The Charlie Kirk Show - Chaos, Crime, and the Crisis of Masculinity with Pedro Gonzalez

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, we are joined with Pedro Gonzalez from Chronicles magazine.

00:00:07.000 War on Men.

00:00:09.000 We also talk about the incredible and unprecedented crime wave in our country.

00:00:16.000 That and so much more.

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00:03:28.000 So I have a very simple question that should have a simple answer, but it divides Americans.

00:03:34.000 What causes crime?

00:03:37.000 Now, the answer to that question, most Americans get right because most Americans aren't insane.

00:03:44.000 The answer is usually a question of morals.

00:03:49.000 Crime occurs because of a lack of a moral footing, a lack of a family environment that teaches people right from wrong, not just pleasurable from unpleasurable.

00:04:06.000 But the predominant view on the American left, it's always been this way, but now it's become widespread, especially in colleges and academia, is that criminals commit crimes not because that they don't know right from wrong or they weren't raised correctly, but because of their circumstances.

00:04:26.000 That criminals commit crimes, especially violent crimes, because they have to.

00:04:32.000 You see, this belief has been around the left for quite some time.

00:04:35.000 It's one that always tries to blame the external for a problem that very well might be one of the internal.

00:04:42.000 Now, that's not to say that external circumstances can't play a role with internal development.

00:04:46.000 The most important one that no one wants to talk about on the collectivist authoritarian left-wing side is: are there fathers in the home?

00:04:55.000 What causes the rise in crime and what causes crime?

00:05:00.000 So here's a thought crime for you, first and foremost.

00:05:03.000 That 5 to 10% of the population, unfortunately, has a chemical imbalance where they have a predisposition to commit crimes.

00:05:12.000 No one wants to say this out loud.

00:05:14.000 No one wants to say the obvious that as we have opened mental institutions, certain areas have seen an increase in crime.

00:05:22.000 Another percentage of the population, which is an unknown number, if you take any percentage, if you take any group of people, on average, one in about 20, and in certain populations, one in 10 are sociopathic.

00:05:36.000 Sociopathic people are more likely to commit crimes because they do not feel the emotions. 0.94

00:05:43.000 They do not feel a connection to their potential victims.

00:05:47.000 And then, yes, there is a portion of people that commit crimes that happen in the moment.

00:05:52.000 They do not have self-control.

00:05:54.000 They might have been inebriated.

00:05:55.000 You put all that together, you're always going to have some form of crime.

00:06:00.000 But then the question should be: why is there spikes in crime?

00:06:05.000 So criminologists, they look through a lot of different sort of leading indicators and inputs as to why crime might be increasing.

00:06:13.000 Now, we could look at battery, arson, rape, sexual assault.

00:06:18.000 We could look at robbery, but the one type of crime that is really hard to fake is homicide.

00:06:28.000 Do you have a body and are there a bunch of holes in it?

00:06:31.000 You don't have to overthink it.

00:06:33.000 Where, you know, arson is like, well, who set the fire?

00:06:36.000 You know, Ryan started the fire.

00:06:39.000 If you're an office fan, you get the reference.

00:06:41.000 If not, forget it.

00:06:44.000 Battery, smuggling, like all these sorts of different things are kind of harder to track.

00:06:50.000 Homicide, we're pretty close.

00:06:54.000 There's a pretty much, I would say, a 99.9% correlation between homicides and whether we know them or not.

00:07:02.000 Hard to dispose of bodies, illegal to dispose of bodies, and so they get registered.

00:07:08.000 So 12 major cities in 2021 have experienced dramatic increases in their murder rate.

00:07:18.000 Portland, Oregon has a 100% increase in their homicide rate.

00:07:22.000 Tucson, Arizona, 87% in their homicide rate.

00:07:25.000 Albuquerque, New Mexico, a 22% increase.

00:07:28.000 St. Paul, Minnesota, 25%.

00:07:30.000 Indianapolis, 44%.

00:07:32.000 Austin, Texas, 175%.

00:07:35.000 Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 91%.

00:07:37.000 Louisville, Kentucky, 111% increase.

00:07:41.000 Toledo, Ohio, 63%.

00:07:43.000 Rochester, New York, 144%.

00:07:45.000 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 46%.

00:07:48.000 Philadelphia has 521 homicides.

00:07:52.000 Columbus, Ohio, 121%.

00:07:55.000 What is driving this massive increase in crime?

00:08:01.000 Well, first of all, only 18% of U.S. households are now nuclear families with a married couple and children.

00:08:12.000 I'm going to say that again.

00:08:14.000 Only 18% of U.S. households are nuclear families.

00:08:19.000 This is a study that just came out a couple days ago.

00:08:22.000 Down from 40% since the 1970s.

00:08:25.000 It's the lowest since 1959.

00:08:30.000 The Census Bureau's count shows that just 17.8% of the United States, 130 million households, featured married parents with children under the age of 18.

00:08:42.000 U.S. households with married couple and children is at its lowest it's been.

00:08:47.000 It was 40% in 1970.

00:08:49.000 It's now 17.8%, the lowest it's ever been.

00:08:56.000 KidsCount.com says that 34% are single-parent households of all colors, all races, I should say.

00:09:05.000 64% of black households do not have a father.

00:09:10.000 52% of Native American households do not have a father.

00:09:13.000 42% of Hispanic households do not have a father.

00:09:17.000 24% of white households do not have a father.

00:09:20.000 And 15% of Asian households do not have a father.

00:09:23.000 Now, if you were to run those numbers backwards, guess what?

00:09:27.000 Asian Americans are the richest group in America.

00:09:32.000 Whites are the second richest, then Hispanics, then Native Americans, then blacks. 0.88

00:09:36.000 It's almost as if there's a direct correlation between whether or not you have fathers in the home, wealth, not going to prison, all these things.

00:09:43.000 And it asks the question: what causes crime?

00:09:45.000 Now, the one external thing that I think you can blame for crime is the fact that there are not fathers in the home.

00:09:53.000 Seven out of 10 of every young person that is housed in a state-operated correctional facility, including detention and residential treatment, come from a fatherlessness home.

00:10:03.000 Children from a fatherless home are twice as likely to drop out of school before graduating from children who have fathers in their lives, according to the NPR.

00:10:11.000 Yet, where is the corporate-funded, let's get fathers back in the home agenda?

00:10:16.000 Where is the taxpayer-funded, non-stop, get vaccinated, get vaccinated agenda saying keep fathers in the home? 0.74

00:10:25.000 Well, the problem is that father staying in the home goes right at the root of something that corporate America and the government never wants you to actually do: take responsibility.

00:10:38.000 Taking responsibility for your actions is something that the government definitely doesn't want you to do.

00:10:46.000 But also, there has been for many years an exemption that men can impregnate women and abandon those women.

00:10:55.000 It's almost built into a large part of American culture.

00:11:01.000 Children from fatherless homes are twice as likely to drop out from school before graduating than children who have a father in their lives.

00:11:08.000 Children who live in a single-parent home are more than twice as likely to commit suicide than children in a two-parent home.

00:11:14.000 75% of rapists are motivated by displaced anger that is associated with feelings of abandonment that involves their father, U.S. Department of Justice.

00:11:22.000 Living in a fatherlessness home is a contributing factor to substance abuse, with children from such homes accounting for 75% of adolescent patients.

00:11:31.000 85% of all children which exhibit some type of behavioral disorder come from a fatherlessness home.

00:11:36.000 And 90% of youth in the United States who decide to run away from home or become homeless for any reason originally come from a fatherless home.

00:11:43.000 All of that is according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

00:11:45.000 Yet we're not allowed to have a conversation about this widespread epidemic.

00:11:51.000 Instead, we talk about systemic racism.

00:11:55.000 We talk about gun crime, but not the root issues.

00:12:00.000 What causes crime?

00:12:02.000 The lack of leadership, morality, and strong men.

00:12:06.000 That's what causes crime. 0.98

00:12:10.000 As we celebrate the Christmas season, we often pause to consider our many blessings.

00:12:14.000 Hillsdale College wishes to thank you for standing with them as they celebrate over 177 years of blessings.

00:12:20.000 Since 1844, the Beacon of the North, the last college, Hillsdale College, has held fast to its mission to provide the kind of education essential to preserving free government.

00:12:29.000 And for decades, the college has extended its educational mission on behalf of liberty through a variety of outreach programs.

00:12:34.000 Perhaps you receive in Primus for every month, or you've taken one of Hillsdale's excellent online courses or attended one of Hillsdale's free regional events.

00:12:42.000 You know of Hillsdale's refusal to take even one penny of government money.

00:12:45.000 This independence allows the college to focus on promoting its core purpose: learning, character, faith, and freedom without government interference.

00:12:52.000 And no time in our nation's history has there been a greater need for this kind of classical liberal arts education that Hillsdale offers on its campuses and nationwide.

00:12:59.000 So, during this season of blessings, Hillsdale thanks you for partnership in extending its mission to the country.

00:13:04.000 To learn more about Hillsdale College and take their online courses, the Aristotle course, the Winston Churchill course, the Dying Citizen course, which I'm about to wrap up with Victor Davis Hansen, it's incredible.

00:13:14.000 Check it out: new Victor Davis-Hanson course.

00:13:17.000 Go to charlieforhillsdale.com.

00:13:18.000 For parents out there, require your children to take at least one Hillsdale course before they get any Christmas gifts.

00:13:24.000 You see, I'm a very big fan of parents withholding good things unless kids do the necessary things.

00:13:32.000 Kids shouldn't just get Christmas gifts because they exist, they should get Christmas gifts because they've earned them.

00:13:38.000 And by earning them, they need to take Hillsdale online courses to learn about Western civilization, learn about God, learn about Genesis, the book of Genesis, the Constitution, and more.

00:13:47.000 Charlie4Hillsdale.com, charliefohillsdale.com.

00:13:55.000 So, what causes crime?

00:13:57.000 We know that the lack of morality and just social decay and societal decay makes any country less safe, more dangerous.

00:14:08.000 See, American civil society is built on this idea that the everyday man, the middle-class man, the muscular class man, is going to do the right thing.

00:14:18.000 But as America becomes a much more dangerous country, all of a sudden people are starting to point fingers.

00:14:25.000 Now, the other side, the left, they start with this idea that there is no rise in crime.

00:14:32.000 It's just a lie.

00:14:33.000 So, for example, the Philadelphia district attorney says that there is no major rise in crime in the country or in Philadelphia, which, of course, is gaslighting.

00:14:45.000 In Philadelphia, murders are up 46%.

00:14:48.000 So, the Phil, and by the way, whatever happened to that story of the illegal alien who raped a woman for 45 minutes on a train while everyone else was filming it and did nothing.

00:14:59.000 Remember that story?

00:15:01.000 Not allowed to talk about that, obviously.

00:15:04.000 And so Gascon, what's his official title?

00:15:09.000 Is he like DA or something of LA?

00:15:11.000 District Attorney?

00:15:14.000 He's the district attorney of L.A.

00:15:17.000 And L.A. was dangerous to begin with, but L.A. is basically a complete war zone at this point.

00:15:24.000 There's a big recall effort underway to try to get Gascon out of office.

00:15:29.000 And Gascon said, look, when I took the office, the legal system here offered victims one solution after someone caused them harm, a long sentence.

00:15:38.000 We have set a path for ourselves to turn around the criminal legal system in this country in a way that's more humane, more equitable, and above all, will create a safer environment for all of us.

00:15:48.000 So basically, they believe in almost a Rousseauian view of the world that if there's anything wrong with the world, it's not because of broken human nature.

00:15:56.000 It's because human nature can progress to the next station of perfection.

00:16:04.000 So you must understand when you hear the word progressive, the thing that they're actually trying to progress is human nature.

00:16:16.000 One thing that is a massive difference between conservatives and leftists is we as conservatives believe in a fixed station of human nature.

00:16:27.000 We believe that human nature is unchangeable.

00:16:34.000 Now you can improve who you are as a person.

00:16:37.000 You can improve your character, but your nature, your natural operating system, it's there to stay.

00:16:44.000 Cut 79.

00:16:46.000 Before I took office, the legal system here offered victims one solution after someone caused them harm.

00:16:55.000 A long sentence.

00:16:57.000 We have set a path for ourselves to turn around the criminal legal system in this country in a way that will become more humane, more equitable, and above all, will create a safer environment for all of us.

00:17:14.000 Los Angeles Times, crews of burglars publicly smashing their way into Los Angeles' most exclusive stores, robbers following their victims, including a star of the real housewives of Beverly Hills and a BET host to their residences.

00:17:27.000 And this week, the fatal shooting of an 81-year-old Jacqueline Avant, an admired philanthropist and wife of music lecheon Clarence Avin in her Beverly Hills home.

00:17:35.000 After two years of rising violent crime, the Los Angeles Times writes, these incidents have sparked a national conversation.

00:17:43.000 I love how they always say that.

00:17:44.000 If they have a problem, they're like, oh, there's a debate and a conversation.

00:17:49.000 There's really not much of a conversation.

00:17:50.000 People are dying about both the crimes themselves and where the outrage over the violence will lead.

00:17:57.000 Quote, the fact this has happened, her being shot and killed in her own home after giving, sharing, and caring for 81 years, has shaken the laws of the universe, declared Oprah Winfrey.

00:18:07.000 The world is upside down.

00:18:09.000 Oh, Oprah, I thought once Joe Biden got elected, everything else, I thought the laws of the universe were going to recenter.

00:18:15.000 I should say once Joe Biden got implemented, not elected.

00:18:18.000 While overall city crime rates are below what happened in the notorious gang wars in the 90s, violent crime has jumped sharply in LA as it has in other cities.

00:18:28.000 And what does Biden say and his whole team say?

00:18:31.000 They say, look, it's because of the pandemic.

00:18:32.000 Play cut 84.

00:18:34.000 So when a huge group of criminals organizes themselves and they want to go loot a store, a CVS, an Ordstrom, a Home Depot, until the shelves are clean, you think that's because of the pandemic?

00:18:46.000 I think a root cause in a lot of communities is the pandemic.

00:18:49.000 Yes, go ahead.

00:18:50.000 Always blame something else.

00:18:53.000 Not societal decay, not moral decay, not the fact that lawlessness is now widely expected, accepted by our leaders.

00:19:00.000 No.

00:19:01.000 Instead, it's because of the pandemic, okay?

00:19:03.000 People need new Louis Vuitton bags because they were cooped up for so long.

00:19:08.000 I mean, what are you like?

00:19:08.000 A bigot?

00:19:11.000 Hey, everybody.

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00:20:15.000 With us is Pedro Gonzalez from Chronicles Magazine.

00:20:19.000 Very smart, smart guy.

00:20:21.000 We spent a whole week together at the Claremont Institute.

00:20:23.000 That was a fun week.

00:20:23.000 Pedro, it's been a long time.

00:20:25.000 We wanted to do this.

00:20:26.000 Welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:20:27.000 Thanks for having me on, Charlie.

00:20:29.000 So Pedro, you've been speaking out lately about a lot of different things.

00:20:33.000 I want to start with kind of the war on American men and the importance of talking about masculinity and how that ties into several different kind of unfolding crises in front of us.

00:20:49.000 Why does America need strong men?

00:20:50.000 And more importantly, why should the conservative movement talk about it?

00:20:53.000 We need strong men because, well, look around you.

00:20:57.000 Look, I think I can summarize my view of, on the one hand, the necessity of strong men.

00:21:03.000 And on the other hand, the absolute importance of it.

00:21:06.000 Forget necessity.

00:21:07.000 I don't think that word actually sums it up.

00:21:09.000 When you have things like educators pushing critical race theory and radical gender ideology on kids, when you have educators pushing things like transgenderism on our kids and experimental vaccines on our kids behind our backs, I don't want civility.

00:21:25.000 I don't want endless blathering about the free market of ideas.

00:21:29.000 I want methodological barbarism because for me, being a man means defending the family, not talking about the importance of the family endlessly, but actually doing something about it.

00:21:40.000 And I think that the conservative intellectual movement has really failed to go beyond that stage, simply talking about masculinity and trying to kind of denude it and make it something that is civil and harmless.

00:21:53.000 We need the kind of middle American that shows up in school board meetings and gets thrown out because they call out the superintendent or the people on the school board for the right reason and they don't like to hear it. 0.98

00:22:05.000 And so what does that look like?

00:22:06.000 So Josh Hawley spoke a little bit about this and was criticized greatly.

00:22:12.000 What is this idea of the cult of strength and how does that connect to the everyday voter?

00:22:18.000 Cult of strength is actually a good thing.

00:22:20.000 I don't think that we should actually drop that term.

00:22:23.000 I like it.

00:22:24.000 Cult of strength, it means that we're cultivating something.

00:22:26.000 We're growing strength.

00:22:28.000 So I think that is actually a compliment as far as I'm concerned.

00:22:31.000 The people that view it as a threat are people that are either themselves effeminate or they enjoy the status quo.

00:22:39.000 They like the existing order.

00:22:40.000 All the things that I just described, the things that boil parents' blood, the things that make them show up and fight for their children at these meetings and things like that.

00:22:50.000 This doesn't bother them.

00:22:51.000 And that is why when they say cult of strength, they mean it as a pejorative.

00:22:55.000 It's something that we should eschew and back off of.

00:22:59.000 Obviously, that's wrong.

00:23:01.000 My background is actually not as someone who grew up as a conservative intellectual movement.

00:23:07.000 I come from a more or less normal background.

00:23:09.000 And I think that's why, for people like me, it's just absurd to see when Holly makes remarks that aren't even that controversial.

00:23:17.000 He's just saying we need a healthy, strong conception of what it means to be a man.

00:23:21.000 People clutch their pearls and lose their minds.

00:23:25.000 So David French wrote an article.

00:23:27.000 You're a big David French fan.

00:23:29.000 I know, Pedro.

00:23:30.000 Big time.

00:23:31.000 The new right, strange and dangerous cult of toughness, an emergency culture idolizing a twisted version of toughness at the highest, the highest ideal, despises a false version of weakness as the lowest vice.

00:23:45.000 I could go through his piece.

00:23:47.000 I usually don't like doing that.

00:23:49.000 But why, first, obviously he's mistaken, but some people on the intelligentsia say, no, we shouldn't talk about masculinity or toughness.

00:23:59.000 We should be focused on tax rates or at most just kind of school choice.

00:24:05.000 Why is the war on the American male and masculinity in general an issue that kind of touches almost every other issue or connects to almost every other issue?

00:24:15.000 Well, first, weakness is not strength.

00:24:18.000 And there's nothing virtuous about turning the other cheek when the person that's trying to strike you wants to destroy you, everything you love, your family, and the country that you live in.

00:24:29.000 That's not virtue. 0.99

00:24:30.000 That's pathetic. 0.99

00:24:31.000 And it's weakness. 1.00

00:24:32.000 That's just what it is.

00:24:33.000 It's not another form of strength.

00:24:34.000 It's not charity.

00:24:35.000 It's nothing like that. 1.00

00:24:36.000 It's frankly pathetic and weak. 0.99

00:24:39.000 And this gets to my point, actually, of the conservative movement. 0.99

00:24:42.000 French is actually just a small part of this.

00:24:45.000 Recall that National Review condemned Nick Sandman as evil for doing nothing but smiling while being right.

00:24:52.000 National Review sided with Al Sharpton against George Zimmerman and has called for the Confederate monuments to come down.

00:24:59.000 National Review has called for us to compromise on LGBT ideology.

00:25:03.000 The conservative intelligentsia, the conservative political movement has failed Middle America precisely because it thinks of itself as somehow perhaps better than middle America.

00:25:13.000 They're better than us.

00:25:14.000 They have to educate us on what it really means to be a man.

00:25:16.000 And apparently a man is someone who rolls over and dies, even when their family and their country is at stake.

00:25:22.000 So we have a lot of people ask us, well, what does that mean practically?

00:25:25.000 Well, a good start would be a strong person doesn't abandon a woman after you impregnate them.

00:25:32.000 A weak person does that.

00:25:34.000 A strong person takes responsibility for their actions and is able to control the impulses of the flesh for something that is virtuous, good, beautiful, and true and rare.

00:25:46.000 Talk a little bit about that practically, because some people just kind of have this idea of, oh, strong men, it's going to be a bunch of weightlifters.

00:25:53.000 By the way, we do have declining testosterone in the West.

00:25:57.000 And I think that plays a role.

00:25:57.000 No one wants to talk about it.

00:25:59.000 But what does this actually look like practically outside of kind of a more abstract kind of critique?

00:26:04.000 Well, I think there is actually a fundamental connection between physical strength and mental toughness.

00:26:09.000 And mental toughness matters because whether you are mentally tough or not will determine how you react to persecution and pain and suffering, which is what we need right now.

00:26:19.000 Men who are strong in body and mind and able to resist being persecuted, whether that is for what they believe or literally perhaps being physically confronted for what they think, because that is the world that we live in today.

00:26:32.000 So I actually think that the connection between the mind and the body is inseparable.

00:26:36.000 A good philosopher on this, although he's not American, is Yukio Mishima in Sun and Steel.

00:26:41.000 He compares the body to essentially an orchard, and that if you allow your orchard to just fall apart, well, then the fruit that it bears isn't going to be all that great, right?

00:26:51.000 So I think there's a fundamental connection there.

00:26:54.000 But you raise a good question.

00:26:57.000 What is actually our vision of healthy masculinity?

00:27:01.000 Because on the other hand, there is such a thing as unironically toxic masculinity, which you just described, the man who gets a woman pregnant and then leaves.

00:27:10.000 The man who thinks that the apogee of manhood is beating a woman, something like that, right?

00:27:16.000 That's obviously not what we mean when we talk about masculinity. 1.00

00:27:20.000 It's almost not even worth addressing that point to your critics because it's so stupid and absurd. 0.99

00:27:25.000 This is a constructive discussion to have with people that are like-minded and are trying to work this out. 0.99

00:27:30.000 But do we actually need to entertain this argument that when we talk about healthy manhood, we mean beating women and things like that? 0.98

00:27:37.000 It's so dumb, it doesn't really deserve an answer. 0.98

00:27:39.000 But I think that we can start there. 0.99

00:27:42.000 We know what manhood and masculinity does not look like.

00:27:46.000 It does not look like David French.

00:27:49.000 It does not look like the person who allows their family and their community to be terrorized by bureaucrats and progressive activists.

00:27:57.000 That's not what it looks like.

00:27:58.000 The question is, what is our ultimately our one hand vision of masculinity?

00:28:04.000 And on the other hand, how do we cultivate it?

00:28:05.000 I actually don't think there's a solution at scale.

00:28:07.000 You can't snap your fingers, pass a law, and then, you know, put HGH or TREN in the water supply, and then everyone's testosterone levels go back up.

00:28:17.000 This is actually a long-term civilizational project that actually begins with ourselves and the people that we know and love.

00:28:24.000 I mean, I totally agree.

00:28:25.000 From the food we eat to the lack of actual muscular exercise that children are now undergoing, testosterone rates have gone down nearly 80% in some circles since the 1970s and 80s.

00:28:38.000 And who knows if it's intentional or not?

00:28:40.000 I mean, we could, I think it is when you have public intellectuals saying that it's because of men that these things are happening.

00:28:47.000 But what they're really getting at, though, is that there is this kind of hyper-feminization of the American project.

00:28:54.000 And of course, feminine qualities are important for a balance for the continuation of the human species. 1.00

00:29:01.000 But a hyper-feminized society is an incredibly fragile society.

00:29:05.000 It's also one that we're living through in that case.

00:29:08.000 Talk a little bit about that and talk about kind of just some of the attributes of the masculine and the feminine.

00:29:13.000 And we're totally out of whack in this sense.

00:29:15.000 And then all of a sudden, people wonder why young male suicide rates are so high.

00:29:20.000 They wonder why young men are kind of this lost boys generation.

00:29:24.000 Well, some of it is they walk outside the door and all of society, especially if you're a young white man, is almost propagandized against you.

00:29:33.000 Speak a little bit about that.

00:29:35.000 So I can talk a little bit from experience.

00:29:39.000 My father was a really hard man, and he taught me how to be a man and directly teaching me that, but then also he taught me not how to be a man.

00:29:51.000 I love my father.

00:29:52.000 He passed away in 2017, but that's just the reality.

00:29:55.000 He was a human.

00:29:57.000 He was flawed, right?

00:29:59.000 But now that I'm a dad, my son is a year and a half old.

00:30:03.000 I've got another on the way.

00:30:05.000 I understand now that every little thing that I do, everything that I say, everything that I, the habits that I have, all of this will affect the way that my son grows up and the way that he acts when he goes out into the world.

00:30:19.000 And so what I try to project around my son, and I mean, this ultimately, this is kind of forcing me to grow up, although that probably should have happened a while ago.

00:30:29.000 But for me, the qualities of a man are someone who is stable, someone who is stalwart, someone who is calm under pressure, someone who knows that there is a time to use aggression.

00:30:46.000 We should never accept the idea that aggression is bad.

00:30:49.000 Aggression is good when it's constructively channeled.

00:30:52.000 Assertiveness is what we need, actually.

00:30:55.000 You raise this question of what happens when basically the effeminate and masculine get swapped, basically when men act like women.

00:31:05.000 We've already talked about it.

00:31:06.000 It's when men just roll over and let terrible things happen to their country and their community.

00:31:12.000 So, but without a healthy masculine role model, we see the things that you're seeing now and all across the United States and in cities where crime rates are going through the roof.

00:31:24.000 Basically, this is uncontrolled aggression.

00:31:27.000 It has no constructive outlet.

00:31:29.000 And so it just manifests as violent crime and things like that.

00:31:33.000 So this is the importance of a male figure is precisely that.

00:31:39.000 And again, this is not a cliche.

00:31:41.000 It's just that we hate men so much in society that we have decided that we can eye roll when people talk about this.

00:31:49.000 But then we scratch our heads and wonder why are we seeing these spikes in crime and things like that, or these spikes in childhood depression, in a sense of loneliness, a feeling that there's a kind of void that needs to be filled by something.

00:32:05.000 It's precisely of this issue, that there are no healthy or there are too few healthy male role models in our lives.

00:32:13.000 Pedro, it's bad for women too. 1.00

00:32:15.000 And that's something that we need to say, that it's creating deeply unhappy women, especially unmarried single women in their early 30s that were told that they have to go pursue a career and they have to become masculine to compensate for the society that doesn't have men around.

00:32:30.000 It's bad for everyone involved.

00:32:34.000 Look, stocks are at all time high.

00:32:36.000 People are saying things are going well, but you know they aren't.

00:32:38.000 Interest rates are at zero and the government just printed $5 trillion.

00:32:42.000 What could possibly go wrong?

00:32:44.000 Consumer confidence just hit a 10-year low and inflation hit 6.8% with parts of the United States seeing rates as high as 8%.

00:32:50.000 Something is not adding up.

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00:33:29.000 And so right now we have this whole conversation in our country about how we need to restrain toxic masculinity.

00:33:36.000 That's continuing.

00:33:38.000 Meanwhile, Biden has a transgender, we shouldn't even say that. 0.90

00:33:44.000 We were told not to. 0.78

00:33:45.000 A man who thinks he's a woman come and do that vaccine promo. 1.00

00:33:48.000 But then Pedro, what's really weird is that as we're told strength is a bad thing and all this, there's this kind of baseless posturing done by the American national security apparatus when it comes to a foreign border that most Americans shouldn't care about, don't care about, and can't even identify in a map.

00:34:05.000 And it says, if Vladimir Putin dares cross this line, we might have to use nuclear weapons.

00:34:11.000 What am I missing as I analyze this?

00:34:14.000 Go ahead.

00:34:15.000 If this straight white male crosses this line, then we will engage in nuclear warfare. 0.59

00:34:20.000 No, that's only half a joke.

00:34:23.000 This is, I think, the ideology of LGBT, things like that.

00:34:27.000 It provides a moral justification for the United States imperial projects abroad.

00:34:33.000 That's really what it is.

00:34:35.000 There are plenty of people who actually believe in this.

00:34:36.000 Like the woke generals probably are actually woke.

00:34:39.000 But the important thing is, is that the LGBT stuff, it provides a kind of a, this is the basis for us getting involved everywhere all over the world, is that we have to bring feminism and LGBT ideology to all these countries that don't have it.

00:34:57.000 We have to decriminalize laws that institute traditional marriage, whether it's in Africa or whatever, Russia.

00:35:05.000 I think that there is a tendency among the conservative political movement to kind of jiu-jitsu genuine masculine feelings into these imperial projects.

00:35:17.000 Yes.

00:35:18.000 Basically, we beat our chests and want to invade other countries because that's the manly thing to do.

00:35:23.000 But there's nothing manly about this.

00:35:26.000 There's nothing manly about getting involved in other people's business while your own country is going to hell.

00:35:31.000 And there's certainly nothing manly about bringing the pride flag to Kabul.

00:35:37.000 There's nothing manly about fighting for a regime.

00:35:41.000 And this still provokes disbelief in people, but this actually happened. 0.98

00:35:46.000 The CIA bribed Afghan tribal leaders over there with, among other things, Viagra, because there's a penchant among these Afghan tribal leaders to rape little boys. 0.96

00:36:02.000 Many of these leaders are older, right? 0.97

00:36:04.000 I mean, do the math here.

00:36:05.000 The CIA exploited essentially pedophilia in the indigenous population.

00:36:10.000 It's masculine to fight for this.

00:36:12.000 It's masculine to defend this order. 0.98

00:36:14.000 Let me ask you, is part of this, and I know this sounds kind of bizarre, but you'll get, is this some of this like a compensation strategy for people that are really like uncertain of their own masculinity that they have to kind of like saber rattle with Russia? 0.61

00:36:27.000 Maybe I'm like going too far with that, but the true masculine thing is to know your limitations and take responsibility for your family and your nation, not to be irresponsible.

00:36:40.000 Am I right?

00:36:42.000 Yeah.

00:36:42.000 And I'm sure that there is an element of that, the compensating for having a small saber, so to speak, spiritually and otherwise.

00:36:52.000 But I'm not sure how much of that actually plays into the broader picture.

00:36:57.000 Like is Mike Pompeo compensating for some deficiency or something like that?

00:37:01.000 I have no idea.

00:37:02.000 But I do know that there is absolutely nothing masculine about neoconservative foreign policy.

00:37:09.000 When the Pentagon says, sorry, we can't deploy troops and resources to the border.

00:37:16.000 The apparatus is in charge of national security doesn't care about national security, but it wants you to fight and die to protect other people's borders.

00:37:24.000 This is a perversion. 0.99

00:37:26.000 It's an exploitation of masculinity, of the last little bits of it in this country, and using it for fundamentally stupid and perverse projects. 0.95

00:37:35.000 What you just articulated is so important that at times some of these wars are actually sold on the premise that it is the masculine thing to do to beat our chest and to go into every conflict.

00:37:48.000 In reality, the higher level of masculinity is one of restraint, prudence, and contemplation, to use an Aristotelian framework of, is this really our role?

00:37:58.000 Are we able to accomplish this?

00:37:59.000 Is this what helps my children?

00:38:01.000 Or accomplishes some other goal?

00:38:03.000 That is something that is being lost.

00:38:05.000 Instead, recklessness is not a masculine value.

00:38:10.000 Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of that recently.

00:38:12.000 Pedro, I enjoyed this.

00:38:14.000 We participated in several thought crimes in the midst of this conversation, which makes it very interesting.

00:38:19.000 How could people follow you really quick?

00:38:21.000 Find me at chroniclesmagazine.org or unfortunately at Twitter at E-M-E-R-I-T-I-C-U-S.

00:38:29.000 And I use the same handle for everything.

00:38:31.000 So I'm going to pretend you didn't say that.

00:38:33.000 Pedro, thanks for joining us.

00:38:35.000 Talk to you soon.

00:38:36.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:38:37.000 Email us your thoughts.

00:38:37.000 Freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:38:39.000 And if you want to support our show, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:38:42.000 Thank you so much for listening, everybody.

00:38:44.000 God bless.

00:38:47.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - December 10, 2021

Chaos, Crime, and the Crisis of Masculinity with Pedro Gonzalez

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