Charlie's final book "STOP, in the Name of God" is finally out nationwide, and nobody is more fitting to talk about the book's message than Erika Kirk. She joins the show to discuss why the Sabbath meant so much to Charlie and how God's gift of rest only made him more effective as a campaigner, communicator, and leader. Plus, Hillsdale's Matthew Spalding talks about his new book on the Declaration of Independence and its central role in defining the "American mind." Order "STOP, in the Name of God" at 45books.com.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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All right.
Welcome to our two of the Charlie Kirk show.
Blake, this is, I think, the moment everybody's been waiting for today.
And that's because, of course, we have Erica Kirk on the show.
She is joining us remote because she has a busy, busy day.
But Erica, if you can hear us, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
Hey, everyone.
Can you hear me?
We're in New York City.
Hi.
Well, today is the book launch of Charlie's book, his final book, Stop in the Name of God.
And here is this beautiful artwork.
Yes.
And Erica, you and Charlie and your beautiful daughter are on the back.
And it's just a beautiful book.
I've been voraciously reading it.
It is a wonderful personal tribute and such an important message.
Tell us about it.
It is a book that my husband, as you know, Andrew, he was writing this for what, a year and a half, and he finished it in July.
And I'll never forget him coming downstairs and he was like, I finished it.
I finally finished it.
I was like, baby, I'm so proud of you.
And he was like, you know, if this only changes just one person's life, at least it changes just that one.
He's like, but honestly, he, and I have to tell you, this, watching him live this out in real time changed his life, totally elevated him.
I mean, he was already elevated, but it was the next level.
It was amazing.
I mean, yes, my husband was amazing to begin with, but this really took it to the next level.
Yeah.
Well, and I can just tell you, and Blake probably saw this as well.
So this is a little, this is a little funny story.
So Charlie loved to work.
He loved, loved working, which is good because he got to do it all the time.
Yeah.
I mean, and he really loved working.
And I remember when I first started working with Charlie, it was kind of just like 24-7, you know?
And he was always good-natured about it, always upbeat.
He loved, he loved it.
And I remember my wife was like, hey, you know, are we ever going to have any, you know, time damage?
That's so downtown.
Yeah, like, how about a weekend, husband?
And I was like, yeah, we, you know, we will.
I'll talk, I'll talk to Charlie.
Well, then along comes Erica.
Now you guys have a family and Charlie starts getting really into this idea of how to rest, how to rest well.
And I could just tell you that I saw not only did I see Charlie, this take Charlie to the next level, but it also allowed everybody else to kind of go to the next level too, because our lives and everybody that he was leading, their lives became more in balance too.
It was an amazing transformation for the entire team.
It was.
And not even so much from just a productivity level, but Andrew and Blake, you guys both know this.
The whole team knows this.
Being in politics and just in a total echo chamber and then also just dealing with real world issues and then also just dealing with even personal life issues, all of those three combine become this absolute trifecta of this weight on you where you're just like, can I just have a second to breathe?
I just need a second to breathe.
And that's what this is.
It has nothing to do with running away.
It has nothing to do with take it's literally taking a pause so you can lay out and map out, okay, pause the noise for a second.
Just stop the noise for a second.
What truly matters?
Have people pour into you.
Have some alone time with the Lord.
Spend some time with your family.
Have a beautiful meal with your family on whatever day you choose to do this.
It does not have to be a Friday.
It does not have to be a Sunday.
It doesn't even have to be a Wednesday.
You can choose.
That's what's so beautiful.
Charlie was not legalistic about the Sabbath.
He was saying, please just take the time to be, just set aside to be alone with the Lord, to be able to pray, to be able to just even journal.
Charlie loved to journal.
He left hundreds of his journals.
And that to him was just so cathartic to be able to just write out what he was grateful for.
You know, even just, I don't know, when he would go for a walk and he just would have ideas that came to him for his show.
He just really took the time to think, you know what?
This worked for me because it helped me from burning out.
And that was a superpower for him.
People would say, how do you do this?
How do you operate?
And he would always say, I get, he would get eight hours, eight to 10 hours of sleep a night if he could when he was at home.
But not only that, he made sure that if he kept this pace and rhythm of giving himself a break, he wouldn't burn out like many other people because they thought it was cool to pull all-nighters.
Actually, it's not, and it's not good for your brain health either.
But he felt like he found the ultimate secret and the ultimate hack as an entrepreneur and wanted everyone else to be in on him on that.
Can I just read this section that hit me so hard last night as I was reading this book?
It's such a good book, Andrew.
So good.
It's like so good.
I think it's, there's just something about, I just, God has a plan.
And you just sometimes have to.
I know, but the depth and level of the theology in here is unbelievable.
Yeah.
It's unbelievable.
I mean, I'm telling you, resting for Charlie took him to the next level.
And here's what he said.
To stop utterly, decisively, rhythmically is perhaps the most radical command God ever gave humanity.
In a world governed by unrelenting drive, by the mantras of faster, harder, and more, the divine voice says something astonishing.
Stop.
In his name, cease.
Cease striving.
Cease earning.
Cease proving.
Cease buying and selling and producing.
This is not a suggestion.
It is a divine imperative.
What did you notice when Charlie really put this into practice?
Because I have my own stories, but what did you see in Charlie?
He, I mean, he was already an amazing husband to me.
But our love for one another just amplified him and his role as a father amplified.
He was so intentional with his time to begin with.
I mean, he had it down to a millisecond.
You guys know that.
But Charlie was so good about making sure that his priorities remained his priorities.
And even just hearing you read those words, Andrew, I have to tell you, like, I hear my husband's voice and spirit so much in this book.
Like I said this morning when we were having an interview earlier about this, I just, he feels so alive with me still when I read these pages because I feel like he's addressing it to me personally.
And again, he made sure that when he took the time to rest and go for a hike or spend some time with the kids or just be able to show the world, the rest of the world, yes, I'm Charlie Kirk.
Yes, I have these organizations.
Yes, I have my show.
But what's the most important to me is God and my family.
You guys can wait 24 hours.
If it's an emergency, you know how to get a hold of me, but you can wait.
And that's so special.
Yeah, he was so intentional.
And by the way, what you could see from what I just read, Blake, how serious Charlie took this.
Yes.
It was very, very serious to Charlie.
And we would all get the notes like, hey, see you later.
I'm on.
Not even that.
It was always, I always knew it was coming around the same time.
Shabbat shalom.
Exclamation point.
I said, Shabbat Shalom.
I did a telegram.
Always the same one.
And I'm like, I would sometimes be working on stuff.
I wanted Charlie to see something right before, and it would come through.
I'm like, it's done.
Not getting a response to that one until Sunday.
We still got everything done.
That's the key.
As a matter of fact, I think you get more done in six days with rest than you do with seven days with no rest.
And that's that's that's the breakthrough.
You do.
And another thing, too, is that Charlie made sure that this wasn't a legalistic thing.
It didn't matter if you were Jewish, Christian, non-observing citizen.
That had nothing to do with it.
It actually really doesn't.
What it boils down to is that you are taking the time to really use your time wisely.
Charlie was only alive for 31 years.
That sucks.
It just does.
Your life is so short.
We have no idea how long we'll be here.
We have no idea our expiration date and when we'll be in heaven with the Lord.
But what we do know is that we have a choice.
Every day we can decide to take the time that we're given to do something amazing, to go out and make a difference, to go and empower people, to serve people, or you can use that to be destructive.
You have an option.
Charlie knew that if he took the time to have a moment to breathe, to strategize, to create solutions instead of problems, he knew how important that time was.
And if he didn't have the time to give his brain the space to do that, he wouldn't be able to be an effective leader like he was and still is.
He's just in a different location.
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We have the great Erica Kirk, who is out there doing an amazing job telling the world about Charlie's last book.
Stop in the name of God.
We are so proud of you, Erica.
You're doing an amazing job.
You have such a busy day.
You know, it was just, I always think with the Sabbath, how I just walked in in the middle of it.
You guys have all testified how it transformed Charlie for the better once he adopted it.
I just think of how I got in and I saw this person who was hugely effective, had so much agency, had this immense ability to change the world.
But then he was also checking out for one day a week and everyone's saying, like, you have no idea how different Charlie is from how he was just two years ago.
He was just, he just, he expanded his capacity.
It was just amazing.
Like the man had, it felt like unlimited capacity.
And then he takes one day off a week and he somehow it expanded his capacity and everyone around him as well.
Yes.
It really was a force multiplier.
Stop in the name of God, Charlie's last book, which breaks my heart, honestly, makes me kind of want to cry every time I say it.
And I'm trying not to, but I'm so proud of Erica, who's doing it for her husband.
She is doing an amazing job promoting this book in his stead.
Erica, what does that mean to you?
You know, just to be out there doing this for Charlie to spread this word that was so near and dear to him.
It's really, I mean, I'll be honest, Andrew, I can't finish the last chapter.
I don't know when I'll be able to.
It's kind of like when you, again, I've said this before, you get only so many firsts and lasts within one thing.
And for this book, that's united in one for me, meaning it's the first time I am reading my husband's last book.
It's not the last time I'll read the book, but it's the first time to read his final words.
And it's hard to think that it's just, it's so, it's so divine too, that of all of the books that he leaves for us, it's not a book about politics.
It's not a book.
I mean, although he does talk about some things politically within here, and he does talk about worshiping idols, and he does talk about, you know, different philosophies and theologies that have implications towards certain things.
But he, of all the books to write, he writes something about honoring God.
And he writes it in a way where he literally became the subject matter expert on it because he wasn't trying to preach and lecture to you.
You need to do this.
He was like, you know what, guys?
I did it.
And this made an impact in my life.
And these are the final words that I will leave you with.
He went on campus knowing that communication was key, but he also knew that if the students, if whoever he was communicating with also took some time to nourish their soul, to nourish their brain, to actually give themselves a better night's sleep, to take care of themselves holistically, there would be way more of a difference made in this country.
There would actually be healing in this country if people actually took those combined holistically.
And to me, it's just Charlie being like, you know what?
Stop and pause and rest.
That doesn't mean you're weak.
That doesn't mean that, you know, it means just take some time for the Lord and take some time to really just hold into perspective what's true and what's beautiful.
Man, I almost don't want to ask a follow-up question after that.
That's so beautiful.
But I thought we do have, we do have three minutes here still, Erica.
Obviously, Charlie was working on this at home a lot.
I thought I'd ask, is there anything you've read in the book so far that stands out?
Oh, I remember that conversation that led to that.
Or on the flip side, is there something that you learned to your surprise while going through reading this book?
Surprise side is, I mean, I knew my husband was brilliant, but the depth of understanding of this topic was amazing and how he weaves in the Bible and how he reads in,
just weaves in all these different interesting facts and history of the Sabbath and then even certain laws like blue laws that we had here in this country and how we have changed as American citizens without having that rest built into our country and how that's actually impacted us as a whole, as a body.
So that was kind of, because I, you know, I hear him writing about this book and everything, and he shares certain topics with me, but that was really interesting.
The one thing that was really sweet, when he, when he, at the, towards the end of the book, he will give you practical ways of applying the Sabbath for yourself, whether that means you going for a hike in nature, whether that means you doing something like sunsetting your device where after 5 p.m., the phone's off, just how it used to be years ago before there were devices everywhere.
And once you left the office, that was it.
But what was really sweet to me is that in there there was something called a Sabbath box that you can have with your kids.
And I got to see that with him and my children.
I mean, they were, that was such a special bonding time for them.
And man, I'm missing you guys.
I just miss him.
Of course.
Of course.
Erica Kirk, you are doing an amazing job.
You can get this book.
It comes out today at 45books.com.
45books.com.
Check it out.
Erica, you're doing phenomenal.
I know how busy your day is because I've seen the schedule and I just love that.
It's a Charlie schedule.
We're honoring him well.
Exactly.
You are.
Today you're not resting, but you will rest this weekend.
I will on, yeah, on Friday and Saturday and Sunday.
You deserve it.
You have earned it.
And then some, I mean, everybody pick up your copy today.
This is Stop in the Name of God by Charlie Kirk.
Erica, you're the best and you're doing a great job.
God bless you guys.
Thank you.
I'll see you guys soon.
Send us your thoughts.
Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.
Blake can gather them.
I'm so proud of Erica doing that.
I can't.
That was incredible.
I can't tell you just how hard that must be.
I can't imagine how hard it would be, but doing the press tour for your husband's book in his stead is just something nobody should have to do.
And I'm very proud of her.
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Very excited about this next conversation with Dr. Matthew Spalding.
He's vice president at Hillsdale College.
He has a new book, The Making of the American Mind, The Story of Our Declaration of Independence.
I wanted to do this book today.
I've been talking about it for a little while with their team because you got this birthright citizenship thing coming up and that the discussion gets very distracted very quickly.
But Dr. Spalding has a very, I think, interesting focus point.
So, Dr. Spalding, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
Great to be with you.
I'm honored to be on the show with both of you and also in light of Charlie.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, we just had his wife, Erica Kirk, on.
She's doing the tour for Charlie's last book, Stop in the Name of God while honoring the Sabbath will transform your life.
And so it's an important day in that respect.
But it's also important about your topic.
What is an American is a question that is really echoing across, I think, elite intellectual circles, but also social media circles.
What is an American?
And you have this book that just endeavors to answer that in a very unique way.
You're saying the making of the American Mind, the Story of Our Declaration.
What is your book about?
And there's a through line I want to dive into, but I'll give you the floor.
No, there absolutely is a through line, and I think it's a very clear through line to be perfectly honest.
But we're coming up on our 250th anniversary of the Declaration itself, which is the timing of it, I suppose.
But I've been working on this for a long time and studying the modern debates, both on the left and the right about numerous topics.
Almost all of them go back to an understanding of what we are as a people.
What does it mean to be an American?
What are the principles that form us?
And there's this conception of what makes us Americans.
And the document that is really central to that whole thing, that whole conversation, is the Declaration of Independence, which we oftentimes will read or will hear spoken parts, the famous sections on the 4th of July.
Maybe we'll know a little bit about it and its history.
I wanted to write a book that tells its own story, the story of the Declaration, how we got it, how it came into being, how Jefferson ended up drafting it for the Continental Congress, how they edited it significantly to make more points about, among other things, theology, the theological implications of the Declaration, and go through it essentially as a commentary, looking at the Declaration for a general audience very closely, line by line, in a way that people can understand.
Because when you understand, you can't really love your country if you don't know your country.
And the thing we do need to know is the Declaration of Independence.
It is the greatest and the most, I think, most eloquent statement of freedom in Western civilization, especially in the American tradition.
It's a beautiful document, and we should know it.
Our listeners should know it.
Members of TPUSA, every college student in America, children, it's a beautiful thing.
I'm just looking at the Constitution.
It's under Charlie's hat here and his gift from his daughter.
But yeah, he would always flash this thing on the show.
Is it the Declaration or just?
No, I think it has.
We have versions, at least we used to with the Declaration.
A lot of times they put them together.
Yeah, but you describe it as the extent to which there are two documents.
They go together.
You can't entertain the Constitution without the Declaration.
Well, and here's something that you say about this.
You said Thomas Jefferson called the Declaration of Independence an expression of the American mind, not merely a document.
The Declaration is the common creed of our civic life, and it inspires the shared poetry of our political soul.
I think that's a really fascinating way to put it.
It is a common creed.
I guess the question then for you, Doctor, would be, you know, we just love Hillsdale.
Charlie loved Hillsdale.
So, you know, I didn't give your bio, but you are the Kirby Professor in Constitutional Government and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College.
And you have a lot of other titles, which is very academia of you.
Your titles are always so long.
But I guess the question, the real question of our time is with how much the nation has changed, with how much technology has changed, how many new cultures have come into the country in the last 40 years, especially.
Can this common creed, this shared poetry of our political stole, can it bring us together again?
Great question, central question, probably the question for us to think about.
But here's the way to answer that, I think, that Charlie, among others, I think was getting at when he was studying more and more about these questions, in particular, the American founding.
The founding occurs in a time period that's not the modern one we are used to being surrounded by and what is taught in college campuses.
It was a world in which we still had Christian moral horizons and we were still within the broad confines of what we might call a classical educational system.
And in that way of thinking, the way we think about things that change, technology, methods of warfare, shipbuilding, whatever it might be, there are things that change.
But the most important things to understand are the things that don't change.
And the things that don't change are those things that have to do with our theological pursuits, which is why the kind of Christian roots of Western civilization are so important, but also the kind of the intellectual, moral, rational roots of our thinking about unchanging principles.
And the Declaration really brings, in the American context, especially, brings both of those things together in a very deep way.
And so the argument of kind of this sense of education that underlies all this is that you know the permanent things, and then these other questions become kind of prudential matters.
We can debate about them.
We can think them through, but you look at them in light of something else.
Today, one of the problems is we look at these things in particulars as if that's the only thing at issue here, this particular policy question.
The founders looked at it differently.
I think Charlie looked at it differently.
I think we at Hillsdale look at it differently, which is these are all interesting questions.
Let's think them through.
Let's argue and debate and deliberate, which is why it's so important to have that conversation.
But we do so in light of things that don't change because you can't judge whether something immediate, new is good or bad unless you have something, a standard by which to judge it.
And that's really the heart of the Declaration.
It's also the heart of the kind of the Westerns, the whole Western tradition, both Christian and rational, going back to the Greeks and the Romans.
Yeah, it's the Western tradition, but I think one thing that's often worth remarking upon is how really fortunate America has been.
We were created in a revolution, but you can compare the French Revolution, another Western country, another historically Christian country, and their revolution was spectacularly bloody.
We've had other spectacularly violent overturnings of the existing order.
And in America, ours was relatively peaceful.
Even our Civil War, we recovered from quickly.
I was wondering if you could comment on, were there special ingredients into the American Declaration of Independence?
Absolutely.
And you're, again, that is a fabulous question itself as well, because there's an American, we call it the American Revolution, and then there's another thing called the French Revolution.
They are diametrically opposed and very different.
And it's important to understand the differences, which is why we call it an American Revolution, but more rightly, we refer to it as the American founding.
As they were declaring their independence, having a revolution against England, but at the same time, they were starting a new nation.
So it really kind of points to the roots in a way that, whereas the French Revolution was all about tearing things down.
But there are a number of important differences.
One is the American Revolution, American founding is influenced by the roots of Western civilization that go through, in particular, England, which means it's more religious.
It also means it's more tolerant and focused on constitutionalism and the rule of law.
The French Revolution really is all the bad aspects of the Enlightenment.
The French thinkers, which give rise to the German thinkers and a lot of the modern progressive liberals we have today, which largely rejects, it was very anti-religious and it was anti-constitutional order.
The other aspect I would add to it, which I get into some here, but is another aspect of some of my other scholarship, is the people involved.
The members of the Continental Congress, and in particular, George Washington, are their particular roles, their characters, their shaping of their values and their moral sensibility.
So our revolution ends in Washington making sure we have a constitutional convention, as opposed to the French Revolution ends in people getting their heads cut off, the guillotine, and Napoleon making war on the rest of the world for his own glory.
So they can't be, you couldn't have two revolutions that are more different than each other than the American and the French.
Yeah, I mean, the French Revolution, I have not studied it to the extent that Blake has, but it is, as you said, diametrically opposed to the American experience.
By the way, there is something, you know, you hear sometimes these arguments about a case for British colonialism and a case for the British Empire, and it really is a remarkable element.
Britain has shaped the world so much, we overlook how amazing Britain was, the places that created America, Australia, even Canada before it's recent.
You got to admit, I don't know about that.
Yeah, no, I'm just kidding.
What I will say, I'm really curious, Doctor, I want to dive into this because you're saying that the Declaration is a particular and a unique outflow of the spirit of the people of America.
And so when we have you in the next segment, I want to ask you, what was the break and what was the distinction between America and Britain?
What made us so unique?
And so hold on to that thought there, Doctor, until we have you for the next segment.
But that is a unique question, I think.
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Dr. Spiley, do you take any of these classes?
Have you taken them?
Have you gone through them?
Oh, I take most of them when they first come out.
Absolutely.
And I know people that do them.
We talk about them a lot.
We have two coming out next year on 1776 and the American Revolution.
So look out for those too.
Oh, it's fantastic.
They are really well produced.
People don't appreciate they're beautifully shot.
The lighting is perfect.
The visuals.
I mean, they're incredible.
And this one, you get Dr. Larian.
So we were talking about how great British imperialism actually maybe was, because if you compare, I mean, I know that's a controversial statement.
Okay, I get it.
It was complicated business.
But if you take their colonies versus others, you can see that they were far more successful.
Even in Kenya, you know, which was a British colony.
It's one of the most stable countries in Africa.
Anyways, but America was a British colony, but we broke from it.
What made America unique from the motherland?
From the mother country?
What made the American soul so different?
Well, I'd almost have to write a book to give you a full answer to that question.
Well, that's your next one, Doctor.
This one gets into a lot of that because I actually draw that out because that's, again, a crucial question.
So America is unique and different because it draws on a lot of these traditions.
I mean, Western civilization, going back to the Greeks and the Romans, going through the Christian tradition, going through England in particular, that is extremely important, creates this thing called America.
And America could go places the British just could not go.
The British weren't going to get rid of their king as a practical matter.
They were going to have consent.
But really, the turning point comes when all those things kind of combine, if you will, the Christian tradition in particular and the kind of rational Greek-Roman tradition and the British rule of law tradition.
And they are forced by the king and by his regulations and taxes to come up with a new idea for the basis of their freedom.
And they do.
And the basis of that is to recognize that in the very nature of things, there is human equality.
And that is a radical idea.
Not revolutionary in the modern sense of the French, but radical in the sense of going back to the root of things, which is what the word radical means.
That's a radical idea.
Now, that grows out of the whole Western tradition through England and equality is a very Christian idea.
But it's the first time a nation dedicates itself to the idea is the Americans.
So what's unique about it, the American tradition, is that it's both a tradition, a people.
We have a particular history.
We're a place.
We're made of this mix of these English peoples, especially that get mixed with other people.
And we have a lot of different religions.
All that is important.
But we have this political, these ideas, which are universal.
All men are created equal, not just Americans, not just British.
All men are created equal.
So we're a particular nation dedicated to universal principles.
Those two things together get back to what you were earlier asking about what's unique here.
A lot of countries are defined as merely because they're German or their ethnicity.
And then there are a lot of modern countries like the French or kind of radical claims, these various forms of rational idealism.
But the Americans have this melding, if you will, of a certain ethnicity, tradition, and history with ideas, but their ideas really go back to the earlier arguments you get from the Christian and the Greek and Roman traditions.
And as a result, I would say that's why America really is, as Lincoln said, the last great hope.
Doctor, we do represent Western tradition today.
Yeah, no, and I wish we could keep going.
We're hitting the end of our show here, but it does feel like America somehow took all the best things from all the best ideas and put them together and lifted up these universal truths.
