Two Different Conservative Paths Forward—In Depth with Dana Loesch
Charlie sits down with the one and only Dana Loesch for an in depth discussion about what it means to be a conservative in 2021. In one of the truly memorable discussions on The Charlie Kirk Show, Charlie and Dana go back and forth on issue after issue confronting the conservative movement including: Should the government subsidize American families having children? What is the conservative answer to the government's gun grabbing lobby? Should the government use its power to encourage virtuous behavior or is that just socialism and big government by another name? In a conversation that exposes two divergent conservative paths forward, this is a can't miss, fascinating discussion with a great friend of the show and of Turning Point USA, Dana Loesch. Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Hey, everybody, today the Charlie Kirk Show, a fun conversation with my friend Dana Lash, where we find a time in this program or we don't agree.
She has a viewpoint on a certain topic, and I have a different viewpoint.
I believe that we need bold and dramatic action to rebuild the American family, to increase our birth rate.
Right now, we have a population collapse happening right now in America.
And if we do not put the church and the family and things that matter first, things that are good and beautiful and eternal, then we are going to lose the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world.
Dana is a friend of mine, and it was a good-spirited disagreement that I know a lot of you are going to enjoy.
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Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
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Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show with me and with us today is a friend of mine, Dana Lash.
Dana, welcome back.
Charlie, it's good to be with you.
Good to see you again.
How was it at our women's show?
Oh my gosh, it was amazing.
The room is, there's so much energy.
And it's really encouraging as like the older sister to look down and see so many young women.
And just, this is really encouraging because I just feel like with everything that things get so nasty and women, you know, I mean, you've seen it.
Women, particularly in politics, they deal with a lot of garbage.
And so it's nice to see so many women work like a conservative sisterhood.
And I called them Shield Maidens, and that's completely accurate.
That's awesome.
So it was nice to see.
It was great.
2,500 young women we have.
Oh my gosh, really?
Yeah, it's incredible.
Conservatives Embrace Freedom00:14:44
It's insane.
And there's even more out there that weren't able to get in because of we need to add more seats.
And they're getting checked in and everything.
But you were a huge draw for them to be here.
And so I want to explore a couple of things with you.
So the conservative movement that I came into back in 2012, Andrew Breitbart.
Seems like so long ago, doesn't it?
Right.
It seems like a different world.
We had Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben.
The Redskins were called the Redskins.
Cleveland Indians weren't canceled.
Women were women.
Yes, that's right.
And we had a Democrat Party that at least part of it loved America.
Yeah.
Those were the days.
So, but I felt like back then, and I'd love your thought on this.
There was an overemphasis on libertarianism back in 2012 and 2013.
Do you think that that's the case?
Or do you think that it was a good thing that we kind of were these issues that are now kind of coming front and center, challenging corporate tyranny, rebuilding the American family?
Do you think that's a good thing for conservatives to be talking about?
Or do you think that we should be more kind of focused on the kind of Ron Paul energy that used to exist?
Ron Paul did have a lot of energy, didn't he?
Ron Paul is the opposite of a narcissist.
Every time he got a compliment, he's like, it's not about me.
It's about all of you.
It was like the Donald Trump movement before Donald Trump.
Yeah, it was, yeah, a lot of energy.
There were a lot of people.
There were a lot of people around that.
And I think that any kind of coalition needs, you need personalities like that and people who can really motivate and inspire and get people engaged.
I think every issue should be on the table.
We are in such, and maybe it doesn't seem like it, but I really think that for the first time in maybe perhaps my life, I don't know that I've ever seen such a coalition that has existed on the right like it does today.
The last election, there were more Hispanic Americans voting Republican than we've seen since, and black Americans voting Republican since what, Nixon?
Which is, it's amazing.
You have people who in 2016 loved the discussion of just immigration, of jobs, just the simple issues that appealed to them.
Because people can't pay their bills with pronouns.
They can't pay their bills with what bathroom should they use.
They can't pay their bills with any of that stuff.
And that's, you know, in 2016, that's when Trump really focused on that with his message.
And that's, I think, what started really pivoting a lot of people to rethink where they were politically.
And they left the Democrat Party.
They were assailed by the media.
These were people who dutifully voted for Barack Obama.
They dutifully voted for Clinton.
They dutifully supported every candidate that the Democrat Party threw to them.
But they were underserved and ignored for so much, so much, so many administrations.
And then they see somebody who's actually coming up.
And then because Trump was talking about it, a lot of other Republicans started modifying their messaging as well and really started focusing in and putting faces with these stories, putting like on immigration.
Instead of just talking about and giving crime statistics, you know, Trump brought out Jameel Shaw Sr., whose son was the star athlete and someone who had entered the country illegally and was a criminal and had a record.
And because this person wasn't deported, was able to be in the streets of Los Angeles and murder his star athlete son and with him his hopes and dreams.
And putting a face with those kind of stories and really having that messaging, that wide, I mean, that brought a lot of people, Charlie, you remember, it brought a lot of people to the Republican Party, to the right in general, lowercase L's, maybe even a couple of capital L libertarians.
But that coalition, it's tough to maintain it.
It's that 80-20 rule.
And that's going to be really, I think, the true test of the party.
And can that be maintained?
Can that coalition be maintained going forward?
And I think that's, you know, right now it is.
And I think everybody's, you know, it's between freedom and tyranny.
It's just as simple as that.
I mean, people are choosing freedom.
So walk me through what you think the conservative movement should stand for because there's a lot of different opinions on that, where it should be freedom or tyranny.
Well, so, so, okay, let me ask you, do you think we should challenge neoliberalism?
Like, do you think we should say it's a great thing to trade with China?
Like, this is the thing that we're wrestling with, right?
Should we say we want more people in our country?
Right.
This is something that I think is really interesting.
And for me personally, I've become quite honestly disgusted with neoliberalism and some of the Republicans that have run our party.
And because I think it's all just been a massive corporate scheme to get us to hate ourselves and not have children.
That's the thing, isn't it?
Isn't that like a spirit?
We're at this really interesting crossroads where conservatives, like with the instance of corporatism, conservatives traditionally haven't been brought up or encouraged to think of corporations in that way.
Whereas I think a lot of capital L libertarians have always viewed corporations that way, maybe some smaller L libertarians as well.
I don't trust anyone.
So I view everybody that way, but I'm a cynic.
So, you know, that's a whole different other thing.
But when you start seeing, well, because conservatives haven't traditionally been brought up to think like that, they find themselves now, we're all in this era where corporations, maybe they've acted like that before, but not at the extent that they have been acting like that now and not so blatantly.
I mean, you have social media companies where Twitter and Facebook, these are corporations that have been acting as agents of the state.
You have other corporations out there doing the same thing.
We have Operation Checkpoint where banks and other financial institutions, some of which have been helped with taxpayer money, some have not, have been acting as agents of the state in which they basically want to drum out firearm business.
Yeah, Operation Chokepoint, drum out firearm business, going after things like pawn shops, all that stuff.
So I do think that we are at the moment where I understand how people want to, because I almost can argue both sides of this, but I think in the past like couple of months, I finally have come to a position on it because at first I'm like, oh, I can't compromise the principle of not wanting to tell private business what to do.
I'm so far past that.
See, I know.
See, that's where I am so cautious in that.
And I keep putting the brakes on.
I keep because my first instance is to whip off a heel and just like go barbarian on somebody.
So and that's, and I'm like, okay, Dana, let's roll it back.
Let's bring it down.
Let's see, you know, let's just, let's ask all the questions and see, you know, is there a different way that we could maybe approach this?
And, but I, I, when they start acting as agents of the state, I think that they're assuming that liability.
I think that they're, they're assuming, they're inviting that, that sort of, that sort of treatment.
Um, and I know a lot of conservatives struggle with this, and I understand that because they're very hesitant, and they also don't want to be baited into inadvertently creating a new precedent that could ultimately come back and hurt them.
So I understand their caution.
They're not doing it to be contrarian.
I think that they've just, they're so shell-shocked that they don't know exactly how to remedy that problem.
But it is a problem like Section 230, all of this other stuff that we, you know, and not just with tech, but with, you know, I mean, just businesses in general.
So it is, it's a new realization for conservatism, if that makes sense.
Yes.
And I remember you called yourself a conservatarian before.
I've used that term as well.
But I think it's really interesting.
And I totally share this and I still have part of this is this caution and this restraint.
Like, I don't want to use government power because the, you know, the government's terrible.
And obviously we hate the government largely.
I mean, outside the middle.
We hate the abuse of power.
Yeah.
Anything outside of Article 1, Section 8, we don't like it.
Yeah.
So FTC, IRS, DEA, all of that, right?
Be totally abused, then it has been abused.
What I think has not existed, though, is what happens if Google's more powerful than your government?
What about then?
No one ever stopped to ask that question because they didn't think it was possible.
Right.
And because of technology and because of merger and acquisition culture in Silicon Valley, where they buy up their competitors, we're kind of there.
Like what we're seeing with BlackRock right now.
Well, so let's talk about that, right?
So some people on Twitter think it's perfectly fine for a company with $8 trillion in assets to go being single-family homes.
$9 trillion, I think.
Huh?
$9 trillion, I think.
I think that they should, I think it should be illegal.
Do they receive government?
Like, how close are they to the Federal Reserve?
Do they just get like a stream of, I think it's Jack Pasebik tweeted out.
I think they get some Fannie and Freddie.
Ah, see, that changes things.
And they also manage a lot of pension money.
But let's pretend they were just all a bunch of brilliant Wall Street people, which obviously is usually not the case.
Is it right to say like we want to create a renting culture?
So no one who shovels their driveway voted for Joe Biden.
No one who shovels their own snow voted for Joe Biden.
Like, go find me that person.
That almost contradicts with a lot of the, I mean, the idea to create that kind of society does almost, I mean, it kind of contradicts with the earlier sentiment in the Federalist Papers when the founders were arguing with each other about property ownership and taxation.
Totally.
And that, I mean, anti-Federalists were right about a lot.
And it brings up a lot of, brings up a lot of really big questions because I think when public money comes into it, that's a game changer.
I am, just to give you where I fall politically, I Republicans are too liberal for me.
I tend to vote Republican, but I am very, if it's not Article 1, Section 8, it should be abolished and done away with entirely.
So that would be a lot of things.
Oh, I totally agree.
And then everything else be determined by the state according to the state's constitution or how people want to amend it.
But everything has become too federal, too corporatized, too, too big.
Yeah, too big.
Society is becoming too big to fail.
I've come to the sad realization, we're never going to get rid of these departments.
And some people are like, oh, you're thinking too small.
No, we have to deal with what is.
And either we're going to use political power and public policy to preserve what matters, or we're going to be principled while we manage the decline of the greatest country ever.
Hey, guys, you guys have heard me talk with my friend Kelly Shackelford before.
Kelly Shackelford from First Liberty is a good person.
Look, we've talked about court packing.
It's the tool of left-wing authoritarians.
Hugo Chavez packed Venezuela's Supreme Court with his socialist cronies and paved the way for his tyrannical regime.
But now Joe Biden and American socialist radicals want to pack our Supreme Court with four new liberal justices.
Court packing isn't some policy idea to improve our courts.
It's a coup, a coup to take away your constitutional freedoms and turn America into a socialist country.
That's why First Liberty Institute, the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated to defending religious liberty in America, is doing something about it.
First Liberty recently launched supremecoup.com.
That's supremecou.com to serve as a one-stop shop in the fight against court packing and help patriots like you learn the truth about what's happening in the courts.
But more importantly, there's a big take action button so you could do something to stop the Supreme Court coup.
So do me a favor, support Kelly Shackelford in this and get involved.
If you want to defend our God-given freedoms and stop the left's court packing scheme, head over to supremecou.com slash Kirk.
That's supremecou.com slash Kirk.
S-U-P-R-E-M-E-C-O-U-P dot com slash Kirk.
What do you say to people who question whether or not we're getting baited into creating a precedent where that big government then can turn around and be used against us?
They might be right.
There's no other choice.
Wow.
That's where I always go right up to that line.
We need to pay people to have children.
Oh, no.
Absolutely.
No.
With what money?
Our money.
Public money?
Of course.
No.
We need to fix the declining birth rate.
No.
We're bringing in Nicaraguans and Honduras.
That's how you persuade people with...
Yo, no, no, you got to persuade people.
You need to subsidize what you like.
No, I don't believe that.
That's where I stopped.
That's where I stopped.
Let's explore that.
Why?
Because I don't believe in the government getting involved in those kind of decisions.
Because it's for individuals to do.
Individuals to decide.
Free society.
We're appealing to a government to solve our problems, which is the antithesis of the conservative ethic.
No, that's libertarianism.
Conservatism makes clear calls of what's right and what's wrong.
Having children's good.
Having children's good.
But that doesn't necessarily mean, however, that you then can subsidize it with taxpayer dollars.
Because we subsidize all sorts of things.
Doesn't mean that it makes it okay.
We subsidize jail.
Doesn't mean that it, well, I mean, jail.
Well, state jail, that's a whole other issue, kind of.
But just because it's, just because they subsidize some things doesn't mean that everything should be subsidized.
Because maybe some of those things shouldn't be subsidized.
What's more important than like...
What's more important than free will?
I'm not saying you should be forced to have children.
No, but you should force other people to pay for them.
That's what it's doing with public money.
Well, if you're part of a society, you have to replicate.
No, that's not exactly what the social contract is.
Whose social contract?
Rousseau's, Hobbes, or Locke's?
No, that's, I mean...
Which one do you believe in?
I think all of them are at some point.
I think there's a little bit of socialism at all in some point of it.
I think people should be a free society, like two steps above anarchy, free society.
Wow.
That's libertarianism.
Article 1, Section 8, and then everything else.
That's why I don't like subsidization of the, you know, too big to fail, big banks, housing, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and then to pay people to have kids.
That's what Russia does now.
It's awesome.
That's what Hungary does.
Hungary has reversed their declining birthright.
And they're also Eastern bloc countries with Eastern Bloc mentality.
What's wrong with people?
They believe in the family.
There's no buildings higher than the church.
They have a declining birthday.
They also have breadlines.
They have breadlines.
What are you talking about?
This is Russia.
Russia pays people to have kids and have females.
Yeah, they love their people.
Yeah, I don't, I think that there's better ways to show that than to.
No, but like, this is an interesting conversation.
It's like, if something's going wrong, should we do something about it?
Like, we have a population collapse.
Right.
500,000 less American-born children this year than last year.
We were.
We went from barely maintaining our population rate to I think now we're like, what, one, we're like below it now.
Yes.
And it's that, that is, I was trying to remember how much below, I just talked about this last week.
We were about 15, 20 years ago maintaining.
That's changed.
Now, how quickly that's going to continue to decline.
Pakistan, though, they're maintaining and more.
Yeah.
They also have a different, whole different view.
Yeah.
Just kind of social commentary, though, from my opinion.
Right.
Is not is not adequate.
We have to use political power to do good things, like having lots of children.
I don't know if I agree with using that kind of, because it's not political power seems to be a misnomer.
It's still government power, isn't it?
Yeah, but the people gave it.
We didn't take it.
We didn't like stage a coup.
People voted for us to have that power.
Responsibility Requires Personal Agency00:11:26
Yeah, but just because you're not.
It's consent of the government.
They gave us power.
They said, please fix my country.
With limitations.
Of course, though.
I mean, it's not unconstitutional pay people to have children.
Well, I don't know if I would agree to that.
Well, why wouldn't it be?
Because that's, well, I think taxation, if it's coming from public money, taxation is theft.
I think that's unconstitutional, first and foremost.
So if you're talking about taking public money, I agree with that in principle, but outside of the abstraction.
It's not an abstraction, though.
That's totally funded.
You have to fund the government within its means.
Article 1, Section 8, things that are, you know, your interstate highways, et cetera, et cetera.
All of the minutiae.
Talkboard politics.
Like we live.
No, that's the Constitution.
I know, but we live in big government.
It's here.
I don't like it.
I'm not going to get acclimated to it.
Okay.
So, like, it's either we're going to fix the declining birth rate or not.
Well, it's more than the declining birth rate.
I'm just using that as an example.
No, I know, I know.
But I'm not going to be acclimated to having the government.
I can't ever, I don't like it.
I can't.
And maybe, I mean, yes, we were born in it already.
We were born into crony capitalism.
We don't even have a pure capitalist system.
But I think doing using the government in ways that are antithetical to our limited government beliefs, because that's what we're expanding government.
Like the moon project, that was good, right?
Yeah, but tungsten don't make a right.
But like going to the moon, that was cool.
Going to the moon could be argued as something that's defense.
Okay.
So it's defense to have more children.
So we don't have to bring in Elon Omar to our country.
If we had American-born children, we'd have Somalis in our country.
There's nothing wrong with bringing other people into the country either.
Why?
What are you talking about?
I mean, an illegal process and based on a meritocracy.
I used to believe that.
You used to.
When did you stop believing that?
What changed?
When I started to see the real motivation behind mass migration.
Like, for example, I don't think it's a good thing that Elon Omar's here.
So you mean you don't believe Joe Biden when he told American troops that it's climate change that's driving.
I think it's corporate oligarchy that wants cheap labor and the Democrats want cheap votes.
Right.
And then so they want a lot of idle time for it.
There's Republicans in there, too.
Oh, of course.
Lindsey Graham and like Mitt Romney.
Like, I don't think it's a good thing that Elon Omar is here.
I would rather have American families have like 10 kids per family and we subsidize that than being like, you know what?
Let's go bring in another.
Yeah, that's just welfare to me, though, to subsidize families.
It's just another formula.
Okay, so you would get rid of the earned income tax credit.
I would get rid of taxes.
Okay, but I'd get rid of the IRS.
I get rid of all of it.
Graduated sales tax.
Right.
Article 1, Section 8 expenditures.
But like here we are.
Here's like a very simple, like that's abstractionist.
It's not going to happen.
No, that's that concrete.
Welfare, the kind of like paying for people to have families.
Who knows at this point?
Okay.
Honestly, I mean, everything is so crazy.
I mean, if you told me that Joe Biden was going to be president like 10 years ago, I would have said you're on crack.
And I probably agree with you on all those principles, but I'm also looking at this beautiful republic.
Right.
And there's like five things that we can do to actually fix it.
And this is a really interesting conversation.
The biggest thing is people can show up to vote.
Some are.
Some aren't.
Most people don't.
There's huge significant percentages of Republicans that don't show up to vote.
That's right.
I agree.
That, to me, is the travesty.
That's a huge travesty because we're talking about changing things where if people were motivated enough to vote and they went out like for, I mean, I looked for in Georgia when they had the special election and I get it that you have people like Lynn Wood down there who was saying, oh, it's vote.
I totally agree with you.
I mean, Trump is like, go vote, go vote, go vote.
And Lynn Wood's saying the opposite, going down there and holding these rallies.
And I can't remember what number her district is.
Marjorie Taylor Greene's district, the turnout was so low.
It's northern Georgia.
Low.
So low.
There were 600,000 white male rural voters that didn't show up.
I wonder who they're going to vote for.
Probably not Raphael Warnock.
No.
No, I would probably.
But they didn't show up to vote.
They didn't show up to vote in a special election that decided who's going to be setting the calendar for the Senate.
That's decided who's going to.
And it was just like, you have all these people out here that are talking about things that they could do, and they can't be prevailed upon to do one of the most simplest things.
But then there's for all of the ways to figure out how to save the Republic.
That's one of the most basic things.
It's one of the most basic ways to start.
A lot of people are completely divorced from civic engagement, period.
They're divorced from civic participation.
They're divorced from even having any kind of involvement in their school board elections.
And the town where we live in, for instance, municipal elections, I don't, I think there was a record number of people that came out to vote, and still it was only like 60-something percent of people who came out to vote, which floors me that that's a record number when you could have 100% of people come out to vote.
And we ended up taking back the school board.
was a big OCRT fight by over by a little over 70%.
And that's when people, when conservatives, when limited government people engage, we win every time, not just some of the time, every single time.
I have never seen an election fight where we lose when we are all in and we are engaged.
But the problem is, is I think that some people think it's one and done.
Or they're like, okay, we got our guy in, our job's done, or we did it, we cast our vote, our job's done.
Freedom requires so much more from people than that.
So much more from people than that.
But they get lazy and then they want to outsource.
Conservatives will outsource activism, just like progressives will outsource responsibility to the government.
Yes.
So how do you think we fix that?
Well, that's a great point.
You're always going to have some people who are not going to want to get involved.
This is the nature of humanity.
You're going to have those people.
But I think really pressing upon them and telling them this is when, I mean, actually telling the stories.
Don't just get, you know, don't just give them the statistics.
Tell them the stories.
Like these are, you know, a mom in my town who decided she wanted to stand up, a Cuban immigrant family who created businesses and they love America more than any white progressive I've ever seen who get out there and they wanted to speak out against indoctrinated racism that is CRT.
They get out, they engage, they run for seats and they win.
And to tell those stories to inspire people to get engaged and to be willing to risk it because liberty is not supposed to be comfortable and it doesn't guarantee happiness.
You've got to provide that for yourself.
You just have the opportunity.
That's all liberty is, is opportunity.
You have to make it.
It's not a comfortable existence.
That's why I'm like, I don't want to pay people to have families in the United States because if you want a republic, then you have to keep it.
It's not the government's responsibility.
And it's un-American to outsource any of our civic participation, our engagement, or our advocacy to anybody else but ourselves.
How would you define liberty?
That's a good question.
I think just freedom to freedom to take advantage of opportunity or create opportunity, freedom to pursue, nothing's guaranteed.
That means assume risk also.
And responsibility.
And responsibility.
It's a double-edged sword because not everybody makes the right decision.
Do you think a nation that has large families and has a declining divorce rate is more or less likely to want to preserve liberty?
Probably less likely.
Less likely?
You think large families may...
Or no, I meant like countries with...
Yeah, so like, for example, if we had a declining divorce rate and we had more children, do you think that kind of a nation would want to preserve liberty more?
Well, probably more than the ones with the age of 15.
So we should do the thing that makes liberty more sustainable.
But that doesn't mean we use government.
Why wouldn't we?
If it's a way to get it done, it's been, we have proven that certain government policies can have a certain output.
Like we built an interstate system.
It's kind of cool.
Yeah, but that's something that's actually protected by the Constitution.
That's actually literally listed in the numerator powers for you can work on interstate roadways, but there's certain things that you can't do.
Provide for the general welfare.
How about that?
No, not with my tax money.
It's welfare.
It's just welfare.
It's an awful lot of people.
Provide for the general welfare is literally in the constitution.
No, paying people to have kids is grifting.
It's welfare.
We already earned income tax.
We already do that.
But that doesn't mean that you just add on to it.
Just because.
But if it works, then do more.
How does it work, though?
Really?
The earned income tax credit works?
That's why we have such a declining birth rate.
Well, it's not nearly enough.
We should give people like $10,000 a year per kid.
Why not give them $1 million per kid?
$20,000.
This sounds like the same argument about minimum wage.
No, you know why this is different?
Why?
Because the moral good for a society is children.
Some things are better than others.
There's a hierarchy of the good.
We should be unafraid to say some things are true and some things are untrue.
Children are great, but not paying people to have children.
But if children are great and a society exists with it and be a good person.
But then if you're paying people to have kids, you're going to have people who have kids that are not going to want to take care of them.
Then what happens?
You have society that hopefully steps up.
You're always going to have external.
So it's like it turns into this like weird Orwellian movie.
It's already going there.
You look at Victor Orban in Hungary.
They have a declining divorce rate.
Every study shows they're happier and they have more children per capita than ever before.
And they don't have to bring in Middle Eastern labor to get their jobs done.
Well, good for them.
We should replicate that.
Not with our government, though.
You're right, our government.
So anyway, it's a good discussion because I don't want to sit idly by while I'm like, you know what?
We have this political power that people gave us, but I'm not going to do something because I'm afraid that that power will be abused.
That just seems so opposite.
I look at it as I don't want to do something if it's in a contradiction to my principle.
That's how I do it.
But why have the principle if the nation will crumble while you stand on that principle?
Then that's my penalty for not being a good enough advocate.
Okay.
Well, that's where you and I differ.
That's the beauty of freedom.
It's a double-edged sword because it guarantees that you can pursue opportunity, but at the same time, not everyone makes the same choices as you.
No, of course.
And a lot of people are incompatible with liberty.
Not everybody wants to assume the responsibility of it.
So do you think liberty is sustainable?
I do think it's sustainable.
How?
You might be right.
No, I think it's sustainable, but I think it also has to be, people have to be raised to be self-sufficient.
That's why self-sufficiency and virtue were so prized and discussed by the founders.
I mean, it's because in order to have a virtuous government, you have to have a virtuous people.
You can't have a bunch of, you know, criminals and think that you're going to get from these people virtuous representations that are going to run your government well.
That's not going to happen.
So virtue and responsibility and self-sufficiency, these are absolutely crucial to maintaining liberty.
So those, I agree.
So you think the state should take no stance in trying to foster those things?
I don't think it's the state's responsibility.
I think when the state has to step in, I think that's when people in the church have failed.
I think we're there for sure.
Oh, I think that I, well, I have my, I have my criticisms with how certain pastors have been focusing maybe a little bit too much on the plaid shirts and the worship service.
Yeah, and all the songs sound like Hillsong stuff.
Yes.
Yeah, I could sit here.
There's like a fun song that's going around on the internet where it's just like they it's it sounds like it literally I thought it was a hillsong song and then I was listening to the lyrics and I'm like, oh my gosh, they're making fun of this kind.
Okay, I see.
It's like soulless.
It's like, gosh, what is that phrase?
It's like soulless blues.
I don't know.
It's kind of, it kind of sounds like that a little bit.
But no, it is.
I've always thought that, and I actually talked about this today, because Marxism can't continue without selfishness and without the vices of humanity.
That's what it survives on.
And that stuff comes into being when people, they don't understand, like in the Gospels, it's always like stewardship is voluntary and it's voluntary for the edification of the spirit.
Conservatism Is Not Religious Dogma00:02:19
And you were called to that.
God gives free will wherein tyrants don't.
And that's the one thing I'm like, if God's not going to, if God's not going to give it, then why am I going to advocate for it?
You know, if he's not going to sit here and deny someone free will, why would I deny someone free will by way of where other their tax dollars would go or et cetera?
And just because my government doesn't operate like that right now doesn't mean I still don't want those things.
But when it comes to the church and when it comes to the family, I really think that a lot of pastors out there have their, I understand they want to win souls.
I get that.
Some of them want to win souls.
Some of them want to live in big houses and sell a lot of books and be that kind of pastor.
You know, I mean, let's be real.
Trust me, I've been very vocal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's really when people fail to be good voluntary stewards for edification of the spirit, that's when this other stuff is allowed to move in.
Because if you're not going to be a good steward, if you're not going to be that person, you know, the good Samaritan, then there's going to be something that is going to move in and use that as leverage to do it for you.
And so that's where, I mean, honestly, that's what I think it is.
It's almost like punishment for not being a good steward voluntarily.
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So the church is totally unengaged.
Protect Your Private Data Online00:02:21
Hopefully, we can change that.
Yes, we need to change that.
Do you think that this is a very interesting question?
Do you think that you can be a conservative while being an atheist?
I think that conservatism is not a religious principle.
I think it's a practice of, I think that I think it's a practice of limited government and it's a practice of, I think you can still have, you know, a good moral standing.
But I do think at some point, if it's not rooted in anything, how secure is it?
How secure is your virtue?
What is it rooted in?
Totally.
That's where I have questions.
I completely agree.
And not passing judgment, but I have questions.
I think that if anyone wants to call themselves a conservative, that can agree to these things.
Right.
But I think a transcendent order is fundamental to conservatism.
Well, where does virtue come from?
What is it rooted in?
Exactly.
So it's like, how are you able to make, you know, how are people able to make the determinations if they don't have that grounding?
And that's how do you know a line is crooked unless you have a straight line to compare?
Exactly.
So this is awesome.
I really enjoyed this, actually, because this is really what's kind of going on in the conservative movement.
It is.
And I haven't come here lightly.
I'm just, I'm at a place where I see this beautiful gift we've been given by God, this country, decline and crumble.
I see a couple things that could, I believe, could be done that could help.
And who knows?
It might actually be absolutely terrible.
But I'm not kind of going to just sit idly by and like just win the argument, lose the country.
But at least you want to propose ideas and have discussions.
Well, you're super provocative about those ideas.
But people need to have conversations and they're afraid to have provocative conversations.
And have you noticed, I mean, even playing devil's advocate isn't allowed in conversation anymore.
People want to assume the absolute worst intent of what someone says, as they want to use that as an argument as opposed to having any kind of intellectual argument themselves.
So I've become more libertarian on one issue, which is guns.
And I think you and I agree on this.
There's an awful nominee up for HPC.
David Chipman.
Just rant on this.
Oh, David Chipman's a bad guy.
I'm not a fan of David Chipman.
David Chipman looks like a kind of guy who's never had to draw down on anyone.
David Chipman looks like a guy who's never had to do any kind of drill ever.
I mean, David Chipman looks like his reflexes are about as slow as your grandma.
I mean, that's who David Chipman is.
David Chipman has more passion for going after law-abiding gun owners than he has to actually understand firearm and firearm law.
And I can say that confidently.
David Chipman And Gun Control00:10:22
I've read so many things that he's written.
I think I've watched every single interview that he's given.
I watched every single second of every bit of testimony that he has given in front of in front of Cindy Judiciary.
I've looked at all of this.
This guy is, he's a tyrant.
He is a blue and on conspiracy theorist tyrant.
That's exactly who this guy is.
This guy was, he wasn't at Waco.
He came in after.
He was a Waco agent.
He was a case agent.
For no reason.
It's like saying, you know, I ran Lehman Brothers.
Hire me to work on the.
Oh, no, that's the one thing that gun control activists will try to use.
If you bring that up, they're like, well, he wasn't, excuse me, Charlie, he wasn't at Waco.
Well, at least we agree now that Waco was a mistake.
It took us like 20 years, right?
Am I right, Chris?
Why did it take 20 years for people to think that it was?
Honestly, Netflix.
Really?
Yes, I'm telling you.
Am I right, Brian?
It was everyone can see now that Janet Reno, the whole gang, they totally went after David Koresh with way too much militaristic power.
Oh, I'm not a David Koresh apologist.
Probably was doing some.
I have a funny story about that.
Oh, you have to tell me.
So I have, I like to go to weird places.
And so this is like probably, this is such a weird story.
So it started, we were at Ted Nugent's.
He doesn't, he, he lives in around Waco.
We were at Ted Nugent's house and eating some venison.
You know, we were eating some venison sausage.
He chilled with his hands.
He actually did, yeah.
And we, well, maybe not with his hands, but he totally like, you know, feel dressed and all that stuff.
And then Simain fried it up.
And we were shooting guns, blowing stuff up.
And we were leaving.
And I'm like, you know what?
We're actually not that far from the Branch Davidian compound was.
And I'm like, let's start.
I watched so much of this as a kid on television.
I just, I want to see it.
You know, it's like for the same reason that people drive by the, you know, the JPC.
And because it's weird how reality diminishes a place to where it looks so much smaller and so much more attainable than when you're younger and you're watching it on TV where it looks huge and crazy.
And so we went there and I was with some show folks and when I was at the Blaze.
And so we drove there and it was, it was so, I mean, beautiful country.
Drive down this quaint little gravel road, beautiful, beautiful Texas Hill Country fields on either side.
And you come up to this very nondescript fence.
And if you had not known what had happened there all these years ago, you would just think that this is just like really pretty ranch property.
Well, they have like a memorial there and there were, I mean, they still have the old burned out shell of the compound that was there and there were a couple of trailers that were there.
So we were out of the car and we were just kind of looking at it.
And I had a ton of guns in my car, tons of guns.
I had like two guns on me, knife, K-bar, everything.
And we are there looking at stuff and this other, this other car drives up.
Oh my gosh, the cult is still there.
And that's how we learned that.
And there was like the head cult guy.
I don't know.
Do you call them pastor, preachers, priests?
I don't know.
Koresh's like heir.
No.
So this guy was the guy that Koresh ran off when they got into the big fight and over like their doctrinal cult stuff.
I don't even know what was different.
And he ended up coming back.
And so he lived there in this trailer.
And it was so weird.
So he comes up and they'd find like a different piece of property.
You would think.
But it is really pretty country out there.
And so about this time, one of the guys that we were with is this older gentleman.
He's like, you know, probably old enough to be our dad's.
And he got real weird.
And he's like, oh man, I was here when this happened.
And we're like, what?
And he was like, yeah, I was in that tree over there and I could feel the heat from the fire.
And I'm like, why didn't you tell us this sooner?
Maybe before we came here and, you know, you had to relive this.
This is crazy.
So yeah, the cult guy came and wanted to convert us and it didn't happen.
You didn't join the branch division?
No, I didn't.
But I'm like, man, if anybody wanted to get froggy, I have so much ammo and so many guns in my car.
I will say they do respect Second Amendment rights.
But it was, I mean, well, and they weren't actually, nobody ever actually got them on the charges that they had, that they were.
Not even close.
No.
And so a lot of young people are listening to us.
Like, what are you talking about?
Waco, Baylor, Barris.
No, no, no.
Waco was an incident.
Yes.
You want to tell the story?
So what ended up happening is that there, because everybody focuses on there were charges of child molestation, child abuse that were never actually substantiated according to a congressional report.
And I mean, I have kids.
I love kids.
I will murder with my bare hands a child abuser.
I will do it unprovoked.
If you're a child abuser, I'll murder you to death.
I don't care.
And I'll gladly serve the time for it.
So that's my thought.
So what ended up happening is how all of this began was they thought that they were basically illegally manufacturing firearms and they were receiving like lowers and just like basic, you know, like gun kits like other, you know, everybody else does.
And so the accusation was that they were involved in illegal weapons manufacturing.
And instead of waiting for David Koresh to, you know, go out, he went to the post office multiple times a week.
He was out around Waco, according to every single person who lived in Waco.
He was out and about regularly.
So if they suspected the guy, and I'm sure he was a weirdo, and I'm sure he probably wasn't the best dude.
I mean, I'm just going on, you know, the fact that he was a weirdo and a cult.
But they could have served that warrant on him at any point.
They didn't actually have to go and blow up a whole building and kill 25 kids.
After a siege.
Yeah, after a siege.
They could have easily have served him when he was out and about because they knew he was walking around because they had him under surveillance.
So they knew because they were seeing him with their own agents that were surveilling him.
They could have served and they could have arrested him.
None of this could have been avoided.
But what was the, the operation was called showtime.
And you can't have, I mean, just, you know, why would you call it showtime unless you wanted to have this big display of power and authority on television?
And they had the whole thing filmed.
It was like the ATF and the DOJ and the FBI and Janet Reno is running the whole thing.
And this guy now, David Chipman, wants to go be able to confiscate all of our guns.
No, he wants to, yeah, he wants to turn everything into an NFA item and basically put, which would put all of us under a registry.
We'd have to pay $200 per firearm just to ask the government to own a piece of private property that we're legally able to purchase and legally able to own.
And it's a legal item.
And that's where they're going, right, Dana?
That's what he wants to do.
Ammunition.
The ownership of it, not the ownership of the gun, but they want to tax the gun.
They want to make it impossible to own ammunition.
Put it on a registry so they know everything that you have.
And here's the other thing.
Because regular average everyday people can't actually access the NICS system.
So that's one of the, they want to expand the NICS system.
They want to put make everything as an NFA item, meaning National Firearms Act.
That's the National Firearms Act of the 40s.
You had the Gun Control Act, which was in 68.
And then you had the Brady Act, which is, which was in the 90s.
And so the NFA item, that was the thing that originally covered machine guns.
And that was after the Valentine's Day massacre, when it was mafia stuff, et cetera, et cetera.
1936 or something.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like, it's like old time stuff.
And so by making everything an NFA item, like if you wanted a suppressor, which is stupid that that's an NFA item, you got to get your tax stamp.
You got to do all that stuff.
If you want, you know, an SBR short-barreled rifle, you know, something that's select fire, three-round burst or full auto.
I mean, these are all things that are considered NFA items.
And so he wants to take something like, you know, an AR-15.
He wants to take something like, you know, a 22LR.
He wants to basically, that's why I keep saying the AR-15 is just the avatar for all semi-automatic firearms, because for most of these gun control activists, that's the easy thing for them to remember.
They don't really have to know much about it.
It's one of the most least used things in crime, FBI, UCRs.
I mean, all the data is out there on the internet where it's so hard to find, apparently.
But that's the goal.
The goal is to make everything be discoverable by the government.
In order to be an NFA item, depending on how people would be licensed, you may be opening yourself up to inspections of your home by the government to determine whether or not your NFA items, they're properly licensed that you have your tax stamp and they're properly stored if they decide to do some kind of New York safe act, a part of this as well.
I mean, who knows?
But these are all things that David Chipman has talked about.
So when they say that they're coming for your guns, like Beta War Works said, he, I mean, he's such a stupid man, but he was being honest.
And he meant it.
He said the quiet part out loud.
Yeah, he did.
He did.
No, I think the guns are the Rubicon that once that crosses.
That's not going to go well.
No.
And that's when they start trying to make everything in an NFA item.
And I'm very careful in talking about any kind of, I'm very careful in talking about any kind of conflict because I don't like the.
I don't like the mentality that we're all just red dawn characters or a bunch of gravy seals out there talking about how they're going to bust it up.
And I play Call of Duty too.
I don't believe all this stuff.
But here's the thing.
The people who talk about it aren't the ones who are going to be doing it.
The ones who are going to be doing it are my sons, my friend's sons, their friends.
Those are the people who are going to be doing it.
So you don't want to make the people who don't want to get involved mad.
Yeah.
Because that's the line you can't cross.
Because when those people commit to that kind of a loss, they're in it to win it.
And that's when it gets serious.
I agree.
Dana, this has been great.
Anything else you want to cover?
I think that's about it.
Thank you for speaking to our young women.
And we have to have you back again sometime very soon.
We're going to keep our eyes on this Chipman guy.
Yes.
Do so.
Yes.
And there should not be a single Republican that votes in favor of his confirmation.
I don't think there will be.
I hope not.
I hope not.
Susan Collins and Murkowski come from Second Amendment Loveham.
I'll fly myself up to any Republican state and I will fundraise against them personally on my own time and dime.
I can't imagine.
I can't imagine Murkowski can justify that in Alaska.
Oh, no, not in Alaska.
Not in Alaska.
That's what I'm saying, though.
I mean, that's, we would need a Murkowski or a Collins.
You never know, though.
Because just because they have an R by their name, don't think that they know God.
Trust me, I totally agree.
I mean, I just think it's terrible.
Dana, thank you so much.
Thank you, Charlie.
Good to see you.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
If you want to support our program, go to charliekirk.com slash support and email us your thoughts.