The Charlie Kirk Show - Marxism Dismantled, Free Markets Explained, and a Comprehensive Defense of American Exceptionalism Live from Calvary Chapel Chattanooga
Aired: 2020-10-05
Duration: 01:02:32


=== Exclusive Speeches from Calvary Chapel (02:54) ===

[00:00:00]  Thank you for listening to this Podcast 1 production.
[00:00:02]  Now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast 1, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
[00:00:09]  Hey, everybody.
[00:00:10]  This weekend I had the amazing opportunity of speaking at Calvary Chapel Chattanooga.
[00:00:13]  We covered everything from critical race theory to 10 reasons why Christians should vote for Donald Trump to so much more.
[00:00:20]  I am honored to be able to share this episode with you.
[00:00:23]  It has been widely remarked as a very positive sequence of speeches.
[00:00:28]  You're going to hear the best of that.
[00:00:29]  Also, listen to our sister Ask Me Anything episode.
[00:00:31]  And as of today, we are live on radio stations across the country.
[00:00:34]  So check us out at charliekirk.com.
[00:00:36]  And as always, email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:00:39]  We tackle the key issues and news of the day and so much more here on the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:00:43]  And also, if you guys want to win a signed copy of the MAGA Doctrine, type in Charlie Kirk Show to your podcast provider, hit subscribe and leave us a five-star review.
[00:00:52]  Very important topics here discussed.
[00:00:54]  People really have been enjoying this sequence of speeches aired to you exclusively here on the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:01:01]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:01:02]  Here we go.
[00:01:04]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:01:06]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:01:08]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:01:11]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:14]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:01:16]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:01:17]  His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:01:25]  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.
[00:01:34]  That's why we are here.
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=== The Significance of Marxism (15:35) ===

[00:02:54]  Charlie, if you're unaware, about, well, is it almost eight and a half years ago, Biguette pioneered a movement, really.
[00:03:04]  I don't know if you knew it was going to turn out to be a movement, but you had some big ideas that we've talked about over the course of this weekend that seems that God has actually taken you further than you could have imagined.
[00:03:15]  And it's really a pretty beautiful thing.
[00:03:17]  You really have a heart for this country.
[00:03:19]  You have a heart for the next generation, which we're going to talk specifically about the next at the next service.
[00:03:25]  But just real quick, how many of you actually already subscribed to Charlie's podcast?
[00:03:30]  A bunch of you.
[00:03:31]  Wow, a bunch of you.
[00:03:32]  It's amazing.
[00:03:32]  Yeah, it's a super simple thing to do.
[00:03:35]  It's been extraordinarily helpful for me to try to navigate a lot of the things that we're being faced with.
[00:03:41]  A lot of the ideas that we've been, you know, we're hearing.
[00:03:45]  Some of us heard these ideas in school, but they're actually making their way to the forefront once again in a very sincere, I call it a threat.
[00:03:55]  We'll talk about that in a second.
[00:03:56]  But nevertheless, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, do so.
[00:04:01]  Go to that app that actually navigates your podcast, Charlie Kirk Show, and you will be incredibly, incredibly blessed.
[00:04:10]  It's been very helpful and edifying to me.
[00:04:14]  But so anyway, we want to spend some time today kind of going back to school because we're hearing a whole lot about socialism, democratic socialism.
[00:04:25]  We're hearing about Marxism.
[00:04:26]  BLM sort of brought back to the front this idea of Marxism.
[00:04:31]  We've talked a little bit here at the church about cultural Marxism, communism once again.
[00:04:36]  And then all of those really are a rival to capitalism.
[00:04:40]  Yes.
[00:04:41]  Because capitalism, for a large group of people, is an evil that must be overcome.
[00:04:47]  So could you take us back to school a little bit this morning on some sort of social studies?
[00:04:53]  Yeah, well, first of all, it's awesome to be here.
[00:04:55]  Thank you.
[00:04:56]  And you have an amazing pastor, by the way, and a great pastoral team here.
[00:04:59]  You really do.
[00:05:03]  So yeah, just a little bit of background.
[00:05:05]  Born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, started Turning Point USA.
[00:05:08]  It's now on 2,000 high school and college campuses across the country.
[00:05:12]  We're now doing two podcasts a day.
[00:05:14]  Tomorrow, our radio show actually goes to 180 radio stations across the country.
[00:05:18]  Wonderful.
[00:05:19]  And I guess we're going back to school.
[00:05:20]  The great irony is I never went to college.
[00:05:22]  So I guess, you know, you get to learn from someone who actually deals with this stuff every day.
[00:05:27]  And it's actually interesting because I've become, in a lot of different ways, a subject matter expert in kind of how these ideas have materialized in the public space because I have visited over 155 college campuses and spoke at them over the last five years, debating countless professors, understanding the kind of root philosophy that these things actually come from and the consequences, not just in just chalkboard philosophy, but actually how it materializes into our society.
[00:05:57]  So a lot of words there.
[00:05:58]  Let's just kind of talk about factually what they are and then some of the implications of them.
[00:06:03]  So you mentioned first and foremost Marxism.
[00:06:05]  Well, that, of course, was started by Karl Marx in the mid-1800s.
[00:06:10]  Karl Marx was not the first ever communist, actually.
[00:06:13]  He was hired by a group of communists in Switzerland to articulate the communist manifesto.
[00:06:19]  Karl Marx lived in London.
[00:06:21]  His best friend, his best friend, was Frederick Engels, who actually was a pretty rich guy, who financed his writings.
[00:06:30]  The biblical equivalent would be Theophilus, right?
[00:06:32]  So Theophilus was kind of the supporter of Luke to write the book of Luke and Acts.
[00:06:37]  That's kind of probably not the best.
[00:06:40]  It's a fitting example.
[00:06:42]  He was the sponsor, right?
[00:06:43]  So Karl Marx wrote two big pieces of literature that he's known for.
[00:06:47]  Of course, the Communist Manifesto, but more importantly, Das Kapital is the one that really started to articulate his philosophy.
[00:06:54]  Now, Karl Marx did not just come onto the scene and start to invent a lot of stuff.
[00:06:57]  He was just a better articulator of these ideas, more so than anyone that came before him.
[00:07:02]  The idea that there shouldn't be private property, the idea that people should be communal in nature, was not just, he didn't all of a sudden just get in the laboratory and discover it.
[00:07:13]  It was kind of being experimented with many thousands of years before.
[00:07:17]  So prior to Karl Marx being hired to write this piece of literature, he was heavily inspired by a French philosopher by the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
[00:07:26]  Jean-Jacques Rousseau probably has had more of an impact on kind of the current political climate that we're living in right now.
[00:07:34]  Rousseau rejected the biblical view of human nature.
[00:07:38]  He believed that in the state of nature, human beings are wonderful to each other.
[00:07:43]  We do not hold that view as Christians.
[00:07:45]  We believe that we have original sin.
[00:07:47]  We believe that we would tear each other apart.
[00:07:49]  And because of how awful we are and depraved by our nature, we need Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.
[00:07:55]  It is the only salvation that we can possibly even comprehend because we're so depraved in the state of nature.
[00:08:01]  Rousseau rejected this completely.
[00:08:03]  He valued the infant over the adult, the primitive over the civilized.
[00:08:08]  And his argument was that the reason there's bad in the world is not because people are bad, but the systems were improperly built around people.
[00:08:18]  And if we build better systems, then we can live in a state of heaven or a state of harmony.
[00:08:23]  This should be completely rejected by any Bible-believing Christian whatsoever.
[00:08:27]  It is completely antithetical to the gospel and to just basically the first couple chapters of Genesis, right?
[00:08:34]  So Karl Marx wrote this piece of literature and it was actually condemned.
[00:08:39]  It was mocked when it was first published.
[00:08:42]  Marx never lived actually to see his ideas materialize.
[00:08:46]  And then something very interesting happened.
[00:08:49]  The transition happened from the farms to the factories almost overnight.
[00:08:52]  The Industrial Revolution began.
[00:08:54]  And Marx started to see the beginning stages of this.
[00:08:57]  And Marx made some correct arguments and observations and then some very incorrect policy suggestions.
[00:09:05]  He made the correct observation that in a market, you're going to see some form of inequality.
[00:09:12]  And that is absolutely correct.
[00:09:14]  The idea is how do you manage that inequality?
[00:09:16]  His argument was let's obliterate the entire system because eventually he believed that the destruction of the capitalist superstructure was going to be one of demise.
[00:09:28]  And so the ideas really didn't catch fire.
[00:09:32]  And there was a couple small movements up until the Russian Revolution.
[00:09:36]  And so Russia was under Tsarist rule for hundreds of years.
[00:09:41]  And there was a lot of anxiety growing because as all of Europe was industrializing, the agricultural part of kind of the Russian landscape felt to be they were very disenfranchised.
[00:09:53]  And it's actually a way to break apart World War I. Vladimir Lenin was sent out of a German prison, equipped with a communist manifesto, and started a Russian revolution that we know as the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
[00:10:04]  This was the first real experiment of communism.
[00:10:08]  And it was a bloodbath, right?
[00:10:09]  I mean, it was awful.
[00:10:11]  It was the Bolsheviks versus the Mensheviks.
[00:10:13]  Eventually, Vladimir Lenin takes power.
[00:10:15]  Messy transition.
[00:10:16]  And eventually, you know, Joseph Stalin takes power.
[00:10:18]  Couple big beliefs of the communist Marxist belief that human beings are good in nature.
[00:10:26]  That if we create things correctly, eventually we can live in a state of heaven on earth.
[00:10:31]  We reject this as Christians.
[00:10:33]  You can get very, very close to some form of hell here on earth.
[00:10:37]  You can't get anywhere close to heaven on earth.
[00:10:39]  And we know that as Christians.
[00:10:41]  The communists also believe inherently that work is a form of slavery.
[00:10:47]  That if you are toiling, if you are working, there's something wrong with that.
[00:10:52]  They believe it to be inherently exploitation.
[00:10:55]  The Bible doesn't believe that as well.
[00:10:57]  The Bible believes a man does not work, he shall not eat.
[00:10:59]  Now, that's not to say all work is created equal, right?
[00:11:02]  That some work is more fulfilling than others.
[00:11:04]  But the complete and total rejection of all labor is not something that is biblical.
[00:11:09]  But communists also, the big fight that they really make is that the workers should own the means of production.
[00:11:14]  This is their biggest thing, is that, for example, if you were to go to Home Depot down the street or Walgreens, their biggest complaint, and you'll see this a lot of times in kind of veiled terms by certain people in the political discourse in our country, is that if someone works at Walgreens, they should own an equal share of the toothpaste that is being sold or the equipment to make the toothpaste as the person who started the company.
[00:11:39]  This sounds like a pretty good idea, but the danger is that why would anyone take a risk then?
[00:11:43]  Why would anyone start a new business to try to invent something new or innovative or exciting if you had to share all the profits among people that had no risk, right?
[00:11:52]  Why would you ever try to start something of any sort of with any adventure in the marketplace?
[00:11:58]  And so I hope that's helpful to just kind of set terms as to what communism and Marxism is.
[00:12:02]  If I had a Marxist sitting next to me, which I don't, he would agree with everything I just said.
[00:12:08]  Nothing I said was pejorative or negative in nature, right?
[00:12:11]  This is of their literature.
[00:12:13]  And I encourage all of you just to go on an adventure of learning.
[00:12:16]  Just really steep yourself in this stuff.
[00:12:19]  And so in the late 1920s and early 1930s, communism was kind of hitting a little bit of a speed bump.
[00:12:26]  A lot of the Western world had the roaring 20s.
[00:12:29]  We know that.
[00:12:30]  And there was a lot of wealth being created.
[00:12:33]  There were a lot of communist failed movements.
[00:12:36]  And someone by the name of Antonio Gramsci, who spent time in an Italian prison, coined this term called cultural Marxism.
[00:12:44]  He argued that Marxists should not just talk about economics, which again, all Marx really cared about was the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat, was the working class versus the business owners.
[00:12:54]  Antonio Gramsci argued that there should be a cultural struggle to all of this stuff.
[00:13:00]  It took many decades for this to really take root.
[00:13:02]  It finally kind of played out in postmodernist thinking and eventually the Frankfurt School of Critical Race Theory of Herbert Marcuse.
[00:13:11]  What's the significance of this?
[00:13:12]  Is that what started as just an economic struggle is now a struggle of power dynamics, right?
[00:13:18]  So it's not just that it's the rich versus the poor.
[00:13:21]  Instead, they say it's the white people versus black people, overly generalizing that every single white person in the country is in a position of power and every black person is not, or men versus women, right?
[00:13:32]  All men must be in power because they believe that we live in a patriarchy and that all women must not be in power.
[00:13:38]  So that's kind of how they transitioned it into just the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat to a much broader idea of the oppressor versus the oppressed.
[00:13:47]  And so when we start to talk about these sorts of terms and the significance of them, we should ask the question of, you know, do we support this as Christians and kind of, you know, how we build it out more?
[00:13:57]  But if is there any specific you want me to do?
[00:13:59]  I'm doing great.
[00:14:00]  Just keep going.
[00:14:01]  Okay.
[00:14:01]  Yeah.
[00:14:01]  All right.
[00:14:02]  So I need to get my notepad.
[00:14:06]  Okay.
[00:14:06]  Yeah.
[00:14:07]  And so.
[00:14:07]  It's fantastic.
[00:14:08]  And so these ideas have been tried many different times.
[00:14:12]  And we have to understand this: that communism and socialism is tempting.
[00:14:15]  It's very tempting.
[00:14:17]  I'm the first one to admit it.
[00:14:18]  It is much harder to oppose these ideas and articulate a framework that relies upon responsibility, virtue, hard work, waking up early, going to bed late, and taking ownership for your life than one where you can take other people's stuff, redistribute it at your liking, and have to work less.
[00:14:34]  It is much easier.
[00:14:35]  My job would be so much easier if I came here today and said, you get healthcare, you get education, you get a car, you get a home, just take it from the guy down the street.
[00:14:43]  Congratulations, right?
[00:14:44]  That's a lot easier to do.
[00:14:46]  So because of this, because this ideology is easily, it's very persuasive, right?
[00:14:53]  Especially amongst people that are struggling, it has been experimented so many.
[00:14:57]  We have so many different little test modules, if you will.
[00:15:00]  And they're all horrific, right?
[00:15:02]  It's been tried 100 times over the last hundred years, only resulting in the intentional slaughter of 100 million people, right?
[00:15:09]  And you name a continent, any continent from Rhodesia that turned into Zimbabwe to Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Vietnam, to the Korean Peninsula, where people still live in absolute darkness in North Korea because of these horrific ideas.
[00:15:21]  And I hope you all understand the significance of ideas that translate to politics, which translates to real life.
[00:15:27]  Christians sometimes say, I don't like that sort of stuff.
[00:15:29]  It doesn't really impact me.
[00:15:31]  I'm going to give a little side note of how politics really impacts every person in this room, whether you know it or not, and just the Calvary family.
[00:15:37]  You're all here today and you're enjoying your time of worship because salvation is essential and church is essential.
[00:15:42]  However, the difference between Tennessee politics and California politics is this, is that right now today, my pastor, Pastor Rob McCoy, head of Calvary Chapel Thousand Oaks, is facing the fifth straight week of arrests and criminal prosecution because he's doing what you guys are doing right now.
[00:16:00]  And some of you might be taking for granted.
[00:16:01]  Yeah, I'm going to church, had a long night last night.
[00:16:04]  It's illegal to do what you're doing in California right now.
[00:16:07]  That's the significance of politics.
[00:16:09]  So if you don't get involved in the public square, you don't contest in the kind of government you want, all of a sudden in your family of Calvary Chapel pastors, three pastors right now that I know of, James Cadiz, Jack Hibbs, and Rob McCoy, are all facing massive criminal prosecution for what you guys get to enjoy in the state of Tennessee because you have made choices that are not perfect, but better around the idea of respecting religious liberty and peaceful assembly.
[00:16:33]  That's just one example of the consequence of these things.
[00:16:35]  So some people say, it doesn't matter for us Christians, but your brothers and sisters in the faith right now might be arrested today in Thousand Oaks, California.
[00:16:43]  Not a different country.
[00:16:44]  I don't have to talk about Cuba.
[00:16:46]  No longer do I have to use like these examples distant.
[00:16:47]  I'm talking about California because they open their church.
[00:16:51]  Meanwhile, marijuana dispensaries are open, liquor stores are open, abortion factories are open, home improvement stores are open.
[00:16:57]  And if you support BLM Incorporated, you can march in the streets.
[00:17:00]  No social distancing, no masks, 100,000 people in the streets.
[00:17:03]  So there's serious consequences of these things.
[00:17:05]  And it's been tried all across the planet in isolated examples and big examples, Soviet Union to Cuba to Southeast Asia, and there are all different variations of it.
[00:17:13]  And the long and short of it is this, is that we believe absolute power corrupts absolutely.
[00:17:18]  We know this.
[00:17:18]  Lord Acton articulated it very well.
[00:17:21]  And the whole idea, what ends up happening is that if you don't trust a lot of power to be in a small subset of people's hands, then you should completely reject this.
[00:17:29]  The idea of a representative constitutional republic is trying to keep the power away from a few people.
[00:17:35]  That's the entire premise, is that the few should not dominate the many, that the strong should not dominate the weak.
[00:17:41]  That is the idea of a constitutional republic, that your right to disagree, your right to say something contrarian will be protected by your government to not be infringed upon.
[00:17:52]  And it's easy to take those things for granted.
[00:17:54]  And so what are we as Christians supposed to do as we unpack this?
[00:17:57]  Well, first of all, I believe we should look at things empirically with wisdom, right?
[00:18:01]  We have a whole book that is rooted in wisdom, the book of Proverbs.
[00:18:04]  When there's an idea that's been tried 100 times over 100 years, resulting in 100 million people dead, we should probably say that's probably a bad idea, right?
[00:18:12]  That's probably a good, that's probably a good pause.
[00:18:15]  Now, so I think that there's a universal rejection of that, but then like, oh, then what should replace it, right?
[00:18:20]  Because some people say, well, I definitely don't like that, but, you know, I don't like capitalism.
[00:18:24]  That's what people say.
[00:18:25]  I don't like it.
[00:18:26]  And by the way, capitalism has plenty of flaws.
[00:18:27]  I'm the first one to admit it, but it's the best of all the worst systems.

=== Private Property and Biblical Wisdom (14:06) ===

[00:18:30]  I mean, absolutely.
[00:18:32]  Of course, it creates inequality.
[00:18:33]  Of course it does, because you have competence hierarchies, and people are going to be better at certain things, and some people are going to work harder, and some people are going to work weekends, and some people are born with certain God-given gifts that other people aren't, right?
[00:18:44]  And it's actually the Matthew principle.
[00:18:46]  We derive this from the book of Matthew, which is a very harsh teaching, which is that the many will be given more, and the least will be, and you know the verse better than I do.
[00:18:55]  And it's literally the Matthew principle.
[00:18:57]  And so, but the question is, first of all, what is capitalism?
[00:19:00]  People say Adam Smith invented, I hate that term capitalism.
[00:19:03]  By the way, it actually was a Marxist term.
[00:19:05]  I prefer free enterprise.
[00:19:06]  I think that's actually a much better term.
[00:19:08]  Entrepreneurship, I also like a lot better than that.
[00:19:11]  But Adam Smith did not create it.
[00:19:12]  He discovered it.
[00:19:13]  This existed thousands of years.
[00:19:15]  It existed in the times of Christ in small areas, in markets, and kind of like transcontinental trading relationships.
[00:19:23]  But Adam Smith saw this happening at a rapid rate.
[00:19:25]  He wrote the Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations.
[00:19:28]  And in that book, it's a very interesting book.
[00:19:30]  By the way, Adam Smith was a Scottish Presbyterian.
[00:19:32]  The Scottish Enlightenment was led by the Presbyterian Church, thanks to the Protestant Reformation, that built a lot of modern society.
[00:19:39]  This part of the world has a lot of Scots.
[00:19:41]  Hello, I'm Kirk, so it's nice to see all you again.
[00:19:43]  Been a couple hundred years.
[00:19:45]  In a lot of different ways, the Scots built the modern world.
[00:19:47]  A lot of what we have came from what was the poorest country in Europe that all of a sudden sprang up these amazing ideas of John Locke, Burke, Hume, Smith, and many others.
[00:19:56]  And so, what Adam Smith was asking, and the title is so important into the, we call it the wealth of nations.
[00:20:02]  That's not the title.
[00:20:03]  It's not.
[00:20:03]  The title is an inquiry into the wealth of nations.
[00:20:06]  He was just asking a question, like, why are certain countries getting richer?
[00:20:10]  And why are certain countries staying poor?
[00:20:12]  He was on a discovery mission.
[00:20:13]  That's what he was.
[00:20:14]  He was a fact finder.
[00:20:16]  And he was just asking questions.
[00:20:18]  And he's like, wow, the people that allow the countries that allow people to kind of trade, they're doing really well.
[00:20:25]  And over time, the products improve and the price systems actually work.
[00:20:29]  And he acknowledged in the Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations that there are people that will be disadvantaged.
[00:20:34]  And you know what he argued?
[00:20:35]  He said that the Kirk, the church, should step up and help those people.
[00:20:39]  That was his solution, which I completely agree with.
[00:20:41]  I think the church should do even more to help the least of these in society.
[00:20:45]  I think the church should be the first safety net, not the government.
[00:20:47]  I think that the church should step up even more so in the place of the welfare state in our countries.
[00:20:52]  That was what Adam Smith argued.
[00:20:53]  But then all of a sudden from that moment, you saw a lot of other countries embrace this idea of markets.
[00:20:59]  And so how have we done since 1776?
[00:21:03]  Which, by the way, is the same year he wrote Inquiry into Wealth of Nations, same year that we had our birth certificate.
[00:21:07]  Interesting how that worked, right?
[00:21:09]  Same year.
[00:21:10]  Also, when common sense was written, how have we done as humanity?
[00:21:13]  Well, from Christ's resurrection to 1776, life expectancy went up maybe five years.
[00:21:21]  We didn't have access to modern medicine, international transportation, all these sorts of things.
[00:21:27]  From 1776 to today, we have things so unbelievably good with a standard of living that is so hard for us to comprehend that you look at where things were and where they are, we have to ask ourselves the question, why don't we do an inquiry into why things are so good in 2020?
[00:21:40]  Just like Adam Smith did in 1776.
[00:21:43]  Not perfect.
[00:21:44]  Lots of problems.
[00:21:45]  I have plenty of critiques.
[00:21:46]  I think that government should play a bigger role in certain areas, smaller role in others, but to just indict the entire capitalist system is lazy and it's wrong.
[00:21:54]  And so let's look at it.
[00:21:55]  During this pandemic, despite all of the kind of runs on toilet paper and all the different things that happen, our market experienced the greatest stress test we could possibly imagine.
[00:22:10]  Think about this.
[00:22:11]  Our grocery stores had a throwaway food.
[00:22:14]  We still produced so much food.
[00:22:15]  Our drugstores remained open.
[00:22:18]  We were able to have the supply chain continue.
[00:22:20]  If you needed something at your home, a lot of you had the opportunity to have it delivered straight to your home through some sort of home delivery service, Amazon or otherwise.
[00:22:28]  We passed the stress test.
[00:22:30]  And we did a lot wrong during this pandemic.
[00:22:32]  I'm the first one to mention it.
[00:22:34]  What do you think this pandemic would have looked like in 1704?
[00:22:38]  That's a different question, right?
[00:22:40]  Do you think that we would have had the same sort of access to information, to technology, to all these sorts of things?
[00:22:46]  So we have things rather good.
[00:22:48]  And by the way, other countries that didn't embrace these ideas, go see how they handled the pandemic.
[00:22:53]  Mass starvation.
[00:22:55]  Poverty rates that will take them decades to break out of.
[00:22:58]  And so, yes, we went through a lot of pain the last six to nine months, but we are so far ahead of other countries that didn't have a sort of market-based system after we experienced this kind of stress test.
[00:23:10]  So we can kind of see that.
[00:23:12]  And we take it for granted when we're like, man, you know, I have to go get another type of almond milk or something, right?
[00:23:19]  Or whatever.
[00:23:21]  You know, great.
[00:23:23]  The struggle is incredible, right?
[00:23:25]  I mean, but look at how amazing our companies and our options adapted, right?
[00:23:31]  Where all of a sudden mobile order was given and curbside pickup.
[00:23:34]  There wasn't a government, there were some government orders that suggested it, but the market just kind of did it, right?
[00:23:39]  They saw what people were worried about and they adapted to it in real time.
[00:23:43]  And that's what Adam Smith called the invisible hand.
[00:23:46]  And albeit was clumsy and plenty of companies made mistakes, but generally in this country, I think we took that for granted the last nine months.
[00:23:54]  That still generally our population was able to have access to medicine, have their prescriptions filled, put food on the table, have the supply chains uninterrupted.
[00:24:03]  And so, anyway, what do all these terms mean?
[00:24:05]  People say, well, Charlie, a Christian can't be a capitalist.
[00:24:07]  I say, well, that's entirely on you.
[00:24:09]  I say, capitalism gives you freedom.
[00:24:11]  If you believe that the gospel tells you to go live like a Mennonite, you can go do that, right?
[00:24:16]  I mean, you have freedom to do that.
[00:24:18]  You don't have to live a certain way in a capitalist system.
[00:24:20]  It's easier to live in certain ways.
[00:24:22]  But for example, the Mennonites or the Amish, they live communally.
[00:24:26]  If you think that is what the gospel tells you to do in a capitalist system, you're given the freedom to do that.
[00:24:31]  You can live like a socialist in a capitalist system.
[00:24:35]  Can't live like a capitalist in a socialist system.
[00:24:37]  So the Amish, God bless them, they think they figured it out.
[00:24:41]  You know, Pennsylvania, Dutch country, really fun to visit, right?
[00:24:44]  And they kind of share products and services, and it works for them.
[00:24:48]  Okay.
[00:24:49]  I don't know if it would work for me, but that's just my own approach.
[00:24:52]  But the idea is that it's all on you.
[00:24:54]  So if you have virtue, you have the agency to make good decisions.
[00:24:58]  So for example, if there's business owners out there, you have the liberty to treat your employees with dignity or not.
[00:25:06]  That's the whole idea of liberty, right?
[00:25:07]  Is that you have the opportunity to act with virtue or not?
[00:25:10]  And that's the golden triangle that built America.
[00:25:13]  Liberty is easy, right?
[00:25:14]  We teach our kids liberty, but we don't teach them responsibility, which is the other side of the triangle.
[00:25:19]  We definitely don't teach them virtue.
[00:25:21]  So liberty is the easy thing.
[00:25:23]  Go do whatever drugs you want.
[00:25:24]  Go put whatever you want in your body.
[00:25:25]  But for everything, there's a cost in life.
[00:25:27]  You drink too much, you feel bad in the morning, right?
[00:25:29]  You treat somebody bad, the relationship falls apart.
[00:25:32]  There's a cost to everything, right?
[00:25:33]  And we just kind of have the one-sided argument of liberty, but not on responsibility.
[00:25:37]  And so as we start to unpack what does that mean for the capitalist society, we have to understand that the framework for enterprise systems is a framework.
[00:25:44]  Do what you want with it, right?
[00:25:47]  And so if you're blaming other people's problems on the framework, I think that also just has more of an idea of are we communicating virtue and are we communicating values?
[00:25:55]  That's the first thing.
[00:25:56]  The second thing is this.
[00:25:57]  What system has proven to be the best at multiplication?
[00:26:02]  We don't use that word enough, I think, in Christendom.
[00:26:04]  Multiplication is a goal that Christ leaned into many different times.
[00:26:11]  Parable to talents, I'll get to that in a second.
[00:26:13]  But also, feeding the 5,000, multiplication is something you talked about quite often.
[00:26:17]  So the question is this: everyone in this room has been given gifts.
[00:26:20]  Everybody.
[00:26:21]  What system allows you to multiply the gifts God gave you the best for the advancement of his kingdom?
[00:26:27]  One that has freedom and liberty or one that looks like Cuba?
[00:26:31]  That's a question, right?
[00:26:32]  So when you have agency, when you have choice, when you're given liberty and freedom, let's say that you're a carpenter like Jesus was.
[00:26:40]  Let's say that you were, you know, a fisherman.
[00:26:42]  Or let's say that you run a church or you have a convenience store and you want to do everything in the pursuit of the gospel.
[00:26:49]  Now, mind you, that doesn't mean that if you're making shoes, as Martin Luther would say, you have to put a cross in every single shoe, right?
[00:26:55]  Martin Luther said you live it out in how you treat people and how you communicate people, right?
[00:26:59]  Communicate to people.
[00:27:00]  The question is then, what kind of system has allows Christians to multiply not just on the wealth side, but their impact to the most amount of people?
[00:27:10]  The answer is, of course, a free enterprise system.
[00:27:12]  Of course it is.
[00:27:13]  And by the way, socialism violates two out of the 10 commandments.
[00:27:15]  Thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not steal.
[00:27:18]  And it's rooted in taking other people's stuff.
[00:27:20]  Capitalism is rooted, or free markets are rooted in creating new things.
[00:27:24]  It's rooted in building things up, new innovations.
[00:27:26]  And I actually think it's a really good thing that we can have open heart surgery, brain surgery, lung transplants, kidney transplants, dialysis machines.
[00:27:34]  Life expectancy has gone up.
[00:27:36]  I think there's a really good things that we take for granted.
[00:27:37]  I think it's a good thing that we have incredible supply chains in our country.
[00:27:41]  And so I think that all of that is attributable thanks to a market-based type system.
[00:27:46]  And I'm not arguing that there aren't problems.
[00:27:47]  Of course, there are problems.
[00:27:48]  I think that certain companies need to be kept in check.
[00:27:50]  And I think that monopolistic behavior needs to be cross-examined.
[00:27:54]  And so I'm not trying to argue in a dogmatic sense.
[00:27:59]  Instead, I am arguing in a framework sense.
[00:28:01]  And I think that we as Christians need to lean into this more and say the system that we currently live in, which is generally a private property-based system.
[00:28:11]  By the way, private property is a biblical idea.
[00:28:13]  Abraham bought Hebron, and you can visit it in Israel.
[00:28:16]  He didn't steal it.
[00:28:17]  He didn't say this is mine.
[00:28:18]  He bought it.
[00:28:19]  He purchased it.
[00:28:20]  The idea of private property is a biblical idea.
[00:28:22]  And you guys all know this.
[00:28:24]  You guys can have stuff.
[00:28:25]  Just don't have stuff have you.
[00:28:26]  And so, and I think that if you, the final thing is this, and we can kind of build out other ideas, which is what system uses the worst of human nature and behavior for the pursuit of betterment for the whole?
[00:28:43]  And the answer is free enterprise.
[00:28:44]  Here's why.
[00:28:45]  There are jerks.
[00:28:46]  There are bad people in the world.
[00:28:48]  We know that.
[00:28:49]  But generally, it's hard for a long period of time to run and operate a business and be an awful person.
[00:28:56]  It's very hard to do that.
[00:28:57]  It's not impossible, but people generally don't want to work for you.
[00:29:01]  They don't want to buy your products and they won't keep showing up.
[00:29:04]  I know from the best places that I like to shop from, it's people that care about their businesses the most and treat you the best.
[00:29:10]  Now, that's not to say everyone is great.
[00:29:12]  However, there's an incentive to act closer to the biblical mandate of treating people the way you want to be treated in a market, closer to that.
[00:29:20]  It's not perfect, but it's close.
[00:29:23]  Whereas the other side, one where you have no commerce, no markets, none of those sorts of things, I'm afraid it actually gets closer away from that sort of illustration.
[00:29:31]  Interesting.
[00:29:32]  Interesting.
[00:29:32]  Well, you know, biblically speaking, we know that there is a liberty.
[00:29:36]  It is for freedom.
[00:29:37]  It is for liberty that Christ has set us free.
[00:29:40]  But liberty is not easy.
[00:29:42]  I mean, it requires the responsibility.
[00:29:44]  It's really hard.
[00:29:44]  I've talked about before.
[00:29:47]  But given the choice between a bondage or some ruler, some ownership over you, and the chance to have true liberty, still requires a lot of responsibility.
[00:29:58]  You know, it requires a lot of responsibility.
[00:30:00]  When you talk about those other systems, the Marxist, the socialism, communism, and capitalism, which of those would be most antagonistic to our faith, the exercise of our own faith?
[00:30:12]  Would you find in socialism and communism that we still have this kind of liberty is still granted since we want it seems so fair, so nice?
[00:30:21]  Right.
[00:30:21]  So I think that the default position for believers should be to allow people to make choices as they see fit, and it's actually better for the kingdom, whereas socialism is the antithesis to that, right?
[00:30:33]  So it doesn't create a framework for choice or for the capacity to be able to pursue means as you see fit.
[00:30:41]  And we would all want that in this construct.
[00:30:44]  So the real question is this, is where do rights come from and what are rights?
[00:30:47]  That's also the really important question, right?
[00:30:49]  So are rights stuff or are rights something that God grants you naturally?
[00:30:54]  And this was the question the founding fathers wrestled with.
[00:30:57]  And it's very popular to say that certain things are a human right.
[00:31:00]  And, you know, for example, people say Netflix is a human right, or people say that, you know, you're joking.
[00:31:05]  Just wait.
[00:31:06]  It's going to happen.
[00:31:06]  I mean, people say that certain conveniences or luxuries are a human right.
[00:31:10]  Of course not.
[00:31:11]  That's not true.
[00:31:12]  Rights are who you are in the state of nature granted you by God.
[00:31:14]  That's what rights are.
[00:31:16]  So, and this is a harder argument to make because it's so much easier to say, no, no, no, free education is a right.
[00:31:21]  Again, I reject that from a pure philosophical and principle standpoint.
[00:31:24]  My argument's a harder argument to make, but it's true, which is that in the state of nature, who are you?
[00:31:30]  Consciousness, you have speech, you have ideas, and you should have the capacity to protect yourself and not have your stuff stolen from you.
[00:31:37]  That's basically the entire construct of natural rights.
[00:31:41]  Whereas you have a position that doesn't have natural rights, where it's more of a positive rights standpoint.
[00:31:47]  People believe that rights are things that should be given you the convenience to be able to live.
[00:31:52]  And mind you, that sounds very acceptable on the surface.
[00:31:56]  The question is, well, then at what point do you start to draw lines on what are rights and what aren't?
[00:32:01]  And so people say, well, I know my rights.
[00:32:03]  Okay, what are your rights?
[00:32:04]  And sometimes they don't actually know their rights when they say that.
[00:32:08]  But basically, it's the rights of cross-examination, the right of criminal, you know, lawyer, legal representation against an accusation, a right of due process.
[00:32:16]  And so, look, if you just look at these systems, again, I said it very clearly, capitalism is the best of the worst systems.
[00:32:22]  All these things are flawed because we're dealing with sinful human beings and acting, kind of interacting together.
[00:32:29]  However, if we just look at the data, and this is a very interesting thing that we as Christians need to look for, we like helping poor people, right?
[00:32:36]  Of course we do.

=== HR Issues That Kill Businesses (02:43) ===

[00:32:37]  That's one of the biggest things that we're told to do.
[00:32:39]  Thanks to capitalism, thanks to free markets, world poverty is at the lowest it's ever been in human history.
[00:32:46]  You know that?
[00:32:46]  Probably not.
[00:32:47]  Activist media probably wouldn't tell you that.
[00:32:49]  Life expectancy has gone up.
[00:32:50]  There are less people living without running water, without medicine.
[00:32:54]  Now, how does that happen?
[00:32:55]  Well, all these countries are countries that tried the socialist communist experiment.
[00:32:59]  Most of these countries are Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines.
[00:33:04]  And they're basically doing the Adam Smith thing.
[00:33:06]  They're just letting their people trade.
[00:33:08]  And they're still trying to figure it out and manage it, and they're having issues here and there.
[00:33:12]  But generally, people are breaking out of poverty.
[00:33:14]  In India, there are 480 million people in India without toilets.
[00:33:18]  You think you got it bad?
[00:33:20]  They have a larger population than our entire country that doesn't have a toilet.
[00:33:23]  Now, that country, now that number was 800 million 10 years ago, so they're doing really well.
[00:33:28]  And so when you sit down with the Indian government, when you sit down with their country, they say, you know what?
[00:33:35]  We have a lot of problems, but things are a lot better today than they were 10 years.
[00:33:38]  You have to look at these things sometimes in relative terms, right?
[00:33:40]  And markets work.
[00:33:43]  They work in a way that a lot of us can't even explain.
[00:33:46]  Where all of a sudden you could go to Walgreens right here, and they have more choices of stuff than you could possibly ever imagine without you ever having to fill out a form for it.
[00:33:54]  It's because somebody out there is taking a risk to try to satisfy that for you.
[00:33:58]  And I think the other part of this is, look, what system allows you to have work that is meaningful?
[00:34:07]  And I think that we need to talk more about entrepreneurship, which is starting something from nothing.
[00:34:11]  And I think we're losing that in our country in a lot of different ways.
[00:34:17]  When running a business, HR issues can kill you.
[00:34:20]  I know this quite well from running a business.
[00:34:22]  Wrongful termination suits, minimum wage requirements, labor regulations, and more.
[00:34:26]  And HR manager salaries are never cheap.
[00:34:28]  They're an average of $70,000 a year.
[00:34:31]  Bambi, spelled B-A-M-B-E-E, was created specifically for small business.
[00:34:36]  You can get a dedicated HR manager, craft HR policy, and maintain your compliance all for just $99 a month.
[00:34:42]  With Bambi, you can change HR from your biggest liability to your biggest strength.
[00:34:47]  Your dedicated HR manager is available by phone, email, or real-time chat.
[00:34:51]  From onboarding the terminations that customize your policy to fit your business, and they help you manage your employees day-to-day all for just $99 a month.
[00:34:59]  Month to month, there's no hidden fees.
[00:35:00]  Cancel anytime.
[00:35:01]  You didn't start your business because you wanted to spend time in HR compliance.
[00:35:04]  Let Bambi help.
[00:35:05]  Get your free HR audit today.
[00:35:07]  Go to Bambi.com slash Kirk right now to schedule your free HR audit.
[00:35:11]  That's bambi.com slash kirk.
[00:35:13]  Spelled bam to the b-e-e dot com slash kirk.

=== Gratitude for Living in America (15:56) ===

[00:35:20]  Yeah, something we know a little bit about here.
[00:35:22]  We, you know, my wife and I moved here 20 years ago, just the two of us.
[00:35:27]  Start a little Bible study in an apartment, and you look around here and you see that there's this great thing that God has done, you know, through the agency of individuals that say, What do you want to accomplish?
[00:35:44]  Life is either what it is, life is either a discovery of what God created us to be, or it is, in a sense, this sort of drudgery of becoming trying to, you know, in a sense, make yourself make something.
[00:35:57]  And it's just a thrill to look on and go, well, what is it that God wants to do?
[00:36:02]  And he wants to be generous and kind, and he wants to shine light through us and to others.
[00:36:07]  You've said in a couple of our gatherings that the most important thing anyone will ever do is put their faith in Jesus Christ.
[00:36:15]  And the second thing is to make sure that that can actually happen.
[00:36:20]  And that, I think, is something that we're toying with right now because these ideas that sound so fair, so equitable, you know, it's going to be, we're going to come and solve the problems by tearing down the system that has its flaws.
[00:36:34]  And we're going to just make it all, it'll all be equal.
[00:36:37]  It won't all be equal at all.
[00:36:41]  Why would we want equal?
[00:36:42]  Since when is that a good thing?
[00:36:44]  No, that's a really interesting question, right?
[00:36:46]  Like people like, we want equality.
[00:36:47]  I'd love equality under the law.
[00:36:49]  I like equal rights.
[00:36:50]  But what if I work harder than somebody else?
[00:36:53]  Well, what if somebody doesn't show up to work?
[00:36:56]  We want to be equal with that person.
[00:36:58]  Like, I actually believe that it's biblical that if you don't work, you don't eat.
[00:37:02]  It's true.
[00:37:03]  And that whole idea of the whole idea of that verse is that if you don't show up, someone's going to have more than you.
[00:37:08]  Same with the parable of the talents.
[00:37:09]  You guys, I'm just going to let's remember the parable of the talents, which Christ challenges us to multiply.
[00:37:16]  Where in the parable of the talents, you have an owner of sorts or an employer, and it depends on the translation of how you interpret it, and three subjects.
[00:37:28]  And they're all given a certain piece from the owner.
[00:37:32]  One of them does nothing with it and hides it under a rock, the second of which multiplies it minorly, and the third of which multiplies it majorly.
[00:37:41]  And in one of the most harsh verses that we have that Christ ever uttered, he condemns the person so unbelievably clearly that puts what is given to them under a rock.
[00:37:54]  And the person who multiplies it faithfully gets some of the highest praise and reward from our Lord and Savior.
[00:37:59]  What are we supposed to make of that?
[00:38:02]  Well, I think it's pretty clear that we're pushed every day to get up and try to multiply the kingdom in every single vertical in the arts and the sciences and markets and of course the church.
[00:38:16]  And I don't think God would want a stationary or sedentary Christian body.
[00:38:21]  And so when we ask ourselves the question of, you know, what sort of framework creates that, I think it's one where Christians are being pushed to try in a good way, you know, to aspire and thrive to the highest level possible for The betterment of the kingdom.
[00:38:40]  That's great.
[00:38:41]  You know, God's a creator.
[00:38:42]  He's the creator of all things.
[00:38:44]  And we, his sons and daughters.
[00:38:45]  And so, you know, one aspect of Christ-likeness is a certain sense of creativity.
[00:38:51]  It's a sense of something coming out of us that is something coming out of us that uniquely created by God who's a creator.
[00:39:00]  And then we turn around and in a Christ-like way, you know, create something else.
[00:39:04]  And what did he create?
[00:39:04]  Created things that were beneficial for others, that met the needs of others.
[00:39:08]  And so for the church to have the liberty and the freedom to be who it is that God has called him to be, and then, you know, create something that may, in a sense, turn out to be an extraordinary blessing for other people, as opposed to mandates that say that this is how we're going to make sure everything, again, sort of gets distributed equally so that there isn't anything unfair.
[00:39:30]  Where do you think the sort of the idea that's rising, it's got to be fair, any inequality, any inequity, where does that sort of, you know, sort of to these, at this time, it seems to sort of be hitting sort of a fever pitch, you know, with now is the time for this.
[00:39:50]  There's so much injustice, and the injustice is that things just aren't fair out there.
[00:39:55]  And again, capitalism is sort of, you know, in the scapegoat.
[00:39:59]  Yeah.
[00:40:00]  Yeah.
[00:40:00]  I mean, look, I'm not, of course there's sin in the world.
[00:40:03]  And of course, there's things that are awful and terrible.
[00:40:06]  I think that acknowledging that America has made mistakes is perfectly fine.
[00:40:11]  Sure.
[00:40:11]  But saying that America's a mistake is foolish and I won't tolerate that.
[00:40:15]  We're the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world.
[00:40:18]  We're the most generous, benevolent, forward-thinking, open-minded country ever that has brought in more people into our country successfully ever in any other country ever.
[00:40:27]  We gave away $500 billion to charity last year.
[00:40:30]  We bring in a million immigrants to our country every single year, whether it be a earthquake, flood, natural disaster, it's always our country that steps up disproportionately more so than any other country in the world.
[00:40:40]  And it's been good for the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
[00:40:42]  Amen.
[00:40:48]  Let's look at South Korea.
[00:40:49]  South Korea has 100 million people, one of the most Christian countries on the planet.
[00:40:53]  Why does South Korea exist?
[00:40:56]  Because of the United States of America, because 30,000 people, many of whom from this beautiful state, went and fought the forgotten war to push back the Chinese Communist Party and Korean military forces to now the DMZ zone, where it would have been all of Korea be communist, where all now half of Korea is communist.
[00:41:11]  So now 100 million people live in a neoliberal democracy where the kingdom is on fire in South Korea.
[00:41:20]  So America's made plenty of mistakes.
[00:41:22]  The Iraq war was a mistake.
[00:41:23]  The Vietnam War was a mistake.
[00:41:25]  We have plenty of people in the political class that I think serve their own self-interest and don't make good decisions.
[00:41:30]  All those things are true.
[00:41:31]  But I also think that there's an ingratitude brewing in our country that I feel called to confront.
[00:41:38]  Again, I'm the first one to say there are plenty of legitimate problems.
[00:41:41]  In fact, all of Next Service will talk about all the problems that we have in our country, seriously, because we got a lot of them.
[00:41:47]  And I think there's ways that we can solve them a lot easier than we give ourselves credit for.
[00:41:50]  And we'll do a whole service on that and talk about the crisis of young people and all that.
[00:41:54]  But I think that what happened, and this is a transition that happened, it happened suddenly.
[00:41:58]  Valid critiques of things that we can improve on that all of a sudden became to our country's an awful place.
[00:42:04]  Maybe we should disintegrate it.
[00:42:05]  I'm like, how did that happen?
[00:42:07]  And it happened very quickly.
[00:42:09]  And when I talk to first-generation immigrants from countries that are war-torn and that there are people living in the slums and the sewers, we have things very, very good here.
[00:42:19]  We really do.
[00:42:20]  And there's a big conversation right now about racial injustice and all those sorts of things.
[00:42:24]  Just one statistic that's very interesting.
[00:42:26]  Since 1983 million black people have legally immigrated into this country, 2 million from Africa, 1 million from the Caribbean.
[00:42:32]  The richest immigrant group in our country is Nigerian Americans to our country.
[00:42:37]  In fact, Bloomberg wrote an article saying that we need more Nigerian immigrants to our country.
[00:42:41]  I agree with that.
[00:42:42]  They're productive, family-oriented.
[00:42:44]  If we are so systemically racist and awful, how is it that Nigerian immigrants are doing so well in our country?
[00:42:50]  It's because they value the three things you need to do well in our country.
[00:42:53]  You need to do three things in our country.
[00:42:55]  And these things are colorblind.
[00:42:56]  It doesn't matter where you come from on the planet, you do these three things, you're going to break out of poverty.
[00:43:01]  You get married before you have kids.
[00:43:03]  You get a job, any job, and you graduate high school.
[00:43:06]  And then there's a fourth one that's pretty nice, which is don't mismanage money and don't commit crimes.
[00:43:11]  That's about it.
[00:43:13]  And those other three things play into the fourth thing, right?
[00:43:16]  But for example, a young white kid that is born to a single mother, who are heroes, by the way, this is not an indictment of single mothers.
[00:43:25]  But a young white kid born to a single mother is less likely to succeed than a black kid who is raised by a mother and a father.
[00:43:30]  It's empirically true.
[00:43:32]  It's two parent privilege in our country more than anything else.
[00:43:34]  And 77% of black kids in our country are born without stable fathers in the home.
[00:43:38]  That's a moral injustice, the likes of which is the true concentration, should be the true concentration of our outrage.
[00:43:44]  And it's not just the black community.
[00:43:46]  In certain states, such as West Virginia and parts of Tennessee, the fatherlessness rate in the white community is 38%.
[00:43:54]  You know a lot, you guys have ministry work that deals in a lot of those parts of very, very poor Appalachia.
[00:43:59]  So it's not just pertained to just one specific group.
[00:44:03]  And so you look, again, I think that there's some very, like, again, I could talk about all the things that have gone wrong, but you look at this really short experiment we have in self-governance and liberty in a constitutional republic, and you kind of got to give America a little bit of credit that we've gotten some things pretty amazingly right.
[00:44:18]  And that considering that the track record of governments are self-implosion, civil war, genocide, power-hungry maniacs, what have we done that has actually set the example for any sort of stable government?
[00:44:32]  And that is the decentralization of power, checks and balances, representative government, fair and free elections, all these sorts of things.
[00:44:39]  And if you have a problem with it, you're able to run for government, run for office.
[00:44:42]  You're able to actually serve in the government, which is a citizen-led government.
[00:44:46]  And so we kind of look at these things right now.
[00:44:49]  And I think, so, for example, only 43% of my generation thinks that America is a great country, 43%, right?
[00:44:56]  So that number was 70% 10 years ago.
[00:44:59]  Went from 70% to 43%.
[00:45:02]  That is like civilization-ending stuff, everybody, just so you understand.
[00:45:06]  A country's ability or inability to replicate its values and what it believes to the next generation will be the reason whether or not that country continues to exist.
[00:45:17]  And I believe firmly that we should be thankful for what is given to us.
[00:45:22]  I believe that gratitude is one of the least talked about biblical virtues.
[00:45:28]  I really do.
[00:45:28]  And gratitude is almost the fruit that makes everything else after it tastes sweet, right?
[00:45:34]  When you are thankful when you wake up, things just get a little bit better.
[00:45:37]  When you're unthankful, things don't get better.
[00:45:39]  And so I think that we should have a position of gratitude that we live in this country, that maybe there are some things that we got right.
[00:45:45]  Maybe that we are living in the exception, not the norm of human history, which we are.
[00:45:50]  And it's pretty remarkable when you look at the incredible, I mean, just another example is this: is that, you know, the poorest people in America are still in the top 1 to 2% on the planet.
[00:46:04]  And again, I'm not discounting that there's not poverty in this country, but it's very relative.
[00:46:09]  And it's very relative, is that the standard of living that we enjoy in the West versus almost all of Southeast Asia or the developing world should really give a lot of people pause.
[00:46:18]  It should.
[00:46:19]  For example, if just the black people in this country had their own economic country, they'd be the 18th wealthiest country on the planet.
[00:46:28]  So I mean, there's some reason to kind of pause and say, maybe things aren't as bad as people are telling me.
[00:46:34]  And if we are getting some things correct, what are we getting correct?
[00:46:37]  And then what we're getting wrong, how can we actually fix it?
[00:46:39]  And we have the Bible to actually tell us that.
[00:46:41]  How about this?
[00:46:42]  Get married and be loyal to that person.
[00:46:46]  Work hard.
[00:46:47]  Focus on the good.
[00:46:49]  Make your goals sharp and clear.
[00:46:51]  Be thankful more than you complain.
[00:46:54]  And take the education of your children very seriously.
[00:46:57]  If every person did that in this country, all of a sudden a lot of these problems would all of a sudden disappear.
[00:47:03]  So true.
[00:47:09]  So, to whom much is given, and I think it should go with almost out saying we have been given quite a bit.
[00:47:16]  Much is required.
[00:47:18]  Much, I would say, is at stake.
[00:47:22]  So imagine just for a second a world without our country.
[00:47:26]  Yeah.
[00:47:27]  And why would that, like, what part would we play and why would that matter?
[00:47:30]  That's a great question.
[00:47:32]  I was in Germany once, and I was sitting around the table with a group of Germans and Europeans, and they had nothing but negative stuff to say about our country.
[00:47:40]  Awful stuff.
[00:47:42]  And just arrogance and bitterness and every stereotype you've heard that now your kids tell you about our country, right?
[00:47:49]  That we have to hear our young people tell us.
[00:47:51]  And I was hearing five years ago, and I had enough of it, right?
[00:47:54]  I just said, all right, I got a question.
[00:47:56]  What happens if America did?
[00:47:58]  What would happen if America didn't exist?
[00:47:59]  And I got very quiet.
[00:48:01]  And they said, one of them said, well, the world would be a lot less free.
[00:48:07]  I said, okay.
[00:48:08]  And that was the end of that discussion.
[00:48:12]  And, well, what's the point?
[00:48:13]  Is that a benevolent superpower is a very rare thing.
[00:48:20]  We've made plenty of problems, plenty of mistakes.
[00:48:22]  We have plenty of problems.
[00:48:23]  I've said many times.
[00:48:24]  I try to always, you know, nuance it.
[00:48:27]  But think about what other countries would do if they had the wealth and power that we had.
[00:48:33]  Look what China is doing with the wealth and power they have.
[00:48:35]  There's a million Muslims in concentration camps in China right now.
[00:48:39]  Million.
[00:48:40]  We say never again, but we're lying when we say that.
[00:48:42]  The Holocaust is happening all over again in China.
[00:48:45]  And we're okay with it.
[00:48:46]  Are we?
[00:48:46]  I don't know.
[00:48:47]  I'm not.
[00:48:47]  We keep buying products from them.
[00:48:49]  We keep having our companies go over to them.
[00:48:50]  We keep buying textiles from them.
[00:48:51]  We keep buying our electronics from them.
[00:48:53]  But you're funding the concentration camp surveillance empire in China.
[00:48:57]  China's building islands in the South China Sea.
[00:48:59]  They released a virus that killed 200,000 Americans, lied about it, probably a bioweapon from one of their labs.
[00:49:03]  The very least, it was absolutely covered up at the highest levels of their government, and time will tell about that.
[00:49:08]  That has now infected the top levels of our government.
[00:49:11]  They have the Belt and Road Initiative where they're buying up natural resources and minerals and ports of entry of Africa, Southeast Asia, all across the world for their own betterment and their own enrichment.
[00:49:21]  There is no church in China.
[00:49:22]  There's an underground church.
[00:49:23]  And if you get too loud, they'll cut your head off.
[00:49:26]  So what would they do with absolute power?
[00:49:28]  What would Russia do with absolute power?
[00:49:31]  Where they poison dissidents and throw them in prison?
[00:49:35]  Where there is no freedom of speech?
[00:49:37]  Where Vladimir Putin is very popular.
[00:49:39]  Just look at the elections.
[00:49:44]  What would North Korea do with absolute power?
[00:49:48]  So that should be take pause everyone, like, wow.
[00:49:51]  We have the most sophisticated weaponry.
[00:49:53]  We have more aircraft carriers than any other country put together combined.
[00:49:57]  There's only one other country in the aircraft creator, that's not China.
[00:50:02]  We have drone reconnaissance, stuff that no one else could have.
[00:50:05]  An economy that, if we turned on the faucet to just support our military, it could do incredible stuff.
[00:50:12]  And sure, I mean, we make some decisions that are regrettable, the war of Iraq and all this.
[00:50:18]  But generally, we only ask for land to bury our dead.
[00:50:21]  Generally, that's the rule of American foreign policy.
[00:50:24]  We just say, just give us a cemetery plot so we can bury those that died so that you guys could be free.
[00:50:29]  And so.
[00:50:30]  Any other nation have any other of their dead buried on it?
[00:50:34]  I mean, I mean, we're not, Great Britain, other Western countries do that.
[00:50:38]  But I'm saying, look at the look at the power we have with a $26 trillion economy, more airports, more airplanes, more scientific discovery, 18 out of 20 of the top research institutions, a standing army that is unprecedented, incomparable, nuclear warheads, all this stuff.
[00:50:54]  What would another country do with that kind of magnanimous power?
[00:50:57]  And the question is, why don't we do that?
[00:50:59]  And the reason is, despite all of our clumsiness and all of this, there is a pursuit to try to say, we want to do something good in this world.
[00:51:08]  That's why.
[00:51:09]  That's why we fought the Korean War.
[00:51:11]  It's because we were not comfortable with the entire Korean peninsula being under totalitarian rule.

=== Politics Matter to Every Christian (10:34) ===

[00:51:16]  100 million people are living free thanks to that today.
[00:51:19]  And the same could be said for other, you know, other, World War II is another phenomenal example of that, where the European continent was in absolute crisis.
[00:51:30]  And many people from this region of the world rised up to never come back, to go fight land that their relatives would never visit, to go liberate a continent from absolute ultimate evil so that the intentional extermination of the innocent would stop.
[00:51:46]  Yeah, that's a country I'd be proud of.
[00:51:49]  That's good.
[00:51:50]  Very good.
[00:51:52]  Very, very good.
[00:51:58]  You're probably listening.
[00:51:59]  You're listening to the Charlie Kirk show right now, or else you wouldn't hear me say this.
[00:52:03]  And you might have earbuds in.
[00:52:05]  And the best way to listen is actually premium wireless earbuds.
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[00:52:44]  That's buyraycon.com slash Kirk for a special 15% discount on Raycon Wireless.
[00:52:49]  Again, make sure to check it out right now while the deal is running.
[00:52:52]  Buyraycon.com/slash Kirk.
[00:52:57]  Well, we are followers of Jesus, you know, most of us here.
[00:53:01]  And we've got, it would take just this last minute.
[00:53:04]  We've got an election shortly.
[00:53:06]  Is that true?
[00:53:07]  I had no idea.
[00:53:09]  We've got an election.
[00:53:12]  Just give us a couple very, very practical action steps as people that, you know, I've been sharing with the congregation, and it, you know, to me, it boils all down to Ephesians 6's spiritual warfare, that there are principalities and powers that at the end of the day, there is a great conflict between truth and lies and light and dark and life and death.
[00:53:37]  And I think that what it is that we're facing in these ideas, because ideas have extraordinary consequences, right?
[00:53:43]  100 years, 100 million people slain because of ideas that are godless.
[00:53:49]  And so I've said in each of the services that it's just, you know, my simple conviction that we face not ideas, but an evil behind those ideas that is not in any way.
[00:54:01]  The enemy comes to kill, he comes to steal, he comes to destroy.
[00:54:06]  And so there's a unique role that the church plays in the restraint and the pushback against evil.
[00:54:16]  And so we've got an election that many believe for our country.
[00:54:20]  Some would say it's the most important election that our country's ever seen or in the last hundred years.
[00:54:25]  I mean, it's been stated in different ways.
[00:54:28]  What are just some practical things that we need to be aware of, or maybe just some practical ways in closing how that we might engage?
[00:54:35]  Because we have a role that simply others, even just Americans, you know, don't.
[00:54:40]  I mean, we have an understanding that's a little different.
[00:54:42]  Yeah, look, I mean, whether it's something that you enjoy hearing or like talking about politics matter.
[00:54:47]  As I mentioned, another Calvary chapel might go to prison today while you guys get to go back home and enjoy watching football.
[00:54:52]  So politics matter because you have better governance here than in California.
[00:54:57]  So while they're dealing with public health officials and trying to negotiate police bail bonds, you guys get to go watch the Tennessee Titans or whatever, right?
[00:55:05]  So politics matter, and it's happening in this country right now.
[00:55:08]  So look, I'm not going to say that one party's perfect and one party is, you know, more fitting into the perfect fit, I should say.
[00:55:16]  But I will say this, there's a couple issues that I think almost every Christian should be able to agree on.
[00:55:21]  The first of which is the fight for those that can't fight for themselves, which is the fight for life.
[00:55:29]  And let me say, I think that we as Christians need to do a much better job of communicating the necessity to adopt, the need to make it financially easier to adopt, to make the laws easier to adopt children in our country.
[00:55:42]  And secondly, I think that a lot of times in churches that I visit, we do not do enough to talk about how women that have had abortions should not be condemned.
[00:55:52]  We should have a ministry to help heal them.
[00:55:54]  And instead, our critique should be after the abortionists that lied to these young ladies and told them that this was a victimless act.
[00:56:01]  And when in reality, there is serious spiritual, physical, and emotional damage that is done to women that do that.
[00:56:08]  And so I think we need to do a better job of that.
[00:56:10]  So I just want to preface it with that.
[00:56:11]  With that being said, I think that it's a moral travesty that 61 million lives were terminated since Roe versus Wade in our country.
[00:56:18]  That's twice the population of Canada that we have terminated in the womb.
[00:56:24]  And it's disproportionate to the black community, by the way.
[00:56:26]  And this is something that does not get talked about enough.
[00:56:28]  If you see a pregnant woman, a black woman, on a subway in New York City, she's more likely heading to the Planned Parenthood than to the delivery clinic.
[00:56:36]  And so the question I think that we Christians should be asked, and it might be asked at the highest levels of, you know, when we go face our Creator, is, what did you do when those people that couldn't defend themselves were being, you know, terminated?
[00:56:51]  So the question is, when does life begin?
[00:56:53]  I think we as Christians have a very simple answer to that.
[00:56:56]  Believes that it begins at conception.
[00:56:58]  When that unique DNA is formed, when that unique image, we're made in the image of God.
[00:57:02]  I knew you before you were in the womb.
[00:57:04]  When that life is created, I believe that that right should have the same sort of protection as an older life.
[00:57:11]  And so I believe that every Christian should get behind an agenda that of some people that speak at the March for Life, people that challenge our public funding of Planned Parenthood.
[00:57:21]  And yes, appoint justices and judges to the United States Supreme Court to challenge the unconstitutional ruling of Roe versus Wade.
[00:57:29]  I believe that every Christian should be involved in that.
[00:57:31]  The second issue, and I'll just do three because I did 11 last service and it took like an hour.
[00:57:36]  So the second issue is the issue of Israel.
[00:57:40]  Every Christian, Bible-believing Christian, should have a reverence for God's chosen people in the State of Israel.
[00:57:46]  And Israel has been under attack, condemned.
[00:57:49]  From the moment Israel was formed, they were invaded by every direction, by every power, all at once, trying to suffocate and destroy the Jewish people to have their own sovereign state.
[00:58:02]  From that point forward, Israel has had to deal with rockets being shot at their civilians and children, suicide bombers being subsidized by the Palestinian Authority, a three-front war from Gaza to Hamas to the Palestinian Authority.
[00:58:17]  And for the first time in a couple decades, all of a sudden we are seeing an incredible peace deal that has come through between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, negotiated by a president that many of you support, some of you don't, in a way that you might not like his style.
[00:58:30]  But my goodness, you bring the Emiratis and the Israelis in a room together to agree on peace.
[00:58:36]  Someone's doing something that's not getting mentioned in the media.
[00:58:46]  Of course, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Golan Heights.
[00:58:49]  If any of you have visited Israel, it makes you a stronger Christian and makes you a more convicted Christian.
[00:58:54]  And I believe that it is imperative for Christians to also defend our relationship with Israel for the archaeological discoveries, for making it the Bible in technical and real life.
[00:59:06]  And I think that if the state of Israel were to fall in this period of time that we live in, it would be an unspeakable tragedy and travesty.
[00:59:15]  So the third thing that I think that Christians should care about, and I mentioned this a little bit, is the judges and justices, is interpretation of the rule of law as it is written.
[00:59:24]  With the United States Supreme Court as it was back in August, Calvary Chapel, another Calvary Chapel fighting for its life, everybody, in Las Vegas, sued because they were not able to open.
[00:59:39]  And the mandate put forward by the state government said no more than 50 people, but they said the casinos are allowed 50% capacity and they get 15,000 people because their fire codes are so high.
[00:59:48]  They sue up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
[00:59:50]  John Roberts ruled incorrectly, 5-4 decision and said, church is not essential.
[00:59:54]  Casinos are.
[00:59:56]  That's what he said, basically.
[00:59:58]  What he said is that casinos can be at 50% capacity.
[01:00:00]  Churches must stay at 50 people.
[01:00:03]  Because they said something about proximity or singing helps spread whatever.
[01:00:07]  So yeah, courts matter.
[01:00:08]  Oh my gosh.
[01:00:09]  And right now, you have a woman who has seven children, two of them adopted, five natural-born children who loves the Lord, who's about to be on the United States Supreme Court.
[01:00:21]  That's a fight that every Christian should get into right now.
[01:00:23]  Oh, my goodness.
[01:00:25]  And so, and also, just to close, 200 federal circuit court judges, the most in recent history, if not in all of U.S. history, since George Washington, and now three Supreme Court justices.
[01:00:37]  We have three branches of government.
[01:00:38]  The least appreciated and least talked about is the judicial branch.
[01:00:42]  We talk a lot about the legislative and the executive.
[01:00:44]  The judicial branch is one that honestly has more power and more weight than we have ever seen in our lifetime.
[01:00:52]  And so, yes, and to answer your question, I guess we'll close on this: I am a friend of the president's.
[01:00:57]  Please pray for him.
[01:00:58]  He's in a very difficult position right now, and one that just makes me sick seeing how some people react to it on television and social media, just so it shows you the brokenness where I don't even need to get into it.
[01:01:10]  It's just awful.
[01:01:11]  So, but yeah, look, I think that he gets a really bad rap by a lot of people.
[01:01:14]  And understand, if you have a problem with him, remember, you're voting for two people, too.
[01:01:17]  You're also voting for Mike Pence, who's been loyally married to the same woman for 35 years, Bible-believing Christian, who prays over the president every day, who does Bible studies in the Oval Office, who brings ministers into the White House.
[01:01:32]  And you have this combination of street fighter and Midwestern Christian together into the most pro-life, most per-Israel, most successful judicial appointment administration in American history, which I believe justifies four more years.

=== Supporting Freedom Fighters at TPU (00:41) ===

[01:01:50]  Very good.
[01:01:53]  Very good.
[01:01:54]  Thank you.
[01:01:54]  Thank you.
[01:01:55]  Okay.
[01:01:55]  Thank you, guys.
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[01:02:12]  Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com.
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[01:02:23]  Thank you guys so much for listening.
[01:02:24]  God bless.
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[01:02:29]  Thank you again.
[01:02:30]  Talk to you soon.
[01:02:31]  God bless.