On Thursday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles explains the double standards of the Left when it comes to civility with those on the other side of the political aisle. Video and partial transcript below.
The Left can’t be civil. Don’t take my word for it. Hillary Clinton explains why the Left won’t be civil anymore.
Hillary Clinton: You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That’s why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize, and respect is strength.
You can’t be civil with people who oppose everything you stand for. That’s her theory. Then who are you supposed to be civil with? If you don’t have to be civil with the people who disagree with you then what’s the point of civility? Of course, you’re civil with the people who agree with you. You’re not just civil with them, you embrace them. You celebrate them, they’re on your team. The only purpose of civility in politics is to be civil to the people that you disagree with, but Hillary doesn’t grant that people who disagree with her have any legitimacy, have any right to speak, have any right to vote. They’re deplorable, they’re irredeemable. They’re the worst kind of people in this country. They shouldn’t have a voice. They shouldn’t be able to elect a president. Guess what happened by the way? When she said that those very people made sure that she never came within a stone’s throw of the White House again.
It’s the same thing with free speech. People say, “We can protect free speech, but we can’t protect hate speech.” The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to protect hate speech so-called. What is hate speech? I don’t know. Good luck defining it. Who defines what’s hateful? Something that’s hateful to one person is maybe not hateful to somebody else.
The purpose of the First Amendment is to defend unpopular speech. Popular speech is already going to be protected by the mob because everyone likes it. The only reason to have civility is to be civil with the people that you disagree with. What does this look like? It’s not just Hillary Clinton who’s saying this. Current elected Democrats, Maxine Waters, very prominent Democrat Congresswoman is coming out and showing you what it looks like when you stop being civil to your political opponents.
Maxine Waters: If we can’t protect the children, we can’t protect anybody. If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them and tell them they’re not welcome.
That’s what it looks like. You get in their face; you go to where they sleep. You go to where their children sleep. You scream and you physically intimidate them. That’s what they want to do. I mean that is a recipe to get rid of self-government. You cannot have a democratic republic very long if you keep that up – you’re going to have to impose more order from the top down.
This is the deal that we’ve made with self-government and with a democratic republic. We say we’re going to have political freedom. We’re going to run our own country. We the People. We can only do that if we discipline ourselves. If we are mature, and if we educate ourselves about what the political issues are and we educate ourselves about how we’re supposed to behave, and if we can be civil and if we can deal with people that we disagree with… that’s the only way we can do it. If we can’t do that, we will lose self-government.
We will lose political freedom because we have to. The country must have order. Order will reassert itself. It will either assert itself from the bottom up, from people who are disciplined and educated and serious people who are worthy of freedom, or it will be imposed on us from the top down. But we will not have anarchy. It’s never happened and it’s never going to happen.
And this is the very risky gamble that Democrats are trying to foist on us right now. The Joe Biden issue is a really important one not because of the stupid race stuff but because Joe Biden represents the old school of Democrats who say I hate Republicans they’re awful, they’re racist, they’re bigots, they’re terrible but I’ll be civil with them. Or in the case of Joe Biden I guess, I hate other Democrats who are racist and bigoted and awful, but I can be civil with them. That’s the old school and the new school is saying, don’t be civil. Don’t be civil at all and ruin them. Get physically violent go to their houses. That’s the debate we’ll see in this 2020 race which side of that is going to win.