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Aug. 16, 2020 - The Charlie Kirk Show
01:20:34
Embracing Political Action w/ Kirk Cameron and Rob McCoy

Kirk Cameron and Pastor Rob McCoy join The Charlie Kirk Show to discuss why each of them has thrown off the the prevailing church wisdom to stay out of politics, and instead have engaged the political, policy and cultural battles of our...

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Growing Pains and Faith 00:09:17
Thank you for listening to this podcast one production.
Now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast One, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Hey, everybody.
Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, happy Sunday, by the way.
We have Rob McCoy and Kirk Cameron.
That name probably should ring a bell.
Two great friends of mine.
As I do this podcast right now, Pastor Rob McCoy is under incredible attack by the secular atheist left trying to arrest him for his Christian beliefs.
Please email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
And it's Sunday.
So this episode is brought to you advertiser-free for those of you that support us at charliekirk.com slash support.
CharlieKirk.com slash support.
Kirk Cameron is here on the Charlie Kirk Show.
You got three Scottish guys talking about liberty, freedom, and America.
You're going to love it.
Thank you guys so much for supporting us at charliekirk.com slash support.
Buckle up.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit is love of this country.
He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
Turning point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to this special episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
I'm joined by my pastor, Pastor Rob McCoy.
First time on the podcast, Rob?
No.
First time today.
And of course, the legendary Kirk Cameron.
Oh, whoa.
In some universe, maybe legendary, but it's an honor for me.
Both of us have Kirk in common.
I love that.
There's not many of us left.
We're a rare breed.
And don't forget, Charlie, that Cameron means church in Scottish.
It does.
You go back.
I can trace my family all the way back to 1620 arriving to this country, Alphonse Kirk.
Not 1619?
No, the year after, actually.
So 1620.
I think it's cool too because Kirk does mean church.
And Cameron.
Cameron was a very vicious clan in the highlands of Scotland.
All three of us are Scottish.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's why we actually might fight for something.
Can I say one thing?
Yeah, of course.
You know why God invented Scotch whiskey?
Why did God invite and invent Scotch whiskey?
To stop the Scottish from ruling the world.
You know, it's kind of the law of averages, right?
God gave the fighting spirit, but you have to dull it down at some point.
That's right.
Kirk, your reputation precedes you.
You were in growing pains many, many years ago.
Yeah.
Twice nominated for Golden Globe, right?
If I remember correctly?
I think so.
Don't pay too much attention to some of those things.
You have made a ton of movies, grew up watching your movies.
Yeah.
You're a Christian.
There's a lot happening in our country.
What's on your heart?
Well, Charlie, I'm a dad.
I've got six kids.
And the conversations that are happening around our dinner table are: is this, are we watching socialism?
Or I mean, is this, what they're deleting videos off of the internet?
This stuff's important.
I'm hearing doctors say things that I want to know about.
I'm hearing politicians say things I want to know about.
My kids are interested.
And my kids are having these crazy ideas that maybe America really is not such a great nation.
And my kids coming back and saying, Dad, kids at school are like, they're saying that they're embarrassed to say that they're Americans.
They're ashamed of being American.
And I'm like, what are you talking about?
This is the greatest country in the history of the world.
This is the freest, most prosperous, generous nation that's ever existed.
This is the culmination of 4,000 years of liberty documents.
We go all the way back to, you know, Christ and him bringing liberty and Patrick of Ireland and setting Ireland free and all the way through English common law and all this stuff that I've learned.
And they want to, you know, just kind of say, nope, it's all bad.
It's all rooted in racism and bigotry and ego.
And we should just ditch the whole thing and we should go the way of, you know, Stalin?
I mean, that's how I'm perceiving all of this, going, what's going on?
So how old are your kids?
Six kids?
Our kids are 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23.
Wow, that's pretty.
And they're all of them are listening to you, and the others I'm trying to get to listen to you.
Yeah.
Well, thank you.
That means a lot.
I appreciate that.
My math might be bad, but I thought you just gave five ages.
Yeah, I got six kids.
I got six.
Well, you know, you know how it is.
They're in there somewhere.
Yeah, youngest is 17, oldest is 23.
There you go.
It's all within that window.
It was a busy six years.
Yeah.
Yes.
They got a TV.
Everything's fine now.
Exactly.
So, Kirk, you've been in Hollywood.
You've been around fame and people recognizing you and all that stuff.
And you've become more committed to your faith, obviously, over the years, in despite of all that temptation and all that.
Walk us through your story a little bit.
And I do want to get back to what you talked about, the deletion of our beautiful country.
Walk you through the story of my faith story.
Both, yeah.
I mean, you have a pretty incredible story.
You were part of a very successful network TV show, critically acclaimed.
Continue to be a Christian.
Probably some would argue at the cost of some of your career of not getting every major role you can imagine.
Just walk us through your story.
So I didn't grow up going to church.
When I was about 14 years old, my mom took me down to interview with an agent and signed me up.
I started doing 409 and McDonald's commercials.
And then I got this gig on a show called Growing Pains, which we didn't know if it would go anywhere.
Alan Thick was a TV talk show host from Canada.
I did a show called Thick of the Night.
He played my dad, and the show kind of took off.
And we were on for six or seven years.
And during that time, there was a really cute girl who played a cheerleader at the high school that Mike Seaver was at.
And I wanted to get to know her.
And she said, well, why don't you come visit me at my church?
So I went there as an atheist and heard a message that really, really captured my attention.
It was the message of the gospel.
And as an atheist, that didn't mean much to me, but the implications of that message really had me asking a lot of questions.
And I got some great answers to those questions.
Introduced to guys like Ravi Zacharias and Sean McDowell and read some books like More Than a Carpenter.
And I started exploring the Bible and Jesus and his claims and became persuaded that he really did rise from the grave, which was crazy for me to think that that could even happen.
But I believed it was true.
And as I began to take steps in that direction, I believe God started to change me and change me on the inside.
And that began to change decisions I was making on the outside, which ultimately have served me so well.
Some would say maybe you didn't get the career that Leonardo DiCaprio, who was also on Growing Pains, got.
But you know what I've got?
I've got, wait a minute, I've got forgiveness of sin over here.
I've also got a wife I've been married to that I love dearly for 30 years, six children, and I've been part of projects that I've been passionate about that combine my values, my sensitivities, my sensibilities, and my passions.
And And I'm still doing cool things like a podcast with Charlie Kirk.
I get to talk with amazing people and I think, wow, God has been good to me.
So let's go back to where you started.
That's an amazing testimony.
You're father of six.
You're seeing your kids be propagandized with all this information.
You did a movie once called Monumental.
Right.
What's that movie about?
Well, I made a documentary, not because I wanted to make a political documentary.
In fact, growing up, just to give you a bit of background, I don't ever remember my parents voting.
I don't think my parents ever talked to us about even voting to be for the presidency.
It just wasn't an issue.
I think my dad may have felt like, what can I do?
I'm one guy.
You know, they up there make the decisions and we're sort of like rats in a cage and we just go along with stuff.
But I made this movie because I'm seeing my six kids grow up into a world that looks to me like it's falling apart.
Everybody was saying the world's going to hell.
The right blames the left, the left blames the right, the rich blame the poor, the poor blame the rich.
Hollywood blames religion for so many of the evils of the world.
And the church is blaming the media for so much of the problem.
And I'm thinking, how do we, where's the clear voice of how to get back to what we need?
And I thought, if I could only go back in time and speak to our founding fathers and mothers and say, which presidents got it right?
The Forgotten Monument Story 00:04:14
Which laws are good?
Which ones do we need to chuck?
What are the principles that are the non-negotiables?
And since I couldn't do that, I thought, well, maybe I just start retracing the escape route of the pilgrims and find out who they were and why they came here.
Reagan said, remember the pilgrims.
And as I did that, I found out that these were free thinkers.
These weren't religious fuddy duddies that had funny hats and belt buckles on their shoes carrying turkey guns around.
These were faith-filled, free thinking people who had gotten a hold of the Geneva Bible and they were studying it for themselves and realizing that the tyrant had overstepped his bounds and they wanted to go to a place where they could find the freedom to create a society that would allow them to worship God, that would have freedom.
And they eventually got to North America, faced incredible difficulties, and then switched from a social, from what I understand, more of a socialistic construct in the way that they were dealing with their economy to a free market, a free cap, more of a, every guy's owning his own land.
Everyone is producing their own food.
And so many of the principles that they began to lay down became the template for the free market, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, all these things that we enjoy today.
Charlie, you rightfully pointed out that one of the most underused individuals in America is Bill Federer.
Bill Federer is awesome.
He's an amazing historian.
And yet, Bill Federer, he's phenomenal.
But Kirk had some really great instruction from a pretty phenomenal man that not many people know a lot about.
I want you to touch on Marshall because that guy doesn't get any credit and he has just been plowing for years.
He's a treasure.
Yeah.
Dr. Marshall Foster was a friend of mine.
He wrote a book called Battle for the 21st Century.
And I was reading it and happened to bump into him in an airport.
And we found out that we live 10 miles away from each other.
So we got friends.
As do Kirk and I.
We live in the same community.
Yeah.
And he began telling me about the people of faith down throughout the ages who fought for liberty.
They weren't just the passive Church mice who just sort of went along to get along and took Romans 13 as just sort of the excuse to just roll over and do whatever the government says.
And he talked about great people like Alfred the Great, and he talked about Patrick of Ireland, and he talked about so many people who set cultures free by getting the word of God into their hands and applying it to all the different spheres of culture.
And so he came with me and showed me this incredible monument in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that happens to be, I think, the most important monument in America.
And they haven't torn it down yet.
And I don't know, maybe after this podcast.
I know they might all of a sudden.
They might all of a sudden.
It's really hard to find, though.
It's really obscure.
Yeah.
Even though it's the largest, what granite is it?
The largest solid granite monument in America.
It's 88 feet tall, 80 tons of granite.
Good luck moving that.
Yeah.
It spells out our forefathers recipe for a free and just society.
And what's the name of the monument?
It's called the National Monument to the Forefathers.
And it's hidden behind a forest of trees in a residential neighborhood.
So you can't see it unless you go down the right residential street to find it.
When it was built, it was built to overlook Plymouth Harbor and Plymouth Rock.
When was it built?
It was, well, it started just before, it started in the 1800s, and then it was interrupted by the Civil War.
Lincoln actually was one of the very first contributors for the funding of it.
And the cornerstone, no, it was finally completed in 1889.
Wow.
And it overlooked Plymouth Harbor, and it was supposed to be a test, but then these trees and then, you know, the changing of the demographic.
And so it's protected, but it is amazing.
Plymouth Rock's Hidden Meaning 00:03:46
So what's the design?
What's the significance of it?
This will blow you away.
It'll blow you away.
And I'm kicking myself that I didn't, if I had known we were going to be here today, I would have brought one because I've actually made, I hired the Weta workshop who did all the sculpting for Lord of the Rings.
For the video, we can superimpose it over.
So that's what we'll do.
But describe it as we put the sculptures.
So these are the best sculptors in the world to make a copy of this.
And I've got one that's three feet tall.
And then I've got a thousand smaller ones to give out to people.
So basically, this monument consists of five figures.
And one figure is like this, up at the top.
And then she's standing on a platform.
And underneath the platform are four figures at the corners of that platform.
And the top platform, the top figure, her name is Faith.
She's the largest of all five.
She's holding a book in her hand.
And that book is the Bible and she's pointing to heaven.
She's standing on a rock, which is Plymouth Rock.
Yeah, I've seen this before.
Continue.
Yeah, go ahead.
She has a star on her forehead representing wisdom.
Monument.
Go ahead.
Massive.
And so they believe that faith also was not just something that you believed in your heart, but it was something that you used wisdom and you reasoned from the word of God in her hand.
And that faith would be expressed in four specific ways.
First, right below her is morality.
And morality is a woman sitting in a chair and she's holding the Ten Commandments in her left hand.
She's holding the scroll of Revelation in her right hand, representing Old and New Testament.
But they believed morality was not an external standard imposed by a king or a tyrant.
It must start in the heart.
So on her left is inscribed the evangelist.
He's preaching the gospel so that the heart is transformed by the Spirit of God.
Then you begin to love what God loves and hate what God hates, and you adopt God's standard of morality.
And that's good morality.
Once you have good values, now you go to the next figure, which is law.
And now you can put that morality into laws and begin to restrain the evil in your society.
Are you blown away by this?
And he's holding, the judge is a man of law sitting in the judge's chair.
He's holding a book of law.
And Charlie, the book in the judge's hand is directly beneath the book in faith's hand, indicating that man's laws must line up under God's laws or they're not good laws.
And he's flanked by justice on one side and mercy on the other side.
And justice is a woman holding scales and a sword.
She doesn't bear the sword in vain.
And mercy on the other side.
Once you have law and you have civility in your country, now you can educate your children.
And they believed education was critical because if you didn't pass these principles on to the second and third generation, you'd lose them.
And she has a mother holding the books of knowledge.
She's victorious.
She has a wreath of victory around her head.
And on her right, it says youth.
And there she's training up a young person in the way that they should go.
And on her other side is an old man, wisdom.
And he's holding a Bible and a globe, indicating he has a biblical worldview.
Once you've educated your kids, your grandkids, and your great-grandkids in the faith, in morality, and established laws to protect those good values in your country, you now have the fourth figure, which is liberty.
And he's this just muscular, strong soldier dressed in the full armor that you find in Ephesians chapter 6.
He's got the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the belt of truth.
The chains on his wrists and his ankles are broken because tyranny has been overthrown.
Tyranny Overthrown in History 00:03:37
Love it.
And he's got the lion of England slain, the hide's over his back, the claw is on his shoulder, and he's got the sword back in its sheath because tyranny has been overthrown.
But he's looking out over the Atlantic Ocean because he's ready to defend anyone who would try to take away his biblical faith, his morality, his laws, or the ability to educate his children in a biblical worldview.
So the concept of government public education would be anathema to them because they just came away from that whole thing.
And on his left is his wife, and her name is Peace.
And she's holding a basket of overflowing with gifts and things for her family and friends.
And he's liberated both from the internal power of sin and can defeat those inner demons.
And he's liberated from the external powers of tyranny and bad, big government, which I've learned sucks.
It's an awesome monument.
And I want to give one to every politician, to every president of educational institutions, patriots, parents.
And I want to give one to the president.
I got to get one to him.
I visited an event up in the Northeast, and someone mentioned this to me, I remember years ago, four or five years ago.
And I looked it up, and when I saw it, I was like, oh, yeah, I've seen this before.
But I had no idea that it existed prior to that.
No idea.
And your summary of that was phenomenal.
And I made a whole documentary about it.
Now, the documentary is in DVD format.
I'm wanting to get this out.
Let's put it on YouTube.
Yeah, we got to get this thing out to the masses.
Because the way he described it just now was outstanding.
But in depth, the way he does it, I was just blown away.
It really has to be brought out, especially in this time.
It's even more, you know, those principles that our founders left us.
It's like, I feel like it was almost like they had the idea.
I mean, why would they etch this stuff in stone?
Why would the American people 150 years ago say, this is so important?
We're going to make the largest granite monument.
It's almost as though they thought it would be easy for a culture of people to get lost.
But explain to me, and maybe there's not a good answer.
How does that forgotten?
How do not more people know about this?
Is that a metaphor for the country?
I think so.
I think so, yeah.
And I think it's also been protected so that we can revisit it.
I mean, it isn't, it's in the national registry, right?
So, or something like that.
It must be.
So, some communist city council can't remove it or something.
Well, I know that it was originally owned by the city of Plymouth, and then it was given apparently for a dollar to the state of Massachusetts to take care of it.
And it's like the forgotten stepchild that, you know, it's not manicured very well.
There was, you know, all kinds of garbage on the top of it.
The Audubon Society apparently were protecting some form of birds that were making a nest on top of Faith's head, and they were like, there's like bird poop all dripping down her face and everything else.
And, you know, it's like kind of like the forgotten monument.
And I think it's one of the most important you could ever find.
In Plymouth, Massachusetts, pretty awfully significant.
It is.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'd love to take you there sometime.
And I know a guy who runs the museum, and he's there to preserve the real story of the pilgrims.
And he could give you just the most phenomenal walking tour around that monument.
Freedom Used Against Society 00:09:53
It's something where you look at the tenets of faith, law, wisdom, liberty, peace, as you articulated it.
We're told that everything from that era and from the last hundred years is awful and is nonsense and garbage and should be thrown out and deleted instantaneously.
And it actually you start to realize that there's a foundation of the ideals that was fought for.
And it wasn't, it's not insignificant that all these ideas of the West found a launching off point and was deliberately unimplemented.
Yeah.
And I'm so thankful.
I mean, the fact that we can do what we're doing right now, I think, is a result of that.
And one of the things that I've learned by listening to you and listening to my friend Dr. Marshall Foster and guys like Rob McCoy who are preaching this from the pulpit every week is that all of these great institutions that we have and all of these freedoms that we have have to be accompanied by personal self-government, right?
Like freedom comes with the responsibility to do the right thing, not just do anything, but to do the right thing.
And I think that's where our faith comes into it: if I love my neighbor as myself, then I can be trusted with freedom.
But if I'm going to take advantage of other people, then someone's going to come in and need to govern me, right?
Because I'm being irresponsible with that freedom.
And I'm so grieved when I see young people today who've had so much freedom for so long.
They don't know what tyranny and oppression is.
So I feel like they're not even really fighting for freedom.
They're fighting for free stuff.
They're fighting for security or provision.
Provide me with this, give me that, give me everything that I need.
But I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said, if you've got a government that's big enough to give you everything that you want, it's also big enough to take away everything you have.
And the great, one of the few downfalls of freedom is if the people that live in freedom don't understand in order to have freedom, you must have responsibility, then freedom will actually either turn people into tyrants or they will seek tyranny themselves, which is the inverse of freedom.
And that is the perplexing, unsolvable dilemma with freedom.
And freedom isn't just necessarily having access to anything you want.
Freedom is freedom from bondage, to be removed from those things that will enslave you.
And cultures don't understand that.
That if we're left to our own vices, we devolve into a place where we are just absolutely enslaved to our passions.
Yeah.
And then so the irony is that we give young people limitless freedom.
We say, yeah, go do whatever you want.
I would say unlimited choices.
Again, freedom.
They think it's freedom.
Yeah.
That's it.
I'm sorry.
And we phrase it as that.
Yeah, and you're correct.
Say, go do whatever you want or whatever.
And they actually end up being less free than any other generation ever because they all become bondages to their own poor choices.
That's the better way to word it.
Isn't that crazy?
Yeah.
And what is the most difficult part of living in a society that has liberty and freedom?
And there's a difference between the two.
They could be cousins, and Rob walks through the difference.
Yeah, Bob McEwen did it.
Yeah.
But they're interchanged, I think, incorrectly sometimes.
But for the sake of this, we can use them both.
They're cousins.
They're not opposites.
When you have a society like that, something that has, I haven't cracked the code yet.
And the only way I could crack the code, I would think, is to have a continual, such a hyper-focus on self-government, and we've lost that, is that eventually freedom can be used against the society that embraces freedom.
Say that again.
So eventually the freedom will be used against the society that embraces freedom.
For example, you have an entire generation now that uses the freedom of speech, freedom, all that, to be able to spread outright and total lies and misinformation so that they can destroy the very country that gave them that freedom in the first place.
Yes.
Oh, that's well, well said.
And it's a puzzling conundrum because in some ways we want to preserve this very special thing that we have, right?
And so, and this is what the Chinese have done to us, is they say, well, you've all this freedom, all this liberty.
Okay, we'll go buy up all your institutions.
Right.
It's to make you less free.
So we have this free society, this open international agreement where they then use that against us, then go infiltrate us with tyranny.
Right.
And in some ways, if you don't understand why you're able to be able to speak freely or go to church and you just do it, then that will almost guarantee you almost be guaranteed to lose that very thing.
That's so true.
I see that all around me.
I see people that are, they have the freedom to burn the flag.
They have the freedom to protest and to write F Trump on the side of the bottom.
You and I fight for that right.
Well, not the vandalism, but yes.
But for the right of freedom.
Of disagreement, sure.
And then I go, but then you're using that to flip the government to the type of government that will actually either throw you in jail or kill you for doing that very thing.
That's right.
Don't you understand?
Like, if you want to turn us into Venezuela or you want to turn us into some totalitarian type of, don't you know that that same type of government now has the power and when they flip on you, you have no recourse.
And the only way I've been able to solve that in my mind is that they don't necessarily want the freedom.
They actually want to become the tyrant.
So they don't want tyranny.
They want to become the tyrant.
Right.
So they want to be in charge.
Churchill said that When he spoke in the United States at a college, the name escapes me, but he said, European politics, unlike American politics, European politics is always about power.
Whereas in America, American politics was always about truth.
And he said, I fear because America is now coming to a place where politics is about power.
So you use that freedom, and then you go to nefarious means.
Then you gain power, and then you suppress the freedom.
That's right.
And suppressing the freedom is, in a sense, suppressing the truth.
Now we can censor you.
Now we don't want to discuss truth anymore.
We don't want anything to do with the truth.
This violates community standards.
Yeah, it's fake news.
And you don't have the freedom.
You don't have the freedom to make me feel bad.
It has nothing to do with contending for ideas.
It's now my emotions and my feelings.
And we become enslaved.
And so what ends up happening, and we've seen this in the entire generation, we play into the worst devices of their upbringing.
And most parents are just awful parents.
And most are.
You guys are both terrific, but they basically want to be their kid's friend, and they don't teach them the history of our country at all.
And they say, yeah, you know, go, sure, go smoke marijuana and go do all that stuff.
Yeah, whatever.
And it creates really miserable people.
And even on a micro level, that individual will eventually want to live either under a tyrant or become a tyrant themselves.
Yeah.
I believe it.
I can see it.
I can connect the dots and see that happening.
And so here's the question.
And I think I know the way Rob would answer it.
And I don't even know the answer is, do human beings actually desire to be free?
And I don't think there's a right or wrong answer.
I think some people do, some don't.
I do think that a certain portion of the human condition wants to be taken care of, especially the human population.
I really do.
Because being free is a very dangerous thing.
Especially without God.
The only way for someone to take care of you is they're going to do all the work and you don't do any.
So the only way to operate that is you have to enslave them to afford your lifestyle at their expense.
That's right.
So the people who are enslaved are obviously going to be the majority because that's how all oligarchies operate.
The few rule the many.
Always been more slaves than masters.
And those slaves cry out for freedom.
And that freedom comes by realizing who you are and awakening to that, that you're creating the image of God and these are inalienable rights and you can push back.
And it's going to come at a cost, but it's worth fighting for because your children don't have to be raised in slavery and you're doing it for generations to come.
And you finally get to a place where you say they've taken everything from me.
I have nothing to lose.
I'm willing to fight for this.
And then you get that Titler cycle.
From bondage comes freedom.
Freedom comes abundance.
Abundance comes apathy.
Apathy comes dependence.
Independence comes bondage.
And that cycle, until you infuse that triangle of freedom, faith, virtue, and freedom, we're going to be stuck in repeating that and destroying this nation that's had great freedom.
Yeah.
Gosh.
I feel like I just need to freeze what you just said and just study that for an hour.
There's so much packed into what you guys are saying.
From Bondage to Apathy 00:15:48
I learned so much by listening to you guys.
We were getting a tour of the facilities.
And the staff was showing Kirk around.
And I was really moved by something he said.
And I think you're going to really appreciate this, Charlie.
The staff had commented what they do and what the vision is here at Turning Point.
And repeat that.
And then what you said about Robbie Zacharias.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
A couple of the staff here were saying that they're turning activists into leaders.
Leaders and leaders into activists.
And then leaders into activists.
And I said, that's so great.
That's so important.
And it reminds me of a mentor friend of mine named Ravi Zacharias.
Yeah, he was terrific.
Whose motto was, we're trying to turn believers into thinkers and help thinkers become believers.
So good.
But I got to say, the comment a couple of your staff members was, who's Robbie Zacharias?
Well, you know, and I'm amazing.
And there's so many young people I've never heard of him.
And we've got to make sure that we solve that pattern.
Robbie Zacharias.
We got to dust these books off and get him into hand.
I know.
I know.
Well, he is a great social media presence, but we got to.
And he was amazing.
I had a chance to meet him a year and a half ago last summer.
He was so gracious, so awesome.
He is.
He was one of the best apologists ever.
Ever.
And he gave a speech once at Princeton that just like brought the house down.
All atheists.
And he didn't give an inch.
He was amazing.
He is.
Gosh, every time, every time.
He's in heaven right now.
Yeah, he is.
That's one where I think the Lord stood up when he came in.
Yeah.
All right.
I got it.
All right.
Hold on.
Hold on.
One sec.
I'm going to put my drink down.
I'll try to hold my fresco.
Yeah, exactly.
Precisely.
So being in Hollywood, being in pop culture, being in that whole world, what have you seen works the best when communicating these values to people?
What have I seen works the best?
In pop culture?
All of them.
Or in the entertainment industry.
Communication styles, methods, means of communication, argumentation.
What are things that don't work?
We can start with that.
What was one thing you tried to be persuasive with that didn't work?
Careful.
That's a really good question, Charlie.
You know, I've got it's interesting how the means of communication have been changing over the years.
And it's so brilliant that you're focusing on a younger generation.
Rob had said to my son outside here, he held up and said, hey, if I could give you a brand new iPhone with all the bells and whistles and everything on it, but you could only download one app, what would it be?
And he thought for a second and said, Instagram.
Or Snapchat.
Or Snapchat.
Right.
And my comment to you was.
Yeah, he didn't say Fox News.
He didn't say some of these television shows.
And so I'm looking honestly at what you're doing.
And I'm looking at the things that others are doing, like Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro.
And I'm seeing young people just get their information.
And the stuff that's working is these short, pithy statements, sound bites, video clips.
And those are the things that stick in their head.
And it's good and bad.
I see young people, a lot of them, they're not paying attention in terms of researching, fact-checking things, really diving deep into it.
Attention span is so short.
And so I wish it wasn't so short.
I wish they would dig more into it.
And I wish they were learning this stuff in school.
But it appears that the stuff that you're doing and Prager University and others is really, really, I think, the most effective right now.
Yeah.
It's an interesting thing.
And I think that the conservative movement has been more successful in the last five or six years because of social media.
And Donald Trump got elected largely because of social media.
And I think they know that, which is why they're going to turn the spigot off in the next couple months and even more so in the next year and a half.
And we don't have a solution for that as conservatives.
We don't.
And there will be a couple people that will be allowed to be the token conservatives on these platforms where they'll be like, oh, yeah, see, look, we actually care about freedom of speech and all this.
But the tech companies, and this is a completely separate issue, but they're far more powerful than our government.
And that's an example of freedom being used against us, right?
Right.
Start a private company, not going to break you up.
We love free markets.
Next thing you know, we have private companies more powerful than the Pentagon.
And what happens in a private company starts to own every politician.
Every politician.
In both parties.
In both parties.
So they go in front of Congress, and it was pretty much a joke.
I mean, you had one member of Congress, really nice Republican, I know him, ask Mark Zuckerberg, why is Donald Trump Jr. locked out of Twitter?
Why is Donald Trump Jr. locked out of Twitter?
And Mark Zuckerberg's like, I'm the CEO of Facebook, sir.
I don't have any idea what happens at Twitter.
And you just keep on repeating it.
This is what our party does.
You realize that it's a completely separate...
Trying to make a fool out of Mark Zuckerberg just blew up in his face.
My favorite part is when these guys have no idea what these tech companies are, but they receive money from them, of course, right?
And they're asking them the most vanilla questions.
And it's a serious issue.
I mean, I'm not an alarmist by any means, but if the tech companies do what I think they're going to do, we will have a one-party state like California in five years.
You will not be able to get information out.
Well, there's no means of communication at all whatsoever.
Just look at an example.
We had nine doctors in our podcast that were kind of the dissident doctors, right?
All independent doctors, board certified.
All of them came on our podcast.
Many of them have been taken down.
The censorship went to an entirely new level with these guys, though.
So on our podcast, they plugged their website, AmericaFrontlinedoctors.com.
Just watched all three of those videos from the press conference that they just had in Washington, D.C. For the first time in my experience that I've ever seen, the web server company took down their website.
Not a social media company, the server company.
Think about that.
So that's GoDaddy or whomever it was.
I don't want to implicate GoDaddy or I don't know who it was.
Said, we're taking it down.
So you can't even have a website anymore.
That's like saying you can't own a home.
That's crazy.
And so my, I mean, you put on here, and this is a very provocative argument that I make, but you have liberty here, right?
You have faith and peace and wisdom, but liberty in particular.
And one thing that free market conservatives, of which I am one, can never answer is what happens when a private company restricts your liberty?
They say, oh, find a new company.
What if there isn't one?
Then what?
Right.
And they say, oh, well, eventually a competitor will rise up.
What if it doesn't?
Because what if that company keeps buying every single company at a 10 times multiple?
What do you do?
I would say our family.
Break them up.
Yeah, our founders wrote that in the Declaration of Independence because when they start usurping inalienable rights of other citizens, then you have the right and duty to push back.
So that my opinion, and it's a hard argument, right?
I mean, I love the free market.
I don't like government.
I mean, I have a whole organization dedicated to it.
But don't enslave people.
But here's the reason, though.
And this is where conservatives fail.
Why don't I like government?
Because government restricts liberties and harms people.
So I actually don't like government because it does that things.
I don't like anything that does those things.
And so if something that exists does the things I don't like, then I'm not going to tolerate that.
Because then we begin to be governed by these private companies.
Exactly.
It's no different than being governed by the federal government.
They just call themselves Google.
Right.
Google's almost a trillion dollar company.
They have 200,000 employees.
They work on weekends.
They're way smarter.
And they have total contempt for Christians, for a biblical worldview, and for conservatives.
So they could push a series of buttons that would topple civilization.
Our government does not even have that kind of power.
It doesn't.
The only difference is our government has probably more thermonuclear weapons.
But who does the Pentagon go to to help design their surveillance state?
They go to our tech companies.
They don't have that.
The government, in a lot of different ways, they're just kind of subcontracting out their tyranny to our private companies.
So, yeah, it's one of those questions where what are we supposed to do about it?
So, I love the feedback, right?
But I live in fear every single day.
Not fear, that's the right word.
I live in expectation every single day that we're all going to get shut off.
My 1.1 million on Instagram, my 1.8 million almost on Twitter, the millions on YouTube, 1.7 million on Facebook.
They could decide to shut it all off.
And think about that.
Think of the years of work I put into these platforms, right?
Yeah.
The videos, the travel, the millions of dollars I put into them.
Yeah.
You know, Charlie, what do you do there?
Because what you're saying now is you're expressing what I've been thinking in my head, and I don't know how to say it.
But I thought to myself, well, wait a minute.
You know, Facebook is a private company.
So they have every right in the world to say, well, we don't think that's good content, so we're not going to promote that on our platform.
Maybe.
Isn't that, I mean, we wouldn't want to say someone's going to come in here to Turning Point and get to say whatever they want if you don't like it.
Let's ask ourselves two hypotheticals.
Let's work through this.
Can Verizon say Trump supporters aren't allowed to make calls on our network?
I suppose they could.
It's illegal.
It is.
Yeah.
It's FCC regulated.
You can't have viewpoint over telecommunication.
You can't just disconnect a call.
But that's illegal because somebody with a very clear understanding of liberty contended for that law.
You say you can't legislate morality.
Every law is going to represent someone's morality.
Yeah.
Well, let's do another one, right?
So let's pretend you're in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and you're a Trump supporter.
And Delta finds out.
They say, you know what, Kirk Cameron?
You're a Christian.
Let's just say that.
Let's make it even more.
No Christians are allowed to fly in Delta Airlines.
But the only way to get out of Jackson sometimes is Delta.
Yeah.
Are they allowed to do that?
Now, airlines do have a little bit more flexibility, but the FAA says they cannot discriminate based on viewpoint or religion.
So that's a pretty good rule, right?
Because there's only so many carriers and accessibility and all that.
So who gets sort of governed that way?
But you wouldn't do it to a church.
You can't go to a church, right?
And say, well, you can't discriminate based on religion.
Well, but we are a religion, right?
Like we're Jewish or we're Muslim, so I'm not going to have an atheistic rabbi.
So yes and no.
I think that if a synagogue was hurting people's liberties, it's a question, right?
And so we've already seen it debated, right?
So for example, you can't murder someone in a synagogue, but you can tell someone, you know, I'm going to do something that you can't speak or you have to sit in the back.
So that's debated.
But I guess the question is, is Google really a private company?
And that's a very, very interesting question, right?
And it's not just the size question, right?
It's that they themselves are basically a government.
Now, they might be filed as Google LLC, publicly traded, but nothing about them is a private company.
They are the information portal for the entire planet.
For all intents and purposes, they are the consciousness of most of our human exploration.
And so that's different than like the bakery in Colorado that has a different viewpoint.
In some ways, Google, I think, has a moral mantle that they have backed themselves into, where now you're dealing with something that's much more, what's the right word?
The much more important is one way to say it, but it's more than that.
It's much more precious than just, I want a cake.
It's, can I tell you what to think?
Now we're talking about a level of tyranny that the founders couldn't even explore, right?
So typically the free market argument is Google, just go to another search engine.
Okay, hold on.
First of all, they control 92% of all search results.
But is it moral?
Is it okay if that private company that has 92% of all search results and 70% of all email delivery, right, Gmail, the number one video processing site, viewing site on the planet?
What if they decide that they don't want anyone that says anything on the center, right?
What does that mean for your civilization, right?
And so the way I look at it is we do have laws on the books that are supposed to be restricting against monopolies.
Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, if any company engages in monopolistic style behavior, it's illegal.
And I think that there's something to be said that tyranny in all forms should be confronted against those that wish to keep men free, right?
To break those bonds.
And so when you have entire portions of the American population that can't speak their mind because of a private company, I think that's the strong exploit in the week.
And I think you have to use what you can to break them up.
And I don't come to that decision lightly.
I don't.
No, because you believe in capitalism and you want people to be able to grow their companies and make it as big as they want.
I'll tell you this.
So this is a very important thing.
I love the free market, but the free market is not my religion.
It's not.
I would insert this.
Google gets away with what they get away with because we prefer the convenience more than we do with the morality associated with surrendering that in order to have that convenience.
Liberty requires vigilance from every citizen.
And when we come to this place in the Teitler cycle where we have abundance, we have abundance of information easily accessible.
We purchase these iPhones and they didn't put a gun to our head to buy them.
They provide maps.
They provide direction.
They provide reservations and we can book flights and we pay them to do this because they've made our life simple.
Well, we don't pay them.
Well, we purchase the phone because they make our life simple.
And so with that, they take all that resource, all that money, and they use it nefariously.
But because we have abundance and access to these great inventions, we become apathetic.
And then the apathy comes or complacency, then apathy, then it's dependence.
And bondage, yeah.
And bondage.
So we have to start pushing back.
The only reason why laws are there is because people were elected to be able to contend for those laws.
We've got to fight.
And so I always say if Google was kicking left-wing viewpoints off their platform, and if Google was a conservative company that had 92% market share, I mean, in a second, they would be called to be broken up.
And just, it wouldn't even be a question, right?
And Google is probably the best example of this because they say, well, we don't manipulate results.
We don't do these things.
We know that's not true.
We have incredible amounts of data to show that.
But what's going to stop Google from toppling a civilization?
We're supposed to just trust them.
I mean, the one interesting thing is I'm against government abuse and government tyranny.
If the government locked me up, I get a lawyer.
Google as a Private Monopoly 00:15:38
I get a trial at least.
I get a jury of my peers.
If Google decides to shut me up, I get nothing.
I have no due process.
So we believe in first freedoms, right?
Freedom of expression, liberty.
How can you express yourself if you're not allowed on the internet today?
I mean, go do a protest outside, I guess.
But you now have a growing population of people online that have been kicked off of every platform.
And I know some of those people work for me.
Young kid, 22 years old, Alex LaRusso, 100,000 followers on Twitter, retweeted by the president.
Twitter decided that he was too controversial.
Digitally assassinated him.
All of his work gone.
His freedom of speech is gone.
He's a really neat guy.
He's super smart.
Yeah.
And I'm on my podcast.
That's an infringement of liberty.
It is.
And I don't care if it's a private company or government.
I'm not going to tolerate that.
Especially when it's impartial like that.
Especially when it's just so just.
And I guess the counterargument is: well, are you going to make sure, are you going to have someone come into my church and say that?
Well, I think that there's, I think you can still have first freedoms while you also have 10,000 churches.
But when you have a company that is so big and you cannot express yourself or petition your government, no, I think that there needs to be a new set of rules there.
I really do.
And the difference is the church doesn't own the narrative around the world.
So you have the choice to leave.
You vote on your feet.
There's no choice to leave.
You can't.
These accents work together, all of them.
And so it's a very, you know, and I say this very clearly.
You know, I have a value hierarchy, right?
And the thing that I value most is, of course, truth, which is Christ and God, right?
And from truth, we get freedom and liberty.
And because I value freedom and liberty, I love free enterprise and markets and private property.
So what's above free market and private property?
Liberty.
So I believe that markets are something that could be utilized towards the betterment of society.
But I'm not dogmatic about my free market beliefs.
I'm not.
I think it's useful for human beings.
But sometimes in the conservative movement, some people will say we can never waver from our free market fundamentalism.
I think that's a really stupid thing to say.
And I love the market.
Trust me.
It's generally done phenomenal things.
But what if there is an exception that is an outgrowth of that, that uses the freedom against us?
Right.
Then I think we should be unafraid to act.
That's my opinion.
I'm in agreement.
Yeah.
It's like, yeah, yeah, I hear what you're saying.
That's why that self-government is so important.
Google needs to be able, Google or whoever the company is, needs to be able to say, you know what, what we're doing is this is morally not right.
You know, we're suppressing people's freedoms.
We're taking their voice and canceling them, digitally assassinating them because they disagree with us.
But that's where ultimately your faith comes into it and my faith comes into it because we're going to say, I mean, if you ultimately are not appealing to an all-loving, all-truthful, sovereign God for your moral standard, Google has its own moral standard and it becomes its own God with its own tension.
It's worse than that.
Google thinks they're God.
That's what I'm saying.
And the first commandment is cancel conservative ideas.
They have a hundred-year plan where they think they can create something that's close to a supernatural.
They do.
Yeah.
Through artificial intelligence, creating new human beings, and almost creating a machine that is so powerful that it can be similar to something what they call supernatural.
That's the future my kids' kids are going to live in.
So the governor says that we can't, Governor California says we can't meet and shuts all churches, but you can do live stream.
That's permitted.
So we didn't shut, but we still do live stream.
And we put content on our live stream that YouTube disagrees with and takes down our live stream.
So where's the freedom of religion?
They usher us into, they take us out of the building and out of fellowship, put us in front of a camera, and then declare what we can and can't say.
We got problems here.
Well, then all of a sudden now you're being held hostage to private companies.
Exactly.
By the government.
This is...
And then the counterargument would be like, well, but it's their company.
It's a private company.
But the government is telling me I must use that.
Here's the problem.
I don't have any other access.
Here's the issue.
Google is now kind of like an interstate highway.
They're a delivery mechanism now.
And so whether they like it or not, they have created themselves to be like the I-5 or the 405.
The 405, even if you're a bitter, awful person, you can go get to use the 405.
Exactly.
Right.
Even if you're a lousy driver.
Yeah.
And even if you're a lousy driver or even if you're being transported to or from prison, the 405 doesn't discriminate.
It doesn't.
And that's what Google is now.
They're a delivery mechanism.
They're a highway.
And if you've committed murder, they can chase you on the 405 with helicopters.
Of course.
But the point is this, is that, and people say, well, it's a private company.
We can't infringe upon private property rights.
But we've done it before in our country's history.
I actually think we benefited from it.
We did it in the early 1900s.
Teddy Roosevelt broke up very big companies.
And I think it was the right time because we really did not understand industrialization in our country.
We did not have a literate population.
So because of that small collection of guys that actually loved their country, that weren't always abusing their monopolistic power, but they had it.
They were able to accumulate extraordinary amounts of power.
Some abused it, some didn't.
Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan Chase, Leland Stanford earlier than that, who built the railroads out west.
And Teddy Roosevelt said, you know what?
Most of the population can't even read right now.
And let's try to have some sort of guardrails on the rampant massive industrialization because we went from agrarian-based economy to industrialization in 40 years.
And so, of course, you're going to have the people that are in the upper hierarchy be able to capitalize on the industrialization dramatically, right?
And that's not, there's, Roosevelt didn't take everything from them.
He just said, here are some limitations.
And a lot of Republicans said, oh, he made a mistake.
I was wrong.
I said, I don't know if that's true.
I don't.
I actually think that that helped create the American middle class.
I really do.
And pure libertarians look at it differently.
And I've read their books, and I don't agree with that.
And so we've done it all throughout our country.
We did it with AT ⁇ T, too.
ATT used to be the sole phone provider in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s.
And we put on controls on them.
And I think that's a good thing.
What if someone had argued, well, Charlie, if it was flipped and you had conservative companies that were really trying to cancel out harmful ideas that would take us back towards socialism, would you feel the same way?
Oh, no doubt.
If they had this kind of megaplex of power.
Would you still want them broken up?
Yes.
Because you agree with them.
Yes.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And it's not a bias selection issue.
If there is anything that has this kind of power and they're abusing that power, it should be called out, in my opinion.
And look, the conversation is this, which is, do you want a marketplace of discussion?
And absolutely, I do.
I love that.
And whether we like it or not, and the founders, the founders hated tyranny.
They wrote about it in the Federalist Papers.
And in the 1790s, early 1800s, when they were writing the Federalist Papers, the biggest, the most dangerous form of tyranny they could imagine was like King George 2.0, right?
Like another government.
What if King George is running Google?
Do you think the founders would be okay with that?
Just put the tyrant in charge of the thing that every one of your kids are looking at all the time.
Right.
That's tyranny.
So, you know, as a dad, you know, I'm saying to my kids, hey, check out this video.
Like, for instance, check out this video that I just saw from the American Frontline Doctors.
This is really fascinating.
It disappears.
And then it disappears.
And I say, wow, that got taken down.
Here's another link.
That one just got taken down.
Okay, here's a third link.
And sort of the universal reaction that I get from whether it's just my family or friends is they just kind of go like, wow, that's weird.
That's weird.
You know, that's, wow, what's that all about?
Oh, well, hey, let's, you know, let's go, let's go get a latte.
And you kind of move on going like, well, okay, so they deleted a video.
I guess maybe there's something wrong with it or something.
And so you kind of go, wait, wait, guys, time out.
This is like, stop the clock.
This is a big deal.
And obviously, that's why you're doing what you're doing.
But I think, what could you, what could you recommend to average families, dads like me, who's seeing this going like, what can we do?
What do you do?
Do you complain to somebody?
Do you stop using Google?
What do you do?
Yeah, I mean, there's a whole stop using Google movement.
I try to minimize it.
It's hard because I have a YouTube channel.
Yeah.
You know, and we get millions of views on it.
So, right.
I mean, I'm going to use these highways until they kick me off, right?
Because who knows how many minds I can impact while I'm doing it.
And I'm not arguing.
And if you've heard my language, I've not said that what these companies have done has been all negative.
I have not said that.
I've said they are abusing the power that was trusted with them to become tyrants, right?
So I'm not saying that what they have done has been a complete and total wrecking crew to American society.
I'm not.
But what can you do?
I mean, people say that all the time.
The first thing is you have to say something about it before you do something about it.
So, you know, vocalizing it and articulating it.
And also, you just kind of play it out.
I mean, where does this end?
Where does this stop?
And the question is, it doesn't.
You think that the autocrats are just going to stop being acting in this way because they will never stop because they find meaning in their suppression.
And then people say, well, Charlie, what can I possibly do to do something about all this tyranny everywhere?
And Rob, I'll let you start, then I'll finish.
What I find, just standing up in the small sphere of influence that I have been granted, the response I get from people who say, what can I do?
Before they ask that question, they typically tell me what I need to do.
What you need to do.
Yeah, I got a call today.
Oh, you're going to be on a podcast with Charlie Kirk.
He has access to people of influence.
I need you to have him tell the White House.
And that's how the entire conversation begins.
And they're looking for the answer to come in on Air Force One.
They're looking for the answers in the halls of government.
What can you do?
It's really simple.
Teach your family.
Yeah.
The education of your children belongs to you.
You are a steward of your children's life.
Guard them, watch it, and build community and start contending for your community.
Quit thinking that the answer is going to come from the highest levels.
The reason why they call Washington a swamp is because geographically it is.
And so Sacramento, by the way.
Geographically, it is a swamp.
But figuratively speaking, it's because they say that's where everything ends up.
That's the cesspool.
But if you want to change the swamp, you have to change the source.
And the source is always local.
Start awakening.
Have churches start taking responsibility for their communities and realizing that nobody's going to be enslaved on my watch.
And if every community, you light a thousand fires across the country that everyone starts taking responsibility for the communities, the swamp will change.
The swamp is 20 years down from the source.
And what we're seeing at the swamp is a result of what we stop doing in our homes.
I think you're right.
So if you want to change it, light a thousand fires.
Quit waiting for this guy over here to fix it for you.
Quit waiting for you to fix it in Hollywood.
Get off your duff and educate your kids.
Start demanding from your churches that they be engaged in the public square.
Start sitting in your school board meetings and start sitting in your council meetings.
Change your locality.
Throw your starfish back, the old analogy of all the starfish on the ocean, you can't make a difference.
You make a difference from the one in front of you.
Take responsibility because if you're waiting for someone else to do it, you're apathetic.
You're lazy.
No one's going to do it for you.
The only reason why we've gained any traction, you and me, is because we decided to stand in the sphere of influence in which we've been placed.
But it's come at great cost.
Now, the world would say great cost, but as you described, your life is wonderful.
So's mine.
Take everything I have.
My kids have everything they're ever going to need.
That's called character.
My dad, when he died, he left me with nothing financially, but he left me with everything I needed, character.
And that's let's give it to our families and start getting back to that and quit waiting for someone else to fix this.
Roll up your sleeves and get your button gear.
I love it.
And what I find, I mean, I travel a lot and people ask me that question all the time.
And I say, it's very similar to what Rob is.
They kind of want me to be the savior of all this.
And first, it's a ridiculous amount of pressure.
It's not going to happen at all.
I mean, it happens all the time Rob hears it all the time, right?
I mean, we were at a thing recently, and it was just okay.
Got it.
All right, I'm doing a lot.
And you have to do this.
You got to do this.
I'm like, oh, my gosh.
Maybe I do.
Okay, I'll think about it.
I'll pray about it.
My gosh.
In some ways, I want to say, like, what are you doing?
Exactly.
And then I ask the question to some of these people.
They're like, well, and I ask, what are you doing?
And they say, well, I'm not doing a lot.
Then I ask the very simple question: Do you think what you do matters?
And some people don't.
That's an actually very important point.
A lot of people are actually nihilistic on our side.
They really don't think that their behavior has any bearing on the world around them.
They really do.
It's a very important realization I've come to recently.
I think you're right.
And it even exists in the church.
And you know where it is?
Especially in the church.
I talked to somebody and I said, you know, I'm just, I'm so concerned to see how things are falling apart on our watch.
And this was a Christian person said to me, or as one of my friends told me, maybe things are not falling apart.
Maybe things are falling into place.
And just for those, those who are Christians know exactly what I'm talking about.
It's like an eschatological eschatological Tetris block that's just falling into place.
And maybe, I don't know, but it's also, it does breed, it's actually the worst in Christian circles.
The worst.
Yep.
More so than even in humanist circles.
See, the left actually believes what they do matters.
It's a very, very bizarre thing.
And Christians with that eschatology believe that we're polishing brass on the Titanic.
Oh, yeah.
Jay Vernon McGee said it all the time.
But that's why I got so fired up about the pilgrims.
I mean, think of them.
Think of them.
And they're over there in England.
And you've got King James and you've got Tyrant on steroids.
And the economy's shot.
He thinks he's God on earth.
He controls the church.
He controls the state.
If anyone were going to think that the world had come to an end, that everything is about to implode, it was them.
And they didn't tuck their head between their knees and say, it's over.
Everything's falling into place.
They said, let's get on a boat and go somewhere, make a 200-year plan, and change the world.
Micro-Tyrannies Bubble Up 00:05:41
So that's the kind of guy I want to be.
And so I actually believe that everything that you do matters.
It might matter.
One thing might matter more than the other thing.
But what you eat, how you act, how you communicate, the language, your diction, it all matters.
And I'm not an over, I'm not a legalist.
Trust me.
That's not why I'm saying that.
I got accused of that when I say it.
I got this ridiculous email the other night because I said that recently at a church gathering.
And I got this ridiculous thing.
Charlie, you're engaging in the legalism, talking about human action too much.
I'm like, talking about too much?
Like, what are you talking about?
I mean, the whole thing is just, I completely reject it.
I mean, we should just get rid of the book of Proverbs if human action means nothing, in my opinion.
Yeah.
No, but this is a real thing, Rob.
It is.
I know.
And I'm just sighing because I get it too.
My mentor, the man I adore.
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Oh, you're not interrupting me.
Add to it.
His comment to me was: biblically speaking, he said, you know, the house is on fire.
We just got to get the kids out.
And that's an eschatological view that, you know, the next thing on God's Day Planner is the rapture.
And, you know, the house is on fire.
We've got to get the kids out by evangelism.
My feeling is, no, no, put the fire out.
Yeah.
Put the fire out.
Where do you get to decide that this is the end of the world?
Well, it's the mark of the beast.
And Google is advanced on the.
I can go through history and show where people have said this.
In the 1200s, they said that.
It's not.
But that's another discussion.
And so, you know, and maybe they're right, maybe they're not.
I just think it's also, it's a ridiculous.
Who knows?
It's a ridiculously cocky thing to say that you happen to know that the stars are aligning.
I think it's ridiculous.
But anyway, so to complete the point, a lot the kind of, and I don't want to use nihilism, that's not the right word.
It's close, but it's not.
But a lot of Christians do engage into, they believe that their action is meaningless, and in fact, it is not necessary at all.
I'm contending against the eminent eminence of the end time.
But bizarrely enough, I know they don't actually believe it because they believe in me.
And so then I'm like, well, why do you want me to do it then?
Because then does what I do matter then?
Well, it's only going to keep them happier until the end.
That's the point.
So do the work for me.
The resetative is what it is.
Yeah, do the work for me.
So then it's like, hold on a second.
Then I should just stop.
And they're like, oh, no, I want you to keep going.
Hold on, why do you want me to keep going?
Is this a spectator sport?
Am I some sort of Coliseum act?
You know, before this whole thing gets thrown over.
So I actually do think that they think the contesting for truth matters.
And so I, again, call me traditionalist in this sense.
But when people say, what can I do?
I say, go live a better life.
And then go in every single micro-decision you go through, especially in today's time.
I said this recently, and I got more positive response than this, which is that in order for a macro-tyranny to exist, millions of micro-tyrannies must bubble up.
And so this happens all the time.
It happened throughout the 20th century, especially in the Soviet Union.
And we teach history incorrectly, and sometimes we don't teach it at all.
And it's not intentionally incorrectly, but I've been reading Joseph Bondarenko's book, USS SS Most Wanted or something at the SS.
KGB, wrong tyrant.
KGB's Most Wanted.
And what I realized is that the tyranny was in every part of the Soviet Union.
It wasn't just Stalin's country.
It wasn't.
It was that when Joseph Bondarenko, the Christian pastor at age 26, was locked up in prison because he was preaching the gospel all throughout what was then Ukraine and the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe.
Stalin didn't know who he was because he actually did most of his ministry when Stalin was dead.
Is the fact that, but even if Stalin was alive, the following leaders did.
The point is that the local baker, he acted like Stalin too, and he turned him in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So all of a sudden, you start, you have the micro-tyrannies that bubble up into a manifestation.
Right.
So what we talk about, and it's incorrect, we act as if Stalin had this top-down tributary where all of a sudden then tyranny rained down, where it's not correct at all.
Maybe because there was lawlessness and godlessness, millions of tyrants allowed someone like Stalin to manifest.
And Stalin was actually the manifestation of the corrosive country that already existed.
That's right.
And it's the complete opposite of how we teach it.
We teach it as if Stalin turned the country when in reality, maybe the country was already there and Stalin was exactly where the country already was.
Exactly.
So then people say, well, what can I do?
You go after.
I'm sorry, you're going to say something.
No, just what you're saying.
And I've heard people say that, that the government is an externalization of the values of the culture.
Politicians are actors performing a script written by the audience.
Bingo.
So Stalin was tolerated because in St. Petersburg, 60 miles outside of St. Petersburg, the local carpenter for a village or the local dairy farmer, he himself was Stalin of that town.
Right.
Right.
And he was able to abuse people, turn them in, not allow God to be rewarded for it.
So Stalin's entire infrastructure was built around the idea.
And he was a delegator in this sense, that I'm going to multiply myself.
This is sounding like a multi-level marketing scheme, and you're selling tyranny.
Yeah.
And you got all your little minions under you.
Everything We Do Matters 00:06:08
And so then this is why I believe everything matters.
Everything we do matters.
Yeah.
Is that people say, ah, it doesn't matter.
What can I do?
I think people are way too focused on the presidency and way too focused on the Air Force.
One part of it, it's in Thousand Oaks, California, in your daily experience, who's the tyrant?
Who is it?
Because you know who it is.
I know who it is.
Right.
Exactly.
You know what I'm saying?
It could be in.
Stand up to the bully.
Chino, California.
And then people say, well, how do I do that?
Well, get your words right.
Straighten yourself out.
Look them in the eye.
It's a very important thing.
Don't get angry.
And just tell the truth.
And then do something about it.
Pull your kid out of that school.
Stop shopping at that store.
Tell the neighbor that they're cut off.
Don't wear your mask.
Whatever it is.
Yeah.
Right?
That's my words, not yours.
Whatever that micro-tyranny is, then stand up against it.
What happens then is those micro-tyrants will get very angry.
They'll try to find other people to join in their corrosive behavior and it'll fall apart very quickly.
And the narrative changes rapidly.
Like that.
Like that.
So that's what you could do.
I find it fascinating that we're sitting with you, Kurt, and we're talking about eschatology.
And I mean, your Christian walk is, God's taking you through some revisions.
What is eschatology, Rob?
Study at the end time.
Sorry.
No, it's okay.
We'd have to see that.
It's Revelation.
Yeah, Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel.
How the world is.
End of the world stuff.
Yeah, end of the world stuff.
And, you know, there's been some changes in your walk, things that you once saw, where you are today.
And I think all of us kind of, Christianity is like a whole chicken.
You eat the meat and you spit out the bones.
You know, you got to figure out: are you pre-trib?
Are you post-trib?
You know, and you go through that.
And are you a Calvinist?
Are you an Arminianist?
And as we look at these things, I find it fascinating.
We're talking about the end times, and you acted.
You did a movie called the Definition.
Yeah, you defined.
Yeah.
Left behind.
I mean, talk about the rapture in that sense.
And yet, still doing that movie, here you and I are sitting with Charlie and we're contending to put out the fire.
That we're not acting as though the next thing on God's Day planner is the rapture.
We're not self-prophesying it into place.
We're not believing that we're polishing brass on the Titanic.
Well, and I just think you have to, in my opinion, sorry to interrupt, is just you have to have a little humility.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I also think the Pascal's wager equivalent would be you must act as if it isn't, right?
You must ask.
Otherwise, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and we'll bring the whole thing down.
That's exactly right.
So, I mean, the only, what if you're wrong?
What if we're actually a thousand years out or two thousand years out?
You should have a different plan.
Probably.
And I want civilization to continue.
And you have children.
You have grandchildren.
Right.
I'm sorry, Rob.
No, that's okay.
I was just going to say, I have evidence that they That pre-trib premillennial, which I happen to be a part of that, that they have taken it to the point where it's self-fulfilling prophecy.
They said, no, no, no, we're still working as though we don't know the day or the hour.
I don't believe it.
Because Calvary Chapel, of which I'm a part of, which is pre-trib premillennial, we've been in California since 1968.
We have had 10,000% growth, 1,800 churches around the world, all conversion growth, not transfer.
South of Van Euys, there's 350 Calvary Chapels, biggest churches in the country.
Three of the 10 largest churches in America, Calvary Chapels.
All right.
52 years we've been in California.
52 years.
What difference have we made?
Don't want to touch politics.
We don't touch politics.
So in 68, we had the fifth largest GDP.
We had Reagan as governor.
We're a conservative state.
It was a state of the future.
People were investing.
And we're 52 years into Calvary Chapel.
10,000% growth.
Church is saturating.
Big Christian sandbox in California.
Now we're not the fifth largest GDP.
We're probably the sixth.
We have the highest gas tax, sales tax, income tax, corporate tax.
We have the highest debt.
You combine the next four largest states' debt doesn't equal the debt of California.
We have the highest homelessness, highest poverty.
We're the authors of No Fault Divorce, Transgender Bathroom Bills, the most progressive, secular, progressive sexual education curriculum of any state in the nation, probably the world.
And we're the authors of No Fault Divorce, which decimated a marriage across the country.
But here's the kicker: we lead the nation in abortion.
We've aborted more children than the entire population of Canada.
And yet we've never had more buildings.
We've never seen more people raise their hands.
We've had crusades.
Where are we investing in the next generation?
Where are the schools that we've built?
Where are the governments we've influenced?
Where are the laws that we have used to stop this tyranny?
And we say that we really believe that we're supposed to stand in these precepts.
We've given up.
That's condemnation on my own denomination.
We're not a denomination, but that speaks for that's evidence.
That's empirical data.
Yeah, it's not said outright, but I think that's ultimately communicates, well, it's kind of a losing battle to try to change the culture or culture and recapture these kinds of values because we've read the end of the script.
We know what it says.
Well, and I think it's probably coming on Tuesday.
And I think that there's, it's such, it's such sloppy thinking, in my opinion.
So then I ask people the question where I believe in this kind of this, they're so committed to that specific eschatology and use it as an excuse for inaction.
And I've had these conversations and they say, well, it's all irrelevant.
It doesn't matter because we're all going to heaven, blah, blah, blah, those sort of stuff.
And I hear it a lot.
I said, well, let me ask you a question.
I say, are people going to be more or less likely to come to Christ if Fidel Castro takes over California?
Sloppy Thinking on Abstinence 00:06:28
No, that won't happen.
What are you talking about?
First of all, if you say it won't happen, all of a sudden you believe that there's some system that actually prevents tyranny.
But let's just take the example.
Do you think people will be more or less like to come to Christ?
Will they be more Christians or less Christians if a free society ceases to exist?
And there's never a good answer.
The point is this: if you actually care about the kingdom expanding and the gospel spreading, you should be fighting for civil society every single day.
I got to tell you an illustration.
This is burning in me.
When I was a youth minister in Santa Clara County, I was trained to be a speaker for the planned parent, or not, excuse me, for the pro-life organization there, the Crisis Pregnancy Center.
Excuse me.
I was speaking against Planned Parenthood.
I was speaking against Planned Parenthood.
Go in and speak on abstinence and life.
And I had access to every public school.
And I gave that talk over 300 times in different public schools all over Northern California.
And I do it all six of the health period classes.
And they'd let me come in.
And I learned how to communicate with these kids.
And they enjoyed me coming in.
And as I worked fervently on behalf of this, the one school I couldn't get into.
And I'll leave the school unnamed.
It was a Christian school.
No, it was a public school.
And the guy had invited me and he said, I've heard about you.
I want to get you in.
But the principal is just really struggling.
And he said, I've built up a relationship.
I used to be a missionary, but now I'm a teacher.
And he said, look, I've gotten access.
You can come in, but you're going to speak to the half of the student body that's not doing testing.
Meaning they were doing some sort of testing.
These are the ones that didn't qualify for whatever it was.
And I go into the school when I'm going in, there's metal detectors and they're checking me and the whole bit.
And I get into the school and the auditorium's packed and they were going to show him a Star Wars video or something.
And they're all up there and they say, hey, we're going to show you a video, but we got a guy from the Crisis Pregnancy Center who's going to talk to you about absence.
Here's Rob McCoy and have at it.
And there's like a fight breaking up in the upper right-hand corner of the bleachers and it's just chaos.
And I look at the one, the few kids who are in the front row looking at me and I just start with them and I get them to laugh.
And then these guys start kind of gave, and the inmates are running the asylum.
Teachers aren't doing anything.
I mean, they're going out of control.
And kids are cussing at me the whole bit.
I still, by the end of it, it was the hardest thing I've ever done.
I finally got a handle on the audience and they're laughing and they grasp the content.
But it was hard as can be.
And I turned to him, I said, how did this school get like this?
You've been here for years.
And he said this.
He said there was a professional football player that everyone knew.
And we had a huge, growing FCA organization.
Fellowship of Christianity.
Yeah, Fellowship of Christianity.
And it was growing rapidly.
And the principal allowed us to bring him in to invite them to this after-school.
But the one thing the principal said is you're not allowed to, you know, talk about the Bible and none of the Jesus stuff, but you can invite them.
And he's like, great.
This football player comes in.
First thing he does, he preaches the gospel, does an altar call, lays it out there.
20 kids come forward.
Like it's a big deal.
20 kids got saved.
And that's great.
I don't dismiss that.
But FCA got shut down and there wasn't a Christian presence for the remainder until the day I stepped in, like 12 years later.
And it was an asylum.
And my point for this whole story is this.
You have all these ministers who are refusing to stand up and open their churches.
And they're saying, you don't know how many people are coming to Christ over the live stream.
I got that.
But guess what?
They're going to shut you down just like they did that high school.
And you may think that you're having this amazing evangelistic opportunity, but it's over.
Unless you contend for freedom and get off your rear end and stand and push back with those tyrants, you're not going to have access to any of that anymore.
Ever.
So.
Yeah.
Wow.
Any closing thoughts, Kirk?
Well, my son, I'm so excited.
My son James is in the control booth over here, and he's just listening.
He's a good kid.
He's listening to us talk.
And it just makes this dad's heart feel so good.
It's awesome.
Knowing that he's hearing these truthful words coming from you guys.
And I'm so thankful for you both.
Thank you.
How can people learn more about you?
You could learn more about me if I posted more on my Facebook and Instagram.
But you could go there, and that's probably the best way.
I mean, I've got, you know, KirkCameron.com has pretty much got all the different projects I'm working on now.
Can you get a DVD or access to Monumental, the movie?
Yeah.
At kirkcameron.com?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You can go there and you can get access to getting one of those monuments themselves.
And you can also get the DVD.
But social media would be a good place to go to find out more current things.
I teach marriage and parenting conferences at so it's called Living Room Reset.
And in it, we talk about some of the things we're talking about right now and passing these values down to our kids.
Good.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Amen.
Rob, what's your Instagram?
Rob underscore McCoy underscore.
That's also my Twitter.
I think we're finally going to get that right.
Yeah, I got it down.
Everyone, email us, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Get involved with TurningPointUSA, tpusa.com.
Please consider supporting us at charliekirk.com/slash support.
Thanks so much, Kirk.
Rob?
Thank you.
Thanks, Charlie.
Bless you, man.
Talk to you soon.
Thank you guys so much for listening.
What a great episode that was.
And I encourage you right now to get involved with Turning Point USA.
Go to tpusa.com.
That is tpusa.com.
Get involved.
Get engaged.
Start a chapter at your university, at your high school, tpusa.com.
Check out professorwatchlist.org to find out the radical professors that might be teaching your kids and grandkids.
And thank you for supporting our program at charliekirk.com/slash support.
CharlieKirk.com/slash support.
Thank you guys so much for listening.
Tomorrow, we got two episodes, including an Ask Me Anything.
So email me your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
And if your question is selected, you get a signed copy of the New York Times bestseller, The MAGA Doctrine.
Thank you guys so much for listening.
God bless.
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