Bonus Episode: Charlie Kirk's Bad Faith Debate at Cambridge
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In this bonus episode, Dan and Brad dive into a recent viral video of Charlie Kirk debating a claimed Cambridge professor about contentious issues like the Israel-Hamas conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war.
They meticulously dissect Kirk’s arguments, explore their rhetorical strategies, and discuss the implications of such debates on public discourse.
The episode concludes with a Q&A session for subscribers addressing empathy, sympathy, and the complexities surrounding biblical interpretation within evangelical contexts.
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www.feyyaz.tv Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
Great to be with you for our bonus episode this week.
And get to do this with my co-host.
Who am I, Brad?
I don't even know.
I'm Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Nice to be with you, Brad.
I know you've been six.
I'm glad you were able to, I don't know, feel okay enough to do this.
So we'll see.
We'll see how it goes.
Yeah, it's been a thing.
But, you know, everyone's got their things.
And appreciate you stepping in for me in the weekly roundup a week or two ago.
Today we have two objectives.
One of them is...
The other is going to be just fun.
So we've got a bonus episode here.
At the very end, as usual, you're going to hear Dan answer some Q&A from subscribers.
So subscribers, stick around.
Dan will be here the last half an hour of this episode answering questions.
If you're not a subscriber, stick around for the first segment.
What we're going to do right now for everybody, subscriber or not, is premium subscriber or not, is spend some time...
There's actually some doubt about that.
I've been trying to verify.
It's not clear that he's actually a professor, Dan, that it looks like he might just be the, not just be, that's the wrong way to say it, but he might be the union finance chief, like for the student union, debate union, whatever, rather than faculty at Cambridge University.
So we're going to dissect that.
Dan and I both have comments.
I've ruined Dan's algorithm because now his YouTube is just filled with Charlie Kirk videos, so you're welcome, Dan.
And then we'll talk about Dan's, you know, very, his middle-aged renaissance leading up to a doctor visit where his doctor was like, you might be aging in reverse.
Are you that guy, Brian Johnson, who's like spending two million?
I've actually had people point this out to me, that you've been kind enough to refer to all this as a middle-aged renaissance and not a crisis.
No, no.
No, no, no.
That's not even close to a crisis.
I mean, and we'll get there.
Let's do Charlie Kirk, and then we're going to get to why this is a total renaissance.
All right, y 'all.
So, everybody, brace yourself for the next half an hour or so.
We're going to do some Charlie Kirk debunking.
So, let's play the clip.
It's about five or six minutes.
Some of you might have heard the clip already.
Some of you might have seen it on Instagram, etc.
But here's Charlie Kirk talking to a...
Dan's flip phone is going off.
Dan, flip...
I'm going to flip you off is what I'm going to do.
Now we're doing it.
Bonus episode.
We're loose.
We're feeling good.
I've had a seltzer water or two.
So, listen to Charlie Kirk and this gentleman at Cambridge and then we'll go from there.
Here it is.
Israel versus Hamas.
Good guy versus bad guy.
Russia versus Ukraine.
Who's the good guy and who's the bad guy?
Both are bad.
One is worse.
Which way around?
Russia is worse than Ukraine.
Okay, so why haven't we pursued that?
What do you mean?
Well, it seems to me that in the whole of the current US proposition, that Ukraine is being the bad guy.
In what way?
We funded Ukraine upwards to $200 billion.
Absolutely.
We just signed a mineral deal with Ukraine, not Russia.
But you are expecting Ukraine to give up 20% of its territory to someone who invaded it?
Well, is Crimea part of Russia or Ukraine?
Ukraine.
That's where we don't agree.
Well, I'm afraid that's part of an international treaty.
That's not up for grabs.
Well, it's interesting.
I mean, thanks.
Thanks for that.
I mean, thanks.
No, no, no.
America signed the agreement that gave Ukraine Crimea when the Soviet Union ended.
Right.
It was done.
First of all, it never should have been done.
It was largely ceremonial.
However, it was annexed under Obama.
Yes, and it was a mistake.
And it should be given back to Russia as a sign of good gesture to end this conflict.
Who's currently controlling Crimea?
Where was the Russian Navy headquartered in World War II?
Where was the end of World War II?
I'm not doubting that.
I'm just saying that if we're being logical on what has happened, that you are now arguing against that flow.
And I don't understand it.
Because actually, why is Ukraine the bad guy?
No, I said they're bad.
They're not the bad guy.
They were both bad, but one was more bad than the other.
Correct, yes.
So why is Ukraine bad?
There's a lot wrong with Ukraine.
First of all, they're not a democracy.
Zelensky refuses to hold an election.
Well, no, he can't hold an election.
Wait, did Churchill hold an election during the war?
Because under his constitution, That's not true.
He can call an election.
He can call a snap election.
He's full dictator of the country.
No.
Because he knows that the people of Ukraine would kick him out immediately because he's deeply unpopular.
In fact, if he wanted to show a statement to the world, he would call an election and win by 80% and say, see, I'm super popular.
So that's number one.
I have a problem with that.
I have a problem with a person being propped up as a government we're sending $200 billion to that refuses even to face his voters.
I can't agree with you factually on that at all.
Constitutionally, Ukraine is not able to hold an election because it's under military law at the moment, and that's just a matter of fact.
Again, he can, as a prime minister or president, he can do whatever he wants.
He can't.
He can't sign an executive order and change their constitution.
Neither can the American president either.
He could even do a ceremonial election to see where he actually stands with the people.
I think we call those opinion polls.
Yes, and they're very negative.
But you would agree that a person that holds on to power without the election of the sovereign is pretty questionable?
No, not in those circumstances.
Okay, then we disagree.
Okay, that's fine.
But give me another reason why you're Do you not know where a lot of this money is going?
I don't disagree that there is a problem with corruption, but the most corrupt country in Europe, are you sure about that?
I'd have to think, I'd have to double or triple think about that, but they're very corrupt.
Okay, so that's a little bit doubtful, it's not absolute.
There's plenty of corruption around, I mean, you know, let's face it, we are talking about comparison with some of the states you're doing business with in the Gulf.
Of course, but we're not giving them money, they're giving us money.
That's the difference, right?
Saudi Arabia is Well, hold on a second.
It's morally acceptable to take money from corruption.
Well, hold on.
First of all, as far as morally acceptable, you do what's best in the benefit of your country.
And so, for example, we were allied with Russia during the Second World War, and I'm glad we were.
How much money is too much money to send to Ukraine?
We're at 200 billion right now.
I don't think you have to send any more money to Ukraine.
We agree.
I think you have to agree to support them as a free country and perhaps sell them weapons like you're very happy to sell weapons to less free countries.
And I think Europe will pick up the slack, as we ought to.
And I don't disagree with some of the comments about Europe not looking after its own security.
I just don't get this approach, which was supposedly to end the war quickly, which now seems to be elongating it.
And in doing so, throwing up a smokescreen of very variable facts, if they are facts at all, about how things occurred, which actually isn't helping things.
And if people can't see that Putin is stalling, I think he might be stalling.
And I think even your president has acknowledged the fact that he thinks he might be stalling.
That's correct.
So we don't have a disagreement there?
No, no, we don't.
We just have a disagreement about the efficacy of tactics.
And we don't know.
And I'm willing to say we could be wrong.
Of course you could be wrong in life.
We could all be wrong.
But actually bringing that war to an end consistently actually isn't going very well.
And I would just suggest to you that whatever tactics have been used are perhaps not the best.
and they are certainly inconsistent with what's going on in the Middle East and how America has been treating parties in the Middle East.
No, that's a fair contention.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you.
All right, Dan.
I made the mistake of watching this before bed, like when I was sick last week.
So you've been awake since then, basically?
I was so angry, and I was just like, He debates the students from Cambridge.
These debates to me are set up for...
people like Charlie Kirk to win, because no matter what, they're going to claim that he destroyed Cambridge Professor.
And right-wing media is set up to- I know that this is true, Brad, because as you say, my algorithm, if I look in the pane on YouTube now, it is all just Charlie Kirk destroys student this, Charlie Kirk does...
Charlie Kirk destroying.
He's like the rhetorical right-wing Godzilla, just marching through the poorest cities of the left and destroying them.
Yeah.
I've got thoughts on how it's set up for him to win as well, or the things that he does to always sort of occupy that space, but you're right.
It's a rigged game if you're going to take on somebody like Charlie Kirk.
It is, and I think there's hesitancy for me to even do this today, because it's like, well, why give more attention to this?
I think for me, what gets under my skin is the lack of any kind of good faith.
Engagement with these arguments in the public square and the lack of rigor.
And so I just at least once in a while appreciate spending time with you and just being like, let's just go through what he argued.
And let's see how the argument works mechanically, if it holds up.
What he's doing to distract and to red herring and to strawman his way through it such that it feels like he's winning.
And if you're just somebody at home who wants him to win, you think he won and all of that.
Let's tee it up.
So the very first part is this gentleman who's older.
If you see the video, he looks as if to be in his 50s or 60s.
He says, I have a short question.
It's about Israel versus Hamas.
Good guy versus bad guy.
So he's like, you're very clear, Charlie Kirk, in the Israel-Hamas conflict, there's a good guy, Israel, complete bad guy, Hamas.
And he's like, let's go over to this other conflict, Russia-Ukraine.
Is there a good guy or a bad guy in that one?
Charlie Kirk responds by saying, Both are bad.
One is worse.
Russia is worse, but Ukraine is bad.
So the follow-up question is, well, you know, why is Ukraine bad?
Like, what makes them bad?
Okay?
And Charlie Kirk starts by asking this question.
Is Crimea part of Russia or Ukraine?
And the guy responds, Ukraine.
And Charlie Kirk says, that's where we don't agree.
And the Cambridge professor, I mean, I don't know if he's a professor or not.
I honestly haven't been able to verify it.
So the gentleman here says, I'm afraid that's part of an international treaty.
That's not up for grabs.
Two applause and cheers.
The room kind of erupts at that line.
And this is where Charlie Kirk starts to go into the propaganda, which is really pro-Russia propaganda, for sure.
But he starts to go into the propaganda about I'll stop.
I mean, I've teed this up.
I don't know if you want to jump in at this party.
Yeah, a couple points.
Even before the substance, you talk about the kinds of things that Kirk does.
And I haven't watched Charlie Kirk often.
And I don't like listening to him.
I don't like watching him.
And I'm an academic, which means I read really fast.
So I tend to read transcripts more than I often watch videos or hear the accounts.
And so watching this first time in a while.
But he'll do this thing.
I watched at least parts of some of those other videos showing up in my pain.
And he'll do that thing where he'll give a one-line answer and he'll literally set the mic down.
It's almost like, oh look, it's mic drop.
So the guy comes up, quick question, good guy, bad guy, Russia, Ukraine, who's the good guy?
He's like, one is bad, the other is worse.
And literally sets the mic down.
And I have to think this is a really practiced move of his.
Because it signals this kind of finality.
It signals this, here's your answer.
This is not complex.
This is not a hard question.
This is not a real debate.
I say it.
I set the mic down.
I saw one, I think it was about abortion.
And somebody said, your position on abortion is life begins at conception.
Sets the mic down.
And it's, he does that here.
He has to keep picking it back up.
And if you're just looking at it from a mechanical thing, you're like, why do this?
Like just in terms of logistics, you've spent more time than I have having to like use handheld mics and stuff.
I've spent some like...
You can make weird noises.
You can drop them.
The tech people hate it when you do all that stuff, whatever.
It's like, why does he do it?
He does it because I think it's to give that image of authority, that image of finality, that image of there's nothing hard about this question.
So that's just like a general thing.
And I invite people, if you watch it, look how many times he sets the microphone down after giving a one-line answer.
And I think it's intended to convey that this is really a simple matter.
It's not complex.
It's not difficult.
And what have you.
A couple points sort of leading into this notion.
I'm just going to call him Cambridge.
When Mr. Cambridge comes along and says, you know, it's international treaty.
That's how it was.
He also says, you know, America signed the agreement that gave Crimea to the Ukraine.
Like the U.S. was a signatory on this.
And this is where we'll go next.
To watch the subtle shifts, the shifts to change topic.
And so Charlie Kirk, he's caught off guard a little bit, you can tell, but he has these dismissals first.
He says it was largely ceremonial.
It wasn't really an international treaty.
It was largely ceremonial.
He says it never should have been done.
But then he goes back to World War II boundaries.
Can I just jump in?
Go ahead.
So what's happening there though, One, it was largely ceremonial.
Does not expound on that.
Does not say anything.
defend it.
It's a literal It's just a statement with no basis given in anything.
It's a literal international treaty that was signed.
Like, what is ceremonial there?
What is ceremonial about?
Like we could talk about terrifying Alsace.
We can talk about, you know, Gdansk and Poland.
I mean, we can talk about these places that have been up for discussion, shall we say, about who they belong to.
None of that is ceremonial to the people who live there.
Two, it should have never been done.
Okay.
Hey, it's done.
Like, it's done.
So, you can't just say because you're Charlie Kirk.
Crimea belongs to Russia because it should have never been done.
Like, de facto and de jure, it is part of Ukraine.
Now, Russia is trying to change the de facto and to, you know, retake Crimea, et cetera.
But all that to say, the argument there is two reasons with no supporting evidence, no justification, and nothing to counter the fact that this is an actual international treaty.
But here's the issue.
The treaty, as Mr. Cambridge highlights, right, was with the collapse of the Soviet Union and so forth.
And you have the emergence of all these independent states and all of that.
We know I'm not great on dates.
I have to look them up all the time.
But my understanding is, Brad, you can correct me if I'm wrong.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence or re-emergence of all of these independent states out of what had been the Soviet Union, including the modern state of Russia, that happened after World War II?
I'm pretty sure.
So, yeah, I don't think that...
Cool.
Non-sequitur is the fancy word for that.
It means it's completely irrelevant because we're talking about stuff that happened decades and decades later.
But he transitions back to appeal to Soviet boundaries for somehow...
So there's just another shift where he's now talking about a different country.
The Soviet Union is not the same country as Russia and an entirely different time period.
And it's this shift to try to, again, move it to a terrain that he feels like he can defend and legitimize what's happening.
But if you take if you take the six or seven minutes as a whole.
Yeah.
the end of World War II boundaries were such that Crimea was part of what you just described as, accurately, the Soviet Union.
The argument from history is, in 1945, Crimea belonged to the Soviet Union.
And therefore, it should now.
There's a lot of stuff that belonged to the Soviet Union in 1945 that's not part of Russia now, just to throw that out there.
But if you look at the transcript as a whole, and you think about the argument from history, this all started with Israel-Hamas.
I'm pretty sure that in 1945, at the end of World War II, there was no state of Israel.
Charlie Kirk cannot make the same argument for the state of Israel as he is making for Crimea being ceded to Russia.
The argument from history is only useful to him when it bolsters his argument.
He's not going to use it in total, right?
And furthermore, if we would like to do the argument from history, we can do this all the time.
Dan, we could talk about the Louisiana Purchase.
We could talk about the War of 1812.
We could talk about California and Mexico and Texas and who they really belong to or don't belong to.
Or Hawaii, the territory state of Hawaii.
When the Charlie Kirks of the world don't like the argument from history is when you start talking about indigenous rights.
Yeah, exactly.
So you start talking about land claims of indigenous nations, which are considered sovereign nations, right, under U.S. law, and you start getting those claims.
All of a sudden, the history doesn't matter so much then.
If you talk about property and things expropriated from African Americans, property expropriated from Asian Americans during World War II when they were in internment camps and all that kind of stuff, yeah.
So it's a very, very convenient appeal to history, as appeals to history often are, especially when they're made by folks like Charlie Kerr.
So the next part I'll tee up for you is, you know, Mr. Cambridge asks, Why is Ukraine bad?
So if Russia is bad and Ukraine is bad but not as bad, as Charlie Kirk has argued, why is Ukraine bad at all?
Like, why would you characterize Ukraine as, quote-unquote, bad in the conflict with Russia?
And the answer is because, among other reasons, it's not a democracy.
So I've got a billion thoughts on this, but I'm going to just...
Go ahead.
Yeah, so I can start us off on that.
He says it's not a democracy.
And the reason is this, and this is standard fare on the right at this point, is that Zelensky is a dictator.
He hasn't held elections.
He should hold elections.
He's not holding elections because he wouldn't be elected as president and, you know, all of this sort of stuff.
Mr. Cambridge points out by saying that the Ukrainian constitution forbids an election because they're currently under military law.
Now, I haven't read the Ukrainian constitution.
I have read analyses like that that basically say you're in this kind of state of emergency, military law, what have you, and so you can't have an election.
And he says, again, he says that's just a matter of fact.
That's what the facts say.
So here's the interesting rhetorical thing.
So then Charlie Kirk says, well, he could do whatever he wants.
If he wanted to have a snap election, he could do that.
He could go ahead and call for an election.
Basically, so here's what Charlie Kirk does.
He says he could have an election.
The counter is, no, actually, according to the Ukrainian constitution, he can't.
And then Charlie Kirk says, well, he can because he's a dictator.
He could just bypass it.
And the point is, if he were to do that, he would become the autocratic, non-constitutional leader that he's accused of being.
And it's this kind of classic thing of positioning somebody into a no-win.
If they don't have the election, you're a dictator.
But if you were to have the election, you would only do so by proving that, in fact, you don't care about the Constitution and you're violating it and so forth.
And so it's one of those arguments.
We talk about this all the time.
I talk about this on It's in the Code all the time.
It's not an argument made in good faith.
It's not an argument made to give a reason and be open to hearing a counterpoint or reconsidering your position.
It's intended to be sort of a trap that somebody can walk into because there is no right answer.
If you want great examples of this, it's like Stephen Colbert.
It's like the questions he'll ask when it'll be like, is this a great thing or the greatest thing?
And, you know, it's somebody who thinks it's terrible.
It's that same kind of thing.
Is he a dictator or is he a dictator?
If he doesn't hold elections, he's a dictator.
But if he went out and violated the Constitution and called for an election, he'd be a dictator.
And then they'd say, see, we told you.
So the irony is, if he were more democratic in this context, it would prove that he's a dictator.
So those are my sort of thoughts on the circularity and the way that that works.
What were your sort of thoughts or impressions on that?
Well, there's data from the Journal of Democracy cited that says that in December 2023, 84% of Ukrainians opposed holding a presidential election.
In February 2024, 69% preferred that they did not hold an election.
Now, that data is now about a year and it's about 15 months old, okay?
Nonetheless, there has been opposition to holding an election while the country has been under attempted invasion.
I think that makes sense.
So you've already hit the like...
Kirk reveals his understanding of a president here so clearly.
Yes.
Because he's like, oh, he's president.
He can do whatever he wants.
And Mr. Cambridge is like, actually, he can't according to the Constitution.
And literally, Charlie Kirk responds with, well, he's the president.
He can do whatever he wants.
And he's like, no, he can't.
And he clearly shows you what you've talked about for weeks on this show, Dan, which is that Trumpists think that because Trump was elected, that means he can do whatever he wants.
Like, there's both this sort of democratic appeal of like, well, he was elected.
And then there's like, because he's elected, he can do whatever he wants.
And that's not how democracy works.
That's not how checks and balances works.
It's not how separation of powers works.
But that's what Kirk thinks about Zelensky, and that's part of his circularity and cornering him into being a dictator in one way or another, okay?
We then have another appeal to history.
So he says the people of Ukraine would kick him out immediately.
And Mr. Cambridge is like, no, I don't think so, okay?
And, you know, Kirk is like, well, didn't Churchill hold elections?
Didn't Lincoln hold elections?
In fact, if he wanted to show a statement to the world, he would call an election and win by 80% and say, see, I'm super popular.
The appeals to history, again, are meant to make Kirk's argument look smart, erudite, informed, but it's apples to oranges.
You have different scenarios, different constitutions, different countries, different states, different circumstances, different will of the people.
You can't just say, because Lincoln did this, Zelensky should do that.
And again, if the history didn't support him, he'd be saying that.
He'd be like, well, just because 80 years ago they did this doesn't mean we're going to be doing that.
That's one.
Number two, I got hung up on this 80% thing so much, Dan, because again, that's not how democracies work.
Democracies work when a majority of people elect a person.
And Trumpists don't seem to understand that.
But in addition, I'm not going to relitigate it.
Trump was elected on the basis of the smallest popular vote victory in modern presidential history.
He got like 0.9% or 1.2% more of the popular vote than Kamala Harris.
Donald Trump, as we've chronicled on this show, got 29% of overall voting age Americans to vote for him.
Not 80%.
Not 50%.
29% of people 18 or over who are eligible to vote voted for Donald Trump.
So the fact that you would raise the bar for Zelensky to 80% is such a stupid, moronic idea.
But once again, in the moment, in the heat of battle, Lincoln, Churchill, 80%.
That's what he should do.
One final thing here that I want to come back and then I'll throw it back to you is this.
He says that Zelensky should give Crimea to, cede Crimea to Russia as an act of good will to end this conflict.
Later in the debate, and we may get there, we may not, because we're going to run out of time.
Mr. Cambridge is like, you're happy to sell arms to Qatar.
Supports Hamas, things we've talked about on this show.
Qatar.
And Charlie Kirk is like, and Mr. Let me back up.
Mr. Cambridge is like, that's not moral, is it?
And Charlie Kirk says, what's moral is doing what is beneficial to your country.
Now, A, I don't agree with what he just said, but B, he just changed positions.
Friends, notice it.
In one moment, he's like, Zelensky should just cede Ukraine as an act of goodwill.
Is that what's beneficial to him and his country?
Is that what he has decided and his country folks have decided are good for their country?
They have not.
That's why they continue to fight.
In the other breath, though, you're like, you know what you should do as a leader?
You know what's moral?
Whatever's good for your country.
He completely reverses his positions here.
On one hand, he's like, what's moral is doing what's good for your country.
That's why we should sell arms to a Hamas-supporting regime in Qatar.
In the other instance, he's like, well, Zelensky, if he had any goodwill, he would just cede this so we could end the conflict.
I don't know what his problem is.
Totally ignoring what he just defined as moral, which is doing what is good for your country.
So back to you.
What other thoughts do you have on this part, or should we tee up the next bit?
Yeah, I mean, I've still got a couple more.
One is his response to all the election stuff when he says that he should do a ceremonial election to see where he stands.
He's really into the ceremonial stuff today.
And Mr. Cambridge, of course, points that he says we call those opinion polls.
Like, that's...
What, Dan?
I'm sorry.
What...
Leader in their mind, a leader of a business, a leader of a school, a leader of a nonprofit, a leader of a country would say, we are in the most dire, difficult, disgusting era of our existence.
I'm going to hold a ceremonial election because we certainly have time and budget for that.
We are in a place being invaded where we have time for ceremonial elections.
It's moronic.
Dan, if you had a business and you were losing money every day, you would not hold a ceremonial vote.
You wouldn't do anything ceremonial, do everything to survive, everything to keep going.
I'm sorry, I apologize.
Go ahead.
Yeah, so there's that.
There's the ceremonial election line.
But then he says this, and this actually gets a more serious thing.
This is another thing that Charlie Kirk does, where he'll be like, well, you would agree with that, and then he says a statement.
It's a way of essentially trying to get people to grant premises that you might not want to or whatever.
He does that all the time, you know, whatever.
And it's always stated, maybe he doesn't always state it this way, every time I've heard him say it, it's a statement of fact, not a question.
Would we agree that this and this and this?
Or can we define this term in this way or whatever?
So anyway, what he says is, he says, you would agree that a person who holds on to power without the election of the sovereign is pretty questionable.
Now, a couple things.
When he says the sovereign, that opens up all kinds of interesting questions about within a modern democratic system, who or what is sovereign?
What holds sovereignty?
And the democratic answer is always the people.
But within constitutional democracy, there are limits on the sovereignty of the people, and they're constitutionally defined.
Complex questions there about, like, you know, if you're putting a constitution into place, there isn't one that's pre-existing, like, on what can it be based and so forth.
Real questions about, you know, how you go about changing constitutions or suspending constitutions or whatever.
But the point is, certainly in an American model, in most countries with a written constitution of some sort, a binding constitution, the will of the people is not absolute.
And the idea is that essentially at some point, So it's interesting that he says that if he holds on to power without the election of the sovereign, this is just a populist vision that everything, quote unquote, the people want is what it should be without constraint.
goes back to the point that you're making.
It's this notion of unconstrained sovereignty, which for him As you say, it reflects his view of the unified executive theory in the U.S. He's sort of projecting that onto Zelensky as the president.
He can do whatever he wants.
But then here he's claiming sovereignty, presumably for the people, but he's ignoring the fact that it's a constitutional order, and constitutions, at the very least, radically complicate the concept of sovereignty, in my view.
The view of, like, who or what holds, quote-unquote, sovereignty within a constitutional democratic order.
It's a really complex question, because that's the whole purpose of a constitution, is to limit claims to sovereignty by any particular group, including the people.
Constitutions can be changed.
Constitutions can be wrong.
Constitutions can be suspended.
They can be improved.
They are not inviolable, immutable, inerrant doctrines or documents or whatever.
But that was an interesting point when he appeals to that notion of the sovereign, which I think, again, we could look at everything Charlie Kirk does and be like, yep, here's the populism piece.
Here's the real authentic Americans, or in this case, I guess, Russian-loving Ukrainians or the real Ukrainians.
The president can do whatever he wants and so forth.
Those notions of sovereignty knocking around in his head.
The last part I want to talk about here, and then we can wrap this up, is just, you know, they get into the fact that we have given Ukraine arms support.
And Charlie Kirk is...
Is it $100 billion, $200 billion in arms for Ukraine, etc.?
Okay.
That's a discussion that has some worth, in my opinion.
Now, I'm not gonna come down on the side of Rand Paul or Charlie Kirk on this, but I think that's something that is...
But what Mr. Cambridge does is he's like, well, Charlie, you don't want to give any more arms to Ukraine.
You say enough is enough, but you're more than happy to sell them to Saudi Arabia or Qatar or whoever.
And Kirk turns around and says, well, but they're giving us money for those.
We're not giving them away.
And again, my brain goes here.
For Charlie Kirk, the idea is basically, if we get money at all, that is morally acceptable because it helps the United States somehow.
The short-term view is, they gave us money for our arms.
Now, they might be Hamas supporters.
Might be corrupt Gulf states.
It might be Gulf states that have human rights records that are abominable.
It might be a Gulf state where Jamal Khashoggi was murdered.
The journalists.
As long as they give us money, though, morally acceptable.
We got money from them.
Giving money to Ukraine, now that's a problem.
And it indicates, Dan, when people are like, what is nationalism?
And why can nationalism be self-defeating and short-sighted?
To me, this is a great example, because as I've outlined on this show for the last three, four, five months, what emerged after World War II was this U.S. foreign policy that said, look, The long-term play is to spread liberal democracy across the world, because if we do that, we will avoid the pain to our nation and other nations that was inflicted by Mussolini, Hitler, other authoritarian regimes, on to Stalin, and so on.
If we spread democracy and freedom through democracy, we will have a world that benefits us and everyone else.
That's the long-term play.
Now, as I've said on this show many times, Yeah.
a morality that has a long-term view that says the world is better when more people are able to be free and vote and have their will represented in their government, rather than have an autocracy or a fascist dictator or something else.
Yeah.
Nationalism, a la Trumpism.
The vision is just, what do we get?
Do we get money from Qatar and Saudi Arabia?
Good, then that's moral.
Well, what about giving stuff to Ukraine?
Well, why would we give stuff away?
That's not moral.
You're dumb.
You're an idiot.
Why would you give stuff away?
And the long-term answer might be, well, Ukraine is the democratic stronghold standing in the way of Putin, who has designs on not only Ukraine, but other states in the far north of Europe.
And maybe the entirety of Europe itself.
Supporting Ukraine is actually supporting a world where we don't have someone trying to take over an entire continent, as happened 80 years ago.
And that will mean good things for us, the United States, too, because of the ways the world is going to work in terms of free trade, democracy, the ability for our partners not to be under threat.
There's so many reasons, but you can see in Kirk's mind.
The contemporary conservative approach to this, which is nationalism all the way down, what is moral is just, did you give me money?
Did you even say thank you?
Did you give me stuff?
No?
Well, then how is that moral?
I don't understand.
So, any more thoughts on this?
Yeah, so a couple.
One, I just want to expand this.
Last week on the Weekly Roundup, my reason for hope was talking about – And maybe Trump was listening.
I don't know if he listens to Straight White American Jesus, but maybe he was because he went on a little tirade about how America needs nothing from Canada.
But what did he do?
He put an actual price tag on it and said, Canada can pay $60 billion and we'll protect them with the Golden Dome or they can become the 51st state and get it for free.
It's just money.
It's transactionalism.
And so we hear that in Kirk.
So just to your point, That this is just something that has seeped into kind of mainstream conservative ideology at this point.
It's just about money, not just transactionalism, but monetary transactions.
Moving back from that, this part of the conversation was situated in the second claim he made about why Ukraine is bad.
And what he said about Ukraine is that they're the most corrupt country in Europe and they don't meet the standards of any.
It was about corruption.
To which Mr. Cambridge said, well, okay, we want to talk about corruption.
What about dealing with these countries in the Middle East and so on and so forth?
And then he said, well, we're not giving them money.
We're taking it.
So that was his, I guess, rationale to which Mr. Cambridge says, so it's more acceptable to take money from corrupt governments?
And, of course, the crowd cheers and all of this.
But the point is that it does highlight that because it was in the context of this language of corruption.
And it shows that within the right and present, there is no such thing as corruption.
And it's not even just winning or losing.
It's not even just national interest.
It's just as tautery and simple as monetary gain.
We make money from these countries, so it's fine.
That's the interest of the U.S. We could go into a whole history of things like, I don't know.
Supporting radicals in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation and how that turned into al-Qaeda and all of that and comes back to bite the U.S. decades later.
And that's the kind of thing that happens if you just channel weapons and money and things like that to radical regimes and so forth.
But here it's not even that sophisticated.
It's just like, no, we made a buck.
National interest is just about did we make money?
And we hear that all the time on the right now.
In ways that make no sense, like Trump's whole thing about, you know, the tariffs are just going to make money for the U.S. And all of his economic advisors saying that sort of magically they're generating money for the U.S. when everybody going out and buying stuff is like, I don't feel like we're generating money.
I feel like I have to spend more.
Like, maybe I'm crazy.
So I think that that was the other piece of it that shows the amorality.
Not the immorality, but the complete lack of any kind of moral reasoning when it comes to questions of what the U.S. does.
When the highest moral good is simply, do we have more money in the bank after this exchange than we did before this exchange?
And I think it says a lot of things about the contemporary right.
But there's so many folks who've supported this show since we started.
And all of you are amazing.
And I'm so grateful for you.
Whether you jumped into this show a year ago, four years ago, it doesn't matter.
Since the very start, it doesn't matter.
The fact that you all listen and you support us and you make this go means the world to us.
But, like, Dan, what if I woke up tomorrow and there was an email that was from, like, Focus on the Family or the Family Research Council or from Charlie Kirk and was like, we will pay you and Dan each, right, half a million dollars per year to do Straight White American Jesus.
You're going to have to abide some parameters that we set, but that's how much you'll earn.
And for the record, that's about $484,000.
I don't know how much more it is than we make per year.
So, you all listening would be like, that's immoral.
Like, how are you going to take money from Charlie Kirk or from Ralph Reed or from Opus Dei and do your show?
Like, we're not listening.
We don't want to be part of that.
And it's clearly immoral to do that, isn't it, Dan?
And we would know that.
And we'd be like, yeah, we'd have a lot more money, but we can't do that.
We heard it from people when you get, like, Fox News advertisements, which, of course, we have no control over that.
But people were like, what is that?
And you're like, I don't know who thought that was going to be the listening audience.
But, you know.
But, yeah, I mean, and the point is, to your point, people pick up on it.
People know that.
I think people have an intuitive sense of, And the fact that there is moral reasoning that should be happening doesn't mean we have to agree.
Doesn't mean we all have the same basis for doing that.
But I think a lot of us understand when we're in a moral terrain that has to be navigated.
And the complete denial of that, I think, strikes a lot of people.
But it's just gangsters and mafia who have that code.
Oh, you give me money?
Great.
I'm good.
That's a gangster mentality.
It's a mobster mentality.
That's not anything else.
All right.
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