“Why America Is Screwed…” Michael Knowles on Ben Shapiro, Hookup Culture, and Toxic Wokeism

the country is literally dying we are all just afraid of offending some hypothetical third party that doesn't really exist and I think that is how the left controls the whole dialogue people are attracted to truth I don't think men want to rule over women I don't want to rule over women I have to do that that's my role what do you think are some of your most extreme opinions there are certainly things I believe that I I wouldn't be allowed to even say on YouTube it would shut down the whole the excellent Michael noes thank you for using the proper pronunciation of that title oh Mr Shapiro he does not pronounce it correctly how does he they say he says something with a couple extra letters and I it sounds almost ex I don't know excellent is the excellent Michael nles and since we're on the topic of Ben Shapiro I was wondering if maybe we could just start this off by you reacting to this little clip we have right here okay just letting us know your thoughts okay free association Michael nolles uh I was going to say good Catholic is not as good as but he's you know mediocre Catholic and mediocre person I mean I think we can agree on on that I mean NS is is a discredit to the company and he's actually but it's not my free association I really shouldn't be sounding off go ahead go ahead he's just awful I mean the fact is that that nolles has somehow been able to make a career out of being a complete empty vessel and it's it's incredible to me and all the stuff where he's not an empty vessel whenever he talks about it I mean my goodness have you heard him going go on for like an hour about aquinus it's it's really just just it's it's pretty terrifying so okay so I like by the way I like hear how Ben says I'm an empty vessel and then I just pontificate for hours about St Thomas aquinus the greatest Theologian ever to walk the earth uh you know where it comes from though especially the EMP empty vessel phrase where does it come from Mr Shapiro my friend of many years uh he wrote a lot of books when he was a young man he started writing his first book I think he was in the womb then I come along this about the year 2017 and I published a book called a masterpiece actually called reasons to vote for Democrats a comprehensive guide and it it didn't have any words in it and that book at the time since then Ben has sold a lot of books I think at the time my book without any words may have sold more than all of Ben's books that he put a lot of time and effort and words into he was not happy about that but then there was one other this is something that really got got bad 2016 the election Hillary Clinton was supposed to win Ben is Mr Data Ben is Mr facts all of the polls said Hillary Clinton was going to win now I'm a little bit more when it comes to politics a little bit more about intuition and I said I don't I don't know if I believe that the Wicked Witch of the West is actually going to be elected president and Trump he's kind of a weird guy he's big celebrity though for 40 years I don't know and Ben said okay okay nolles I'll give you four to one odds four to one on a $100 bit that Trump is going to lose I said okay I don't know if I'd take even odds but four to one I'll take sure okay Ben and I now have a check framed in my office at home crumpled up cuz he crumpled it and threw it in my head but it's now framed $400 and he said in the memo it was for ignoring data I think that was the beginning the origin story of Ben's U frustration so I'm curious when you made this book yeah there's there's no words in it it's just just blank pages how much did you make on a book like that is that technically now a New York Times bestseller well it it is certainly a bestseller uh it is not in New York Times Beth why is it they wouldn't acknowledge it they would not acknowledge it now they the the book when I say bestseller I mean a number one Amazon bestseller and there are a lot of books who that claim to be that sure because they'll say well you know in the category of uh Norwegian fantasy troll fiction you know I'm the number one but this was the number one Amazon bestseller in all of books for days and what was in the book so the book I can't say it had zero words okay it had a very limited number it opened up with an epigraph from thiddies the ancient Greek historian and the epigraph said this is not an effort to win the Applause of the moment but a contribution for all time because my book was not just for the 2016 cycle it it remains true every election cycle and then it had about 10 chapters or so on economics on civil rights on immigration on foreign policy of all the reasons to vote for Democrats now those chapters were completely blank they did not have any words in it but but then at the end of the book I had a very very extensive bibliography I cited all of my sources modern medieval ancient and uh I think that the book was very persuasive to answer your question about the money I made a lot of money on that book I made I I I sold I sold hundreds of thousands of copies of this for I I don't even know what the number is at this point I don't think it's a million yet but it's it might be getting up there sure I self-published it so it cost me nothing to oh my gosh and I it wasn't like a stunt meaning I I actually just did it to irritate my friends and relatives I didn't expect to make a ton of money and then I see the thing starts ticking up I was having a cigar with uh Jeremy the god king boring over here and we're refreshing Amazon and it's you know number 20,000 that's pretty good number 20,000 on all then it's number 5,000 then it's number 500 then it's number 20 or something so Fox News called me asked me to go on the morning show the next day I said okay I wake up for the morning show this is La time and it's number six I do the morning show I go back to sleep 400 a.m. or I wake up it's number one and it stays at number one forever so here's where the real money kicked in uh I I get a request from Simon and Schuster to purchase the rights to my no way to my nothing and so I sort of thought well do they know that they could just kind of do it I what protects someone else from taking your idea doing the exact same thing copying me a little different well they could do it for Republicans they could do it I know maybe I should have played both sides could have doubled my mind I wasn't mercenary does that exist on the other side yeah there were a bunch of copycats who all tried to do it but they didn't the libs man the essence of it yeah they they also just ar your first marage it's got to be really high quality it's hard to make nothing high quality but the cover needs to look like a real cover the epigraph has to be a good epigraph it has to you know it has to be a little subtle to and the libs they did all these you know it was like 10 reasons why I hate that dumb idiot Donald Trump or what I said that's not even the joke man you're not getting it you know and uh so it was number one yeah Simon and Cher tries to buy it I talk to Jeremy I say hey man Simon and shuster's offering me like I I think it was like 25 Grand to buy the rights plus then royalties I said um I didn't have a lot of money I'm a young guy I said this is great right and Jeremy says no you can't take it so what do you mean I can't take it he goes 25 Grand is not funny said no it's funny to me man it's pretty good he goes no it's got to be at least six figures you need at least a six figureure Advance on your fake book for it to be funny said then I get a request from another publisher St Martin's then Ben though he was upset about how great the book was doing he uh then because of his masochism decided to give me his book agent to help negotiate the deal so he said okay NOS I'll set you up with this this agent you can negotiate a contract between for nothing I tell the agent it's got to be six figures he said okay all right they negotiated all the way up we get the deal but the Publishers didn't they just didn't get the joke so they said okay well Michael the one thing you can't do is make fun of us for giving you a bunch of money for nothing I said why'd you give me the money then the whole reason to do this is that's how you get more media and it'll be funny they won't do it so the SES start to decline they say we got to turn this around I said okay put me back on Fox so I go back on Fox we had already done the shtick about the book so they asked me it's just something about I think it was Trump's policy in Syria maybe and I complimented Trump in those days fox fox and friends had a big audience but there was only one audience member who counted and that was the man sitting in 1600 Pennsylvania who happen to be watching that morning and so I go off the show I go take a little nap at the office and I wake up as my phone explodes because Trump had tweeted out uh reasons to vote for Democrats by Michael J noes a great book for your reading enjoyment goes right back up to number one and and then the New York Times won't acknowledge it okay fine I'm offered another book contract I say well what what do you mean another book what would what have I ever done that would give you the impression I can write a book with words people were offering me a book contract so I finally take one years later yeah I write this book and I and I realized this had to be a pretty good book because otherwise the headline would say no should stick to what he knows you know and it would have been a disaster so I really put a lot into this book uh and the book hit number one on the Publishers Weekly list which is tied to actual Book Sales sold uh 18,000 copies first week or something um I I outsold the number one New York Times bestselling book by like 40% that week nowhere on the list even with my book with words nowhere on the list would the lying fake News New York Times put me on their list what was what was the second book that was called speechless so the first book that great name thank you I was a little just a little nod yeah sure so the first book had no words the second book was entirely about language and the SEC I actually didn't know how the second book was going to sell because it was not just a usual right-wing pmic I think had it been a usual right-wing pmic you know how to own the libs and so can you uh it would have sold reliably very well but this one was a little different because it was a book about Free Speech but at the time all the conservatives were defending free speech in this grandios absolutist kind of way and my book actually disagreed with that and my book said no know Free Speech absolutism that's a liberal idea that's not a very conservative idea actually all societies have a have a right to standards and Norms I don't think you should just be able to go scream whatever you want in the street even if it's offensive or obscene or fraudulent or whatever uh the question is not a battle between censorship and Free Speech the debate is actually between two competing sets of Standards so the question is not um how much should we be allowed to say the question is what are we going to say because free speech in the abstract doesn't mean anything to people who have nothing to say although before we go into that AI might be the most important new computer technology ever kind of like the beard trimmer Jack that you should be using that you're not using at least I can grow you're not using it though anyway it's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested so you got to buckle up the problem though is that AI requires a bunch of speed and processing power so how can you compete without cost spiraling out of control that's why it's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud or Cloud infrastructure or our sponsor oci oci is a single platform for your infrastructure database application development and AI needs oci has four to eight times the bandwidth of other 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the time I could remember uh and then I was always relatively conservative I've had this haircut since I was six years old you know I started smoking cigars when I was 15 oh by the way I have I brought you guys for my company Mayflower cigars W I brought you uh these are some of the rarest items on the market right now why is that I sold out of these cigars I had a 4mon supply when we launched this company Mayflower we sold out in one day 30,000 cigars these cigars took a year to get the blend and the brand perfect I worked with the best Factory in estle Nicaragua which is the best cigar capital in the world right now as far as I'm concerned and there's two cigars here this is the dawn that's your breakfast have it with coffee smoke this is the dusk that's your evening smoke you have a full day right there you got to figure out you're on your own for lunch how much how much can you smoke of a cigar in one day do are you like a multiple cigar per day type guy I can be I try to keep it to about one just not even for the health you know I actually think cigars are on the whole uh relatively good for you uh the FDA has not uh looked at that statement though there have been a couple studies on this that that have shown that fewer than four cigars per day have no statistically significant correlation with mortality cigars yeah and there was one actually done by one of the cancer societies a major study that showed that the cigar now there's a difference between cigarettes and premium cigars but for premium cigar smokers the uh premium cigar smokers who smoked in moderation actually lived slightly longer than the non- premium cigar smokers is it a social thing could it be that people who smoke cigars maybe do so in a group setting so I think part of it is it it's social so you're more likely to have good conversations with guys and you know relax a little some of it you you could have a cigar alone I'll Have a Cigar at night with a book and a and a drink that's the only way I really get to relax right I got kids running around I'm working here all day traveling if you sit and relax I think stress is a real killer you know and and that's one of the few ways a man is not going to go to the spa usually and get a face mask and cucumbers on his eyes so that that's one way to do it so it's the sort of thing where yes you get a tiny little bit of a nicotine buzz but just like you you know you get a little jolt from the coffee but it's also just about Focus focusing on these flavors and in the same way you would with a scotch same way you would with a good meal and it's just I I think if you can take your mind off your work and your responsibilities for 40 minutes a day but there are other certain Outlets that you could achieve that with right have you noticed any detriments to to smoking cigars anything bad in your life no maybe like you went on a date with a girl and she was like ah you know it smells a little bit so my wife who is a a saint walking around the earth she's right about almost everything she hates the cigars she hates them and I told her I said look I'll defer to you on a lot of things but there are very few things that I've Loved longer than I've Loved You cigars are one of them because I kissed my wife for the first time at age 16 but I smoked my first cigar at 15 it was your first love it was it was my first I'm curious what does she hate most about you smoking cigars just the smell she she encourages me to go have my nightly cigar go sit outside to relax she likes you cigar maybe when you're calm down yeah she likes to kick me out of the house I think your wife is right I can't stand the smell of it like I've seen some of these cigar lounges and you walk down the street and it stinks like you're 20t away and you smell the thing and you get there it's just it looks like a weird place inside it's always really tiny and there's like I dudes in there all like just it's kind of weird you like that I love it I love it here's another reason I love so you know I'm a married guy if I go to a bar what do I get out of that I could if I go to a regular bar there's going to be girls around now I don't think I'm going to be tempted to go you know pick up a girl at a bar but even the the appearance of impropriety I don't need that I don't need some woman walking up someone takes a picture and it looks bad and I don't need any of that what do I well you know what I want to do when I go to a bar I want to sit with a bunch of fat old dudes and I want to talk about politics and religion and philosophy and I want I want there to be a woman repellent all around the bar and for the bars that I go to there is and that would be a big cloud of smoke that you're describing now is that more so because of you or because your wife would prefer you not to go to a bar with a lot of women around drink she's not worried that you know I'm going to go be a Don Giovani but it's it's more for me I just don't need the appearance of impropriety I mean I think there's there's real wisdom first of all in avoiding the near occasion of sin so I think you would probably have to tort me to get me to ever cheat on my wife but I don't need the occasion of sin to be near to me and uh then furthermore I don't need uh the sin of Scandal you know I don't I don't want there to be the appearance I was talking to a friend of mine who was set up one time he's a uh celebrity May one might have heard of him uh and he was taking pictures with people sometimes you know they come up let's have a picture and so this woman sis we take a picture and he has his hand on her shoulder or something and right before the picture's taken she grabs it pulls it down and so he's like hey get get out of here they got the picture and then all of a sudden you know it's you're in essentially a blackmail kind of a situation I don't need any of that okay I don't I just want to sit also even let's say you have a more innocent conversation with a chick at a bar I don't want to sound like I'm a sexist or something but what I don't know I don't I don't need to what you GNA say what are youna say topics lend themselves more toward the conversation among women certain topics lend themselves more to the conversation among men and certain things guys are not going to talk about or they're not going to talk in a certain way if they're in mixed company okay well let let's get on to that but but real quick while you're on the topic of like that photo thing where the guy the girl grabbed his hand I have seen this meme of Ben your very own Ben Shapiro he does a hand Le itation have you seen that every single time he takes a photo ke Reeves I think his hand like six in off of her shoulder and he's always like smiling the exact same people love the Keo wanto because they're like look how respectful he is he's not even touching the other person yeah I to me that's a little too far you think that's too far I think it's a little too far a safety precaution right it it's a safety precaution it it is a safety I just sort of think I I fear that if I were to do that that would be seeding to the Liberals and the me too movement way too much ground I think it's okay if someone asks you for a picture they like you you can be chummy and put your hand you make sure they don't pull your hand in anyad could happen with a guy too hypothetically there's nothing stopping a guy from grabbing his your hand and putting it down and taking the photo luckily my hands aren't that long or my arms aren't that long but yes no it could H exactly it could happen to and I just sort of think if I live my life in a way that has Integrity if I do my best to do that and I am the person who I present myself to be as much as I possibly can be uh then people just aren't going to believe it that that sort of a trick just is not going to work and so I think that's the the better way to focus on it but who knows you know if we if all of us end up getting me toed at some point then Shapiro and Keanu are going to have the last laugh when it comes to you know do I have to is everyone out to get me all the time do I sort of think there are two kinds of fear there's surval fear and there's fear of the Lord right fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and survi fear is cowardice so we don't ever want the survi fear this is what I think I go to these schools and I give speeches and sometimes people make death threats sometimes more than others and we take security precautions very seriously around here but I'm not going to live my life in constant fear that some wacko is going to pop me off it could happen Okay well that's life you know and uh I I I'll I'll prepare in case that happens I'm I'm be more inclined to prepare my soul than to constantly be worried you know and checking every corner of of the day uh you know at a certain point then they win don't they if you're constantly in fear of these things then they've already won but you know 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well it's it's always the protrans crowd they are by far the craziest protesters i' ever the most violent the most uh likely to threaten to kill you and everyone you know and I mean it's not even close there's no other issue abortion immigration colonialism nothing touches the trans issue and so I said okay well why why are you protesting me and it was because of a speech I gave at CPAC the big conservative conference back in February or March where I said that for the good of society and especially for the good of uh the confused people who Fallen pray to this confusion transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely the whole Preposterous ideology at every level that was that those are the exact words because I've seen them written in print a lot now I was accused of calling for genocide I said hold on how do you get that Rolling Stone accused me of that Huffington Post accused me of that other Outlet Daily Beast I think and I said I called for the eradication of an ideology from public life I didn't call for killing people where' you get that I said in fact I prefaced my statement with for the good especially of these people who identify as transgender we we got to get rid of this crazy idea and uh So eventually all of those lialis Outlets had to change their headlines I think eradicate is probably a heavy word to use so I I think I think eradicate I usually think pests or I think something in house like ants you have an ant calling you eradicate the ants maybe maybe eradicate was too strong of a word but you were talking about an ideology and people thought you were talking about a population I mean you hear about eradicate poverty does that mean you're going to kill all the poor people you're going to eradicate Nazism does that mean you're going to Nuke Germany I don't think so uh eradicate comes from radics the Latin word radics means root you got pull it out by the root which is precisely what I was saying I don't believe that it's a good idea to uh merely say all we need to stop transing the eight-year-olds we need to wait until they turn nine you know eight is too young but 18 or whatever that's fine no either a man can become a woman or he can't and if a man can become a woman and vice versa then we should trans the kids if if you can really be born in the wrong body then for sure we should we should encourage gender affirming care or whatever else they call it but if you can't and we know that you can we know that a man can't really be a woman in vice versa then we shouldn't tolerate it for anyone it's not going to help anybody in fact the largest data set on this ever published just came out of the UK not long ago and it showed that contrary to popular propaganda the transgender transition does not alleviate any of the conditions of gender dysphoria uh they looked at anxiety suicidality depression uh they all remain the same post hormonal and postsurgical transition and in one case in the case of anxiety got worse so I just looked at that in a sober way and I said oh this ideology which is fairly novel uh poses a false view of human nature it says that your body has nothing to do with who you really are and uh so it's harming everyone it's harming society and it's harming the individuals who believe in it uh so we got to get rid of it and in in America we had never enshrined transgenderism in our law until about 8 years ago and then some you know feisty radicals on the Supreme Court decided to start doing that some legislators in North Carolina but uh it's been bad for everyone so let's just get rid of it so what happened with the protesters so the protesters shrieked and yelled and I made my point and then they just shrieked profanity at me because they don't have a there there's no argument you know I don't I don't think I'm overstating the case here I don't mean to sound condescending or anything there is no protrans argument I've never heard a single persuasive argument I I doubt either of you could even think of one that you've heard that was in any way persuasive and so uh they left you know some voluntarily some the police you know were helping to get out if they were getting a little little more violent um and then we went on with the speech and I talked about the history of colonialism which probably disappointed them actually so is your view that that would be body dysmorphia where you believe you're born in the wrong body and transitioning wouldn't help that solution that instead it should be treated how else if if let's just say I'm I'm in a male body but ment I think I'm female how would you go about treating you're not in a male body you are in part your body yes so the human being is body and soul hylomorphic being combined right so what these people believe is that uh it's a it's a view once called Gnostic dualism the idea that the the soul the metaphysical self is opposed to matter to the body and that matter is bad and metaphysics is good and uh it this heresy has cropped up a number of times in history and it's always been put down thankfully because it would destroy civilization so what would I tell a person who's confused I'd tell him the truth that's what I would do what would you tell an anorexic an anorexia comes to you she's 89 lbs she says I'm so fat I just got to put down the sandwich would you say well you know to be charitable and to help to affirm your what you know yourself to be deep down yeah fatty put down the sandwich no you wouldn't you say no you're you're deeply diluted and and uh you're at at risk of a lot of health problems and even death and so no you're you just have a defect of your perception and we're going to we're not going to indulge that we're going to correct that and that might be hard for you you might never get over that temptation to uh starve yourself but we're we're not going to help you do it yeah so your answer would be in that case therapy of going through maybe self-acceptance or answer would acknowledging therapy is one way you could do that though that's a little bit dangerous now because there are so many quack therapists who will affirm these delusions uh I guess I would just broadly say I would tell people the truth and you get the truth a lot of different places you know you get the truth from talking to your friends you get the truth from talking to your family you get the truth from talking to a psychotherapist you get the truth from talking to a priest you get the truth from talking to your guidance counselor I don't but uh what we have now is a regime that insists to all of those people that if they do not tell a lie they will be punished the PE parents the teachers the psychotherapists they'll lose their accreditation they'll lose their license and uh so I I would not only encourage the culture to change I would I would also change the law back to what it had always been what do you think the harm is to society in indulging in that because my belief tends to be if it doesn't affect me and it makes someone happy I don't really care if someone wants to wear a suit every day doesn't impact me whatsoever they want to wear a dress every day day or dress you know one gener it doesn't affect me so it's not really something that you know I'm all for whatever makes people happy how do you believe that is a detriment to society well Society is not just about you right Society is about all of us that's so even your premise which is that uh uh leave me alone you do what you want to do I do what I want to do we have nothing to do with each other that is the negation of society right but the uh furthermore the premises are off because you say well if it makes someone happy it doesn't make them happy happiness is not merely a subjective question that the anorexic might think that starving herself makes her happy she'll tell you that but it doesn't it's it do that is not conducive to human flourishing so uh that would be the first issue the second issue then is the real harm felt by other people I don't know when big Husky Hank walks into your little girl's bathroom you know that's a problem that's that damages her it's scandalous it's traumatic and it can lead to sexual assault and it has this is what got Glen yunan elected in Virginia the ladden county schools had a a transgender bathroom policy and so some very confused young man went into a girl's bathroom and ried a girl and what happened what did the school do they covered it up why because it was politically dangerous to touch the trans issue so what did they do they sent the kid to another school and what did he do he did it again and what did they do they covered it up again so you know for the victims of of those people who were In Harm's Way because of trans bathro policies directly that would be a harm to society the girls who train their whole lives to win Scholarships in in women's sports we're doing a movie about this now lady Ballers and then they lose their scholarships and they lose their medals they just lose even the glory of the game because some husky dude who's sexually confused T takes their trophy because men are physically stronger than women that's a direct harm I mean that can be a real Financial harm even to those girls so there are all sorts of problems that come along with it but at a deeper level even Beyond these material issues living in lies is never going to allow your Society to flourish the further removed your Society is from reality the the uh worse off it's going to be the libertarian view that you've just articulated which is well leave me alone you do you I do me no one really believes that you might not care about politics but politics cares about you you might not care about Society Society cares about you we are not free floating atoms in outer space man is a political creature we are born not primarily with rights and entitlement but primarily with Duty and obligations uh you know you didn't choose your life you didn't choose how you came into the world you're not going to choose hopefully how you leave the world and and so we need to recognize that we do all live together we have to figure out how to live together and we can live together either in accordance with truth that we can all perceive using our reason and objective reality or we can live According to some kooky Narrative of lies that we're constantly rewriting where no one ever knows what everyone accepts and where where the ground is basically quicksand so if you think the people that believe the opposite of what you believe are really suffering do you think that saying something like they subscribe to a kooky Narrative of Lies is something that's going to like flip a switch in their head and think oh okay maybe Michael's right and I can change my ideology or do you think that it puts them into a position defending their ego or their idea of who they are that maybe it wouldn't be productive to defend in the first place cuz I think like if you're really trying to convince the other side coming at from an angle of being like I understand your plight I understand the way that you suffer and I understand your argument entirely and I respect you for having said opinions right but I have my own and these are what they are rather than from a more aggressive angle because I see these kind of like these debate like aggressive undertones which I see on everybody right the left and the right 100% but I do Wonder to bring people into the center in some capacity right it is better I feel like to not be super aggressive and say that the other person's agenda and narrative is just like you know ideologically inferior like like to a to a supreme degree right especially something that so many people subscribe to yeah I don't think so I you know it depends on the context so you're saying in these debate scenarios sometimes people get aggressive yeah that's a debate you know a debate is not when you're sitting with a loved one trying to persuade them of something a debate is when you and an opponent are standing on stage you both have fixed views you will not convince the other person that's not your job you're not allowed to convince the other person you know they are there to defend their view you are there to defend the other view you are trying to persuade the audience and so the way to persuade the audience the people kind of in the middle I think is through Clarity and I think always Clarity is Charity but especially during a time of debate now if I were speaking to a um trans identifying person as I have many times I would speak very differently there I'm not having a public debate there I'm trying to figure out okay what has led you to this error so I can go in and correct that error for different people it's going to be different things for some people it might be they fell down a a tumbler rabbit hole on the internet I talked to one trans D transitioner who who did that for someone else it might be a a childhood problem or sexual trauma that they had that's often the case uh for some it might be an undiagnosed uh medical condition like autism I talked to a girl who nearly transitioned at because her doctors told her that she was you know or other doctors had told her that she was the opposite sex and then fortunately her doctor and her family and her priest said no that's not how reality works and they found out she had undiagnosed autism and now she feels a lot better so it depends on who you're talking to but even calling it necessarily like an error is kind of attacking somebody's belief of who they are their identity and I think like no it's attacking their belief of who they are their identity right saying that like your entire identity is an error because to them it's their identity that they are in error about their identity that's true but it's not attacking their true identity it's not attacking them I guess that's the distinct but to them that is them but they're wrong yeah and you can't convince someone they're wrong by telling them they're right right of course not but I'm just saying to call something an error when someone what should we call it a situation maybe I don't know I what kind of situation I guess it could be like attacking someone's religion where like that's what they believe that's I think that if anything it's going to ramp up their side of the argument it's going to make them angry and defending their position even more I don't think it's going to Spur actual change if I felt that there something really wrong or bigoted or mean-spirited or something about my statement that men and women are different which everyone everywhere has belied for all of history until five minutes ago uh then I might soft pedal it so I have nothing but love and charity for them um and part of that charity is telling them honestly what I think I mean you just mentioned that it's sort of like attacking someone's religion it's not sort of it's exactly like attacking someone's religion they have a belief about human nature how man relates to the world to himself how the body relates to the soul that is fundamentally wrong in fact where I will give the protrans gender people a little bit of credit is they have an advantage over the modern liberal materialists the modern liberal materialists who say you know you're just your body you're a bag of chemicals love is fake everything in your head is just an an illusion caused by firing synapses and uh you're when you die you turn to warm food and take a dirt nap right that's that's the modern materialist view the the protrans people say no I'm not just my body they go too far they say I'm not my body at all but they they recognize at least that there is a metaphysical component sometimes they fall into error and into um liberal materialism again where they'll say my true transgender identity is on a brain scan I have the brain of a woman but the body of a man but of course your brain is part of your body so they don't really understand that what they're trying to talk about is the mind what they're trying to talk about is the soul they can say my body including my brain could be entirely male but I am at a deeper level female and that's actually closer to the the truth of the matter which is they're saying I have a soul and they do have a soul but then the question is what is the relation of the soul to the body can the Soul and the body really be in opposition or and by Soul they use the term gender identity or is your soul the substantial form of your body which is the matter and does your sex and your gender identity derive from the soul or from matter and the fact is the great thinkers who have ever walked the Earth have actually discussed these questions there there is an answer to these things but because our education system is so extraordinarily weak now very few people have ever read maybe have even heard of someone like atomas aquinus or an Aristotle or Plato you know they don't read these things anymore and uh so they're left totally Al confused on the questions but there is an answer and I I think that is a lot more comforting you know there's a great tapestry called the the biotapestry that depicts the Battle of Hastings 1066 one of the most famous scenes from it is this guy with a funny hat holding a stick beating his soldiers who were who are running at him and it says here Bishop Odo holding a stick Comforts the boys so comforts Bishop Odo was not able to fight in the battle the bishop but he had a stick and when his retreating men were coming at him he hit them with the stick and say go back into the battle go back and fight and the biotapestry one of the most famous pieces of Western Art says he was comforting them because to comfort is to give strength and I think the way you give strength is by telling people the truth and putting them on a path that will that will be conducive to their flourishing in happiness that's the traditional view the traditional view in our civilization is the truth sets you free and lies will will deceive you and lead to death the way the modern Libs talk about it is that they want you to believe that lies will set you free oh just let them live in their lies who cares it doesn't harm you doesn't hurt your bottom line just it makes them happy that the truth can be so harsh and cruel and actually harm people it's a total inversion of reality although you know what before we go into that you guys might have noticed that lately we've been putting a lot of money back into the podcast we've been traveling to guests we've been upgrading our equipment but the thing is if you want to get into content creation yourself it doesn't have to be this expensive with her sponsor streamyard for those that aren't aware streamyard is a live streaming platform that allows you to create high quality content with just the click of a button all you need is a camera and an internet connection and then you could stream directly from your browser and what makes it even better is that you could stream across multiple platforms at the exact same time from Facebook to LinkedIn to Tik Tok to YouTube and more and trust me guys if you're trying to blow up you have to be on every single platform when we got on Instagram reals and Tik Tok it did huge number for us so I highly recommend it and streamyard makes it incredibly easy how Graham with just the click of a button plus streamyard is the best way to start creating content without having to spend any money because they actually offer a free package for our listeners linked down below that's right the cost is absolutely nothing to get started meaning it's going to cost you the low price of zero and we absolutely recommend it the link is down below thank you so much and now let's get back to the episode so you wrote an entire book on language what do you think is more important in debate and conversation in just like transmitting information to someone else the words that you're putting out with the intent that you that you assign to these words or the way that it's received from the other person receiving information well one hopes in in good communication one hopes that the two overlap and the way they overlap is uh if we have a shared view of reality this is one of the reasons that the transgender issue is so dangerous to society is because it it rips at one of the most basic aspects of of our shared perception of reality the distinction between men sure but let's just say you don't have a shared reality with someone else so what's what's what would be more important well if you don't have any shared reality then words don't do anything because so then how would you bridge that Gap through through persuasive and clear language so the the what words are is words are symbols that refer to some objective reality outside of us right ideally this is how we're communicating right now we're not communicating because I'm in your head and you're in my head we're communicating because we're using different symbols and we basically agree on what those symbols refer to uh language breaks down when the relationship between the symbol and the symbolized between the the signifier and the signified are ruptured which is increasingly happening people don't know the meaning of the word woman that's why Matt Walsh has a big hit movie is because one of the most basic words in language is now controversial uh so what we see from this then is that the the progressives in a way have a point when they say language man you know it can kind of it changes meaning over time you know it's it's what leis Carroll writes about Humpty Dumpty in Allison Wonderland Humpty Dumpty says when I use a word it means whatever I say it means nothing more and nothing less and Alice says well can a word really means so many things and Humpty Dumpty says that's not the question uh the question is which is to be master who is controlling things who's controlling the perception of reality this is why the libs are so so frequently using language manip manipulation to change the political order both from controlling the the Public Square through big Tech these days uh but but then also by changing the very meaning of words marriage woman uh patriotism what you know any of these FS so it's very important for the conservative I think or for any normal person who wants to get back to a shared reality to use to use words in their proper meaning in a very precise way even and especially if it's a little bit provocative because sometimes you've got to be provocative to wake people out of a trance and so when I use a precise word like eradicate I'm doing so very intentionally and that is going to make headlines and that is going to lead left-wing Outlets to lie about me and that is going to lead left-wing activists and terrorists to threaten my life when they read the lying headlines from the left-wing articles but I think you actually kind of have to do that because the only alternative to that is to buy into the manipulated me mouth language of the left to use vague usism a word like situation that will do nothing other than seed to them the ground so I want to get your take on this because we try to be as in the middle as we can we really don't pick a side you know if you stand in the middle of the road you will be hit by a here's what I want your opinion on y uh we very much want to be a platform that gives everybody a way to speak their truth both on the right and on the left however we found overall that we make a very diligent effort to reach out to people on the left and ask them to come on and they don't want to come on and they don't it's very very very difficult for us we really want Andrew Yang Bernie Sanders and AOC if we could get those three on not to argue not to debate but purely just to hear them out and learn and it's very difficult we had a couple of people on the left on our show before we had fantastic is amazing I don't think never Destin's incredible the daily wire needs to cab with Destiny in some capacity I think I was supposed to do something with him Absol do it and the scheduling told I think he's you were on whatever right was on that or he was ones or something like that Destiny and I were supposed to do something and it scheduling got sure postponed but we should do it yeah because I I like that he's willing to talk to conservatives I've invited conservatives on my show a bunch and the irony is there are some clips of me that have gone viral you know owning a lib with fact and logic and you know having one of these intense debates it's really not my style though I'll do it when I do it I think I do it maybe a couple times a year but I'm much more interested in long form conversations I I'll do a two and a half hour show with a pro-abortion activist I did one uh about a year ago there were some zingers in there but I I actually do want to figure out what they think where it comes from how to correct that eror Destiny would be great he articulates everything he has so much dep to his arguments as well yes but most of them most of the libs I find don't want to do it and the thing is if they're not coming on my show I am I say with no false modesty and true humility I am like the nicest guy on the right I am the most willing to Grant premises and Seed ground and try to see it from their perspective if they're not going to come on my show they're not going to come on any shows they're not going to come on Ben's show they're not going to come on this show no matter how much you try to be down the middle uh and I think part of the reason for that is one they don't have very good arguments but two they have cultural hegemony so they have all of the um institutions of influence which means that they don't need to sharpen their arguments and to they have no reason to make the arguments because they've got all the power you brought up relationships and marriage a couple of times now I think you said somewhere that you met your wife when you were like four years old right we were in the womb no where how did you meet your wife at four years old it's controversial I we were at least in sixth grade Home Room okay uh in middle school but we may have met in fifth grade district Orchestra because I was the you know 52nd chair of second violin and she was 53rd or something but we don't really remember it I this was a long time ago sure and uh so then in the eth grade she had a crush on me I was dating the lead of the eighth grade musical it was you know a real celebrity romance and then I had a crush on her in ninth grade she was stating a much older man wait did you break up with the the celebrity Orchestra person or whatever like the number one we we we broke up Happ you know it was a real Torrid love affair I don't know we one of us didn't hold the other's hand or something you know it there's got to be more than that a few weeks of passion yeah it was just a few week long relationship it was I don't I mean in Middle School a few weeks is like you're married for 10 years you know I mean that's pretty long and then but then 9th grade my wife was dating this much older upper classman in high school oh I was Furious but then they broke up and then we started dating in high school who made the first move I guess I did yes I do you remember what you said I do actually I remember she had broken up with her uh boyfriend and I instantly said oh we should go watch a movie that was it it was just instantly you so you were kind of waiting for them to I was waiting I was keeping my my eyes out were you were you friends with her at the time kind of like yeah yeah yeah we were friends I mean we were like we weren't I'm somewhat skeptical of men and women being friends just platonic friends generally but we were yeah we you kept your foot in the door a little bit why you're skeptical maybe of that is why yeah you the exct okay I see you ever met a girl you tried to date when did you realize that this girl you were dating in what sixth grader whatever you said it was or nth grade 11th grade we started dating okay okay was was going to be the one pretty pretty quickly I I realized it my wife and I split for college we're very sort of we regret this now but at the time you got to put yourself in Liberal New York it's amazing how backwards everything was everyone in our lives said you have to split for college you have to it's crazy you can't marry your high school sweetheart that's not that's what country bumpkins did 50 years you can't do that you got to split for college you've got to go date a million people you got to go you know live the hookup culture and so we go to we were in colleges that were pretty far away from each other and so we did break up for college and then rather quickly I realized oh that's this isn't good you know but whatever I was single for three four years and uh then by so you're single all throughout College yeah so didn't even work being split up with her anyways did you guys communicate in between or did no I wasn't single like I was dating other women I wasn't single I was sitting okay and she just went out and had fun so you were not dating anyone else so you guys BR I was you guys trying to make me I'm just double checking no you want to get the timeline correct sequence of events this is I guess you know all well that ends well in that I I know for certain that my wife is like the one of the greatest women ever to walk the earth you know um and certainly you know at present the greatest woman walking the Earth because I I did I dated a lot of girls in college and I thought why am I doing this like what's the point I know I have to I was told I have to break up with my high school girlfriend and we have to date these other women and we have to but it's all just bunk man you know it's totally crazy it turns out that what people had been doing for all of history is usually better than what a bunch of modern radical reformers are doing now and the evidence of this is my friends who really bought into that especially my female friends one can have a few I guess is uh they say put your career first don't pay any attention to relationships don't get married young don't have kids young don't do this don't they're all miserable and it's I feel bad for them I'm not saying this to make fun of them in any way they got duped I got duped a little bit too but they got duped and they were told this by the entire culture and you know then they wake up one day and they say wait you know brunch isn't as fun anymore or you know actually my my puppy is not satisfying aing that I have and actually I'd like to be with a person and you know I asked my my grandparents who were married for 69 years before my grandfather died and uh at their 60th anniversary I said hey Grandpa what's the key to a good marriage and he was a Navy Captain he said oh three things buddy uh patience shared experience 54 months of pregnancy that's shared experience and frequent absence because he you know he would deploy and go away for nine months at a time the shared experience is a big one you can't there's no substitute for that you know I have known my wife and her family for the majority of my life my wife and I went on our first date more than half my life ago that's crazy and I'm a young man you know I mean that is a that is a crazy thing and so people don't really have that anymore and I'm not saying you can't have a great marriage with someone you meet but it's it's just harder it's harder to do that and I hear all the time people write into the show young men and especially young women who say I just got lied to dating is just so hard okay but you don't think that there's any Merit to going on multiple different dates with a bunch of different people and collecting all these data points about things that you like and things you don't like and then once you have this rubric finding someone that kind of fits all of those things I do think that there is Merit in knowing what you know and liking what you like and finding that someone else so this gets to another uh disagreement about human nature which is some people say you need to go figure out who you are and then you need to find that person who will you know match perfectly with you the other view of human nature is that we grow together or we grow apart so I think it's very hard if someone you know is single until they're 40 and they date a million girls and they you know have their career and they do whatever they want it's going to be very hard to find someone who fits perfectly into that you've got a life you've built a kind of life you're more set in your ways you've cultivated habits that are going to be harder to break the longer you do them the older you are if you and a and a person grow from a young age together look there's a risk you might grow apart there's a risk you might have some big blow up and disagreement I guess that's that's always a risk with any relationship but more likely you're going to grow together you know you're my wife's views are going to influence my views my My Views are going to influence my wife's our behavior is certainly going to influence each other's behavior and so that view you're describing it's the most popular view by far of of everybody but I I think it it mistakes how human nature really works liberalism lowercase L liberalism you know I'm not even just string about modern crazies but this whole idea of modernity views man primarily as an individual and we just we do our own thing and leave me alone and don't you know don't yuck my yum and don't don't bug me to oversimplify it the enlightenment liberals were wrong Aristotle was right man is a political creature or a social creature we don't make any sense outside of our social environment and the basis of that the fundamental political and social unit is marriage as the family because we're a coupling creature as well and and uh so if you can couple with a good person and you know you don't pick a bad one at a at a young age you're going to grow up together and and you're going to be different people as a result of that than you would have been had you gone separately so what event happened in your relationship with your now wife that kind of sold it to you that she's the one well we got back together because I I realized that the modern hookup culture I I won't call it swipe culture because dating apps weren't around yet but that the modern just like date a million girls and don't you know don't don't treat romance or love or anything as as significant was it was deeply unsatisfying and pointless and just a huge waste of time don't you think there's Merit to that as well it's like the the motivation is Created from desperation so when you were away and you felt like you lacked that love with your wife that that was empty in your life you're like oh my gosh I need this back and then that had like fortified it and created some strength that wasn't it can be it's like the Zeal of a convert you know I was an atheist for 10 years I'm uh fairly fervent in my religious views and my my faith in part that's because I was an atheist now does that mean that I'm more fervent than I would have been had I just stayed in the faith I don't know I know plenty of people who were uh you know cradle Catholics who who are much more um Sanctified and edified than I am uh so I I I don't know but that that effect can be the case and yeah it could be that three years of girls at whatever College you went to send you screaming back to your high school sweetheart arms outstretched sure but think of just all the wasted time I had this realization in college I said man if I had spent every moment that I spent chasing girls reading I would be the smartest person at this entire University you know like what did it get me there's no point and so much of our modern view of sex is pointless including marriage now because marriage can be dissolved with no fault divorce even marriage is just kind of pointless you do it as long as you sort of feel it's personally beneficial and then you just split up and oh you had some kids well that's okay better that the parents are happy than that the kid you know that the parents bicker and you know stay together so then we'll go on and we'll just have a new marriage and that'll break up though because we take our vows and we say we're going to be together till death does its part but no one really believes that and so you know it's just kind of whatever it's just me me me but a man wrapped up in himself makes a small package indeed and it just seems so pointless I mean a lot of the criticism of the um LGBT movement from from uh you know heterosexuals I think is um a little high-handed and misplaced because that the problems run so much deeper than that you know um what it all boils down to I think is a sterile sexual ethic the idea that sex can be just totally divorced from procreation this is a view that never existed at all in really in human history until uh modern birth control technology and the radicalism of the middle of the 20th century and now we think that the primary purpose of sex is just to you know be titilated for a little while and uh you know we we consider babies to be a sexually transmitted disease and and if you know something goes wrong with your contraception well at least that that's why we need to have abortion to kill the baby so you don't need to think about it and it it's just to totally wrong when you when you separate means from ends when you separate actions from their natural consequences then things are going to go haywire and the consequence that we're facing now is the country is literally dying you know we have a a below replacement birth rate and we have for 50 years and that's that's been true around the West only one country has even started to turn it around that's Hungary through a great deal of effort so you know even if you think I sound like an old fuddy dudy or something and you know people should go out and swipe right uh there are actual political civilizational effects xianping and China in South Korea they're talking about this they're doing everything they can to turn it around because otherwise your country literally dies so what is your advice to young men who are dating today I don't want to sound exactly like Ben I can't because Ben talk so much faster than I do uh date for marriage certainly um and don't make all the mistakes that all of us have made and what are those mistakes don't don't um have sex before marriage don't do uh don't don't view marriage it's just some kind of relationship you know I I hate I hate that word relationship it's so devoid of any romance or Aeros or love at all you know do you hear now people even heterosexuals will introduce their boyfriend or their girlfriend they say this is my partner this is my like you have an accounting firm together you know what's so funny I've said that with Jack I'm like oh this my partner but I'm think like business partner and people look at us be no no no business business partner business we're also lovers but you know that's a separate we do that after the show yeah that would be that would be some of the advice and U so what do you call it then it's not a relationship Do It Let's Fall In Love that's what Cole Porter was singing not you know let's do it let's swipe right and have a relationship you got to do that and then you got to get married and then you have a have to have a ton of kids that's the other thing you only have two I only have two you know listen we got started a little late but we're working I'm I if I can fill up the Trad wagon by you know age uh 38 or something how many kids I my ideal number look I would be open to as many as we could possibly have but my ideal number six would be good six it's a little tough six kids tough if you especially if you have C-section or anything it's a little trickier to expensive it's expensive sort of I don't know man I left California so I already saved a ton of money but how do you how do you make sure you have the time to spend with each child individually and give them the time that they need and want from their father well I don't know that you you know again I guess we're getting to this kind of distinction between the view that we're primarily individuals and the view that we're primarily social I don't know that I need to play with my kids individually all the time I do you know a little bit here and there but we're also together as a family a lot so that that's one way to do it what do you think are some of your most extreme or Fringe opinions and are there any opinions that you hold that you feel too uncomfortable to share publicly oh many yes really no no not that many I mean the thing is there's a there's a writer by the name of Leo Strauss and this guy Leo Strauss a u very smart Jewish philosopher who wrote a book called persecution in the art of writing who said that um basically in any age if you get a little too close to the truth you will be persecuted by the regime for it so you have to find clever ways of conveying the truth and one way would be through esoteric writing and he makes a persuasive case that for some philosophers they write in a way that is exoteric to be understood plainly from the text and esoteric as well and this is part of a great conversation with philosophers so uh anyway I think people who have any Politically Incorrect opinions probably need to engage in a little esoteric speech every now and again but I don't think my views are particularly extreme and I'm not just being glib or cute about it I think among conservatives even I have pretty moderate views it's just that moderation these days I guess is in the eye of the beholder I think moderation is a good thing I think moderation is a virtue uh but I don't think for instance that uh claiming that a man is not a woman you know I don't think that's extreme I don't think claiming that a baby is a baby is Extreme I don't think claiming that God exists is Extreme I don't think claiming that uh the family is a real thing uh and a basic unit of society is Extreme I guess the libs would say that that is Extreme but you know I can't I can't help that is there anything too extreme that you would feel uncomfortable talking about on camera well I certainly wouldn't bring it up there's a c cameras all over there I don't know if you guys saw they're off they're not recording I'm trying to think what why sort of edgy or maybe if there is something you could just say yes there are a few things that I do believe that would just be too triggering to talk about it's pointless well there are certainly things I believe that I I wouldn't be allowed to even say on YouTube it would shut down the whole maybe I already said some of them it would shut down the whole if stream how about this what if we bleep it and then you just get a reaction but we're not going to acknowledge what it is I'll give you an example of it okay that do you want us to bleep it just no no you can keep this well we'll see maybe for our own sake we might bleep this is the example and I I really promise you I'm not I'm not just being cute and glib about this here's here's an opinion I have okay when the parliament voted to oust James II the king of England last Catholic Monarch and to invite the Protestant Interlopers from Orange William and Mary in that was an unjust Act of parliamentary Supremacy that created a major problem and sent England on its path of degradation and uh there was a Jacoby Rising there were a number of them the most famous of which was led by Bonnie Prince Charlie uh from France into Scotland and it was a blood bath and he got lost and you know he totally was destroyed and then he went back and lived his life in obscurity and sadness and then Through the Ages there have been various Pretenders to the throne presently it would be France the arch Duke of Bavaria who is childless and a homosexual apparently so then it would pass to his brother Maximillion then down to his daughter Sophia and then finally down to a young man about our age Prince Joseph wiel of lion uh who will uh be the claimant to the um Throne of England that's a view that I only somewhat ironically hold uh that's an extreme view I guess now most people would listening to that will just their eyes will glaz over they say what the hell what are you talking about who cares about but that's the kind of political disagreement that I'm most interested in I thought maybe you were going to bring up aliens the aliens give me a break give me I heard you're a big believer here we go here this is this is do they exist and have you seen proof that they exist I think I think maybe maybe the present royal families are actually the aliens who took over uh the aliens are not real they're not real and I have friends and loved ones and colleagues who believe that they are but they're not they're fake how do you know they're fake but what about the the piece that was recovered which piece was that that little the little tiny Guy the one from Mexico I think it was discovered in Mex that one that guy is real I love you know this is what I love these guys man they so there's a congressional committee to investigate ET which is it just tells you everything about the Congress right and they said no but there's evidence now so cool what's the evidence and there was like well you know my cousin's brother's third uncle's neighbor who once saw a movie about the C CIA man he said he saw a weird light in the sky like well okay I don't know that's not very persuasive and then the best evidence they had is this a little like papier-mâché project from a fifth grade student in Mexico I said here he is we've got ET but ET is not real uh but demons are real I guess maybe that's a controversial opinion that I have so we've spoke with someone who was high up in a certain organization who told us off the Record now now but this is a firsthand experience they've seen this firsthand well now it's third hand from I guess so okay but they have told us off the Record that they've seen unidentified spacecraft in air that they cannot explain that has been covered up they that they see these these objects come down and will whiz off and they're in the the best technology ever in the world and these things are outpacing by a hundred times and they'll report it they'll do but it disappears yeah I I am inclined to believe that I mean that could be a SC op to sometimes we do that our government pretends to discover things to scare our enemies and so we we might be doing that again or it might be enemy technology or it might be just a failure of perception in Radars but yeah people probably see things but the little green men do not exist so you don't believe in anywhere in our universe that is infinite that there can't be life well the universe probably isn't infinite it's probably finite but it's very big uh but no I don't I don't suspect that we'll find life anywhere else in the universe no that's not I don't I wouldn't you know if if we find some little cell somewhere I I wouldn't that wouldn't totally rock my world but yeah I don't think we'll find life anywhere basically I think that the chance of us being the only living organisms in the entire universe seem pretty small when you really think about it what are the chance why because I feel like calculate the chances I don't well then how do you talk about the CH I just think that the fact that we're here means there's a good chance that someone else is elsewhere now why do you think that why do you think that our EX ex istence here implies the existence of other people somewhere else because I don't believe that our existence is an accident I do I don't think it's an accident either so I don't think it would be an accident that there would be something else somewhere you're saying you don't think we're special I think that we could be unique but I don't think that us being alive is something that is unique necessarily to us I feel like life has to exist we're here yes you're you saying that so you're you're stating that belief but I'm I'm just asking what about our life here seems to you to imply the existence of any life anywhere else it the answer will involve something about what you believe about i' say maybe by chance it it feels like if the chance of us here you think we got here by chance I do there you well that's really what it comes down to uh I don't I don't really believe in chance you know I believe in Providence um but I don't really believe in just I don't think that this whole world that we live in and our life and everything I don't think it's just like a big dumb accident and and a farce and a joke I think it's intentional and so I think that we are special and I think that we are created by a creator that being the case there is nothing about our special existence that would imply the existence of some other kind of life form elsewhere I even compare human beings to animals on Earth what separates human beings is that we have a rational Soul right so we have intellect and will a a cow does not have intellect what about octopus and octopus is a weirdo and might be an alien but does not have a rational Soul they always overstate it to they say you know octopus has the intelligence of a seven-year-old think I don't know what kind of dumb seven-year-olds your dog do but looks like a Big Blob to me that like got out of a a container just like a mouse can too but but anyway maybe they're smarter than mice but they're not that smart and uh the reason we know this is we would not put an octopus on trial for killing somebody would we an octopus sneaks into your home at night strangles you with all his little tentacles would you would you say arrest that octopus he's really smart he knew what he was doing no he's just a dumb octopus well my understanding is that octopus would be way smarter but they don't live that long so that they because their lifespans are pretty short they're not able to advance in the same way that we would so if they lived 80 to 100 years old yeah they might can have entire octopus civilization maybe they might have they do down they could have pet crabs and stuff like that if they lived to 80 years old which they don't but look I don't know what they do down in the water this is the other crazy we're investigating outer space which is empty we should be investigating the oceans which we know basically nothing about where probably a bunch of aliens live down there you know but like octopuses but we don't you know we're not going to put any of these even an 80-year-old octopus we're not going to put them on trial and it's cuz we have a rational W will and a soul and so we can conceive of abstract Concepts and we can think about things like justice and we can perceive objective reality and reason about it no other being can do that on Earth uh it's even relates to the way that our Wills work right we have two Wills you want like you you want the 10th cup of coffee but you don't want the 10th cup of coffee because it'll make you jittery but you want it CU it'll taste good and give you a little more caffeine high and so how do you explain that you have a a disagreement about your Wills well one is the higher will it's rational it's reasonable and the one is the lower will it's the appetite the the animals have the latter but they don't have the former and the rational will is understood as mediating between the lower will and the Divine will the you know God's will perfect will the objective truth and reality so if that's the view of things that you're going into with which is how I view things then I just don't see any reason to believe that you know ET is out there somewhere certainly that there's no rational ET out there I don't even know I don't even know what that would mean for our own understanding of ourselves you know because if you believe what I just said then you believe that man is made in the image and likeness of God so what's ET is he made in the image and likeness of I don't know some like lesser demon or something I don't I don't know what like is he does he look just like us see my question when it comes to religion is that there are so many different religions out there and every religion believes that they are right and so in virtue of that not necessary I I tend to think that how do you know which one is the correct one if there are so many out there well there are a lot of different theories of physics right and and they contradict one another so how do you know which one is right there are a lot of different theories of evolution and if you're inclined to uh you know be really gung-ho about Evolution well which one do you think is right is it Darwin is it Lamar is it some newer strand of either of those you you use your reason and you you separate fact from fiction and you take you believe the more persuasive arguments and you throw out the less persuasive arguments and that's what you do with religion when when it comes to theology theology is Faith seeking understanding so it's applying logic and the rigors of reason to religious claims and and religion is just simply a habit of virtue that inclines the will to give to God what he deserve so we talk about multiple religions but there's really only one religion and we're all just trying to figure out what it is but do you believe that other sex of that religion are incorrect or I don't believe in sex before marriage if that's what uh yeah I I mean I I'm I'm Catholic yeah I think that's true I think that's the true Faith so in as much as a religion contradicts that I think that religion is wrong of course but that's you know that's just Aristotle's non-contradiction principle right you can't simultaneously believe things that are in opposition I think even the most atheistic person would say that certain religions seem more plausible than other religions you know um what would be a good example of this with offending uh wide swath of the audience most people out there would say that uh Christianity is more plausible than Scientology right why well because Scientology makes all these crazy claims about machines and Technology okay like space aliens right okay like kind of actually the claims you're are you guys scientologists you are I had a feeling a bad example then uh so we would say that okay well if Christianity is more persuasive than Scientology then okay You' you've just dismissed one of the religions well how about the other ones do you think it's more persuasive than Islam I do I think that the historical claims of and and the theological claims of Christianity are are more persuasive than Islam okay we got rid of that one how about Judaism I you know have great respect for my Jewish friends and my Muslim friends and even scientologists some of them uh but Judaism says Jesus is not who he says he is Christianity says Jesus is who he says he is well I don't know what is it then one investigates the this question and I've arrived to the conclusion that he is who he says he is okay so there goes that religion how about Buddhism well all the Buddhists I know are just like liberal women in Northern Westchester who wear tight pants and you know meditate during this so they're not right about anything I I can easily dismiss that religion how about Hinduism I some of my best friends are Hindus uh but that's a a non-theistic religion uh so that's pretty easy one to to uh reject off the bat because it contradicts um uh plenty of logic and conclusions I've already come to about uh the nature of being and who created everything uh okay well I think we've just handily gotten rid of all the other religions right now you might say well there's a lot of different sects of Christianity that's true I just think that the historical claims and the theological claims of of the church uh go back to Antiquity they're well attested to over 2,000 years and so that's how I landed on that one your mileage may vary maybe you come to a different one but at the very least we we've landed roughly in the neighborhood of one another here we don't just have to throw up our hands and say well you know Johnny says this and Jack says that so who the hell knows everyone can believe whatever they want let's not try to arrive at any why did you become religious oh I was persuaded of it you know I was an atheist for 10 years but uh that view just is not tenable what about it well it doesn't explain anything why do you need things explained because I'm a rational person with the bra curious explain certain things I feel like like just by chance is an explanation right how does the chance come about how does anything come about it just that's the nature of I feel like just chance one could discuss chance and probability and I don't know stochastic systems or whatever but that you can only do that within the context of a created world right you can only do that um within the context of I'm a human being with a brain I think with faculties of reason on planet Earth within a universe and so at a certain point you have to ask well how did all of that come about and there are plenty of ways to do it you can ask how anything is in motion an object is in motion uh when some other object put it puts it in motion well what happens when you go all the way back down the line you need to have an unmoved mover how how are how do effects come about I smack you across the face I would never do such a thing because I'm a lover not a fighter but then you would have a little red mark on your face that's an effect and the cause was my slap well why did I slap you I don't know because I drank too much coffee this morning well that was the cause and the effect was my irritability well where did the coffee come from you go all the way back down the line of causes there has to be an uncaused cause doesn't there uh perfectability the fact that some things are better than other things the fact that we would all agree even if you're like a nice happy skeptical person we all agree that it's better to help a little old lady cross the street than it is to kick a newborn baby in the head right I think we would all agree with that okay well if some things are better than other things then there has to be a maximally great thing traditionally called a summum bonum well who is that maximally great thing that would that would be God there many other arguments too I mean that's just a handful off the top of my head but the those observations necessarily entail coming to the conclusion that atheism is just like Reddit tier 2006 bunk what prompted that though there's got to be an event that happened that made you think that pushed you in that direction I met smart people I guess I mean this really started my freshman year of college and I I diss my college sometimes cuz it's kind you know super liberal and gone completely off the rails but there are a lot of intelligent people at it a lot of them were atheists no question about it I noticed the very smartest people were religious and they presented me with arguments you know we're just having little debates and things CH they were challenging my thinking and I didn't have an answer for the arguments that they were making and so if you have any kind of humility at all then you you have to say huh you know you never do it in the moment you never say yeah you're totally right man I can see the debate in the moment you say you're totally wrong you're a big jerk whatever but then you go home and if you have any humility whatsoever you think about it you say huh yeah I guess that guy was right I guess I did lose that debate and then once you do that for long enough you you come to the uh the correct conclusions hopefully was your wife on board with the decision to go in a certain way for Religion she was freaked out by it she was freaked out cuz look we grew up in a big agnostic liberal New York play everyone was functionally an atheist anyway whatever their nominal really you know some people were nominally Jews some people were nominally Catholics but you know basically everyone was a practical atheist a liberal really I mean they just they believed what you articulated at the beginning which is you do you leave it alone we can't really know anything I don't know whatever you know and and I don't mean to diss it I don't mean to be dismissive in any way that's that is the Zeitgeist man that is the culture we're living in but uh as a result of that when I came around and I said hey you're gonna this might freak you out but uh I think God exists it's so fun it's so funny this is the thing that virtually everyone believed for all of human history but now if you say it's kind of like it's a little radical and I said look I'm going to go to mass this weekend I'm going to go to church you don't have to come but I don't I'm just G to go because I think I should she said Okay and she kind of you know she went with me just to kind of she was freaked out man she became less freaked out over time obviously you know we were married in the church and everything but but uh can be very jarring I mean it's very this is why I keep coming back to liberalism because I don't I don't mean it in in the own the libs way I mean it in the like recognize the air that you're moving in way we live in in a liberal age where all the premises of liberalism we're just what we believe we don't even think about it and it's not our fault we don't you know you don't wake up every day and write a five-page report on whether you're going to have waffles or pancakes for breakfast you just do things you know we we we are animals of prejudice and we just kind of go about our habits right but when you start to pull at that thread and this is why to bring us all the way back full circle this is why the trans issue keeps coming up because the trans issue is just it's so absurd everybody knows a man and a dress is not really a woman but it's also The Logical conclusion of liberalism it's also The Logical conclusion of radical self- sovereignty it's also the radical conclusion of I'm going to make my own reality I'm going to have my own truth and so once you pull at that thread you can't you can't stop pulling the whole thing starts to unravel so you say okay yeah we shouldn't trans the kids we shouldn't really trans anybody actually men and women are different which means that marriage is what it used to mean not what people say it means now which means that feminism is kind of bunked too which means that liberalism is kind of bunked which means we're actually not radical individuals we're not just we don't make ourselves we don't oh my goodness gracious the last 500 years has been a total serious of error what if your wife did not want to convert with you what if she says I disagree with you you could have your religion I don't see the things the same way I can't do that would that be a deal breaker for you no I wouldn't be it wouldn't be a deal breaker at first because uh I'm I'm what uh the late conservative writer William F Buckley called an epistemological optimist meaning it's a very unfortunate and pretentious phrase but it means that I think we can know things and I'm confident in the rational faculties of my loved ones not just my wife but but you know people like my good friends too and so I'm confident that if something is true and that I think it's true and I I'm relatively persuasive person I think uh that I'll be able to persuade them of that or maybe it's not true maybe I'm mistake I make mistakes sometimes a rare occasion and if it's not true I'm confident in their rational faculties and solid you know character that they'll be able to persuade me some people really worry about this when they talk about values alignment and true especially if the if the person that you're dating is you know not the brightest not the most humble not the most open to things you want to make sure that you agree on basic stuff but I think that people are persuadable and I think people do have reason and they're they're amenable even if you're really far down the rabbit hole people are attracted to Truth at a certain point and to Beauty into goodness and you know eventually you want those things so I I'm not afraid of it I don't I don't treat dating or friendship like you know you've got to check boxes on a on a checklist so okay you scored 75 all right we can get married you got to see I don't think so you're a human being do you do you get along do you love the person all right then you'll you'll grow together let's talk about maintaining a marriage how long have you been married at this point five five and a half years five and years we just had our fiveyear anniversary in Memphis Tennessee the most romantic city in America no I don't know she recommended I said we can go to the Caribbean we'll do whatever you want M I want to go to Memphis what's in Memphis well what's it's it's more about how do you get to Memphis she didn't want to get on an airplane for a day or two and so she we had to do someplace we could drive to and there aren't that many places to drive if you're in Nashville go to Chattanooga that's not that's not that romantic go to Louisville I don't know drink some Bourbon and hit a baseball and so Memphis we it was great we went to graceand went to Elvis's house and then we where else did we go we went to this hotel that has ducks and had a nice dinner and it was really fabulous yeah but so anyway that was five so I guess we've been married like five Louisville is one of the few places that we've been yeah really to Louisville Papa John he was all right yeah we collabed with him Papa John like schn oh man that guy's great yeah should collab with him I'd love to I've never met they're looking for collabs yeah that's great um but okay question garlic sauce I could take that like shot yeah it's very good this is a question I love to ask most of our guests if you think your wife does not look great in a dress do you tell her yes now it's it's rare my wife is a hottie there's no doubt about it and there was actually she's going to get angry because I'm like telling Tales out of school she was trying on two dresses the for an event like a couple months ago and so she tries one on it's just like yo girl let's clear the night you know let's she's like M get out of here so I just want your opinion on the dress you know whatever she's like I want to try another one on and she tried the other one on it was was a pretty dress but it was it didn't it didn't Garner that reaction so I told her I was like yeah that other that dress is fine that dress is just like super hot you should keep you should get like three of that dress you know and so I'll do it but I would never say I'd never say you know like he you look fat and frumpy in a dress or that doesn't seem like a good idea you know why does your wife sound like Eric Carman that's a good question many people have asked that uh so I I because she's a cartoon uh third grader from Colorado actually got I was doing that voice you know we started dating my body I do what I want you will respect my authority I when we were I was 16 and my much younger bride was 15 and a half and I don't know I thought it I I would pronounce her name Alisa like it's Alyssa but I pronounce it Alisa this like romantic Italian and I I don't know why I would I would put on this Italian accent and then I would have her do an Italian accent she's not Italian she speak Italian and she would go um and then it so it started out was like well you know I'm Alisa and then it went it became a little more Mexican it was like well you know I'm Alisa you know hey Lisa and then it became a little like Consuela almost like from you know and then now I think it's fully like Eric car it's fully Mexican Eric listen here ma so I also want to know in settling an uncomfortable conversation with your wife yeah do you treat these conversations a little bit differently than you would treat conversations with let's say like a work colleague or a peer or something like that yeah I don't I don't sleep with most of my work colleagues debate like yeah because we were talking with it was Ben MAA right and I think I asked him something like how do you approach difficult conversations or debates with your wife and he just said she's right all of the time oh that's so gay he def gay he defers to her happy wife happy life is what he says oh no oh that's he says though he handles the business he handles the business and the finances big decision I want she will do everything else but when it comes to the business she doing that Ma I just got to say he's a saint if you met him you would love him I'm sure I would I so I feel bad that I but the the view that he was articulating is so gay and cockled it actually and so he it but what if it works for him it does it doesn't seems like he's pretty happy married 25 years something like that because of all the other great things in his life I'm sure he's a great guy I really don't mean to diss him but that view is is like a feminist view it's very sad be because the question you ask how do you settle an argument I take my wife's views into consideration all the time in fact she practically to to give your pal credit practically she probably makes many if not most of the decisions around the house what are we going to do on the weekend what are we going to have for dinner what are we going to what are the boys going to wear what are we going to who are we going to see what are we you know she where are we going for the holidays a lot of the time but in our household we do this a little of the oldfashioned way I still view the husband as the head of the household which is an office that you know is not exercised explicitly all the time but sometimes it is if you really come to a a final impass the husband is going to decide that's my view because the alternative is the wife is going to decide and that doesn't seem right to me that's not how any culture has ever viewed it properly that's not how uh Christendom you know has ever viewed it that's it seems kind of weird to me is your wife you the idea is that there won't necessarily be impasses if you're so aligned and I think that's kind of where Ben is probably with his wife where there's never been an actual thing where he's exercised you know his his his power like that obviously he because he gives it all to his wife but he so think he's defer those decisions like you like you mentioned about where we vacationing where we going for dinner this and that because he runs the business which is here's yeah no but no that's this we can't move on from this this is a big problem he runs the business yeah I run my business too but I run my household too or I I'm I'm I'm at least the head of my household my wife actually manages it all of the time and my wife is my wife and my wife is The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is the hand that rules the world and my wife is a living Saint you know I mean she's all these things but we're talking about in an argument when there's a disagreement and what you said is your pal says happy wife happy life you you win always we do what you want to do which means that your wife is your husband now and I just think that's crazy I don't think women want that here's what I think here's what I think and what I've noticed for at least for myself and I'm not married but engaged uh how strongly do you feel on a certain thing uh and that's usually what I kind of defer to where if she's like I really need to go and get Chipotle tonight and I'm like I don't really care I don't want Chipotle but feel that strongly absolutely will do will do but if I feel really strongly about like no I I can't get your pole tonight you could get your P I'm going to get this it's really like you know who wants something more and if she feels more strongly about one thing than I do then it's her but if I feel more strongly about one thing then she does it's me and how how do you know that how do you measure that no I really feel more strongly no no I a discussion I believe when she said this is like really like there are certain things that she said this is really important to me that that you're here for this or that you do this one thing this means a lot and if I don't match that same level of conviction I'm fine with it if we if we get to a disagreement where I'm like I'm really against it you're really for it sometimes we'll sleep on it and just talk about it and then sometimes we could just say you know we'll agree to disagree on this one thing I'm okay with this we'll move on to the next one so you'll say we agree to disagree but I'll do what you want no no um I I think you know not that all agree to do that but that you know we could table this for another time pushing it off so so what if the question though becomes something a little more important than Chipotle which is uh you know where the kids go to school and look that can totally shape a person's I married my wife from sixth grade you know uh and you have a big disagreement on that you know she wants to send the kid to public school you want to send the kid to some private school well that's going to have big effects on your family's finances that's going to have big effects on your but I think these are discussions to have before getting married like these are discussions that should be happening before having kids what about the city you want to live in you you want to take a job in St Louis and she wants to stay with her sister in San Diego well that was a discussion that we had when we left California mov to Vegas was was a big discussion and so I took her opinion into consideration she took mine uh I talked to Jack about it I mean it was not just an overnight like all right let's move you still you still made the decision I think the will to move um was stronger than her desire to stay given our circumstances at the time yeah that's good that's a great see you do you do it the way that I do it but here's thing if she says you know what if you move to Vegas we're going to break up that would that would put a whole different spin on things what if your wife said that because you weren't married at the time righto you're engaged so what if your wife said if you don't do what I want we're getting divorced I don't like ultimatums so for me it would be the nature just talking about an ultimatum you just brought up an ultimatum I don't think that's an ultimatum I think will break up if you move I think that would be something that she's entitled to that opinion and that and you know not wanting to go somewhere I'm not going to force anybody to move where they don't want to move what if she what she's your wife though I think that that would probably be deserving of of therapy and really getting to the root cause of it and and figuring out can there be a compromise where maybe we say okay let's move here but you're going to visit your family so often so we're going to make time to go back I feel like a lot of things can be compromised in such a way where it's not like all or nothing it's like I'll give you a little bit you give me a little bit it's a partnership in this I fear this I I practically I largely agree yeah but in principle I fear this this perspective a little bit because it turns everything every conversation with your wife into a negotiation you're always trying to get a little bit maybe I'll have more of my say on this and I'm going to give on here because then I'm going to score some points I'm going to bank them and then I'm going to be able to get my way later on down the road and I think Clarity is charity and I think if if you drew claven gave me good advice he said uh keys to marriage don't sleep with other people throw out feminism if if you say from the outset look we're going to do this the oldfashioned way and I love you and But ultimately I'm G to have the final say and if I got to move to St Louis we're moving to St Louis the whole family and I'm not going to hear peep about it uh I think that's it it reduces anxiety actually it reduces tension because you you recognize that you have different spheres of influence you recognize that you have different roles in a marriage you recognize that you have uh different responsibilities in a marriage I think a lot of the times men do not want to be the decider I think this is actually the secret of Genesis chapter 3 which is sometimes cited by feminists as uh patriarchal and you know knuckle dragging whatever because it says um men love your husbands men love your husband that's what it says now that's the rewrite says uh men love love your wives and wives submit to your husbands oof yikes and what so we see this throughout scripture in Genesis chapter 3 we see uh your the to the wife your desire will be for your husband but he will rule over you and rather than viewing this as a little reward given to Adam for his disobedience in the Garden of Eden I see it as a little bit of a punishment or a corrective at least cuz I don't think men want to rule over women I I don't want to rule over women you know what I want to do I want to sit on the couch and I want to sit in my boxers and eat potato chips and strum a ukulele and watch movies that's what I really if if you told and smoke a cigar Mayflower cigar that's what I would do I am called by the circumstances of this Fallen World to be the head of my household and to uh make decisions and to work by the sweat of my brow and I have to do that that's my role but it's not my natural inclination and so I think a lot of guys they follow their worst instincts and they just say no you know man wife does whatever she wants and I'm just you know I'm just I'm a schlub I'm I'm Ray Romano in that sitcom I'm uh Kevin James and that sitcom I'm both great guys but the that ARA I'm Homer Simpson I'm just like the big dumb schlubby husband and she she makes all the decisions that's not good you know that's not I don't think that's going to lead to happiness that's really interesting cuz I mean in my relationships that I've had obviously with women uh I feel like I just care so much less about so many things than they care about yes like to them just like everything is the world but to me it's just like yeah is very Carefree tell me where to show up and when tell me what to wear tell me you know how to do my hair just whatever I just don't care you know there are like maybe three things that I care deeply about everything else I'll defer to you I know the the issue is though if you cultivate this uh Habit of just like letting your wife do whatever she wants even if you don't really like it you just don't care enough so you're like I don't like it but whatever I'll go along it's not my big deal I'll show up ultimately that's going to build up a little bit of resentment and it's going to build up on your part it's going to build up some entitlement on your wife's part and it's and then when the rubber does meet the road on a on a really difficult decision you I think you're going to be you're going to regret the your behavior until that point when the rubber really meets the road and she's not going to move on the issue but you've never exercised your role as the head of your household and you've never even expressed you have a desire for anything you know you just show up uh you're going to be at a at a very hard impass and and it's not even about what the decision's going to be you're in San Diego or St Louis it it's going to be how do you even make decisions what you know it gets back to a fundamental question what is the family what is the marriage what is it that we're doing together are we just I think this is what leads to a lot of divorce are we just we're just roommates just negotiating something we're just women are exactly like men and men are exactly like women and we don't we relate to one another in the same way I'd relate to my butt or is this something special and different with roles and duties I it's the ladder so you on the whatever podcast by the way uh yeah we're going almost two hours here but that was like what five hours that was 5 hours now you guys you know you're a little more succinct and clear in some of your views than some of our friends who were on the whatever podcast so maybe that was why I went on to go on the whatever podcast because I have an associate producer who is a hip young cool Zoomer we call him professor Jacob he's this cool he's like 12 years old and he said he like Mr Nolls yeah you you got to go on the whatever podcast I was like what's that he like and he showed me and I said oh I've seen these clips everywhere this thing is great I was like there's no way they'd want me to go on that show though I don't I don't know he said no they they do they want you to come I said let's go let's go now there was a conflict of intentions here because the point of going on that show is to make fun of these poor ignorant young women that's the whole point and you make fun of them and then they look stupid and then you get a great viral clip and I just thought man that's kind of mean I don't I don't not going to California to go just make fun of these young women because it's not their fault most of them grew up in broken homes and they don't know anything and they're attending some stupid school that doesn't teach them anything and they don't know and they live in a swipe culture and they're all being exploited and used and on only fans and so I said okay I'm going to do this show a little differently I'm going to do the show on their side so often you Brian who I like the guy who runs the show often it was not me and Brian against the girls often it was me and the girls attacking Bryan's point of were you switching up your principles then no because the girls are wrong I mean I pointed out when they were wrong plenty of times too but Brian well he's probably more correct than them on some like basic things Brian said he didn't want to get married so you don't want to get married that's gay you know I don't I'm making this accusation why do you keep using that term I'm like that guy that's a not very inclusive term you know that it's very inclusive there are a lot of gay guys gay so I'm including them why can't you just say you disagree cuz I well I disagree but specifically I disagree because that view is gay right but okay but the problem that I have with calling something why are you gay why are you gay you ugly well you ug like I have a problem I feel like with at least if I'm trying to understand your motive like your desired outcome of going on these shows and speaking the truth or whatever your truth whatever you want to call it I don't think it's going to yield good benefit or desired results if you say things are gay in a derogatory way because it's not like like someone maybe who's gay is going to hear that and they're going be like oh this guy he thinks all gay people are bad or L I'm I'm I'm a an icon of the gay community you know I don't I have plenty of friends look I lived in New York I lived in La I went to the gayest University on what university Yale okay so it's they say one in four maybe more at Yale you know and uh I have I have a disproportionate number of uh homosexually identifying friends and people with variously eccentric views but uh you know I'm my view is that we shouldn't recommend the uh uh LGBT activism I think that's not a good thing to right but it's not recommending that it's just like I said if if your desired result is to hopefully find a middle ground where you can both agree on something or my desired result is to arrive at the truth that's my desired result but don't you is for yourself or to help other people arrive at the truth for everybody but if you're trying to help other people arrive at the truth calling something gay in a bad way in front of another gay person I don't I think it's really good I think it's really good to do because I think people they recoil when you attack at like recoil I don't think a lot of other people a lot I think a lot of people grew up on the playground saying hey that shirt's really gay hahhaa and then everybody laughs I think everybody used this kind of language until 5 minutes ago and in no way is it mocking or you know uh attacking any people who have kind of eccentric sexual desires or anything like that I think it's just kind of gay you know even if it alien this whole conversation but imagine it alienates one or 2% of the audience is that worth it in this case I'm using it in a very specific way and intentionally much as I would use the word eradicate at my CPAC speech with regard to transgender ideology so it's I'm using it attention no no no that's what the Liberals accused me of but that's because they have difficulty understanding words uh the reason I use the word eradicate there is because I specifically was referring to uprooting an entire ideology root and branch and the reason I use gay specifically in this case is one because it's kind of funny and we've all used it even though we all politically correctly now pretend that we don't we're all clutching our pearls but uh the the other thing we all pretend that the homosexuals are offended by it they're not homosexuals are outrageous people a lot of the time and they're men a lot of the time and they can they're tough guys uh you know it's like Macho Macho Man in the in the Village People the reason I'm using it specifically here is because gay uh refers to an entire view of the sexual ethic a view of the sexual ethic that views men and women as uh IND discernible and uh substitutable for one another and if you have the sexual ethic that is ultimately sterile that does that separates means from ends and so I'm doing that very intentionally using the esoteric way right I don't think that's so esoteric I think it's playing on uh the the proper meaning of the word and it's showing people the the issue from a perspective that has been kept from them when you say when you just say the word gay without any context behind it people are not going to put that meaning the way that you meant it they're not going to do all the background thinking of oh he means it like this and if you extrap this use a word that everyone used until 5 minutes ago that now the politically correct sensors won't let us use when I use that word what I am saying is I will not ascribe to your leftwing censorship regime and you're right it might put some people off it'll at least raise their eyebrows even if they're not offended I don't think many people are actually offended by it but it'll raise their eyebrows at least at first but the consequence of that will be that it will start to crack away at the leftwing censorship regime which uses a cycle of euphemisms to constantly change words that we're allowed to use for anything I would disagree I think it would cause a lot of people to check out immediately they would hear you saying something like this and immediately think a it's one of these guys anything he says my speech has a lot of views on it anything you say after that then you're going to tune out or not take as seriously as saying I disagree with the concept of marriage because of this to me that sounds a lot more eloquent and a lot more sophisticated than saying oh understanding which is I feel like the number one thing that you you need to be if you're trying to persuade other people I guess my evidence to the contrary is I I've given many long lectures using very dry language on all of these questions and you've never seen any of them and none of those clips have ever gone viral you have conversion rate on not merely for attention it's so that my your message point is heard by people in a precise and and just way but then I think it's also do you want your message to be heard or do you want it to impact the people in a positive way that you would like to get your message across because getting attention and just saying crazy stuff will get crazy attention I don't think I'm saying any crazy stuff I think say very reasonable true stuff but just taking to the extreme and saying I'm going to say something that'll get attention that will do well on social media versus I'm going to say something it's not going to get as much attention but the people who watch it will take my ideas into consideration it'll make more of an impact than saying something think I think that my CPAC speech dominated the national discourse for at least a week after I gave it and it was wasn't exclusively see back speech it was Matt Walsh's what is a Woman movie it was the work of turf radical feminists who have you know there I'm not I'm really not taking credit for all of this but I do think that my speech at CPAC and the uh positive way that it was received by the American right and a lot of the American middle and the screeching crazy reaction that came from the left and the lies that came from The Establishment media helped to expand the window of discourse and helped to move that issue more in our Direction and it's like led to laws that have been proscribing the transgender ideology in public life so I think it was very persuasive and it did get people's attention it did I I actually didn't intend for it to get that much attention but it did and I think that's a good thing and yes the the libs are going to accuse me of all sorts of things genocide or whatever but it's ridiculous and reasonable people know that's ridiculous just as when I say that you know a guy uh saying that my wife gets to run the whole show at home and I don't have a say that's kind of gay man I don't think that homosexuals at home are saying that awful terrible man he wants to throw me off a roof like the Taliban no they're saying okay he's using a word that we don't use as much in the last five years but a lot of people have used for a long time and he's using it in a derogatory way because he's criticizing an action of a husband with his wife and he's using it in a precise way because he's saying that that view of sexual relations Is essentially the same view as the gay view which is that uh men and women are basically the same so I think it operates on a lot of levels and the proof of the pudding is in the tasting I'm happy to give a really dry academic lecture but that message is not going to penetrate uh to some people it will I give it in a you know I'm giving a lecture on Dante this coming summer can't wait to do it it's going to be extremely academic very dry a lot of people will consider it boring probably the people in the room will look I tend to believe that you could spice up your message without alienating even one or two% of your audience whatever that maybe without using what do you mean by alienate I think when you say the term that's gay I think the people who would be really receptive to you and want to hear what you have to say might tune you out at that point why because they think that I disapprove of the sexual Revolution I think that you would use terms that maybe are not um it's just an aggressive term it is I'd say when when did it become an aggressive term it doesn't matter how you're transmitting it I'm just asking it became an aggressive I'm saying that's not even a part of this disc I'm saying matters how it's received well all right but I got to get an answer to this question you're saying it's an aggressive term that's very shocking for me to hear my whole life that wasn't an aggressive term when when did it become an aggressive term probably in the last couple of years exactly exactly so what are we going to do are we going to accept the radical redefinition of basic words by the left and and just play along with their words and what pretty soon I'm going to start calling Bruce Jenner she or Caitlyn and then I've accepted transgenderism because here's the point when you use the language framed by your ideological adversaries you accept their whole premise when you start talking about the right to marriage equality rather than the meaning of marriage you've already there's no debate to be had you've already accepted that two men can be can marry one another just as a man and a woman can marry one another you've already accepted that you're just asking who has the right to do it you've lost the debate the moment that you call Bruce Jenner Caitlyn that's a girl's name or if you call Bruce Jenner she especially you've accepted the premise of transgenderism and you're right if I call Bruce Jenner he people are going to recoil at that I'm going to alienate 1% of the Audience by saying that because I'm not supposed to call him Bruce I'm not supposed to call him him I guess I'll I guess I'll alienate some radicals but I will show the vast majority of the audience the reality as I see it which I think is so that's that's what I've been trying to understand this whole time is that if you're optimizing for impact you think that your route would be more impactful than maybe the other rout you're giving me way too much credit you you're you're make making me out to be some uh big strategist calculator of every piece of rhetoric I use it's not that complex I just Endeavor to tell the truth I Endeavor to speak the truth and I Endeavor to speak the truth in really plain terms I'm with George Orwell on this politics in the English language we should use simple terms we should use Saxon words over latinate words when we can we should use terms that are vivid and I guess we now we call that aggressive but George Orwell would say it's plain it's it's clear it presents to people reality because if we don't use that if we just use the euphemisms and the mey mouth politically correct words then people are going to continue to see a fantasy you know if if we talk about an illegal alien then we know that's the kind of person who has no right to be in the country if we talk about an undocumented future American dreamer well that paints a picture for you whether you're aware of it or not of someone who has every absolutely every right to be in the country probably more than you do if we talk about she that she the transom woman well she has every right to go into that bathroom she's a she if we say it's a he and he's a dude and he's wearing a dress and he has no that man has no right to go into the bathroom the the clarity here in language you might call it aggressive I think it's the only option I'm not saying that I personally find that aggressive I'm saying in the way that it's received and digested in the people that are this this is the key you think the language is just fine you think you probably think I'm not labeling it EI either way you just said you don't think it's aggressive I preer i' probably be more at least not aggressive or you think it is aggressive I think it is what the impact is probably no I'm asking what you think man I think if someone told me that no I wouldn't be you know super sensitive to it and I think basically everyone is like you and I think that we're all just afraid of offending some hypothetical third party that doesn't really exist and I think that is how the left controls the whole dialogue because we're all normal guys and everyone you talk to even if they say you know I'm a gay guy or I'm a this thing or I'm a that thing or whatever I don't know what what language they're supposed to use now but very few people actually get offended by any of this stuff it is the fear the hypothetical fear of offending the other that keeps us all trapped in this linguistic prison living in a Web of Lies rather than just speaking the truth clearly truth that we can all basically perceive well Michael thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour thank you very much to the Daily wire and thank you so much to the production crew that set all of this up this is incredible every single time we come over here we we have a great time we're going to wrap this up with one final thing y we're going to do word association I want to know the first thing that comes to your mind when I say Michael nolles sexy Matt Walsh not Ben Shapiro hm that's my answer yeah finally Brett Cooper a marvelous wonderful bright shining I future of this country was that one word yeah no that was just one emotion that girl she's great great thank you so much Michael appreciate it