The Charlie Kirk Show - A Tale of Two Americas

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, The Tale of Two Americas.

00:00:02.000 Is it similar to The Tale of Two Cities?

00:00:04.000 I explore that with my friend Pastor David Engelhart and Turning Point USA's Isabel Brown.

00:00:09.000 If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com.

00:00:12.000 I encourage every young person to listen to this right now to start a chapter, get engaged, get involved with Turning Point USA.

00:00:18.000 You can always email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:21.000 And if you would like to support our program, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:26.000 A Tale of Two Americas, a lot to unpack.

00:00:29.000 Buckle up.

00:00:30.000 Here we go.

00:00:32.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:33.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:36.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:39.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:42.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:43.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:44.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:00:53.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:01.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:05.000 I'm very excited to talk to you about a new book that is coming out this month from my dear friend, a great American, and one of my top mentors, Jim Holden.

00:01:13.000 He's a best-selling author, a member of the Turning Point Endowment, and a very clear thinker.

00:01:19.000 So listen carefully.

00:01:20.000 Selling in an Anxious World is Jim's fifth book on selling strategies and best practices.

00:01:25.000 This time, Jim brings together research science and observation to identify the leading cause of declining business-to-business sales, also known as corporate culture.

00:01:35.000 I had the great honor of contributing to a chapter of Selling in an Anxious World through my work with Turning Point.

00:01:41.000 I'm in a unique position to observe academic culture within our colleges and relate it to the corporate world, particularly its impact on company culture.

00:01:49.000 In today's world, good company culture requires vigilant protection, which is why this book is so timely and a must-read for business people, sellers, patriots, and Christians.

00:01:59.000 Selling in an Anxious World combines research from extensive deal reviews, examples from Jim's personal life, and Bible references to shine a light on culture, presenting an unconventional guide to solving an unconventional problem.

00:02:12.000 You'll get quick access to whatever topics are important to you through chapter summaries and reference guides.

00:02:18.000 Jim Holden's book is not like any other business book out there.

00:02:22.000 So go to sellingcharlie.com.

00:02:24.000 That's sellingcharlie.com and use the special code Charlie to get a discount.

00:02:28.000 Again, my dear friend, Jim Holden, we're going to have him on the podcast talking about this book.

00:02:32.000 And send me some of your thoughts at freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:02:35.000 Again, that's Selling in an Anxious World by Jim Holden, a must-read for everyone.

00:02:42.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

00:02:44.000 We are thrilled to be joined today by Isabel Brown from Turning Point USA.

00:02:49.000 Always happy to be on the show, Charlie.

00:02:51.000 And a dear friend of mine, Pastor David Engelhart from King's Church.

00:02:54.000 Good to be here, Charlie.

00:02:55.000 York.

00:02:56.000 Yep.

00:02:56.000 And also a great mind, and you're really going to enjoy him.

00:03:00.000 And trust me.

00:03:01.000 So we were talking off kind of before, off air here and kind of beforehand, the framing of how we want to take this.

00:03:08.000 And I want to really explore this idea with both of you, The Tale of Two Americas.

00:03:13.000 So I think a lot of what we're experiencing in our country connects back to this thesis of Tale of Two Americas, which is obviously kind of a parallel to the Tale of Two Cities.

00:03:24.000 David, you're very familiar with this piece of literature.

00:03:27.000 Walk us through when it was written, the significance of it, and also how we can connect it to some of these stories we're talking about.

00:03:32.000 Yeah, well, Tale of Two Cities is a Dickens piece written in the 1800s, late 1800s.

00:03:36.000 And Dickens was, he was, he loved the French Revolution, and he was fixated by it for a number of reasons as a UK guy, watching the parallel of two revolutions that were happening, the UK Revolution, the French Revolution, and then we were about to have our own revolution.

00:03:54.000 And when do revolutions happen?

00:03:56.000 They happen when the people are upset, when the broad spectrum of people are upset.

00:04:01.000 And frankly, when the government's not doing anything about it, and they're not hearing the voice of the people.

00:04:08.000 And why?

00:04:09.000 Because they're comfortable.

00:04:10.000 So, you know, we think about our revolution and the monarchy getting taxation and power, and they think it's going to be this way forever.

00:04:16.000 And that's the opening line of that book, right?

00:04:19.000 It was the best of times.

00:04:20.000 It was the worst of times because for people in power, they felt like it was the best of times.

00:04:25.000 And right now, you know, we have 2020 that just went by.

00:04:29.000 Tons of people are out of work.

00:04:31.000 People are broke.

00:04:32.000 People are committing suicide.

00:04:33.000 Yes.

00:04:34.000 But the rich have just had an amazing year in the market.

00:04:37.000 And, you know, the news focuses on the market.

00:04:39.000 How do we do?

00:04:40.000 Let's look at the market.

00:04:41.000 Who does the market affect in the United States?

00:04:43.000 It doesn't affect anybody that like on the day-to-day people.

00:04:47.000 It affects people that have a significant net worth.

00:04:50.000 And so it's the best of times for them.

00:04:52.000 But then for the people that are underneath, it's the worst of times.

00:04:55.000 They're locked down.

00:04:56.000 They're broke.

00:04:57.000 They don't have any economic options to move forward.

00:05:00.000 And you can feel the tremblings of a potential civil war that's starting to brew.

00:05:05.000 And I'm not saying we're here, but I'm saying those support that, by the way, we don't support it in any way.

00:05:12.000 We're just looking historically where things are. 0.98

00:05:14.000 And when that happened with the French, it was brutal and bloody. 0.56

00:05:18.000 And some of the worst political ideas that were morally unhinged from a standard construct of historic morality came into play and has affected the rest of the world and the history of the world from that revolution. 0.77

00:05:32.000 The first line of the book is: it was the best of times.

00:05:36.000 It was the worst of times.

00:05:37.000 Is that correct?

00:05:37.000 That's exactly right.

00:05:38.000 And it's playing the regular people that are going through.

00:05:42.000 I mean, just think of it.

00:05:43.000 Lockdown, you can't leave your house, but us, we're going to be having this, you know, French laundry dinner and we're all going to be having $1,000 plates.

00:05:51.000 It is the best of times.

00:05:52.000 And the Louis Vuitton guy, Bernard Arnault, he's worth $155 billion.

00:05:59.000 And I was going through what is in his portfolio.

00:06:02.000 And it really makes sense why he's able to do so, why he's doing so well.

00:06:06.000 He owns Louis Vuitton, Moet, and Hennessy.

00:06:10.000 So rich people that buy luxury goods, he's going to continue to do well.

00:06:13.000 And his portfolio grew in a year that the economy for the regular person was trash is what happened.

00:06:20.000 And so that's exactly what's at play.

00:06:22.000 And the crazy thing in that first chapter, it says, and the French nation was pumping fake dollars into the economy to make the people happy.

00:06:32.000 And you're like, have we ever heard of a time like that before?

00:06:35.000 Perhaps that fake dollars are being pumped into an economy.

00:06:41.000 And so part of the tale of two Americas is also how the ruling class and the people in charge have reacted to certain crises that they are really worried about.

00:06:52.000 Right.

00:06:52.000 And so, Isabel, we talked a lot about how the market crackdown has happened here on to try to protect the incumbent hedge fund guys.

00:07:01.000 And yet we juxtapose that with something that is quite honestly a bigger issue than GameStop stock, which is the future of our children in our schools.

00:07:12.000 Yeah.

00:07:13.000 The reality is there's this crackdown, not just in the markets, but honestly across the board culturally, when you look at everyday Americans versus the elite class culturally and politically, you're seeing crackdowns on free speech and inability for people to voice their opinions and organize online, especially now we're starting to see that in the marketplace to prevent wealth from accumulating outside of that elite cultural and political class.

00:07:35.000 You're telling people they're not allowed to go back to school.

00:07:37.000 They're not allowed to go back to their jobs.

00:07:39.000 We're going to try to dramatically change what the culture looks like, at least for you, maybe not for us, from an elite ruling perspective, so, so significantly in 2021.

00:07:50.000 We talked a little bit earlier this week about the World Economic Forum happening in Davos, Switzerland this week.

00:07:55.000 And they're literally using the terminology great reset saying there should be no private property.

00:08:01.000 You shouldn't be able to have your own autonomous decisions.

00:08:04.000 We are going to take care of everything for you.

00:08:06.000 And don't you worry, we'll make it sound really great.

00:08:08.000 But it's this dystopian reality that squashes the little guy over and over and over again.

00:08:14.000 And we're not seeing that overall quite yet in the United States and around the world, but we're starting to see steps in that direction.

00:08:20.000 That's right.

00:08:20.000 And so, what are some of the big takeaways then from the tale of two cities?

00:08:24.000 Well, there's a couple of big ones.

00:08:26.000 The biggest takeaway is actually the storyline that's weaving throughout it because this is what we all say when we hear about this kind of stuff.

00:08:35.000 Well, what am I supposed to do about this situation?

00:08:38.000 How am I supposed to respond when there's this estate of people that are being crushed?

00:08:43.000 There's an estate that's living large.

00:08:44.000 What do I do?

00:08:45.000 And that's the story.

00:08:46.000 It's actually that I would say the protagonist, there's a lot of many characters, is a lawyer trying to figure out what he's doing because he's living for himself.

00:08:54.000 His life is narcissistic.

00:08:56.000 He's drunk. 0.71

00:08:57.000 He's all about self-consumption.

00:08:59.000 And that's the same kind of spirit that fuels this kind of AOC.

00:09:04.000 You don't have enough.

00:09:05.000 The world is against you.

00:09:06.000 Take revenge.

00:09:07.000 Have the bloodiest revolution in the history of civil revolutions.

00:09:11.000 That kind of gaping desire for justice without an actual moral construct.

00:09:17.000 So this guy, he's a lawyer that's living this kind of consumption life.

00:09:21.000 And then he has this realization that I actually have to give of myself to find real life.

00:09:27.000 And instead of everything being about his own consumption, his own justice, his own rightness, he begins to turn his life.

00:09:35.000 And at the end of the book, he gives his life away for another.

00:09:37.000 And that's how we change things by the individual taking individual action.

00:09:42.000 It's the opposite of the tale where it's woven right now.

00:09:46.000 It's like the group must take group action to stand against group wrongs.

00:09:51.000 And that's not really how we fix things.

00:09:54.000 We fix things by individuals taking individual actions.

00:09:57.000 And we have this setup where groups take group actions when we have people in our political commentary that say the other side are demons.

00:10:06.000 They are the worst, like most demonstrations.

00:10:09.000 The AOC calls Ted Cruz a murderer. 0.64

00:10:12.000 He tried to murder me. 0.97

00:10:13.000 Right.

00:10:13.000 And so that kind of language.

00:10:15.000 So there's at the end of the first paragraph of the book, and it says, and the authorities of that time spoke only in the highest degree of superlative comparisons.

00:10:22.000 What does that mean?

00:10:23.000 That means everything was extreme.

00:10:26.000 So I'm a conservative.

00:10:27.000 Charlie is a salvific figure.

00:10:29.000 He's an angel.

00:10:30.000 He's got a halo on when he goes to sleep.

00:10:32.000 And the other guy is literally the incarnation of the devil.

00:10:36.000 And that in part happens when you have a society that's been unhitched from morality and they don't have a God and a devil.

00:10:43.000 So they make people in those images and it creates the fuel for the fire for social instability.

00:10:50.000 And when you have that social instability, then demagogues can take over.

00:10:53.000 And they do.

00:10:54.000 And you want to give them power because, and I've heard you say this before: if there is a murderer on the other side, now I'm scared and now I need someone to protect me, which is why crisis always creates an authoritarian regime.

00:11:08.000 That's Hayek's Road to Serfdom, one of the great political treatises on the danger of crisis in society and not protecting ourselves against those dangers by saying, no, we need to act calmly and rationally through crisis so we don't give up our rights assistance.

00:11:24.000 Especially in a crisis, that's when you need to safeguard freedom and liberty more than ever.

00:11:28.000 Absolutely.

00:11:28.000 And so I want to continue to explore this idea of the tale of two Americas because there's a lot happening.

00:11:33.000 The rich people's kids are doing just fine.

00:11:36.000 They're getting educated.

00:11:37.000 They are able to travel.

00:11:40.000 However, working class people are still being subjected to schools being closed, completely, totally shuttered.

00:11:46.000 And there's a massive consequence of this. 0.98

00:11:48.000 And part of what we have seen in recent days and weeks is the muscular class, the working class in our country, they're growing a little bit uneasy. 1.00

00:11:58.000 And that will eventually materialize in something I don't think we're prepared to deal with. 0.99

00:12:04.000 I don't think that our country is all, I don't think we have an experience like this, especially in the digital era, that will be able to handle this in a way to bring us back to a place that does respect private property, entrepreneurship, and the American way.

00:12:22.000 With Turning Point USA and the movement that we have started, I've had the honor of traveling and visiting the college campuses and engage in rigorous debate with the next generation.

00:12:32.000 When you talk to as many students as I do, you see several familiar themes.

00:12:36.000 I see disillusionment with the media, a lack of hope in their job prospects.

00:12:40.000 I hear them claim that they're victims and they deserve better.

00:12:43.000 Whether college students realize it or not, they're forming ideologies that will affect the way they think and treat others for a lifetime.

00:12:49.000 I'd like to recommend a great book to any young person in this time of life.

00:12:52.000 It's called Reflections on the Existence of God by best-selling author Richard Simmons III.

00:12:58.000 This guy never shies away from the hard questions of life.

00:13:01.000 Reflections on the existence of God is a collection of short essays that tackles the biggest question of all: does God exist?

00:13:08.000 This book is well researched and easy to read.

00:13:10.000 One of the most important things a young person can do is to solidify their worldview.

00:13:14.000 Our worldview informs our personal, social, and political lives.

00:13:17.000 It helps us understand our purpose.

00:13:19.000 So I'm challenging college students to ask themselves life's toughest questions.

00:13:23.000 Dive in and get this book today.

00:13:25.000 Reflections on the existence of God.

00:13:27.000 Reflections on the existence of God.

00:13:29.000 Go to reflectionscharlie.com.

00:13:31.000 That's reflectionscharlie.com.

00:13:33.000 Then drop me a line at freedom at charliekirk.com with your thoughts.

00:13:39.000 I'm going to get to some sound here of Charles Payne.

00:13:41.000 Let's go to cut 64 of Charles Payne, good friend of mine, doing a great job.

00:13:46.000 They're allowed to short so much stock.

00:13:49.000 Do you know the amount of stock that was out on GameStop?

00:13:52.000 Let's just say 100% of the shares that are out.

00:13:55.000 Well, they shorted 140% of the stock.

00:13:59.000 So they borrowed the same stock over and over and over, the same shares and sold it into the market over.

00:14:06.000 Their job, their mission was to drive GameStop to zero.

00:14:11.000 Zero.

00:14:12.000 No one said a word on any financial network, particularly CNBC.

00:14:17.000 Let's go to cut 65.

00:14:18.000 Charles Payne talking about why is it okay for hedge funds to want to drive a stock to bankruptcy and make money off of that?

00:14:26.000 But then all of a sudden the masses do the opposite and the world blows up.

00:14:30.000 Play tape.

00:14:31.000 So what happens?

00:14:32.000 Some people get wind of this.

00:14:34.000 These folks that you said, these individual investors, they decide to buy the stock up.

00:14:39.000 They start to pressure the shorts.

00:14:41.000 It's called a short squeeze and it's working and Wall Street is losing its mind and Wall Street now wants to change the rules of the game because a bunch of people with accounts ranging from $500 to $2,500 are taking down the billionaires.

00:14:58.000 David, what's your take on that?

00:14:59.000 I mean, it's incredible how much volatility is available in the market right now.

00:15:06.000 And whenever we have things that happen like this, legislators do what they always do.

00:15:09.000 They legislate.

00:15:10.000 And there's always unintended consequences from fast legislation because of things like that.

00:15:16.000 And ultimately, the market will end up suffering.

00:15:19.000 And the people that are experts in this area will end up getting the best tax guys and the best accountants and the best lawyers to figure out how to continue to make cash in this.

00:15:28.000 And it will limit the other regular people that have the $500 accounts and have the $1,000 accounts to be able to get in the market in the first place because of a whole host of new regulations.

00:15:38.000 And there'll be new fees and there'll be new structures and we'll have new jobs, but they're the kind of jobs that don't add to our GDP.

00:15:46.000 They suck away from it like regulators and clients.

00:15:51.000 Accountants and tax guys that aren't making a product, they're not making a game at a game store. 0.98

00:15:54.000 Checking boxes.

00:15:55.000 Exactly right.

00:15:56.000 And so what we have here is the continuing of what America, which America is more concerned about GameStop all of a sudden going up.

00:16:10.000 Let's just be very honest.

00:16:11.000 Executing a short is a very sophisticated financial move.

00:16:15.000 If you have E-Trade or if you have Schwab's account or if you have any one of these apps, a lot of people don't even know how to do a short.

00:16:22.000 I had somebody ask me a couple months ago, Charlie, how do I short something?

00:16:24.000 You know what I told them?

00:16:25.000 Don't.

00:16:26.000 If you don't know what you're doing, don't do it.

00:16:28.000 Because if it goes up, you could lose infinitely.

00:16:31.000 It's a very specific, it's a lot harder than just buying, you know, going long on a stock and holding.

00:16:36.000 It's a lot more common.

00:16:37.000 That's what people should do.

00:16:38.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:16:39.000 Go long and hold.

00:16:40.000 Just long and hold for a long time.

00:16:41.000 Yeah.

00:16:42.000 And good companies with good earnings and good leadership and good products and all that.

00:16:46.000 However, the outrage that we have seen here and the mobilization of the government to go after this goes to show really where the priorities are.

00:16:55.000 And this goes back to one of the key problems that we have in our country, which is how do we finance our elections?

00:17:02.000 How do we actually put leaders into office?

00:17:06.000 Who actually supported Joe Biden's campaign early and often?

00:17:09.000 Where did Joe Biden go?

00:17:10.000 This is a good question for you, David.

00:17:12.000 You probably know.

00:17:12.000 Where did Joe Biden go after he lost Iowa, lost New Hampshire?

00:17:16.000 He didn't go to South Carolina.

00:17:18.000 Right, exactly.

00:17:18.000 He went to New York.

00:17:19.000 That's exactly.

00:17:20.000 You remember that, right?

00:17:20.000 He didn't go to the people in the Bronx, P.S., people in the Bronx, friends in Brooklyn.

00:17:25.000 He didn't go to your houses, right?

00:17:27.000 He didn't go to people in California that live in the suburbs.

00:17:30.000 That's not where he went.

00:17:31.000 He went to the people that are already holding these positions in these states that are passing layer upon layer of regulations that are driving people from the states.

00:17:41.000 So what happens if you extrapolate that to the guy that then rules the country?

00:17:46.000 I mean, just logic, the logical extrapolation is that those kind of layers of rules will happen nationally at the federal level and it will create the same effect that it will want to drive people out.

00:17:56.000 But as Americans, we're the last hope.

00:17:58.000 We're not going to New Zealand.

00:18:00.000 Like we're not hopping up to the top hat.

00:18:02.000 We're staying here and there's nowhere else to go.

00:18:05.000 We can't go with Elon to the moon yet.

00:18:07.000 To Mars or wherever.

00:18:09.000 Joe Biden did not go to campaign in South Carolina.

00:18:11.000 He did a fundraiser on Wall Street.

00:18:14.000 He called in as many favors as he could to keep his fledgling campaign alive.

00:18:18.000 And it was not really, it didn't kind of get resurrected until Clyburn endorsed him.

00:18:23.000 And there was a private Democrat meeting where they said, Buddha Judge and all you guys, you're dropping out and you're endorsing Joe.

00:18:29.000 We're going to ride him to the White House.

00:18:30.000 We don't care how clumsy it is.

00:18:33.000 And that goes to show who's actually running our government.

00:18:37.000 Donald Trump never did those fundraisers in Wall Street.

00:18:39.000 He was actually repulsed by him.

00:18:42.000 They loved Hillary Clinton.

00:18:43.000 They loved the access to government regulators.

00:18:46.000 And so now, when the people start to disrupt their game a little bit, they all of a sudden say, get our regulators and our protection in.

00:18:57.000 Dave Portnoy, who is kind of like the modern day Plato, more wisdom comes out of that guy than most of our leaders.

00:19:03.000 I say that non-sarcastically.

00:19:05.000 He runs Barstool.

00:19:07.000 And amongst other things, he's coming in hot.

00:19:10.000 Like Cut 78.

00:19:11.000 It is one of the most remarkable, illegal, shocking robberies in the history in plain sight.

00:19:20.000 In plain sight.

00:19:21.000 No closed door meetings, nothing behind. 0.99

00:19:24.000 Just right in your face, putting a gun in your mouth and saying, give us all your money.

00:19:28.000 That is what Robin Hood, Crooks, Jail, The Citadel, Ken Griffin, Jail, Steve Cohen, the Mets owner, jail, are doing. 0.98

00:19:38.000 Right in your face.

00:19:40.000 It's pretty aggressive.

00:19:41.000 Let's go to Cut 77.

00:19:43.000 Nancy Pelosi says SEC and Biden administration are taking a look at the GameStop situation, CUD 77.

00:19:51.000 Interesting, isn't it?

00:19:52.000 I understand that the administration is taking a look.

00:19:55.000 The SEC is taking a look at what that is.

00:20:00.000 But we'll all be reviewing it.

00:20:02.000 But interesting.

00:20:03.000 It's interesting.

00:20:05.000 It's interesting.

00:20:05.000 Yeah.

00:20:06.000 You know, it's interesting to buy a million dollars of Tesla stock like you did as soon as a green energy plan gets passed to the House of Representatives.

00:20:13.000 Let's go to another cut here.

00:20:15.000 I want to get into, we'll talk more about this, but this theme of the tale of two Americas.

00:20:19.000 And Isabel, can you help?

00:20:20.000 Can you help build this out for us?

00:20:23.000 There's been a big increase in suicides.

00:20:27.000 Do you have some of that data to help pack through that?

00:20:30.000 Yeah, I know there was a couple articles we were talking to.

00:20:32.000 Pull that up, please.

00:20:32.000 And so, David, you live in New York, school closures.

00:20:35.000 Have you seen it impact the mental health of a lot of kids?

00:20:37.000 Yeah, there's a massive impact mental health, not just kids, but all throughout New York City.

00:20:41.000 I mean, and you can see that impact with two primary statistics.

00:20:45.000 One is the massive increase of crime throughout the city, murder throughout the city.

00:20:51.000 In New York, it's terrible, right?

00:20:54.000 The numbers have been back and forth between 150K to 500,000 people have left because of what's happening there.

00:21:02.000 But more than that, the reality of crime increased in New York City in part because of the lockdowns and the desire of people to be out and amongst other people and around people.

00:21:16.000 And then, you know, the criminal elements are like, I'm going to break laws.

00:21:18.000 I'm just going to break all the laws.

00:21:19.000 And there you have this weird kind of symbiotic increase of criminality.

00:21:25.000 I mean, I live a block away from Wall Street and a couple of months ago, a Sunday morning, 7 a.m., someone was held up at gunpoint in front of the stock market.

00:21:34.000 That doesn't happen.

00:21:36.000 Like, that doesn't happen in big tourist areas since Giuliani came in and cleaned up the city in like major, you know, midtown Manhattan, downtown Manhattan.

00:21:46.000 But you see crime hectic going crazy.

00:21:49.000 I think they, I think the last stat I saw was 120% up.

00:21:51.000 Murder rates was January for the year.

00:21:55.000 And then obviously that's a byproduct to some degree of the mental health of the city.

00:22:01.000 I totally agree.

00:22:02.000 And New York is unrecognizable now.

00:22:04.000 Last time I went, and the lockdowns, you can't escape the lockdowns if you're a middle-class family in New York.

00:22:11.000 If you are one of the hedge fund people, you just get on your helicopter, go to the Hamptons or go to Aspen or go to Martha Vineyard or whatever, right?

00:22:17.000 Just get out.

00:22:18.000 And that's what they're doing.

00:22:19.000 And they're doing, or they go to Florida and they go to Miami, whatever.

00:22:22.000 Because of lockdowns, all of a sudden, I don't want to have to live in that kind of set of circumstances.

00:22:27.000 And the two Americas that have really been built here.

00:22:30.000 And by the way, the two Americas are not equally populated.

00:22:32.000 Let me be very clear.

00:22:34.000 One of the Americas is a group of people that control our financial institutions.

00:22:40.000 They control our government apparatus. 0.90

00:22:41.000 They control the means of communication.

00:22:43.000 And they're really a small group of people.

00:22:45.000 They're powerful.

00:22:46.000 They're wealthy.

00:22:47.000 There's not very many of them.

00:22:48.000 The next America are the people that have to live under the rules and the regulations and the decrees, if I may, from this other group of people. 0.97

00:22:59.000 And so the question should be, where does this head? 0.96

00:23:05.000 And we don't really know.

00:23:07.000 We just know that it's going to be heading to chaos, disorder.

00:23:11.000 Yeah.

00:23:12.000 And the Pareto effect, the Pareto principle, we know how that goes.

00:23:15.000 The Matthew principle, some people say that the people that are faithful with resources get resources that then are attracted back to them because they're faithfully using it.

00:23:24.000 So they can then continue to use it and grow, et cetera, et cetera.

00:23:28.000 But there's two issues: that if the people that are the stewards of that wealth are immoral people, then it damages all of the rest of the people that don't have that kind of concentrated power.

00:23:39.000 And that's when French Revolution, Tale of Two Americas, in the French Revolution, you had the third estate, the primary populace that was being dominated by the political power and the religious power.

00:23:53.000 And the religious power were just A-O-K-ing, rubber stamping everything the government did and said, it's all okay, it's totally fine. 0.80

00:24:00.000 Let's talk about, you know, heaven or let's get our eyes off of the here and now. 0.99

00:24:06.000 And it's frankly echoed in our big churches across the nation.

00:24:10.000 Let's not talk about political stuff.

00:24:12.000 Like, if you dare do it, you're a Christian nationalist. 0.91

00:24:15.000 And they try to want to stamp you in the forehead with a swastika.

00:24:18.000 And you're like, no, I'm actually trying to care for my community, for the people that aren't the people in power.

00:24:24.000 I'm actually trying to, like Sidney Carton does in the story, lay my life down for the people that are in my neighborhood, that are, you know, in my city.

00:24:33.000 And care for the welfare of the nation around you.

00:24:35.000 Yes.

00:24:36.000 So, Isabel, talk, you have some of those statistics on suicide.

00:24:40.000 In fact, Las Vegas schools are now opening because of the rise in teenage suicide.

00:24:44.000 We've been warding against this on this program, and we were not listened to because our leaders don't listen to us.

00:24:48.000 Isabel.

00:24:49.000 It's really shocking the state of affairs, not just that we're seeing in the United States of America, but around the world when it comes to just this unprecedented mental health crisis for all people.

00:24:59.000 It doesn't discriminate based on your gender.

00:25:01.000 It doesn't discriminate based on your race, regardless of where you live, what class you are a part of.

00:25:06.000 Really, every individual worldwide is experiencing this affront of depression, of anxiety, of hopelessness, and a lack of understanding where to go.

00:25:16.000 You brought up Las Vegas, and I'm glad you did, Charlie, because since last March, there's been more than 3,000 alerts sent to district officials regarding mental health episodes for students in K through 12 schools in Las Vegas alone.

00:25:29.000 And it took 3,000 alerts, including many successful student suicides, for them to decide to reopen schools.

00:25:36.000 We saw youth suicide reach record highs in 2020.

00:25:40.000 It was already increasing at a very steady rate between 2007 and 2018 by a rate of 60% for suicide among 10 to 24-year-olds in the United States.

00:25:49.000 But last year, we saw the highest number we've ever experienced in the United States.

00:25:53.000 And it's not just suicide, by the way.

00:25:55.000 It's record levels of depression, of anxiety, of substance abuse, of people just feeling like they have no community.

00:26:01.000 They have no sense of connection to the world around them.

00:26:03.000 And therefore, there's no other hope for them other than to take their own life.

00:26:07.000 And so we have some sound here that I want to play.

00:26:09.000 And it's from a family.

00:26:11.000 I believe it's right here.

00:26:14.000 Play that tape, please.

00:26:15.000 In the beginning, we didn't know exactly how long they were going to be out of school.

00:26:20.000 So week by week, I just saw changes in him.

00:26:23.000 He's a teenage boy.

00:26:25.000 You know, they need their friends.

00:26:27.000 They need the interaction.

00:26:28.000 They need the socialization.

00:26:29.000 I saw him started to get just, you know, a little depressed.

00:26:34.000 And he took his life.

00:26:35.000 I actually know where he is, where he lived in Illinois and where his family is from.

00:26:39.000 I know that area very well.

00:26:41.000 And this has happened all across the country.

00:26:43.000 And it's been ignored by the ruling class.

00:26:44.000 Why?

00:26:45.000 Well, they say it's because of the virus.

00:26:46.000 And we're all in this together.

00:26:47.000 No, we're not.

00:26:48.000 The ruling class have sent their kids off to either private schools that are open.

00:26:53.000 They have homeschooling options.

00:26:55.000 They have tutors.

00:26:56.000 You want to go see the hottest real estate market in the country?

00:27:00.000 Go to Aspen, Colorado.

00:27:02.000 Aspen, Colorado, which is the playground for the ruling class in America.

00:27:08.000 If you live in Aspen, Colorado, and you just own a fire height, we don't want to own a fire hydrant.

00:27:16.000 I'd take a fire hydrant.

00:27:17.000 A blade of grass in Aspen, Colorado is worth like a million dollars.

00:27:21.000 Yeah.

00:27:22.000 The property values are, there are homes that are selling for $3,000 a square foot in Aspen, Colorado.

00:27:30.000 So you might say, well, what's it with Aspen?

00:27:34.000 Aspen's obviously in the mountains, and it's very nice there in the summer.

00:27:38.000 And obviously, in the winter, it's not in the city.

00:27:40.000 A lot of people are migrating there.

00:27:41.000 They're bringing cash offers, and it's the playground of the ruling class.

00:27:46.000 They're doing great.

00:27:48.000 They had $500 million under contract in one month in Aspen real estate.

00:27:53.000 Think about that.

00:27:54.000 In a small town of Aspen, I think it's Pitkin County, if I'm not mistaken, right?

00:27:58.000 It is, yeah.

00:27:59.000 Pitkin County, Colorado, $500 million.

00:28:03.000 And so we're not all in this together.

00:28:07.000 Right.

00:28:08.000 That family there in Illinois, that amazing young man who took his life, they didn't have the money to go on a Gulf stream and go to Aspen and go buy a new home and make sure they got everything sorted out.

00:28:19.000 They needed school.

00:28:20.000 He loved school.

00:28:21.000 And now J.B. Pritzker, who might be America's worst governor, but it's really hard because you got Cuomo and you got Newsome.

00:28:28.000 J.B. Pritzker is an absolute disaster to our country.

00:28:33.000 He's born on third, thought he hit a triple. 0.74

00:28:34.000 He's not a very smart person.

00:28:36.000 He's done nothing but inherited money his whole life.

00:28:38.000 No, he spent $187 million to become governor, to become a bad governor.

00:28:43.000 $187 million of his own money.

00:28:45.000 And he's very vulnerable coming up here.

00:28:47.000 And a lot of people should rise up.

00:28:48.000 I don't care if you're a Democrat or you're a moderate, he's got to go because these lockdowns have broken the soul of our nation.

00:28:54.000 Well, and that's the whole idea that we've been talking about.

00:28:58.000 It's the best of times.

00:28:59.000 It's the worst of times.

00:29:00.000 It is the worst of times.

00:29:02.000 You know, I've talked to so many people that have been like, there's never been a time like this in the history of the United States for my finances, for my family, for my mental health.

00:29:11.000 And then again, we have another class where it is, in fact, the best of times for.

00:29:16.000 And, you know, we look to history to see patterns of where we're at and how to navigate through those places.

00:29:23.000 And if we don't look to history, then we're moving blind through our current set of circumstances.

00:29:29.000 And we have to have people that wake up and say, oh, yeah, you know, our country is about freedom.

00:29:33.000 That's what we're fundamentally founded on.

00:29:36.000 And you cannot have freedom and safety.

00:29:39.000 They don't coexist together.

00:29:40.000 You have to give up some of one for some of the other.

00:29:44.000 Will Durant famously said, you know, freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies.

00:29:50.000 And when one, you know, survives, the other one dies.

00:29:53.000 And we have a nation that has been really happy with safety.

00:29:58.000 And we've forgotten the value of freedom.

00:30:00.000 And that's what Soltzenitson says in the first chapter of the Gulag Archipelago: we have forgotten freedom.

00:30:06.000 We have stopped loving in freedom.

00:30:08.000 And so then we just gave it all up.

00:30:09.000 And you don't realize how valuable it is until it's all gone.

00:30:14.000 That's well said. 0.88

00:30:15.000 And the other thing that Solschenitson mentioned in the Gulag Archipelago is that this is all thanks to ideology.

00:30:22.000 That no nuance, no awareness, no capacity to really see what's going on around you.

00:30:27.000 It's simply and strictly ideology that is driving all of it.

00:30:31.000 And in this two Americas that we have, we have the rulers and the ruled.

00:30:36.000 It's that simple.

00:30:37.000 Are you part of the rulers or are you part of the ruled?

00:30:40.000 Here's a very interesting, just here's a way just to test it out: are you able to see government policy written and designed to directly benefit you and quickly?

00:30:51.000 The answer is no, you're part of the ruled.

00:30:52.000 It's that simple.

00:30:53.000 Do you see things on a news channel that reinforce your position of power?

00:30:57.000 Now, mind you, a lot of the criticisms that we're now levying might be misinterpreted as a leftist power struggle argument.

00:31:04.000 No, what's happening is the further reinforcement of a power incumbency that will destroy first principles and freedom and liberty.

00:31:19.000 Legacy Box is an effortless way to digitally preserve your home, movies, and photos that you never have to wonder where they are or whether they're safe.

00:31:28.000 Legacy Box does an amazing job to make sure that your family's history is preserved.

00:31:33.000 Did you know that videotape recordings weren't made to stand the test of time?

00:31:36.000 They start diminishing after 10 or 15 years.

00:31:39.000 So the sooner you digitally preserve them, the better off they'll be.

00:31:42.000 Legacy Box makes reconnecting with your past as easy as pressing play.

00:31:46.000 Over the past 10 years, Legacy Box has helped more than 1 million families restore and protect irreplaceable moments from the past.

00:31:53.000 In 2020, Legacy Box's services have become so popular that the team has created an additional 125 jobs at its preservation studio here in the United States.

00:32:02.000 Even if you wanted to do this yourself, it could cost you hundreds of dollars.

00:32:05.000 But when you visit legacybox.com today, you'll save 50% off.

00:32:09.000 You can get started for as little as $39.

00:32:12.000 So go to legacybox.com/slash Kirk to take advantage of this limited time offer.

00:32:16.000 Go to legacybox.com and save 50% while supplies last.

00:32:22.000 I want to get to some sound here.

00:32:24.000 Pelosi Cut69, please.

00:32:27.000 Thanks for having me.

00:32:28.000 What exactly did you mean when you said that the enemy is within?

00:32:31.000 What exactly did you mean?

00:32:32.000 It means that we have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence on other members of Congress.

00:32:40.000 It's absolute nonsense.

00:32:41.000 Bringing a fire I'm going to want to protect against yourself.

00:32:43.000 By the way, wouldn't it be a logical thing to believe that you can arm yourself after there was an insurrection because the security was not satisfactory?

00:32:53.000 You'd think.

00:32:53.000 You would think that that would be a logical way to handle it.

00:32:55.000 But this is a common narrative and that is happening between the Democrats in power, AOC and Pelosi, that are continually saying that they do not trust Republicans, not to vote correctly, not to tell the truth, but they're actually dangerous.

00:33:16.000 Right, exactly.

00:33:18.000 We've been talking about this whole best of times, worst of times, Tale of Two Cities Dickens analysis.

00:33:23.000 And this is a bizarre thing I saw while I was looking through the book recently.

00:33:28.000 The bad guys in the story are this couple named Defarges.

00:33:33.000 And the Defarges, a husband and wife couple, and they own the local wine shop.

00:33:38.000 And the emblem that Dickens is trying to draw is that they are peddling wine to the masses.

00:33:45.000 And they are.

00:33:46.000 They have like their underground revolutionary meetings there.

00:33:49.000 And they're enraging the populace.

00:33:52.000 They're intoxicating them with this language and they're whipping them up to do incredibly brutal acts.

00:33:58.000 And the proverb says really clearly: wine is a brawler, strong drink, a fighter.

00:34:04.000 And it's that idea that this cheap intoxication, that this incredibly intense language, I'm not safe around these people groups, does something to us emotionally because we're made to respond to that kind of intense language.

00:34:19.000 And when you use it cheaply for the purpose of political power, you don't understand, especially when you're standing on a pulpit like Pelosi or AOC or these people that regular people look up to as leaders and they say, oh my God, all of the Democrats are going, excuse me, all the Republicans or vice versa are going to kill me. 0.54

00:34:38.000 They're my enemy.

00:34:39.000 And it's intoxicating and it whips people up and it's ultimately incredibly damaging for our populace.

00:34:46.000 That's exactly right.

00:34:47.000 And words have meaning.

00:34:49.000 And when all of a sudden you go to the highest level of hyperbole every single time, it also cheapens those words in every single fashion imaginable.

00:34:58.000 And then you really have no words left to be able to describe the other side if they ever actually go into that form of behavior.

00:35:06.000 Let's just break down for a second the words that they're calling conservatives and Republicans domestic terrorists, violent extremists.

00:35:14.000 They called President Trump Osama bin Laden-esque, whatever that's supposed to mean. 0.99

00:35:19.000 They've graduated so significantly from political adversary to you're a deplorable to you're a racist and a white supremacist. 0.98

00:35:27.000 Now, you inevitably are going to commit some act of violence against me because of how you think politically or how you voted in the last election. 1.00

00:35:35.000 That makes you an extreme terrorist.

00:35:38.000 And the real story that's happening in the country with all of this kind of tied together, which by the way, this entire GameStop AMC BlackBerry thing is exactly the opposite of what the Democrats want to have happen right now.

00:35:58.000 Why?

00:35:59.000 Democrats control government.

00:36:02.000 Democrats control power.

00:36:04.000 The people want something.

00:36:05.000 They're upset at the power structure.

00:36:07.000 They want these hedge funds to be held accountable.

00:36:10.000 And now the Democrats who control government are going to come and swoop in and use the power to crush the little guy.

00:36:16.000 So the establishment, if you will, and both parties are now going to have to transparently defend a broken institution against the people.

00:36:27.000 Democrats don't want to be talking about this.

00:36:29.000 They'd rather continue this narrative that there will be a Republican Party is actually the party of an insurrectionist party, all that sort of stuff.

00:36:37.000 They want to continue that narrative of the tragic events that happened on January the 6th and misrepresent them intentionally.

00:36:44.000 And so this sort of populist moment that's continuing, now it's materializing in markets.

00:36:54.000 We've seen it in everything, right?

00:36:55.000 We've seen it in politics.

00:36:57.000 We've seen it in communication.

00:36:58.000 Now we're seeing it in markets, everybody.

00:37:01.000 What more evidence do you need?

00:37:03.000 It's the exact opposite of what the Democrats want right now.

00:37:05.000 Because now Joe Biden, this is becoming such a big story right now, based on everything I'm seeing and reading.

00:37:11.000 Joe Biden's going to have to address this.

00:37:13.000 And Joe Biden's probably going to say, oh, my Wall Street Treasury Secretary is going to go look into this.

00:37:23.000 You mean the one that has been paid by Wall Street, Janet Yellen, that Wall Street Treasury Secretary?

00:37:31.000 And so, David, I want to just start with you.

00:37:33.000 You're working on a lot of different things right now.

00:37:34.000 You're pastor of a church in New York City.

00:37:36.000 By the way, if anyone's in New York City, you got to go to David's church.

00:37:39.000 It's awesome.

00:37:39.000 What's it called?

00:37:40.000 King's Church downtown between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge.

00:37:43.000 If you're in New York City, you know where the Brooklyn Bridge is.

00:37:46.000 I do.

00:37:46.000 That's southern Manhattan.

00:37:47.000 That's right.

00:37:48.000 Yes.

00:37:48.000 The bottom, bottom.

00:37:50.000 And so tell us what you're working on.

00:37:53.000 So we have church life and rocking and rolling and preaching the gospel and standing for righteousness and our society and talking about actual things that matter, not just your personal finances and how to make your car run smoother, but all of the chaos and try to order our way through this.

00:38:09.000 Jesus was the light of the world.

00:38:10.000 That emblematically is what you need to get through darkness and confusion and not just emotional stuff, but all of the storm that's currently happening.

00:38:21.000 So that's happening.

00:38:22.000 And then as you know, Charlie, I have my law practice and representing my business clients on that side and hanging out with Turning Point and Charlie Kirk, which is the exciting part of my life.

00:38:33.000 It's always fun. 0.67

00:38:35.000 And so, David, what do you have to say for Christians that say they shouldn't be involved in politics? 0.68

00:38:39.000 Stay away from it.

00:38:40.000 And by the way, we had a really good question yesterday of a woman in South Carolina. 0.90

00:38:44.000 Actually, no, is in our supporter call.

00:38:46.000 And by the way, if you guys want to get in our supporter call, all you have to do is support us at charliekirk.com slash support.

00:38:51.000 She says, I'm in South Carolina.

00:38:52.000 I don't know one political pastor.

00:38:54.000 What do you have to say about all that?

00:38:56.000 They exist.

00:38:56.000 I don't know anybody in South Carolina, too, but I actually have a buddy that is at a church in Charleston in a few years.

00:39:02.000 The point is that that's in the buckle of the Bible belt, right?

00:39:04.000 Yeah, right, exactly.

00:39:05.000 And then why do we have a, the grander question is, why do we have a church culture that's decided that politics is irrelevant?

00:39:12.000 Well, I mean, because there's a number of reasons for that.

00:39:14.000 One is an eschatological reason that the church has decided that Jesus is coming back in five minutes, so you don't have to do anything.

00:39:20.000 So you can just buckle up and take off in a couple of minutes.

00:39:23.000 And the other is just kind of what we've been calling the prosperity message.

00:39:27.000 I don't like that kind of terminology, but let's call it the narcissism gospel that it's all about me.

00:39:32.000 It's all about my house.

00:39:33.000 It's all about my marriage.

00:39:34.000 It's all about my cats and dogs and the movies I like.

00:39:37.000 And it's not about being, you know, hit with the truth.

00:39:39.000 Because if you're hit with the truth and then you look at our culture, you're like, man, there's a lot of stuff wrong out here.

00:39:43.000 Oh, and also there's a lot of stuff wrong in here that I need to deal with.

00:39:48.000 I need to clean up my own house before I can turn outward.

00:39:51.000 That's one of the reasons.

00:39:52.000 And I think there's just been a general misunderstanding of politics.

00:39:55.000 Like there was a Roman centurion.

00:39:57.000 He was in the Bible.

00:39:58.000 He interacted with Jesus.

00:39:59.000 And Jesus didn't say, listen, brother, if you want to follow me, you have to lay down your sword, promise never to do anything mean again, you know, kiss all the babies on the forehead.

00:40:08.000 No, in this interaction with the Roman centurion, he said, this guy has more faith than anyone I've ever encountered in my earthly ministry.

00:40:17.000 And he didn't tell him to leave the military.

00:40:19.000 And we don't understand that as a culture.

00:40:21.000 We have this idea that Christians and Christianity is all about kissing babies and, you know, painting lions or whatever the church does these days.

00:40:28.000 And it's not about the articulate, peaceful engagement in our culture in things that matter, like taxes, like, you know, law and all of that kind of stuff.

00:40:39.000 And I do mean the articulate, peaceful engagement and culture.

00:40:44.000 And that's something that we don't understand either because this Christian nationalism phrase is like, if you want to engage in politics, then you take, you know, Trump and you put him on the crucifix, you bow down to him in the morning.

00:40:54.000 You're like, what are you talking about?

00:40:57.000 We're far more nuanced than that in our belief system.

00:41:00.000 We understand that we can stand for a party and a group because they benefit freedom.

00:41:06.000 And Christianity needs freedom in order to flourish.

00:41:10.000 That's right.

00:41:10.000 And what do you think about this idea of the church now becoming a radical social justice exercise?

00:41:17.000 Well, and then that's taking the whole other idea that when we stop getting our marching orders from the scripture and we get our marching orders from academia.

00:41:27.000 And that's what's happened.

00:41:28.000 And there's been a push for the last couple of hundred years to have our marching orders come from academia.

00:41:34.000 Now, why don't we get our marching orders from academia?

00:41:38.000 Because there is a hierarchy of order in the scripture, a thing that, you know, a list of things that are most important and a list of things that are least important.

00:41:47.000 And that means, that doesn't mean the things on the bottom are not significant, but it means there are things that we have to deal with first.

00:41:55.000 And in Christianity, it's, you know, repentance, reconciliation to the cross, and then turning outward to serve other people.

00:42:01.000 And who?

00:42:02.000 The most vulnerable first and then moving our way down the list.

00:42:05.000 That's exactly right.

00:42:07.000 And so as Christians, we're called to pray for the welfare of the nation around us, called to be in the ecclesia.

00:42:12.000 The gospel always comes first, but the gospel should touch everything.

00:42:15.000 That's right.

00:42:16.000 And we as Christians should influence every single sector of government.

00:42:19.000 And the gospel is not just Jesus died on the cross for your sin.

00:42:22.000 That is a shallow understanding of the gospel.

00:42:24.000 The gospel is the entire book of Romans.

00:42:27.000 And Paul is telling the Romans how the world works.

00:42:31.000 He starts out in Romans chapter one.

00:42:33.000 He talks about God's rule in nature and law, evidenced by the way nature functions.

00:42:39.000 And then he walks all the way through into Romans 13 and talks about how we interact with society.

00:42:45.000 That's right.

00:42:46.000 And also, if you read Romans 13 correctly, it is who's the sovereign in this country?

00:42:52.000 We are the sovereign, right?

00:42:53.000 To protect individual rights and first principles.

00:42:56.000 I want to keep building that out with you, David.

00:42:57.000 Isabel, we're getting a lot of questions about this Illinois, a lot of questions about this.

00:43:03.000 Can you just go through this again?

00:43:05.000 I think it's really helpful.

00:43:06.000 And thank you for emailing us, everybody, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:43:09.000 Isabel.

00:43:09.000 Yeah, so Charlie, I don't remember if this was yesterday or the day before that we dove into this, but one of you sent us an email, by the way.

00:43:15.000 You can always send us news tips to freedom at charliekirk.com about a really interesting story coming out of Illinois regarding new standards for public education that are going to be legally mandated from the Department of Education and the state legislature.

00:43:28.000 This was sent to me by a former teacher of mine.

00:43:31.000 That's exciting.

00:43:31.000 Really?

00:43:32.000 Not allowed to say who it is.

00:43:33.000 Oh, don't, please do it.

00:43:34.000 This person will lose their job.

00:43:36.000 But they said, hey, Charlie, I taught you.

00:43:38.000 And I was like, of course I remember you.

00:43:39.000 They're like, can you please publicize this?

00:43:40.000 We've gotten.

00:43:42.000 Hundreds of emails from people in Illinois outraged about this.

00:43:45.000 Well, it's outrageous.

00:43:45.000 Wow.

00:43:47.000 So essentially what's happened is the State Board of Education in Illinois has already approved this rule, but now the General Assembly is going to be voting on it on February 16th.

00:43:55.000 And it's this new legally mandated rule called the Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Standards.

00:44:01.000 Sounds really nice, but when you actually break it down, it sounds absolutely terrible.

00:44:05.000 So legally speaking, should this pass, all teachers in Illinois public schools must, in their words, embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives.

00:44:15.000 So I think that's pretty safe to assume leftist ideology and perspectives.

00:44:19.000 That's generally what we know progressive pertains to.

00:44:23.000 And then beyond that, it's more so than just putting that into the curriculum.

00:44:26.000 It's actually implementing things like action civics, defined as taking your students on field trips to protests for gun control or lobbying your state legislature for progressive policies like the Green New Deal.

00:44:38.000 And it really goes into detail here about just how insane this policy is.

00:44:42.000 Teachers have to acknowledge that there's infinity genders that any student can identify however they want.

00:44:47.000 They have to implement critical race theory like the 1619 project from the New York Times into their classroom.

00:44:53.000 And this isn't just history classes or cultural relevance classes.

00:44:57.000 This is stuff like science and math and everything.

00:45:00.000 Homec, yeah, it has to be progressive.

00:45:03.000 That's right.

00:45:04.000 Yes.

00:45:05.000 But the shocking thing, the shocking thing about this is what happens when teachers don't want to do it, right?

00:45:10.000 You'd think that they have some level of autonomy when it comes to teaching their students and providing a neutral.

00:45:16.000 This is the telling thing.

00:45:17.000 They don't have an opportunity to provide a neutral perspective in their classroom anymore because if they fail to go on this full-blown train of progressivism, they are immediately disciplined and maybe even will have their teaching licensure revoked from the state of Illinois.

00:45:17.000 Right.

00:45:31.000 And so specifically in there, you have to mobilize your students for protests.

00:45:35.000 It's called action civics, which sounds so fancy and nice, but it literally means mobilizing your students to go protest and lobby for things.

00:45:35.000 You do.

00:45:44.000 Gun control. 0.99

00:45:45.000 So now Illinois students are being turned into a at-will mobilization campaign for Greta Thunberg.

00:45:45.000 Yes.

00:45:52.000 Yep.

00:45:53.000 Got it.

00:45:53.000 That's well said.

00:45:54.000 Well said.

00:45:54.000 Exactly.

00:45:55.000 So a whole army of Greta Thunbergs are happening now in Illinois.

00:45:58.000 Here's a question from John about Illinois.

00:46:00.000 This is a good question.

00:46:01.000 I don't want to make this too much about Illinois.

00:46:02.000 I know we got some friends watching from Illinois in there and some good Americans.

00:46:06.000 I'm from Illinois and I pray for its salvation.

00:46:10.000 He says, what can we do?

00:46:10.000 Illinois has been Democratically controlled for 60 years.

00:46:13.000 It's steadily gone downhill.

00:46:14.000 That's not exactly true, respectfully, John.

00:46:16.000 I have to push back. 0.87

00:46:17.000 There's been a ton of Republican governors that were weak and they were cowards and they didn't fight.

00:46:22.000 We've had lots of Republican governors.

00:46:24.000 As recently, did you know that three years ago, Illinois had a Republican governor?

00:46:28.000 Three years ago.

00:46:29.000 Yeah.

00:46:29.000 A lot of people didn't know that.

00:46:30.000 Bruce Rauner, Edgar, George Ryan, who I think might still be in jail.

00:46:36.000 Illinois' got a lot of former governors in jail.

00:46:38.000 I think George Ryan might actually just be out of jail now.

00:46:41.000 You see, in Illinois, we have term limits, one term in office, one term in jail.

00:46:44.000 That's beautiful.

00:46:46.000 I got a whole Illinois.

00:46:48.000 I got a whole Illinois deal.

00:46:49.000 You heard that one before, Connor?

00:46:51.000 Once or twice, one or two hundred times.

00:46:54.000 I got a whole Illinois repertoire, right?

00:46:56.000 I got the whole thing figured out.

00:46:57.000 But no, the point is that, yeah, Democrats have been mostly in control, but we've had Republican senators, Mark Kirk.

00:47:03.000 We've had more Republican congresspeople than Democrat congresspeople.

00:47:06.000 Republicans have controlled the state house and the state senate before and the governor's mansion.

00:47:10.000 Reagan won Illinois in 84 and 88.

00:47:15.000 It was close in the 90s.

00:47:16.000 Clinton started to turn it.

00:47:17.000 The point is this: it was weak Republicans that did this.

00:47:20.000 And I want to get into some of the Chicago teacher union stuff in Chicago and in Illinois.

00:47:24.000 It's super important.

00:47:26.000 The biggest mistake that Illinois governors made, the biggest mistake, it was Edgar that did this, a Republican governor from downstate.

00:47:33.000 His fatal error was when he said that Chicago teachers and Illinois teachers are allowed to strike.

00:47:41.000 It's the big teachers should not have the legal ability to strike.

00:47:45.000 Now, you might say, well, what do you mean?

00:47:46.000 Police officers are not allowed to strike.

00:47:48.000 It's considered a safety risk.

00:47:50.000 So police officers are fired, like they just lose their job.

00:47:53.000 You don't show up, you strike, you're done.

00:47:55.000 It's part of the agreement.

00:47:56.000 We think about it.

00:47:56.000 It makes a lot of sense, right?

00:47:58.000 Police officers start striking.

00:47:59.000 Criminals are going to start.

00:48:00.000 Same with firefighters, right?

00:48:02.000 Teachers, because they have this ability to strike and shut down all the schools, which is bad for kids, bad for safety, bad for health, bad for communities, bad for families.

00:48:10.000 It is their nuclear option, right?

00:48:12.000 They're able to get whatever they want whenever they want to do it.

00:48:15.000 So the Chicago teacher unions, every 18 months, they're like, yeah, we are the highest paid metropolitan teachers in the country.

00:48:21.000 We are the highest paid this.

00:48:23.000 However, we're going to strike and we're going to get even more.

00:48:25.000 And what does everyone do?

00:48:26.000 They give them whatever they want.

00:48:27.000 It's a pure surrender.

00:48:28.000 No one wants to wait out the actual strike because all of a sudden you go a week, you go two weeks, you go three weeks without kids in school.

00:48:35.000 You start to see things really start to unravel.

00:48:37.000 So it was weak Republicans that really contributed to the once great state of Illinois, the downfall of the once great state of Illinois.

00:48:43.000 New York is similar.

00:48:44.000 Yeah.

00:48:44.000 I mean, in New York, we have the rubber rooms that the teachers are so strong that if you're a teacher that's negligent in your classroom, even abusive, I believe, certainly negligent, they will not fire you because it takes, it costs too much money.

00:49:02.000 It costs more money to fire you than it does to put you in a room where you sit on your phone and read the news and play Angry Birds and get paid full salary.

00:49:12.000 How is that not an incredibly corrupt and broken system?

00:49:14.000 And how are we not doing something about it as citizens?

00:49:17.000 Like, ah, well, I guess just that's how it goes.

00:49:20.000 Unions were really helpful at a time in our nation.

00:49:23.000 They were really helpful.

00:49:24.000 And now we've tilted the scale.

00:49:26.000 We've crossed the fulcrum where we're getting actual bullying by unions.

00:49:31.000 And it's not a market demand and it's not rational.

00:49:34.000 And there's not incentive by doing an incredible job, which is what we're seeing in a lot of these charter schools.

00:49:40.000 And then you have all this, you know, fake statistical research that's trying to debunk charter schools that are really the hope.

00:49:46.000 Tom Sowell just came out with a book.

00:49:48.000 Was it last year?

00:49:49.000 His analysis of New York City and charter schools and saying they're really the hope for actual students in New York City that are publicly educated.

00:49:58.000 Well, and by the way, it's the teachers' unions largely that are contributing to this ongoing shutdown of schools when it comes to COVID-19.

00:50:05.000 The science is very, very clear and speaks to the fact that young children in the United States and everywhere else around the world are not really that vulnerable when it comes to COVID-19.

00:50:16.000 They might get sick, but statistically, they are very sick for maybe a day if they really get sick at all, and then they're fine.

00:50:22.000 They've completely recovered within a few days.

00:50:24.000 They're really not at risk to contract the disease whatsoever to begin with.

00:50:27.000 We should be opening schools.

00:50:28.000 If we're really focused on sticking to the science, that's the pathway that we need to be taking.

00:50:32.000 But all of a sudden, you see the same tactic like driving up wages that we see from teachers' unions all the time, every 18 months in some places.

00:50:39.000 Colorado's like that too.

00:50:40.000 That's where I grew up.

00:50:41.000 And now it's all about, well, we just don't feel safe unless you pay us a lot more money and then we can reapply.

00:50:46.000 And the point in the Tale of Two Cities point, to throw it back to the Tale to Americas.

00:50:49.000 Tale to Americas, the solution to the issue was sacrificing your own desire and needs and consumption and safety and pleasure for someone else's safety.

00:51:02.000 And Sidney Carton, at the end of the movie, he gives his life over to the life of this other guy.

00:51:08.000 And that's the journey of a nation.

00:51:10.000 If we want to find ourselves again, we have to once again believe in self-sacrifice.

00:51:16.000 It doesn't mean it's easy.

00:51:17.000 It doesn't actually mean it's safe.

00:51:19.000 It may mean it's not safe, but it's the sacrifice of myself for my family, for those that are around me.

00:51:26.000 I totally agree.

00:51:27.000 And that is the journey that our nation should be on, but really isn't. 0.50

00:51:33.000 And it's a journey that should be led by the church morally, and they're abdicating their role to do so.

00:51:37.000 Sorry.

00:51:38.000 Go ahead.

00:51:39.000 Please continue your questions coming in.

00:51:41.000 Freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:51:43.000 I made some headlines recently.

00:51:44.000 This question here is about my comments to Lecrae.

00:51:48.000 And Lecrae is a Christian rapper. 0.61

00:51:50.000 I never liked his music.

00:51:51.000 He seems like a nice enough guy, but I went pretty hard after him.

00:51:55.000 It really isn't about him.

00:51:56.000 I went hard after him because he decided to go do an election rally with Raphael Warnock and John Ossif.

00:52:03.000 Lecrae's a Christian rapper.

00:52:04.000 And I just basically, I said some, basically, he shouldn't be allowed to perform in churches because of this.

00:52:10.000 And so it's trended on Twitter and all this stuff.

00:52:14.000 And so here's the statement that I'm writing now for a news publication.

00:52:17.000 It says, and I'm just responding to some of the listeners that asked about this.

00:52:22.000 It's basically, while I hold no personal animosity towards Lecrae, and we'd be happy to discuss this issue with him privately, the scriptures are incredibly clear that we are fearfully and wonderfully made and that God formed us in our innermost being and knit us together in our mother's womb.

00:52:35.000 Senator Warnock calls himself a pro-choice pastor, and that makes him complicit in the genocide of nearly 400,000 black babies that are killed every year in America alone.

00:52:43.000 Lecrae nevertheless decided to publicly campaign for this man, and I find that morally incompatible with our Christian faith. 0.58

00:52:49.000 I stand by what I said.

00:52:50.000 And so we're getting a lot of questions about that.

00:52:53.000 And again, I don't say this in a place of personal animosity towards Lecrae, but if you're going to be an abortion advocate and call yourself a Christian, I got some problems with that.

00:53:01.000 Yeah, Ali Bestucki, I think, said something like, I'm a pro-hamburger vegan. 0.51

00:53:07.000 They're impossible to join.

00:53:09.000 You cannot stand for the death of the most innocent member of a society and call yourself a Christian. 0.88

00:53:15.000 It just doesn't work that way.

00:53:17.000 I mean, we're talking about a life in the scripture.

00:53:20.000 We see, you know, John the Baptist jumping up and down as Jesus is coming in his mother's womb.

00:53:27.000 Like the two babies in the wombs are meeting together and John is recognizing it in his spirit and jumping up and down because it's a real individual autonomous life stamped by the image of God.

00:53:40.000 And when Warnock says, you know, I'm a pro-abortion pastor, it doesn't compute.

00:53:46.000 It can't compute unless you say, you know, I'm also a pro-Satan Christian.

00:53:50.000 Like I love being a Christian and I love Satan at the same time.

00:53:53.000 They're both really fun these days.

00:53:56.000 It's completely, they're inherently incompatible.

00:53:59.000 Exactly.

00:53:59.000 And it trickles down to the rest of the church, too.

00:54:01.000 I read a really interesting poll from Pew Research the other day doing a research project for something I'm working on with Turning Point USA.

00:54:08.000 And the vast majority of the Christian church in America is pro-choice.

00:54:11.000 They believe that abortion should be legal in at least some situations.

00:54:15.000 And this poll broke it down by denomination, too.

00:54:17.000 I don't remember every single number, but Catholics are 58% in favor of abortion in all circumstances in America today.

00:54:26.000 That should tell you something of how dramatically the church has changed within the last few decades within our lifetime, Charlie.

00:54:32.000 And just the idea that the church used to be a single issue voting block about protecting the sanctity of life, how quickly that's degraded because pastors and priests have completely abandoned their responsibility to tell the truth to people is so disappointing to see.

00:54:47.000 It's incredible.

00:54:48.000 If you're not even able to impact the lives of those that can't protect themselves, then what good is the gospel?

00:54:52.000 That's exactly right.

00:54:53.000 And so when we look at the world and we say, you know what, my Christianity is only about my relationship with me and God.

00:55:01.000 Like, wrong.

00:55:02.000 That's not how it works.

00:55:02.000 You look at the parables and see what Jesus says.

00:55:05.000 You know, you have the rich man walking by.

00:55:07.000 Exactly.

00:55:08.000 Rich man is walking by the poor man, right?

00:55:11.000 Begging, and he's like, nah, I don't feel like giving you money.

00:55:14.000 And the rich man goes to hell because of his interactions with other people in his culture, not just because he has some kind of moral assent.

00:55:23.000 And we haven't been taught that.

00:55:24.000 We've been taught this kind of, you know, single issue system.

00:55:28.000 Like, if you believe, you're set.

00:55:30.000 Did you say the prayer?

00:55:31.000 You're set.

00:55:32.000 I don't care what you believe about abortion or any other moral issue that's clear in scripture.

00:55:37.000 Don't worry about it.

00:55:38.000 And so then we have, you know, major famous Christian rappers that are like, I'm going to support this pro-abortion guy that's pro-genocide in the womb and not literally not understand why he shouldn't.

00:55:50.000 And the church does nothing to call him out. 0.61

00:55:52.000 Exactly.

00:55:52.000 It takes me and whatever.

00:55:54.000 I guess that's what we do.

00:55:55.000 Charlie Kirk, strong church.

00:55:56.000 That's what your name is.

00:55:57.000 Yes, right?

00:55:58.000 That's well, that's right.

00:55:59.000 Charlie means strong, and Kirk means church.

00:56:01.000 If we go back to our Scottish roots, David, give us a trivia question, but don't give us the answer.

00:56:06.000 A trivia question?

00:56:08.000 What do I have in my pocket?

00:56:09.000 What do you want?

00:56:10.000 It's the Lord of the Rings.

00:56:11.000 It's like the Lord of the Rings riddle.

00:56:13.000 I have a coin.

00:56:13.000 Okay.

00:56:14.000 Doug just gave me a coin.

00:56:16.000 Our mutual Chicago friend.

00:56:17.000 Charlie's not from Chicago.

00:56:18.000 He's from California.

00:56:19.000 And I don't know.

00:56:20.000 It's a golden coin.

00:56:21.000 And that's what's in my pocket.

00:56:22.000 I don't know what it is yet exactly, but I'm going to find out.

00:56:25.000 So what's the trivia question?

00:56:27.000 It was a riddle.

00:56:28.000 That was the riddle of what is in my pocket.

00:56:30.000 That was like, it's a...

00:56:32.000 Are you not a Lord of the Rings guy?

00:56:33.000 I am, but it's going way over my head right now.

00:56:37.000 When the Hobbit is in the Hobbit, that's the prefix stuff, though.

00:56:41.000 That real Lord of the Rings can be.

00:56:43.000 No, that's the whole ring of power.

00:56:44.000 That's where he gets the ring of power.

00:56:45.000 He has it in my pocket.

00:56:47.000 What's another trivia question?

00:56:49.000 Man.

00:56:50.000 You ask the audience if they get it right, then they get a signed book.

00:56:53.000 Oh, really?

00:56:54.000 So don't tell them the answer.

00:56:54.000 Yeah.

00:56:55.000 Okay.

00:56:56.000 What are things I know about?

00:56:57.000 We always put our guests on the spot.

00:56:59.000 What are some things I know about?

00:57:02.000 It could be about you, too.

00:57:03.000 Okay, let's, can I, can I have the answer?

00:57:05.000 Can I decide the answer?

00:57:06.000 What's the best pizza in New York?

00:57:08.000 Can I say that?

00:57:08.000 Yeah, sure.

00:57:09.000 What's the best pizza in the New York?

00:57:09.000 Okay.

00:57:10.000 What you think, David?

00:57:12.000 And I'm saying in the top, people think these are in the top three.

00:57:15.000 West Village, classic, Greenwich Village, classic pizza, piece of all time, floppy, beautiful New York pizza.

00:57:21.000 My own personal trivia question.

00:57:22.000 If you guys get that right, alongside a subscription to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast, we just type in Charlie Kirk or hit subscribe.

00:57:28.000 Email is freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:57:30.000 I will send you a signed copy of our book.

00:57:32.000 God bless all of you.

00:57:33.000 Stay strong.

00:57:34.000 And Isabel, how do they get involved with Turning Point USA, which every human being should do?

00:57:38.000 Every human being, regardless of how old you are, should get involved with TPUSA this year.

00:57:42.000 If you go to tpusa.com/slash get involved, our team will reach out and get you plugged in.

00:57:48.000 Very good.

00:57:49.000 Thank you guys so much for listening and watching.

00:57:51.000 God bless you.

00:57:52.000 Speak to you soon.

00:57:56.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:57:58.000 As always, email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:58:01.000 If you'd like to support us, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:58:05.000 And if you'd like to get involved with Turning Point USA, you know how to do it.

00:58:07.000 Go to tpusa.com.

00:58:09.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:58:10.000 God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - January 29, 2021

A Tale of Two Americas

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript