basically satanic, but he said that he was a Catholic.

So he had this problem.

His party promotes the wholesale slaughter of innocent little babies, to name just one issue, and he's supposed to be Catholic, and that's a non-negotiable issue.

He has to support life.

What does he do?

Mario Cuomo resolved this by saying, well, look, in my political life, I'm a liberal Democrat.

But in my personal private life, I'm a Catholic.

So

his answer was literally to split the baby, which kills the integrity of the person, turned him into a schizophrenic.

And what the Pope is saying to not just these French politicians, but to all politicians is, you can't be schizophrenic.

He said, there is no division within the personality of a public figure.

There is not on one side the politician and on the other the Christian.

Rather, there is the politician who, under the gaze of God and of his conscience, lives out his commitments and his responsibilities in a Christian manner.

You are therefore called to strengthen yourselves in faith, to deepen your knowledge of doctrine, particularly of social doctrine,

and

which Jesus taught to the world, and to put it into practice in the exercise of your responsibilities and in the drafting of laws.

You need to write laws based on your Christian understanding of the world.

Its foundations are fundamentally, this is key, its foundations are fundamentally in harmony with human nature, with the natural law that all can recognize, even non-Christians, even non-believers.

You must therefore not fear to propose it and to defend it with conviction.

It is a doctrine of salvation that seeks the good of every human being, the building of societies that are peaceful, harmonious, prosperous, and reconciled.

This is, in a phrase, political Catholicism.

This

calls for integrity.

Another word for this is integrity,

having an integration of all the parts of your individual self and of the political community.

This is not to say that, you know, we need to imprison people for not recognizing every feast day of every saint or boldly proclaiming every dogma of the church.

What Pope Leo is saying is

You need to legislate in accord with Christian teaching, teachings by Christ himself, teachings which can be understood, not necessarily every aspect of Revelation, but teachings which, because they are in accord with nature, because Christ is the law gos, the divine logic of the universe, can be understood by everyone, even non-Christians, even non-believers.

This is going to scare some people, the big libs.

It's going to scare them because they're going to say, this is authoritarianism.

This is integralism.

This is

Catholic fascism.

I don't know, whatever they're going to call it.

No, it's just a vision of politics that is in line with Christianity.

The alternative is a vision of politics that denies Christianity, that says that we can kill babies, that says that marriage isn't real and we can abolish it, that says that men can be women.

That's the liberal vision of politics, which is not really totally open, which is not neutral, which is not, it's just got its own sets of doctrines and dogmas.

The only difference between the doctrines and dogmas of liberalism and the the doctrines and dogmas of Christianity is that the doctrines and dogmas of liberalism are false.

They tell us false things about men and false things about women and false things about life and false things about our rights.

And it's just wrong, you know?

And so

if you're the Mario Cuomo, if you're the Joe Biden, Joe Biden did the same thing.

you have to choose on an issue like abortion between your christianity and your liberalism don't choose your liberalism well don't think you you can be both at least.

You can't split the baby.

You kill the baby that way.

You can't.

We don't want a schizophrenic political order.

Can't do it.

Okay.

One point before we get to the mailbag.

This also pertaining to Christianity.

We haven't talked about the war in Ukraine all that much recently.

We haven't talked about the war in Gaza and the Middle East all that much recently.

However,

after

President Trump called for the U.S.

taking control of Gaza, building that beautiful Trump casino right there on the Gaza Strip.

The State of Israel said, no, no, we're going to take control of it.

Again, the State of Israel controlled Gaza for a very, very long time.

In the mid-2000s, they gave control to the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian Authority lost control, gave it to Hamas.

Didn't really work out with Hamas having control.

Since Israel says, we're going to take it back.

Okay, perfectly understandable.

However,

they're now ordering Gazans to leave.

Gaza city.

And this creates a problem, not just for the Muslims, but for the Christians.

So there's a joint statement by the Latin Patriarch and the Greek Patriarch in Gaza.

A few weeks ago, the Israeli government announced its decision to take control of Gaza City.

In recent days, the media indicate that the population of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of civilians live and where our Christian community is located, is to be evacuated and located to the south of the Strip.

Reports of heavy bombardment continue to be received.

There was more destruction and death in a situation that was already dramatic before this operation.

I'm not going to read the whole thing, just the really operative points.

Since the outbreak of the war, the Greek Orthodox compound of St.

Porphyrius and and the Holy Family Compound have been a refuge for hundreds of civilians.

Among them are elderly people, women, and children.

In the Latin compound, we are hosting

since many years or for many years, people with disabilities who are under the care of the sisters, missionaries of charity.

Like other residents of Gaza City, the refugees living in the facilities will have to decide, according to their conscience, what they will do.

Among those who have sought shelter within the walls of the compound, many are weakened and malnourished due to the hardships of the last months.

Leaving Gaza and trying to flee to the south would be nothing less than a death sentence.

For this reason, the clergy and nuns have decided to remain and continue to care for all those who will be in the compounds.

Okay,

as you know, I have the least popular view on the Israel-Gaza conflict, Israel-Palestine conflict, because I have nuance to it and I recognize the claims of both sides.

And I just, I'm simply attempting to pursue justice here.

And I even recognize the imperial politics that are involved, including great powers like our own country, the United States.

I don't think that Hamas should be given a state.

I don't march with Greta Thunberg wearing the kefias or anything like that.

I'm not even an N-word, you know, a nationalist.

I'm not a hardcore nationalist.

I don't think that we need nation-states for every single grouping of people in the world.

And I recognize imperial politics.

I even recognize why Israel sees as a national security matter why they have to take control of the Gaza Strip.

I get all of that.

You can't displace the Christians.

Can't do it.

This is the only oldest Christian population in the world.

And

as the patriarchs, the Greek and Latin patriarchs say here, if they try to move these people that they're caring for, some of the most vulnerable people in Gaza, that will be a death sentence to them.

And so they're going to stay.

Very heroic that they're going to stay during what looks like is going to be an Israeli occupation.

Okay.

I would just recommend to the Israeli authorities that they should not touch a hair on the head of any of these people, that it would be very bad for them to do that, because the government of Israel is losing a lot of support throughout the West and even in the United States, which is the political protector of the state of Israel.

And they're losing support even among conservatives and Republicans who are inclined to support them.

And

many conservatives see all the sorts of problems of the Islamists who've been fighting for 1,400 years and of Hamas and all the rest.

But when the sisters and the priests and the nuns are staying there to care for the elderly and the little babies and the sick and the disabled,

not a hair on their heads should be touched.

That's going to make a real political problem for the state of Israel, and I don't think they should test it.

Okay,

finally, finally, we've arrived at our favorite time of the week, the mailbag.

Mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk.

Go to puretalk.com/slash Knowles, Canada WLES, to get your free phone today.

First question.

Good morning, Michael.

This is Arun.

So I have a shower thought that I would like to share with you.

And I, of course, mean that figuratively, because we Indians don't shower or engage in any kind of personal hygiene.

This is about Shiloh Hendrix.

Now, obviously, Shiloh has been treated rather unfairly.

She was defenestrated from society for saying a bad word, and she is now being charged with disorderly conduct and could apparently face up to 90 days in jail.

Now, I think back in 2020, I would have advocated vociferously for her, not because what she did was good, it was definitely trashy and ratchet behavior, but ratchet behavior does not merit 90 days in the can.

That said, in 2025, I'm less likely to advocate on her behalf because it looks like whereas black supremacy kind of peaked back in 2020,

it's now kind of petered out and we've normalized white supremacy, at least on Twitter.

I can't believe that I'm saying this, but it appears that it's a free-for-all on racial supremacy.

You've got black identitarians, you've got white identitarians, you've got, you know, the whole gamut.

So as you might say, they're losing me.

Do you have any thoughts on what the racial rhetoric on Twitter is doing to the unity of America?

Thank you as always for your wisdom.

Very, very good question, Arune, as always.

That's true.

When people...

making racial comments are losing a rune.

I mean, you're really, you're really losing, you're losing somebody.

Yes.

It's not that Twitter is not at all real life.

Twitter does have some effect in real life, but it's also a kind of

grotesque cabaret show.

It's not an accurate reflection of reality, though there is a relation between the cabaret and ordinary life in the streets because people

have integrity.

So if you spend all of your time online and you do things that are

not conducive to your flourishing and sanctity, whether it be engaging in

cruelty or whether it be looking at pornography or whether it be engaging in fraud or deception, that's going to carry, have effects in the street too.

It's not a one-to-one, but there is a relation between those things.

And what it comes down to is a reckoning with the role of ethnos, you know, with the role of race and ethnicity in human life, because for the last three decades, we've been told that race and ethnicity mean absolutely nothing,

which is ridiculous.

You know, it's a

it's a real fact of life.

It's a real fact of human nature.

However,

the opposite error would be an error, which is to say that ethnicity is everything or it's dispositive in human life.

That's kind of crazy, too.

Aristotle reminds us that virtue is the mean between two extremes.

And so you can have a healthy love of your own kind, I guess.

But you should not,

therefore, cultivate a hatred or an animus toward other people.

I guess the way I think about this is if Joe DiMaggio hits a home run,

the Italian Americans can take a special happiness in that.

There's nothing all that wrong with that.

You know, it's a part, it's kind of like even an extension of just your family, you know, the people who look like you and maybe behave like you for reasons of history and tradition, culture, and who knows, and biology.

But

you have to keep that within boundaries.

You know, you have to keep that within its proper place and recognize that at a fundamental level, we're all made in the image and likeness of God and there's human solidarity.

So I agree.

There has to be a prudential balance here.

As for Shiloh Hendricks, I don't know.

Reasonable minds can debate how far the pendulum has swung back.

But that's how you have to think about ethnicity.

Next question.

Hey, Michael, great show.

Always prefer your show over many other options.

Anyways,

my local priest was just arrested for,

I don't know, sexual battery of a minor 16 17 year old something like that we're gonna have details later supposedly

obviously it hurts the family it hurts to see this

I don't really know how to explain this or have this conversation with my wife she is

interested in Catholicism she's making a lot of progress and it's you know really good for us

but you know it hurts a lot especially this is the man who baptized my son, you know.

What are your thoughts or

which way should I go with this?

Obviously, I am still praying.

Thank you very much for your insight.

Sorry to hear that.

That's awful.

I mean, this is scandal.

This is, this is the millstone verse, you know, because it's scandalizing not just kids, but it's scandalizing even adults, even people who might be swimming the Tiber like your wife.

So that's really awful.

I mean, this is a serious scandal.

Now,

you know, if you try to look at it from a more disinterested perspective,

you would say, well, okay, what was my premise here?

Is my premise that

priests are the sort of people who never do bad things?

Is my premise that Christianity is the sort of

religion that

utterly prevents sin in this world?

No.

So, okay, those would be false premises.

Is the issue that we're saying that the Catholic Church commits sin or these particular sins at higher rates than any other institution?

No, that isn't true.

It isn't true if you look at Protestantism or Judaism or public schools, public schools which vastly outstrip any religious tradition in these sorts of sins.

So that's the disinterested way in looking at it.

But it's very difficult to dissociate yourself from these issues when you see a sin like this.

So then I guess you have to ask yourself

the question that St.

Peter asks, which is, well, is it true?

Is what the church teaches true?

Are you persuaded of this?

And then, Lord, to whom shall we go?

If it's true, then where else do you turn?

You know, even you mentioned that this priest baptized your kid.

This issue was settled back in antiquity.

The heresy was called Donatism, which said that the efficacy of a sacrament depend, of baptism in particular, depends upon the sanctity of the priest.

And that was condemned.

What was that?

The Council of

Chalcedon, or I forget which council, but anyway, one of the councils

condemned the Donatist heresy and said, no, no, no, the sacrament is

God working.

It doesn't depend on the sanctity of, because thank God.

Thank God sacraments don't depend on the sanctity of the priest or on the sanctity of any human being.

So that's what I would say.

I mean, but it can.

It's a scandal.

You have to work yourself through the scandal.

The thing about scandals and heresies and all the rest is in a a weird way, in an anti-fragile way, they actually strengthen the faith over time because they clarify what we believe in the truth of the faith.

But I would lean into, I wouldn't hide it from your wife.

You know, I'd say, I'd lean into it.

Yes, this is human nature in all its wickedness, in all of its ugliness, in all of its absolute depravity.

And

also,

here's the way to salvation.

Okay, they want me to go to the membrane segmentum now, but I don't care.

I want to keep going.

Next mailbag.

Hey, Michael.

As a Protestant, I don't feel like I have a good grasp on the concept of purgatory.

I imagine the version of it that everyone who isn't Catholic thinks of as a place to go for a second chance before you go to heaven or hell is not accurate.

How would you describe what purgatory truly is, and is the evidence for it in Scripture relegated to the books of the Bible that Protestants do not regard as canon?

Thanks.

Oh, no, really good question.

And no,

the deuterocanonical books, which a lot of Protestants don't recognize, do allude to purgatory.

But you can get to evidence of purgatory, clear scriptural evidence of purgatory right in the Gospels and in the epistles.

Matthew 12, 32 comes to mind,

where St.

Matthew writes, in the words of our Lord, whoever says a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven in this age or in the age to come.

The implication meaning that

one can, in principle, be forgiven for sins in the age to come.

Otherwise, our Lord would not say,

you wouldn't be forgiven in this age or in the age to come.

Also, in St.

Matthew chapter 5,

you hear the

injunction to

make amends with people now because of the story of the debtor.

The debtor is in prison and he won't get out until he's paid the last penny.

That can't be a figure of hell because in hell, you can't get out.

You're damned for eternity.

There ain't no getting out of hell.

But the debtor's prison is

referring to a period of purgation.

The clearest scriptural example comes from St.

Paul, 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 11, 11 through 15.

I actually have that one written here.

For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, each man's work will become manifest, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.

If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

So this is a really clear image of purgatory.

This kind of fire that will burn up your iniquity, but you yourself will still be saved.

This is not the fire of hell

in which one is damned for eternity.

And then

And then two bits also from the Johannine epistles, 1 John says, all unrighteousness is sin, but there is some sin which is not mortal.

So this is the scriptural distinction between mortal sin and venial sin.

Venial sin, which weakens the relationship of grace, mortal sin, which severs the relationship of grace.

And this ties in with a verse from Revelation, the book of the Apocalypse, chapter 21, which says that nothing unclean enters into heaven.

So all unrighteousness is sin.

Some sin is not mortal.

That means there is venial sin, which is unrighteous, which is unclean, which is impure,

which then seems to butt up against the book of the apocalypse, which says nothing unclean enters into heaven, except St.

Paul explains it, and our Lord explains it too, that there is a forgiveness of sin in the age of come, but only as through a kind of fire, though a man might be saved.

So that's it.

When you're in purgatory, it's not like, will I go to hell?

Will I go to heaven?

You're going to heaven, but there's this period of purgation, which is explained by the apostle, explained by...

uh the book of revelation explained by saint john and explained by our lord himself okay there's more to get to, but stake headline Friday.

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