In an exclusive interview, Live Action founder and president Lila Rose talked with author and commentator Michael Knowles about truth and morality, and how to make those values attractive and winsome in today’s world.
“I think there’s space for persuading people with a little bit of sugar,” Knowles said. “Sugar can make the medicine go down. And it’s most difficult on an issue like life, because this is ghastly stuff. The United States is killing 800,000 of the most vulnerable, innocent people per year — there’s no jokes to be made there. This is a fallen world, and there are awful, terrible things that happen all of the time. And you can either allow that fact to cause you to pull your hair out, and wail and scream, and be bitter and resentful and angry towards everybody, or you can take the fact of this fallen world, and attempt to cooperate with grace, and turn bad things into good things.”
In the interview, Knowles and Rose discuss major questions facing our world today. From the issue of abortion continuing to plague the globe, to the existence of God and the importance of marriage, the pair tackled serious topics, as well as how to use one’s own intrinsic talents to change hearts and minds.
Both Knowles and Rose have appeared on the “Whatever” podcast, discussing monogamy, dating, marriage, and protecting life, often amongst people hostile to those views. “There’s this longing — especially among young women, and among young men too, I think — for some semblance of traditional, normal life,” Knowles said, adding, “They can see, a little bit, through this veil of decadent society.”
“They need an example of it lived in front of them, in a normal way, that yes, it’s possible,” Rose agreed.
Rose also asked Knowles what his advice would be for debating pro-abortion advocates in a way that is winsome and disarming.
“You need to know all of their talking points,” he began, adding, “Don’t underestimate the mendacity of the people you’re debating… or, to be more charitable, the sheer ignorance of them, to believe the lies of other people.”
He further said that pro-life activists need not be afraid of what their opponents may say.
“If you’re on the right side of an issue like this — if you’re pro-life, you’re obviously on the right side — they’ve got some errors in logic that have led them to the position that it’s OK, or even a positive good, to murder little babies,” he said. “Something has gone wrong in their intellectual journey. Allow them to expose that. Don’t interrupt your opponent when he’s destroying himself.”
