Michael Knowles

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome host of the Michael Knowles show, Michael Knowles. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. It is a pleasure to be back at CPAC. Oh, stop it. Get out of here. Come on. Come on. I love you. I love you more. Come on. Thank you very much. Thank you to Matt and to the rest of the team for the invitation. It is a special honor to be at CPAC this year because I think this year I may be the only speaker who is not actively planning to run for president in 2024. Obviously President Trump is running again. I'm noticing a lot of governors and senators and businessmen and Candace. Lots of other people who might be interested. But I am not because I am not old enough so So this this CPAC has relatively low political stakes for me personally But the political stakes for our country are very very high Which is why I suspect so many people are planning to run for president because they're seeing What we're all seeing that when it comes to protecting our country Joe Biden has failed on every point It's not hyperbole, it's not a cheap political shot, it's just a plain fact Our country faces mounting threats on every single front Inflation is at 40-year highs Illegal immigration is at all-time highs and for the first time since World War two We've seen the outbreak of a major war in Europe a war that we are funding to the tune of a hundred billion dollars with no end in sight Now there is one silver lining to that particular storm cloud Which is that I believe we can now all write off Zelensky as a dependent on our tax returns Which will help us recoup a little bit of that money, maybe Basic aspects of life are breaking down Marriage rates and birth rates are at all-time lows in recent years for the first time in history Our life expectancy has declined driven largely by suicides and deaths of despair drug overdoses Our nation allegedly the most advanced on earth can't even protect its own citizens from street criminals The murder rate has reached its highest level in nearly three decades Many conservatives are tempted to throw up their hands The challenges seem too enormous the conservative optimists differ from the conservative pessimists Only in as much as the conservative pessimists say that things can't get any worse and the conservative optimists say oh, yes they can Things might get worse, but they don't have to These problems are not as complicated as many people would have us believe most of these problems are pretty simple The patron saint of this conference Ronald Reagan was once mocked for making this point The liberals Reagan said say we offer simple answers to complex problems Well, perhaps there is a simple answer not an easy answer But simple if you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want a national policy Based on what we know in our hearts is morally, right? Ronald Reagan did his part He did his part But we don't need to look back to the 1980s to see the wisdom of these words We can look around us today and not very far from home Until recently El Salvador was the most dangerous country on earth Today it is one of the safest countries in Latin America El Salvador is president naive Bukele cut the nation's murder rate in half in just one year How did he do it? Well? He built a big prison and put all the criminals in it Seems pretty simple He humiliated the criminals. He knocked down their symbols and their monuments and he enforced the law I'm sure it wasn't easy, but it was simple demoralized the bad guys Encourage the good guys Pursue a national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally, right? President Bukele explained the secret to his nation's improbable success He said the nation was turning back to God Turning back to the most important values honor Loyalty courage love for our fellow man He said those values had been degraded in El Salvador as they are now degrading in our own country But it wasn't too late How he asked could a nation not rise up with values such as those? If one of the weakest countries on earth can do it, why can't we I think we can I think we can Unfortunately Unfortunately many conservatives think we might not be able to because though conservatives have many virtues We're intelligent. We're funny devilishly handsome unfortunately sometimes conservatives lack imagination We suffer from low expectations We think that the thing that we can most hope for is that we halt the left exactly where it is Preserve the status quo and hope we don't lose any more ground It sometimes feels as if all conservatives do is defend the policies that the liberals fought for ten years ago The clearest example of this is the battle over transgenderism on the one side of the debate You've got the liberals who argue that third graders should be taught to change their sex in schools on The other side of the debate you've got the conservatives who say that we should wait until fourth grade Doesn't seem like much of a difference to me The problem with transgenderism is not that it's inappropriate for children under the age of nine the problem with transgenderism is that it isn't true the problem With transgenderism is that it puts forward a delusional vision of human nature that denies the reality and importance of sexual difference and complementarity The problem with transgenderism is that its acceptance at any level necessarily entails the complete destruction of women's bathrooms women's sports all of the specific rights and spaces that women currently enjoy There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism It is all or nothing if transgenderism is true if men really can become women then it's true for everybody of all ages if Transgenderism is false as it is if men really can't become women as they cannot Then it's false for everybody, too And if it's false Then we should not indulge it Especially since that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of so many people if it is false then for the good of society and Especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely the whole preposterous ideology at every level It's simple it is as simple as the advice Don Corleone gave to Johnny Fontaine you can act like a man What's the matter with you? We talk a lot about rights and rights are very important But so are duties and men have a duty to act like men. It's not complicated some people Some people maybe not the people in this room But in the online and television audience, they're probably clutching their pearls. It's such a clear and simple statement. I Don't know why do these people forget? Transgenderism did not exist as a political matter until about eight years ago when Barack Obama and some liberals in North Carolina introduced it through military policy and bathroom ordinances eight years ago the notion that a man of any age had some sort of Right to strap on stilettos and read a book to your kids that would have been met with nothing but laughter and scorn by everybody in the country and then a handful of devoted radical left-wing activists pushed Relentlessly to normalize this crazy notion and the craziest part is the conservatives now want to meet them halfway But there is no meeting halfway between truth and falsehood between reality and delusion There's no neutrality We are either gaining ground or we are losing ground meeting the liberals halfway Will always take us all the way down their road to perdition in the long run always That's the story of the last 50 years This is what happens over the last 50 years the liberals introduced some crazy idea that conservatives briefly oppose it The liberals stand firm and the conservatives cave, and then you know what they say they say okay We're fine with that crazy idea work, but the thing the liberals are saying now We're fine with that, but that new idea we oppose that that's crazy when the feminists of the 1970s started burning their bras and saying that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle the conservatives They said that's crazy Then what happened? They cave the conservatives cave they said feminism is fine, but all that sexual revolution stuff That's crazy all that village people stuff over there. That's crazy And then what happened they cave they said the sexual revolution stuff is fine, but transgenderism. Oh, no. I'm sorry first They said redefining marriage. Oh that would be crazy Then what happened? They caved then they say okay the redefinition of marriage. That's fine, but that transgenderism stuff. That's crazy Then what happened now, they're saying transgenderism is fine, but just don't trans the kids. That's crazy in fact what they're saying now is Transing the kids in some cases is fine. Just don't trans the really little kids that would be crazy and So it goes that's how it goes it was ever thus from the moment the liberals accepted the conservatives rather accepted the liberals premise in the 70s that men and women are Interchangeable the moment they went along with the bra-burning feminists it was all lost because Transgenderism flows naturally from that premise and conservatives became to quote Michael Malice Progressives driving the speed limit they offered voters not a choice, but an echo to quote Phyllis Schlafly You know there's one issue on which we haven't caved That would be the issue of life, and you want to hear a crazy coincidence It's the only issue on which we've won It's the issue on which we stood firm. We didn't meet anybody halfway. We said murder is wrong We're not going to give up and now Roe v. Wade is gone deader than disco No coincidence National decline is not inevitable It is only inevitable if we believe that it is if we give up if we give up and give in to popular and destructive Fashions as though they could ever supplant simple and eternal truths Cardinal Manning said there is a day to come which will reverse the confident judgments of men Those men say we offer simple answers to complex problems. I hope we still do I Hope that we still have the simplicity and the courage to say that men ought to act like men That criminals ought to go to jail That marriage real marriage the kind between a man and a woman is the fundamental building block of our society the basic Unchangeable political unit that our Republic was built for a moral and religious people and so our country founded as a shining city on a hill should always give glory to God and Relentlessly pursue what we know in our hearts is morally, right? No matter the odds no matter the consequences no matter the passing fashions of the day Thank you very much