The Charlie Kirk Show - Chaos, Crime, and the Crisis of Masculinity with Pedro Gonzalez
Aired: 2021-12-10
Duration: 38:51


=== Thanking Our Generous Supporters (03:28) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, we are joined with Pedro Gonzalez from Chronicles magazine.
[00:00:07]  War on Men.
[00:00:09]  We also talk about the incredible and unprecedented crime wave in our country.
[00:00:16]  That and so much more.
[00:00:17]  Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
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[00:02:36]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House folks.
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[00:02:41]  He's an incredible guy.
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=== The Crime Wave Explained (04:32) ===

[00:03:28]  So I have a very simple question that should have a simple answer, but it divides Americans.
[00:03:34]  What causes crime?
[00:03:37]  Now, the answer to that question, most Americans get right because most Americans aren't insane.
[00:03:44]  The answer is usually a question of morals.
[00:03:49]  Crime occurs because of a lack of a moral footing, a lack of a family environment that teaches people right from wrong, not just pleasurable from unpleasurable.
[00:04:06]  But the predominant view on the American left, it's always been this way, but now it's become widespread, especially in colleges and academia, is that criminals commit crimes not because that they don't know right from wrong or they weren't raised correctly, but because of their circumstances.
[00:04:26]  That criminals commit crimes, especially violent crimes, because they have to.
[00:04:32]  You see, this belief has been around the left for quite some time.
[00:04:35]  It's one that always tries to blame the external for a problem that very well might be one of the internal.
[00:04:42]  Now, that's not to say that external circumstances can't play a role with internal development.
[00:04:46]  The most important one that no one wants to talk about on the collectivist authoritarian left-wing side is: are there fathers in the home?
[00:04:55]  What causes the rise in crime and what causes crime?
[00:05:00]  So here's a thought crime for you, first and foremost.
[00:05:03]  That 5 to 10% of the population, unfortunately, has a chemical imbalance where they have a predisposition to commit crimes.
[00:05:12]  No one wants to say this out loud.
[00:05:14]  No one wants to say the obvious that as we have opened mental institutions, certain areas have seen an increase in crime.
[00:05:22]  Another percentage of the population, which is an unknown number, if you take any percentage, if you take any group of people, on average, one in about 20, and in certain populations, one in 10 are sociopathic.
[00:05:36]  Sociopathic people are more likely to commit crimes because they do not feel the emotions.
[00:05:43]  They do not feel a connection to their potential victims.
[00:05:47]  And then, yes, there is a portion of people that commit crimes that happen in the moment.
[00:05:52]  They do not have self-control.
[00:05:54]  They might have been inebriated.
[00:05:55]  You put all that together, you're always going to have some form of crime.
[00:06:00]  But then the question should be: why is there spikes in crime?
[00:06:05]  So criminologists, they look through a lot of different sort of leading indicators and inputs as to why crime might be increasing.
[00:06:13]  Now, we could look at battery, arson, rape, sexual assault.
[00:06:18]  We could look at robbery, but the one type of crime that is really hard to fake is homicide.
[00:06:28]  Do you have a body and are there a bunch of holes in it?
[00:06:31]  You don't have to overthink it.
[00:06:33]  Where, you know, arson is like, well, who set the fire?
[00:06:36]  You know, Ryan started the fire.
[00:06:39]  If you're an office fan, you get the reference.
[00:06:41]  If not, forget it.
[00:06:44]  Battery, smuggling, like all these sorts of different things are kind of harder to track.
[00:06:50]  Homicide, we're pretty close.
[00:06:54]  There's a pretty much, I would say, a 99.9% correlation between homicides and whether we know them or not.
[00:07:02]  Hard to dispose of bodies, illegal to dispose of bodies, and so they get registered.
[00:07:08]  So 12 major cities in 2021 have experienced dramatic increases in their murder rate.
[00:07:18]  Portland, Oregon has a 100% increase in their homicide rate.
[00:07:22]  Tucson, Arizona, 87% in their homicide rate.
[00:07:25]  Albuquerque, New Mexico, a 22% increase.
[00:07:28]  St. Paul, Minnesota, 25%.
[00:07:30]  Indianapolis, 44%.
[00:07:32]  Austin, Texas, 175%.
[00:07:35]  Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 91%.
[00:07:37]  Louisville, Kentucky, 111% increase.
[00:07:41]  Toledo, Ohio, 63%.
[00:07:43]  Rochester, New York, 144%.
[00:07:45]  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 46%.
[00:07:48]  Philadelphia has 521 homicides.
[00:07:52]  Columbus, Ohio, 121%.
[00:07:55]  What is driving this massive increase in crime?

=== Fatherless Homes and Rising Homicide (05:53) ===

[00:08:01]  Well, first of all, only 18% of U.S. households are now nuclear families with a married couple and children.
[00:08:12]  I'm going to say that again.
[00:08:14]  Only 18% of U.S. households are nuclear families.
[00:08:19]  This is a study that just came out a couple days ago.
[00:08:22]  Down from 40% since the 1970s.
[00:08:25]  It's the lowest since 1959.
[00:08:30]  The Census Bureau's count shows that just 17.8% of the United States, 130 million households, featured married parents with children under the age of 18.
[00:08:42]  U.S. households with married couple and children is at its lowest it's been.
[00:08:47]  It was 40% in 1970.
[00:08:49]  It's now 17.8%, the lowest it's ever been.
[00:08:56]  KidsCount.com says that 34% are single-parent households of all colors, all races, I should say.
[00:09:05]  64% of black households do not have a father.
[00:09:10]  52% of Native American households do not have a father.
[00:09:13]  42% of Hispanic households do not have a father.
[00:09:17]  24% of white households do not have a father.
[00:09:20]  And 15% of Asian households do not have a father.
[00:09:23]  Now, if you were to run those numbers backwards, guess what?
[00:09:27]  Asian Americans are the richest group in America.
[00:09:32]  Whites are the second richest, then Hispanics, then Native Americans, then blacks.
[00:09:36]  It's almost as if there's a direct correlation between whether or not you have fathers in the home, wealth, not going to prison, all these things.
[00:09:43]  And it asks the question: what causes crime?
[00:09:45]  Now, the one external thing that I think you can blame for crime is the fact that there are not fathers in the home.
[00:09:53]  Seven out of 10 of every young person that is housed in a state-operated correctional facility, including detention and residential treatment, come from a fatherlessness home.
[00:10:03]  Children from a fatherless home are twice as likely to drop out of school before graduating from children who have fathers in their lives, according to the NPR.
[00:10:11]  Yet, where is the corporate-funded, let's get fathers back in the home agenda?
[00:10:16]  Where is the taxpayer-funded, non-stop, get vaccinated, get vaccinated agenda saying keep fathers in the home?
[00:10:25]  Well, the problem is that father staying in the home goes right at the root of something that corporate America and the government never wants you to actually do: take responsibility.
[00:10:38]  Taking responsibility for your actions is something that the government definitely doesn't want you to do.
[00:10:46]  But also, there has been for many years an exemption that men can impregnate women and abandon those women.
[00:10:55]  It's almost built into a large part of American culture.
[00:11:01]  Children from fatherless homes are twice as likely to drop out from school before graduating than children who have a father in their lives.
[00:11:08]  Children who live in a single-parent home are more than twice as likely to commit suicide than children in a two-parent home.
[00:11:14]  75% of rapists are motivated by displaced anger that is associated with feelings of abandonment that involves their father, U.S. Department of Justice.
[00:11:22]  Living in a fatherlessness home is a contributing factor to substance abuse, with children from such homes accounting for 75% of adolescent patients.
[00:11:31]  85% of all children which exhibit some type of behavioral disorder come from a fatherlessness home.
[00:11:36]  And 90% of youth in the United States who decide to run away from home or become homeless for any reason originally come from a fatherless home.
[00:11:43]  All of that is according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
[00:11:45]  Yet we're not allowed to have a conversation about this widespread epidemic.
[00:11:51]  Instead, we talk about systemic racism.
[00:11:55]  We talk about gun crime, but not the root issues.
[00:12:00]  What causes crime?
[00:12:02]  The lack of leadership, morality, and strong men.
[00:12:06]  That's what causes crime.
[00:12:10]  As we celebrate the Christmas season, we often pause to consider our many blessings.
[00:12:14]  Hillsdale College wishes to thank you for standing with them as they celebrate over 177 years of blessings.
[00:12:20]  Since 1844, the Beacon of the North, the last college, Hillsdale College, has held fast to its mission to provide the kind of education essential to preserving free government.
[00:12:29]  And for decades, the college has extended its educational mission on behalf of liberty through a variety of outreach programs.
[00:12:34]  Perhaps you receive in Primus for every month, or you've taken one of Hillsdale's excellent online courses or attended one of Hillsdale's free regional events.
[00:12:42]  You know of Hillsdale's refusal to take even one penny of government money.
[00:12:45]  This independence allows the college to focus on promoting its core purpose: learning, character, faith, and freedom without government interference.
[00:12:52]  And no time in our nation's history has there been a greater need for this kind of classical liberal arts education that Hillsdale offers on its campuses and nationwide.
[00:12:59]  So, during this season of blessings, Hillsdale thanks you for partnership in extending its mission to the country.
[00:13:04]  To learn more about Hillsdale College and take their online courses, the Aristotle course, the Winston Churchill course, the Dying Citizen course, which I'm about to wrap up with Victor Davis Hansen, it's incredible.
[00:13:14]  Check it out: new Victor Davis-Hanson course.
[00:13:17]  Go to charlieforhillsdale.com.
[00:13:18]  For parents out there, require your children to take at least one Hillsdale course before they get any Christmas gifts.
[00:13:24]  You see, I'm a very big fan of parents withholding good things unless kids do the necessary things.
[00:13:32]  Kids shouldn't just get Christmas gifts because they exist, they should get Christmas gifts because they've earned them.
[00:13:38]  And by earning them, they need to take Hillsdale online courses to learn about Western civilization, learn about God, learn about Genesis, the book of Genesis, the Constitution, and more.
[00:13:47]  Charlie4Hillsdale.com, charliefohillsdale.com.

=== Fixing the Legal System (03:48) ===

[00:13:55]  So, what causes crime?
[00:13:57]  We know that the lack of morality and just social decay and societal decay makes any country less safe, more dangerous.
[00:14:08]  See, American civil society is built on this idea that the everyday man, the middle-class man, the muscular class man, is going to do the right thing.
[00:14:18]  But as America becomes a much more dangerous country, all of a sudden people are starting to point fingers.
[00:14:25]  Now, the other side, the left, they start with this idea that there is no rise in crime.
[00:14:32]  It's just a lie.
[00:14:33]  So, for example, the Philadelphia district attorney says that there is no major rise in crime in the country or in Philadelphia, which, of course, is gaslighting.
[00:14:45]  In Philadelphia, murders are up 46%.
[00:14:48]  So, the Phil, and by the way, whatever happened to that story of the illegal alien who raped a woman for 45 minutes on a train while everyone else was filming it and did nothing.
[00:14:59]  Remember that story?
[00:15:01]  Not allowed to talk about that, obviously.
[00:15:04]  And so Gascon, what's his official title?
[00:15:09]  Is he like DA or something of LA?
[00:15:11]  District Attorney?
[00:15:14]  He's the district attorney of L.A.
[00:15:17]  And L.A. was dangerous to begin with, but L.A. is basically a complete war zone at this point.
[00:15:24]  There's a big recall effort underway to try to get Gascon out of office.
[00:15:29]  And Gascon said, look, when I took the office, the legal system here offered victims one solution after someone caused them harm, a long sentence.
[00:15:38]  We have set a path for ourselves to turn around the criminal legal system in this country in a way that's more humane, more equitable, and above all, will create a safer environment for all of us.
[00:15:48]  So basically, they believe in almost a Rousseauian view of the world that if there's anything wrong with the world, it's not because of broken human nature.
[00:15:56]  It's because human nature can progress to the next station of perfection.
[00:16:04]  So you must understand when you hear the word progressive, the thing that they're actually trying to progress is human nature.
[00:16:16]  One thing that is a massive difference between conservatives and leftists is we as conservatives believe in a fixed station of human nature.
[00:16:27]  We believe that human nature is unchangeable.
[00:16:34]  Now you can improve who you are as a person.
[00:16:37]  You can improve your character, but your nature, your natural operating system, it's there to stay.
[00:16:44]  Cut 79.
[00:16:46]  Before I took office, the legal system here offered victims one solution after someone caused them harm.
[00:16:55]  A long sentence.
[00:16:57]  We have set a path for ourselves to turn around the criminal legal system in this country in a way that will become more humane, more equitable, and above all, will create a safer environment for all of us.
[00:17:14]  Los Angeles Times, crews of burglars publicly smashing their way into Los Angeles' most exclusive stores, robbers following their victims, including a star of the real housewives of Beverly Hills and a BET host to their residences.
[00:17:27]  And this week, the fatal shooting of an 81-year-old Jacqueline Avant, an admired philanthropist and wife of music lecheon Clarence Avin in her Beverly Hills home.
[00:17:35]  After two years of rising violent crime, the Los Angeles Times writes, these incidents have sparked a national conversation.

=== Uncontrolled Aggression Defined (15:46) ===

[00:17:43]  I love how they always say that.
[00:17:44]  If they have a problem, they're like, oh, there's a debate and a conversation.
[00:17:49]  There's really not much of a conversation.
[00:17:50]  People are dying about both the crimes themselves and where the outrage over the violence will lead.
[00:17:57]  Quote, the fact this has happened, her being shot and killed in her own home after giving, sharing, and caring for 81 years, has shaken the laws of the universe, declared Oprah Winfrey.
[00:18:07]  The world is upside down.
[00:18:09]  Oh, Oprah, I thought once Joe Biden got elected, everything else, I thought the laws of the universe were going to recenter.
[00:18:15]  I should say once Joe Biden got implemented, not elected.
[00:18:18]  While overall city crime rates are below what happened in the notorious gang wars in the 90s, violent crime has jumped sharply in LA as it has in other cities.
[00:18:28]  And what does Biden say and his whole team say?
[00:18:31]  They say, look, it's because of the pandemic.
[00:18:32]  Play cut 84.
[00:18:34]  So when a huge group of criminals organizes themselves and they want to go loot a store, a CVS, an Ordstrom, a Home Depot, until the shelves are clean, you think that's because of the pandemic?
[00:18:46]  I think a root cause in a lot of communities is the pandemic.
[00:18:49]  Yes, go ahead.
[00:18:50]  Always blame something else.
[00:18:53]  Not societal decay, not moral decay, not the fact that lawlessness is now widely expected, accepted by our leaders.
[00:19:00]  No.
[00:19:01]  Instead, it's because of the pandemic, okay?
[00:19:03]  People need new Louis Vuitton bags because they were cooped up for so long.
[00:19:08]  I mean, what are you like?
[00:19:08]  A bigot?
[00:19:11]  Hey, everybody.
[00:19:12]  Charlie Kirk here.
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[00:20:15]  With us is Pedro Gonzalez from Chronicles Magazine.
[00:20:19]  Very smart, smart guy.
[00:20:21]  We spent a whole week together at the Claremont Institute.
[00:20:23]  That was a fun week.
[00:20:23]  Pedro, it's been a long time.
[00:20:25]  We wanted to do this.
[00:20:26]  Welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:20:27]  Thanks for having me on, Charlie.
[00:20:29]  So Pedro, you've been speaking out lately about a lot of different things.
[00:20:33]  I want to start with kind of the war on American men and the importance of talking about masculinity and how that ties into several different kind of unfolding crises in front of us.
[00:20:49]  Why does America need strong men?
[00:20:50]  And more importantly, why should the conservative movement talk about it?
[00:20:53]  We need strong men because, well, look around you.
[00:20:57]  Look, I think I can summarize my view of, on the one hand, the necessity of strong men.
[00:21:03]  And on the other hand, the absolute importance of it.
[00:21:06]  Forget necessity.
[00:21:07]  I don't think that word actually sums it up.
[00:21:09]  When you have things like educators pushing critical race theory and radical gender ideology on kids, when you have educators pushing things like transgenderism on our kids and experimental vaccines on our kids behind our backs, I don't want civility.
[00:21:25]  I don't want endless blathering about the free market of ideas.
[00:21:29]  I want methodological barbarism because for me, being a man means defending the family, not talking about the importance of the family endlessly, but actually doing something about it.
[00:21:40]  And I think that the conservative intellectual movement has really failed to go beyond that stage, simply talking about masculinity and trying to kind of denude it and make it something that is civil and harmless.
[00:21:53]  We need the kind of middle American that shows up in school board meetings and gets thrown out because they call out the superintendent or the people on the school board for the right reason and they don't like to hear it.
[00:22:05]  And so what does that look like?
[00:22:06]  So Josh Hawley spoke a little bit about this and was criticized greatly.
[00:22:12]  What is this idea of the cult of strength and how does that connect to the everyday voter?
[00:22:18]  Cult of strength is actually a good thing.
[00:22:20]  I don't think that we should actually drop that term.
[00:22:23]  I like it.
[00:22:24]  Cult of strength, it means that we're cultivating something.
[00:22:26]  We're growing strength.
[00:22:28]  So I think that is actually a compliment as far as I'm concerned.
[00:22:31]  The people that view it as a threat are people that are either themselves effeminate or they enjoy the status quo.
[00:22:39]  They like the existing order.
[00:22:40]  All the things that I just described, the things that boil parents' blood, the things that make them show up and fight for their children at these meetings and things like that.
[00:22:50]  This doesn't bother them.
[00:22:51]  And that is why when they say cult of strength, they mean it as a pejorative.
[00:22:55]  It's something that we should eschew and back off of.
[00:22:59]  Obviously, that's wrong.
[00:23:01]  My background is actually not as someone who grew up as a conservative intellectual movement.
[00:23:07]  I come from a more or less normal background.
[00:23:09]  And I think that's why, for people like me, it's just absurd to see when Holly makes remarks that aren't even that controversial.
[00:23:17]  He's just saying we need a healthy, strong conception of what it means to be a man.
[00:23:21]  People clutch their pearls and lose their minds.
[00:23:25]  So David French wrote an article.
[00:23:27]  You're a big David French fan.
[00:23:29]  I know, Pedro.
[00:23:30]  Big time.
[00:23:31]  The new right, strange and dangerous cult of toughness, an emergency culture idolizing a twisted version of toughness at the highest, the highest ideal, despises a false version of weakness as the lowest vice.
[00:23:45]  I could go through his piece.
[00:23:47]  I usually don't like doing that.
[00:23:49]  But why, first, obviously he's mistaken, but some people on the intelligentsia say, no, we shouldn't talk about masculinity or toughness.
[00:23:59]  We should be focused on tax rates or at most just kind of school choice.
[00:24:05]  Why is the war on the American male and masculinity in general an issue that kind of touches almost every other issue or connects to almost every other issue?
[00:24:15]  Well, first, weakness is not strength.
[00:24:18]  And there's nothing virtuous about turning the other cheek when the person that's trying to strike you wants to destroy you, everything you love, your family, and the country that you live in.
[00:24:29]  That's not virtue.
[00:24:30]  That's pathetic.
[00:24:31]  And it's weakness.
[00:24:32]  That's just what it is.
[00:24:33]  It's not another form of strength.
[00:24:34]  It's not charity.
[00:24:35]  It's nothing like that.
[00:24:36]  It's frankly pathetic and weak.
[00:24:39]  And this gets to my point, actually, of the conservative movement.
[00:24:42]  French is actually just a small part of this.
[00:24:45]  Recall that National Review condemned Nick Sandman as evil for doing nothing but smiling while being right.
[00:24:52]  National Review sided with Al Sharpton against George Zimmerman and has called for the Confederate monuments to come down.
[00:24:59]  National Review has called for us to compromise on LGBT ideology.
[00:25:03]  The conservative intelligentsia, the conservative political movement has failed Middle America precisely because it thinks of itself as somehow perhaps better than middle America.
[00:25:13]  They're better than us.
[00:25:14]  They have to educate us on what it really means to be a man.
[00:25:16]  And apparently a man is someone who rolls over and dies, even when their family and their country is at stake.
[00:25:22]  So we have a lot of people ask us, well, what does that mean practically?
[00:25:25]  Well, a good start would be a strong person doesn't abandon a woman after you impregnate them.
[00:25:32]  A weak person does that.
[00:25:34]  A strong person takes responsibility for their actions and is able to control the impulses of the flesh for something that is virtuous, good, beautiful, and true and rare.
[00:25:46]  Talk a little bit about that practically, because some people just kind of have this idea of, oh, strong men, it's going to be a bunch of weightlifters.
[00:25:53]  By the way, we do have declining testosterone in the West.
[00:25:57]  And I think that plays a role.
[00:25:57]  No one wants to talk about it.
[00:25:59]  But what does this actually look like practically outside of kind of a more abstract kind of critique?
[00:26:04]  Well, I think there is actually a fundamental connection between physical strength and mental toughness.
[00:26:09]  And mental toughness matters because whether you are mentally tough or not will determine how you react to persecution and pain and suffering, which is what we need right now.
[00:26:19]  Men who are strong in body and mind and able to resist being persecuted, whether that is for what they believe or literally perhaps being physically confronted for what they think, because that is the world that we live in today.
[00:26:32]  So I actually think that the connection between the mind and the body is inseparable.
[00:26:36]  A good philosopher on this, although he's not American, is Yukio Mishima in Sun and Steel.
[00:26:41]  He compares the body to essentially an orchard, and that if you allow your orchard to just fall apart, well, then the fruit that it bears isn't going to be all that great, right?
[00:26:51]  So I think there's a fundamental connection there.
[00:26:54]  But you raise a good question.
[00:26:57]  What is actually our vision of healthy masculinity?
[00:27:01]  Because on the other hand, there is such a thing as unironically toxic masculinity, which you just described, the man who gets a woman pregnant and then leaves.
[00:27:10]  The man who thinks that the apogee of manhood is beating a woman, something like that, right?
[00:27:16]  That's obviously not what we mean when we talk about masculinity.
[00:27:20]  It's almost not even worth addressing that point to your critics because it's so stupid and absurd.
[00:27:25]  This is a constructive discussion to have with people that are like-minded and are trying to work this out.
[00:27:30]  But do we actually need to entertain this argument that when we talk about healthy manhood, we mean beating women and things like that?
[00:27:37]  It's so dumb, it doesn't really deserve an answer.
[00:27:39]  But I think that we can start there.
[00:27:42]  We know what manhood and masculinity does not look like.
[00:27:46]  It does not look like David French.
[00:27:49]  It does not look like the person who allows their family and their community to be terrorized by bureaucrats and progressive activists.
[00:27:57]  That's not what it looks like.
[00:27:58]  The question is, what is our ultimately our one hand vision of masculinity?
[00:28:04]  And on the other hand, how do we cultivate it?
[00:28:05]  I actually don't think there's a solution at scale.
[00:28:07]  You can't snap your fingers, pass a law, and then, you know, put HGH or TREN in the water supply, and then everyone's testosterone levels go back up.
[00:28:17]  This is actually a long-term civilizational project that actually begins with ourselves and the people that we know and love.
[00:28:24]  I mean, I totally agree.
[00:28:25]  From the food we eat to the lack of actual muscular exercise that children are now undergoing, testosterone rates have gone down nearly 80% in some circles since the 1970s and 80s.
[00:28:38]  And who knows if it's intentional or not?
[00:28:40]  I mean, we could, I think it is when you have public intellectuals saying that it's because of men that these things are happening.
[00:28:47]  But what they're really getting at, though, is that there is this kind of hyper-feminization of the American project.
[00:28:54]  And of course, feminine qualities are important for a balance for the continuation of the human species.
[00:29:01]  But a hyper-feminized society is an incredibly fragile society.
[00:29:05]  It's also one that we're living through in that case.
[00:29:08]  Talk a little bit about that and talk about kind of just some of the attributes of the masculine and the feminine.
[00:29:13]  And we're totally out of whack in this sense.
[00:29:15]  And then all of a sudden, people wonder why young male suicide rates are so high.
[00:29:20]  They wonder why young men are kind of this lost boys generation.
[00:29:24]  Well, some of it is they walk outside the door and all of society, especially if you're a young white man, is almost propagandized against you.
[00:29:33]  Speak a little bit about that.
[00:29:35]  So I can talk a little bit from experience.
[00:29:39]  My father was a really hard man, and he taught me how to be a man and directly teaching me that, but then also he taught me not how to be a man.
[00:29:51]  I love my father.
[00:29:52]  He passed away in 2017, but that's just the reality.
[00:29:55]  He was a human.
[00:29:57]  He was flawed, right?
[00:29:59]  But now that I'm a dad, my son is a year and a half old.
[00:30:03]  I've got another on the way.
[00:30:05]  I understand now that every little thing that I do, everything that I say, everything that I, the habits that I have, all of this will affect the way that my son grows up and the way that he acts when he goes out into the world.
[00:30:19]  And so what I try to project around my son, and I mean, this ultimately, this is kind of forcing me to grow up, although that probably should have happened a while ago.
[00:30:29]  But for me, the qualities of a man are someone who is stable, someone who is stalwart, someone who is calm under pressure, someone who knows that there is a time to use aggression.
[00:30:46]  We should never accept the idea that aggression is bad.
[00:30:49]  Aggression is good when it's constructively channeled.
[00:30:52]  Assertiveness is what we need, actually.
[00:30:55]  You raise this question of what happens when basically the effeminate and masculine get swapped, basically when men act like women.
[00:31:05]  We've already talked about it.
[00:31:06]  It's when men just roll over and let terrible things happen to their country and their community.
[00:31:12]  So, but without a healthy masculine role model, we see the things that you're seeing now and all across the United States and in cities where crime rates are going through the roof.
[00:31:24]  Basically, this is uncontrolled aggression.
[00:31:27]  It has no constructive outlet.
[00:31:29]  And so it just manifests as violent crime and things like that.
[00:31:33]  So this is the importance of a male figure is precisely that.
[00:31:39]  And again, this is not a cliche.
[00:31:41]  It's just that we hate men so much in society that we have decided that we can eye roll when people talk about this.
[00:31:49]  But then we scratch our heads and wonder why are we seeing these spikes in crime and things like that, or these spikes in childhood depression, in a sense of loneliness, a feeling that there's a kind of void that needs to be filled by something.
[00:32:05]  It's precisely of this issue, that there are no healthy or there are too few healthy male role models in our lives.
[00:32:13]  Pedro, it's bad for women too.
[00:32:15]  And that's something that we need to say, that it's creating deeply unhappy women, especially unmarried single women in their early 30s that were told that they have to go pursue a career and they have to become masculine to compensate for the society that doesn't have men around.
[00:32:30]  It's bad for everyone involved.
[00:32:34]  Look, stocks are at all time high.
[00:32:36]  People are saying things are going well, but you know they aren't.
[00:32:38]  Interest rates are at zero and the government just printed $5 trillion.
[00:32:42]  What could possibly go wrong?
[00:32:44]  Consumer confidence just hit a 10-year low and inflation hit 6.8% with parts of the United States seeing rates as high as 8%.
[00:32:50]  Something is not adding up.
[00:32:51]  Inflation is here, everybody, and you've got to do something about it.
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=== Masculinity and Global Conflict (05:22) ===

[00:33:29]  And so right now we have this whole conversation in our country about how we need to restrain toxic masculinity.
[00:33:36]  That's continuing.
[00:33:38]  Meanwhile, Biden has a transgender, we shouldn't even say that.
[00:33:44]  We were told not to.
[00:33:45]  A man who thinks he's a woman come and do that vaccine promo.
[00:33:48]  But then Pedro, what's really weird is that as we're told strength is a bad thing and all this, there's this kind of baseless posturing done by the American national security apparatus when it comes to a foreign border that most Americans shouldn't care about, don't care about, and can't even identify in a map.
[00:34:05]  And it says, if Vladimir Putin dares cross this line, we might have to use nuclear weapons.
[00:34:11]  What am I missing as I analyze this?
[00:34:14]  Go ahead.
[00:34:15]  If this straight white male crosses this line, then we will engage in nuclear warfare.
[00:34:20]  No, that's only half a joke.
[00:34:23]  This is, I think, the ideology of LGBT, things like that.
[00:34:27]  It provides a moral justification for the United States imperial projects abroad.
[00:34:33]  That's really what it is.
[00:34:35]  There are plenty of people who actually believe in this.
[00:34:36]  Like the woke generals probably are actually woke.
[00:34:39]  But the important thing is, is that the LGBT stuff, it provides a kind of a, this is the basis for us getting involved everywhere all over the world, is that we have to bring feminism and LGBT ideology to all these countries that don't have it.
[00:34:57]  We have to decriminalize laws that institute traditional marriage, whether it's in Africa or whatever, Russia.
[00:35:05]  I think that there is a tendency among the conservative political movement to kind of jiu-jitsu genuine masculine feelings into these imperial projects.
[00:35:17]  Yes.
[00:35:18]  Basically, we beat our chests and want to invade other countries because that's the manly thing to do.
[00:35:23]  But there's nothing manly about this.
[00:35:26]  There's nothing manly about getting involved in other people's business while your own country is going to hell.
[00:35:31]  And there's certainly nothing manly about bringing the pride flag to Kabul.
[00:35:37]  There's nothing manly about fighting for a regime.
[00:35:41]  And this still provokes disbelief in people, but this actually happened.
[00:35:46]  The CIA bribed Afghan tribal leaders over there with, among other things, Viagra, because there's a penchant among these Afghan tribal leaders to rape little boys.
[00:36:02]  Many of these leaders are older, right?
[00:36:04]  I mean, do the math here.
[00:36:05]  The CIA exploited essentially pedophilia in the indigenous population.
[00:36:10]  It's masculine to fight for this.
[00:36:12]  It's masculine to defend this order.
[00:36:14]  Let me ask you, is part of this, and I know this sounds kind of bizarre, but you'll get, is this some of this like a compensation strategy for people that are really like uncertain of their own masculinity that they have to kind of like saber rattle with Russia?
[00:36:27]  Maybe I'm like going too far with that, but the true masculine thing is to know your limitations and take responsibility for your family and your nation, not to be irresponsible.
[00:36:40]  Am I right?
[00:36:42]  Yeah.
[00:36:42]  And I'm sure that there is an element of that, the compensating for having a small saber, so to speak, spiritually and otherwise.
[00:36:52]  But I'm not sure how much of that actually plays into the broader picture.
[00:36:57]  Like is Mike Pompeo compensating for some deficiency or something like that?
[00:37:01]  I have no idea.
[00:37:02]  But I do know that there is absolutely nothing masculine about neoconservative foreign policy.
[00:37:09]  When the Pentagon says, sorry, we can't deploy troops and resources to the border.
[00:37:16]  The apparatus is in charge of national security doesn't care about national security, but it wants you to fight and die to protect other people's borders.
[00:37:24]  This is a perversion.
[00:37:26]  It's an exploitation of masculinity, of the last little bits of it in this country, and using it for fundamentally stupid and perverse projects.
[00:37:35]  What you just articulated is so important that at times some of these wars are actually sold on the premise that it is the masculine thing to do to beat our chest and to go into every conflict.
[00:37:48]  In reality, the higher level of masculinity is one of restraint, prudence, and contemplation, to use an Aristotelian framework of, is this really our role?
[00:37:58]  Are we able to accomplish this?
[00:37:59]  Is this what helps my children?
[00:38:01]  Or accomplishes some other goal?
[00:38:03]  That is something that is being lost.
[00:38:05]  Instead, recklessness is not a masculine value.
[00:38:10]  Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of that recently.
[00:38:12]  Pedro, I enjoyed this.
[00:38:14]  We participated in several thought crimes in the midst of this conversation, which makes it very interesting.
[00:38:19]  How could people follow you really quick?
[00:38:21]  Find me at chroniclesmagazine.org or unfortunately at Twitter at E-M-E-R-I-T-I-C-U-S.
[00:38:29]  And I use the same handle for everything.
[00:38:31]  So I'm going to pretend you didn't say that.
[00:38:33]  Pedro, thanks for joining us.
[00:38:35]  Talk to you soon.
[00:38:36]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:38:37]  Email us your thoughts.
[00:38:37]  Freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:38:39]  And if you want to support our show, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
[00:38:42]  Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
[00:38:44]  God bless.
[00:38:47]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.