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June 20, 2022 - The Charlie Kirk Show
34:09
Exposing the True Meaning of Juneteenth with Pedro Gonzalez
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Juneteenth: A Black Independence Day 00:14:59
Hey everybody, today in the Charlie Kirk Show, Juneteenth.
Should it be a federal holiday?
How should we think about Juneteenth?
I talk about it to start the show, and also then we are joined by Pedro Gonzalez, the great Pedro Gonzalez from Chronicles magazine.
Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.
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When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature is God entitle them.
A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
I'm reading, of course, our birth certificate, July 4th, 1776.
The founding of America on July 4th, 1776 is a profound and meaningful day.
You see, America did not stumble into existence.
It was summoned into existence.
It was a moral claim written by Thomas Jefferson and signed by these incredible men, from Roger Sherman to William Williams to John Hancock, that men deserve the ability to govern themselves.
Let me read that again.
Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
This was and is the great shot forward.
What was special about July 4th?
Everything that you enjoy, the fruits of Western civilization, all came to a culmination moment on July 4th, 1776.
Now, why would I be mentioning July 4th on June 20th?
Well, it's because the national regime media is in the process of trying to create a new Independence Day, a new federal holiday.
Now, on the surface, it looks like an innocent enough day worthy of celebration.
And if you take it word for word, it absolutely is.
It's wonderful news that the news of emancipation hit Texas and the slaves were freed.
A day worthy of celebration.
But let's not be naive.
Let's look below the surface and see precisely what is happening and what is being pushed by the people at the top levels of elite society.
Having Juneteenth as a federal holiday is a direct attempt to create a summertime competitor, a racially focused Independence Day, a new Independence Day, to compete against July 4th, 1776.
July 4th, 1776 is a colorblind day.
It's a day where you don't care about black or white, but red, white, and blue.
I just read the Declaration's beginning, and nowhere is skin color mentioned.
It is a moral claim that regardless of background, regardless of how you look, the melanin content in your skin, that it says when in the course of human events, it means at all times.
The founding fathers believed in a natural law.
They believed in an unmoved mover.
But unfortunately, the people, the top levels of our society now, the people running our country, they have been successful in creating a new national holiday, something that we pushed back against.
Now, we didn't push back against, obviously, what Juneteenth means if you read it word for word for word for word.
But no, instead, we push back against some of the claims that are embedded in the propaganda campaign the media is pushing right now when it comes to Juneteenth.
One of them being that somehow July 4th, 1776 was insufficient.
July 4th, 1776, well, it was really July 2nd, but that's a different issue.
We'll talk more about that actually on our July 4th special week because they actually signed it on July 2nd and 3rd and it wasn't publicized until July 4th.
However, the culmination of those couple days was a step forward in the revolution of self-government, the separation of the colonies and their ability to have constitutional government and the British Empire with tyrannical and autocratic rule.
But now we have people in the media saying we have a new Independence Day.
Despite the fact that the abolitionist slavery was triggered by the Declaration of Independence, Vermont abolished slavery in 1777 inspired by the Declaration.
Despite the fact that nine out of 13 colonies had independently abolished slavery by the time the Constitution was ratified in 1787, despite the fact that the Northwest Ordinance, the first act of the Continental Congress post-war, one of the first acts, I should say, in Article 6, said that all new territory in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa would be free of slavery, a reflection of the values of the nation.
As George Washington privately mused, it's not a matter of if we will get rid of slavery.
It's a matter of how and when we'll get rid of slavery.
All of us as human beings have something in common.
We are born into a world we did not create.
And by the time the founding fathers were passing away in the 1820s and 1830s, they were leaving a world where slavery was less common, was questioned, and was on the way out.
These are people that are worthy of examination and praise.
Abraham Lincoln knew that our founding as a nation was four score and seven years ago, 1776.
But listen to this, cut two.
CNN hosts says that Juneteenth will now be seen as Black Americans True Independence Day.
Play cut two.
Today in the United States, we celebrate Juneteenth.
For decades, Black Americans have marked June 19th as their true Independence Day.
And this weekend, all across the country, there will be public parades and private family barbecues.
And of course, now that it is a federal holiday, plenty of corporate and political statements attempting to latch on to the holiday's symbolic meaning.
CNN article, Juneteenth is America's true birthday.
This is by Peneil E. Joseph, the Barbara Gordon Chair in Ethics and Political Values and the founding director of the study of race and democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.
So for any of you out there that say, oh, Charlie, what's possibly wrong with talking about Juneteenth?
How could you possibly be against the federal holiday?
Well, very simple.
We know what they're doing.
They first introduce it as an innocent enough resolution.
Okay, we're going to celebrate the news of the emancipation of slaves hitting Texas.
Fine.
But let's look at how things are, not how things, how you want things to be.
Let's not be naive of who we're against.
This is a hyper-racialized, now multi-day propaganda campaign from the people at the top levels of our society.
Juneteenth, which the nation officially celebrates Monday, is unfolding against extraordinary twin backdrops.
The ongoing hearings of the House Select Committee.
What does that have to do with Juneteenth?
You see how all of a sudden it goes from Juneteenth to January 6th?
That's interesting.
And the continuing legislative efforts to halt or disrupt the teaching of the very history of Juneteenth.
Now, I would be all for that if they actually taught the accurate history of Juneteenth, that a Republican president Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, but that's not what they're talking about, is it?
No, instead, it is an opportunity for them to hyper-racialize the American conversation, say that we are still in a systemic racist moment.
As the nation prepares in only four short years from now to celebrate 250 years of independence, it is worth remembering that Juneteenth, as much as 4th of July, represents American democracy's true birthday.
No stable country can have two Independence Days.
What makes our Independence Day so special, July 4th, 1776, is that it was intentional.
It was thought over.
We did not back into it and kind of stumble over it and say, oh, well, America exists now.
No, as the Declaration beautifully ends, ends on a universal note.
It ends with, and for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
Juneteenth, by its opening argument, says that July 4th, 1776 is insufficient and that we need a new Independence Day, one that focuses on race, not on character.
Pay very close attention, everybody.
Charlie Kirk here.
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Despite the Emancipation Proclamation being on September 22nd, 1862, today is the day that the media and the academics say that we celebrate the freeing of slaves.
Understandably, this is a Texas tradition.
The news hit Texas that slavery was abolished.
It's phenomenal news.
No one is debating that.
But let's go a level deeper because if we've learned anything throughout the last couple years, it is not what the media tells us, it's what's actually going on.
Mask and facts.
Wait, hold on a second.
What's actually going on here?
We must stand with Ukraine.
What's actually going on here?
Well, cut nine, Josiah Johnson, an academic on television, says how Juneteenth is the black 4th of July.
And if you don't think so, you need a history lesson.
This is exactly why we stood against making this a federal holiday.
So according to Josiah Johnson, we now have a black National Independence Day and a white National Independence Day.
Do you see how destructive and corrosive that is?
That each race has their own Independence Day?
Play cut nine.
Before we start celebrating, can we at least agree that Juneteenth, one of the most legendary days in American history, is way more important than Columbus Day and should be a national holiday already.
Now, I know some of you are scratching your heads right now, trying to figure out exactly what Juneteenth is.
No idea.
So, how about a little pop quiz?
Is it A, the Black Fourth of July, B, the day that slavery ended in the United States, C, African American Independence Day, or D, all of the above?
For everyone who literally picked any of those choices, respect.
For everyone who didn't, hmm.
I guess it's time for a black history lesson.
All the above.
It's a black independence day.
It's a black 4th of July.
As if somehow blacks were excluded from the promise of the Declaration of Independence.
Our true founding as a country sparked the movement of freedom that gave birth to the freedom of slaves.
You know, in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson admonished King George for bringing slaves to the United States?
Do you know the first ever anti-slavery convention was hosted by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1775?
John Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams, intentionally re-ran for Congress despite not wanting to do so, inspired by his faith, inspired by the courage of the founding generation, he was the second generation to go and abolish, to go fight for the abolitionist slavery in Congress.
Do you know there's more slaves today on planet Earth than there were back in colonial times?
Let's go to another cut here.
Let's go to this one right here.
That's right, cut 13.
This is now coming to our schools.
Teacher does the pledge not to the United States flag, no, but to the pan-African flag with students.
Play cut 13.
One, two, three.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Afro-American people.
Under God, I will protect freedom, seek peace, honor our ancestors, and encourage and support the development and prosperity of people of African descent.
You may be cheated.
Did you hear that?
We will support our ancestors.
We will defend and support people of African descent as she is doing with a black power fist above her head.
Federal Holiday Increases Racial Tensions 00:03:05
That is what Juneteenth gives you.
And for the naive Republicans that voted for this to become a federal holiday, as somehow this would lessen racial tensions, this increases racial tensions.
You have given BLM a national holiday to be able to write these ridiculous op-eds in CNN.
How about this one, Time magazine?
Juneteenth is now a national holiday.
Are reparations next?
You see, they look at that as a starting point.
You validate their racial disharmony agenda.
You platform and recognize and give power to the very same people that burned and looted the entire country for weeks and months.
Somehow we're now the very same academics that said that looting is acceptable, that the proper way to honor George Floyd is to blow off a little steam.
This is what is called the movement of a million steps.
They start with Juneteenth, but they're not done.
Now they're saying, are reparations next?
And Republicans' unwillingness to fight on what July 4th actually is, and instead say, well, yeah, sure, this seems innocent enough, goes to show how naive our own side is in dealing with the arsonist left.
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A terrific article written by the brilliant Pedro Gonzalez.
The meaning of Juneteenth.
I want to read one paragraph here that I found to just be phenomenal.
Juneteenth vs July Fourth Competitors 00:11:55
Juneteenth, in truth, marks the dead of the old American nation and the birth of a new one, clawing out from the chest of the Republic in a nightmarish vision that would make Ridley Scott squirm.
The new holiday emerged from the mists of June with feeble opposition from Republicans who spent months railing about the evils of anti-white critical race theory and the New York Times 1619 project, only to turn around and inaugurate a national holiday and honor and validate the basic narrative underlying those things.
With us right now is Pedro Gonzalez.
So Pedro, let me play devil's advocate.
I totally agree with the article.
My open was all about this, but let me just play devil's advocate.
Isn't Juneteenth about the good news about emancipation?
Why should we fight on this?
Shouldn't Shouldn't we just kind of turn the page and just say it's okay?
Why is it important to articulate the meaning of Juneteenth, your own opinion of it?
What's your thoughts here?
Well, Charlie, thanks for having me back.
So, Juneteenth, as a regional thing, as a minor regional event, had meaning, real meaning for a particular group of people in Texas in reference to a particular time in a particular place.
But by taking Juneteenth, out of its historical and regional context and nationalizing it, all it has been reduced to is just another element in this national tapestry of shame alongside things like the 1619 project, which serve only to remind us of how America is evil, how we must always be begging for forgiveness, groveling, hating our past and ourselves.
So in other words, the original meaning, the good meaning that meant something to these people in Texas who have been quietly observing it for all this time is now gone.
Instead of, for example, community fundraisers and things like that, right?
These organizations of giving thanks that would occur in Texas.
Now, instead of giving thanks, Juneteenth becomes the basis for ever more demands of diversity, equity, or inclusion, or as you noted out, reparations.
That's all it has become now.
The abstraction of Juneteenth into this national holiday has completely stripped all of the otherwise benign or good things that the holiday symbolized for a particular group of people.
It's just a weapon now.
Yeah, and it's in some sense, it's almost a jumping off point, right?
It's kind of a trampoline to be able to get to the next level of reparations, institutional CRT.
It helps move the Overton window in their direction, as if racial politics is something necessary for us to continue to talk about.
One thing that stood out for me in your piece, Pedro, and I am, you and I both are big promoters of his book, and we don't get royalties for it, but he deserves it, is Christopher Caldwell's book, The Age of Entitlement.
You actually, your insistence for me to read this book largely prompted me to read it right after our week together with the Claremont.
And so everyone just kept on talking about Caldwell.
I was like, my goodness, you guys won't shut up about this.
So I read it on the flight home and I was just blown away by it.
You write here, in the age of entitlement, Christopher Caldwell similarly identifies the engine of this radical reconstruction as the rival constitution effectively created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
As with Juneteenth now, the King holiday then, writes Caldwell, quote, mark not the end, but the beginning of shame of an official culture that casts their country's history as one of oppression and its ideals of liberty as hypocrisies.
Elaborate, Pedro.
Yeah, that's right.
So again, we're talking about removing the original meaning from these things and then filling them with a different or a new set of symbols.
And that is exactly what has happened originally with the MLK holiday.
As Caldwell pointed out, MLK is a figure that I think most people would look at and say, okay, there's a lot of good things about this person.
But taking him and turning him into kind of like the leading light of the American pantheon, it wasn't for a lot of people a kind of moment of relief.
It was just a day that we would remember how bad America is.
That's exactly what the MLK holiday has become.
It's just a day to remind people how bad America is.
And as part of that project, the Constitution, the original way of doing things of federalism, due process, and things like that, all of that stuff is an obstacle to the revolution, which things like the MLK holiday originally and now Juneteenth symbolize.
That's all of the people that are the people that have been saying things like, this is the real Independence Day, they're the honest ones.
They actually are telling the truth about the symbolism of Juneteenth, that basically it represents a new kind of nation.
But if you're creating a new nation, that means the old one and all of the things that accompany it have to be discredited, deconstructed, and ultimately discarded and replaced.
And you bring up a great point about federalism, which actually goes to your point about Juneteenth being a regional celebration, which is fine.
It's wonderful, great.
But it's the hyper-federalization of this, which almost, which it actually creates more radicalism is what it does.
Is that the whole idea of federalism is that people have different tastes and wants and interests and backgrounds.
They literally have different geographies they have to deal with.
And federalism says, okay, I'm going to kind of not agree with you on certain issues, but I'm going to live in a different state and so be it.
And that was kind of the promise of live and let live.
A lot of us were naive to believe that actually ever existed when in reality it was live and let them rule.
So where does this go in the next couple of years?
You know, you and I and a couple others, Candace Owens, Brandon Tatum, they deserve some credit, came out against Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday.
So did Tucker Carlson.
I see this only intensifying in racial discord, almost being a summertime competitor to July 4th.
No strong nation can have two Independence Days.
Your thought?
Yeah, well, ironically, there was actually a shooting at, I think, the first national Juneteenth celebration in Oakland, California.
So, yes, I think that it will only make things worse.
Things are only going to get uglier.
It's only going to increase more polarization.
But I also think that there are things that we can learn from it.
And there's a common conception of how power works among conservatives, that basically politics are downstream of culture.
But in this case, when you look at Juneteenth, only 7% of Republican voters thought that it should be federalized.
60% of Americans, according to the New York Times, said they knew nothing or little about Juneteenth.
About 35% of Americans didn't think that it should be a, or did not think that it should be a federal holiday.
They didn't see the point.
They weren't necessarily opposed to it, but they didn't see the point of making this a federal holiday.
I think that's significant, but because basically, when you look at all of the data, when you look at all the polls and surveys, the consensus among most Americans was we either don't care about this, we don't know about it, or we don't really want it to be a federal holiday because to your point, it seems to make things worse, right?
And it happened anyways.
And so a holiday that went from being an obscurity, a regional thing, is every year going to become more and more potent as a symbol of this new nation.
And it's going to breed more and more resentment as time goes on.
In other words, political power is changing the culture.
That's the lesson I think of Juneteenth.
But that wouldn't have been possible without the Republican Party because just 14 Republicans voted against making this thing a national holiday.
Those Republicans actually used religious language here.
Ted Cruz, I'll just use this as one example.
Ted Cruz said that Juneteenth was a reminder of our original sin.
Original sin?
You're talking about something that's concrete and permanent and will stick to each generation to come.
That's a Republican talking about America.
And it doesn't even recognize or notice how complicated this issue was at the time.
It'd be one thing if every single one of the founding fathers and signers of the Declaration were enthusiastically for slavery.
It's not true.
It's not even close to being true, actually.
In fact, the first anti-slavery convention was held in 1775 before the Declaration was signed.
As we've mentioned on this program, nine out of 13 of the states had already abolished slavery by the time the Constitution was ratified.
So what original sin exactly?
Right.
So it'd be one thing if every founder was in unanimous agreement and they wrote extensively and they had books that said the case for slavery, that's not true.
In fact, that didn't come until like the 1820s by people like John C. Calhoun and others post-CottonGen.
I want to play a tape here.
Cut 11.
This is what Pedro was mentioning.
New video of Juneteenth mass shooting in DC, PlayCut 11.
Nobody key.
These police ain't kid.
But on Juneteenth, as you can see, says Mocelle ended early.
There they go, Lo.
Man, they see.
And if I'm not mistaken, Pedro, there were young ladies as well twerking on top of police cars yesterday.
Is that right?
Yes.
Yeah.
I don't think it was, I'm not sure if it was yesterday, but yeah, they were twerking as this whole thing went down and the scene devolved into total chaos, which is actually, again, kind of symbolic of this entire debate that we're having.
And I'm sorry, I think I misspoke earlier.
Just 35% of Americans thought that it should be a federal holiday.
Most people, again, didn't see the point in this.
Did Juneteenth prevent that shooting from happening?
Did it result in racial healing?
No.
No, it did the exact, on the one hand, it didn't solve anything.
But on the other hand, it has made people hate each other even more.
And again, I don't think you can drop that point.
You can't just pretend that, okay, it's fine now.
It's part of the culture, which is what some conservatives are saying.
Just let it go.
Well, no, actually, we can't let it go because it's going to get worse as time goes on.
Again, each subsequent generation will inherit this new, this myth of the American nation as irredeemably evil that everyone has to kind of get on their knees and apologize for something that they have nothing to do with.
No one alive has anything to do with this mythical history that Juneteenth represents.
Again, this narrative of America as evil from the start, evil today, and evil until we, I guess, hand over the keys of the kingdom to the most radical people in this country.
I believe it's an intentional, they picked this date for a summertime competitor against July 4th.
They could have picked November.
They could have picked January, which would have, for example, they could have picked Emancipation Day, where Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation, but it was kind of they want it within a two-week window of July 4th to kind of create a contrast.
And based on all the academics at the top levels of CNN and Princeton, they're writing openly that blacks should not celebrate July 4th and that local communities should go all in on Juneteenth.
And so basically now we have two summertime independence days.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And again, some people are saying that out loud that Juneteenth is the real Independence Day, that the other Independence Day is just for white people.
In other words, it's illegitimate.
They're saying it out loud.
We're just not listening to them.
Or there are people among us, especially among conservatives, who don't want to believe that, who are still kind of attached to, again, the previous, their regional benign meaning of the holiday.
But I'm sorry, that's not what it stands for anymore.
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Conservatives Reject Illegitimate Independence 00:04:09
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All right, Pedro, I want to ask you: you did mention some other piece here and you just touched on it.
14 Republicans voted against federalizing the holiday.
You mentioned how disconnected the Republicans are from their voters.
Why is it that Republicans are afraid to fight early?
And then, once all of a sudden, let's, for example, CRT takes over the land, then they're comfortable opposing it.
Isn't it the early fights that matter the most?
Yes.
And that's why I don't think we should let this go.
Although we technically lost the early fight, thanks to Republicans.
I think it's a combination of fear, as silly as that sounds.
These people truly do fear being called racist.
They fear getting a bad article in Vanity Fair, getting a bad line in the New York Times.
They really are afraid of that.
But on the other hand, I think this is worse, is they actually believe in these things.
And maybe some of these people change their mind or realize that they have to qualify their support for what they previously heralded as the best thing ever.
But by then, it's too late.
And I think that's why it's incumbent on the base to aggressively hold these people accountable.
I think it's insanely unacceptable that just 14 Republicans after the riots, of course, we can't forget the context in which this occurred, right?
It was basically a concession to these BLM terrorists that, okay, you get a holiday.
And there was even Republicans that talked about replacing Columbus Day, getting rid of Columbus Day, and instead establishing Juneteenth.
We kept Columbus Day and we have Juneteenth.
But just the fact that Republicans were floating that was absurd.
And again, in the context of BLM, of national rioting that killed dozens of people and caused billions of dollars in damage, irreparably ruining communities.
And we give this concession of a national holiday that is deliberately designed to reduce in stature the 4th of July and all of the things that that represents.
I mean, sorry, that's a long answer to your short question, but it's a complicated one.
And I think it's important to really cultivate this sense of anger and outrage at our own supposed allies.
And I think, again, going back to the poll numbers and stuff like that, 7% of Republicans thought this was a good idea, Republican voters.
But there was unanimity among not only the Republican political establishment, but also among, frankly, a lot of conservative pundits, especially in legacy magazines like National Review, kind of looking down at people like us, thinking that we're rubes for suspecting that there could be something more to Juneteenth than just a kind of national day of kumbaya, right?
All those people were wrong.
And importantly, they're all completely disconnected from the Americans that they claim to represent.
It's well said.
Pedro, thank you for joining us today.
The meaning of Juneteenth, it's chroniclesmagazine.org.
We're going to be linking to it at charliekirk.com.
It's just terrific.
And thank you for the courage and clarity, Pedro.
Thanks for joining us today.
Thank you, Troy.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening.
God bless.
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