Ep. 1693 - Trump Revokes Chuck Schumer's Jew Card

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Other fees may apply. Chuck Schumer is officially no longer a Jew.
So declareth the president of the United States. And Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I'm concerned.
You know, he's become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish.
He's not Jewish anymore. He's a Palestinian.

I think that does it. I know it's still debated among scholars whether or not the Scottish-German-Presbyterian president has the authority to de-Hebraize one of the most famous secular Jews in the world.
It is kind of like a modern, really a post-modern investiture controversy. But I'm with Trump.

I suspect the reverse circumcision will be deeply unpleasant.

I suspect Democrats will be deeply unpleasant. I suspect Democrats will rue the day that they developed all of that technology for trans surgeries.
But Trump is de-Judaizing Schumer because Schumer has opposed the deportation of the foreign former student, former graduate student at Columbia, Mahmoud Khalil, who led a bunch of pro-Palestine demonstrations and made a general nuisance of himself around New York City. But Schumer is not the only prominent Jew taking the side of the radical pro-Palestine activist, Jerry Nadler, Jamie Raskin, also top politicians in America, top Democrats, top Jews,

they are both demanding Khalil's release.

Meanwhile, Baptists and Catholics and lapsed Presbyterians are cheering on his deportation,

all of which tells you a lot about the true meaning of the Mahmoud Khalil affair.

Hint, it is about a lot more.

It goes a lot deeper than Israel or Gaza.

I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

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Mahmoud Khalil, the former graduate student who has somehow dominated the news more than any real academic in the country for probably many decades. Will he be deported or not? Is holding a pro-Palestine demonstration a deportable offense? Are the Republicans and Trump trampling on Mahmoud Khalil's free speech rights? Is this just an example of the Israel lobby? Jews trying to deport their enemies, even though the really prominent Jews are all demanding that he stay.
What's going on here? We turn away from the Democrats and the Jews toward a Republican, Cuban, Italian, Irish, Southern Baptist, Senator Ted Cruz on a podcast I've heard of before, the Verdict podcast. Have you ever heard of that? Senator Cruz explaining why the Khalil deportation is a good idea and not a free speech issue.
There have been a number of people online, a number of leftists who are saying, well, this is free speech. This is allowed.
Let me be clear. Under U.S.
law, American citizens are protected by the First Amendment. Foreigners are not.
A visa to come to this country as a student, that is a permissive decision, and you do not have a right, if you are a guest to this country, to actively undermine America. Let me be clear to anyone.
If you hate America, if you want to undermine America, do not come to this country. And the Trump administration rightly arrested and plans to deport Mahmoud Khalil for organizing anti-Israel, anti-America, pro-Hamas protests.
And what's stunning, Ben, what do you think the reaction of the Democrats is to this? They stand with Khalil. They stand with the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protesters.
So if you want to know where you stand, if you stand with Israel, if you stand with American Jews, if you stand with freedom, if you stand with the right to be free from oppression and violence, that ain't the Democrats. They stand with those engaged violence.

Okay, so Senator Cruz's primary point here

is visas are a permissive decision.

No one has a right to a student visa.

Foreigners who come into this country

cannot say, you know,

I'm an American citizen.

You can't deport me for stating my mind.

We can choose to let you in or choose to exclude you for basically any reason. And if you're here and you're doing things we don't like, we can send you home for basically any reason too.
Foreigners are not entitled to all of the rights of American citizens. So what is this really about? You heard Senator Cruz bring up so many issues here.
He's anti-American. Okay, that's one thing.
He's anti-Israel. That's a different thing.
He's a Columbia graduate student. Senator Cruz doesn't point this out explicitly, but as far as I'm concerned, all the Columbia graduate students should be deported, even the ones who are American citizens.
He's demanding free speech rights, but he doesn't actually have some kind of right to free speech in the same way an American citizen does. What is this really about? There is a charge that this guy is being deported because of Israel.
That if he hadn't come out against Israel, if he were just an ordinary anti-American protester, if he were just supporting some other cause around the world, he wouldn't be deported. I don't really totally buy that, in part because of what we opened the show on.
One of the most ardently pro-Israel Jewish politicians in the country is also one of the loudest voices to keep this grad student in the country. I'm not sure if you say, well, it's only because of Israel, only because he's anti-Israel and pro-Palestine.
That's the only reason he's being deported. Have you ever seen other demonstrators be deported? I'm trying to ask, well, what would the other example be? What are the big leftist demonstrations in recent years? BLM? There weren't a lot of foreigners involved in BLM.
Much as I would like to deport the people who marched with BLM, those are American citizens. That's a different issue.
The Me Too movement, all those screechy feminists with the pink hats, much as I would like to deport them, they were American citizens. The pro-Palestine anti-Israel protests uniquely attracted lots of people who aren't, some are citizens, but many were not citizens.
Many, like this guy, were here on visas or had green cards or were just studying over here. It's a different situation.
So you could deport those people in a way you couldn't deport people from other leftist protests. What is this about? Obviously, it touches on Israel-Palestine.
There's no doubt about that. But this goes deeper than that.
This is about what do we think about free speech? And I'm really happy about that because, as you know, I wrote a book called Speechless, number one national bestseller, highly recommended you pick it up, which said that we're getting free speech wrong. The debate really is not over pure free speech versus total censorship.
It's about competing standards and norms. And we have the right to standards, and we have the right to restrict speech that is disordered or illegal or not conducive to human flourishing.
So in this case, you're seeing Republicans take up that more traditionally conservative point of view. This is about the border.
We are now in the midst of mass deportations. It's no surprise that this guy is potentially being deported during that big wave.
This is about immigration generally. Most Americans want less immigration total, illegal and legal.
For decades in this country, we've been told we have two options on immigration, more illegal immigration from the Democrats or more legal immigration from the Republicans. But if you look at public opinion polls, Gallup, Pew Research, most Americans want drastically less immigration overall.
So yeah, we do want to deport some people who aren't. Even the conversation, what's the purpose of immigration? The Libs say that foreigners have a right to be in America.
Even many of the squishy Republicans for years have said, well, they have a kind of a right to be in America. But now what we're saying is, no, no, these people don't really have a right to be in America.
The purpose of immigration is to make our country better. If diversity is our strength, a dubious proposition advanced by Dan Quayle in the 90s, but if that really were the case, then great, show me how it makes us stronger.
I don't think this guy is making us stronger. So you have this weird situation where the most prominent Jews in the country, Jews tend to be Democrats, though there are many good, strong conservative Jews.
But especially the unobservant Jews tend to be Democrats. And so you got the most prominent Jews in the country in politics saying that they got to let this pro-Palestine guy stay.
And then you got what? You got Ted Cruz, who's a Cuban, Italian, Irish, Southern Baptist. You got President Trump, who's a Scottish, German, Presbyterian.
You got Tom Holman's the guy in charge of deportations. Tom Holman's a Catholic.
And what is Holman? Holman Dutch, maybe? I don't know. Anyway, they're the ones who are on the side of deporting the guy who's pro-Palestine.
It's not that it has nothing to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict. It obviously does, but it goes much deeper.
And it goes to the kinds of political debates that have transformed the right and have defined the battle between right and left for about a decade now at least. There's so much more to say.
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Speaking of the culture war, the representative from Delaware in the U.S. Congress, Tim McBride, who calls himself Sarah, a fella who dresses like a lady, the first member of Congress who insists he is a member of the opposite sex.

He just came out, gave a speech with other House Democrats, accusing Republicans of being obsessed with the culture war.

We will not take a lecture on decorum from a party that incited an insurrection. Republicans and being obsessed with culture war issues.
The Republican Party is obsessed with culture war issues.

It is weird and it is bizarre.

And the American people deserve serious legislators, serious elected officials who are focused on bringing people together to deliver real results for the American people.

Not to play games and not to engage in schoolyard taunts. The man who shows up to Congress in a skirt is accusing us of being weird and bizarre.
The man who has made a personal jihad out of forcing himself into women's bathrooms against the protestations of women, including his female colleagues in Congress, people like Nancy Mace. That guy's accusing us of being weird.
A man who makes a sexual delusion at best and perversion at worst, the center of his identity is accusing Republicans of being obsessed with culture war issues. first of all, on the culture war, a reminder, Republicans, conservatives are not now and never have been the aggressors on the culture war.
We're not the ones who are radically trying to change things. We thought it was perfectly fine until, what, 2015, 2016, that men were limited to the men's bathroom and women were limited to the women's bathroom and boys were restricted to boys sports leagues and girls were restricted to girls sports leagues.
We thought that was fine. We had no problem with that.
You guys are the ones who changed things. You guys are the ones who said that Husky Hank has a constitutional right to strip down naked next to our daughters in the public pool.

That was your aggression.

And that was rather intense aggression in the culture war.

And then we objected to that, and you said we're the aggressors.

You said we're the ones who are obsessed.

But then furthermore, in this term culture war, what is the culture war?

You know, the culture war is a very, very bad thing when it's the other side who's winning. Have you ever noticed that? In fact, the phrase culture war is usually just a polemical term to try to dismiss the complaints of one's political opponents.
The Democrats didn't seem to have a problem with the culture war when they were redefining marriage, the bedrock political institution. They didn't seem to have a problem with the culture war when they were forcing fellas into the ladies' bathroom.
They didn't seem to have a problem with the culture war when they were toppling, even beyond the sexual issues, when they were toppling statues of the founders of America. They didn't seem to have an issue with the culture war when they were radically rewriting the curricula to oppose truth, beauty, and justice, goodness, the American way, everything in between.
No, no, no, they only have a problem with the culture war. When, where did this come from? It's because one of Tim McBride's colleagues in Congress referred to him as Mr., which is a respectful thing to do to your congressional colleague who's a man.
Because a Republican member of Congress, Keith Self, who came on the show a few days ago, because Congressman Self refused to be forced to lie on behalf of Tim McBride's sexual confusion. Because of that, now this guy's throwing a big news conference, accusing us of being obsessed with the culture war.
At a basic level, though, what is the culture war? What is culture? Culture is the customs, the institutions, the beliefs, the behaviors of a people. That's what the culture war, that's what the culture is.
So a culture war is just trying to change culture in some way, to advance, to defeat one's opponents in the culture. But that's what politics is.
Yeah, it's a polemical term and it's kind of silly, culture war. But whatever it means, yeah, I should hope Republicans are engaged in it.
That's the job of Republicans is to engage in politics. That's why most American voters elected Donald Trump is to engage in politics and change politics for the better.
What are the Democrats doing? They're not concerned about the culture. They're not trying to change the culture.
Oh, wow. What are they doing there? Are they whittling? Are they sewing? Are they knitting? What are they doing, D.C.? No, they're engaged in the culture war.
It's just right now they're losing, And they're rightly losing because they show up. Much of what the Democrats have pushed forever has been absurd.
But now it's so visibly absurd. When it's people like Chuck Schumer who are generally polished and put together and wear their necktie and speak in a kind of dry, educated way with this Harvard degree, then you sometimes miss out on the absurdity and the radicalism of what they're pushing.
But when it's a fellow wearing stiletto heels and a skirt in the halls of Congress, it's clear that what they're pushing is absurd. And they have the audacity to call us weird and bizarre and obsessed with politics.
Okay. All right, buddy, whatever.
Now, they don't want to talk about the culture. Well, I don't know what they want to talk about.
They want to talk about technocracy or efficiency. That's fine.
Getting down to brass tacks. He says, Tim McBride says that the Republicans would rather stop the government than make sure the government is going on well.
Okay. Well, what about that government shutdown we were supposed to have? It's not the Republicans who are trying to stop the functioning of the government.
It was the Democrats, and everyone knows it, and President Trump made this point from the Oval Office. If it shuts down, it's not the Republicans' fault.
You know, we passed a bill where we had an incredible Republican vote. We only had one negative vote, a grandstander, you know, one grandstander.

There's always a grandstander in the lot.

But it was amazing.

People were amazed that the Republicans were able to vote in unison like that so strongly.

If there's a shutdown, even the Democrats admit it'll be their fault.

And I'm hearing a lot of Democrats are going to vote for it, and I hope they do. So that was yesterday.
Things are moving very quickly. The things that move very quickly generally in the Trump second term, it truly feels, and I like basically everything that's going on, but it feels as though Trump was inaugurated five years ago.
It was January 20th. We're not even at March 20th yet.
It's less than two months. So much is that.
So yesterday, he says, hey, even the Democrats are admitting if the government shuts down right now, it's their fault. Because essentially all of the Republicans voted to fund the government, voted for this continuing resolution.
You had all but one in the House. You had all but one in the Senate.
So it's up to Schumer because the Republicans would need 60 votes, not just 51, but 60 votes in the Senate in order to advance the bill, in order to go to cloture. And Chuck Schumer said, well, you don't have the vote.
So it was the Democrats who were going to shut it down. that the Democrats are on record for many years now, inveighing against the horrors of a government shutdown, saying it's contrary to democracy.
People will die. This is the end of our country.
It's terrible. The people who shut down the government, they've given up their right to govern.
And so now the Democrats don't want to look like huge hypocrites. They realize they're just backed into a corner.
What happens yesterday? Chuck Schumer caves. Republican rejection leads us to a decision.
And it's not really a decision. It's a Hobson's choice.
Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Donald Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.

This, in my view, is no choice at all.

While the CR bill is very bad,

the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse.

For sure, the Republican bill is a terrible option. It is not a clean CR.
It is deeply partisan. It doesn't address far too many of this country's needs.
But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even more, even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option. Listen to this.
Oh, man. He knows.
It's so embarrassing. He knows he's in the corner.
He says, oh, I know I said I wasn't going to vote for this. And I know I said we were willing to shut the government down.
But I was bluffing. Trump called my bluff.
And now I don't want him to shut the government down because that'll give him even more power. No, it wouldn't.
Not really. Not really at all.
If you didn't fund the government, if you shut it down, you would not be giving him more power. You just like it look like a big jerk.
I guess in the long long run you might be giving him more power because you guys would get blown out during the midterms. But no, this is a flimsy excuse.
You bluffed and you lost. So do I care that much about the government continuing operations? A little bit.
It's good that they'll be able to do this. It is a win for Trump.
This is a loss for Schumer and the Democrats. L after L after L for the Dems.
And poor Chuck Schumer, he's still licking his wounds because he's no longer Jewish by official decree of Emperor Donald. But beyond this continuing resolution, this makes me much more bullish on Trump's other negotiations.
Because what have we been hearing for days? Oh, Trump's, he's going to blow up the government. Oh, Trump, he's, look at these, he's destroying the norms and everything's going to get worse.
And then what? No big deal. No government shutdown.

Government shutdowns under Obama, no government shutdown under Trump.

But what are the big negotiations he's engaging in now? Ending the Ukraine war. And we hear,

oh, he's going to give everything to Putin, always a bad negotiator, resolving the Israel-Gaza war. Oh no, Trump, this is crazy.
He doesn't know what he's doing. Oh, he's a bad negotiator.
He's going to get us a bad deal. I don't know.
This is the first big deal that Trump had to secure in his second term. And he got everything he wanted over the intransigent Republicans, over the House Republicans.
That's like herding cats. Over the Senate Republicans and over the Senate Democrats and over Chuck Schumer, who's a very talented politician.
And still, Schumer went down in flames and Trump got everything he wanted. Makes me bullish on Trump's other deals this term.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Patrick Coley, who says, no shirt, no shoes, no service. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason.
This was posted on every 7-Eleven window in the US in the 70s and was strictly enforced. Funny you mentioned the 70s because in principle, it actually couldn't have been enforced.
The notion that we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, that has not been really enforceable since the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, which whatever good it did, whatever good it promised to do, it didn't really deliver on much. But whatever good it promised to do, it took away an essential aspect of the American political order, which is freedom of association.
So actually, businesses don't really have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. And in America, relating to immigration, which is what you're talking about here, relating to Mahmoud Khalil and the other foreigners who are causing nuisances in our streets, in recent years, we've been told, no, we don't have the right to kick them out.
No, no, no, they're as American as apple pie. I mean, they don't have papers.
They're not citizens. They're foreigners.
They hit our country. But no, they're American.
We can't do anything. And Trump's coming in and he's saying, no, we do reserve the right to refuse service.
Buy. Get out.
The American people voted for me on that basis. President Trump has taken one minor L in recent.
Look, he's not going to bat a thousand, okay? Nobody can bat a thousand. This is not abstract philosophy here.
Politics is an applied science, and so nobody gets every single thing he wants. So one of the rare losses so far for Trump just happened yesterday.
This is his director nominee for the CDC, reported here in the New York Times. Dr.
David Weldon, he was the pick to head the CDC. He just issued this statement following withdrawal of his nomination.
I'll give you the broad scope. It's quite long.
It's worth reading this official statement of Honorable Dave Weldon,

MD, withdrawing 12 hours before my scheduled confirmation hearing in the Senate. I received a phone call from an assistant at the White House informing me that my nomination has been withdrawn because there were not enough votes to get me confirmed.
Who refused to vote for him? Susan Collins from Maine. She's one of the squishies of the Republic.
She's arguably a Republican, but she's very squishy.

It's because this guy has been smeared as anti-vax. Now he says, I reminded them that I actually give hundreds of vaccines every year in my medical practice.
So not only is this guy ideologically not totally anti-vax, he personally administers vaccines. for some reason, Colin's staff couldn't get over that no matter what.
So there were 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the committee. Losing one was a problem, but also the White House staff, he suspects withdrew his nomination because Republican Chairman Dr.
Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was also voting no. And he's also an internist.
He's also a medical doctor. Apparently these two guys had known each other for years, but he was also throwing around the claim that this guy was anti-vax or that he believed vaccines cause autism, which Dave Weldon says, I've never said.
And then Big Pharma. He says the concern of many people is that Big Pharma was behind this, which is probably true.
They are hands down the most powerful lobby organization in Washington, D.C., giving millions of dollars to politicians on both sides of the aisle. They also purchased millions of dollars of advertising in newspapers, magazines, and on TV.
For any news organization to take on Big Pharma could be suicide. Many media actually carry water for Big Pharma.
So he says, look, I love Bobby Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy was furious that my nomination was withdrawn, but there it goes.
It's worth reading the whole thing. The vaccines are going to be a major political issue right now.
And as politics has applied science, we're going to get an experiment to see who's right on the vaccines. Because you've got the media powered in no small part by big pharma.
You've got politicians going into overdrive, fear-mongering people on the next big epidemic, which is going to be measles. Measles had been pretty much wiped out in America following the introduction of the measles vaccine about half a century ago.

Now, people have more concerns about vaccines, especially bombing children with many, many vaccines, many, many more than even existed when I was a kid, when they're really, really little.

And there are some concerns about what that does to kids. So vaccination rates are declining,

and measles rates presumably will increase. Now, what's funny is you're seeing all these headlines

about how the measles are taking over the country this year

and all this fear-mongering.

There were also measles outbreaks last year,

but last year Joe Biden was president,

so you just didn't hear anything about it.

This year, Trump is president,

and it's a hot topic because Bobby Kennedy is at HHS

and supposed anti-vaxxers are being nominated for the CDC.

So now we're going to see in real time. Even conservatives are very nervous about the measles.
Even people who had been anti-vaccine for their own children, they're now saying, should I get the measles vaccine? So what is it? Let's not forget, 50 years ago, people just got the measles. In fact, this is a clip that that's been going around from the brady bunch one of the most popular sitcoms of all time this is how americans understood measles outbreaks half a century ago hi peter what are you doing home from school? They sent me home.

Measles.

It's either measles or a strange case of red freckles.

You have got a temperature.

They told me.

101.1.

What's the record?

Never mind.

Are you sure it's the measles?

Well, he's certainly got all the symptoms.

A slight temperature, a lot of dots, and a great big smile.

A great big smile? No school for a few days.

Say hello to my dotted son for me. Tell him I'll bring him some comic books and I'll see you later, dear.
Okay, honey, bye. Boy, this is the life, isn't it? Yeah.
If you have to get sick, you sure can't beat the measles. That's right.
No medicine. Inside or out.
Like shots, I mean. Don't even mention shots.
Yuck! Measles.

Measles.

Measles.

Well, all the kids have now had the measles.

So have I.

Well, I had them years ago.

Looks like the Bradys are finished with the measles.

Hold it.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

And there's the laugh drag.

Uh-oh.

Alice has now, you know, Alice is a bit older than the kids. You'd say, you say oh no she's going to be on death's door we're all going to die you should just like get the measles I never had the measles I had the measles vaccine I had chickenpox now kids don't even get chickenpox because they get the chickenpox vaccine so I don't know I'm not a doctor I'm not like this former CDC nominee Dave Weldon I'm not a doctor like Bill Cassidy I'm not a doctor like I'm not like this former CDC nominee, Dave Weldon.
I'm not a doctor like Bill Cassidy. I'm not a doctor like, I don't know, any of these people.
But it is not unreasonable for people who have just lived through a traumatic national experience that is COVID, during which our public officials lied to us specifically about vaccines. We now know they lied.
It's not even just that they got it wrong. They lied.
They now say the purpose of the vaccine was never to prevent infection. Previously, they told us the purpose of the vaccine is to prevent infection.
They lied. Then they said, well, it'll prevent transmission.
But actually, it didn't prevent transmission. Then they said, well, I don't know, it'll do something.
It is not unreasonable for a people who have been lied to specifically about vaccines to have some questions about vaccines, especially when measles was a punchline in sitcoms 50 years ago. All those same people are fear-mongering to us now, telling us that we're all going to die from it.
But it's a big fight. It'll be borne out in practice.
We'll see who's right. Who's right? Bobby Kennedy? Guys like Dave Weldon? Or Big Pharma? We'll see.
We'll see. Story I want to get to before the mailbag.
Crazy story. The Scottsdale police have arrested 202 people in a 12-day multi-agency human trafficking sting.
This is between January 22nd and February 15th. This was an operation to arrest sex buyers, child predators, individuals involved in sex trade trafficking.
The operations were decoy-based, so no children were directly involved in it, but children were ostensibly involved in it. Charges rained from child sex trafficking, prostitution, pandering, luring a minor for sexual exploitation, attempted sexual conduct with a minor, possession of narcotic drugs, and felony flight.
202 arrests, 53 felonies, and 149 misdemeanors. What?

That's a shocking news story.

Next layer, it's another shocking news story that the news is not talking about this mass arrest on child sex trafficking. Next, tertiary level to this news story, it happened in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Scottsdale, Arizona is a very rich part of the country. It's not that this happened in the ghetto somewhere.
It's not that this happened in the shadows somewhere. Scottsdale, Arizona, the median household income in Scottsdale, Arizona is $107,000 per year.
That's much higher than the national median household income. National median household income is $75,000 a year.
So you're talking about over a third higher. Scottsdale, Arizona, when you consider towns and cities that have over 50,000 people in them, it's in the 87th percentile of wealth.
When you look at education, 59% of Scottsdale, Arizona residents have a college degree compared to 31% nationally. This is not a problem that afflicts what our elites would call the unwashed masses.
This weird sex stuff, specifically child sex stuff, it seems to be a problem that afflicts the elites, a pathology, I should say, that afflicts the elites. That's really weird.
Not totally unexpected

for anyone with some familiarity with history, but it's really weird,

and it's really, really weird that no one's talking about it.

What's that about? I don't know. I'd like to hear.
I don't have more facts on the ground here because this story came out and there's just so little coverage of it. Why isn't the news covering this? Very strange.
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Take it away.

Hi, Michael.

Katie from Chicago here.

Love your show.

I know you feel very strongly that there are no pets in heaven.

However, I had a conversation with a Lutheran minister who I admire who explained to me

that he believes heaven is the place where your joy is made complete.

So if when you go to heaven someday, you need your pet there in order for your joy to be made complete, then they will be there. And truthfully, I've gone my whole young adult and adult life believing this as well.
What are your thoughts on this take? I'm curious. Best of luck and take care.
Let me know. Good question.
Do we eat cookies in heaven? do we eat physical cookies, specifically chocolate chip toll house cookies? Do we eat those cookies in heaven? Are they there? No, because heaven is incorporeal. But what if you need cookies to have the fullness of your joy? I really like cookies.
Do I get to smoke cigars in heaven? That's a better example probably for me. Cigars are a big part of my joy on earth.
Do I get to smoke cigars in heaven? I don't. There will be the incense in the choirs of heaven that we see in the images of heaven and revelation, but no, you don't smoke physical cigars in heaven.
But I need them for my joy, don't I? No, no, no. The completion and perfection of your joy is in God.
Let me put this in an even more practical way. There is a place called hell.
Hell is real. People go there.
People you know go there. Maybe people you love go there.
Maybe it's even quite likely that people you love are in hell.

But what if you need them to be in heaven for the completion of your joy? C.S. Lewis takes up this question in The Great Divorce, and he says it's impossible for us to imagine it.
Just as it's impossible for a child to imagine there's anything more wonderful than cookies and chocolates and candies. It's impossible for us to imagine, but perhaps the blessed in heaven actually takes satisfaction in the justice

that leads to the torment of the damned in hell.

We can't really imagine that,

but maybe that's the case

because maybe we can't comprehend God

because if we could, he wouldn't be God.

We can't fully comprehend God.

No, pets don't go to heaven because animals don't have rational souls. They have souls that are proper to their being, but they don't have rational souls.
So they don't go to heaven. There could be animals, not in heaven, but in the new heaven and the new earth after the second coming, after the final judgment.
Maybe there could be animals in principle. I don't know.
It could be the case. But pets themselves, no, they can't go to heaven because their souls don't have an existence outside of the material of their bodies.
We do because we're made in the image and likeness of God and we have reason. But they don't.

So, sorry.

I heard someone describe this as, it's not the fideist heresy, it's the fidoist heresy. That is pertaining to Fido.
Next question. Hey, Michael.
I'm a big fan of the show and your book, Speechless. You often speak of how the left has taken over the arts, specifically film and music.
and as a Christian conservative and a musician myself,

I hate seeing the music, movies, and music. And as a Christian conservative and a musician myself, I hate seeing the music movies and TV shows made today declining both in quality and in morality.
And so my question is, what are some real things we can do to take back the arts? I have a great example. And providentially, I actually have a prop with me right now.
I had to bring this in today for a bit that we're filming after the show. For those of you who are listening, this is my ukulele.
I've played ukulele since 2004, maybe. I don't know.
I've played ukulele for the now vast majority of my life. I'm not even that good at ukulele, but I love ukulele.
I could go months without playing, but sometimes I play it every single day. I just love it because I find it very relaxing.
I find it charming. What I get out of music is not that I'm going to be a rock star.
There aren't that many ukulele playing rock stars. I get a great deal of joy out of music.
It works my mind. It relaxes me.
I can hear beautiful things and then try to recreate them in a paltry way, or I can even imagine things, write little songs myself. All of that is to say, if we want to bring reason back to the arts, if we want to bring seriousness back to arts and culture, we need to engage with ourselves.
And not just in an instrumental way, pun unintended, not just in an instrumental way to make money or something, or to build a big company. We actually have to love it.
We have to help to shape our loves in a good way and then be guided by our love toward good art. You're not going to force a bunch of Chamber of Commerce type Republicans to suddenly care about symphonies and ballet.
And if all they really care about is spreadsheets, you can't force them to do it. You have to cultivate that kind of love.
And the way to do that is in your living room. It's to play ukulele around your kids.
It's to learn the piano. You don't have to be good.
You could just do it. It's like Winston Churchill with his paintings.
Winston Churchill wrote a great essay, Painting His Pastime. He said, if you're reading this essay because you want to start painting, you will never be good.
Get that out of your head. That's not the point to be good necessarily.
It's to get better at it, to grow in love for it, and then you can really appreciate music and arts. That's what you got to do.
But that starts in the living room. Some things can be a little bit more top-down in our country.
That one, you need to be cultivating that for a long time in your private life. Next question.
Hey, Michael, just wanted to get your thoughts on a phenomenon that I've observed, which is there are a lot of Christmas Easter types of Catholics who go get ashes on Ash Wednesday. I'm at a university and I got ashes at our Newman Center and it was just filled with all kinds of people that I'm sure don't regularly attend mass.
And I even went to a parish nearby for mass and it was like Christmas level packed in there. Even my roommate who hasn't been to mass in years went to get ashes.

So what do you think the reason for that is?

It seems like it may be almost kind of a fad of sorts. Like people kind of like to show that they're Catholic, but not really in a religious sense, more of just a cultural sense.
And if it is that, is that even a good thing? you know, for all these people to just be treating it as kind of a cultural celebration

rather than contemplating its real significance and, you know, their own state of lukewarmness in the faith. I'm curious to get your take on it.
Thanks. Yeah, it's weird that actually Ash Wednesday is probably more popular in churches than Christmas or Easter.
The churches are more packed for some reason. And so on the really shallow side of things, it might just be that people are tribal.
Another way of putting that is people are social. People do not merely have individual identities, but collective identities.
We on the right have tried to deny that in recent decades, but it's true. It's part of human nature.
We're not islands unto ourselves. We are social creatures.
And so they do, they want to visibly express their Catholic identity, even if they don't really live that out, which is better than nothing. I'd rather them go to confession and receive the sacraments, but I'd rather them at least feel some identity, some toward the church than none at all that's good but at a at another level the most charitable view of it i think is it's somewhat hard for people to grasp the resurrection which is what easter is about that's really hard for people to grasp it's hard for people to grasp the incarnation how does god become man? That's hard.
That's a hard thing to understand intellectually. Christmas is about the incarnation.
Easter is about the resurrection. Ash Wednesday is about something much simpler.
You die. We all know.
We all will die. That's what the priest rubs the ashes in the cross on your forehead and says, remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.
We know that. We will die.
Even our deluded age, most of us still know we're going to die. So it's a more natural part of religion as opposed to more supernatural.
We know we're going to die. People can grasp that.
And that's a good starting place because when you recognize that you're going to die, then you begin to think about the solution to this problem. And that is a very serious problem.

Okay. It's Fake Headline Friday.
The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it.