Welcome to the Eric Metaxus show with your host, Eric Mettaxas.

Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Michael Knowles, author of Speechless.

Controlling words, controlling ways.

I just have to laugh, Michael, because I know that your previous book literally was word-free.

It was wordless.

We won't get into that.

Well, how have we gotten to the point in America where reasonable people could be so silly that they would not understand why drag

queen's story hour could be deeply harmful. Do they not understand that a child could be deeply

messed up by this kind of thing? I mean, it's like, you know, if a child witnesses a rape,

what are we going to

argue that it's not going to make any difference to? Have we lost this concept of trauma that just

watching something like that could be traumatic? I mean, why would we even have to discuss this?

Well, we've lost our concept of first principles, You know, as a Hemingway describes bankruptcy,

he says it happens gradually, then suddenly. And this happened gradually for at least a century.

And then I think we're sort of in the suddenly episode right now. So one way, how is it that we've

lost a sense of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Well, because, for instance, there's one book

that you will not be taught in schools right now. You can be taught Robin DiAngelo, you can be taught

Ibram Kendi, you could probably be taught mind conf. But the one book that you can, you will go to

court if you teach it, is the Bible. Because in the 20th century, some justices on the Supreme Court, they found in the invisible ink above the emanations beneath the penumbras that the Constitution says no Bible in schools.

Right now in schools, you can have a religious liturgy.

You can pray to the various secular saints.

You can have rituals for BLM or pride or you have a whole month

...