The Michael Knowles Show - May 31, 2021


Kirk Cameron ｜ We Honor The Fallen In The Fight For Freedom


Episode Stats

Length

31 minutes

Words per Minute

185.04492

Word Count

5,912

Sentence Count

349

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

17


Summary

Kirk Cameron joins me on Memorial Day to talk about where we came from, where we re going, and how to revive the country. Happy Memorial Day, everybody! -Happy Memorial Day. I hope that you are all having a good day, drinking beer, eating hot dogs, thinking about our great American heroes. I marked the occasion by sitting down with the great Kirk Cameron, talking about some American history.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, happy Memorial Day. I hope that you are all having a good time, you know, drinking,
00:00:06.220 eating hot dogs, thinking about our great American heroes. I marked the occasion by sitting down with
00:00:11.920 the great Kirk Cameron, talking about some American history, where we came from, where
00:00:17.260 we're going, and how to revive the country. Take a listen. Happy Memorial Day, everybody.
00:00:28.720 It's sort of a strange thing to say happy Memorial Day because, you know, we're out, we're drinking
00:00:33.060 beer, we're eating hot dogs, we're at the beach maybe. But we are also remembering people who
00:00:38.200 gave their lives to preserve our way of life, our country, and our freedom. All of which,
00:00:44.700 I hate to remind you, seem more under threat than perhaps ever before, you know, in ideological ways,
00:00:52.980 in some explicit physical ways, people burning down the country, this sort of thing.
00:00:59.080 Fortunately, I am joined by one of the most positive voices out there today. I mean this
00:01:04.560 in his demeanor, but I also mean this in the sort of things that he is doing. Kirk Cameron.
00:01:11.060 You may know Kirk from a whole variety of different places. Of course, if you're a big fan of 80s
00:01:16.420 sitcoms, perhaps you would know Kirk. But also all the wonderful work he's done, well beyond acting
00:01:21.160 ever since then, just a tremendous voice in religious issues, in political issues.
00:01:26.180 Kind enough to join the show right now from what I can tell just looking into the monitor
00:01:30.900 is the single most American place on earth. Kirk, where are you right now?
00:01:38.120 Hey Michael, so good to talk with you. I'm kind of, it's a little kind of a fan guy moment right now.
00:01:45.120 I'm an admirer and so appreciate the work that you do. So thanks for letting me come to you from my
00:01:50.640 backyard. That is very kind. I've not tried to escape the state yet. I'm still here in my backyard
00:01:58.620 with my flag waving and I've got a campfire burning in my backyard, which has been pretty
00:02:04.320 typical of me for the last 100 days. In response to the first 100 days of the current administration,
00:02:11.520 I decided to have a counter of 100 days. I loved when you announced this because one,
00:02:19.860 we're all, we've all been a little down, I think, you know, over the first days of the
00:02:23.640 Biden administration. But I liked your idea that, hey, we don't, we don't need to just go along with
00:02:28.760 this. We can, we don't need to just sit even and complain. We can actually do something positive
00:02:33.440 ourselves right now. We don't need to wait until the next presidential election or the one after that
00:02:38.640 or the one after that or the one after that. So I'm, I'm there. I think that waving the flag
00:02:44.300 in your backyard is officially a hate crime in the state of California now, but you're,
00:02:48.840 you've got the courage to do it. So, so what's the mission? What's the plan? The 100, the Kirk
00:02:54.180 Cameron 100 days. So, so I don't have the best plan in the world, but I want to be a part of some plan
00:03:01.180 and, and, and, and we're, we're, we're here on Memorial Day and it makes me think of my grandfather,
00:03:05.440 my grandfather, Frank Bowsmith, who just passed away. And he was a Navy corpsman fighting with
00:03:12.380 the Marines on the Island of Iwo Jima during World War II. He was a real hero and he was a man of
00:03:18.680 faith. He was a man of freedom. He was a family man. And when I look at so many people making
00:03:25.020 promises, so many talking heads, talking about evidence and, and, and stuff that has been coined
00:03:31.260 as hopium, I, I, I then see none of this stuff materialized. And I said to myself early this
00:03:37.340 year, wait a minute, why don't we join together as we, the people and come up with our own first
00:03:43.560 100 days. And I said, you know, I want to do something. And history tells me that it's always
00:03:51.060 a minority, a, a small group of people outnumbered out, uh, outfunded, usually persecuted who prayed
00:04:01.120 to God, joined together and begin doing things for honorable causes that turns the tide. So I decided
00:04:07.160 for 100 days in a row, I'm going to build a campfire in my backyard. And I'm going to invite
00:04:10.940 people on Facebook live to join me in my backyard to pray, to play, uh, music, uh, to sing songs of
00:04:18.940 worship to God and go through a book that teaches us about what made America so free and prosperous and
00:04:25.000 blessed all these years. It was written by a friend of mine called the American covenant,
00:04:28.500 the untold story. And I'm not here to promote a book. I'm just saying that our forefathers had a
00:04:33.700 different idea. They didn't believe that hope flew in on air force one. They said, no, we're a free
00:04:39.320 people. And our hope comes from the power of God working through the hearts of moms and dads and
00:04:45.380 brothers and sisters and family members. And then we, as people of character and virtue take positions of
00:04:51.240 leadership, not only in our homes, but in our churches, our communities, our States and the national
00:04:56.240 government. And it starts with self-government. And so I've been teaching this for the last 100
00:05:01.240 days in my backyard. It's called the American campfire revival. That's my plan.
00:05:05.580 Kirk, what you've said is something very radical here. You're talking about American freedom and
00:05:10.120 you're saying that it's way too radical out there for California, but it's actually, I think even a lot
00:05:16.040 of conservatives don't quite appreciate what you're saying, because what you're saying is that if we
00:05:22.660 want to restore American freedom, we need to get back to family, we need to get back to community,
00:05:28.640 we need to get back to God. But I think the prevailing view right now on the left and all
00:05:33.820 too often on the right is that true freedom can only exist when I shake off the shackles of my family.
00:05:40.940 You know, for instance, when you take away the necessity of parental consent for the way that
00:05:46.580 your children are educated or the sort of things your children can do. The only way we can truly be free
00:05:51.020 is when we shake off the shackles of God. You know, this country, it's a secular country founded
00:05:57.900 on a firm separation between church and state. And that's true freedom. And you're positing a
00:06:02.540 totally different vision of liberty than that. So who's right? You know, Michael, as you were saying
00:06:09.720 those words, we need to shake off the shackles of family and true faith. I could just smell the
00:06:16.760 fumes of horse manure coming through my computer as you were saying that. Because that couldn't be
00:06:23.060 further from the truth. You see, those are the tenets of Marxism that you're talking about.
00:06:27.960 These are the tenets that are designed to divide a people and make them easily conquerable.
00:06:33.640 And what I've been learning is that our forefathers and our foremothers were not just these religious
00:06:39.200 fuddy duddies who were trying to just run away and be by themselves and create this weird little
00:06:45.900 religious community. They wanted a full, thriving, flourishing human society. And they understood that
00:06:54.560 it could not be created and freedom could not be achieved from the top down where you had an emperor
00:07:00.260 or a king or a queen or a czar or a shogun or a prince who would who would give you everything you
00:07:06.340 need and allow you to have freedom. It came from the inside when you're when your own heart was
00:07:13.460 liberated from from pride and selfishness. And you began to love God and you began to love your
00:07:21.660 neighbor and you governed yourself. See, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and the pilgrims and
00:07:28.340 our founders, they said, no, it's it's it's counterintuitive to to to what you see in other kingdoms.
00:07:35.660 The kingdom that is characterized by freedom and blessing begins when you begin to govern your
00:07:41.780 own self. And then as a self-governing mom and dad, you can then govern your family and your children
00:07:47.920 and then children begin to grow up and go into the world and heavenize the earth as they implement
00:07:55.460 these principles of integrity and honesty and truth and compassion and love and mercy. And that's the
00:08:01.420 inside out bottom up strategy that built America and allows us to have limited small government.
00:08:07.580 If we don't govern ourselves, they said, we'll have no choice but to have someone from outside and up high
00:08:15.940 come and and beat us back into obedience. And and if we don't voluntarily submit to things like the
00:08:24.660 Ten Commandments, then we will be ruled by the Ten Thousand Commandments of the tyrants.
00:08:30.920 And and I see that happening right now. And so I'm trying to call people back to genuine revival
00:08:37.140 that begins in the heart and in the home. Kirk, how did you get so smart? I mean this and not as
00:08:43.320 flattery. I don't I'm not being glib. No, what you're describing here, you're talking about American
00:08:49.600 history and you're saying that the the popular view on the left but all too often on the right
00:08:55.320 that our our founding fathers were atheists or total secularists, that that's not true. Obviously,
00:09:01.260 you're right that America was founded in this flourishing. Well, and you're getting the whiff
00:09:05.880 again. You know, this this historical anti-historical idea that that our country was founded to be
00:09:13.700 this secular country rather than a shining city upon a hill and from a model of Christian charity,
00:09:18.300 one of the earliest American speeches. You're knocking down that idea. You're recognizing
00:09:24.120 the philosophical distinction between liberty and licentiousness, which all too often is totally
00:09:29.620 conflated. But but you recognize they're not the same thing. They're actually opposite things.
00:09:33.780 I'm not joking when I say you you are expressing a much wiser, truer opinion than the vast majority of
00:09:43.200 American commentators on this, even even many on the right. How did that happen?
00:09:48.300 Well, you're right. There are so many people on the right, on the left who are brilliant and far
00:09:53.420 smarter than I am. But I'm seeing that that much of it's not working. A lot of it feels like a hot
00:09:58.820 air, a bunch of hot air to me. And I say, wait a minute, wait a minute. In a very short amount of
00:10:03.200 time, history shows us that America became one of the pinnacle nations in the world. And guys like
00:10:08.880 Alex de Tocqueville and others came over and said, what's the secret of the success of this,
00:10:12.360 this new nation? And it's not in their military and it's not in their it's not in their their
00:10:16.800 their economy. And it's not in all of these places you typically want to find it. You know what?
00:10:21.620 Their churches have pulpits that are on fire with the gospel and people's hearts were being
00:10:28.180 transformed and they wanted to do the right thing without having to be told. And when that begins
00:10:33.940 to happen, all of a sudden it's like the Lion King. It reminds me of when Simba, who believed the lie
00:10:42.100 that he had murdered his father, Mufasa, runs out into the wilderness, loses track of his identity.
00:10:47.020 And then Rafiki goes out there and says, Simba, you've forgotten who you are. And he takes him to
00:10:53.600 the pool of water and he sees a reflection of his father and he hears the voice of Mufasa in the sky
00:10:58.320 and says, Simba, remember who you are. You are the rightful son. You are the king. And he runs back
00:11:05.740 and Scar sees him. And who does he think he sees? He thinks he sees his father, Mufasa. And then he
00:11:12.160 fights him. Simba wins, regains his place as the king and all of life comes back into the pride lands
00:11:18.840 and darkness and the shadows begin to flee. I think we as Americans have have similarly forgotten who we
00:11:25.520 are. We come from a long line of freedom fighters who are not looking for riots and lawlessness,
00:11:31.840 but we're the army of compassion who is looking to bring healing to a broken nation who's so woke
00:11:39.660 that they they've they've fallen asleep to what really brings freedom and truth and healing to us.
00:11:45.140 And if we will we'll move from the heart and get back to these essential principles,
00:11:50.220 which, by the way, I've tried to encapsulate with something that I've made available
00:11:56.460 called the pledge to renew the American covenant. Most people don't even know that we had such a
00:12:02.180 thing called the American covenant. And these are sacred promises made by our forefathers to God and to
00:12:08.300 one another. And and it begins with stuff like this. We affirm as a family to to do these things.
00:12:15.340 And it talks about the personal level, the family level, the church level and the the civic level.
00:12:21.800 And if we'll come back to these things, I believe we'll begin to see life coming back into
00:12:26.820 this land of promise that we've inherited. I think you're right. And I love the Mufasa analogy.
00:12:33.080 You know, I love that. Remember who you are. And you're probably uniquely qualified to perceive this
00:12:38.800 sort of thing as a storyteller, which is we have these national stories and these national stories
00:12:44.060 tell us about our identity. The way we understand our past is going to influence how we behave in
00:12:49.500 the present and what our country is going to look like in the future. So right now there's a battle
00:12:53.920 over American history. You've got the traditional understanding, which this is a good country founded
00:13:00.340 on good principles with good people. You know, got some problems. We're all broken. This is a fallen
00:13:04.500 world, but it's generally a good place. And we like that. And then there's the 1619 project
00:13:09.620 version, which is in their own words, a reframing of American history. They lied about some facts
00:13:15.660 there too, but they're just going to shift the frame like you're moving the camera and they're
00:13:19.340 going to present this picture of America as intrinsically evil and wrong. And we have to
00:13:23.800 be very sorry and ashamed of it. So how do we reclaim the story? I mean, what is the story that we're
00:13:30.540 telling? Well, one of the ways that I'm doing that is by going to more reliable sources than the
00:13:36.560 1619 project or your, you know, your, your typical social media newsfeed. Um, and it's
00:13:42.120 hard to find trusted sources now. And so, um, again, the one that I'm, I'm actually, uh, spent
00:13:47.280 a hundred days of my life in a row, uh, traveling across the country and changing my flight schedule
00:13:52.880 so that I could have a campfire at a hotel or a friend's house or my own backyard is this book
00:13:58.200 called the American covenant. Um, I, I, I hesitate to even show it up cause I don't want you to think
00:14:02.540 I'm, I'm trying to push this, but what it does is it goes back to information that people don't
00:14:08.060 hear anymore. And it's talking, uh, and quoting from people who understand history and, and see
00:14:14.820 the world differently, that history truly is his story, his story. And that there is unseen hero in
00:14:23.700 the events of the world that are being played out on the stage of earth. And Michael, I think you and I
00:14:29.020 everybody else who's alive today have been placed on this stage to play a strategic role. We're not
00:14:36.280 the main character, but we're supporting characters of the one who's working all things together for
00:14:40.720 good. And I want to be wise. I want to play my part. And that's the way our founders and forefathers
00:14:48.040 and mothers understood time in history. Um, let's, let's play our role correctly. Shakespeare said that
00:14:55.660 as well, all the world is a stage. And if we see this world as a narrative that has been authored by
00:15:02.400 the most benevolent being in the universe, then we can have hope and we can find courage to do the
00:15:08.980 right thing against all odds, knowing that it will turn around and it will be good in the end. Even if
00:15:14.080 we're not here to see it, maybe my kids will. And that's worth it enough for me to put all I have into
00:15:18.860 it. What an important point. When you look at American history and you look at all the great
00:15:23.340 characters, George Washington, Governor Bradford, Lincoln, all these people to, to recognize the
00:15:29.500 most important character who is God. And you, you see the hand of providence. I was going to say the
00:15:35.760 unseen hand of providence, but actually you can, you can really see it. The odds that when the Mayflower
00:15:41.800 lands at Plymouth Harbor, they get delayed. There's all sorts of sabotage in the old world. They finally
00:15:47.220 make it here. They're blown hundreds of miles off course. They land at some random spot and out of the
00:15:52.280 woods pops the two Indians on the entire continent who speak English. One of whom, Squanto, lived in
00:16:03.640 London and was talking to the pilgrims about the streets of London because he had been captured.
00:16:10.260 He was brought over there. He was freed, probably freed by Catholic monks, brought then to London,
00:16:15.700 comes back on another ship. The odds of this happening just by random chance are virtually nothing. And yet
00:16:22.260 this is the first moment that allows these pilgrims basically not to just get totally wiped out on
00:16:27.920 their first winter in the new world. What are the odds of that?
00:16:31.520 I think we don't, I don't think we need to play the odds. You, you know, as well as I do, that the
00:16:36.720 hand of providence is, is, uh, is behind all things. And I love the story of the pilgrims. I, I, I think we
00:16:43.200 can go back there and learn so much for them from them. Um, in fact, uh, one of the things that I
00:16:47.600 thought was so fascinating is that when they first landed, they actually landed in a place that they
00:16:51.360 thought was the mainland, but it wasn't, it was a little Island off the coast of the mainland.
00:16:54.740 And I actually went there in a little private little boat and they're there. They realized it
00:16:59.460 was the Sabbath day when they landed. And so they didn't want to do anything for fear that they would
00:17:04.660 do something that might offend the God of providence that had brought them all the way across the
00:17:09.380 Atlantic in a little wine ship that had been designed only to go port to port in England.
00:17:13.480 The mast had broken. They for sure thought they were going to sink. And so they spent the day
00:17:18.100 praying and reading scripture on a big boulder. They called, they called, um, pulpit rock. And,
00:17:25.780 and again, this is the kind of, of, of wholehearted faith that they had. And they, they switched from
00:17:31.840 a socialistic framework in the way that they did business to a free, uh, capitalistic mindset and,
00:17:40.820 and, and everybody had their own piece of land and they, if they didn't work, they didn't eat
00:17:45.080 and, and, and they changed things around to fit the principles in scripture. And they began to
00:17:50.800 prosper. It began to give thanks. That's where we get Thanksgiving from, uh, those, those first couple
00:17:56.640 of, of, uh, falls and winter, uh, with the pilgrims where half of them died. At one point, there were
00:18:03.140 six people who were taking care of the rest of them who were still living in the winter, most of them
00:18:07.200 women and some of them just laying on top of their children, uh, uh, dead so that they could keep
00:18:12.580 their children alive. This is the kind of character that we need to see in America again. And I'm
00:18:17.160 hoping that all of this from the pandemic to the economy, to the political things we see happening
00:18:22.540 wakes us up and shakes us up. And that character and virtue and faith rise to the top. And these,
00:18:29.460 I don't think without a revival, these things are connected. I'm glad you brought up the point
00:18:34.380 about the early socialism of the, of the pilgrims, because very often the left writes this off as
00:18:39.300 just some kind of shallow conservative talking point. It's not just some talking point. Governor
00:18:43.480 Bradford writes about this in detail. That's right. You know, they, yes, they did. And finally,
00:18:51.040 they instituted a bit more private property, a bit more private responsibility and what happens,
00:18:55.520 they all start to flourish and they, they tie in together this economic component with the
00:19:00.380 political component. And then what's most important is the religious component. You know,
00:19:04.460 Andrew Breitbart, the patron saint of Hollywood conservatives, he famously said, politics is
00:19:09.100 downstream of culture. And, uh, you know, this is not to deny that politics influences culture too,
00:19:14.120 but certainly we can say culture is downstream of religion. Cult and culture come from the same
00:19:19.800 root word. So how do we revive the country? So Michael, that's such a great point in Plymouth,
00:19:25.880 Massachusetts. I don't know if you've ever seen this, but there is, there is a giant monument
00:19:30.020 it is a hundred and I'm sorry, it's 88 feet tall. It's, um, I think, uh, about 180 tons of solid
00:19:37.240 granite and it's called the national monument to the forefathers. It's the largest granite monument
00:19:41.280 in America. And it's hidden in a forest on top of a hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts. If you have a
00:19:46.480 chance to go there, I highly recommend it because it is the, the, the forefathers recipe for how to
00:19:52.460 sustain freedom and prosperity in America. And, and if you look at it, uh, you know, if, if, if my cup
00:20:00.080 here is, is that monument, uh, you would come up to about this high on top of the monument and the top
00:20:06.780 of it is faith and faith then expresses herself through all areas of life, morality, law, education
00:20:13.200 resulting in Liberty. And so you're right. It begins with faith and an internal change of the heart.
00:20:19.300 Uh, this isn't, uh, something that politicians are making up. This is something that we can find
00:20:25.380 in, in, in the, you know, 4,000 year old principles found in the Judeo Christian scriptures. This is the
00:20:33.940 principles that the ancient Hebrew Republic under Moses, uh, flourished, uh, before they got their
00:20:40.360 Kings. This was about representative government. This is about a division of powers. This is all about
00:20:46.240 self-government. Uh, these are the kinds of things our founders understood. They applied it and it
00:20:50.640 worked and we can get back to it. Well, I hope we can Kirk, but all this talk, this has been way
00:20:55.420 too positive and hopeful for a conservative radio show. So I need to bring in a little bit of pessimism
00:21:00.760 here. That's it. Let's shoot. Let's, let's fire shots at the balloon. Well, here's the big problem.
00:21:08.720 Recent polls show every year, fewer and fewer people are going to church. Fewer and fewer people are
00:21:14.720 identifying with religion, uh, the fastest growing religious group in America. It's called
00:21:19.360 the nuns. And I'm not talking about cute little old ladies and habits. I'm talking about N O N E
00:21:24.880 people who have no religious affiliation. So how are we supposed to get an American revival
00:21:29.520 when everyone's fleeing church? I wouldn't worry about that. Uh, the solution is not sitting here
00:21:37.080 and crying in our, in our, in our Chick-fil-A soup, uh, as Christians. Okay. The solution is to
00:21:43.580 understand, uh, you know, if you, if you look at the stock market, you can say, Oh, we're in a
00:21:48.240 downturn. We're in a downturn. Uh, well, but, but you look at the trajectory over time. Uh, the,
00:21:54.500 the Christian faith has been flourishing over time. Go back a thousand years where it was culture and
00:22:00.460 life and, and living as a person of faith better or worse now than it was back then. I wouldn't want
00:22:05.920 to be alive during the Roman empire when, when people are being thrown to the lions and burned at the
00:22:09.940 stake. Uh, we have more freedom now and we are, are actually winning in the courts at the Supreme
00:22:14.940 court level, uh, and at state levels on religious cases. And we're about to have more freedom than
00:22:20.140 we have had, uh, in a generation because I believe people are waking up at the same time. I think it's
00:22:25.820 good to, to separate the sheep from the goats and the wheat from the chaff. I think it's good to shake
00:22:31.960 the place out and find out who is really in this to win this and who's really playing church for the
00:22:39.900 sake of, uh, you know, keeping a job or, uh, collecting tithe money or, or looking good to
00:22:46.800 your friends. Um, I, I'm not inviting persecution, but if we see challenges come, I say the kite that's
00:22:55.720 really anchored with a good, strong string is going to fly higher. The stronger the winds.
00:23:01.960 A very good point. The blood of the martyrs ceded to the church and sure, I'm sort of hoping we don't
00:23:08.060 get thrown to lions or anything, but a little bit of, of trial, of course, that can be spiritually
00:23:13.960 quite edifying. And that that's true on the national level too. So, uh, I'm glad you've given me hope
00:23:19.740 again. All right. I'm shaking off that pessimism for now. We're looking back and we're, you know,
00:23:24.820 we're trying to find our national future in, in those, uh, the, the faith of our founders and,
00:23:31.860 uh, trying to recover some of that. But one, now we've dealt with the church issue. What about the
00:23:37.220 education issue? Students are simply not being exposed to this stuff. There was a survey that
00:23:41.680 came out now. It's, it was 14 years ago. This was a 2007 survey. Imagine how much worse it is today.
00:23:47.420 It was all the top colleges in America. They surveyed, it was on civics and government and
00:23:52.960 history in the United States. Graduating seniors did worse on the test than incoming freshmen.
00:24:00.420 The students had gotten more ignorant the longer that they were in the schools.
00:24:03.640 And, and the question is, I mean, I mean, the, the, the, the question I guess is obvious to the
00:24:11.000 answer is obvious. You know, when we vacate, uh, the responsibility, we abdicate the responsibility
00:24:18.100 of training our children up in the way that they should go. We shouldn't be surprised when they come
00:24:23.820 out the other side of the educational system, uh, without the results that we're hoping for. I think
00:24:28.460 a friend of mine named Bodie Bauckham said, um, if you send your children to Caesar to be educated,
00:24:35.100 don't be surprised if they come back Romans. And that's true. It's a discipleship program for 12
00:24:40.640 years through high school. And then an advanced discipleship program as we go into higher education.
00:24:46.460 And, you know, that's why I come back to, well, well, what's the right thing? I I'm not even looking
00:24:50.900 to the left. I'm not even looking to the right. I think the choice as Ronald Reagan once put it is
00:24:55.220 either up or down. We either go up to the eternal rules of right and the principles that are found
00:25:00.580 in the scriptures that history show produce maximum human flourishing. Uh, or we go down
00:25:06.260 to the ash heap of totalitarianism. And I think that what we need to do is say, wow, educating our
00:25:13.960 children is a sacred responsibility. I'm not going to just hand it off to somebody else. It doesn't
00:25:17.700 mean I have to be a math teacher and a science teacher and a music teacher. But what it does mean
00:25:22.060 is I can read good books. I can find good sources of information. And I, as a parent understand that
00:25:28.080 that little heart, that little soul, that little mind has been placed in my hands by God, and I'm
00:25:32.820 going to lead their educational path and put them in the presence of good people, not just hand them
00:25:39.320 over to a government babysitter where they're going to undermine everything that I want my children
00:25:43.980 to believe and to embrace. We've got to recapture education. I think that's where we went wrong
00:25:49.520 40, 50 years ago. And that's the biggest single mistake that we've made. We've got to recapture
00:25:55.220 education. Of course. But Kirk, what do you say to people who say, you know, listen, I'm glad for
00:26:00.480 you, Kirk, that you've got this clear sense of right and wrong and good and bad and true and false and
00:26:05.020 beautiful and ugly. I'm glad you got that. But that's just your opinion, man, to quote the dude
00:26:10.800 Lebowski. And maybe I've got my opinion of right and wrong. It's totally different. And look, you've got
00:26:16.060 your preferences and I've got my preferences. And if you try to appeal to some eternal moral
00:26:20.680 authority, why you're just a theocratic, authoritarian, I don't know, they'll find lots
00:26:27.060 of adjectives to call you. What do you say to those people who say, it is very important for us to
00:26:32.800 indoctrinate children in, say, drag queen story hour, but you need to keep your Bible out of our schools?
00:26:38.700 No, I would say actually your narrative is actually backwards. The reality is, is that the truth of a
00:26:47.700 good and kind and loving and just God is obvious. The evidence is all around you through what he has
00:26:53.600 made and through the scriptures that he's left for us here and through the evidence of the transformed
00:27:00.460 life of those who have come to know him and walk with him. You're actually trying to indoctrinate
00:27:07.220 a country out of the truth and into your pagan ideas that always produce death and despair.
00:27:16.280 It always produces bondage rather than freedom. So if you want to make up this narrative that you
00:27:22.100 evolved out of the slime, that we are just a happy accident, we are overarching worms, that there was no
00:27:29.140 design in mind for the birth of my child and your nervous system and your muscular system and your
00:27:37.400 skeletal system and all of the other wonders and miracles found throughout nature. You can keep your
00:27:43.140 head in the sand and you can believe your happy fairy tale that really is designed to get you off the
00:27:48.280 hook morally and try to absolve you of any accountability. But I would rather stick with the
00:27:53.700 time-tested method that has produced the greatest nations on earth and maximum human flourishing and
00:27:59.380 actually allows you to believe those crazy things in this country without being put into prison. Because
00:28:04.960 we believe you were made in the image of God too. And so therefore I'm going to treat you just as kindly as
00:28:10.640 I would like you to treat me, even though you're crazy.
00:28:13.100 I love that answer. You know, I've noticed from the people who insist there's no such thing as grace
00:28:19.820 or sin. There's no such thing as right or wrong. It's all just an accident of pistons firing off in
00:28:25.080 our head. I always look at them to quote another line from the Bard and say, the lady doth protest too
00:28:31.300 much, me thinks. These people seem sometimes a little wracked with guilt. They don't seem quite so
00:28:36.760 certain of what they're putting out there. Yeah, we have just this wonderful country and I think
00:28:42.780 that we've been living off the fumes of faith that our forefathers and foremothers had. And we need
00:28:52.980 to get back to these principles because the truth is, if there are other principles that produce more
00:28:58.020 freedom, more flourishing, more opportunity for all people, by all means, please go live there.
00:29:05.260 Go there and see what that's like. Why is it that everyone's breaking the law to come here
00:29:10.420 and then they're wanting to then vote for principles and policies that are going to take this country to
00:29:18.060 become more like the place you just escaped from? That just doesn't make sense to me. And I can tell
00:29:23.340 you, and those who have studied history know, that the best places to live are in the places where
00:29:28.520 people genuinely love God and genuinely love their neighbor. And that requires a change of heart.
00:29:33.940 And those who want to use religion to abuse people, and there's been lots of examples of that in the
00:29:41.100 past, even in our country, that needs to be thrown into the trash heap, just like all the other false
00:29:48.000 ideas. And we need to get back to something that's true and praiseworthy and honorable. And that's what
00:29:54.580 I'm trying to be about. Yeah. You know, I notice a lot of people who prattle on about humanity and
00:30:00.280 humanity and all this, they go on and on and on, but they don't seem to care very much about their
00:30:04.680 fellow humans. You know, and people who say, we need to, you know, totally transform America.
00:30:09.980 They don't seem to like their countrymen very much. And so I think what you're saying is so true.
00:30:13.880 The countries that are the freest, the most flourishing, the most pleasant to live in are the
00:30:18.620 ones that recognize God, that love God, and that love their neighbors and love their countrymen.
00:30:24.260 Kirk, I've done my best to bring in some typical conservative pessimism here, and you have thwarted
00:30:31.400 me at every turn. I'm leaving this conversation hopeful, and you're doing the thing. You're sitting
00:30:36.400 there, you got a nice campfire, a fluttering, waving American flag, and, you know, looking back on our
00:30:42.840 country and bringing up wonderful memories on Memorial Day. No better way to celebrate than that.
00:30:47.080 Well, I'm encouraged by you. I'm encouraged by the Daily Wire. I'm encouraged by the guy that I
00:30:54.740 just bumped into in the grocery store at Trader Joe's as I was getting some sausage for dinner
00:30:59.760 tonight. And, you know, he had an American flag on his shirt. He looked at me. I didn't have a mask
00:31:05.160 on, either did he. And he said, oh, my goodness, look at this, another free human. And he said,
00:31:11.340 this is wonderful. And he said, remember, what you allow will continue. And we had a great
00:31:17.860 conversation. And those kinds of things inspire me to want to lovingly and courageously stand for
00:31:24.760 the right stuff, just like you're doing. Thank you, Kirk. You have inspired me. Seriously. I mean,
00:31:30.520 you've just done really great work. I've now got to go out and get the American Covenant, by the way. I
00:31:34.460 know you said you don't want to plug the book, but now I certainly do. The American Covenant,
00:31:38.120 got to go order it. Kirk, keep doing what you're doing, man. It's just, it's so, it's such great
00:31:43.340 work. It's so important. And you've even, you've even managed to give some hope to a curmudgeonly
00:31:48.800 conservative, maybe many of us out there today. Thank you. Kirk Cameron, everybody. Thanks so much
00:31:53.460 for coming on. All right, Michael. Great talking with you. Thank you.