June 6, 2021 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
35:05
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| It's always young people that have the, that, that their frontal, well, A. | ||
| They have all of this energy, all of this passion, and they want to change the world, right? | ||
| I mean, you talk about young people and always talking about they want cultural change, they want a revolution, and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. | ||
| A lot of the older folks, I'm 50 now, we have gray hair, which is a sign of wisdom. | ||
| We've been around a while to see that all this history stuff is actually important. | ||
| And so, when you're young, you need a vision. | ||
| And so, I think that if we give the vision as older, wiser people who understand that ideas have consequences, that history can teach us about where we're headed in the future, that if they get on board with that and they're inspired, if they catch the vision that's rooted in the right stuff, I think that not only I don't think that it's they who are going to make the difference. | ||
| I'm banking on the power of God working in their hearts and through their minds to make better decisions than we've made in this generation. | ||
| That's where my hope is. | ||
| I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is an 80s sitcom legend, a touring speaker bringing | ||
| the gospel across America, and the host of the Campfire Revival on Facebook and Instagram, | ||
| Kirk Cameron, welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Hey Dave, it's so good to be talking with you. | ||
| I hope you don't mind me bringing you into my backyard like this. | ||
| I just thought it might be a little different for your program and the viewers. | ||
| Kirk, I believe this is the first time in I don't know how many hundreds or thousands of shows that I've done that someone has done it outdoors with a fire and an American flag. | ||
| I've never been prouder. | ||
| You know, I just feel like we gotta go grassroots, we gotta get real, and it's just, this is as real as it gets for me. | ||
| I got my tomato garden off to the left, I got a fire here, s'mores in a couple of hours, and you know, we're gonna play like Born in the USA with the flag waving in the breeze here pretty soon. | ||
| Are you allowed to have an American flag just waving in the breeze in crazy California? | ||
| I don't wanna out you, my friend, but you are in crazy California, not too far from me. | ||
| Well, I spent enough time in Florida and Texas and Tennessee to kind of balance it out. | ||
| So, I love it out here, though. | ||
| You know, it's a beautiful state, and it's my hope and my prayer that good people across this state will begin to reclaim the values that we want. | ||
| And we want to see them represented in this state and not abandon it. | ||
| All right, well, we're gonna get to some of those values. | ||
| We're gonna get to that flag behind you. | ||
| We're gonna get to the campfire and all that, but I gotta start at the beginning. | ||
| And the beginning for us is the 80s. | ||
| You were on Growing Pains. | ||
| It was like the number one show for a couple of years at least. | ||
| How many seasons was it on total? | ||
|
unidentified
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Like seven? | |
| I believe we were on six or seven seasons, yeah. | ||
| Six or seven seasons. | ||
| Definitely number one at some point. | ||
| ABC, I remember, eight o'clock. | ||
| Kirk Cameron, Growing Pains. | ||
| Were you watching as a little kid? | ||
| I mean, be honest. | ||
| Did you watch? | ||
| I was not only watching as a little kid, but I did my research. | ||
| So the show came out in 85. | ||
| I was about eight, nine years old, and there was a belief in my high school, I grew up in Syosset in Long Island, that we knew that Growing Pains took place in Long Island. | ||
| There was a rumor it took place in Syosset, but we discussed this once when I met you off camera. | ||
| You actually told me it took place one town over, is that correct? | ||
| It took place in Huntington, Long Island. | ||
| One town over. | ||
| One town over. | ||
| One town over on a street called Robin Hood Lane. | ||
| I don't know if that's a real street. | ||
| We had a Robbins Lane. | ||
| We had a Robbins Lane where I grew up. | ||
| Okay, well. | ||
| That was in Syosset, maybe in Huntington, it was Robin Hood Lane, I don't know. | ||
| Well, anyway, you were on a show that to me like sort of just captured what my childhood was like. | ||
| And you know, you're a couple of years older than me, but we were basically the same age. | ||
| My demeanor was very much the demeanor of Mike Seaver on that show, kind of happy-go-lucky, sort of popular, whatever, that whole thing. | ||
| You were a star at a pretty young age. | ||
| What was that like? | ||
| Well, you know, when, when I look back, I have kids now, so I have six children and I look back and I think, man, I would never, I would never want them to be in the environment that I was in just because it is, um, it is so precarious. | ||
| It's so dangerous. | ||
| I mean, how many child's TV stars do you see that grow up and they, they turn out with their head on their shoulders, uh, and you know, where they're not in jail or they're not, you know, just jumping off some, some crazy, uh, cliff in, in, in some way. | ||
| And I think, wow, For me, it was my only normal. | ||
| I can't compare it to a different childhood. | ||
| And fortunately, I had good people around me. | ||
| But yeah, it was very strange. | ||
| At 14 years old, people asking me for my autograph. | ||
| I thought, are you kidding? | ||
| This is some kind of a joke. | ||
| But then it went on and on. | ||
| It was a crazy adventure, but one that was beautiful. | ||
| I'm thankful. | ||
| I met my wife. | ||
| I got to work on projects that I'm passionate about, all because of growing pains. | ||
| I just want to be a good steward of these opportunities in the platform now, rather than just taking advantage and looking out for me. | ||
| So you met your wife, Chelsea, 29 years ago on the set? | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| On the set? | ||
| We're going to celebrate 30 years this year. | ||
| So I married Mike Seaver's girlfriend. | ||
| So you may remember that beautiful brunette who showed up on the set, because I sure do. | ||
| And interestingly, I actually met her first on my sister Candace Cameron's show, Full House. | ||
| And a year later, she showed up as Mike Seaver's girlfriend, and then I stole her away from Mike Seaver behind the scenes, and I married her, and we're gonna be celebrating 30 years this year. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| You stole her from Mike Seaver, who you also were. | ||
| That's very deep. | ||
| That's very deep. | ||
| He didn't deserve her. | ||
| Not at all. | ||
| He was a goofball, that guy. | ||
| Yeah, he always saw too many fish in the sea. | ||
| He was playing the field. | ||
| I was like, no, I'm a one-woman guy. | ||
| So I moved in and I managed to make her laugh the first time I kissed her on screen. | ||
| And that was way ahead of our real-life relationship. | ||
| In the show, I actually had to kiss her. | ||
| Mike Seaver had to kiss her. | ||
| And I made her laugh. | ||
| I think that was the charm that set the hook. | ||
| And now she's mine. | ||
| And here we are. | ||
| And you guys did all the serious stuff. | ||
| You know, the 80s had their melancholy episodes. | ||
| There was the episode where you and your friends went to that party and a bunch of them did cocaine, but Mike did not. | ||
| And you've grown up to be a good family man. | ||
| Six freaking kids. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's nuts. | |
| Well, it is. | ||
| You know, unless you're the Duggars, then that's just light work. | ||
| But it's been, you know, it's kind of like the Brady Bunch. | ||
| I don't have Alice the Maid or Sam the Butcher, but we got a house full of kids. | ||
| It's been awesome. | ||
| They're grown now. | ||
| So my kids are now 23, 22, 21, 20, 19 and 18. | ||
| And so I've got proposals and marriages. | ||
| I've got college and graduations. | ||
| And so we're just kind of dealing with the gamut of it right now. | ||
| And it's It's always a growing experience, not just for them, but for us as parents. | ||
| Are you saying there are growing pains involved, Kirk? | ||
| I am, I am, but I wanted you to say it, not me. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So talk to me a little bit about the show ends and then eventually you kind of reappeared and you started talking more about faith and the things that mattered to you. | ||
| And then the media was kind of not that nice about it, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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Or did that take a little while at first? | |
| It was good fodder for the tabloid shows. | ||
| It was good rating stuff. | ||
| But in reality, what happened was I was an atheist. | ||
| I was one of many people who just never really thought about God, never thought about faith. | ||
| I had more faith in myself or people that I looked up to. | ||
| And then one day, a pretty young girl invited me to meet Her family and they went to church and so I was an atheist and so I wasn't interested in in the church I was interested in the girl, but I figured if I was ever gonna see her again I I couldn't tell them what I really believed but that at the end of that day I was really intrigued and I was captured by the message that I heard and I began investigating and eventually came to the conclusion that maybe maybe this isn't all an accident and maybe I don't know everything and | ||
| And eventually became persuaded that the message of the gospel and the message in the Bible was one that I wanted to embrace with all of my heart. | ||
| And I began going that way and it really changed my trajectory, not only personally, but I wanted my personal beliefs and convictions, which I felt were right, to line up with the things I did professionally because I knew it would influence other people. | ||
| You know, kind of like what I think you're doing a beautiful job of taking the values that mean something to you and helping to spread them because you want to produce, you know, human flourishing. | ||
| You don't want to squash that with bad ideas, but uplift it and help it with good ideas. | ||
| Were you surprised when you started talking about that and doing some other shows and doing some stuff on your own? | ||
| And I assume your agents must have been like, oh no, he's going down this road, this ain't gonna fly. | ||
| Yeah, that kind of stuff did start to happen. | ||
| You know, really it was, I mean, imagine I'm 17. | ||
| Imagine you, Dave, you're 17 years old. | ||
| You're on a TV show. | ||
| Um, I would rather be playing basketball with my friends, but I got, I got a huge responsibility and kind of like whatever I do affects all these other people and their livelihood. | ||
| And I'm feeling like, Hey, I think some of these jokes for this family show in the eighties is, is really kinda, Maybe sending kids down the wrong road, and so I would request for a line change. | ||
| Well, that could be seen as flexing celebrity muscle from a 17-year-old kid who thinks he's all that, when really, all I wanted to do was be able to go to sleep at night with a clear conscience. | ||
| And so, people started to get upset, and then all kinds of e-entertainment crazy stories were coming out. | ||
| Kirk Cameron, born again! | ||
| Kirk Cameron tanks the show! | ||
| Uh, has actress fired when in, when reality, uh, that, that wasn't it at all. | ||
| And, um, you know, I, I, I, I look back on growing pains and I say there were ups and downs, there were, there was challenges, but ultimately that's where I found out who my true friends are. | ||
| And, and that's where, where my, where my faith in God was actually strengthened because it really caused me to examine the things that I, that I, that I hold dear and, and make sure that they're, that That they're tested and that they're true. | ||
| So as a guy that grew up as a kid and as an atheist, I suppose, on television, then you have your kind of awakening. | ||
| Does it surprise you that Hollywood is kind of where it's at at the moment, which I'm sure most of my viewers will agree is not a great place? | ||
| Does it surprise me? | ||
| Well, you know, I guess I don't know whether it surprises me or not. | ||
| One of the things that I find interesting is that when people are afraid of public shame or humiliation or condemnation, | ||
| we don't like that, right? | ||
| And so we tend to like hide and we don't let people see who we are | ||
| or really what we believe. | ||
| And I think unfortunately, people within the family of faith have felt that way | ||
| and sort of kept that stuff under wraps. | ||
| Even though the world is increasingly religious. | ||
| I believe that we were actually designed to know and to love God, and so we wind up worshipping something if it's not God. | ||
| Whether it's yourself, or it's the government, or it's a group of people you think are smarter, but ultimately from that source will come our laws, and it will dictate our morality, and all of that kind of thing. | ||
| that people of faith will begin to not divorce that faith from the arts and entertainment. | ||
| I hope that they'll take their faith in their values and let it permeate the things that will then shape the culture. | ||
| And I think when we see more and more faith-based movies doing better and better at the box office, you look at The Chosen and you see how well that's doing, you look at the quality of that, you look at The Passion of the Christ years ago, and even a movie that I just finished, I think that people are beginning to say, like, wait a minute, there's not only a market for this, but this is actually communicating good messages that most of us, I believe, in America understand we're getting away from, and we want to get back to those things. | ||
| So I'm hoping for a revival, not just, you know, in the heart of people of faith, but in Hollywood and in government and in the marketplace and everywhere else. | ||
| Are you hopeful just because of how crazy the last year and a half was? | ||
| I've sort of come around to that, that I think so many people, you know, yeah, people are depressed, they're angry, they're confused, all of that stuff, but it caused them to look at their lives more seriously. | ||
| So I'm hopeful for that. | ||
| Yeah, I think you're right. | ||
| And I think that, Dave, at the end of the day, you know, if you and I jump off a building, Um, we, we don't break the law of gravity. | ||
| The law of gravity breaks us. | ||
| There are things that are built into the world that are non-negotiables, and I think that false systems will always end up failing. | ||
| They may flourish for a while, but it's kind of like that big tree that you see in the background. | ||
| Sometimes these oak trees get so big and top-heavy with all their big, impressive branches, but if the root system underneath is not as developed, if it's not down deep, all it takes is a strong wind and the thing topples itself. | ||
| Because it's way too top-heavy and I think our culture is getting that way. | ||
| Eventually it will teeter and topple over because our foundational roots of faith and morality and virtue that our founders said were absolutely essential for a free society have begun to rot and we've neglected them. | ||
| So if we see rotten fruit culturally, I think That the real answer is a systemic answer and we need to go down and we need to begin to nourish the roots again. | ||
| So you're sort of answering my next question, but how does the faith part, that was pretty good what you did there, how does the faith part get you to that flag behind you and sort of shape, you know, what you believe politically? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I've never, I'm really not a political guy. | ||
| I'm a, I'm a family guy. | ||
| I would say I'm a faith guy. | ||
| Um, but, I have kids in the world, and I think to myself, what's the place gonna be like in 20 years? | ||
| That's a terrifying question. | ||
| When I think about where we're headed right now, politically, economically, morally, spiritually, that's why I'm glad for your program. | ||
| I'm glad for many others who are communicating this message. | ||
| And so what I did is, as I said, you know what? | ||
| Guys like George Washington, people like Abraham Lincoln, and the Pilgrims even, Uh, said that faith and morality are absolute essential for a free and just society. | ||
| And so I began researching and educating myself and I found that, that the people who built this country did something that we're not doing anymore. | ||
| And that is they're making these, these sacred promises with one another to covenant together. | ||
| It's not just a legal contract that we can show to a judge later when somebody screws up and, you know, breaks the contract. | ||
| But it's this sense that till death do us part, we are going to have each other's back, and we're going to do the right thing from the heart, and we're going to promise with God as well that if He would protect us, if He would guide us, that we trust and believe that things will go well. | ||
| And our forefathers did that. | ||
| Our foremothers understood that. | ||
| It's what they taught to their kids. | ||
| And I believe that we need to go back to that if we want to see America flourish as a free and just society, even economically, even educationally. | ||
| All of these things, I think, are fruit on the tree with the roots going down into faith and virtue. | ||
| And that's what I'm trying to get people to think about, hoping that we, the people of America, will come up with a solution and not wait for our hope to fly in on Air Force One. | ||
| It ain't coming. | ||
| Not from any Air Force One, but particularly not from the guy on this Air Force One. | ||
| Which one of your sons did I meet? | ||
| How old was he? | ||
| So that's James, and James is 18, and he actually took his last math final today and graduated high school. | ||
| Very exciting day. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Do I say congratulations to you? | ||
| I guess so, you're the dad, you got- Yeah, thanks, thanks, yeah. | ||
| Tell James I said congratulations, but the reason I bring him up is because I met you at an event in Florida, a bunch of his friends were around there, and you were saying, oh Dave, you know, you've affected these kids, and I love hearing that, because it's like, oh, that means that there are young people who are, Thinking about freedom, thinking about all the things that I talk about. | ||
| Are you, are you hopeful? | ||
| Like when you talk to your kids of those ages who are going to be the ones that get us out of this mess, like, are you hopeful that they can do it? | ||
| Yeah, I am hopeful that they can do it. | ||
| It's, it's always young people that have the, that, that their frontal, well A, They have all of this energy, all of this passion, and they want to change the world, right? | ||
| I mean, you talk about young people and always talking about they want cultural change, they want a revolution, and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. | ||
| A lot of the older folks, I'm 50 now, we have gray hair, which is a sign of wisdom. | ||
| We've been around a while to see that all this history stuff is actually important. | ||
| And so when you're young, you need a vision. | ||
| And so I think that if we give the vision as older, wiser people who understand that ideas have consequences, that history can teach us about where we're headed in the future, that if they get on board with that and they're inspired, if they catch the vision that's rooted in the right stuff, I think that not only I don't think that it's they who are going to make the difference. | ||
| I'm banking on the power of God working in their hearts and through their minds to make better decisions. | ||
| than we've made in this generation. | ||
| That's where my hope is. | ||
| What have you done, you and your wife, I guess, to make sure your kids are not infected by so much of what's going on out there with critical race theory, identity politics, just all the cultural norms? | ||
| Because I get a ton of questions about that from people that are of our old age, 45 and 50, that are like, what do I do about the kids? | ||
| Yeah, well, that's a great question. | ||
| And I don't know that I have a one-size-fits-all fix for that, You know, we homeschooled our kids for many years and we didn't do that because we were running away from something. | ||
| We felt we could offer our kids a superior educational path by teaching them the values, uh, and giving them the sources of information and history about, and government and literature and, and faith that they weren't going to get at a regular school. | ||
| And then some of the years were actually spent at private schools as well. | ||
| But, but this stuff is that you're talking about is per it's pervasive. | ||
| And so, You know, honestly, I invite friends, my kids' friends and my friends, to sit around a campfire like this and to say, hey, what do you think of that flag? | ||
| You know, what is important to you? | ||
| What are your friends dealing with right now, you know, in relationships, politically? | ||
| You know, what are the taboo things that you can and cannot say? | ||
| And then we discuss those things. | ||
| I think Not just swallowing the narrative that's coming in off of your social media feed, but researching things. | ||
| And that's even becoming increasingly difficult, right? | ||
| Because stuff's getting scrubbed off the internet and filtered out to where, you know, I can't even say certain words right now. | ||
| You and I might get this video scrubbed. | ||
| And so maybe you found a workaround. | ||
| But it's challenging. | ||
| Last week, I had to edit for the first time ever in all my years of doing a show. | ||
| We had David Horowitz on. | ||
| He said something that he believed as a free person in a somewhat free society. | ||
| But we knew that if we aired it as is, we were in risk of getting our channel booted. | ||
| For the first time ever, I had to edit something or we put soundbars over it on YouTube. | ||
| Put it on my local channel though. | ||
| Yeah, well, that's great. | ||
| And you know what I hope, David? | ||
| I hope that we realize that we're all sort of kicking ourselves now and going, wait a minute, wait a minute, why did we think of creating our own social media channels and news outlets and keeping those free? | ||
| Why didn't we think of that 40 years ago? | ||
| But the good news, I think now, we're waking up to it, and now these things are beginning to be formed, and now we're beginning to be able to not rely on other people who disagree and wanna squash our message to distribute and promote our message. | ||
| That just doesn't make sense. | ||
| But it was easy, it was free, and so we just kinda went along with it. | ||
| So I'm hopeful that we are at a very exciting point in history, and that people are gonna look back on this generation That guy, David, beat Goliath, right? | ||
| Am I getting that story correct? | ||
|
unidentified
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He did. | |
| But, you know, he was a little guy and David was a really big guy. | ||
| and outnumbered, but they did the right thing and heaven was behind him and they | ||
| made the difference. That guy David beat Goliath, right? Am I getting that story | ||
| correct? He did, but you know he was a little guy and David was a really big | ||
| guy and I think the lesson there is that you know the only way that that story | ||
| ever makes sense is when God is working through David to defeat Goliath. | ||
| And that's my hope, is that he'll also work through us to take down the nefarious forces that would love to see freedom go away. | ||
| So for the people that have not seen the Campfire Revival, you are sitting at the campfire right now. | ||
| You lit the fire for us. | ||
| Hopefully you're not gonna self immolate or burn the flag while we're here, but you did this all just as we sat down. | ||
| What are you doing over there at the Campfire Revival on Instagram and Facebook? | ||
| Is that it? | ||
| Just chat. | ||
| Well, I know what you're doing, so I'm asking you. | ||
| I'm asking as the audience, not as myself. | ||
| I know what you're doing. | ||
| Okay, so basically, You know, this all started, you know, after this whole last year and then through the election time and the inauguration and people are talking about the first hundred days of the administration. | ||
| And, you know, so many of us have been sort of like waiting and hoping for someone else to do something. | ||
| And we're waiting for this to happen. | ||
| And I thought to myself as I'm sitting in my backyard, cooped up in California, where you're basically under house arrest and lockdown at the time. | ||
| Wait a minute. | ||
| What's our plan? | ||
| What kind of a hundred day plan could I be a part of that's gonna actually promote the positive change rather than just complaining about the things that I don't like to see? | ||
| And I said, you know what? | ||
| I don't know the best plan, but I'm gonna start a plan and it's gonna be, I'm gonna sit in my backyard for 100 days in a row and build a campfire. | ||
| And I'm going to invite other people to join me as we pray, as we worship God, and as we begin to learn what made America the freest, strongest, most prosperous nation in the world. | ||
| And we found that on Facebook Live, we'd have 15,000 to 20,000 people every single night joining. | ||
| And the comments were flying, and people made it a destination every night because they found hope, and they found something for them to talk about with their kids. | ||
| And we did that for 100 days, called it the American Campfire Revival. | ||
| And it's all about that inside-out strategy, that bottom-up strategy that our founders understood and that I think is gonna be the solution to getting us back to where we wanna go. | ||
| Yeah, what else are you working on right now? | ||
| Are you gonna be traveling again and spreading the word and getting out there? | ||
| I mean, you're here in Cali. | ||
| We are opening up, apparently, at some point. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| Well, I am working on quite a few things. | ||
| This American Campfire revival has been just kind of a surprise joy for me to do, although all of my wardrobe smells like smoke and my wife is tired of it. | ||
| I'm roasting like a marshmallow as we speak. | ||
| My back is my backside is turning golden brown. | ||
| You just see it. | ||
| Nice, nice. | ||
| And we're going to continue this, and I'm about to start another 40 days of the American Campfire Revival, speaking about family covenants and then community covenants, church covenants and civil government covenants that kind of all weave together to form kind of this Kevlar fabric that I believe will resist the darts of tyranny and totalitarianism. | ||
| In fact, this is something I wanted to show you. | ||
| This is a pledge that I kind of modeled after the Declaration of Independence called Our Pledge to Renew the American Covenant. | ||
| And it's what we can affirm together as families and as individuals to get back to these values. | ||
| And we've signed it here, and I'm hoping people will hang this in their wall and talk about it as a family and with their neighbors. | ||
| And then we have some live events around the country where we gather in fields and farms. | ||
|
unidentified
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Whoa, whoa! | |
| No, that's all right, we're good, we're good. | ||
| Well, if you dropped the whole covenant in the fire just then, that would have. | ||
| It is, and we're still good. | ||
| And gather around bonfires and sing and pray and talk about what really matters. | ||
| And if we have one here in California, I'll make sure that I invite you. | ||
| I'd love to have you come. | ||
| I'd love to come. | ||
| For a second, I thought Newsom was about to try to take you out. | ||
| I thought, you know, cause he's got these snipers out there. | ||
| People are in the backyard having fun with an American flag. | ||
| Geez. | ||
| That's actually the first time that's happened. | ||
|
unidentified
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So I think? | |
| If you see any smoke coming from behind me, you let me know, okay? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I hope you have insurance for this program. | ||
| Wait, so give me some of the, give me two or three of the, not edicts, of the principles that are on the document there. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| That's it. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Boy, here we go. | ||
| We promise to each other as a family to provide for one another as long as we live. | ||
| There's so many others. | ||
| in scripture. There's so many others. We commit to living peacefully, to obeying the laws | ||
| of the land and working to elect godly, trustworthy leaders who will not abuse their limited power | ||
| as our public servants and distort our constitution. So we talk about the civic realm and also | ||
| the family realm and also the community realm. And you know, all of it really begins with | ||
| self-government, right? | ||
| I think this is important. | ||
| I think people would find this interesting. | ||
| When we talk about government, we're usually talking about them, you know, like out there or up there. | ||
| We're talking about government and what they're doing. | ||
| But in our country, our founders understood that that kind of government will be terrible totalitarian government unless we lay the foundation of self-government. | ||
| And if we govern ourselves according to the rules of right, right? | ||
| Like it's not about left or right, but it's about up or down. | ||
| And if we go up to heaven's rules of right, then we don't need the government with the big stick to beat us back into civility. | ||
| We've already got that. | ||
| We got that individually. | ||
| We got it in our families. | ||
| We got it in our communities and government can stay limited and small and people have freedom. | ||
| And so that's really the essence. | ||
| The most powerful culture-transforming force in the world is the self-governing person who loves God and loves their neighbor. | ||
| That's what our founders believed, and that's what I'm trying to communicate to people. | ||
| Which one do you think is harder for your old Hollywood friends to swallow? | ||
| The belief part or your feelings about government part? | ||
| Because they're probably not thrilled with either. | ||
| You mean, government being limited? | ||
| Yeah, well, you believe in small government and the constitution that America's good, you know, that sort of stuff. | ||
| Or the belief part, is that harder for them to swallow? | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You know, it's all so tied together. | ||
| But actually, I think that It's interesting, you said that small government and that America is good. | ||
| You know, the principles that America is founded on are absolutely good. | ||
| The framework is genius. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| But it depends on personal self-government. | ||
| All of our founders told us that. | ||
| And the truth is, I'm actually for big government. | ||
| But it's not what you think. | ||
| It's big self-government. | ||
| It's big family government. | ||
| And once we take care of that, we don't need a big police force. | ||
| Because we're doing the right thing at the friend and family level. | ||
| I think a lot of people are watching this going, what are you two fools still doing in California? | ||
| I mean, at this point for you, is it just the weather? | ||
| I mean, you could be doing this in Florida or Texas or Tennessee. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| And I certainly understand why people are moving out of here. | ||
| They're getting out of here like rats jumping off of a ship. | ||
| because we're sinking economically and politically. | ||
| However, I'm all about revival. | ||
| Look at my shirt, American Campfire Revival, re-vival. | ||
| Right, so that means like putting life back into things again, things that are flatlining | ||
| and dying, reviving them. | ||
| I think that can happen anywhere. | ||
| I think it can happen in my marriage, if my marriage is flatlining. | ||
| I think it can happen in my family, my community. | ||
| I think it can happen in our state. | ||
| And so I'm hoping and praying that America, and starting with California, begins to see a renewal, a revival, and a resurgence of the kind of stuff that will Cause human flourishing, not human decay. | ||
| What do you think we can do in this crazy state? | ||
| I mean, you know, I'm hanging on by a thread, man. | ||
| I know, I hear you. | ||
| Well, I'm starting with a campfire. | ||
| All right, all right, fair enough. | ||
| All right, that's it, I'm coming to the campfire. | ||
| And I'm listening to you and I'm listening to others. | ||
| And I believe that there are people with more brilliant ideas than I have that are gonna are gonna help move us in the right direction. | ||
| And I continue to pray for them. | ||
| Do you find that people across the country, when you're traveling, regardless of whether you're red or blue or any of that stuff, that people are pretty much the same? | ||
| Uh-oh, uh-oh, what's going on behind you now? | ||
| That people are pretty much the same. | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| Like, regardless of whether they're red or blue. | ||
| That if you can really get to them, that the stuff that you're talking about is sort of the stuff that they really believe. | ||
| Some of them just don't know it, maybe. | ||
| You know, I think that people want to have a good job. | ||
| They want to be able to put food on their table and provide for their family. | ||
| They want to have a sense of purpose, like their life counts for something. | ||
| And I think people have been, sold different recipes on how to, how they're going to get that. | ||
| And so, you know, politically, uh, you know, are, are, are you going to have somebody who's going to give you those things or give you the opportunity to work for those things and invest in those things? | ||
| Uh, that, that's, that's one aspect of it. | ||
| But I think at the end of the day, if we're talking about values, you know, I, I've got friends who are on the other side of the aisle and, uh, you know, They want the same things that I want. | ||
| I want an opportunity to provide for my family. | ||
| I want an opportunity to be able to speak the truth and not be censored for it. | ||
| I want an opportunity to pursue happiness and not be restricted and controlled and thrown into a cage because somebody disagrees with me. | ||
| And I think there's a very specific way to go about that, and that's what I'm trying to promote. | ||
| Yeah, when you get those guys on the other side of the aisle to come to the campfire, are they able to do it? | ||
| Because that's what a lot of my, let's say, conservative friends are now struggling with. | ||
| It's like, yeah, I'll have that conversation with anybody, but they don't seem to want to have that conversation with us. | ||
| Yeah, I do know what you're talking about. | ||
| I hope I'm not just, you know, parroting something here. | ||
| I think I really do see some groups of people really going after facts and data and statistics. | ||
| And I see other groups of people that seem to not want to talk about those things, but really pour on the lighter fluid of emotion. | ||
| and sometimes not deal with the issues. | ||
| I'm all about dealing with the issues and understanding what the facts are, | ||
| and then let's work together to solve problems. | ||
| I've got a family too, and I've got neighbors too, and rather than the government taking my money | ||
| to give to other people in an inefficient way, I would rather keep my money and have a heart of compassion that gets to know my neighbor and help them out at the local level. | ||
| I just think that's more efficient. | ||
| I think that's better. | ||
| And it develops relationships that cause communities to flourish. | ||
| Where am I sending the fine people? | ||
| Just to kirkcameron.com? | ||
| If I send them to Facebook, I mean, you could say something and next thing you know, long gone. | ||
| Yeah, so, you know, yeah, just send them to my website, kirkcameron.com. | ||
| You've got all the info there. | ||
| You can check out the American Campfire Revival and stay in touch. | ||
| Kirk, I'm coming over for a campfire. | ||
| Come on, bring it. | ||
| You're doing the s'mores? | ||
| You're doing the s'mores? | ||
| I'm doing the s'mores. | ||
| You know, if you got something that you want to grill on the fire, you just bring it with you. | ||
| You've seen some of the things I'm grilling. | ||
| I'll bring over the meat. | ||
| And you've got like a crazy flamethrower over there, don't you? | ||
| I do, this guy gave it to me. | ||
| It's like a personal flamethrower, like every guy needs one. | ||
| Especially if you have a beard, this is a tool you need to have in your toolbox. | ||
| It throws out about a five, six foot flame and it's awesome. | ||
| I will bring the meat, you bring the flamethrower, keep the American flag right there. | ||
| It will be a hell of an evening. | ||
| We will put it on Instagram or something. | ||
| Let's do it. | ||
| All right, Kirk Cameron, great seeing you, man. | ||
| Thanks, you too. |
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