The Charlie Kirk Show - January 12, 2023


America and the Art of the Possible with Chris Buskirk


Episode Stats


Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

182.27985

Word count

6,796

Sentence count

533

Harmful content

Toxicity

11

sentences flagged

Hate speech

21

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Chris Buzkirk's new book, America and the Art of the Possible: Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay, examines what it means to be a vital country and what it looks like when things are working.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today's Charlie Kirk Show, an entire hour with Chris Buzkirk.
00:00:04.000 We talk about national vitality, the art of the possible.
00:00:07.000 We talk about smoking.
00:00:08.000 We talk about high fructose corn syrup, why the food pyramid is upside down, and a lot more.
00:00:13.000 We cover a lot.
00:00:14.000 We also talk about the Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Incans, and the Mayans.
00:00:18.000 If that does not capture your curiosity, I'm not sure what will.
00:00:21.000 Email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:24.000 Check out Chris Buzzkirk's new book, America and the Art of the Possible: Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay.
00:00:31.000 Get involved with Turning PointUSA at tpusa.com.
00:00:34.000 That is tpusa.com.
00:00:37.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:38.000 Here we go.
00:00:39.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:40.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
00:00:43.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:46.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:49.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:50.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:51.000 His spirit, his love of this country.
00:00:53.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
00:00:58.000 Turning point USA.
00:01:00.000 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.
00:01:08.000 That's why we are here.
00:01:11.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
00:01:20.000 I'm super excited for this entire hour with one of the clearest, smartest thinkers in the conservative movement, helps run American Greatness.
00:01:28.000 You run American Greatness, amgreatness.com.
00:01:30.000 And I do my clear thinking over there, too.
00:01:32.000 You do your clear thinking over there.
00:01:33.000 Your new book is America and the Art of the Possible, Restoring National Vitality in the Age of Decay.
00:01:40.000 Tell us about it.
00:01:42.000 So I, yeah, I'm trying to think what's the best place to start on the book.
00:01:47.000 I guess I would say this is I wanted to write a book about what had gone wrong in America.
00:01:53.000 And as I was sort of working through this, this is a couple of years ago.
00:01:55.000 I started to think through it, and I realized there was something really insufficient about writing that original idea for a book.
00:02:02.000 And that was I didn't want to just complain.
00:02:06.000 You know, I think everybody spends a lot of time saying, well, this went wrong or that went wrong or I wish it could be this way or wish it could be that way.
00:02:15.000 And there's lots of things that have gone wrong.
00:02:17.000 There's lots of things that we think we could improve.
00:02:19.000 I always think about, you know, that sort of like there's always that poll question they ask around elections, right direction, wrong direction.
00:02:25.000 And it's kind of one of those things that's super easy to say, like the country's wrong direction.
00:02:30.000 What do you do about it?
00:02:31.000 Right.
00:02:31.000 And so I started to think more about it.
00:02:33.000 And this is really where I came down with the thesis for the book is to say, look, and that's the way the book is divided roughly in half.
00:02:40.000 The beginning half of the book is descriptive.
00:02:43.000 It's like, let's be really concrete about the things that we think have gone wrong.
00:02:48.000 Like, what are they?
00:02:49.000 Not just, I don't like this, but like, how do you define it in a way that you could actually take action on?
00:02:55.000 And that's why the second half of the book really takes those things that I've identified that I think aren't working and have defined often in a very quantitative way and then come up with some potential solutions, not necessarily to solve everything, but at least to begin to solve problems.
00:03:14.000 And so that's why the use of the word vitality in the subtitle was intentional, because it was just a way for me to think about what does it mean when things are working?
00:03:24.000 What does a vital country look like?
00:03:27.000 And then I sort of went through and defined the concrete items that would define a vital America.
00:03:33.000 That's a word I don't hear very often.
00:03:35.000 What does a vital America look like?
00:03:36.000 So the way I think about it is this, is that, you know, there's like the ideological version of it.
00:03:44.000 And I say it in the book.
00:03:45.000 I say, you know, people in politics tend to be super ideological.
00:03:49.000 And I wanted to kind of stay away from that.
00:03:51.000 Like people on the left will always talk about like justice, right?
00:03:55.000 And people on the right will often talk about liberty or about freedom.
00:03:59.000 And I think, you know, on the everybody's like, well, I don't know, I'm kind of for both of those things.
00:04:03.000 But it's like insufficient.
00:04:04.000 And so I thought about like, what would what are the things that we would want in the country in order to be able to say like we're succeeding and things are going well?
00:04:12.000 And so I said, well, let's see.
00:04:15.000 So I think like, I think material prosperity is important.
00:04:20.000 And there is like from the right, there's always like a sort of spiritual critique, which, as you know, it's highly sympathetic to.
00:04:27.000 So am I.
00:04:29.000 And I do deal with that in the book, but I said, you know, material prosperity is a real thing.
00:04:33.000 Like, part of the American promise is that I do better than my parents.
00:04:39.000 My kids will do better than me.
00:04:40.000 Like, that is an explicit expectation that Americans have.
00:04:43.000 And that has spiritual implications.
00:04:45.000 It has all kinds of.
00:04:46.000 Yes, 100%.
00:04:47.000 That's something that we believe in.
00:04:49.000 Like, we want to achieve things.
00:04:52.000 We want to make our living standards better for ourselves and our kids.
00:04:55.000 We want our kids to be able to achieve things.
00:04:57.000 And so, and it's also something you can quantify.
00:04:59.000 Like, what does that look like if living standards are improving?
00:05:02.000 Like, it's kind of like, you know, you're doing more with less.
00:05:05.000 You know, this, like, this is technological progress.
00:05:08.000 So I say there's that.
00:05:09.000 Say, like, health and longevity is really important.
00:05:14.000 We need to have an America where lifespans are expanding and where chronic disease is declining.
00:05:20.000 And we actually have the exact opposite of it right now of that rate.
00:05:24.000 Went down, went down for the first time last 30 years, right?
00:05:26.000 Well, lifespans, longevity has been declining for a decade.
00:05:29.000 Oh, is that?
00:05:29.000 In this country.
00:05:30.000 Yeah.
00:05:31.000 I did a thread about this on Twitter the other week because, and I just wanted to draw the contrast because, for instance, I use the example of France, and this is actually broadly true in Western Europe.
00:05:42.000 France's lifespans have been increasing.
00:05:44.000 Like the average lifespan or median lifespan in an American right now is a little bit over 75 years.
00:05:51.000 In France, it just increased, again, to like 80.3 or 80.4 years.
00:05:57.000 The heavy cigarette smoking France and wine and cheese France?
00:06:01.000 One in three people is a regular cigarette smoker in France.
00:06:04.000 So regular cigarette smoker, I have a whole theory on cigarettes.
00:06:07.000 I find them to be repulsive to be around.
00:06:10.000 However, I actually think cigarette smoking was a narcotic hedge against obesity.
00:06:17.000 Yeah, that's probably right.
00:06:18.000 I think that's right.
00:06:19.000 There's like, I'm a little provocative, like at my thread, and I kind of alluded to this in the book too about the cigarette smoke.
00:06:24.000 I think that's probably right.
00:06:25.000 When you think about it, like if you had, if you have to choose.
00:06:28.000 A vice.
00:06:29.000 If you have to choose a vice, like it turns out like maybe the cigarette smoking is better for you than like the seed oils and the polyoxide.
00:06:38.000 I can see the argument.
00:06:39.000 And I don't like being around cigarettes.
00:06:40.000 I don't like the smell of them.
00:06:42.000 But the country was actually macro healthier when cigarette smoking in certain areas was wider spread.
00:06:48.000 Now they say, well, lung cancer and all that.
00:06:50.000 That's legitimate.
00:06:51.000 It's true.
00:06:52.000 You know, you're inhaling a lot of carcinogens.
00:06:54.000 But countries that still, like France, that have way higher cigarette smoking populations actually have higher life expectancy.
00:07:02.000 They have higher life expectancy and they have lower incidences of chronic inflammatory disease like heart disease, diabetes, et cetera.
00:07:09.000 And so I said, well, in terms of when we're talking about national vitality, like one of the things that is pretty obvious, it's not just like the material prosperity.
00:07:17.000 I think that's obviously important.
00:07:18.000 It's one of my criteria, but also are we living longer and healthier?
00:07:23.000 And not only are we not living longer, Americans as they get older are sicker than they were in the past. 0.70
00:07:30.000 And they're sicker than our peer countries. 0.95
00:07:31.000 Like, Lane, the example I used was France. 0.99
00:07:34.000 So that's another one.
00:07:35.000 That's another one of my criteria.
00:07:37.000 And then I have another criteria about like, you know, is there high social trust?
00:07:43.000 Are we able to achieve things as a country?
00:07:46.000 One of the elements of this, I think, is, you know, are people, are they having families?
00:07:50.000 Do they get married?
00:07:51.000 Do they have kids?
00:07:53.000 As you know, that is less true now than it has been in the past.
00:07:58.000 And it is just an indicator, in my view, of what's the general health.
00:08:04.000 Like if people are generally optimistic about the future, if they feel like they have opportunities, they are more likely to have a family.
00:08:13.000 And if you have, and countries that are based on a family as the basic building block of their country tend to have higher social trust.
00:08:21.000 And as a result, and this is another element of, like, this is like my macro version of what is civilizational or national vitality look like.
00:08:29.000 It's you have the high capacity for collective action.
00:08:33.000 In other words, can you identify, agree upon, and achieve big goals.
00:08:40.000 So the big one for the United States historically was we conquered the frontier.
00:08:44.000 Like we start off as like these 13 colonies sort of clinging to the Atlantic coast, and everybody agrees we should get to the Pacific.
00:08:53.000 Go westward.
00:08:54.000 Go westward. 0.99
00:08:55.000 It's the Abraham story. 1.00
00:08:56.000 Get up and go. 0.99
00:08:57.000 Get up and go.
00:08:58.000 Call to adventure.
00:08:59.000 Right.
00:08:59.000 Build, build, build.
00:09:00.000 There's something over the next hill.
00:09:03.000 And everybody participated in that in this country.
00:09:07.000 Not just the people in the covered wagons, not just the people who were building the railroads, but there was somebody back home who was building spikes that went into the railroad.
00:09:19.000 Everybody sort of had some share in the national project.
00:09:23.000 And the idea that a country, a civilization, needs to be able to, A, agree on what that goal is, like, is almost foreign to the way we act as a country now.
00:09:38.000 But if we want to be able to sort of sustainably, it's a funny word to use, but you know, in order to be able to sort of sustainably achieve what we understand as the American dream over the long term, we really need to figure these things out.
00:09:53.000 And what I like, I don't use the term intentionally, like rebirth or restart or return.
00:10:00.000 I think we need to inaugurate.
00:10:04.000 In other words, we need to begin again an age of American.
00:10:09.000 It's not your new birth of freedom speech.
00:10:11.000 It's no, it's not that.
00:10:12.000 No, it isn't that at all.
00:10:14.000 I feel like, and this is like a little critique for my own side, which is I think we're often too backwards looking.
00:10:22.000 There are a lot of great things in our history.
00:10:24.000 I am sympathetic with that argument.
00:10:26.000 Yeah, but like we're not going to go back to 1790.
00:10:30.000 We can't.
00:10:31.000 We can honor 1790 and we should, but we need to continue doing what those people in 1790 did, which was built. 0.88
00:10:39.000 You know that we are too backward facing, where in every political convention or conversation, our own included, 50% of the speakers mention World War II.
00:10:51.000 Rents are soaring at unprecedented highs.
00:10:54.000 If you're renting or have a friend or family member that is, now is a great time to make the move to homeownership.
00:11:00.000 Look, you got to own renting, that's great reset stuff.
00:11:04.000 Andrew Del Rey and Todd Avakian at Sierra Pacific Mortgage have helped so many people make that leap from renting to owning with lots of programs that offer first-time buyers assistance with little to no down payment needed.
00:11:16.000 I encourage you right now to visit my buddies, their website.
00:11:19.000 They're great guys.
00:11:20.000 They're Christians.
00:11:21.000 They're conservatives.
00:11:22.000 They love the Lord.
00:11:23.000 AndrewandTodd.com right now.
00:11:25.000 The thing I love about these guys is it's not about the transaction.
00:11:28.000 They're helping you create a plan to help you reach your goals.
00:11:31.000 Give them a call or go to their website, AndrewandTodd.com.
00:11:34.000 With today's still historically low interest rates, it's easier than you think to become a homeowner.
00:11:38.000 I've relied on them and producer Andrew has as well.
00:11:41.000 I highly recommend you take action now.
00:11:43.000 And if you know someone paying rent, tell them about Andrew and Todd.
00:11:46.000 Go to andrewandodd.com and tell them the Charlie Kirk Show sent you.
00:11:54.000 America and the art of the possible restoring national vitality in an age of decay.
00:11:58.000 Chris, we were talking about World War II and the hearkening back to.
00:12:02.000 Yeah, I mean, everybody brings up World War II.
00:12:04.000 I mean, you bring up this good point: is that so often there's these sort of reference points, which are appropriate, right?
00:12:12.000 Don't get me wrong about these.
00:12:13.000 We sort of have these reference points with, and they're often wars, right?
00:12:16.000 The War for Independence, the Civil War.
00:12:20.000 For some reason, the War of 1812 gets George.
00:12:22.000 It was remarkably heroic.
00:12:24.000 Totally heroic, yeah, but it gets no love.
00:12:27.000 But then you get World War I gets no love.
00:12:29.000 World War II gets a ton of love.
00:12:31.000 And people talk about it all the time.
00:12:33.000 And this sort of goes to my theme in the book about the Capacity for Collection Act, collective action.
00:12:39.000 In other words, what are the big things that a country, our country, or any civilization can agree that they need to do because they're good, because it's an existential necessity, whatever it is. 0.56
00:12:52.000 And World War II was maybe the last really big thing this country did.
00:12:56.000 I would argue maybe that Apollo, the moon landing, is but even that is not at the same scale as World War II, obviously.
00:13:04.000 It was very precise.
00:13:05.000 It was a smaller group of people.
00:13:07.000 There was national agreement, but it was probably a couple thousand people that were involved in that project.
00:13:12.000 It was a few thousand people, many of whom were, you know, had been involved in World War II, you know, sort of famously that NASA, NASA imports, the German rocket program.
00:13:22.000 So people from both sides of the war moved to America or were already here to came here and participated in this big project, which was legitimately a huge project.
00:13:32.000 But what my argument here is in the book is that people hunger for that.
00:13:39.000 Like it is a necessity for a country.
00:13:42.000 And what we a lot of times are seeing with the political polarization, political tension, and friction that occurs in the country is that that's sort of an outgrowth of the fact that we don't have a big national project.
00:13:57.000 The example I use, or one of the examples that I use in the book, is that very often there have been religious motivations behind big civilizational projects.
00:14:08.000 And you think about all of the big monuments that have been built around the world.
00:14:14.000 They are very often religious artifacts, effectively.
00:14:18.000 Think about like the pyramids, the Sphinx of Giza.
00:14:21.000 The oldest pyramid was built in like 4,500 BC.
00:14:25.000 The Sphinx was built around 2500 BC, so like a thousand years before the Iliad.
00:14:30.000 The Mayan temples, you have just Stonehenge.
00:14:34.000 There were all these huge projects, the ziggurats of the Sumerians and the Akkadians.
00:14:39.000 These are massive projects that required really, you know, huge logistical feats, organization, but also buy-in from people. 0.76
00:14:48.000 And we wind up, you know, you go to Egypt, what do you see?
00:14:51.000 You go to Europe, what do you see?
00:14:51.000 You see the pyramids.
00:14:52.000 You see cathedrals.
00:14:54.000 One of my favorite examples that I cite in the book about how a people can undertake a very long-term project and why they do it is you have the Duomo, the cathedral in Milan.
00:15:07.000 So this cathedral is construction is built.
00:15:10.000 It's spectacular.
00:15:10.000 I've been there.
00:15:11.000 It's unbelievable, right?
00:15:12.000 It's like it is one of these, like it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site for a reason.
00:15:17.000 It's underrated in the Italian portfolio.
00:15:19.000 I could not agree with you more.
00:15:20.000 I was there in 2019 before COVID, and it's just like what you, it's one of those things where it exceeds expectations.
00:15:27.000 Like your expectations up here, but what you see is actually up here.
00:15:31.000 It was begun in 1385 or 1383, I think.
00:15:35.000 They finished construction in 1965.
00:15:38.000 Okay.
00:15:39.000 It was 600 years to build the cathedral from beginning to end.
00:15:43.000 And what did they do when they finished?
00:15:46.000 They began the restoration.
00:15:47.000 Like that project is ongoing since the late 14th century.
00:15:51.000 By the way, that site is built upon a very early Christian site from the Roman era.
00:15:56.000 But the cathedral itself was a 600-year project to get from groundbreaking to, okay, ribbon cutting or whatever.
00:16:04.000 And then they just started saying, okay, well, we continue on because like the stained glass is old and like this thing has been weather worn or whatever.
00:16:13.000 And there is buy-in in Milan, in Italy, you know, and Milan has changed hands during that 600-year period.
00:16:23.000 Everybody agreed that that was something that was important.
00:16:27.000 Now, some of those people were Christians and some of them weren't, but they thought it was important regardless, and they continued to do it.
00:16:36.000 And that is the sort of social cohesion that makes a civilization successful over the long haul.
00:16:45.000 I want to explore this.
00:16:46.000 I think this is really interesting.
00:16:47.000 I'm a big believer in the tactile and the physical.
00:16:50.000 I think that Christianity, obviously I'm a Christian, so are you.
00:16:56.000 Modern Christianity is very focused on the invisible, and that's okay.
00:17:00.000 The Old Testament, though, is a very tactile, tangible religion, right? 0.70
00:17:06.000 And I think we lose part of that, which is part of what we are doing, in my opinion, to glorify God, should also be building temples, cathedrals, works of art, music, statues that glorify him.
00:17:20.000 Because things that you could physically see, what the Old Testament equivalent of the tabernacle or the Shabbos or the Kaddush are ways that you could physically be able to keep what is holy and sacred.
00:17:32.000 That's an interesting thought to explore.
00:17:36.000 Charlie Kirk here, look, I've told you about producer Andrew and how Relief Factor has really improved his life and relieved the pain in his knees and back.
00:17:43.000 Now, let me tell you about Yvonne in California.
00:17:46.000 She says this, quote, both my husband and I are in our 70s and so grateful to have found Relief Factor.
00:17:51.000 We've tried so many other solutions, but none of them have given us the freedom from aches and pains like Relief Factor.
00:17:57.000 I hear Yvonne, Relief Factor works for me too.
00:17:59.000 Relief Factor is a 100% drug-free solution developed by doctors based on scientific research to help your body attack the underlying inflammation causing you pain.
00:18:09.000 Three weeks from now, you could be doing the things you enjoy doing.
00:18:12.000 Your first step to becoming pain-free could be just to order the three-week quick start for only $19.95.
00:18:18.000 After trying Relief Factor, over half a million people have gone on to order more.
00:18:23.000 Go to relieffactor.com or call 8004 Relief to find out more about this offer.
00:18:28.000 That's relieffactor.com or call 8004 Relief.
00:18:31.000 Live your best life and feel the difference with Relief Factor.
00:18:36.000 For those of you that listen to our podcast with regularity, you know that I have been bashing against Gnosticism.
00:18:44.000 And we don't have to go too far too deep down that rabbit hole.
00:18:47.000 However, it does tie into our conversation.
00:18:48.000 Chris, you wanted to pick this up about glory be to God, to do big things in the physical world that glorify God.
00:18:54.000 Yeah, I think this is actually super important.
00:18:57.000 Just to sort of recap, you know, one of the things that has always and every place united civilizations is some common religion.
00:19:08.000 Now, I know, like, probably not with your listeners, but for some people, when they hear that, it makes them itch a little bit because they think it means like intolerance or pogroms or something like that.
00:19:17.000 Obviously, that's happened in the past, but you think about like places like, I know Rome, like the Roman Empire or something, you know, Rome was actually pretty tolerant, particularly by ancient standards.
00:19:28.000 Correct. 0.96
00:19:29.000 Yes, were they intolerant of Christians? 1.00
00:19:31.000 Sometimes is the answer.
00:19:32.000 It depends on who the emperor was.
00:19:34.000 Dependent on who the emperor was, but Christianity within the Roman world was kind of unique because Rome's typical standpoint with foreign gods was just incorporate them.
00:19:45.000 Yep.
00:19:45.000 The problem with Christianity for Rome was like Christ can't be incorporated into the pantheon.
00:19:51.000 Yes. 0.78
00:19:52.000 He did wind up, as it turns out, taking over.
00:19:55.000 Constantine, I think, eventually allowed Christ to take over everything. 0.71
00:19:59.000 Right.
00:20:00.000 So, but you think about like what has motivated people to do these big projects and hold these civilizations together.
00:20:06.000 We talked about Egypt and we talked about the Sumerians and we talked about obviously Christians, but it goes any place in the planet. 0.97
00:20:13.000 Like there's these massive Buddhas built all over Asia, which are these big problems. 0.99
00:20:17.000 Mind-blowing. 1.00
00:20:18.000 Mind-blowing.
00:20:18.000 Yeah.
00:20:20.000 But the point I think that you were driving at is really important is that, you know, America is a country that has a Christian heritage.
00:20:28.000 It has a, if you sort of take all Christians, regardless of denomination, as a single block, as a country that has a Christian plurality, and it has Christian ethics, like even there's even a version of like very left-wing ethics, which are sort of secularized Christianity, which is, by the way, a bad idea, right?
00:20:49.000 Because when you take the Christ out of Christianity, it becomes really abusive.
00:20:53.000 My point here is that when you do things to glorify God, and I think this was a point you were driving at, you can undertake these big projects. 0.65
00:21:03.000 We were talking about the Duomo, the cathedral in the center of Milan.
00:21:07.000 People were trying to create a work, and they did, in fact, create a work of unimaginable beauty, creativity.
00:21:16.000 Even when you get down below just the very sort of high element of it, that's the beauty.
00:21:22.000 You think about the people whose, their job was to organize it, the logistics.
00:21:26.000 Like that was people using the talents that they had been given in order to do everything, you know, for Christians think about the world this way, you do everything in order to glorify God, as unto him, as scripture says.
00:21:43.000 And these are things where we should not be bashful about building things in the physical world that are good, that are beneficial, that are beautiful.
00:21:54.000 What would be more beautiful if the Bible tells us looking on the face of God, which we can't now, but we will after the glorification and the consummation.
00:22:05.000 But to do these things with a conscious attitude that they are being done not to glorify the maker, meaning the person, but to glorify the creator.
00:22:18.000 That's a good thing.
00:22:19.000 The Latin phrase is sole deo gloria.
00:22:23.000 Bach and Handel, before they wrote a musical note, wrote that on the top of every single one of their pieces of music.
00:22:33.000 And essentially what they were getting at is we're going to have this point towards something.
00:22:39.000 It's going to point towards the glory of what is absolutely good, true, and beautiful.
00:22:44.000 Why is our art so terrible now?
00:22:46.000 It's not pointing towards anything.
00:22:48.000 And so, Chris, you mentioned something.
00:22:49.000 I want to get kind of back to some of these themes of the book.
00:22:52.000 You say the social trust thing, I think, is the most interesting point you make because some of this is, you know, really profound.
00:22:59.000 All of it's profound, but I think that's the one that's really interesting and collective action.
00:23:04.000 If everybody has their own truth, how on earth could you ever get towards a purpose of collective action?
00:23:11.000 This is the problem, right?
00:23:12.000 This is exactly the problem.
00:23:13.000 And so I was talking with a friend yesterday about this who had just been reading the book.
00:23:18.000 And he says, well, how do you, he hadn't gotten to the second half, right?
00:23:21.000 The first half is the problems.
00:23:22.000 The second half of the book is sort of my attempt at solutions.
00:23:26.000 He says, well, like, what do you, like, what's the solution?
00:23:28.000 He's like, tell me, I haven't gotten there yet.
00:23:30.000 So, like, one, I want to temper expectations.
00:23:33.000 Like, I don't have the solution because I don't think there is a single like silver bullet that says, like, oh my gosh, we have all these problems.
00:23:41.000 If we just do this, it's going to be fine.
00:23:42.000 Like, I think that's too simplistic.
00:23:44.000 But what I did was, is I went through things that are very concrete that are achievable.
00:23:48.000 I would try, I'll give you an example in just a second because social trust is very important, but you don't get a country of 330 million people that spans like this massive continent that goes from sort of dysfunction and polarization.
00:24:03.000 And then it's kind of like the internet thing.
00:24:05.000 With this one weird trick, we got everybody to have social trust again.
00:24:10.000 But rather, what I put forward in the book is plans that I think are like audacious but achievable so that you can have that sort of functioning and that sort of trust and those sort of big goals, but things that you can do at a meaningful but still kind of small scale.
00:24:26.000 So one of the examples that I use in here in the book is I propose building new cities in the country and that these cities, like brand new de novo cities, like Sahilo, out of nothing.
00:24:38.000 Out of nothing, but that they should exist within a different purpose-built political rubric so that they would have, they would exist within the United States.
00:24:52.000 They would exist under the rubric of the Constitution, but they would be given a pretty broad latitude to try different things.
00:25:02.000 And I have talked to a couple of people about this and sort of they scratch their head.
00:25:06.000 They say, like, that's not possible.
00:25:07.000 There's not even an analog to that.
00:25:09.000 And to which my answer is, actually, there's a few analogs to this.
00:25:13.000 One of which is in the Holy Roman Empire, there were so-called free cities.
00:25:16.000 There were like 100 some odd, maybe 150 free cities.
00:25:21.000 And they operated, you know, they were within the empire.
00:25:24.000 They owed allegiance to the emperor.
00:25:27.000 They had to pay taxes.
00:25:28.000 If there was a war, they had to send troops.
00:25:30.000 Or if they were attacked, the empire would protect them.
00:25:33.000 There's sort of all these basics, right?
00:25:35.000 But they were, in a way, in a way, they were sort of similar to Hong Kong.
00:25:40.000 Like they would, you know, they had different trade rules.
00:25:42.000 They were able to be very much self-governing and they created their own sort of systems that were very specific to their hybrid system.
00:25:51.000 And they say, ah, okay.
00:25:52.000 People say, okay, well, that was a long time ago, Chris.
00:25:55.000 I don't know if you could do that today.
00:25:56.000 Say, ha, but there's actually an analog within the United States now, and that's Puerto Rico.
00:26:01.000 And Puerto Rico, again, everybody in Puerto Rico is a U.S. citizen.
00:26:06.000 They pay federal taxes, though, at a much lower rate than people on shore do.
00:26:10.000 They exist.
00:26:11.000 They have all the rights of the Constitution, which are protected by the courts, et cetera, et cetera.
00:26:16.000 But they have a much lower regulatory burden and with it, particularly within certain industries.
00:26:23.000 And that's actually an opportunity for Puerto Rico.
00:26:25.000 Like, I know people on the left try and say, you know, Puerto Rico needs to be a state because it's bad for the Puerto Ricans and it's not fair.
00:26:32.000 And in actuality, it's actually pretty good for Puerto Rico.
00:26:35.000 Like, that's, they've got a great deal.
00:26:38.000 And there are, there are businesses in Puerto Rico that are just really in the past maybe five or 10 years have realized what a good deal they have.
00:26:45.000 And there's these burgeoning industries down there.
00:26:48.000 But my point about the cities is, you know, like these are just analogs, right?
00:26:52.000 To show what's possible.
00:26:53.000 Like, if you, if we were to say, let's build a new city wherever, and I don't really care if it's in New York, Blue State, Texas, Red State, California, Blue State.
00:27:04.000 Or Kansas.
00:27:05.000 Yeah, or in Salinas, Kansas.
00:27:07.000 The act of doing that in and of itself is a good thing that shows that we can undertake big projects.
00:27:15.000 You talked about Constantine in the Roman Empire.
00:27:17.000 What did he do?
00:27:18.000 He split it, East and West.
00:27:20.000 He split it east and west.
00:27:21.000 Out of necessity, too.
00:27:22.000 It wasn't all.
00:27:23.000 But he built a new city.
00:27:25.000 He built Constantinople.
00:27:26.000 And the people became Istanbul, yeah.
00:27:27.000 Right.
00:27:28.000 Stood for hundreds of years.
00:27:29.000 Stood for hundreds of years.
00:27:30.000 It was a big project that showed the strength and the vitality of that civilization.
00:27:36.000 Hagia Sophia lives to today.
00:27:38.000 It's actually one of my examples in the blog of that.
00:27:40.000 I was talking about things that were built.
00:27:43.000 So the Hague Sophia was a church and that it is now a mosque.
00:27:47.000 And in between, when Turkey was officially secular, it was a museum for many years.
00:27:52.000 But there's even under all of these different regimes, there was an agreement that it was something beautiful and that it should be preserved.
00:28:00.000 Yeah, and I, let's, let's explore that together.
00:28:03.000 We live in an ugly country right now.
00:28:06.000 The art is ugly. 0.80
00:28:07.000 The music is ugly. 0.99
00:28:08.000 The people are increasingly ugly.
00:28:11.000 Is that part of the national revitalization plan? 1.00
00:28:15.000 Aesthetics matter.
00:28:17.000 Let me say that.
00:28:17.000 Aesthetics matter a lot.
00:28:19.000 I talk about the, we talked at the beginning of the show about the physical aspect to vitality.
00:28:25.000 Yes.
00:28:26.000 There is a national version of that, the whole country.
00:28:29.000 There's a personal version of that.
00:28:32.000 Like if we want, this is one of the projects I say the country should undertake. 0.91
00:28:36.000 Like we should state as a national priority that the median age of an American should be 100 and we should try and do that within 50 years. 0.85
00:28:44.000 Wow.
00:28:45.000 That's like semi-insane to say because it's 75 now and it's been declining.
00:28:52.000 But it's only semi-insane.
00:28:54.000 Like it's just crazy enough to say, okay, we should actually take a hard run at that and we should be devoting resources to that.
00:29:00.000 And not only do we want Americans to be living to 100, we want them to be healthy in their old age.
00:29:06.000 It is achievable.
00:29:09.000 And to your point about the aesthetics, if you are living older and you are healthier, you will look better, right?
00:29:18.000 You have to take care of yourself.
00:29:21.000 And that contributes to a culture of beauty.
00:29:26.000 Yes.
00:29:26.000 And that's something that I think is important because people are happier.
00:29:30.000 We talked about France earlier.
00:29:33.000 France, BMI there on average, much lower.
00:29:37.000 They do not have the obesity epidemic that we have here.
00:29:40.000 Smoking is an appetite suppressant.
00:29:41.000 It is.
00:29:42.000 It's a strong appetite suppressant.
00:29:44.000 It's awful for you, but it also is an appetite suppressant.
00:29:49.000 Yes, it is.
00:29:50.000 Because I'm thinking about the, it's awful for you.
00:29:53.000 Like, yes, it is.
00:29:54.000 Carcinogens are.
00:29:55.000 No, it is.
00:29:55.000 It's a real thing.
00:29:56.000 It's arguably bad.
00:29:57.000 That does do stuff to you.
00:29:59.000 No, I agree.
00:30:00.000 I'm not going to be the thanks for smoking guy, right?
00:30:02.000 You got to be the thanks for smoking.
00:30:04.000 But I will say, for some people that are morbidly obese, I think it would be better for them to be doing a pack a day than to be eating saturated fat and McDonald's and Burger King.
00:30:16.000 We believe in science here on the Charlie Kirk show, right?
00:30:19.000 Just look at the data.
00:30:20.000 Over the past 50 years, smoking has declined.
00:30:24.000 Obesity has risen.
00:30:25.000 I know that I guarantee you.
00:30:27.000 You get accused of correlation.
00:30:29.000 Yeah, I don't know for sure.
00:30:30.000 I'm going to be getting the correlation and causation memes in my Twitter feed in like five seconds.
00:30:34.000 I get it.
00:30:35.000 I get it.
00:30:36.000 But like something obviously changed.
00:30:38.000 It's a proven appetite suppressant, though.
00:30:40.000 Anyone who has smoked in their life will tell you that a substitute for a meal could be a cigarette, where now it's a crispy cream donut or a Big Mac.
00:30:51.000 Your body is demanding some form of sensory saturation and nicotine with some, you know, let's just say what becomes a dopamine rush and a noreperephine rush is actually a pretty good substitute instead of I'm going to just fill my body with caloric serotonin.
00:31:10.000 So let me take that one step further.
00:31:13.000 Eating has become an activity.
00:31:15.000 Yeah.
00:31:15.000 It's become a hobby.
00:31:17.000 So you're talking about like with the thing with smoking, like people sort of get bored and want to do something with their fingers.
00:31:21.000 If they smoke, they just smoke.
00:31:22.000 But there's people who just say they just start eating.
00:31:25.000 And not only are they eating more what they're eating, like industrial food is just demonstrably bad for you.
00:31:35.000 I did not anticipate this hour to be talking about what the potential downsides to the war on smoking would be.
00:31:42.000 But Chris, you had a thought on this?
00:31:45.000 Yeah, I'll bundle up.
00:31:46.000 Gosh, a bunch of thoughts on this subject.
00:31:48.000 Ida, look, the, I guess the point I wanted to drive at was like we sort of focused on the smoking, which is, I think it's, it's fun because it's, it's at least partially true and it's super provocative.
00:32:00.000 So it's fun to do.
00:32:01.000 It's probably contrarian.
00:32:02.000 And again, I personally hate cigarette smoke.
00:32:05.000 I've never smoked in my life.
00:32:06.000 So I'm an interesting defender of it.
00:32:08.000 Yeah.
00:32:08.000 Because I actually think it's obnoxious to be around.
00:32:12.000 That's my own take.
00:32:13.000 Yeah, nobody likes, like, the thing about secondhand smoke is that like it doesn't give anybody cancer, but it smells bad.
00:32:18.000 So it's like, it's like it's annoying, but not dangerous.
00:32:21.000 Yeah.
00:32:21.000 And so let me just make sure my position is clear.
00:32:24.000 I just don't want to be around your cigarette smoke. 0.79
00:32:26.000 But if you have a choice between morbidly obese or a high-functioning cigarette smoker. 0.88
00:32:31.000 That's an easy one.
00:32:32.000 And the morbid obesity, like this is, this is another part of my argument is, and this, and this, like, you think about the big projects the United States should undertake if we want a country that is both working together on something that's important and beneficial, but it's where are we getting our food and what are we eating?
00:32:49.000 You and I have talked about this.
00:32:50.000 A bunch.
00:32:51.000 A bunch.
00:32:52.000 We've talked about this because it's so important is, you know, like there was a conscious decision made in this country in the early 70s to industrialize American agriculture.
00:33:04.000 I think there were good reasons for it, to be honest with you.
00:33:06.000 Like, I don't want to sort of be Pollyanna and come along 50 years later and say, like, you mean, you wanted to make sure people had enough to eat? 0.97
00:33:15.000 Gosh, you're a bad person.
00:33:16.000 Like, the Secretary of Agriculture who undertook this project was a Republican. 0.98
00:33:20.000 His name was Earl Butts.
00:33:22.000 He came out of, you know, he grew up on a farm.
00:33:25.000 He came out of that world.
00:33:26.000 And I'm super sympathetic to the idea, the reality that for most of human history, the major problem with food hasn't been obesity.
00:33:35.000 It's been people starving.
00:33:37.000 It's been people not getting enough to eat.
00:33:39.000 That's correct.
00:33:40.000 Well, now 14 million kids are morbidly are obese.
00:33:42.000 I don't know if morbidly, they are obese.
00:33:44.000 Yeah, and there'll be some set of those that are morbidly obese.
00:33:47.000 It's like the percentages with adults are horrible.
00:33:52.000 There's, I think the number is something like 40 or 45% of Americans are obese and something like maybe 20% are morbidly obese. 0.98
00:34:02.000 The food itself, we talked about the smoking, the appetite suppression, but the food itself is garbage. 0.94
00:34:07.000 It's void. 0.93
00:34:08.000 These high fructose corn syrup, these seed oils.
00:34:10.000 The seed oils with the linoleic acid, which is inflammatory.
00:34:13.000 It causes inflammatory disease.
00:34:15.000 The pyramid, I think, is a conspiracy to make America fat.
00:34:18.000 It's just, it's basically based on the idea that you should just be eating grains.
00:34:23.000 Carbohydrates are way overrated, especially grain carbohydrates.
00:34:27.000 Right.
00:34:27.000 Grain carbohydrates are the worst form of carbohydrates.
00:34:30.000 You're going to need all you need carbohydrates in your diet.
00:34:33.000 You have three ways to nourish yourself, proteins, fats, or carbohydrates.
00:34:36.000 If you ask Americans which one's the worst for you, 90% would say fats.
00:34:39.000 When in reality, good fats are actually the best thing for you.
00:34:42.000 Are very good for you.
00:34:43.000 Yeah.
00:34:43.000 That's right.
00:34:45.000 It's funny.
00:34:45.000 There's this, there's one of these reality shows that my wife and I watched like a year ago.
00:34:51.000 It's called Alone.
00:34:52.000 And the point of the show is like, they put you alone in the wilderness someplace and it's like a competition show.
00:34:57.000 And you get to bring like, I don't know, two matches and like nail clippers or something.
00:35:02.000 Who can live the longest and just live off the land?
00:35:05.000 And it just always strikes me.
00:35:07.000 We watched like three seasons of it, but I love these reality shows.
00:35:12.000 Everybody's always saying on the shows, we need to get more fat in our diet or we're going to die.
00:35:18.000 There's a great, got a great story.
00:35:20.000 It's actually tragic of some of these guys that were in the back mountains and all they ate was rabbits.
00:35:25.000 Yep.
00:35:25.000 And they died.
00:35:26.000 Tons of protein, zero fat.
00:35:28.000 Zero fat.
00:35:29.000 I mean, when you, some of these folks who like on this show, and this, I think, goes to the idea of like, what's actually good for people?
00:35:35.000 What's necessary when they, when they're hunting, the first thing that they eat, which is what, you know, traditional people would eat, what do they like?
00:35:42.000 What does the chief get?
00:35:44.000 The organs.
00:35:45.000 Yes.
00:35:45.000 Right.
00:35:46.000 They're nutrient-dense.
00:35:47.000 There are fats, and you need those for your body to function.
00:35:51.000 Weirdly, just as an aside on this, one of the strategies on the show to win is there's certain people who will try and gain a huge amount of weight before they start the show.
00:36:00.000 So they just store fat on their body and then they feel like they don't have to eat.
00:36:03.000 And one of them actually won after gaining like 100 pounds and just let himself sort of wear down and wore everybody else out.
00:36:10.000 But the point is, the point for what we're talking about here is that the idea that you are being healthier by just chowing down on grain carbs is just false.
00:36:22.000 You can go with almost zero carbohydrates.
00:36:24.000 They're largely unnecessary for daily function because your body can turn fat into energy.
00:36:29.000 Correct.
00:36:30.000 Protein you need for obviously muscle growth and for development of hair and anything that has amino acid-based.
00:36:38.000 But we now have carbohydrates as the basis.
00:36:41.000 Some people say, well, exercise needs carbohydrates.
00:36:43.000 No, it does not.
00:36:45.000 You can exercise at a high level with just fats, and that's where you get your body into ketosis.
00:36:50.000 We're out of time, Chris.
00:36:51.000 Sorry.
00:36:52.000 America and the art of the possible restoring national vitality in the age of decay.
00:36:56.000 We are going to bring back fats and smoking, and there's nothing you can say about it.
00:37:00.000 Chris, God bless you, man.
00:37:01.000 Thanks a lot.
00:37:04.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:37:05.000 Email me your thoughts as always.
00:37:06.000 Freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:37:08.000 Thank you so much for listening and God bless.
00:37:13.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.