Knowles: Of far greater concern to society
is the recent scourge of cancel culture,
which threatens to make our public discourse
courser, falser, and crueler.
Cancel culture takes two forms.
In one version, cancel culture occurs
when a once obscure individual achieves some modicum
of fame or success,
at which point a social media swarm stirs up
and digs up some tweet that guy sent 10 years ago,
at which point his achievement is totally
taken away from him, and he is canceled.
Even the kindest of souls find themselves subject
to this sort of cancel culture.
I'm not talking about myself,
I'm talking about a guy named Carson King.
Just recently, an Iowa football fan,
Carson King held up a sign at a game
that said please send beer money,
and it included his Venmo address.
Now his -- we have some people leaving,
They're canceling Carson King too.
Well, I'll tell you about Carson King,
and you can leave 'em if you want.
He held up that sign and raised one million dollars.
The reaction that he got from the American public
was exactly the reaction that we're seeing in this room.
People who don't want to listen to a thing,
who don't want to look at grace, who don't want to live
in a culture that takes each other seriously,
but a culture that merely wants
to rip people down for no reason.
Now, the one positive thing about that culture
is the minute that all the schmucks leave...
[Audience laughter and cheers]
Knowles: The positive thing is the minute all the schmucks leave,
the people who are waiting in line all the way out the door
get to come in and fill the seats,
so welcome, to those of you who were not here before.
[Audience laughter]
Knowles: What we find is very often the truer a statement is
the more liable it is to incur the ire of cancel culture.
Cancel culture is political correctness with teeth.
Political correctness is the leftist speech codes
and behavior codes that we all make fun of
because they're so ridiculous.
Cancel culture is the mutant spawn of political correctness.
Cancel culture is what happens when you contradict
those codes of speech and behavior
that political correctness dictates.
PC and cancel culture threaten our public discourse.
They stifle speech, they stifle thought,
worst of all they encourage lies.
We must fight both of those scourges tooth and nail.
We must do it. We must not be forced to live in lies.
We must not be forced to live in fear.
Nobody benefits from living in lies.
Nobody benefits from living in fear.
We're told that they do, they don't.
This entire speaking tour is a rebuke
to that hideous culture of intimidation and lies.
In "Alice In Wonderland," Humpty Dumpty says to Alice,
"When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean,
neither more nor less."
Alice responds to Humpty Dumpty, she says,
"The question is whether you can make
words mean so many different things."
Humpty Dumpty knows better, he corrects her, he says,
"The question is: which is to be master?
That's all."
Those who would redefine reality would be our masters.
They tell us not to believe our own eyes,
but fantasy is not reality.
Ideology is not truth, men are not women.
Most importantly,
and this is an important subject of the whole tour,
lies are not comforting, they're not comforting.
To comfort means to encourage, that's what it means
with fort, like forte, strength.
It means to give strength. Lies do not give strength
and they don't encourage, they deceive,
they weaken, they give harm.
Increasingly, our society shies away
from what we call "uncomfortable truths."
This is a misguided plan, destined to cause misery.
We need comfort, we need to be strong.
The way you get strong is with the truth.
No matter the cost,
we must choose the truth above all things.
There is a lot more at stake than bathrooms and pronouns.
Thank you very much.
[Audience applauding]