The Charlie Kirk Show - The Conservative Movement’s Identity Crisis with Matt Peterson
Aired: 2021-09-04
Duration: 43:46


=== The American Mind Podcast (02:51) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey, everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, conversation with my friend Matt Peterson, one of the smartest minds out there from the American Mind, AmericanMind.org.
[00:00:08]  How do we replace wise men with experts?
[00:00:11]  A very interesting take.
[00:00:12]  Also, just about the state of the country and where we are right now.
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[00:02:33]  Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show with us today.
[00:02:36]  It's a friend of mine from the wonderful American Mind and Claremont Institute, AmericanMind.org.
[00:02:43]  Also, the new founding and the firebrand pack.
[00:02:46]  We're going to get into all of that.
[00:02:47]  Matt Peterson, Matt, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:02:49]  Hey, thanks so much for having me on.

=== Facts Versus Credentialed Experts (07:31) ===

[00:02:51]  This is great.
[00:02:52]  So there's a lot I want to explore with you.
[00:02:54]  You really caught my attention in a podcast that you were doing, the American Mind podcast, that I don't plug a lot of podcasts, but I encourage people to check out.
[00:03:02]  It's wonderful, where you were talking about how we have replaced kind of this idea of a wise or complete man with a subject matter expert.
[00:03:12]  And then you went into great detail on how even in the, even when using math to its greatest purpose, it's an approximation.
[00:03:21]  Can you kind of recount that couple minute commentary you gave?
[00:03:25]  I thought it was so wise and it opened up my eyes to a lot.
[00:03:28]  Absolutely.
[00:03:29]  Well, first, thank you for plugging the American Mind podcast.
[00:03:33]  I always wonder doing podcasts, why do people listen to this, Steph?
[00:03:36]  But every once in a while, maybe we say something valuable as we pontificate all day, right?
[00:03:41]  So we're blessed to have that composition.
[00:03:43]  So what I was trying to say was in regard to Afghanistan.
[00:03:47]  I think you see this example, but you see this happening all throughout the regime.
[00:03:52]  And really what happened over the last hundred years is that people began to think that wisdom could be replaced by the social sciences, that you could take mathematics, you could break up problems into parts and really treat the problem of human nature as if it was kind of a statistical problem.
[00:04:14]  And the rise of the social sciences, you know, behavioral science, replaced prudence or the old school virtue of trying to figure out what the best thing to do in the circumstances is.
[00:04:25]  And you see over and over again the failure now of this approach to trying to solve for the problem of human nature.
[00:04:34]  And the truth of the matter is that human beings, wisdom in human beings takes into account all kinds of knowledge, right?
[00:04:43]  Into the whole of what it means to be human.
[00:04:46]  And the wise person is ultimately the standard by which you judge and not this idea that there's some mystical algorithm or formula out there where if we break things down into so many widgets, we can make policy decisions about what should happen in Afghanistan.
[00:05:00]  Does that make any sense?
[00:05:02]  It does.
[00:05:02]  And the problem is that you have a group of people that are not wise, but they're credentialed.
[00:05:08]  And they think that there's some sort of formula that they can implement either in Afghanistan or in public health.
[00:05:14]  And so you said something that was super interesting as well.
[00:05:16]  And I've been, I stole it the last couple of days.
[00:05:19]  And it's that the boomer Facebook people, like, you know, the 65-year-old guy on Facebook has actually been wiser when it comes to the Afghanistan issue or public health or masks or any of this than the experts because they're actually using what we would call common sense or practical knowledge or practical wisdom, where our own leaders almost reject that.
[00:05:39]  And they say, no, if it doesn't fit in a very tight formula, then it can't be possibly right.
[00:05:45]  Can you expand on that a little bit?
[00:05:47]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:05:48]  I mean, look, the credentials, as I think your audience well knows, are completely bogus at this point.
[00:05:55]  I mean, when you credential someone, ultimately, you know, it's just a judgment of a few other people who set up a system and say, you're good to go or you're not.
[00:06:06]  And think about grading.
[00:06:08]  You know, if you've ever been on the bad side of getting grades that you think are unfair, welcome to human life, but you're not wrong.
[00:06:16]  There's no perfect way to grade.
[00:06:18]  You can't create a perfect numerical scale and then put everyone into it.
[00:06:23]  And if you've ever been on the other side where you grade people, you realize, well, this person actually showed up to class, but didn't really understand the concept.
[00:06:30]  This person didn't show up to class, but did understand the concept.
[00:06:33]  How should I grade?
[00:06:34]  Should I reward for this factor or that?
[00:06:36]  At the end of the day, what grading really should be is just a judgment on the purpose on the part of someone you trust.
[00:06:42]  And so credentials are the same way.
[00:06:43]  You're giving someone a piece of paper because you and a bunch of other people have decided that they earned it.
[00:06:49]  Well, there's no formula for that.
[00:06:52]  And ultimately, if the judgment of those people is good, then the credential is good.
[00:06:57]  But if those people have problems and they're actually fools and idiots and don't understand what's going on, then the credentialing is worthless.
[00:07:03]  Well, and so they all say they have PhDs that was given based on, they say it's O objective, but there was some subjectivity to it.
[00:07:11]  At some point, somebody said your dissertation was worthy of credentialing you into the club.
[00:07:18]  And so they hide behind this kind of formulaic supremacy when in reality, they themselves were let into the cool kids club by somebody saying, oh, yeah, this is a good argument or a bad argument or this makes some sense.
[00:07:32]  And so this goes kind of back to what's been generally wrong with education, which is this idea that we can program human beings, that we can fit them into kind of this mathematic formula from the top down.
[00:07:47]  Can you talk a little about that of how the decline of higher education has participated directly to this and kind of the German historicist model that, you know, with the rise of science, then we can also program human beings?
[00:08:00]  Yeah, look, the idea was in an older, really more elite kind of view of education was, you know, say history and political science or politics.
[00:08:09]  You would read history.
[00:08:11]  That was part of politics like the founders did.
[00:08:13]  And you would think about principles and human nature in kind of a broad-based way.
[00:08:18]  You had a sense of virtues or habits that would make you good or able to see clearly about what ought to be done.
[00:08:24]  And you'd study human nature in kind of this broad-based way, more like the great books programs that are few and far between, but still exist today.
[00:08:31]  What happens after the Civil War in America is that the universities and graduate degrees start to appear for the first time.
[00:08:39]  Before then, like Abraham Lincoln, he could just apprentice to become a lawyer.
[00:08:43]  He didn't have to go to law school and get the credential from a bunch of people who handed them out.
[00:08:47]  He could just work with a lawyer in town and get to the point where the judgment of his peers, like he's good.
[00:08:54]  He's good to go.
[00:08:55]  When we established the grad schools, we all of a sudden created this credentialing system.
[00:08:59]  And the problem is we base the very idea of the universities here on this German historicist model, which worshiped social science and statistics and pretended that there's no such thing as morality isn't part of science.
[00:09:13]  There's a separation between facts and morality and human nature.
[00:09:18]  And basically all of philosophy is just a bunch of garbage and the old stuff is a bunch of garbage.
[00:09:24]  We base everything on stats and experimentation.
[00:09:27]  And of course, there's some truth to that when you, it's very successful when you think about technologically where we've come, right?
[00:09:34]  We learned a lot about how to manipulate nature.
[00:09:38]  But what we lost and what we really purposely lost, we jettisoned a long time ago, is the idea that you can reason about morality or politics in a broad, kind of commonsensical way.
[00:09:50]  And here's the ridiculous thing.
[00:09:52]  Leo Strauss pointed this out after the Second World War.
[00:09:55]  Even if you're a scientist, you still rely on common sense.
[00:09:59]  So you can lie to yourself that all of a sudden that stuff doesn't matter and you can somehow make an equation out of everything.
[00:10:05]  But in reality, like we all rely on common sense.
[00:10:08]  What's dangerous is when we have people who are credentialed who think they're doing very fancy, discreet breaking up of problems into quote unquote science when the problem is something like, how do we leave Afghanistan?

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=== Scrubbing Morality From Politics (09:51) ===

[00:12:50]  Right.
[00:12:51]  And so now I want to kind of segue into the conservative movement.
[00:12:54]  Then I want to talk about the Biden regime, which I do think is falling apart because they've been so ideological.
[00:13:00]  If they were just a little less ideological, I think they actually would have been able to navigate some of these things and not harm themselves politically.
[00:13:07]  But let's just talk about the conservative movement.
[00:13:09]  It seems that the conservative movement I grew up in was very, very focused on almost the social science emphasis, which is charts and graphs, GDP growth, you know, consumer price index, and almost lost what you and I would think is a more prudent approach of, well, is this really good for the country?
[00:13:27]  And can everything be explained in X, Y axis?
[00:13:30]  And in some ways, Donald Trump kind of blew that all up because he's like, yeah, I don't really care about your charts and graphs.
[00:13:34]  I know instinctively by talking to the welder and talking to the plumber and talking to my waiter at Mar-a-Lago, the country's going to hell and I'm going to fix it.
[00:13:41]  And so as we ask ourselves from a conservative movement standpoint, you know, kind of post-Trump or in between Trump, regardless if he's going to run, again, you know, how do we kind of de-emphasize the social science obsession and kind of get back to this more holistic approach of how to, how to govern ourselves?
[00:13:58]  Yeah, so I'm so glad you mentioned this.
[00:14:00]  It's so important.
[00:14:01]  I mean, what Trump did is bring back in a very simple way politics, I mean, which is the pursuit of justice, as the federalist papers, as Hamilton says, right?
[00:14:10]  You're going to pursue justice.
[00:14:11]  And if you lose it, if you can't attain justice, then you're going to go to a tyrant because that's ultimately the goal of politics.
[00:14:20]  And so what conservatives have done, sadly, for many decades is talk about making the federal register more efficient.
[00:14:27]  And they don't want to talk about moral claims or what's just and unjust.
[00:14:31]  The left talks about it all the time, social justice, right?
[00:14:34]  As they used to say.
[00:14:35]  And so therefore they win because they're talking about what's actually good for us.
[00:14:39]  And look, you can do all the STEM you want.
[00:14:41]  You can do all kinds of science-y stuff.
[00:14:43]  That doesn't tell you how to use the stuff you create with it, right?
[00:14:46]  I mean, as far as I can tell, the Nazis and communists sometimes were pretty good at STEM.
[00:14:51]  They had some great scientists.
[00:14:53]  Those trends ran out of time.
[00:14:55]  They didn't go to good places, though.
[00:14:57]  Exactly.
[00:14:57]  Exactly.
[00:14:58]  And so this is what we need to resurrect on the right.
[00:15:02]  We need to make moral claims and not be afraid to say, you know, this is wrong.
[00:15:06]  This is unjust.
[00:15:07]  And Trump would kind of do that in a basic way when he'd just say, these are our farmers.
[00:15:12]  Shouldn't we protect our people?
[00:15:14]  I mean, and that's the basic nub of justice, which is just, you know, defend friends and attack enemies, you know?
[00:15:20]  But beyond that, there's greater moral claims I think that we can make.
[00:15:24]  And we have to realize that you can't scrub the morality out of politics and you shouldn't be afraid of it.
[00:15:29]  Yeah.
[00:15:29]  And what I have to do when I travel sometimes to some of these audiences that are more secular in nature, but call themselves conservatives, is retrain them that we can make moral claims.
[00:15:39]  And now religious groups actually don't mind this as much because they really are used to, you know, differentiating good from evil or truth from lies.
[00:15:48]  But can you talk about where we went wrong in this in this regard?
[00:15:53]  Because when I spoke at a secular group recently, and again, I'm not saying secular is a pejorative, it's just how they were.
[00:16:00]  And they said, Charlie, everything sounds great, but who are you to say that some things are objectively good and objectively bad?
[00:16:07]  How do we navigate that question?
[00:16:08]  Because inevitably we get that.
[00:16:10]  Okay, so this is the great psyop of the last 150 years in higher education.
[00:16:16]  And what it was was to basically teach all of American elites that you can't reason about morality, that there's no rational basis for claims about what's good and bad.
[00:16:27]  And I know that we all think this because we're all moderns.
[00:16:30]  We've all been educated in this great, you know, American psyop, which, and it's, it's all lies.
[00:16:35]  The entire founding generation, even the most modern of them, thought that you could reason about morality.
[00:16:40]  Of course, people disagree about what's good and bad.
[00:16:43]  That's what politics is.
[00:16:44]  We disagree about what's good and bad.
[00:16:46]  But that doesn't mean that there is no good and bad.
[00:16:49]  Why is everyone arguing about it if it doesn't exist?
[00:16:51]  Why is one of the first things that a little kid does is say that's not fair?
[00:16:54]  That's not equal.
[00:16:55]  They have a sense of justice.
[00:16:56]  And so just because people argue about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
[00:16:59]  And it doesn't mean that it's not possible to look closely at human nature and figure out how we ought to act, what really makes us happy.
[00:17:06]  Granted, it's always messy.
[00:17:08]  Granted, we disagree, but it's actually a primitive and idiotic notion to say, you know what?
[00:17:13]  We can't really know anything about good and bad.
[00:17:16]  There's no rational basis to that.
[00:17:17]  It's just based on faith.
[00:17:19]  And that's idiotic.
[00:17:20]  And we've been taught that that's the educated way to think, right?
[00:17:24]  That's that we've been miseducated to think, oh, it's only faith-based claims that can say anything about good and bad.
[00:17:30]  And exactly, who are you to say it?
[00:17:32]  And the answer is, well, no, there are.
[00:17:36]  If we focus on the way human nature is, we can determine some things that will make us happy and some things that won't.
[00:17:43]  And grandma was right about this stuff.
[00:17:45]  Yes.
[00:17:46]  And there are objective goods for society and for people.
[00:17:50]  And so what happens, Matt, is then even if I can get people to agree on that, they say, well, that doesn't mean we should use state power in pursuit of those means, is that we should be able to call balls and strikes, but we need to be indifferent, non-interventionists, which I find hilarious because they also are regularly very aggressive about bombing other countries.
[00:18:06]  But anyway, it's kind of this domestic libertarianism, right?
[00:18:09]  Like we can proclaim our truth from our churches, but don't dare try to legislate morality, which of course I've lost patience with that argument.
[00:18:17]  But how do we persuade that?
[00:18:18]  Because you just did a wonderful job articulating the psyop, but I'm sure you run across this all the time, right?
[00:18:22]  The David French is like, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, I don't like drag queen story hour.
[00:18:26]  I think drag between story hour is awful, but I would represent the drag queen in court because that's what freedom of speech is all about.
[00:18:33]  Yeah, so exactly.
[00:18:35]  It's the problem that you face and we all face.
[00:18:38]  And how do you make this argument?
[00:18:40]  And I would say this.
[00:18:41]  First off, what I'm about to say does not necessitate a certain form of government.
[00:18:46]  In other words, you can still want government to be limited, right?
[00:18:50]  But to be really strong in what it does.
[00:18:52]  That's what the founders wanted.
[00:18:53]  Yes, they limited government, but they wanted a strong federal power that had power that went all the way down, right?
[00:18:59]  So you can, what I'm about to say does not, it doesn't mean we're communists or socialists or we want government to have all the power.
[00:19:05]  Or you're fascist.
[00:19:06]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:19:07]  Yes, yes.
[00:19:08]  Here's the truth.
[00:19:09]  The truth is all laws legislate morality.
[00:19:13]  There's no way out of it.
[00:19:15]  You can have traffic law.
[00:19:16]  Why do we have traffic law?
[00:19:17]  Well, that's not anything about morality.
[00:19:19]  That's just procedural.
[00:19:20]  No, it's not.
[00:19:21]  It's based upon the premise that human life is valuable and therefore we need to obey certain laws that restrict our freedom, right?
[00:19:28]  And that's what traffic law is.
[00:19:29]  All law legislates morality.
[00:19:31]  And it's ridiculous for us to pretend otherwise because law, it doesn't, it can't reach.
[00:19:36]  I mean, the left is wrong about this.
[00:19:38]  And the right is the right has been correct.
[00:19:40]  Legislating morality, I don't mean that law can get inside your soul and like physically shape you with its hand or something.
[00:19:46]  That's true.
[00:19:47]  We can't do that.
[00:19:48]  But on the other hand, it sets forth certain habits, right?
[00:19:51]  So you, it's like bumper bowling.
[00:19:53]  The law is external.
[00:19:54]  It's like bumpers on both sides of the bowling alley.
[00:19:57]  And it makes it so you kind of just have to move in one direction as opposed to another.
[00:20:01]  And it established habits, habits of life that then you hope turn into virtue.
[00:20:06]  This is what the founders thought.
[00:20:08]  They had no problem talking this way about law.
[00:20:10]  They knew that law legislated morality.
[00:20:12]  Now, does that mean law should legislate everything?
[00:20:14]  No.
[00:20:15]  Even the like medieval scholar, you know, say Thomas Aquinas would not say that all laws, we should have laws about every, you know, everything under the sun.
[00:20:23]  That's ridiculous.
[00:20:24]  But the key is law, by its nature, legislates morality because it establishes certain kinds of habits for human beings.
[00:20:33]  And you can't make the determination about what should be legal and what should not without making a moral claim.
[00:20:40]  And what's so promising is I finally find conservatives being open to accept this.
[00:20:46]  And I'll be honest, Matt, four years ago, I would have all my alarm bells would have gone off and I would have been like, road to serfdom, F.A. Hayek, you know, this is tyranny talk.
[00:20:55]  When in reality, it's the opposite.
[00:20:57]  That if you don't make these moral claims in a limited yet strong government, then all of a sudden you will get tyranny.
[00:21:03]  That's that's the that's the great irony is that if you don't get basic things right, human life is valuable, children should be protected, right?
[00:21:10]  I mean, just kind of this balance between the ancient and some of the fruits of the Enlightenment, which is free, you know, discourse and dialogue, then you're going to be stuck in some sort of a tyrannical or authoritarian government.
[00:21:23]  Yeah, it's so true.
[00:21:24]  And this is the founders, I mean, over and over again, they knew that licentiousness or freedom gone wrong would always lead to tyranny.
[00:21:33]  And so if you pretend that laws don't legislate morality, they're just neutral, what you'll get is the worst actors will change your law, just as happened in the last 30, 40 years in America.
[00:21:43]  The left will come in and change the law because you don't make moral claims and you pretend it's neutral.
[00:21:48]  And then they will create a situation in which people go, you know, the freedom gone wrong leads inevitably to tyranny.
[00:21:56]  And this used to be commonplace.
[00:21:57]  The founders said it all the time.
[00:21:58]  And it's a commonplace of Western political philosophy that if, you know, if you don't have good laws and people just become enslaved to their own desires, the next thing that happens is a tyrant takes over.
[00:22:11]  That's right.
[00:22:11]  So I want everyone to check out AmericanMind.org.
[00:22:14]  And I'm also going to plug new founding and your super PAC because this is really where the conservative movement, you can call it the new right, whatever, this is the best intellectual defense amongst other websites.
[00:22:26]  I'm not trying to outrank them, but I got to tell you, just some of the articles recently, Angelo Cotavilla's Graveyard of Narratives, I think that was on your website.
[00:22:35]  Maybe it was on American Graveyard.
[00:22:36]  That's AmericanMind.org.
[00:22:37]  Yep.
[00:22:38]  Yeah.
[00:22:38]  And then also the one, Michael Anton's, It's Not Happening and It's Good That It Is.

=== Leading A Conservative Counter Move (10:18) ===

[00:22:42]  It's just probably one of the most beautiful pieces I've read in recent memory.
[00:22:49]  Who's your wireless provider?
[00:22:51]  ATT, Verizon, or T-Mobile?
[00:22:53]  What if I told you PeerTalk uses the exact same network as one of those carriers, same towers, same exact coverage, but it literally costs you half?
[00:23:01]  I know it sounds crazy.
[00:23:02]  When I first heard about PeerTalk, I thought this is too good to be true.
[00:23:05]  But then I looked at some of their customer reviews.
[00:23:07]  Sarah from Albilene says, quote, the service is amazing.
[00:23:10]  Love the price.
[00:23:10]  The speed is quick.
[00:23:11]  The reception is perfect.
[00:23:13]  Angela from Midland says, quote, the absolute test was visiting my parents who live out in the country.
[00:23:17]  I've tried to use ATT, Sprint, and Verizon.
[00:23:20]  None worked until I went into town.
[00:23:21]  Peer Talk worked excellently at their house.
[00:23:23]  I was so excited.
[00:23:24]  Eugene from Granbury said, quote, good service.
[00:23:27]  Haven't any problems in our travels at all.
[00:23:28]  Switching is so easy.
[00:23:30]  You can keep your phone and they'll just send you a new SIM card.
[00:23:32]  It's literally just a new SIM card.
[00:23:34]  So you can get the same great service you have, but half the price.
[00:23:37]  Listen to this, unlimited talk, text, and six gigs of data for just $30 a month.
[00:23:42]  The average person is saving $400 a year.
[00:23:45]  So here's the deal.
[00:23:45]  Unlimited talk, unlimited text, plus two gigs of data for just $20 a month.
[00:23:50]  All you have to do is grab your mobile phone and dial pound 250 and say keyword Charlie Kirk.
[00:23:54]  That's pound 250.
[00:23:55]  Say keyword Charlie Kirk.
[00:23:56]  And what you do, you save 50% off your first month.
[00:24:01]  So now I want to transition to the current regime.
[00:24:07]  Some people were stunned at the accelerated pace that Biden and his allies have been implementing their agenda.
[00:24:13]  For those of us that follow them closely, we're not that surprised by it.
[00:24:17]  In fact, the only thing that surprises me is how unwise they've been at some of the implementation of it.
[00:24:24]  Give us a status update of the Biden regime.
[00:24:26]  I think their regime is starting to fall apart for reasons that I wouldn't have even expected.
[00:24:31]  What's your diagnosis?
[00:24:33]  Yeah, so I think, first off, you're right.
[00:24:35]  I mean, it wasn't surprising to any of us, right, that they went in and they had all kinds of plans and they were ready to implement all kinds of crazy things that are terrible for America and the world.
[00:24:44]  And of course, this is because the left is organized and is, as we were just saying, that they know what they want to accomplish.
[00:24:51]  They don't have to pretend it's neutral.
[00:24:54]  But I do think a funny thing happened along the way to the kind of tyranny they wanted to enact.
[00:24:59]  And that is their own incompetence caught up with them, right?
[00:25:03]  You want an old doddering guy to be in charge, and you also want your technocrats to come in who have all the fancy degrees and whatever.
[00:25:11]  Here's the problem.
[00:25:12]  You know, they're not able to govern in an effective way anymore because of their own incompetence.
[00:25:17]  So yes, they're doing terrible things every day.
[00:25:21]  But what's going on is in real time in front of the American people, it's becoming increasingly apparent in every sector, right?
[00:25:27]  Whether it's whether we're talking about the virus and the virus restrictions and mandates, et cetera, that things don't make logical sense anymore, right?
[00:25:36]  Whether you're talking about Afghanistan and the insane way in which we tried to withdraw, I mean, agree that we should get out, but the way it happened, right?
[00:25:44]  I mean, when you look at that, you can't hide it anymore.
[00:25:46]  And then you look at the unpopularity of Harris and the, you know, the doddering nature of Biden as he struts about the scene, totters about the scene.
[00:25:55]  And it's just, it's becoming harder to hide.
[00:25:58]  And I think that the reaction to that is real.
[00:26:03]  And you see people now, right, who are sort of in the middle if such a thing exists, who don't pay attention to what's going on, but they're aware that something isn't right.
[00:26:14]  And I think more and more people are essentially radicalized, right?
[00:26:17]  They're thinking, wait a minute, you're really going to make me get this vaccine or I lose my job?
[00:26:22]  Well, maybe I should move, right?
[00:26:25]  And that is happening every day in every sector, I think.
[00:26:29]  Yeah, so let's talk about kind of the corporate side of it in a second.
[00:26:33]  But just from the Biden kind of kind of power ruling structure, they seem to be falling out of favor with the American people.
[00:26:42]  They don't seem to care.
[00:26:43]  How do you process that?
[00:26:45]  They're seeming indifferent to normal checks and balances.
[00:26:49]  A normal president would kind of compensate a little bit, right?
[00:26:52]  Would not maybe hedge or how do there's two ways to process it, right?
[00:26:56]  Either they just don't care and it's like, we're going to run this thing out, or they have some sort of plan up their sleeves that's pretty insidious.
[00:27:04]  And I don't even want to guess what that is.
[00:27:07]  Yeah, well, I'll just say this.
[00:27:08]  I mean, I think that the problem is that they don't regard themselves as living in a full-fledged democracy.
[00:27:16]  They regard themselves as deserving, being deserving of the throne, and that anyone who opposes them is illegitimate, right?
[00:27:24]  And this is why Trump, he was illegitimate.
[00:27:26]  He was not a legitimate president because they have the divine right of kings in their minds.
[00:27:31]  They have the mandate of heaven in their minds.
[00:27:36]  And so there's a certain sense in which they don't care.
[00:27:39]  And by the way, look at what's happened over the last 20 years.
[00:27:41]  I mean, whether you're talking about, you know, California, say, the Prop A voting against gay marriage and the courts say, no, it doesn't matter what the people think.
[00:27:49]  Right now, the recall in California is a good example.
[00:27:52]  Will it matter that there's a recall election when it's going to be fortified?
[00:27:56]  That election is going to be fortified like crazy with a month for mail-in ballots and Gavin Newsom's political machines.
[00:28:01]  There's a sense in which these people think that they have transcended the democratic form of governance and they control the media, they control the technology.
[00:28:12]  And so you can just see them, they don't care.
[00:28:17]  And they're pushing everything to 11, right?
[00:28:20]  They're using cultural and commercial capital, all of it.
[00:28:24]  They're putting all of it on the line and just moving forward and leaving democracy behind.
[00:28:32]  And so then how do we as conservatives, and we have a lot of listeners to this program that run companies and give money generously to many different causes, how do we then counter move against that?
[00:28:44]  Right.
[00:28:44]  You're right.
[00:28:44]  They go to 11.
[00:28:45]  I mean, for example, the Department of Education just came out today and they said that if you have anti-mandatory mask mandates, you're in violation of the Civil Rights Act.
[00:28:54]  I mean, and by the way, all I have to say is Christopher Caldwell was right.
[00:28:58]  That's all I have to say.
[00:29:00]  And we are, by the way, we're plugging his book every day, Age of Entitlement.
[00:29:03]  It's that good.
[00:29:04]  And I was only made aware of it thanks to the wonderful fellowship I did with you guys at the Claremont Institute.
[00:29:09]  What is the proper counter move then, Matt?
[00:29:11]  Because people feel helpless.
[00:29:13]  People say, I get it, Charlie.
[00:29:14]  I agree with you.
[00:29:15]  If I have to listen to one more podcast of you telling me that we're living through a blitzkrieg, how do I fight back?
[00:29:20]  Yeah, so there's, look, in general, I have to say, asking the question is the first step, because once you get to the point where you realize voting is not enough, you know, just listening to podcasts isn't enough.
[00:29:34]  You have to take action.
[00:29:35]  And that's what, you know, thank God there's groups like yours bringing people in so they can actually be become activists.
[00:29:42]  And so, look, a lot of it is that you have to find other, what I say is find other people, surround yourself with other people who also want to take action.
[00:29:51]  And good things will come of that.
[00:29:54]  In my own life, I feel the same way.
[00:29:56]  And this is why I realize we need a cultural and commercial movement that ultimately points in the different direction from the woke borg.
[00:30:05]  And that's where new founding comes in.
[00:30:07]  We've created a company called New Founding that will newfounding.com.
[00:30:11]  You can sign up for our newsletter, which is about not buying products and services, not using services and buying products from people who hate you.
[00:30:19]  We have a lot of plans for that.
[00:30:21]  And that's not like one company trying to dominate them all.
[00:30:24]  We want to just be the flagship of a movement where medium-sized businesses who really have no one to represent them start joining alliances, creating new associations that move in a different direction.
[00:30:36]  We have all kinds of people who are talented who are ready to leave their jobs at fancy blue chip firms and organizations and blue cities because they're being persecuted.
[00:30:46]  They want to join with investors and other people to create new companies that look just point in a different direction, that are non-discriminatory, that really want to move people towards a way of life that's very different than the ugliness you see on the covers of lifestyle publications today.
[00:31:03]  And so we need to band together as a cultural and commercial movement to actually do business together and start to make informed choices about where we spend our money.
[00:31:13]  And I think everyone wants to do this.
[00:31:15]  There's a lot of other people we're working with do this.
[00:31:18]  We're taking a step at newfounding.com to just go out there and get after it.
[00:31:22]  But we need as many people as possible to start solving some of these problems.
[00:31:27]  And I'll say, the will is there, right?
[00:31:29]  The will is there.
[00:31:30]  We're going to need some of you who are listening to this to step up and lead that idea that you have that for X, Y, and Z. You need to go out on a limb and start asking people for advice and get funding for it and just charging forward.
[00:31:44]  And I can't say enough.
[00:31:45]  This is going to have to be led by younger people.
[00:31:47]  Boomers are not going to save us, as we know.
[00:31:50]  Yeah, I would love to talk about the generational dynamics.
[00:31:54]  Professor Azarad, I think I said that correctly, said something super interesting recently.
[00:31:59]  He wrote it somewhere because I read all your guys' stuff, where he said that, I don't think we've even started to fight till recently.
[00:32:07]  Do you agree with that?
[00:32:09]  Because some boomers find that to be heretical, fallacious.
[00:32:15]  Like, oh, no, we fought with Phyllis Schlafly and we fought with Reagan and we fought with Falwell and we fought.
[00:32:20]  Is that true that now I agree, by the way, Azerad, but some older listeners say, what about all the sacrifices we made in years past?
[00:32:27]  I would argue that really wasn't fighting.
[00:32:29]  That was just like normal politicking.
[00:32:31]  This is a different level that we've never seen before.
[00:32:35]  Yeah, I agree.
[00:32:36]  Look, I'm not going to say that there weren't, there were brutal fights and sometimes there were brutal fights in the past, right?
[00:32:41]  But I think you're correct.
[00:32:43]  And David Azarad, who's a great friend, is correct as well.
[00:32:48]  Right now, something has changed.
[00:32:51]  It's not just Democrat versus Republican, right?
[00:32:53]  It's you are illegitimate, right?
[00:32:55]  That's what that's what the left is saying.
[00:32:57]  You are actually all a bunch of racist, fascist Nazis.

=== A New Republican Voice (10:44) ===

[00:33:01]  You don't deserve to exist.
[00:33:03]  Your president didn't deserve to exist and he shouldn't be able to speak to the American people anymore.
[00:33:07]  That's the kind of level we're at.
[00:33:09]  So to react to that, it can't be, oh, well, I'm a Republican and you're a Democrat and we have different policies.
[00:33:16]  You have to react in a much more serious way.
[00:33:18]  Essentially, like what I just described was half the country needs to and wants to act more like Mormons and Jews when it comes traditionally have acted when it comes to economics, right?
[00:33:30]  I mean, to keep their traditions alive, they have banded together against outside forces.
[00:33:36]  And I think Christians need to understand that that's the model now.
[00:33:42]  And people who just aren't, whether they're not religious or not, who just aren't down with the woke religion need to realize we have to band together in a serious way to take action against the other side.
[00:33:53]  So I absolutely think that's the case.
[00:33:55]  And that leads me to one of the other projects we're engaged in, AmericanFirebrand.com, which is a digital media super PAC that fights to win.
[00:34:06]  And there's a signup sheet now.
[00:34:09]  It's just, it's going to be launching in the next month, over the next month or so.
[00:34:12]  And AmericanFirebrand.com, I mean, Firebrand is about fighting to win and attacking the enemy and saying the things that Republicans generally won't say and rewarding candidates who say the right thing and punishing those who do not.
[00:34:28]  And I think, you know, the people need a voice and Firebrand will be that voice.
[00:34:33]  You're a voice.
[00:34:35]  We need these voices who start saying, calling out the reality that we're in and, you know, attacking the right people and rewarding those who are actually moving this forward, who understand what time it is, who know that we're in a kind of political cold war that's turning hot.
[00:34:54]  No matter how you're feeling about getting back out there, there's no denying it's an adjustment.
[00:34:58]  When the world gets too loud, something I love to do is create my own soundtrack by popping in Raycon wireless earbuds.
[00:35:04]  Sometimes you need upbeat music to pump you up before you see people or stay calm with some guided meditation.
[00:35:10]  Let me tell you right now, Raycons are the best way to listen.
[00:35:12]  Raycon have a 32-hour battery life and they start at half the price of the other premium audio brands, but they sound just as good.
[00:35:19]  At Raycon, they come with a 45-day happiness guarantee.
[00:35:22]  So you really can't lose.
[00:35:24]  Give them a try and you'll see what I mean.
[00:35:25]  Create your own soundtrack with Raycon right now.
[00:35:28]  That's byraycon.com slash kirk.
[00:35:38]  If you guys go to americanfirebrand.com, there's a great clip of the few woke men of Mark Milley talking back.
[00:35:44]  It's absolutely hilarious.
[00:35:46]  Done almost kind of South Park style, I have to say, just kind of in the sarcasm of it.
[00:35:50]  You guys, everyone should check it out.
[00:35:52]  And that really is kind of the new philosophy, isn't it?
[00:35:55]  Is that, look, the 1980s are not coming back anytime soon.
[00:35:58]  The 90s are dead.
[00:36:00]  Kind of the, as Eric Weinstein would call it, the ego, the embedded growth obligation is over.
[00:36:05]  Kind of the expectation of a brighter tomorrow and caring about people's spirit and soul and character.
[00:36:11]  The other side doesn't want that.
[00:36:13]  They're in a power struggle.
[00:36:14]  And it's about time that we start using power as well.
[00:36:17]  Isn't that the message that we also need to send to our activists to give clear marching orders to their leaders to actually be able to use political power?
[00:36:24]  And what does that look like, Matt?
[00:36:26]  Because as soon as we start talking about power and Republicans, everyone gets really scared.
[00:36:31]  What does that look like?
[00:36:33]  Yeah.
[00:36:33]  So first off, I mean, the method you described is exactly right.
[00:36:37]  Look, 70% of the Republican base plus, they are the leaders now.
[00:36:41]  They're out in front.
[00:36:43]  The base is based.
[00:36:44]  The base understands what needs to happen.
[00:36:47]  And the problem is they're depressed, they're demoralized, they're atomized, and they need to stand up.
[00:36:53]  You need to stand up and tell in an organized fashion, your leaders what they ought to be doing to represent, to represent you.
[00:37:00]  Yes.
[00:37:00]  The Republican Party needs to resolve to actually represent, defend, and defend its own people.
[00:37:07]  And the only way it's going to do that is if we stand up and tell them exactly what we want them to say and exactly what we want them to do.
[00:37:15]  So for instance, even our firebrand project, I mean, the whole idea of the super PAC is you start showing them what's actually popular with the base, right?
[00:37:24]  If a video is popular, then they know that that is something that they should be saying.
[00:37:28]  And so what do you want them to say?
[00:37:30]  Well, I think there's some obvious.
[00:37:31]  You want them to go after big tech.
[00:37:33]  Find a way.
[00:37:34]  I don't care what it is, right?
[00:37:36]  As long as it's constitutional, you find a way to go after big tech, which is absolutely destroying free speech in this country.
[00:37:45]  You threaten the corporations that are destroying this country.
[00:37:49]  You don't sit there and say, oh, no, they're a business, so we leave them alone.
[00:37:52]  They're not going to leave you alone.
[00:37:54]  They're not going to leave the American worker alone.
[00:37:56]  They're causing destruction.
[00:37:58]  You go after them.
[00:37:58]  Election integrity, an obvious one.
[00:38:00]  Everyone cares about it.
[00:38:01]  Oh, it's a conspiracy theory.
[00:38:03]  We can't say that there's any fraud ever.
[00:38:06]  That's ridiculous.
[00:38:07]  You tell them they need to do this.
[00:38:09]  Defending people who are being ill-treated.
[00:38:12]  Look, January 6th, if people went out and committed crimes, they should be prosecuted for their crimes.
[00:38:18]  But on the other hand, is this a fair process, right?
[00:38:22]  If it's not a fair process, then why are we afraid to say, like the ACLU used to say, hey, even if you don't like what they did, they deserve a fair process like everyone else.
[00:38:32]  Why is that so hard for Republican politicians to make that distinction?
[00:38:36]  So we have to push them to lead.
[00:38:40]  And if we do that, I do think that over the next year or so, we're going to see a new brand of leader emerge.
[00:38:47]  And I do think that's going to happen because the base in a way is ahead.
[00:38:52]  But in order to get there, we have to organize and we have to support each other whenever we see people who get it.
[00:38:58]  Yeah.
[00:38:59]  And also then give the base realistic expectations of what's going to happen and how things are going to change.
[00:39:05]  I recently gave a speech and it was met with mostly positive feedback, but a couple of people didn't like when I told them.
[00:39:11]  I said, many of you are not going to see the country that you once had again.
[00:39:15]  This is a 30-year project.
[00:39:17]  And people don't like hearing that, right?
[00:39:18]  They want instant gratification.
[00:39:19]  They want instant, yeah, maybe 2050.
[00:39:22]  I think that the fruit of the homeschooling movement can finally then bear out, kind of hopefully conservatives having six kids per family and them having no kids.
[00:39:30]  Like maybe then we could start to see things, but it seems that we just kind of want it now and we want it quickly.
[00:39:36]  And that's something that people don't always want to hear and kind of want to act on.
[00:39:42]  So in closing, Matt, I'm going to go through the websites again, newfounding.org or come.
[00:39:47]  Come, newfounding.com.
[00:39:49]  And then AmericanMind.org.
[00:39:51]  I look at it every morning before I do our podcasts and broadcasts.
[00:39:55]  It's a lot of fun.
[00:39:57]  And then also then, I want to, what's the firebrand?
[00:40:01]  AmericanFirebrand.com.
[00:40:03]  AmericanFirebrand.com.
[00:40:05]  So we just have like a couple minutes here.
[00:40:08]  Matt, what gives you hope about what you're seeing with the conservative movement?
[00:40:12]  You kind of touched on some of this, but specifically, what is giving you optimism as we drive forward at this moment?
[00:40:19]  Well, look, first, I mean, I am very, very cognizant that this is a bad situation we're in, right?
[00:40:24]  So there's all kinds of black pill, you know, depressing ways you can go.
[00:40:28]  But here's, so I think it's very serious.
[00:40:30]  And to get out of this is going to be a squeaker, right?
[00:40:32]  But here's the thing.
[00:40:34]  I am full of hope because of how much energy is now being expended since the election by people who are just done taking orders from losers.
[00:40:45]  I think there's a lot of us who have woken up, have evolved in the last few years.
[00:40:50]  We see what needs to be done and we're going out there.
[00:40:52]  We're building new things and we're making connections to do it.
[00:40:55]  If there's anything, it's like almost, if there's any downside to this, it's like there's confusion because so many people are trying to organize to build a new cultural, commercial, and political movement.
[00:41:05]  And so if you're out there and you feel alone and, you know, depressed, you need to realize there are people out there who are trying to make a difference, who are building new things, who see the same things you do.
[00:41:16]  And if you get with them, you will build the future.
[00:41:20]  The energy is there.
[00:41:22]  And there's more and more people who see what needs to be done and are taking the bull by the horns and going out there to do it.
[00:41:28]  And that energizes me every day.
[00:41:30]  And so what are some of the people that you're seeing that are doing it right?
[00:41:33]  Tucker Carlson, Josh Hawley.
[00:41:35]  Give people some heroes that they can start to support, right?
[00:41:39]  Claremont is one of them.
[00:41:41]  What are you seeing on the landscape that our audience has always asked me, Charlie, who are the good guys?
[00:41:45]  Who are the bad guys?
[00:41:46]  Bad guys we can focus on later.
[00:41:47]  Who are some of the specific people that you really see are moving the dial?
[00:41:51]  Well, I mean, just in terms of politicians, I like JD Vance, Blake Masters, Joe Kent, Anthony Sabatini, who is with us at the Lincoln Fellowship.
[00:42:01]  I mean, these are bright lights who are saying very, you know, very bold, belligerent things as they run for office.
[00:42:08]  In terms of organizations, I mean, I like our Friends at American Moment.
[00:42:13]  I think there's organizations like that that are new, that are trying to move in interesting directions.
[00:42:20]  And I guess I would just have to say that the thing that energizes me most, Charlie, is actually not some of the main names or big organizations.
[00:42:32]  Although, you know, you're all doing good work.
[00:42:35]  It's the people, and you have this experience as well.
[00:42:37]  So people you meet who are in business, who are quietly behind the scenes, who are starting to organize new businesses, new cultural and media movements.
[00:42:49]  That is very exciting to me.
[00:42:50]  How many people are saying, you know what, Matt?
[00:42:52]  I'd be willing to take less salary if you could put me with other competent people and I could create a new media tech or finance firm.
[00:43:00]  That to me is really where, as Azerad said, now we're really fighting, right?
[00:43:05]  Because we're going to take market share away from them.
[00:43:08]  Well, I love that.
[00:43:09]  So, all right, everybody, check out all those websites that were mentioned.
[00:43:13]  And Matt, we'll have to have you back on very soon.
[00:43:15]  It was a lot of fun.
[00:43:16]  Thank you.
[00:43:16]  Oh, that was a blast.
[00:43:18]  Thank you so much for having me on.
[00:43:19]  You bet.
[00:43:22]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:43:23]  Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:43:26]  And if you'd like to support our program, you can do that at charliekirk.com/slash support.
[00:43:31]  Also, a reminder: get involved with Turning Point USA.
[00:43:33]  Check it out right now.
[00:43:34]  Get engaged, get involved in a fight for our country, tpusa.com.
[00:43:38]  God bless you guys.
[00:43:39]  Speak to you soon.
[00:43:42]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.