Fighting Off the Death of the Citizen: A Conversation with America’s Future
What does it mean to be a citizen? Why is it special to be an American citizen? And what makes this republic worth preserving? In a speech sponsored by the Classical Conversations series live from Scottsdale, Arizona, Charlie spoke with a room full of home school families about all of these things and much more before taking their questions on a variety of topics—from tech to healthcare to biblical and spiritual citizenship and much, much more. 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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The Fragility of Citizenship00:14:27
Hey everybody, happy Sunday.
No advertisers in this episode.
Thanks to you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Those of you that support us at charliekirk.com/slash support.
This is an event I did with classical conversations.
More from them later in the episode schedule.
We're actually going to sit down with the head of classical conversations.
I think you'll really enjoy it.
It was a homeschooling group, and I got to tell you, the smartest, most driven, determined kids that I talk to are homeschooling kids.
So if you're a parent out there or a new parent, I want you to think deeply and pray about that.
I'm very pro-homeschooling.
I talk to them about America and why they should care about America, and then I take their questions.
It's a fun, unfiltered conversation.
And you'll hear from the quality of the questions.
No, these are not college kids.
These are 11, 12, 13, and 14-year-old kids that ask questions as if they were 25 years old.
Very, very impressive.
If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, that helped co-sponsor this event, go to tpusa.com, sort of high school chapter, sort of college chapter today at tpusa.com, where we play offense with a sense of urgency to win the American Culture War.
We want to make sure your kids live in a free country.
That's our daily mission.
Buckle up, everybody.
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.
Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
Wow, it's Friday night, and you guys are spending your time so nicely.
Thank you so much for having me here tonight.
And I want to thank the Jensens for helping put this together in classical conversations.
We're going to have some fun here.
And I also want to thank the church for hosting this.
And I could guarantee you that you're making better decisions this Friday night than most young people your age.
Let me first start with what I you are all very privileged here tonight, not because of your skin color or any of that nonsense that you'll see on TV.
You're privileged because most of you are being homeschooled.
And statistically, that means you're going to live a happier and better life.
And you need to be reminded of that.
Now, when I grew up, I was not homeschooled, but I went to a couple different schools, Christian school included.
I was kind of propagandized by my local community that anyone that was homeschooled was kind of homeschooled as kind of weird and like not socially kind of up to the task.
And that was just wrong.
It was a lie.
And now I look back, all the homeschooled kids are, they own companies and have big families and they're super happy.
And the kids that went to public school, not as much.
Now, maybe you go to public school here and you're saying, oh, you know, that's too bad.
But it's just true.
And here's why.
It's because homeschooling, you don't allow the state and you don't allow the government to get in the way of the transmission of truth to children.
And it's good for the parents as much as it is for the kids.
And we obviously talk about it mostly from a child perspective, which is obviously the most important thing.
But also, it keeps the parents on their toes to constantly be relearning and also aware of what's happening in the world and connecting that to their students.
It creates better citizens, is what I'm getting at, is that it creates a adult citizenry that is constantly interfacing with their childhood child developing, which you kind of look at the last year and a half in our country.
You know, homeschooling has doubled, by the way, which is a great thing for the future of America.
It's a very good thing.
And I couldn't be more supportive of that.
But I laugh because at Turning Point USA we do a lot with education space and trying to warn parents how bad public schools actually have become and how deceitful they have become and how damaging they can become for a children's future and what they're teaching, what they're not teaching.
And this last year and a half, especially when the whole country decided to lock down unnecessarily so, a lot of parents started to become aware of what was happening in their local schools.
And I'm sure some of you parents actually might be recent homeschooling moms.
Maybe, maybe not.
Maybe all of you have been doing it since the beginning, and that's awesome.
Maybe you know some parents that have just recently kind of joined the movement.
And I laugh because some parents, that's what it took for them to become aware of it.
But praise God that something as terrible as the lockdowns and our reaction to the virus caused this renaissance of parents caring about their kids' education.
And so I'm not going to get too much into this, but this is mostly directed towards the parents.
One of the most consequential legislative and public policy fights that is going to come nationally and more to states like California and New York is going to try to outlaw homeschooling.
It's coming.
They've already tried to do it.
They're doing it in Europe.
It's probably that that's not going to happen in Arizona anytime soon.
I'm not a fear-mongering guy.
I'm not trying to make you kind of worried about something that's not realistic.
But there's a reason for that.
And the reason goes directly towards the promise that is in one of the Ten Commandments, and a promise that every kid here probably knows a lot better than most public school kids, which is the only Ten Commandment that comes with the promise, which is honor your mother and father so you may live long in the land of which you are in.
And the state exists to interrupt that promise.
The reason why America, one of the reasons why America is becoming less free and unrecognizable is because children are being taught not to honor their parents.
It's not outward at times, but it's very intentional over a period of time.
It's your parents don't know it like we do.
Oh, they're outdated.
They believe the Bible.
We believe science, whatever nonsense they say, right?
Where a country cannot survive if that's the case.
It cannot happen.
And Mao understood this.
Stalin understood this.
That if you can break the bond between a parent and a child of the transmission of things that are true, the country falls apart.
So I want to talk about one thing in particular mostly to the students here and kind of the next generation.
And then I want to spend a lot of time doing questions, which I think is the most fun and the most important.
You are all classically educated, so I expect all of you to know your Aristotle and your Plato and your Socrates super well.
I'm half kidding, okay?
And your Aquinas.
The fact that you're laughing means you get it, which is beautiful.
I say that to public schools, and they say, what is that?
Is that a sandwich, Aristotle?
They don't know.
Okay, Philippians 4.8, which the Bible is the most important document ever written.
It's the Word of God.
We can go through why that's the case.
I feel like I'm preaching to a hometown audience.
I'll let the great pastor kind of talk about that.
But Philippians 4.8, one of the last things Paul ever wrote in a letter to the Philippians said, basically, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is good, think on these things.
I'm paraphrasing, I'm missing some words.
But the point is that we as Christians are supposed to think deeply about the things that are true in this world.
Whatever is true.
And whatever is good.
And America is good.
America is a good nation.
Now, our government is highly questionable at times.
And so I want you to separate our government from the nation and from the people.
But many of you are going to be challenged in the next couple years.
You're going to be challenged to disconnect your role as a citizen of this nation.
They want you not to care as a young person.
They want you to be cynical.
They want you to think that maybe you want to go start a family, maybe you want to go have a job, but the nation's toast.
Forget it.
Who cares about this?
It's a gift from the Lord that you get to live in this country.
It's a very exceptional, unprecedented nation in more ways than one.
In Jeremiah 29, 7, it says that it's the Lord speaking that we must demand the welfare of the nation or the welfare of the peace of the nation that we are in because your welfare is tied to the nation's welfare.
We're called to care about the place that we're in.
And the place that we're in is in trouble right now.
But the history and the unprecedented nature of this country is something beautiful and exceptional.
So you guys are super smart.
What is America's birthday?
Anyone?
1776.
Good.
What date in 1776?
July 4th.
It's not a trick question.
Don't worry.
It's all right.
We'll get to trick questions later.
That's not now.
So you're right.
July 4th, 1776.
Not September 17th, 1787.
Not the ratification of the Constitution.
Why that day?
Let's just think about this.
Okay, so what happened on that day?
Now it was really July 3rd.
Okay, we don't have to get into that.
The point, let's just say July-ish, okay?
Right?
Because it was like post-dated and they had to wait over a weekend and they took the Sabbath.
Anyway, the point, it's true.
There's like, there was all this drama.
If you actually study it, it really wasn't July 4th.
But we celebrated July 4th.
Let's pretend it's July 4th.
The fact that we have a birthday is a big deal.
Now, here's a trick question.
What is the United Kingdom's birthday?
Britain's birthday.
You don't know.
They don't have one.
It's just kind of there.
It's like, I don't know, sometime in the 900s, we decided we didn't like the Vikings, right?
It's true.
And then King Edward decided to draw a line in the sand and we went to war and sometime in that span.
What's China's birthday?
They don't have one.
It's just kind of been there, right?
The point we have a birthday is a really big deal.
That means that we drew a line in the sand and we said, okay, today we're going to start.
And the amazing thing is it's a birthday that was self-declared.
That's why it's called the Declaration of Independence.
And the Declaration obviously starts by Thomas Jefferson, I think, who gets an unbelievably bad rap in American society.
Super flawed and complicated guy, obviously, unbelievably wise.
If any one of you live a life like Thomas Jefferson, I'll build your statue, okay?
And never tear it down.
Thomas Jefferson was a student of the Bible, despite his own personal opinions of it.
The point is that he derived incredible wisdom from it.
And he wrote this, the first paragraph, the Declaration of Independence, is a beautiful paragraph.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands that tie them to another.
Like, whoa, that's big.
That means that he's making a moral argument.
He's saying that the rights that you're given at birth from your creator, if they get violated, it's not, he's saying it's a good idea.
He's not saying you might want to.
No, he says you have to separate.
Unprecedented.
He goes on to say the laws of nature and nature is God.
Now, God is mentioned four times in the Declaration of Independence.
Now, for bonus points, can anyone tell me all four?
No?
That's okay.
So, creator of the world, judge of the universe, and supreme being of the universe.
And that's a kind of a precursor to the U.S. Constitution.
But the point is that Jefferson, throughout this document, is very obviously pointing to what was already brewing in the colonies, which was a citizenry demanding a government that recognized a transcendent order.
That King George was not at the top of the throne, that Jesus Christ is at the top of the throne.
That's what the colonists were demanding.
Now, the fact that we look at the Declaration as our birthday is kind of bizarre because we didn't have a president.
We didn't.
We didn't have a Senate.
We kind of had a Continental Congress.
It was super informal.
We didn't even have a constitution, yet we say that's our birthday.
That's weird.
Why is that?
It's because that's the day we decided to separate and go a different path.
A path that is very simple, that every person in this room lives under, and almost no one here takes for granted.
I hope not.
Which is separation of powers, consent of the governed, independent judiciary.
A very simple truth.
God grants your rights, government does not.
That God grants your existence, government does not.
So the whole axis of government was inverted at that moment.
Because before then, every government absent the Roman Republic, which fell apart in like an afternoon, basically, right?
Most republics don't last, by the way.
Most republics are super fragile, they fall apart.
And we're not a democracy.
Happy to get into why we're not a democracy.
I never want to hear any of you ever in your life.
There's only one thing you remember.
It's like that Charlie Kirk guy said that we're a republic, not a democracy.
Good.
You remember?
That's it.
My work is done.
We're not a democracy.
I can go into the significance of that at a different time.
But before that, it was always the case that you, the people, were slaves, serfs, or subjects, not citizens.
The only exceptions would be, again, the Roman Republic and Athenian city-state democracy that was legitimate democracy.
And it falls apart very quickly.
Those would be the only exceptions.
And maybe, I don't know, I get some guy that emailed me some Peruvian example that lasted for like a season.
Okay, maybe that.
The point is it didn't last, okay?
Citizens is a very unique thing.
Now, citizens, the word citizen comes from a Greek word that means co-owner.
That means you're part of the project.
Now, here's the thing that no one wants to say out loud.
It's easier to be a subject.
You don't have to think.
It's easier to be a serf.
You don't have to provide.
You just do what you're told.
Citizenship is hard.
It requires responsibility, awareness, education.
It requires you to want to better your own life and trying to move yourself to a higher place of existence and being.
Citizenship is fragile.
Now, here's the amazing thing about the founders is they understood human nature correctly.
So let me find out if you guys are classically educated or not.
Do you believe human nature is naturally good or naturally bad?
Bad.
Good.
You've read the Bible.
Founders and Human Nature00:15:06
That's one of the main takeaways.
It doesn't take a long time to figure that out.
Brothers killing each other, entire nations going to war, floods, disasters, famines, judgment, you name it.
There's rebellion against God's order.
It's like in our DNA, right?
It's in our operating system that our natural state is original sin.
We know that.
We believe it.
The rest of the world does not, by the way.
Just so you know, you go to college, they'll tell you people are naturally good.
That's a big difference.
That's a big deal, though.
If you think people are naturally good, then you have to explain why things are so bad.
And then they blame capitalism or the Constitution or the system, right?
That's why everything around them is a systemic issue where we believe things are mostly a soul issue.
Big difference, right?
Systemic versus the soul.
We can get into that if people are interested.
So, but what the Declaration did is it inverted the axis.
It said, okay, before this document, and of course there was the Magna Carta and the Mayflower Compact, but this really was the separation.
Now all of a sudden, we're going to recognize the sovereign as being the people.
Made in the image of God, King George, you're not in charge.
And it created a war.
We won, thankfully.
We won for a lot of different reasons.
We won because all we had to do was not lose.
That's a different distinction.
No, it's true.
When you think about it, when you're the country that's being invaded, all you have to do is not lose.
When you're the country invading, you have to win.
Big difference.
All you have to do is not give up, and you win.
You just have to exhaust the invader.
It's what the Taliban does, right?
Like, all right, we'll just wait two generations and they're going to give up.
Big difference.
We outlasted them because we had the resolve, we had the commitment.
We didn't win a lot of battles in the Revolutionary War.
You guys probably know that.
We kind of had a tough couple years, really.
We just didn't give up and outlasted them and ended up being victors.
And then we had this big question, which is the founding fathers were tasked with this dilemma of, well, what do we do?
Like, we have this document.
Okay, it's the Declaration.
This is why they're so exceptional and why no statue of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, John Jay, or Alexander Hamilton should ever be removed, ever.
And they should be studied, appreciated, and understood for who they were in their times, is because they decided not to take power for themselves.
You think Alexander the Great did that?
When Alexander the Great conquered, he's like, this is my territory.
We are Hellenizing this area.
Thanks for playing.
Show me another time in human history a winner of a war decided to give up power.
That doesn't happen very often.
It doesn't.
Napoleon, they had to put him on an island, literally.
It's like, stop causing problems.
It's true.
Stalin didn't really give up power very easily.
The point is that these were the first winners of a war.
And I stand to be corrected if any of you know some sort of, I don't know, Macedonian king or something that I don't know about.
I'm standing to be corrected that said, we win, we're going to be less powerful.
They very well could have created the Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, and Washingtonian monarchy, and the people of America never would have questioned it.
They would have been like, yeah, that's just how things are.
We get it.
Okay, you get Virginia.
You know, you get Rhode Island.
You're not King George.
Stop taxing us, like, whatever.
So they decided to do something totally different.
Totally different.
Unique, unprecedented.
They decided, like, we're actually going to reread the Declaration, and we're actually going to do what it says.
So some of you, and in classical conversations, you guys are being educated properly.
But if you ever come in contact with these fake historians that work at the New York Times, they make this argument, and most of them in colleges are saying this too.
They say that the Declaration and Constitution are at odds with each other.
That they're two different, it's totally wrong.
They're perfectly interwoven with one another.
Because the Constitution answers all the complaints of the Declaration.
Because if you read the Declaration carefully, which I encourage all of you to do, you probably already have, which is it starts really broad, gets really narrow, and ends really broad.
And the really narrow part is, hey, King George, you're doing all this stuff wrong.
Like, you're abusing us, you're lying to us, you're doing deals with foreign countries, you know, you're doing all these different things.
And then the founders actually decided to solve it.
But it wasn't just that.
The Bill of Rights, which came in 1791, was large in part thanks to the Virginia Declaration of Rights that was done in 1776.
The point is that there was a bubbling up of a lot of these different things.
The founders decided to do the great leap forward.
And in the Constitutional Convention, they got Thomas Jefferson out of the way because he was probably too much of a problem.
Again, I'm a big Jefferson fan.
They had to send him to France to actually get a deal done.
It's true.
He was writing letters because he was a little bit too, what's the right word?
Anti-federalist would be a nice way to put it.
But one of the great things that you should study is the letters between Madison and Jefferson.
It's a beautiful dialogue.
We're basically Jefferson, you guys have probably heard this quote before that the tree of liberty is watered by the blood of tyrants.
Have you ever heard this quote before?
Totally misused all the time.
And then Madison responds to Jefferson.
He's like, yeah, that's probably not a good idea.
And Jefferson's like, yeah, you're right.
So it's like, you always got to kind of like look at, because Madison's always kind of calming down Jefferson.
But Jefferson was his own animal.
The point is that in 1787, the founders decided to do what was there, previously thought of as impossible.
A citizenry that will govern themselves first and foremost, that will enumerate God-granted natural rights, separate power, put in checks and balances.
But that wasn't the birthday.
The birthday is when they signed the Declaration.
You have to understand that, right?
And before the Constitution, you all know this.
Articles of Confederation fell apart a total disaster for a lot of different reasons.
And then the states had to ratify it.
That's another important point.
The states created the federal government.
The federal government didn't create the states.
Happy to get into the significance of that.
And then four years later, the Bill of Rights was officially ratified.
Now, let me just kind of go to the quote-unquote elephant in the room to equip you with the intellectual ammunition to either push back against people that don't know anything or maybe you have these own questions, which is the question of slavery.
Okay?
This is a massive fixation of the American academic ruling class.
They want to indict every founding father because slavery existed.
Okay?
Now, when was the first anti-slavery convention in the history of the planet?
Philadelphia in 1775, co-chaired by Benjamin Franklin.
The first state to abolish slavery, Vermont, because they were so inspired by the Declaration of Independence in the year 1777.
Thomas Jefferson, the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, in his own handwriting, admonishes King George for bringing the sin of slavery to the United States in his own handwriting.
They knew it was wrong.
They debated how to get rid of it.
In the 1780s, by the time the Constitution was ratified, nine out of 13 of the states had already independently abolished slavery.
Nine out of 13 had already independently abolished slavery.
In the 1790s, Thomas Jefferson, as governor of Virginia, was arguing for the abolition of slavery in Virginia.
George Washington famously said, if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.
He said some variation of that, so did Abraham Lincoln.
Thomas Jefferson, one of his first acts as president in March of 1803, signed a moratorium ending no new slaves coming into the United States in March of 1803, which was put in the Constitution to end slavery.
The provisions were there to end slavery.
Now, very unwise, deeply unhappy, and bored people.
I have a whole speech on boredom I could give.
We have the most bored society in American history, which is why we're the most unhappy and the most suicidal.
No, it's a very important thing.
For parents out there, never let your kids get bored.
And for you kids out there, do not let you get bored.
Be busy and always be putting goals.
No, it's very serious.
I mean, I know we can laugh about it.
Boredom is exactly when Satan creeps in, and all this next thing you know, your life is totally derailed.
Anyway, bored people just make up arguments that aren't true because they need purpose, so they just do weird things.
One of the things they say, one of the things they say is that we need to get rid of all the founding fathers because slavery existed while they breathed.
That's basically the argument, right?
They existed at the same time slavery existed, despite the fact they started the process of unraveling it, abolishing it, and getting rid of it.
And the fact that slavery pre-existed today, then, and by the way, there's more people in slavery today on the planet right now than there were back then, just so that we're all clear, okay?
Slavery happening on the U.S. southern border right now.
And I'm not legitimizing it, obviously, it's a moral stain, a moral sin.
But instead, what does the Bible say about how to judge people in history?
It's very, very clear.
You go look at the writings in Genesis about Noah.
What does it say about Noah?
Now, some of you that know your Torah might say, oh, it says that Noah was a righteous man.
It's true.
But what does it really say?
No, it says that Noah was a righteous man amongst those in his generation.
That's a weird way to put it, isn't it?
That means you compare Noah to Elijah might not be a great guy.
You always compare the person to the time that they're in.
Always.
What are the circumstances?
You know, so the founding fathers believed in human equality.
That doesn't mean that all people have the same skills.
Doesn't mean that everyone can run the fastest.
You know what one part of human equality is?
We all have one thing in common.
We were all born into a world we did not create.
Every person in the room today has that in common.
So Thomas Jefferson was born into a world that slavery existed.
By the time he died in 1823 or whatever, slavery was on the way out.
Or it was hotly debated and an abolitionist movement was sparked, large in part thanks to him.
That's a moral good for society and for humanity.
You won't hear that at most colleges or in most schools.
Okay, so I just had to do kind of that detour about slavery because I guarantee you, you'll encounter that through some person who thinks they actually know history.
Not in one private journal, not one private musing, not in any document will you ever find the founding fathers defending slavery ever, period, hard stop.
Does not happen.
Instead, the only arguments they make is about how they want to manage the union to stay together against a potential British invasion and making concessions with the southern states, if necessary, to keep the union together.
That's it.
That's as far as you'll get.
Okay.
But then as time went forward, the American project was born.
Republics are hard to last.
The United States Constitution is the longest lasting political document, unchanged since the beginning.
And I'll end with this kind of theme and then we can do questions.
Why is it the Constitution is just as true today in 2021 as it was in 1787?
It's because the Constitution was not written for the times.
It was written to stand the test of time.
Because the Founding Fathers were not writing a document based on what they saw in CNN at the time or whatever.
No.
They were instead, they knew people.
And they knew people didn't change.
And so you ask yourself the question, what's the worst thing a person can do?
Now, there's young people in this room, but we could go through all the evil stuff you could do.
Okay?
Let's just put it that way.
But even worse than that, even worse than individually you doing something evil, is collectivizing that evil and institutionalizing it.
So it's bad to murder, awful, obviously.
You know what's worse than that?
Stalin.
It's worse.
It's worse than just one murder.
It's like creating an infrastructure around murder.
So the founding fathers are like, okay, we know people are pretty messed up.
We know that they have a natural inclination to sin.
Let's make it really hard to make a government designed around the worst aspects of human behavior.
So what did they come up with?
Two things.
Separation of powers and checks and balances.
Basically, the Constitution is written to like, no matter how bad and corrupt and awful the people you send there, it's still really hard to get bad stuff done.
And it's still slow.
And it's still arduous.
And it's still painstaking.
Now, it's hard.
It's really frustrating for those of us that want to get good stuff done at times, isn't it?
Because we're always running into roadblocks and all of that.
Be glad the founders put that stuff in place.
Because they said, as bad as that is, you know how quickly things all of a sudden you could get rail cars going to death camps.
20th century is a pretty good illustration of what happens when you don't have a government built on checks and balances.
The whole 20th century told us that.
And make no mistake, I'm not putting FDR in the moral category of Stalin or Mao.
But FDR, the only reason he did not do more damage to the country was because he kept on getting stopped by the Constitution and the checks and balances.
He kept on running up against the slowdown of what the founders put in place because they knew there was this unquenchable thirst for people to become mini Alexander the Greats or Napoleons or Genghis Khans.
It's just no matter what you do, there's going to be a demagogue that wants to try to get power and it's going to lie to you and then try to abuse people.
The people that disagree with me, they're like, oh, no, no, no.
No, we can create utopia and people will stop wanting to do that.
Like, yeah, okay, thanks.
Not going to happen.
And this is an important thing.
The founders never tried to make heaven on earth.
They never, ever tried to make that through government.
They just tried to prevent an earthly version of hell from coming forward.
It's a massive difference.
And that's why they said, okay, we're going to try to decentralize things and put a check and balance to every corner.
So you live in this country, and it's on really fragile footing right now.
I'm not going to get into all the details.
You guys can figure it out yourselves.
You can ask me questions about it.
This is not a political talk.
In fact, I'm kind of bored with politics, to be perfectly honest.
I am.
I'm more interested in teaching young people about things that are true and are good and creating you to be good citizens, and you'll figure out the rest.
Why I say I'm bored with politics, I just think the conversations are so superficial and sloppy at times.
And I have no tolerance for people that trash the country, honestly.
I really don't, because it's such a gift that we've been given to live here.
And it's something that I think we have to preserve.
I think we have a moral obligation to do that.
And so, as young people, as students, you hear all this, you're like, well, that's a lot.
What do I do?
Well, at the younger the age you take responsibility as a citizen, the better chance our country has to survive.
And that means being aware of what's happening around you, knowing your founding documents, knowing the sacrifices of people that made before you, getting involved in the civic process, doing something about it.
The younger you do that and you reject cynicism, which is, oh, what matters?
What does it matter?
It's all terrible, the better our country will be.
Citizenship is rare and unique.
The current trajectory is to put us back into the box of serfs, subjects, and slaves, and away from citizens.
That is the current trajectory.
And you look at it from a biblical perspective, citizenship is absolutely biblical.
Caring about the land of which you are in, caring about your children, their future, their education, all these sorts of different things.
There's something unique about being an American.
It's in our history, it's in our culture, and it's in all of you.
One of the things that makes us different than any other country is our ability to step up and do the right thing after we've exhausted all of their options.
That's what Winston Churchill used to say about Americans.
And that means for young people out there, this is your country now.
Asserting Your Rights Now00:10:07
And let me just give you some advice.
There's a movement right now in the country to try and obviously turn kids against their parents.
And it's done through this ridiculously misleading environmentalist movement, amongst other things.
It's your parents' fault that the environment's falling apart.
You kind of see this language.
First of all, the environment's not falling apart.
Okay, let's just be honest.
I could get into that.
It's such nonsense.
It's earth worship.
It's crazy.
But it's this idea that every person before you needs to be blamed for any unhappiness that you have.
Now, let me balance the argument.
Parents, there has been a raw deal given to most kids with lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and mask mandates and the technological nonsense the last year and a half.
But don't let your kid, instead, you tell your kids and students out there, don't blame others for your own problems.
That's generally a good rule for life.
Instead, ask yourself, what can I do to improve?
What can I do to lead a better life?
What can I do to be in better obedience to the Lord?
What can I do to live in better alignment to his commands?
That's not to say that you shouldn't complain about necessary when our borders are wide open.
Get in line.
I do that every day, okay?
But instead, it's all right, there's all these problems.
Am I going to let that impact my soul and who I am?
Because the enemy would love nothing more for you to start pointing fingers at why you're not happy or why you aren't living a life that's at peace or one that's trying to improve or be better.
So we live in a great country, and the future truly is yours.
And there's a lot of people that want to clamp down on it, but really assert yourself as a citizen, and our best days will be ahead.
Okay, let's do some questions and thank you for sitting through all that.
So thank you.
If you'd like to ask a question, you can line up right here.
Okay, so before we do the questions, I just want to say one thing.
We are going to reuse this conversation as a podcast and potentially some broadcast.
So if you're not comfortable being kind of rebroadcasted, I do want to just give that disclaimer ahead of time so that you guys have, if there's a privacy concern as a parent or as a student, I just want to make sure you're notified of that so you're not taken by surprise.
Okay, all right.
Hello, Mr. Kirk.
Thank you for being with us tonight.
I was at AmericaFest a few weeks ago, so I'm aware of the size of crowds that you can and do speak to.
So thank you for taking the time to be with us tonight.
My question is, with social media companies and the mainstream media, there is a problem with the public narrative and full honesty there.
Do you think that conservatives with companies like Blaze TV, The Daily Wire, Epic Times, and so many others, do you think conservatives have a chance of getting their voice really back into the public forum?
And what are the ramifications for the culture if we don't?
Yeah, it's a very good question.
Thank you.
Yes, I do.
I think that there's a lot of alternative media starting to be created.
That's very exciting.
And obviously, I do a podcast and radio show every day.
Thank you for those of you that listen and watch and support that.
We appreciate that, and it's growing like crazy.
We're really blessed by that.
Yeah, I mean, look, the problem is distribution.
I think eventually we're going to save that.
Rumble is solved that.
Rumble's a great company.
Rumble.com, R-U-M-B-L-Com is a great YouTube competitor.
YouTube is just awful in more ways than one.
I'm happy to talk more broadly about social media companies if you're okay with that.
So now we're going to get into the Q ⁇ A where I'm going to just kind of be very blunt.
And I just have to do be a disclaimer.
I don't mean offense to anybody, but just take what I say from 10 years of experience, fair amount of wisdom of speaking it 300 times a year and kind of seeing what's happening.
So please don't be offended by this, okay?
All right, I got my disclaimer out of the way because I care about you guys.
Young people should not get a phone until they're 18.
It's that simple, okay?
Now, students are saying, what, what, what?
Yes, you heard me right.
These are portals into the unknown.
You are giving your soul, the future, and your child to some weird tech guy that doesn't care at all about your kid's future.
The people that have made Facebook, the people that have made Pinterest, the people that make Gmail and YouTube, they don't let their own kids use these products because they know how psychologically addictive they are.
For all the major companies, they have neuroscientists that work for them full-time that study eight-year-olds, nine-year-olds, and 10-year-olds on how to make these boxes of nonsense and boxes of chaos, which are betterly known as iPhones, more chemically addictive to your kids.
I say this as humbly as I can.
Parents, most of you have no idea how dangerous these things are.
You might think you do.
I encourage you to just listen to what we've exposed.
We've had all the experts on our show, how bad it is for your kid, how much it stunts their view of who they are in the world and their identity.
I thank the Lord every single day.
I grew up in an America 10 years ago, 10 years ago, without these things.
I don't know if I would be the person I was today if I had the anxiety, the self-image, the push notifications, and I'm talking about all across the board, from TikTok, which is obviously garbage, to Instagram, which is garbage, to all of it.
And I say this as someone who has millions of followers and all these things.
I don't care.
If you said, Charlie, would you lose all those followers in an instant if that meant kids wouldn't be using these?
After this conversation, most people in this room won't take what I said seriously, right?
So, how about this?
Do one day a week where you don't have a phone, okay?
I do the Shabbos.
I encourage you guys to do it as well.
It's beautiful, the Sabbath.
And I do 24 hours, no phone.
It's awesome.
If I can do it, I think you guys can do it as well.
But I just, I want, if you wouldn't give your nine-year-old a nine-millimeter without supervision, do not give them a tablet.
The tablet's much more dangerous.
I'm not kidding.
You want to know why suicide is the highest it's ever been?
Why we have the most medicated, least happy, you know, least godly generation in history.
It's like, yeah, we've decided to hand them these devices.
And this is an interesting argument, right?
Where some people say, well, technology is what you do with it.
That's partially true, but I don't agree with that.
So technology, like the way, for example, it's like, okay, a car is what you do with it.
It could help you get you there faster as long as you use it safely.
We're dealing with something completely different because there's somebody on the other side of this one.
And they're monetizing your 11-year-old to try to get them to hate themselves.
And they're good at it.
So they keep on opening up their Instagram feed to see if the dopamine will keep on rushed.
And guess what?
99 out of 100 times, they're programming your 11-year-old daughter to hate themselves.
Until that one time they like themselves, they keep on coming back through body image issues, through self-worth issues, all of it goes back to these things.
And so I'm on an anti-technology crusade to try to tell parents it's okay not to give the phone to your child.
It's the loving thing to do.
Thank you.
Hi, I just want to say thank you so much for being here tonight.
My question is: as a young adult, just I'm going to be graduating this year.
What are some simple but effective ways that I can reach out to other people who aren't blessed to be homeschooled and know these things?
So a graduating high school?
Or awesome.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Yeah, so some good ways to reach out to people.
You could join Turning Point USA.
We got no shortage of people that don't know what they're talking about that we talk to.
That's okay.
We love on them with truth, which is the best way to love on people, actually.
Different talk for a different time.
You guys can ask about it if you want.
Yeah, so you obviously have a heart to try to reach out to people, which is awesome.
I would encourage you, I don't know if you plan to go to college or not.
Maybe you do, maybe you don't.
That's going to come later once you guys, before I run out the whole room out of here, right, Rachel?
You got to get them to, yeah, I could do the college thing.
Is that all right?
Maybe later.
I have some very strong opinions about college.
That comes later.
But yeah, I would just, so the first thing is this, is that people say, Charlie, I want to change the world.
Well, first, focus on yourself, right?
More damage has been done to the human species than people that want to change the world that refuse to change themselves.
Okay?
That's one of the most dangerous equations ever.
Ever.
So that's the first thing, which obviously you know because you're homeschooled.
The second thing is then your immediate circle, which is the most difficult, right?
And so I say this as personally.
It's a lot easier.
I kid you not.
It's so much easier for me to go to Berkeley and speak than with my immediate family.
It's infinitely easier for me to go to Vermont than to speak with my cousins about politics.
Like, I'll do that all day long, okay?
You can throw stuff at me.
I don't care.
But if it's like someone I grew up with, like, hold on, right?
Can we talk about football, please?
Come on.
Right?
You know it.
That's my, that's, so here's the issue when it comes to that.
And I get both arguments.
I'm actually really not, I'm not, I'm torn.
Because half of it is like, I want to keep my family still talking to me.
I don't know if I need to be like picked up at the airport at 3 a.m.
I don't want to like lose all every cousin.
Family vs Public Discourse00:04:03
And it's just probably not good for society.
But the other side is, don't they deserve to know the truth, right?
And maybe it won't happen in the fourth conversation, maybe the 40th conversation of asking them very simple questions.
Maybe that might turn them around, right?
So I'm not here.
So I'm sure you have, maybe every family member agrees with you.
Maybe not.
I don't know.
I know that's not the case for me, for sure, but that would be my charge to you, is focus on people in your immediate circle.
But I'm going to warn you, that can be the most difficult, disappointing, and challenging things, but it will mature you very quickly.
And I encourage that for every parent out there is in a very polite way trying to put your kids in situations where they're challenged early is a very, very big deal and an important thing.
I hope that's somewhat helpful.
So thank you.
Appreciate it.
Hi.
I want to thank you again.
Just echo what these other kids have said for being here.
I'm really appreciative.
So my question is, how do you think the United States can move more towards a true free market in our healthcare system?
Yeah, that's a big one.
That's a big one.
Yeah.
Look, I already did all the disclaimers.
So if you guys have disagreed by now, you'd be gone.
So yeah, look, I've always been kind of a skeptic of the institutionalized healthcare system.
The last year and a half has just really set me to the moon.
And I'm not here to tell anyone what to do with their personal medical decisions ever, obviously.
Everyone makes their own decisions that they see fit.
What's really bothered me, though, is the lack of willingness from our public health people and from even companies to empower people on treatments that very well might save lives.
And it's been one of the great injustices of my lifetime, the fact we're not even able to talk about how vitamin D levels have a direct correlation to COVID mortality rates.
Let's just start there, right?
It's in 195 different studies that if you have a vitamin D level over 50, you have an exponentially higher likelihood of surviving a cytocosine storm that happens that's inflicted by COVID, right?
I don't know about you.
I haven't seen one public health bulletin, one radio advertisement, one billboard that says, try to get your vitamin D levels up, get it tested at your doctor.
Maybe you guys have seen those advertisements, but I sure have seen about the equivalent of a multi-billion dollar propaganda project trying to tell people to get vaccinated, right?
And so I think to myself, that's just a very simple wellness thing, right?
Vitamin D levels over 50, not controversial, end of story.
Why is that not even talked about, right?
And the issue, and I hate to be so cynical, is I'm afraid that a lot of companies are making a lot of money around trying to get people to come back for the same sort of medicine that they might like, or that they might work, and maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.
I'm not going to get into that tonight.
If you guys want to, I'm happy to get into that.
That's not why I'm here tonight.
But you can listen to my podcast.
I have every doctor you could imagine from Dr. McCullough, Dr. Malone, Dr. Zelenko, that talk at great length about that, if you're interested.
I'm just making a broader generalization.
Your question specifically, how do we get closer to a free market?
I think one of the encouraging things, though, is that the consumer, you, you're demanding more out of your doctor, and I think that's exciting.
I think that you're not satisfied that if you get COVID and your doctor says, oh yeah, just go home and nurse the symptoms, and then if you get bad enough, go to the hospital, which that's being told to a lot of patients across the country, which I consider to be an unbelievable injustice, right?
And I'm sure there's doctors in this audience that do a wonderful job, but I hear that all the time, right?
All the time.
And it really pains me.
It does.
So I think that it's going to come from you.
It's going to come from the consumers demanding wellness first and foremost and demanding transparency and information.
And then also, from a public policy perspective, we subsidize from the federal government and the state government broken hospital systems.
Maybe you guys think the hospitals are wonderful.
Abortion and Life's Value00:04:12
I think they're largely broken and they rob taxpayers blind.
So thank you.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Thank you again for being here.
I've loved listening to you and people like Candace Owens.
I have a question about abortion because some people in my extended family have sort of, in conversations I've had with them, brought up arguments like the life of a mother would be ruined if she had to carry to term and her standing in society would be changed.
She wouldn't be able to have all the opportunities she would have if she had an abortion.
So I've had trouble sort of responding to that and interacting with that.
So I was wondering what your thoughts were.
Thank you.
So let me just say, before I talk about this topic, there's some young kids.
If parents don't feel comfortable with kids having exposure to this topic, I just want to give you a warning.
Is that okay?
You're sure?
Okay.
All right.
So I'm going to get into it.
Again, I never ever want to rob a child of innocence.
The left does that every day.
I think it's one of the most immoral things a human being can do is robbing a child of innocence.
I really, I never want to be responsible for that.
I think it's disgusting.
Okay.
Look, let's just get to the bottom of it.
They want the pleasure that comes from sex with no responsibility.
That's why they're so obsessed about abortion.
Okay?
They want to have unfettered access to human pleasure without ever having to take responsibility for it.
Now, what you're talking about is the life of the mother.
So it is an exceedingly rare situation, beyond rare.
We're talking about a couple dozen situations a year where the life of the mother is legitimately compromised, where an OBGYN will say that the termination of the child will result in the continuation of the life of the mother.
This happens only with maybe petite women or very, very young women, if at all.
There is a society of Christian pro-life OBGYNs that are saying it doesn't happen at all.
I'm not willing to make that argument.
I've seen contracting data, but it's so statistically improbable that it's not even worthy of conversation, right?
It really, in a country where we have 3,000 abortions a day, we're talking about a handful of a couple dozen, maybe.
And that's not even, by the way, entertaining the potential attempt of the early delivery of the child, right?
A C-section and many other potential deliveries that might help save the mother.
Now, putting the life of the mother in danger was a big deal in the 1300s, right?
We have such sophisticated technology that can aid a mother through intravenous technology, make sure the mom continues to be hydrated, monitoring the child, and so on and so forth.
Okay, life begins at conception.
Regardless of what any pro-abortion person might say, the beginning of the creation of the deoxorbonucleic acid, the meeting of the sperm and the egg, that is a life made unique in total essence in the image of God.
Now, your specific question is that the standing of a woman in society.
Okay, completely different moral issue, right?
Not really concerned about a woman's social status when a life is involved, okay?
So make better decisions.
Now, someone says, well, what about rape or incest?
Okay, I have a lot of compassion for that.
That's still a life.
And that life is worthy of protection.
And I could change anyone on this because some people here say, Charlie, I don't know, you lost me at rape or incest.
Okay, if I had a picture of a baby here in the womb and a picture of a baby here in the womb, I said one of those is a baby by rape.
Which one is it?
You wouldn't know.
Therefore, both lives are worthy of protection.
It's that simple.
And so we as a society have failed on this question largely because we have allowed unrestricted teenage premarital sex without telling children to wait for marriage before having sex.
It's an uncomfortable thing to say out loud, but that's really the root of all this.
The abortion crisis basically goes away in America if we tell young people to wait for their selective partner for marriage.
All of this is basically of a hookup culture, an instant gratification culture.
No one likes to say it out loud, including many conservative politicians, because they're afraid they're going to lose their constituency.
Sports, Sex, and Society00:05:24
I don't know what constituency they think they're serving.
I'm not running for office anytime soon.
I'm willing to get to the bottom of it, right?
Which is that if people took responsibility for their actions and saved themselves for a partner that hopefully they'll meet one day, then much of this would go away.
And they want abortion to be a form of birth control.
A million abortions a year is a moral stain on our country.
So did that answer your question?
Is there any other part of that that I didn't cover?
Yeah, no, definitely.
All right, thank you so much.
All right, thank you.
I just want to thank you for being here.
I really appreciate it.
My question is, if someone wants to go into a career in politics, what one piece of advice would you give?
Great question.
Don't go to college.
All right, can I get to that part of the conversation tonight?
Okay, so I think I did all the proper disclaimers.
All right, for 95% of people, college is a scam and a waste of time.
Okay, let me just get into it.
I say this is, so I'm the best and the worst person to talk about this, but I'm going to pretend I'm the best.
I'm going to tell you why the worst.
I didn't go to college, okay?
Therefore, I'm the best person to tell you what you could do without going to college, right?
So, but then people say, oh, Charlie, you don't know what you're talking about because you haven't gone.
Okay, in all fairness, what learn?
160 schools I've spoken at, and we have thousands of groups across the country.
I have a pretty good pulse of what's happening on college campuses, right?
Okay, your question was about politics.
I'll get to it in a second.
But let me just kind of say this.
Unless you're willing to play Russian roulette with your beautiful child's values in future, do not send them to college.
And the chamber is five bullets in one blank.
It's that simple.
I meet parents all the time.
And the thing that I always ask them, without a doubt, I could see it in their eyes, Charlie, I'm such a big fan, da-da-da-da-da.
And my kids, I stop them.
Say, how many share your values?
And most say half.
I say, well, where did they go to college?
And they say, well, yeah, of course I lost my college.
I sent them to Texas, Oklahoma.
It's one of the great moral tragedies of our time that no one really wants to say out loud is that you raise your child in a way that you want them to go.
You put all of this energy in their homeschooling upbringing to go send them to some school to get, what, a piece of paper?
Like, really?
It's totally unnecessary in most fields, completely and totally unnecessary.
Now, if you want to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, fine.
But to go study like North African lesbian poetry to like, I don't quite get it.
I don't.
You will learn nothing of use at most colleges.
Nothing.
Take Hillsdale online courses.
Go watch anything from classical conversations.
By the way, most of you are smarter than all the college kids I deal with.
Your questions are already way wiser.
I'm not kidding.
You think I'm kidding?
College is where most people go get really stupid.
No, it's not a joke.
And you might say, I don't know what I'm talking about.
Respectfully, I do.
Okay, I run a college organization.
I visit these schools.
I hire them.
Okay?
I do.
And I could tell you that if you care about your kid, you need to be very careful.
Now, there's some good schools.
Hillsdale is a great school.
And I'm torn.
It's all about who your child is, right?
For some kids, they're super bullheaded.
They know what they believe.
And they could use a little dose of liberal exposure.
That's a very rare kid, by the way.
No, seriously.
Some kids, they're like, all right, you think you know what you're talking about too much.
We're going to go send you to Brown and, like, you know what I mean?
Very rare.
Okay?
But most are still trying to find their way in the world.
And you're going to drop a child into the most vulnerable place where they're already hyper-anxious because of social media.
They're already off the charts with these other things.
And they will be manipulated by professors that frame things inaccurately, deteriorate the moral code that they were raised with, because college is really good at giving people degrees of ingratitude.
That's what they do.
They make you unthankful.
Okay, to your point about politics.
In politics, the cool thing is that it just matters how hard you work.
That's what matters the most.
If you really want to be in a career in politics, first and foremost, I want people to go into politics.
I want to do something, not be somebody, okay?
That you really want to see something change, right?
That's really important.
The second thing, though, is that the cool thing about politics, very, very few industries are this way.
It's as close to a pure meritocracy of anything you'll ever come across.
Very close.
Where it's like, for example, you're working for a campaign.
It's like the first one there and the last one there is going to get promoted to a deputy campaign manager really quick.
Like really quick.
It's just, it's so many hours, it's so much output.
And the thing, why is that?
It's because you have a goal in a short period of time, right?
There is an election day.
We got to get it done.
Therefore, it's rewarded quicker and you can move up really quick.
But the opposite is the same thing.
So, but you also just kind of, my advice for people want to get involved in politics is just know what you believe and why you believe it and what you want to try to do in the world.
And that's really important.
So, and then never stop learning, is my other piece of advice.
And every person who wants to get involved in politics should start with knocking on doors.
I started my career knocking on 100,000 doors in suburban Chicago for congressional candidates and Senate candidates.
You want to learn a lot about the world, about yourself, about your stamina, about how people view things.
Go knock on doors in the north side of Chicago in Highland Park and ask them to go vote for Republican.
Fighting for Fair Play00:06:25
Seriously.
You learn a lot about the world.
And you figure out whether or not you want to keep doing this.
And so that's my advice: where so many kids get involved in politics.
I want to get famous.
I want to do this.
I want to do that.
Go work for a campaign.
Go make phone calls.
Go knock on doors.
Get the leaflets and figure out if this is actually what I do.
Okay.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Hello.
Thank you for being here.
My question is: if you're a woman trying to pursue your sport, how are we supposed to, I don't know, fight men trying to transition over and taking the records and scholarships from women?
Thank you for asking this question.
So this is where it's been interesting because I'm in a business where the Lord has blessed me, where I could say whatever I want, whatever I want to say it, and I've been doing that for a while.
And then I kind of have this meeting of people that are so good and they see something so wrong and they're so afraid to say what they see as wrong.
And this is like one of the most number one issue, right?
Where I get these beautiful emails from mothers who are just so agreeable and they're just great people, right?
And they're so intimidated by the alphabet mafia, right?
The LGBTQ, whatever, right?
That they wouldn't dare say anything against it, right?
And so, yeah, I say this.
First, let me just say this.
Everyone needs Jesus Christ.
It's the most important thing.
Everyone, including the man who's competing in women's sports, University of Pennsylvania, and destroying women's swimming.
I want him to come back into communion with Christ.
It's very important.
Before this entire kind of trans movement, there used to be a psychological condition called gender dysphoria where this would be diagnosed as.
It's a very serious thing where someone thinks they are a separate gender than what they are.
There are treatment options, non-medical, by the way, of getting to root causes.
Maybe you were really poorly treated by your current gender when you were a kid.
Maybe you have father issues and you're a boy.
There's a lot of different things that could play into it.
But therapy and treatment needs to be something that we talk about with that.
Okay.
But if we're not also simultaneously willing to say that men that compete in women's sports are nothing short of cheaters, then we are kidding ourselves.
That women's sports should not be an open-air athletic therapy place for people that have serious mental problems.
Because you deserve better than that.
We believe there are differences between men and women.
I grew up in a country where feminists used to scream in my face about that, about how men and women are so different that we need special laws designed for women.
Okay.
I was against that then and against that now, but I understood the argument that at least there were biological differences between men and women.
Now it's like, nope, there's no difference.
Men can give birth.
You get fired from Google for saying that.
It's true.
You get fired.
And most colleges, if you say that only women can give birth, you'll get kicked out of school.
I'm not kidding.
Most colleges.
I have a whole speech on how bad colleges are, right?
But when parents hear that, like, what?
It's true.
The Biden administration, when they came out with their guidelines, what did they say?
Birthing people.
It's true.
When they proposed income aid for people that have given birth, moms, they refused to put mothers in the official White House document.
They said birthing people.
It's bad.
And it's bad because of something you might not expect.
And this is where I can play a role, and I'm happy to, you guys can all rest on my shoulders.
My only advice is just speak out a little bit.
We're way too agreeable as a country, everybody.
This is nonsense.
It's garbage.
And we are afraid of losing friends or social status or whatever.
And they are bulldozing decency and our girls' future in sports.
It's just the way it is.
And again, happy to bear the brunt of a lot.
You're transphobic.
Actually, I'm kind of afraid of women's sports being abolished.
Like, thanks for mentioning that.
I kind of am.
I think it's awful.
I think it's terrible.
And it's unfair to all of our female competitors that work so hard.
And there's so many other issues of that.
So your specific question is: what can you do?
Not a lot without losing a lot.
I'm going to be very honest with you.
They will condemn you.
They will ostracize you.
They'll say you have no compassion.
You have none of this stuff.
This is a fight for your parents to start to pound the table, to be perfectly honest, right?
I'm starting to see more and more parents do this.
You guys are all doing a wonderful job.
You wouldn't be here tonight on Friday night if you guys didn't get it.
But we really have to start to see parents say this is not going to happen, right?
This has no place at all whatsoever.
We can have a heart for these people.
We can get them into treatment, get them to therapy, but you're not going to abolish the competitive future.
And just to fill out in the gaps for everybody here, women's swimming is done.
Women's swimming is no more.
Every record that was once held in collegiate women's swimming has been broken by a man by 30 to 45 seconds.
It's done.
Over, gone.
So if you're a woman that's a swimmer and you want to be in college, it's gone.
It's done.
You'll never compete at the equal footing ever again.
And so this is the final point: it really comes down to this question of justice, right?
Those of you that are classically educated probably read a lot about justice because that's in the human soul is a yearning for justice, right?
How do we know that?
Without ever having to tell them, a two-year-old that has a toy taken away from them says that's not fair.
It's true.
They know in their soul that that toy should not just be taken away without an explanation.
Within the upbringing of a child is a yearning for things to be fair.
Just.
Justice is a debt.
That's the best way you can explain justice to a kid.
Justice is a debt that is owed.
Meaning, you did something wrong, something must happen.
This is massively unjust.
It is on every single level.
So, I don't mean to kind of do a detour on that, but this really is the regime of political correctness.
It is.
People that know something that's wrong, that do not want to say anything because of the penalty that might exist.
The country will become a lot more free the moment that good people stop caring what they can lose for doing what's right.
Thank you.
Thanksgiving and New Minds00:02:51
Hi, Mr. Kirk.
I would like to thank you again for being here.
My question is: you did touch on how kids can be, that you'd want to teach kids how to be good citizens.
You did touch a little bit on how they could be in this world, but could you tell me a little bit more how they could be spiritually a good citizen?
Absolutely, yes.
We're in the midst of a spiritual war.
Everything physical is a manifestation of things that are happening in the spiritual.
For young people, that's important.
The sooner you realize that, the better, and the more important.
Look, I'll go back to Philippians 4:6, 7, and 8, right?
Philippians 4:6, I say this to any young person that is dealing with anxiety, which is, by the way, 75% of kids under the age of 15 say they have serious anxiety issues, 75%.
Well, the first line of Philippians 4:6 is: Do not be anxious, but instead, through prayer, thanksgiving, and supplication, let your request be known to God.
So, let's just start with that.
Do not be anxious, but it gives you three things to do: supplication, prayer, and thanksgiving.
Pastor can explain what supplication is a lot better than I can.
So, I'll stick with thanksgiving and prayer, okay?
Prayer is a real thing.
You need to pray to God every single day.
I encourage verbally, and you need to have custom, personalized, and sincere prayer.
Remember, Jesus said that the hard things come to people who do what?
Fast and pray.
Prayer is a real, real thing, and you should not forsake that.
Thanksgiving.
I love Thanksgiving, the holiday.
That's not what Paul's talking about, obviously.
But every day, you should say intentionally things that you're thankful for.
People say, Charlie, how can I be happy?
I get these questions.
I have a lot of listeners.
We have an eclectic mix.
I say, What are you thankful for?
Oh, I never thought of that.
Thankful people are happier people.
When you're thankful for things, you're not like, oh, let's ruin everything.
Right, so then Philippians 4:7, 4:7 continues by saying, For the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, right, will guard your heart and mind through Christ Jesus.
So, how do you be a good person?
Well, by accepting the peace of God and Jesus Christ as the chairman of the board of your life.
And then, Philippians 4:8, which I can never ever remember every one of them, but it's basically what is good, what is noble, what is true, what is the rest.
Thank you.
Praiseworthy.
Yes, thank you.
Think and dwell on these things.
Those three verses, I think, are so incredibly important for any young person that is looking for their place in the world.
You got everything from what to think about, what to do, what's supposed to come is the promise.
And then Romans 12:2 is: Do not conform to the ways of this world, but instead be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
That's a great verse for a young person.
It comes with a do-not statement.
Paul loved do-not statements, loved them, did them a lot, but also comes with a promise, a promise of transformation.
Avoiding Provoked Violence00:08:53
That's a big deal.
So, do not conform.
What does that mean?
Don't drink.
Don't do weed with your friends.
Save yourself for marriage.
Get off TikTok.
That's what do not conform means.
Right?
Like all of that stuff.
I could keep going, right?
But instead, be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Well, that's a great promise.
So if you don't do those things and honor God instead, you'll actually have a new mind.
You won't be anxious.
You'll be at peace.
Right?
You won't be restless.
You'll be focused on things that matter.
I hope that's somewhat helpful.
I could go on further than that, but Paul wrote a lot about how Christians need to be equipped for the spiritual war.
And I could go into that more unless you're interested in that.
That was really helpful.
All right, thank you.
Great.
Okay.
Do you think that the U.S. is moving towards socialism?
And in what ways, if or why or why not?
It's a great question.
So let's first define what socialism is, right?
Which is the collective ownership of goods and services and transfer of wealth.
I've said for a while that we're moving closer towards a hybrid of socialism and fascism, where fascism is a small select companies that are approved by the government or the regime that get preference, like Google or Twitter or Amazon or Pfizer.
I think we're getting closer to that.
Now, I will say, though, that we're definitely becoming more socialistic in the doling out of government benefits.
Now, any of you guys can always email me.
You know that freedom at charliekirk.com.
And if any of you solve this completely, I want to know, which is where have all the workers gone?
And some of you might have some answers, but you don't have the whole picture because no one does.
I've asked our whole national audience and people are as confused.
And I'm so confused.
And I think it's a mixture.
I think we pay people not to work.
I think that people have all these fake internet jobs with inflated Bitcoin currency.
They think they're super rich.
I think marijuana plays a big role in this, which, by the way, don't let your kids do weed and kids don't do weed.
It's awful.
It's terrible for you.
It makes you dumber and a bad person and probably neurotic.
I'm not kidding.
It's not a joke.
I've seen it ruin people's lives.
It's not cool.
It's not fashionable.
It's not mainline.
It's nothing.
It's awful.
So I think that's part of it.
I think it creates a lazier society.
And then I also just think that, I think part of it is the vaccine mandates for sure.
I think the other part of it is that people don't want to wear a mask at work all day long.
I think that the quality of actually the work is harder than ever before.
And then I also just think we have a general culture of people that don't want to work right now.
So what does that all mean?
Is that I think we're getting to a place where we're going to be subsidizing inactivity more than activity, which is a very dangerous precedent, right?
Where we're going to be paying more people to sit at home, where those of us that are taxpayers, and all of you are taxpayers, and you pay a lot in taxes, are going to have to pay a greater and greater burden for the people that don't want to work or they want to become some sort of Bitcoin millionaire or whatever, right?
So yeah, that's a concern.
So your question is, are we heading towards socialism?
I think we're heading closer towards this kind of authoritarian crony capitalism, right?
That's very dangerous, that if you aren't in the small select group of companies, they will abolish you, they'll run you over.
I could go into greater detail about that.
But make no mistake that we're getting away from our roots of an entrepreneurial, market-based, private property-focused society, which is obviously very, very troubling, and it restricts liberty and freedom.
So thank you.
Appreciate it.
This will be our last question.
All right.
I had a question about what can we do to change the direction our country is.
One more.
Sorry.
I'm going to override the video.
One more.
Sorry.
All right.
So what can we do as that our country is going without like, I know protests, that has to do a lot with it.
But also, when you go, what's to keep them from ignoring that?
And do you think it's time?
I don't know how to say this without sounding very radical, but when it's time to, I guess, do what the Constitution gave us the Second Amendment for.
Yeah.
So, no, it's not time for that.
So, I have reporters that follow me around.
No, it's not time for that.
But you are right, that is what the Second Amendment's for.
It's not for hunting.
It's not for self-defense.
It's for a free people to defend themselves against a usurpatious government, which unfortunately the 20th century was riddled with.
So, what can we do?
Look, this is a very important point: which is, you live in Arizona.
Arizona is a super important state.
A lot of these issues are to the forefront.
But a couple things: the enemy would love nothing more for you than be cynical and for you to believe that what you do does not matter.
So, first and foremost, focus on yourself.
Do I know the issues?
Do I know my elected officials?
Do I know the road that our country has been?
Do I know the natural rights that God has given me, the Constitution protects?
Do I know these things?
And am I willing to do something about it?
Now, you're right.
Sometimes protests, people might not notice it or whatever, but protests are like a small part of what you can do.
This is why I love speaking to this audience.
Parents, you're already doing the most important thing that I tell people to do: homeschool your kids.
You are making an amazing and wonderful contribution to the future of the republic when you homeschool a child.
Truly, it creates every statistic shows it creates better citizens, better informed population, more grateful, less likely to be a revolutionary, all the things that we want, right?
And then the final thing that I'll say is that, and you kind of ask you asked very delicately, you know, it's a question I get a fair amount, which is like, at what point do we say no more?
I do think there's a game being played by the current regime where they're trying to provoke us into a response where we will do something that I wouldn't support, that would be physical or violent, that will then justify a massive power grab like we've never seen.
Don't fall for it, is what I tell people.
Don't fall for their provoking.
Don't fall for them trying to, you know, irk you.
It's kind of the guy that you would grow up with in school that would taunt you, taunt you, taunt you, and get you to throw the first punch, right?
You know the type of person that I'm talking about, and then all of a sudden he would laugh at you with the bloody nose and go to the teacher and not even punch you back and then get you expelled.
That's exactly what they're trying to do with a lot of this stuff.
Don't fall for it, right?
Because there's a fair amount of chatter in D.C. right now about trying to categorize every single person in this room as a domestic terrorist.
They've done that already, and they want to try to use the power and the apparatus of the United States security state against you.
But we have to be the ambassadors of optimistic, peaceful, forward-thinking solutions.
And I think that's actually what the regime fears the most.
When I say the regime, that's an overarching word, by the way, of just people that don't believe what I believe.
Okay, that's just so you guys know.
That's just like a good catch-all, right?
Because I don't like saying the left, because that's not even a fair encapsulation.
I just call it the regime.
And basically, I think they're really afraid that we are actually going to increase our numbers peacefully, that we're going to keep on organizing, that our arguments are going to strengthen.
And I think that's their biggest fear.
And that's why I think they're trying to provoke us into a preemptive fight to justify a security state grab.
Don't fall for it and stay focused on things that are really good and true.
And I can tell you guys: look, the laws of nature, nature, as God is articulated in the Declaration of Independence include the laws in Natonian physics.
And guess what?
The laws in Natonian physics apply to cultural fights and political fights.
For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
And normal people and good people are rising up.
So thank you.
I appreciate that.
All right.
This will be the last question.
Thank you for taking my question.
So, my question for you is: what would you say to someone if they said that wearing a mask is loving their neighbor?
Yeah, I've heard that before.
Look, it would have to be under the premise that you believe masks work.
I'm not going to get into that.
Let me just talk about with children with masks.
I think it's unbelievably detrimental and abusive to children to make them wear masks.
I do.
And when I see children wear masks, I just, I cannot believe it when I see that.
Masks and Neighborly Love00:03:11
Outside of like, you have to, when you have to go to a certain place, I get that.
I'm talking about in a park, okay, when I see parents that put masks on their kids.
But, like, this is a great question, right?
What is love?
And we, yeah, I know there was a song that says that I know.
But again, the good pastor would probably have probably given this sermon multiple times, but it's good for some of the students here to know is that, look, in the New Testament, there were multiple Greek words for love, and we interchange them.
The English language is one catch-all word, but we know them as eros, storge, agape, phileo, and there's even more Greek words than that.
And, for example, in John 3:16, it's God so loved the world, it's God so agape the world, which is sacrificial love, right?
And phileo love would be brotherly love, which is where we get Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love from, right?
Or philanthropy, the love of human beings, like kind of a brotherly love in that sense.
Storge would be love between a parent and a child, a mother or a daughter, mother and a son, father and a son.
And then Eros would be a romantic love between partners.
So there's lots of different types of love, but Jesus told us that the truest love is one that tells the truth.
That is pure love.
I'll give you an example, and I'll close with this, which is that I recently had to get my wisdom teeth removed.
No offense at all to anyone that's a dentist.
I think you're all medieval witch doctors and basically are a punishment put on the human race to make us suffer.
That's a joke, okay?
But I can't stand dentists.
There's something about getting in my mouth, not a fan.
Phobia, whatever you want to call it, hate it.
Can't stand it, right?
I've professionally skipped dentist appointments for years and I've been proud of it.
So my mouth started to really hurt.
I never got my wisdom teeth removed.
And I went to go see a dentist reluctantly here in Phoenix, Dr. Toll.
Maybe you didn't know of her.
She's amazing if you ever need your wisdom teeth removed.
And she did an x-ray.
And I was already late for three things.
I had no patience and no time, right?
And she looked at me and she says, okay, I love what you do, non-romantic love.
I love our country, and you're important to our country.
So I'm going to tell you something that you do not want to hear.
You've got to get your wisdom teeth removed in seven days or your brain's going to basically be filled with a virus, right?
Like really bad infection, like all over the mouth.
And I said, yeah, no, that's not going to happen.
Like, you know, pushing back, like, yeah.
And she's like, no, no, no, no.
I love what you're doing so much and I care so much for you.
I'm not going to let you leave here until we schedule your surgery.
I didn't want to hear it.
I complained, threatened a lawsuit, like everything you could imagine, right?
The point is that that was the most loving thing she could have possibly have done.
Not what I wanted to hear, by the way, at all.
Zero.
Like, that was not comfortable, wasn't nice, but it was loving.
Infection's gone, wisdom teeth are gone, right?
And everything's fine.
Now, how does that relate to mess?
I don't think it's loving to try to give people a false impression that some cloth is going to prevent them from getting communicable disease.
I think it's a false promise.
False Promises to Citizens00:01:17
I think it gives people a false sense of safety, which it does.
And instead, we should be saying, hey, what's your D-level?
Do you have ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and zithromycin?
Do you know melatonin and aspirin could reduce hospitalizations?
Maybe, you know, do you know obesity could impact COVID?
You know, all these things that would actually empower them, that's loving.
No one wants to say that.
They instead want to say, hey, just put on this cloth mask because it makes you more obedient and less familiar with your neighbor.
Aristotle famously read book five of the politics.
You guys can read that at some point.
That tyrants have a habit of what?
Trying to make citizens unfamiliar with one another.
Think about that.
That's Aristotle 2,500 years ago.
Tyrants want to make you unfamiliar with your neighbor, makes you easier to control.
And when it comes to children, children learn a lot through facial recognition.
They learn a lot through kind of unspoken cues.
We're robbing them of that.
I have been an outspoken critic of the Muslim hijab for years because I said it dehumanizes people.
And I believe masks.
I don't like masks for the exact same reason.
So tell the truth.
It's the most loving thing you could do.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
Email us your thoughts.
As always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.