Prove Me Wrong: Michael Knowles At America Fest

Speaker 1 Tu mereces fruitartos favoritos por menos. Ja sel na Big Mac, McNuggets, or a sausage, egg and cheese, McCriddles, pidetuan to hocomo un meo, ya hora.
Oof, nava comodarto un gustaso por tam poco.

Speaker 1 Los extra value meals están de regreso.

Speaker 2 Gana por la mañana con el extra value meal, sausage, mc, muffin with egg, hash browns, yun cafe pequeño por solos selares. Bara ba ba ba.
Preses y participación pueden varía.

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Speaker 6 Thank you guys so much for being here. It's a great honor to be here.

Speaker 6 What time of the morning? Okay, it's not that early. I don't know.
Maybe it's just it feels early because I was out at the cigar party last night. It's great to be with all of you.

Speaker 6 Thank you for making it out. I am so, so pleased.

Speaker 6 I want to give a big thank you, a big shout out to TPUSA, the unbelievable team here, who has just done heroic work in keeping everything going and growing and advancing,

Speaker 6 just as I think we all know our friend Charlie would have wanted. Just incredible work from TPUSA and incredible work from all of you.
Thank you.

Speaker 6 I've never done one of these. You know, Charlie was the king of this, and now a bunch of Charlie's friends are going to be sitting in all day.
So go easy on me, please.

Speaker 6 He was...

Speaker 6 But, you know, one thing that we all really, really have loved over the years and I think has really helped our political movement is that we're willing to have these conversations.

Speaker 6 People come up, no notes, no anything, no rules, ask anything you want, and we'll try to get at the truth and we'll try to move on forward together. So, who's the first question? Love your hat.

Speaker 6 I love your hat, but I hate your microphone because I can't hear you.

Speaker 8 So, my question is: what is your opinion on private Christian schools versus public education?

Speaker 6 I'm sorry, I still hate your microphone and I can't quite hear you.

Speaker 6 Public education.

Speaker 9 So private schools versus Christian-run organizations in college.

Speaker 9 Education.

Speaker 6 Christian versus public education.

Speaker 6 The first thing we have to all recognize is that education is not merely a private endeavor. So I love that homeschooling is normalized now.
I've been homeschooling my children.

Speaker 6 I think the reason that homeschooling really took off is great. We've got a lot of homeschoolers.

Speaker 6 Of course we do. Of course we do here.

Speaker 6 All of the public school kids are at the BLM rally down the street. But all the homeschoolers are here at TPSA.
So I do it. I really love it.
I think it's great.

Speaker 6 Part of the reason homeschooling really took off in recent years was because during COVID, the students went home.

Speaker 6 the parents actually got to see what their students were being taught, and they yanked them out as quickly as they possibly could. So that was a great temporary solution.

Speaker 6 Christian education is a great alternative to the secular public schools, but it's not the final stop. Because education is a public thing.
It's a political thing.

Speaker 6 It creates and shapes whole citizens. It shapes whole souls.

Speaker 6 And so I think that conservatives would make a mistake if we merely retreated to the Christian schools, private parochial schools, and homeschooling.

Speaker 6 That's all good. I'm all for it.
But we need to go a step further and we need to reassert ourselves in the public schools as well.

Speaker 6 You know, there didn't used to be a difference between Christian schooling and public schooling.

Speaker 6 It was all the same thing because until the middle of the 20th century, you were able to, I don't know, read the Bible in schools, you know, the most important book ever written, without which you can't know anything about anything at all.

Speaker 6 You know, you were able to pray in schools.

Speaker 6 Our friend Yoram Hazzoni, great philosopher, suggests that taking the Bible out of schools, prayer out of schools, was the most catastrophic event of the 20th century in terms of our country.

Speaker 6 So, look, I encourage everyone, yes. Do the homeschooling, do the Christian private schools if you can afford it, if you can find a good one, but let's go further.

Speaker 6 Let's make more demands of our country. Let's make more demands of the public school system.
Let's fight the bad guys. Let's fight the public teacher unions.
Let's go in there.

Speaker 6 Let's overturn ridiculous Supreme Court decisions. And let's restore seriousness to education.
It's about raising up whole people. It's not just reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Great question.

Speaker 7 Thank you.

Speaker 6 Thank you.

Speaker 11 Gotcha. Thank you, sir, for taking my question.
I want to preface that I'm a devout Christian as well as not a racist, which feels like something I shouldn't even have to say in America.

Speaker 11 But my question, or maybe topic for debate for you today, is I do not believe that Islam and those practicing this religion are compatible with institutions of the West considering their long track record and the fact that their core book, the Quran, most literally says to, for example, kill the unbelievers.

Speaker 11 And then once again, just the combative nature.

Speaker 6 I don't think you're going to get much debate out of me on that particular question.

Speaker 6 Though there are some who do want to debate that on the right. And I think there are some people who think that we can form some kind of enduring alliance with Islam.

Speaker 6 There can be some synthesis, say, between Islam and the liberalism that came out of Christianity and maybe Christian civilization itself.

Speaker 6 And to them, I would just say, seems like wishful thinking, because to your point,

Speaker 6 Christendom, which we now call the West, has been in conflict with Islam for roughly 1,400 years. So

Speaker 6 this began very shortly after the invention of Islam. You know, the first real clash between the Christian West, between Europe and Islam, took place in 732.
And it didn't take place in Arabia.

Speaker 6 It didn't even really take place in the Levant. It took place 150 miles outside of Paris.
So Islam has endeavored to conquer the West many times over the course of history.

Speaker 6 The Battle of Lepanto, 1571, is a good example. The Battle of Vienna, after that, now we just sort of welcome them all in and allow them to defraud our welfare systems and

Speaker 6 create their religious rituals and buildings all over the world.

Speaker 6 So, no, it's not going to work. What do we do about that? Well, we have to recognize a very important word for conservatives, and the word is no.

Speaker 6 We've had a lot of trouble with the word no in recent years, haven't we?

Speaker 6 Even the conservatives have had trouble. We used to say, look, we want endless migration as long as it's legal.

Speaker 6 Flood the country with totally unassimilable cultures, but make sure they fill out the right paperwork before they come in. And that's ridiculous.

Speaker 6 It's not just the procedural norms that matter, it's the substantive goods that matter. We have believed that our country is totally open.
It's just,

Speaker 6 some people would say it's just an idea, but what's crazy is some people would say it's not even, it's any idea. It's just anything at all.
We can close our eyes and be whatever we want to be.

Speaker 6 But of course, a country that's everything is a country that's nothing. So we have to circumscribe what we mean.

Speaker 6 And we need to recognize, when we talk about the migration issue, for instance, we need to recognize that the question is not merely legal versus illegal. The question is not merely even numbers.

Speaker 6 You know, we'll take half a million versus two million or something. No.
The question is, where is the migration coming from?

Speaker 6 What cultures have the habits, the institutions, the beliefs that work for us? I go back to John Adams. John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1813:

Speaker 6 a little bit of bad blood between two of our founding fathers, but they both agreed in principle on what won the revolution.

Speaker 6 John Adams says, the general principles of Christianity, in which all the sects agreed, and the general principles of English and American liberty are the principles upon which independence was won.

Speaker 6 It is simply an historical fact that we are a Christian nation with a history of tolerating all sorts of deviations, but nevertheless with a norm.

Speaker 6 The differences between the Christian and Muslim conceptions of God are manifest. In Christianity, God

Speaker 6 sends His Son as a mediator between man and God. In Islam, God is wholly transcendent.
There is no way to reach Him. In Christianity, Christ is the divine logic of the universe, the Logos.

Speaker 6 In Islam, God is pure will. And so, as Pope Benedict XVI quotes Ibn Hazm,

Speaker 6 we get some shout-outs for Pope Benedict XVI out there. I don't think for Ibn Hazm.

Speaker 6 According to Islam, if Allah wanted his followers to worship idols, he could make them do so. These are radically different conceptions.
They've led to radically different civilizations.

Speaker 6 And we can't just paper over those differences.

Speaker 6 We can be nice and kind,

Speaker 6 but we can't be everything to everyone. We have to be a specific civilization.

Speaker 6 And for us, if our civilization is not animated by the Spirit which has animated us from the beginning, namely the Holy Spirit, our civilization will be nothing at all.

Speaker 11 Thank you, sir, for your time.

Speaker 6 Can I sign that hat? Yes, sure. Throw it up.

Speaker 6 Here we go.

Speaker 6 That's a good throw. Now,

Speaker 6 can you throw up a pen?

Speaker 6 That's a black hat with a black pen. How am I supposed to sign that?

Speaker 6 All right.

Speaker 6 Here you go. Thank you.
Look at that. I was terrible at baseball as a kid, but I'm glad that throw worked.

Speaker 6 Who's this at? All right, one more, one more. That's it.
Now I've got to get back to answering these questions, because Charlie was way pithier than me. I'm a little more verbose, okay?

Speaker 6 We got to get through these questions.

Speaker 6 There we go.

Speaker 6 All right, next question.

Speaker 6 Hello.

Speaker 12 My name is Chelsea, and I'm from New Jersey. And I wanted to ask you, should America implement free health care just like Canada and the UK?

Speaker 6 Should America have a universal socialized health care like Canada?

Speaker 6 I agree. I agree.
No, we should not, though I see why some people want us to, because the American health care system is really messed up.

Speaker 6 Worth pointing out that the American health care system was created almost entirely by Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama.

Speaker 6 So, you know, it doesn't have a great track record on who built it. I'm not surprised it hasn't worked out.
And yet it's still preferable to what you see in Canada because

Speaker 6 the conclusion of the Canadian health care system is death. And I mean that literally.
A huge number of Canadians now, every single year, are killed.

Speaker 6 I think it's over 5% are killed through government-encouraged physician-assisted suicide, which is contrary to the Hippocratic oath and leads literally to the suicide of the whole country.

Speaker 6 Furthermore, though, you see a major rationing of care. So women who are under the age of 50 have a reasonable chance of getting breast cancer procedures in Canada.

Speaker 6 Women who are over the age of 70 basically do not.

Speaker 6 Something like 80% of women who are waiting for breast cancer surgeries over that age just did not get the procedures because the government said they were old enough and they would rather ration the care and let the older women die.

Speaker 6 That's a ghastly kind of system.

Speaker 6 Furthermore, you have Canadians waiting months and months, years and years for procedures, and many of whom will die because of that.

Speaker 6 You hear stories coming out of Canada, coming out of the United Kingdom, of people who have cancer in particular who simply will not be given chemotherapy by the horrific regimes that have a monopoly on health care up there.

Speaker 6 And so what are they offered instead? They're offered the privilege of killing themselves. This is completely contrary to any sense of moral goodness.
It's totally inhuman.

Speaker 6 It is as tyrannical as any government policy could be. I've long observed that Canada is America's evil top hat.

Speaker 6 George Washington did not conquer it for a reason, and I think we should leave them be and not adopt their terrible practices.

Speaker 12 Thank you very much.

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Get back to the table.

Speaker 14 Good afternoon, Mr. Knowles.
Big fan of your show. I'm a very devout Catholic myself.

Speaker 14 Praise God.

Speaker 14 My understanding is the only thing I disagree with you on is the one beef that you have with Mr. Walsh: I believe in aliens.

Speaker 6 I couldn't hear it.

Speaker 14 I believe in extraterrestrial life, that it is possible.

Speaker 6 Please, hear me out. I know I said ask me anything.
I should have said ask me anything but this ridiculous new age Gnostic nonsense about the little green man. I'm sorry, go on, go on.

Speaker 14 Yeah, so it was Kardashev who basically said that it'd be kind of ignorant to say that we are the only sentient terrestrial life out there.

Speaker 14 I do believe that God created man for one sole purpose, to inhabit the earth and to follow our Savior Jesus Christ, praise God.

Speaker 14 But I do think that it is possible within the 14 billion years that this universe has existed, that there are other forms of life out there. We just will never know.
So what is your rhetoric on that?

Speaker 6 Do you think it's likely that aliens exist?

Speaker 14 I think it's likely. I think it's more like Schrödinger's box, where it's like, until you open the box, I mean,

Speaker 14 you can neither prove nor disprove it, and we'll never know the answer.

Speaker 6 That's somewhat more reasonable than Walsh's view that he's been

Speaker 6 beamed up to the little green man, and who knows what procedures has undergone. But

Speaker 6 no, I just don't buy it.

Speaker 6 Because the argument from the vast age of the universe or the immense size of the universe does very little to me in terms of ascertaining the probability that little green men exist.

Speaker 6 Because in order to ascertain the probability of anything, you need to know something about how the phenomenon came to be. And so when we're talking about how

Speaker 6 life could spring up in a physical sense, how you could go from inorganic matter to organic matter, we have absolutely no idea how that happened.

Speaker 6 Scientists have posited all sorts of crazy theories over the decades, and none of them have been proven true. There's really no evidence for any of them.

Speaker 6 I mean, I believe that God made man out of clay and breathed into his nose, and now man had life.

Speaker 6 And I think that whatever physical precision that description lacks, that is without question the clearest, most accurate view of how life came to be.

Speaker 6 So until someone can make a serious argument for abiogenesis, for instance, I see no reason to conclude that just because the universe is really big, that it has some other life in it.

Speaker 6 Just like I have no reason to believe that just because my basement is really big, there's a bar of gold sitting somewhere in it.

Speaker 6 I could be, you know, there's just no, how did the bar of gold even get there in the first place?

Speaker 6 The theological problems that would come from this also come from the

Speaker 6 specialness of man as man,

Speaker 6 because God is a man.

Speaker 6 The mystery of the Trinity, which is the central mystery of the Christian Christian faith, tells us that we have God the Father and God the Son, God the Son, eternally begotten of God the Father, true God from true God, true light from true light, who becomes man, who takes up, who is incarnate of the Holy Spirit, conceived by the Holy Spirit, incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and becomes man, and ascends bodily into heaven.

Speaker 6 That his humanity is an essential part of Christ,

Speaker 6 of the Godhead.

Speaker 6 And there's no room for E.T. in there.
So I don't know what it would mean for us to discover some extraterrestrial life.

Speaker 6 To me, it's kind of an amusing thought experiment at best, and

Speaker 6 a demonic perversion at worst.

Speaker 6 Not to go like two Alex Jones here. It's a demonic perversion.
But I kind of think it is, because I think it's a way for

Speaker 6 the devil to whisper into our ears that man is not that special, which is, of course, the cause of the angels rebelling in heaven.

Speaker 6 Them basically refusing to bow down to a man.

Speaker 6 And so I wouldn't follow it that far. The other reason I'm convinced aliens don't exist is because Walsh says they do exist.
And so that alone should be reason to conclude it.

Speaker 6 But in any case, regardless of your very mistaken view on this, live long and prosper, Obi-Wan, or whatever those other people say.

Speaker 6 Thank you. Thank you, budge, budge, budge, fudge.

Speaker 17 Hello, my name is Lorelei.

Speaker 10 You are awesome.

Speaker 17 On your show, you had said that you don't believe that Christmas decorations should be for all year, and they should only be for around the days of Christmas.

Speaker 17 And I would like to say that I think that we should be allowed to have all the decorations out all year so that you can see and you can celebrate and you can remember every day.

Speaker 10 And I will say, I don't mean like the Christmas tree or any of that stuff, but like Jesus Baby, that kind of a thing, out all year so you can see it and you can remember it every day.

Speaker 6 Okay, all right, you saved your point right there at the end because I freaking hate when the people put up the Christmas decorations.

Speaker 6 It used to be right after Thanksgiving, which I found preposterous. Then it became just before Thanksgiving.
So that's Thanksgiving erasure. This is the American holiday.

Speaker 6 This is erasing the legacy of the men who came on the Mayflower, which is a great cigar company, by the way. And then...
Oh, thank you, thanks.

Speaker 6 but now, I kid you not, I saw people putting up Christmas decorations the day, you can see how angry I'm getting. The microphones aren't even working.

Speaker 6 I saw people put up Christmas decorations the day after Halloween. I said,

Speaker 6 this is the problem with modern religion. We used to have first the fast and then the feast.
Now we have first the feast and then the hangover. It's got to be special.
Lent is a penitential period.

Speaker 6 Now the modern Christians, they say during Lent, you need to meditate on hope and joy and no. No.

Speaker 6 Traditionally, during Lent, Christians focus on the four last things. Death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
Fa la la la la la la la la.

Speaker 6 Okay? I want penitence. I want one song playing during Advent.
I don't want to be Felice Navidad rocking around the Christmas tree. I want that song to be, oh, come, Emmanuel.

Speaker 6 Maybe if you're feeling spicy, come thou long expected Jesus. But that's it.
And then,

Speaker 6 I sound like Scrooge, then

Speaker 6 you can put up your Christmas tree on the evening of Christmas Eve, and you keep it up through February 8th.

Speaker 6 I'm starting to lose the audience on the Christmas. Okay, all right.
I went too far. I went too far.
You keep it up through all of Christmas, 12 days, or bring it all the way up to February 8th. So

Speaker 6 then you get to enjoy. That's what I'm doing on my set.

Speaker 6 Now, you make one other important point, though, which is, well, look, maybe you don't put Santa Claus up all year, but you do have an image of maybe the baby Jesus. I think that's good.

Speaker 6 I have an image of, I have many images of Jesus in my house, one of which is the Theotokos Tenderness. It's an Eastern icon of Mary holding the baby Jesus.
And I think that's very important to put up.

Speaker 6 You need to have these symbols all over. Because...

Speaker 6 You know, we're in an age of iconoclasts on the left. They want to tear down our statues.
They want to tear down our pictures. They want to tear down our whole culture.
But we're physical creatures.

Speaker 6 That's the message of Christmas and the incarnation. And we got to see things with our senses in real life.
We got to see images. Those images color our world.
They elevate our mind up to God.

Speaker 6 So I totally agree. Keep pictures of the baby Jesus up all year long, but if you put Rudolph up one day before Christmas Eve, I will come to your house like the Grinch and steal it up your chimney.

Speaker 6 Perfect. Sounds good.
Thank you.

Speaker 18 You're the best Obama impersonator on the internet. I just like to say that.
I also think the GOP should be the party to legalize marijuana federally. What's your position?

Speaker 6 I know, I know, I know, I know.

Speaker 6 Listen here. I'm a cigar man, so I like combustible leaves.

Speaker 6 I'm not opposed to smoking generally. But you're not asking me about tobacco, the crop that built our country.
No. You're asking me about the old sin spinach, the jazz cigarettes.

Speaker 6 You know what I mean? The Peruvian parsley, the Haitian oregano. I'm talking about Mary Jane reefer.
I'm talking about pot.

Speaker 6 Yes. Which conservatives have long opposed.
Why have we opposed it?

Speaker 6 Because

Speaker 6 just as we make distinctions between one nation and another nation, one culture and another culture, one religion and another religion, so too we make distinctions.

Speaker 6 Just because you roll something up, put it in your mouth, and light it on fire doesn't mean it's the same. So let me ask you before I give you my final anti-pot reefer madness diatribe.
Why?

Speaker 6 What is the good that is achieved by legalizing pot?

Speaker 18 Well first the economic benefits in Missouri when we legalized it immediately we had dispensaries opening when everywhere else was closed. Kind of weird about the COVID stuff but that's one.

Speaker 18 And then two I think that the liberty of it,

Speaker 18 it's not as bad for society as alcohol is. So I think that we should have it.
It's a liberty versus society thing. And I think the down effect on society is oversold.

Speaker 18 It's not as bad as we think it is.

Speaker 6 Say that last part again. I couldn't hear you over the booze from the crowd.

Speaker 18 I think that the effects on society are not as bad as we think they are. I think that for the most part, like nobody ever gets aggressive off of marijuana.

Speaker 18 They tend to keep to themselves, maybe play too much video games or something, but they're not going to go home and

Speaker 18 kick the dog because they had too much to smoke.

Speaker 6 Okay, so to take those in order,

Speaker 6 the first one says that if you legalize pot, you'll get a new industry, namely selling pot. That's true, though that argument alone could be used to justify legalizing any manner of vice or

Speaker 6 deleterious activity. It could be used to defend the pornography industry, could be used to defend widespread gambling, could be used to defend prostitution or anything else.

Speaker 6 So we wouldn't say that just because something might make some money, it is therefore a good idea and even a conservative idea for us to legalize it.

Speaker 6 Then on the point about alcohol, I would have to push back a little bit. Alcohol can be abused, just like any, I mean, cupcakes can be abused, anything can be abused.

Speaker 6 But alcohol, when it's used in moderation, has some good effects. It's a social lubricant.

Speaker 6 So it makes us more sociable. It's a little bit relaxing.
It encourages conversation, sometimes rowdy conversation, as we discovered last night at the Mayflower Party here in

Speaker 6 TPUSA. But it inclines us more toward our human nature, because man is a social creature, the political animal who is naturally inclined to live in ordered society.

Speaker 6 Marijuana doesn't really do that. I'll make a little confession here before all of you.

Speaker 6 I'm a Catholic, so I usually make my confessions in a box to a priest, but I'll make it to this gigantic crowd.

Speaker 6 I might have tried the old left-hand cigarettes once or twice. Okay, I might have tried it.
It's not too bad. Unlike Bubba, I may have inhaled.

Speaker 6 I actually have trouble inhaling because I'm a cigar man. But anyway, the thing I've noticed about pot, anecdotally and personally, is that it does not conduce to socializing.

Speaker 6 It makes you more introspective.

Speaker 6 People say it makes you funnier, it doesn't. It makes you much less funny, but it makes everything seem funnier.

Speaker 6 So it makes you kind of dumber, makes you kind of slower, makes you hungrier and like fat. And so, you know, I don't see those as being particularly good.

Speaker 6 And then your point on the social effects of it more broadly.

Speaker 6 We've been told for years that pot is not addictive. That's obviously ridiculous because

Speaker 6 we all know potheads who wake and bake and are vaping all day and who, if they go one one day without their drugs, they start freaking out.

Speaker 6 Even the fact that many people who are into marijuana refer to it as self-medicating tells you that obviously this is a habit-forming addictive substance. Furthermore, though,

Speaker 6 yes, you usually don't see fights between potheads at a bar or at a dispensary, but you do sometimes see psychotic breaks.

Speaker 6 And this is being reported more and more as marijuana has become more normalized and legalized.

Speaker 6 You're seeing psychiatrists having to deal with people who have overdosed, not just on a few puffs of a joint, but especially on edibles where the doses can be insanely high, where they're very difficult to regulate, to say nothing of car accidents and things like that.

Speaker 6 So I think the social effects are pretty bad. And then I'll bring it back to both a traditional argument, an argument from tradition, and an argument from religion.

Speaker 6 From the religious perspective, Christ's first miracle is turning water into wine for people who have been drinking for like four days, okay?

Speaker 6 So that tells you, it's not necessarily a recommendation to drink all day long, but it tells you that wine has an important place even in our faith. That the, you know, Christ says at the Last Supper,

Speaker 6 I will not yet again taste of the fruit of the vine, you know, until all is accomplished. So there's this role.

Speaker 6 And if you believe in sacramental religion, you believe that actually alcohol is necessary to the proper worship of God. Now,

Speaker 6 If you look from the traditional perspective, we've had wine forever. We've had wine and beer and mead forever.
Marijuana is only recently introduced to our culture. So it's kind of a foreign thing.

Speaker 6 I once spoke to a drug czar for a Republican president, and he said, you know, at the bottom of all these kind of libertarian, let's legalize marijuana arguments, my question is, why would we, even if you think alcohol is bad, why would we add another bad thing?

Speaker 6 What's the benefit to that? So to me, the strongest argument for legalizing pot is this libertarian idea that we should all be able to abuse our bodies however we want. But I don't think that's true.

Speaker 6 I don't think you really own your body. I don't think you're chiefly an individual.
I think you are a member of a family and a society and a nation. And so I think that argument's bunk.

Speaker 6 And you've got to get off the dope, kids, not even once. And what you got to do is something much better for you, much more delicious, much more conducive to civilization.

Speaker 6 You need to smoke a Mayflower cigar.

Speaker 6 Thank you.

Speaker 20 Hi, Michael. I'm a Roman Catholic, and I want to make sure that my future husband shares my goals of a strong, faith-built family that is in communion with God.

Speaker 20 I know that there are challenges in mixed-faith relationships. Should I be focusing my prospects on Catholic boys, or should I, like,

Speaker 20 yeah, how should I approach that?

Speaker 6 So the question is, you're a serious Catholic, you want to marry a mackerel-snapping papist husband, and you want to know, do you go swimming in the Tiber to find your man, or do you go on missionary dating?

Speaker 6 Do you go see, yeah, look,

Speaker 6 my advice, oh, obviously, yes, I think it would be wonderful for you to have a good, nice Catholic marriage. You can have a small Catholic family of 12 or 14 kids.
That all sounds wonderful.

Speaker 6 However, when I think about dating,

Speaker 6 I think I have the least popular take of all. It's a take I don't hear on the right anymore.
I certainly don't hear it on the left. I think dating is fun.

Speaker 6 I think like speaking to members of the opposite sex and flirting with them and getting them to like you and

Speaker 6 going to dinner is like fun and should be enjoyable. And you can be guided by attraction.
Like girls are hot.

Speaker 6 I know you're

Speaker 6 a crazy suggestion these days, but

Speaker 6 you should follow that a little bit. Don't make it a chore.
Don't make it a job interview.

Speaker 6 Especially the way some Zoomers talk about dating. It's like they're applying to college or something.
No, it doesn't have to be that way, man. Girls are fun.

Speaker 6 And if you're a girl, girl, you know, it's like, I think maybe it's, I don't know, it's probably less fun to hang out with a guy, but I don't know. Girls seem to like it.

Speaker 6 And so that's what I would do first.

Speaker 6 I would allow yourself to be legitimately attracted in ways that are not always conscious, that get to the intangible, ineffable aspects of love.

Speaker 6 You know, Cole Porter did not sing, let's do it, let's find the ideal partner to have a perfectly flourishing life with. No, let's do it.
Let's fall in love. So, you know, allow that to happen.

Speaker 6 Now, you're going to have to weed out some losers or some guys who don't necessarily want to go along with

Speaker 6 a conducive life. But you find that along the way.

Speaker 6 I hate to sound like a liberal, but kind of follow your heart a little bit first. And then, when he's just mad about you and he says,

Speaker 6 I love you, you're the only thing I ever think about, you say, that's great. You need to sign on the bishop's line right here.
We're raising the kids Catholic, and we're having a lot of them.

Speaker 20 Thank you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 6 Yeah, throw the hat up.

Speaker 6 Look at that.

Speaker 6 Oh, no, I have a pen. I stole that pen from whoever it was.
Thank you. Perfect.

Speaker 6 That's a bat. This is the hat.

Speaker 6 Now, I'm a lefty, so don't judge me if this is a bad throw. Yeah.
That was a perfect throw.

Speaker 6 All right, I'll get to the hats after the next question.

Speaker 15 Hey, Michael. So I'm pro-H-1B visas and pro-meritocracy, and it seems like a lot of the right is very against it.
You could tell me why that is?

Speaker 6 Yes, that's true, because that's been a big shift and

Speaker 6 I'm not entirely opposed to some version of an H-1B visa program.

Speaker 6 Obviously the H-1Bs have been horribly abused and it's in many ways just a way for corporations to get cheap labor and undercut American workers.

Speaker 6 But some version of bringing in talent that's difficult to find in America in very small numbers, I'm not totally opposed. I'm a conservative.

Speaker 6 In practical policy, I generally don't deal in firm absolutes. But it needs to be radically reformed.

Speaker 6 Your latter point, I think, is more pertinent, which is this belief in meritocracy. Because I don't think that meritocracy is a particularly conservative or traditional idea.

Speaker 6 I believe in rewarding good effort. I believe in justice, giving to people what they deserve.
I believe in encouraging people to work hard.

Speaker 6 I believe in the American tradition of being able to make something of yourself regardless of your circumstances.

Speaker 6 But I think that meritocracy takes all of those good virtues totally out of whack and it makes an idol out of them.

Speaker 6 That's often what happens with heresies and ideologies is they take a kernel of a good thing and they take it so far that it becomes a bad thing.

Speaker 6 Because

Speaker 6 In a purely meritocratic country, other virtuous relationships are diminished.

Speaker 6 If a guy, for instance, has a family business, he's been in business business for 100 years, his great-great-grandpa founded it, went to his great-grandpa, his grandpa, his dad, and now it goes to him.

Speaker 6 And he says, you know, I want to hire my kids for this business and keep the business in the family. But they didn't score well enough on the SAT, so you're all out, kids.
Bring me the Indians.

Speaker 6 We're going to have a new business now. You know, that rings unjust for all of us.
That seems kind of silly.

Speaker 6 The reason that universities have had legacy admissions in the past is not just to award some plutocracy, it's because, in in many cases, one of the things that people go to universities for is to pall around with, to form relationships with, people who are from different stratas of society than they are.

Speaker 6 That it's a way of maintaining traditions even within institutions. And I think that's a good thing.

Speaker 6 I think continuity within institutions is wonderful and should be encouraged, even if it crosses against meritocracy. And taken to the extreme, and this is where it goes back to the H-1Bs,

Speaker 6 it's one thing for Americans to have to compete with people from their high school, say, or from their hometown or county or state.

Speaker 6 But in an increasingly globalized economy and in an increasingly borderless country, until President Trump was re-elected, all of a sudden you're telling American workers that they have to compete against the entire world.

Speaker 6 And that's not even a level of playing field, by the way, because the American workers have regulations imposed upon them

Speaker 6 and costs imposed upon them that the workers around the world do not.

Speaker 6 And so I don't, it's, I suppose, in a sense, anti-meritocratic for American policy to favor American citizens and exclude other people. But that's what a country is supposed to do.

Speaker 6 A country is supposed to conduce to the common good of the people in that country. So I would say two cheers for meritocracy.
Not three cheers. I would say two cheers for meritocracy.

Speaker 6 We want our people to be tough, smart, work hard, ambitious, not get lazy, not be on the dole. We want all of those things.

Speaker 6 But we also have to recognize these are our people, and we have a special obligation to our people that we don't have to people on the other side of the world. Awesome.
Thank you.

Speaker 21 Hi, Michael. My name is Nella.
I'm a student at a college in Indiana. I've been listening to you and Ben Shabir for like five years now.

Speaker 21 But I'm a Protestant. I'm like not Calvinist, but I'm Arminian, so I do agree with a lot of the Catholic traditions.

Speaker 21 But the one thing that like, like, the one thing I disagree with Catholicism is, like, that

Speaker 21 you have to be beholden to the Pope, because I just don't think you should do that. Because the Pope is a man that's fallible, like, we are all fallible, and that's like the only thing I have.

Speaker 6 Yeah, the Pope was a big stumbling block for a lot of people who are, they're Catholic curious, but that's the one issue that they have trouble.

Speaker 6 In fact, our friend Charlie, you know, quite openly had issues, especially with the last Pope, who

Speaker 6 sometimes made things difficult for

Speaker 6 people given some political statements of his. However, the Pope,

Speaker 6 the office of the papacy, obviously has developed over time, as all things do.

Speaker 6 But I think you see the papacy going all the way back to the Apostolic Age. I think really even in Scripture.
That's certainly been the defense of it.

Speaker 6 And the primacy of the Bishop of Rome goes all the way back to those early ages, too.

Speaker 6 So the scriptural defense is that Christ says to Peter, Peter, Simon, you are now Peter, and on this rock I'll build my church. I'll give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

Speaker 6 What you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. What you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Speaker 6 This traditionally was understood to be the special appointment of Peter to have this leading role in the visible physical church on earth. Peter and Paul then go to Rome.

Speaker 6 And you see this in the writing of the early Christians, the church fathers, going back to the Apostolic Age and shortly thereafter, that when there were divisions between the churches, they would defer to Rome.

Speaker 6 Rome was understood to have had a special authority because Peter and Paul went there.

Speaker 6 Furthermore, there's a famous quote from St. Augustine, which is that Rome has spoken, the matter is settled.
That when there were disputes, the disputes had to be settled ultimately by someone.

Speaker 6 And so I think there's a misconception of what the Pope is and does. The Pope is not some like North Korean tyrant who just imposes his will on every matter of life.

Speaker 6 I think the Pope arises out of, not only out of Scripture and the Acts of Christ, but out of a logical necessity that for an institution to have authority and to carry on,

Speaker 6 someone has to be the ultimate decider when issues cannot be resolved at lower levels. So when you have an issue with your brother, you try to resolve it amongst yourselves.

Speaker 6 Then maybe you bring in some of the other believers. Maybe you go to your priests, your presbyters, your elders, your bishops.
You bring these people in.

Speaker 6 When there are battles between the bishops, theological questions that have to be resolved, there can be councils. There have been many, many councils throughout history.

Speaker 6 We see a council in scripture.

Speaker 6 And And

Speaker 6 ultimately, when you need that clarity, when you need to believe, or rather, when the church needs to speak as a divine institution that really has the authority of God, you need someone to settle that.

Speaker 6 That has been traditionally the office of the Bishop of Rome.

Speaker 6 I agree, there have been lots of bad popes over the years, some recent, some older, and so, you know, this is very scandalous, but I often go back to a line from Hilaire Belloc, who is a great Catholic writer, very pugilistic.

Speaker 6 And Hilaire Belloc said, look, I have to take it as a matter of faith that the church is divinely instituted. But for those who

Speaker 6 doubt the divine institution, one proof of it is that no other institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight. And I think that is kind of a proof of it.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 our Lord, just as St. Paul tells us the civil authority is there for our good, our Lord sends a spiritual authority.
And sometimes we get good popes, and sometimes we get bad popes.

Speaker 6 And maybe the bad popes are there to chastise us. Maybe the good popes are there to

Speaker 6 comfort us in a way.

Speaker 6 And maybe the bad popes are even there to remind us that the Pope is fallible except when he's infallible.

Speaker 21 Thank you so much. It would mean the world to me if I could just get a quick selfie real quick.

Speaker 6 A selfie, absolutely. Thank you so much.
Nihil Obstad, I say with authority, you can have that selfie. And I'm not even the Pope.

Speaker 6 All right, we have a very brief hat signing pause. Please ask your question while I gather the hats.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 6 Don't throw all the hats. No, I'm going to be buried in hats.
No.

Speaker 6 That was entirely my fault. I shouldn't have said that.

Speaker 6 Yes, your question.

Speaker 16 Hi, my name is Levi Blair. I am a junior high school student at Mountain View High School.

Speaker 16 And I just actually

Speaker 16 started my own chapter at Mountain View High School.

Speaker 16 And I agree with you on just about everything I can think of except for

Speaker 16 I have nothing against Catholicism or anything, but I personally believe that Catholicism and Christianity are two different things

Speaker 16 and beliefs.

Speaker 16 I want to know what your stance is on that and why.

Speaker 6 Well, I would disagree with that, I would say.

Speaker 6 Though

Speaker 6 certainly

Speaker 6 Catholicism and Protestantism have different views of religion, and Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy to some degree have different views, though

Speaker 6 the chasm is much smaller. So if the premise is that there's Catholicism,

Speaker 6 which

Speaker 6 Catholics are fine, but they're wrong, and there's

Speaker 6 true Christianity, which is some version of Protestantism, I guess the first question you would have to answer is, how it is the case that Protestantism only came about beginning in 1517?

Speaker 6 Because what that would suggest is that Christ was on earth, he picked apostles, he said, go make disciples of all nations. He says, you know, you're the rock on which I'll build my church.

Speaker 6 But it's all going to disappear for the next 1,500 years. And then, in roughly 1,500 years, then the true church will finally emerge.

Speaker 6 How could that possibly be the case? That would mean that the great saints, the church fathers, the great Christians of of history were all fake, basically.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 16 Yeah,

Speaker 16 I hear the argument that

Speaker 16 Catholicism typically came before

Speaker 16 Christianity and stuff, or as it is defined

Speaker 16 with

Speaker 16 Protestant

Speaker 16 practices.

Speaker 16 But the reason why I don't believe that, I reject that argument, is because

Speaker 16 by that logic, wouldn't Judaism also count as Christianity and wouldn't we call Judaism Christianity?

Speaker 6 You're saying Judaism came from Christianity?

Speaker 16 No, I'm saying that Christianity came after Judaism, and many attribute Judaism.

Speaker 6 You know, that's also kind of a touchy subject because that's not really how I see things. You know, the church understands herself to be the new Israel or the spiritual Israel.
That the particular,

Speaker 6 the Old Testament Israelites are a particular particular nation chosen to be the type of all nations. So

Speaker 6 there are particular people called out, but they tell us something about all nations. And that the Old Testament prefigures the New Testament.
That you can find the New Testament

Speaker 6 foreseen in the old and revealed, the Old Testament is revealed in the New.

Speaker 6 So it would seem to me that

Speaker 6 just as St. Paul tells us, previously you had circumcision, now you have baptism.

Speaker 6 St. Peter says, baptism now saves you.

Speaker 6 What we see are, you know, hints of the true religion. And it comes out, and the incarnation is the fulfillment that God makes in his promises to Israel.
And so it's not that there's a break.

Speaker 6 You know, we used to have Judaism and now we have Christianity. It's that there is a fulfillment of God's promises going all the way back to Abraham, in fact, going all the way back to Adam.

Speaker 6 So I don't really see that as the issue.

Speaker 6 The other distinction, of course, between Judaism and Catholicism, Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and a few other things in the middle, is that we believe in Christ.

Speaker 6 So, you know, I don't think it's a totally apt comparison.

Speaker 6 And it just seems to me strange that our Lord would tell us in Scripture, I will be with you always, even until the end of the age.

Speaker 6 And then he would say, except for the next 1,500 years, I'm going to totally abandon you. But don't worry, I'm coming back at some point.

Speaker 6 So I think the historical arguments are kind of difficult for that, to say nothing of the theological arguments. And I would point to someone who was just made a doctor of the church, St.

Speaker 6 John Henry Newman, who was Protestant, and he was extremely anti-Catholic.

Speaker 6 He wrote anti-Catholic invectives.

Speaker 6 And then, especially through his acquaintance with the history of the church and church fathers,

Speaker 6 he became Catholic, and he became a cardinal, and then he became a saint. And so, listen, if Jack Newman can do it, That might be the path ahead of you too.

Speaker 6 I'm not making any prophecies or predictions, but that might happen to you as well.

Speaker 16 Okay, thank you. Also,

Speaker 16 can you sign my Reagan 80?

Speaker 6 Yeah, let's do it. Look at this stack of signing things I have.

Speaker 16 I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Speaker 6 If I fall off this stage signing a f a poster, that will be very that's the only clip that's going to go viral from Amfest.

Speaker 6 Thanks, pal. Great catch.
Okay, next question.

Speaker 22 Hi, I'm Phoebe Linney.

Speaker 22 I was wondering: do you think you would be

Speaker 22 Matt Walsh in a fight?

Speaker 6 Do I think I could beat Matt Walsh in what?

Speaker 6 A fight. A fight.
A fight.

Speaker 6 In a fight. In a fight.

Speaker 6 Like, combatively. Are you a Walsh plant? Are Are you a Walsh child? Hold on.
What is your...

Speaker 6 Yeah. Hold on.
How old are you? What? How old are you?

Speaker 22 10.

Speaker 6 Unbelievable. I love 10 years old.

Speaker 6 That's so great. He's ah.

Speaker 6 The future.

Speaker 6 The future is great. Because you ask

Speaker 6 a very important question.

Speaker 6 You know, at DW, I don't know, we're all kind of like moderately sized fellas, with one exception. Matt Walsh, that giant tree.
He's like 6'11. He's a lumberjack of a man.

Speaker 6 In between shows, he just chops down oak trees. So

Speaker 6 what you would suspect is that I, of a moderate Sicilian stature, would be defeated in a physical battle by Matt Walsh. But you would be wrong.
And let me tell you why you would be wrong.

Speaker 6 Because I live, as I alluded to earlier, on a steady diet of caffeine, nicotine, vim, and vigor.

Speaker 6 We are a clever, crafty people, we children of the mezzo Giorno. The Princess Bride tells us never to go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
And I am reminded.

Speaker 6 I am reminded that the tall trees fall the hardest. I would in fact defeat Matt Walsh in a battle of brute strength.

Speaker 6 Very good question.

Speaker 6 What?

Speaker 22 What did you say at the last part? Sorry, I missed it.

Speaker 6 What did I say? Yes, I would beat him. That's what I'm saying.
I would totally beat him.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 20 I forgot what I was going to say.

Speaker 22 But yeah, can I have my pen back after you're done?

Speaker 22 Can I have the marker back after you're done?

Speaker 6 Can someone yell that at me? The pen.

Speaker 6 That's your pen that I've stolen. That's why you had that feisty question.
I think Matt Walsh, I think Matt Walsh would come beat you in a fight, Michael, you pen thief. Yes, I can give you this back.

Speaker 6 Hold on.

Speaker 17 This will be the last question.

Speaker 6 Last question.

Speaker 6 At least you have a beautiful sweater for your last question.

Speaker 7 Thank you. Hi, Michael.
I'm Emma.

Speaker 12 And my question is that people love to say that America has no culture.

Speaker 7 How do we combat the diversity as our strength message and put the focus back on making American values and American traditions back in the mainstream and worthy of our protection again?

Speaker 6 That America has no culture? No more.

Speaker 6 Yeah, well, I guess that would explain why the entire world is trying to come here, actually.

Speaker 6 Because if you claim that America's a vacuum, perhaps that's why we're sucking up everybody from all around the world. That's one explanation.

Speaker 6 I think the other one is we obviously have a culture, and the culture is the envy of the world, and everyone wants, at the very least, to experience the fruits of that culture and benefit from them, even if they don't want to participate in that culture or sacrifice for that culture.

Speaker 6 So it's totally ridiculous. One way to combat the idea that America has no culture, no identity, it's just an idea or any idea or nothing at all.
Come on in, Ilhan Omar.

Speaker 6 The one way to combat that is to travel anywhere else in the world, especially because a lot of us have some immigrant background, maybe a quarter this or half that.

Speaker 6 And when you go, well, I'll speak from my own experience because, you know, a quarter of my family is from England. Some of them came over on the Mayflower, which is a great cigar brand, by the way.

Speaker 6 And then a quarter of them are, did I mention that? And then a quarter of them are Irish. I don't really look at.
And then the other, a quarter Italian and a quarter Sicilian.

Speaker 6 So I remember I was a teenager. The first time I went to Italy, I said, ah, I'm going to be coming home.
You know, this will be like visiting my people.

Speaker 6 And then I go there and I think, wait, there's a bunch of foreigners. What are you talking about, my people? I don't know.
And I speak Italian, by the way. I said, this is crazy.

Speaker 6 I went to a sandwich shop. It was the most famous sandwich shop in Siena.
I go there to get a sandwich at lunchtime. It's closed.
I wait there 45 minutes. The guy rolls up, this Italian.

Speaker 6 He finally opens it. I said, can I buy a sandwich here? He says, and no, there's no bread.
I said, said, what do you mean there's no bread? He said, I don't have bread. I got to go get a bread.

Speaker 6 I said, well, should I wait? Should I go? He goes, I don't care what you do. You wait.
You go. I said, why don't you have capitalism in this country? Why do I have to explain to you?

Speaker 6 And I realized in that moment, if not earlier,

Speaker 6 I'm an American.

Speaker 6 You're all Americans.

Speaker 6 You are.

Speaker 6 USA. USA.
USA. USA.
USA. USA.

Speaker 6 Antonin Scalia, the late great Supreme Supreme Court justice, told this story when he was in school. He studied for a year in Switzerland.
And he went to Switzerland. He goes to Italy.

Speaker 6 He doesn't feel that...

Speaker 6 He goes to England. This big, gigantic Sicilian man.
He goes to England and he feels more at home in England than anywhere else he had been in the world other than America. Why?

Speaker 6 Because...

Speaker 6 It's the closest to the American culture. Because our culture has come from the English culture.

Speaker 6 And so what we have to conclude from that is, despite the waves of mass migration, despite all the nonsense about diversity is our strength and America is a nation of immigrants or whatever, no, America is a real country with a real people, with real traditions and habits, many of which we can't even articulate.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 that's a special thing. That's what has attracted people.
And if you want to continue to flourish, if you even want to continue attracting people, that's what you have to hold on to.

Speaker 6 That's a real particular thing. It can't be universalized with some dumb slogan.
And if people didn't like it or if it didn't really exist, the whole world wouldn't be clamoring to get here.

Speaker 6 Thank you very much. Wonderful to be with all of you.

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