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This episode is brought to you by Starbucks. That is fire. Whoa, that's good. This might be the drink of the summer. Okay, I like this one too. I'm rocking with it. Okay, try it for yourself. Starbucks refreshers concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours. You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank. Wayfair gets it. Planning on dining al fresco or relaxing poolside? Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space. Shop now and save up to 70% off during Wayfair's 4th of July clearance. Score huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus surprise flash deals. July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at Wayfair.com Wayfair Every style, every home. While we all ring our hands over new political winds blowing in the gop. Isolationism, protectionism, nativism, there is a new factional insurgency among Republicans that we should be excited about. And that is the rise of the right wing goth baddie. We will examine the rising Republican star, the congressional candidate shaking up conservative aesthetics. Then a Democrat campaign staffer calls for a trans jihad and general murder of Republicans. And President Trump swings by the Teddy Roosevelt Library to remind us all how terrible this year would have been with a lib President presiding over America's 250th anniversary of Michael Knowles this is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. James Tallarico, who the polls are showing might be the Democrat senator from Texas very soon. He wants you all to know that his whiteness and his masculinity limits his imagination. That guy could be that guy like right now. Odds on the numbers. Very good chance that guy is going to be the senator from Texas. We'll get to that in a moment. First though, 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 to without using your data. Do not miss an episode. Before we get to anything I want to tell you about Bolen branch, go to bowlandbranch.com knowles b o l l a n d b r-a n c-h.com knowles there are few better feelings than getting home after a long day, taking a shower, climbing into your own bed. And there are few worse feelings than immediately realizing this bed is not nearly as comfortable as I remember. Maybe the sheets are worn Out. Maybe the comforter is too heavy. Maybe you're waking up hot halfway through the night. Point is, you don't realize how much your bedding affects your sleep until you finally replace it. That's exactly what happened to us with bowl and branch. Okay. We love our Bolen branch bedding. I've had many sets of boll and branch. Boll and branch bedding say that 10 times fast. Over the years, I have purchased Bolen branch to give to family members. The bedding is made from 100% organic cotton, so it's incredibly soft and breathable. Unlike a lot of cooling bedding that depends on gross synthetic fabrics and chemical treatments that'll probably poison you. Bolen branch stays cool because of the way the cotton itself is woven. It's simple. Makes a real difference. It's just. It's the best. I just ordered a new I finally acquiesced to Elisa. She want she likes to spruce up the bedding once every at least like 10 years and she wanted a new comforter. We just ordered another bowl and branch comforter set. They're having their annual summer event. If you've been thinking about upgrading your bedding, do it right now. Sleep cooler this summer with bowl and branch for a limited time. Get 20% off site wide bowl and branch.com knowles code knowles bolenbranch b o l l a n d b r-a n-h.com knowles code knowles to take 20% off bonebranch.com knowles code knowles exclusions apply. I hate to admit that Mr. Davies, the producer of this show, is sometimes right. I teased this a little bit yesterday. I have to get to it. He has been saying for weeks now that I need to cover the rise of the goth baddie. I said, what are you talking about? The goth baddie? He was saying, no, Michael, my whole social media feed is just being inundated with with really good looking goth girls. It's just, it's a social phenomenon. I said, no, no, no. That's a your feed phenomenon. I said, I don't know what kind of sick, perverted, freakish things you look up on your computer, but I'm not seeing that anywhere. I said, that's not a real trend. And it takes a big handsome guy wearing a red, white and blue plaid shirt to admit when he's wrong. Because the new star GOP congressional candidate coming out of Colorado is in fact, I think it's fair to say nothing lecherous in the observation she's a goth baddie. This is Kelly Dennison. She just won the Colorado second congressional primary and she is not your typical Republican, at least in the way she looks. She's a 27 year old massage therapist. Her picture that is being posted around in the news reports of her victory was actually taken in front of St. Joseph Catholic Parish. Great signs. I was in Fort Collins this year and she probably doesn't have a chance to win the race. I think the district is D plus 20 or something like that. But she won the primary. She has now won the hearts and minds. The fascination of at least many Republicans on the Internet. And it made me have to contemplate whether or not Mr. Davies was seeing a trend and why it would be that a goth chick would be a conservative Republican. I've noticed this. You know, I travel around the country, go to a lot of churches. When I'm around the country, go to a lot of events, and I've noticed this. I actually, I did not on my social media feeds, but in real life, I have been noticing more and more goth girls, like the kind of thing you saw in the late 90s. White makeup, dark hair, some piercings, black eyelashes, black clothing. I have been seeing them crop up more and more and you would often imagine them being on the left or maybe even the radical left if they weren't totally politically apathetic. But I've been noticing them more and more on the right. And why is that? In a way, it makes perfect sense because the goth aesthetic rose out of the Victorian era. The best explanation I've heard for the rise of the goth aesthetic, which really took on prominence in America during the 80s. Punk, post punk. Then Hot Topic kind of commercialized it. But it comes from the Victorian era because Queen Victoria spent a very, very long time mourning the death of her husband, Prince Albert. So she wore a lot of black. And that's what it draws on. And it draws on other cultural influences from that era. From the 19th century, the Gothic novels, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The kind of culture that is about enchantment, the kind of culture that is about the supernatural. Things that are a little uncanny, eerie, numinous, a little bit spooky. The kind of culture that takes religion seriously. What's interesting about the goth aesthetic is, is in the goth aesthetic, you could see someone wearing a pentagram or a crucifix. Totally opposite religious views, but nevertheless taking religion seriously, whether it be in an occult and rather bad religious form or in a good religious form, which is in the form of Christianity. I mean, even the word goth, coming from gothic, you know, the Goths who sacked Rome, but then the great Gothic cathedrals and then into the Gothic novels of the era. And I thought, you know, in a way, this makes perfect sense because we live in this world that has been so disenchanted. We live in this world where everything is so clinical, everything is mediated by technology, where everything seems so clinical, so scientific, so plain. Our longings, our desires, our hopes and our dreams, they're all reduced to chemicals firing off in our brains or some other mechanical processes. And human beings realize that that doesn't really fully explain the world. It doesn't even come close. It doesn't explain the most important things in the world. And so I think we're living in an era. This is also why you're seeing a big return to religion, and especially the more sacramental and traditional forms of religion, the liturgical kind of religion, the smells and bells kind of religion. You're seeing people recognize that we know that the world really is enchanted and we need to re enchant ourselves with it. We're living post stupid new atheism. We're. We're now in a world where we start to take religion and spiritual matters seriously. Even those Gothic novels, you know, they're very romantic. It coincides with the romantic era. And we live in a world where we're told we're just supposed to have, you know, clinical partnerships with our. With our. You know, I'm going to propose a marriage to my partner because we're really good, we help each other, and we're all gonna just, like, do the dishes, and we're gonna be exactly co. Equals, undifferentiated. And it's all. It's just, like, so lame. And we want romance. We want to be that couple climbing up the Empire State Building, taking a knee and proposing on top of a needle above New York City. So we are living at a time. Maybe I'm reading too deeply into this congressional primary candidate, but I don't think I am. I think it's indicative of a broader trend. We're in a time that calls for enchantment and romance and religion. We are in an age that calls for the return of the goth baddy. And the goth baddie will not be on the left. The goth baddie will be on the side that is looking for a return of those things, and that is conservatives and Republicans generally. Okay, now let's look at the Democrats. What are they up to? This is something that would come out of a gothic novel, a horror novel or a horror movie. A Democrat campaign staffer has Just called on followers to, quote, kill your local Republican and commit trans jihad. Trans jihad, two of our favorite things. Transgenderism and Islam. Combine them. What could go wrong? They do actually kind of combine in a lot of activism. This person, his name, I guess it's a him, but he thinks he's a girl, is Tiha Della Ruel. I don't think that's his Christian name, but that's the name he goes by. He was a volunteer staffer for Wisconsin Democrat Socialist candidate Katrina Deville. Katrina Deville. I don't know what Katrina Deville's real name is, because Katrina Deville is also transgender. This Democrat candidate in Wisconsin, also trans. So this fellow, the staffer, was photographed sitting in front of a dry erase board scrawled with the words, quote, kill your local Republican in black marker. And. And he says, we're gonna make this the moderate position for the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin, which I believe has pushed more serial killers on America than any other state in the country. Now this is the trans stuff. The trans people are kind of like the, er, evil version of the goth baddie. You know, this is like everything goes wrong. This is the villain from the gothic novel. But I guess what's really troubling about all of this, this person calling for a trans jihad, is how not weird he is. I mean, he's weird, don't get me wrong, he's weird, but he's not weird by the standards of the modern Democrat party. I mean, just listen to the reporting. He was working for another tranny, a tranny who is now not uncommon for a transvestite to be in public office. There was a time 10 years ago that would have been completely absurd in both parties. Now there's a transvestite in Congress, sitting in Congress as a member, a Democrat. Of course, what the left is gonna wanna do is say that the trans staffer calling for the murder of all Republicans is an aberration. This is not what we're about. And the Republicans are gonna pounce on this story. But this is not indicative at all of what the Democrats are. And the problem is, it is there's a big difference. Think about back in the 90s, we had, like, David Duke. There's a similar version of that in the mid-2000 teens, which was Richard Spencer, who was a kind of more intelligent, more intellectual version of David Duke, but still white identitarian, who would say, heil, victory, and had Nazi leanings. What's ironic about Richard Spencer is Richard Spencer, I think is now a. A Democrat because he says the Republicans can't do anything, but whatever. My only point is whether they were pointing to Richard Spencer or David Duke, the Republicans certainly could say, well, no, we're not about that. They are advancing views that we don't agree with. So much so that Richard Spencer says, I'm done with Republicans. I'm just gonna vote for Democrats. At least they're competent. But you could say in the 90s, David Duke would be calling for all these things. And it was all the Republicans would say, no, no, no, we support colorblind meritocracy. No, no, no. We're the party that freed the slaves from those Democrats who owned the slaves. No, no, no. We don't have anything in common with this guy. He is not one of us. The Democrats can't say that about these guys. They can't say that about transgenderism. Obviously, there's a trans identified member of Congress. They've almost uniformly embraced the transgender ideology in recent years, and they can't even run away from it now that it's totally unpopular. But furthermore, a huge swath of Democrats, prominent mainstream Democrats and have embraced political violence as well, including minimizing and excusing and celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk, who was the most mainstream Republican. When it says, kill your local Republican, we're talking about that kind of guy. So they're totally different scenarios. And unfortunately, I'm open to a rebuttal. But unfortunately, it seems to me that. What's this person's name? Deville. Cruella Deville. I don't know, whatever the trans staffer's name is, working for the other trans candidate. That has become the norm. And if you get enough drinks, or probably more like hard drugs when it comes to that side, if you got enough drinks into even your mainstream Democrats, something tells me they would start defending or at least minimizing and justifying political violence. Something tells me they wouldn't be so totally opposed to trans jihad. Very, very dangerous. The staff are calling for this violence is at most. I'm being as charitable as I can is at most an exaggeration of the norm. David Duke in the 90s, that was a contradiction of the Republican platform. This person is at most a slight exaggeration of where normal Democrats are at. Normal Democrats increasingly a contradiction in terms. Now, speaking of trans liberal Democrats trying to murder Republicans, we have finally gotten the sentencing for the guy who tried to kill Brett Kavanaugh. You remember this a big story. And it kind of went away. The person who over Kavanaugh's decision to overrule Roe v. Wade traveled across the country, tried to murder him and potentially his whole family in his house. We have just gotten the sentencing, and it turns out that he too, is trans. It's always the ones you most expect. We'll get to that momentarily. First, though, speaking of understanding public policy and politics, I want to tell you about Pepperdine. Go to pepperdine. Edu dailywire. Someone's going to write the laws. Someone's going to shape public policy. Someone is going to advise elected officials, elite agencies, and make decisions that affect millions of people. The question is who? I happen to be of the belief that personnel is policy, that the people matter much more than some stated ideology on the back of a napkin. You want the people to be well formed. That is what forms their character, their judgment. These are the people doing the jobs. That is why Pepperdine School of Public Policy exists. Students earn a Master of Public Policy while tailoring their studies to American politics, national security, or local government, preparing for careers where ideas become action. One of the things that makes the program especially unique is where students learn. They study in Malibu, overlooking the Pacific, and in Washington, D.C. just blocks from the White House, combining rigorous academics with firsthand exposure to where policy is actually made. I remember I had a professor in college teaching con law, and I noticed in the summer he got out of the kind of northeast and he would go teach at Pepperdine because it's a great school and great place to be. If you're serious about serving your community or even serving your country, Pepperdine School of Public Policy is worth exploring. Go to go. That is go Pepperdine. Edu dailywire. The man who tried to murder Brett Kavanaugh has been sentenced to eight years in prison and is now a chick. And what's really, that's not surprising. You know, transgenderism is an intrinsically violent identity and ideology because it is at odds with one of the most basic aspects of nature, that that being sexual difference that is at the heart of distinctions between human beings. Much more so than race or ideology or geography or whatever. The distinction between man and woman is core to human identity. And so when you have a problem with that, when you're at odds with that, you are simply inclined, more inclined to be violent. What is somewhat surprising, at least to me, is the way the Washington Post reported on this. The Washington Post. She got eight years for plotting to kill Justice Kavanaugh. Prosecutors want more. The Justice Department is appealing the sentence of Sophie Roske, who pled guilty in the case. There you have it. Most people would remember and say, hold on, I thought it was a guy who tried to kill Kavanaugh. Yeah. And then like a lot of these wackos, whether for sincere psychosis or just for cynical reasons, so that he could be housed in prison with women, which would be easier on him, maybe so that he could commit more crimes, who knows? Regardless, he now identifies as a woman. And the Washington Post is going along with it. The she and the Sophie and the her. And we're still doing this. We're still doing this. And as I mentioned at the top, right now the Republican election chances are looking pretty bad. It looks like the midterms are gonna be as bad, if not worse, as some people were fearing a couple months ago. We're still in silly se season. Things could change. But the Iran war really hasn't helped the historical fact of the midterm. After one party wins the whole government. Things are compounding at this point to not look great for Republicans. And we could be back to 2023 era peak woke like that, like that. It's happening. The Washington Post wants to do it. The Democrat Party wants to do it. The electeds, the people on TV want to do it. The rank and file Democrats want to do. They want to bring that back. And there is one guy, there is this catacomb like figure who is stopping them from doing it. And it's Trump. And I get frustrations with Trump. I get that you wish he had done more on immigration. Some people want him to do less on immigration. Or you wish he had bombed Iran harder, or you wish he hadn't bombed Iran at all. And I understand, I don't even mean to make light of it. I understand the issues that people have with Trump. He is the only reason that we don't live in a world full of trans jihad. And this wacko identifying as a woman and the newspapers calling all the men chicks. It's just him. The only reason that that abated at all was because after the 2024 election, the powers that be got really scared. The cultural powers that be got really scared that Republicans had unified government. They were going to come after them. And they saw the popular vote went the way of the conservatives. So that's what they pulled back for now. It could all come back in a second. This is what brings me to President Trump at the Roosevelt Library a couple days ago. President Trump went to the Teddy Roosevelt, not the Franklin Roosevelt, the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library. It was great. The motorcade had horses and it was very Teddy Roosevelt. There was this great clip of Trump debating or interacting with an AI of Teddy Roosevelt. It's all kind of fun, wacky stuff. We don't have time to get to all of it. But here is just a little bit of his comments days before the 250th official anniversary of the United States. From winning our independence to laying the railroads, taming the west, and planting our flag on the moon, nothing great that America has ever done has come without staggering effort and has never come easy. It's been really an unflagging persistence that drove us into greatness. We had the persistence of great people, great men, great women. They were persistent. They never gave up. This country was built on the conviction that just because something is hard to do, that only means that Americans try even harder and they succeed almost all the time. Because whatever the obstacle, whatever the challenge, it's no match for American grit. And you have it probably as much or more than any other place there is. You have American grit, okay? And you love it. You got the guys with the bandanas and the cowboy hats on behind them and it's just, it's all great, nice big belt buckles, real Americana. He's just talking about how great America is and the spirit that built America. He's really invoking the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt, who maybe until Trump did this kind of thing, second to none. I mean, there are so many parallels between Trump and Teddy Roosevelt, all the way down to hosting combat sports at the White House. Teddy Roosevelt would host boxing matches, was pre ufc, but he would host boxing matches at the White House. He would even participate in them sometimes. And there's one time he had to stop participating in them because he was boxing and the guy got him in the head and partially blinded him. TR was partially permanently blinded cuz he was, as president participating in boxing match at the White House. So a lot of similarities there. But all that could go through my head while I'm watching these great comments. Totally normal, nothing all that remarkable about the comments. America's a great place. We've done great things. We should do more great things. What went through my head is what could have been. Because had Trump lost in 2024. Let's just start there. Had Trump lost in 2024, some Democrat Kamala Harris would be presiding over the country for our 250th. What speech would she have given at the Teddy Roosevelt Library? She wouldn't have gone, but what speech would she have given at the Franklin Roosevelt Library? What speech would Joe Biden, had he been able to pull the drool up from his lower lip and actually stick it out through the campaign. What speech would he have given at the library? Even Biden, who's supposed to be the old school, more establishment, more moderate Democrat. Well, the party moves so far to the left, all of a sudden Joe Biden's embracing, like transing the kids. Literally transing the kids. The speech would have been. And America, America, listen. We've had our challenges. We haven't lived up to our ideals. We failed a lot. We've done a lot of bad things. We're racist. The worst. The original sin of America, of slavery. We've never totally gotten past it. This is a place. We've gone to wars we shouldn't have gone to. We've. We've oppressed people. We've kept women down. Oh, and don't get me started on the gays. We haven't done enough for the gays and the trans and the trans kids and man, we suck. We, We're a terrible country, but we try to be better. And every day we elect another Democrat. There's a chance we could be better, but still a lot of our bitter, clinging, hideous, rube toothless citizens, they want to drag us down into Nazism. They're deplorable politics. But we're gonna try so that there will be a chicken in every pot and a trans kid in every garage. That's what the speeches would have been. It would have been a year of that. We're looking ahead. Obviously, the fourth of July is tomorrow. It would have been a year of that. And we don't have that. Instead we have big monuments, new arcs going up in D.C. big state fair on the National Mall, great speeches, bunting and ban and flags. And at the very least, even in a polarized country where one major political party has collapsed in its patriotism reflected in every social media, every social scientific survey, at least in that country, we got the face of the country. The guy with the bully pulpit saying, this is a great country and we've done great things and we should be proud of that and we should build on that. And then what? That got me thinking. Final point on this. Then we'll get to James Talarico's struggles with his whiteness and masculinity. But what if Trump had remained in office after 2020? What if the 2020 election had turned out differently? Let's just say, hypothetically, the Democrats hadn't changed all of the rules in the lead up to the election and increased the opportunities for voter fraud inestimably. And what if, just however it shook out, I'm not what if Trump had remained in office? Well, then he would have been term limited out in 2024, and Mike Pence, I guess, would have been the nominee. And I like Mike Pence. But look, after two terms of any party, it's hard to keep holding onto the power, especially with someone like Trump. We would have had a Democrat. And this is the way just, it's the silver lining of. One of the silver linings that we have of the suffering that we face is that God in his providence sees a lot more than we do, to put it mildly. And even we were so disappointed. I certainly was disappointed when Trump, when the election turned out the way it did. I can't say Trump lost when it turned out the way it did. I was really disappointed. And yet imagine, imagine what we'd all be thinking now if we'd had a Democrat in 2025. Okay, before we get to James Tallarico's sexual and racial struggles, I want to tell you about Mount Titano Media. Go to mount titanomedia.com as we get closer to America's 250th anniversary, I have been thinking about a simple how much of our own history do we actually remember? Not the dates, not the trivia, the words, the speeches, the arguments, the ideas that shaped the country in the first place. Because one of the strange realities of modern education is that Americans are constantly told what to think about their history while spending very little time actually reading the people who made it. That is one reason I'm very excited to be part of a new project from Mount Teutona Media. It's called Finding Our Words that Made America. I think I have the book right here. Look at that. This is a great, great book. The book collects some of the most important speeches in American history, many of which have been almost completely forgotten, despite helping define the American experiment itself. Now, there's a new Audible edition featuring voices you might recognize. Spencer Clavin. Who cares? Andrew Clavin. Yeah. Yawn. Bill Whittle. No, I'm not listening to that. Military leaders, educators, scholars, and yours truly. That's the key, okay? It's a really, really great book. I just totally love it. You will get context from journalist Tracey Lee Simmons and editor Allison Ellis. Go check it out right now. Mount titanomedia.com get your copy of Finding Our Words, Words that made America. Mounttitanomedia.com what you would have gotten. What you would have gotten. Well, you can get a preview of what you would have gotten. The kind of speech you would have gotten had Adem been in office for the 250th anniversary. From the potential, if not likely, future senator from Texas, James Talarico, I should mention, my imagination is also just limited by my own background and identity, my whiteness, my masculinity, all those things limit my imagination about what's possible. So I have to continually press against that to try to expand the limits of what I'm dreaming of for our community. And that's where, Dr. Robin, your book helps me do that. And podcasts like this helped me do that. His struggle. He has this big struggle. The Germans call it a Kampf. James Talarico's struggle is with his sexuality. Breaking news. It's not exactly man bites dog story there. James Talarico struggles with his sexuality, but also with his race, his whiteness, which limits his imagination. Now, what's so funny about this is, at a very basic level, I guess we could agree with him. In other words, it is the case no matter how enlightened and wise we are, and people who are wiser, who have some humility, who have gained in wisdom and knowledge, they can largely transcend the confines of their circumstances. But there's always some limit. That's true. I guess that's true. In a certain sense. We can all say that we're limited by our race, by our sex, by our socioeconomic circumstances, but I guess you could say that. But he would never say this about any other race or any other sex. So here's what I want to hear from James Talarico in Total Charity. I say, okay, you're limited by being white man. I hope he comes on and does an interview. He obviously will not. But you say you're limited because you're a white person. White people are limited by their race. Men are limited by their sex, and their imagination is confined because of that. So can you say, hey, hey, blacks, your imagination is confined by your race? I don't think he would say that. Hey, ladies. Hey, ladies. I know you're getting a little mouthy here, but just remember, your imagination is confined by your sex, Woman. Know your limits, woman. Would he say, probably not. So, unfortunately, he's making this, like, really, really overstated point. Because people who have charity, who have some goodwill, who have reason, who exercise their reason and try to grow in knowledge, your imagination can go pretty far. I can imagine what it's like to be people who are pretty different from me. I can even imagine what it's like to be James Tallarico. I guess I really gotta stretch for that one. But I guess I could. But not only is he making this just tedious HR diversity training session kind of nauseating point, but he doesn't even believe it because it's not really a principle he holds because he wouldn't apply it evenly. Okay, speaking of weird sex stuff, one thing I do want to get to before we get to the mailbag. We have a great mailbag today. But a little positive note before people start to go on their vacations for the 4th of July, I know many people are doing that. There is some good news on a really one, good news coming out of Texas, not James Talarico. And two, it's on an actual controversial point that only the real hardline, kind of comprehensive conservatives really grasp. I think I predicted a while ago that this issue would grow and grow and grow in the public mind and people would start to change their minds on it. But it would take some time. But nevertheless, it's happening. We're seeing good moves here. And that's on ivf, on in vitro fertilization and the surrogacy industry. The Texas Republican Party. This happened just about a week or so ago. The Republican Party of Texas voted to add a plank to their platform, citing their desire to protect fetal life from destructive practices such as IVF and commercial surrogacy. This is despite the fact, as is reported, that 65% of Texas Republican voters support legal and accessible, perhaps even subsidized ivf. So this is actual political courage and moral clarity coming out of a Republican Party organization, which that is a man bites dog story. You do not usually see courage and clarity coming from the party apparatus. And you are getting that in Texas. And this is another example where I would love to say, I hate to say I told you so, because I've been on the IVF drumbeat for a long time now. And when I first started bringing it up on the show, the idea that actually IVF is bad and surrogacy is bad and commercializing and commoditizing human life is really bad. I got a ton of pushback from people. I'm sure there are many people listening now who say, well, I only got my kid through surrogacy. How dare you say there are problems with surrogacy. I only got my grandkid or my niece or my nephew through surrogacy. How dare you say that? Of course that doesn't hold up as a logical argument. I know people who are conceived as a result of rape and I love those people. But you would never say I only got my Friend as the consequence of rape. Therefore, rape is good, and we need legal rape, and we need to subsidize rape. No one would ever say that. You would never say that a good end justifies an immoral means. So the question really then becomes, okay, is IVF and surrogacy morally justified? I know people want it. I understand how difficult infertility can be. But is it really justified to hand over to business people and dubious physicians the origin and destiny of human life, to establish the domination of science and technology over the origin and destiny of human life, and to trade people as you would trade baseball cards or any other commodity? Is that really justified? To say nothing of then opening up the prospect of gay couples creating children with the intent to deprive them of their natural mother, father, or all the rest of it. To say nothing of the fact that the vast majority of people who are conceived through IVF are killed. Are intentionally killed. This is great. This is really, really great. The Texas Department of Health and Human Service. I'm sorry, no. The National Department of Health and Human Services, their Embryo Adoption Awareness and Services program, is also now replacing the word embryos in several sections with child, children and children who already exist. Really important. There's nothing radical about that. Embryo is just a term for a stage of development of a child, of a person. You say fetus. Fetus is just the Latin word for offspring. No one thinks it's a platypus. No one thinks it's a desk chair. It's a human being. It's a living human being. So they're just clarifying what it really is. And that's important. It's really important that people are now seeing the reality. And at the time, there were a lot of sort of cynical political people who said, michael, don't go after surrogacy. Don't go after ivf. You know, it's so unpopular to go after those things. It's gonna hurt your ratings. People are gonna turn on you. Just don't touch that issue. In much the same way that cynical political operators would say, don't talk about traditional marriage. We lost that battle. Just move on. In much the same way that cynical political operators would say, don't talk about abortion. Oh, come on. Just. We lost that battle. Supreme Court ruled twice. Just move on. Public opinion, it's hard to overcome. Just move on. Notice one, we have just scored a major victory in winning the abortion fight and many PR victories on that. But also at the Supreme Court, people thought it could never happen. Already public support of so called same sex marriage has really declined. I mean, you're seeing a real collapse in public support for that. And a time will come when people view IVF the same way. And it's not because we're some silver tongued devil who can convince people of anything. It's because people don't know what it is. They don't see it for what it is, which is creating children to deprive them of their natural parents in many cases creating people, most of whom will be killed or frozen indefinitely in virtually every case, and commoditizing human life, which we all know is wrong. That's happening. That's already happening. And some of the people who are thinking about this most deeply are even getting a little bit ahead of the demos, the voting public on that. Good stuff. I like seeing that. Okay, much to get to My favorite comment yesterday is from Zach Killen who says how many Mayflower cigars do I need to get my comment read on the show? I don't know how many you've bought. I suspect a bazillion. We sold out of the Mayflower dawn of America, the special limited edition for the 250th and the tubes and the special edition box. Told you it was gonna happen. But for those of you who did not get it, we're trying to order more. We'll see if we can get it done. It's hard. We're using on this seven year aged True Connecticut, usa, Connecticut Tobacco. And it's just this is a handmade artisanal product so it's a little tricky to do. But we're working on it. For those of you who did get your boxes, congratulations. Glad you got em. I'm taking a couple of my own. I only have one box actually. I didn't even hoard them all. I only got one box of the dawn of America. But I'm taking two of the sticks to smoke for four Fourth of July. Okay, finally. Finally we arrive at my favorite time of the week when I get to hear from you in the mailbag. Mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com knowleskenwles to switch to the only wireless company awarded 5 stars in every category by Consumer Reports. Take it away. Hey Michael, what are your thoughts on the SSPX proceeding to consecrate new bishops without papal authority? I know that you love the traditional liturgy, but you're also not a Vatican and pulp hater as some Catholics are. As with all your other takes, I know that you're probably going to have a well thought out and moderate response that'll probably make both sides unhappy. Which of course makes you correct. Anyways, thanks for everything you do and for the show. Very precisely worded question and totally accurate. So for those who don't know, there's a group called the Society of St. Pius X, which is a priestly fraternity within the Catholic Church. You know, there's all sorts of groups within the Catholic Church. You have different religious orders, the Dominicans or the Jesuits. So I think technically you're still Catholic. You get priestly fraternities like the Society of St. Pius X, which really exists to preserve the traditional Latin Mass and has qualms with the Second Vatican Council and certainly with its implementation. You have the priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, which was founded as kind of an offshoot of the sspx, which does not object in principle to the Second Vatican Council. Also preserves the traditional Latin Mass. Wonderful, wonderful fraternity in the Church. Anyway, this all started because in 1988, was it. In 1980s, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated bishops without the authority of the Vatican, without the authority of the Pope. So he illicitly consecrated four bishops, and they all immediately incurred automatic excommunications. Now, it meant that they could still. They were still validly saying Mass, but it was illicit, it was real. When they consecrate the host, that's the real Eucharist, you know, when they're really saying Mass. But it was illicit. It was done without the permission of the Vatican. And so there's been this power dynamic going on for decades now. At one point, the excommunications of the bishops were lifted. Then one of them was kind of put back on again because the bishop had some impolitic things to say, among other things. And I won't get into all of the details of it, but they've just decided, okay, they haven't come to terms with Rome, so they're going to illicitly consecrate the bishops again. They incur automatic excommunications. It's very sad. The whole thing is very, very sad. I am opposed to schism. I am opposed to, you know, the ordination of the bishops. It was even kind of dubious in itself because you have to have an apostolic mandate. You have to have a mandate from, like, the Pope to consecrate the bishops. And they kind of worked around that in the liturgy, which didn't totally persuade me. But in any case, it's very bad. I've never attended an SSPX chapel. I love the traditional Latin Mass. I attend the Traditional Latin Mass. But I do have a great deal of sympathy for the sspx. And one of the arguments the SSPX make is the only reason you get these other groups that are kind of defending the Traditional Latin Mass is because we're the bad guy. Like, they're the good cop, we're the bad cop. And if you get rid of us, then all those other groups are going to go away, too. And now this leads to a scary conclusion, which is that in a way, it's these kind of other groups that save the Church rather than the Church saving all of us, which I obviously don't agree with. However, I guess what I would say my conclusion from this is not to dunk on the sspx, where I think most of the people involved have very good intentions. Maybe some are genuinely schismatic, but most have good intentions. I'm not persuaded by, really by the arguments of the sspx, but I love what they are trying to do, which is to preserve the Traditional Latin Mass. There's so many abuses, liturgical abuses that came about after the Second Vatican Council. And, you know, so I have great sympathy. The whole thing makes me very, very sad. I hope the Vatican has seemed to suggest that they want to reconcile. Maybe. I pray, and I hope that that happens. That's what I'm hoping for here. So, yes, I gave you an answer that is almost exactly as you would have predicted. How interesting is that? There's so much more I want to get to. I got written mailbag questions about love, about romance. We don't have time. We gotta go catch a flight. So I hope everybody has a beautiful Fourth of July. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you Monday.