The Charlie Kirk Show - Charlie Kirk on Family, Freedom, and America's Moral Future—LIVE from the Halls of Berkeley
Aired: 2022-05-02
Duration: 01:23:55


=== Airing The Berkeley Conversation (02:32) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, I am campaigning right now for JD Vance in Ohio with Senator Josh Hawley.
[00:00:04]  A little bit distracted and for good reason, so I haven't been able to be in the chair today.
[00:00:08]  So we're airing this episode of my conversation at Berkeley.
[00:00:13]  That's right, the halls of Berkeley.
[00:00:14]  You can enjoy my comments and then my back and forth and QA with the leftists at Berkeley.
[00:00:20]  Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:00:23]  Subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast by taking out your podcast app and typing Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:00:28]  If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com, start a high school or college chapter today at tpusa.com.
[00:00:36]  If you want to support the Charlie Kirk show, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
[00:00:40]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:00:40]  Here we go.
[00:00:42]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:44]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:00:46]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:00:49]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:00:52]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:00:53]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:00:54]  His spirit, his love of this country.
[00:00:56]  He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:01:03]  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.
[00:01:12]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:15]  I want to thank the university for helping make this happen.
[00:01:18]  Thank you guys for stopping by our table, by the way, today.
[00:01:21]  That was awesome.
[00:01:22]  And we had some really good discussion.
[00:01:24]  I want to talk about that for a second, but first, I want to thank our amazing Turning Point USA chapter that has helped put this on.
[00:01:29]  You guys are amazing, truly.
[00:01:32]  It's awesome.
[00:01:33]  So I'm not going to do my opening remarks for too long.
[00:01:37]  I really enjoyed having conversations with you guys.
[00:01:40]  I'm sorry, can't assume genders.
[00:01:41]  I'm sorry with you people earlier.
[00:01:44]  Sorry.
[00:01:46]  Got to know the rules.
[00:01:48]  It was fun.
[00:01:48]  I learned a lot.
[00:01:50]  Really smart students here, I think, largely misled on a lot of different things.
[00:01:54]  We could talk about that.
[00:01:55]  I learned a couple things, which is, so I've come to this university a couple times.
[00:01:59]  I spoke here four years ago, I want to say.
[00:02:01]  There has been a couple changes here, and not just the masks and all that.
[00:02:05]  But one of the changes is that there was an overwhelming amount of cynicism from the students here at UC Berkeley.
[00:02:14]  Cynicism about the political process, about the future of the country, a cynicism just kind of about life in general.
[00:02:22]  And it's not that that wasn't there four or five years ago, but when I first visited Berkeley, there was this insistence that utopia is just around the corner, right?

=== Finding Moral Standards In Cynicism (04:55) ===

[00:02:32]  That if we just kind of give government a little bit more power and we get rid of rich people or whatever, then heaven can kind of be brought on earth.
[00:02:39]  And I didn't get that vibe as much today talking for over two hours with a lot of you.
[00:02:44]  I instead kind of got this undertone that things are really awful, they're terrible, and people like you are the reason why.
[00:02:52]  And, you know, there's really not a path forward to make it better, but just kind of don't tell me how to live my life and so be it.
[00:02:59]  And I think we can unpack that because it kind of transformed from an outward utopian kind of promise to something that's outwardly dystopian.
[00:03:09]  And there's just a lack of hope that I sense today from a lot of students.
[00:03:14]  We can talk about that today, which I think is really, you know, important, helpful, and necessary.
[00:03:19]  Something that kept on happening today as we talked on campus is there was this question that continued to be repeated over and over and over again, which is by what standard?
[00:03:28]  Like according to who?
[00:03:30]  And that's a really important thing I think that we should focus on here.
[00:03:34]  And it's holy week.
[00:03:35]  And I know we have a lot of atheists here in the room.
[00:03:37]  We could talk about that too.
[00:03:38]  But if you do not have an absolute standard of morality, then it really does kind of come down to, so who's to say?
[00:03:46]  Who's to say?
[00:03:47]  And that was kind of a theme that continually was repeated.
[00:03:52]  And there's an old expression that has been repurposed, and Dennis Prager said it for many years, which is, and Dennis Prager is amazing.
[00:03:59]  And it kind of goes like this, which if you do not believe in God, or if there is no God, right and wrong is merely an opinion.
[00:04:06]  And there were a lot of opinions about right and wrong today.
[00:04:09]  Opinions that I didn't even think that were controversial, such as murder and killing and the defense of innocent and people that can't defend themselves.
[00:04:19]  And so you might not believe in God, okay, but it's hard to believe that having a society that doesn't believe in God will make that society or that country or that civilization more free, or at least be able to have kind of agreed upon terms, if you will.
[00:04:37]  And so if you keep on saying by what standard, by what standard, eventually it's going to be whoever's opinion, and you're not going to be able to appeal to kind of a transcendent authority to be able to say, well, by the standard that kind of transcends space and time.
[00:04:52]  I'll give you an example, right?
[00:04:53]  So it doesn't matter if it's year 600 or year 2000 or you 2500, abusing children is wrong.
[00:04:59]  That doesn't change over time.
[00:05:01]  That's not something that should be an opinion.
[00:05:03]  But if you reduce kind of from a transcendent belief, where does that come from?
[00:05:08]  Then someone will just say, well, it's just my opinion that it's wrong.
[00:05:11]  Or it's your opinion that it's wrong.
[00:05:13]  And so I think it's really important that we explore whether or not there's a thing such as absolute truth.
[00:05:19]  And there is.
[00:05:19]  There is absolute truth.
[00:05:21]  There are things that are absolutely wrong, and there are some things that are absolutely always good.
[00:05:25]  And I believe, and I'll be happy to have discourse on this, that there is a God, and we're made in that God's image, and we're here to fulfill a very specific purpose while we're here.
[00:05:36]  And that's not just true, but it's also civilizationally critical to believe that.
[00:05:42]  Because the absence of that, you're going to have not chaos is kind of the filler word, but you're going to have disarray and confusion.
[00:05:50]  And then how do you order a society around that?
[00:05:53]  How do you actually find your own individual purpose?
[00:05:56]  And so, and then where do you get morality from?
[00:05:58]  Do you get morality from your opinion, from your experiences?
[00:06:02]  And I think that all, and eventually the dialogue that we had today, which I found to be very meaningful and helpful for me too.
[00:06:09]  And I hope the people that were there felt the same, is kind of if you, at the fundamental level, there is something eventually we can agree with in morality.
[00:06:19]  The question, where does it come from?
[00:06:21]  And then how do you pass it down?
[00:06:22]  And then how do you defend it?
[00:06:24]  Okay, another question that was asked that was interesting today is, and I've never been asked this question before, but I was happy to elaborate on it.
[00:06:30]  Somebody said, well, how do you know what a human being is?
[00:06:33]  So that was an interesting question.
[00:06:35]  For example, what makes a human being more valuable than a goldfish, right?
[00:06:40]  Interesting thought, I guess, for that.
[00:06:43]  Well, put very simply, there's something unique about humanity.
[00:06:47]  There's something unique about the beings that we are.
[00:06:49]  We are the speaking beings.
[00:06:50]  But if you think about it, if you do not believe that human beings have a soul and it's just a collection of cells, that becomes a lot harder to defend.
[00:06:59]  So I believe a human being is a mind, body, and soul combined all into one.
[00:07:03]  But if you believe that the human being is just a mind and a body, then you're basically defending like a really cool machine that might be created and might be able to reason and can speak, but it doesn't necessarily have defensible moral value.
[00:07:17]  And so I could go into great detail about what a human being is, of like the speaking beings, our ability to reason, to make sense of the natural world, our ability to use common nouns, all these different things.

=== Economic Conditions And Population Collapse (11:06) ===

[00:07:27]  But I think most importantly, that when you're wrestling with these very fundamental questions, I think it's time to take a step back and say some of the more consequential things of how we order society.
[00:07:38]  We need to kind of take pause and say, we need to be able to at least, in a majority opinion, be able to answer these fundamental questions.
[00:07:45]  And so that's, you know, so interesting.
[00:07:49]  At the capital of free speech, some people are just so miserable that they have to go bang on windows.
[00:07:54]  It's so interesting, isn't it?
[00:07:55]  Yeah, my dog's going to go say hi.
[00:07:57]  Good luck.
[00:08:00]  Yeah, they'll scatter.
[00:08:02]  So, look, we'll get to questions in a second.
[00:08:04]  I appreciate you guys being here.
[00:08:06]  The final thing is this: if you feel as if there's a massive amount of injustice in the world, there's a lot of truth to the argument that you, as a young person, have been lied to and misled, and that you've been told to do things that are not in your best interest.
[00:08:21]  One of them being having to go to college to succeed.
[00:08:25]  I do not believe that a majority of young people should be going to college.
[00:08:28]  In fact, I think that college is largely a scam, and I'll prove it to you.
[00:08:32]  How many of you have to take classes that you are forced to take that have no relevancy to your degree or major, and you wish you shouldn't have to take it?
[00:08:37]  Every hand goes up, right?
[00:08:38]  Almost every hand.
[00:08:39]  Jeez, there's a lot of people back there.
[00:08:41]  And so, the idea that just a piece of paper is going to be able to grant you access in society is a highly questionable one at best.
[00:08:50]  And so, you look at the statistics: 41% of people that go to college do not graduate.
[00:08:55]  41%.
[00:08:56]  And so, how many of you know someone that dropped out of college?
[00:08:59]  Raise your hand.
[00:08:59]  Yeah, almost every hand goes up.
[00:09:01]  And so, you're being forced to take classes that really have no relevancy to your future, whatever that might be.
[00:09:07]  And you're also simultaneously then knowing that people are dropping out at a record rate, ask yourself the question: why is this the case?
[00:09:15]  And so, but this is something I want to try to just hopefully find some common ground on, which is the following: which is that if you feel as if kind of the game has been rigged against you as a young person, you're not totally wrong.
[00:09:28]  And the best evidence of that is what we did to students across America the last two years: locking down America, forcing masks on them, and forcing a vaccine on them for a virus that did not pose a significant risk against them was nothing short of generational theft.
[00:09:43]  Now, for years, I've been warning about big government and the intrusion of government and how it makes your life, you know, potentially more miserable if it gets too big, all these things, with some prudent interventions here and there that I would support.
[00:09:54]  But, what better example of kind of the misery that a stupid centralized government and a corrupt centralized government could create than what we have lived through over the last two years?
[00:10:04]  Now, for those of you that are graduating soon, almost everything is twice or three times as expensive as it was before the lockdowns.
[00:10:12]  So, what did we decide to do?
[00:10:13]  Unnecessarily lock down society, create trillions of dollars out of thin air.
[00:10:18]  Those trillions of dollars go into hard assets.
[00:10:20]  Good luck buying a home.
[00:10:21]  Good luck buying any hard asset, not to mention your student loan debt burden.
[00:10:25]  And then, if you get married, having children is more expensive than ever.
[00:10:29]  There is an understandable anger that begins to set in.
[00:10:33]  And I know a lot of you feel this way: as if I've done everything I've been told to do, and I do not get the same shot at the American dream or at flourishing that my parents did.
[00:10:45]  And I will say that we could talk at length about what to do about that, but I think that there is a critique out there by some conservatives that all young people are lazy and all that.
[00:10:57]  I don't believe that.
[00:10:58]  I think there's plenty of lazy young people.
[00:10:59]  There's lazy people in every age group.
[00:11:02]  I don't think that millennials and Gen Z are generally lazy.
[00:11:05]  I think that they've done everything they've been told to do.
[00:11:09]  And now they're looking at their life when they're 25, 26, and 27.
[00:11:12]  And they're like, wait a second, I followed the rules.
[00:11:15]  I wore the mask when I showered.
[00:11:17]  I got the ninth booster shot.
[00:11:20]  I did everything I was told to do.
[00:11:22]  And yet, my life is materially more in jeopardy than I ever thought.
[00:11:26]  And so, because of that, now you're cynical.
[00:11:29]  So, my message is understanding that critique, let's try to turn some of that cynicism into hope, into a country that could be something you could buy into, something you could do in your own life to actually find meaning and purpose.
[00:11:44]  Because cynical people do really bad things.
[00:11:47]  They do.
[00:11:48]  Over time, cynical politics is not good for society.
[00:11:51]  You get very radical political movements when you start to be cynical about everything.
[00:11:56]  And guess what?
[00:11:56]  I have to wrestle with this myself.
[00:11:58]  I'm cynical about a lot.
[00:12:00]  I'm cynical about Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the CIA, the deep state department of justice, corrupt politicians.
[00:12:09]  I could go on.
[00:12:10]  But instead, I have to go through the process of stopping the cynicism, saying, wait a second, what do I believe?
[00:12:16]  What's the country I want to live in?
[00:12:17]  What can I do to actually hopefully get an optimistic, hopeful message out?
[00:12:21]  Because the politics of cynicism is bad for everybody.
[00:12:23]  If you think things are always constantly falling apart and there's no resolution, there's no way to try to solve it, then by definition, what comes next is either going to be an authoritarianism or anarchy, one of the two.
[00:12:34]  And one will lead to authoritarianism, right?
[00:12:36]  Anarchy does not last.
[00:12:38]  It doesn't.
[00:12:38]  Anarchy happens and then an authoritarian person takes over.
[00:12:42]  And you saw this in the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, when people get hyper-cynical about the political process.
[00:12:47]  They're willing to give their political power to a Napoleon or a Vladimir Lenin or whatever.
[00:12:52]  I don't want that.
[00:12:52]  You don't want that either.
[00:12:54]  And so if you're feeling as if the game has been structured against you, I want to just say there's a lot of truth to that argument.
[00:13:02]  And conservatives don't always talk like this.
[00:13:04]  Conservatives will usually say work harder, study harder, live by the rules.
[00:13:09]  I agree with all those things, by the way.
[00:13:10]  I think there can be a little bit more grit in this generation and all that.
[00:13:13]  But I think it would be unfair and not true to act as if right now a 20-year-old at UC Berkeley has the same set of circumstances that someone in the year 2004 had here.
[00:13:25]  It's just not true.
[00:13:26]  And the lack of recognizing that, I think, is something that creates even more cynicism and more anger.
[00:13:33]  So what is it that we should support?
[00:13:35]  And we can have a robust discussion on actually what this is, what this means.
[00:13:38]  We have to create citizens that are bought into their country.
[00:13:41]  There's three things that need to be done that are moral goods for society.
[00:13:45]  We call them conservatizing events at Turning Point USA.
[00:13:48]  We need to make it easier to buy property.
[00:13:51]  People that own homes do not burn down Wendy's, okay?
[00:13:54]  When you own property, it immediately de-radicalizes you.
[00:13:58]  And also it has you bought into the society at large and hopefully have some sort of vested interest in what's happening around you.
[00:14:03]  Number two, we need to encourage people to get married and get married younger.
[00:14:07]  Marriage rates are plummeting in America and it's a serious problem.
[00:14:11]  And then number three, we need to make it easier, and I'm open to all sorts of different ideas, financially and otherwise, and culturally, to have children in America.
[00:14:19]  We are on the verge of a population collapse in America.
[00:14:22]  Now, one of the reasons we're on the verge of a population collapse that I will find agreement on with some of the left-wingers in this audience is because of financial and economic conditions.
[00:14:32]  Now, it is more expensive than ever to have children in America.
[00:14:36]  In 1985, it took 32 to 34 weeks of labor to sustain a family of four.
[00:14:42]  Now, it takes 54 weeks of labor to sustain a family of four.
[00:14:47]  Yes, I know there's only 52 weeks in a year.
[00:14:50]  What does that mean?
[00:14:51]  In order for just a single, that's just for one person, right?
[00:14:55]  They have to either go into debt or the other spouse has to go into the workforce.
[00:15:00]  And I don't think a family should have to choose between raising the child in the way that they see fit and also whether or not going into debt or all these different sorts of things.
[00:15:10]  By the way, those were pre-inflation numbers, just so you know.
[00:15:12]  So something that I push back against a lot is that we have to kind of live to those pesky shackles of reality, one of which is that men can't become women and women can't become men.
[00:15:23]  We could obviously have a lot of fun talking about that.
[00:15:27]  But if you believe that something that's just not true can become true, you also might indulge in really bad economic and fiscal policy as well.
[00:15:34]  The same people that believe that men can become women are the ones telling you that creating $8 trillion out of thin air is somehow going to make people wealthier.
[00:15:42]  Money is not wealth.
[00:15:43]  Money is a piece of paper.
[00:15:45]  It should hold value.
[00:15:46]  So what's one of the ways that we can hopefully make our generation have a higher likelihood of having buy-in into this society is how about the federal government stop creating and printing $6 trillion a year and pumping it into our economy and acting as if this is going to create wealth.
[00:16:03]  And what it does is it makes the people in this room significantly poorer and it makes a lot of the asset holders richer.
[00:16:12]  So certain people benefit from inflation.
[00:16:15]  Now, if you have student loan debt, you might actually benefit a little bit from inflation.
[00:16:18]  I'll tell you why.
[00:16:19]  If you have debt, you benefit from inflation.
[00:16:23]  Better yet, if you have debt plus a hard asset, you're the real winner.
[00:16:27]  Well, guess who that means?
[00:16:28]  Homeowners.
[00:16:29]  Most students out there, you probably don't own homes.
[00:16:33]  Maybe you do.
[00:16:33]  I probably wrong.
[00:16:34]  You probably don't.
[00:16:35]  So when inflation happens, your $500,000 mortgage, because the money supply is increasing so much, it's actually a smaller debt burden versus the amount of money in the economy.
[00:16:45]  So it goes down by 10%, even though it stays the same, because there's more dollars out there.
[00:16:51]  And all the while, the asset gets more valuable.
[00:16:54]  So home prices go up and there's more dollar bills.
[00:16:57]  So the debt that you incurred actually isn't the same sort of, let's say, the same sort of burden on you that it would have been the year prior.
[00:17:05]  Now, the other thing that's really interesting is this was all predicted and we saw this coming.
[00:17:10]  Corporate borrowing increased by $700 billion in the midst of the pandemic.
[00:17:15]  I want you to think about that.
[00:17:16]  So corporations saw an opportunity.
[00:17:18]  They said, wow, interest rates will never get this low again.
[00:17:20]  We're going to go borrow as much money as possible.
[00:17:23]  And then the interest rate will be so low, our growth rate will exceed the interest rate.
[00:17:26]  We're going to play with house money.
[00:17:28]  Now, for a lot of you students out there, like interest rates, I wasn't even allowed to leave my home.
[00:17:32]  You know, I had to wear a mask all day long.
[00:17:34]  By definition, you were disenfranchised from economic conditions because you just didn't have the material ability to enter into the economy as other people who were older than you.
[00:17:43]  That needs to be, I think, substantially addressed.
[00:17:46]  I have advocated for a national recovery program, a national recovery program of intergenerational healing that addresses the rise in depression, suicide, mental health issues, alcohol addiction, social isolation, and the economic uncertainty facing young people.
[00:18:01]  I stopped very short of some of the more radical proposals like taking money away.
[00:18:05]  I think that's unnecessarily Bolshevikian.
[00:18:09]  I will say, though, that rewarding good behavior is something that we should start to entertain as conservatives.
[00:18:15]  I'll give you an example.
[00:18:16]  If you want to start a business instead of going to college, there should be an opportunity for you to be able to get a low to zero interest rate loan to be able to start a business.
[00:18:23]  We need a lot more entrepreneurs and a lot less people going to college.
[00:18:27]  The government could do that in an instant.
[00:18:29]  And I believe it should.
[00:18:30]  Okay, so yeah, I kind of hit all these points here.

=== Dating As An Interview Process (04:29) ===

[00:18:34]  So let's get into some questions.
[00:18:35]  And I want to thank you guys again for being here.
[00:18:38]  I'll stay as long as I can.
[00:18:39]  And thank you.
[00:18:40]  Even though you might have disagreed with everything I just said, respectfully allow me to kind of finish those opening remarks.
[00:18:45]  We're going to have a question line right down the middle.
[00:18:47]  Is that right, Mackenzie?
[00:18:48]  Okay, so this tends to be a little bit of a conservative audience.
[00:18:52]  I can't quite tell by some of the golf claps all the way in the back.
[00:18:55]  But if you are a conservative, please do not heckle.
[00:19:01]  Please do not use profanity or interrupt people when they ask questions.
[00:19:06]  Allow people to ask a question, allow them to get it out.
[00:19:08]  We, at conservative events, we want to show respect to people on the left that sometimes they don't always grant to us, especially as we're here at UC Berkeley, the capital of free speech, whatever that might mean.
[00:19:18]  All right, so you can start a line right there, single file.
[00:19:21]  I see some familiar faces actually from our tabling today.
[00:19:24]  One of the libertarian friends, I think that's right.
[00:19:26]  Maybe I'm wrong.
[00:19:27]  Bright lights here.
[00:19:28]  And so if you have a question, you can come up.
[00:19:30]  Again, questions, not statements, please.
[00:19:33]  We want to get to as many questions as possible.
[00:19:36]  And let's get started.
[00:19:39]  Hi, Charlie.
[00:19:40]  I'm a young conservative guy in the bluest state in the country in a big blue city.
[00:19:45]  So dating is a struggle.
[00:19:52]  So what's your advice to young conservatives that are red specs in a sea of blue?
[00:19:59]  And also, how do you feel about dating apps?
[00:20:00]  Yeah, so I'm not a huge fan of dating apps, but so I will have an opinion here that will really get people.
[00:20:08]  You should not date people that have different politics than you.
[00:20:12]  You should not.
[00:20:13]  And I'm not, and the reason I believe you should date with the intent to marry.
[00:20:19]  I don't think date is a hobby.
[00:20:20]  I think dating is an interview process.
[00:20:23]  And I know that is a minority opinion on most college campuses where date is a mechanism for, I don't know, companionship, amongst other things.
[00:20:31]  And so I believe that you in Berkeley, it's going to be tough.
[00:20:35]  You're going to have to hopefully only date people in alignment with your values, right?
[00:20:38]  That doesn't mean you can't have friends with people that disagree with you, but dating is a very serious thing.
[00:20:43]  So how do you go about doing that?
[00:20:45]  Well, thankfully, at Turning Point USA, all the conservatives at the front have red shirts on, so maybe you can introduce yourself to somebody.
[00:20:54]  But yeah, look, I will say this: that try to associate or marry or date somebody that does share your deeply held values.
[00:21:01]  I think that's very, very important.
[00:21:04]  And secondly, I will say this: which is men in general who have difficulty finding women generally have a couple problems.
[00:21:13]  And this is not directed towards you.
[00:21:14]  I just met you.
[00:21:15]  Okay, so please, we're good if I say this.
[00:21:17]  Okay.
[00:21:17]  Most men are beta males, okay?
[00:21:20]  With very little to any, very little to any detectable testosterone.
[00:21:26]  Like the radar is trying their best.
[00:21:30]  Men, I believe, especially in this time of moral and societal chaos, need to get back into what it means to be a spiritually, physically, and mentally strong man, which I believe, which I believe includes stopping watching pornography, which I believe means working out on a regular basis.
[00:21:50]  And I believe also understanding that the most desirable quality that young ladies look for in men, according to my big survey of all of our listeners, is self-control.
[00:22:02]  Is that young ladies say that they cannot find a young man who can control himself?
[00:22:07]  That's a big deal.
[00:22:08]  And we believe as Christians that self-control is a fruit of the spirit.
[00:22:13]  Happy to get into the theology of that.
[00:22:15]  I'm sure there might be some curiosity in that.
[00:22:18]  So put that all together.
[00:22:19]  What are you supposed to do?
[00:22:21]  Try to be the best version of yourself, both mentally, spiritually, and physically.
[00:22:27]  And then be very clear with women and respectfully about what you want and your intent.
[00:22:33]  A lot of men are intimidated by women.
[00:22:35]  And I get it.
[00:22:36]  It's because our entire culture has basically turned men to be intimidated by women.
[00:22:41]  They might accuse you of something or whatever.
[00:22:43]  I would encourage you to be very direct.
[00:22:45]  Don't try this all like, yeah, we're going to try the friend thing for a while.
[00:22:49]  Like, just be a man and say, I like you.
[00:22:51]  I want to take on a date.
[00:22:52]  Like, does that happen anymore?
[00:22:53]  Maybe it does.
[00:22:54]  Probably not a lot.
[00:22:55]  And so, yeah, and then if that doesn't work, man, move to Birmingham, Alabama.
[00:23:00]  You'll find a wife in like an afternoon.
[00:23:02]  God bless you.

=== What Conservatism Needs To Articulate (15:57) ===

[00:23:03]  Thank you.
[00:23:07]  Dinesh D'Souza has a real special movie coming out, everybody.
[00:23:11]  In 2020, November 2020, Democrats were up to no good.
[00:23:16]  They were planning to pull off one of the greatest schemes of election fraud never seen before, but they didn't think we would catch them, but we did.
[00:23:23]  Find out what they did and how they did it in a new documentary film called 2000 Mules, directed and narrated by renowned filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, an executive produced by the Salem Media Group, with research from truthevote.org.
[00:23:36]  2000 Mules is going to be a game changer.
[00:23:39]  2000 Mules tells the story of the ones who tried to hijack a presidential election.
[00:23:43]  You'll see actual video surveillance tape.
[00:23:45]  You'll see how we track their cell phones to box after box after they got paid to carry out this illegal scheme.
[00:23:51]  Watch the trailer for yourself.
[00:23:53]  It's 2000mules.com and check your local listings and get your tickets today at 2000mules.com.
[00:23:59]  And the premiere will be on May 2nd or May 4th.
[00:24:03]  That's a limited release premiere.
[00:24:05]  So go to 2000mules.com.
[00:24:07]  That is 2000mules.com.
[00:24:10]  I'm in the movie.
[00:24:11]  It is a game changer.
[00:24:12]  Check it out right now.
[00:24:13]  2000mules.com.
[00:24:14]  That is 2000mules.com.
[00:24:19]  Okay.
[00:24:20]  I mean, I agree with your diagnosis of the problem.
[00:24:24]  I just feel like when I see economic policy proposed by people associated with turning points, that I see that it feels like, like, for example, the tax bill that passed, I guess, however many years in the Trump tax plan, it felt like a lot of the policies were, like, tax rates went up after Trump left office.
[00:24:45]  There were tax cuts for people who, like, it feels like the door is being closed on me.
[00:24:50]  And so I feel pressure to vote against people who are trying to close the door against young people like me.
[00:24:57]  Okay, yeah, that's a fair question.
[00:24:58]  So it was a mixed bag.
[00:24:59]  So part of the bill really hurt people in California.
[00:25:02]  I'm not going to lie.
[00:25:03]  It raised taxes on you because it got rid of your state and local deductions.
[00:25:07]  There's a reason for that.
[00:25:08]  The reason the federal government would make for that is why should we subsidize your high taxes while other states can get their fiscal house in order?
[00:25:15]  So that's a pretty good argument.
[00:25:16]  I'm not going to lie that someone in Texas doesn't get the same sort of tax benefit that you get in California.
[00:25:21]  The inverse is like, you're a young person.
[00:25:22]  You didn't, maybe you chose to live here, maybe not.
[00:25:25]  There were some benefits to the tax bill.
[00:25:27]  I think it unnecessarily pandered to big corporations that hate our values.
[00:25:30]  I'll be very honest.
[00:25:32]  Corporations hate conservative values.
[00:25:34]  A lot of them are incredibly woke.
[00:25:35]  Why we went out of our way to try to lower corporate tax rates that hate us is beyond me.
[00:25:40]  Not because I don't think it's good economics.
[00:25:42]  I just don't think it's good for the country to give more money to companies that are giving $100 million to BLM.
[00:25:47]  Like, not exactly something I think we should go out of our way for.
[00:25:50]  There are some other provisions, though, in the tax bill that aren't talked about, such as increasing the standardized middle-income middle-class deduction for having children.
[00:25:58]  It was a marginal increase.
[00:25:59]  It wasn't that significant.
[00:26:01]  But here's something that you and I could probably agree on, which is, okay, you look at, you're trying to make a political decision, right?
[00:26:05]  Republican and Democrat.
[00:26:07]  You're like, wow, Republicans control the House and the Senate and the presidency, and that's the best you can do.
[00:26:11]  I agree, that's an incredibly underwhelming policy accomplishment if that's the best you can do.
[00:26:16]  Meanwhile, in my personal opinion, you do nothing on the southern border, right?
[00:26:19]  You do nothing meaningful to address our drug overdose problems in our country.
[00:26:23]  Nothing meaningful to address student debt or the scam of college.
[00:26:26]  Nothing meaningful to address some of these other systemic issues.
[00:26:29]  And so I think it was designed by lobbyists for major corporations.
[00:26:34]  And I do agree with a lot of the economics of it.
[00:26:36]  Let me be clear.
[00:26:36]  I think that there is something to be said to open up, you know, supply side to help production and all that.
[00:26:42]  But I think it's lost a lot of the times.
[00:26:44]  I think demand side is compelling at times.
[00:26:46]  It's overindulged upon, I think, by certain liberal economists.
[00:26:50]  But it's hard to disagree with you that that tax bill probably didn't speak with you.
[00:26:55]  I'm not going to stand up here and say it's the greatest bill ever.
[00:26:58]  There were some good provisions for it.
[00:27:00]  There were some questionable ones.
[00:27:01]  But I think that we look at that.
[00:27:04]  I am frustrated that that has to be the piece of legislation that I, as a conservative, have to say, oh, yeah, go give us political power back and you get more of that.
[00:27:12]  Like, really?
[00:27:13]  I think Republicans watching need to realize you guys have to do a lot better than just cutting corporate taxes for Google and Facebook and Amazon.
[00:27:20]  Thank you.
[00:27:24]  Hey, Charlie.
[00:27:25]  I appreciate you taking the time.
[00:27:26]  Did we talk earlier?
[00:27:27]  Yes.
[00:27:28]  Yeah.
[00:27:28]  Hi again.
[00:27:29]  I'm going to change your clothes.
[00:27:32]  I'm going to ask another question about healthcare.
[00:27:35]  All right.
[00:27:36]  So you I've been hearing you in the news ripping Biden over inflation and I think some of that stems from government spending coming out of the pandemic if you were facing Armageddon people were I mean we really didn't know anything about COVID at the beginning of at the beginning of 2020.
[00:27:55]  Would you have not done any government spending sending out the stimulus checks and right now Biden's proposing to cap the price of insulin and another thing that you talked about was student debt and you didn't mention any student debt forgiveness.
[00:28:09]  I'd love to hear your thoughts on that because that seems like a quick and easy way to get people into the market of buying a home.
[00:28:17]  Okay, a lot there.
[00:28:18]  So let's start.
[00:28:19]  I've been consistent throughout the entire time.
[00:28:21]  You guys can dig up my podcast from two years ago.
[00:28:24]  I've been against every form of lockdown and all government spending and the stimulus bill all throughout the entire time.
[00:28:29]  I think it was a mistake.
[00:28:31]  I reject the premise that it was Armageddon.
[00:28:34]  We did know a lot about the virus about two to three weeks in.
[00:28:37]  We had the Diamond Princess cruise ship actually not too far off San Francisco Bay where we had an isolated incident that was very contained, spread of COVID.
[00:28:45]  And actually those modeling of infection rate and death rate actually modeled really well for across the country throughout the pandemic, which showed a very low death rate, high transmissibility rate.
[00:28:56]  I personally believe that there was a concerted war by pharmaceutical companies to restrict the discussion and the spread of early intervention treatments that have proven to be very, very helpful and successful, such as hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, azithromycin, intravenous therapy, ozone, monoclonal antibodies.
[00:29:15]  And so let's take one that's less controversial, right?
[00:29:17]  Vitamin D. There's over 150 studies that show that if you have a vitamin D level over 50, that you have a much higher chance of surviving with COVID and not even getting a significant risk of COVID.
[00:29:29]  Our public health officials very well could have run TV ads that I didn't see that said, hey, check your vitamin D level like you check your credit score and get a free vitamin D booster shot.
[00:29:39]  That alone could have prevented millions of cytokosine storms because a vitamin D is an interrupter that gets in the way of what is the most, is the harshest reaction and the most severe reaction that came from the virus.
[00:29:51]  So the same scientist that said the vaccine was great.
[00:29:54]  Hold on.
[00:29:55]  I mean, let me finish.
[00:29:57]  Hold on a second.
[00:29:58]  So the other part to student loan forgiveness, so I'll actually finish with this.
[00:30:04]  So on the healthcare part, no lockdowns ever.
[00:30:06]  The best stimulus to the economy should have been reopening the economy quickly.
[00:30:09]  Creating money out of thin air was wasteful.
[00:30:11]  It was wrong.
[00:30:12]  It rewarded bad behavior.
[00:30:14]  Paying people not to work, pay people staying at home was wrong from the beginning.
[00:30:18]  It never should have been done at all whatsoever.
[00:30:21]  And so, yeah, that's my statement on that.
[00:30:24]  And therefore, the regime, both parties, but mostly the left, especially recently, created $7 trillion, $67 trillion of new government spending the last two years, pumps that money into the economy.
[00:30:34]  That's why you're seeing everything that you could touch or use go up dramatically, right?
[00:30:39]  Pork, beef, gas prices, homes, anything where there's a finite amount, it goes up dramatically.
[00:30:45]  In fact, we have so many dollar bills that we start to see things that are otherwise rather not very valuable skyrocket.
[00:30:52]  Very risky cryptocurrencies.
[00:30:54]  I'm only talking about Bitcoin or Ethereum.
[00:30:55]  I'm talking about crypto we never heard before because there's so many dollar bills.
[00:30:58]  They're trying to find a home.
[00:31:00]  Okay, to your second question about student loan forgiveness, right?
[00:31:03]  Okay, I'm a very, I'm a huge opponent to student loan forgiveness.
[00:31:06]  Let me tell you why.
[00:31:08]  I do not believe that we should penalize young people that got scholarships, went to community colleges first, or did not go to college altogether.
[00:31:16]  Forgiving student loan loans, by definition, would be penalizing other students that made other decisions not to go to as expensive schools, going to community college, work their way through college, got academic scholarships, took AP classes, took honors classes, and managed their student lett burden, their student debt burden.
[00:31:35]  And so while it's attractive to say, yeah, let's just kind of forgive that debt, let's just wipe it out.
[00:31:40]  The moral question is, what kind of behavior do you want to reward, right?
[00:31:44]  Now, I do not believe rewarding going to UC Berkeley to go study North African lesbian poetry while somebody, you know, got works with their hands to become a plumber, electrician, or carpenter.
[00:31:55]  How they look, they say, wait a second, why do they get the handout?
[00:31:58]  Just because they went to Berkeley and took all those classes and I didn't?
[00:32:01]  So it is by definition unfair.
[00:32:03]  Really quick follow-up and I'm going to get to the next person.
[00:32:05]  Yeah, sure.
[00:32:06]  I mean, a plumber, a plumber might have to go into a profession because they can't get, they can't afford college.
[00:32:16]  So the prohibitive cost of college factors into the problem.
[00:32:20]  And if you don't have any student loan debt forgiveness, you're getting into the problem that you were talking about earlier where people have been lied to.
[00:32:27]  They have been.
[00:32:28]  And so you're not going to help them out if they've been lied to?
[00:32:32]  Like if they've been lied to by the government, why wouldn't you help them out?
[00:32:35]  Well, I think helping them out would be opening the economy and not forgiving the debt burden.
[00:32:39]  I mean, by helping them out, I think there's ways to do it while also enshrining a basic principle that I believe in, which is individual responsibility, which is, I feel sorry for you, you were scammed, but you also signed on the dotted line at fastfa.gov and you decided to go borrow $65,000.
[00:32:55]  And I do not believe that it is the role of government nor the correct moral thing to do to completely wash that away because there still needs to be individual responsibility built into that.
[00:33:06]  Okay?
[00:33:06]  So the second part of your question with the plumber thing, which is we have way too many people going to college.
[00:33:11]  College is completely overrated for a lot of different fields and studies of industry.
[00:33:16]  We have a massive underemployment problem for electricians and carpenters, police officers, firefighters, and people in the muscular class in our country.
[00:33:23]  And the reason is this, is from the time you get into grade school, you look up at the wall and they have all these pennants, right, of all the different banners of colleges you could go to.
[00:33:32]  We are told a lie that going to college is going to make you wealthier and happier and more likely to succeed.
[00:33:37]  The data just doesn't pan out on that.
[00:33:39]  When you have more of something, it's actually worth less.
[00:33:41]  So everyone gets a college degree.
[00:33:43]  It's kind of like, okay, now what?
[00:33:44]  What's your differentiator, right?
[00:33:46]  Where actually what we've done, because we look down on the muscular trades in our country, you might not want to admit it, but it's true.
[00:33:52]  We don't look very highly at the plumber, the electrician, the person that sweats while they work, is we have a massive problem actually finding people to fill those jobs.
[00:34:00]  When in reality, a lot of people that were told to go to college in the first place should actually been pushed towards those jobs and encouraged to take them in the first place.
[00:34:06]  Thank you for your question.
[00:34:07]  We got to get to the next one.
[00:34:08]  Thank you.
[00:34:12]  Hi, Charlie.
[00:34:13]  I'm sorry, could you raise the mic a little bit?
[00:34:14]  Thank you.
[00:34:16]  You're the libertarian, right?
[00:34:17]  Yeah.
[00:34:19]  Am I right?
[00:34:19]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:34:21]  So I just had a question about what conservatism's point is in the modern day.
[00:34:27]  Because 40 years ago, when Reagan entered and won that landslide election, he campaigned on three main points, lowering taxes, increasing military spending, and putting back morals in society, whatever.
[00:34:38]  And there were specific policy points behind that.
[00:34:40]  And for 30 or so years, that kind of dominated the political spectrum.
[00:34:44]  And the left was forced to respond to that.
[00:34:46]  They didn't have many points of their own.
[00:34:48]  The problem now I see among conservatives is they don't actually have policy points of their own.
[00:34:53]  The left drives the policy agenda.
[00:34:55]  They drive the agenda on Medicare for all.
[00:34:57]  They drive the agenda on Green New Deal.
[00:34:59]  And the question I have to ask is, as someone who's not directly a conservative, as someone who just looks out on the political spectrum, is the right doesn't actually, it looks to me that like they don't actually have like a point of existence.
[00:35:11]  They just respond to whatever.
[00:35:13]  So there's some truth to that.
[00:35:15]  So let me first tell you why, and then I'll dive into what I believe the conservative movement needs to articulate better.
[00:35:21]  The reason why is because when you believe in less government, there's a temptation just to kind of stick with we're going to do nothing and just kind of let you live your life, right?
[00:35:29]  So that by definition, you're kind of non-interventionist by a public policy standpoint, where the other side, their belief system is to continue to expand government and strengthen the Leviathan and give stuff out to people.
[00:35:39]  So that's the first reason why, but that's not a good excuse.
[00:35:41]  It isn't.
[00:35:42]  So what does conservatism stand for right now?
[00:35:45]  Well, the bumper sticker is to conserve the good, the true, and the beautiful, one of which is the country.
[00:35:50]  I think it's alarming and wrong and awful that if the border policy continues as it is, one in five Americans will be illegal in three years.
[00:35:59]  There's something deeply troubling and wrong about that.
[00:36:02]  This is where I think Donald Trump was at his best.
[00:36:04]  He told you exactly what he wanted to do.
[00:36:06]  Didn't execute on it, I think, as well as a lot of us would have liked, which is we're going to build a southern border wall.
[00:36:10]  We're going to be able to control who comes into our country.
[00:36:13]  And that's something that obviously was compelling enough to be able to win the presidency.
[00:36:18]  But more broadly, I think that conservatism, and I'll push back a little bit, conservatism is finding a very strong moral center, but there's two parts to this, okay?
[00:36:26]  The first is defeating the woke, okay?
[00:36:28]  That's very similar to what Ronald Reagan did in 1980 when he opposed, or 1980 election, 1984 election, opposing the Soviet Union, right?
[00:36:36]  So for example, I think looting is wrong.
[00:36:38]  I think we should not defund the police.
[00:36:39]  I don't think men could become pregnant.
[00:36:41]  I'm against black-only dormitories.
[00:36:42]  We need to crush those beliefs, okay?
[00:36:44]  Now, that's not enough to be able to govern.
[00:36:47]  It isn't.
[00:36:48]  That's enough to be able to oppose, but it's really important to oppose those things.
[00:36:52]  That's why I can find, I'm like, all of a sudden, weird allies with like Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk.
[00:36:59]  Someone, I probably don't agree with them a lot, but we all agree that kind of the woke industrial complex and those idea pathogens, if you will, have such damage.
[00:37:07]  The second part is where it gets a little trickier, right?
[00:37:09]  What are you actually going to do if you get political power?
[00:37:12]  So let me tell you who I think is doing it well and someone who I think we can look to and say, wow, that's meaningful.
[00:37:17]  Ron DeSantis in Florida is a great example of what I think the future of conservatism looks like.
[00:37:23]  You might say, Charlie, what is that?
[00:37:25]  A strong and unapologetic defense saying that five-year-olds are not going to be taught about gender transitioning or lesbian sex.
[00:37:32]  Saying that we're not going to allow, we are going to harshly prosecute interstate trafficking of people coming into our state to try to riot.
[00:37:40]  Ron DeSantis has just allocated $70 million more to a fatherhood initiative to try to rebuild the family in Florida, remaining wide open, being against vaccine mandates, all these things.
[00:37:50]  So I want to get out of the clouds kind of like what you do and say, show me the money.
[00:37:54]  Well, the money is a state that used to be considered to be a tilt-left state that is now the freest, most open, prosperous state in the country, and one of the most desirable places to live thanks to leadership.
[00:38:05]  And that leader is Ron DeSantis, who I think can teach us a lot about the future of American conservatism.
[00:38:10]  Thank you for your question.
[00:38:11]  I appreciate that.
[00:38:16]  Hi, Charlie.
[00:38:17]  Hope you're doing well.
[00:38:18]  So as you can see, media here.
[00:38:20]  Okay.
[00:38:21]  With the Free Peach, our satirical organization here.
[00:38:24]  Oh, you're satirical?
[00:38:25]  We were hoping to talk to you about this.
[00:38:27]  Is the mask satire too?
[00:38:32]  I'm really ugly, but besides that, something that I was hoping to talk to you about is you really emphasize, you know, Christian values, right?
[00:38:41]  And, you know, if Jesus doesn't return this year, which hopefully he does, you'll have another year to help educate the young public on American values.
[00:38:50]  And in the past, you've expressed a lot of support for a free K through 12 alternative to curriculum that provides an American-first re-education.
[00:38:59]  Can you elaborate?

=== Emphasizing Christian Values Today (06:43) ===

[00:39:01]  Can you elaborate on your support for re-education camps?
[00:39:04]  First of all, just some kind of like spiritual word to the wise.
[00:39:10]  Wouldn't make a habit out of committing blasphemy against Jesus Christ in Holy Week.
[00:39:14]  Not exactly something I would do, but you obviously know better than I do.
[00:39:18]  So good luck with that.
[00:39:19]  I'll pray for you.
[00:39:20]  Oh, you don't believe in God, probably.
[00:39:23]  So, yeah, I think that we should teach children to love America, and we should be unapologetic about that, and we need to create good citizens.
[00:39:29]  And what you're referring to is a turning point-you say, initiative that will happen, where we are going to empower families across America to be able to have a go-to resource to be able to properly teach the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln, and the beauty of Western civilization.
[00:39:47]  Thank you for being here tonight.
[00:39:48]  I appreciate it.
[00:39:50]  We're going to get to the next question.
[00:39:52]  Thank you.
[00:39:54]  Hi, Charlie.
[00:39:56]  I am also pressed.
[00:39:58]  And you talked a little bit about how strongly religious.
[00:40:02]  Prefer not to say.
[00:40:04]  Strongly religious.
[00:40:06]  And you also, you know, talk about Holy Week.
[00:40:09]  I was just wondering if you think about Ronald Reagan, the president, and would you think that he's looking up at you right now with pride from down there?
[00:40:19]  Yeah, so that's so you believe in hell?
[00:40:23]  You do?
[00:40:24]  I'm asking you.
[00:40:25]  I'm saying, do you believe?
[00:40:25]  Because that's what you said looking up, right?
[00:40:27]  Well, I believe Ronald Reagan was saved by grace.
[00:40:29]  And so, look, I'm not going to take this line of questioning too seriously, but here's what I will say: there is a God.
[00:40:36]  He made you.
[00:40:37]  He loves you.
[00:40:38]  And I pray he'll give your life to his son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
[00:40:43]  Thank you.
[00:40:50]  Hi, Charlie.
[00:40:51]  First of all, nice to meet you.
[00:40:53]  I want to say that I'm following your videos all the way from Israel.
[00:40:57]  And when I moved to the U.S., it was one of my dreams to come and see you talking.
[00:41:01]  So thank you for that.
[00:41:07]  One more thing that I wanted to say is that I really took something that you said in one of your videos about taking a year gap.
[00:41:14]  Yes.
[00:41:14]  Speaking back to the guy with the yellow.
[00:41:16]  So I'm a contractor and I'm taking that gap in order to save money, in order to go back to school.
[00:41:23]  And I know how much we need more plumbers, more electricians, more carpenters, more people that work on framing.
[00:41:30]  I build houses from A to Z.
[00:41:31]  So I know the demand.
[00:41:34]  That's about that.
[00:41:35]  And then I wanted to thank you for preaching all your wisdom with us because without your advice, I wouldn't be here today.
[00:41:43]  So thank you.
[00:41:44]  Thank you very much.
[00:41:45]  One more thing that I wanted to say is that I wanted to mention a couple of names.
[00:41:53]  Barak Lopin, Tomir Morad, Itam McGinnie, Doisbas, Rabbi Moshe Kavinsky, and one second.
[00:42:02]  Loren Itzrak, Menachem Hezkel, Amir Khoui, Rabbi Yaakov Shalom, and Yazan Falach and Shirel Abukarat.
[00:42:13]  Have I ever heard of them?
[00:42:14]  No, no.
[00:42:15]  They were murdered last week in a terror attack in Israel.
[00:42:18]  And not a lot of people know that, but I want to thank you for all your advocacy for Israel.
[00:42:24]  Thank you.
[00:42:24]  What you're doing for us.
[00:42:26]  And thank you so much.
[00:42:27]  And I want to ask you, that's for the question.
[00:42:30]  Sorry for that.
[00:42:31]  Yeah, just their names were very important.
[00:42:34]  May their memory be a blessing.
[00:42:35]  What's your question?
[00:42:35]  And thank you.
[00:42:36]  What do you think that can be done that America can do in order to restore the peace that Donald Trump brought to the area?
[00:42:45]  Obviously, we had a great time while Donald Trump was the president.
[00:42:48]  And right now, the world is kind of like...
[00:42:51]  In chaos, yeah.
[00:42:53]  Changing the president would help, that's for certain.
[00:42:55]  My goodness.
[00:42:59]  He did the impossible deal.
[00:43:01]  He got no credit for it.
[00:43:02]  You know it.
[00:43:03]  He brought Israel and UAE to the table and had a détente.
[00:43:08]  I'm not going to over, I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but it's very simple.
[00:43:11]  Is that as long as the Iranian regime is what it is, they cannot be allowed to get to a nuclear weapon.
[00:43:17]  And uniting the Middle East and their partners against Iran is very, very important.
[00:43:22]  Now, I admit that it's because of American intervention that the Iranian regime is what it is.
[00:43:26]  However, we have to deal with what currently is there.
[00:43:29]  But Iran getting a nuclear weapon would spell disaster for the modern and industrialized world.
[00:43:34]  Thank you.
[00:43:35]  I appreciate that.
[00:43:39]  Hey, Charlie, hope Berkeley's treating you well as much as it can be.
[00:43:44]  I know it can be daunting at times.
[00:43:45]  I feel that, including.
[00:43:47]  So I was originally going to ask you a question about socialized healthcare, but someone else did that.
[00:43:50]  So I wanted to pivot to basically media, especially for kids.
[00:43:56]  And my question was, you see cartoons like Paw Patrol, for example, Peppa the Pig.
[00:44:02]  I mean, like, her dad is.
[00:44:04]  And also just some other things too.
[00:44:06]  And my question was: how are these authoritarian figures in these shows, how are they contributing to the downfall and the sexual deviation of our society, especially within Peppa the Pig and the daddy pig, especially?
[00:44:19]  And because one more thing is just the daughter, right?
[00:44:24]  I mean, just a daughter in general.
[00:44:26]  You can see you, I mean.
[00:44:28]  I can't tell if you're like a caricature of yourself, man, or if this is like a real question.
[00:44:31]  I'm not going to lie.
[00:44:33]  Anyways, but just was wondering just about the sexual deviation and deviancy and like Nickelodeon and Disney, because it is wild.
[00:44:39]  And I think it's a stop.
[00:44:40]  Thank you.
[00:44:41]  Yeah, so I can't tell if you're telling this question in good faith, but I'll answer it in good faith.
[00:44:44]  Disney sucks, and Disney should be boycotted by every decent person in the country.
[00:44:49]  And what Disney has done and what they do is a disaster.
[00:44:56]  So can't tell if you believe what you believe or you're a satirist or whatever, but you almost pulled it off.
[00:45:02]  Thanks for being here.
[00:45:03]  Next question.
[00:45:07]  Hey, Charlie, hope you're doing well.
[00:45:09]  Oh, quick question.
[00:45:10]  Are you going to be back here tomorrow on the 2020s?
[00:45:14]  But I will make a free promotion for Seth Gruber, who's coming to campus tomorrow for a pro-life event.
[00:45:19]  So you guys should go to that.
[00:45:21]  I'm very disappointed I missed speaking with you.
[00:45:24]  But okay, my question is...
[00:45:27]  No, no, length.
[00:45:29]  My question is, so you talk a lot about how you're talking to people on campus and how now that people are like atheists or agnostic, they don't really have like moral backing for, or they don't have backing for their morals because they don't have religion.
[00:45:42]  And it's just sort of like an opinion war.

=== Evidence For A Higher Being (03:44) ===

[00:45:44]  Don't you think that religion is, in some sense, even has less backing than opinion?
[00:45:50]  Because there's no evidence for your opinion.
[00:45:52]  There's no way to logically reason through your opinion.
[00:45:55]  You just refer to a book written 2,000 years ago and you're like, this is the word.
[00:45:59]  Like nothing else matters.
[00:46:00]  Like just listen to what this book says.
[00:46:03]  It seems like as a very evidence-based, logical type person like you, it doesn't make sense to just read morals and believe them.
[00:46:11]  Okay.
[00:46:11]  Yeah.
[00:46:12]  So the question is, you know, are the teachings of the Bible true?
[00:46:15]  That's a good question, right?
[00:46:17]  The answer is, of course.
[00:46:18]  I mean, if you look at the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, you live your life by the Ten Commandments, you will flourish.
[00:46:23]  If you honor your parents, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet, if you honor the Sabbath, if you honor your Creator and have no gods before him, and you do that for a long period of time, that law is what will set you free.
[00:46:36]  So the question is, are the teachings of the Bible true?
[00:46:39]  And judge a tree by its fruit.
[00:46:41]  I mean, look at Western civilization.
[00:46:43]  We live in a pretty amazing civilization.
[00:46:45]  Separation of powers, consent to the govern, constitutional republic, independent judiciary, these things just don't kind of fall out of the sky.
[00:46:52]  Well, I guess you could say they fall like manna out of heaven, but I'm not sure you would agree at that.
[00:46:56]  But it came from the teachings of the Bible.
[00:46:59]  So there's a logical fallacy in your question, and I don't think you intended it.
[00:47:02]  Just because something is old doesn't mean it's untrue or that it's not beautiful.
[00:47:07]  Things that are old that last, that should actually make you appreciate them more, not less.
[00:47:13]  If something's able to have staying power for 2,000 years, that should make you take pause and say, I wonder why, throughout all of history, throughout the Enlightenment, post-Enlightenment, that people still believe in this book.
[00:47:22]  Maybe there's something that is speaking to the soul of the being, not just the reason itself.
[00:47:29]  But there is evidence for a higher transcendent being.
[00:47:32]  I can get into apologetics.
[00:47:33]  We can get into the evidence for the resurrection.
[00:47:35]  We can get into why I believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
[00:47:38]  We could talk about that and the very compelling historical evidence behind that.
[00:47:41]  But let's just talk about the creation of the universe.
[00:47:43]  A scientist will agree, even atheistic scientists, that the universe started at a specific moment.
[00:47:48]  There was the Big Bang.
[00:47:50]  In order to have physics be consistent, in order for something to happen, something must have caused that something to happen.
[00:47:55]  You would agree with that, right?
[00:47:57]  So an object at rest will stay at rest is a law of Newtonian physics, right?
[00:48:01]  Therefore, you can deduce very easily using logic.
[00:48:04]  If there was a starting point, there was something that made that starting point happen.
[00:48:08]  We as Christians call that God.
[00:48:10]  And therefore, if you have time and you have space and you have matter, you therefore then can deduce and use very basic logic.
[00:48:17]  In order for time, space, and matter to exist, you must have something that is timeless, spaceless, and transcends all those different things.
[00:48:24]  And we believe that to be God.
[00:48:25]  And so now to answer your final question, why do we keep on referring back to this book, as you say?
[00:48:33]  I'll defend the Bible a little better than that.
[00:48:35]  It's not just one book.
[00:48:37]  It's one author, but it's 66 books.
[00:48:39]  And it talks about everything.
[00:48:40]  If you go and apply the teachings of Proverbs to your life, you will flourish.
[00:48:44]  You'd be amazed at how many of the idioms and sayings you say to yourself are actually derived from biblical truth.
[00:48:51]  The Proverbs being a great example.
[00:48:52]  If you want to learn about the human condition, go read the story of David, the story of Solomon who wrote Proverbs.
[00:48:57]  There is an infinite fountain of wisdom in the Bible that I don't think gets a fair hearing at campuses like this all the time.
[00:49:03]  And in fact, a lot of the morality that you in this room believe to be true, such as the strong protecting the weak, defending children, not murdering, is derived from first the Torah and then the Bible in its entirety.
[00:49:16]  So quick follow-up?
[00:49:17]  Any thoughts really quick?
[00:49:18]  I want to get some other questions.
[00:49:19]  Yes, you just talked about Newtonian physics.
[00:49:21]  I'm really into physics.
[00:49:22]  Okay.
[00:49:23]  If you say that the universe was created by something and that thing is God, then what created God?

=== Systemic Racism And Violent Crime (15:40) ===

[00:49:29]  Right, exactly.
[00:49:29]  So it's always been.
[00:49:31]  And that's why we say it's infinite.
[00:49:32]  And that's where our human-sized brains struggle with the mystery of having to comprehend that.
[00:49:38]  Is that if we were able to understand how something could always be, then maybe we wouldn't ever have to have something that we as Christians believe is fundamental, which is faith.
[00:49:47]  We believe both faith and certainty create a beautiful life.
[00:49:50]  If we had all the answers all the time, you would be in an endless, let's say, hurricane of reason.
[00:49:55]  But faith is important.
[00:49:56]  Faith humbles you.
[00:49:58]  Not being able to articulate how something has always been, we believe that God to be infinite in a finite galaxy or universe is something that would then, by logical deduction, be able to transcend all those different things.
[00:50:10]  So thanks for your question.
[00:50:11]  I appreciate it.
[00:50:16]  Hey, Charlie, thanks for coming.
[00:50:18]  I want to ask some question about racism.
[00:50:21]  I know you've argued that systemic racism in the U.S. doesn't exist.
[00:50:24]  I wanted to point out some answers I think that's obviously wrong and see what you think about it.
[00:50:28]  So just starting with the issue of crime, we know for a fact, because it's been studied pretty extensively.
[00:50:33]  Black people and people who aren't black or white people use drugs, commit nonviolent drug offenses at pretty much the same rates.
[00:50:40]  Black people get arrested for these crimes about two to three times more often.
[00:50:44]  It's dropping now that we've legalized weed more in more and more states, which is a great thing that we've done.
[00:50:49]  Even if you say that like police are doing that not on purpose, but because they're just in areas where more violent crime is committed and they're controlling, isn't that an obvious example of something that black people have to deal with in this country that's much worse off for them than non-black people?
[00:51:03]  Okay.
[00:51:04]  No, but any other point you want to make about systemic racism?
[00:51:08]  So let me ask you a question.
[00:51:09]  You believe there's systemic racism?
[00:51:11]  Just like some, I would say that there's a lot of shit that black people have to deal with that makes them worse off in the country.
[00:51:17]  Okay, such as like having to be around police all the time.
[00:51:21]  Yeah, because if you're around police, not because police, but because we have like this, I think, like shitty law that you have to, that you're going to get arrested for committing a nonviolent drug crime.
[00:51:31]  So as an extension of that, you're around police more often.
[00:51:33]  You're more likely to be arrested for that crime.
[00:51:35]  So look, here's the thing.
[00:51:37]  So in 2018, blacks made up 53% of all the homicide offenders in America.
[00:51:42]  No one wants to say it out loud, but blacks commit more crimes than whites and Asians and Hispanics.
[00:51:47]  In fact, there's a disproportionate amount of crime committed by blacks in America.
[00:51:50]  And so therefore, you're going to have a heavier police presence.
[00:51:53]  And so why is that happening?
[00:51:55]  I believe there's a fatherless epidemic happening in America.
[00:51:58]  And I really don't have a soft spot for the argument like, hey, there's too many police around.
[00:52:04]  Therefore, I can't like deal crack without being interrupted.
[00:52:07]  Like not exactly very compelling to me.
[00:52:10]  Okay?
[00:52:11]  Now, secondly, let me say this, though, is that there are issues, if you want to just talk strictly racial, that are disproportionately affecting white America, such as opioids and fentanyl.
[00:52:21]  Not to say that blacks are not affected by this, but it is a disproportionate rural issue.
[00:52:25]  Now, why would that be?
[00:52:27]  Well, white individuals, because of the industrial kind of growth in America, were more likely to get involved in muscular trades in Ohio and Pennsylvania, especially in steel mill towns and such.
[00:52:38]  Therefore, they'd be more what?
[00:52:39]  Likely to get injured at work.
[00:52:41]  So you get likely to get injured at work because of the Sackler family, which you and I could probably agree are a bunch of criminals, who should be put in prison for a long period of time.
[00:52:49]  They started to over-prescribe oxycontin, oxycotin, I'm sorry, into the communities and therefore getting these people addicted to the high of an opioid and then searching for other places to go there.
[00:53:01]  So we could play these kind of racial games all the time.
[00:53:03]  Is it fair for someone in Southeast Ohio who's white, who was a son of a steel mill worker, and all these things, that they might have been more exposed to this sort of thing?
[00:53:12]  I think the hyper-racialization of all that is less important than the real, more fundamental question, which is why does race matter in any of this?
[00:53:21]  And I say it doesn't.
[00:53:22]  I don't like looking at people through a racial lens.
[00:53:24]  If you want to do that, which I said, the statistics are not good at all.
[00:53:28]  In fact, it shows that there's an under-policing problem in black neighborhoods across America.
[00:53:32]  In fact, 50% of homicides go unsolved in Chicago, 50% because of lack of detectives and lack of police in a lot of these areas.
[00:53:40]  And kind of for your daily thought crime, police prevent crime, and they did prevent crime in New York City.
[00:53:46]  New York City was one of the most dangerous, murderous cities in the 1980s and early 1990s.
[00:53:51]  And someone who I think it's unnecessarily mocked and smeared, Rudy Giuliani, became mayor and cleaned up that entire city.
[00:53:57]  And to his credit, liberal Democrat who ran for president, Mike Bloomberg, continued those policies.
[00:54:04]  And so, look, any thoughts on that really quick?
[00:54:06]  Because I want to get some other questions.
[00:54:08]  Yeah, I think I wasn't disagreeing at all that police do a lot of great work.
[00:54:12]  The only problem with that is that it's, is it true fact that a ballot, that a factual extension of the fact that police are in certain areas more often means that if society has shitty laws, those shitty laws are going to be enforced more often.
[00:54:25]  I think most people are.
[00:54:25]  Okay, because I don't think the law against, okay, sorry to interrupt, but I don't think a law against dealing crack is a bad law.
[00:54:31]  What about weed?
[00:54:33]  What about weed?
[00:54:34]  The same applies for weed.
[00:54:35]  You're much more likely to get arrested.
[00:54:37]  And even this isn't happening as much now.
[00:54:38]  It happened much more often in the past.
[00:54:40]  You're much more likely to get arrested.
[00:54:42]  So there's been plenty of studies done by Harvard and Maryland showing there's actually an under-policing problem in a lot of these communities.
[00:54:50]  You know, I could do statistics all day long because I'm sure that there's plenty that you could cite.
[00:54:54]  But first of all, I'm not a fan of legalizing marijuana.
[00:54:56]  I think it's a really bad idea.
[00:54:58]  But I can probably agree with you that there is a problem with locking people in prison for an extended period of time for using marijuana.
[00:55:06]  But there's another more fundamental question, which is this, which is you can get into sentencing, right?
[00:55:10]  Which is usually kind of a talking point, which is that the most important thing when it comes to, you know, your likelihood of going to jail if you commit a crime is less about your skin color and more about your wealth and how competent of a counsel you can hire, right?
[00:55:24]  And so, for example, LeBron James, if Bronnie gets caught dealing crack, which I don't think he will, he's going to have the best lawyer on the planet representing him that will be filing motions for dismissal, cross-examination of evidence, you know, all sorts of different things.
[00:55:39]  So it's less about race, isn't it?
[00:55:41]  I mean, if Denzel Washington kids or Oprah's God kids did that, it's more about really a wealth problem, right?
[00:55:47]  So then you say, well, it's because of racism.
[00:55:48]  Well, no, it's not.
[00:55:49]  Blaming wealth inequality between races, which I don't like doing, but if you want to play that game strictly on racism, is a sloppy way to look at things.
[00:55:57]  So the perspective we have is a perspective of Thomas Hole, Thomas Soule, which is you look at the whole body of work, you'll see that just because you have disparate outcomes does not mean you could solely blame discrimination.
[00:56:10]  And I'll prove it to you with one data point, then we'll move on, which is this, which is that you can have different data points that have outcomes, and there's other factors that play in.
[00:56:18]  So for example, San Francisco and New York are far wealthier than Missoula, Montana, and Birmingham, Alabama.
[00:56:25]  Why?
[00:56:26]  Someone would say racism.
[00:56:27]  Well, no, it's not.
[00:56:29]  Mountain towns and inland cities are just less likely to be around commerce and trade.
[00:56:34]  And port cities, by definition, are always wealthier.
[00:56:36]  That has nothing to do with race and everything to do with geography.
[00:56:39]  So what does that example have to do?
[00:56:41]  Sometimes you can have disparate outcomes with data, and attributing racism to it is actually not just imprudent, it's really, really detrimental and harmful.
[00:56:50]  So one thing that I would agree with that we need to do, put fathers back into the home, which is very, very important.
[00:56:55]  In 1965, marriage rates in the black community were about 80%.
[00:57:01]  Now it's plummeted down to 20% to 25%.
[00:57:03]  There's a lot of reasons for this: subsidizing single motherhood through the Great Society and many other things.
[00:57:07]  But there's other factors that play in.
[00:57:09]  How many words is a child hearing at home?
[00:57:11]  Is the child getting read to on a daily or weekly basis by parents?
[00:57:15]  Those things transcend race.
[00:57:16]  And in fact, the hyperfixation and kind of systemic racism, I think, kind of creates a smokescreen that disallows us from actually finding meaningful solutions to these problems.
[00:57:23]  So thank you.
[00:57:24]  We got to get to the next question.
[00:57:25]  Appreciate it.
[00:57:25]  Thank you.
[00:57:29]  It's really out of control.
[00:57:30]  Inflation is at a 40-year high.
[00:57:33]  Your cash is getting sucked right out of your wallet with higher prices on gas, groceries, practically everything.
[00:57:38]  Look, you got to take charge of your money right now.
[00:57:40]  So here's a principle that we say: don't use the big banks that hate you.
[00:57:43]  Bank of America is canceling conservatives.
[00:57:46]  A team member that we have at Turning Point USA literally just had his bank account shut down by Bank of America.
[00:57:53]  Literally, no longer allowed to use Bank of America because of his politics.
[00:57:56]  True story.
[00:57:57]  So when you want to consolidate your debt and use equity in your home to do so to lower your monthly expenses, you have to use my friends, Andrew and Todd, at andrewandtodd.com.
[00:58:07]  You have to know what you're going through.
[00:58:09]  So look, I just had dinner with Andrew and Todd in Orange County.
[00:58:12]  We had a great time.
[00:58:13]  They love the Lord.
[00:58:14]  They know the Bible super well.
[00:58:16]  They're ethical.
[00:58:17]  They're beautiful people.
[00:58:18]  They really are.
[00:58:19]  They're wonderful.
[00:58:20]  And Andrew and Todd aren't brokers, they're bankers who handle your refi loan personally from start to finish.
[00:58:26]  And they're always in your corner.
[00:58:27]  In fact, they're helping me with the problem right now.
[00:58:30]  Just all this nonsense with interest rates and all this are helping me clarify it.
[00:58:33]  They're phenomenal to work with.
[00:58:34]  They're responsive.
[00:58:36]  They're Christians.
[00:58:37]  They're conservative.
[00:58:39]  It's AndrewandTodd.com to beat inflation by lowering your monthly expenses and protect your greatest asset, your home.
[00:58:45]  So don't use these woke banks.
[00:58:47]  Bank of America, again, my team member, I'm not going to say his name.
[00:58:50]  You guys know him.
[00:58:50]  He's been on our show.
[00:58:51]  Literally, Bank of America sent him a note saying, we are no longer allowing you to bank with us.
[00:58:57]  Boom, like that, all because of politics.
[00:58:59]  Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage share your values.
[00:59:03]  I trust them.
[00:59:04]  That's why I work with them.
[00:59:05]  I hang out with them casually and I've got to know them really well.
[00:59:08]  They'll treat you right, and that when you use them, you're not using Citibank or Chase or these people that hate your values, that believe in this trans nonsense.
[00:59:17]  Don't use those banks, diversity, equity, inclusion banks.
[00:59:19]  Nope.
[00:59:20]  Andrew and Todd at andrewandTodd.com.
[00:59:23]  So just write that down right now.
[00:59:25]  Write it in your phone.
[00:59:25]  You might say, oh, Charlie, I don't need to refinance or whatever.
[00:59:28]  Well, maybe you will two months from now.
[00:59:29]  Maybe you young millennials out there, maybe the millennials listening to our show, my fellow millennials, you're going to buy a home soon.
[00:59:35]  Maybe you're getting married and you want to buy something.
[00:59:36]  It's AndrewandTodd.com for a quick mortgage checkup.
[00:59:40]  Use the equity in your home before it's too late.
[00:59:42]  Go to andrewandtodd.com.
[00:59:44]  That's andrewandodd.com.
[00:59:45]  Stop giving money to people who hate you.
[00:59:47]  AndrewandTodd.com love the Lord.
[00:59:50]  They love America.
[00:59:51]  And they're great friends.
[00:59:53]  So I encourage you to use them as your go-to partner for anything mortgage-related.
[00:59:58]  Stop using the banks who hate you.
[01:00:00]  AndrewandTodd.com.
[01:00:05]  Hi, Charlie.
[01:00:06]  Obama shirt.
[01:00:07]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:00:09]  So I'm going to read off my phone because I wasn't really expecting to ask a question.
[01:00:14]  I completed my degree in economics last semester and I'm currently wrapping up my data science minor.
[01:00:19]  I was really with you about the fact that the material condition of a young adult now is much worse than that of a student 20 years ago.
[01:00:25]  You're making a lot of good points about the state of the society through an economic lens.
[01:00:29]  Thank you.
[01:00:30]  Unfortunately, we disagree on the reason for why we've done it to this point.
[01:00:34]  I feel that the problems we face today are rather a result of a shift in the American economic culture during the Reagan era when he promoted austerity and Reaganism economics.
[01:00:43]  Extreme wealth inequality isn't a new concept.
[01:00:46]  It's something that's been on trend for the past half century.
[01:00:48]  Don't you feel like the transfer of wealth you described earlier is a result of monetary policy enacted by politicians on both sides that cut spending for social services and keeps the effect at tax rate for the 1% low?
[01:00:59]  So you almost had me there.
[01:01:00]  Monetary policy, yes.
[01:01:01]  Cheap money benefits rich people.
[01:01:03]  It does, and it disincentivizes saving.
[01:01:06]  You also said, what was the other part?
[01:01:07]  You said the slashing social welfare benefits?
[01:01:09]  Right.
[01:01:09]  Yeah, you're not going to get me at that.
[01:01:11]  I do not believe that a heavy burden of social welfare is good for the human condition.
[01:01:16]  I don't think it materially has evidence to actually show people that elevate.
[01:01:20]  You know, kind of the one-liner that I think we use a lot is we want a safety, we want a safety net, not a hammock, right?
[01:01:26]  We don't want to get people addicted to government assistance.
[01:01:28]  Unfortunately, there's like 40 to 50 million Americans that are just perpetually on government assistance.
[01:01:33]  But something I think you and I could actually agree on is a proper diagnosis of the Reagan era.
[01:01:37]  I think Reagan's a mixed back.
[01:01:39]  I'm not someone who just defends him at all costs.
[01:01:42]  I think he was really good in the Soviet Union, generally good on anti-socialism and communism, but he also ushered in a lot of other things, such as incredibly radical abortion policy here in California.
[01:01:51]  But there was an agreement post-Reagan and kind of George H.W. Bush, which was kind of part of his regime, that I think you and I could agree on, which is that we really want to try to internationalize the American economy.
[01:02:02]  And there was a betrayal of the American worker, allowing China into the World Trade Organization in the late 90s, right?
[01:02:07]  The repealing of Glass-Steagall, which I'm against, just so we're clear, that I think that that was actually good to keep commercial and investment banking separate.
[01:02:14]  I think it created a massive moral hazard.
[01:02:16]  The lowering of interest rates unnecessarily throughout the 90s and early 2000s, which I think were all things that factored in some of these economic conditions that you talk about.
[01:02:25]  But I would be careful just kind of blaming only, that's not true.
[01:02:29]  You did say both parties, but it's not just, it was continued by Clinton a lot in the 90s as well.
[01:02:33]  But the question is, what do we want?
[01:02:35]  And this is something I can actually find common cause with a lot of people on the left is I look at middle class wages, how easy it is to have children, can you flourish and how many new businesses are we starting, right?
[01:02:45]  And I think under Donald Trump, which is something you'll definitely disagree with, those things actually were improving dramatically.
[01:02:52]  It was a blue-collar boom.
[01:02:53]  Middle-class wages were going up more than anyone realized.
[01:02:57]  In fact, the wage growth for middle-class workers and blue-collar workers far outpaced wage growth for the 1% at the top ladder of the economy.
[01:03:05]  Now, was it perfect?
[01:03:05]  Of course it wasn't.
[01:03:06]  I would have liked to see even harsher trade policies against China to actually prioritize our own industry and our own manufacturing.
[01:03:14]  The last thing I'll say is this: I think NAFTA was a disaster.
[01:03:17]  You may disagree or not agree.
[01:03:19]  The left can't really make up their mind on this.
[01:03:21]  They used to hate NAFTA.
[01:03:22]  Now they love NAFTA.
[01:03:23]  I think that the kind of bargain that was sold to us, which is we are going to send all of our labor through a massive arbitrage, close down our factories, send it to Wuhan, China, and get a bunch of plastic in return, was a bad deal for America.
[01:03:37]  And that did play in to a lot of the economic and income inequality we're seeing right now.
[01:03:41]  So I don't think we're that far off, to be perfectly honest.
[01:03:44]  I would just kind of push back a little bit on some of the critique of supply-side and market-based policy.
[01:03:49]  I think it's generally a good thing for society and does have some benefits.
[01:03:52]  So thank you.
[01:03:53]  I appreciate you being here.
[01:03:54]  Thank you.
[01:03:58]  Hey, Charlie.
[01:03:59]  So I remember you mentioning that you were concerned about family formation and home ownership.
[01:04:07]  Also, that we should incentivize more than we should be punitive in a government sense.
[01:04:12]  Yes, that's correct.
[01:04:12]  So then what should we respond to organizations such as BlackRock in the way that they're mass purchasing homes, often using government money as well to purchase hundreds of thousands of homes all over the United States?
[01:04:26]  If they're already in a position theoretically where they own over like 50% of the housing market, you have almost a sort of inverse situation to the student loan situation where they technically legally already own all these houses, yet what solutions can be offered from organizations such as TPUSA in response to those kind of actions?
[01:04:47]  Yeah, I won't go too deep in the policy side of it because I haven't really thought about it very much, but I agree.
[01:04:51]  I'm a huge critic of BlackRock.
[01:04:52]  I think it's a disaster what they're doing.
[01:04:53]  If you don't know what they're doing, they're buying up single-family homes all across America and then renting them back to you.
[01:04:57]  I do not want a nation of renters.
[01:04:59]  I want people that own stuff.
[01:05:01]  I think when you rent things endlessly, it creates radical politics and you just feel less connected to the society and the civilization that you're in.
[01:05:08]  What should we do about it?

=== The Disaster Of Mass Home Purchases (04:53) ===

[01:05:09]  I don't know.
[01:05:11]  But I do think having BlackRock dictating our politics via Larry Fink is very dangerous and wrong.
[01:05:17]  It is.
[01:05:17]  Now, that's just one of the things BlackRock is doing.
[01:05:19]  They're also doing this ESG nonsense where they're coming in and they're withdrawing funding from fracking and from oil and gas exploration because it doesn't meet their environmental standards.
[01:05:29]  BlackRock is more powerful than the government in some sense.
[01:05:32]  What to do about it?
[01:05:33]  I'm open to any solution.
[01:05:35]  There's not a lot, right?
[01:05:36]  People say, oh, break him up, use the government.
[01:05:37]  Well, that's the very same government that they own.
[01:05:39]  So it's kind of like, well, now what, right?
[01:05:41]  I'm not a fan of nationalizing homes.
[01:05:42]  Of course not.
[01:05:43]  That would be stupid and dumb.
[01:05:44]  Markets work and we should defend markets, especially when you have 330 million people with individual choices to make.
[01:05:51]  But we're left with very few options.
[01:05:53]  But I agree.
[01:05:54]  I will agree that BlackRock is a huge problem to young people buying homes.
[01:06:00]  And we as conservatives should be unafraid to say that.
[01:06:02]  So I don't like big government and I do not like big Wall Street business coming in, swooping in and buying up homes and then renting them back to young people before they even can get off the finish line.
[01:06:10]  I don't think it's right or it's fair.
[01:06:12]  Thank you.
[01:06:12]  I appreciate it.
[01:06:18]  Charlie, I just want to thank you for being here.
[01:06:20]  You know, I really agree with everything you have to say about restoring American morality.
[01:06:25]  And one of the things you say is that in order to restore our values and save America, that we have to quit pornography.
[01:06:31]  But I have a crippling porn addiction.
[01:06:34]  And so I just want to know how, thank you.
[01:06:36]  It's hard.
[01:06:40]  Yeah, look.
[01:06:41]  Look, you kind of revealed yourself with the mask that you're a satire.
[01:06:44]  There's no way you agree with everything that I'm saying.
[01:06:47]  But I will talk about this issue.
[01:06:48]  Porn destroys lives.
[01:06:50]  It's predatory.
[01:06:51]  It's not good for you.
[01:06:52]  There's no redemptive quality.
[01:06:54]  It's a serious issue.
[01:06:55]  It affects the brain harsher than heroin and then cocaine.
[01:07:00]  A lot of people struggle with it.
[01:07:02]  And I've talked openly about it in my life with the debate I had with the porn person, the transporn, whatever person that we debated recently.
[01:07:09]  You guys can check that out.
[01:07:11]  But look, I'll just tell you honestly, I think it's disgusting that you're coming up here and trying to create satire of life of something that destroys people's lives.
[01:07:18]  And I think that's really reprehensible.
[01:07:19]  So next question.
[01:07:20]  Thank you.
[01:07:26]  Hi, Charlie.
[01:07:28]  So I really enjoyed your talk.
[01:07:31]  I agree with a lot of, like, I actually agree with a lot of things you're saying.
[01:07:34]  Cool.
[01:07:36]  And because I know a lot of people have been saying that and just like, you know, it's like bullshit.
[01:07:39]  But I actually like exhibit A.
[01:07:42]  Yeah.
[01:07:42]  Yeah.
[01:07:44]  But I wanted to ask you a question.
[01:07:45]  So like what you said about monetary policy, about colleges, everything, it all makes sense.
[01:07:50]  But there's like one thing throughout the conversation and like kind of just throughout the event where there's like a big focus on the culture around the movement being Christianity.
[01:08:02]  And I have nothing against Christianity.
[01:08:05]  That's not what I'm saying.
[01:08:06]  But I'm not Christian.
[01:08:07]  I'm Jewish.
[01:08:08]  And like, so, and I'm proud of being Jewish.
[01:08:10]  So, and I, and I don't have anything against like, oh, people that are Christian in their values or whatever, but it's just that like, if you want people to kind of like fit into this movement, it seems like it's kind of like the religion of Christianity is kind of being forced on people.
[01:08:26]  So I, in not forced, but you know, it's just like it's very emphasized.
[01:08:30]  So is there room in this movement or like, you know, in what you're saying for there to be people of other religions that are not Christianity partners?
[01:08:38]  At Turning Point, we do a young Jewish leadership summit.
[01:08:40]  I mean, we do it every single year.
[01:08:42]  We believe in inclusive populism, right?
[01:08:44]  We believe in people of all different backgrounds and belief systems.
[01:08:47]  These are my opinions when it comes to religion and what I believe to be, you know, true.
[01:08:53]  And so you could make up your own mind on that.
[01:08:55]  But it's also, there's parts of things that I say that are factual, which is that the Bible did inspire our system of government.
[01:09:01]  The Bible did inspire, you know, our kind of structure of the West.
[01:09:05]  And something that you have common cause, you both and I together, is that the Torah was instrumental in the creation of America.
[01:09:11]  John Adams spoke fluent Hebrew.
[01:09:13]  I mean, on the libertarist, hell, you know, the founding fathers were awesome.
[01:09:16]  They put Leviticus on the liberty bell, okay?
[01:09:19]  Now, Leviticus, that's not exactly like passive reading, right?
[01:09:24]  It's not like Psalms.
[01:09:24]  You got to really get into it.
[01:09:25]  Leviticus 25.
[01:09:27]  And so, but look, I mean, the common phrase is that the West was a combination between Jerusalem and Athens.
[01:09:32]  But we live in a pluralistic society, right?
[01:09:34]  You can make up your own mind on these things.
[01:09:37]  But I also feel a moral obligation to also share my beliefs and my views on these things.
[01:09:41]  You could disagree with them, obviously.
[01:09:43]  But yeah, and just also kind of one final thing I'll say.
[01:09:45]  I've gotten more questions on the topic than I actually push forward from here.
[01:09:49]  If you kind of think back, the reason you keep on hearing it is because they keep on bringing it up to me and I'm not going to back down, you know, from these beliefs or where they come from.
[01:09:56]  So God bless you, man.
[01:09:57]  I appreciate it.
[01:09:58]  Thank you.

=== Drilling More For American Energy (03:12) ===

[01:10:02]  Hey, Charlie, how you doing?
[01:10:04]  I think so far I'm the second or third person who actually 100% agrees with you other than the first guy who's looking for that beautiful Republican girl.
[01:10:12]  Yeah, me too, man.
[01:10:13]  I've been looking, me too.
[01:10:15]  Me too.
[01:10:16]  So anyways, my question for you.
[01:10:19]  What do you think we can do about fuel prices?
[01:10:21]  Because someone like me, I'm rolling a 77 Chevy with a big block and I'm getting six miles per gallon.
[01:10:27]  It ain't too much fun.
[01:10:29]  Spending $250 to fill up both tanks, not how I want to spend my Saturday.
[01:10:35]  We need to drill.
[01:10:36]  We need to drill more and we need to explore American energy.
[01:10:41]  The environmentalist movement has done such damage to our country.
[01:10:45]  And this belief that the world is going to end in 10 years if we do not get rid of all fossil fuels.
[01:10:52]  It's not just pathological.
[01:10:53]  It's anti-science and it's harmful to humanity.
[01:10:56]  So what can we do about it?
[01:10:57]  We've got to complete the Keystone XL pipeline, approve more oil leases, expand exploration of the Permian in the Balkan and in the Marcellus Shale, the three largest deposits of oil and natural gas in America.
[01:11:09]  And then finally, we should have a specific policy that we are not going to buy energy from people who hate us while we have it under our own feet.
[01:11:19]  And so if that isn't persuasive to you, then I would love to hear the counter argument of why people oppose natural gas.
[01:11:28]  Natural gas is clean, it's abundant, it's widespread, and it is the envy of the world.
[01:11:35]  Our deposits of natural gas are the envy of the world, and we are intentionally not exploring them for reasons that can only be described as ideological, as believing that they're so harmful and so terrible that somehow the emissions of them are going to end the planet in 10 years.
[01:11:52]  We have an obligation, I believe, to allow human beings to flourish now.
[01:11:57]  And when you have to pay, what, $680 to fill up your Chevy, or $200, whatever, $80?
[01:12:03]  Yeah, a little bit of an exaggeration.
[01:12:05]  That makes your ability to flourish and actually travel and move harder.
[01:12:08]  And so our U.S. natural gas has actually helped lower carbon emissions in America over the last 30 years.
[01:12:15]  Carbon emissions went down because of how we expanded oil, mostly natural gas exploration in the last couple of years.
[01:12:22]  It's unique in the developed world in that sense.
[01:12:24]  So drill, baby, drill.
[01:12:25]  Thanks for your question.
[01:12:26]  I appreciate it.
[01:12:30]  Okay, thank you.
[01:12:31]  Hi, Charlie.
[01:12:32]  As you know, California is unfortunately not getting any more red, and more boomers and millennials are moving out of state.
[01:12:40]  However, I was just curious to know if you can see that though as an opportunity for Generation Z and us college students here to thrive here, more job opportunities, especially for future entrepreneurs.
[01:12:51]  Potentially.
[01:12:52]  Yeah, look, I'm not someone that says you should leave California automatically, but boy, is it difficult right now to flourish in this state with income tax rate, regulation, the burden of the public service bureaucracy?
[01:13:03]  How many of you plan to leave California after your graduate?
[01:13:04]  I'm just curious.
[01:13:05]  That's a fair amount.
[01:13:06]  It wouldn't be that way a couple years ago.
[01:13:09]  Arizona is great.
[01:13:10]  I live in Arizona.
[01:13:11]  Texas is awesome.
[01:13:11]  Nevada, it's all right.

=== Effective Communication And Political Power (10:40) ===

[01:13:14]  They got to figure out some stuff.
[01:13:16]  But so your question is, is this an opportunity?
[01:13:18]  Yeah, I think your mindset is awesome, and I want to encourage you.
[01:13:22]  Find opportunity when things seem super bleak and down.
[01:13:25]  Try to find what the seed of the equivalent benefit would be.
[01:13:28]  So if everyone's leaving, well, then there's less entrepreneurs and less competition for you and more ability to be able to dominate.
[01:13:33]  If this is where you want to live and this is where you want to be able to flourish.
[01:13:36]  That is something I think we need to instill more in young people and not just say like, it's over, it's terrible.
[01:13:41]  I can't succeed.
[01:13:42]  It's still the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world.
[01:13:44]  Even though California is probably one of the least free states, you still have a semblance of an entrepreneurial culture of being able to take risks and be able to be able to succeed.
[01:13:52]  So lean in on it.
[01:13:53]  Look at it as an opportunity, right?
[01:13:55]  If people are starting to leave and close their business and all that, you're like, hey, more for me.
[01:14:00]  And so I think your mindset's right.
[01:14:01]  I don't have that mindset.
[01:14:03]  I left Illinois, got out as quickly as I possibly could and got to Arizona.
[01:14:07]  But if you're meant to be here, flourish, man, and don't let anyone get in your way.
[01:14:11]  I appreciate it.
[01:14:12]  Thank you.
[01:14:17]  Hey, how you doing?
[01:14:18]  His shirt says, You ain't black, Joe Biden.
[01:14:21]  I know.
[01:14:21]  It's a great shirt.
[01:14:22]  I got it at MTEST.
[01:14:23]  I got it at MTest.
[01:14:24]  Thanks for hosting, by the way.
[01:14:25]  I had one question for you, and it's a really simple one.
[01:14:28]  What's your thoughts on those people that call themselves conservatives, but like they sort of partake in the activities of what the liberal left is doing?
[01:14:36]  I just want to know your thoughts on that.
[01:14:38]  Elaborate.
[01:14:39]  So for instance, you have, yeah, someone said Mitt Romney.
[01:14:45]  Oh, it's a great example.
[01:14:46]  Mitt Romney?
[01:14:46]  I mean, geez, Mitt Romney's not a conservative.
[01:14:49]  He's a liberal that calls himself a conservative.
[01:14:51]  And so, I mean, if you vote for Katanji Brown Jackson and you tell me that you're a conservative, like that dog doesn't hunt and that's not going to happen.
[01:14:59]  So what do we do about it?
[01:15:01]  I guess is your question.
[01:15:02]  I don't know.
[01:15:02]  I mean, what are my thoughts?
[01:15:05]  Don't think very highly of those people.
[01:15:06]  That's for certain.
[01:15:07]  Here's the thing.
[01:15:07]  I get more frustrated with, and this is my own personal beliefs on this topic.
[01:15:13]  I get more frustrated with Republicans that betray their voters than Democrats who do what they say they're going to do and are super radical.
[01:15:21]  I get more frustrated with that, personally, when I see Republicans get political power and they turn their backs on the people that actually put them there, like Mitt Romney in Utah, which is one of the most conservative states in the country.
[01:15:32]  Thanks for being here.
[01:15:33]  Appreciate it.
[01:15:37]  Hi, Charlie.
[01:15:38]  I wanted to ask you about what your thoughts on the current American work culture and how it currently overemphasizes leadership.
[01:15:45]  And although leadership is important and gets us through like important crises, sometimes the average worker is just left out.
[01:15:52]  Yeah, it's interesting.
[01:15:53]  So what's my thought?
[01:15:54]  Did you say American worker culture?
[01:15:56]  Is that right?
[01:15:56]  Like everyone wants to be a leader, but like if everyone's a leader, no one can be a leader, right?
[01:16:00]  That's an interesting point.
[01:16:01]  I've actually thought that deeply about it.
[01:16:03]  I'll disagree.
[01:16:04]  I don't think everyone wants to be a leader.
[01:16:06]  I think everyone wants the perks of being a leader, for sure, but they certainly don't want the responsibilities of being a leader.
[01:16:12]  Being a leader is hard.
[01:16:14]  You can delegate authority.
[01:16:16]  You cannot delegate responsibility.
[01:16:18]  And so everyone kind of wants the kind of image of being a boss on Instagram, coroner office, you know, you get all the perks and all that.
[01:16:25]  But do they really want to be there 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning, having to go crunch a deadline when it's you on the line that have to do that?
[01:16:33]  Because that's what we that own business and run business have to do.
[01:16:35]  There's no days off.
[01:16:36]  It's seven days a week.
[01:16:37]  It's constant pressure, borrowing money, paying bills, firing people, hiring people.
[01:16:42]  So, but you're right.
[01:16:43]  Not everyone can be a leader.
[01:16:44]  So how do you create a culture where people are okay with being led?
[01:16:51]  I think you need better leaders.
[01:16:52]  I hate to go back to it.
[01:16:54]  I don't know if I agree with you.
[01:16:55]  I don't think there's an overemphasis on leadership.
[01:16:58]  I think that there's an overemphasis because there's such a lack of a crisis.
[01:17:02]  There's a lack of leaders in such a crisis to actually find people.
[01:17:05]  And so what is a leader?
[01:17:07]  A leader is someone that says, like George S. Patton said, lead, follower, or get out of the way.
[01:17:11]  Without a vision, the people perish.
[01:17:13]  The scriptures tell us that, right?
[01:17:14]  And so, but we see in America, we have a lot of people that do finger pointing and not people that are willing to cast a vision, work towards it, and meaningfully try to execute on it.
[01:17:23]  The greatest leader of the 20th century is Winston Churchill, period.
[01:17:26]  It's why we're never surrender right here.
[01:17:28]  Winston Churchill cast the vision against impossible odds.
[01:17:31]  He united a people against existential and material and immediate evil.
[01:17:35]  He rallied people with optimism and charm and a perseverance that was relentless when he was the minority of people thought it couldn't be done, surviving the blitz, pushing forward into Europe and liberating them from absolute existential and just unspeakable evil.
[01:17:49]  I don't know if we have that.
[01:17:50]  That sort of a leader is very hard to find.
[01:17:53]  I believe Washington, Lincoln, and Churchill are the three best Western leaders we have post-1776.
[01:17:59]  Boy, you look around in America, you say, where is that statesman today?
[01:18:03]  And it seems to be messy.
[01:18:05]  Yeah, it could be in Florida, either at Mar-a-Lago or in Tallahassee.
[01:18:08]  You guys can tell me which.
[01:18:09]  So thank you.
[01:18:11]  I appreciate it.
[01:18:12]  Next question.
[01:18:12]  Sorry.
[01:18:13]  Thank you.
[01:18:14]  All right.
[01:18:15]  This is the final question.
[01:18:16]  Hi, Charlie.
[01:18:17]  Thanks for coming out today.
[01:18:19]  Throughout your public endeavors here in public speaking and whatnot, you've become obviously a figure for the conservative movement, which I'm very happy to have you along with us.
[01:18:27]  But obviously, we have those on the left, especially here in California and placing like New York, that just make assumptions and quite frankly spread lies and aren't interested in getting to know you at all or getting to know your viewpoints.
[01:18:37]  I have some experience of this.
[01:18:39]  I gladly state who I am, my positions, and the fact I'm a proud boy in the USPAY chapter of California.
[01:18:46]  My question to you is: What do you find a little bit more effective in communicating your cause and your position?
[01:18:52]  Public debate, where you're able to take someone down.
[01:18:56]  I mean, you know, in the debating aspect, where you can, yes, sorry, where you can actually make your viewpoints heard in the public stage and show how you can defeat the left.
[01:19:05]  Or do you find it more effective to say more of a grassroots issue where you can talk to someone that's kind of teetering the left and actually is interested, maybe not in agreeing with what you say, but also in just hearing your viewpoint.
[01:19:17]  And my second part to that is, since no one else has asked it, Trump or DeSantis.
[01:19:21]  Okay, okay.
[01:19:22]  All right.
[01:19:23]  So that's the hardest question of all, I guess.
[01:19:26]  So I'll get to that second.
[01:19:28]  So what's the most effective way to persuade?
[01:19:31]  I think I know, but we're still learning.
[01:19:33]  Persuasion is different than activating, right?
[01:19:35]  So activating is part of my job, activating people that believe in what we believe, but aren't doing anything about it.
[01:19:40]  And then persuasion.
[01:19:41]  I think dialogue is really important.
[01:19:43]  I think what we did tonight is really helpful.
[01:19:44]  Like, come on up, tell us what you think.
[01:19:46]  Tell us what you believe.
[01:19:47]  You're going to get a couple smart Alex and people, you know, that try to do it, but that's part of the game, right?
[01:19:51]  Sitting out on the quad for two hours and having conversations with people.
[01:19:54]  But look, I will say this: that I think that when we have, there is this, and I know you didn't touch on this, but I think it's necessary to say, right?
[01:20:04]  Which is that we as conservatives are feeling a lot of frustration at times.
[01:20:08]  And we have to continue to be, and we try to be ambassadors of this, not to indulge into any sort of violence or any sort of, I think that's wrong.
[01:20:17]  I do.
[01:20:18]  And in fact, I think it hurts our cause and it makes it harder for us to be able to win converts over.
[01:20:24]  And I know you didn't touch on that, but I just want to kind of say that in the orbit of all that.
[01:20:27]  But the final thing I'll say is this: is that we have to be unafraid to say things that are true, even though you might be in a room the only person saying it.
[01:20:36]  I believe fundamentally that 99% of Americans believe that this idea that men can become pregnant is patently insane.
[01:20:44]  But 99% of Americans are afraid to say that out loud.
[01:20:47]  So it's going to take courage and it's going to take conviction to stand up and speak your mind on those things, regardless of what that backlash actually might be.
[01:20:56]  And in California, this is the toughest place to do that.
[01:20:59]  It definitely is.
[01:21:01]  And so I want to thank you for your question.
[01:21:03]  Thanks for being here tonight.
[01:21:04]  Appreciate it.
[01:21:05]  Thank you.
[01:21:05]  Oh, Trump or DeSantis.
[01:21:07]  You're right.
[01:21:07]  Okay, so this is me speaking personally, not on behalf of Turning Point.
[01:21:11]  Okay, so I'm a loyal guy.
[01:21:13]  I believe if Trump runs again, he deserves a right to run again, and he'll have my support if he runs again in 2024.
[01:21:19]  I would love a Trump DeSantis ticket.
[01:21:21]  Now, interestingly, you can't have a VP from the same state.
[01:21:24]  It's the 12th Amendment.
[01:21:25]  I didn't, so someone's going to have to move out of state temporarily, go buy like a summer home in Georgia.
[01:21:29]  You can't have the same, you can't have a president, vice president, combo from the same state.
[01:21:34]  Ron DeSantis, I believe, is a special statesman.
[01:21:36]  And I don't use that word lightly.
[01:21:38]  He really is starting to look like he's in the tradition of Churchill and Lincoln in many ways.
[01:21:45]  But here's what we do know about Trump.
[01:21:46]  And I got to give him credit for this.
[01:21:48]  He did what he said he was going to do.
[01:21:49]  And he was right with his predictions and his will to fight and his resolve.
[01:21:53]  And I believe once you win a presidency once, and then you run again and narrowly get displaced after all the shenanigans that happened last time, you have earned, and I do not use that word lightly, earned, a right to be able to run again and present to the American people the I told you so, get me back in power to lower your gas prices, close your border, and end these silly wars that are popping up all across the world.
[01:22:15]  I love Ron DeSantis.
[01:22:16]  I think he would be a great president, but I know Donald Trump was a great president.
[01:22:21]  And for that, I believe he's earned support for another term in 2024.
[01:22:25]  Thank you.
[01:22:26]  Okay.
[01:22:27]  So that was a lot of fun.
[01:22:30]  And so in closing, thank you guys for allowing us to speak.
[01:22:33]  Absent all the whatever the nonsense outside there was.
[01:22:36]  I enjoyed the discourse outside.
[01:22:37]  If you guys want to hear all of this, the clips, you guys can subscribe to our podcast, Charlie Kirk Show Podcast.
[01:22:42]  You guys can subscribe to that.
[01:22:43]  I want to thank our amazing Turning Point USA chapter for helping organize this.
[01:22:47]  It's just terrific.
[01:22:49]  And this is the place where they say the free speech movement started across America.
[01:22:54]  So thank you for largely more than not allowing that tradition to continue.
[01:22:58]  But look, for those of you that are on the left that, you know, believe and disagree with what I say, just please keep an open mind.
[01:23:05]  Dive deep into these ideas.
[01:23:08]  There's something out there, I think, that is more attractive and beautiful.
[01:23:13]  And I would say that would resonate with you a lot more than just kind of the dark and dystopian agenda that I think is being pushed a lot of times.
[01:23:21]  And so I want to thank you guys again for having us tonight.
[01:23:23]  This is a wonderful place.
[01:23:25]  And I don't think the next time I get to Berkeley, this is going to be the right-wing capital of the world.
[01:23:30]  This place hasn't changed much in the last couple of years.
[01:23:32]  But for you conservatives out there that are fighting in Berkeley, you are heroes.
[01:23:36]  I mean that.
[01:23:37]  And God bless you.
[01:23:38]  Thank you guys so much.
[01:23:42]  Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
[01:23:44]  You can email me always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[01:23:46]  Thank you so much for listening.
[01:23:48]  God bless.
[01:23:51]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.