Michael Knowles is a young man of whom, until recently, I was unaware. My curiosity was piqued when I saw him on the panel at a conference I attended. What he had to say was not particularly exceptional, so I was surprised when the panel ended to see him mobbed by almost every young person in the room. “Who,” I wondered, “is this?” Subsequently, I learned that Knowles is a podcast star at The Daily Wire.
I also learned that Knowles has a pointed sense of humor. He published a book titled Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide containing 266 blank pages, with bibliography. It was a bestseller. He also has a lot of nerve. At the University of Missouri–Kansas City, he gave a speech on the subject “Men Are Not Women”. The audience was amply larded with protesters who tried to shout him down for being transphobic. It only made him smile. One protester assaulted him by spraying him with some unknown substance. University Chancellor C. Mauli Agrawal admitted that the attacker had “crossed a line,” but praised the protestors and condemned Knowles, alleging that his “professed opinions do not align with our commitment to diversity and inclusion and our goal of providing a welcoming environment to all people, particularly to our LGBT community.” All are welcome, except for Knowles. Agrawal reiterated an “absolute commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and the equal rights of members of the LGBTQ community.” (Whenever you see the word “equity” used in the liberal lexicon, you may be sure that it denies equality – in this case, the equality of Michael Knowles.)
Now Knowles has another bestseller – this time one with words and about words, titled Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds (Regnery, 2022). The subject of the book is the language of political correctness and its subversion of our culture. He does a thorough job of surveying the devastated landscape. There are few sacred cows he doesn’t skewer, including JFK and the Stonewall Riots, which make the book a fun read despite its distressing subject matter. Who thought sanity could be this interesting?
Late in the book, he broaches the underlying theoretical issues of which these things are mere manifestations. He shows his familiarity with the spiritual pathologies of Gnosticism, Manicheanism, and Albigensianism, all precursors of our current malaise, but he doesn’t develop these crucial references in any depth. Had he done so, it would have shed greater light, but it might have also changed the popular character of this work. In any case, it would have been better to mention these precursors at the beginning of the book, so as to alert the reader to the spiritual genealogy of the linguistic subversion he lays before us.
I also wonder if some mention of William of Ockham, the 14th-century father of nominalism, would have been appropriate. Ockham was certainly no Gnostic, but he did separate language from reality. I wonder if any politically correct people have even heard of him? Regardless, Knowles neatly sets forth the metaphysical heart of the issue:
If nature is fixed and objective, and the identity of a speaker cannot change the meaning of the words because the reality to which the words refer exists apart from the speaker; if nature is perfectible and evolves, the identity of the speaker can change the meaning of words because there is nothing separate and enduring to which the words refer.
Knowles mentions Jean-Paul Sartre’s paramour, Simone de Beauvoir, several times and gives some extensive quotations from her loathsome oeuvre. I will only add one in which she asserts that nothing has an a priori identity: “The basis of existentialism is precisely that there is no human nature.” Things no longer have essences; they are without natures. As there is no nature, it’s easy to change things. Simply change the words and things change. The devotees of political correctness believe that their words constitute reality. What they say, is. Knowles nails the ethical consequences of this solipsism: “By its speech codes, political correctness removes responsibility and therefore the possibility of any coherent moral code. Under political correctness, saying the right thing supplants doing the right thing.”
Presciently, Plato in book 3 of The Laws forecast the effect of endless affirmation on the young. Speaking of the Persian ruler’s children, he wrote that no one was allowed “to oppose them in anything,… and compelled everyone else to praise whatever the children said or did.” The children “turned out as one would expect, after having been brought up without any restraint.… They were bursting with luxury and lack of restraint… No child…will ever become outstanding in virtue if he has been brought up in such a way.” Welcome to the political correctness of the sixth century B.C.
Imagine what will happen to today’s college children who are given “gender inclusivity manuals”. One Catholic university instructs faculty and staff on how to be “gender-inclusive” on campus and avoid the “harmful effects of gender stereotyping and misgendering.” They are likely to end up just as did the Persian ruler’s children.
Knowles is an equal opportunity critic, and he limns conservatives repeatedly for good cause. It’s usually for the same reason, but it’s a good one. Its finest articulation appears at the end of the book:
When conservatives eschew any political vision of the good, we do not leave each individual free to pursue his own conscience in the supposedly neutral and value free playing background of secular liberalism, as many seem to believe. Instead, we give our ideological foes free rein to define and enforce their opposite vision of the good, to which everyone will ultimately be forced to submit or else face censorship and ostracism, as we see occurring now in real time.
Knowles thinks that libertarians are particularly at fault with their free market-for-everything ideology (my term, not his), offering as an example one libertarian’s ludicrous defense of drag queen story hours for children at a public library in the name of free speech. Something like this must account for the utterly abysmal failure of the conservative movement to mount a substantive defense of natural marriage in the face of its homosexual alternative. How could something considered so absurd and morally noxious throughout all of recorded history have been so easily accepted today? What were conservatives conserving, if not this? The failure certainly speaks to the hollowness of much of the conservative movement which is Knowles’ target.
They were, unfortunately, speechless. Now that the “Respect for Marriage Act,” a bill that would codify the “right” to same-sex “marriage” into federal law, is being considered in the Senate, conservatives are typically falling back to the religious freedom defense. No one will dare suggest that homosexual “marriage” is undeserving of respect because it is spiritually disordered and corrosive of society. The failure to speak of the morally repulsive, intrinsically evil nature of sodomy lost the marriage issue for conservatives before the battle began.
The last chapter of Speechless is titled, “Back to Methuselah.” In it, Knowles quotes from George Bernard Shaw’s play of that name. The Serpent tells Eve, “And I am very willful, and must have what I want; and I have willed and willed and willed.” The politically correct are glib in calling their verbally noncompliant opponents fascists or even Nazis, but it is they who promote the triumph of the will. But willing does not make it so, nor does speaking strange words. That might be the epitaph for the politically correct generation. Someone should place Michael Knowles’ book on its gravestone.
Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds
By Michael Knowles
Regnery, 2022
360 pages
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“One Catholic university instructs faculty and staff on how to be ‘gender-inclusive’ on campus and avoid the ‘harmful effects of gender stereotyping and misgendering.’ They are likely to end up just as did the Persian ruler’s children.” Why can’t writers be specific? In this instance, why not name that Catholic College?
As far as objective and immutable reality is concerned, there are some who adhere to the notion that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” when it comes to art. No it’s not. We know when a painting is beautiful and when it’s not. I fantasize about standing in the Contemporary Wing of any museum and, as people approach a Lichtenstein for example, comment, “What an ugly piece of crap.”
Yes, it’s high time for radical truth-telling among conservatives.
Well, I just don’t know what to say, I’m speechless!
Thank you R. Reilly, a wonderful article. You worked in the White House under a great President. I absolutely hate political correctness. It should be a major sin because they are trying to control what we think and what we say. The worst part about is in most countries they have unjust laws that try to regulate our speech so we confirm to unjust politically correct speech. God has given us freewill and wants us to be bold and decisive when defending what we all know is God’s truth on all issues. Proclaim the truth from our rooftops! Pray! Pray! Pray!
We read from Knowles: “…if nature is perfectible and evolves, the identity of the speaker can change the meaning of words because there is nothing separate and enduring to which the words refer.”
As the Romance languages continued to emerge, the 9th-century Charlemagne (who could read but not write) attempted to standardize and enforce the original Latin, partly because he believed that God can understand prayers only if spoken in Latin…
Latin, the so-called “dead language” because its meanings do not evolve or mutate. Maybe ye olde Charlemagne’s intuition about the nature of reality itself was onto something, now so evident in the 21st century?
A sincere effort towards truth honours God and enlightens people. Some despise useful knowledge, preferring a destructive opposition towards order and decency. Still, it comes as a surprise, yet we have not proclaimed Jesus Christ. We have run from Him. Is it any wonder the times are chaotic?
We ask our priests to be miracle workers, however, are we an encouragement and blessing to them? Some will say we have a pretender Papa presiding! yet what are we doing to speak of Jesus and to be a blessing to our neighbours?
Mark 16:15 And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.
1 Peter 3:15-16 But in your hearts honour Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behaviour in Christ may be put to shame.
“The failure to speak of the morally repulsive, intrinsically evil nature of sodomy lost the marriage issue for conservatives before the battle began.” Bingo.
And within the church also. I have been unable to get the term “sodomite” printed in a letter to the editor for publications like “Our Sunday Visitor” for years when discussing homosexual marriage. We call those who murder “murderers” and those who commit theft “thieves” but for some reason it is not allowed to call those who engage in sodomy “sodomites”.
And the issue is even broader. How many conservatives are willing to name and condemn the action which results in most of the children who are aborted – fornication? How many are willing to say that the men who “father” such children need to be held responsible by society? One might want to start perhaps with Herschel Walker, but no doubt a bunch of conservatives cringed there. But single motherhood is not a long-term solution to abortion, and unless we are willing to re-establish acceptable behavior at a very basic level, there is no true solution to the increasing disorder of our society.
“Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide containing 266 blank pages, with bibliography.”
The only reasons that I would vote for a Democrat would be if he was completely pro-life, anti-mutilation, and promised to implement just employment laws (e.g. end at-will employment). The latter is the only distinguishing mark of – historically – Democrats.
My understanding is that Catholics USED to vote Democrat because it was “the party that supported the poor.” This is likely no longer the case, but there are at least some Democrats that support workers.
“Something like this must account for the utterly abysmal failure of the conservative movement to mount a substantive defense of natural marriage in the face of its homosexual alternative. How could something considered so absurd and morally noxious throughout all of recorded history have been so easily accepted today? What were conservatives conserving, if not this? The failure certainly speaks to the hollowness of much of the conservative movement which is Knowles’ target.”
Marriage is – by nature – the permanent exclusive union of two humans of different sex. To be accurate the phrase used should be “homosexual ‘marriage.'”
The fact is that conservatism is purely negative and is defined by the opposition. There isn’t any coherent reasoning that supports it. If there is any historical predecessor of “the conservative movement,” it would seem to be “the right” which was opposed to “the left” during the French Revolution.
The true enemy of those who label themselves as “conservatives” is religious liberalism and the consequences of the same. Religious liberalism is to be found best defined in the book “Liberalism is a Sin.” It can be found online.
The defense of marriage is a matter of reason and logic. It also requires that the immorality of sodomitical behavior be condemned for as very immoral perversion that it is.
When considering the word “conservative,” I almost always think of an believe that it is worth repeating the following quote by a famous English Catholic:
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.”
-Illustrated London News (1924)
Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/1920289-g-k-chesterton-the-whole-modern-world-has-divided-itself-into-con/
‘Praised the protestors and condemned Knowles ‘ – was it irreseponsible on the part of the person not to have anticipated the scene .. or was it allowed with some eager anticipation .. being from a background that keeps deep hidden motives to see such chaos in the culture ,in long range plans to take dominion ..Parents , students, those in places of authority cannnot discount t the words of the Holy Father about the W.W 111 playing out ..need for deliverance prayers .. Hoping that the Newman Societies and such would consider ongoing deliverance sessions as an essential aspect of their ministry , esp. when antipating trouble , to invite in The Spirit to speak in hearts ; thank God that we have good resource and timely help for same – https://www.catholicexorcism.org/smcvideos
LGBT and its precursor existentialism. Husserl’s Ideen [Ideas], speaks of epoché, a withholding of judgment that begins the interior [mental] search for correspondence between the mind and the external world, a literal search for existence. Reaching beyond Kant’s phenomenon and the identity of the mysterious noumenon [existence]. Accordingly, the presumption of an epistemic structure, existential phenomenology.
What developed in France, quite distinct, is existence as it appears devoid of predetermination. Absent, absolutely, of order [all order presumed a preconception]. A purer form of solipsistic consciousness [likened to intellectual anarchy] perhaps, than the definition given here of political correctness.
Simone de Beauvoir, cited by Knowles said, “The basis of existentialism is precisely that there is no human nature”. She said [somewhere, I believe in a letter] that ‘when you’re in bed with someone all bodies are the same’. This train of psychological thought is compatible as a basis for the LGBT phenomenon. Also, as Reilly/Knowles apparently agree, as in Nominalism things become what you name them.
With the breakdown of language, or rather, should it be said, consistent with the breakdown of a First Principle [God] of existence, and consequently of order is the capriciousness of language.
I’m not sure it’s fair to criticise Knowles’ book for not getting into Manicheanism (sp.?) and those other philosophical isms. He knows his audience. Those looking for a more philosophical understanding of the corruption of language/thought need to look elsewhere.
As Knowles explains so well with other words, Political Correctness is Voluntary Language Psychosis, the perversion of the essence of language by dirty Leftist politics to enable the voluntary acceptance of their tyranny. They believe what they say is absolutely real just-beacuse-they-say-so and they can change it the next minute at their most lowly convenience.
It’s Systematic “Sanctified” Lying. Simply change the words and the things change. Hocus Pocus! Living la vida loca! Poof! Poof! Poof! It’s where Protestant Pastor Joel Osteen got his Word of Faith, “Blab-It-And-Grab-It”, pagan magic of words using and totally disrespecting the Bible. When I was starting to grow in the Faith, the first sign to me that Jesus was truly God was his uncompromising bluntness about the Truth. HE IS THE WORD!! Viva Cristo Rey!
Michael Knowles also plays hard liquor drinking games with guests, on YouTube, as they torch mob cannabis via private subscription, at the Daily Wire. He is the very reason I didn’t renew my subscription.
The trolls who frequent the site are the polar opposite of the sort of lefty hipsters you see on Twitter, only these people are barely literate. I have no interest in being a part of that syndicate, either.