00:01:05.000His 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.
00:01:13.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:24.000I don't know about you, but I feel like I'm always looking at a screen now more than ever.
00:01:29.000And whether you're an avid news watcher or in serious need of a distraction, unplugging yourself is easier said than done.
00:01:35.000One of my favorite ways to rest my eyes and still get the content I'm inching for, by putting in my Raycon wireless earbuds and listening to something great.
00:01:42.000Whether you're catching up on a favorite news podcast, binging an audiobook, or powering through your workout with pumped up playlist, a pair of Raycons in your ears can make all the difference.
00:01:51.000Raycons are built to perform anywhere or anytime with water and sweat-resistant construction and Bluetooth app pairs quickly and seamlessly.
00:01:56.000Raycon's offering 15% of all their products for my listeners.
00:02:00.000And with enough battery life for six hours of playtime, you can unplug for a while.
00:02:40.000Well, what we're dealing with right now in our country is rather unprecedented because the vast majority of the pressure that we are seeing from these companies are technology-based.
00:02:54.000And their model is not about building railroads.
00:02:57.000It's not about producing anything you could touch.
00:03:00.000Instead, it's about figuring out better ways to sell you.
00:03:05.000You see, the technology companies in our country, it's a completely different profit model than almost anything we've ever seen.
00:03:15.000We had Senator Mike Lee in the office yesterday, and I encourage all of you to subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast to hear the conversation.
00:03:21.000And Senator Lee is definitely more on the libertarian side of economics.
00:03:24.000By the way, he's a good friend and a great American.
00:03:27.000I was surprised because I asked him a question, not really sure where he was going to go with it, but anticipating that Senator Lee was going to say, hey, we got to let the market work itself out when it comes to these companies.
00:03:37.000And Senator Lee even said that it's time for government to intervene with the tech companies.
00:03:42.000I mean, you could have just tapped me over.
00:03:46.000It's a big deal that even the most committed free market defenders in the Republican Party, in the Senate, are now saying that we need government intervention.
00:03:58.000And here's part of the reason why, is that looking at how things are, not how we wish them to be, and looking at things empirically, not just on a chalkboard or a whiteboard, when companies are involved with artificial intelligence and the massive surveillance of citizens, and that's their business model, it warrants a different type of approach.
00:04:19.000Now, the goal should always be, obviously, what is good for human beings?
00:04:22.000What is good for the flourishing of our lives and our families, of our nation and our home.
00:04:29.000And markets generally do a really good job of that.
00:04:33.000Markets are a good job of being able to empower people to take risks and to invest in themselves and improve their standard of living and the standard of living of people around them.
00:04:42.000But these tech companies are not operating in a market.
00:04:48.000These tech companies, Facebook and Google and Amazon in particular, they have a perverse incentive structure.
00:04:54.000In fact, their incentive structure is opposite of that of a local small business.
00:04:58.000Their incentive structure is trying to steamroll and pummel you.
00:05:03.000So when I was in Bismarck, North Dakota, talking to Scott Hennan, and we started looking at small businesses throughout the city, I said it's Amazon's goal to destroy those small businesses.
00:05:13.000That's not a healthy incentive structure.
00:05:15.000Now, a pure libertarian free market person would say, no, that's a good thing because it's competitive advantage and it is spontaneous order.
00:05:26.000I think markets are systems that we set up.
00:05:29.000People can operate naturally in markets, obviously, before they're set up by the government.
00:05:34.000But when you involve this very, quite honestly, unknown form of technology, artificial intelligence, where whomever has the most server space and whomever can allocate the most amount of capital the quickest, you're talking about a form of an economy that I don't think we really understand what we're dealing with.
00:05:58.000And so should we have a check and balance against these corporations?
00:06:02.000It's just about time we start using it.
00:06:15.000However, anytime I bring up some of these topics, the way it used to go is that some people on the right would say, you're a socialist.
00:06:20.000I mean, that's a ridiculous accusation.
00:06:24.000Instead, think a little bit more creatively.
00:06:26.000And how about you think for the first time in 30 years?
00:06:29.000What if I told you that Google is the Soviet Union?
00:06:34.000How did you view the Soviet Union back in the 1980s?
00:06:37.000You viewed it as we have to do whatever it takes to challenge their power and push back against the sort of totalitarian impulses in the Soviet Union.
00:06:51.000And so this is a problem that has popped up in a variety of different ways.
00:06:56.000And the amount of power that is now vested in these companies is no different than if a government had that form of power.
00:07:08.000And so what is the proper check and balance?
00:07:56.000The argument Peter Thiel was making, if you don't know who Peter Thiel is, co-founder of PayPal, very successful guy.
00:08:02.000He's saying, if you're always looking to your right and to your left and trying to out-compete another, and instead not being independent in your own thinking, then you're simply trying to just create a mousetrap better than the person next to you instead of creating a whole new product that has not been dreamt of before.
00:08:26.000So, this is a question to ask yourself: What do you know to be true?
00:09:10.000And I'm afraid that we have become so in love with this idea of kind of horse jockeying.
00:09:17.000I kind of prefer that phrase, quite honestly, better than competition.
00:09:21.000So, I think that there's some, again, we're getting into semantics here.
00:09:24.000But I guess what I'm trying to say is: if your whole life is just trying to outdo another person, that's actually not what's good for society.
00:09:32.000Ayn Rand had a wonderful quote about this, and I get beat up all the time by Christians for quoting Ayn Rand.
00:09:38.000I just don't think you understand Ayn Rand.
00:09:40.000Ayn Rand was an outspoken atheist, but by the end of her life, there's a great piece written by Steve Mariotti who claims that Ayn Rand accepted that there was a God.
00:10:39.000We need more John Galts and Hank Reardons.
00:10:43.000And that little snapshot of Atlas Shrugged does a phenomenal job of that.
00:10:47.000But Ayn Rand had another quote, and I'm going to find it in a second, where Ayn argued that the most immoral thing you can do is to say that you're living just to beat others.
00:11:02.000So instead, what if I told you that instead of worrying about getting the promotion over somebody else, you should retreat and think, pray, and reflect and say, what is it that I know is right?
00:11:17.000The truth that I hold that I want to accomplish outside of the guardrails or the corporate hierarchy that might be existing around me.
00:11:25.000That is something worth thinking about.
00:11:29.000Did you know that 80% of the grass-fed beef sold in the United States is imported from overseas?
00:11:34.000That's why I get my meat from goodranchers.com because their product is 100% American.
00:11:38.000When you buy your steak and chicken from Good Ranchers, not only are you getting amazing meat, but you're also supporting American farms.
00:11:44.000My friends at Good Ranchers have traveled the United States and met with actual farmers that raise the livestock to ensure the product they are sending to your table is the very best.
00:11:51.000All the product is individually wrapped and it eliminates waste.
00:11:55.000Goodranchers.com safely delivers American craft beef better than organic chicken right to your door.
00:11:59.000Buy one time or better yet, subscribe.
00:15:21.000Of course, they're not outside of the mainstream.
00:15:24.000And what they're doing, again, we have used this phrase so many times, and it's important because it just seems to be about 15 things that we talk about here on this program that is just kind of buckets.
00:15:35.000So I just have to kind of sometimes draw from this bucket and draw from that bucket.
00:15:41.000We talk about that a lot on this program.
00:15:43.000If you don't know what gaslighting is, it's a psychological manipulation tactic that is used.
00:15:50.000Let's just say you were trying to manipulate or abuse your spouse.
00:15:55.000So, what you would do is every time she would walk in, you would turn down the light a little bit and she'd say, Is it getting darker here?
00:16:49.000There's nothing that you should apologize for.
00:16:51.000There's nothing radical about wanting to preserve the American family, protect freedom of speech, your rights to own a firearm, the ability to own private property, not be bossed around by a corporation or by your government.
00:17:07.000Both of those are conservative values.
00:17:13.000Look, I want to tell you about something pretty cool.
00:17:15.000Do you want to get a professional hand-painted portrait created from any photo at truly an affordable price?
00:17:21.000Choose from a team of world-class artists and work with them until every detail is perfect.
00:17:25.000So here's how it works: you got maybe a picture of your dog, maybe a picture of your uncle, maybe a picture of just Donald Trump at a rally.
00:19:05.000We get this question every so often and I just chuckle because it shouldn't have to be hard.
00:19:11.000You know that you're living in the age of insanity, for lack of a better term, when the simple becomes complex and they try to make the complex simple.
00:19:22.000You know you're living in a state of chaos when the simple gets made complex and they try to make the complex simple.
00:19:29.000For example, they try to make the idea that blacks are on average less wealthy than whites as a simple idea.
00:19:39.000That's a very complicated idea with thousands of inputs and prerequisites that can't be blamed just on discrimination.
00:19:49.000Thomas Sowell wrote beautifully about this from in Discrimination and Disparities, one of his last works he's worked on recently, 2019, I think it was published.
00:20:00.000But then they try to make the simple overly complex.
00:21:14.000If anyone's listening that knows him, send him this episode.
00:21:18.000He always used to have this belief, and we tested it, that the girls' varsity team, if they were any good, they would be able to beat the boys' freshman team.
00:21:37.000And if they couldn't, they're really, they're not going to be good.
00:21:40.000So if the boys' freshman team could beat the girls' varsity team, the boys' freshman team is pretty good.
00:21:45.000If not, the girls' varsity team, vice versa.
00:21:48.000And that's about the level that they were at.
00:21:51.000So 14-year-old boys would be able to compete with 18-year-old girls with basketball.
00:21:56.000That's about where the level was, four years removed.
00:22:00.000Now, this is something that we call rather self-evident.
00:22:06.000I have a mountain of pieces of paper that go to show that men have more muscle mass, they're faster, they have higher levels of testosterone.
00:22:16.000And so the fact that your local community college professor and class don't see that is quite remarkable.
00:22:23.000Women's sports were created because women are women and men are men.
00:22:28.000I'd love to see just you really, you really think that, do you think, and here's just a very simple question.
00:23:29.000Now, do you think that there is any NBA player or any player in NCAA basketball that wouldn't dominate in women's basketball?
00:23:41.000Now, if what I'm saying sounds so ridiculously logical and obvious, of course, but we're living in the land of the insane where I have to say things that are logical and obvious.
00:23:50.000Here's another question: Is there a woman in America that could play a quarter of NFL football without being hospitalized?
00:26:40.000Show me one picture ever of a woman shooting a pure and total jump shot the way that Ray Allen or Scotty Pippen or Michael Jordan or LeBron James did.
00:27:48.000Women's basketball is a smaller basketball.
00:27:51.000If there's no difference, if it's all the same, why is it that the women's three-point line is closer than the NCAA college three-point line?
00:29:07.000And they always use this ridiculous example of 1973 highly publicized Battle of the Sexes tennis match, but tops win player Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs, who is 55.
00:29:17.000By the way, it was a 29-year-old against a 55-year-old, okay?
00:30:16.000No, I actually want women to be able to compete.
00:30:21.000I want women to be able to have a place where they can pursue excellence in a fair environment.
00:30:32.000So the question is: should we just get rid of gender segregation in sports?
00:30:37.000That would be the most anti-woman thing you could possibly do.
00:30:42.000It would be the thing that would just create one form of sports.
00:30:48.000And if your position is that women should not be able to compete in sports, then that's your position.
00:30:54.000And that's a really dumb position because a lot of women across the country have found fulfillment, joy, happiness, self-confidence, and courage in their ability to have a participation in an athletic competition.
00:31:10.000All right, let's get to this question here.
00:31:12.000Let's see what other, what is the most provocative thing we could possibly choose in the last five minutes here?
00:31:40.000Okay, Charlie, there's great pressure coming from the left and right right now, encouraging Stephen Breyer to retire while Democrats retain full control of the federal government.
00:32:45.000And we have been encouraging people to show up for school board meetings and run for school board.
00:32:49.000And we talked about the positives of what happened in South Lake, Texas, where parents rose up in record numbers and took back their school board against the people that were teaching critical race theory and putting forward these awful, horrendous, and insidious ideas.
00:33:05.000But even beyond that, we need every single one of you to be spreading these podcasts, to be spreading these radio shows, to be speaking out to your friends and your family members.
00:33:13.000That is what we do every single day at Turning Point USA.
00:33:17.000What we do is we try to inspire and instill courage into the next generation.
00:33:25.000And that's really what is missing right now: people that have the courage to speak out.
00:33:31.000For example, every Republican should do what Ron DeSantis has been doing.
00:33:36.000Let's play a cut here of Ron DeSantis.
00:33:52.000I will also sign an executive order pursuant to that bill invalidating all remaining local emergency COVID orders effective on July 1st.
00:34:03.000But then to bridge the gap between then and now, I'm going to suspend under my executive power the local emergency orders as it relates to COVID.
00:34:15.000I think that's the evidence-based thing to do.
00:34:18.000I think the fact that's a politician and a leader who's giving up power for the betterment of their citizens.
00:34:25.000Every Republican governor should be following that.
00:34:30.000We are opening up our country completely.
00:34:34.000And I hope you find inspiration from Ron DeSantis because Ron DeSantis, a year ago today, was under fire as he was reopening the Florida economy.
00:34:40.000And now he is leading the charge as he banned vaccine passports.
00:34:44.000He just gave a raise to all first responders and police officers.