Michael Knowles (17:57)
We need to import third world peasants because we want a new slave class. Why aren't y' all applauding? So for years I love her. For years the Republicans have pointed out the Democrats support mass migration from the third world, especially illegal immigration, but even some legal immigration. The whole reason that the Democrats wanted it is one to cynically give Them a permanent electoral majority by fundamentally changing the demographics of the country. And two, because they're in cahoots with big business, because they want cheap labor. They want to commit one of the sins that cries out to heaven for vengeance, namely defrauding the poor, oppressing the poor, the workers, giving them substandard wages. And then Jasmine Crockett comes out and goes, you're totally right. Dynamite. That was Jasmine Crockett putting on her. Her, like, 1970s jive voice. Of course, she. She engages in interviews where she sounds like a perfectly normal person. But I guess whichever group she was talking to there, she thought she had to dial it up, dial up the blaxploitation talk, you know? Listen here, man. We done picking that cotton? So what does it mean? What it means is we are bringing these people in to treat them like slaves. So thank you, Jasmine. You have totally admitted the Republicans were right the whole time. That was the justification for it. Amazing, too, that this clip is going viral right after you had this very sorry display in the US Capitol, where even Republicans went along with it. They tore down a statue of Robert E. Lee. They said, robert E. Lee, one of the greatest Americans ever to live. A man who said he rejoiced at the end of slavery, even though he was the general defending his homeland in the Civil War. He said he rejoiced that slavery would end. He called slavery, quote, a moral and political evil in any country. He was so happy that it was abolished. They tear down the statue of Robert E. Lee. They put up some lady no one's ever heard of. They feel so good about themselves. General Lee was a much, much better person, a much more moral person than any of the people tearing his statue down. General Lee was a much more moral person than Jasmine Crockett and had a much more moral political vision. General Lee, on the one hand, saying, look, I have to defend my home, my countrymen, my community. I have to defend them. But I hate slavery. Slavery is a moral evil. Not only in America, anywhere. I'm so happy slavery is abolished. That's the guy they're tearing down and the one that the Democrats are gonna run for Senate in Texas, saying, we need a new slave class. Yeah, we abolished slavery. That's good for me, I guess. Now let's import a bunch of Guatemalans, have them pick the cotton for no money. Am I right? Am I? Can I get an amen? You tear down the ancestors, the forebears, the people who built our country, the giants on whose shoulders we stand. And we think that we're flying. You tear them down because of some moral failings that they had, real or imagined. And who do we put in their place? We put Jasmine Crockett in her place. We put the modern Democrat party and the squish collaborators in the Republican Party. Much less moral, much less dignified people in every single way. So what is American identity? My friend Vivek Ramaswamy published a very thoughtful essay on this in the New York Times. We can overlook that. We can forgive him for publishing in the New York Times on what is an American? Really encourage you to check out this essay because. Because Vivek makes an important point. But I think he misses an important point too. He opens up. He says there are two competing visions now emerging on the American right and they are incompatible. One vision of American identity is based on lineage, blood and soil. Inherited attributes matter most. The purest form of an American is a so called heritage American, one whose ancestry traces back to the founding of the United States or earlier. Even earlier, I guess, referring to the Mayflower, which is a great cigar brand says this view is now popularized by the Groiper right, a rapidly ascendant online movement that argues for the creation of a white centric identity. This is a predictable response, one I anticipated in my book, to anti white discrimination over the last half decade. It is no longer just a fringe viewpoint. The alternative Vivek proposes. And in my view, the correct vision of American identity is based on ideals. Americanness is not a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry. It's binary. Either you're an American or you're not. You are an American if you believe in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience, in freedom of expression, in colorblind meritocracy, in the US Constitution, in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation. So Vivek is saying that he fully endorses what is called the creedal view of America. If you believe in the ideals of America and if you check a box, you become naturalized as a citizen, then you are an American. It has nothing to do with heritage. The people you come from, your family's history here. And look, there's obviously a creedal aspect to the country. So he's getting at something that is partially true, but I think he's missing a point. Here's the problem for Vivek's argument is what about the guy who lives in West Virginia? What about the guy who lives anywhere in the middle of America, whose family's been here forever? Maybe they were on the Mayflower. Maybe they came around the Revolution. Maybe they came in the Civil War. Maybe they came 100 years ago. They've been Americans for many, many generations. Guy loves his American flag. He eats hot dogs on the Fourth of July. His kids are all American. Everybody, you know, he loves his country. But maybe he doesn't believe in absolute freedom of expression or something like that, which, as I argue in my book, Speechless is not really part of the Americans free speech tradition. Oh, thank you very much. I actually forgot about my bell. Yes. That, you know, this belief in total freedom of expression, that's not really the American free speech tradition. We outlaw all sorts of speech, obviously. Fraud, direct threats, obscenity. Now, we've weakened that over time. There were blasphemy laws on the books for much of American history that still are on the books in some places. What if he doesn't believe in that? Does that mean that he's not an American? The notion of colorblind meritocracy even. Take the colorblind part out for a second, just focus on meritocracy. The notion of meritocracy is, in its most extreme form, is a very modern innovation in America. If we believe in pure meritocracy, whatever that means, does that mean that we have to oppose legacy admissions in universities? Does this mean that people can't give some preference in hiring, say, in their family business? You know, they have a mom and pop family business that's been in the family for generations. You can't pass that business along to your kids or your grandkids. You can't favor hiring your grandkids over, I don't know, some random person on the street who maybe scored higher on the sat Taken to its fullest extreme, does that mean that we have to support totally free and open trade where we're competing against not just our countrymen, but the whole rest of the world for spots in schools, for jobs, for. I don't know. That's not really part of the American tradition. And I think there are plenty of people in America who don't totally go along with those ideas, who are nonetheless, I think, still American. There's someone from Tibet who comes over to America, let's say last week, and he gets naturalized as a citizen by hook or by crook. He has no experience in America. He doesn't have any of the learned traditions that come about, not just through a lifetime, but through the generations. He doesn't really know about hot dogs on the Fourth of July. Doesn't really know about fireworks. He passed a civics test, but he's not really part of the community. You're telling me that guy because he has memorized some portion of the Declaration of Independence, that that guy is American. But the guy who, I don't know, maybe he hasn't memorized every line of the Federalist Papers, nevertheless, his family's been here for 300 years. That guy's not an American. I don't think that holds. I don't think that really makes a lot of sense. I see what Vivek is looking at, but I think it's a false dichotomy. I don't think the only two choices are blood and soil nationalism, where heritage is all that matters, or this creedal conception where belief in what is imagined to be the American idea, which in many ways was a construction of the 20th century, that that's all that's American. I think there's something more to it. I don't think that the view that having rootedness in America is purely the domain of some fringe or unseemly or bigoted online right wing. I don't think that's true at all. Vivek goes on. He points out that antisemitic statements are now normalized online. That's true. Now, in fairness, all sorts of nasty, ugly things are normalized online. That's kind of what the Internet's for. The Internet's for porn and racism. Actually, we tried to circumscribe that in the 1990s with the communications Decency act and the Child Online Protection act, and it passed with Republican and Democrat support. And then unfortunately, judges gutted it because judges had a very, very liberal view of the American free speech tradition that wasn't really historical. But yeah, look, it bothers me. I don't like I hate anti Semitism. I hate nasty, cruel rac racism and misogyny and all the rest of that. But it's normalized online. Online is not. You know, the Internet is not the same as real life. There's overlap, but it's not the same thing. He goes on. He says this pattern eerily mirrors the hesitance of prominent Democrats to criticize WOKE excesses in the run up to 2024. So, in other words, if the right does not excise the nasty fringes of its movement, it's gonna end up in the same electoral quagmire that the Democrats ran into because they adopted all the pro trans radical woke stuff that killed them in 2024. Yeah, okay, that's fair. Any political movement has to circumscribe itself. Just as a nation is known by its borders, that's what distinguishes it from other nations. So, too, with political movements, you gotta invite as many people in as you can in a way that is just and successful while also keeping some people out. Totally agree with. I totally agree with that. However, I just think the premise is a little bit wrong. No, I don't think that you need to ascribe perfectly to the present day's understanding of what America means as a creed. I don't think America's just an idea. I think it's a country. I think it's a real country. And countries are made up of people, made up of geography, made up of actions and traditions and sacrifices, and. And made up of creedal beliefs, of course. So it seems to me that there is a synthesis of some of these ideas. I alluded to this the other day when I talked about the Book of Ruth. I think the Book of Ruth is really instructive on what it means to be part of a political community. I think actually it provides the type of what a political community is because Ruth is a Moabite, but she assimilates and joins into the Israelites. And how does she do it? She does it in three ways. We'll get to what that is, and we'll get to, really, the heart of this question that we're gonna be debating for a year. What is an American? First, though, I wanna tell you about StopBox USA. Go to stopboxusa.com, use code KNOWLES. Folks, there's a big dilemma that comes with gun ownership. It's a great privilege. It's a great right in our Constitution. But there's a dilemma. You either can store your gun in the box that's super, super secure, and you don't need to worry about anybody getting into it. But then you can't get into it when you actually need it. Or you go to one of these devices where it's really easy to get in. Maybe it's a little bit too easy to get in when you have guests, when you have kids over. So what do you need? I don't want to have to rely on some retina scan or something to save me when the bad guys are at the door. What I would strongly recommend is Stopbox usa. It is the best of all worlds. It is mechanical, it's analog, it's old school. The electronics are not going to fail. And it's very, very secure. I think it's just terrific. In fact, I got a Desert Eagle in one right now. This Christmas season just got a lot safer and a lot more affordable. For a limited time only, our listeners are getting a great deal. Not only do you get 10% off your entire order when you use code Michael Knowles@stopboxusa.com they're also giving you buy one, get one free for their Stopbox Pro. It's the one that I have 10% off and a free Stopbox Pro when you use code Michael Knowles M I C H A E L K N O W L e s@stopboxusa.com yes, there's a creedal aspect to American identity, but there are two other aspects. There's sacrifice, there's contribution. One way that people have been Americanized in the course of history is when they fight in wars or when they contribute something really great. They're beneficent, they contribute to our economy, they contribute to our political community. Elon Musk is a good example of this. He's an immigrant and he's generated a lot of prosperity for people. He sacrificed some of his private interests to help the good of the country. Even working in government, that would be one way. And then the third part is the people. The people matter. Just a simple thought experiment. If you took all the people In America today, 330 some odd million people, and you swapped them out and you filled up the country with 330 million other people and they all had memorized the Declaration of Independence, they all had memorized whatever the current conception of the American creed is, would you still have the same country? Manifestly you would not. It would be a different kind of country. In Ruth, Ruth says three things importantly. She says, I'm going to leave the Moabites. I'm going to become an Israelite. Israel, which is the particular nation that is the type of all the nations, says, you people will be my people. I will marry and I will have children. Children that go down into the line of David and into the lineage of Christ. So assimilation is possible. You got to kind of marry in. You got to intermingle with these people. Where you go, I will go. Where you die, I will die. You're giving something up. I'm giving up the Moabites. I'm giving up Tibet. I'm giving up the Third World. I'm coming. I'm part of this. Your God will be my God. It's a creedal aspect. And when she marries her second husband, Boaz, after her first husband dies, she says, why are you accepting me? And he says, everything you've done for your mother in law, everything You've done for us, for our tribe, for our nation. That's been told to me, the sacrifice part, that's what the three of them are. And so there is a founding stock of America that's been radically changed over the centuries. We've had periods of no immigration. We've had periods of a lot of immigration. And then since 1967, we've had this mass influx of immigration and demographic change. But there is a founding stock. There really is. There's a people. And you can kind of marry into that. I mean, for me, use the example of the Mayflower. I'm only a quarter English. And even of the quarter English, the Knowles got here in 1660, and they married into the Mayflower line. They got here in 1620. So even if they, you know, I'm pretty swarthy, I'm pretty Sicilian. But there's still. There was intermarriage, there was. There was a period of. A long period of assimilation over the generations. You can't totally lose that. That's the icky part. That's the part that no one wants to talk about in our totally abstract modern life. That tells modern liberalism, that tells us that America is not a real country, it's not a real people. It's just an idea. No, there's a people component and there's a creed. But what's the creed? Is the creed 20th century liberalism, 21st century liberalism, or is the creed Christianity? John Adams says that the principles of the Christian religion are the general principles on which independence was won. We're kind of a Christian country, aren't we? John Jay writes about this in Federalist Number two. And there's an American conception of liberty. And so there's a civic belief and there's a religious belief which is grounded in Christianity. And there's contribution right now in American identity. We have none of the three. You don't have to be part of the people. You don't have to assimilate. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to believe anything. You can be a Muslim communist, it's fine, has no bearing on it. And you don't have to sacrifice. You actually, you're going to commit welfare fraud and you're going to take all the money from the tax bridge. So we have this really big problem. But going all the way back to classical political philosophy, classical civilizations, ancient Rome, which men have to think about three times a day all the way up to the present, you need all three. And to divorce one or the other, say it's only creed where it's only stock or even that it's only sacrifice. I think misses the point. So I think Vivek touches on a good point, but it's not complete. It's a partial truth. And it will be insufficient to persuade Americans now who are seeing the real results of demographic change, massive demographic change, contrived demographic change without any kind of assimilation that the partial truth will not persuade. You need the whole truth. Talking about the New York Times, I'm quoting the Washington Post today. Something's gone very, very wrong. But the Washington Post has a very important report out. The report is on Charlie Kirk's alleged killer. You see this news with Charlie Kirk's alleged killer told friends after the attack. This is Tyler Robinson. A patchwork of social interactions and a trail of online posts provide a view into Tyler Robinson's life and his beliefs. Really, really long piece. But important reporting says 55 minutes before he allegedly shot and killed right wing political activist Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson was bragging about his success playing the online puzzle game Wordle. So he was bragging about committing the crime. According to Wordle, he's got all of these other exchanges on different social media servers. Some of his friends, people referring to family interactions. His mother told police he'd become more, quote, pro gay and trans rights oriented. Had started dating a roommate who was undergoing a gender transition. Friends confirmed the pair's romantic involvement. Says the roommate was distressed about anti trans sentiment. Robinson sent the roommate a confession. Said, I've had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out. He wrote that in a message reportedly hours after the killing. The Post reached out to all of these other people and it's a very long article. I encourage all of you to read it. Maybe read it, I don't know, read it on a gift article. Don't give the Washington Post too much money, but it's important reporting and this is the kind of stuff that's all gonna come out in the prosecution. It's good to get a little bit of this. Now I mention all of it because some people have asked why I have not joined in on the personal side of the right wing civil war. There's always a right wing civil war, but sometimes it gets hotter than at other points and now it's particularly hot. I gave a speech on this at Belmont Abbey and I outlined some of my reasons for not getting so involved there. Beyond the virtue of loyalty, beyond any personal affections or personal hostilities or anything in the mix, there's a practical aspect as well as I've made perfectly clear when speaking about the issue. I have had no confusion whatsoever since the moment that this guy murdered Charlie, allegedly to the present that he did it. I do wonder how many more of these friends and transferee boyfriends and other people were involved, had advanced knowledge, were at least told after the fact. But I've had no doubt that he did it. And the reason for that is it's always the ones you most expect. And the reason for that is that, well, he's allegedly confessed to it, and his fingerprints were on the rifle and all the rest of it. But also because this is the kind of guy who does this kind of thing repeatedly. We've seen this consistently for years, and even in one case at a speech that I was giving at University of Pittsburgh. And so given that, this was all pretty clear, and we're going to get much, much more of this in the prosecution and in the courts. I'm sure there's a practical aspect here, which is that when things become really personal and really gossipy and really focused on reviling and detracting and defamation in some cases, but in detraction in other cases, when it gets all really personal, it distracts from the issue. And some people love that. A lot of people love that in politics and media. I think that's very counterproductive. And the chief lesson that I took from Charlie in his public life, not in our personal friendship, but in his public life, the chief lesson I took from him is you've gotta kinda tune out the noise, and you have to keep your eyes on the prize, and you have to focus on the issues, and you have to keep the team together, and you have to advance and you have to move, and you have to win the elections, and you win the elections by forming coalitions, and you move on. And in some cases, you have to confront the noise head on. In some cases, the facts of the matter are so apparent that they're going to come to light over the course of weeks or months or maybe a year, but they're going to come to light, and you can't allow yourself to get distracted. Now we're heading into America Fest, which is the last event that Charlie gave us. He planned this event. He invited people to this event. You can't get a hotel room in the city of Phoenix. Everybody is showing up to this thing. This is the group that he invited. This is the team looking ahead at the midterms, looking ahead at 2028. Charlie was very, very practical. And Charlie was a winner. He was a winner. He knew how to win. A lot of people have opinions. A lot of people like to blab. Charlie liked to win. And I think the truth is obviously coming out very clearly. Most people never really doubted it in the first place, but it's going to come out much more clearly. The common enemy, the radical left, is once again going to be pronounced. It's gonna come out very, very clearly. The stakes of losing, when you have an enemy that not only is willing to commit these kinds of crimes, but justifies it, excuses it, celebrates it, the stakes of losing and giving power back over to those people, I think those are gonna come into the fore. And I hope that the legacy of the last event that Charlie puts on, albeit posthumously, is a revitalization, a putting away of personal animosities and gossip and whatever and focusing, keeping the eyes on the prize, winning, moving together with some unity, with a clear vision, with practical steps to move forward, to win, to achieve results. Because the winners go to Washington and make laws and the losers go home. A very, very important lesson and probably the only time in my life that I will encourage people to read the Washington Post. In one week, on Christmas Day, episodes one and two of the Pendragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin start streaming on DailyWire plus for all Access members. Here is the truth. No one else was ever gonna make this. No one was gonna bring this legend to life at this scale with the conviction it deserves. Too big, too demanding, too risky. We built a company that could do it. So on Christmas Day, All Access members are gonna get episodes one and two before anyone else. January 22nd, the seven part epic launches for all members. The wait is almost over. The moment Rise of the Merlin hits your screen, you will get exactly why we went this big. Become a Daily Wire plus member right now. Get 40% off new annual memberships DailyWire.com subscribe Very important interview to get to. Speaking of winning, speaking of making policy, I'm so honored to have on the show Admiral Brian Christine, who is the Assistant Secretary for health at the U.S. department of Health and Human Services. Major announcement, big press conference coming out of HHS today. Obviously we've covered a lot of the big changes to the vaccine schedule, to how public health is treated after the massive scandals of public health during the Biden administration. One of the scandals actually pertaining to the very position that Admiral Christine holds. So, Admiral, thank you so much for coming on the show.
