[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2021] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] ♪ >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government, created by america's cable television companies in 1979. today we are brought to you by these television companies who provide c-span2 viewers as a public service. >> coming up, the white house covid-19 response team provides an up date on the pandemic live at 10: 30 eastern today. after that a news conference from the world bank rupe and international monetary fund spring meetings at 11:30. this afternoon president biden

lays out his infrastructure plan. you can watch coverage of that at 1:45 eastern and online at c-span.org or with the free for c-span app. continues. host: we have been featuring political podcasters and joining us now is michael noel, -- is michael knowles, host of "the michael knowles show." guest: increasingly, the distinction is blurry, especially after the president the presidency of donald trump. that distinction is blurry. we cover that angle, but russell kirk had an important observation, which is that culture is downstream of religion. we also hear of the patron saint of hollywood conservatives that says culture is downstream of

religion and these questions are not two easily separated. we like to go everywhere from the headline all the way down to the philosophical and theological premises that undergird those issues. host: do you have an example of a headline you're looking at in today's things that you are covering? what are the cultural underpinnings? guest: the clearest example is this transgender issue. you saw the governor from arkansas last night did not do a good job defending his position on television. he tried to make the argument it is somehow conservative to give little children cross ex hormones and puberty blockers. at the top of all, you see the headline that there are people and children specifically who have confusion about their sex, and boys feel like they are little girls and little girls for like -- feels like they are little boys. and then we have the cultural aspect where it goes to

the lgbt events. for most of the gay-rights movement, we are told we are born this way. if you have attraction to boys and you are boy, society should have more tolerant of these views. immediately after that, we are told that there is no such thing as biological sex and if you are a boy you can become a girl. those are premises that contradict one another. ultimately, there is a religious question, what is the nature of man? the traditional view of the west as man is hilum orphic, -- hilomorphic. according to the transgender movement, our bodies have nothing to do with who we are, so i can look like a man, have an adams apple, a deep voice, i can have all of the various appendages, but on a deeper

metaphysical level, if i feel like a woman, than actually i am a woman. it is not even complicated. i am simply a woman and my body has nothing to do with that, and that is called gnostic dualism. it has crept up repeatedly over the course of western civilization. if you want to learn more about that, it helps to see all of the layer's down so one can have a more informed view of it. host: when you talk about these issues, what you hear from people who support you and do you have an avenue -- guest: increasingly and our politics, one can use their faculties of reason and think through these things and come to a decision on how they feel

about it. i have an avenue for people who disagree with me. i did not realize i had such an avenue but i look at my am box every day for my emailing twitter feed, typically what i would hear from them is a more impassioned argument. i do not mean to caricature my political opponents, but usually what those criticisms involve are just comments that you are a racist or a bigot, or this or that, and i think that when our political opponents engage in the evidence-free vector it is a good bit of evidence that you have won the argument. host: if you want ask questions, (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000 for democrats and then for independents, (202) 748-8002. what shapes how you believe politically? guest: i suppose my friends have

sometimes described me as slight to the right of attila the hun. i think this is unfair because i think the right and left, first of all they are terms that come out of the french revolution, so they are relatively modern terms in politics. i don't know they totally correspond to the way our politics works right now, and i think there are a lot of problems on the right. i would not call myself a leftist but there were issues on the right. right now, this is the topic of my upcoming book, speechless, controlling words and controlling minds, it really takes issue with the right because a self described conservatives have fallen for traps laid by that by political correctness or cancel culture, woken us, use whatever term you want. -- wokeness, use whatever term you want. the governor's performance last night on television arguing that they are to chemically castrate

kids, that proves it very well. i would like there to be not just this where the left and right hold positions and yell at one another, i would like to bring the conversation forward a little bit by taking the leftist intellectuals who have brought that side of the aisle to where it is right now. i want to take them seriously, i want to see if they know something that perhaps conservatives have unfairly dismissed or overlooked. i think they can. i think one of the conclusions i reach in my book is while the right likes to pride itself on this idea that we understand free speech so much better than the left is, they are just snowflakes that hate free speech . i think the left understands free speech and censorship far better than the right does and that is how they have been able to amass and wield political power so effectively through political correctness and it is derivative cancel culture. host: the major league baseball

decision has come up in a week ago, considering this all-star game. this connects to voting laws and this is something of the president referenced yesterday at the white house. i want to play what he had to say about the decision and get your response. >> [indiscernible] pres. biden: i think that is up to the masters. look, you know, it is reassuring to see that for-profit operations and businesses are speaking up about how these new jim crow laws are just antithetical to who we are. there's another side to it. the other side is that when they in fact move out of georgia, the people who need the help the most, people who are making hourly wages, sometimes get hurt

the most. i think it is a tough decision for corporation to make. or a group to make. i respect them when they make that judgment, and i support whatever judgment they make. the best way to deal with this is for georgia, and other states, to smarten up. stop it. stop it. host: what is your reaction? guest: that's quite a change in tune. a few days ago, president biden was absolutely encouraging major-league baseball to move the all-star game out of georgia , which has led to an ironic consequence of mlb moving the all-star game to colorado. in the name of racial justice and voting rights, but of course colorado is a much whiter place than georgia, and colorado has more restrictive voting laws than georgia, even after this malign voter bill. that backfired. people of georgia, including georgia democrats, are ureas at

president biden, so now he is trying to reverse course and say hold on, other sports, please don't move your games out of here. the issue with joe biden, and i say this with all due respect, is i do not think joe biden has many beliefs of his own at all. i think he wakes up in the morning, licks his index finger, puts it in the air, and figures out which way the wind is blowing. he has been this way his entire political career. he will changes pulled -- his position based on the wins. when the practical effects of $100 million leaving georgia because of mlb, he realizes he has to reverse course. it raises this question on issues such as the woke corporations or immigration, or voter id. the democratic party right now, all the way up to the leadership, are pursuing a very unpopular policy. the majority of americans want a

border that a secure, supporting voter id, the democratic party does not do that. why do they get away with that? i think the reason is that they have waged for the last 100 years or so a war of position, to use the radical -- the term of a radical theorist. as a result, they are wielding the power now. we can talk until we are blue in the face, and the american people can respond to survey after survey saying we oppose this thing, but they lack the political power to effect those policies. i think probably they will recalibrate a little bit in the democratic party but will keep the radical lists. host: this is the democrats line for michael knowles. go ahead. you are on with our guest. caller: good morning pedro. good morning, mr. knowles.

i'm not familiar with michael's show, but some comments on what i hear from conservative columnists and conservative talk show hosts is that they seem to gravitate -- gravitate toward emotional wedge issues. your guests started -- guest started talking about sexual identity and what have you, also started to go toward the border. i am not saying these are not real issues, but i do not think they are ones of major import for most of us. a couple thousand kids at the border is certainly a serious situation, but it is not one that is changing our lives. lgbtq issues are men getting involved in women's sports or women using the wrong bathroom

now that they have changed their sexual identity. there are generally things that don't impact us on a daily basis. my point is that these issues are being brought out to kind of get people to act, get people on the right to act with somewhat of a cognizant dissidents and acting against their own best interest. serious issues in this country, like climate change, the way we respond to the pandemic, and not trusting science, the insurrection of the capital, and what that really means in terms of maintaining our democracy. host: mitchell, we will leave it there and let our guest respond. guest: i think mitchell sounds a lot like the republican governor of arkansas on television last night where he said we need to stop talking about these issues like immigration or the

enforcement of our national border, or whether grown men should follow little girls into the changing rooms of the public pool. we need to talk about things people actually care about like marginal tax rates. i have to tell you not only do i not wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night thinking about marginal tax rates, i don't think anyone else does either, these technocratic considerations people would rather us focus on carry with them a lot of political premise. i think what mitchell is implying here is we have already solved all the basic social questions and political questions, so now we are trying to make trade a little more efficient, trying to get that gdp up a little bit more, and ok, yeah, we are pumping kids full of hormone blockers and destroying their biochemistry, but that is just progress and will happen. we have to trust the science because the science works. this is the progressive vision of government. woodrow wilson, our most

progressive president, laid this out well in an essay called " what is progress?" he said under the old constitutional system of government, we lived under the laws of isaac newton with fixed laws of the universe and we have a fixed human nature and we need to have checks and balances to balance the power out and make deliberative decisions as of body politics, but that is all over. we are living in the age of darwin and nothing is fixed. we are evolving toward progress, so what the effect of this is is everything becomes political. chicken sandwiches are political, sneakers are political, coca-cola is political. everything is political except for politics. which woodrow wilson argued has to be outsourced to bureaucrats and administrators the on the scope of the gibbet -- of legitimate political debate. you see this with the rise of

dr. fauci. he says i have never had a political view in my life, i'm just doing what works. in order for something to work, it has to have a purpose. a lawnmower works when it cuts a lawn. you need to know where you are going, what you want to do. and that is certainly beyond the scope for someone like anthony fauci, or the public health apparatus. i think the premise in the comment from mitchell is we have already decided all of that. there is no fixed human nature. all of those things talking about earlier on whether or not a nation should be able to decide who comes into the country and who has the right to vote and access government services. that is just not for you to decide you puny little american people, you peasants. you don't have the right to your political process. we will outsource that to the experts, because they can run our lives better for us then we can run ourselves. i can't go along with that. i do not think those eggheads in

washington have much of a sense of the american way of life. i don't think they are particularly philosophically sophisticated, and a lot of the time, i do not think they have my best interest at heart. i would prefer we the people of the united states of america to exercise the political authority given to us in the constitution that a lot of people want to take away. host: let's hear from brick, new jersey, kevin, a republican line. caller: good morning. i'm a huge fan of yours, michael. been a long time viewer, and a daily wire subscriber. guest: thank you so much. caller: as a young conservative, what do you think -- how do you think we can take back our media and can day mia? i think those are the -- and academia? i think those are the two biggest problems in our country. do you recommend conservatives go into teaching?

do you recommend they try to apply for cnn? or work for harvard and go to teach there? or do you think we should start our own colleges and media? guest: i would not be so much of a sadist to suggest you should work for cnn, harvard, or something like that. it's a very important question and something i detail at great length in my upcoming book, speech list -- speechless. the left focuses on the media and especially academia. this is where you saw the rise of political correctness much earlier than other pulse of the culture -- parts of the culture. why? this is how you take a hold of the common sense. the radical theorist understood the reason marcus -- marxist revolution did not succeed is the allegedly oppressed class didn't feel that oppressed.

the radicals had their theories, but the common people did not like those theories much. so the left undertook a sophisticated and well thought out plan to take over academia and take over systems of mass communication. and they have done it rather effectively. we are starting from a real disadvantage. how do we do this? for a long time, you have heard conservatives say politics is downstream of culture, and therefore, forget the political questions. we have to go out there and make a good stuff, podcasts, our own companies. i think that is very important, we should absolutely do that. that is what i do for a living, so i think that is an important side of it. we also need to wield political power. we also need to -- and you are seeing some republicans waking up to this. easy ron desantis waking up to this, mitch mcconnell waking up to this saying we cannot let's

welcome corporations and private industries undermine our culture. the reason conservatives have become allergic to wielding the political power the people give them under the constitution for the last 20 to 30 years is because they have fallen for a trap that the radical left or political correctness leaves for them. political correctness is designed to undermine traditional standards. it is a purely negative campaign , engages in what marx would call the ruthless criticism of all that exists. from that, you saw the academic movement of critical theory and those in the news like critical race theory. it is just out to destroy the old order. conservatives traditionally react in one of two ways. you have the squishes who go along with it and say you will pump kids full of hormones, that's fine. we want to broaden the party after all, like the governor of arkansas. but even the more ornery,

obstinate and conservatives will say i'm not going to go along with political correctness, because i'm a free speech absolutist or free-market absolutist, or some other absolutism that only exists in the air and has never existed in the actual political tradition of the united states. as a result, they will issue standards altogether. the irony here, you either get into the left new standard or throw out standards altogether. either way, the left gets the obliteration of the old standards. the shorter answer, it is important for conservatives to go to teaching and media, but that is not sufficient. we also need to recognize these entities exist in a broader political landscape, a broader political framework, and we need to be willing and have the courage to wield a political power when we have it. president trump, i hope he lives a long life and i hope when he

goes to his eternal rewards, he donates his body to science and his spine to the gop, because if they would only have courage, the prerequisite for all of the other virtues, i think we could tackle this problem more effectively. host: it is much too early but i believe you will be asked or has been asked about if president trump should run for another term a president. guest: it is much too early, i would agree. i am a supporter of president trump and i thought he was a tremendous president, best president of my lifetime, but he himself said republicans have a deep bench of good candidates. to me, especially if it is president trump making that comment, that was signal he is probably not going to run. i'm not sure. but there are a lot of great candidates out there. i am parshall certainly to senator ted cruz, with whom i host a podcast, and i have encouraged him to run. i think ron desantis in florida looks like he is eyeing a run and doing a good job.

you have other governors and senators around the country who seem to be interested in it. i will take president at his word. if there is a deep bench, he could play a significant role in determining who will get the nomination. and he may end up running himself. he has a time of political support, but if you are to think , in 2013, who will the republican nominee be? i think few people would say donald trump would be the nominee. it is certainly too early at this point. we are all wish casting i think. host: here's michael in syracuse, new york on the democrats line. caller: good morning. host: good morning. caller: i would like to say dipshit donald was the worst thing to happen to this country and you are terrible for thinking every other way. guest: i have to tell you that was not the most persuasive arguments i've heard but --

host: you spent a lot of time on college campuses talking about these issues. i understand you are hit by a water gun at one of these events. [laughter] guest: i was. i don't know what was in the water gun. it was not water, and fortunately it wasn't any particularly noxious substance. the only casualty was my blazer. i have a speaking tour. before covid, we spoke at 10 to 20 schools around the country. i called it the men are not women and other uncomfortable truths tour. it's the reason i answered your question earlier as to what is one of the most controversial issues that has deep philosophical premises. believe it or not, it is the idea that men are not women. i gave other speeches on the tour. i said babies are people, i said cancel culture is bad. various truths. the one that really got everybody was that men are not

women. so i walked into this room at the university of missouri kansas city, and a third of the audience immediately were eccentric looking young activists. they started street -- screaming at me at the top of their logs. you could not hear it on the video feed because my microphone was feeding directly into the camera, but in the room you could not hear the speech. i had prepared my speech anyway, even with what they were screaming i could continue to read it. eventually, they tuckered themselves out and when to leave. one of them went behind the podium, opened up a fire door, and some lunatic comes in and sprays me with some sort of chemicals. the police did a great job of taking that guy down. he seemed shocked he would face any consequences for his actions. eventually, everyone was led out of the room. what is really bizarre as the following day, the chancellor of the university wrote a letter

apologizing, not to me but to the students, that i was invited in the first place, suggesting the idea that men are not women is not a value of the university . it was through the looking glass. i really felt as though i was in wonderland. that is the usual response i get. there have been a handful of times on these campuses that there have been thoughtful leftist responses, which i love. that is what i wrote my recent book on, thoughtful leftists and taking ideas seriously, but unfortunately you do not get a lot of that. i think part of the reason why the conservatives on campus tend to be more thoughtful and -- if you are conservative on campus, the culture is against you. you're constantly having to defend and think through your beliefs, perhaps discard your beliefs and deepen others. if you are in the left these days, your ideas are rarely challenged, not challenged

at work, school, in the broader culture, or political realm. i think they are at a real disadvantage. if there are intellectual and articulate leftist's, i have speeches this year, so i look forward to seeing on campus. please don't ruin anymore my blazer's. host: this is michael knowles of "the michael knowles show." maria in new jersey, independent line. caller: good morning, pedro. your guest has a very elegant mind and i appreciate that. i would like to get back to something he said. i think it was jefferson who said eventually our country will be saved by the people, and i feel that we can't wait for all of these elections. most of our government are full on agents. there are petitions to recall of them right now.

second, this $11 trillion shortfall at the pentagon that has not been accounted for, we are in secret wars all over the world, and we have five eyes which gives written in the commonwealth all of our secrets. so it is nice to talk about party versus party, but it ought to be citizens of the united states against [indiscernible] i think the battle has to start and ernst -- in earnest now. guest: those are a bunch of great questions and comments. what a lot of people are going to say when they listen to you is maria, these are crazy conspiracy theories you're talking about. there's no way a foreign spy could ever influence the u.s. government. you might point them to alger has, a top ranking state department official who was working for the soviet union during the cold war, detailed in the excellent book witness, one of the books that moved ronald

reagan from the liberal camp to the conservative camp. you mentioned the bureaucracy seems to be unaccountable to the american people. this is obviously the case. i remember antonin scalia a, had the privilege of meeting him a couple times before he died, and he said the greatest threat to liberty and the united states is the administrative state because it had such a mission drift and has become so unaccountable as well to the american people. the degree to which these issues are affecting our day-to-day might be disputed, but certainly there are a lot of problems here. you mentioned these wars that seem to crop up all of the time. i remember the old joke in 2008 that they told me if i voted for john mccain that we would start a war in the middle east. and they were right. these problems are frustrating. the way that i think, the conservative way one would begin to address them, and frankly the way the left has a draft them to great effect, is through

evolution, not revolution. i do not think we need to kick the doors in at some administrative agency and say you are all fired, get out of here. one, it wouldn't work, and two, it probably would not have much of the political effects you are hoping for. you need to have incremental change, to be able to identify the republican officeholders who are not fulfilling their campaign promises, who are not pursuing a particularly conservative policy, and you need to get them out for the old-fashioned electoral process -- through the old-fashioned electoral process. when we have political power, you need to wield that power to fire bureaucrats undermining the administration. i'm not saying this is easy. president trump faced a lot of pushback at this. you consider one department in the government, the department of homeland security, i think the the department of homeland

security -- i thing the department of homeland security, these are there issues. that is why you need the steady increments of change. the left, for the last 100 years as i detail in my book speechless, for 100 years, they amassed that power, and it reminds me of ernest hemingway's description of going bankrupt. the question was how did you go bankrupt, and the answer was gradually and then suddenly. i think the left has amassed power gradually, and the exercise it rather suddenly. that is what is happening right now, and i think conservatives would do well to learn a lesson from the strategy. host: from new york, democrats line. good morning. caller: good morning. mr. knowles, i find you offensive, your promised way. the conservative party has done nothing for america but divide us.

your book, i probably would purchase it to read it. i don't agree with anything you're saying. check out history. i am a history buff, and i read history, and i was an independent all of my life until 2008. i realized i sided more with some of the ideas of the democrats. you have conservatives. what about the conservative movement in 1953, pushing religion? rights? did you see the documentary, the family. guest: i have not seen a documentary. caller: i think you should watch it, because it is very telling. it tells you all about how a certain set of republicans, conservative, religious, which is in the constitution, no laws written, ok?

freedom means freedom to practice your religion the way you want, if you want. freedom means if you are a lesbian, gay, lgbtq, whatever you call it, that is your right. host: we will let our guests respond. guest: all interesting points. i appreciate your willingness to buy and read my book even if you suspect you won't agree with it. to your point on religion, you say that the united states does not have any religious underpinning and you should be free to have any religion you want. let's not forget that religion factors into the declaration of independence. the entire american revolution is premised on the idea that there is a god, our creator, who endows us with certain unalienable rights. that idea, which is a very

christian idea, is the basis , the philosophical basis, of the entire country. if you would have a view that would undermine that, that would seem incoherent. jan that, all governments and regimes have some kind of religious basis. this is inevitable. this is very misunderstood, but the first amendment was ratified and there was no established church at the national level. one of the regions -- reasons is that there were many established churches at the state level, and >> we will leave this here and take you live to the white house covid-19 briefing. >> the progress of our vaccination program and fight against this pandemic. as the president communicated our job is to bring the public the truth, the good news and bad. we are at a period where there is a fair amount of both. we are making real progress even admits to continue challenges.