Cincinnati Police Chief (8:06)

Let me be clear. Anyone, anyone who put their hands on another individual during this incident in an attempt to cause harm will face consequences. I don't care which side of the incident or the fight they were on. If they place their hands on somebody in an attempt to cause harm, that is unacceptable. This is still an open investigation and all potential charges are being investigated. For everyone involved. All investigative tools and techniques are on the table, including were some of these individuals overserved at some local establishments. It is clear to us that alcohol played a part, a significant part in this incident.

Michael Knowles (9:12)

So you understand it wasn't necessarily just the criminal's fault. It wasn't the people kicking the single mother in the head, making her bleed from her mouth. Really, when you really think about it, it was the bartender's fault. I think it was Jack Daniels fault, frankly. You know, that'll mean Jim Beam, go arrest Jim Beam. This woman. This woman is a police chief. A topic for another time. This woman gets out there, she says, you know, we're not gonna let those bartenders off the hook because we wanna let the criminals off the hook. And the only way that we can go soft on the criminals is if we go hard on everyone else. Even to the point that you hear she is implicitly blaming the victim. She obviously doesn't know a damn thing about being a police officer because the first thing she says is false. It's false as a matter of law and morality. She says, in this case, we're gonna hold you accountable. We're gonna make you face consequences. If you put your hands on someone with the intent to cause harm, whether you're on one side of the fight or the other. Drawing an equivalence between the perpetrator and the victim, that principle is obviously not true. If someone breaks into my home to rob me and kill my children and I punch that person, or I shoot that person, or I bash that person's brains against the concrete, I would not be committing a crime. I would be causing harm to that person. I would even be intending to cause harm. I guess you could say that it's a double effect. I'm intending to protect my property and my family. And the unintended consequence of that is I have to kill this marauder who's coming into my home. But in the colloquial way that this lady is speaking, it's much the same thing. I would be causing harm to that person. I would be laying hands on that person, possibly killing that person, and I would not be doing anything wrong. In fact, I would be doing something that is positively right. So take it to this incident here. Some gang of feral creatures comes up and starts attacking the single mother. If this single mother were to have swung and laid a punch on one of these people, if this single mother had pulled out a gun and shot every single one of them dead in their tracks, that woman wouldn't have done anything wrong. The aggressors would have done something wrong. The criminals would have done something wrong. The person defending himself or herself would not have done anything wrong. That lady needs to go back to police school. Something tells me she didn't get the highest grades at the academy. How did she become a police chief, this woman? I don't know. She needs to go study criminology again. If she thinks that gang attacks on single mothers are caused by Jack Daniels and Jim Beam, I think she might have failed that class at the academy. Or maybe not. Maybe it's even a little darker than that. Maybe it's that even our law enforcement, and especially the political apparatchiks that run law enforcement, even they are not permitted to enact justice or have no interest in enacting justice. They're just trying to manage a political situation. And in so doing, they give inordinate mercy to the guilty. They don't care a wit for the innocent. They let criminals out on $400 bonds when they got them on pretty serious crimes. And then guess what the criminals go do? They go and commit more crimes. And the blood coming out of that lady's mouth is on the hands of the corrupt and incompetent justice system that we've got in Cincinnati and elsewhere around the country. Absolutely pathetic. This is proof that when you go wrong in principle, you come to terribly, terribly mistaken outcomes. When you get something a little bit wrong in the beginning, when you try to cut corners in the beginning, we're not gonna. We're not gonna enact justice. We're gonna. It's so sad. This criminal, I don't want him to inconvenience himself by having to wait in prison. Let's let him out on basically a free bond. Let's, let's not, let's not blame him for his actions. Let's, come on, let's just. Well, this is what you get. And you're gonna get more of it. Now, speaking of misunderstanding our criminal justice system and the causes of violence, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, really, really blowing it. I mean, somehow the Democrats arguments for gun control laws are getting worse and worse decade by decade. Hold on one second. Put a pause if you're driving, pull over. If you're standing, sit down. Go to PureTalk.com knowles how many times have you told someone, if it ain't broke, don't fix it? That is great advice on most things. Not so much for a cell phone because over time the battery life fades, the processor can't keep up, it's fallen, you know, on the ground or in the commode one too many times. Finally, and fortunately, thanks to PureTalk, your cell phone is something you can replace without feeling guilty. When you switch to PureTalk this month, they're going to give you a Samsung Galaxy A36 for free with a $35 qualifying plan. How do those numbers work? How can they possibly keep the lights on? I have no idea. 35 bucks a month for talk, text and data and a free Samsung phone with scratch resistant gorilla glass and a battery that lasts all day, all on America's most dependable 5G network. I've had PureTalk for four or five years now or something like that. It's great, phenomenal service. Actually the best 5G service you're going to get. Also, you can take it overseas. Supporting companies like PureTalk is a good thing because on top of the great product, on top of cutting your cell phone bill in half, you are also helping them help American veterans. You're signing up with a cell phone company that believes what you believe in and walks the walk. Switch in as little as 10 minutes. Go to PureTalk.comKnowles get your free phone today. PureTalk.comKnowles Switch to my wireless company, America's Wireless Company, PureTalk. There was this horrible shooting in New York in Midtown East. This guy who was not from New York, he's from Nevada, shows up with a rifle in an office building, kills multiple people, injures a bunch more, kills a New York City police officer and then he kills himself. That's the happiest part of the whole story. Kathy Hochul goes on tv. Who does she blame? What does she blame? You know the answer to this? The blame lies with the gun and with the Republican politicians who refuse to ban guns in contravention of our second Amendment. And we've heard that argument for many decades. She somehow made it even less persuasive than it's been all these years.

Governor Kathy Hochul (15:59)

This is a ghost of difference between states laws related to gun ownership in the state of New York. You cannot buy one of these. You have to be over age 18. You cannot have access. I mean he had a concealed carry permit which, which allowed him to have this weapon. Much looser laws in the state of Nevada than we have here. And so our argument is, if every state had the same laws, uniformly, you could not have a situation where we fight really hard in the state of New York to make sure that we have the toughest gun laws in the nation.

Michael Knowles (16:32)

Okay, so she's making two claims here, claims about other states laws and therefore the need for national laws. And then she's referring to New York's own laws. Can you play that clip again? Because her argument's getting a little blurry.

Governor Kathy Hochul (16:49)

This goes the difference between states laws related to gun ownership. In the state of New York, you cannot buy one of these. You have to be over age 18. You cannot have access. I mean, he had a concealed carry permit, which allowed him to have the weapon. Much looser laws in the state of Nevada than we have here. And so our argument is this, like if every single.

Michael Knowles (17:12)

Okay, I think I got it. I think I got the point. She's saying, in New York, you couldn't buy this rifle. This is one of the most popular types of rifle in the entire country. So unless you actually repealed the second Amendment, there's no way you could get rid of this rifle. Then she says, well, he had a concealed carry. That's what allowed him to carry this rifle into an office building. Did you catch the problem with that argument? Any gun owners out there? Probably a lot of gun owners listening to this show. Concealed carry permits don't in any way pertain to rifles. Unless you're, I don't know, 12 foot 5. Unless you're a Nephilim, you're probably not concealing an AR15 in your pocket, are you? In your waistband, maybe in your sock? Is that. Concealed carry permits relate to handguns. That's the kind of gun you can conceal. You can't conceal one of those, by the way. He wasn't concealing that gun. He was just walking down the street into it. How he was able to walk right into a building carrying this gun is beyond me. That's a question for law enforcement. That's a question for the incompetence of New York's government. That's a question for all sorts, but not an indictment of concealed carry laws. Furthermore, she then says, and the concealed carry laws allowed him to get this gun? What on earth are you talking about, lady? There are plenty of places that do not readily issue concealed carry where you can buy those guns. In fact, when I was in Los Angeles, I bought a similar rifle, L.A. county. You cannot get a concealed carry. It's basically Impossible. You can get one of those rifles. Even with all of California's gun control laws, you can get a rifle. It's one of the most popular rifles in the country. So she has no idea what concealed carry is. She has no idea what kind of gun that is. She has no idea how the laws would affect the purchase of that gun. She has no idea how those laws could have stopped the gun from getting into the building in the first place. And she has no idea how to repeal the federal law or the federal right, the second Amendment that allows those guns to be purchased elsewhere in the first place. And she wants New York State to write the gun laws for every state in the country. She has no idea how federalism works. And she can't even make the argument over what kind of law would have stopped the shooting, which no Democrat has been able to do in my lifetime. How is it? Why? Can I probably explain it? Because it does seem weird that the Democrats made better gun control arguments 20 years ago than they do today. But I guess the reason for that is one, the arguments were not good even then. And they didn't work and they didn't persuade people. So you gotta try something new. And if those were the best they were gonna make now, I guess the arguments are worse. Number two, people like their rights. People like their guns. People recognize that we have not only a constitutional right, but even a natural right, an ability that we can derive from the natural law to protect ourselves. And this doesn't mean that you can have tanks and bazookas necessarily, but it does mean that you can have reasonable protection with common weapons to protect yourself. And in America, which has more guns than people. In America, where these kinds of rifles are extraordinarily comm. You get to have them. And by the way, none of the laws to ban that kind of gun or any other kind of gun or change concealed carry permits, none of those laws would have stopped that shooting. Here's the proof. New York already bans all that stuff. And this guy got in. Really, really weak stuff. Governor Hochul. Good grief. It's like a comedy of errors, these New York governors. Some of you don't remember this. We had a good governor in New York 30 years ago or more, George Pataky. We had this good governor in New York, George Pataky. He was a Republican. And then we've only had losers and jokers ever since. Who have we had? Since we had Elliot Spitzer, he got pinched on hookers. He goes down. Then we had Patterson. David Patterson. Was that his name? This Guy also super crooked. I don't think he ran for reelection. Then we had Andy Cuomo. He was a complete disaster. He resigned in disgrace, ostensibly over a sex scandal, but it was really because he killed granny during COVID And then we got this lady. She's like the best one we've had in 30 years. Really, really pathetic. The race of New York governors is not improving over time. Now, the science of improving the race is called eugenics. And that word, the E word, the U word, is being used to describe that Sydney Sweeney jeans ad for American Eagle. ABC News so offended that a hot, normal lady is selling jeans again, which has been part of marketing for a very long time, albeit with a break in the middle of the last 10 years so that we could promote androgynous weirdos to sell. Now we're back. Now we're back. We're back to the normality of the 90s. Anyway, ABC is referring to this as eugenics and they kind of have a point. We'll get to that in one second. First up, folks, on Friday, I get to hear from you. And it's my favorite time of the week. I get to hear from you. In the mailbag, I get to answer your pressing questions about dating, philosophy, politics and more. How do you do it? You go to DailyWire.com, you click on watch, you click on the Michael Knowles show. This should be bookmarked already. This should be your homepage. Then you click send A mailbag question, opens up an email and you can either write your question or what I prefer you record it on your phone. However, you record audio on your phone. Video app, audio voice message app. You record it, keep it short, ideally 30 seconds, certainly less than a minute. People, you send me your audiobook of your memoir. You send me your 10 hour soliloquy. I can't put that on the air. You got 30 seconds to one minute, please. That way I can hear your mellifluous voice and then I can give you my pearls of wisdom to answer them. Head over there right now is the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle Jeans ad Eugenics. Time to check the pulse. We begin with the backlash of our new ad campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney. Yeah, the ads are for American Eagle and the tagline is sydney Sweeney has great jeans. Now, in 1 AD, the the blond haired, blue eyed actress talks about genes, as in DNA being passed down from her parents. The play on words is being compared.

Governor Kathy Hochul (23:38)

To Nazi propaganda with racial undertones.

Michael Knowles (23:43)

The pun good genes activates troubling historical associations for this country. The American Eugenics movement in its prime between like 1900 and 1940, weaponized the idea of good genes just to justify white supremacism. Okay, got it. Okay. Now there's something really funny here. And this is an irony that many people have already observed. So I'll get that out of the way first before we get to the deeper point. The irony that many people have already observed is that the eugenics movement was very, very popular on the left. And in fact, the founder of Planned Parenthood was deeply entwined with the eugenics movement. And in fact, the founding of Planned Parenthood was part and parcel of the eugenics movement to improve the race by killing and preventing the conception of undesired races and people who were thought to be mentally deficient and all the rest of them. So the libs, absolute favorite, a non governmental organization, is the last living remnant of that eugenics movement from the 1920s and 30s. They love it. Margaret Sanger, one of the great saints of the left, she was a eugenicist. They love eugenics, but they only like their eugenics. They don't like it when the exact same ideas and movement was adopted by people like Hitler or whatever. Okay, that's the irony. That's what everyone's observing. There's a deeper point, though. There's a deeper point, which is sometimes you have people on the right say eugenics is terrible. It can be terrible. But the libs have a point here, too. The Sydney Sweeney ad kind of is about eugenics in the sense that. Hold on, hear me out. Hear me out. It kind of is in the sense that Sydney Sweeney is very beautiful. She's a very beautiful girl. And part of that is how she has lived. Part of that is that she probably works out and she probably eats relatively healthily and she doesn't get face tattoos and she doesn't abuse her body. So some of that is just her behavior. But a lot of it is good genes. A lot of it's good genes. She's just pretty. She has a pretty facial structure. She has other attractive aspects of her body which have been much discussed on television and elsewhere. And she's just. She's beautiful. And some people are very beautiful just as a matter of birth, as a matter of their genes. And some people are physically a little bit uglier as a matter of birth and a matter of their genes. Their face is a little more lopsided. They're. I don't know, they're kind of. They just don't look as good. That doesn't mean that the really good looking people are morally great people or spiritually great people doesn't mean that the physically ugly people are morally or spiritually degraded people. But there is such a thing as physical beauty. And physical beauty is largely a matter of good genes. And that's just a fact, okay? And not only is that a fact, everyone acknowledges that fact. And not only does everyone acknowledge that fact, everyone acts on that fact. And in so doing, by a broad understanding of eugenics. By like the most literal definition of eugenics, you meaning good genics, referring to the breeding, referring to the race or the stock. Everyone engages in eugenics to some degree. In as much as you go out on a date, you could go out on a date with five people, a really hot person, a few kind of mid looking people and a really ugly person, all personalities being equal, all virtue being equal, you're going to go out with the hot person, right? Probably. When you marry and have children with a hot person rather than an ugly person, you are practicing eugenics. You are practicing eugenics in a defensible and natural and perfectly fine way. There is a very evil way to practice eugenics. The evil way to practice eugenics would be to, for instance, kill mentally retarded people. It would be to, I don't know, exterminate whole races of people because of their supposed undesirability. There's an evil way to practice eugenics, which is the way Margaret Sanger did or Adolf Hitler did. But just wanting your kids to be like good looking and smart and healthy and sturdy and all that, that's not only defensible, that's something that everybody naturally wants. That's a good thing for people. I don't know if the right is ready for that conversation because we're so used to our talking points from the past 40 years or so. We hear that word eugenics, we say, well, that's a terrible. Yes, the political movement in the early 20th century was mostly evil. And the remnants of that political movement today are quite evil. But there's nothing wrong with wanting your kids to be healthy, which is kind of at the literal core of it. And the libs here, I mean, I think the reason the libs are really upset about the Sydney Sweeney ad is because she is quite pretty. She's quite beautiful actually. And the, the return of beauty in advertising is offensive to them because for the last 10 years at least, but to a lesser degree, for many decades, the left has tried to replace beauty with grotesquery, with ugliness, with horrors that are novel. If nothing else, that's what they want. And it's part of a broader campaign to invert all of the transcendentals, the transcendentals of being, being truth, goodness and beauty. And so there's been a consistent effort to replace truth with falsehood. Constant. Not only telling lies, but forcing all the rest of us to tell lies, to replace goodness with evil. Not only falling away from the moral order, but trying to invert the moral order. The things that we've always considered evil now are considered to be virtues. Things that we've always considered to be virtues are now considered to be repressive and awful and evil and replacing beauty with grotesquery. So the criticism of the Sydney Sweeney ad is that we don't want to be selling products by inciting lust. That that's always bad. Even if the person is really hot or traditionally beautiful or whatever, you still want some modesty. You don't want to be appealing to the prurian interest. Which is why I've said from the beginning, two cheers for the Sydney Sweeney ad. It's great that we've moved away from the high watermark of wokeness in 2020. We've moved back to 1998. That's great. But 1998 wasn't all that great, actually. And we need to go a. But that's what this is about. And so even the suggestion that putting a hot chick in a jeans ad is akin to Hitler propaganda, it's really an attack on beauty. Not all that different from attacks that we've seen in recent years on truth and goodness as well. Says nothing about the genes, of course, but in terms of the advertisement, it's a step in the right direction. Now we have to keep moving. Now we need. Let's keep good. We've got the beauty part largely down. Okay, now let's move a little. Let's move into the goodness part, into the truth part, and then we can be really free. And that's what it's about. Now. Speaking of women and sex appeal, I guess biggest sex scandal that we've had maybe in my lifetime, other than Bill Clinton's Oval Office dalliances. Bill Clinton, though, was friends with these people. So I guess it all relates. Ghislaine Maxwell might be called to testify before Congress. For years now, we've been calling for the release of the Epstein files. And we have a lot of the Epstein files, but it doesn't give us that much juicy info. Then we say we want the Epstein client list. What is the Epstein? The government says there is no client list. Well, there were Clients. There were associates. There are at least the people accused of palling around with him. People on the flight logs. Shouldn't we investigate that? Well, we don't. I don't know. It's the. The information is a little murky. It's a little dubious. Okay, well, can we interview Jeffrey Epstein? No. Because he's dead. How'd he die? Don't worry about it. Can we interview the guards that were on duty when Epstein was killed or killed himself? Oh, they were using the john. Sorry. They weren't there. At the moment, doesn't seem like we can get answers from anybody. But there is one woman who has all the dirt. The woman who was closest to Epstein for years and years and years. Ghislaine Maxwell. Still in prison. Some Republicans want her to testify. In fact, James Comer of the House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed Ghislaine Maxwell for a deposition. And Ghislaine Maxwell has responded. Will she talk? Won't she talk? She has given the smartest answer she could possibly have given. We'll get to that in one second. First, this month, your Daily Wire plus membership gives you more than ever. You get ad free uncensored shows from the most trusted handsome voices in conservative media. You also get entertainment that matters, like what is a woman? And Am I racist? And our brand new documentary, journey to the UFC. August 13th, you will get a documentary from me. The Secret Vatican Files premieres exclusively to members. Plus, Isabel Brown's new show launches right here this fall. Are you already a member gift? A full year of Daily Wire plus for 40% off with code July. Go to DailyWire.com to join or give a membership today. My favorite comment Yesterday is from Claujev 7092. What CNN meant to say was hopefully. Oh, this refers to after the horrible shooting in New York. The CNN analysts go on. They say, okay, the shooter used a rifle and was from out of state and he was probably white. Then you look at him, he's like the least white person who's ever walked the face of the earth. I don't know, he could be multiple races, but he sure ain't white. And you're right, it wasn't probably right. What they meant to say is hopefully, please, please let him be white. Please let him be white. Let him be Christian, let him be straight. Please, please, please let him be my enemy. That's the kind of analysis you get on. It's not just cnn. It's all the liberal news channels. Okay, Ghislaine Maxwell asked to testify before Congress, here's what her lawyers write. Our initial reaction was that Ms. Maxwell would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights and decline to testify at this time. This is according to her attorney, David Oscar Marcus. So see, the Congress can subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell and she can say, I plead the Fifth against self incrimination. So she has every right not to give up anything. However, the attorney writes, after further reflection, we would like to find a way to cooperate with Congress if a fair and safe path forward can be established. Now, what else does this say? The letter says that they're going to request a delay in the testimony until after the Supreme Court rules on her appeal. And the letter says that if she receives clemency from Trump, a commutation of her sentence, for instance, then she'll testify. And the layers of this political chess move are so brilliant. First off, why is Ghislaine Maxwell being subpoenaed? Because the people, a large portion of the Republican base, wants an answer on the Epstein story and they're not getting an answer from, they certainly didn't get it from the government under Joe Biden and they're not really getting all that much of an answer under this government. So now the executive branch, President Trump doesn't wanna have to deal with this issue which long predates him, so he tries to kick it to the judiciary. He says, okay, I've directed the DOJ to ask the judges to unseal the grand jury testimony. Cuz the DOJ can't just unseal the grand jury testimony in the Epistine case. They've gotta go to the judges. So okay, hot potato, hot potato. It's outta the executive branch, it's outta the White House, it's over at the courts and the courts have it and the courts say, hot potato, hot potato. We don't, we don't want to unseal the grand jury testimony because there's no compelling reason to and it could cause all sorts of problems. Hot potato, hot potato, poof. So now it's up in the air. So then the people have only one branch of government left they can turn to. They turn to Congress and they say, okay, Congress, now you got the hot potato of Jeffrey Epstein. And the Congress says, ah shoot, hot potato, hot potato. Okay, well we gotta do something with this. Cuz our constituents who elect us every two years in the House and every six years in the Senate, they really want us to do something. But we have to balance other concerns, namely we need to have a good relationship with the White House and We're gonna have our political careers nuked. We're in the short term, not gonna get any legislation passed. And in the long term, we're gonna be running out of government. So we have a responsibility to our constituents, and we need to make sure that we're in their good graces. But we can't irritate the White House. And the White House doesn't really want any more of this coming out. And so they kicked it to the court. The court doesn't want this coming out. Now it's gotta come to Congress. Okay, well, shoot. All right, let's subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell. That's the only thing we can do. And Ghislaine Maxwell says, all right, I got nothing to lose. I'm just in prison forever now. So, okay, I'll come testify, but you gotta give me something. I'll give you what you want, which is for me to testify, but you gotta give me something, namely, you gotta give me clemency, since you really want me to testify. But the funny thing is the executive branch doesn't really care if she testifies or not. Probably doesn't really even want her to because they think that this issue is a distraction from all the achievements of the administration. So they don't. They kind of say they want her to, but they don't really want her to testify. The Congress doesn't really want her to testify. They don't care. They think this thing's probably a dead end, it's not going anywhere. If this really is a matter of super secret, high level intelligence, nothing's gonna come out. And if it's not, then all the information's already out. So they don't actually want her to testify. And they know she knows that they don't want her to testify, and they know that she knows that they don't want her to testify, but she knows that the people demand that they want her to testify, even though they don't really want her to testify. So this is like 11D chess. And the question is for the Congress, for the White House, I guess. And the Congress, can they keep this on the back burner long enough that they don't have to grant her clemency and they don't even have to ever come testify, because, by the way, she's put on the White House, specifically, she's put them in an impossible situation. If the White House grants Ghislaine Maxwell clemency, the headline from Democrats is gonna be, President Trump goes soft on his old friend to cover up for Jeffrey Epstein. And no one, no one is being held accountable, not even the madam who procured all the underage girls. That's gonna be the headline. So he's damned if he does. But then if Trump doesn't give her clemency, the headline is gonna be Trump refuses to have Ghislaine Maxwell testify. Refuses to do what needs to be done to get Ghislaine Maxwell to testify because he's trying to cover up for the Epstein sex ring. So he's damned if he doesn't. There is nothing. I mean, it's a masterstroke from Ghislaine Maxwell's attorneys. She's put the Congress in a bad position because the Congress also kind of says they want her to testify, but they don't really want her to testify and they kind of want this thing to move on. Cuz the longer the story's in the news, I don't think this incriminates Trump in any way. I don't think this incriminates prominent Republicans in any way. I'm not. I think that's all nonsense. But the longer it's in the news, the more distracting it is. There's only so much attention, there's only so much political capital. They wanna move on and do other things like the trade deal in Europe, like other investigations like immigration policy, like resolving wars. So it's just bad for this to be in the news for Republicans. And so she's got the Congress in a bad spot, but she's really got the White House in a bad spot. I don't know what they do here, you know, on 99.7% of issues, if the White House asked my opinion, I would have a strong opinion on what to do in this case. Ghislaine has really boxed them into a corner. Give her clemency so she can speak or not. I mean, I guess I would say, if I were advising the White House, I would say don't give her clemency. Cuz at the very least you can always say she was trying to wriggle out of it. We'd love for her to testify. In fact, I want to make her testify. We're going to exhaust all legal options through the DOJ to force Ghislaine to testify before Congress. But we're not going to give her clemency. We're not letting her off the hook for her terrible crimes. I guess that's what I would say. But there's no way to respond to this without drawing a little blood. Maybe this woman is a super spy. After all, maybe she's a smart political operator. At the very least, she has very good attorneys. Okay. Speaking of achievements of the Trump administration, there's a really big one that not a lot of people are talking about. The Office of Personnel Management has just ruled that federal employees can display religious items and evangelize at work. This is a memo just came out from opm. Protecting religious expression in the federal workplace says that the government workforce should be a welcoming place for employees who practice religion. Allowing religious discrimination in the federal workplace violates federal law. It also threatens to adversely impact recruitment and retention of high qualified employees of faith. Very true. And federal employees, quote, may engage in conversations regarding religious topics with fellow employees, including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views, provided that such efforts are not harassing in nature. Employees may also encourage their co workers to participate in religious expressions of faith, such as prayer, to the same extent that they would be permitted to encourage co workers to participate in other personal activities. Yes, obviously that's the case. And even if you read some small coverage of this, even the liberals will admit, well, in principle, this doesn't change the law. It's just a change of enforcement. It used to be we would discourage religion in the workplace, but now the government's kind of allowing it. Yeah, you have to because of the First Amendment, for starters, and because it's the right thing to do. Because religion is not just a private thing. It's not just the Obama version of stuffing it all into your head quietly. Freedom of worship rather than freedom of religion. Religion is a habit of virtue that inclines the will to give to God what he deserves. Part of the Christian religion is the Great Commission that Christ gives us to make disciples of all nations to go out and evangelize. If you're not allowed to do that, if you're not allowed to talk to people about your faith, you don't have anything even resembling religious freedom in this country. Or you have religious freedom, but you can't practice a basic aspect of your religion for eight to 12 hours a day, five days a week. Give me a break. But Michael, doesn't this violate the First Amendment? No, I've just explained how it Actually, the First Amendment requires a provision like this. But no, doesn't this violate the freedom of religion or freedom from religion, or you're not allowed to have religion in the workplace or in the government? My friend, my friend, each session of Congress begins with a prayer that has been true since 1774 in the First Continental Congress. My friend, my Friend, if Congress gets to have freedom of religion, why don't you, in your workplace, in your federal workplace, in your private office, you can't harass people. There's obviously a proper mean, a virtuous mean between extremes. But, yeah, we get to have our religion. Sorry, sorry. Lib's destroyed. Okay. Speaking of moral development, there's a story. I know I'm running late, but I don't care. There's a story I have to get to. I guess I mentioned it to you at the top of the show. Horrifying story. Kids who get smartphones before the age of 13 face a huge suicide risk. This according to a study published in the Journal of Human Development Capabilities. This study tracked over 100,000 people between the ages of 18 and 24. Almost half, 48% of those who got phones between age 5 and age 6 reported suicidal thoughts. For almost 1 in 2 kids who got phones between age 5 and Age 6 reported having suicidal thoughts. Now, that risk drops significantly. If you got a phone at age 13, that's only 28% of kids, so it almost drops in half. Those who got smartphones before the age of 13 showed much higher rates than their peers of suicidal thoughts, aggression, and emotional struggles. And that probably won't surprise people because of social media, because of bullying, because of porn, because of grotesque content, because of everything. Many people. This, to me, is the most interesting political aspect of this story. It's not all that surprising a study. Maybe you haven't heard about it before, but you heard similar things. Many people will hear that study and still give their kids cell phones under the age of 13. And they'll do it because, well, all their friends at school have one. And, well, you know, I gotta pick them up at soccer practice, so how could I possibly do that if they don't have a portal to hell in, you know, 4k at all times on their hands? And, well, it's just kinda. This is just today's day and age. Well, we're gonna try to mitigate the risk in other ways. And, well, I put some stupid program on their browser, so they definitely can't get around that. Well, well, well, well. And they'll do it. They'll rationalize it and excuse it if I told you, hey, there's a thing that you can do that can cut your kid's suicide risk in half. Or I'll phrase it differently. There's a thing that you can do, this new kind of thing that you can do that has never been done before in history. And if you do that thing for your kid, their risk of suicide will massively increase. It's this thing that no one's ever really needed before, and it's kind of superfluous and it's mostly a way to waste time. And anyway, if you give it to your kid, their risk of killing themselves will massively increase. Hey, do you want to give it to your kid? And 8 out of 10 parents are going to say, golly, yes, I do. Sign me up. Of course I do. Why? I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Because there are only two persuasive arguments in liberal society. They are license. They are. The first persuasive argument is, well, why not? Why shouldn't I? Because your kid might kill himself. Yeah, but it's a less than 50% risk. What? Yeah, why not? Why not? Why shouldn't we redefine marriage? Yeah. Why shouldn't we take away obscenity laws? Yeah. Why shouldn't we kick religion out of the public square? Yeah. Why shouldn't we allow kids to date at the age of 10? Why shouldn't we use contraception all the time? Why shouldn't we kill babies? Why shouldn't we? Why shouldn't we? Why shouldn't we? Why not? Why not? Why not? Why not? Is license maximizing personal autonomy? That's the first persuasive argument in liberal society. And the other one is social proof. And that's the crazier one. Even in a liberal society such as ours that has so liberated itself that we've liberated ourselves supposedly from the moral order, from objective reality, from biological reality, from moral and philosophical reality, we've liberated ourselves from everything. We're just floating in space, man. And so there is nothing that we can ground ourselves on. There's nothing solid. There's nothing sturdy. And so the only way that you can get any guidance on what to do is to look around you and see what all the other lunatic hot air balloons floating in outer space are doing. And so you can read the study and say, hey, here is a lot of sturdy scientific evidence that backs up your sturdy philosophical intuitions and deductions that if you give your kid a portal to hell, he might kill himself. Here's all the evidence. But when those hot air balloon liberals look around and they see everyone else giving their kids cell phones, they say, well, 50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong. Well, there's no everyone else is doing is the thing your father or mother told you as a kid and you said, come on, Johnny gets to do it. And say, well, if Johnny drove off a bridge, jumped off a bridge, would you do it too? That's it. The liberals would do it too. They would do it too because they have no other criterion on which to base their decisions. That's really what it's about. And that combination, why not the license? Well, if there's no totally rock solid compelling reason that I in my broken darkened intellect cannot perfectly understand, then I'm just going to say we should do it. Why not? You do you laissez faire laissez le bon temps brulee and social proof you combine those. That is a toxic combination that will, God forbid, kill people you love and ultimately will kill a society. Okay, today's woke Wednesday on that cheerful note. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code nolescannon wles at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.