The Charlie Kirk Show - Who Defines Right and Wrong? LIVE from University Texas Austin

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Oct. 30, 2022 - The Charlie Kirk Show

01:20:17

Who Defines Right and Wrong? LIVE from University Texas Austin

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Speech at UT Austin 00:03:25
	Hey everybody, happy Saturday.
	No advertisers on this episode as we air my speech at the University of Texas Austin, where I also take questions.
	Always entertaining.
	I think you'll really enjoy it.
	If you're from Texas, it's definitely worth listening to.
	Email me directly, freedom at charliekirk.com, and support our program at charliekirk.com/slash support.
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	No advertisers this Saturday episode.
	So thank you for those of you that support us at charliekirk.com/slash support to allow us to continue to grow and flourish.
	Thank you.
	Buckle up, everybody.
	Here we go.
	Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
	Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
	I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
	Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
	I want to thank Charlie.
	He's an incredible guy.
	His spirit, his love of this country.
	He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
	Turning point USA.
	We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
	That's why we are here.
	Thank you.
	It's great to be here.
	I have to apologize in advance.
	It's been a long day.
	We sat at a table there.
	Was anyone there today?
	We had a good time, I have to say, outside of a couple people.
	But no, generally, I learned a lot.
	One of the individuals there, she asked, she said, you actually go here to learn.
	And not that I've heard anything that was totally new and profound, but I learned a lot at kind of where this generation is politically and philosophically.
	And yeah, I learned a lot kind of about some of the major sticking points there.
	And I do want to thank a couple people.
	I want to thank the students there that were there for all two hours and were respectful.
	That says a lot.
	Speech is important.
	In fact, without speech, all you have is power and brute force.
	And so that says a lot about you.
	So if you're out there and you hear that, good for you.
	And then I also, I can't believe I'm doing this, but I want to thank the UT administration that kind of came.
	It's amazing.
	No, you have to be honest in life, though, right?
	I'm not exactly a fan of college.
	But they came in and they smart enough to make you attend.
	Okay.
	So, yeah, thank you.
	That right there is what someone who's about to lose very big X like.
	Let me tell you, that's that was one minute and eight seconds.
	That's a new record.
	Here I am complimenting that everyone had a great time and trying to be magnanimous, even though people said very bad things, but whatever.
	And that happens.
	You got to love it.
	It's great.
	Okay, where was I?
	It's like speaking of how wonderful of a university this is.
	Let me continue with my compliments.
	No, I mean it.
	It's that the Uti administration came in to a couple people that were trying to interrupt and play music or whatever.
	And they said you have to do that elsewhere.
	So that allowed our discussion and our conversation to continue.
	And so that was very nice.
	And we appreciate that.
	And so there was, yeah, you could give it up for the UT administration.
	They deserve credit for that.
	They do.
	And they had a commitment to free speech, which is very, very important.
The Special Nature of America 00:11:58
	So something that kept on coming up in our discussions today, which I found to be fascinating, not surprising, but it was fascinating to keep on hearing, which is, who are you to say what is right and wrong?
	And that's not a new question.
	I thought that that would be probably well understood by the time you get to college, but it shouldn't be a huge shock for those of you that are kind of consuming postmodern deconstructionist philosophy on an almost daily basis, which is who are you to say?
	Why is your right the right?
	And that really does ask the question of what is the purpose of college, right?
	where I think college should be, kind of what Hillsdale College has become, which is an exploration of the good, the true, and the beautiful, and what is right, what is good, what is, how should you as a human being properly develop.
	And, you know, it was a really interesting question where they said, you know, your beliefs should not be able to be imposed on somebody else.
	And that sounds really good, right?
	Like, okay, yeah, your beliefs, but it's not true.
	At some point, somebody's belief is going to be imposed on you.
	Even the absence of a belief is somebody's belief.
	So at some point, you have to come to some sort of consensus of what is good.
	And they say, well, I don't think the government should be involved in any decisions.
	That's a decision in and of itself.
	Not to be involved is a decision.
	Not to do something is actually a decision to do something.
	And you have to have a moral basis for that.
	And so we had a very long conversation about that.
	And I hope that can continue in the question and answer line of which disagreement will be invited.
	And you guys can have the microphone.
	We'll have a back and forth.
	But it kind of goes back to that question of who are you to say?
	And boy, the founding fathers really thought deeply about that.
	And we are the beneficiaries of framers that gave us the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world.
	And I have to say, when I said that today, there were a lot of people gasping and booing, which is just such a shocking thing because that is as close to an objective fact of anything I could say here tonight, that you are the beneficiaries to live in the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world.
	That's a big deal.
	And somebody asked and they said, well, why?
	And I said, look, I mean, first of all, greatest is obviously relative.
	You're judging yourself against other countries.
	Are we perfect?
	Of course not.
	We're human beings.
	We're far from perfect.
	But we're the most generous country.
	We're the most productive country.
	We have the longest waiting list of people that want to come into our country.
	Our ideals have been successfully replicated all across the planet.
	We're the nation that goes and fights wars for the freedom of other people, not perfectly all the time, obviously, but has an ethic within our history and within our background, something that is not an empire to try to gain lands, but in some ways, something greater than yourself.
	And I could go on from medical advancements to cultural impact.
	There's something very special about America.
	And I'm desperately afraid that we're losing it.
	And not only are we afraid of losing it, I'm afraid that people want it to be lost.
	And that's even more troubling to me.
	And it wasn't said today, but I've heard it before when I was at Berkeley, which don't laugh too much.
	You guys are right up there with Berkeley.
	So right up there.
	I have to say that I heard some wacky stuff today, but Berkeley had some other wacky.
	He was right up there.
	But I heard something else, which is, you know, America is the great Satan.
	We want it eliminated.
	It's a force of evil in the world.
	And only spending an exhaustive amount of time in a lecture hall listening to someone who hates about America could you come to such a ridiculous conclusion as that, which, I mean, just the evidence in front of it is you look at America's greatness, which, again, I think we're losing through self-inflicted decisions, and you look through our history and you look at what we've been able to accomplish.
	There's just one fact that will tell you everything you need to know.
	America's the only nation on the planet where even those who hate it and they say they hate it, they refuse to leave.
	And so, and people, and they say, well, you know, where am I supposed to go?
	I said, I don't know you guys talk about Denmark all the time.
	Like Paris?
	I'm not saying leave.
	I'm saying, why don't you?
	And because I have to hear about how awful this place is, but your actions speak a lot louder than your lectures in that regard.
	And that does kind of tell you something.
	It kind of reminds me of all the celebrities that said they were going to leave the country after Donald Trump won.
	It's actually like, yeah, okay, you might have a problem with that.
	But it turns out that this place still is the best hope.
	It still is the greatest nation.
	And so why?
	Why is this country great?
	Why have we achieved anything of value?
	Well, you can ask yourself the question, what is the longest lasting Constitution in world history?
	And you're living under it.
	It's the United States Constitution.
	Magna Carta is not a constitution.
	The Ten Commandments is not a constitution.
	Constitution is an agreement.
	It's a compact.
	It's a contract.
	And they wrestled with these ideas, the framers, and boy, did they get it right.
	They got some things wrong, and they can prove it along the way.
	But what they got right more than anything else is the question that we spent about two hours trying to go back and forth with today.
	I don't know if we ever found consensus, but it's a very simple question, which is what is a human being?
	Is a human being a collection of cells?
	Is it just kind of an accident of hundreds of millions of years of evolution?
	Or is a human being more than that?
	Is a human being an image-bearer, has a soul, has something that is worthy of protection?
	And the answer to that question can tell you directly the type of government that you think should exist.
	And it said so clearly because the Declaration of Independence starts completely and totally universally.
	It doesn't start specific.
	It gets specific.
	But Thomas Jefferson writes, when in the course of human events, he's talking about all time, all human beings, all people, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands that have tied them to another, deriving the separate but equal power that goes on to equal station and goes on to say laws of nature and nature is God.
	What he's making is a moral argument that the people of this nation have something that is just that is even greater than reason and is even greater than touch and feel in the senses.
	And again, you could have your own religious views, but it's an arguable to say that the founders of the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world, they believed you had a soul, and that's a very big deal.
	And if you believe you have a soul, then you must have a government that respects all human dignity, regardless of size, level of development, environment, or degree of dependency, including those in the womb or outside of the womb.
	That those beings are worthy of protection.
	And when you start to talk in that way, all of a sudden, natural rights start to come into the picture.
	You say, wow.
	And obviously they talked life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
	Previously, it was life, liberty, and property from John Locke and Thomas Jefferson.
	I had added the pursuit of happiness, which is you have a right to be able to live.
	That's a very big deal.
	And guess what?
	Government does not give you those rights.
	And that was the huge change, right?
	Is that the government protects those rights, first and foremost, from government abusing those rights?
	And not only were they able to tell you what a human being is, they told you how human beings acted.
	And if there was kind of the big, one of the big lies, if you will, of American progressivism is that somehow human beings change just because technology changes with it.
	And that is not true.
	Just because times change, human beings do not change.
	We're exactly the same.
	In fact, technology only makes it easier for us to do the bad stuff that would have been harder for us to do a couple hundred years ago.
	Said differently, the Constitution was not written for the times.
	It was written to stand the test of time.
	That it was an analysis of human behavior of every civilization that ever acted before, and they had some truths in it that all of us are able to enjoy today.
	The first and most obvious one is consent to the governed.
	You are the sovereign of the U.S. Constitution.
	And that is so easy to take for granted.
	And it only existed in a short little spurt in maybe Athenian democracy before that.
	And it's a big deal they put that into place.
	But it's important that it's not a democracy, though.
	People say we're democracy.
	We are not a democracy.
	We're a constitutional republic.
	What's the difference?
	In a democracy, the majority rules no matter what all the time.
	And I say, well, that's the way I want it.
	Well, if the majority wants something that is evil and wrong, shouldn't there be a check and balance against the majority?
	Shouldn't there be a process to slow it down?
	You see, a constitutional republic says there are things that are true that will always be true.
	Do you notice that the preamble to the U.S. Constitution has never had to be changed?
	It's because it's always been true that we do ordain these truths.
	We do ordain this Constitution said differently.
	And so when we kind of look at all these different things that are kind of factoring in, I think it's important to note that the posture that I encourage you to have, and we can have obvious disagreements here, we're going to get to questions early tonight because boy, some of you guys wore me out today.
	I got to be on.
	I had three hours of radio and we were talking forever.
	And is a posture of gratitude.
	One of my great complaints, I really couldn't care less about your political affiliation.
	We could talk about that.
	That's not why I'm here tonight.
	If you want to ask me political questions, I don't care.
	That's fine.
	Obviously, I have strong opinions that way.
	But it drives me nuts when there is a lecture of ingratitude towards America.
	People that are thankful are happier.
	And you have a lot to be thankful for.
	And you might not be happy.
	You might say, oh, look at all these injustices.
	I would venture a guess there's probably half truths baked in that.
	And it's not as much of the injustice as you think, but whatever.
	I'm sure I could agree with part of it.
	But when you think about it, when you're ungrateful, you're much more likely to be a revolutionary.
	When you're grateful, maybe you want to conserve that thing.
	That's why I'm a conservative.
	That's why a lot of you are conservatives.
	You say, this is something that I actually want to protect to make sure future generations are able to live through.
	Just becoming a father, I could tell you, I'm like, I want my daughter to be able to live in this nation.
	I want future generations to be able to enjoy this incredible system.
	And you always got to ask the question, which is, replace it with what?
	Replace it with what kind of experiment?
	What kind of a country?
	What is the solution?
	What is the form of the structure of government?
	And there's a reason why that constitution has stood the test of time and the stress test at every single corner, despite opposition, foreign and domestic.
	It locates the sovereignty within you.
	And at the same time, the people are actually not running the administration of the government.
	It excludes the sovereign from the ordinary business of the government or the ordinary operations of the government, which in some ways is a check and balance on the people, which again shows that absolute power can corrupt absolutely.
	And it comes down to this fundamental question and this fundamental thing where it goes down to at some point, you have to agree upon what C.S. Lewis said, which is you have to come to some consensus of the Tao or the way.
	And this is what really troubles me about some of the things I heard today more than anything else when they say there's unlimited amount of truths.
	And I want you to understand the ramifications of what that looks like in society.
	And, you know, somebody said, you know, different cultures have different truths.
	Think about that.
	Different cultures can have different diets and customs and attitudes.
	But is it really the case that if you believe that child sacrifice to Molech is okay, that's somehow something we should act as if that's not eternally wrong, regardless of where it happens?
	No, there's eternal principles that apply to all people, regardless of where they are on the planet.
	Now, are there different customs?
	Of course, be respectful of them and all things.
	But you look at that question.
	There's an unlimited amount of truths.
	Now, there could be lots of different shared experiences.
	But for example, if you have a car crash and there's five witnesses, everyone says, well, this happened and this happened.
	Eventually, you want to get to the truth of what ended up happening.
	You want to be able to get to the consensus of the matter.
	And when you design a government or you have a society and you raise a generation that says, you know what, anyone can believe whatever they want to believe about anything at any time.
	How on earth are you going to have a stable and civil society from that point?
	If everybody had a definition of what North is, good luck trying to orient everybody.
	So no, there's not an unlimited amount of truths.
	I believe there's one truth, but I think that truth that we could agree tonight is rather broad.
	I think that it's a road that is not too narrow and not too wide, as C.S. Lewis would say in the abolition of man.
	It's the Tao.
	It's something that says, okay, within the maxims of liberty, we can agree that separation of powers, consent of the governed, independent judiciary, private property rights, these things are important to protect.
	And whenever there is a threat against those things, we're not going to put up with that.
	Like we're not going to say, you know what?
	Yeah, maybe you could believe that you're a platypus or that you could believe that you're actually six foot eight when in reality you're not.
	That your feeling is not as important as to what actual reality is happening in that exact moment.
	And the consequence of this, I could tell you, will end up being two things.
One Truth for All 00:14:47
	First, you get chaos, and that's bad.
	And that's kind of the talking point.
	If you don't have all these things, you have societal chaos.
	But we never talk about what happens after that, which is then you get totalitarianism.
	You see, as soon as you confuse everybody, there is no truth, you have your own truth, and you have all these different kind of bickering tribes, eventually people are going to want order.
	And that's when you get someone like Joseph Stalin that comes along, and all they care about is power, and they're good at it.
	And then all of a sudden, you could throw out all the stuff I've talked about, consent to the govern, separation of powers.
	Chaos is a strategy towards totalitarianism.
	And not everyone who's participating in it even recognizes or realizing it.
	They say, oh, we're liberating groups to be able to have whatever truth they want to have under any circumstance.
	And you have their own opinions.
	But you notice how quickly it goes from this is my truth to all of a sudden, if you don't accept your truth, you're going to be penalized.
	Happens very quickly.
	So it's not just your truth.
	It's that I must now adopt that.
	And whatever that kind of fiction or whatever that might be.
	And so I'm very, very worried about the direction of the country currently and for a variety of reasons.
	And I think that the restoration has to start, has to kind of rest on all of you.
	Something I wish we could have talked about more in this, kind of in our time together on the quad, wherever we were, is kind of what's going on generationally.
	I guess you're all Gen Zers, is that right?
	If you're in college, I'm a millennial, so I have to thank you, by the way.
	I have finally found a generation boomers hate more than millennials, Generation Z.
	It's great.
	So thank you very much.
	I get to now hate on the younger generation.
	It's terrific.
	It's great.
	For years, although stupid millennials are the worst.
	It's awful.
	Now I get to do that.
	It's actually quite delightful.
	So, but let's talk seriously here.
	There's two ways we could take this.
	And I think both have something that we can glean from it.
	The first is the reality of the topic is that this is the most depressed, suicidal, alcohol-addicted, and drug-addicted, psychiatric, drug-addicted generation in history.
	Most likely to kill themselves, least likely to get married, least likely to have kids, most likely to believe that there is no God, no eternity, no reason or harmony for life.
	That's a very scary thing.
	And for those of us that are not in Generation Z, we should pause and take time out and say, what is going on?
	That is a very troubling and sad thing.
	Now, I do believe that there is a direct connection between a lot of this postmodernist garbage that is being, you know, a lot of you guys are going into debt for to learn and the fact that all of a sudden you have something that could be best described as existential despair.
	You feed a child a steady diet of Jock Derrida and Michelle Foucault and Herbert Marcuse without being anchored in absolute truth, or at least the kind of the inquiry of such, you're going to really mess with some kids' heads.
	I really believe that does not help.
	But also, even deeper than that, and this is where I think some students would totally agree, especially those on the left and some adults would say not so fast, is I think that older generations did a massive disservice to this generation.
	And I don't say that lightly.
	I'm not one to try to wage generational warfare.
	I don't like it, but it's true.
	The lockdowns will go down as one of the worst mistakes in American history where we decided to harm a generation for an awful reason.
	And this generation is still trying to climb out of it.
	We locked down a generation and masked them and forced mRNA gene altering technology on them by saying maybe you get kicked out of school or have your entire life ruined for a virus that did not significantly threaten them.
	And every single person in this room could tell you a story as someone that has been left aside.
	Maybe you are one of those people.
	And we're here for you if you need help in any way possible of someone that is now in a very serious mental health crisis, someone that took their life.
	And I'm telling you, the lockdowns are a direct correlation to this generational carnage that a lot of young people are living through.
	And, you know, a lot of adults will say, oh, young people just need to work harder.
	I agree.
	You know, there is a work ethic issue.
	But how about we take a pause and we tell young people, like, we were wrong.
	This never should have happened.
	We never should have took prom and graduation.
	And I know a lot of you out there that are adults were against it.
	So I'm overly generalizing.
	But the consensus of the American adults did it.
	It's a fact, right?
	They just did.
	And it was so perverse when you really think about it, which is the 15, 16, and 17 year olds that have their whole life ahead of them.
	They need to be locked at home so that they won't spread a virus to their grandparents.
	Now, I'm not a fan, obviously, of anyone spreading viruses to anybody.
	But the question should have always been, the kids come first.
	What's right for them first?
	Because now we see the results, right?
	And not to mention all of our insane fiscal policy is around this.
	And I say this to conservatives all the time.
	And I think that we could find some agreement with some people on the left here tonight, which is, you want to know why so many people on the left and younger that love socialism.
	Yeah, part of it, they want free stuff and they've been indoctrinated, all that.
	Obviously, it's all totally true.
	I get that.
	But I want you to put yourself in a young UT Austin grad's shoes for a second.
	They graduated with a philosophy degree and now they have to go become a barista or whatever the career track is.
	I mean that non-jokingly, right?
	And they were like, wait a second, I did what I was told.
	I borrowed the money.
	I got the piece of paper.
	I'm $70,000 in debt, whatever, right?
	And now they go to go pay rent and everything's twice as expensive because we decided to go print a bunch of money we didn't have.
	And inflation is crushing people.
	And good luck trying to buy a home if you're a young person right now with what, 6.6% interest rates and down payments out of reach.
	And this is something that is some conservatives reject this argument, but just hold on, which is some people that then embrace socialist ideas, at some point you have to wonder like, man, you can blame them a little bit, but did we create the conditions where they're ready to embrace free enterprise?
	And the answer is no.
	I hear all the time, and this is probably the best argument from the left right now in America.
	And this is for the left.
	They're so busy talking about stuff.
	If they were smart, they would talk about this stuff.
	They would win everything.
	But instead, they're too talking about race all the time and defunding the police and men becoming pregnant.
	If they were smart, if they were smart, they would say the very simple, which is very, really true, which is a 25-year-old is working harder and getting poor than any other time in American history.
	That's true, not American history, the last 50 years.
	And not only is that true, it creates a lot of anger in people, and it should, because you have a rule-following generation.
	That's what I call Gen Z and millennials, because they followed every single rule put in front of them.
	And they say, I can't afford gas.
	I can't afford groceries.
	I have to go into debt just to be able to survive.
	And they want to just be preached by the older generation.
	Like, oh, just go work harder.
	Go apply yourself more.
	If you want to all of a sudden, if you want to have a Marxist revolution on your hands, you got to fix this really quick.
	You got a bunch of young people with college degrees that don't own anything.
	That's not going to end well.
	You got a bunch, you know, it's a great rule for life.
	People burn down Wendy's only if they don't own anything.
	Okay?
	Like the people, if you own a mortgage, you're probably less likely to go all of a sudden act in revolutionary fervor.
	And I think we're on the cusp of an economic collapse in this country in more ways than one.
	And again, it's not even political.
	It's just talking very realistically, which is, do you think the hard economic left, which again, this is the great miscalculation of the American Marxists.
	And if there's a Marxist here now, I'd be happy to talk to you because the Marxist, you're giving advice to Marxists, right?
	It's quite a thing, which is they decided to go all in on this race Marxism garbage, which actually was the best gift for those of us that are conservatives because they decided to show their true colors that they're actually not about economics.
	They're about dividing people based on skin color and tribes and going against straight white men and all that sort of nonsense that they're doing.
	When every single one of their arguments of like, oh, we need to confiscate wealth and all total and complete garbage, obviously, being a free enterprise guy has kind of gone by the wayside in a way where you have a legitimate economic anxiety amongst the younger generation.
	And so the question is, how are conservatives going to respond to that?
	Well, I mean, I think our response needs to be, of course, rooted in market principles and rooted in consent of the government constitutional ideas.
	But I have to even say beyond that, it's we should also as conservatives be defenders and we should be pushers of things that would give this generation that currently is telling us they're in misery by every metric possible, things that would give them meaning, make it easier to marry and have children in our country, make it easier to be able to buy a home, to have a little bit of investment in that very same American dream.
	You want to de-radicalize a generation?
	Have them experience the same sort of growth that many of you experienced, adults in the room, in the 1980s.
	Your politics get very de-radicalized when you're getting wealthier and you start having kids.
	You want to know why this generation has radicalized politics?
	Because they're getting poor and they're not having children and not getting married.
	It's the perfect kind of raw material for every single one of these awful ideas to kind of go in and metastasize.
	So it kind of goes both ways.
	I tell young people work harder, apply yourself more.
	At the same time, as someone who's kind of a bridge between generations, being 28 years old, I think there needs to be a national recovery plan.
	I don't know what that looks like.
	I don't know what that means, but I've said this before.
	I would much rather see money go to help kids be able to own homes and have families and send it to Ukraine.
	I think that is a much more important priority for our leaders.
	That's not a popular position in every room.
	Obviously, it is here, but I think there's a moral obligation to defend your citizens.
	So, but yeah, this look, for those of you that are Gen Z and you're here tonight and you don't know how you stand politically welcome, by the way, we're glad you're here.
	It's more important where you ask yourselves the question: how am I going to be able to live a life of contribution and meaning and purpose?
	And I guess I'll close with this and we'll do some questions, which is it could be very depressing and very dark when you watch the news and all this, but I just want to be able to tell you that there is a beautiful life that is ahead of all of you.
	There really is.
	There are things that give your life meaning that you might be told on a daily basis you shouldn't do.
	Getting married, having children, having a job that you believe in, being able to serve your country, your church, your community, whatever those things might be.
	Those are very beautiful and important things.
	And so we're kind of going through this massive thing where they say, you know, we have this mental health crisis on our hands.
	And I know we do.
	And there's a lot of different reasons for that.
	Lockdowns, as I said, contributed to it.
	But what is a young person generally, if they believed everything the left told them, what are they to believe in?
	Yeah, I mean, exactly.
	Government.
	Yeah, okay, great.
	That's awfully depressing, right?
	Where it's, can't we, as conservatives, paint a much more beautiful picture than that of safe local communities that function?
	How about a future where we don't care about skin color at all?
	We don't talk about it.
	I think that's necessary.
	And I think it's very compelling.
	In fact, I know it's compelling.
	And I think that's a lot more important for conservatives to talk about than tax cuts.
	But it also goes into this, which is one of the main strategies is if you get a generation to no longer believe in the history and the story of that nation, then why wouldn't they just tear it all down?
	And that's one of the reasons why I'm such a defender of the American Republic and our history, which is a beautiful history.
	It really is the great American story.
	It's a land of hope.
	It's a story where you can start with absolutely nothing and you can achieve something.
	I just don't mean monetarily.
	It's a place of applied success and meritocracy, and we have to get it back.
	And that starts here at this campus and spreading the truth and having debate and dialogue and reason and hearing each other's ideas out.
	But I'll tell you right now, it's a massive crisis because I look at the next generation and I'm very afraid that we're going to be talking about a country that used to exist.
	And I'm not okay with that.
	And that's why I'm here tonight.
	Okay, let's do some questions.
	Thank you guys for sitting through that.
	Just some ground rules, everybody.
	Obviously, it's somewhat of a majority conservative audience here.
	You guys can feel free to form a line and ask questions if you would like.
	If you disagree, you can go to the front of the line.
	And then if somebody who is on the left comes, please treat them with respect.
	Don't boo them or scold them.
	It takes courage to go to an event of people that you disagree with.
	So show them respect and give them an opportunity to kind of state their case if someone from the opposition goes there.
	So feel free to get in line, guys, if you want.
	And okay, question here.
	All right.
	Howdy, Charlie.
	Thank you for coming.
	I'm sure that all of us are so excited that you're here finally.
	So before I ask my question, I just got to say this.
	We need you to come to Texas AM University.
	I know that we're here at UT, but I'm not the only person that thinks that.
	Okay, so I don't remember if it was at SAS 2022 or at AmericaFest, but I remember you saying that UT Austin is the most leftist university you have ever visited.
	It's been a few years since you've been here.
	So, and I mean, you can elaborate on this.
	Does that still prove true?
	I know you said UC Berkeley.
	Okay, so last time I was here, that was something.
	I got to tell you, we had like a cameraman get assaulted, and it was all sorts of crazy stuff.
	That was four years ago.
	So I don't think this campus has gotten more conservative, but I think other campuses have gotten more liberal.
	So by process of elimination, you're no longer the most liberal school I visited.
	So I guess you'll take it, right?
	So, no, but I will say this, though, I'll repeat it.
	The administration coming in and allowing our dialogue to happen, hosting the event, campus police, that's very good.
	I don't get that at every school.
	I got to tell you.
	We got to fight for every single inch.
	And so that's good.
	I appreciate it.
	But I said this kind of out in the open when I was there.
	There is a lot of work to do here because some of the postmodern pablum that I was hearing has some very, very serious implications.
	So the question, I guess, is also liberal versus leftist, right?
	Liberal, I'm fine with, okay?
	Liberals like free speech, live and let live.
	Okay, fine.
	I'm not a liberal.
	Leftists really bother me.
	Leftists are the few people, not a lot, who came up today and they said, you don't have a right to be here.
	We want to kick you off campus.
	Okay.
	Leftists bother me.
	They're totalitarians and they should bother you too.
	Instead of having debate or dialogue, they resort to force or they try to intimidate you with threats or they try to play music while you talk.
	So there's a difference between liberals and leftists.
	And I hope UT at least remains liberal and never becomes leftist in that regard.
	Thank you.
	Appreciate it.
	Thank you, Charlie.
	Hi, Charlie.
	I also want to say thank you so much for coming out here and speaking to us today.
	I have a question that's a little bit more political about transgenderism.
	As a parent yourself, what would you say to maybe a teacher who's pushing this agenda onto students, maybe even your daughter one day?
	Yeah, that person is a groomer who is a pervert and should not be in teaching to use their position in education to put forward radical, baseless, perverse gender queer theory on a five, six, or seven or eight year old.
Protecting the Innocent Youth 00:07:24
	That is a, I mean, I used the right descriptions, right, when I said that.
	Not only does it have no place in education, the implications of that are quite obvious.
	And evidence after evidence after evidence is surfacing of parents telling kids not to, I'm sorry, teachers telling parents, teachers telling kids not to tell their parents, right?
	Teachers coming in and saying, you know, do not repeat this.
	And if we're at a place in society where we can't remove pornographic images from kids' textbooks, then we got a serious problem.
	And that's where we're at.
	I mean, if you're at seven, eight, or nine years old and you have this graphic, graphic teaching, it really shows a broader sickness.
	Why, though?
	Why?
	Well, it's because the innocence of children is worthy of being protected and preserved.
	It's a moral good.
	The innocence of children is very important because they never get it back.
	And that period of childhood development where they are quote unquote as innocent as they can be is important for them to find out their values, grow close to their parents, find out what's right and wrong.
	You know what ends up happening when the innocence of children is robbed?
	They're less likely to take risks and fail and learn who they are.
	Every study shows this.
	When a child's innocence is quote unquote robbed, you could use whatever graphic example you could imagine, then all of a sudden, are they going to be as likely to, you know, there's a great, there's an old Hebrew proverb, which is, someone who's afraid of being embarrassed will never learn.
	It's a great Hebrew proverb, isn't it?
	Which is they're going to be less likely to ask, quote unquote, the dumb question, maybe more likely to be in their shell.
	I think there's something really fun and exciting of a five, six, or seven-year-old that asks the wackiest questions you could imagine because they're trying to explore truth.
	We want to destroy that.
	You never get that back.
	Once it's gone, there is no reversing it.
	And I think that's a very special thing.
	I think every, you know, the kind of the beauty of what the West has been able to do is saying that those of us that are older and those of us that have some form of strength need to use that strength, I mean strength more collectively, not physical strength, use that to protect children that can't protect themselves.
	And then once they become to an age of informed consent, we basically have that age around 18, then obviously they can, you know, make more decisions themselves.
	But we're not even talking about 18.
	We're not even talking about 14.
	We're not talking about 12.
	We're talking about five, six, and seven-year-olds.
	We're talking about the most moldable, impressionable ages imaginable.
	Thank you for your question.
	I appreciate it.
	Okay.
	Hi, Charlie.
	I just want to open up by saying I am a leftist and I understand your perspective on it.
	Thanks for being here.
	But I did want to hear you out today and, well, you know, ask a question.
	So you said that you believe that quarantine is the cause of our generations like distraught, essentially.
	And I believe that is actually war.
	Like we were born fresh out of 9-11, some of us around the time of 9-11.
	And I don't know.
	My father served in Afghanistan.
	So I don't have a very keen perspective of the United States, let's say, but I did want to hear you out and what you had to say.
	And I do believe we have some common ground in the fact that capitalism has failed my generation more than any other in recent years.
	Yeah, I didn't quite say that, but I would say lack of free enterprise in some ways, but that's okay.
	You got most of it.
	So, yeah, so the lockdowns, not quarantine, right?
	That was the word I used.
	But I mean, I'll just, I'll prove it to you.
	So the war thing aside, I mean, how many people in this room know someone that committed suicide or seriously harmed themselves in the midst of the pandemic just by a show of hands?
	That's a lot.
	I mean, the numbers show suicide visits were 50% higher among 12 to 17-year-olds during the same period in 2018.
	Psychiatric medication prescription went up.
	Alcoholism went up.
	Drug use went up.
	Not to mention young people then re-entered an economy where everything was twice as expensive because we created a bunch of money because of the lack of productivity in the lockdowns.
	And so I think it's just unarguable that the lockdowns played a huge role, a massive role in really depriving a generation of the ability to congregate and to communicate.
	Can I say my perspective?
	Yeah, sure.
	This is kind of personal, but I was considering taking my own life before quarantine.
	And I think discovering myself during quarantine is what saved myself.
	I have quite the opposite experience.
	I know that is unique in that case, but I would say that it's the opposite.
	I would say it's the opposite case.
	But that's just my personal perspective.
	I think there are far more worse things that my generation has been exposed to than the lockdown and the inflation that you have cited during the lockdown.
	That's arguably not the fault of the current standing president if you do believe that it is the fault of the current standing president.
	Well, right.
	I mean, first of all, Biden created $5 trillion new dollars, not created, but he approved $5 trillion new dollars that was hyper, hyper-inflationary.
	But I'll even give you that the other COVID relief funds never should have been approved.
	But look, it's not just the suicide issue.
	First of all, thank you.
	We're glad you're here.
	We're glad you didn't make that decision.
	Life is beautiful and worthy of protection.
	I mean that.
	And but it's from childhood speech impediment development.
	It's from asocial cues.
	It's from, if you talk to any psychologist or child psychologist, they do not have the bandwidth to be able to even facilitate the amount of kids.
	And I know that you have an obviously exception experience, but that is the exception, right?
	I mean, it is self-evident that these lockdowns were unusually cruel.
	And you know who they were most cruel to?
	To poor families.
	It was the most cruel to people that didn't have extra bedrooms or high-speed internet connection to be able to keep up with this.
	The kind of zoomification of American education was the hardest on the people that the regime said they want to help the most.
	And I mean, so you're an economic leftist.
	Is that fair to say?
	I mean, would you at least agree that for one of your passionate causes, which is billionaires getting wealthier, billionaires got $600 billion wealthier?
	Absolutely.
	And like your whole big tech sucks, is that what it says?
	I don't know what it says.
	Yeah, that's one of them.
	I'm absolutely on your side with that.
	And I don't think enough conservatives understand that the left are equally against big business as they are.
	Well, some leftists, right?
	I mean, it depends who you talk to.
	Like the loud minority, I would say, are the ones that make you get the impression that we're not against big business.
	Yeah, I promise the ones I actually read are.
	Excuse me where I'm a little cynical about that, just to be honest, where I have to hear they're against big business while they mandated a Pfizer-AstraZeneca Moderna vaccine of publicly traded transnational corporations.
	And see, that's more of like, in my eyes, a neoliberal concept.
	Okay, but I mean, it was find me one left-wing senator that opposed that and it just didn't exist.
	But I think you're coming at this from an honest perspective.
	And I just, I'm, I'll just close with this.
	This is what drives me nuts about kind of the fixation on race all the time and all these other issues that I would prefer not to talk about is that I think there's actually agreement on kind of how things went wrong last couple of years.
	You blame capitalism, I blame more cronyism and big government intervention over a lot of different things.
	But I'm afraid that a lot of what we spend our time talking about are some of the more superficial issues rooted in race Marxism.
	I actually absolutely agree.
	I absolutely agree.
	So I believe classism is the biggest issue in America.
	Yeah, so let me ask you a question.
	As a leftist, you know, why is it that the American left, why is the American left allowing the conversation to be controlled by white liberals that just want to stay rich?
	It's big business paying them off.
Autonomy Over Your Body 00:07:27
	It's not.
	That's an honest answer.
	You are a true revolutionary.
	So God bless you, Comrade.
	Thanks for being here tonight.
	So thank you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, man.
	Thank you.
	If you disagree, come to the line, whatever you guys want.
	Thanks.
	All right.
	So abortion seems to be like a big topic these days.
	And I was actually at your booth earlier.
	I was just listening in, and that was a big topic there, too.
	And so I guess I just had a question about that because at the booth, like whenever you were, whenever someone was asking you why revalling the fetus, it kept coming back to human life.
	And like, I didn't really understand what you meant by that because when you say human life, human life by definition is an organism or a being that has human DNA.
	And so when the fetus only really has that connection with, you know, like fully grown adults or just like born children, what entitles the fetus to violate the property rights of the mother over her own body or to have the government do so on her behalf?
	Does that baby have unique DNA?
	Yeah.
	So by your own definition, that should be worthy of protection, right?
	No, I don't believe that DNA has moral value.
	Oh, okay, got it.
	So when does human life begin?
	Well, human life, I guess, if you say like an organism that is human species, by definition, begins at conception.
	Right.
	So then my position is that being that begins at conception is worthy of constitutional rights and protection.
	Why?
	What moral value does simply having being an organism, even if it's just a single-celled organism that has human DNA, what moral value does it mean?
	Right, because human beings are different.
	Human beings have the ability to have rational speech, to reason, not just consciousness, not just the ability to feel.
	Human beings are the only species that can not just feel pain and pleasure, but can tell the just from the unjust.
	Human beings are something that is so beautiful and so special.
	And of course, I have many different reasons to believe this, but I'll make a natural law argument that that DNA will never exist again.
	It's distinct and it is living.
	And if allowed uninterrupted growth, that human being will hopefully mature into something just like you have.
	And we're all abortion survivors, aren't we?
	Okay, so you mentioned the, I guess, the rationality that makes human beings special.
	But that single-celled organism doesn't have that rationality yet.
	And so what qualifies the entirety of the human species to so my seven-week old doesn't have a lot of rationality yet.
	It, I mean, my baby girl eats and does other things and sleeps.
	Does, I mean, obviously you would agree.
	It's that seven-week old has value.
	Well, yeah, but I'm not coming from an argument of rationality.
	I'd come from more of like a self-ownership type perspective.
	And I simply don't believe that an organism that is inherently dependent, like on the on like violating another person's property rights in order to survive.
	Right.
	So, but I mean, my seven-week old is very dependent on my wife and me.
	That doesn't mean I can just eliminate my seven-week old.
	Like, I'm sorry?
	Obviously, like, the seven-week old depends on like for practicality and living.
	But if we're talking about a moral perspective, right, just the capacity to have rationality, why does that give it moral value?
	Okay, but we're talking about two different things.
	I guess the question is, do you believe just because something is dependent on another, is that a reason that you could be able to eliminate that being?
	If that being has to violate someone else's moral rights in order to do so, yes.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	So what moral rights do you mean by that?
	The right to have like autonomy over your own body.
	If another actor is violating those rights, then yeah, to remove it, I don't see a problem with that.
	Got it.
	So bodily autonomy would be more important than another being being able to live a full life.
	Yeah, I would value a being that has the right to property over one that doesn't have a right to property yet.
	Got it.
	Just because the being is older and not in the womb and bigger.
	And also because the being is a person and not just an organism.
	Okay, so but if that being's one week old, it's more than a single cell or organism.
	Yeah, but that person, that one week old still has like autonomy over themselves, at least at one week old.
	Like has an inherent like got it.
	Okay.
	Natural autonomy over.
	So this is where we have clarity, but not agreement.
	Here's the problem.
	Okay.
	Morality that built the West and the morality that I'm going to defend tonight is that one week old can't defend themselves.
	So stronger, bigger people not in the womb need to insert themselves to make sure that one week old is not terminated by people that are just happen to be older and bigger than them.
	Is that regardless of size, as soon as that life begins, which you agreed, it starts at conception, that being deserves constitutional rights, uniquely and fearfully made.
	And it's the question of the morality of a society, what we're willing to do when that being comes into existence.
	Because human life is special.
	Human life is different than dolphins.
	It's different than chimpanzees.
	We not just have the ability to reason, and I'm going to make an argument you might not agree with.
	Yes, human beings have a soul.
	And a soul is worthy of protection.
	I would even go as far to say that human being is made in the image of the creator.
	I don't expect you to agree with that.
	Final point.
	Okay, so I guess I would just believe that the only types of, I mean, at least the only types of humans that can have moral rights are ones that act as moral agents.
	And a single-celled organism that's living in a womb or a multicellular organism that's living in a womb.
	Can you explain what you mean by moral agents?
	Moral agency?
	So if you don't have moral agency, then you could be up for elimination.
	If you don't have, I mean, if you don't have moral agency, if you don't have like the ability to like, if you don't have ownership over your own body yet.
	Yeah, so by the way, that is babies until they're about 18 months old do not have ownership of their own body.
	No, I would say that they would.
	Okay, how would my seven-week old feed herself if I just left her in the crib?
	That's not ownership over your own body, though.
	The ability to move your body by instinct even is ownership over your own body.
	Okay, so a 22-week-old baby in the womb moves all the time.
	You're contradicting yourself.
	You have to have a line.
	At 15 weeks, six weeks, there's a heartbeat.
	I guess I would say that.
	Okay, so that was a good point.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	I guess I probably just need to clarify that what I mean by like self-ownership or moral agency, because that organism or that human, whatever in the womb is still inherent, like in order to like survive, it's inherently biologically dependent, even if it does nothing, right?
	It's biologically dependent on the mother.
	And so if we talk about like late term, like just, I mean, like, I guess I don't want to go into that territory just like right now, right?
	So if we say, huh?
	So like if we just talk about like early term like abortion, I simply don't see, I don't have, like, and I don't think that generally people see a moral value that is similar to even that of a newborn baby in something that is just conceived.
	We have clarity.
	Thank you for your question, man.
	Appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	Hi.
Florida Surgeon General Warning 00:04:52
	So we've now had the COVID vaccine out for about two years now, right?
	End of 2028 came out.
	And my question to you basically is: how long is it going to take you to accept the fact that the COVID vaccine is fine for people to use?
	Did you hear about what the Florida Surgeon General said the other day?
	Are you aware that over 2 billion people have taken the vaccine?
	And there are incentives by other countries who have made their own vaccines to go against the United States.
	And even Donald Trump himself.
	So you don't know that he's Trump against me.
	That's really rich.
	So the Florida Surgeon General said that the vaccine has caused an 84% increase in cardiovascular events for young men 18 to 40.
	Why would he say that?
	Well, if you look at the entire pool of people who have gotten the vaccine, it does actually.
	So let's do that.
	Raise your hand if you know someone that was harmed by the vaccine or had an adverse event.
	Look around.
	Well, 2 billion people.
	Are they lying?
	No, look around.
	That's a lot of people that have seen adverse events.
	So don't you think that if it really is...
	Is it all a conspiracy?
	No, no.
	Let's say it's not a conspiracy.
	Don't you think that the fact that in your world that this false vaccine has been distributed so like widespread throughout not just the United States, but the world demonstrates that the United States is a failed country?
	No, but I don't personally don't believe that the United States is a failed country.
	I like living in the United States, but I have faith in our institutions enough to say that distributing a vaccine to 300-something billion people in the United States, that is false or that it's not safe to use.
	Well, so what do you know about the VARES, the government database of VARES, the vaccine adverse event reporting system?
	But I can go on the system and report whatever I want.
	Well, no, actually, it's a very long, exhaustive process that takes 45 minutes to an hour.
	Hold on.
	Under penalty of perjury to go to jail if you followed a false report.
	And if you talk to them in a hospital, they say it's underreported.
	According to the government's website, 31,330 people died because of the vaccine.
	According to the government website, 179,806 people were hospitalized.
	136,000 people were in urgent care, 16,100 with Bell's palsy, 10,064 with anaphylaxis, and over 207,576 doctor office visits, 5,000 miscarriages, 16,000 heart attacks, and 52,000 events of myocarditis and pericarditis.
	That is not a safe or effective vaccine.
	Do you think that if we compare those numbers to the total amount of people who got the vaccine, that it makes it...
	Say it again.
	I couldn't hear you.
	You can list like a large amount of people.
	Like 10,000 people sounds like a lot of people.
	Like 100,000 people sounds like a lot of people.
	But when you divide that number by the amount of people who have taken the vaccine, then you can look at the statistical rate of that.
	You do realize that.
	You can compare it to other vaccines and see if it's the exact same thing.
	If the flu shot has even six adverse events, they pull it from the entire field for adverse.
	It has six.
	So let me ask you a final question.
	So the Florida Surgeon General said the following.
	This analysis found that there's an 84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related deaths among males 18 to 39 years old within 28 days following the mRNA vaccination.
	That's the Florida Surgeon General that has come out.
	Pfizer came and testified today, and they said, we never tested the vaccine to be able to prevent the spread of the virus.
	Pfizer has admitted the booster shot was tested on eight mice.
	Does that bother you?
	Do you realize that there's variants, right?
	The original COVID variant is the one that they're saying.
	The mouse variant?
	No.
	We have the Delta variant and we have the Omicron variant now, right?
	In the beginning, the first variant of coronavirus is the one that they claimed the original vaccines stopped the spread of, right?
	And then the Delta weaned that off and Omicron weighed that off even more.
	And now they don't say that.
	They say that it prevents hospitalization and death, which is still true.
	Right.
	So here's the thing.
	I'm going to trust not just the data, not just the Florida Surgeon General, not just my own lying eyes.
	You looked around the room.
	People have experience after experience after experience.
	And by the way, if you think it works, God bless you.
	Take it.
	Have a great time.
	But I have a moral obligation as a communicator not to lie to you.
	And I'm looking at the data and I'm never going to back away from this position.
	And honestly, history is going to vindicate every one of us that told you not to take this.
	Thank you very much.
	Sure.
	Hey, Charlie, thanks for coming out.
	I got to admit, I was a little freaked out when you had all those numbers that you just pulled out.
	I was like, whoa, don't mess with Charlie.
	He has the facts ready to go.
	It's a little intimidating, right?
	But, and I have to say, too, like on the last comment, even if there was only a 1% adverse effect, why are we mandating it then?
	Why are people losing their livelihoods getting kicked off?
	They're getting kicked out of the military for this.
	Exactly.
Pro-Choice and Self Defense 00:09:06
	But my question to you is, my question to you is, are you a nationalist?
	And if you are, do you think nationalism leans more towards loving your people or loving the ideas of your country?
	Under the proper description, yes, I am a nationalist.
	Under the proper descriptions, I think there's a lot of smearing and you should always value people more.
	Great.
	Thank you.
	That was the quickest answer here.
	Appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	Hi, good evening.
	I'll start by saying I'm a leftist, but I found common ground with you on abortion.
	And I completely agree that, you know, whatever you want to call it, a fetus at whatever stage it is, it's alive.
	There's no contention on that front.
	My concern, though, and I want to hear your perspective on this, is here in Texas, we have the strictest abortion ban in the whole country.
	There's no exception for rape or incest or for the life of the mother after six weeks.
	My concern is that the government is mandating that people carry out their pregnancies even when it goes against their own life and their own well-being.
	I can take an example of if somebody is threatening to harm you, you have a right to self-defense.
	Why not have the same, give the same autonomy to people who are pregnant?
	Okay, thoughtful question.
	Thank you.
	So first thing is, if you believe abortion is wrong, which you admitted it is, well, then you should obviously have laws that.
	I'll clarify, I didn't admit that abortion was wrong.
	Okay, that said, I see it as a form of self-defense.
	Okay, right.
	So that's a new one.
	Well, as the previous person says, that person inside of you is completely dependent on you in a way different than a natural born person.
	So in most cases, rape and incest aside, how did that being get there?
	I mean, in most cases, through sex, regardless of rape or incest.
	Yeah, so there was a choice made.
	I see your point.
	Even with a choice, let's say you invite someone into your home and they still decide to assault you.
	Does that mean you not have a right to self-defense against them?
	Well, no, I think that, for example, if you have a bunch of teenagers over to your home and they start wrecking everything, you shouldn't be shocked when all of a sudden you wake up the next morning and things are a little awry.
	But we're not just talking about wrecking a home.
	We're talking about wrecking your own body, your own personality.
	Well, hold on.
	Again, rape and incest aside, of which I'm happy to answer and happy to talk about the moral aspect of that.
	But 98% of all abortions are done as a form of birth control, right?
	Sure.
	It's a form of birth control.
	How did those people get pregnant?
	Usually through consensual sex.
	Right.
	So they are pro-choice.
	They made a choice to have consensual sex, and now they want to be able to use scientific medical technology to crush a being that is not them, is a different person out of convenience.
	Let's say you have a child who needs a kidney transplant and you are the only one who can supply it and you consensually allow them to use that kidney.
	What if the operation goes too long?
	They're still kind of using your blood for months on end.
	Should the government mandate, you know, maybe not kidney.
	I love these hypotheticals.
	I got it not mine.
	But you see where I'm going to be.
	No, earlier, I got the most amazing hypothetical.
	We don't have to overthink this.
	Like, why should children get the death penalty because their parents decided to have consensual sex?
	I don't understand that.
	Sir, even if you consent to, say, taking care of your child through the, you know, transfusing blood or whatnot, should the government mandate that you have to continue that consensual blood transfusion?
	Again, under the unrealistic hypothetical, and I reject the whole premise of this.
	The question is, let me answer it more broadly.
	Do I think the government should step in to protect and preserve human right if by be it by mandating, especially when the question is termination or not?
	Of course, the answer is yes.
	But it says a lot when there's a very serious concrete question, and kind of we have to yield to these abstractions, which is fine.
	The philosophical sides and the kind of hypotheticals are fine, are legitimate, I suppose, in some sense.
	But it comes to be just more concrete, right?
	We've got a million abortions every single year.
	Okay?
	998,000 of them are because of a form of birth control.
	Do you find something wrong with that?
	Not necessarily.
	Okay.
	I think there is something wrong with that.
	I think that just looking at the last resort to be able to terminate human life as a form of girth control is not just sick, it's immoral.
	And it says a lot about who we are as a people and kind of the folding of culture, the folding of a cultural life in our nation.
	And so I'll just ask one final question.
	When does human life begin?
	It begins at conception, but that doesn't override the right to bodily autonomy and self-protection.
	Okay, so that's interesting.
	So it does begin at conception.
	So does that mean someone who is larger than another being has the right to terminate them?
	Why is it bodily autonomy?
	Just because the being is in them?
	The size doesn't matter.
	It's the self-defense.
	If a toddler is running a knife at you, you can knock it down.
	I'm sorry, I'm kind of impromptu here as we talk about it.
	That's okay.
	Yeah.
	Well, so I'll just close with this.
	Don't use that analogy again.
	Yeah, no, that was a bad one.
	Thank you for being here tonight.
	Thanks.
	Hey, thank you so much for coming out here and for like facing disagreements first, I guess.
	I really appreciate it.
	All right, I had another question coming up here, but I really, the bait is there and I have to take it.
	So I am also pro-choice, and I was wondering how, like, you said to the previous dude back there that the government, in cases where human life is at risk, should step in through any means necessary, be it through mandates, be it through bans, things like that, right?
	Again, that was a hypothetical answer.
	Let me clarify it.
	I think the government has a moral obligation to protect innocent life when confronted with the question of someone intervening to end that life.
	All right.
	So if a police officer is standing idly by and he sees someone on the side of the street and someone is going by to about to kill them, the police officer being an agent of the government has a moral right to intervene.
	I'm sorry, I do have to take like a little bit of a caveat here.
	So the behavior of the police officers in the Uvalde shooting was disgusting.
	Oh, I totally agree.
	Okay.
	But guess what?
	I'm consistent.
	The cowardice that happened at Uvalde is the cowardice we allow to happen when there's a million abortions in our country every single year.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Which is standing idly by when children unspeakably get massacred.
	I don't know.
	I think there's a bit of a difference.
	And the analogy that I usually use, or the question that I usually ask pro-life people, is, do you believe that the government should mandate organ donation, even in cases of like things like donating your kidney?
	Or right now we have a policy where even after death, if you have like religious things where you, you know, your whole body has to be intact in order for like burial rights and things like that to happen, we say that you shouldn't have to donate your organs, but the pro-life case seems to extend to the idea that even people who are living should have to give up their kidneys to people in hospitals, maybe, who need kidneys?
	Well, I don't quite see it that way.
	What makes the uterus different?
	Well, first of all, again, in 99.67% of the cases, the woman made a choice that could potentially be.
	What about those 0.4%?
	What do you think should happen then?
	Oh, I think the baby should be delivered, of course, because I'll give you an example.
	Let me just prove it to you.
	If I had two ultrasounds, and one of them was a baby conceived in rape, and one was a baby conceived in consensual sex.
	Well, which one is it?
	They look the same.
	But you can't tell because they're both human beings.
	And in Western morality, of which I'm defending tonight, doing something wrong after something evil is never the right thing.
	So do you think that government should mandate organ donations?
	No, and I think it's a false equivalency.
	For more reasons than one, for a lot of different reasons.
	By the question of do I think the government should come in and protect innocent life from being slaughtered?
	Of course I do.
	Yes.
	And that's the answer.
	So, I mean, when it comes to mandating organ donations, I don't even see how that's applicable to the question.
	Because in 99.6% of the cases, 6-7% of the cases, the mother made a choice to be able to get pregnant.
	Now, in the very small micron kind of case, then the case is that the human life and the human being needs to exist.
	They need to be able to exist.
	All right.
	I'm going to argue that different forms of birth control have different forms of effectiveness, and someone could be potentially on birth control using those control methods, and it fails.
	Is that just a risk that someone?
Christians Must Speak Boldly 00:04:57
	Yeah, so I'm going to say something.
	This is how far our morality has gone.
	We need to teach kids to save themselves from marriage.
	And a lot of these problems wouldn't be having.
	And if you do decide to engage in consensual marriage before sex before marriage and you get pregnant, that's the cost of the game.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Thank you for being here.
	Appreciate it.
	Aladi, this may be the hardest question all night, but I really have to ask it.
	So right now on October 12th, 2022.
	It is DeSantis or Trump button.
	Right here.
	We need an answer.
	I'll repeat it.
	I get it everywhere I go.
	So I need to play the tape.
	Did you want to say anything else with that?
	No.
	Okay.
	The question is, Charlie, will you support DeSantis or Trump in 2024?
	So, okay, speaking personally, not on behalf of Turning Point USA, I'll say what I've always said, which is I'm a very loyal person.
	I told President Trump, if he runs again, I'm going to have his back 100%.
	And I can't stand in politics when people are wishy-washy and wavering.
	We had our turning point action straw poll, and Donald Trump won with 78.7% of the results.
	But, and it's a very big one, I got to tell you that Ron DeSantis might be a once-in-a-generation leader.
	He's very special.
	And I don't know when, I don't know how, but I would not be surprised if he's president of the United States one day.
	And I think he would make a great president.
	But I'll close with this.
	I think you'd make a good president.
	I know Trump was a great president.
	And that's why I'm behind you.
	Thank you.
	Great answer.
	Thank you.
	So, hi.
	Oh, you have to hold my.
	He's actually my friend.
	I actually first heard of you through a Christian apologist I follow called Dr. Frank Turek.
	Yeah.
	He's special.
	He's great.
	He's awesome.
	He's a great friend.
	My question concerns the hope and love we can have for America.
	I mean, we live in a country that has allowed for 63 million deaths through the abortion industry.
	And we have multiple industries and institutions that are built on lies and lusts.
	And it seems as if the majority of American citizens either don't care or even approve of all of this.
	So where do you think we can go, the individual people, the church, and the government, to where can we go from having hope and love for our country at this point?
	It's a very dark picture you painted.
	Congratulations.
	Do you have anything else you want to add to that?
	Well, first of all, you know, I assume you're a Christian.
	And so, I mean, it's up to us Christians.
	There's two things Christians can't be, apathetic or cynical.
	I won't put up with it.
	You're secular, you could be apathetic and cynical.
	You're Christian, I'm not going to put up with it because you know how the story ends, and you have a great hope, and you should always be working towards a great end.
	You should care about your nation.
	Jeremiah 29, 7, demand the welfare of the nation that you are in because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare.
	Daniel fasted and prayed for his nation.
	Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Esther, Mordecai all cared about the world.
	Yep, exactly.
	Yeah, pray for your leaders by name because they're counselors to the king.
	And so, look, I think we have a lot of hope, and the hope is not in the institutions.
	It's not in the FBI, it's not in the DOJ, it's not in the CIA, it's not in Facebook, it's not in Google, it's not in Goldman Sachs.
	My hope is in the energy and the spirit and the optimism of you.
	I mean, what I get to see in the American people traveling the country, hosting a national radio show, hosting a podcast, I'm nothing but hopeful.
	The spirit in the grassroots of the American people right now of all ages and backgrounds is so awe-inspiring.
	And it doesn't take a majority.
	It doesn't.
	It takes 10 to 15% of a vibrant, hopeful, spirit-filled group of people that can turn things around.
	And, you know, we as Americans have done great things, and there's something special about America.
	I will defend it at all corners.
	And the thing that one of the things that makes America different is when something bad happens, we step up.
	Is that we have it in our history to not be apathetic.
	We have exceptions to that rule, obviously.
	And my hope is in what I'm seeing across the country.
	My hope is in pastors rising up.
	My hope is in people that are starting to speak boldly.
	My hope is in parents showing up to school board meetings and challenging what is being taught in these local public schools.
	My hope is parents that are homeschooling.
	My hope is in our turning point USA chapter leaders that are starting these chapters, that are in the grassroots, that are on high school and college campuses, leaning in.
	That's what gives me hope.
	The institutions, here's the cool thing about institutions.
	They come and go and they build and they crumble.
	But the spirit and the will of the people, I think, is stronger than any other time I've been doing this in one decade.
	And I think that resolve is only going to strengthen.
	So God bless you, man.
	Thank you.
	God bless you.
	Hi, Charlie.
	I'm Jamie, and I'm actually from New York, and I was one of the only conservative people in my school.
	So it's really cool to see you talk here.
Living in a Free Society 00:08:25
	My question is, since we live in a world where big tech and digital tracking of payments and information dominates the avenues to being social, attaining many jobs and being in academia, do you think in my lifetime we'll see a world where cash is obsolete and how do I protect my privacy of personal information such as vaccine status while still being able to stay social and attain a corporate job and perhaps also enjoying other luxuries in which releasing this information is required?
	Yeah, well, that's a great, great question.
	So let me kind of tell you, it's hard to do all those things, right?
	It's going to be hard to keep a corporate job and also keep all of your kind of medical information private because for whatever reason we decided to throw out HIPAA and ask everyone for their personal medical information about the vaccine, which never should have been allowed in my personal opinion.
	But look, as far as the currency question, it's a very important question.
	What PayPal announced and then what PayPal attracted should just scare everyone regardless of political affiliation, where PayPal came out and they said that if you engage in their definition of disinformation, they're going to take $2,500 out of your account on violation.
	Now, they backed away from that, but this is a company that did $25 billion in revenue.
	How on earth did they ever get this approved through, you know, how did this get on a press release?
	How did this become policy?
	You just saw today.
	You might like him.
	You might not like him.
	You might think he's great.
	You might think he went too far recently.
	But Kanye West just got an alert from J.P. Morgan Chase.
	He's no longer allowed to bank at J.P. Morgan Chase.
	And that's wrong.
	I don't care what you think of Kanye West.
	To be able to shut somebody's banking system off because you don't like them or because they say something that you deem to not be appropriate.
	And so there's something very troubling about that.
	And so how do you protect against it?
	I don't think it's the end-all be-all.
	I don't think it's a solution to everything, but I am a big fan of cryptocurrency.
	I think that blockchain properly employed can be a great hedge against tyranny.
	I think that the federal government is trying to make us cashless soon.
	And we have to resist, and I'm telling you, resist very loudly against the federal government trying to put forward a federal digital currency.
	It's a very, very big concern.
	It hasn't gotten a lot of focus on it, but a federal digital currency is a very big issue.
	We've already seen the intentional debasing of our currency.
	I don't agree with libertarians on a lot of things, but the one thing I'm 100% on is the destruction of our money.
	I have to tell you, the Federal Reserve intentionally coming into our money system and creating money out of thin air and making you poor year after year after year through quantitative easing is something that we should all be very concerned about.
	I'm afraid they're trying to get us closer to a currency reset.
	And so part of it is just owning assets that assets that can be moved quickly that are transparent.
	That's one of the things that excites me about Bitcoin.
	Again, I'm not telling you to buy Bitcoin.
	If I did, I could get in trouble like Kim Kardashian did.
	Do whatever you want to do.
	I don't care.
	I think it's good technology.
	And I think crypto can solve some of these problems.
	But their agenda is trying to get us to go cashless.
	And also, I remember over winter break last year when I was in New York, I couldn't even like enter buildings or eat in a restaurant.
	I still love a lot of other aspects of New York, and I was kind of hoping to stay there.
	Do you think it would be worth it?
	Or do you think like being unvaccinated and a conservative is just like yeah, that's a good question.
	Only you can answer it.
	My question would be: where do you feel free and happy?
	And if you feel free in New York, God bless you, I got to tell you, that's not exactly what I feel when I go to New York.
	I feel a lot of things.
	That is definitely not it.
	So, but we can't, I have a mixed opinion on this.
	I have a couple things that I say that I totally contradict myself.
	This is one of them.
	So, I'll give one speech where I tell everyone to go move to Red States.
	And then I'll give another speech where I say we can't have all the people leave Red State, blue states, because we still need red-thinking people, if you will, in those states.
	And so, I contradict myself on that all the time because I see it both ways.
	I know I grew up in Illinois, and I'm glad I don't live there anymore.
	And part of me feels bad that I left, but also I think life is so important.
	You should try your best to live in a free society.
	And there's still some great states, Texas being one of them, that I think gets it.
	So, God bless you.
	Thank you.
	Hi, Charlie.
	I'm here with a group of students from the UT Pro-Life Club.
	So, we're really thankful for your pro-life stance.
	My question is about like phone addiction and sort of this switch to transhumanism that's going on in our culture right now.
	It's really worrying me with my generation that we're so addicted, and we don't even realize it.
	So, I was wondering your perspective.
	Yeah, that's a really, really great question.
	Thank you for your advocacy.
	The pro-life group here deserves a lot of credit because, based on what I saw today, you guys are up against the law.
	Seriously.
	It's great.
	I'm not a fan of our digital pacifiers that have seemed to permeate our entire society.
	I really believe that we are participating in the largest and most cruel open-air drug experiment in human history, which is to give these devices to 12, 13, and 14-year-olds.
	There's some really great thinkers on this, not political.
	You could just read Dr. Anna Lemke.
	You can go read Andrew Huberman, who I think is really smart.
	He spends a lot of time here in Austin.
	And they're very fair and they're very well-cited and researched.
	And they just talk about the neurological damage that staring at a phone will do, especially at a young age.
	And I look at it no differently than giving kids drugs.
	And so, the one thing, and I wish that Marxist, I don't know if you're the leftist was here, and I wish he would have said it.
	I would also say, and this is, if you want to talk about one of the great hockey stick correlations and not get too ahead of yourself, if you look at suicide and depression, or just kind of what would be a kind of like a basket of how you would define mental health, and like how you say, okay, good or bad, it went up like a hockey stick in 2013 as the iPhone was widely distributed.
	And again, I'm not a big causation correlation guy, but it's like, come on, what else could you possibly attribute?
	Like, what has changed the most in our day-to-day interaction at a restaurant in the last 10 years?
	Let's just be honest, right?
	I see entire families out to dinner and no one's talking to each other.
	I think it's deeply unhealthy.
	I think it's anti-social.
	And this is not even governmental or political in nature.
	So, I mean, just some stats I have here: 26% of car accidents are caused by smartphone usage.
	31% of smartphone users in the U.S. never turn off their phones.
	45% of children aged 10 to 12 have a smartphone.
	45% of teens feel addicted to their smartphone devices.
	It's bad for both boys and girls.
	It's especially bad for girls.
	I think TikTok is one of the worst things ever to come across the American technological landscape.
	I really do.
	And it's okay if you're addicted.
	I know some of you applauding are probably addicted.
	That's fine.
	I understand.
	And so, just a final piece on this.
	I turn my phone off Friday night to Saturday night.
	I encourage all of you guys to take a phone Sabbath once a week.
	It's very freeing.
	It's awesome.
	It's a challenge too, because you got to kind of figure out how to get directions and where to go.
	It's really fun.
	And you could do it.
	Just take one day a week and turn off your phone.
	Within three weeks, all of your friends will know you're unreachable by phone from Friday night to Saturday night.
	You'll be in a grocery store and you won't know what to do when you're waiting in line.
	You're like, wow, this is how it used to be.
	It's very freeing.
	And just the final thing is this.
	I'm far from an expert, but if you read Dr. Anna Lemke's book, Dopamine Nation, you will have a picture into how horrific the damage we're doing to give these kids devices.
	There's other books as well.
	Gary Wilson wrote an unrelated book, but important, especially for young men, your brain on pornography or your brain on porn.
	May he rest in peace.
	He was a great thinker.
	But there's like this whole new genre of scientific thinking that I think is legit science, by the way, of people that are a little ahead of the curve diagnosing what I think is going to be 10 years from now.
	We're going to look back and be like, what were we doing giving all these kids devices?
	So you still have the power to turn off your phone.
	I know it's hard, but it's doing huge damage to young people in particular.
	Thank you.
	Appreciate it.
	Hi, my name is Jackson.
	I'm actually the editor-in-chief of our conservative paper on campus at Texas Horn.
Pushing Back on Vaccines 00:07:52
	So you'd expect me to agree with most of what you said, and I do, but there's one area of disagreement where I really feel need to push back, and that, of course, is on the vaccine.
	So I'd like to talk about your Florida study, which said an 84% in heart problems among young men who took the vaccine.
	So I was interested in this report, and I actually just Googled it.
	And if you look in the chart on page six of the report, see that the basis period is 17 deaths before due to these heart palpitations among men 18 to 34, whatever it was.
	So an 84% increase from 17 deaths is bad, but it is nowhere near the 20 million plus who have been killed due to COVID.
	So I just like to hear how you weigh that from an 84% increase from 17 deaths against 20 million plus killed by COVID, more, if not for the vaccine.
	Right.
	So, and I'll repeat the VARES data, right?
	The vaccine adverse event reporting system from the government, right, where it says there's 52,896 incidents of myocarditis and pericarditis.
	But let me ask you a let me ask you differently where I think we could come to a quick conclusion.
	Do you agree that myocarditis and pericarditis is increasing dramatically?
	I do, yes, from a very low base rate.
	Right.
	Why?
	Well, I mean, obviously, the vaccine is the prime suspect.
	But if you have a very rare disease and it increases by a slight amount, then you have to make the trade-off and say that something which is killing millions of people is worse.
	No, no, no, I understand that.
	That's a separate argument, right?
	But do you agree that it's probably the vaccine that's causing these cardiac issues?
	That seems to be the most likely.
	Okay.
	So we agree the vaccine is causing heart damage.
	We don't know how much, right?
	It says in the VARES database, 52,896 incidents of myocarditis and pericarditis.
	You saw the hands around the room.
	And just one other anecdotal thing.
	I asked my audience, I said, how many people in our podcast audience have instances of people that got the vaccine and mysteriously died or had heart attacks?
	We have like 10,000, 15,000 emails, one after the other.
	And I would just encourage you, go look at Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the nation's large, you know, leading cardiologists who has spoken out about this, right?
	Dr. Robert Malone, and also previously uninterested in this topic, who I just think is great, Dr. Brett Weinstein, who hosts the Dark Horse podcast.
	He's a liberal.
	He used to be a professor at Evergreen State University.
	And I think his scholarship is great.
	So I don't want to redo the conversation we had previously, but thanks for being here tonight.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Okay, so I'm one of the first agreers.
	All the disagreers are first.
	But anyway, one thing I don't think is pushed strong enough by the pro-life is adoption.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Because, I mean, that kills it all entirely.
	There's so many families that want to adopt kids.
	And if you see a show like Long Lost Family, you see these people that reunite with their biological parents 20, 30 years after they're born, and they live wonderful lives, and they have two sets of parents, and it's a wonderful thing.
	So, if this whole discussion on, oh, the mom is going to be, you know, live a terrible life, she can't afford to have the child.
	But there are, I think, something like 30 families per every one child that's adopted that want kids.
	I think it needs to be pushed stronger, you know?
	I totally agree.
	And, you know, I want to shout out my friend who runs a great clinic in San Antonio, does a phenomenal job for the pro-life movement.
	And by the way, I know we don't like the term crisis pregnancy center, right?
	It's not our favorite term, but Dave McCaw does such a great job.
	And I got to tell you that the people that are on the front lines of this deserve a lot of credit.
	Elizabeth Warren says she wants pregnancy crisis centers to be shut down, which is unbelievable.
	But I'll say this, and I think you're right.
	And I didn't make this point clearly enough earlier at the table.
	If we are going to advocate an end to abortion using the state or government, then we have to be there to make sure that every single child is taken care of through charity, through churches, and through resources necessary.
	It's morally imperative we do that.
	And adoption is that first step.
	God bless you.
	Yes, sorry.
	Well, no, I've got more.
	Because if you read Peter Zion's book, I mean, China's population is going to collapse in the next 20 years just because of the one-child policy.
	I mean, we need to have kids.
	Your nation dies.
	The population collapse is coming here in big time.
	Well, according to Peter Zion, we're doing okay.
	And we've got immigration, too.
	I agree with Elon Musk.
	You think it's declining?
	Okay, but we need to have kids, regardless.
	God bless you, man.
	But, okay, but I got one.
	We've got to get to another one.
	I'm sorry.
	Thank you.
	Thanks.
	Hi.
	Sorry, we're short on time, sir.
	Sorry.
	Hello.
	I'm asking a question for friends.
	If I sound stupid, this is not on me.
	So let's agree that abortion should be banned, and this is the government's right to protect the rights of kids and whatnot.
	And so we see a lot of statistics where kids going into foster care homes or things of that nature tend to be abused or sexual abuse to a certain extent.
	So what would you say is the government's solution and role in this whole situation?
	Yeah, I'll piggyback on the kind of question previously, which is we have to change the way we do adoption in our country.
	I would, again, a lot of people find this to be terrible, but I will lean on this.
	I think we have to lean on the church who has the infrastructure and essentially these parachurch ministries, and they have the willingness to be able to do this and to support adoption.
	There are 2 million people right now that want to adopt in America.
	2 million people.
	And I bet that would double or triple if the pastors of this nation really challenge their congregation to lean in and to adopt.
	If you're going, to be consistent as a pro-life person, you have to come up with solutions.
	And the solution should be: we have to make it financially easier to have children.
	We should go maybe as far as Hungary goes, which is to pay people to have kids.
	I'm not against it.
	I'm not.
	We should go as far to make sure that adoption is easy and seamless.
	And then we also have to individually and charitably step up to make sure that this idea of an unwanted pregnancy is a thing of the past.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Appreciate it.
	I know you.
	Yes, you do.
	What's up, man?
	What's going on?
	Great final question.
	Yes, yes.
	Quick question.
	You said we should stop talking about racism, but we have a problem in the country.
	You're not a racist.
	As often as I've been around you, you've never said anything that has been racist.
	But the left, they constantly say that you're racist.
	And if we don't talk about the problem that they're trying to create, it will never go away.
	Yeah, so what I was saying, and I think you'd agree, I'm exhausted with talking about race all the time, right?
	And I'm happy to also push back on who's actually the ones that are being racist.
	And the people that are pushing black-only dormitories in America, that's racist.
	Exactly.
	Right?
	The people that are saying that we should have value on skin color and not content of character, that's racist.
	And so I'm just exhausted about talking about it all the time, honestly, because I feel as if when you focus on those issues, like, man, we're just constantly talking about what divides us, right?
	And I think you understand my heart in that way.
	Exactly.
	But it's only the left that's constantly pushing that.
	They're constantly pushing it.
	And I get it all the time.
	So thank you.
	God bless you, man.
	Thank you so much.
	All right, everybody.
	This was a lot of fun.
	Couple things.
	Support your Turning Point USA chapter.
	They're doing an amazing job.
	I want to thank UT for hosting us nicely.
	Really appreciate that.
	Closing note, we live in a beautiful country.
	Do something about it.
	Make sure you're registered to vote.
	I'm not going to tell you who to vote for tonight.
	Just make sure you're registered to vote.
	Make sure you vote.
	A lot of people gave a lot for you to be able to vote in this country, be an informed citizen, stay engaged, stay involved.
	America is the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world.
	God bless you guys.
	Thank you so much.
	Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
	Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
	Thank you so much for listening.
	God bless.
	For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.

Chapters

00:00:00 Speech at UT Austin
00:03:25 The Special Nature of America
00:15:23 One Truth for All
00:30:11 Protecting the Innocent Youth
00:37:35 Autonomy Over Your Body
00:45:03 Florida Surgeon General Warning
00:49:56 Pro-Choice and Self Defense
00:59:02 Christians Must Speak Boldly
01:03:59 Living in a Free Society
01:12:24 Pushing Back on Vaccines