Exposing Critical Racism Tour—LIVE from the University of Michigan
Charlie visits Ann Arbor, MI, home of University of Michigan for the first stop in Turning Point USA's "Exposing Critical Racism Tour." Charlie levels six real world examples of how CRT is being implemented in American industry and institutions in ways that will fundamentally damage the entire society if adopted by the majority. Charlie contrasts true American ideals passed down by the Founding Fathers and kept alive by every generation of Americans up until today, with the ideas of CRT, which believes this country was establish and founded on racism by racist white men. Charlie dismantles these notions and explains why it's impossible, with an honest reading of history, to believe that America is as simplistically evil as "they" want you to believe. Charlie then takes questions from students in attendance, where no topic is off limits. Visits TPUSA.com/CRT to come to the next stop in the tour. Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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TurningpointUSA Support00:03:13
Hey everybody, special advertiser-free episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
My speech in Ann Arbor, right outside University of Michigan.
And I wish it was on campus at the University of Michigan, but they didn't allow us.
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I have some opening remarks about CRT and what it's really doing to our country and some specific examples.
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Enjoy.
Buckle up.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
Critical race theory, or as we call it, critical racism theory.
It's impacted our life dramatically in the last year.
Fighting Critical Racism00:15:51
And this is something that can be called wokeism or diversity, equity, inclusion, or learning.
And those of you that are obviously at University of Michigan, you have to deal with this all the time and all of its different manifestations.
But it's amazing how few people actually understand this and talk about how it's an existential threat to the American way of life.
And we need to talk about how critical race theory, wokeism, whatever you want to call it, right?
It's a filler term, is a virus against America and civil and free society.
It doesn't have a 99.5% survivability rate.
Doesn't.
Now, I'm not saying it's worse than COVID because some media person can say, they're two totally different things.
This is not an infectious disease, but I'm using a metaphor intentionally by saying if we allow these ideas to go unchallenged, then everything that we have grown to know as justice and the American way of life gets immediately compromised.
And so, what is this?
What is this idea?
Well, I think we all know it in our uncertain way, but let's start with what we believe and why we believe it.
Super simple, not controversial.
By the way, tonight's not even going to be political.
I'm going to do everything I possibly can to not say Republican or Democrat, right?
We're just going to talk about ideas, what is true, and what is good and what is beautiful.
It's really simple.
Every human being has dignity.
I believe every human being is made in the image of God.
I believe that every single human being is worthy of the idea of the American view of human equality.
That is a fundamental American value.
And that doesn't mean that everyone has the same talents, obviously.
You know, some football coaches are better than others.
By the way, let me just say, I'm a big Jim Harbaugh fan.
I really am.
I always have been.
I don't know if you guys like him or not, but maybe not.
Yeah, it's the jury still out.
We'll see if he beats Ohio State, right?
Like, that's basically how it is.
Yeah, people start applauding.
Five and oh, it's a good start.
We'll see.
I always think he's very sincere, but some football coaches are better than others.
Human equality does not mean equal talents, and it definitely does not make equal outcomes.
It means that we're all the same sort of thing.
As Aristotle would say, human beings are the speaking beings.
We are the only type of being that can reason, that can make sense of the natural world through speech.
Now, that sort of being should not be categorized or characterized by things we cannot change.
So, this is basically the divide right now for those of us that are deciding to launch kind of a critique of critical race theory, what it is or what they say it is, and the people that are defending it, which is, do you believe society should be organized around things that people can change or things that people cannot change?
Usually, America would say, okay, we want to have a preference, at least in some way or capacity, around things that you can change.
How hard you work, how hard you study, whether or not you commit crimes, are you making good choices?
A bad way to organize society and a moral way to organize society is that's your skin color, therefore we're going to treat you a certain way.
Because you can't change that, and therefore, you are de-emphasizing human agency and choice.
And one of the reasons why America still remains the most exceptional nation on the planet, despite all of our shortcomings, especially in the last nine months, is that we never really cared about who your parents were.
We never really cared about where you came from.
And there's obvious exceptions.
I'm sure, you know, someone will come up and they say, Charlie Wright came from, that's all that mattered.
Okay, fine.
The point is that if you go to India, the second most populous country in the world, the caste system is everything.
Your parents are your future.
Your destiny is your bloodline.
Now, there might be some truth to that.
If you're LeBron James' kid in America, you're going to have a better future, okay?
Or at least materially.
But generally, we said, how do we design a society that puts a preference on you?
Your actions hold you accountable.
That's empowering.
It's not just empowering, it's the only moral way to build a free and civil society.
And so, but when all of a sudden you say, you know what?
We are now going to reorganize society based on things, no matter how hard you try, you cannot change.
And so, for example, when they're teaching white privilege at University of Michigan, I don't know if they are.
Are they teaching white privilege?
Are they wild guess?
Which is, we are now going to tell you that you have a certain sort of privilege based simply on the melanin content of your skin.
Now, some people say, Charlie, it's important that we have all these thought exercises and critical race theory is nothing more than a construct.
So, I have here six examples of since last summer, Floyd Apalooza, when we decided to destroy our entire country and burn it all down, of how our country has profoundly changed.
These are real policies.
This is not just like proclamations or some nut job going on television.
Pfizer, not exactly a fan, but Pfizer, a big company, said that it will fill leadership roles of their company with exclusively black and Hispanic people.
Like they want to, and so what does that do?
Well, it disenfranchises people that are not black and Hispanic.
So you can either prioritize diversity or you can prioritize competency and character.
I prefer competency and character, and I'm going to prove it all to you because deep down, everybody agrees, even the people that support critical race theory.
Oh, that's the third example.
You got to it.
Atlanta Public Schools, second example, is putting black children, black second graders, into one classroom and white second graders into another classroom.
Now, I remember growing up in America and saying segregation was evil.
We shouldn't segregate people based on skin color.
This is not some sort of theory is what I'm trying to tell you right now.
This is in practice.
This is policy.
And the kind of woke industrial complex, until it gets challenged from free and decent people, they are not going to stop.
Here's a third example, which is United Airlines pledges 50% of all their pilots are now going to be black or women.
I have nothing against black or women pilots.
But are they as competent as the other people?
Maybe they are.
But if you're hiring based solely on skin color, then all of a sudden you're saying, you know what, we care more about melanin content than competency.
When I have a pilot flying my plane, I couldn't care less about the color of their skin.
I want to make sure they can land the plane.
And every, even the person that, even someone who is, like, you take Patrice Cullers, whatever, or Ibermax Kendi or Robin DiAngelo or Tahani C. Coates, any one of the people that write these ridiculous pieces of literature.
I mean, you guys have to read that garbage.
Maybe you do.
Deep down, they don't want to have a pilot that is incompetent.
Like, yeah, it's all fun and games.
Like, who cares if the Department of Defense Secretary doesn't know what he's doing?
Like, who cares if 13 Marines get killed?
Like, okay, whatever.
But all of a sudden, if it's a pilot and you have to ride in that plane, it's like, wait, hold on a second.
Has this pilot ever flown before?
No, no, no, no.
Diversity is our strength.
Like, it doesn't matter.
Like, all the good, we're hiring based solely on skin color.
Of course, we know the absurdity of that, right?
Obviously, is that when you do things where the pressure is very high, where success, you literally need to land on a certain airstrip, like you're 50 feet to the left and 50 feet to the right, the margin of error is death.
Like if you go into a doctor's office and you're like, you know, I have this tumor, I need it removed, is the first thing you're going to be like, hey, I only want doctors of color to operate on me.
Like, really?
Like, that's, is that the new, and by the way, that's a new push by the American Medical Association saying that we need not competency to be valued, but skin color to be valued.
Now, any person here in this room that has grown up in the, you know, at least the semblance of a free society in America, this comes across you as absurd and insane.
Yet it's happening.
And it's being implemented as policy.
Number four, Western Washington University, which is kind of a radical place.
This is not the only school that's done this, by the way, has come out and they have said they have black-only dormitories now at Western Washington University.
So again, I think segregation is evil.
If you're defending this, then all of a sudden you want to have like a reinstitution of like American segregation based on skin color.
Not to mention Columbia University, maybe they have this at Michigan, maybe not, hope not.
They have graduation ceremonies based on skin color.
Black-only graduation ceremony at Columbia University.
Hispanic only graduation ceremony based on skin color.
Now, they don't have a white-only graduation ceremony because everyone would lose their mind, right?
That's racist.
Let me be very clear.
If you judge or categorize anyone based on skin color, you're a racist, period.
End of story.
The CDC has come out and said racism is a public health threat.
Now, mind you, I haven't heard the CDC give like a long speech on how obesity is a public health threat, or diabetes is a public health threat, or what you eat is a public health threat.
No, no, no.
But racism, now we're going to get into this because one of the advantages that the people that are pushing this garbage have is they never actually have to define their terms.
Do you notice this?
It's just racism.
You're saying it's like, okay, well, fine, sure.
And honestly, so many of us, because we mean well, we stop talking as soon as we get called a racist.
It's an incredibly powerful tool to stop all conversation.
It's almost, it puts people into paralysis.
It's like, well, anything but being called that.
Like, you could call me an adulterer.
You could call me a thief.
Do not call me a racist.
Whatever you do.
Because that kind of is now the new social currency to be able to destroy discussion and debate and dialogue.
And I always have to say this unnecessarily so, but it's just kind of repetition in case no one's ever heard me speak before.
Yes, there are real racists.
We have a supply and demand problem with racists in America.
We have such a low amount of them and such a high demand to find them that when you find one, they get on the front page of the New York Times.
It's like this incredible supply and demand problem.
But if you are a racist, I hope you find Jesus Christ and repent and ask for forgiveness and apologize to the people that you've wronged.
I mean, it goes without saying, right?
And but it's also to say that like the people that are instituting these things actually deep down harbor those types of resentments.
And then finally, Lori Lightfoot, to fight the public health crisis.
Wonderful.
She's terrific.
Yeah.
To fight the public health crisis of racism has allocated $10 million, whatever that money's going to go to.
And so I could go on.
I have many of these examples.
But the reason I have those six examples is that, you know, as we kind of go on this tour, what I don't want to hear is that, Charlie, this is just some sort of spirited debate, right?
We're just exposing young people to different ideas.
How many times have you heard this as like a counter?
Like, oh, we want to hear both sides of the story.
Like, no, this is public policy now.
Like, these are things that now impact people's lives.
Like, who are we going to hire to fly our airplanes?
How we're going to run our medical institutions?
How are we going to house people and certain college campuses?
Or how are we going to educate our children?
Black-only classroom, white-only classroom at Atlanta public schools.
And so let's just state things that are very obvious, which is human equality, the way that we were raised to believe it in the American sense, means that you should judge people, if at all, but we all make judgments and you should.
And you should never judge people based on the color of anyone's skin, but you should judge people based on character, their soul, and their spirit.
So if there's like some random axe murderer or Eric Rudolph or Ted Kaczynski or Timothy McVeigh, you don't say like, oh, they're evil because they're a certain skin color.
It's like, oh, they're evil because they killed a bunch of civilians and innocent people against, you know, with just totally belligerently.
That's an evil thing to do.
However, what happens now is a mass categorization of a certain type of people and then this new phrase called whiteness, which is a very interesting thing.
Like you're participating in this custom or this civilization of whiteness.
Now, again, when pressed, never can really define that.
But when you dive into it, the truth reveals itself.
Western civilization.
They equate whiteness with Western civilization.
And that is something that we must say.
Hold on a second.
You mean Western civilization?
The place where reason and revelation met into one?
The place where freedom of speech and dialogue and a transcendent order was instituted into a constitutional republic?
Like the place where the idea of separation of powers, independent judiciary, checks and balances, the idea that a government should be of and by and for the people, this idea of Western society is actually at the root of their critique.
And that's what it really is, because if you were to try to deconstruct Western civilization, they have realized, and they being the people that are supporting this garbage, which is in the predominant viewpoint of every major institution.
What's interesting, though, is that I don't actually think a majority of Americans are okay with this.
The polls show they aren't.
I know that anecdotally, but it's a majority of the powerful people are doing this.
So it's not a majority of you, the subjects, not citizens, because that's how we're governed.
No, it's the majority of people that run the colleges, that run our government, that run the tech companies.
By the way, super thrilled Facebook went off for like five hours today.
It was a great thing.
I was cheering for it just to continue.
Fortunately, I think it's back online.
Not all good things can last forever, unfortunately.
Not a fan.
But anyway, maybe you guys are big fans of Facebook and whatever.
So that the people that are running these major companies, they all embrace the certain orthodoxy.
Why?
It's because where you guys go to school, University of Michigan, or whatever schools that are represented here, especially if you go to your master's program or you get a law degree or a PhD, those are a pipeline.
It's a non-stop highway into the places of influence around the rest of the country.
Where just like a normal person, a plumber from Indianapolis, Indiana, looks at this and he's like, I don't need a PhD.
No, this is racism and bigotry.
Like some of this stuff takes so much unnecessary sort of time and attention where all of a sudden this sort of nonsense must be taught.
And what's happened then is you have the people in charge of our entire society that are then trying to implement it against us.
And here's the great irony of the whole thing, is that when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s, we were promised a colorblind society.
And in reality, we've got the exact opposite, is that instead of colorblindness, we now have heightened racial consciousness and awareness.
Where, again, I feel like I'm 75 years old when I say this.
When I was a kid in Chicago, which was like 10 years ago, when I was in high school, literally 10 years ago, if the idea that you would judge people based on their skin color would be deemed immoral and it would be intellectually sloppy and lazy and at very best, you would be asked to like completely reconsider that.
Now this is considered to be tolerant.
It's considered to be the status quo of kind of how you implement either ideas or public policy.
And the consequences of this are very, very real, is that not just because of all these six examples that I rattled off, but America is now rapidly becoming an unsafe, and dare I say, more unpleasant place to live because of this.
Is that, and again, I feel like I'm like yielding to this 50-year-old nostalgia.
10 years ago, it was actually a much more pleasant, safer place to live.
I'll just kind of give you some numbers.
Ever since the defund police movement and abolished police movement, which is tied together with this entire argument, systemic racism, marching the streets, shooting black people without their consent, all a bunch of garbage and nonsense.
But there's been a near 30% increase in murders since 2020.
21,570 total murders last year.
The largest single-year jump since the Bureau started recording crime statistics six decades ago.
A surge in killings drove an overall 5% increase in violent crime last year.
2,021 homicides are running ahead last year by a count of 4,033 to 3,341 at the same time last year.
And I read some blog of some guy said, oh, no, they're just making up for how they were locked down.
Police Statistics Rise00:05:12
Like, who's making it, like, the criminals are trying to make up for lost time?
Like, what kind of crazy argument is this?
You're like, oh, no, no, they're locked down, so they got to get it out of it.
They got a lot of people they want to kill.
Like, really?
This is the argument that we're making.
And police in so many communities are now no longer allowed to do their job because they're afraid that some activist group is going to call for their firing.
Whatever interaction that happens will be widely misinterpreted and misrepresented on the news media.
So the reason we did this tour and we are doing this tour is that regardless of your political affiliation, and trust me, I have plenty of opinions on every controversial topic you could possibly ask me about tonight.
Feel free to ask me about technology, immigration, abortion, like whatever it is.
I don't care.
But the point is that at the very least, we need a 70, 80% consensus that if we keep going in this direction, there will be no disagreement of opinion.
That America, as we know it, will shatter into a million different pieces.
That we are going to be something that resembles a South American banana republic like Brazil, where the rich people are just fine and there's nothing but persistent and perpetual racial conflict in every other quarter of the country.
And what's so tragic about this is that the very communities that they say that they actually want to help, you know, black communities, actually get harmed the most by these sorts of policies.
They say, this is all about representing, you know, black constituents that are being unfairly targeted by police officers.
And the result is what's called the Ferguson effect, which happened after 2014, 2015, after the Michael Brown hands up, don't shoot lie, when all of a sudden police officers said, fine, if you're all of a sudden going to that we're the problem, we're getting out.
We're retreating.
You see this in Minneapolis.
You see this in Philadelphia.
You see this in New York City, where all of a sudden you retreat from just kind of very basic policing and law enforcement, then the people with money, they'll just go to Aspen on their private jet.
They're going to be fine.
But it's the single mother working two jobs with three kids that's trying to just survive or their kid gets shot on the way to school.
And so the tragedy of this is all of a sudden we're being ruled by these intellectually weak and dare I say dangerous and immoral ideas where the very constituents they say they're trying to help actually have become disproportionately hurt by these very ideas over the last year and a half, year and a half, especially.
And so there's one other thought I want to get into with this, which is how we actually build the society.
Because people say, well, Charlie, what's your solution then?
Well, first, I need to agree with the problem.
Do I think that police officers killing unarmed black people is a major problem in our country?
Of course not.
You look at the Washington Post, who's like ridiculously generous in their reporting towards this narrative.
They said that there were 18, that's right, 1-8 unarmed black people that were killed by police officers in year 2019 or 2018.
Now, even if you look at those definitions, some of them were like, oh, they were in a car trying to run over the police officer, like trying to grab the police officer's weapon.
I mean, you kind of look at that, you're like, okay, if you go down, it's probably like six where the police officer really and truly acted wrong.
So you go through 335 million police interactions every single year, and you're trying to tell me we need to radically redefine society and change the way we hire pilots because six police officers are jerks should go to prison.
Like that's the argument?
Is that like that's the reason to totally tear apart the country?
And I always get these arguments like you have to hear my story.
Like you don't know what it's like to walk in my shoes.
Like look, if we're going to govern by our own personal testimony, then everyone's going to have a different form of government.
The cool thing about empiricism is like, here's the data.
Do you agree or disagree?
Is this the way that we should organize society or not?
And like some people still commit to this idea that there is this unknown or non-definable or undefinable, I should say, racism that exists in the bones and the structure of our country.
And so then it kind of conveniently goes to something that I am very comfortable talking about, which is where they've always wanted to bring this argument.
Because I could show you the truth police statistics.
Happy to go through that if anyone's interested.
Kind of like verse by verse, chapter by chapter, where this idea of a disproportionate police force going after black people is just completely and totally untrue.
When in reality, it's the opposite, when in reality, actually, police officers are more likely to be shot by black people than the other way around, 18 and a half times more likely, actually, according to the Wall Street Journal's own statistics.
But in reality, here's where it really comes down to, which is a full indictment of our story as Americans.
This is what they've always wanted to get to.
So they use, you know, the death of George Floyd, which I'm going to go into great detail tomorrow in Minnesota.
It'll be a lot of fun, to kind of talk.
Like, again, I'm not saying he deserved to die.
Of course, I didn't say that.
But we should also talk about how he was likely overdosing from drug use and that the first autopsy said that.
And this guy is not someone that you should like deify and put up on some sort of platter.
He literally was a lifelong criminal who went up to a pregnant woman with a gun.
Like, that's not exactly someone who's like, let's go put statues to this man.
Like, yeah, no, thank you.
Okay.
And so, and so let me just kind of extend past that where I say they use that as a segue and a gateway drug to go after our shared story experience, which is the American founding, the American framers, and our American story.
Jefferson and Slavery00:03:05
And this is one of the most important topics we can talk about, which is, should we be proud of our founding or should we be scared to even mention it and always have to say this?
I can't stand it when conservatives say this.
Yeah, the founding fathers were brilliant, but yeah, they also owned slaves.
Why is that so necessary to say, do you actually know the true context in the history?
Here's one thing.
So human equality means the following.
That we are all speaking beings.
We have reason.
And guess what?
We are all born into a world we did not create.
We all have that in common, right?
So Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Ben Franklin, I could keep going, were all born into a world that they did not create.
So they were born into a world where slavery was ubiquitous.
It was the norm.
It was defended.
And it was unchallenged.
What do they do about it?
Well, the first ever anti-slavery convention in the history of the planet happened in 1775 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, chaired by Benjamin Franklin.
Where all of a sudden they started to ask this question.
They said, if we're going to believe in natural rights, how are we going to get rid of this thing?
Is this right for all of a sudden human beings to own human beings?
In 1777, right after the Declaration of Independence was signed, Vermont independently abolished slavery.
First sovereign state to do that.
Nine out of 13 of the states, by the time the Constitutional Convention met in the summer of 1787, had already independently abolished slavery.
Nine out of 13.
In George Washington's own private journals and musings, he said, it's not a matter of if we get rid of slavery, it's a matter of how we get rid of slavery.
After the Constitutional Convention, the Northwest Ordinance came up, which is where we are right now.
Congratulations, everybody.
We're in the Northwest part of the country.
You're like, what are you talking about?
This actually used to be considered the Northwest Territories because of how geographically different America was.
The Mississippi River was the western boundary of America until the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 or 1806, where all of a sudden all the states met together and they said, what are we going to do with this Northwest Territories?
And I encourage all of you to read the Northwest Ordinance.
It's a profoundly beautiful document.
And Article 6, or kind of Provision 6 of the Northwest Ordinance, says the following, that the Northwest Territories will be free territories, not slave territories.
One of the first measures ever put forward by all 13 states unanimously agreeing.
So you'd think that the new territories would be a reflection of the type of nation that you're trying to create.
Yet all 13 states or 13 colonies agree, you know what?
The new territories, those places need to be free.
It's a pretty amazing thing.
And I could go through how Thomas Jefferson contested for the abolition of slavery as governor in the 1790s.
Thomas Jefferson signed the first person to sign a moratorium of new slaves being brought into the United States as one of his first actions as president in March of 1803 or 1807.
I could keep going, list by list by list.
But I think it's more important to realize this.
This is the whole point.
When Thomas Jefferson was on his deathbed, was slavery more popular or less popular when Thomas Jefferson entered the world?
It was less popular.
It was less institutionalized.
It was less widespread.
Territories Must Be Free00:07:30
That is how you should judge human beings.
You should judge human beings based on what did the world look like when they entered and what was their mark on it.
Not whether or not, well, me in my 2021 lens, because I'm a 19-year-old prick that goes to whatever school, I think I know the best because I'm such a good person.
And that's not to say I'm defending an indefensible evil, but I'm saying who began the process of closing the door on an unspeakable sin?
Was it you?
Like with your sign that says climate change is going to kill us all?
Like how about you read a book, a thick one, and get back to me sometime soon.
Go understand that somebody that existed before you said something wise and beautiful and good and true.
That there are some things that don't change.
And the founding fathers understood eternal wisdom and they were willing to do something about it.
They were willing to all of a sudden create a new government that allowed for people to speak and not be ruled by force.
And that's the kind of final point here before we get into questions, which is as we ask, like, how do we actually organize society?
There's only two ways, there's two buckets where you could put every government in the world now and every government of the last 5,000 years in one of the two buckets.
Is the government that you establish, is its central organizing principle, speech or force?
It's that simple.
Soviet Union, force.
Communist China today, force.
America, who knows?
It's a little in the middle right now, right?
But traditionally, it was speech.
What do I mean by that?
Well, to get elected, you got to make a good argument.
You got to convince people of something.
You got to tell them why you need to get power.
Power in America, as the founders saw it, will always be given from us to them.
Never forget that.
The people first, then the leaders, by the process of persuasion and dialogue and discourse that did not exist in the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union is like, we have the guns, you don't.
Thanks for playing.
What ends up happening is because of this regime that we see, the CRT regime, wokeism, diversity industrial complex regime, is all of a sudden they say, what?
White silences violence.
Allow certain voices to have an elevated sort of platform.
And all of a sudden, you're like, wait a second, are we now going to be governed by the tyranny of the forcible minority or a better idea?
And I hate to make it as binary as that, but it really is that simple.
The best governments ever to exist always put an emphasis on speech.
The most tyrannical ones put an emphasis on force.
We take it for granted, right?
We're like, oh, yeah, it will never happen here.
It's happening here.
And this is a slow-motion cultural revolution.
So what do we do about it?
Again, we can go into all the amazing things we disagree with.
Happy to do that.
Seriously, like nothing is off limits.
You can dive into that.
But the most important thing is all of a sudden, like, wait a second, if we still want some semblance of a civilization, then we need to build a coalition, absent political parties, absent whatever you call yourself.
Like, I'm a libertarian, I'm a conservative, whatever, fine, I'm a conservative.
We could talk about that.
Where all of a sudden you're like, we need to defeat this woke industrial complex forcibly and quickly, because that will destroy us all.
It will destroy us from within quicker than any sort of domestic enemy ever could.
And I'll close with this, which is many people that are kind of, they remember a different America.
And I'm told a lot from people, or I'm asked a lot, Charlie, how did this happen?
How did we get to the place that we are in?
Well, put simply, post-1960s liberalism, they realized that to undermine the American nation, conflict is necessary to overflow the nation, not speech.
Pitting people against each other.
This is a doctrine of conflict politics, which is rich against poor, man against woman.
So I've lived through all three attempted takeovers of the American way of life in the last 10 years.
And I want to just walk you through them.
Number one, occupy Wall Street.
Now, out of all three of these, I actually agreed to occupy Wall Street the most.
Their complaints were not terrible.
Their solutions were garbage.
But their complaints were like, look, there's kind of this cartel of Wall Street bankers and DC insiders that continually rig the rules against normal people.
And we kind of want to talk about that.
And then they started talking about Marxism and socialism and confiscating property, and they lost most of Americans.
But then all of a sudden, the revolutionaries said, okay, we are not going to be able to take over America and get power for ourselves by just talking about economics.
It's not going to work.
Because generally, Americans like markets and they want to work hard.
That's tough to break.
So then what do they try next?
Man against woman and woman against man.
Best illustrated by the Brett Kavanaugh hearings a couple years ago, where like the most boring human being on the planet was called like a serial gang rapist in front of a Senate hearing.
And that fell apart because I don't think that the kind of regime realized that even liberal women have sons too, and they sometimes have husbands.
And you know what I mean?
Like there's kind of that whole thing where it's like, okay, maybe it's too far to indict like every single man.
They're like, no, believe all women no matter what.
And that obviously hit its limitations.
And it kind of dissolved.
Still, there's still elements of that there.
But then all of a sudden, after many years of attempting and careful plotting, when everyone was cooped up, you couldn't go to the gymnasiums, we couldn't go to sporting events, schools, there was almost this activist pressure cooker in May of last year, a video that animated everyone.
Then all of a sudden, we had a racial reckoning, as they call it.
And I just asked the very simple question, is this prudent?
Is this the best we really can do?
Where you have, if you believe that's an injustice, you say that's one injustice, and you say now we should radically redefine the Western prescribed way of life.
And so the goal was always the same, though, which is to displace power dynamics, which is to make private property less important, meritocracy less important, freedom of speech less important.
Communal ownership of goods, more important.
A technocracy, more important.
A rule of a scientific elite, more important.
Where the American tradition is now being put on the ropes by an unexpected villain.
And that villain is not rich versus poor, even though that's what's behind it.
It's not man versus woman, even though that's a component of it.
Instead, they want to start a race war in this country.
And I'm telling you, don't give it to them.
I'm saying do not give them what they want.
Instead, it's incumbent on us to call out what this is, to realize how good we have it in this nation, understand our history, understand our values, understand where we come from, and then be able to appropriately and effectively push back against it.
Okay, let's do some questions.
And I'm not sure how we're going to do it.
I think we're going to do a line.
And if you disagree, feel free to go to the front of the line, which we always do.
And it's a question, not a speech.
If you go too long, we reserve the right to pull the microphone.
Okay, we have one line or two.
Morgan, are we doing one?
All right, just start lining up there, everybody, and we'll have some fun.
Oh, this just broke while I was speaking.
The Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose critical race theory in public schools, citing threats.
Christian View on Justice00:05:16
The directive follows the National School Board Association's request to classify parents as domestic terrorists.
Okay.
It's true.
Yeah.
The stakes are very high.
Okay, again, if you disagree, if you want to cut the line, you guys are allowed to do that.
Just tell the people your question.
All right.
Yes.
Oh, sorry.
This question is sort of unrelated, but I understand that you're a Christian, and I get a lot of people who tell me about like how Jesus was a socialist because he said, if your brother, you know, doesn't have food, give him some the all that, you know, basic morality.
And I just wanted to know how you sort of combat that Jesus was not a communist.
So socialism violates two out of the ten commandments, thou shalt not covet and thou shalt not steal, just right out of the bat.
Jesus would, let's just talk about Jesus.
If he was anything less than or some sort of political activist than the savior of the world and the son of God, I immediately say, time out.
You're now co-opting the way, the truth, and the life for some sort of weird political agenda.
And I think that should be dismissed altogether immediately.
But let me just say this, that Jesus talked very clearly, and I won't spend too much time on this, but I suppose there's some interest in this, very clearly about the need for multiplication.
The parable of the talents is one of the best illustrations of this.
Does socialism subtract and divide or multiply and add by definition?
And did Jesus ever call for state-run action to actually distribute the means of production or to try to help the poor?
Did he call for you individually to help people, for you individually to give the cloak off your back to help people?
And let me say this, that using prudence, which comes from a Greek word prudentia, we must look at things as they are, not how we wish them to be.
Socialism is the creed of envy and a philosophy of failure.
It's rooted in wanting to take away somebody's house, income, or wealth.
Now, I think some Christians are saying, I want to help people.
Let's talk about helping people.
What does it say in this?
What does Paul say about work?
Man does not work, he shall not eat.
Says that twice in Proverbs as well.
Is the best way to help people, to give them something that they did not earn or empower them to understand what earned success actually is?
Jesus never, ever argued against private property itself.
In fact, the idea of private property is a biblical idea.
When Abraham went to go to Hebron, when he wanted to go buy a piece of land to bury himself and his lineage, a very important thing in Jewish custom, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he went and actually executed the first ever real estate purchase in the history of the world.
He bought Hebron.
He didn't conquer it.
He didn't say God wants it.
He said, okay, I'll exchange value for this piece of land.
The idea of self-government as we know it is actually a biblical idea.
And so some people say, Charlie, why do you believe the Bible is divinely inspired?
A lot of different reasons.
But one of the other reasons is that no people would ever write a book that makes themselves look as bad as the Jews wrote the Old Testament.
It must be true.
I mean, they're a total mess for like 500 chapters.
Like only if this actually happened, this was divinely inspired would they put this down.
But also, this is a very important point, is that, for example, you take the Babylonians or you take the Hammurabi Code, some skeptics will say, well, the Hammurabi Code is very similar to the Jewish code.
There's nothing unique about it.
But what's different is that the king came first in Babylonian culture, then the law came.
In Jewish culture, which of course is the Old Testament, the Christian Bible, the law came first and then the king came.
In Galatians 3, it says the law is a school teacher to Christ.
The law is a guardian that points you to Christ.
What's that important?
Why is that important?
It's important because if you advocate for socialism, you have a different view of justice than the ancient Jewish Hebrew view of justice.
The view of justice that those of you that are Christians have, at least earthly justice, is a man is given what he is due.
You murder somebody, you pay a price for that.
You steal something, you pay a price for that.
The socialistic view of justice is a give a man, not what he is due, but what makes it egalitarian.
One of the commandments in Leviticus says you shall never favor a rich man in a criminal trial or favor a poor person at a criminal trial.
This is where we get the Western idea that justice must be blind.
And the final thing I'll say about this is that throughout Jesus' ministry, which of course was ended at the hands of the state, He wanted to bring people from a place of spiritual captivity to a place of freedom and liberty only through his son and accepting Jesus Christ.
The story of the Bible, put simply, is to set the captives free.
God did it in Egypt with the Jews and again through Jesus Christ.
Socialism does the opposite.
It makes the free captive, not the captive free.
Abortion Consensus Question00:06:34
And we must advocate for as many people to live in liberty as possible.
Thank you so much.
Hey, Charlie, how are you doing?
My name is P.J. Serati, and I thank you very much for coming here today.
Now, Amanda Bourne and I, we're founders of Michigan Students Take Charge, and we're working, just like you, to empower students across this country.
Now, we are truly working to bring students together across all these issues.
And, you know, you bring critical race theory and other issues, and you kind of bundle them together, and you kind of discuss them on your platform, which I love.
Now, one of the issues that I have been having a very hard time with dealing with is this issue of abortion and pro-choice and freedoms that we as Americans hold.
Now, I believe that this issue, this freedom of choice, this bodily choice, is the Achilles heel of our opposition.
Now, I'm struggling right now because I truly believe that there is some common ground that the left and the right and us versus them can come to with this.
But how do I go about doing this?
How do I, through my organization, bring people together when it's such a tough issue as abortion?
It's only tough if you view a human life as property.
So it's a binary choice.
Are human beings persons or are you property?
And the question is, then when does human life begin?
And so I'm very pro-life.
Human life begins at conception.
The science of embryology tells us as soon as new DNA is formed and the sperm and egg meet, all of a sudden that human life begins the process of growing into a full and total mature human being.
So the argument that is sometimes made by pro-abortion activists is that, well, it's small.
It's the size of a peanut.
Well, I'm 6'4.
Do I now have a moral right to be able to kill every single person in this room that is shorter than I am?
Of course not.
So that's size.
So for anyone here that cares about the abortion issue, these are the four biggest things that you're going to encounter.
I'm going to talk about how we might be able to reach consensus, which I'm not too optimistic about, which is the second is level of development.
So first is size, then level of development, which is how far along the developmental timeline are they?
So this is where all of a sudden you get some one of these arbitrary weeks.
Now, don't get me wrong.
I prefer, obviously, a six-week ban than an unrestricted ban all the way through.
But an 18-week old baby is equally a human being as a two-week old baby.
And it's just not developed all the way along the same.
So here's what's amazing about human beings, is that unlike putting together a Corvette at an assembly line, is that a human being given nutrients will grow itself.
It's not something you have to put inputs in.
It's not something where you have to kind of add knobs and polish it.
The human being within our genetic code is development itself.
The third is environment, that some pro-abortion activists will say, well, because it's in the womb, not outside the womb, therefore there's a different moral categorization and characterization.
Now, we know this is not true, obviously, that just because something is a different place doesn't give it a different moral right or different moral categorization.
Because someone who is 95 years old is in an old person's home or someone who is living at home, you know, in their own home, doesn't change the kind of way that we morally view them.
And then finally, the one that trips up pro-life activists the most is the degree of dependency, which is how dependent is that being on another.
This is the one that trips up a lot of people that are pro-life, where they say, well, all of a sudden, the pro-abortion activists will say, it's not a full and autonomous life because it's dependent on the mother, because it will not be able to survive in the state of nature without assistance.
Now, any person who's dealt with a six-day-old or a 15-day old or a 20-week-old knows very simply and clearly that that sort of autonomous ability to hunt and gather, that's not going to come for like a decade, let alone for 10 days.
Same can be said for people that are on feeding tubes or in comas.
Should we go start pulling plugs all the time for people in comas?
Now, some pro-abortion activists will say, well, Charlie, we're able to pull plugs of people in comas.
Like, hold on a second.
There's a very strict legal and dare I say controversial process to do that that happens rarely at a low percentage where there are over 3,000 abortions a day in America.
And I would actually not support the kind of cord plug pulling, kind of cord pulling that happens as, let's just say, often as it happens with people in comas.
Now, one argument, and you guys will all see a debate, I put that in the air quotes because it was a total circus, that I have coming out on Thursday against a pro-abortion activist, which is where this one guy thought he was being a smart aleck debating me.
He says, Well, Charlie, what's your birthday?
And your birthday is how old you are.
Now, this is a ridiculous argument, right?
Because we don't call it our conception day, we call it our day of birth.
I don't know if you ever heard this argument before, but it's like there, it's kind of like sophistry linguistics, right?
Where we believe human life begins nine months before your birth, but what's the significance of your birth?
All of a sudden, the people who brought you into the world, your mother and your father, get to meet you for the first time.
That's why we celebrate the birthday, that you are outside of the womb.
Now, the final thing I'll say is this: which is the best logical argument against abortion, which is that if it's not your DNA, it's not your choice.
That if it's a different set of DNA that's been formed, and that new, and whether it be the fingerprint, eyes, nose, breath, heartbeat.
So, how do you reach consensus on this issue?
I don't have good advice on that, honestly, because I tend to be someone who believes if we can, I'll give you some advice, it might not be helpful, which is if we cannot reach consensus or agreement on an issue that is so fundamentally clear as to when does life begin, do we defend those that can't defend themselves?
Then, I believe all the other issues that we're fumbling and that we're clumsy with can be attributed back to that one.
I would say, though, that one way that you might be able to reach consensus or agreement is just saying, Do you want more abortions or less abortions?
Do you think that's a person or is that a property?
Where on the animal kingdom hierarchy is a fetus?
Is it a crocodile that turns into a human being, or is it a human being that remains a human being and you believe you can abolish it because of its size, level, development, environment, or degree of dependency?
And I believe there's actually, I believe, the more we talk about this issue compassionately, rationally, and factually, I believe that we're winning on the pro-life issue.
And I think conservatives in elected office and in advocacy should be unafraid to talk about this and not try to pander to less talking points on an issue as important as life.
Challenging Equity Premises00:11:04
So, thank you so much.
I will reinvite if anyone has a disagreement, let it be known that I offered.
Okay.
Good evening.
My name's Abby.
I was just wondering what you think we can do to ensure that our future generation is not racist.
Yeah, so I okay, I think you mean like the definition of racist we've been talking about, right?
Okay, good.
Yeah, I mean, I think we have to stop talking about race so much.
I think that's like the first step: why are we focused so much on this?
And again, we reluctantly did this as a counter move to just the arbitrage of the race conversation, because I just kind of want to put this to bed once and for all.
I don't know about you, but I'm so tired of like worrying about racial quotas and the melanin content people's skin and whether or not pilots are going to be a certain skin color.
And so I want to create an America where race is de-emphasized and character is elevated as the primary way that we organize society.
I think that's the best possible way I can answer that.
So, thank you.
Hello, my name is Annette, and I am currently in a battle with two different superintendents at two different school districts over the word equity.
And several parents I know who are here are in the middle of this battle as well.
And the superintendent in my school district, I asked if you're meeting the mission statement of our school, why are you now trying to push for this instead of CRT?
They're calling it DBEI, diversity, belonging, equity, and inclusivity.
So, why are you pushing for the equity, especially since you know that term is evolving?
And she's trying to trip me up.
Well, how is that term evolving?
Right.
So, I'm trying to catch her in a trap by saying: if you were meeting the needs of every student with our mission statement, why the push for the DBEI?
She keeps saying it's important because not everyone comes from the same level playing ground.
And she says, And how is equity changing?
Can you tell me that?
That's what she says to me.
So, well, I mean, it's so clear.
I mean, it'll be clear to you and I.
I don't know if you can convince this administrator.
So, what the other side is engaging in is word laundering, where they take a definition of the word.
You guys ever see Ozark, Marty Bird, great, great show, and they literally launder it through the system.
They're like, oh, no, no, equity actually means fairness and inclusivity.
Well, we know what it means, where equity means forced redistribution.
That's what it means.
And I could give you multiple examples of how the critical race theorists themselves in their training seminars are now saying, Let's start using equity and not use CRT.
But I think the best example is this.
And I would just ask a set of questions of the administration that they have to answer.
And here, actually, you actually segue to something I forgot to ask: which is these are three questions that you can ask any of your friends to see which side that they're on on this.
These are three ones.
Number one: Is race a characteristic you care about in judging people?
Is it any sort of a determining factor?
If the answer is yes, but you're a racist, you're in the CRT bucket.
Number two, what is your opinion of black-only dormitories and Hispanic-only dormitories, also known as segregation?
And the third is this: Should people be grouped and punished based on their group?
It's a very important question.
Should people be punished or should they be organized based on their group, based on their skin color?
For example, in your school district, they might be saying, Well, Hispanic students are doing far worse than white students.
And the next question you need to say is: Have you factored income?
Put race aside.
How are poor white students doing against poor Hispanic students?
Have you factored in whether or not they have mothers or not in the home or fathers in the home?
Have you factored that into account?
You see, we have to challenge the premise, and here's what you should say: I'm all for an equity conversation about whether or not people that do not have fathers in the home get the attention they need, of whether or not people that have lower incomes have the attention they need.
That's not what they're talking about, they're based strictly and solely on race.
I don't know the example you have in your local school district.
But the thing that always trips them up is the conversation about how this actually gets fixed because they actually want to destroy it, which is, do you want to rebuild the nuclear family or not?
They never want to talk about it.
Do you notice that throughout every single one of these conversations, they never want to talk about putting men back in the household?
It's always about police reform, access to capital, stimulus checks, or Green New Deal.
How about this?
You have men take responsibility for their actions, stay loyally married to the person they impregnate, and stay with that person.
Now, I'm happy to walk you through the specifics of your school district offline, but those are things they usually do not want to talk about.
And absent skin color or any of those groups, the things that I think matter the most is whether or not we are talking about rebuilding nuclear family and holding that up as an ideal.
So happy to help you offline.
Thank you so much.
Hi, my name's Kaylee.
I just want to thank you so much for coming out here and talking to all of us.
I just have a question.
What do you think is like sort of the ultimate goal of critical race theory?
Not necessarily the goal of like the 19-year-old girls screaming at people that they're a racist on the side of the street, but more of like the goal of like the big people in power are like some of the goals.
That is such a great question.
And so I have long abandoned the benefit of good intentions.
You know, some people say, oh, yeah, you know, Jeff Bezos, he wants a less racist world.
Like, yeah, give me a break.
Okay.
Jeff Bezos wants to go to Saturn or something weird.
Okay.
No, it's all about power, obviously.
It's about creating America into this racially divided, quasi-apartheid state where there's non-stop class conflict.
You see, when Americans get along, the elites lose power.
When we live in harmony, people with very little skill have to go find something else to do.
When we're getting along, all of a sudden, white fragility goes to like 955,000 in the Amazon book charts.
When we actually are looking at people as human beings, that we're all made in the image of God, then all of a sudden BLM kind of has to close up shop.
There's not really an audience for that.
Now you might say, well, Charlie, that's awfully Machiavellian.
Of course it is.
That's how these people operate.
It's always through power dynamics.
And I'll give you a perfect example.
We have seen the fraud of this entire movement as clear as day in the media and the propagandists' unwillingness to stand by BLM against forced vaccinations.
We have seen that they actually don't care about the things they say they care about, that they use this as a means to an end to try to make white suburbanites feel bad about their skin color, to go get $250 donations to BLM.com so that Patrice Cullers can go buy houses all over the country to try to mobilize people to go down and burn down Wendy's to try to boost black turnout in political elections every couple years.
But when actually the black community is like, hey, we don't want to take vaccines against our will, there's a couple BLM organizers in New York that guess what?
Are attacked by all the major leaders of the apparatus of the city of New York that are attacked by the regime media and said they're anti-science.
I thought we have to believe black voices and brown voices that you have to sit down and shut up and white silence of violence.
But instead, it's like, you know what?
They don't know what they're talking about because in some way, actually, the science regime and the technocracy actually outweighs the CRT regime.
That's a whole different tour we could do maybe at a different time, which is how we push back against the expert class and this cult of science that we have destroying our country, which we make this false idol out of science.
I'm happy to get into that if anyone's interested.
It's absolutely very disturbing in a lot of different ways.
So I guess the question is, what is the goal?
Power.
And so, yeah, there's this great phrase.
Someone could pull it up in 1984, which is a great book, all too applicable, where O'Brien, who's kind of the villain of the entire book, turns to Winston.
And there's this, I think it's like about page 285, depends what version you're reading.
And I love 1984, by the way.
I read it once a year.
It's kind of unbelievably creepy, how every year it gets more applicable.
And there's this phenomenal phrase where O'Brien turns to Winston and he's torturing him.
If you guys have read the book, you know this.
And Winston says, Why are you doing this?
What is your end goal?
You have to understand, Orwell was a Democrat socialist himself.
He went and fought in the Spanish Civil War.
He was super idealistic.
He himself actually ended up hating a lot of forms of socialism because he said it actually is more about hating the rich than helping the poor.
It's one of his most famous quotes.
But Orwell perfectly captured the mind and the motives of an authoritarian and a tyrant.
And there's this beautiful dialogue where O'Brien says, You do not understand.
It's power for power's sake.
It's the thrill of a boot on the neck, knowing I could remove it at any time, but I don't have to.
Now I'm paraphrasing, but it's this dark couple-page lecture that O'Brien is giving to the defenseless and depleted and destroyed Winston, who has nothing.
He doesn't own a home.
He doesn't have his identity, but he still wants to crush his soul because there is this urge for man to dominate the other.
That is a dark urge that has replicated itself over humanity the last 5,000 years.
I believe there's a spiritual dynamic to it.
Don't have to go to that as deeper as kind of how self-evident that is.
But so, what do they want?
They want power.
They want what O'Brien said to Winston in the most famous dialogue of the book.
We want to be in control and we want you to be underneath us.
And we have to resist that.
A free society and civil society requires an active citizenry that understands the threats.
These people want to be in control.
It's really that simple.
So thank you.
Hi, Charlie.
My name is James.
I'm from Southeast Michigan.
What do you think of the idea of scientism becoming a new religion?
Where you see.
Perfect segue.
You see these people putting up false prophets like Fauci and people like that and practically worshiping them.
What do you think?
Phenomenal question.
And so Winston Churchill wrote this beautiful letter after, I think it was in Afghanistan where he saw the Darvishes, which was kind of the Afghan fighting force, where they stumbled over a hill against the British Empire to go charge the British Empire.
Science vs Morality00:04:21
And the British Empire had machine guns and the opposition, the Darvishes, did not, and they mowed them down.
15,000 dead within like 30 minutes, and maybe a couple casualties, like a couple on the British side.
It was a huge victory for the British Empire.
But Winston Churchill was super unsettled by this.
And he wrote this long essay where he said, No longer will the winner of wars have more courage or valor.
It's about technology, machinery, and science.
He was realizing in real time the people in control are not going to be the people with better ideas.
It's going to be the people that are able to build gizmos that can control us and keep us in lines of obedience.
Science can be a wonderful thing.
It really can.
Science can be something that is worthy of exploration.
But science absent morality will destroy our civilization.
Science should be a means to a moral end.
If you organize society strictly looking through a microscope, you will get eugenics very quickly.
Who's stronger than the others?
Who's worthy of survival?
Too many human beings, got to get rid of them.
Too much carbon dioxide because it's polluting the earth.
Eventually, you're going to have to start making moral claims.
Now, the morality of scientism is trust the experts.
Let's give more power to an unelected group that is unaccountable, that is unknown in the fourth branch of government.
Now, even if that was the case, I would be okay with that because at least you have disagreement amongst the experts.
Instead, we have a biomedical, tyrannical state of one-size-fits-all science, where you're not allowed to even say ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, vitamin D, zinc, not being overweight.
Like very basic things, right?
Instead, we have a regime that focuses on, no, no, no, you must get vaccinated, regardless of what you're seeing, a breakthrough case, you know, you must get vaccinated.
And so, this cult of scientism segues beautifully to the prior question: what better way to control an entire civilization or society when all of a sudden you have an untouchable class of people that know more than you know that can never be cross-examined or criticized, no matter what.
And here's what's so incredible: you kind of have the common sense people, regular middle-class Americans, a lot of you are these, that kind of turned off the CDC propaganda and were like, wait a second, okay, I see who in my local area is getting really sick from this thing.
I see that younger people aren't getting that sick.
Maybe there might be a better treatment.
So, you just kind of started rationing, you know, kind of reasoning, a gift that God gave you.
You're like, wait a second, maybe this is not worth shutting down our entire civilization.
And you realize that the people who were in charge were, they never should be given the power to actually shut down an entire country or to micromanage through a technocracy.
And so, but you hit it perfectly.
It's replaced religion.
As America has become less religious, the God-sized hole in our heart has not gone away.
That people need to fill that void with something.
So, they fill it with believing in the salvation of Anthony Fauci or the sacrament of wearing a mask, where it's like a pseudo-religious experience.
That I'm going to wear the mask, I'm going to have the incantation of making myself feel good.
And this is mixed, obviously, with the cult of safetyism that is tied together with it, which is that safety should somehow be valued more than liberty, which has never been an American idea.
You can't have a great or an ambitious or strong nation where you care more about being safe than having liberty.
And so, I suppose I'm happy to get into the details of this, but I'll finish with this, which is that science is something that could be helpful and useful.
You want to know a country that valued science more than morality, one country that did it more than anything else?
The National Socialist Workers' Party in 1930s, Germany.
They were a country governed by mad scientists.
They had technological and scientific innovations, the likes of which humanity had never dreamed of seeing before the time.
They put down highways, railways, they had chemical weapon developments, they were having interstellar-type plans, the likes of which we'd never even comprehended before.
Confronting White Guilt00:09:44
They were evil people, obviously, the most evil regime I think we've ever seen in the history of the planet.
I'm not saying that's what you automatically get when you do that, but what's to stop it?
Is that Socrates famously said, He said, or it was either Plato or Socrates, he said, I dread for the civilization that is run simply and solely by scientists, by subject matter experts.
And it is a religion, and I pray we can have a revival of actual religion, not the religion of Fauciism.
Thank you.
Again, if anyone disagrees, more than welcome to come up.
Hi, my name is Deanna.
I'm in the police academy right now.
My brother is also in the police academy, and I'm going to go to the next step.
Thank you for your service.
That's terrific.
I'm also married to a police officer.
And obviously, you know, we've lost a lot of friends through that.
It is what it is.
But what is the best way to talk about the ridiculousness of the argument that blue lives don't exist because that's your chosen profession?
And, you know, we take off our uniforms at the end of the day.
Whereas someone who is not white is always not white.
Yeah, I've never heard that one.
Yeah, I guess that's like an overemphasis on identity, be perfectly honest.
I can't stand identity politics.
It's repulsive.
But yeah, I mean, I think it would matter more that you actually can choose to be a police officer than whether or not you choose to be white, because we want to build a civilization around choice, action.
It's kind of like saying, oh, yeah, you know, you could choose to go into the military and get the Congressional Medal of Honor, but you can never stop being white.
Like, what kind of ridiculous accusation is that, right?
Like, oh, yeah, yeah, thanks for saving, you know, the child out of the burning home, but you'll never actually stop being white.
Like, really?
That's that somehow heroism, bravery, and courage are de-emphasized for melanin content.
Is that kind of what we're at?
Essentially, the answer is yes.
And so I've never heard that argument.
Doesn't surprise me.
But I want to thank you for what you're doing.
We need more people to be police officers.
It's so incredibly important.
And in 2019, there were 12 unarmed black people shot by police.
In 2020, there were 18.
That's 30 in two years with over 600 million police interactions.
And guess what?
Most police interactions go well.
Of course, there's bad cops, there's bad everything.
But the majority of cops are just normal Americans that do their job, that are being unnecessarily tyrannized, terrorized, and quite honestly, put through this tyranny of trying to destroy the rule of law as we know it in itself.
And so, not really sure what to tell you about how, like, well, you put on a badge and you could choose that, therefore, blue lives don't matter.
Yeah, blue lives, of course, they matter.
All lives matter.
I say that, and people lose their mind.
All lives matter, you understand?
Every single life matters.
Every single life matters.
And so, I want to thank you for what you're doing.
God bless you.
We need more police officers.
Thank you.
Hi, Charlie.
My name is Cynthia, and I have high melanin content.
Who has high melanin content in here?
Okay, so my husband over there has very slight melanin content.
And what I ask him is: why is it that white people or some white people are complicit in their own destruction?
You guys do realize we're heading back to reverse Jim Crow.
Why are they creating a world where their children will suffer?
And what I've come to realize is that it's the white guilt.
It's all-consuming and it's a scourge upon this land.
So, what can we do to decrease this white guilt so that words like racism won't be so powerful?
So, I love it, by the way.
So, thank you.
That is so good.
So, first of all, so many it's so interesting you kind of fasten on that word guilt.
So, many people do not know how to process, explain, or deal with any sort of elevated social status or economic status.
So, they get shamed into saying, you live in a house, it's because of your skin color.
Not because you didn't commit crimes or graduated high school or got a job or got your life together.
Again, action and agency.
And this really fosters a sense of guilt.
And so, one way you could be helpful is by telling other white people, stop feeling so guilt.
Like, stop apologizing to me.
It's kind of creepy and weird, actually, that you keep on feeling like the need to apologize for something that you did not do, merely existing.
And one of the other kind of mind tricks the other side plays is they talk about this idea of systemic racism.
So let me ask you a question.
Living in America, is America systemically racist?
I don't believe so.
Yeah, I mean, so, and we are told, though, that it is.
The laws, the customs, the traditions, what happens and how it operates.
And you kind of have this population of upper-middle-class white people that get super uncomfortable whenever the conversation of race comes up.
And it's white guilt, and it's also another thing.
No one actually wants to be called the R-word.
And again, for someone who's wrongly and needlessly called that every single day, I just don't care, right?
So we're going to say things that are true, which actually goes to a nice piece of advice to all of you, which is please live your life in a way where you're the same person in public that you are in private.
Stop pretending you're somebody else to different friends.
You're going to be called all these different things.
Who cares?
Be bold, be courageous, know who you are.
Know why you believe what you believe.
But I could tell you that so many white people are going along with this, and it will destroy the country.
And what I've learned is that most black people, they don't like walk through life every single day wondering or thinking that white people are keeping them down.
I'm sure there's a poor population that does, but in general, it's like, how do I improve my life?
How do I educate my kids?
Like, you know, normal human being things.
And the biggest tool, everybody, is that we have to stop allowing whatever baseless accusation they throw at us to have any sort of merit and any sort of basis.
And so white guilt is definitely a big driver of this.
And it's also Americans' inability to deal with guilt in general.
As America has become less Christian, then all of a sudden people say, how do I deal with things I did wrong?
Here's the cool thing about Christianity.
We have a process for that.
We do.
You pray, you ask Lord Jesus for forgiveness.
You go to the person you wronged and you look them directly in the eye and you ask for forgiveness between interpersonal and then you are born new.
Your sins are forgiven and you are born new.
But in a hyper-secularized society, when you believe there is no God, there is no eternal life, there is no word of God, what do you do?
You go get a BLM sticker and you put it on your Prius.
Thank you.
Thank you, Tom.
Three to four years ago, I figured out that politics are really going to affect my future.
And that's when I started to, you know, really pay attention to what's going on.
And, you know, three to before that, I didn't really pay attention, to be honest with you.
And this whole entire thing with this new takeover that going off of your three previous ones, this is the fourth one.
And do you think this is going to blow over?
Because I don't want to have to plan my career around the radical left's agenda and socialism.
And what are your thoughts on that?
Yeah.
So I'm going to tell you the truth.
You might have to.
We are now, our generation is now entering a phase where we're not going to be able to escape this.
That we're going to have to fight it and confront it.
We're going to have to win.
I'm not going to paint a picture that is unrealistic or rooted in lies.
We're like, yeah, this is a storm that's going to blow over.
Not to make fun of the question because it's a real question.
Which is, you know what?
A lot of you, if you vocally say you're a conservative and you have a promised CRT, you might not get the job that you want to get.
I'm going to be very blunt and very honest.
Your professors will grade you differently.
What I'm saying is that you're going to have to pay a price.
Is that every single person here is going to be damaged a little bit.
But guess what?
You could be free.
Do you want to earn, you could earn $65,000 a year coming right out of University of Michigan?
But guess what?
You might have to pretend to be a political moderate.
You might have to take a knee during the lunchtime for BLM Incorporated.
You might have to become a different human being.
Is that worth it?
To sacrifice your autonomy, to sacrifice your consciousness?
Here's what I do know, though, is that courage is so lacking in our country that if you boldly go, you will be blessed and you'll be rewarded.
Now, I do believe that there is a growing consensus, regardless of political party.
You've noticed I haven't even made this political tonight.
This is all philosophical, which is what we do at Turning Point USA, educationally, because that's actually more important, which is a growing consensus that is really simple, which is fed up with this stuff.
But again, I'm going to go to the previous question.
The reason why most people aren't speaking out about it is because there is a cost.
You might get kicked out of the country club.
Your kid might not go to the school you want to go to.
You might lose contracts.
Empathy and Better Choices00:09:12
CNN might say something bad about you.
It's true.
It really, it terrorizes people.
I really don't care.
Be free is my answer to that.
Don't do something to try to provoke a response.
Do the right thing.
And if it provokes a response, it's on them and stand clearly against it.
So to answer your question, it's not what people want to hear.
This is not going away anytime soon.
This is going to be at least a decade-long struggle to remove this virus and this cancer that has now infected every major institution across the country.
You can wish it away, it won't go away.
You can hope it away, it won't go away.
You know how it goes away?
We win, and this ideology loses.
It's going to take a little bit of confrontation.
It's going to take a little bit of calling it out.
But I know this: that when BLM was confronted, they took a pinnacle, a pillar off of their website that said they want to destroy the Western prescribed nuclear family.
I know that when we started to push against CRT, American Express and 10 other corporations today announced that they're going to remove it from their ideology training.
Coca-Cola comes out and says that whiteness is an existential threat to America.
They're now coming out and saying they no longer teach that and they apologize.
Now, those are little things.
Don't forget that, though.
We're going to have to now push forward and say, no, no, no, we're not going to give you our business.
I'm not going to work for you anymore if you do this.
And we have to realize we have the power, but it might cost you something in the immediate, but that's the only way the country will actually be saved.
Thank you so much for your question.
Thank you, Charlie.
Hey, Charlie, my name is Zach.
I'm currently in a class called Global Civil Discourse, and we're reading a book by Terry Givens called Radical Empathy.
And she wrote this book during the height of COVID and the BLM riots.
Today's political left continually calls for empathy to be the primary focus of policy decisions.
How do I help my classmates recognize the wrong in this idea of empathy?
So, you guys ready for a thought, Crime?
No.
Sorry.
Empathetic is not a biblical idea.
It's nowhere in the Bible.
It's a created English word that is misinterpreted from compassion, mercy, and grace that came in the 1920s.
Now, empathy is trying to put yourself in somebody else's shoes.
That's the whole idea of empathy.
And I think we have morally misinterpreted the idea of empathy versus trying to have truth and trying to put grace and trying to understand right from wrong.
I think that the overemphasis on empathy comes with a deterioration of looking into one's own conduct and choices.
Now, this is not a popular argument.
You're not going to win this argument amongst your friends, but it still should be said, which is this, which is, should everyone be given empathy?
It's a good question, right?
So, should 5% of the population that's in prison for murder or for arson or theft be given empathy?
They'll say yes.
So, yeah, I'm not going to waste my time for that.
I'm not going to waste my time as somebody that goes and takes the life of another person.
Instead, I want to talk about how I can build myself up to be a better person, to be a good-souled man.
And so, you see a lot of sermons in churches where they say we must put empathy as the top ideal.
Now, you can have sympathy.
That's okay.
Sympathy is not empathy.
Empathy is literally you want to put yourself into those shoes, live and embody those complete and total circumstances.
I don't think that's right.
I don't.
Instead, I think a better way to say it is, what is good?
What is true?
I want to be those things.
I want to be the best version of myself.
I want to all of a sudden lead by example.
So, what's good and true in today's time?
Some things that are tough.
Because instead of reading this ridiculous book that you're telling me, why don't we say this?
Why don't we tell young people to stop drinking and doing drugs the way they're doing it currently?
Why don't we tell young people to get married before they have sexual relationships?
That's a thought crime.
Can't say that.
So you must have empathy.
You know what?
Be a better person.
It's tough.
By the way, we all have our shortcomings.
Trust me, myself included.
But instead of trying to all of a sudden bring ourselves in different shoes, let's look at the ideal.
Let's shoot for the teleological aim, which literally means the purposeful aim of human existence.
Happy to dive into why I think the overemphasis on empathy is wrong, but let me finish with this.
Every single ounce that we try to say to ourselves, we need to compare ourselves to someone that might be disadvantaged, is a piece of energy and an ounce of activity that is not used on worrying about whether or not I am a good sold and properly sold individual.
The ancients spent time not on comparing yourself to another, but instead on trying to elevate yourself through a transcendent order: mercy, justice, courage, contemplation, friendship, magnanimity.
Do you even hear these words anymore?
Of course not.
The words we hear are: no, no, you need to give up what you have to somebody else because they have less than you.
I'm more focused on developing good individuals with character that are willing to go out into the world.
Happy to expand on that further, but thank you.
Thank you, Charlie.
Hey, Charlie.
I have a friend who recently fell down that leftist rabbit hole, like getting involved with likes of AOC, Bernie Sanders, Hassan Piker.
So I was wondering.
I know Hassan.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I met him once or twice.
My question to you is: what do you think the best tool is to stop young people from falling down those similar rabbit holes?
So I'm just curious for my own.
What do you think prompted that in your friend?
I don't know.
Probably kind of what you were talking about earlier with the whole Occupy Wall Street in Brazil and kind of the viewing the elite as this big force that's kind of pushing down on us.
Yeah, I mean, there's some truth in that, but I guess the question, we could dive into this.
I'm just saying, so I guess they took the blue pill, not the red pill.
So here's kind of just the truth of it, right?
Which is everything I believe and everything we as conservatives believe, a defense of the natural law, understanding eternal wisdom, trying to have a preference on consent to the government, separation of powers, independent judiciary, constitutional republic, our view is the harder view to persuade people.
It's harder because embedded in everything I'm telling you is kind of this unspoken truth that you got to get your life together.
You got to make better choices.
That don't rely on the state for everything.
Now, with that being said, do I think that there's actually a very valid critique about a ruling class of elites that are trying to crush your life?
Yeah, I actually can kind of sympathize with that.
So, I think the solution is to nationalize everything and turn this into like the mobilization of grievance politics?
Of course not.
So, I think there's a balance that could be struck there.
I'm not going to give you a great kind of like way to persuade it, but I will say this: focus on the conversations, not on the conversions.
Don't give up with your friends.
Ask questions.
Ask really good.
So, tell me, do you trust the government?
No, I think it's evil.
Then, why do you want to make the government bigger exactly?
I don't.
Well, everyone you support wants to make the government bigger, so let's unpack that one together.
I always get a kick out of some people on the left: they say the military is evil and they kill civilians.
I also want a domestic military to be like, really, that's a really interesting judgment, like to go after people's taxes.
Like, either the government can't be trusted or it can be trusted.
And so, but I will say this: that a lot of young people succumb to the lies of the left because they are not steeped, in my personal opinion, in wisdom.
They're filled with practical knowledge and not in wisdom, which is the knowledge of things that do not change.
Human beings, regardless of how much we have convinced ourselves, have not changed in our nature since the Declaration or since the writing of the Bible.
This is really what divides the right and the left in the country.
Not everyone here might agree at this, but it's true, which is that human nature is unchanging.
The founding fathers dealt with the same problems we're dealing with, even though they didn't have TikTok, Twitter, or transcontinental airlines.
Guess what those problems were?
That human beings lie, they steal, they cheat, were nasty, brutish, and short to one another.
They understood that marriage is a good thing, that hasn't changed.
Life is preservative, worthy of protection and preservation and protection.
Private property must be protected.
And so, that's really the debate I would get into: whether or not you believe human beings are a blank slate that are malleable that could be made around the forces around them, or there's a nature to human beings.
And I believe that obviously, as a Christian, there is a nature.
We're broken, we're fallen.
And we better build a government accordingly.
That if you give too much power to broken and fallen people, really bad things start to happen in the corporate domain or the governmental domain.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This will be the final question, right?
Is that right?
Am I reading that?
Okay, yeah, cool.
Hi, my name is Anthony.
World tied.
Is that Alabama?
I see that.
Truth-Telling Business00:07:11
And I go to a small school outside of Flint, and a lot of people there are very woke.
And so, like, I've had a few times in class where, like, we were talking about racism and how I have innate rights over other people because I'm white.
And I say something, and then I get called a racist and get in trouble for it.
And, like, my teacher was talking about how that, oh, white people will always have the opportunity in society that black people never will.
And I brought up an example of my dad, and he went to an engineering school and was top in his class and didn't get a job he wanted over the person that was 26 in his class just because they were black and they needed to fill a hiring quota.
And I was called a racist and got detention for it.
And I just wanted to know what you can do to voice your opinion but not get in trouble for it in schools.
Are you in high school?
Yeah.
First of all, I want to thank you for being here tonight, and it's wrong the way that you approve it.
And the work we do at Turning Point USA is to empower and to support students like you.
And I hope every parent that's watching online or here in this room understand and realize what he just said.
This is a profoundly different country than it was 10 years ago.
That you share the story of your father who worked hard and played by the rules and you get punished or penalized or a detention for that.
I'm going to ask, I'm going to answer a specific question because I'm not a politician, so I actually answer questions, which is, how can I speak out without getting punished for it, right?
I'm afraid you can't.
And so you're going to have to make a decision.
And the decision is: do I want to be a strong and tough person that's going to pay a price at a young age that will be good for me as I grow and develop?
Or do I want to avoid that conflict, get momentary benefit, but not be prepared for what might come next in your life?
Now, this chapter in your life is going to be difficult.
It already is.
People are probably already calling you racist, but you're going to find out a lot about who you are.
It'll strengthen your resolve.
You will become more resolute in your beliefs.
Also, you're going to have other people that support you.
People here tonight are going to come up to you and say, I'll be praying for you.
I'll support you.
Because by the time you're 21 or 22, you're going to be running relay laps around every single person that calls you a racist, which is intellectually dishonest and lazy, where you actually profoundly thought through your beliefs.
Where you understand why you believe what you believe?
There's no easy answer, is what I'm trying to tell you.
I'm not going to tell you, like, you know, you can tell everyone what you believe while you believe, you're getting straight A's.
That's not going to happen.
It's not.
That country's dead.
I wish it was still alive.
It's over.
We want it back.
Instead, I'm going to tell you this.
You can become a better, stronger, and complete human being by standing for truth, even as a high schooler.
And we at Turning Point USA are here to support you.
So you're not alone.
So whatever punishment they give you is just nothing compared to the friendships, compared to the relationships, and the support network that we are here to support you.
Because people say, Charlie, how are we going to support the country?
What's your name again?
Anthony.
Anthony.
We support the country when a million people named Anthony say, fine, give me a detention.
I'm not going to stop saying it.
Fine, kick me out of school.
I'm not going to stop saying it.
I don't care.
Penalize me.
Punish me.
Mock me.
Ridicule me.
I know who I am.
I know what I believe.
You could try to take that from me, but I will never stop contesting for truth.
And then a more kind of applicable, just kind of applicable thing in high school.
I don't say this for college kids, but I would appeal through your parents to try to have some sort of review of how they're issuing justice.
Remember, the idea of justice is now being abused because that is an abuse of justice against you.
That a high school kid has to go through a detention sort of quasi-Soviet show trial because you dare to question legitimate racism.
But I'll close with this.
I'll say again, we support you and we have your back.
And a couple years from now, you're going to say, man, that was tough.
That was a winter phase of my life.
Remember, the Bible says there is a season for everything.
And some of you are about to enter a winter phase in your corporate career, in your college career.
But after winter comes spring and you will be strong because of what happens through it.
We are not in the hopium business at Turning Point USA.
You know what that means?
Hope and opium feels good, but it's not really good for you and it's not true.
We are in the truth-telling business here.
That every single one of us, if we want our country back, we're going to have to pay a price.
You're going to be called names.
You're going to be kicked in a little bit, but you'll be stronger and tougher because of it.
So God bless you, Anthony.
I'm so glad you're here tonight.
Thank you.
So I just want to reiterate my thanks to the incredible Turning Point USA activists that helped put on this event.
And I just want to say this: that this sort of regime, this educational, this educational diversity regime is one that we are going to push back against in every single way.
Know what you believe and why you believe it.
I want to thank those of you.
I know there's some people here tonight that listen to our podcast and our radio show.
Thank you for that.
It really means a lot to us.
We are doing two podcasts a day.
I say this at every single event.
If you guys are not yet subscribed on your phones to our podcast, it really personally blesses us.
I know it's a perfunctory procedural thing, but please consider taking out your phone and doing that.
And in closing, also get involved with Turning Point USA if you are not.
We have America Fest, the largest ever celebration of America coming December 18, 19, 2021 in Phoenix, Arizona.
10,000 plus people are going to be there.
And wait till you see the speakers and the musical artists that are going to be there.
That's all I'm going to say.
I'm not going to say anymore.
I'm not allowed to say anymore.
Everybody, we outnumber them.
They might control more.
They might be louder.
They might intimidate you.
They might mock you and ridicule you.
But if we hold the line, if we continue to proclaim truth against what they push towards us with courage, because courage is the ultimate virtue, because without courage, there are no other virtues.
People say all the time, Charlie, what do you at Turning Point USA try to do?
I try to spread courage like a wildfire through every single one of our students, like Anthony, like our Turning Point USA students, University of Michigan, to stand what they believe.
Because if not, we're living in an open-air Soviet country the moment we stop telling people what we believe and why we believe it.
But here's the amazing thing about truth: truth has a way of handling itself once you let it free.
You say something that is true, it'll defend itself.
You say something that is rational and reasonable against the lies, against the deception and the treachery.
Then all of a sudden, things start to sort themselves out.
But it's only going to happen when every single one of us proclaim the truth and we stand courageously for it, which is exactly why we have this event tonight.
God bless you guys.
Thank you so much for having us.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.