00:00:01.000I take your questions that you've emailed me, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:05.000We go over the filibuster rather extensively and comprehensively.
00:00:09.000We talk about the legacy of Ronald Reagan, ancient Greek, and so much more.
00:00:14.000It's a pretty interesting and fun episode.
00:00:16.000But the first part of this episode on the filibuster is super important to send to all of your friends that might say, we must get rid of the filibuster.
00:00:22.000We go through a very detailed, evidence-based argument of why we must keep the filibuster in place.
00:00:28.000If you want to support our program, please go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
00:00:33.000When you go to charliekirk.com/slash support, you are able to get behind the work we are doing to reach millions of people across the country, young people.
00:01:41.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:53.000So a question we keep on getting, and this is from Faith.
00:01:56.000It's very similar to this question: is, hey, Charlie, if Democrats tried to end the Senate filibuster, couldn't Republicans filibuster against ending the filibuster?
00:02:05.000Or is that not possible since it's more of a Senate rule than legislation?
00:02:08.000Could you talk about how the filibuster works exactly?
00:02:16.000So it starts with: if 50 Democrats can agree for a Senate rule change, you cannot filibuster a rule change.
00:02:24.000And so if they all of a sudden agree that, you know what, 50 votes is adequate enough to change the way that we do business in the United States Senate, then that could change the filibuster altogether.
00:02:33.000Now, what's the significance, again, of the filibuster?
00:02:37.000The filibuster, as it stands right now, is all that is preventing Democrats from passing HR1, HR5, and all of this very harmful legislation to our country.
00:02:52.000The filibuster requires 60 votes to end debate.
00:02:57.000The filibuster has been around in one way or the other since 1807.
00:03:04.000The filibuster is nothing new, and the Democrats are trying to go out of their way to call it a Jim Crow relic.
00:03:13.000However, if you look at the history of the filibuster and you look at what Democrats have said about the filibuster, it's actually contrary to that.
00:03:22.000In fact, we have some tape right here of when Joe Biden was defending the filibuster back when he was in the Senate.
00:03:40.000What they don't expect is for one party, be it Republican or Democrat, to change the rules in the middle of the game so that they can make all the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet.
00:03:55.000The checks and balances which have been at the core of this republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option.
00:04:06.000And they will change the rules, break the rules, misread the Constitution so that they will get their way.
00:04:14.000At its core, the filibusters are not about stopping a nominee or a bill.
00:04:50.000And if we have to, if there's complete lockdown and chaos as a consequence of the filibuster, then we'll have to go beyond what I'm talking about.
00:04:59.000And then, but Joe Biden then accidentally highlighted the fact that Democrats used the filibuster last year after saying it was abused in the past, Cut 66.
00:05:09.000You know, with regard to the filibuster, I believe we should go back to a position of the filibuster that existed just when I came to the United States Senate 120 years ago.
00:05:20.000That it used to be that from between 1917 and 1971, the filibuster existed.
00:05:29.000There were a total of 58 motions to break a filibuster that whole time.
00:05:36.000Last year alone, there were five times that many.
00:05:42.000So it's being abused in a gigantic way.
00:05:46.000Wait, Democrats weren't in control of the Senate last year.
00:05:49.000So Democrats were abusing the filibuster?
00:05:51.000Is that what Joe Biden's trying to say?
00:05:53.000The Democrats were using the filibuster too much?
00:05:57.000You see, the Democrats have grown impatient.
00:06:00.000For many of these Democrats, they're septogenarians.
00:06:16.000And many of these Democrats are now being presented with the energetic radical base of the Democrat Party who's constantly in their ear and they say, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, you can be a revolutionary like the rest of us.
00:06:31.000You can be remembered for being on the side of the proletariat.
00:06:41.000Together we can stand up against systemic racism.
00:06:44.000And for some of these feeble-minded, weak politicians, they are now being convinced by a group of people that do not share our values to change every single rule and tradition that came before them just so that they can hold on to power forever.
00:07:13.000And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that's what we should do.
00:07:26.000Now, the significance of the filibuster, this is actually going to be the most important, wonky, weedsy, nuanced detail that will determine the future of our republic.
00:07:40.000I know that some of this stuff does not interest a lot of people.
00:07:42.000I know that it could be very detailed.
00:07:44.000But basically, the fate of our country largely rests on whether or not the filibuster will stay in place.
00:07:52.000You're starting to see every single Democrat leader start to agree on their impatience.
00:08:00.000Let's listen to Julian Castro, Cut 81, who says the reason we can't take away guns is because the filibuster, CUT 81.
00:08:09.000In Washington, they actually were, or do we need to get rid of that filibuster?
00:08:14.000I actually think this is going to be another indictment of the filibuster.
00:08:18.000How do you not call something strongly bipartisan in this country when almost 90% of Americans support it, and yet mainly one political party stands completely against it?
00:08:33.000And this is one more example of why, in the least, we need significant filibuster reform that makes it possible for effective, meaningful legislation like this to actually get enacted.
00:08:48.000So their argument is that, look, a couple of Republicans voted with us in the House.
00:08:53.000If the Senate is going to remain united against us, then we need filibuster reform to be able to pass HR1 gun confiscation, D.C., Puerto Rico estates, be able to abolish the Electoral College.
00:09:04.000And then also be able to expand our capacity to win elections.
00:09:11.000Democrats know that under normal circumstances, they are not going to be in power after 2022.
00:09:18.000So then they ask themselves the question: why must we live under normal circumstances?
00:09:23.000Why can't we live under circumstances like they do in California or New York, where only Democrats win?
00:09:30.000So Democrats are saying, hey, instead of trying to do this bipartisan compromise, instead of trying to understand that we might not be in power forever, they say, why won't we be in power forever?
00:09:42.000Let's create a set of circumstances where we never lose power, where we never have to actually run for reelection again, where we decide who will be in charge based on primaries and not based on general elections.
00:09:56.000That's basically how it works in California.
00:09:58.000With some rare exceptions, California has not had a statewide elected official as a Republican in quite some time.
00:10:05.000Last time there was a Republican, I think, was Arnold Schwarzenegger.
00:10:09.000And so the Democrats, they never actually want to give up their newly found power.
00:10:13.000And they realize that universal mail-in voting, they know that these public policy measures are helpful in staying in power indefinitely.
00:11:50.000Well, first of all, Strom Thurmond was a Democrat, and he was the only one that switched parties, and the other 20 people who filibustered for 75 days straight, they were all Democrats.
00:11:59.000But those details aside, Mitch McConnell had a great response to this lie from Trevor Noah and Elizabeth Warren that somehow the filibuster is based in racism, Cut 80.
00:12:11.000Elizabeth Warren has said that the filibuster is based on racism.
00:12:17.000No, the filibuster predates the debates over civil rights.
00:12:21.000It goes back to the beginning of the country.
00:12:23.000The filibuster started well before we got into the civil rights debates that have occurred off and on over the history of the country.
00:12:32.000So the derivation of the filibuster was not related to race or civil rights.
00:12:39.000And Senator Ben Sasse, who could be very good on some issues and then very annoying on other issues, he came out and he made a very good point and he said the filibuster is only racist to Democrats when they want it to be.
00:12:54.000Where were all the Democrats calling the filibuster racist when they tried to stop Tim Scott's police reform bill, Cut 82?
00:13:02.000Goals, and therefore it needs to be tossed out.
00:13:05.000But when you were using the filibuster to halt Senator Scott's police reform bill, the filibuster was an essential American institution that forced compromise.
00:13:16.000But now that it can be occasionally used to resist a 51-50 straight majoritarian exercise of power, it's supposedly exclusively a relic of slavery and a tool of Jim Crow.
00:13:28.000It's nonsense, and the people saying it know that it's nonsense.
00:13:32.000And Cut 83, Senator Ben Sasse continues by saying, why did you use the filibuster then to block a black man's police reform bill?
00:14:28.000Senator Ben Sasse basically says, okay, Democrats, you used the filibuster last year to stop police reform, the very same thing that you said that you need more power to try to get done.
00:14:37.000And Senator Tim Scott, a black man who's a Republican from South Carolina, you blocked his bill.
00:14:44.000And Senator Chuck Schumer was asked, why was it okay for him to filibuster?
00:14:47.000Because they're not willing to negotiate and McConnell isn't.
00:15:18.000So to summarize all of that, the filibuster is not racist.
00:15:21.000It predated any sort of usage by Democrats to block civil rights legislation.
00:15:26.000The filibuster is supposed to slow down the process.
00:15:28.000The Senate is a deliberative body, and the Democrats want to get rid of it because they're growing impatient because they know they will not be in charge forever.
00:15:36.000But they want to be in charge forever, which is why they want H.R.1 and all these structural changes to our country.
00:15:45.000Do you know how much you need to save to have a comfortable retirement?
00:15:48.000The average retirement savings for families across the country is $255,000.
00:15:54.000If you are using these averages as a goal for your retirement, let me be blunt.
00:17:15.000You win a signed copy of the MAGA Doctrine.
00:17:18.000Ronald Reagan is one of the greatest presidents in American history.
00:17:22.000Ronald Reagan brought America from a dark place under the presidency of Jimmy Carter, a one-term presidency from 1976 to 1980, to a place of optimism, hope, and American renewal.
00:17:37.000Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, spent a lot of time in Eureka, Illinois, was a Democrat.
00:17:46.000He actually was an actor in a very famous film called Bedtime for Bonzo.
00:17:51.000He was hired to go speak in a tour-like fashion by General Electric.
00:18:00.000He talked in manufacturing plants and tours across the country.
00:18:04.000When he started to do that, he started to get a great love of America, and he was asked to talk about America's founding and free market principles.
00:18:15.000So he would go on a whistle-stop tour, a train tour from one area to the rest, and start to read these books and start to really grow in reverence for America and our history.
00:18:26.000Ronald Reagan then became governor of California, and he was always a movement conservative.
00:18:32.000He was more in the Goldwater tradition and less in the Rockefeller or Romney tradition, not Mitt Romney, George Romney, his father, and they're very similar ideologically.
00:18:43.000Ronald Reagan tried to win the presidency by primarying Gerald Ford in 1976, I want to say.
00:18:54.000And he lost Gerald Ford, who was the incumbent president, who took over from the resigning Richard Nixon, made Rockefeller his vice president, I believe, and then lost in a reelection bid to Jimmy Carter, Southern Democrat.
00:19:11.000And then Ronald Reagan righted that wrong after awful economic conditions.
00:19:16.000You think interest rates are troublesome now?
00:19:19.000When Ronald Reagan was running for the presidency, we had 18% interest rates.
00:19:30.000But more than anything else, Ronald Reagan should be known for not just restoring the American spirit, not just expanding the Republican Party to be a working person's party, Reagan Democrats.
00:19:42.000But he defeated Soviet communism without ever firing a shot.
00:19:48.000He defeated Soviet communism because he framed it as a theological debate.
00:19:53.000He said, we in our country believe our rights come from God.
00:19:57.000The Russians and the Soviet Union does not.
00:20:02.000We are going to win this battle of ideas because we believe in freedom and the Soviets do not.
00:20:08.000Ronald Reagan famously had the Reykjavik summit in 1987 in Iceland, where he met with Mikhail Gorbachev about denuclearization.
00:20:20.000And you started to see little promising signs that Ronald Reagan and his doctrine of peace through strength, a robust rebuilding of the American middle class and the defense aspect of our country, was actually working.
00:20:34.000He never actually saw it happen while he was president, but George H.W. Bush did see the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the Soviet empire.
00:20:42.000Ronald Reagan and his legacy and why you should be unafraid and unapologetic to defend him was about American greatness.
00:21:21.000Ronald Reagan broke the back of the air traffic controlling union.
00:21:26.000Ronald Reagan actually put tariffs on semiconductors coming into America, which preserved the semiconductor industry, which basically created Silicon Valley.
00:21:34.000You could decide whether or not that's a good thing.
00:21:37.000Ronald Reagan was unafraid to stand up to the Japanese threat where they were deindustrializing our country and never got credit for that.
00:21:46.000Ronald Reagan was also well known for saying that we must take an 80% victory rather than a 100% loss, that if someone is with you 80%, consider them an ally, not an enemy and an adversary.
00:22:01.000He united the Republican Party more than any other candidate up until Donald Trump.
00:22:06.000He believed in our country, and yes, he even ran on a doctrine that was called make America great again.
00:22:15.000I encourage all of you in your free time to go back and listen to Ronald Reagan's speeches.
00:22:33.000So I encourage everyone to not just study the history of Ronald Reagan, but be unafraid to defend his legacy.
00:22:41.000So Landon, I hope that's somewhat helpful.
00:22:43.000That's just an off-the-cuff, off the top of my head, summary of one of America's greatest presidents, Ronald Reagan.
00:22:49.000If I can name the greatest presidents, Lincoln, Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, which is a different type of president than the others, and I think he gets misrepresented, but I think Teddy Roosevelt's a great president for a different reason.
00:23:04.000I've done podcasts on that before, and you guys have to check that out.
00:23:07.000I also believe that Dwight D. Eisenhower was a phenomenal president in addition to that.
00:23:13.000So thank you so much for your question.
00:23:14.000You win a signed copy of the MAGA doctrine.
00:23:18.000Gene from Utah, Charlie, what are your thoughts on Krispy Kreme giving free donuts for the foreseeable future on people who've proved they've received both vaccination shots?
00:23:25.000Isn't this one step forward, one step backwards, thinking, seeing as though obesity is a leading corbidity related to the Chinese coronavirus?
00:24:31.000I had a conversation with my aunt about some concerns I had regarding America and where it's headed.
00:24:35.000She kept brushing it off because she said, quote, I just need to do more research, which is exactly what I'm doing and why I have good reason to question the direction of our country.
00:25:37.000Socratic method, of course, comes from Socrates.
00:25:40.000The Greeks were the best and the greatest of the ancients.
00:25:44.000Socrates was, of course, killed for asking questions.
00:25:48.000Socrates was, of course, killed for pursuing truth.
00:25:52.000So I'm sure it's actually going to end up probably better for you than Socrates.
00:25:56.000But Socrates, of course, taught Plato.
00:25:58.000Plato taught Aristotle, the, of course, teacher-student relationship.
00:26:04.000Socrates was killed by the democracy or the demos or the many by a popular vote.
00:26:11.000But the Socratic method goes like this.
00:26:13.000I'm going to ask questions specifically focused on the question why, and that question why will be like a shovel and we'll get closer to the truth, hopefully.
00:26:29.000Dive deeper into the reason of why you believe what you believe and know your stuff.
00:26:35.000There is no replacement for knowing your material.
00:26:39.000There's no substitute for knowing your material is probably a better way to say that.
00:26:43.000So I encourage you that the deeper you dive, the richer you will have a belief of your worldview and the more people will respect you.
00:26:52.000Okay, let's get to another question here.
00:26:54.000Freedom at CharlieKirk.com from Clifton.
00:26:57.000Charlie, can you talk about why gas prices are rising in a segment on your podcast, please?
00:27:01.000Not hearing or reading many conservative networks talking about thank you.
00:27:04.000Well, it's basic supply and demand, and we've done many podcasts and many podcasts on economics and supply and demand.
00:27:12.000When you have a greater supply of something and a constant demand or even a little bit of an increased demand as long as supply is outpacing demand, then prices will go down.
00:27:21.000But when you have increased demand and less supply prices will go up, which is exactly what's happening here.
00:27:26.000So Joe Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline.
00:27:29.000He's making it harder to transport oil.
00:27:30.000But most importantly, the reason why gas prices are going up is because last year, when new leases were basically expiring, the price of oil was so unbelievably low.
00:28:20.000Long story short, Joe Biden is largely responsible for a lot of this.
00:28:24.000He should be approving new leases and new drilling all across the country.
00:28:28.000He should be trying to get into the national stockpile and reserve to bring down the price of oil.
00:28:33.000I know a lot of my friends in Oil Country and Oklahoma and Texas disagree with me because they like the price of oil where it is right now.
00:28:38.000I think that's probably a fair argument if we're able to find some equilibrium where it's affordable for the American worker and someone who transports themselves, but also it's able to have a robust energy sector in our country so we are not dependent on foreign adversaries for our oil.
00:28:56.000Look, business owners are facing a ton of challenges today.
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00:30:15.000Two Soviets walking down the street, Cut 92.
00:30:17.000One of the heads of state that I met with on this visit told me the story about the two fellows in the Soviet Union that were walking down the street, and one of them says, Have we really achieved full communism?
00:30:38.000You pointed out that police would be so busy arresting handgun owners that they would be unable to protect the people against criminals.
00:30:46.000It's a nasty truth, but those who seek to inflict harm are not phased by gun control laws.
00:30:53.000I happen to know this from personal experience.
00:31:01.000He said personal experience, of course, because he was shot.
00:31:04.000And finally, Cut 94, a little self-deprecating humor, Cut 94.
00:31:08.000Speaker, Mr. President, distinguished members of the Congress, honored guests, and fellow citizens.
00:31:16.000Today marks my first State of the Union address to you, a constitutional duty as old as our republic itself.
00:31:25.000President Washington began this tradition in 1790 after reminding the nation that the destiny of self-government and the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty is finally staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.
00:31:44.000For our friends in the press who place a high premium on accuracy, let me say I did not actually hear George Washington say that.
00:31:54.000Such a contrast between how Joe Biden handles his age and Ronald Reagan handled his.
00:32:15.000And if I remember correctly, Romans 15, 13 is made the God of hope fill with all joy and peace if you trust in him, if I remember correctly, something of that sort.
00:32:29.000I'm fascinated by our Greek roots in our language.
00:32:34.000And the more that I study Aristotle and Plato, the more I'm fascinated with how much of a Greek influence is actually we have here on the West.
00:32:44.000So Dr. Larry Arne from Hillsdale College, he walks people through some just very basic Greek terms.
00:32:50.000For example, philosophy comes from two words, philos and sophos, love of wisdom, right?
00:32:56.000Philo, love, that's where we get the word philanthropy from, city of brotherly love.
00:33:01.000The Greeks had many different words for love, agape, storge, phileo.
00:33:11.000And actually, there's like five or six of them.
00:33:13.000And then theology, of course, means to the study related to God.
00:33:16.000I am by no means an ancient Greek expert, but there's some great resources.
00:33:20.000Actually, the University of Texas Austin has a phenomenal linguistics research center if people are interested in that.
00:33:26.000And I highly encourage anyone that just wants to explore truth.
00:33:30.000The deeper you dive into ancient Greek and Latin, the more you'll actually realize that the words we use so often have really meaningful roots.
00:33:37.000The Greeks had two words for time, for example, chronos and kairos.
00:33:40.000Kronos, what you look at on your wrist, and kairos is basically a time, a time of moment, an action moment, if you will.
00:34:06.000Anyway, the point is that knowing Greek is really important, especially if you're going to study biblical texts, because the New Testament was almost written, I think it was all written in Greek, even though Jesus spoke Aramaic, likely spoke Aramaic.
00:34:20.000Greek was the written word because of the Hellenistic influence, largely because of Alexander the Great, who himself was a student of Aristotle.
00:34:29.000Greek language and tradition took over the entire Middle East.
00:34:34.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:34:35.000Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:34:39.000If you want to support us, you know how to do it.