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Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com the New York Times celebrates Father's Day by publishing a cartoon strip about children's responsibility to make their lesbian mothers feel more like men. You thought woke was dead, when in fact it has just been lying in wait, perfectly intact, just waiting for the right to destroy itself. And it might might have its chance. Then the Prime Minister of the UK resigns. Turns out that flooding your nation with an endless procession of foreign rapists and then covering up their crimes, threatening for decades is not good politics. We will examine the supposedly subtle, nuanced political forces at play in the uk. Then one of the whitest towns in America goes all out for Juneteenth. We will bring you all the important coverage on this beautiful Juneteen. Second, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. Smash that like button and subscribe. Also check us out on Spotify where you can download full episode audio and video to watch or listen whenever you want without using your data. Do not miss an episode. A British colonel has just spoken out to a Jewish audience and he prefaced his remarks. He says, I speak as a goy, Amir goy. And then he goes on to talk about how we all need to worship the state of Israel. And I just, can. I just, I wish people could be normal. Can we not be normal? Does everybody have to be totally crazy? Does everybody on all sides of every single political issue have to be totally crazy? We'll get to the answer. Spoiler alert. The answer's yes. First, though, I hope everybody had a good Father's Day. I had an absolutely magnificent, delightful Father's Day. So much so, my kids wake me up in bed. They give me nice little cards. They made happy Father's Day playing baseball outside. My eldest boy, he just looks at me. He's holding the bat. He's got his little Yankee cap on. I'm about to throw the wiffle ball. He looks at me, goes, hey, hey Deda. Happy Father's Day. It was so beautiful. It was a beautiful Father's Day, or as we now know it in the liberal calendar, June t first. It was June t first, obviously. Friday was Juneteenth. Saturday was Junet Sunday, Father's Day was Junetee first. Today is Juneti second. How did the New York Times celebrate Father's Day? You can guess. Well, I just told you. But even if I hadn't told you, you could guess. Guest essay in the New York Times. Like 10,000 pages long. To my daughter, my gender was never complicated. So, you know, right off the bat, okay, we're delving into the trans stuff. Now, this is a little confusing because it says guest essay, but it's not an essay, actually. It's just a comic strip. But it's a comic strip. A very lengthy comic strip drawn as a full New York Times column. This is no surprise to anyone who's followed the New York Times in recent years and decades who have noticed the literacy standards just plummeting among the staff and the editors, along with the audience, presumably. So little funny strips is probably about as sophisticated as we can expect from New York Times readers. Now. What does the comic strip show? Here's just a little smattering. It's a daughter next to her dad. And the daughter pulls up an old picture of her dad. But in the old picture, the dad is a woman. And so the daughter says, oh, you look really different. Yeah, says the dad. Yeah, you look cool. Then or now? Asks the dad, do we have the next strip then or now? Then, oh, oh, then you see these on the playground. One girl says, you can't grow a beard. You're a girl. And the daughter says, my dad did, and he was a girl. And then you hear the narration goes, you know, moving past, it was hard sometimes. Next frame, they can move between complex topics, you know, these little daughters. How long did you have breasts for, Dad, I won't subject you to the whole thing. It goes through. Says, I've been living as a trans man since I was 18 years old, but I had to learn how to be a trans dad when my wife and I had Elliot. And all these questions. Now, this is my favorite part of says, I wasn't out to everyone as trans. This is when the daughter finds that picture. I wasn't out to everyone as trans, but with Elliot, I had to learn how to talk about it. But you look different. Yeah, yeah, it was hard, you know, there was some adjusting. Took the daughter a little bit of time, but, you know, she figured it out. Okay, that's great. Right off the Bat. I wasn't out to everyone. Yes, you were. You were. This is one of the silliest delusions of transgenderism is the people who think that they're convincing everyone else. You're not convincing anyone. You can always tell. It's always totally obvious. I wasn't out to everyone. They know. They know. Don't worry about that. They know. Number two, so perverse on Father's Day. One of the theses of the comic strip is that it is the job of children to affirm the delusions of their parents and to make their parents feel comfortable in those delusions. In reality, it is the job of parents to educate children out of their delusions, to educate them and bring them up into accord with reality so that they can be comfortable in their own skin and in the real world. But now we got this flipped 180 degrees where it is the burden of the children to miseducate. To affirm the absurdities and delusions of the parents in order to make them feel more comfortable with their sexual perversions. And then number three, and this is really what it all comes down to. I think ultimately it's not just the trans ideology. It's can liberal women let men have one single thing ever? Can liberal women tolerate men having just one thing in the entire world? No. The answer is no, they can't. Father's Day. That's just the one. Okay, maybe we don't get to carve the Thanksgiving turkey anymore. Maybe we, I don't know, maybe we don't get to be the head of the household. Come home, Father knows best. We don't have Donna Reed waiting for. I do, but a lot of people don't have Donna Reed waiting for us. Okay, can we have one thing, though? Can we have Father's Day? No. Father's Day actually is about lesbian women. So says the New York Times. It's not just the New York Times, by the way. There was a piece. This was the Toronto Star or something like that. You saw a number of these opinion. On Father's Day, it's crucial to recognize the importance of mothers. It's not actually. It's not. That's the one thing you don't have to do on Father's Day. Mothers are great. Love mothers. I had the best mother in the world. I'm married to the best mother currently in the world. Mothers are great, but fathers. The one thing that Father's Day is not about is mothers. But the left can't tolerate that. It's not just the New York Times, but The real takeaway for us politically is that woke never went away. It never went away. It went a little bit underground, but it didn't permanently go away. We didn't utterly vanquish it. We revealed its toxicity to the voters. We demonstrated its absurdity, especially with the transgender ideology. But the left never gave up on it. You'll notice the left will try to downplay it now, like Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, but they don't disavow it. James Talarico in Texas, he doesn't disavow his comments about how God is non binary. He doubles down on them. He doesn't disavow his description of women as neighbors with a uterus. He just kind of tries to downplay it. In other words, that peak wokeness of 2020-2022, it's just, it's dormant right now. It's a little hidden right now, but it is waiting to spring back and destroy your life again. It's waiting. The left has not learned a single lesson other than to shut up occasionally. They're waiting to do it. And this to me puts a lot of the right wing infighting into perspective. Because the Republicans control the whole government. All the focus in politics is on the right and it's on all the factional disputes among the right and all the personality disputes because especially the political media have become more independent, more focused on new media, because everyone's fighting everyone. There's even more competition than there used to be with the networks. Because of that, there's a major incentive for the new media voices, the podcaster class, to oppose the government. Cuz you don't get great ratings if you say, oh, things are actually going pretty well and here's how they could be better, but here's how they could have been a lot worse. You don't get ratings for that. You get ratings for opposition. So the very same people who were totally opposed to Biden supporting Trump, the minute Trump gets into power, they have to oppose Trump in some way. It's just they might not even be aware of that, but that's where all the incentives are. So politics right now is all about the right. It's the neocons versus the paleo cons versus the groipers versus the libertarians versus the reactionaries versus neo reaction. It's all this infighting. Then at a more mainstream level, you have all the former never Trumpers are coming out against J.D. vance right now. There's a very concerted effort to attack the Vice President. And I can't help but notice all the people leading it. The Venn diagram is almost a perfect circle of the people who were hardcore Trump in 2016, who finally came around to Trump if for no other reason than you would totally irrelevant in Republican politics for the last decade if you were opposed to Trump. But then a lot of those people immediately first chance they had, they tried to back the primary challenge to Trump in the DeSantis campaign has nothing to do with DeSantis. DeSantis is great, but they're just trying to find an alternative to Trump. And then now they're going after J.D. vance, who is the heir apparent and clearly the just looking at who's really attacking him. He is clearly the avatar of that Trump movement from 2016. So you got the Never Trumpers going after Vance. You've got a bunch of podcasters going after Trump cuz they're complaining about Iran or whatever other policy you've got all of. I'm not even saying these are minor issues. You know, the right always has factional disputes. I'm just pointing out while the right is doing all of this infighting and to some degree a lot of navel gazing, settling personal petty grudges in some cases while that's going on, the left is waiting. The left is waiting to bring this back. The left is waiting for the right to destroy itself so that they can bring back transing your kids. That's what this is about, this Father's Day. Just remember, we want to trans your kids. So says the New York Times is just waiting to bring back all of the racial politics of 2020, is just waiting to bring back all of the heavy handed government suppression of 2020, 2021. Waiting to bring back all of it. I'm not saying the right needs to sit down and shut up. I'm just saying that as the right works out all of its problems in the lead up to the primary for 2028, what happens after Trump, as that happens, I am just, I am imploring the American right. Please keep some perspective. Your enemy is not some podcaster. That's not your chief threat. Your enemy is not JD Vance or Marco Rubio or Ron DeSantis or Ted Cruz or Ron Paul, sorry, Rand Paul or this guy or that guy or this guy, anyone who might run for president. This is your enemy. This is the threat. These are the people who want to castrate your kids. These are the people who want to fling open the border. These are the people who want to take control of your life. That's the threat. And that threat is crouching in the corner waiting to pounce on you while you play fiddle on the Titanic. Okay, Speaking of division, one of the big sources of division has been over not just the Iran war, but the broader issue of the US Israel alliance and Israel's purported influence on US Foreign policy. A video has just gone viral from a retired British colonel who presents himself as a mere goy, giving a view of Israel that is a little, shall we say, extreme? We'll get to that momentarily. First, though, speaking of Israel, I wanna tell you about Ave Maria Mutual funds. Go to avemariafunds.com Michael People often talk as though values and investing exist in two completely separate worlds. On one side you've got your principles. On the other side are your financial decisions. But that division has never made much sense to me. The reality is that every investment strategy reflects certain assumptions about the world. Every dollar is ultimately supporting something which raises a reasonable question. Should your investments reflect your values? That is one reason that I love being involved with Ave Marie Mutual Funds. Why I'm proud to serve on their board. Since 2001, Ave Marie Mutual Funds has offered investors an approach that seeks to align investment decisions with deeply held principles. Today, they manage nearly $4 billion in assets on behalf of more than 100,000 shareholders. What makes them different is straightforward. They do not invest in companies involved with abortion, pornography, embryonic stem cell research, or companies supporting Planned Parenthood. I love these guys. I think they're absolutely terrific. Whether you're planning for retirement, saving for your children's future, or simply looking for investment options that align with your beliefs, Ave Marie Mutual Funds offers a range of choices designed to help you invest without compromising your principles. Learn more@avemariafunds.com Michael that's avemariafunds.com Michael all mutual funds are subject to market risk, including possible loss of principal. Request a prospectus which includes investment objectives, risks, fees, charges and expenses, and other information that you should consider and read carefully before investing. The prospectus can be obtained by calling 1-866-283-6274. It can be viewed at ave.mariefunds.com, ave Marie Mutual funds are distributed by Ultimus Fund Distributors, llc. British colonel, retired Richard Kemp was just speaking at the JNS A this is the Jerusalem News Syndicate, in which he presents his view, a very popular view in the UK and America, of the meaning of the State of Israel.
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I speak as a goy, a mere goy. The Jews upon the face of the earth to be a light unto nations and they Are Israel is being that light in. Is in defense of its own country. And I think most particularly not just in military technology, but in the way in which those extraordinary men and women of the IDF have shown the world how to fight. And many countries in Western Europe which are going to face this violence will be looking to Israel to see how they're going to fight. So the narrative is one thing, but action, I think, is even more important.
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I have one request of people across the political spectrum, especially when it comes to the issue of Israel. Can we please be normal? Can we please be normal? Can anybody in politics just be normal? You can support the state of Israel as I do, without being a total weirdo about it. It's possible. I know it seems like it's impossible. You either have to believe that Israel is the worst rogue state puppeteer of all the nations, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you know, occult, demonic monstrosity. You either have to believe that, especially if you're a podcaster, or you have to believe that Israel is the most blameless nation, the greatest state, above all rules and order, that we must all serve as slavishly as possible, and no one can ever criticize it. Those are the only two options that you're allowed to hold, I guess, in public life. But what I would suggest, humbly, is that you just be normal for like, five seconds. The way this retired colonel presents himself, he says, I'm a goy, a mere goy. Goy, the singular of goyim, the plural, which does not have to be a term of derision. It's often used, usually jokingly, as a term of derision, but it just means a gentile. It means a non Jew. And so he says, I present myself as a mere non Jew. And maybe he's being a little cute with this. Maybe there's a little irony to it, but maybe there's not. Maybe he really is just being obsequious. In any case, he says Israel is here as a light to the nations. God chose Israel to be a light to the nations. That's all true. If you're a Christian, you believe that, of course, though there is quite a lot of debate over the relation between that belief and the modern nation state of Israel that was founded in 1948. It is not, in fact, a mandate of the Christian religion that you have to believe that the nation state of Israel from 1948 is the light to the nations specifically chosen by God. Above reproach. Have to believe that. And the traditional Christian understanding is that, yes, Israel is Chosen is taken as a particular people, as the type of all the people. The history of Israel is the type of all of history. And that the fulfillment of that type in the Old Testament is in Christ and in the Church as the new Israel is Christ who comes as the new Covenant in the new Ark of the Covenant. Who is Mary to establish the new people of God, who do not exclude the Jews, but who rather invite the rest of the world in, who say there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave, nor free man, nor male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus. And this is the figurative meaning of the particular people of Israel, that God actually brings an offer of salvation to all people. You don't need to believe that a modern nation state that arose out of a 19th century nationalist political movement that was then established through UN declarations and a war of conquest in the middle of the 20th century. You don't have to ascribe to that any prophetic or scriptural or religious meaning. You can just kind of support it. Why would you support the State of Israel? Why would you be favorably inclined toward the State of Israel? Well, because of international law, because it was established by the United nations after a declaration from the empire that previously controlled that territory, the British Empire. Because there is a lot of cultural similarity and affinity and cooperation between Jews and Gentiles in the west. Because we have Israel as a strategic ally and that has helped us a number of times. Though our interests have diverged on other times, on and on and on. You can just be kind of normal about it. This stuff, I think, really turns a lot of people off. And it's a big problem for the State of Israel, especially at a time when you see support for the State of Israel collapsing even in the United States, which was its biggest backer, even among Republicans, even among conservatives, who were the biggest backers of the State of Israel, even within the United States. I think that if we just re establish the facts here and we recognize, you know, a lot of our political adversaries, geopolitical adversaries, Russia, Iran, China perhaps, really want to stoke a lot of the anti Israel sentiment because it plays on a division that has existed in the west, which is a tension between Jews and non Jews, they want to exacerbate that tension. They want to promote powers that are hostile to ours, like Iran, which has been opposed to the United States for 47 years. And they. We recognize that the leading anti Israel voices are radical leftists, people like Greta Thunberg and all of the radical left going back many decades. You can just be normal about it. But the less normal we are about it, the worse the situation's gonna get. That's basically my view. The low but solid ground of alliances and international relations is gonna bode a lot better for the United States and the state of Israel. The hysterics and the insistence upon adopting novel theological stances, that is only gonna help America's enemies and Israel's enemies for that matter. Okay, speaking of racial and ethnic tensions, Portsmouth, New Hampshire has gone all out for Juneteenth. There's just something a little weird about the vibrant, widespread Juneteenth celebrations in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Namely, there basically aren't any black people there. We'll get to that. We'll get to why they're doing it. First, though, I want to tell you about Preborn. Go to preborn.com knowles ken wlas what if your gift today could impact not just one life, but generations to come? Right now, there is a new generation of mothers and fathers rising up. 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For 28 bucks, Preborn can provide one free ultrasound and help equip a new generation of parents to choose life. To donate, dial pound250 and say keyword baby 28 bucks. This is a good investment. You're getting a good ROI. That's pound250 keyword baby or go to preborn.comknowles preborn.comknowles Sponsored by Preborn if you're a business owner, you might consider a larger donation. To claim a write off a donation of 1,000, 2,000, 10,000 $15,000 will sponsor an ultrasound machine for a needy clinic helping to save countless babies lives for years to come. All gifts are tax deductible and will reach eternity. Get involved today. Preborn.comKnowles, portsmouth, New Hampshire. We look back from this June t second on how they celebrated the sacred feast of the Juneteenth National Independence Day. We see the one black person who accidentally stumbled into New Hampshire is dancing, doing some odd kind of dance next to the whitest woman you've ever seen in your entire life, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, wearing a pink pantsuit, doing what appears to be the macarena or, I don't know, doing some kind of pseudo tribal dance surrounded by all the other white people in New Hampshire. There was a meme going around of this performance that said that New Hampshire, this town in New Hampshire, was mostly white. It was 88% white or something, and only 2 to 3% black. And that's actually not true. The town is 86 to 87% white and less than 1% black. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, by the records that I could find, is about 0.2% black. And they're celebrating Juneteenth. And by the way, they're not celebrating Juneteenth by adopting the culture of black Americans. They're celebrating Juneteenth by doing some contrived African thing that has nothing to do with the cultural experience of black Americans for the last 400 years. They're doing it in New Hampshire because Juneteenth is really not about black people. The idea of the Juneteenth federal holiday, it definitely uses black people and it plays on black grievance, which is sometimes promoted by black people, though often promoted by white liberals as well. But it's not really about black people. And the opposition among some conservatives, such as myself, to Juneteenth, it has nothing to do with opposition to black people or black history or the end of slavery or any of that. Obviously not. I saw some people, some conservatives who were trying to be good little boys who were trying to, you know, prove their anti racist bona fides over the weekend, they said, no, we have no problem with Juneteenth. We love Juneteenth. Why would a conservative ever object to the Juneteenth holiday? We love it. It's awesome. It's our favorite. I actually prefer it to Christmas. You know, I just love for me, I don't know about you, just for me. I think Juneteenth is better than Christmas and Easter and the Fourth of July combined. Yeah, okay. You're trying a little too hard. Juneteenth is bad. There was actually a tweet of Charlie's, Charlie Kirk's from a year or two ago saying Juneteenth is bad. Like, you should not celebrate Juneteenth. And Charlie was right, as he was about many, many things. I've been opposed to the Juneteenth federal holiday from the very beginning. And it really has nothing to do with black people. It has to do with Jeanne Shaheen, and it has to do with liberalism more broadly. The most offensive part of the Juneteenth holiday. Well, I shouldn't say that there are like three or four most offensive parts, but one of the most offensive parts is the. The way in which it became a federal holiday. Juneteenth came out of the George Floyd riots. That's real. I know that there was a local custom that's been practiced for a long time, But Juneteenth as a national matter, came out of the George Floyd riots and all of the black grievance politics that the Democrats cynically stoked and exploited during 2020 and 2021. And then when they contrived this thing, the federal Juneteenth holiday, what was most personally offensive to me was they demanded that we all pretend that this was a real thing. For a long time, no one had ever heard of Juneteenth. Like seven people in Texas had ever heard of Juneteenth. And then we all just had to pretend it was a thing. Most black people had never heard of Juneteenth in 2019, but we all just had to pretend it was a thing. And then we all had to pretend it was totally awesome. And if you opposed Juneteenth, you hated black people and you love slavery, and. And it was never about that. What Juneteenth is really about is displacing the fourth of July. That's why the federal holiday is called the Juneteenth National Independence Day. We already have a national Independence day. It's called Independence Day. It's called the fourth of July. But the left doesn't like that because they hate the actual founding of our country. So they need a new national Independence Day. And the new National Independence day cannot be a discrete particular event because that would assert that we have already won our independence and that we are free. And the left can't have that. The left, constantly revolutionary, always needs to assert that liberty is just around the corner. It's not here yet. The past was evil. The present is a crisis. Liberty's around the corner. Just give us more power. Just go along with what we say, and then you'll truly be free. Viva siempre la revolution. This is why revolutionary leaders wear military fatigues a lot of the time, is because the revolution has to be perpetual. It has to be ongoing. And Juneteenth is actually perfect for that. Because Juneteenth does not really celebrate a discrete event. It's not about the Emancipation proclamation, which frees a lot of the slaves. It's not about the 13th Amendment, which abolishes slavery in the United States. Those are discrete acts that took place and then they were done. It's about the day that the mailman got to some town in Texas and told them that the slaves were free. Ish. That's what it's about. It's this kind of nebulous, ambiguous event that tells us that independence is around the corner if we give the left more power. That's what it's about. In as much as Juneteenth involves black people, it's just as an excuse. They just use black people as a tool to advance a liberalism that is embraced perhaps most clearly in a town that's 88% white, that has like three black people in a 300 mile radius. It's about Gene Sheen, okay? It's about left wing politicians. And that's why it's never gonna end. That's why it's June 22nd today, and it's gonna be June 23rd tomorrow and June 24th the next day. It's ongoing. The revolution is ongoing. Now, speaking of New Hampshire, here's a little update also to relate to that first story we were talking about from the New York Times. Do you remember the story? Big, big celebration on the left, especially among the sexual revolutionaries. Finally, this is about 10 years ago or so. Finally, we had elected the first openly transgender state legislator in the United States. Finally, after the transgenders were oppressed for millennia, finally, in our era of freedom, an openly trans legislator can enter a state house and emerge in public life. And then about five seconds later, it emerged that he was chomo. He was a pedophile, a child abuser, and he was arrested for this. Thankfully, he's just been sentenced. Just over the last few days, he's been sentenced to 33 years in prison for child exploitation. Now the story goes away. No more do we hear about the valiant first ever transgender politician to become a state legislator. They're gonna sweep that one under the rug until the next trans legislator, who they hope will not be a pedophile, and then they'll make him the big star. But this was the guy. He was the one. He was the groundbreaking pioneer for trans rights in politics. And it turns out he's a chomo. So the question then becomes, were there signs Were there signs? Cuz if you look into this guy's history, it should really not come as a surprise to anyone. The picture of him going around is him wearing a trans colored shirt with a gay flag colored mask, I guess during COVID and. And a little tag that says clergy. I don't know what denomination he's a part of, but I guess he's a member of the clergy too. No surprise for lots of the liberal offshoots of Christianity. Were there signs? Yeah. In 2008, long before this guy got into politics, this guy had been sentenced to seven and a half to 15 years in prison for conspiracy to commit credit card fraud. And three and a half years to seven years in prison for falsifying physical evidence. The guy not only committed the crimes, he was arrested, prosecuted and sentenced for the crimes. Somehow this never came up in the campaign. They had to suppress that. The story was too good. The first openly transgender legislator. This guy then turned himself into police. 2015 After a warrant was issued because he had made a bomb threat at Southern New Hampshire Medical Center. He made a bomb threat. The guy is clearly very violent, has a lot of problems, kind of criminal. You've seen these, You've heard this song before. When it comes to the trans people. In 2019, this state legislator paid $2,000 in restitution because he would not have been able to run for public office with these crimes on his record. So he pays $2,000 in restitution to be cleared to run for public office again. Formed an exploratory committee to get back into government. He then ran for and won a selectman seat in Nashua, New Hampshire. In 2020, beginning of peak woke, he runs again for the New Hampshire House of Representatives and he wins. And then he was reelected, by the way, in 2022. And now he's going to prison because he's a chomo. But he wasn't just a chomo or he's not just a chomo. He also is a terrorist or at least a psycho because he called in that bomb threat at the hospital. And he also is a fraudster because he committed credit card fraud. And he also obstructed justice because he destroyed physical evidence. And it's always the ones you most expect. The whole trans movement was really predicated on ignoring warning signs because one big anthropological error that people make is they think that talents, virtues and vices are distributed basically equally. If someone is really handsome, he's probably really stupid. Actually, that's a very popular stereotype. The dumb jock. By the way, the Dumb jock stereotype is totally disproven by social science. The jocks are actually more likely to be intelligent than your average guy. There is a positive correlation between good looks and physical prowess and intelligence. But our culture, the stereotypes, tell us it's the opposite. We believe that if you have one virtue, you probably have some other vice. So it all kind of evens out in the end. But I don't think that's really true. That's not how virtue and vice work. It's not that ugly people can't be smart or talented or anything, but it just means that, though, frankly, actually going back to virtue and vice, as Aristotle writes about it, Aristotle actually is kind of a looksmaxer. Aristotle was a very early clavicular. Aristotle does think that there's a link between at least physical athletic prowess, good looks, and other virtues. But nevertheless, what a virtue is, is it's a habit that inclines the will to. To. Or rather, it's a habit formed over time, which is rational, which is a type of an excellence, and which ultimately leads you to happiness. And it kind of spreads out. So if you have one vice, you're more likely to have a second vice and a third vice. And the more vices you have, the more vicious you become. Likewise, the more virtues you have, the more virtuous you are likely to become. And with transgenderism, it's not just one vice, or, let's be even less judgy about it, it's not even just one defect. This defect that, you know, you think you're the opposite sex. It's like a billion vices and defects. Because transgender ideology, Transgender identity is positively correlated with depression, with anxiety, with suicidality, with a whole host of other sexual deviancies. LGBT identity is correlated with a higher likelihood of being a chomo, for instance, pedophilia, all of these other issues that go along with it, emotional regulation problems, all the rest of it. And so what transgenderism tried to do was tell us to ignore the warning signs that things that are manifestly abnormal and absurd have to be normal. And I think this was the real political value of transgenderism for the left. It's not just that they're sex freaks and perverts. That is true also. But I think even more powerfully than that, the reason the left really glommed onto transgenderism is it offered them the opportunity for a final triumph of the will over reality, for the final triumph of the will over the intellect, over reason and logic, for a final triumph of man, over nature, and over nature's God, an ability for us finally to become as gods, the promise from the Garden of Eden. If we can force our own will upon the most basic elements of biology and nature, we can do anything. And furthermore, if we can enforce that in the political community, if we enforce everybody to go along with that, to believe that the greatest absurdity we've ever seen, at least in my lifetime in politics, then we can do anything. I think that was the real thrust of it, even if the left wasn't totally aware of it. But warning signs are still warning signs. And this is no surprise. If you had asked an American 60 years ago, hey, do you think the first transgender state legislator is gonna be a pedophile? 100% of them would've said, yeah, probably. At least, very likely. Yeah, probably. Cause he's like a sexual weirdo. So he's more likely to be even more of a sexual weirdo. That's it. And now we're beginning to read warning signs. This is what a lot of the kind of edgy, often sort of racist and unpalatable discourse on the Internet is about. The idea of being woke, being awakened to something, or being red pilled. In other words, being awakened to something or noticing or whatever the lingo is. It all basically on the left and the right redounds to the same thing, which is that we're, we're seeing patterns, we're acknowledging things that we weren't previously allowed to acknowledge because of political contrivance and ideology. And with the trans issue, it's so clear and it's why the left won't give it up. It's why the left is insisting upon it even today in the year of our Lord 2026. Okay, speaking of warning signs, the Strait of Hormuz is closed again. Well, sorry, it was closed when I went to bed, but then it was open when I woke up. But the Iranians still say it's closed, but the boats seem to be getting through. We'll get to that because the vice president right now is over in Switzerland trying to negotiate this deal. First though, my favorite comment on Friday from Spotify. Spotify, which can leave comments now. So if you. I find the Spotify comments might be better than the YouTube comments. I can't tell if it's just a bias because I didn't know you could leave comments on Spotify. So now I'm really taken with that. But all I always say is, YouTubers, you gotta get your comment game up or go leave the comments on Spotify. It's from overtoast. Who Says who? Says, don't forget to leave cookies and milk out for George Floyd tonight. That was on Juneteenth. That's not nice. That's not nice. Okay, you shouldn't say that. I mean, I know that the Juneteenth federal holiday, like, literally became a thing because of George Floyd. And I know that they've tried to make George Floyd out into a mythological figure and a saint, much as Santa Claus came from St. Nicholas. And I know it's a perfect, perfect analogy, but that's not nice. You shouldn't do that. Okay, is the Strait of Hormuz open? Can anyone tell me? Mr. Davies, are you refreshing your Google News feed? We're talking about Schrodinger's straight. Here is the potential of the strait being open. Has it collapsed into any reality at this very moment at 9:07am on Monday morning? According to AI on Google, it's not.
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B
Sure.
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A
I love everything about your answer. You won't look at a news site. You're looking at AI and you're looking at the weakest AI. But you know, the AI, it's supposed to be really intelligent. And not even the. Not even the AI, the supercomputer that people are worshiping as God, not even AI knows. All right, see, if the straight is open, like five minutes ago. Said it's closed again. It's closed again. That's what cnbc said. Yeah, 32%. But I checked the AP or whatever it was this morning and said it was closed. But it was open. It was closed, but the ships were getting through. Okay, you get the point. We appear to be in something of a quagmire. And the vice president has the most difficult job on planet Earth right now, which is to effect President Trump's policy. Don't forget the mou. The memorandum of understanding is Trump's policy. He wants this. He's the one who signed it. In fact, when the White House presented that the MOU is being signed, they didn't even include JD Vance in the picture. It was Trump and Rubio who were standing there because this is the administration's policy. And a lot of the former never Trumpers are trying to pin it on JD Vance because they don't want to actually come out against President Trump for his own policy because they don't wanna get on the wrong side of the White House. So they're trying to scapegoat it to the vice president. They hate the mou, but they want to scapegoat it to the vice president, who's one of the people who's negotiating this thing. But it's the Trump policy. And the vice president, who it would appear was opposed to the war in the first place, he is now the one who is negotiating the peace deal, which what's funny is a lot of that faction, the hawkish faction, is trying to pin this on Vance cuz they think it's going to destroy him. I think a lot of people want some kind of a peace deal. Now, of course, the devil's in the details. And this is the big problem, because I think we were a little cavalier about going to war in Iran. As I said, not the bunker busters last year, which I think was simple enough, and we got out quickly enough. It took what, like seven hours and we were done. And that was pretty effective at setting back Iran's nuclear program. The more recent war in Iran, Operation Epic Fury. I was very skeptical before, during, and after, and I remained so. Not because the Iranian regime doesn't deserve it, but because I feared that our likelihood of success at the things that we would need to do to make the war more generally a success, I thought the likelihood was relatively low. And the reasonable chance of success is one of the criteria for a just war, the other one being proportionality. That the goods to be achieved are proportional are outweighing the costs that will be inflicted. And so here the question is, what was the goal of the war? The goal of the war, most importantly, was to get rid of Iran's nuclear program. Now, ostensibly, we had already done that a year ago, but the argument was that Iran's ballistic missiles program had gotten so good that they would reach a point of immunity, after which they could redevelop their nuclear program. They would reach breakout capacity, and we wouldn't be able to stop them from getting nukes. So it was this opportunity to take out the Iranian leadership and end the nuclear program, or at least severely set it back. Okay, all well and good. The problem is, once the war is over, what's to stop the regime from just building back its ballistic missiles, as it's very likely going to do, and restarting the nuclear program? I mean, they still have a lot of ballistic missiles and they still have something of a nuclear program. So what's to stop them after that? Well, I guess the answer would be regime change. Okay, well, now you're kind of shifting the goals of the war. And it's not that I don't want regime change in Iran. I certainly do, but I just didn't. I thought the Iranian regime was more durable than A lot of people who had a more cavalier attitude thought that it was. And I think that that's been proven to be correct. Don't forget, the Islamic regime has lasted twice as long as the CIA backed regime from 1953. So they're a lot stronger than propaganda would have it seem. All of which recalls, for those fans of ancient history, Herodotus, the founder of the discipline of history and history writing, who famously recounts this story of King Croesus, the Lydian king, going to war with Cyrus the Great, the Persian king and the oracle at Delphi, per Herodotus warns, famously warns, if King Croesus crosses the Hellas River, a great empire will be destroyed. And so the Oracle, it would seem, is saying the Persian Empire will be destroyed, but actually it destroys the empire of the belligerents. This is another for those fans of ancient history, I'm thinking of that line of Julius Caesar's from the Gallic wars where he points out that men are at all times inclined to believe the things that they wish to be true. A key to politics is understanding. I forget the Latin, I can't recite the Latin, but it's a beautiful, concise Latin phrase that men are really inclined to believe to be true that which they wish was true. And I think that's a lot of what was going on in Iran. It's not that America can't dominate the Iranians. We obviously can. We're the world's superpower. They are a backwater, albeit one. They're a kind of semi savage regime, albeit in a very civilized place, which is Iran, which is Persia. It's not that we can't dominate them. We can. We're basically the only military on Earth that can project power forward. It's that we don't want to really. We don't want to get bogged down in a regime change war for 10 years. We don't want to have election watchers monitoring their elections to usher in the new democratic regime of the Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah of Iran. It's that we're not really committed to doing that. And so if you're not gonna go all the way, it probably was not the best idea to go in in the first place. This is what the Trump administration is dealing with right now. It's very, very difficult. They will be able to claim many victories in the war. They set back the nuclear program. They might get the nuclear dust. They destroyed a lot of the ballistic missiles. They killed the top two or three layers of Iranian leadership. They can claim a lot of kinetic victories. They can claim that the United States and the State of Israel are better off than they were before the war. In some ways, however, the fact that Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz means that we're worse off than we were before the war. So that's a real sticking point. It means that Iran now has a more powerful weapon than the nuclear weapon that we're trying to keep out of their hands. And it means it's gonna be very, very hard to extricate ourselves from this war. It means, in fact, that we might go back to war. Those are the stakes. It's very easy to go to war. It's a lot harder to get out of wars. Okay, speaking of foreign affairs, before we go, this one I have to get to because I promised it at the top. The Prime Minister of the UK is resigning. Keir Starmer, he. Do we have the video of him resigning? Yes, here he is.
- [46:36]
B
Every decision I've taken has been about putting the country I love first. That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour Party.
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A
We fixed this with closed caption.
- [46:48]
B
Why did we bring the King this morning to inform him of my decision? I will ask the National Executive Executive Committee of the Labour Party to set out a timetable with nominations opening on 9 July and completed by the summer recess.
- [47:04]
A
Okay, so this is happening fast. July, it's over. They've already got the guy who's gonna come in after him. Keir Starmer was in office for less than two years. And I'm particularly irritated at this whole thing. Cuz when I was in the uk, I was supposed to go on the BBC and then I got bumped and I got bumped for the only person that I kind of accepted I should be bumped for, which is the incoming Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. People have known this for a while that Keir Starmer was on the ropes. He's out. Why is he out? There are people I noticed in some of the commentary saying Keir Starmer's government is falling and no one can quite see why. No one really knows why the government is falling. Well, it's part of a larger trend. It's not just about Keir Starmer. How many prime ministers has the UK had in the last seven to 10 years? You had this guy, you had Rishi Sunak, you had Liz Truss. Yeah. I mean, it's just. It's crazy. You used to have Prime Ministers of the UK who would govern for decades sometimes. Wasn't it Walpole governed for like 20 years. Maggie Thatcher was 11 years. Used to be a lot more stable. Now the uk, once a stiff upper lip model of stability, now it's becoming like Italy, which changes its prime minister every 37 seconds and hasn't had a functional government since Octavian. Why is the UK becoming like this? Well, the simple answer actually I think explains it. The simple answer is that the UK government keeps letting a bunch of foreigners in. Bunch of foreigners who don't assimilate, who are particularly criminal and who, oh yes, by the way, do you remember our interview from last week? Spent the last number of decades raping a quarter million British girls. So yeah, it turns out the people don't like that. Turns out. Look, it's about more than that. It's about the economy, it's about, it's about the next spate of elections, it's about government corruption and it's about all these different things. But like really what it's about is pretty simple. It's that the British people don't want a bunch of foreigners coming in and raping and killing them. That's really what it's about. And that's what a lot of these elections and the instability in Europe and even in the United States is about. The British people have voted time and time again to defend their island. They voted for the Brexit, they didn't get the Brexit. They voted for immigration restriction, they didn't get that. You know what they got? They got the police mocking a white kid while he was bleeding out and joking with his murderer who was the son of immigrants. That's really what this is about. It's a recognition that the governments are not responsive to the people at all and they're prioritizing foreigners over the citizens. That's it. And unfortunately in the UK, what they're doing is they're gonna replace this guy with another lefty, Andy Burnham. And they're gonna do that because they see a groundswell of support for the right wing party. But the right wing party's not even the Conservative Party, it's not even the Tories. Cuz the Tories and the Conservatives are basically just as bad as the left in the uk. So you had this new party emerge from Nigel Farage, Reform uk. And some people thought that didn't go far enough. So you have an even further right party emerge, restore. But with Rupert Lowe and you're seeing these alternatives keep coming up. And the problem is reform just won some 1500 seats in the elections. A little under that. Labor lost a ton of seats in the election. So Keir Starmer realizes, okay, he's out. The labor is trying to put in a better candidate to put a little more lipstick on the pig to try to stop this wave of right wing populism. It's probably not going to work. The problem is though, the way these governments are set up, even if you get the right wing populist governments, they're probably not gonna be fixing the fundamental problems. So the people are going to become more irate, they're going to feel more betrayed. You're gonna get even more instability. And the UK hasn't figured that out. The Europe hasn't figured that out. America figured it out to some degree with the improbable, dramatic theatrical election reelection of Donald Trump. But what comes next remains to be seen because the left is crouching in the corner waiting to reimpose its will over the demands of the voters. Okay, much more to get to, but it's music. Monday this June 22nd. The rest of the show continues now. You don't want to miss it. Become a member. Use code knowleskannawles at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.