Should Transgenderism be Regulated by Law?

foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you my name is Johnny burka I'm the president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute it's my honor to welcome you to tonight's bait debate on a transgenderism and law first and foremost I want to thank the students at the University of Pittsburgh for their warm and spirited welcome we don't typically get this kind of feedback for isi events but I thank you for being here I think the college Republicans for their courage and helping to organize this event the University Administration for their defense of free speech and open inquiry and allowing this event to proceed and I'd also like to thank the Diana Davis Spencer foundation for making this event possible before we get to the topic at hand I'd like to tell you a briefly about my organization the Intercollegiate Studies Institute isi exists to provide a forum and a community for college students across the country to explore and examine fundamental questions about politics culture economics and history and debate to debate how to implement those ideas in American life and on their campuses specifically to ensure that the common good and dignity of every human person is respected we host about 150 events around the country on a wide range of topics from lectures debates weekend conferences and this debate series is part of an effort to explore questions and we've explored a number of topics from National Security economics technology to social issues and we've actually heard from our students that it's the social issues in particular in particular that they would like more discussion of more debate and more verification and so we've picked this issue tonight of transgenderism and law and I understand that it's obviously a controversial topic over 11 000 students have signed a petition calling for this event to be canceled but we believe that that's a signal that there's more that needs to be explored on this topic and it touches the nerve in terms of the life in common here at the pit Community it touches the nerve because it's a conversation ultimately about human nature what does it mean to be a man or a woman according to biology to culture to history and to religion and how should law and public policy reflect those realities so Tonight We Gather at a university a place of open inquiry and discourse where we ask tough questions and examine uh presuppositions to confront a difficult question and I expect our speakers to do it with patience intelligence honesty and openness in an effort to pursue truth together and to deliberate which is a Hallmark of of our Democratic life about how to best order our community on this important question so without further Ado thank you all for coming tonight and I'd like to welcome Dylan of the college Republicans to introduce our speakers thank you thank you all for coming I'm glad you were able to make it in here through a little bit of a unanticipated crowd there but just a quick reminder to everybody before I introduce the speakers that there's no signs noise makers or disruptions permitted um and any disruptions that impede the ability of everybody in the room to view and engage in a productive conversation we'll have those items removed so our first debater uh Mr Michael Knowles is the celebrated host of the Michael Knowles show at the daily wire and the book club at prageru he is also the author of the best-selling book speechless in 2017 Michael published the number one National best-selling Treatise reasons to vote for Democrats which president Donald Trump held as a great book for your reading enjoyment in late 2020 after an appearance guest hosting the Rush Limbaugh program it was announced that Michael's daily podcast would be syndicated to terrestrial radio our second debater Brad Palumbo is a Libertarian journalist his work has been cited by top lawmakers such as Senator Rand Paul Senator Ted Cruz senator Pat Toomey Congresswoman Nancy mace congresswoman Congressman Thomas Massey and former U.N Ambassador Nikki Haley as well as by prominent media personalities such as Sean Hannity Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin Brad has also testified before the U.S Senate appeared on Fox News and Fox Business and written for Publications such as USA Today National Review Newsweek and The Daily Beast he co-hosts the based politics podcast and has a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst tonight's debate will be moderated by Leah Sargent who is the chief of staff for debates and public discourse at braver Angels her writing has appeared in the New York Times The Washington Post and others she is the author of two books and has spoken on building community and constructive conflict around the world she runs other feminisms a sub-stack community focused on the Dignity of interdependence so please join me in welcoming our speakers thank you thank you [Applause] very much before we begin I I just have to point out this is a very different welcome than we got outside thank you all very much for coming I want to give you a brief introduction to the debate format we'll be using and the goals for our debate we're going to lead off with opening speaker speeches of five minutes from each of our speakers starting with Mr Knowles followed by Mr Palumbo they'll each have a two-minute opportunity to rebut or respond to each other's statements and then we'll have about 30 minutes of moderated discussion between the two panelists and me and after that we'll open it up to questions from the room and I suppose if sufficiently aerodynamic from the outside room as well I'm Leah Sargent I work for braver Angels facilitating debates on contentious issues Across the Nation and what always interests me is when there's a debate where people feel stuck where there's a question they feel is vitally important where they've struck out again and again in trying to address it with people they disagree with or have felt unable to bring it up at all I think tonight's topic certainly hits that Benchmark but what interests me about it is I think it's also two contentious topics wound up together there's the obvious questions of gender identity and who we are how we see each other but then there's the second one which is how do we live alongside each other in a pluralistic society when we disagree strongly with our neighbor and there isn't an easy compromise you can't average out the tax rates to decide how you'll live alongside a difference of agreement about gender identity so I think one thing I'd like everyone to consider in attending is that whether or not you've come into the room with a very strong belief about the question of gender and transgender ideas you may find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with the speaker you support when it comes to the question of how we navigate those differences in a pluralistic society when the law should coerce what we do when we disagree deeply with a friend and I hope you'll leave this room better prepared to speak to someone who you think is living wrongly who you love who you can't walk away from or simply protest and you want to figure out how do I say I think you're wrong in a way that they'll hear as an act of love with no further Ado Mr Knowles [Applause] thank you very much that's very kind of you all right there they are I didn't know I thought they might have been stuck outside but we found them was that to them or to me that was to them okay it's confusing all right [Applause] that's that sounds like they've gotten into harmony it's not even just uh Melody anymore all right see I was under the impression that I was opening the debate and then Brad would follow and then we'd have rebuttals but I guess there was an opening act that I was not [Music] yeah no certainly not as mature in a while all right well as edifying as that lecture has been I think we probably ought to get on with the debate thank you very much to the police for removing that all right Leah I don't want that to come off my clock I I didn't call for them anything Michael I'd like to begin by thanking a few people I want to thank Liam I want to thank isi I want to thank my welcoming committee out there I would especially like to thank Brad for Pinch hitting after my original debate opponent withdrew uh Brad came in at the last minute I really appreciate it Professor McCloskey who I was initially slated to debate despite three degrees from Harvard could not defend transgender ideology he knew my views we had chatted about them he repeatedly expressed his desire to debate then at the last minute he withdrew because I suspect he felt it more prudent to concede than to lose in front of c-span's cameras even a distinguished scholar could not defend the indefensible my opponent tonight has a more middle of the road position than Professor McCloskey unlike Professor McCloskey Mr Palumbo does not believe that so-called trans women are really women he has admitted that they're men he doesn't think we should trans the kids he opposes men in women's sports but he does address men who identify as women as she and her and he does think they should be allowed into women's bathrooms this middle of the road position makes even less sense than Professor McCloskey's at least McCloskey is consistent he says transgenderism is true and therefore true for everyone of all ages and therefore we ought to call some men she and her and allow them into the girls bathroom and on to women's sports teams and give them all the rights and privileges that our culture and law traditionally reserve for women my opponent tonight on the other hand is inconsistent even I'm sorry to say incoherent on this point he says transgenderism is not true but that we ought to pretend that it is but only sometimes he has said that if Blair white who's a very nice guy by the way who's been on my show if he were convicted of a crime that he ought to be sent to a women's prison because surgery and makeup have made him sufficiently dainty whereas burlier transgender identifying criminals might have to stick with the men my opponent suggests that we be dishonest enough to call men she but honest enough not to force women to compete against men in sports but still dishonest enough to force women to share bathrooms with men because the men aren't women but they should enjoy women's rights and privileges but only some rights and Privileges and those based on I don't know I'm sure Brad will do his best to explain that in just a moment seems a bit haphazard to me above all though my opponent believes the law should pretty much stay out of it it is this last point that matters for tonight's debate because tonight's debate is not concern whether transgenderism is true or even how to address it tonight's debate concerns a more basic question should the law regulate transgenderism at all on that question there is not much to debate because regardless of whether or not one wishes for the law to regulate transgenderism it will even the most tolerant open-minded pluralistic society cannot simultaneously uphold mutually contradictory principles in even the most liberal Society the law must answer at least certain basic questions if the law has nothing to say about what a woman is then the law has nothing to say at all my opponent might suggest we leave it to Private Business to decide but the Practical implications of transgenderism extend far beyond private business to the military to public schools to government employees and to many other sectors of society the law cannot evade the question the bathroom issue keeps coming up because it is so clear and so instructive it presents a conflict between two supposed rights the right of women to have their own bathrooms and the supposed right of some men to go into the women's bathroom thereby abolishing women's bathrooms the law must pick a side there is no neutrality unlike some other political issues there can be no middle ground either women get their own bathrooms or they don't either women have rights and legal protections as women as they always have or they don't the law might say they do and the law might say they don't but the one thing the law cannot say is nothing [Applause] hi everybody I want to say thank you to isi for having us and thank you to Michael for be being willing to have this debate and I would like to say to the people outside who are or inside who are not just interested in having their voices heard but in trying to shut down this debate grow the hell up thank you foreign the debate is happening whether you like it or not it's your choice to participate in it or bury your head in the sand this is America we have free speech and I just don't really stand for anybody who would try to shut down the voices they disagree with rather than engage with them now I want to start by pointing out something that might seem surprising but I am a gay agnostic libertarian yet I recently or not too recently found out that I have something in common with a Orthodox Christian conservative Baker you might have heard of named Jack Phillips you see I met him a few years ago when he was the subject of a Supreme Court case because gay rights activists had haranged him into court trying to force him to bake a gay wedding cake then trans activists came and invented a gender transition cake and wanted him to bake that too but when I met him I realized we actually had much more in common than I had ever anticipated because we both believe in pluralism freedom of speech and the general laissez-faire Live and Let Live idea of America that we can have radically different World Views and beliefs but live in peace side by side without either side trying to conquer or Force the other side to bend the knee but those activists who chased him into court who harassed his business harassed his family drove away his customers tried to use the force of the law to eradicate his beliefs his bigoted and evil beliefs in their view they do not they reject America's classically liberal pluralistic values and unfortunately I have to tell you that Michael Knowles and people of his intellectual ilk they do too they've unfortunately become essentially a right-wing version of those LGBT activists who seek to use the state to police how other people can live their lives and restrict them from living in ways they personally disapprove of you don't have to take my word for it Michael recently said at a speech I'm sure you're all aware of that we should eradicate transgenderism from public life now to be fair to Michael he was not as some of his critics have mischaracterized him calling for pogroms or for people to be killed but what he was calling for and what he has called for many times in many other places is to ban transgenderism to ban adults from receiving medical transition treatments to ban adults from using preferred pronouns and names in public to ban adults from accessing facilities that align with their outward appearance and even in the case of transgender tick tocker Dylan Mulvaney who I will admit is pretty cringe um Michael has called for Dylan Mulvaney to be institutionalized that's what we do to serial killers who plead not guilty by virtue of mental Insanity we lock them up deprive them of their Liberty take them away from their family and that's what apparently folks like Michael Knowles think should be done to outspoken transgender adults because he disapproves of their lifestyle he disapproves of their beliefs and he disapproves of their words now I'm here to suggest that that totalitarian approach to debating social issues is fundamentally inconsistent with conservative principles of individual Liberty limited government and the classically liberal Society the conservatives in the US have always wanted to conserve but it's also remarkably short-sighted about 30 percent of the United States identifies as socially conservative about 23 percent identifies as Catholic which is Michael's faith and I'm from New England so that I know that a lot of those Catholics are actually pretty limped out so what you have is a minority of the country a small minority that actually holds ultra traditionalist beliefs on social issues so if we want to start having the majority rules approach of suppressing Lifestyles you don't approve of of shutting down ideas of banning ideas and Lifestyles that aren't in alignment with your values that is not going to go well for my friends on the religious right now none of this is to say we must have a totally Anarchist approach to transgender issues I think we can reasonably and fairly discuss questions about medical societal and perhaps even governmental restrictions on things like children making decisions for Medical Treatments they can't really consent to that could have life-altering consequences I think we can protect rules that ensure fairness in sports where it's applicable I think we can navigate these nuances without depriving our American adult peers of the right to live their lives how they see fit in accordance with their values because that's the test of freedom it's easy to believe in Freedom for the people you like it's easy to believe in Freedom for your friends for the people on your team but you have to believe in Freedom for the people you don't like the people that give you the ick if you don't you don't believe in Freedom for anybody and unfortunately the approach that Michael Knowles and his elk Advocate on these issues is inconsistent with a traditional conservative values of individual liberty and it would ultimately set the stage for their own downfall so we should take a pluralistic and classical liberal approach to these issues thank you [Applause] thank you Brad I am shocked to hear that I'm not pluralistic I consider myself very very open-minded as we all are in America but on certain issues we cannot be totally open-minded because on some issues you see a conflict of Rights and conflict of claimed rights in a conflict of Freedom so if we were debating tax policy we might come to some conciliatory middle ground and we might hear all sides if we were discussing immigration we might say okay we take in three million immigrants a year today conservatives don't want to take in any more immigrants we've taken in a lot but uh okay let's meet in the middle somewhere on this issue we can't do that because either the women have the bathrooms or they don't either the women have the sports teams or they don't certain issues you can't just meet in the middle on certain issues you would split the baby which is no good for anybody so here Brad is claiming the freedom of the transgender identifying people men who think that they're women mistakenly to enter into the women's bathroom and what I'm defending is the genuine freedom and right of women to have their own bathrooms only one of those is going to win out only one of those is in accordance with reality so I I would just as soon defend the one that happens to align with the truth now a lot of what Brad just said is not true Brad said that America is very liberal and open-minded on these transgender issues it doesn't seem to be the case according to Pure research 60 of Americans say that manhood and Womanhood is determined by biological sex and so I wish it were 100 but 60 is not bad it's a clear majority of the country it's up from 56 percent just a couple of years ago and it's up from 54 in 2017. so the American people are on our side on transgender issues because they have eyes in a brain and and the American people are increasingly on our side on these issues as for the freedom of these people to mutilate themselves and to harm themselves I wonder if Brad would extend that same conception of freedom to someone who suffers from a body Integrity disorder body Integrity disorder is very similar to transgenderism and that involves people usually early on set about 8 to 12 years old who will imagine that a healthy limb does not really belong to them and they'll ask a doctor to cut off that healthy limb this would be medical malpractice today I don't think any of us would want to allow some poor soul to have their limbs chopped off because of a disorder we would want to give them psychiatric treatment so I I don't I don't really see why the same principle wouldn't hold true here especially considering the very harmful effects of the transition the largest data set on sex reassignment procedures both hormonal and surgical reveals no mental health benefits whatsoever this was in October 2019 the American Journal of psychiatry in fact what the data set showed was that the transition made the patients mental health deteriorate at least on one point which is anxiety rates of transgender regret are skyrocketing Lord Robert Winston surgeon and scientist in the UK found that 40 percent of people who undergo what we'll call euphemistically bottom surgery experience complications many need further surgery quarter of the women who undergo tops surgery feeling comfortable with what they have done this harms people immensely it is growing it is Raging the numbers of young people who identify with it have doubled in recent years and that's why we shouldn't subject people to it thank you Leah for that very kind reminder that I've gone over time thank you so a few points to touch on there but as to the question of polling the American public's view on these issues is pretty nuanced but I could also show you polls that say 60 70 percent of Americans believe in anti-discrimination protections for transgender people in fact I think the ultra the eradicate transgenderism from public life position even as Michael describes it not as his critics do is not going to pull high in America and if all you have to offer to one extreme is the opposite extreme you're actually making that opposite extreme more likely to succeed imagine if instead of running against gun control you had to run on let people own nukes imagine if instead of running on let's not do socialism you had to run on abolished Social Security abolish Medicare abolish everything obviously you're going to be less successful at actually achieving power at winning an election at building a consensus to accomplish what you want to accomplish which in our case for example is protecting children protecting fairness in sports these kinds of things if all you're offering is the complete and opposite extreme and that's what Knowles and his company are offering as far as bodily Integrity disorder or the benefits to transition supposedly not existing I'm not here to quibble with the scientific data I'm not an expert in any of that and neither neither is Michael I'm here to say it's not up to us you're a fully grown adult it's up to you to decide what's best for you and as far as chopping off your limbs and bodily disorder no doctor in their right mind is going to do that whether you agree with it or not it is the case that most doctors most medical authorities most medical bodies do recommend transition for adults with persistent gender dysphoria so I don't view it as my place or our place to get in the way of that relationship if that's what they want to do if that's what will make them happy who are we to second guess it who are we to tell them how to live their lives I don't want the government policing my wardrobe my speech what pronouns I use I don't want the government telling me what I can believe what I can say how I can live my life if you don't want that you have to respect that for transgender adults as well I'll start with the question for each conversation moderated by Mr Palumbo in your rebuttal you were saying that your concern is about the efficacy of Mr Knowles's approach it's not popular I'm curious both whether you think he's right and he should just be differently strategic in how he approaches it and whether you know it's always ineffective to make an unpopular Point plainly and honestly or kind of as a faint should the you know anti-abortion pro-life movement have responded to kind of the backlash after Dobbs by kind of hiding their commitment to a pro-life calls or by openly making the arguments yeah so I think it's both I don't fully agree with Michael's positions but also from a pure tactical position I would say it's wrong to run on the opposite extreme a good example of this is um you want to use the abortion context I live in Michigan we had a governor candidate there Tudor Dixon who ran on no abortion exceptions no rape no incest I life of the mother Maybe she lost terribly it was every single ad because that was a wildly unpopular position and as a result you know those are like two percent of abortions or whatever you could have had a governor that would have worked to restrict 98 of abortions and instead you have Gretchen Whitmer so you're not going to convince me that just taking the most extreme position because it's honest or because you believe it fully it's naive if your goal is to actually achieve change I'm also of course just coming at it from a fundamentally different premise in which look I believe there's two biological Sexes they are immutable but there's a lot that we attach to gender that is social and if someone like Blair white who I consider an acquaintance and am friendly with if she wants to live as a woman I'm surgery as she has if that's what will make her happy and she struggles with deep depression and mental issues and then that helped why would I object to that and moreover why would I embrace some sort of one-size-fits-all government approach that would force legally Force somebody with c-comp tits to use the men's room and the boys locker room it doesn't make any sense I think the more concern you have for women the less you should use the word tits on the stage I mean [Applause] I know that you think that when someone asks you to address them by their pronouns their preferred pronouns they're asking you to lie to them or be complicit in a lie but that's clearly not the only time that you believe you're asked to lie in a pluralistic society and I don't usually see you going to Episcopalian churches to tell them you don't believe they're offering the body of Christ that I'm not asked to go to Episcopalian churches mercifully I was going to ask for you right where is Christ present where is he not why is this the issue where you want to bring the force of law the force of your voice to contest this disagreement among the many you have with your neighbors well because this one would appear to be exclusive this one is inescapable I can escape from the Episcopalian Church down the street and I don't attend it I can escape from many liberal Catholic churches down the street by the way for that matter and and there's no problem nobody's forcing me to attend but on the question here women will have bathrooms where they won't women will have sports teams or they won't and I will engage in conversation with people because we live in a society we're not atomized individuals and no man is an island entire of himself so when I am to refer to somebody especially as a matter of public life if I am not permitted to refer to him as him and her as her I am being forced to lie in my regular everyday life contrary to what Brad suggested I am not a totalitarian I'm not an authoritarian I'm not against pluralism or whatever but there are certain issues on which one side has to win and one side has to lose because they can't exist together at the same time so Brad points out that uh Blair who's very nice guy as I pointed out might feel better by being allowed to go into a women's bathroom I'm skeptical of that none of the data which I always think are ridiculous but I'm happy to cite social science when it backs up my point but but all of the data that we have suggests that there is no mental health benefit whatsoever from these sorts of surgeries and from the hormone therapies so I'm skeptical that it would make him feel any better but then I have to ask what about the women what what about the women who would very much like to have their own bathrooms wouldn't that make them happy don't they have some rights because you're falling on the bathroom example when you've also talked about involuntary commitment and I think on the spectrum of where the law intervenes you know the bathrooms both kind of the least you know charged issue to kind of fall back on and saying at a certain point of delusion I think someone who disagrees with on this issue should be confined I want to hear you defend that point rather than the bathroom well I I think that what's very important here is Prudence this is one of those forgotten virtues that people in our highly ideological age think that we need to have a Manifesto written in five bullet points on a napkin to answer every question but but for example if someone is a man who has fallen into the transgender rabbit hole and for him it is as it historically has been for pretty much everybody a sexual fetish a paraphilia of cross-dressing that is largely driven by pornography today but but that man still understands that he's a man this is just a little weird thing that he does at home and it makes him have a thrill and okay fine you know we live in a fallen world I wouldn't suggest we need to commit that man but there is a spectrum here of irrationality and Insanity let's call it what it is and so if a man is convinced that he really is a woman like in some of those viral videos we've all seen of the big Burly man screaming in the bodega my name is ma'am my name is ma'am and and he's acting out in a way that is really disorderly and disrupting the public and harmful to himself for instance if he wants to chop off his own healthy body parts and and cause all sorts of Destruction to himself then I think not only is it the right of society to take some action here to restore order but I think it's only compassionate for that person I think it's a very selfish and shallow kind of liberalism that says that when when people have mental problems we ought to just let them out on the street often to die of exposure or to go do drugs in some back alley in San Francisco no we owe them help Brad asks who am I to tell people what to do why would I use the force of government we live in America America is at least supposed to be a self-government you're a citizen with faculties of reason and moral conscience you can perceive truth and it is not only your right but your responsibility to do so to help your fellow country I'll give you a moment yes absolutely can you explain Michael why you want the government to be the Arbiter of of Truth to decide what beliefs I mean I've lived through the government tell us there were wmds in Iraq lie to us every which way about covid and you are saying that the government and the people that run it should be an Arbiter of Truth and then should involuntarily commit and basically lock people up who don't need their perception of the truth can you explain to me as a matter of prudence how that could possibly be a good idea well I'm not saying that the government is the Arbiter of truth of course not but we have civil authority to establish and to enforce laws and so we can either establish and enforce laws on the basis of pure will you know a man who says I very much want to be a woman and so that's what we're going to do completely divorced from reality in the moral order or we can establish and enforce laws as a matter of interpretation to believe that there is such a thing as objective reality and a moral order and a natural law that we are then translating into the civil law traditionally in our country and in all states it we have pursued the latter in in our age that now seems to be increasingly until third from reality where people will mock the very notion of objective truth we say that that cannot happen but but to my points earlier the law will say something inevitably the government is not some foreign entity we live in America we have some say in our government even still today and and the law must necessarily say something either the women get the reason I keep going to the bathrooms is because it's just so clear but you can use the sports teams you can use I think the involuntary commitment one is relevant though because I think you know this is not the level of force that Mr Palumbo is worried about about as I'm worried about well I suppose right I mean bathrooms are are smaller scale but what I would say is that these issues are complicated and they should be decentralized let let a business decide their own bathroom policies I've been to a lot of places in Liberal cities that solve this by having single stall unisex bathrooms fantastic I will I don't have a one-size-fits-all solution I'm going to stay on the commitment question for a second so Mr palumbu Canfield a question himself you know certainly the government does draw lines around some people who should be committed whether due to risk to others or sometimes risk to themselves I'm curious how you Mr Palumbo feel the government should respond is it right to commit someone for treatment for anorexia which does not put them as a danger to others purely because we believe them to be a danger to themselves to have a false belief about their body I think there has to be a very high threshold for civil commitment we've seen it horribly abused in the past in this country but I think it has to be a direct danger to themselves or others right their physical safety so we've got trans or not trans somebody is a danger a suicide risk or if they're a threat to others then we can discuss involuntary commitment but what we're talking about here is essentially saying well we think somebody has deluded and wrong beliefs so they should be locked up I mean we should that would have gotten God Gala that's the approach that had people wanting to lock up and kill Galileo for dare to suggest that the Earth was not the center of the universe I don't think we know all know the truth that's part of the process of discovering the truth and let me just say and I'm not saying this but a large swath of the country thinks that the Catholic faith believing in a God is a deluded belief is a delusion they might should they want to have you committed no the majority of Americans still believe in God not I don't think maybe not in 50 years but today is still in the interest of the best use of this time I went up the Galileo fisticuffs happen outside and I will I will point out on that point they did lock up Galileo and they locked him up for being a jerk it had nothing to do with his stupid scientific but what I want to ask here on this question uh for a moment is when it comes to these questions you know there's you've said it's hard to be sure right you've said Mr Paloma that you're not an expert in the science Mr Knowles you've brought a number of citations with a you know varying confidence in different ones what is your greatest source of uncertainty for each of you right now about the current growth in transgender identification in the roots of it and what would you most like to know that you don't know now well I I would just like to correct you Leia you've said that I've had varying degrees of confidence in the scientific studies I have no confidence in any of them I'm just citing them because they back up my art what would you actually like to see study I mean it right like kudos for honesty I think you're right that this is an issue that's been understudied because no one does a randomized controlled trial that's true of a lot of things where we really care about the answer so what would you most like to see studied in the scientific context that you think would help you and your opponents at the end of it have a better understanding of what's true I would most like to see this issue studied not through biology and not through some bizarre sociology course in a gender studies department but through anthropology and through ontology and through philosophy because ultimately what this comes down to I'm happy that all the scientific studies back up my view but I wouldn't really care even if they didn't because the question is what is the human person the claim of transgenderism it keeps moving but the claim basically is that one's true self has nothing to do with one's body so one can be embody entirely a man but some deeper metaphysical level one can be a woman and so the old way we used to talk about this would be the distinction between the body and the soul and there's been a whole lot written about the relationship between the body and the soul the conception that has dominated for at least 2 300 years in our civilization is an idea called hylomorphism which is that body and soul are united and sex derives from the body and is an Inseparable accident of the individual that persists and applies to the whole person so that that's to me a fascinating conversation maybe eyes are glazing over here in the room but the question that we're asking here is what is a man what is a woman and I I am not happy with the even the conservative answer which is a woman is a womb and two X chromosomes I don't know what 2x chromosomes are if you told me that a woman is sugar spice and everything nice that to me is a much more precise description and accurate description of what a woman is so I'm happy to have those conversations I don't think that is the question I think the question is who gets to decide well you would have the government decide for everyone and I would have people decide for themselves in their own life let me ask you the Mr Palumbo one question the government does make a decision on that arguably is a murkier question is when is someone legally morally intellectually an adult right right yo and that's something where the government cannot remain silent we write a lot of laws to draw a relatively sharp line between children and adults even though nothing magical happens on your 18th or 21st or for the purposes of running for congress I think 25th birthday um but the law has to speak so how do you think about when the law has to draw a distinction how do you want it to draw it I think that 18 is an imperfect legal age of adulthood but it's the one we have we should stick to it you're either an adult or you're not and once you're an adult you have the full freedoms and rights and responsibilities that come with our society and that should include living your life in a way that traditionalist conservatives don't approve of think is wrong think is gross think is bad but for minors I think it is fair to talk about uh not nearly enough safeguards on this care I question whether they can even consent to it but I think I think I have a better sense right now for Mr Knowles about how he would work through the anthropological question of when should the law set that limit you say you're comfortable with the current one are you comfortable with 19. if the if the country were with you I mean it's inherently arbitrary I would say just has to be consistent right now we kind of have a patchwork of things like 21 for some things 18 for some things 17 for some things I I agree it will be fundamentally arbitrary I just think it should be consistent so it could be 18 it could be 19 it could be 21. what irks me is when it's inconsistent well what I'm asking you just for a moment is there's a question of is it inconsistent with the question of is it correct and I'm curious what do you drawn to answer the question of is it correct yo you're trying to draw them to some common number but maybe you want that one to be right you know what where do you get your account of the human person to decide what it means to pass into maturity I think what we're talking about when we talk about a legal age of adulthood is your ability to fully understand what's going around you your brain development your ability to consent inform consent to something right and it I don't have a great way of drawing the line that's not kind of arbitrary but you do have to draw it somewhere I will allow Mr Knowles the obvious yeah well I I don't I don't think that one's view has to be arbitrary on this matter I don't think my view is arbitrary I just don't think transgenderism is true and age we're talking about well but this gets to age because for all of human history pretty much no one has thought that transgender the transgender idea really is true and you don't seem to think that it really is true it's interesting well I view it different I have a different definition but here's the inconsistency that I I find in your point you say that when you turn 18 you ought to be able to chop yourself up and put on a dress and go into a women's bathroom and putting aside the public issues that come from that I just wonder how it is the case that transgenderism is false for the first 18 years and then suddenly becomes true when one turns 18. and if that is not what's really happening if it is false and your trepidation in exposing children to this is because it obviously is false if it's false and harmful for children why is it beneficial and true for adults shouldn't we apply an even standard across the board so you often set this up as a dichotomy but I think it's a that it either has to be true for all or false for all um I think it's a false dichotomy I think the issue is children cannot fully consent to the full consequences of a life-altering medical procedure we're not even talking about social transition I think if you have a persistent gender dysphoric 13 year old and you want to have them socially transition I think that's up to parents conservatives were just screaming yesterday about parental rights I'm I'm fine with that but not parental wrongs you should have the right with it with only very very high exceptions in extreme cases to parent your kids rightly or wrongly and it's not badly or well except for extreme cases of abuse so I'd actually like you to draw that out for a second here because I think the thing that we can all agree on in this room is that parents make life-altering decisions for and with their kids outside the question of gender Mr Knowles choice to raise his children Catholic sets a mark on them that you know they may diverge but they'll still have been raised Catholic in their Beginnings you can convert you can't undo a lot of the medical transition things it can permanently sterilize you for life so that's what I'm that's what I'm asking another little how are you thinking about what a parent can and cannot consent to on behalf of their child I think the same way a parent cannot consent to sex on behalf of their child there's obviously a level of physical maturity you have to reach before you can make potentially life-altering decisions about your body and so something like raising your kids Catholic well your kid grows up and wants to become Jewish or an atheist they can they can't undo a bottom surgery right not really so that's why I draw that distinction and I would just say to Michael's point that you it either has to be true for everyone or false for everyone first off we're talking about the government as an Orbiter of Truth or not but also we can have different standards for kids and adults you can't get a tattoo as a child you can't drink you can't buy a gun you can't go into our movie you can have differences you can't take hormones if your parents where you're too short as a child and I'm curious whether you think that's something parents should consent to doctors will give you growth hormones if you're projected to be short enough that they worry it will impact your quality of life yeah I think there's a very different and it's permanent it's you know not undoable between that child for example I guess so much what it's like precocious puberty right when you sometimes you'll have a rare case where a seven-year-old will start going through people so I want to I want to unpack the difference between these two precocious people slowing down something that will happen choosing to give your child growth hormones is triggering a permanent change that cannot be undone do you think parents should be able to consult to growth hormones on behalf of their child when they're told their child will be very short it's a choice parents make across the country um I would say there's not going to be like life-altering harm and consequences for it yes but I mean the difference is like if you go through gender transition as a minor and never go through your natal Sexes puberty you often lose fertility for life that's not quite the same thing as of being a few inches taller or not interestingly the pitch is often in some sense about preserving future fertility in so far as the doctor worries being too short will inhibit your ability to find a spouse all right um I want to ask you the question that you aren't going to get asked by Mr Palumbo because you're debating him rather than Ms McCloskey people report and you disagree that they have a different anthropology than you they don't agree with your you know description of the soul and what they say is I see my child you know I see them light up when they get to dress in the way they want I see them you know feel more comfortable even aside from those longer term questions how can I as a parent be so sure when you tell me that when I see my child feel more comfortable they're wrong and I'm wrong when in anything else if they signed up for little league and it really fit for them I would go with it I would explore and your answer here is not so how do you answer that sense of apparent sense of their own child and that particular child's response to a transgender you know feeling I think this point by The Phantom of Professor McCloskey is a very good one because it would seem to me that what what transgenderism is proposing is is an anthropology it's an idea about what human nature is and so if it is true then it is true for children and I'm not using this to suggest we get rid of transiting the kids ultimately I think that of course but but if it's true then it would seem to be very cruel to prevent a child from transitioning especially before puberty because if you can suppress a child's puberty and then you can put them on cross-sex hormones and then you can have the little boy look more like a little girl he is going to much more successfully pass as the opposite sex than if he were to be put on these kinds of hormones and have these procedures much later it would be much more expensive it would be much more painful and so if transgenderism is true then I think we have to trans the kids now it so happens that transgenderism is not true and there are people who are in all various states of anxiety and depression and suicidality even who have fallen into this confusion of transgenderism later on and so just as I think it would be wrong to lead children who are behaving in an irrational way down this path I think would be quite wrong to do that to adults as well Mr Palumbo has conceded the point that at the extremes of anorexia it would be fine to force feed somebody or Force somebody into hospitalization Mr Palumbo has made the point that someone's suffering body identity disorder would not be able to even to get this sort of a surgery to remove a limb What doctrine is right mind would do it I will point out there were doctors today removing the healthy breasts of 14 year old girls so I think you can find a lot of quacks out there in fact there have been quacks who have performed this surgery but none of us I think believes that we ought to chop off the healthy limbs of these very mentally ill people so I just don't see why we wouldn't apply that down the line Professor McCloskey's position is a consistent position and it's consistently wrong and I think that if we're going to be right here we have to be consistently right to Brad's point that he keeps saying why would you want the government to do this why would you trust the government I've said it before I suppose I'll say it again in the United States we are the government even with all the corruption we are the government and if if we surrender our capacity for reason and moral conscience if we really say that we can't know the difference between true and false and right and wrong then we're surrendering self-government this is what John Adams meant when he said the Constitution is built for a moral and religious people that wasn't soft soap and a nice platitude he's saying that's how self-government works if we surrender that we lose the American project I do want to ask you the same question what would you say to a parent who says I want to take care of my child everything I see in my child's Behavior not just in what they tell me but in the way they act when you know I address them one way or the other when I put them with one group of kids or the other tells me they're happier this way and uncomfortable the other that you say I can't do this until they're 18 why well declare verify I am okay with them socially transitional but I think you know that that's not always where people want to stop I agree so what would you say to that parent the reason that that is not appropriate is that that child is two one too young to really consent to the life-altering possibilities of that but two going through puberty of your natal sex we okay some people were transitioning to the front rows the security got a little worried about that okay [Applause] so again I'd like to I'd like to ask the question again because I think I think the reason the noises are so loud out there and the reason everyone got quiet when we saw someone moving is that people think the stakes of this question are high they are and that parents worry if they listen to you Mr Palumbo and wait and act later they may not be taking care of their child or loving their child as they are and it sounds like you're all right with them doing that later but not earlier and I think that's a that's a big burden of proof for that so I I understand completely and that's why I think this is a really complicated issue I don't envy a parent who has a child with severe gender dysphoria I can see why they would be incredibly torn on what the right thing to do is um but what I will say is that it's actually the process of going through puberty as your natal sex that often causes gender incongruity to desist so the problem is that now they go on puberty blockers then they do cross-sex hormones they never actually go that's why previously decades ago when you had gender incongruent youth many of them grew up to be gay men or lesbian women and that was because when they went through their puberty they reconciled their gender they realized the things they were feeling didn't mean they were actually is there a point after a certain trial of puberty where you'd feel comfortable with a minor transitioning when they say I've given it a good shot Mr Palazzo like said this work for some people it doesn't work for me it's that's why it's so hard to have the government come in and set a one-size-fits-all rule I have also said that you know I think the age of consent should be 18 but in some states it's 16 or 17. it would make sense to me then that in those States you could also transition gender at 16 or 17. um but I don't know exactly where to draw the line and that's part of my point here is that Michael keeps saying transgenderism is false and if it is false it should be banned I don't believe the government should be in the business of banning false ideas Michael's also said that transgenderism is a false religion so then we want to ban religions I'm wondering what happened to freedom of religion what happened to freedom of speech and also the average federal bureaucrat has the politics of Elizabeth Warren and I know you can cite Noble things about self-government but the truth is we have a bloated bureaucracy that does not represent the American people it is an entrenched political class with politics much different than yours so the idea that we're going to make that government the Arbiter of what ideas are true and false and ban or eradicate some ideas as a result of that seems to me not just a bad idea on principle but incredibly short-sighted for people from your background in world view and values Mr Knowles how do you think you would fare under a government that has the reach and you know intimacy that you are advocating for I think I would fare Fair fairly well because well I agree with Brad's point that we have far too many bureaucrats on the federal payroll the recent upending of laws concerning sex and gender have come from elected and appointed officials come from the Supreme Court appointed by presidents it's come from legislators in Charlotte North Carolina and and all over the country so it has been from representatives of people and appointed officials who who have been appointed by representatives of the people and the people change their minds that's one of the features of democracy and so unfortunately the Supreme Court in 1973 decided that there were some imaginary right to abortion and this error persisted for a long time and then 49 years later the court reversed that decision in 2020 the Supreme Court made an error and decided to interpret civil rights law protections for sex as being protections for sexual orientation and gender identity which ironically undermines civil rights protections for sex by allowing the men to play on the sports teams and go to the bathrooms and so in this case I know Brad you keep suggesting that I want this very narrow authoritarian totalitarian view I don't there are all sorts of questions where I'm happy to leave things pretty open but on certain issues where only one side can can establish its principle in society we have to come to conclusions and I would come to the conclusion that has prevailed for all of human history not the one that cropped up five seconds ago so I want to push a little on what pressing on these questions in this distinctions means for kind of the stability of our democracy because it's one thing when losing power means you know losing a little bit of ground on some parts of your agenda the tax rates are set differently more fewer oil wells are drilled another thing when laws kind of seesaw wildly between administrations you know that we have the kind of the gag rule on abortion it's one example of a law that just gets flipped on and off every time the administration changes and it feels like more and more laws are in that All or Nothing executive order thing it seems to me that makes every election feel apocalyptic yes uh we get more of the flight 93 talk right do you how do you see a way out or through that right if people feel losing an election means losing ground possibly permanently it doesn't seem we can live alongside each other at all we've already lost faith in democracy kind of regardless of where we draw the line when we're in power this is such an important point and the reason that you've seen this kind of radical polarization where now we go topsy-turvy every election is every election that we're able to win for for that matter sometimes the Democrats rule for a long time the reason for that is because we no longer have shared norms and standards and so the very thing that I am arguing is a solution to this problem the reason that our norms and standards have broken down is because half a century ago leftist activists decided to upend our standards and Norms in our culture to say that having any standards or Norms at all would be authoritarian and anti-American and and so what happened was the left pushed their radical new standards in in the 1950s the 1940s you could read the Bible in schools you could not read pornography in schools today you cannot read the Bible in schools you can and in some cases are assigned to read pornography in schools it's not a battle of more freedom or less Freedom it's a bad Battle of what standards are we going to have what taboos are we going to have and so what happened in especially in the 60s is the left knocked down all of the old standards they insisted upon their standards in their place and the conservatives lost the ability to even speak about standards to even speak about the good the true and the Beautiful the common good the what's true and false and as a result the left has totally upended things but I think if we can reassert a sensible Vision then things will will go less for one second then pose a last question to you two then we'll take questions from the audience Mr rules do you really think this is a question of the left pushing or more of what Aleister McIntyre describes is just the losing uh for many people including conservatives of a sense of where order comes from until we don't have a language to speak together not one side putting forward new Norms but all sides nearly losing touch with what gives rise to their Norms that they learned kind of habitually from their Community without learning them from the roots up well it's I think you're blaming just one side here and I don't know that I believe you on that no I I blame both of those things but I think one is a consequence of the other if not entirely a consequence largely a consequence why are people not in touch with the basis of order and Truth might it have something to do with the fact that left-wing activists booted the Bible out of schools why is it that people don't have a solid formation about the grounding of of our government and our public life might it have something to do with the fact that a judge decided that preachers can no longer speak about political things that religion now has to be merely A Private Matter for the the inner closet of your own Consciousness rather than a matter of public life you know to me these are not separate questions and and I I point to the left because they have been so conscious and intentional about this kind of a strategy and and because feckless conservatives bought on with the logic you know there's a line from William F Buckley Jr who's very important to this organization uh that I always come back to from God and man at Yale and he was quoting a liberal actually who said it and he said skepticism has utility only when it leads to conviction it's nice to have a big open Society but sometimes people's minds are so open that their brains fall out a poem is beautiful because of its limits and its constraints we are limited beings and so that we can't be all things to all people because then we're not anything to anyone can I just um yeah so you say that you want the truth the freedom to speak the truth and the good and the Beautiful and everything else but at the same time I mean you'd toss up and rip up the First Amendment to stop drag queens from reading books to Kids the first amendment doesn't protect that it does it doesn't the First Amendment from the beginning of our country has not protected whole scores of speech obscenity notably it is not obscene if it's so first of all you could ban all sexual performances drag or not from having minors and i would support that but to have a fully closed so you'll Shred the First Amendment no it's that is obscenity there's a very clear standard for them and a fully clothed person not who is simply dressed in the attire of the other gender and wearing makeup reading books to Children is protected by the First Amendment read for much of our country's history cross-dressing was illegal including the San Francisco we had slavery just because we didn't always but so I'm saying just because we had things in the past doesn't mean they're actually consistent with our rights I suppose what you're saying though Brad is Michael your view is anti-American and it's not consistent with the First Amendment and what I'm pointing to is the people who wrote the first amendment the people who ratified the First Amendment the people who lived in a country under the First Amendment for the vast majority of our country's history they all agreed with me and people in very recent times have started to pervert the meaning of the First Amendment to kind of agree with you the people who wrote the first amendment also wrote the alien and seditions acts of the Constitution and the principles outlined are what's important not the imperfections of the people that drafted where you speech and I know which side one is that free speech open discourse is a good in and of itself uh possibly to avoid coercion or too large a government that would be needed to suppress speech but the other view which is the view I know Mr knowleshold so he's not going to need to respond to this one is that the reason we want freedom of speech is to arrive at truth in the same way that we want peer review in scientific journals not so that there's ultimately a panoply of voices but so that by hearing everyone out we wind up with one voice speaking one thing that is true and I'm curious for you Mr Palumbo do you see the point of free speech as an end in itself of protection from coercion or as a tool to slowly you know gravitate towards one thing that is true and free speech is a tool that gets us there but not the good where you are pursuing so I definitely reject the utilitarian view of free speech is that now I think to some extent both can coexist in that I think the best ideas do win out over time and that sunlight can be a strong form of disinfectant but there is utility in and of itself of letting man be free to say wrong and false things like one version of it so what is the good you see in doing that that that's the most fundamental aspect of what it you if you're not free to speak you're not free to think right that is the one of the most fundamental things about Humanity I'm going to press one more time just because for the interest of time I'm going to do it more briefly than I know Mr Knowles would uh what is the good of being free to think to explore and find the best ideas in part but also to fulfill The Human Experience that's what life is is learning and making your way through the world and deciding what you believe and if you're not free to think and you're not free to speak you're not able to do that so it's like the idea of for example coerced morality isn't really morality right because if people are doing the right thing or believing that for example like everyone's very loyal to uh Kim Jong-un in North Korea but there's not actually much value in that loyalty because it's done at the the threat of death a lot of a lot of value for Kim Jong-un all right at this point and you would like to be Kim Jong-un do you I don't think I would I don't know I don't think I I have more questions questions but since I am not Kim Jong-un I will not get hybrid to use the time four questions I want to look a little at the eyes we have a mic over in the corner is the plan for people to approach the mic just to check since it says I've tucked in the corner I want to remind people that the best way of asking your question is to have it Formed very clearly in your mind before you step up to give other people the best chance of also asking theirs questions should be three to five sentences brief to the point uh because I want as many voices to be heard here as possible so questions from the body cool hey thanks for coming guys I've been a fan of both of you for a long time mostly Brad though um [Laughter] so uh the reason I'm a Libertarian is because government is inherently a monopoly on violence that will always further accumulate more wealth and power no matter what you do so having said that as this my question is for Michael as the size of government has grown so has the acceptance of alternative or degenerate lifestyles on a systemic scale culture and the legal system reflect this how can you recognize this fact while believing that simply using the state to fight this behavior in the legal system will lead to the necessary cultural change to eradicate it from public life well the government hasn't just grown I guess that's the misconception at the heart of this yes obviously we're a much bigger Country Now 330 million people the federal government is much more powerful than it was some 200 years ago but in in other ways the government has weakened in other ways the ability of local governments to control their own communities and set standards that's weakened considerably the ability of school boards to set curricula now is is quite uh controversial the the rights of states have completely gone away the states essentially have no real power anymore if they ever disagree with the federal government so once again I don't think this is an issue just of government getting really big or government getting really small conservatives have never supported small government it's not it's not possible for a country of 330 million people with a global Empire to have a small government what we can have is a limited government so we want government to be within its natural and proper limits and so when we're talking about the limits of the government especially in a self-government such as ours we have this question do we have the political right to set certain standards are our rights merely the individual licenses to pursue whatever delusional and depraved sexual identities that we that we want to pursue or any other kind of Fantastical ideas or do we have an exalted Freedom that will suppress some of our lower appetites but will give us a flourishing community that that latter idea was the idea that has animated our country that made our country great that made our whole civilization great as we've lost that the government's gotten all out of whack as you describe and the country's gone to pot less admirably concise answer just just to get as many as possible we'll go to the next one I'll throw a dichotomy as we go America is too large to be justly governed yes or no America is not too large to be just like Governor there have been plenty of Empires that have been just like government well I'd suggest we should maybe be doing a little bit less of the worldwide Empire part sure I would say it is too large to be governed by one large federal government and that's why it should be decentralized as much as possible next question from the students thank you guys both for coming as an inspiring journalists political content creator you guys have been keeping me busy over the last couple weeks I appreciate that uh I'm a senior at Point Park University it's probably about 15 minutes from here uh the school made headlines last year for their implemented pronoun mandate saying that if students told you what their pronouns are and you didn't abide by that that you can get in trouble through Administration it being a private university how do you recommend not only fighting back against that rule but having students who are mainly liberal on that campus kind of see your side of that argument the university is obviously very liberal and so they probably buy into all sorts of student governance kind of silly policies so you can try to get some power and wield it that way but as you point out it's a school that has the right to set its own standards especially as a private university it can do that and so ultimately if you can't persuade the administration to do it you might have to seek out a community that's more reasonable and that very likely will provide you with a better education if if the school that you're attending doesn't know the difference between men and women yeah I think I agree with Michael their private school they can have stupid anti-free speech policies if they want um but I think you should transfer foreign [Applause] oh yeah for sure my bad um Mr Palumbo what's awesome that you could come here on such short notice um how much did they pay you to do it a lot [Applause] um [Applause] [Music] sorry that's your question Leah could I have a follow-up though could I have a follow-up dude are you getting paid more than me because we have to talk about this afterwards this is I'll go all right hi I like to say thank you so much to Mike you Michael for coming out it's been a real pleasure hearing you speak my question actually goes to both of you though so it's been I know with you Brad you argued about uh with the age of 18 that's kind of the accepted limit of when someone becomes an adult and then you said that's when they should be allowed to you know go through gender reassignment surgery my question is at what age do you really do we sh I'm sorry what age should we Define as when one becomes an adult and should it then be allowed to ban surge like this type of surgery up until that age or just ban entirely so certainly uh you know we can have an age to buy cigarettes which they unfortunately raised recently now it's 21 to even buy a cigar but you know you could be 18 to do this 21 to do that or the other thing but more importantly even once one reaches those ages of maturity the question is can certain behaviors be banned and the answer for all of American History including today is yes we even if these are are not issues that directly affect somebody else yes they can destructive harmful behaviors can be outlawed that's why we have laws against heroin and lots of other drugs that's why we have laws against suicide still in Most states in this country and that that's why we have had laws and ordinances against the kind of transgender transition and surgery because we we can know something about reality that's that's the premise of our government and we can know that even adults sometimes fall into very destructive habits and because we're all living together in society if enough people fall into something like the addiction of heroin then we won't have a true Liberty in this country we'll have merely licentiousness which is really just a form of slavery so we we can do that we have done that for most of American history and and that remains very much still a possibility in America unless the The Libertines get their way yeah so I think the question is not so much can we or can we not restrict the restrict this it's should we and I would just say do you want your own life restricted do you want government officials writing rules about what clothing you're allowed to wear I mean I think of it the covid experiment reminded to me the importance of bodily autonomy and medical freedom I don't understand how people can on one hand and I'm assuming some of Michael's positions here but rail against coveted vaccine mandates be outraged that the government would tell you you have to take an objection than I was but then also think the government should be able to tell you whether or not you can take testosterone pills the outraged at the idea of being forced to wear a mask but think the government should be able to tell you you can't dress a certain way in public to me there's a total cognitive dissidence here I want to live in an America where adults as long as they're not hurting anybody else can live their lives how they see fit Michael apparently wants to live in a sort of majority rules type of you'll live your life the way that majority of people think you should America which again isn't going to work out for a minoritarian social conservative faction in a country that's becoming more pro-lgbt becoming less religious becoming less traditionalist it's just not going to work out well for you I want to get we've had a lot of time for us more questions from the crowd oh I have such good points you both get concluding remarks that's true yeah oh okay okay guys stand up hi Michael Knowles hello um so thank you for persisting and coming to speak here despite multiple setbacks um as someone who is conservative and as a devout Catholic who would like to eventually become a commentator for the daily wire similar to your young colleague Brett Cooper um would you recommend I start posting YouTube videos about my commentary on YouTube or gain traction to gain to gain an audience and traction or just email Ben Shapiro to ask him if I can have my own show or how should I begin my career as a commentator I'm going to add an addendum to that question um since I'm also Catholic what prayer rule of life would you suggest for someone who's going to enter into media I mean it this is the St Michael's prayer that 24 times a day a really great question if if you're a friend of mine I would not recommend emailing Ben Shapiro that's not going to be the right move what I would recommend for you is that you get a little bit of political experience if you want to be a political commentator I would recommend you get a little bit of political experience you can work on a campaign that's actually a great way to get political experience to know what it's like on the ground and not just what the news says I would recommend you read everything the reason I recommend you read everything is because you're young you're vibrant and I'm sure you're very well educated but your views will change as you become educated and it's a real pity when people become well known at a young age and they say very stupid things and then they come to regret those things later on so that's that's the first thing that I would recommend as for the prayer life I'm pretty simple about it I would recommend a nightly rosary and very simple I mean for people the people who are interested in the faith I always think oh you could read Thomas Aquinas you could read Saint Augustine you could read all these wonderful people and I reckon GK Chesterton to all these people um but we pray the rosary and the other thing I would recommend I'm not even being cheeky here is I I would recommend praying the Saint Michael prayer it's against against all the evil spirits who prowl about the world [Applause] yes no this I I hate to add another 30 seconds here but the other night it was during Lent I was talking to a friend of mine and we were talking about actually sorry I can't allow this look at the hand s all right I'll suggest my wrath even more I guess all right uh can we have another question from the audience thank you as I've been listening uh I correct me if I'm wrong that it seems that I'm hearing that there's two different ideologies um with each individual Mr Palumbo from what I'm hearing it sounds like more of a relativistic ideology Mr Knowles it sounds more of this basis that there's a truth that is is real and that everyone can discover so that brings me to the question of uh that or the the thought that maybe the real question should be what is truth otherwise it seems like the conversation conversation just keeps going back and forth without finding a tangible outcome do you think this topic can be decided before answering the question what is truth Mr Palumbo to you first yeah I think I'd push back on on the idea that I'm like a relativist that I don't believe every person like I hate the phrase like your truth or I do think there is a truth I think we're all uh imperfect and unable to perceive the perfect truth um and I guess what I'm arguing is not that there is no truth but just that the idea of having Society or the government top-down decide what the truth is and impose it on all of us is antithetical to what I see as human Discovery and flourishing but also to the actual discovery of getting closer to the truth because when uh what is believed to be true is forced on people and and different ideas wrong ideas mostly are suppressed that actually leads to less discovery of getting closer to the ultimate truth that's what we see that's why things that were considered um you know complete conspiracy theories a year or two ago are now like oh yeah that probably happened um and so that's why I would say it's not that I don't believe there is a truth it's that I believe that decentralizing truth seeking is the best approach to get us as imperfect beings closer to it and that is what we aim to do in this debate we're nearing the end of our time I want to give you time for your last Roundup since I've cut you off and you've saved those all up for a rapid fire May I answer this question so the I wonder Brad if you see the irony in insisting upon your view of society which is the view that says we can't have standards and we can't use the government and Society to impose rules because my my preferred Society is the society in America that we've had pretty much for our nation's history and it's the view that says that we can set standards and women can have bathrooms and we can just have norms and we can behave in a normal way and and what you're saying is Michael that's authoritarian and so I the great Liberator I am going to insist that none of you have those standards in those Norms well you can have those standards in your community and your church in your school in your business what you can't do is tell the rest of the world how to live you just said I can have it in my community yes okay so we can have it in my community but not in someone else's case in terms of a private Community cell there's no private Community what is your church your church is a community but my community is Nashville Tennessee clear one correct view of the truth for all its residents I mean but it does you could live you could live in that do those kinds of things but but all all states are like that because all states have laws and they declare certain things true and others false and some elicit and some illicit and those statecrafters but that's still done where the intersection of Rights occurs where one person's right to swing their fists ends where another person's face begins not when it comes to questions of individual beliefs being policed like who gets to go into a bathroom well who gets who owns the bathroom they can make the rule you don't own the bathroom what about the military bathrooms and the school bathrooms the military it can have its policies about that's the government so the government has to have its own policies but that's quite different than telling everybody I think I'll I think I'll pause this here for a moment because I think you've exposed the fundamental Rift here I'm going to give my last question then we'll have your closing thoughts so people get home it's a very short question see now you know how it feels you see that I would just like to know for your own later things that you can weave into your closing thoughts if you there are a lot of people out here tonight who think frankly both of you are pretty seriously wrong on this issue and even if you're right here many of us have something where we later realize we've been wrong and we've harmed people as a result of being wrong and I'm curious what you think is most helpful to you in realizing where you've been wrong on other issues but you may give your closing thoughts and that is merely a suggestion not gavel enforce I think this is an issue like abortion where people think in good faith on both sides the stakes are very high and it's hard to be patient when you think lives are at risk oh all right you get I'll answer your question as I walk to the doctor uh personal humility is helpful and uh deference to the tradition is probably wise but now I have to walk back to get my closing remarks Leah you can't fool me by having me only answer your question all right a wonderful night thank you so much to everybody uh is especially a wonderful night because on the precise topic of the debate my opponent Brad seemed to concede a fair bit of it before we began that the government should in some ways regulate transgenderism uh this is great my first opponent dropped out so this is a great debate this is my favorite one I've ever been part of the law as we have shown must regulate transgenderism because transgender transgenderism contradicts the understanding of man and woman long established in our law even the most tolerant Society cannot simultaneously uphold mutually contradictory principles either women get their own bathrooms or they don't private Enterprise can't solve the problem because the Practical implications of transgenderism extend far beyond Private Business the law cannot evade the question QED before we go though I would like to look a little bit further and ask how the law should regulate transgenderism we have two options Embrace transgender anthropology which is to deny the natural distinction between men and women or to restore the understanding of sex that Accords with reason and reality and which civilization has embraced for all of history not a tough choice to me the law almost basically is an ordinance of reason for the common good promulgated by the one who has care of the community when law becomes unreasonable and untethered from reality Society flounders as we see increasingly today we will live According to some standard or another the only question is whether we'll live in accordance with truth or falsehood we will summon the confidence to assert the truth which we can know through our reason and conscience without which faculties self-government would be impossible or we will shrug our shoulders like the cynic Pontius Pilate and ask that question we just heard what is truth we have seen the rotten fruit of cynical Politics as a citizen in a self-governing republic I say we ought to live according to the truth which sets us free and which offers the only path to a flourishing Society for everyone thank you very much [Applause] the debate we're having here tonight really fundamentally comes down to what kind of a society we want America to be do we want to be a pluralistic and classically liberal Society where people of different beliefs and values can live side by side or do we want to fight in an Ever Ever intensifying struggle a tug of war over the state to be used to crush minority viewpoints enforce Conformity force people to live how others see fit uh I know which one I would like and I would humbly suggest that the Viewpoint of those conservatives sorry uh I I would humbly suggest that the Viewpoint of those conservatives who wish to regulate transgenderism out of existence is incompatible with that fundamental view of America as a place where each person can chart their own way in life as long as they're not hurting anybody else I also would just reiterate that it's remarkably short-sighted 30 percent of America identifies as socially conservative if you guys really don't want to leave space for different Lifestyles for unpopular viewpoints that is not going to go well in a Democratic Society so if this newfound flavor of authoritarian style conservatism gets its wishes it won't just be betraying some of the principles that make America great it will be setting the stage for its own destruction and frankly that destruction will be deserved thank you foreign [Applause]

Channel: Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Views: 207,811

Keywords: conservatism, conservative, us history, politics

Id: iziX8fVV4gg

Length: 97min 10sec (5830 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023