The Charlie Kirk Show - How the Small Things Become the Big Things — Charlie Kirk LIVE from Freedom Square
Aired: 2021-06-27
Duration: 01:26:29


=== Finding Momentum in Small Things (10:20) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, happy Sunday.
[00:00:01]  This message, The Small Things and the Big Things, was given at Dream City Church Freedom Square.
[00:00:06]  Brought to you by Turning Point USA, tpusa.com.
[00:00:09]  Hope to see you in Tampa, Florida at tpusa.com/slash SAS.
[00:00:13]  If you want to support our program, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
[00:00:17]  That's charliekirk.com slash support.
[00:00:19]  This is advertiser-free.
[00:00:20]  It's a Sunday.
[00:00:21]  Thank you guys for supporting us.
[00:00:23]  It really means a lot.
[00:00:24]  I want to thank Edward from Washington.
[00:00:26]  I want to thank Connor from Arkansas.
[00:00:29]  And I want to thank Yolanda from Massachusetts.
[00:00:32]  Very generous.
[00:00:33]  CharlieKirk.com/slash support.
[00:00:36]  Happy Sunday.
[00:00:37]  Buckle up.
[00:00:38]  Here we go.
[00:00:39]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:41]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:00:43]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:00:46]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:00:50]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:00:51]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:00:52]  His spirit, his love of this country.
[00:00:54]  He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:01:00]  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.
[00:01:09]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:12]  I just want to thank, first of all, all of you that send me your warm notes of encouragement that you're praying for us and praying for me.
[00:01:20]  It's, you know, it's a battle out there, and there's definitely some spiritual warfare going on.
[00:01:24]  Do you feel that too?
[00:01:26]  Now, this is not just in the material.
[00:01:28]  And so I want to thank you guys for all of that.
[00:01:30]  And it just came to me today.
[00:01:31]  I was talking to my very good friend, Pastor Greg, who's in from a great church from California, of what to share.
[00:01:38]  And it's actually, we have a really good message to share tonight, one of optimism and hope and one of positivity.
[00:01:43]  And if you're like me, you could use some of that right now, especially what's going on in the world and in our country.
[00:01:49]  So there's one word I really want to focus on tonight, and it's the word momentum.
[00:01:54]  So what is momentum?
[00:01:56]  Well, momentum, for those of you that have built, you know, Pastor Barnett, you know all about momentum.
[00:02:00]  Once you hit that curve, things just start to happen.
[00:02:03]  The question is, how do we get to that place of momentum?
[00:02:05]  You guys know this when you have a sports team.
[00:02:07]  Any of you guys, Chicago Bulls fans, oh, I'm sorry about that.
[00:02:10]  Michael Jordan beat the Phoenix Suns with, sorry about that.
[00:02:14]  I'm a big Bulls fan, by the way.
[00:02:15]  When you get momentum, it's like a team plays at another level.
[00:02:18]  Now, I don't watch professional sports anymore, so you guys could tell me who's doing well.
[00:02:21]  No, I really don't.
[00:02:22]  I heard LeBron lost.
[00:02:23]  That's all I cared about.
[00:02:25]  And so, so for that, I want to, I guess it was Phoenix.
[00:02:32]  Was it?
[00:02:33]  Yeah, I used to love sports, but then everyone can make their own decision.
[00:02:37]  Have a nice time.
[00:02:39]  I wish you well.
[00:02:40]  And, but you guys know in sports, when you get momentum, there's nothing else like it.
[00:02:45]  There's a lot of golfers out there.
[00:02:46]  I know the Barnetts love golf.
[00:02:47]  When you get momentum when you're a golfer, you could have one week can change your golf career forever.
[00:02:53]  Jordan Speet had one week that changed his entire golf career.
[00:02:57]  So we need to ask ourselves when we're trying to reclaim the country for Christ, what is momentum and how do we get momentum?
[00:03:05]  And so first, let's just get to the physics definition of momentum.
[00:03:09]  Momentum is very, and Newton discovered this.
[00:03:12]  He didn't invent it.
[00:03:13]  Force equals mass times acceleration.
[00:03:15]  How big is something?
[00:03:16]  How fast is it going?
[00:03:18]  And when we feel as if we don't have momentum, we feel as if there's not enough or not going fast enough.
[00:03:23]  And if you're like me since January, especially, feels like we've been a little bit on defense, a little bit on the heels, a little bit like we've got no momentum.
[00:03:32]  We're losing ground.
[00:03:33]  It seems as if our values, our ideas are always under attack.
[00:03:37]  And it seems like the mass is decreasing and any movement is going backwards.
[00:03:42]  But in the last couple of days, I've felt actually something different.
[00:03:45]  A certain senator from West Virginia came out and he said, look, I might be able to negotiate on a couple of things, but HR1 and HR5 and adding DC and Puerto Rico estates and mail-in ballots, that's not going to happen.
[00:03:57]  We're going to have to work together.
[00:03:58]  And the other senator from this state, who I think is nuttier than a fruitcake, sometimes, Senator Sinema, did the same.
[00:04:04]  And I think she should be thanked for that, quite honestly.
[00:04:06]  I really do.
[00:04:08]  And so all of a sudden, that threw a boomerang and things, and they got the other side, got very angry about that.
[00:04:16]  And all of a sudden, people are stopping me in airports and they're stopping me when I'm traveling.
[00:04:20]  And they're saying, you know what, Charlie?
[00:04:22]  I'm showing up to school board meetings.
[00:04:23]  I'm going to start getting more aware and I'm feeling something that's happening.
[00:04:26]  That's all of a sudden, this force equals mass times acceleration.
[00:04:30]  I'm seeing the mass increase and I'm seeing the speed increase ever so slightly.
[00:04:34]  So what does the Bible say about momentum?
[00:04:37]  What does the Bible say about this?
[00:04:38]  And so I went through some of my favorite parts of the Bible and I actually literally just typed in momentum.
[00:04:44]  It's not actually in the Bible, is a word that was actually just created in like 1794.
[00:04:50]  I love finding out where words come from.
[00:04:52]  But there are similar stories about this concept of momentum.
[00:04:56]  So a lesser referenced book of the Bible is the book of Zechariah.
[00:05:02]  And this is, in all fairness, it's not referenced because it's glossed over, but I think it's super important to focus on tonight.
[00:05:11]  And so we, most of you know, the story of the first temple and the second temple.
[00:05:15]  So the first temple was Solomon's temple.
[00:05:18]  It was in all of its splendor.
[00:05:19]  And for those of you that have been in Israel, you could just imagine how beautiful and majestic this was.
[00:05:24]  The son of David built something to the glory of God that was so incredible.
[00:05:28]  But that temple was destroyed and the Jews were sent out into exile.
[00:05:33]  Jews coming from the tribe of Judah, the Hebrews, God's chosen people.
[00:05:37]  Then a secular man, best described as someone who is not part of God's chosen people, Cyrus, as said and was prophesied, came and said, You know what?
[00:05:46]  You can go back to Jerusalem and you can reclaim what is yours.
[00:05:50]  So they get back and they have all this momentum.
[00:05:52]  They get back to Jerusalem.
[00:05:54]  They're excited, kind of like how we were a couple years ago, right?
[00:05:57]  We were fired up.
[00:05:59]  We had a plan.
[00:06:00]  And then all of a sudden, kind of what happens with big projects, a little bit of cynicism set in.
[00:06:06]  All of a sudden, people started complaining.
[00:06:09]  The bricks are too heavy.
[00:06:11]  What's the big deal?
[00:06:12]  Why do we need to build a temple?
[00:06:14]  Who is this God that you say?
[00:06:15]  And if you look in Zechariah 1, 2, 3, and 4, they're kind of complaining.
[00:06:19]  They're kind of like, you know what?
[00:06:21]  I watched Tucker Carlson.
[00:06:23]  I bought the pillow and the world is not saved.
[00:06:26]  Okay?
[00:06:27]  And by the way, promo code Kirk, if any of you go to mypillow.com.
[00:06:32]  Let me just be very clear.
[00:06:34]  And by the way, buy as many pillows as you can.
[00:06:36]  I'm fully in support of that.
[00:06:38]  But I get it.
[00:06:39]  I'm there with you.
[00:06:40]  It's kind of a little bit of a, hey, I'm not loving this right now.
[00:06:45]  But then all of a sudden, this man of God, Zechariah, and there's over 30 people with that name in the Bible, and historians point this specific prophet as being kind of the hype man.
[00:06:55]  He was the guy that came to Zerebbabel.
[00:06:57]  Say that three times quickly.
[00:06:58]  Zerubbabel, okay.
[00:07:00]  Zerubbabel, who was commissioned alongside Ezra to rebuild the second temple.
[00:07:05]  And so just you understand the significance of the temple.
[00:07:08]  This was considered to be the holy of holies, the place of God.
[00:07:12]  And we, we, now that we have the new covenant, we know that the third temple is really Christ's return here on earth.
[00:07:20]  We know that.
[00:07:20]  We know how the story ends.
[00:07:22]  And so the second temple was very significant.
[00:07:26]  And Zechariah basically comes to the Jewish people and he starts to say, hold on a second.
[00:07:30]  You guys are complaining.
[00:07:31]  You guys are getting down with yourself.
[00:07:33]  And it's one of the most beautiful pieces of scripture.
[00:07:36]  And I have two different translations for it in English, just for emphasis.
[00:07:41]  And it's Zechariah 4:6 and then 10.
[00:07:45]  And it says, not by might, not by power, but my spirit, says the Lord.
[00:07:50]  Do not despise the day of small things.
[00:07:53]  I'm going to say this differently in a different translation.
[00:07:56]  Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plum line in Zarebbabel's hand.
[00:08:05]  You kind of feel like you're in the days of small things.
[00:08:08]  Like, Charlie, what's the difference?
[00:08:10]  Showing up to the school board meeting, that's not going to save the Republic.
[00:08:14]  But Zechariah is like, no, actually, that small thing actually really does make a difference.
[00:08:18]  That one email, that one brick that you're going to put on that second temple actually makes a big difference.
[00:08:24]  The Lord commands us to care about the small things.
[00:08:29]  And it has this cumulative impact.
[00:08:31]  And little did Zeribbabel know.
[00:08:33]  And he was building the very temple that our Savior was going to walk through.
[00:08:38]  Little did he know he was going to fulfill that covenant perfectly so that the Son of God could come and fulfill the promises.
[00:08:45]  Now, that temple was destroyed in about 70 AD by Titus.
[00:08:49]  And that was also prophesied by Jesus himself.
[00:08:52]  And so it really got me thinking that the enemy tries to get in our ears to tell us that the small things don't matter.
[00:09:00]  And by the way, I'm not immune to this.
[00:09:02]  I'm not.
[00:09:02]  I'm like, does this speech, is this speech really going to move the dial?
[00:09:05]  Like, we are in Banger, Maine.
[00:09:07]  No one ever goes to Banger, Maine, okay?
[00:09:09]  I love Ken Graves.
[00:09:10]  He's awesome.
[00:09:11]  But I mean, that is, you know, basically Nova Scotia.
[00:09:14]  And I'm like, what, what is the difference, right?
[00:09:17]  And that's the enemy.
[00:09:18]  That is not of the Lord.
[00:09:20]  And if you're like me, you get bombarded every day.
[00:09:23]  And then what comes from cynicism comes nihilism.
[00:09:26]  Nothing matters.
[00:09:27]  My actions don't matter.
[00:09:28]  It doesn't matter if I lie, steal, or cheat.
[00:09:30]  It doesn't matter if I care, if I do my taxes correctly, because what I do does not have a reflection in the broader world around me.
[00:09:38]  The Lord tells us to never accept cynicism.
[00:09:41]  In fact, the Bible is like the anti-cynical document.
[00:09:44]  It's the most anti-cynical document.
[00:09:45]  If you're like me, I'm sick of all the cynicism in our country right now.
[00:09:49]  I'm sick of people saying it doesn't matter.
[00:09:51]  There is no truth.
[00:09:52]  There is no beauty.
[00:09:53]  It's kind of depressing, isn't it?
[00:09:55]  And so it's now when we're seeing a little bit of momentum, and that's what Zechariah was.
[00:09:59]  He was encouraging momentum.
[00:10:01]  And as we look at that scripture, we know how it ends.
[00:10:04]  And so if momentum is the product of weight or mass times velocity or speed, then a big, heavy debt object could be going really fast, but that's not momentum.
[00:10:17]  And so what we need to understand, or very slow speed, I should say.

=== The Lesson of Benedict Arnold (06:10) ===

[00:10:20]  So the issue that we have here is we need to continue to expand our ranks and look around.
[00:10:26]  This Freedom Square has momentum.
[00:10:28]  And then the question is, what are we going to do about it?
[00:10:31]  And so I want to tell you a miracle in American history.
[00:10:34]  Then we're going to get into Arizona because that's fun, right?
[00:10:36]  Because I always want to get into what we can do, not just come up and just do the Zechariah II thing.
[00:10:42]  Everything's terrible.
[00:10:43]  Everything's bad.
[00:10:44]  The temple's not going to get built.
[00:10:45]  Goodbye.
[00:10:46]  We're not doing that.
[00:10:47]  But for those of you that say, oh, a small thing doesn't really change history, what if I told you a piece of wood this big created America?
[00:10:59]  What if I told you a piece of wood this big changed the course of human history?
[00:11:04]  All of you have heard of Benedict Arnold before.
[00:11:06]  Benedict Arnold was a traitor to the United States.
[00:11:09]  In the Revolutionary War period, we were in a bitter war against the greatest power the world has ever seen, with a navy that was unmatched and ground forces that were well trained and unlimited budget.
[00:11:19]  King George basically declared war on us for sport.
[00:11:23]  He was like, ah, the American colonists, I'm going to prove it to them.
[00:11:26]  And adding insult to injury, Benedict Arnold betrayed the armed forces and he befriended this guy by the name of Major John Andre.
[00:11:36]  He was constantly slipping secrets of troop formations and George Washington was always confused how the British knew that there was going to be one or two moves ahead.
[00:11:45]  He was always like, how do they know what I'm going to do before I do it?
[00:11:48]  It was bothering him.
[00:11:50]  So, Benedict Arnold, similar to someone that we know in the scriptures, decided to sell out America for 20,000 British sterling.
[00:11:58]  Sound familiar?
[00:12:00]  This deal was brokered at West Point, New York.
[00:12:02]  Anyone been to West Point?
[00:12:03]  It's where our United States Military Academy is.
[00:12:05]  It's beautiful.
[00:12:06]  It's right on the shores of the Hudson, but it's not an in-it's a super consequential military base.
[00:12:11]  It's built like a fort because it was a fort.
[00:12:13]  This was the gateway to the American colonial military base.
[00:12:17]  If you could get West Point, the war is over.
[00:12:20]  It would be the equivalent that in America that if you could control the port city right now of Miami or Philadelphia, it's everything.
[00:12:27]  It would be like San Diego on the West Coast where our entire fleet is.
[00:12:30]  So West Point was the whole enchilada.
[00:12:32]  Now, this guy, Benedict Arnold, was very clever.
[00:12:35]  Now, similar to someone who's running our public health department right now in our country, clever people can be the most dangerous.
[00:12:42]  I'll let you fill in which person that is.
[00:12:47]  Be careful of clever people if they are not rooted in truth and ethics.
[00:12:51]  Deceit, arrogance, and treachery.
[00:12:54]  Be very, very careful of those three things.
[00:12:58]  So Benedict Arnold was a serpent undercutting and disobeying his oath.
[00:13:03]  So there was a meeting that was brokered secretly in the middle of the night in West Point, New York.
[00:13:08]  Major John Andre from the British forces came up and he went with Benedict Arnold.
[00:13:13]  He said, Okay, 20,000 shilling it is.
[00:13:15]  Let's get it in writing.
[00:13:16]  Here's a little note to anyone that's deciding to betray your country.
[00:13:20]  Don't do it in writing.
[00:13:22]  Bad idea.
[00:13:23]  Right?
[00:13:24]  That was the first mistake.
[00:13:26]  But as we know in the Bible, if you decide to do acts of treachery, what is done in darkness will be brought to light.
[00:13:32]  So this deal gets brokered, and Major John Andre gets on the ship.
[00:13:37]  He's excited because he just brokered the deal where Benedict Arnold said, I'm going to tell you when to attack West Point and how to attack it at the perfect time.
[00:13:45]  I'm going to distract the force.
[00:13:46]  He sold the whole country down, right?
[00:13:49]  Like the whole vector of our country was sold.
[00:13:51]  So Major John Andre is just kind of going back down to the Hudson, back to the British Navy, and we didn't even have a Navy, right?
[00:13:57]  I mean, we were just kind of minute men and minute women, and we were just put together, we were just held together.
[00:14:03]  We talked about this at last Freedom Square by a belief in a higher power and we wanted to govern ourselves.
[00:14:09]  That was our secret weapon.
[00:14:10]  It was our resilience and our grit and our capacity to endure whatever they threw at us.
[00:14:15]  So Major John Andre, he's really excited.
[00:14:18]  He's going down the Hudson River and he's got Benedict Arnold's papers in his jacket.
[00:14:23]  And by the way, everything I'm telling you right here is 100% verified by historian after historian.
[00:14:29]  And every child in America should learn this story.
[00:14:32]  So Major John Andre has Benedict Arnold concession papers, right?
[00:14:36]  And a couple of American colonialists have a cannon right on the Hudson River.
[00:14:40]  They're like, oh, British ship.
[00:14:41]  They shoot a cannon at the boat.
[00:14:43]  It does very little to no damage to this ship.
[00:14:46]  But strangely and bizarrely, it hits the wood in a certain way where a splinter of wood this big pops up and goes up into the nose of Major John Andre.
[00:15:00]  So Major John Andre gets really annoyed and irritated and he's like, you know what?
[00:15:04]  Just turn the boat around.
[00:15:06]  I can't focus.
[00:15:07]  I can't man the ship.
[00:15:09]  Turn this around so I can get this fixed or you can find another person.
[00:15:12]  And no one really knows the significance of the documents he has right there in his jacket.
[00:15:18]  They go back, they get intercepted by three American minutemen.
[00:15:23]  And all of a sudden they say, they pat him down and they get all the papers and they look at this and they say, oh my goodness.
[00:15:29]  And a man by the name of Major Benjamin Talmadge, who is one of George Washington's secret spies, a man who is loyal and committed to the truth, said, I will take that.
[00:15:41]  He ran as fast as he could, got on horseback and rode through the night, nearly killed his horse to General Washington.
[00:15:48]  Said, this is how they know what we're doing before we do it.
[00:15:51]  And immediately, George Washington said, Ah, I see.
[00:15:55]  Benedict Arnold fled and this is whole drama, but the trust of Benedict Arnold was broken.
[00:16:00]  And you say, okay, but what's the significance?
[00:16:02]  Well, let's think back to that story.
[00:16:04]  If the cannonball would have destroyed the ship, everyone would have cheered, but they just would have sent another ship to go have Benedict Arnold sell us down the only a piece of wood this big that could have annoyed a sociopath by the name of Major John Andre to turn around to then go to shore and have three American minutemen then get in the custody to get the papers that show irrefutably that Benedict Arnold was selling our troops.
[00:16:29]  Only that could have happened.

=== Trust and the Arizona Example (03:09) ===

[00:16:31]  So be that piece of wood, will you please?
[00:16:35]  Will you go be that one little piece of action?
[00:16:37]  Because the small things are the big things and that changed the course of the entire American Revolution.
[00:16:43]  From that point forward, George Washington only kept his dearest friends and he had checks and balances against everyone around him.
[00:16:49]  All of a sudden, the American troops had a shot of energy and the British troops had a little bit of despair.
[00:16:54]  It changed the course of history nearly permanently.
[00:16:57]  And I truly believe it was a miracle in the hand of God.
[00:17:00]  I believe what was being done in darkness for selling out our country for lies and deceit and for tyrannical control was done for the reason of trying to preserve power.
[00:17:12]  The small things are the big things, everybody.
[00:17:14]  The little things have big, big impact.
[00:17:17]  And a piece of wood that big very well could have won the American Revolution and with it all the freedom and liberty that we enjoy today.
[00:17:25]  The small things are the big things.
[00:17:27]  Okay, let's get to what's happening now in Arizona.
[00:17:31]  So a lot has happened since our last meeting.
[00:17:34]  And I first just want to thank all of you that have had a recommitted energy and focus on school boards in general.
[00:17:41]  So I'm going to do a couple school board updates here, things that are happening, trends, what's wrong with them.
[00:17:46]  Then we're going to get to some statewide stuff.
[00:17:48]  And then we'll do some questions, which we really, really enjoy.
[00:17:52]  So many of you are aware of what's been happening in the Scottsdale Unified School District.
[00:17:58]  And yeah, so quite a lot's been happening.
[00:18:02]  So they had a meeting in late April and they canceled the meeting because they said there was a bunch of agitators there about mask policy and whatever it is.
[00:18:12]  I just want to say one thing.
[00:18:14]  When you do go to these meetings, if you go, please embody Christ in all things that you do.
[00:18:18]  Don't give them a reason to try to ever try and accuse you of anything that's not totally there.
[00:18:25]  With that being said, whatever you're doing in Scottsdale is working.
[00:18:29]  And so I think we're going to see some very, very big reversals there sometime soon.
[00:18:35]  You also might be aware what's happening in the Chandler Unified School District.
[00:18:39]  We have some Chandler people here.
[00:18:42]  Chandler is, let's say, entertaining something very, very dangerous right now.
[00:18:46]  Now, just as some background, maybe this is your first Freedom Square.
[00:18:49]  I believe that the most important focus for us in Arizona right now has to happen in school boards.
[00:18:55]  I really do.
[00:18:56]  I think that we have to recommit ourselves to knowing what our children are being taught, where is it coming from, because a country, a nation, and a people cannot continue to flourish if we are not able to pass down our proven traditions and our customs to the next generation.
[00:19:11]  And look, I'll be honest, I think that we've been taken advantage of.
[00:19:16]  I think that we gave trust and then we kind of just said, you know what, I trust you to do this.
[00:19:21]  And we ran our lives.
[00:19:22]  We built churches, we built businesses, we raised our kids.
[00:19:25]  Next thing you know, you turn around in a school board, they're like, whoa, they're teaching what exactly.
[00:19:30]  Now, we went through the Litchfield, Arizona example last time.
[00:19:34]  That is still very much in play.
[00:19:36]  And if any of you live in Litchfield, Arizona and want to live around there, you have to keep that.

=== Challenging Critical Race Theory (14:40) ===

[00:19:41]  I have to say, because of what we've done here, they released a statement that they're reconsidering their equity critical race theory curriculum.
[00:19:49]  So, God bless you guys for that.
[00:19:50]  It's a very big deal.
[00:19:54]  Now, just as a refresher before I get into Chandler, because it's really important.
[00:19:59]  This is not just Chandler.
[00:20:00]  I'm going to go through a couple other examples.
[00:20:01]  And I met with some amazing teachers previously: is that what exactly is it that we find to be so troubling about this new trend?
[00:20:11]  And so, we went into this last time, but it's worthy of repetition, which is there is a movement right now in the country to try to implement critical race theory into our schools.
[00:20:23]  And critical race theory comes from this idea of critical theory.
[00:20:27]  It was born out of the Frankfurt School in Germany, and it's by a guy by the name of Herbert Marcuse and a woman by the name of Angela Davis, who is still alive.
[00:20:36]  Angela Davis is a member of the American Communist Party, and critical theory, especially critical race theory, is at direct odds with the teachings of the Bible and the traditions of Western civilization.
[00:20:48]  It cares about skin color.
[00:20:50]  It's teaching your children and our children to believe that skin color is really, really important.
[00:20:56]  I quite honestly couldn't care less about skin color.
[00:20:58]  I care about your soul, your spirit, your character, and your actions.
[00:21:02]  I think your skin color is completely and totally irrelevant.
[00:21:08]  It also, by definition, tries to restrict dialogue and freedom of speech.
[00:21:13]  They teach young children that freedom of speech and dialogue is a heteronormative cis-gender colonialist practice.
[00:21:22]  Now, if that sounds like a pile of rubbish, you are right.
[00:21:25]  It is.
[00:21:26]  And in some ways, they divide the world overly plainly and simply into two different categories.
[00:21:32]  And the kind of the archbishop of critical race theory is a guy by the name of Ibram X. Kendi.
[00:21:38]  I've talked quite a lot about him, and he has a book called How to Be an Anti-Racist.
[00:21:43]  He believes the world can be divided into racist and anti-racist.
[00:21:48]  In a bizarre turn of events, he believes that by focusing on skin color, we'll make the world in some way less racist.
[00:21:56]  He believes that current discrimination is necessary to atone for previous discrimination.
[00:22:01]  That is an exact quote.
[00:22:03]  Now, instead of emphasizing action, trying to understand how every person is made in the image of God, critical theory, going back to Herbert Marcuse, believes that everything is a power struggle.
[00:22:17]  That everything, without whether you realize it or not, is one group fighting another group.
[00:22:21]  We as Christians find this to be quite honestly reprehensible.
[00:22:25]  We find that every person at birth is, of course, broken by nature and needs a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
[00:22:32]  That you might be part of a group of your choosing.
[00:22:35]  You might be part of some group, but the most important group that you should be part of is called the kingdom of heaven group.
[00:22:40]  That's the group that we care about the most.
[00:22:43]  And that tradition that was passed down through Western culture allowed this idea of individual rights to really be created.
[00:22:51]  You have to understand before America, this idea of ancestral guilt, that you must atone for what your great-grandfather did was normal.
[00:23:01]  So if I told you right now that all of a sudden you must do something that you didn't do, but someone that you were related to did, you'd say, no, that's not me.
[00:23:08]  I make my own choices and my own action.
[00:23:10]  Now, we know this in how we explain salvation to young people.
[00:23:15]  We say this in a lot of youth groups.
[00:23:17]  We say, hey, you need to, your parents can't save you.
[00:23:20]  You got to come in your own relationship with Christ.
[00:23:22]  Now, that idea that you will be individually held accountable is a uniquely Christian idea that has been passed down either consciously or subconsciously in our American traditions, customs, and in the rule of law.
[00:23:34]  So here's how it would work.
[00:23:35]  Let's say you kind of have an errant brother.
[00:23:38]  The brother decides to go do a bunch of, let's just say, not so good things on a Saturday evening.
[00:23:43]  Should we administer justice by saying anyone who's related to this brother must now go to prison for arson and theft?
[00:23:49]  Of course not.
[00:23:50]  We'd say, that's my brother.
[00:23:51]  I might be related to him, but that's not me.
[00:23:54]  That's pretty obvious.
[00:23:56]  But the way that critical race theory teaches, oh, no, no, you look like that person, therefore, you must be held accountable with that person.
[00:24:03]  And anyone who's grown up in the West, as we have, we know this to be rather so obvious, sloppy, dangerous, and dare I say, unethical and evil.
[00:24:12]  So this is what's being pushed.
[00:24:14]  And I do want to say, but I think some people that are pushing it, I'm offering an olive branch here.
[00:24:19]  I think some of them actually want to make the world a better place.
[00:24:22]  Some of them.
[00:24:23]  And I think that some of them have a misunderstanding, I think, of actually what's happening in the country.
[00:24:28]  And I think some of them have an urge to want to be part of something bigger than themselves.
[00:24:32]  I think some of them have a desire to try to be part of the next major movement.
[00:24:37]  Now, I have a theory, and I think you would agree with it.
[00:24:41]  If social media didn't exist, a lot of these people would never do this stuff, okay?
[00:24:45]  If you couldn't post about this publicly to your friends, that's just a guess.
[00:24:49]  I'm just saying.
[00:24:50]  Now, with that being said, of course, there are issues and problems that we should address.
[00:24:54]  Of course, there are things that we should try to improve in our country.
[00:24:57]  But we know the way that we can improve conditions of all people, regardless of your skin color, your background, no matter what it is.
[00:25:04]  It's very simple.
[00:25:05]  The thing that's truly been destroyed in our country is the nuclear family in our country, is being able to be raised with a mother and a father.
[00:25:12]  So I'll prove it to you.
[00:25:14]  If a child hears 3,000 words or less every single day, they are far more likely to go to prison, commit crimes, or join a gang.
[00:25:22]  If they hear 3,000 words or more, higher, more vocabulary, more likely to have higher cognitive function, they're more likely to be able to go to college and not commit crimes.
[00:25:31]  Now, you ask yourself, is a child more likely or less likely to hear more words if they have a mother or father around?
[00:25:37]  It's a very simple question.
[00:25:39]  And we know, according to the data, that a child that is, a white child that is raised by a single mother, and God bless our single mothers, by the way, it's an afana, we should support them in every way, is less likely to succeed, not because of a single mother, just because of the pressure and the weight of raising a child than a black child that is raised by a mother and a father.
[00:25:59]  That single statistic is the most universal and colorblind statistic.
[00:26:04]  But instead, the emphasis on this conversation that is unfortunately being entertained in Chandler Unified School District, amongst many others, is one that will reverse everything that I said.
[00:26:16]  And this is where I think we have to continue to stand up clearly and boldly and understand where these ideas come from.
[00:26:22]  You know, I remember 10 years ago, 10 years ago, when we used to say, you know what, if you cared about skin color, you're kind of engaging in racism.
[00:26:32]  And I think that we should actually just repeat what Martin Luther King Jr. said, which is I dream of a day where we care about the content of someone's character, not the color of your skin.
[00:26:42]  It's a very basic American principle.
[00:26:44]  So in Chandler, they're entertaining this.
[00:26:52]  There is some people that are being pushed and many other.
[00:26:54]  They have a Voices That Matter campaign that has been started.
[00:26:59]  And there's a person in leadership that is continuing trying to push this there.
[00:27:04]  I'm not going to get overly into details.
[00:27:07]  If you're interested, you could look at amongst your own things.
[00:27:10]  But I believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant.
[00:27:13]  I believe that if this room cumulatively together said, you know what?
[00:27:17]  What's going on in Litchfield, what's going on in Chandler, Scottsdale is a different example.
[00:27:22]  I don't think kids should have to wear a mask when they go to school.
[00:27:24]  I think it's absolutely insane.
[00:27:25]  And I think we should all stand against it.
[00:27:27]  Let me just be very clear, okay?
[00:27:29]  If you want to wear one, fine.
[00:27:30]  God bless you.
[00:27:31]  I won't say anything, but this mandatory, I think it's bad for childhood development.
[00:27:35]  I think it makes people unfamiliar with each other.
[00:27:38]  I think it makes children less likely to see what God has given us, a face.
[00:27:42]  I think it makes less likely to see the nuance, the spirit, and every single way that we communicate with one another.
[00:27:47]  And so it goes back to this question: what is a human being?
[00:27:51]  We are the speaking beings.
[00:27:52]  And if I can only hear you mumble and I can't see your entire expression, I think it actually dehumanizes our interactions with one another and makes us less civil, less likely to have empathy, less likely to be compassionate, less likely to love like Christ did if we're walking around with masks all the time, acting as if you're the problem, not the opportunity.
[00:28:11]  Let me say that again.
[00:28:12]  We're acting like people are the problem, not the opportunity.
[00:28:15]  Okay, so that thing in Scottsdale is a whole other thing.
[00:28:18]  And so there's a couple bills, though, thankfully, that can address this.
[00:28:22]  So let me just say this.
[00:28:23]  Nationally, there have been a couple states, Oklahoma as one, Montana as the other, and Florida as the other, that have passed pieces of legislation in the state level that have done the following.
[00:28:34]  Arizona currently has not done this, but the opportunity is there.
[00:28:38]  Number one, that has said that men are not allowed to compete in female sports against females.
[00:28:50]  Florida has signed that into law, and God bless Governor Ron DeSantis for doing that.
[00:28:59]  Another one would be banning this idea of critical race theory.
[00:29:04]  Now, let me say this: I'm not one to go quick into this idea of banning.
[00:29:09]  After all, we do love freedom of speech and discourse.
[00:29:12]  However, there are certain ideas that are so vile, so against our ethical system, that we do not believe they should be the forefront of how we train and instill values into our children, especially in the formative years, because we know this, especially those of you that are teachers and that have worked in childhood development.
[00:29:29]  You only get so much time and attention with a five and six and seven-year-old.
[00:29:34]  And if you're using that valuable time to all of a sudden emphasize things that we do not want emphasized, then all of a sudden we should say, time out, that is not what education should be for.
[00:29:43]  So education comes from the Latin word to lead forth.
[00:29:47]  So how are we leading forth the seven-year-olds that say, you know what?
[00:29:51]  What really matters is not how you act.
[00:29:53]  It doesn't matter your decisions.
[00:29:55]  It doesn't matter your relationship with your creator.
[00:29:57]  What matters is something you can't change.
[00:29:58]  That's kind of awfully depressing for a seven-year-old to hear.
[00:30:02]  And so there are a couple bills right now that are up against, that are kind of being debated right now.
[00:30:08]  And the Arizona session is coming to an end.
[00:30:12]  I want to just name a couple that have been vetoed.
[00:30:14]  And I hope that there's some reconsiderations of these right now in Arizona.
[00:30:20]  HB 2792 was vetoed by the governor, which prohibits the delivery of early ballots to anyone who has not specifically requested one.
[00:30:28]  Another one that was vetoed, which is kind of bizarre that this was vetoed, is the one right here that requires the Attorney General to review the constitutionality of any executive orders by the president.
[00:30:42]  That seems rather obvious.
[00:30:44]  The one that I can't quite understand why it was vetoed.
[00:30:47]  And again, I'm not going to make any personal comments about anyone in leadership.
[00:30:50]  You guys can make your own.
[00:30:51]  I'm just telling you facts here.
[00:30:52]  You guys make your own decisions, right?
[00:30:54]  And we're doing everything as a 501c3 would.
[00:30:56]  I'm just here telling you the facts, right?
[00:30:58]  That SB 11074 was vetoed by the governor, which would have banned requiring public employees to participate in critical race theory training, which includes teachers, educators, and administrators.
[00:31:10]  That seems like a no-brainer.
[00:31:12]  Another one, SB 1022 was vetoed, which renamed references in law from product of human conception to unborn child.
[00:31:21]  That's a big deal to all of a sudden kind of say that.
[00:31:24]  So there's about 22 of these bills.
[00:31:26]  I'm not sure why they were vetoed.
[00:31:28]  Your legislature was doing their job, but I hope and I pray that we can change that.
[00:31:34]  We have a lot of little pieces of wood that all of a sudden get very, very loud in the next 30 days, maybe, and do that.
[00:31:39]  So, there was an opportunity here to do something.
[00:31:42]  Opportunity is not lost, but I'll let you guys draw your own conclusions on that, of kind of how that is all happening there.
[00:31:50]  The House did pass an unbiased teaching act barring racist, sexist, and politicized instruction in Arizona schools.
[00:31:58]  And here's what Representative Udall said: Racism cannot be combated by teaching children to be racist.
[00:32:04]  Amen.
[00:32:05]  Our country has not always lived up to that concept that all men are created equal, still is a fundamental idea that should be upheld by our schools, government institutions, and society.
[00:32:15]  To teach our children otherwise is immoral and fuels corrosive social tensions within our state and nation.
[00:32:20]  So, let's just be somewhat solution-oriented.
[00:32:23]  How about we say, Governor, I'm not sure why you vetoed these 22 bills.
[00:32:26]  We're going to say it with a smile, but why don't you pass the Unbiased Teaching Act here in Arizona and lead the rest of the country in saying we in Arizona care about character, not skin color?
[00:32:36]  There is still time to do this, and all of you guys can get that done right here in the state of Arizona.
[00:32:44]  And so, this is still coming up, and Michelle Udall is a Republican member of the House of Representatives in Mesa.
[00:32:49]  And so, there's a lot happening in Arizona.
[00:32:52]  And as we talked about last time, this state is the gateway to the rest of the country.
[00:32:57]  There are hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into the state on the state and local level.
[00:33:02]  And I just want to re-emphasize this point, and I'd love to do some questions and dive into this even more.
[00:33:06]  Re-emphasize the point that the small things are the big things.
[00:33:09]  You never know when your individual courageous action could very well be the thing that all of a sudden changes the course.
[00:33:15]  It could be one letter, one conversation.
[00:33:18]  But I also want to say that let us never become angry or bitter or anything less than joyful in how we communicate that.
[00:33:25]  I've tried my best to do that in the way that I've done this, despite any sort of personal reservations I have.
[00:33:30]  And you guys can make your own feelings.
[00:33:32]  But I think that with good cheer and embodying how we're supposed to communicate and be empathetic, but also clear.
[00:33:38]  Remember, Jesus was so unique, obviously.
[00:33:41]  He was 100% grace and 100% truth.
[00:33:45]  He never wavered on what was true, but he never, ever once was one that got into, I mean, he had every insult possibly thrown at him.
[00:33:53]  He could have gotten raised his voice, he could have done all these things, but he always showed love, compassion, mercy.
[00:33:58]  And I think we have to continue to do that.
[00:33:59]  I think it's actually the most effective way that we can continue to push this forward in our state.
[00:34:04]  And so, I want to re-emphasize one other thing, which is this, this now has become SB 1532.
[00:34:12]  If any of you are interested here in Arizona, to get engaged and get involved in that.
[00:34:18]  And so, in close, let's do some questions in a second here.

=== Grace Meets Truth Unwaveringly (02:50) ===

[00:34:21]  I'm super thrilled because I'm feeling the momentum.
[00:34:24]  No longer do I have to tell you guys the problem.
[00:34:27]  You guys are asking me, what can I do about the problem?
[00:34:29]  I have parents that are reaching out to me that are not saying, Hey, Charlie, why do I have to go show up to a school board meeting?
[00:34:34]  They're saying, Show up with me.
[00:34:37]  You see, I've said before, my least favorite thing that I have to hear, and I don't hear it a lot anymore.
[00:34:41]  I'm actually hearing it less and less, was this thing that I would hear when people would kind of pat me on the shoulder.
[00:34:47]  They'd say, Hey, Charlie, how's it going out there?
[00:34:51]  What do you mean out there?
[00:34:52]  What am I, like a running back for the Arizona Cardinals or something, right?
[00:34:56]  And there's nothing special about what I do, it's just energy and it's participation.
[00:35:01]  Instead, I'm hearing people that are saying, Man, like these amazing parents I just met with from a certain unspecified part of Arizona, they said, We're in the trenches.
[00:35:09]  We're getting called names, we're getting called all these things, and I feel what you feel.
[00:35:14]  And thank you for having my back, and we have your back.
[00:35:16]  And that's really what we're here to do: to enlighten, to educate.
[00:35:20]  And if you feel so compelled, all of a sudden you believe what Zachariah said.
[00:35:24]  And I'm going to re-emphasize this piece of scripture.
[00:35:26]  Those small things are the big things that the little action that might feel so insignificant that God can use for that great purpose.
[00:35:34]  Let me say this again.
[00:35:36]  Do not despise these small beginnings.
[00:35:39]  The Lord is testing us in this year of 2021.
[00:35:43]  This is the year of small beginnings.
[00:35:45]  Temple construction was suspended since January.
[00:35:48]  It's like, all right, enough.
[00:35:50]  And all of a sudden, we kind of need that catalyst.
[00:35:52]  We need that hype man.
[00:35:53]  We need that reinsertion.
[00:35:54]  And I can tell you this, guys, once that momentum happens, we know that unstoppable.
[00:35:59]  Force equals mass.
[00:36:02]  Look around you.
[00:36:03]  This is almost every seat full, right?
[00:36:05]  Pastor Luke, 2,000 people times acceleration.
[00:36:08]  How fast are we going to move?
[00:36:09]  What are we going to do about it?
[00:36:10]  Are we going to keep on recruiting and doing that?
[00:36:12]  That is the definition of momentum.
[00:36:14]  I can tell you right now, once we have momentum with grace and truth, we are going to win and it's going to be pretty glorious.
[00:36:22]  All right, let's do some questions, guys, which I really enjoy.
[00:36:25]  And let's keep the questions short, if possible.
[00:36:31]  And I want to thank you guys again.
[00:36:32]  I want to re-emphasize a couple things.
[00:36:35]  I want to just thank Dream City.
[00:36:36]  How awesome is it that Dream City is allowing this forum and is allowing this sort of destruction, which is awesome.
[00:36:41]  Thank you, Luke.
[00:36:43]  And that is a very impressive outfit you have, I have to say.
[00:36:50]  So thank you for being here.
[00:36:52]  Oh, sorry about that.
[00:36:53]  So first, I'd like to thank you for all you do.
[00:36:55]  I'm a very big fan of yours.
[00:36:56]  Thank you.
[00:36:56]  Thank you for saying that.
[00:36:58]  So I'm going to try and keep this brief.
[00:37:00]  Can you define in one sentence why figures such as David Chipman, who by the way is running for the AFT, as Joe Biden would call it?
[00:37:09]  Oh, yeah.
[00:37:10]  Right.

=== Founding Fathers and Hidden Rights (07:35) ===

[00:37:11]  Why is control not the answer to protect our liberties and freedoms that our founding father instilled in this country?
[00:37:19]  So why is control not the answer?
[00:37:21]  Gun control.
[00:37:22]  So like you said in one of your previous episodes, big fan of the Charlie Kirk show.
[00:37:26]  Thank you.
[00:37:26]  You said control is not the answer, and that is the key word.
[00:37:29]  It's not gun, but it's control.
[00:37:31]  They want control.
[00:37:32]  I totally get what you're getting at.
[00:37:34]  So let's talk about what makes the American system unique and where did that come from?
[00:37:37]  Then I'm going to land the plane, as I kind of try to always hopefully do.
[00:37:41]  The American system is unique because it was the first experiment ever that had the following attributes.
[00:37:46]  Consent, otherwise known as permission.
[00:37:49]  It was the first time people said, you know what, we agree to this.
[00:37:52]  We're cool with this.
[00:37:53]  And we're going to form something voluntarily.
[00:37:56]  Number two, independent judiciary.
[00:37:59]  Meaning you've got some people that are outside of the mechanisms of politics that can insert themselves and protect what God gave you.
[00:38:05]  Let me say that again.
[00:38:06]  There is an institution that exists that can insert themselves and protect what God gave you.
[00:38:11]  What did God give us?
[00:38:12]  Well, who are we in the state of nature?
[00:38:13]  We have consciousness.
[00:38:15]  We have speech.
[00:38:16]  Speech is a big deal.
[00:38:17]  Speech is what separates us from the beasts of the wild.
[00:38:21]  So it separates us just from a dog or from a cat or from a giraffe.
[00:38:24]  Speech is the logos.
[00:38:26]  In the beginning, God created the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
[00:38:31]  That word logos is a very heavy word in Greek.
[00:38:34]  And so it's word, it's reason, it's truth.
[00:38:38]  It's all of those things.
[00:38:40]  We are the speaking beings, and the American founders knew that.
[00:38:44]  And they put forward a rules for government first and foremost.
[00:38:48]  What else makes this system different is permission, independent judiciary, and also this idea of a republic.
[00:38:57]  We are not a democracy, everybody.
[00:38:59]  It makes me want to pull my hair out of my head when I hear that we're a democracy.
[00:39:03]  Now, what's the difference?
[00:39:05]  Well, a democracy would be this.
[00:39:07]  We take a vote in a room like this.
[00:39:09]  We say, how many of you want to get rid of freedom of speech?
[00:39:11]  And if 51% of the hands go up, it's gone.
[00:39:14]  A republic is intentionally slow and deliberate because it recognizes things that are eternal, things that don't change.
[00:39:22]  You see, the professors and the people that run our public health department and the people on television, they try to convince you because we have airplanes and internet and Twitter and Facebook that human beings have evolved so much since the times of Christ.
[00:39:33]  Now, we're just as lying, deceitful, treacherous, self-centered, narcissistic, and sociopathic as the Pharisees were.
[00:39:40]  We haven't really improved much at all.
[00:39:41]  In fact, in some ways, technology has made it worse.
[00:39:45]  So the founding fathers built the system on things that do not change.
[00:39:49]  Don't let your smug friends say, oh, we've advanced so much in postmodern America.
[00:39:55]  I can fly to New York, therefore we're better people.
[00:39:57]  Or I can communicate.
[00:39:59]  Well, no, actually, those things only reinforce or accelerate our broken nature.
[00:40:03]  In fact, it only makes us need Jesus more.
[00:40:06]  And so this republic style of government recognizes that.
[00:40:10]  The American system also has this idea of checks and balances.
[00:40:15]  So if you dive deep into the philosophy behind the American founding, you start to see this recurring theme, which is it's really hard to change things quickly.
[00:40:26]  I want to think, just I want to reiterate that.
[00:40:27]  It's hard to change things quickly.
[00:40:29]  And so the founding fathers realized that this idea of liberty is super rare.
[00:40:36]  But all the founders knew when the declaration was signed.
[00:40:39]  I always point to Connor because he's our producer.
[00:40:41]  He always gets the exact number.
[00:40:43]  I think it was 70 out of 74.
[00:40:44]  The signers of the Declaration were self-declared Christians or regular church attendants.
[00:40:50]  They were inspired by the teachings of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield.
[00:40:53]  They knew that liberty was not man's idea.
[00:40:56]  It was God's idea.
[00:40:57]  They knew that this idea of liberty was so short-lived.
[00:41:01]  So let's go through the Bill of Rights if we can.
[00:41:03]  I won't go through all 10 because not all of them apply, but why not?
[00:41:07]  So First Amendment, right?
[00:41:09]  We are the speaking beings.
[00:41:10]  That's who we are.
[00:41:11]  We're not beings that just have force.
[00:41:13]  Chimpanzees fight each other.
[00:41:15]  We don't just pursue pleasure.
[00:41:17]  Plenty of animals do that.
[00:41:18]  No, speech is what differentiates us.
[00:41:21]  Jesus spoke.
[00:41:22]  God spoke and it became true.
[00:41:24]  In Genesis 1, right?
[00:41:25]  He spoke and the world came into existence.
[00:41:28]  We're made in the image of God, just as God spoke.
[00:41:30]  So that's why the First Amendment is so important, that you're able to speak your mind and let the best ideas win.
[00:41:35]  Let us have this sort of debate, this discourse, this dialogue.
[00:41:38]  It's fundamental to who we are.
[00:41:39]  Second Amendment, I'll get to that in a second.
[00:41:41]  Third Amendment is kind of fun.
[00:41:42]  It's like you can't put soldiers in your home.
[00:41:44]  I know you kind of like, we laugh at that one.
[00:41:46]  That was actually a really, really big deal back in the revolutionary times that you just can't quarter soldiers.
[00:41:50]  Like, oh, I own the place.
[00:41:51]  Thanks very much.
[00:41:51]  Fourth Amendment, right to privacy, right?
[00:41:54]  That the government just can't storm into your home and take all of your stuff.
[00:41:57]  Fifth Amendment, that you're able, that's the right against self-incrimination.
[00:42:01]  Six, seven, eight are all about due process, quick and speedy trial.
[00:42:04]  The Ninth Amendment is really kind of fun because the Ninth Amendment says that there are rights out there that exist that aren't currently articulated in the Constitution.
[00:42:14]  I actually love that amendment because it says very clearly in the Bill of Rights, it says, if we didn't touch it, it doesn't mean we got it wrong.
[00:42:21]  It means very well that we're not saying we have all the answers.
[00:42:26]  It's the most humble amendment of the entire United States Constitution and honestly the most looked after, the Ninth Amendment.
[00:42:32]  The 10th Amendment, which means that anything we didn't cover goes down to the states and down to the people.
[00:42:38]  I love the 10th Amendment because remember, the states created the federal government.
[00:42:41]  The federal government did not create the states.
[00:42:43]  Let me say that again.
[00:42:44]  The states created the federal government.
[00:42:46]  The federal government did not create the states.
[00:42:48]  Now, what's interesting, and I will get back to your Second Amendment question, is that the Bill of Rights was not put or passed till December of 1791.
[00:42:59]  If you guys remember, in 1787, in September, after some heated debates, that's when the Constitution was passed.
[00:43:05]  It took them four years to get this passed.
[00:43:07]  Is George Mason, good old George Mason, who passed the original Bill of Rights in Virginia, which recognized this idea, like, hey, you need extra protections so human beings don't get steamrolled by government because that's how God made them.
[00:43:23]  And they need to be able to pursue virtue.
[00:43:26]  Let me say what liberty is: liberty is not being able to put drugs in your body or do things as you want to do it.
[00:43:31]  This like weird secular version of liberty.
[00:43:34]  That is never what the founding fathers knew liberty to be.
[00:43:37]  Liberty is the ability to pursue virtue, which means the good, without someone getting in the way.
[00:43:43]  That's what liberty is.
[00:43:45]  Liberty is your ability to be able to pursue virtue without someone getting in the way.
[00:43:49]  That means what we're doing here: freedom of worship and assembly.
[00:43:52]  Now, the Second Amendment.
[00:43:54]  I believe the Second Amendment is the amendment that protects all the other amendments.
[00:43:58]  Without the Second Amendment, there would be no First Amendment.
[00:44:01]  Now, this is a, some people would call it a controversial way to describe this.
[00:44:06]  I don't care.
[00:44:07]  Because if we just have a little bit of reading of history, it is time and time again of well-meaning people that represent the people that all of a sudden take away our freedoms and liberties.
[00:44:19]  And the founding fathers do this.
[00:44:21]  They knew that in order for consent of the governed to work and permission to work, people had to be able to defend themselves, not just from someone coming into their home, but God forbid from a usurptatious government.
[00:44:33]  And this is a unique characteristic of the American system.
[00:44:37]  This is one that I believe actually creates more peace than conflict.
[00:44:42]  It creates more negotiation and bargain than actual toil and division.

=== Armed Citizenry Ensures Liberty (02:35) ===

[00:44:47]  And it's almost completely contrarian than what you might believe.
[00:44:51]  So the new ATF person, as I now come back to your question, is now up for confirmation.
[00:44:57]  He does not believe that firearm ownership is a constitutional right.
[00:45:02]  He has a whole litany of he thinks that AR-15s aren't, they should be confiscated.
[00:45:08]  He thought that Waco went well.
[00:45:10]  If anyone thinks that the Waco siege went well, like, it's like, you're going to campaign on Chernobyl next or something?
[00:45:18]  Like, is that you're going to all of a sudden be like, Three Mile Island, like, greatest thing ever.
[00:45:22]  Like, okay, that's definitely not the government instance.
[00:45:26]  He oversaw Waco.
[00:45:27]  But I do want to say this: that you're a very surprising and how do I characterize her?
[00:45:34]  I don't really know, but she's either courageous or she's really wants power.
[00:45:40]  Senator Sinema, she has not said she's going to vote for him yet.
[00:45:43]  And so I don't know.
[00:45:45]  She's been pretty good on a couple things.
[00:45:46]  Again, I know that she's awful unlike everything else, but the fact that she opposes breaking the filibuster and adding these things and she's giving some of these nominees a hard time, honestly, think because I could use a couple people standing up and kind of doing, just throwing a little chaos there.
[00:46:03]  But let me just complete the point.
[00:46:05]  It is about control.
[00:46:06]  And I'll give you one final example of this.
[00:46:09]  If you're not yet one over on this, and I'm a big Second Amendment guy, obviously, which is, I want you to think back to Hong Kong, the Hong Kong protesters two years ago.
[00:46:19]  The Hong Kong protesters, again, Hong Kong for 100 years had a 100-year contract with the British.
[00:46:24]  It was a sovereign place where they had private property rights, freedom of commerce.
[00:46:28]  100-year contract basically expires.
[00:46:29]  Long story short, the Chinese Communist Party basically assumed control of it.
[00:46:33]  Still sovereign, but the CCP, super, they're super, they're very, very, what's the word I'm looking for?
[00:46:40]  Not just greedy, but they just want more territory.
[00:46:42]  And so they got in this conflict.
[00:46:43]  Remember that two years ago?
[00:46:44]  That we're going to govern ourselves.
[00:46:47]  We knew that that was not a negotiation.
[00:46:50]  That was a hostage situation.
[00:46:53]  Why?
[00:46:54]  Because the Hong Kong people had no way to defend themselves.
[00:46:57]  At the end of that whole thing, it was whoever brings in the tanks is going to get what they want.
[00:47:02]  Now, I want you to imagine a situation if the people of Hong Kong peacefully had an AR-15 strapped around their back.
[00:47:10]  All 600,000 of them.
[00:47:11]  The Chinese Communist Party would have said, let's negotiate.
[00:47:15]  That's how you can have an armed citizenry that can broker peace and prevent conflict and ensure liberty and freedom.

=== Borders as a Moral Question (09:26) ===

[00:47:23]  Thank you.
[00:47:23]  Next question.
[00:47:28]  Hello, Charlie.
[00:47:29]  Thank you again for being here.
[00:47:30]  And I think I speak for everybody.
[00:47:32]  When I thank you, that we thank you for all your hard work, all your dedication, all your research, all being rooted in the truth, information that you come back to inform us.
[00:47:44]  So thank you for your wonderful wedding gift, too, by the way.
[00:47:46]  I meant to thank you for that.
[00:47:48]  Give me the sweetest wedding gift.
[00:47:50]  Thank you.
[00:47:51]  You're welcome.
[00:47:52]  So here's my question.
[00:47:54]  Last night on Tucker, Candace Owens was on, and she spoke about how the Democrats are actually changing the demographics of the United States, that the Harris-Biden, the Biden-Harris administration, however you want to go ahead and look at it, is actually changing the demographics of the United States by bringing in all these illegals.
[00:48:23]  They're the new votes for the Democrats.
[00:48:25]  So here's my question.
[00:48:27]  How do I, as an individual, how do we, we being the corporate consensus Christian conservatives, how do we stand up against this and stop this insanity?
[00:48:43]  Yeah, so thank you for your question.
[00:48:44]  So let's talk about biblical immigration for a second, because I think that there's a little bit of a misunderstanding here.
[00:48:49]  Every time immigration, migration, or transferring from one land to the other is talked about in the Bible, assimilation is almost always mentioned.
[00:48:57]  Almost always.
[00:48:58]  So what is assimilation?
[00:49:00]  Assimilation is coming and agreeing to the pre-existing culture or language or history.
[00:49:06]  And so that's a very important thing.
[00:49:08]  This idea of borders is actually a biblical idea.
[00:49:11]  This idea of a nation is actually a biblical idea.
[00:49:14]  So let's talk about what a nation is.
[00:49:15]  A nation is mentioned many, many times all throughout the scriptures.
[00:49:18]  A nation is when people come together, hopefully voluntarily, and they agree, again, hopefully through their actual consent, to be able to govern themselves in one way or the other.
[00:49:28]  Nations are rarely, if not ever, acts of randomness.
[00:49:32]  Nations are usually deliberate.
[00:49:34]  Now, sometimes you have some people that play war games with that, but where we are right now, most nations are deliberate.
[00:49:41]  If nations all of a sudden are just kind of suggestions and borders are nothing more than lines drawn on a map, then all of a sudden that means the Bill of Rights does not really apply to the people of America.
[00:49:51]  It might apply to the entire Western Hemisphere, but whose Bill of Rights?
[00:49:54]  The Mexican Bill of Rights or the American Bill of Rights?
[00:49:56]  Now, I have nothing against the Mexican Bill of Rights, but the Second Amendment's not in the Mexican Bill of Rights.
[00:50:01]  I have nothing against the Mexican Bill of Rights, but they do not have as robust free speech protections, or maybe the Canadian Constitution, where they just locked up another nine pastors for violating orders for doing exactly what you did right now.
[00:50:12]  What I'm getting at is that borders and immigration, the ability to have self-determination, is a fundamentally moral question.
[00:50:21]  Now, let me say this.
[00:50:22]  When it comes to this idea of immigration into the country, we have to also broaden the conversation that it's not moral for the people that are coming here, the women that get raped, taken advantage of, trafficked across the southern border for sport and for pay by coyotes in the cartel that have created these vacuums of, boy, what's the right word I'm looking for?
[00:50:46]  They create these vacuums of, they're taking advantage, these vacuums of, quite honestly, horror.
[00:50:53]  That's the best way to say it.
[00:50:54]  And so the moral thing to do would be what Nehemiah did.
[00:50:58]  Build a wall and have a process if you want to come in to come in.
[00:51:02]  The entire book of Nehemiah is just about that.
[00:51:05]  Because in the book of Nehemiah, it says very clearly, and I'm quoting, I'm paraphrasing, I should say, that there are threats sometimes that want to diminish the state of Israel.
[00:51:13]  And this idea about nations and borders, I love Israel, by the way.
[00:51:17]  Greg, you and I talk about Israel all the time.
[00:51:18]  I love Israel.
[00:51:19]  Israel is awesome.
[00:51:20]  And one of the reasons I love Israel is that Israel is very clear about the country that they are.
[00:51:26]  Look, we're Jewish.
[00:51:27]  We are the one Jewish countries at Israel's end.
[00:51:29]  We're the one place for the Jewish people.
[00:51:32]  And thank you for being here tonight, by the way.
[00:51:37]  Thank you.
[00:51:37]  Appreciate that.
[00:51:38]  So Israel has its ability to say that we have self-determination and we are going to be a Jewish state.
[00:51:45]  And because of that, they have walls and they have a defense mechanism.
[00:51:48]  We saw what happened when some people wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
[00:51:52]  Let me just say this about Israel.
[00:51:54]  If Israel laid down their weapons, there would be no Israel.
[00:51:57]  If the Arabs laid down their weapons, there would be peace.
[00:52:00]  That's all I have to say about Israel in the Middle East.
[00:52:02]  With that being said, I believe it is a moral thing that Israel says we are going to have control over the people that come into our nation.
[00:52:13]  So what can you do?
[00:52:15]  I think we should have grace and mercy and truth.
[00:52:18]  At the same time, we must be very clear through public policy decisions that if immigration, which I believe it is, is being used as a political tool, that is immoral and it is wrong and is being used as a continual political football.
[00:52:30]  And I find that to be reprehensible.
[00:52:32]  So thank you.
[00:52:32]  Next question.
[00:52:35]  Hi, I'm just going to start with an opening statement.
[00:52:38]  Okay.
[00:52:39]  So $86.9 million was given to a non-profit organization to house illegal immigrants, technical immigration, in hotel rooms.
[00:52:49]  Now, how many people right now who serve this country are having trouble paying for the housing bills, including their medical, their meals, and yet we have 87 million dollars given to illegal immigrants to an organization to house them until they get a court date.
[00:53:06]  So my question is, can you give us one practical thing we can do to avoid this or to stop the government from doing this?
[00:53:12]  Because I don't know about you, but I prefer American citizens to get help, even more veterans to get help than illegal immigrants or criminals that come into this country.
[00:53:24]  I totally agree.
[00:53:25]  And so here's what there is a lot of problems with the whole way this system is designed.
[00:53:33]  We now have an incentive structure for more and more people to come.
[00:53:36]  We have created chaos and we're subsidizing chaos and we're housing it and we're attracting more of it.
[00:53:44]  So practical is tough.
[00:53:46]  I will say this though, that the more the governors of the southern states can try to use whatever resources they have at their disposal to try to protect the sovereignty of the states that they've been sworn to protect, I'm in full support of that.
[00:54:00]  It seems like the federal government is completely uninterested in helping right now, that our vice president goes down to Guatemala and is interested in that.
[00:54:09]  Look, we had a time where border crossings were at an all-time low.
[00:54:13]  It was about 14 months ago.
[00:54:14]  We had a policy of a return in Mexico, remain in Mexico.
[00:54:19]  And guess what?
[00:54:20]  The amount of rapes, human smuggling, child sex trafficking, drugs, and guns being smuggled were plummeting.
[00:54:26]  So I think we have to talk about the holistic human cost here as well.
[00:54:30]  And I just got to be honest, I'm losing my patience with the current people in power that lectured me and us for nine months about children in cages.
[00:54:41]  And now that is even worse than ever before.
[00:54:43]  And all of a sudden, we have to be just kind of just virtue-signaled non-stop.
[00:54:48]  So, this is where hopefully we can get a leadership class in our country that starts to be very clear about what immigration is, what that mechanism is.
[00:54:56]  And mass migration is not good for anybody.
[00:54:59]  It isn't.
[00:54:59]  It's not good for the people.
[00:55:00]  It's not good for you.
[00:55:01]  It's not good for the workers.
[00:55:02]  It's not good for crime.
[00:55:03]  It's not good for schools.
[00:55:05]  It's not good.
[00:55:06]  A nation, as described in the Bible, has a moral right of self-determination to be able to decide who comes into their country and for what purpose.
[00:55:15]  I'm afraid that the spirit of generosity we have has now been taken advantage of on a national and international level, and that it is now coming at a great cost to us.
[00:55:27]  And so we have to be very clear about that.
[00:55:29]  I wish I had more solutions, man.
[00:55:31]  But it's kind of heartbreaking because we saw that go in a positive direction 14 months ago.
[00:55:36]  And that's something that has a lot of federal.
[00:55:38]  So what I would love to see happen is the governor of Arizona and Texas.
[00:55:42]  New Mexico is a total waste of time.
[00:55:44]  Maybe get into, you know, I mean, like they're on a reservation.
[00:55:47]  Just ask Steve Smutterman all about that.
[00:55:48]  He's got a lot to tell you about that.
[00:55:51]  Come to some sort of state-based coalition to say, look, I'll just use Texas as an example.
[00:55:56]  If you're not going to do it, I'm going to mobilize the Texas Rangers, right?
[00:55:59]  Like, I mean, at some point, there's got to be a breaking point there, right?
[00:56:03]  Because there's a mechanism for this to work, but you guys see this.
[00:56:08]  And just so you guys know, Scottsdale Road.
[00:56:13]  Scottsdale Road, there is a hotel that used to be a double tree right across from the Hampton Inn Suites where there are hundreds of foreign nationals that have illegally entered into America that are being paid $384 a night to stay there.
[00:56:27]  And quite honestly, I'm really insulted because I grew up around Czechoslovakians and Poles and Arabs and Persians and Koreans that waited their turn and they applied and they came into this country and that somehow we should give preference to people that jump in line and border jump.
[00:56:46]  I'm not a fan and I find that to be something that we should oppose.

=== Leading with Pregnancy Crisis Care (04:21) ===

[00:56:49]  So thank you so much.
[00:56:50]  I really appreciate that.
[00:56:56]  Hi, Charlie.
[00:56:57]  Thanks for being here.
[00:56:58]  So this is a heavy topic.
[00:57:00]  I apologize if it's painful for anyone here.
[00:57:02]  I want to know how we can more emphasize God's love, mercy, and forgiveness for those who have already participated in abortion instead of rejecting or judging them because they're the ones that need our compassion the most.
[00:57:15]  First of all, thank you for that question.
[00:57:17]  And I totally agree.
[00:57:19]  And I'm going to speak some tough love to the pro-life movement right now.
[00:57:26]  So I've been pro-life my whole life.
[00:57:28]  And I think the pro-life movement is doing some good things, Lila Rose and others, but we're doing, I don't know what, I've never seen an advertisement.
[00:57:39]  I could be wrong, and I'm going to say this as lovingly as I can.
[00:57:41]  An advertisement or reached out to ever by a pregnancy crisis center anywhere in the country.
[00:57:47]  Ever.
[00:57:48]  We should be leading with that.
[00:57:50]  We should be leading with the pregnancy crisis.
[00:57:52]  None of them even knows what a pregnancy crisis center is.
[00:57:54]  Let me tell you what a pregnancy crisis center is.
[00:57:56]  It's the pro-life equivalent of a planned parenthood.
[00:58:00]  You would be stunned how many pro-life activists don't even know these exist.
[00:58:03]  Wow.
[00:58:04]  And so a pregnancy crisis center is a place that's rooted usually in Christian ethics and values, but it's all about trying to love and counsel and give compassion to expectant mothers to have the child.
[00:58:19]  And I'll say this.
[00:58:20]  I think that the way the pro-life movement currently is in some of its messaging, it is way too harsh for women that were taken advantage of by abortionists.
[00:58:32]  I'll give you a great example of this.
[00:58:33]  I got a question the other day in Ohio, and it was contentious.
[00:58:37]  It was back and forth.
[00:58:38]  And he said, Charlie, I think that women that have had abortion should pay a price.
[00:58:43]  And I got really upset.
[00:58:44]  And I don't get upset very easily, right?
[00:58:46]  I try to embody the fruits of the spirit, the last of which is self-control.
[00:58:50]  I was like, forget it, right?
[00:58:52]  And truly, I said, hold on a second.
[00:58:55]  You know so little about how this process works.
[00:58:58]  These are people that come with whatever option, the small framework of options that have been given to them.
[00:59:03]  We don't have a culture of life in many communities, including, by the way, upper middle class white communities.
[00:59:08]  Just so we're clear, upper middle class white communities, there's like nothing worse than being pregnant as a teenager or early 20 something.
[00:59:16]  And we should be way more understanding and accepting and lifting mothers up like, okay, you made a mistake, but you just made it right for a mistake that you just made.
[00:59:23]  Instead, we're like, oh, you did that premaritally, like you're a bad person.
[00:59:28]  So like, no, actually, okay, you made a mistake.
[00:59:30]  A lot of people do.
[00:59:31]  And there's grace every day thanks to our creator, Jesus Christ.
[00:59:35]  And God bless you for now saying you're going to take responsibility to bring that life into this world.
[00:59:40]  And a lot of young women, they fear nothing more than having to have that kind of conversation.
[00:59:44]  And quite honestly, I can see that to an extent.
[00:59:47]  Secondly, they underestimate the abortionists.
[00:59:50]  These abortionists have a profit incentive to misrepresent the facts, to go after women and try to have a system that they profit from, that they have a financial model.
[01:00:01]  I'm perfectly cool with this conversation of holding abortionists accountable, but I think women have to be met with grace and compassion and mercy and say, look, man, it's bad for everyone.
[01:00:14]  You know, majority of women regret having abortions in our country.
[01:00:18]  And a lot of women never even knew it was an option.
[01:00:22]  They didn't know adoption was an option.
[01:00:23]  They didn't know.
[01:00:23]  And I know that's hard for a lot of people to hear because maybe you're right in, maybe you're in the foxhole, the pro-life space.
[01:00:29]  And like, we have this option and this option and this option.
[01:00:32]  I don't see any of it.
[01:00:33]  I don't.
[01:00:33]  I know what Dream City is doing, which is awesome.
[01:00:36]  And, but holistically, we need to do a lot more.
[01:00:40]  And I think it's also a tonal thing too.
[01:00:42]  It has to be tonal, T-O-N-A-L, which is we got to be the ones that are like, hey, we're pro-life, but we're also going to be the ones that if we need to look after a kid, we will.
[01:00:52]  We're going to be the ones that are going to help, you know, in any way possible.
[01:00:56]  And I think you're right.
[01:00:57]  And this is something I've been talked about a lot.
[01:00:58]  And we're only going to ever, I think, win on that issue when we embrace the entire cycle of life, which is exactly what this beautiful church does from the people that are lost and abandoned and forsaken all throughout.

=== Defending Parents Vaccine Rights (03:15) ===

[01:01:10]  I really believe that.
[01:01:11]  And so just a word of improvement.
[01:01:14]  When we talk about this issue, we got to talk about the miracle of life.
[01:01:18]  We got to talk about everyone made in God's image.
[01:01:20]  But also understand that in certain communities across the country, young women that might be pregnant, they're in crisis.
[01:01:27]  And what they fear is not raising the child.
[01:01:29]  That is not what they fear.
[01:01:31]  They fear the conversations with critical and judgmental, sanctimonious moralists.
[01:01:37]  They're going to say, oh, you got pregnant.
[01:01:41]  Oh, that's actually what a lot of women fear.
[01:01:44]  And I just want to make sure that's very clear.
[01:01:45]  And we have to be solution about that.
[01:01:47]  So God bless you.
[01:01:48]  And thank you for that correct question.
[01:01:52]  Okay, next question.
[01:01:56]  Okay.
[01:01:57]  Okay.
[01:01:57]  Okay, Tommy.
[01:01:59]  You're the man.
[01:02:00]  I just wanted to thank you for the fire that you lit underneath parents like me.
[01:02:05]  And it really is working.
[01:02:07]  I wanted to let you know that there is a group called the West Side Moms United.
[01:02:13]  I love that.
[01:02:14]  And we have gotten together and we are taking Josh's Barnett, who is the gentleman who had that fitness place.
[01:02:23]  And we are serving the school boards.
[01:02:26]  We are serving the principals.
[01:02:28]  We are serving the governor.
[01:02:29]  We are serving the sheriffs.
[01:02:31]  We are serving everyone about the mask mandates and the vaccine mandates.
[01:02:41]  That's awesome.
[01:02:46]  So you're a small thing.
[01:02:50]  So first of all, this is, I just want you guys to understand, this is uniquely American.
[01:02:55]  I get messages from people across the world, Lithuania, Norway, Korea, and they're locked down in the government.
[01:03:01]  And this idea of the disagreeable citizen, this idea of the, no, you're going to need my permission to do that, is so amazingly American.
[01:03:15]  And you embody that.
[01:03:16]  And all of you guys do too.
[01:03:18]  And that's what, and it's something that is so special.
[01:03:23]  And we have to preserve it because when tyranny oversteps its bound, the true check and balance, everybody, is you and us.
[01:03:30]  That's the true check and balance.
[01:03:32]  So God bless you for saying that.
[01:03:33]  And any way I can help you, let me just re-emphasize one thing.
[01:03:37]  I am not pro-vaccine.
[01:03:38]  I'm not anti-vaccine.
[01:03:40]  I am vaccine.
[01:03:41]  I say agnostic.
[01:03:42]  It's not the perfect word for it.
[01:03:43]  I'm neutral.
[01:03:44]  Like, whatever.
[01:03:45]  Just do your research.
[01:03:46]  I'm not personally getting the vaccine.
[01:03:48]  That's my own decision.
[01:03:49]  You don't have to applaud.
[01:03:50]  Some people applaud.
[01:03:50]  Some people boo.
[01:03:51]  Whatever.
[01:03:52]  I am so against vaccine mandates.
[01:03:55]  I can't even tell them.
[01:03:56]  I think we can all agree, especially for children for vaccine mandates for the Chinese coronavirus vaccine.
[01:04:02]  Let's talk to you.
[01:04:05]  So this is about parents' rights.
[01:04:08]  It is their right to mask their child or not.
[01:04:11]  It is their right to vaccinate their child or not.
[01:04:14]  I love it.
[01:04:15]  And the West Valley Moms United, what a great name for a group.
[01:04:21]  And I wouldn't want to get in your way.
[01:04:24]  So God bless you.

=== Navigating Pressure with Character (13:18) ===

[01:04:25]  It's not yours, but you're part of it.
[01:04:27]  So whomever is running it, God bless that person.
[01:04:30]  So thank you.
[01:04:30]  Okay, next question.
[01:04:32]  Hello.
[01:04:32]  My name is Elise, and I'm 16.
[01:04:35]  Thank you for being here.
[01:04:36]  Thank you.
[01:04:37]  So my question is a little bit specific.
[01:04:40]  How do you encourage someone to think for themselves when they're surrounded by far-left influences and you're the only conservative influence on their life?
[01:04:52]  Well, so I want you to look around.
[01:04:55]  This is one of the reasons why I love Freedom Square.
[01:04:58]  So I'm going to do the thing where I'll eventually get back to it.
[01:05:04]  Aristotle said politics is the highest form of community because it combines sociability and morality.
[01:05:10]  And I just want you to know this is a community for you.
[01:05:13]  And if you're the only one, you should get involved with turning points.
[01:05:16]  Keep coming to Freedom Square because this is a place where you can look around and know you're not alone, know that people share your values and that you want to do something about it.
[01:05:24]  I just want to just re-emphasize that.
[01:05:26]  It's tough, the situation you're in.
[01:05:28]  You in high school?
[01:05:29]  It's only going to get worse.
[01:05:31]  And one of the tricks, no, it is.
[01:05:34]  You get into college and you get older, meaning like this, one of the tricks of the enemy, I call it all the eyes of what the enemy does.
[01:05:42]  Intimidation and then isolation.
[01:05:45]  They want you to feel as if you're the only one.
[01:05:48]  They want you to feel as if there's no one else that's within the connective tissue of your belief system or your worldview.
[01:05:54]  It's a trick.
[01:05:55]  It's not the truth.
[01:05:57]  And so what I want to say to someone that might want to think that you're like, how do I get this person to think freely?
[01:06:01]  Do what Christ did and what Socrates did.
[01:06:05]  I prefer Christ as the example.
[01:06:06]  Just ask questions.
[01:06:08]  Dig deeper.
[01:06:09]  Say, so why do you believe that?
[01:06:11]  Do you think that anything is worth preserving?
[01:06:14]  Do you think that anything that existed before you were born was beautiful?
[01:06:18]  What is beauty?
[01:06:19]  Do you find anything to be objectively true?
[01:06:21]  These are all really good questions, by the way, that they're probably not being asked by their teacher.
[01:06:25]  That, by the way, is what classical education is all about.
[01:06:28]  Asking questions.
[01:06:30]  So tell me why you believe what you believe.
[01:06:32]  Well, because I was told, no, that's a really bad reason.
[01:06:34]  So tell me what is true.
[01:06:37]  And so let me just tell you one of my biggest pet peeps.
[01:06:39]  And someone says, Well, my opinion is like, Yeah, I really don't care about that.
[01:06:42]  Tell me things that are true.
[01:06:44]  Yeah, my opinion is the Bible isn't true.
[01:06:46]  Okay, yeah, I got that.
[01:06:47]  So tell me things that are true.
[01:06:48]  You know, everyone's got their own opinion, right?
[01:06:50]  But ask questions and do it the way Christ did it.
[01:06:54]  Engage in long-form dialogues that are rooted in mutual agreement and listen and listen carefully.
[01:07:00]  Don't listen or try to get your point across.
[01:07:02]  That's hearing, not listening.
[01:07:04]  I mean, do less hearing, we need to do more listening.
[01:07:06]  I do that too.
[01:07:07]  Like, yeah, okay, stop talking so I can say my next thing, right?
[01:07:09]  We all do that, right?
[01:07:10]  Come on, Okay, now I'm going to say something smart.
[01:07:12]  We've got to really listen, right?
[01:07:14]  We all do that, of course, obviously.
[01:07:16]  Like, yeah, come on, wrap it up, wrap it up.
[01:07:18]  Yeah, and did you know?
[01:07:19]  Like, no, because people are a lot more interesting than you might think.
[01:07:23]  And honestly, a lot of young people probably share your values more than you might believe.
[01:07:28]  And at the bottom of it, if you're around a lot of 16-year-olds, here's the driving force.
[01:07:32]  A lot of them actually probably want to do good in the world and they just don't know the mechanism.
[01:07:38]  And just a very basic question.
[01:07:41]  If you want to just like open up Pandora's box, just ask them what is good and where does that come from?
[01:07:46]  How do you know a line is crooked if you don't have a straight line to compare it to?
[01:07:50]  How do you know something is true?
[01:07:51]  How do you know something is false if you don't know that which is true?
[01:07:54]  And that's this idea of objective truth, which is what the entire Christian faith is centered around, right?
[01:07:59]  Our whole belief system is that some things are irrefutably, eternally true.
[01:08:05]  And then we built a whole civilization around things that were eternal, right?
[01:08:08]  And that's the connection between the divine and then the material.
[01:08:11]  And so the other thing is just, I keep re-emphasizing this point: just be an embodiment of light and win them over with your charm and who you are.
[01:08:21]  And eventually the ideas will follow.
[01:08:22]  I'll give you a great example of this.
[01:08:24]  And it's been really hard the last couple of days.
[01:08:26]  We lost a dear friend, Foster Freese, a little while ago.
[01:08:30]  Some of you knew Foster.
[01:08:31]  He was larger than life.
[01:08:33]  This man proved that God existed.
[01:08:37]  He made friends with Harry Reed.
[01:08:38]  And I was like, how did you do that?
[01:08:40]  No, seriously, I was like, that was best friends.
[01:08:44]  And it was, they disagreed on everything.
[01:08:46]  But it's the way he approached every conversation.
[01:08:49]  You felt that he was so intent when he was listening to you.
[01:08:52]  That every word was something.
[01:08:53]  He's like, okay, I really want to see where you're coming from.
[01:08:56]  With hyper focus, not just kind of ready to exhaust the point.
[01:08:59]  And I think that's a really good lesson when we try to get into these sometimes controversial and divisive topics.
[01:09:04]  So I hope that's helpful.
[01:09:05]  And then you should join Turning Point USA.
[01:09:07]  God bless you.
[01:09:08]  So, all right, we'll get a couple more.
[01:09:11]  So, knowing that our end goal here is a great awakening, each great awakening had numerous variables and factors involved.
[01:09:18]  I personally agree that education is the first big step, which is why I plan on volunteering with Turning Point USA as soon as possible.
[01:09:25]  But my question here, not trying to look too far, but at least the next few years, is what is step number two?
[01:09:31]  Because education has to be first, but what's next?
[01:09:34]  So, what an articulate question.
[01:09:37]  And whatever you're going to do in life, you'll do well.
[01:09:39]  I mean that because that's really thoughtful.
[01:09:42]  So, look, there's things we can control and things we can't control.
[01:09:45]  And sometimes we conflate the two of them.
[01:09:48]  And so, it's important to know what I can control and then pray steadfastly and trust the Lord for things we cannot control.
[01:09:55]  But what we said earlier, the things we can control are actually really big things.
[01:09:59]  The small things are the big things.
[01:10:00]  So, education is a huge piece.
[01:10:03]  You're all sitting right now in the next piece.
[01:10:06]  This is the piece that I think needs to be sprung into action.
[01:10:10]  And it's been an amazing answer to prayer here at Dream City to see all this coming.
[01:10:14]  I want you to look around you.
[01:10:15]  These are 2,000 people at 8 o'clock, on a Tuesday night in Phoenix that are coming together to hear and listen about what's happening in the nation and in the area around you.
[01:10:26]  There's something happening here, and I don't know quite what it is, but it's bigger than all of us.
[01:10:30]  And it could be explained as maybe the spirit moving or something that's really, really awesome.
[01:10:34]  And I'm telling you that the test is gonna be, and so here's, here's a good, someone said to me, Charlie, what does success look like for 2021?
[01:10:45]  What should it look like for me?
[01:10:46]  And I'll say, here's what it looks like.
[01:10:48]  I want you to imagine that an invisible man follows you around your entire year and documents your year.
[01:10:55]  And he has to give a summary of what your year, like what described that person?
[01:11:01]  A year well lived in 2021.
[01:11:04]  would say, you know what?
[01:11:06]  That guy had guts.
[01:11:08]  That's it.
[01:11:09]  If every person got that description and said that guy had guts for truth, that guy did something that was beyond themselves, that took a leap of faith.
[01:11:18]  If every person had that description, then all of a sudden this thing would turn around.
[01:11:22]  I'll be honest, some of the biggest movements are by a couple thousand people that congregate in places that really matter.
[01:11:29]  It's this kind of retelling of history where sometimes like, oh, it was 500 million people.
[01:11:33]  Sometimes it's 500.
[01:11:35]  The American Revolution was hatched in barns and saloons, bars, barns, literally, bars, saloons, taverns, and churches of just eight to 10 people that were like, hey, do you hear about this George Washington guy?
[01:11:45]  He's kind of awesome.
[01:11:46]  That was before the internet, before Twitter, before Facebook, before TikTok, before Snapchat.
[01:11:49]  It was like word of mouth.
[01:11:51]  Pretty amazing.
[01:11:52]  And so, but the common through line of moral movements is always people that knew the truth that did something about the truth.
[01:12:00]  Let me say that again.
[01:12:01]  It's people that knew it that did something about it.
[01:12:03]  Let me tell you the type of Christianity that I am lovingly trying to change.
[01:12:10]  I call it run the hills Christianity.
[01:12:12]  We got the truth.
[01:12:13]  We'll see you when this whole thing is over and just eat us last.
[01:12:18]  Thank you.
[01:12:18]  Goodbye.
[01:12:19]  Like, no, not going to work.
[01:12:22]  We're called to be salt and light, occupied till I come.
[01:12:24]  If you are not paying the price for Christ, you're not in the arena.
[01:12:28]  And it's the man in the arena that counts.
[01:12:30]  So thank you for your question.
[01:12:31]  Next month.
[01:12:33]  All right.
[01:12:34]  We'll do two more.
[01:12:35]  One here, one there, and then we got to go wrap it.
[01:12:38]  Hey, Charlie, actually, that hotel right on Scottson Road, I graduated from SHAP, which is a Scottsdale School, and I did not wear a mask when I graduated, just FY.
[01:12:47]  But my question is about, I'm very blessed I get to go to college this coming year.
[01:12:53]  And what do you think is like the most important thing for folks my age in college to focus on?
[01:12:58]  Like, would it be history or like taking like theology classes?
[01:13:02]  Like, what's the focus that we ought to have to be this movement, to help continue this momentum?
[01:13:09]  Where are you going to school?
[01:13:10]  Hampton, Sydney, Farmville, Virginia.
[01:13:12]  Cool.
[01:13:12]  So what are you studying?
[01:13:13]  Well, history, religion.
[01:13:15]  I'm kind of asking you what you think is more important to me.
[01:13:17]  No, I mean, so look.
[01:13:19]  Well, I mean, you know what I'm saying.
[01:13:21]  Here's the piece of advice I have, which is pursue things that never change.
[01:13:25]  Pursue things that will be true when you're 100 years old.
[01:13:29]  You see, the Academy doesn't teach that stuff anymore.
[01:13:31]  They teach things that are like, oh, we're so postmodernly enlightened.
[01:13:34]  No, you're not.
[01:13:35]  Go read and it's just go seek wisdom, which of course isn't rooted in the Bible, which is basically a diagnosis of how human beings act, human nature, and things that explain how the world works.
[01:13:47]  So we do two hours of study a day on our podcast.
[01:13:50]  90 minutes of my study is dedicated to things that do not change.
[01:13:53]  Then 30 minutes, I like read the news and like whatever, because I just kind of find that to be some, but the 90 minutes is what explains what's currently happening.
[01:14:02]  So for example, a good thing that you could wrestle with for the next 100 years of your life is what is the good?
[01:14:08]  How do I achieve it?
[01:14:09]  Has a society ever achieved it?
[01:14:11]  And what does it mean to have things objectively beautiful and full of wonder?
[01:14:16]  That'll keep you busy for about 10 years.
[01:14:18]  Just that little statement.
[01:14:19]  And by the way, that used to be how education used to be.
[01:14:23]  It used to be we'd get a bunch of 18-year-olds who think they know everything.
[01:14:26]  And you'd say, so why are you here?
[01:14:28]  I'm here to improve myself.
[01:14:29]  Eventually it gets down to this idea.
[01:14:30]  I'm here to do good.
[01:14:31]  That's eventually what eventually it boils down to.
[01:14:33]  Okay, what is the good?
[01:14:35]  And their eyes like, welcome to college.
[01:14:37]  That's how it used to be.
[01:14:39]  And you'd almost tease an 18-year-old.
[01:14:41]  You'd almost want to bring them along and say, okay, now that we got you interested, here's the 5,000 things you got to do to get even close to knowing kind of almost what that is.
[01:14:50]  Now, college, and I don't know the specific college, now college is the opposite.
[01:14:55]  Now it goes down and says there is no truth, there is no beauty, there is no wonder, there is no God.
[01:15:00]  We're nothing but a bunch of cells in a collision course.
[01:15:03]  All there is is pleasure and death.
[01:15:05]  And what's the use of even being here anymore?
[01:15:08]  And we're going to find a way to try to find some meaning in the midst of all this nothingness.
[01:15:12]  That explains basically half the country, right?
[01:15:15]  So my advice for you is you go to college, pursue the things that never change.
[01:15:19]  And in four years from now, you can explain what is beautiful, wondrous, and good.
[01:15:24]  I'll give you a little bit of a hint.
[01:15:25]  This entire church is centered around worshiping what is beautiful, wondrous, and good.
[01:15:29]  You will have had a good four years.
[01:15:31]  Thank you.
[01:15:32]  Okay, the last question.
[01:15:33]  I apologize, guys.
[01:15:35]  I wish I could get some more.
[01:15:36]  Might take one after that.
[01:15:38]  But yeah, see?
[01:15:39]  You did a pivot.
[01:15:39]  Go ahead.
[01:15:40]  You never know.
[01:15:41]  Go ahead.
[01:15:42]  So I'm going to try to make this real fast, but I'm going into my senior year of high school.
[01:15:46]  What I said.
[01:15:46]  And Horizon and the PVUSD.
[01:15:50]  So how can I, as a senior, like combat these different opinions that go on their own, like racial or critical race theory and stuff like that?
[01:16:01]  How do we as students actually make a difference?
[01:16:05]  So can you just give me some examples of some of the things that are being just, you know, you don't have to if you don't want to.
[01:16:10]  So like all the mask things are critical race theory, that's a pretty big one.
[01:16:16]  Or like what school is this?
[01:16:17]  Horizon.
[01:16:18]  Where is that?
[01:16:19]  Is that 56 and Paradise Valley?
[01:16:22]  Yes.
[01:16:25]  Oh, okay.
[01:16:28]  So they're teaching critical race theory in Paradise Valley?
[01:16:32]  Not yet.
[01:16:34]  I'm just interested.
[01:16:35]  Okay, sorry, go ahead.
[01:16:36]  Not yet, but they're pushing it.
[01:16:39]  Okay.
[01:16:40]  Yeah, that's bizarre.
[01:16:42]  Okay, sorry, continue.
[01:16:44]  So how do we as students make a difference in that?
[01:16:48]  Yeah, so first of all, thank you for your willingness to want to do it.
[01:16:52]  Here's the tough part: they have a secret weapon and they're willing to use it all the time and always.
[01:16:58]  They have a paralytic that gets us to all of a sudden stop and back away, like puts us in like a paralyzed foot passion.
[01:17:07]  They're willing to call anything that gets in their way a racist.
[01:17:11]  And it's a very, very effective weapon.
[01:17:14]  It's the most powerful one right now in American politics.
[01:17:16]  Too bad because there are real racists out there.
[01:17:19]  Of course there are.
[01:17:20]  And when everything is something, then nothing is something.
[01:17:22]  Remember that.
[01:17:23]  Where's my guy that just asked me a question?
[01:17:25]  That's wisdom.
[01:17:26]  When everything is something, nothing is something, right?
[01:17:28]  And that's true, right?
[01:17:29]  All of a sudden, when everything becomes labeled that, then there's no nuance, and then it just becomes this kind of blanket of generalization and this broad stroke of nothingness.
[01:17:36]  So I just want to say, be prepared anytime you stand up against this stuff, be called those things, and be able to navigate that.
[01:17:43]  We can help you with that.

=== Wisdom Against Political Weaponization (04:01) ===

[01:17:44]  The second thing is you have to gauge how much you're willing to sacrifice as coming a senior into Horizon High School.
[01:17:52]  Every kid has a different answer to this.
[01:17:54]  Every parent has an answer to this.
[01:17:56]  The real question is: what are the parents doing about this at your school?
[01:17:59]  I don't know if they're doing anything because that's really, they have very little to lose, you would think.
[01:18:05]  But I will tell you this: nothing matters more than the development of your character at your current age.
[01:18:12]  Now, character is formed in moments of pressure.
[01:18:17]  Pressure creates good people.
[01:18:19]  Let me reiterate this again.
[01:18:20]  Pressure creates good people, or it creates frameworks where you can then correct your behavior, and then you're able to teach ethics in those situations.
[01:18:29]  One of the reasons we have a crisis of goodness in education is we have no more pressure.
[01:18:34]  There's no grades, turning it whenever you want to.
[01:18:36]  There's no accountability.
[01:18:38]  We don't keep score at sports.
[01:18:39]  You remove pressure, all of a sudden that kind of framework for the betterment disappears.
[01:18:44]  So with that being said, character comes from the Greek word imprint or tattoo.
[01:18:49]  You're going to have to ask yourselves the question, what is it deep down, the character that I, the person I want to be, what would I do in a situation like this?
[01:18:55]  Should I ask my teacher these questions?
[01:18:57]  Should I petition the school board?
[01:18:58]  Should I go all of a sudden get parents organized?
[01:19:00]  That's up for you to decide.
[01:19:02]  But I'll tell you this.
[01:19:04]  The more you do in the embodiment of what we talk about with love and with truth and grace and mercy will have a lasting positive impact on you for the rest of your life.
[01:19:14]  Now, you might get graded down.
[01:19:16]  You might have bad things said about you on social media.
[01:19:19]  But all of a sudden, that pressure, the sickness in your stomach, the sleepless nights, the accusations from parents, that will all of a sudden create you to have the maturity of a 50-year-old at 18.
[01:19:29]  And all of a sudden, you'll be like, you know what?
[01:19:31]  I learned about the proper way to navigate opposition when I was in high school, when they decided to throw everything I possibly could at Horizon High School.
[01:19:39]  And all of a sudden, you become that person.
[01:19:42]  I think the greatest person in the 20th century was Winston Churchill.
[01:19:46]  Now, what made Churchill so great?
[01:19:48]  Boy, did he screw up a lot before the most important moment.
[01:19:51]  Seriously.
[01:19:52]  Troop movements, battles, wars, communication lines on hero.
[01:19:56]  And he said his whole life was a series of pressure-filled moments that led up to the moments of when he became prime minister.
[01:20:05]  He met with the king privately.
[01:20:06]  And yes, I am comparing you to Winston Churchill, just so you know.
[01:20:09]  So no pressure.
[01:20:10]  So he met with the king, and basically they couldn't form a government.
[01:20:14]  And the king said, I want you to put down on a list of paper everyone that you think can become prime minister to form a government to stop the Nazis because they were bombing the English channel.
[01:20:25]  And he said, oh boy.
[01:20:27]  Okay.
[01:20:28]  He left parliament and he wrote this in his diaries, according to his historian Sir Martin Gilbert, with the weight of the world on his shoulders because he knew no matter who he put on that piece of paper, the real answer was going to be him.
[01:20:40]  And he said in his private journals that every moment from a time he was in college as a boy in the infantry, in the army, as a biographic or an author of 50 books led him to that moment.
[01:20:52]  Every moment of when the pressure came down and he learned who he was and how to operate and how to act.
[01:20:56]  So what I'm getting at is that you need to ask yourself the question at 17, which is tough.
[01:21:02]  What kind of person do I want to be?
[01:21:04]  And if it's a person that just thinks the ultimate value is getting good grades, that might be an answer.
[01:21:09]  That might be your answer, then don't do anything.
[01:21:12]  If the most important thing in your life is getting good grades, my advice is do nothing.
[01:21:17]  Seriously.
[01:21:18]  Get A's and run away.
[01:21:21]  But if your answer is that you want to live a full and complete life in the pursuit of truth, then you got to do something.
[01:21:28]  And that's for you to decide.
[01:21:29]  So God bless you, man.
[01:21:30]  Thanks for being here tonight.
[01:21:32]  All right.
[01:21:34]  Want to do one more?
[01:21:35]  Right here.
[01:21:36]  You waited so patiently.
[01:21:39]  First of all, congrats on the marriage.
[01:21:41]  Thank you.
[01:21:42]  I recommend all young people to get married early and have lots of children.

=== Loving People While Holding Truth (04:43) ===

[01:21:45]  Do not believe the secular life.
[01:21:47]  I got to wait.
[01:21:47]  No.
[01:21:48]  Find someone that believes in the Lord and is saved by Jesus Christ and loves America and get married.
[01:21:53]  Okay, thank you.
[01:21:54]  So true.
[01:21:58]  Angels like laughing.
[01:21:59]  So yeah.
[01:22:00]  So my question is, what's your opinion on churches having pride flags outside and how do you approach something like that?
[01:22:07]  I'm not a fan of that, obviously.
[01:22:10]  Yeah, so look, I'm very clear of what marriage is, one man, one woman.
[01:22:15]  And I've said that.
[01:22:16]  We have gay people that work for us at Turning Point USA.
[01:22:19]  Some of the most lovely, wonderful people.
[01:22:20]  Some of my best friends are gay.
[01:22:22]  Rick Rinnell, who's a very courageous, good person, is one example.
[01:22:26]  And boy, if all of a sudden the church becomes like an advertising arm of something that is so clearly defined as distance from God, I'm perplexed by that.
[01:22:36]  I really am.
[01:22:37]  And so I don't know what kind of virtue signaling that kind of is, but I do have an idea, actually.
[01:22:41]  And it kind of struck me when I was driving through Seattle.
[01:22:44]  When I was driving through Seattle and I spoke at one of these churches, and a lot of churches had the BLM flag and the gay pride flag.
[01:22:51]  And I asked the guy driving me around, I said, why do they have this?
[01:22:54]  He said, oh, they won't get burned down or they won't get rioted or they won't get picketed.
[01:22:58]  I said, oh, it hit me at that moment.
[01:23:00]  I said, this is the modern day equivalent of blood over the door in ancient Egypt.
[01:23:09]  This is the modern day equivalent.
[01:23:11]  You guys know exactly what I'm talking about: that the blood over the door, the first foreign doesn't get killed.
[01:23:16]  That's what this is.
[01:23:18]  Like, don't audit me.
[01:23:19]  Don't tax me.
[01:23:20]  Don't criticize me.
[01:23:22]  Don't talk to me.
[01:23:23]  I got the flag.
[01:23:24]  We're part of your whole deal.
[01:23:28]  It's not about getting rid of churches.
[01:23:30]  It's about getting rid of churches they don't like that are disagreeable.
[01:23:33]  They want churches they can control.
[01:23:35]  So I look, I am very clear on what biblical marriage is.
[01:23:38]  I'm also one that believes that we should be very clear and loving to people that have that lifestyle.
[01:23:46]  And I am, and we are at Turning Point USA.
[01:23:48]  As I said, they're some of my best friends in the world.
[01:23:50]  But I don't think we should ever waver on the truth and what that is.
[01:23:53]  And let me say this: I know a lot of people that are gay, that are disgusted with the conflation of the gay issue with the transgender issue.
[01:24:01]  And their intention, the movement seems to try to put them together.
[01:24:06]  But look, as soon as you draw distance from God, we know where that goes and we know the pattern that then manifests itself.
[01:24:12]  So, look, I think the most important thing that a church should have is a big cross at the highest possible point that everyone can see.
[01:24:22]  And then, if they need to fly any flag, it says in Jeremiah very clearly to pray and demand for the welfare, the peace, the shalom of the city and the nation of which you are in, because that welfare is your welfare.
[01:24:35]  So, I perfectly support an American flag outside of every church as long as it's not higher than the cross that flies above it.
[01:24:41]  Thank you.
[01:24:47]  So, we had a lot of fun tonight.
[01:24:50]  Action steps.
[01:24:51]  There's a couple school board meetings coming up.
[01:24:53]  I think there one might be tomorrow in Chandler at 6:30.
[01:24:57]  And know your stuff, and we'll see what happens.
[01:25:00]  Scottsdale, if they ever decide to have another meeting, go with love, truth, clarity.
[01:25:07]  And we're keeping an eye on that.
[01:25:08]  We got 30 days if you guys are interested in any of those action items on the state level here in Arizona.
[01:25:13]  And more than anything else, look around.
[01:25:15]  This thing is growing, everybody.
[01:25:16]  This thing inspires action.
[01:25:18]  This thing inspires knowledge.
[01:25:20]  Information is everything.
[01:25:21]  So, I know it's the heat of the summer, but it'll be so cool July 13th to pack this thing up again, bring friends.
[01:25:31]  I'm going to try to have more time for questions because that's what I really enjoy.
[01:25:34]  But, everybody, if you are like me, I'm going all in in Arizona.
[01:25:38]  I'm going all in to try to have Arizona alongside the Barnetts.
[01:25:42]  I love this state, everybody.
[01:25:45]  I have a special place in my heart for this.
[01:25:48]  I got married here.
[01:25:48]  I met my wife here.
[01:25:50]  I want to have children here.
[01:25:51]  And I want one thing, everybody, that I don't have to flee.
[01:25:55]  I want one thing that all of a sudden can take a turnaround and come back, as Pastor Luke would say, back to biblical truth and things that are eternal.
[01:26:03]  And it starts with that little piece of wood because the small things are the big things.
[01:26:10]  God bless you guys.
[01:26:11]  This is a lot of fun tonight.
[01:26:12]  Thank you so much.
[01:26:16]  Thanks so much, everybody.
[01:26:17]  Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[01:26:20]  God bless.
[01:26:20]  Talk to you soon.
[01:26:25]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.