The Charlie Kirk Show - REWIND: Fourth of July Special
Aired: 2023-07-04
Duration: 33:43


=== The Power of Self-Government (14:30) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, happy Independence Day.
[00:00:02]  This is an old episode that we have dug up that I think you'll really enjoy.
[00:00:05]  Enjoy your July 4th holiday.
[00:00:07]  It's a great day to be alive.
[00:00:09]  Be thankful to be an American and enjoy this episode.
[00:00:11]  Get involved at TurningPointActionTPAction.com.
[00:00:14]  That is tpaction.com to get tickets to our upcoming Turning Point Action Conference.
[00:00:18]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:00:19]  Here we go.
[00:00:20]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:22]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:00:24]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:00:27]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:00:31]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:00:32]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:00:33]  His spirit, his love of this country.
[00:00:35]  He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
[00:00:40]  Turning point USA.
[00:00:41]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:00:50]  That's why we are here.
[00:00:53]  Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
[00:01:03]  So we're going to make this Independence Day themed.
[00:01:05]  We'll talk about all sorts of different things that you guys have emailed us, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:01:11]  But there's a couple themes in particular that I want to touch on, which is why should we care about Independence Day?
[00:01:19]  Let's talk about, should we be proud of our history, of our founding?
[00:01:22]  What is it exactly are we remembering on July 4th?
[00:01:28]  So there's a question here from Emma.
[00:01:30]  Emma is from New Mexico.
[00:01:32]  Charlie, love seeing you at Steve Smotherman's Church.
[00:01:34]  Thank you so much.
[00:01:35]  I'm in high school, and my friends think America is racist and awful.
[00:01:38]  They're happy to have the time off for July 4th from their summer jobs and from their sports, but they tell me that America is an awful place and we need to turn it over or have a revolution.
[00:01:49]  Can you please help me explain to my friends why the Declaration of Independence is so important and what exactly happened that day?
[00:01:54]  It's a great question.
[00:01:55]  Emma from New Mexico, and I love speaking at Steve Smotherman's Church.
[00:01:59]  So let's read it.
[00:02:00]  July 4th, 1776.
[00:02:03]  Now, it took three days to actually finish the document.
[00:02:05]  It's really July 2nd that we should be celebrating Independence Day, but they dated it July 4th for a reason.
[00:02:12]  Now, we must understand the time and the circumstances before the Declaration was signed.
[00:02:19]  That this was a bubbling up of many years of the British Empire that needed to pay off war debt, that needed to be able to finance their country to raise taxes.
[00:02:31]  And their colonies in India were totally ravaged by, let's just say, imperialistic hubris, went back to Britain.
[00:02:39]  They needed to try to finance to kind of basically bridge the revenue short gap.
[00:02:44]  No one on the aisle wanted actually to pay taxes.
[00:02:47]  They said, let's go tax those colonists.
[00:02:49]  Now, remember, before the 1750s or 1760s came around, the first Europeans to come to America and the first Americans came right near 1620.
[00:03:00]  Now, Nicole Hannah Jones makes a big deal out of this.
[00:03:02]  We'll play some tape from Nicole Hannah Jones, the wannabe historian who does nothing but basically is a, let's say, historical arsonist to what is true and what is accurate in American history.
[00:03:15]  Of course, there were the first colonies on the eastern seaboard, Jamestown being one of them.
[00:03:19]  Then, of course, the Mayflower got blown off course.
[00:03:22]  That is the creation of the Mayflower Compact, which then, of course, created the first experiment in self-government in the New World.
[00:03:30]  For over 150 years, Americans, those being in America, had an opportunity to wrestle with and figure out what does it mean to have liberty?
[00:03:40]  What kind of government should we set up?
[00:03:41]  They had a blank slate.
[00:03:43]  They wrestled with these ideas.
[00:03:45]  In the 1750s and the 1760s, there was a massive awakening and revival happening in America.
[00:03:51]  It was led by Jonathan Mayhew, George Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
[00:03:58]  In fact, we have that sermon right here in our studio right there, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards.
[00:04:04]  And then finally, in the 1770s, with the abuse of the British monarchy and the soil that was properly tilled by the teachings of the Bible, the American people were ready for a separation.
[00:04:17]  Coming into 1776, there was the Stamp Act, there was the Quarters Act, there were all sorts of different types of act, according to Soldiers Act, whatever they called it.
[00:04:26]  All of this bubbled up into a moment, and there was the publishing of Thomas Paine's famous booklet, Common Sense, which was widely distributed amongst the Eastern seaboard.
[00:04:37]  And so the July of 1776 came and it was written in an urgent time and matter.
[00:04:43]  So there was kind of a committee that put together the Declaration of Independence.
[00:04:47]  It wasn't just Thomas Jefferson, although he was the main author.
[00:04:50]  Benjamin Franklin contributed amongst many others.
[00:04:53]  But Thomas Jefferson really had the gift of the pen.
[00:04:57]  He was young at the time.
[00:04:58]  Thomas Jefferson was one of the youngest founders.
[00:05:01]  Now, so Thomas Jefferson writes this, the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America, when in the course of human events, let's stop there.
[00:05:10]  That means that this applies to all time, all people.
[00:05:15]  This is not just right now.
[00:05:16]  This is not some sort of special circumstance.
[00:05:19]  Basically, Thomas Jefferson is beginning with a universal and grand statement.
[00:05:25]  Now, of course, the Declaration ends in what could only be described as a death pledge.
[00:05:29]  We'll get to that in a second.
[00:05:31]  Thomas Jefferson began talking about things that are always true.
[00:05:35]  The universality of human existence.
[00:05:39]  The promise that is eternal creation and the supreme being of the world.
[00:05:47]  Thomas Jefferson continues by saying, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them.
[00:06:03]  Let's stop there.
[00:06:04]  A couple things that I want to pinpoint.
[00:06:06]  Becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands.
[00:06:09]  So some people say, oh, the founding fathers declared war on the British crown or monarchy.
[00:06:14]  That's not totally true.
[00:06:15]  They knew war would come, but they hoped just for a peaceful separation.
[00:06:20]  You see, the founding fathers wanted to separate themselves in a pursuit of self-government.
[00:06:25]  Now, this was no small task.
[00:06:26]  This is 56 courageous men that had arrest warrants out for them.
[00:06:31]  They did it in a naval city, by the way, Philadelphia, that's right on the water.
[00:06:36]  So they knew the potential cost to them.
[00:06:38]  But in the 1,500 words that is the Declaration of Independence, it becomes very clear that America did not stumble into existence.
[00:06:46]  We were summoned into existence.
[00:06:49]  But the thing that Thomas Jefferson says is that he doesn't say one of the course of human events, it becomes optional.
[00:06:55]  He says necessary.
[00:06:57]  It is written in an urgent matter.
[00:06:59]  This has to happen today, King George.
[00:07:01]  You've abused us.
[00:07:02]  But before we get to the abuses, we got to talk about something that's big, that's grand.
[00:07:07]  I have to frame this properly, that we have a moral right to do this.
[00:07:13]  The separate but equal station, let's stop there.
[00:07:15]  Separate but equal.
[00:07:17]  That right there is a little bit of a harbinger.
[00:07:19]  It is a canary in the coal mine for the separation of powers that come in the Constitution.
[00:07:25]  It's a little bit of a foreshadowing of how they're starting to think about power.
[00:07:31]  You see, the Declaration wrestles with this idea of power all throughout.
[00:07:34]  They say it explicitly, but only to a trained eye do they basically say to King George, you no longer have a moral right to use power against us.
[00:07:43]  You see, the Declaration of Independence being the great step forward for humanity is a mass inversion event.
[00:07:50]  How people view government differently.
[00:07:52]  Government, of course, being the consolidated power of people, hopefully voluntarily, so that they give up the sovereign, give up their sovereignty to government, but they'll still being the sovereign, giving up their power to government, I should say.
[00:08:05]  Thomas Jefferson continues by saying, to which the laws of nature and nature's God.
[00:08:10]  Let's just stop there.
[00:08:11]  This is not even a biblical reference.
[00:08:14]  Entitlement.
[00:08:15]  Basically, what it's saying, what Thomas Jefferson is saying, is that there's laws of the universe.
[00:08:20]  We, as being the speaking beings, are entitled because we know that the universe has certain rules and we know there's a God that put those rules in place and therefore we're entitled to, quote, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
[00:08:41]  What a beautiful statement.
[00:08:43]  The Declaration is only 1,500 words.
[00:08:45]  You should all read it this weekend.
[00:08:48]  So it starts with a proclamation of universal principles, and it continues the following: We hold these truths to be self-evident.
[00:08:56]  What does that mean?
[00:08:57]  That means anyone can figure this out.
[00:09:00]  That means that even you, King George, you pompous monarch, you can see where we're coming from.
[00:09:06]  It's the old adage of, you could see where I'm coming from.
[00:09:09]  And then, of course, the ringer, that all men are created equal.
[00:09:14]  Wow.
[00:09:16]  What did he mean by that?
[00:09:18]  Do all men have the same sort of talents?
[00:09:20]  Do all men have the same sort of money?
[00:09:23]  Does all men have the same potential?
[00:09:25]  No.
[00:09:26]  But they're all the same type of thing.
[00:09:30]  They're all speaking beings.
[00:09:32]  And therefore, when you are a speaking being, as Thomas Jefferson would write, above the beast and below the divine, that's a human being.
[00:09:41]  Above the beast and below the divine, that you have rights.
[00:09:46]  What Thomas Jefferson is doing is he's taking John Locke's treatise on natural rights and his social contract theory, and he's putting it into practice and saying, all men are created equal as being the same sort of thing.
[00:09:59]  Therefore, you cannot rob them of stuff.
[00:10:01]  You cannot rob them of speech.
[00:10:03]  You cannot rob them of their moral right and their ability to form government as they see fit.
[00:10:10]  That just clear these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving from their powers from the consent of the governed.
[00:10:15]  That's such a beautiful statement.
[00:10:18]  Thomas Jefferson is articulating that for the first time ever, you get power from the people.
[00:10:23]  The Greeks tried it temporarily in a democracy and it failed.
[00:10:27]  The Romans tried it in a republic and it failed.
[00:10:30]  But the Declaration was very clear that the people are large and the government needs to be small.
[00:10:36]  That the people run the government.
[00:10:39]  The government does not run the people.
[00:10:42]  So it starts with this universal claim and it continues by saying that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
[00:11:05]  Prudence indeed, love that word, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.
[00:11:14]  That's a beautiful statement there.
[00:11:16]  What is he saying?
[00:11:17]  We don't do this lightly.
[00:11:19]  We're not going about this just because we're upset about taxes.
[00:11:23]  The American Revolution was not about taxes.
[00:11:28]  It was about consent.
[00:11:30]  It was about permission.
[00:11:33]  It was about the abuse of people and continuing to abuse them without the consent of the governed.
[00:11:41]  And accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
[00:11:53]  But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object in vices, a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.
[00:12:12]  Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constraints them to alter their former systems of government.
[00:12:21]  The history of the present King Britain, the King of Britain, is a history of repeated injustices and usurpations, all having in direct order the establishment of absolute tyranny over these states.
[00:12:34]  To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, and then it gets very particular.
[00:12:41]  So it starts universal, and it gets particular.
[00:12:45]  And it wrestles throughout the entire document of this idea of the citizen versus the serf and the subject and the slave.
[00:12:52]  You said, you see, they were not citizens at the time.
[00:12:55]  They were not co-owners or co-rulers.
[00:12:58]  They were subjects.
[00:12:59]  They were subjects to the crown.
[00:13:02]  So the Declaration recognized power dynamics and it totally flipped it upside down.
[00:13:07]  It said, no, no, no, we're in charge.
[00:13:09]  You're no longer in charge.
[00:13:10]  And we're willing to die for this.
[00:13:13]  And that's the kicker.
[00:13:14]  It's not respectfully submitted to the king.
[00:13:16]  Please let us know your thoughts.
[00:13:18]  Write us back in a couple months.
[00:13:19]  No, no, no, no.
[00:13:20]  It was this.
[00:13:23]  And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, I never want to hear from another atheist secularist that America was not a Christian nation.
[00:13:34]  They said here, and support for this declaration with a firm reliance on protection of divine providence, said differently in more kind of modern American English, and for support of this declaration with firm reliance on Almighty God and trusting in his will, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.
[00:13:56]  Oh, is that all?
[00:13:58]  They pledged everything.
[00:14:01]  These 56 men gave everything.
[00:14:03]  They said, we're willing to die for this.
[00:14:05]  That's how important self-government is.
[00:14:07]  We're so willing to form something new.
[00:14:11]  All 56 of us are willing to be hunted down and murdered.
[00:14:17]  When you read the Declaration, you realize that it's a simple and it's a beautiful document, and it could be easily understood and retained.
[00:14:23]  Everyone should read it every single Independence Day weekend.
[00:14:27]  And I had someone email us, well, Charlie, where do I find it?

=== Lowering Drug Prices Now (03:06) ===

[00:14:30]  You could Google it.
[00:14:31]  It's the first search result.
[00:14:33]  If you have email, you probably have it.
[00:14:36]  And remember, the military was looking for these 56 signers of the Declaration in a port city.
[00:14:43]  What's so interesting, too, is that the opening of the Declaration demotes the signers.
[00:14:48]  And it begins so abstractly and universally, and then it gets so narrow.
[00:14:54]  But it's very clear that throughout the document that they viewed this as an act of obedience to the eternal.
[00:15:02]  That they saw this as an act of faith to God.
[00:15:08]  They tried petitions to try to get Britain to get off their back, but they said, we will not be able to exist in the form of government that we know is moral and that is good, that is true, that is biblically based if we do not write this separation.
[00:15:23]  Powerful.
[00:15:25]  It's beautiful, that which is perfected in being.
[00:15:29]  So to answer the question that Emma asked, I know I've been on it for a while.
[00:15:35]  Fact we have a birthday is a big deal.
[00:15:38]  What is the birthday of the Chinese Empire?
[00:15:40]  No one knows.
[00:15:41]  What is the Empire?
[00:15:42]  What is the birthday of the British Empire?
[00:15:45]  Nobody knows.
[00:15:46]  You could approximate it.
[00:15:47]  The fact there was a time and a place and a manner and a decision could never happen again.
[00:15:53]  I want to tell you about one of our new partners here, very important.
[00:15:56]  Just when you thought the government would stop trying to take over more of our health care, there's a new very sneaky bill right now that's working its way.
[00:16:03]  This is a fact-acting action item right now.
[00:16:06]  Senator Bernie Sanders is leading it, total communist, socialist.
[00:16:09]  I'm urgently asking you to support the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste to stop the Senate from passing the Sanders Bill, S1339.
[00:16:19]  This is a specific ask.
[00:16:21]  It would raise the price of prescription drugs by making it harder for pharmacy benefit managers to continue to save an average of $1,000 per year for 275 million Americans just like you.
[00:16:33]  Bernie, Marxist, communist, bad guy, his bill is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
[00:16:38]  He says it will lower prescription drug prices, but we know Bernie Sanders.
[00:16:42]  He's a con man.
[00:16:43]  This is happening very sneakily, and some Republicans are even signing on to it.
[00:16:47]  But we have to stop Bernie Sanders now.
[00:16:50]  Go to lowermydrugprices.com.
[00:16:53]  That is lowermydrugprices.com.
[00:16:55]  I did research on this.
[00:16:56]  And again, anything Bernie Sanders is pushing, I'm inherently skeptical.
[00:17:00]  He's a bad dude.
[00:17:01]  Add your name to the thousands who are standing up and saying you don't want more government interference in your health care.
[00:17:07]  But you must hurry.
[00:17:08]  The Sanders bill will come up for a vote in only a few weeks.
[00:17:11]  So go to lowermydrugprices.com.
[00:17:14]  We need a big push.
[00:17:15]  If you are on prescription drugs, if you are a senior and you have kind of Medicare components to it, this could be a massive change, make things more expensive, you know, disrupt co-pays.
[00:17:26]  There's all sorts of stuff, okay, that could happen.
[00:17:28]  Go to lowermydrugprices.com.
[00:17:31]  That's lowermydrugprices.com.
[00:17:35]  Let's go to another one here.

=== Slavery and the True Founding (10:00) ===

[00:17:37]  Charlie, my friends all say the founding fathers were slave owners.
[00:17:41]  What do you have to say about that?
[00:17:44]  That is what John says from Pennsylvania.
[00:17:48]  So I've done, let's say, a fair amount of public commentary on this, and I have to thank the great Hillsdale College for this, honestly.
[00:17:56]  So look, I went down into the Hillsdale online courses, charlieforhillsdale.com.
[00:18:00]  You should all check it out.
[00:18:02]  That's charlieforhillsdale.com.
[00:18:04]  And I did the work.
[00:18:06]  A couple years ago, I would kind of just trip over my words whenever the issue of founding fathers and slavery came up.
[00:18:13]  And I probably had a response that some of you give, like, oh, yeah, but we abolished it, and that was then, and now this is then, and this is now.
[00:18:19]  That's not even a proper answer because it's not true.
[00:18:24]  The founders all knew what they were doing was wrong.
[00:18:27]  They wrote openly about it.
[00:18:28]  So that doesn't make them hypocrites.
[00:18:30]  It makes them sinners, as the great Dr. Larry Arn would say.
[00:18:34]  Nine out of 13 of colonies had already abolished slavery by the time the Constitution was ratified.
[00:18:38]  The first anti-slavery convention was hosted in Philadelphia in 1775 by Benjamin Franklin.
[00:18:45]  Thomas Jefferson admonished King George for bringing the sin of slavery into America in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence.
[00:18:55]  The Northwest Ordinance, Article 6, said that no slaves should be in the new territories.
[00:19:01]  But Nicole Hannah Jones insists that America's true founding was not in 1776, but 1619.
[00:19:10]  Now, who is Nicole Hannah Jones?
[00:19:12]  She is the con artist that runs the New York Times 1619 project that your kid is probably learning from right now.
[00:19:19]  Let's play cut 153.
[00:19:21]  1619, in August of 1619, is when the first group of 20 to 30 Africans were sold into the Virginia colony.
[00:19:30]  And what the project is basically arguing is that that is actually as foundational to the American story as the year 1776, because nothing would be left untouched by that decision to engage in the institution of slavery.
[00:19:42]  And so Nicole Hannah Jones argues that because slavery came to America, somehow that's the founding of America, as if we invented slavery.
[00:19:50]  Slavery is as old as humanity.
[00:19:52]  It's a tough realization, but it's true.
[00:19:55]  A brother attacking a brother is as old as the Bible, Cain and Abel.
[00:20:00]  The imprisonment of others is immoral.
[00:20:03]  It's not supported by Western values.
[00:20:06]  In fact, there's more slaves today in the world than there were when the slave trade was at its highest.
[00:20:14]  But Nicole Hannah Jones zeroes in on the fact that the first slaves sold into the Virginia colony.
[00:20:20]  That's somehow our founding.
[00:20:24]  Someone needs to ask her the question: why?
[00:20:28]  Why would our true founding be when imperial monarchy Britain brings their practice of slavery?
[00:20:38]  What nation exactly do you think existed then?
[00:20:41]  You see, we as human beings all have something in common.
[00:20:46]  We were all born into a world we did not create.
[00:20:50]  So therefore, we should judge people based on not the world they were born into, but what did they do with the world they were born into.
[00:20:57]  Now, mind you, most people are not able to do anything to the world they're born into.
[00:21:01]  Most times, people are born into a world and that world stays the same.
[00:21:06]  The founding fathers were born into a world where slavery was everywhere.
[00:21:10]  It was ubiquitous.
[00:21:11]  It was widespread.
[00:21:13]  It was unquestioned.
[00:21:15]  It was institutionalized.
[00:21:17]  And by the time the founding fathers had died, specifically Adams and Jefferson, and I believe to be the same day, July 4th, 40 or 50 years later, was it 40 years later?
[00:21:30]  50 years later, I think it was 1826, to the day that they passed away is really creepy, really weird, by the way.
[00:21:38]  On July 4th, slaves and slavery was on its way out.
[00:21:42]  Yeah, July 4th, 1826.
[00:21:44]  They both died on the same day, 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
[00:21:49]  Creepy and weird.
[00:21:50]  Or divine and providential.
[00:21:53]  There you go.
[00:21:54]  Creepy and weird would be how a secular humanist would describe it.
[00:21:57]  Coincidence!
[00:21:58]  Yeah, okay.
[00:22:00]  Numerology matters to the Lord.
[00:22:02]  Remember that.
[00:22:03]  Numbers are important.
[00:22:06]  By the time they died on July 4th, 1826, slavery was on its way out.
[00:22:12]  We abolished the slave trade in 1807.
[00:22:15]  Thomas Jefferson did that as president.
[00:22:17]  Thomas Jefferson argued for the abolitionist slavery as the governor of Virginia.
[00:22:21]  George Washington argued that it wasn't a matter of if slavery would be abolished and ended, but a matter of how.
[00:22:28]  The Northwest Ordinance echoes that as well.
[00:22:32]  The fact they did anything to end slavery speaks to their moral character.
[00:22:36]  Most countries have never ended slavery.
[00:22:39]  There are slaves all throughout Islamic sub-Saharan Africa right now, all over Africa.
[00:22:44]  There are slaves on the southern border.
[00:22:46]  The cartel runs a slavery operation, period.
[00:22:50]  There's slave labor in China right now.
[00:22:52]  The idea of human beings owning humans is a very old and nasty idea.
[00:22:58]  We didn't create it.
[00:23:00]  We didn't perfect it.
[00:23:01]  We didn't implement it.
[00:23:02]  We didn't endorse it.
[00:23:03]  We didn't defend it.
[00:23:04]  We didn't spread it.
[00:23:05]  In fact, the opposite.
[00:23:06]  We condemned it.
[00:23:08]  We shut it down.
[00:23:09]  And we ended it.
[00:23:11]  Nicole Hannah Jones continues with her gibberish Play Cut 154.
[00:23:15]  Our true founding was actually not 1776.
[00:23:18]  Our true founding was when we decided to engage in slavery because we know as Thomas Jefferson was writing the declaration that we would issue to the world on July 4th, he owned 130 people.
[00:23:28]  And black Americans, enslaved people were not included in those founding documents or were not intended to enjoy the freedoms of the Constitution.
[00:23:35]  And we would argue that if you look across American life right now, almost nothing has been left untouched by that legacy.
[00:23:41]  She's just so repulsive.
[00:23:42]  And you know what I hate about that whole video?
[00:23:44]  It drives me nuts.
[00:23:45]  Is there's this kind of white beta male with his white tennis shoes just like nodding along.
[00:23:50]  Oh, yeah.
[00:23:51]  Yeah.
[00:23:52]  Yeah, totally.
[00:23:53]  Yeah.
[00:23:53]  Sure.
[00:23:54]  America sucks.
[00:23:55]  Yeah.
[00:23:56]  Oh, yeah, for sure.
[00:23:58]  We hate this place.
[00:24:00]  Again, please go read a book.
[00:24:02]  A prerequisite to have a debate.
[00:24:04]  So just take an online course with Hillsdale College, any one of them, and then we can talk.
[00:24:09]  Prove that you're willing to do the work.
[00:24:11]  And that actually proves, that actually builds out the point I meant to complete, which is, I was always a little clumsy and intimidated by this question.
[00:24:17]  I'll be very honest, about founding fathers owning slavery because I wasn't educated properly in government schools in the suburbs of Chicago.
[00:24:24]  But boy, as soon as I realized the true history of it and it was total reframing that we're all born into a world we didn't create, how the founders already fought to abolish slavery, the history of the abolition movement.
[00:24:36]  And what's amazing is we've had plenty of debate nights here, and we're actually going to host a, we're going to post a podcast with Debate Night in the upcoming days, is how unprepared the other side is to talk about this.
[00:24:47]  Totally and completely unprepared.
[00:24:50]  They'd never heard any of this.
[00:24:51]  So Nicole Hannah Jones, she says, okay, Thomas Jefferson, when he was writing the Declaration, didn't include us.
[00:24:58]  Well, first of all, he actually did in the first draft of the Declaration.
[00:25:02]  He blamed King George for bringing the slaves to the United States and the slave trade to the United States.
[00:25:07]  But let me ask you: what color is articulated here, Nicole Hannah Jones?
[00:25:13]  How about this?
[00:25:14]  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
[00:25:18]  Do you not find that to be compelling?
[00:25:20]  How about Vermont that abolished slavery in 1777, right after the signing of the Declaration of Independence?
[00:25:27]  Or all the colonies where black people were free and were able to own property and were able to vote.
[00:25:33]  Now, they always point to the Three-Fifths Clause.
[00:25:38]  The Three-Fifths Clause was actually an anti-slavery measure put into the Constitution as a way to prevent slave states from having overcounted population, not for rights to vote, but for representation purposes to be able to make slavery permanent.
[00:25:53]  It was a backdoor way to actually abolish slavery.
[00:25:57]  Thomas Jefferson's anti-slavery passage that was originally in the Declaration of Independence is this.
[00:26:05]  He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distance people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation tither.
[00:26:25]  This piratical, meaning pirates, warfare of infidel powers is the warfare of a Christian king of Great Britain.
[00:26:33]  Pretty strongly worded.
[00:26:34]  He's saying he's a hypocrite.
[00:26:36]  Determined to keep an open market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this excrable commerce.
[00:26:48]  And that this assemblage of whores might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them by murdering the people on whom he obtruded them.
[00:27:03]  This paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
[00:27:12]  Blaming King George for bringing slavery to the colonies.
[00:27:16]  But Nicole Hannah Jones would never tell you that.
[00:27:20]  Nicole Hannah Jones would never tell you about how slavery was actually ended by the Americans.
[00:27:33]  Let's get to another question here.
[00:27:35]  Freedom at CharlieKirk.com, this one here.

=== Reconciling Faith and Nation (04:14) ===

[00:27:37]  Charlie, were the founding fathers Christian?
[00:27:40]  My friends say otherwise, Neil from Youngstown.
[00:27:42]  Yes, of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the great majority, perhaps all, identified themselves as Christian, and all but one were Protestants.
[00:27:50]  I think Charles Carroll was the only Catholic that signed the Declaration of Independence from Maryland, otherwise known as Maryland, Maryland.
[00:27:58]  Four were either present or former ministers, and a number of the signers were sons of clergy.
[00:28:03]  At least half of them had studied divinity at their various universities.
[00:28:07]  The denomination breakdowns run as follows: 32 of the signers were over half Episcopalians or Anglicans, the old state of the Church of England.
[00:28:13]  13 were Congregationalists, 12 were Presbyterians, and there were two Quakers, two Unitarians, and one Roman Catholic.
[00:28:20]  Which was, of course, Charles Carroll from Annapolis, Maryland, Annapolis, Maryland.
[00:28:26]  Charlie, do you call it Independence Day or 4th of July?
[00:28:28]  Which one is correct?
[00:28:29]  Is the more patriotic one more than the other?
[00:28:32]  I prefer Independence Day.
[00:28:34]  I say them interchangeably, to be honest.
[00:28:36]  I try to reject 4th of July because it just sounds just kind of so, it's like a throwaway line.
[00:28:41]  Like the 4th of July, I think Independence Day, but I think good people say 4th of July and mean really well, good patriotic people.
[00:28:48]  We're going to finish this one with the question of: should Christians care about their country?
[00:28:52]  That's something we get a lot of, where people say, Charlie, you're engaging in Christian nationalism.
[00:28:57]  We have a question from Peter about this saying, Charlie, how do you reconcile wanting what's best for America while also wanting what's best for the gospel?
[00:29:07]  What if I told you they actually can be linked together?
[00:29:10]  Jeremiah 29:7 says, Demand the welfare of the nation that you are in because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare.
[00:29:17]  Adam Kinzinger sent out this tweet.
[00:29:19]  He said, Quote, It's interesting.
[00:29:21]  When the Taliban rose, we kept saying the moderate Muslims need to speak out.
[00:29:24]  I'm sure you did too.
[00:29:25]  I believe normal Christians need to call out Christian nationalism.
[00:29:28]  And the Christian Taliban, really, wonder who that is.
[00:29:31]  I can't find anywhere Jesus said that government mattered to him.
[00:29:35]  Well, that's interesting.
[00:29:36]  I would encourage Adam Kinzinger to reopen the Bible because actually, Adam Kinzinger obviously doesn't know Koigne Greek.
[00:29:44]  I don't know what Adam Kinzinger does know.
[00:29:46]  But go back to the Koigne Greek that Tyndale actually originally translated, which actually got Tyndale killed, which is when Jesus was at the mouth of the Jordan River at the Caesarea Philippi, Jesus said to his disciples, he went through a dialogue: who do men say that I am?
[00:30:01]  Some say that you're Elijah, some say you're John the Baptist, and finally goes on to say, On this rock, build my church, not the right word, actually is the word ecclesia or ecclesia, which is the Greek word for public assembly, meeting place.
[00:30:16]  So basically, Jesus said, on this rock, build my community activist organization center that will influence everything that's happening else around you.
[00:30:25]  Now, Jesus did not use the word synaguge, he didn't use temple.
[00:30:28]  He very well could have used any other word imaginable.
[00:30:30]  But he used a secular political term that was widely used throughout Greece, which, by the way, that Greeks, all throughout the polis, the politics, would have ecclesias everywhere, and the two words would be plastered all over the ecclesia, eleutheria and isonomia, which were the two words for freedom and equality.
[00:30:48]  I wonder what country had those two words as their founding ideas and documents.
[00:30:52]  You see, to push back against what Adam Kinzinger would say, Jesus did not want compartmentalized Christianity.
[00:30:58]  He wanted comprehensive Christianity.
[00:31:00]  He called this to be salt and light.
[00:31:01]  What do salt and light have in common?
[00:31:03]  They change the environments they come in contact with.
[00:31:06]  They do not make things remain the same.
[00:31:08]  He says, We as Christians should be what?
[00:31:09]  Counselors to the king.
[00:31:11]  So if Adam Kinzinger believes Christians have no place in government, then he believes that he should take out a piece of scissors and take out Esther, Mordecai, Nehemiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, and every other, and Joseph, and every other Old Testament figure that tried to influence secular government for God's chosen purpose.
[00:31:27]  The idea of being counselor of the king is not just biblical, but it's a mandate.
[00:31:31]  Demand the welfare of the nation that you are in because your nation is tied to your nation's welfare.
[00:31:35]  If your pastor, if your church refuses to talk about this, you need to find another pastor or church or challenge them biblically and do so in private.
[00:31:42]  If your pastor or church do not celebrate Roe versus Wade being overturned, you need to find another pastor or church or confront them biblically or privately.
[00:31:49]  Do not go to a church run by cowards.

=== Gratitude for Life and Liberty (01:51) ===

[00:31:51]  The hour is late.
[00:31:53]  The time is near.
[00:31:55]  I do not have any tolerance for cowards.
[00:31:56]  I do have tolerance for idiots, but at least they're courageous.
[00:31:59]  I could deal with a courageous idiot.
[00:32:01]  I just have to tell them to stop talking.
[00:32:02]  But at least they have courage and boldness.
[00:32:04]  There's a purpose for them.
[00:32:06]  I do not have tolerance at all for weak people.
[00:32:09]  Cowards should have no place in your faith walk or for your biblical walk at all whatsoever.
[00:32:14]  Okay.
[00:32:15]  Last question here.
[00:32:16]  Charlie, what is the proper way to celebrate Independence Day?
[00:32:19]  Well, with gratitude.
[00:32:20]  I said this on the Tim Pool show against Vish or Vosh, whatever his name is.
[00:32:25]  And he laughed at me openly when I said the purpose of education is to try to create gratitude in our citizens.
[00:32:30]  He said, gratitude?
[00:32:30]  What do you mean?
[00:32:31]  Like saying thanks after somebody gets you something?
[00:32:34]  Of course, that's a secular humanist way of looking at existence.
[00:32:36]  No, you should be thankful to God Almighty that you have breath, consciousness, and you have life.
[00:32:41]  Life is beautiful.
[00:32:42]  If you pursue virtue, life can be very nasty if you pursue things that are sinful, which basically the word sin means off target from how God wants you to live.
[00:32:52]  But how to celebrate Independence Day?
[00:32:54]  We should be thankful for what we have, thankful for the nation we live in, and then we have to be motivated towards action, not sitting around on our hands and hoping things get better.
[00:33:03]  But what are you doing to pray for your school board members or maybe run for a school board?
[00:33:08]  What are you doing to make a meaningful difference in your community?
[00:33:11]  I know a lot of you are doing a lot.
[00:33:13]  Many of you are doing a lot, I should say.
[00:33:15]  But it's time to do more.
[00:33:16]  The proper way to honor our founding fathers this Independence Day is to read the Declaration of Independence and channel the spirit of self-government and do something constructive and positive, peaceful to make America a better place to live.
[00:33:30]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:33:31]  Email us your thoughts as always.
[00:33:32]  Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.
[00:33:34]  Thanks so much for listening and God bless.
[00:33:39]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.