Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech interviewed conservative commentator Michael Knowles on Monday to discuss his new book “Speechless,” which tackles how the left manipulates language to “invert reality” and how conservatives can effectively push back against political correctness and wokeness by becoming more persuasive so that they can “better craft the standards that form the limits of our society.”
The two discussed a variety of topics including big tech, transgenderism, and the blurring lines between the power of the private and public sectors.
Domenech highlighted the threat that big tech companies pose to free speech, asserting that special privileges for corporations “ought to be reexamined in light of the way these platforms are behaving,” while Knowles noted that big tech “crossed the Rubicon when they deplatformed the duly elected sitting president of the United States,” when a “handful of oligarchs in Silicon Valley… decided they could censor him.”
Knowles discussed how the manipulation of language has been integral to the normalization of transgenderism, noting that the redefinition of what it means to be a man or a woman “establishes this claim that who we truly are has nothing to do with our bodies and we’re establishing that as a fact of nature” adding that “if it’s true for a 30-year-old then it’s true for a 3-year-old as well.”
Knowles also spoke to the need for the right to articulate its own purpose and beliefs rather than just respond to the left’s, concluding that it is incumbent on conservatives to “offer our own vision” rather than to just “go along with the new standards or abandon standards entirely.”
Listen to the full conversation here.
