Ep. 1757 - We're Officially Not Not At War
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This is Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. Watch Parenting, available exclusively on Daily Wire Plus. We're dealing with misbehaviors with our son. Our 13-year-old throws tantrums. Our son turned to some substance abuse. Go to dailywireplus.com today. We are officially not, not at war in Iran. We're not, it's not, we're not quite at war. Are we at war? We're not, we're definitely not, not at war, but it's official.

It's coming from the top levels of the government. By officially, I don't mean by an act of Congress. I don't even mean by an Oval Office decree. I mean we are officially not at war via a post on Truth Social, which in our constitutional system actually is all that it takes. So what's happening now? What comes next? I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. The Michael Knowles Show.

Welcome back to the show. Did the founding fathers have less access to education than 12-year-olds today?

That is what a liberal lady has gone viral saying. We will examine that very actually widespread belief and why it's totally wrong. First, though, I want to tell you about American Investment Council. Made in America means something to our country's private equity investors. When you invest $700 billion annually in American companies and the 13 million workers and families they support, you're investing in the success of Main Street.

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by the American Investment Council. We are officially not at war. Here's the post on Truth Social that did it. From President Trump yesterday, 10.55 a.m. We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran. That first word there is what gives it. We? Hold on. Who is we here? I thought it was Israel's war and we had nothing to do with it.

Like around the same time, you had a U.S. senator saying, you know, we're doing X, Y, and Z over the skies of Iran. He said, hold on, we? Well, no, we're supporting. Are we supporting? Are we leading? Are we involved? Are we not involved? Are we defending? In any case, President Trump's exact words, we now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran. Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment and plenty of it, but it doesn't compare to American-made, conceived, and manufactured stuff that

Nobody does it better than the good old USA. So I don't mean to make light of America potentially going to war. We're kind of in Schrodinger's war. We're simultaneously at war and not at war. But that's a funny line at the end.

That is a funny line. You know, look, he's even showing respect to Iran. This is a hallmark of President Trump's foreign policy. He shows respect to leaders that we don't like, to North Korea, to Putin, to Iran. He gives them credit, and it actually serves a purpose because it allows them to keep some of their dignity and hopefully come to a deal, though we'll see. The time for a deal is clearly running out in Iran. But he says, look, they did a good job. They did their best, but we...

None of that stuff compares to old American made conceived stuff. Nobody does it better than the good old USA. Like it could be a commercial for Boeing or for or for Raman or something like that. OK, then the next tweet or the truth social post. We know exactly where the so-called Supreme Leader is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there. We are not going to take him out. Kill, at least not for now.

But we don't want missiles shot at civilians or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin. Thank you for your attention to this matter. So two things going on here. One, President Trump is presenting two options for this war. This can either be a war that just takes out your nuclear program or sets it back five or ten years, or this could be a regime change war. That's the Trump perspective. That's the perspective of the United States.

He's giving a little carrot to the Iranians. He's saying, look, we know where the Ayatollah is. We could easily decapitate this regime. We're not going to do that yet. We're going to let you keep your country. But one, we don't want any attacks on U.S. soldiers. And two, you got to give up the nuclear program.

So the second thing that's going on here is he's giving the Iranians an excuse, a face-saving excuse and a legitimate incentive not to attack American soldiers. Because that's what Americans are really concerned about here. It's not that Americans are super concerned about taking out the Iranian nuclear program or even dropping bombs on Iran. It's not that we have any particular love of the Ayatollahs. But we don't want reprisals on American troops, which would then trigger America to become even more involved in this war and could bog us down in another dusty Mideastern war for 20 years. We don't want that.

OK, and Trump gets that, which is why he's saying, look, we are not necessarily pushing for regime change. The Israeli government wants regime change. No question about that. I think that's even implicit in the name Operation Rising Lion, which which is a double entendre. It refers to Judah, you know, refers to the state of Israel, but it also refers to the deposed Shah and his son, the Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who we'll get to in one moment. The symbol of the old Shah, the lion. Oh, maybe we're talking about regime change here.

But this would be an area where the goals of the state of Israel and the goals of the United States are a little bit different. It's not that they're totally different, but they're different. They're distinct. Trump, I think, would be happy just setting the nuclear program back a little bit and keeping the Ayatollahs in power. The Israelis clearly want regime change. And then Trump posts, not to put too fine a point on it, all caps, unconditional surrender. So whatever the nuances and the details, which are changing a little bit by the moment, Trump is making clear here that

We're involved in the war. Now, everyone knew that. Everybody with two functioning brain cells knew that. But we're involved in the war. And we can do that. You're going to hear libertarians and you're going to hear isolationists and non-interventionists and all these people say the president has no right to do this. We have not had a formal declaration of war from the Congress. We don't need one. We don't need one. The president is the commander in chief. The president has a lot of power. It's good that the president has a lot of power.

But the president really, whether you think it's good or bad that the president has power, he has this power. Under the War Powers Act, the president can do basically whatever he wants with the military for 90 days, 60 days, and then 30 days to withdraw. And you don't need a declaration of war by Congress. And the way Trump is looking at this war, I don't think he wants to get bogged down in some major regime change war for 10 years. I think he wants to have a precise military operation or to assist the Israelis in a precise military operation and then get out.

Like we saw in the first term with dropping the Moab, like we saw in the first term with taking out Qasem Soleimani, the top Iranian general, like we saw all over the place. Regardless of what you think, though, because I did the show yesterday on how people are accusing Trump of breaking a promise he never made. You know, saying he said he'd keep us out of war in Iran. The guy consistently for 10 years has said we're not going to let Iran have a bomb. He doesn't want to get bogged down in these long term regime change wars. But likewise, he's not going to let Iran have a bomb. And he has a pretty muscular foreign policy.

People just seem to be confused about what Trump is. I'm not confused about it. I've been saying for a long time, he's not a libertarian and he's not an isolationist. And if you voted for him because you think he's some arch libertarian, arch isolationist, then that's on you because he's not. And he's never pretended to be that thing. And if that's what you read into him, then you were just making up fantasies. So sorry that you got it wrong, but that is not him.

I know the term isolationist is a little bit of a pejorative. So the term that the people that the critics of isolationists would call isolationists, the term that those people prefer would probably be non-interventionist. Whatever term you want to use, that ain't Trump. He's not even really a nationalist as much as he is an imperialist who wants to put America's interests first, not merely as some kind of yeoman republic looking in on itself, but America's interests all over the world. In Greenland, in Canada, in Panama, in China, in Russia and Ukraine and in the Middle East.

He recognizes that we're an imperial power, and he's totally right about that. So then the question is, what is the American interest here? Why are we doing this? Why are we involved in this war in the Middle East? There are some good arguments to be somewhat involved. I don't think there are very good arguments to be all the way involved, but there are some arguments to be somewhat involved.

However, there is one popular argument going around that I think is not convincing. This argument comes from a guy that I quite like, actually, but I think he's not making a good argument here. And that is Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council. America needs Israel more than Israel needs America.

By standing with Israel, we unlock the blessings of God. As God promised Abraham in Genesis 12, 3, I will bless those who bless you and I will curse him who curses you. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. The prophet Joel says nations will be held to account by how they treat Israel.

For behold, in those days and at that time I will gather all the nations and I will enter into judgment with them there on the account of my people, my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations. They have also divided up my land.

This is not just about ancient empires. This is a prophetic declaration that includes all modern nations, including the United States. For those who say we cannot afford to support Israel, I say we cannot afford not to. If we abandon our support for Israel, we will soon discover that the account of God's blessing on America is overdrawn. We have long benefited from the undeserved favor of God.

This is more than geopolitical. It is about biblical truth. So we have to support the nation state of Israel because if we don't, God will be totally finished blessing America. That's the argument. I don't quite buy that. I have much, much more to say, but first go to puretalk.com slash Knowles. Pure Talk, my wireless company, a veteran-led company, believes every man and woman who has faithfully served this country deserves to proudly fly an American flag.

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and to switch to America's wireless company, PureTalk. I love these guys. I've had my PureTalk phone in service for years at this point. You can also, if you're traveling overseas this summer, you can take it overseas. They have overseas service. And they're great. They support you and your values. And you're also, most importantly, going to save a lot of money. PureTalk.com slash Knowles. I like Tony Perkins.

Do not take this to be a broad attack on Tony Perkins. I think he's right about a ton of things, and he's done a lot of great work. This argument, I think, is pretty weak, though he comes by it honestly. This speaks to a divide among Protestants.

And the Catholic view is different from both of these views. But there is a little bit of a divide over the meaning of Israel and the place of the Jewish people in history among Protestants between dispensationalism, dispensational theology, and covenant theology. And dispensationalism is a relatively novel concept proposed and promoted by John Nelson Darby. It's what? It's about two centuries old or so. Yeah.

And then there's covenant theology. Dispensationalism holds that God, as we approach the end times, is going to deal really specifically with the Jews. And an implication of that is that the modern nation state of Israel is really essential to God's plan and is synonymous with biblical Israel. And we need to

We have, as Tony Perkins is pointing out here, we have this religious obligation, not merely political, but also religious obligation to support the modern nation state of Israel. Covenant theology would say, no, God's basically done with the Jews as a people and is just dealing with the church now and forget about the Jews. They don't really matter anymore.

The Catholic Church, which is my church, you know, I'm a mackerel-snapping papist myself, actually takes the truth of both of these positions, the good stuff in both of these positions. Namely...

The Catholic Church recognizes that the church is the new Israel, as we are described in. That's amazing. As I said that, the light just came on in the studio out of the blue. That was a little eerie. That seemed almost providential. That the church is the new Israel, the spiritual Israel. This is attested to in documents of the Second Vatican Council, agentes. This is the traditional understanding of the church, even among Protestants.

However, that doesn't mean that God is totally done with the Jews and doesn't care about the Jews as a people anymore. The Catholic Church also holds that God has a plan for the Jews as a people. So you kind of get a little bit of both of these positions in the Catholic view. But what you don't get in the Catholic view or even just the broad traditional view within a variety of Christian perspectives is the notion that

The United States has a religious obligation to support the modern nation state of Israel. That, I think, is pretty weak. There are plenty of reasons to have broad support or an alliance with the modern nation state of Israel. But I don't think it's a religious obligation, and I don't think that God turns his back on the United States because we don't support the modern nation state of Israel.

Other politicians or other political voices want us all the way in on this war in the Middle East for different reasons, not for religious reasons, but for security reasons like Lindsey Graham. Can you guarantee that? Can President Trump in any form? I mean, can you make the commitment that this would not lead to a longer war?

I can guarantee you that if the Ayatollah gets a nuclear weapon, he will use it. I believe that with all my heart and soul. So the men and women who serve, they're the ones going, not people answering a poll. And if you ask them, would you be willing to risk your life to stop the Ayatollah from having a nuclear weapon?

All of them would say yes because it makes their country, our country safer. So we live in a world where you've got to confront problems. You want to avoid World War III? Learn the lessons from World War II. People in World War II appeased Hitler to the point that it got so much out of hand. We had a world war.

and 60 million people got killed. So we live in a world where you pay now or you pay later. Let's stop this threat before he gets a nuclear weapon. Let's end this reign of terror. Let's do it now. It's not going to take 20 months, but I can't guarantee your freedom and your safety unless we're willing to fight for it. I can guarantee you this. If we don't fight for our freedom, we will lose it.

Yeah, well, Senator. Okay, so I'm sure most people could have scripted Lindsey Graham's response to this without hearing a word that he actually said.

We need to go in, boots on the ground. We need to take over Iran. We need to be there indefinitely, however long it takes. And we have to do this because if we don't, we're Neville Chamberlain, and every global conflict is World War II, and every enemy is Hitler. And they threaten our freedom, and they're going to pose an existential threat. So we need to occupy every country in the Middle East and incite revolutions there and...

There's just no appetite for this. There was not a lot of appetite for this the first time around in 2003 with Iraq. And there's really no appetite after Iraq. And no one really believes this.

Even the people who are open to some military support for this war in Iran, even people who recognize that America has alliances, not just with the state of Israel, but with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. And we kind of get along with Qatar a little bit and Bahrain. And we recognize their regional kinds of axes here. And Iran has alliances with Russia and China and Venezuela and North Korea. So we kind of want to oppose them. And even the people who take a more nuanced view of foreign policy.

I guess you would say, especially the people who take a more nuanced view of foreign policy. Don't go along with Lindsey Graham's prescription here. There is zero appetite among the Republican base.

to go in and just have American troops be sitting targets in Iran, to overthrow the government of Iran, to occupy that place forever where we'll supposedly be greeted as liberators and where we can be totally confident that we won't make the situation worse. Really? Is that what happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya? You remember Libya? Oh, that was going to be easy. That was going to be two days. And we totally botched that from the political standpoint. It was just, we're not buying that.

So then what about regime change? Should we boot out the mullahs? The mullahs are terrible. They hate America. They've been a problem for us for 45 years now. So it's not that they're great. But I, for one, tend to prefer the devil we know to the devil we don't.

So when even going back all the way to Saddam Hussein, when people call to oust Saddam Hussein, people call to oust Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, people call to oust Bashar Assad in Syria. My inclination is, well, hold on. Yeah, maybe those guys are a little rough. Maybe we don't like them. But are we sure that the devil we don't know is really better than the devil we do know? I'm not positive of that. In fact, I'm deeply skeptical of that. Same thing in Iran. Iran is a real country.

If you just blow up the political leadership there, who's to say the situation's not going to get worse? Now, there is one little inkling that you could have regime change in Iran that is more successful than it was in Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya or elsewhere. And the one little wrinkle is because Iran is a real country and has more of a political order to it, we got this guy, the crown prince Reza Pahlavi, who is the son of the deposed Shah of Iran.

So with the question, who comes next? One potential answer to that is, well, what about the crown prince? You put that guy in there. Iran has a living history of this guy's family ruling Iran. Maybe he could just come in and take it over and you'd have relative stability, even ousting the government. That is certainly what the crown prince wants to do. There is a campaign for liberation.

that we've been committed to all these years. The moment is approaching very fast. The regime is on the verge of collapse. We see elements within the regime already talking defections. They get in touch with us. We see a leader who is now hiding in a bunker like a rat, while many high elements are taking flight from Iran. I think all of this is conducive to something that may very soon happen. And finally, my fellow compatriots will be able to

overcome. And of course, there's a plan not only for this phase of our struggle, which is liberation from this regime, but what happens right next, the transition to what we hope will culminate in a democratic outcome. Okay, so this is by far best case scenario in regime change. If there is regime change, best case scenario, we install the crown prince, we basically reinstall the Shah, and you have

a familiar political order in Iran that the Iranian people had up until 1979. We've already killed a lot of the top military leadership there, or the Israelis have, and we've supported it, and it's unclear where Israel begins and we end. But in any case, you keep a lot of the apparatus. You don't make the mistake we made in Iraq, where you disband the Iraqi army or something. You keep as much of the political apparatus as you can tolerate, and you just impose this new guy there, the crown prince, and then hopefully everything goes all right. So look,

Maybe. To me, that is the strongest case the pro-regime change side could possibly make. But there's a wrinkle to that too. And it actually gets to one of my biggest political hobby horses. You know, I've joked, am I joking, over the years about Jacobitism. Jacobitism, which is this movement that came out of the UK because James II of England, King of England,

was deposed in the 17th century. And he was thrown out by parliament in an illegitimate act of parliamentary supremacy. And they dragged in these interlopers, William and Mary of Orange, and James II went into exile. James II's grandson, Charles Edward Stuart,

decided that he was going to mount a return to the throne. The Bonnie Prince, Bonnie Prince Charlie. And there are all these beautiful legends that come out of all these great songs. You know, ye Jacobites by name, well be king but Charlie. My Bonnie, you know the song My Bonnie? My Bonnie lies over the ocean. My Bonnie, that song, it's not just a love song. It's actually about Bonnie Prince Charlie. So there's this whole romantic lore that comes out of this because the grandson of the deposed rightful king is going to come back and reclaim the throne. All sorts of Christian echoes to this.

But when he actually tried to do it, it was a complete disaster. And the ground of Scotland was soaked in the blood of the Jacobites. And after the Battle of Culloden, he went off and lived on the continent for the rest of history, the rest of his life, rather. And Jacobites, actually, some of them came to America, and it just flopped. So there is a real risk, even for the people, the Lindsey Grimms of the world.

Or even the people who say, look, this is going to be an easy regime change. It's not Iraq. It's not Libya. It's not Afghanistan. It's going to be easy. We got a guy. We're going to put him in. It's going to be. Well, does Reza Pahlavi have the goods? Can he do it? I'm a little skeptical. I grant there is a better chance for successive regime change in Iran than there was in other countries. Can he really do it? Are we going to end up with another Bonnie Prince Charlie here?

And another country thrown into chaos in the Middle East and more regional instability that takes our attention off places like Ukraine and Russia, places off places like Taiwan. That's the question. Are we at war? We are somewhat at war, but we're somewhat at war in Ukraine.

Okay, when we, you know, the United States, U.S. politicians will refer to our winning the war in Ukraine, our standing up against Putin, whatever. It's still the Ukrainians technically fighting, but we're supplying them a lot of the military equipment and we're advising them. Same thing's going on here. Empires fight wars, but empires can also fall too if they stretch themselves too thin. Those are the stakes right now. The person who had the best take on this, I think,

Best explanation of this, of anyone who's gone on TV or gone on social media, is actually the vice president, J.D. Vance. We'll get into what his perspective is, which is a little different from a lot of what we've heard. If your razor company takes more pride in the month of June than it does in giving you a close, clean shave, it's time to switch to Jeremy's razors. Five stainless steel blades that destroy stubble and corporate pandering. A precision trimmer for clean lines and tight corners, and a lubricating aloe strip, plus...

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J.D. Vance tweets out this long post. He posts these long explainer posts, and because he's quite intelligent and quite articulate, and I think his political views are quite in line, not only with the base, but especially with young conservatives. I'm just going to read a little bit of this. He says...

Look, I'm seeing this from the inside and I'm admittedly biased toward our president, my friend, but there's a lot of crazy stuff on social media. So I want to address some things directly on the Iran issue. First, POTUS has been amazingly consistent over 10 years that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. This is funny. This post came out yesterday saying,

a couple hours or something after I wrapped my show. And I was pleased to see that first point because I said, oh, right, that was the open of my show. It was basically like, hey, you can attack Trump because you don't want to go to war in the Middle East or whatever, but you can't attack him for lying. He's been telling you for 10 years straight, he is not going to allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Then J.D. goes on. He says, Iran could have civilian nuclear power without enrichment, but Iran rejected that. Meanwhile, they've enriched uranium far above the level necessary for any civilian purpose.

Great. This is the cause's belly right here. You know, this is the justification for some kind of action, at least on the part of Israel. And then he says, the president has shown remarkable restraint in keeping our military's focus on protecting our troops and protecting our citizens. He may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment. That decision ultimately belongs to the president. And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue.

And having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people's goals. Whatever he does, that is his focus. That is precisely my view. That is precisely my view. The vice president clearly has his finger on the pulse because at least he's got his finger on the pulse of my political views. This is precisely my view.

It's not that all of a sudden we want to go back in and drop bombs in the Middle East and swap out regimes and lead revolutions. I don't want that. Maybe Lindsey Graham wants that. I don't want that. I don't think most Republicans want that. But likewise, Trump has been consistent on not allowing Iran to get a nuclear weapon. One can question how close Iran is to a nuclear weapon. We've been hearing that Iran's close to a nuclear weapon for 45 years, but there have been some setbacks to the Iranian nuclear program. And anyway, I don't know.

I don't think Trump is just lying to us or something. And I think he's a pretty shrewd guy. And I think, I guess, ultimately, when we're talking all the way, what we're talking about at the top of the show, the War Powers Act, the fact that the executive has a lot of discretion for the use of the military, at least for a couple months, really three months. I think Trump has earned at least some trust on this issue. We don't put all of our faith in princes. We don't do anything like that. But I think Trump has earned at least some trust on this issue.

I think the people who are screaming and panicking and always say that the walls are closing in and Trump's about to destroy the country on the left and some people on the right have made themselves out to be fools time and time again. I agree with the vice president. I think Trump has earned some trust on this issue. He's giving us a little bit of an inside view here. I'm not working in the White House. I don't know what's going on. That's the inside view. I think Trump has shown a great deal of restraint so far. So as I say, we let him cook a little bit. I think he...

Not ad infinitum, but for now, I think he's earned a fair bit of trust on the issue. Okay, speaking of lucidity, lucid views, really interesting news story just came out. Flashes of lucidity. This is from El Pai. It's a science article.

Flashes of lucidity before death, the debate shaking up neuroscience, near-death experiences, and terminal lucidity raise questions about what we know about consciousness. And it opens up with one of these stories that many of us have experienced, which is you have a loved one,

Well, I'll just read the testimony. My mother had advanced Alzheimer's. She no longer recognized us and seemed indifferent to the strangers who visited her once or twice a week. The day before she died, however, everything changed. Not only did she recognize us, but she wanted to know what had happened to each of us in the past year. This happens where dementia patients, Alzheimer's patients who are really out of it, who might not even be able to speak right at the end, they kind of snap back in.

Totally. Nancy Reagan talked about this. Nancy Reagan said that the variant, Ronald Reagan, had been out of it for years. And then finally, moments before he died, he just opened his eyes, looked right at her. He was totally back on, totally plugged in. What explains that? I love this science article because often, and increasingly actually, scientific studies...

prove that scientism is nonsense and prove more classical and indeed Christian philosophical and anthropological assumptions. For one, that we're not just matter, that we're not just stuff. There is a modern presumption, a false one, in my humble opinion, that our identity, our consciousness, our soul, if you want to call it that, is really just our brain.

that our mind and our brain are synonymous, and that what we refer to as the mind or the intellect or even the soul is just synapses firing off in matter. That is not possible. And the classical Christian tradition and the scholastic tradition and people like St. Thomas Aquinas, not a day goes by on the show I don't mention something from St. Thomas Aquinas. These guys demonstrate that quite easily. The way St. Thomas does in Summa Contra Gentiles or the Summa Theologiae is to point out

That the intellect or the mind receives certain forms, forms using the language of Plato and Aristotle. So like to bring it down to earth, the eye receives colors. That's the kind of stuff, substances that the eye receives.

So the eye doesn't receive smells. You don't smell through your eye. The eye doesn't receive texture. You don't feel through your eye. You see through your eye. Colors. That's what the eye deals with. What does the intellect deal with? The intellect doesn't just deal with material stuff.

Your hands deal with material stuff. I'm feeling the microphone. I'm feeling the leftist ear's tumbler. I'm smelling the delicious Mayflower cigars with my nose. But the mind, the intellect, doesn't just deal with material stuff. The intellect deals with abstract things, immaterial substances, notions of justice, of equality, mathematics, things that are abstract. Therefore, the intellect cannot merely be matter, cannot merely be a body.

Because the body cannot receive things and deal in things that are so beyond it, that are immaterial. That's what Thomas Aquinas would say. That's what the classical philosophical and Christian tradition holds. Modern people say, no, that's all just dumb. The soul is fake. It's imaginary. We're all just matter. Karl Marx is a materialist. A lot of modern philosophy is materialism. Well, science is saying no. Because let's just say that the modern people are right.

And the brain is just matter. It's just stuff. Well, and the mind is just stuff. Alzheimer's disease is plaque on the brain. Alzheimer's disease is irreversible. There's no cure for it. And you just get plaque on your brain and your brain stops working. And that's why your memory fails. And that's why you lose your ability to communicate. And, you know, you become kind of a vegetable.

If that is all that your intellect, I'm not saying the intellect doesn't relate to the brain. It certainly does. I'm not saying that the mind doesn't relate to the body. I'm certainly not saying the soul doesn't relate to the body. But if that's all that it is, terminal lucidity makes absolutely no sense. But if your intellect is something different,

Then terminal lucidity makes sense. Near-death experiences make sense, where people can, as they are clinically dead, can see their bodies, can describe the operating room that they were ostensibly dead in, that they wouldn't have seen with their own eyes. There is, to quote Hamlet, since we're quoting old people,

There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our modern philosophy, Horatio. No question about that. Now, speaking of intellect and modern prejudices that are dumb and the old gods of the copybook headings being vindicated, there is a notion that I've heard since I was in school, and now it's gone viral on TikTok, namely that we know so much more

than the founding fathers, than the old philosophers, than the men who built our civilization. We know so much more than them. And I'll tell you why we don't. And also terrible new law out of the UK. Horrific, horrifying new law. Speaking of modern moral idiocy. The global phenomenon, The Chosen, the series that has captured audiences around the world, has arrived with its most powerful season yet. The table is set. The final hours are approaching. Every moment, every struggle, every sacrifice has led to this.

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Wow. And of course, of course, this comment was picked by the Drummer's Workshop Norms Music. I really don't see it, but Drummer's Workshop Norms Music has probably picked more of my favorite comments of the day over the years. Despite all the viewers of the show, then this one might be my favorite ever. Michael is like, I hate to say, I had told you so. I had told you so. I had told you so. That's good. That's good, man. That's good. Okay. Are the founding fathers dumber than a modern day 12 year old?

When the founding fathers made this great country, I'm gonna stop you right there. The founding fathers owned slaves. The founding fathers had less access to education than a modern day 12 year old. They don't know anything. I don't care what they wanted. I don't care what they think. It's unconstitutional. I should hope so.

The Constitution was written by people who didn't think women should vote. The Constitution was written by people who had 15 year old wives dying in childbirth frequently. The Constitution was written by people who had little cartoon Elmer Fudd shotguns, not automatic war machines capable of ripping down a hundred children in a minute and half and will again. Point is to change the whole to progressively make better decisions so we do not repeat the atrocities of our ancestors.

Okay, so I think she got a few of the facts a little off there. The Elmer Fudge shotgun. I think she got a few, but her thesis is totally wrong. And I've been told this thesis since I was in school, and you might have too. Namely, we are so much smarter, not only than the Founding Fathers, than Aristotle and Plato. We just know so much more. We have, I have, in this little magical device, virtually the sum total of human knowledge at my fingertips.

And in this girl's defense, she does, she qualifies her language. She says we have access to, the modern day 12 year old has access to more information and education than the founding fathers. That's almost plausibly true because we have iPhones and stuff, but it's not, it's practically, it's not true. Practically, we have much less access to education than the founding fathers or than Plato and Aristotle did, or really than an illiterate medieval serf. We have much less access practically.

And here's why. Yes, we have public education, but public education doesn't teach us. Not only does it not teach us very much and very important things, it teaches us a lot of things that aren't true about our country, about our history. It totally ignores philosophy consciously. And when it does make philosophical arguments, it sort of hides them and it says things that are false. All the way down to the level of human anthropology and the most obvious example being telling boys that they can be girls. So public school, that's out.

But even all the way up to the most elite, prestigious colleges and universities, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, all these places, most people don't get to go to those places. And the ones who do are told things that are false. In some ways, it's better for a lot of people not to go to those schools. The founding fathers, one, were very well educated. And two, were told things that were broadly true.

So even if they didn't have iPhones, they had much readier access to true information. And they had teachers that were much more inclined to teach them true things. They had much better pedagogy. We don't know very much. We are really barbarians. You know, I was reading a line from Tertullian the other day, the ancient Christian writer. I think it was Tertullian. Might have been another early Christian writer, but I think it was Tertullian, who said, he said, you know, we Christians, we're different from the pagans in that sense.

We share everything with each other, except our wives. And the pagans are the opposite. They don't share anything with each other, except their wives. And you look around today and you think, wow, man, everything old is new again. The ancient pagans considered themselves very tolerant. They would accept any god into their pantheon. But you just can't make exclusive claims about there only being one god.

And they were pretty fun-loving and free. You could live your life however you want. You do you. You know, love is love, man. And they would do a lot of weird sex stuff. There was like sacred prostitution in their pagan temples. And they would do drugs. And they would get really drunk at their festivals. And they were just, we have this idea because it was in the old timey past that paganism is some old foreign thing that we can't possibly relate. Paganism is just basically what we have today.

And the modern-day pagans partake of all the same vices, the weird sex stuff, and the drugs. They partake of all the same philosophical errors, the misbegotten view of tolerance, and the notion that a kind of limitless false religion will somehow be conducive to civic virtue. All the same stuff. And they're leading us down the same rotten path.

It's the very same rotten path. You know, there's a claim in antiquity that Christianity was the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire. And as we now, we're discussing empire a lot because we're involved in these imperial wars in Ukraine, in Iran, in all of them, maybe some more popping off.

And they say, you know, actually the cause of the fall of Rome was Christianity. Back when we worshiped the old pagan gods, things were fine. But then once Christianity came about, all of a sudden Rome started to crack. And St. Augustine writes City of God in part to counter that narrative. He says, no, no, no, the issue is not Christianity. The issue is that paganism has led you all so far astray that you no longer even have the good old solid stoic virtues of Rome. You've become total derelicts.

Christianity is still being persecuted. Okay, it's not that Christianity is not the true religion. It's not that morality and virtue have led you astray. It's your old gods and turning away from the best that you can find in natural religion and embracing all of the vices. That's kind of where we are. And the kicker on top of all of it is we think that we're geniuses. We think that we're so moral. We promote orgies and drug-filled bacchanals, and we think that that's the height of morality.

We promote nonsense and we think that we're geniuses. We say boys are girls and we say, wow, we're so much smarter than the founding fathers. Pretty pathetic. Okay. Speaking of children, one last story to get to before we head out of here. The UK has just passed a horrific new law. UK lawmakers have just voted to decriminalize abortion basically at any stage of pregnancy. So they voted yesterday to decriminalize abortion in England and Wales and

because a woman, a lawmaker, argued that it was cruel to prosecute women for ending a pregnancy. No woman would be prosecuted up to 24 weeks, well after a baby is able to live on his own outside in the womb, well after a baby is recognizable even to the most morally obtuse people as being a baby. But no, even late, 30 weeks, 39 weeks, I'd be wrong to...

prosecute a woman for that. Labor MP, Tonya Antoniazzi. When did they let the Italians into the UK? She says, this piece of legislation will only take women out of the criminal justice system because they're vulnerable and they need our help. Just what public interest is this serving? This is not justice, it's cruelty and it's got to end. What purpose, what public interest does it serve to protect babies who are totally recognizable as babies, 39 weeks and six days old,

What public interest is served by not allowing butchers to chop them up as they exit the womb? This amendment to the law passed 379 to 137, wasn't even close, means that in practice it will legalize abortion up until the moment of birth. Totally barbaric, totally pagan. You know, in Christianity, abortion has always been condemned, going all the way back to the Didache, going back to the earliest catechism we have consistently throughout the history of the church. Various schismatic principles

supposedly Christian groups have embraced abortion, but they're vile heretics and they'll have to answer for that. The church has been consistent for 2,000 years. In paganism, in classical antiquity, paganism killed babies. Paganism had gay marriage. Nero

got gay married because he castrated a slave boy. I think he got gay married twice, actually. By the way, if you want to argue that same-sex marriage is actually ancient, it's not some innovation, it's not some novel thing. No, no, no, it's actually ancient. Yeah, well, the example you can point to is Nero. That's not a good justification for your policy. But it's not just same-sex marriage, and it's not just abortion, and it's not just the drugs, and it's not just the false conception of tolerance. It's the whole thing. Quite pagan, quite decadent.

I don't even want to call it barbaric because in many ways, when Rome fell, the barbarians were much more moral, had a much keener sense of ethics and morality than the supposedly sophisticated Romans did. What the UK is saying about this law is they're saying this gets rid of an outdated, passe Victorian era protection of innocent babies. What period would you say was more civilized? The Victorian era or today?

The Victorian era when England was on top of the world, or today when London looks like Karachi and the country's falling apart with race riots and rape gangs. Today, when the best law the UK can muster is not to protect its own citizens from foreign invaders and rapists and marauders. No, no, the best law they can muster is to kill more of their own children. What kind of era should we seek to emulate? Modern decadence or the much maligned and much better Victorian era?

It's a lesson. It's a lesson for us too. Well, we're getting a lot of lessons from all around the world, not just the Middle East and not just the UK. These are lessons that we can take to heart at home. You know what I love about our partnership with Helix Sleep? They understand that better sleep means better days. I've been sleeping on mine for months now and the difference is incredible. No more tossing and turning, just pure restorative sleep.

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