00:00:56.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:03.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:55.000I learned a couple things, which is, so I've come to this university a couple times.
00:01:59.000I spoke here four years ago, I want to say.
00:02:01.000There has been a couple changes here, and not just the masks and all that.
00:02:05.000But one of the changes is that there was an overwhelming amount of cynicism from the students here at UC Berkeley.
00:02:14.000Cynicism about the political process, about the future of the country, a cynicism just kind of about life in general.
00:02:22.000And it's not that that wasn't there four or five years ago, but when I first visited Berkeley, there was this insistence that utopia is just around the corner, right?
00:02:32.000That if we just kind of give government a little bit more power and we get rid of rich people or whatever, then heaven can kind of be brought on earth.
00:02:39.000And I didn't get that vibe as much today talking for over two hours with a lot of you.
00:02:44.000I instead kind of got this undertone that things are really awful, they're terrible, and people like you are the reason why.
00:02:52.000And, you know, there's really not a path forward to make it better, but just kind of don't tell me how to live my life and so be it.
00:02:59.000And I think we can unpack that because it kind of transformed from an outward utopian kind of promise to something that's outwardly dystopian.
00:03:09.000And there's just a lack of hope that I sense today from a lot of students.
00:03:14.000We can talk about that today, which I think is really, you know, important, helpful, and necessary.
00:03:19.000Something that kept on happening today as we talked on campus is there was this question that continued to be repeated over and over and over again, which is by what standard?
00:03:47.000And that was kind of a theme that continually was repeated.
00:03:52.000And there's an old expression that has been repurposed, and Dennis Prager said it for many years, which is, and Dennis Prager is amazing.
00:03:59.000And it kind of goes like this, which if you do not believe in God, or if there is no God, right and wrong is merely an opinion.
00:04:06.000And there were a lot of opinions about right and wrong today.
00:04:09.000Opinions that I didn't even think that were controversial, such as murder and killing and the defense of innocent and people that can't defend themselves.
00:04:19.000And so you might not believe in God, okay, but it's hard to believe that having a society that doesn't believe in God will make that society or that country or that civilization more free, or at least be able to have kind of agreed upon terms, if you will.
00:04:37.000And so if you keep on saying by what standard, by what standard, eventually it's going to be whoever's opinion, and you're not going to be able to appeal to kind of a transcendent authority to be able to say, well, by the standard that kind of transcends space and time.
00:05:21.000There are things that are absolutely wrong, and there are some things that are absolutely always good.
00:05:25.000And I believe, and I'll be happy to have discourse on this, that there is a God, and we're made in that God's image, and we're here to fulfill a very specific purpose while we're here.
00:05:36.000And that's not just true, but it's also civilizationally critical to believe that.
00:05:42.000Because the absence of that, you're going to have not chaos is kind of the filler word, but you're going to have disarray and confusion.
00:05:50.000And then how do you order a society around that?
00:05:53.000How do you actually find your own individual purpose?
00:05:56.000And so, and then where do you get morality from?
00:05:58.000Do you get morality from your opinion, from your experiences?
00:06:02.000And I think that all, and eventually the dialogue that we had today, which I found to be very meaningful and helpful for me too.
00:06:09.000And I hope the people that were there felt the same, is kind of if you, at the fundamental level, there is something eventually we can agree with in morality.
00:06:19.000The question, where does it come from?
00:06:24.000Okay, another question that was asked that was interesting today is, and I've never been asked this question before, but I was happy to elaborate on it.
00:06:30.000Somebody said, well, how do you know what a human being is?
00:06:50.000But if you think about it, if you do not believe that human beings have a soul and it's just a collection of cells, that becomes a lot harder to defend.
00:06:59.000So I believe a human being is a mind, body, and soul combined all into one.
00:07:03.000But if you believe that the human being is just a mind and a body, then you're basically defending like a really cool machine that might be created and might be able to reason and can speak, but it doesn't necessarily have defensible moral value.
00:07:17.000And so I could go into great detail about what a human being is, of like the speaking beings, our ability to reason, to make sense of the natural world, our ability to use common nouns, all these different things.
00:07:27.000But I think most importantly, that when you're wrestling with these very fundamental questions, I think it's time to take a step back and say some of the more consequential things of how we order society.
00:07:38.000We need to kind of take pause and say, we need to be able to at least, in a majority opinion, be able to answer these fundamental questions.
00:07:45.000And so that's, you know, so interesting.
00:07:49.000At the capital of free speech, some people are just so miserable that they have to go bang on windows.
00:08:06.000The final thing is this: if you feel as if there's a massive amount of injustice in the world, there's a lot of truth to the argument that you, as a young person, have been lied to and misled, and that you've been told to do things that are not in your best interest.
00:08:21.000One of them being having to go to college to succeed.
00:08:25.000I do not believe that a majority of young people should be going to college.
00:08:28.000In fact, I think that college is largely a scam, and I'll prove it to you.
00:08:32.000How many of you have to take classes that you are forced to take that have no relevancy to your degree or major, and you wish you shouldn't have to take it?
00:09:01.000And so, you're being forced to take classes that really have no relevancy to your future, whatever that might be.
00:09:07.000And you're also simultaneously then knowing that people are dropping out at a record rate, ask yourself the question: why is this the case?
00:09:15.000And so, but this is something I want to try to just hopefully find some common ground on, which is the following: which is that if you feel as if kind of the game has been rigged against you as a young person, you're not totally wrong.
00:09:28.000And the best evidence of that is what we did to students across America the last two years: locking down America, forcing masks on them, and forcing a vaccine on them for a virus that did not pose a significant risk against them was nothing short of generational theft.
00:09:43.000Now, for years, I've been warning about big government and the intrusion of government and how it makes your life, you know, potentially more miserable if it gets too big, all these things, with some prudent interventions here and there that I would support.
00:09:54.000But, what better example of kind of the misery that a stupid centralized government and a corrupt centralized government could create than what we have lived through over the last two years?
00:10:04.000Now, for those of you that are graduating soon, almost everything is twice or three times as expensive as it was before the lockdowns.
00:10:21.000Good luck buying any hard asset, not to mention your student loan debt burden.
00:10:25.000And then, if you get married, having children is more expensive than ever.
00:10:29.000There is an understandable anger that begins to set in.
00:10:33.000And I know a lot of you feel this way: as if I've done everything I've been told to do, and I do not get the same shot at the American dream or at flourishing that my parents did.
00:10:45.000And I will say that we could talk at length about what to do about that, but I think that there is a critique out there by some conservatives that all young people are lazy and all that.
00:11:22.000And yet, my life is materially more in jeopardy than I ever thought.
00:11:26.000And so, because of that, now you're cynical.
00:11:29.000So, my message is understanding that critique, let's try to turn some of that cynicism into hope, into a country that could be something you could buy into, something you could do in your own life to actually find meaning and purpose.
00:11:44.000Because cynical people do really bad things.
00:12:00.000I'm cynical about Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the CIA, the deep state department of justice, corrupt politicians.
00:12:17.000What can I do to actually hopefully get an optimistic, hopeful message out?
00:12:21.000Because the politics of cynicism is bad for everybody.
00:12:23.000If you think things are always constantly falling apart and there's no resolution, there's no way to try to solve it, then by definition, what comes next is either going to be an authoritarianism or anarchy, one of the two.
00:12:34.000And one will lead to authoritarianism, right?
00:12:54.000And so if you're feeling as if the game has been structured against you, I want to just say there's a lot of truth to that argument.
00:13:02.000And conservatives don't always talk like this.
00:13:04.000Conservatives will usually say work harder, study harder, live by the rules.
00:13:09.000I agree with all those things, by the way.
00:13:10.000I think there can be a little bit more grit in this generation and all that.
00:13:13.000But I think it would be unfair and not true to act as if right now a 20-year-old at UC Berkeley has the same set of circumstances that someone in the year 2004 had here.
00:13:35.000And we can have a robust discussion on actually what this is, what this means.
00:13:38.000We have to create citizens that are bought into their country.
00:13:41.000There's three things that need to be done that are moral goods for society.
00:13:45.000We call them conservatizing events at Turning Point USA.
00:13:48.000We need to make it easier to buy property.
00:13:51.000People that own homes do not burn down Wendy's, okay?
00:13:54.000When you own property, it immediately de-radicalizes you.
00:13:58.000And also it has you bought into the society at large and hopefully have some sort of vested interest in what's happening around you.
00:14:03.000Number two, we need to encourage people to get married and get married younger.
00:14:07.000Marriage rates are plummeting in America and it's a serious problem.
00:14:11.000And then number three, we need to make it easier, and I'm open to all sorts of different ideas, financially and otherwise, and culturally, to have children in America.
00:14:19.000We are on the verge of a population collapse in America.
00:14:22.000Now, one of the reasons we're on the verge of a population collapse that I will find agreement on with some of the left-wingers in this audience is because of financial and economic conditions.
00:14:32.000Now, it is more expensive than ever to have children in America.
00:14:36.000In 1985, it took 32 to 34 weeks of labor to sustain a family of four.
00:14:42.000Now, it takes 54 weeks of labor to sustain a family of four.
00:14:47.000Yes, I know there's only 52 weeks in a year.
00:14:51.000In order for just a single, that's just for one person, right?
00:14:55.000They have to either go into debt or the other spouse has to go into the workforce.
00:15:00.000And I don't think a family should have to choose between raising the child in the way that they see fit and also whether or not going into debt or all these different sorts of things.
00:15:10.000By the way, those were pre-inflation numbers, just so you know.
00:15:12.000So something that I push back against a lot is that we have to kind of live to those pesky shackles of reality, one of which is that men can't become women and women can't become men.
00:15:23.000We could obviously have a lot of fun talking about that.
00:15:27.000But if you believe that something that's just not true can become true, you also might indulge in really bad economic and fiscal policy as well.
00:15:34.000The same people that believe that men can become women are the ones telling you that creating $8 trillion out of thin air is somehow going to make people wealthier.
00:15:46.000So what's one of the ways that we can hopefully make our generation have a higher likelihood of having buy-in into this society is how about the federal government stop creating and printing $6 trillion a year and pumping it into our economy and acting as if this is going to create wealth.
00:16:03.000And what it does is it makes the people in this room significantly poorer and it makes a lot of the asset holders richer.
00:16:12.000So certain people benefit from inflation.
00:16:15.000Now, if you have student loan debt, you might actually benefit a little bit from inflation.
00:16:35.000So when inflation happens, your $500,000 mortgage, because the money supply is increasing so much, it's actually a smaller debt burden versus the amount of money in the economy.
00:16:45.000So it goes down by 10%, even though it stays the same, because there's more dollars out there.
00:16:51.000And all the while, the asset gets more valuable.
00:16:54.000So home prices go up and there's more dollar bills.
00:16:57.000So the debt that you incurred actually isn't the same sort of, let's say, the same sort of burden on you that it would have been the year prior.
00:17:05.000Now, the other thing that's really interesting is this was all predicted and we saw this coming.
00:17:10.000Corporate borrowing increased by $700 billion in the midst of the pandemic.
00:17:28.000Now, for a lot of you students out there, like interest rates, I wasn't even allowed to leave my home.
00:17:32.000You know, I had to wear a mask all day long.
00:17:34.000By definition, you were disenfranchised from economic conditions because you just didn't have the material ability to enter into the economy as other people who were older than you.
00:17:43.000That needs to be, I think, substantially addressed.
00:17:46.000I have advocated for a national recovery program, a national recovery program of intergenerational healing that addresses the rise in depression, suicide, mental health issues, alcohol addiction, social isolation, and the economic uncertainty facing young people.
00:18:01.000I stopped very short of some of the more radical proposals like taking money away.
00:18:16.000If you want to start a business instead of going to college, there should be an opportunity for you to be able to get a low to zero interest rate loan to be able to start a business.
00:18:23.000We need a lot more entrepreneurs and a lot less people going to college.
00:18:27.000The government could do that in an instant.
00:18:48.000Okay, so this tends to be a little bit of a conservative audience.
00:18:52.000I can't quite tell by some of the golf claps all the way in the back.
00:18:55.000But if you are a conservative, please do not heckle.
00:19:01.000Please do not use profanity or interrupt people when they ask questions.
00:19:06.000Allow people to ask a question, allow them to get it out.
00:19:08.000We, at conservative events, we want to show respect to people on the left that sometimes they don't always grant to us, especially as we're here at UC Berkeley, the capital of free speech, whatever that might mean.
00:19:18.000All right, so you can start a line right there, single file.
00:19:21.000I see some familiar faces actually from our tabling today.
00:19:24.000One of the libertarian friends, I think that's right.
00:20:20.000I think dating is an interview process.
00:20:23.000And I know that is a minority opinion on most college campuses where date is a mechanism for, I don't know, companionship, amongst other things.
00:20:31.000And so I believe that you in Berkeley, it's going to be tough.
00:20:35.000You're going to have to hopefully only date people in alignment with your values, right?
00:20:38.000That doesn't mean you can't have friends with people that disagree with you, but dating is a very serious thing.
00:20:45.000Well, thankfully, at Turning Point USA, all the conservatives at the front have red shirts on, so maybe you can introduce yourself to somebody.
00:20:54.000But yeah, look, I will say this: that try to associate or marry or date somebody that does share your deeply held values.
00:21:30.000Men, I believe, especially in this time of moral and societal chaos, need to get back into what it means to be a spiritually, physically, and mentally strong man, which I believe, which I believe includes stopping watching pornography, which I believe means working out on a regular basis.
00:21:50.000And I believe also understanding that the most desirable quality that young ladies look for in men, according to my big survey of all of our listeners, is self-control.
00:22:02.000Is that young ladies say that they cannot find a young man who can control himself?
00:23:07.000Dinesh D'Souza has a real special movie coming out, everybody.
00:23:11.000In 2020, November 2020, Democrats were up to no good.
00:23:16.000They were planning to pull off one of the greatest schemes of election fraud never seen before, but they didn't think we would catch them, but we did.
00:23:23.000Find out what they did and how they did it in a new documentary film called 2000 Mules, directed and narrated by renowned filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, an executive produced by the Salem Media Group, with research from truthevote.org.
00:23:36.0002000 Mules is going to be a game changer.
00:23:39.0002000 Mules tells the story of the ones who tried to hijack a presidential election.
00:23:43.000You'll see actual video surveillance tape.
00:23:45.000You'll see how we track their cell phones to box after box after they got paid to carry out this illegal scheme.
00:24:20.000I mean, I agree with your diagnosis of the problem.
00:24:24.000I just feel like when I see economic policy proposed by people associated with turning points, that I see that it feels like, like, for example, the tax bill that passed, I guess, however many years in the Trump tax plan, it felt like a lot of the policies were, like, tax rates went up after Trump left office.
00:24:45.000There were tax cuts for people who, like, it feels like the door is being closed on me.
00:24:50.000And so I feel pressure to vote against people who are trying to close the door against young people like me.
00:25:08.000The reason the federal government would make for that is why should we subsidize your high taxes while other states can get their fiscal house in order?
00:25:35.000Why we went out of our way to try to lower corporate tax rates that hate us is beyond me.
00:25:40.000Not because I don't think it's good economics.
00:25:42.000I just don't think it's good for the country to give more money to companies that are giving $100 million to BLM.
00:25:47.000Like, not exactly something I think we should go out of our way for.
00:25:50.000There are some other provisions, though, in the tax bill that aren't talked about, such as increasing the standardized middle-income middle-class deduction for having children.
00:26:01.000But here's something that you and I could probably agree on, which is, okay, you look at, you're trying to make a political decision, right?
00:27:04.000I am frustrated that that has to be the piece of legislation that I, as a conservative, have to say, oh, yeah, go give us political power back and you get more of that.
00:27:13.000I think Republicans watching need to realize you guys have to do a lot better than just cutting corporate taxes for Google and Facebook and Amazon.
00:27:36.000So you I've been hearing you in the news ripping Biden over inflation and I think some of that stems from government spending coming out of the pandemic if you were facing Armageddon people were I mean we really didn't know anything about COVID at the beginning of at the beginning of 2020.
00:27:55.000Would you have not done any government spending sending out the stimulus checks and right now Biden's proposing to cap the price of insulin and another thing that you talked about was student debt and you didn't mention any student debt forgiveness.
00:28:09.000I'd love to hear your thoughts on that because that seems like a quick and easy way to get people into the market of buying a home.
00:28:31.000I reject the premise that it was Armageddon.
00:28:34.000We did know a lot about the virus about two to three weeks in.
00:28:37.000We had the Diamond Princess cruise ship actually not too far off San Francisco Bay where we had an isolated incident that was very contained, spread of COVID.
00:28:45.000And actually those modeling of infection rate and death rate actually modeled really well for across the country throughout the pandemic, which showed a very low death rate, high transmissibility rate.
00:28:56.000I personally believe that there was a concerted war by pharmaceutical companies to restrict the discussion and the spread of early intervention treatments that have proven to be very, very helpful and successful, such as hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, azithromycin, intravenous therapy, ozone, monoclonal antibodies.
00:29:15.000And so let's take one that's less controversial, right?
00:29:17.000Vitamin D. There's over 150 studies that show that if you have a vitamin D level over 50, that you have a much higher chance of surviving with COVID and not even getting a significant risk of COVID.
00:29:29.000Our public health officials very well could have run TV ads that I didn't see that said, hey, check your vitamin D level like you check your credit score and get a free vitamin D booster shot.
00:29:39.000That alone could have prevented millions of cytokosine storms because a vitamin D is an interrupter that gets in the way of what is the most, is the harshest reaction and the most severe reaction that came from the virus.
00:29:51.000So the same scientist that said the vaccine was great.
00:30:14.000Paying people not to work, pay people staying at home was wrong from the beginning.
00:30:18.000It never should have been done at all whatsoever.
00:30:21.000And so, yeah, that's my statement on that.
00:30:24.000And therefore, the regime, both parties, but mostly the left, especially recently, created $7 trillion, $67 trillion of new government spending the last two years, pumps that money into the economy.
00:30:34.000That's why you're seeing everything that you could touch or use go up dramatically, right?
00:30:39.000Pork, beef, gas prices, homes, anything where there's a finite amount, it goes up dramatically.
00:30:45.000In fact, we have so many dollar bills that we start to see things that are otherwise rather not very valuable skyrocket.
00:31:08.000I do not believe that we should penalize young people that got scholarships, went to community colleges first, or did not go to college altogether.
00:31:16.000Forgiving student loan loans, by definition, would be penalizing other students that made other decisions not to go to as expensive schools, going to community college, work their way through college, got academic scholarships, took AP classes, took honors classes, and managed their student lett burden, their student debt burden.
00:31:35.000And so while it's attractive to say, yeah, let's just kind of forgive that debt, let's just wipe it out.
00:31:40.000The moral question is, what kind of behavior do you want to reward, right?
00:31:44.000Now, I do not believe rewarding going to UC Berkeley to go study North African lesbian poetry while somebody, you know, got works with their hands to become a plumber, electrician, or carpenter.
00:31:55.000How they look, they say, wait a second, why do they get the handout?
00:31:58.000Just because they went to Berkeley and took all those classes and I didn't?
00:32:06.000I mean, a plumber, a plumber might have to go into a profession because they can't get, they can't afford college.
00:32:16.000So the prohibitive cost of college factors into the problem.
00:32:20.000And if you don't have any student loan debt forgiveness, you're getting into the problem that you were talking about earlier where people have been lied to.
00:32:28.000And so you're not going to help them out if they've been lied to?
00:32:32.000Like if they've been lied to by the government, why wouldn't you help them out?
00:32:35.000Well, I think helping them out would be opening the economy and not forgiving the debt burden.
00:32:39.000I mean, by helping them out, I think there's ways to do it while also enshrining a basic principle that I believe in, which is individual responsibility, which is, I feel sorry for you, you were scammed, but you also signed on the dotted line at fastfa.gov and you decided to go borrow $65,000.
00:32:55.000And I do not believe that it is the role of government nor the correct moral thing to do to completely wash that away because there still needs to be individual responsibility built into that.
00:33:06.000So the second part of your question with the plumber thing, which is we have way too many people going to college.
00:33:11.000College is completely overrated for a lot of different fields and studies of industry.
00:33:16.000We have a massive underemployment problem for electricians and carpenters, police officers, firefighters, and people in the muscular class in our country.
00:33:23.000And the reason is this, is from the time you get into grade school, you look up at the wall and they have all these pennants, right, of all the different banners of colleges you could go to.
00:33:32.000We are told a lie that going to college is going to make you wealthier and happier and more likely to succeed.
00:33:37.000The data just doesn't pan out on that.
00:33:39.000When you have more of something, it's actually worth less.
00:33:46.000Where actually what we've done, because we look down on the muscular trades in our country, you might not want to admit it, but it's true.
00:33:52.000We don't look very highly at the plumber, the electrician, the person that sweats while they work, is we have a massive problem actually finding people to fill those jobs.
00:34:00.000When in reality, a lot of people that were told to go to college in the first place should actually been pushed towards those jobs and encouraged to take them in the first place.
00:34:21.000So I just had a question about what conservatism's point is in the modern day.
00:34:27.000Because 40 years ago, when Reagan entered and won that landslide election, he campaigned on three main points, lowering taxes, increasing military spending, and putting back morals in society, whatever.
00:34:38.000And there were specific policy points behind that.
00:34:40.000And for 30 or so years, that kind of dominated the political spectrum.
00:34:44.000And the left was forced to respond to that.
00:34:46.000They didn't have many points of their own.
00:34:48.000The problem now I see among conservatives is they don't actually have policy points of their own.
00:34:55.000They drive the agenda on Medicare for all.
00:34:57.000They drive the agenda on Green New Deal.
00:34:59.000And the question I have to ask is, as someone who's not directly a conservative, as someone who just looks out on the political spectrum, is the right doesn't actually, it looks to me that like they don't actually have like a point of existence.
00:35:15.000So let me first tell you why, and then I'll dive into what I believe the conservative movement needs to articulate better.
00:35:21.000The reason why is because when you believe in less government, there's a temptation just to kind of stick with we're going to do nothing and just kind of let you live your life, right?
00:35:29.000So that by definition, you're kind of non-interventionist by a public policy standpoint, where the other side, their belief system is to continue to expand government and strengthen the Leviathan and give stuff out to people.
00:35:39.000So that's the first reason why, but that's not a good excuse.
00:35:42.000So what does conservatism stand for right now?
00:35:45.000Well, the bumper sticker is to conserve the good, the true, and the beautiful, one of which is the country.
00:35:50.000I think it's alarming and wrong and awful that if the border policy continues as it is, one in five Americans will be illegal in three years.
00:35:59.000There's something deeply troubling and wrong about that.
00:36:02.000This is where I think Donald Trump was at his best.
00:36:04.000He told you exactly what he wanted to do.
00:36:06.000Didn't execute on it, I think, as well as a lot of us would have liked, which is we're going to build a southern border wall.
00:36:10.000We're going to be able to control who comes into our country.
00:36:13.000And that's something that obviously was compelling enough to be able to win the presidency.
00:36:18.000But more broadly, I think that conservatism, and I'll push back a little bit, conservatism is finding a very strong moral center, but there's two parts to this, okay?
00:36:26.000The first is defeating the woke, okay?
00:36:28.000That's very similar to what Ronald Reagan did in 1980 when he opposed, or 1980 election, 1984 election, opposing the Soviet Union, right?
00:36:36.000So for example, I think looting is wrong.
00:36:38.000I think we should not defund the police.
00:36:39.000I don't think men could become pregnant.
00:36:48.000That's enough to be able to oppose, but it's really important to oppose those things.
00:36:52.000That's why I can find, I'm like, all of a sudden, weird allies with like Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk.
00:36:59.000Someone, I probably don't agree with them a lot, but we all agree that kind of the woke industrial complex and those idea pathogens, if you will, have such damage.
00:37:07.000The second part is where it gets a little trickier, right?
00:37:09.000What are you actually going to do if you get political power?
00:37:12.000So let me tell you who I think is doing it well and someone who I think we can look to and say, wow, that's meaningful.
00:37:17.000Ron DeSantis in Florida is a great example of what I think the future of conservatism looks like.
00:37:25.000A strong and unapologetic defense saying that five-year-olds are not going to be taught about gender transitioning or lesbian sex.
00:37:32.000Saying that we're not going to allow, we are going to harshly prosecute interstate trafficking of people coming into our state to try to riot.
00:37:40.000Ron DeSantis has just allocated $70 million more to a fatherhood initiative to try to rebuild the family in Florida, remaining wide open, being against vaccine mandates, all these things.
00:37:50.000So I want to get out of the clouds kind of like what you do and say, show me the money.
00:37:54.000Well, the money is a state that used to be considered to be a tilt-left state that is now the freest, most open, prosperous state in the country, and one of the most desirable places to live thanks to leadership.
00:38:05.000And that leader is Ron DeSantis, who I think can teach us a lot about the future of American conservatism.
00:38:32.000I'm really ugly, but besides that, something that I was hoping to talk to you about is you really emphasize, you know, Christian values, right?
00:38:41.000And, you know, if Jesus doesn't return this year, which hopefully he does, you'll have another year to help educate the young public on American values.
00:38:50.000And in the past, you've expressed a lot of support for a free K through 12 alternative to curriculum that provides an American-first re-education.
00:39:20.000Oh, you don't believe in God, probably.
00:39:23.000So, yeah, I think that we should teach children to love America, and we should be unapologetic about that, and we need to create good citizens.
00:39:29.000And what you're referring to is a turning point-you say, initiative that will happen, where we are going to empower families across America to be able to have a go-to resource to be able to properly teach the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln, and the beauty of Western civilization.
00:40:06.000And you also, you know, talk about Holy Week.
00:40:09.000I was just wondering if you think about Ronald Reagan, the president, and would you think that he's looking up at you right now with pride from down there?
00:40:19.000Yeah, so that's so you believe in hell?
00:44:06.000And my question was: how are these authoritarian figures in these shows, how are they contributing to the downfall and the sexual deviation of our society, especially within Peppa the Pig and the daddy pig, especially?
00:44:19.000And because one more thing is just the daughter, right?
00:45:29.000My question is, so you talk a lot about how you're talking to people on campus and how now that people are like atheists or agnostic, they don't really have like moral backing for, or they don't have backing for their morals because they don't have religion.
00:45:42.000And it's just sort of like an opinion war.
00:45:44.000Don't you think that religion is, in some sense, even has less backing than opinion?
00:45:50.000Because there's no evidence for your opinion.
00:45:52.000There's no way to logically reason through your opinion.
00:45:55.000You just refer to a book written 2,000 years ago and you're like, this is the word.
00:46:18.000I mean, if you look at the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, you live your life by the Ten Commandments, you will flourish.
00:46:23.000If you honor your parents, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet, if you honor the Sabbath, if you honor your Creator and have no gods before him, and you do that for a long period of time, that law is what will set you free.
00:46:36.000So the question is, are the teachings of the Bible true?
00:46:43.000We live in a pretty amazing civilization.
00:46:45.000Separation of powers, consent to the govern, constitutional republic, independent judiciary, these things just don't kind of fall out of the sky.
00:46:52.000Well, I guess you could say they fall like manna out of heaven, but I'm not sure you would agree at that.
00:46:56.000But it came from the teachings of the Bible.
00:46:59.000So there's a logical fallacy in your question, and I don't think you intended it.
00:47:02.000Just because something is old doesn't mean it's untrue or that it's not beautiful.
00:47:07.000Things that are old that last, that should actually make you appreciate them more, not less.
00:47:13.000If something's able to have staying power for 2,000 years, that should make you take pause and say, I wonder why, throughout all of history, throughout the Enlightenment, post-Enlightenment, that people still believe in this book.
00:47:22.000Maybe there's something that is speaking to the soul of the being, not just the reason itself.
00:47:29.000But there is evidence for a higher transcendent being.
00:48:10.000And therefore, if you have time and you have space and you have matter, you therefore then can deduce and use very basic logic.
00:48:17.000In order for time, space, and matter to exist, you must have something that is timeless, spaceless, and transcends all those different things.
00:48:52.000If you want to learn about the human condition, go read the story of David, the story of Solomon who wrote Proverbs.
00:48:57.000There is an infinite fountain of wisdom in the Bible that I don't think gets a fair hearing at campuses like this all the time.
00:49:03.000And in fact, a lot of the morality that you in this room believe to be true, such as the strong protecting the weak, defending children, not murdering, is derived from first the Torah and then the Bible in its entirety.
00:49:32.000And that's where our human-sized brains struggle with the mystery of having to comprehend that.
00:49:38.000Is that if we were able to understand how something could always be, then maybe we wouldn't ever have to have something that we as Christians believe is fundamental, which is faith.
00:49:47.000We believe both faith and certainty create a beautiful life.
00:49:50.000If we had all the answers all the time, you would be in an endless, let's say, hurricane of reason.
00:49:58.000Not being able to articulate how something has always been, we believe that God to be infinite in a finite galaxy or universe is something that would then, by logical deduction, be able to transcend all those different things.
00:50:18.000I want to ask some question about racism.
00:50:21.000I know you've argued that systemic racism in the U.S. doesn't exist.
00:50:24.000I wanted to point out some answers I think that's obviously wrong and see what you think about it.
00:50:28.000So just starting with the issue of crime, we know for a fact, because it's been studied pretty extensively.
00:50:33.000Black people and people who aren't black or white people use drugs, commit nonviolent drug offenses at pretty much the same rates.
00:50:40.000Black people get arrested for these crimes about two to three times more often.
00:50:44.000It's dropping now that we've legalized weed more in more and more states, which is a great thing that we've done.
00:50:49.000Even if you say that like police are doing that not on purpose, but because they're just in areas where more violent crime is committed and they're controlling, isn't that an obvious example of something that black people have to deal with in this country that's much worse off for them than non-black people?
00:51:11.000Just like some, I would say that there's a lot of shit that black people have to deal with that makes them worse off in the country.
00:51:17.000Okay, such as like having to be around police all the time.
00:51:21.000Yeah, because if you're around police, not because police, but because we have like this, I think, like shitty law that you have to, that you're going to get arrested for committing a nonviolent drug crime.
00:51:31.000So as an extension of that, you're around police more often.
00:51:33.000You're more likely to be arrested for that crime.
00:52:11.000Now, secondly, let me say this, though, is that there are issues, if you want to just talk strictly racial, that are disproportionately affecting white America, such as opioids and fentanyl.
00:52:21.000Not to say that blacks are not affected by this, but it is a disproportionate rural issue.
00:52:27.000Well, white individuals, because of the industrial kind of growth in America, were more likely to get involved in muscular trades in Ohio and Pennsylvania, especially in steel mill towns and such.
00:52:41.000So you get likely to get injured at work because of the Sackler family, which you and I could probably agree are a bunch of criminals, who should be put in prison for a long period of time.
00:52:49.000They started to over-prescribe oxycontin, oxycotin, I'm sorry, into the communities and therefore getting these people addicted to the high of an opioid and then searching for other places to go there.
00:53:01.000So we could play these kind of racial games all the time.
00:53:03.000Is it fair for someone in Southeast Ohio who's white, who was a son of a steel mill worker, and all these things, that they might have been more exposed to this sort of thing?
00:53:12.000I think the hyper-racialization of all that is less important than the real, more fundamental question, which is why does race matter in any of this?
00:53:22.000I don't like looking at people through a racial lens.
00:53:24.000If you want to do that, which I said, the statistics are not good at all.
00:53:28.000In fact, it shows that there's an under-policing problem in black neighborhoods across America.
00:53:32.000In fact, 50% of homicides go unsolved in Chicago, 50% because of lack of detectives and lack of police in a lot of these areas.
00:53:40.000And kind of for your daily thought crime, police prevent crime, and they did prevent crime in New York City.
00:53:46.000New York City was one of the most dangerous, murderous cities in the 1980s and early 1990s.
00:53:51.000And someone who I think it's unnecessarily mocked and smeared, Rudy Giuliani, became mayor and cleaned up that entire city.
00:53:57.000And to his credit, liberal Democrat who ran for president, Mike Bloomberg, continued those policies.
00:54:04.000And so, look, any thoughts on that really quick?
00:54:06.000Because I want to get some other questions.
00:54:08.000Yeah, I think I wasn't disagreeing at all that police do a lot of great work.
00:54:12.000The only problem with that is that it's, is it true fact that a ballot, that a factual extension of the fact that police are in certain areas more often means that if society has shitty laws, those shitty laws are going to be enforced more often.
00:54:35.000You're much more likely to get arrested.
00:54:37.000And even this isn't happening as much now.
00:54:38.000It happened much more often in the past.
00:54:40.000You're much more likely to get arrested.
00:54:42.000So there's been plenty of studies done by Harvard and Maryland showing there's actually an under-policing problem in a lot of these communities.
00:54:50.000You know, I could do statistics all day long because I'm sure that there's plenty that you could cite.
00:54:54.000But first of all, I'm not a fan of legalizing marijuana.
00:54:58.000But I can probably agree with you that there is a problem with locking people in prison for an extended period of time for using marijuana.
00:55:06.000But there's another more fundamental question, which is this, which is you can get into sentencing, right?
00:55:10.000Which is usually kind of a talking point, which is that the most important thing when it comes to, you know, your likelihood of going to jail if you commit a crime is less about your skin color and more about your wealth and how competent of a counsel you can hire, right?
00:55:24.000And so, for example, LeBron James, if Bronnie gets caught dealing crack, which I don't think he will, he's going to have the best lawyer on the planet representing him that will be filing motions for dismissal, cross-examination of evidence, you know, all sorts of different things.
00:55:49.000Blaming wealth inequality between races, which I don't like doing, but if you want to play that game strictly on racism, is a sloppy way to look at things.
00:55:57.000So the perspective we have is a perspective of Thomas Hole, Thomas Soule, which is you look at the whole body of work, you'll see that just because you have disparate outcomes does not mean you could solely blame discrimination.
00:56:10.000And I'll prove it to you with one data point, then we'll move on, which is this, which is that you can have different data points that have outcomes, and there's other factors that play in.
00:56:18.000So for example, San Francisco and New York are far wealthier than Missoula, Montana, and Birmingham, Alabama.
00:56:41.000Sometimes you can have disparate outcomes with data, and attributing racism to it is actually not just imprudent, it's really, really detrimental and harmful.
00:56:50.000So one thing that I would agree with that we need to do, put fathers back into the home, which is very, very important.
00:56:55.000In 1965, marriage rates in the black community were about 80%.
00:57:01.000Now it's plummeted down to 20% to 25%.
00:57:03.000There's a lot of reasons for this: subsidizing single motherhood through the Great Society and many other things.
00:57:07.000But there's other factors that play in.
00:57:09.000How many words is a child hearing at home?
00:57:11.000Is the child getting read to on a daily or weekly basis by parents?
00:57:16.000And in fact, the hyperfixation and kind of systemic racism, I think, kind of creates a smokescreen that disallows us from actually finding meaningful solutions to these problems.
00:57:57.000So when you want to consolidate your debt and use equity in your home to do so to lower your monthly expenses, you have to use my friends, Andrew and Todd, at andrewandtodd.com.
00:58:07.000You have to know what you're going through.
00:58:09.000So look, I just had dinner with Andrew and Todd in Orange County.
00:59:05.000I hang out with them casually and I've got to know them really well.
00:59:08.000They'll treat you right, and that when you use them, you're not using Citibank or Chase or these people that hate your values, that believe in this trans nonsense.
00:59:17.000Don't use those banks, diversity, equity, inclusion banks.
00:59:25.000You might say, oh, Charlie, I don't need to refinance or whatever.
00:59:28.000Well, maybe you will two months from now.
00:59:29.000Maybe you young millennials out there, maybe the millennials listening to our show, my fellow millennials, you're going to buy a home soon.
00:59:35.000Maybe you're getting married and you want to buy something.
00:59:36.000It's AndrewandTodd.com for a quick mortgage checkup.
00:59:40.000Use the equity in your home before it's too late.
01:00:30.000Unfortunately, we disagree on the reason for why we've done it to this point.
01:00:34.000I feel that the problems we face today are rather a result of a shift in the American economic culture during the Reagan era when he promoted austerity and Reaganism economics.
01:00:43.000Extreme wealth inequality isn't a new concept.
01:00:46.000It's something that's been on trend for the past half century.
01:00:48.000Don't you feel like the transfer of wealth you described earlier is a result of monetary policy enacted by politicians on both sides that cut spending for social services and keeps the effect at tax rate for the 1% low?
01:01:39.000I'm not someone who just defends him at all costs.
01:01:42.000I think he was really good in the Soviet Union, generally good on anti-socialism and communism, but he also ushered in a lot of other things, such as incredibly radical abortion policy here in California.
01:01:51.000But there was an agreement post-Reagan and kind of George H.W. Bush, which was kind of part of his regime, that I think you and I could agree on, which is that we really want to try to internationalize the American economy.
01:02:02.000And there was a betrayal of the American worker, allowing China into the World Trade Organization in the late 90s, right?
01:02:07.000The repealing of Glass-Steagall, which I'm against, just so we're clear, that I think that that was actually good to keep commercial and investment banking separate.
01:02:14.000I think it created a massive moral hazard.
01:02:16.000The lowering of interest rates unnecessarily throughout the 90s and early 2000s, which I think were all things that factored in some of these economic conditions that you talk about.
01:02:25.000But I would be careful just kind of blaming only, that's not true.
01:02:29.000You did say both parties, but it's not just, it was continued by Clinton a lot in the 90s as well.
01:02:35.000And this is something I can actually find common cause with a lot of people on the left is I look at middle class wages, how easy it is to have children, can you flourish and how many new businesses are we starting, right?
01:02:45.000And I think under Donald Trump, which is something you'll definitely disagree with, those things actually were improving dramatically.
01:02:53.000Middle-class wages were going up more than anyone realized.
01:02:57.000In fact, the wage growth for middle-class workers and blue-collar workers far outpaced wage growth for the 1% at the top ladder of the economy.
01:03:23.000I think that the kind of bargain that was sold to us, which is we are going to send all of our labor through a massive arbitrage, close down our factories, send it to Wuhan, China, and get a bunch of plastic in return, was a bad deal for America.
01:03:37.000And that did play in to a lot of the economic and income inequality we're seeing right now.
01:03:41.000So I don't think we're that far off, to be perfectly honest.
01:03:44.000I would just kind of push back a little bit on some of the critique of supply-side and market-based policy.
01:03:49.000I think it's generally a good thing for society and does have some benefits.
01:04:12.000So then what should we respond to organizations such as BlackRock in the way that they're mass purchasing homes, often using government money as well to purchase hundreds of thousands of homes all over the United States?
01:04:26.000If they're already in a position theoretically where they own over like 50% of the housing market, you have almost a sort of inverse situation to the student loan situation where they technically legally already own all these houses, yet what solutions can be offered from organizations such as TPUSA in response to those kind of actions?
01:04:47.000Yeah, I won't go too deep in the policy side of it because I haven't really thought about it very much, but I agree.
01:05:01.000I think when you rent things endlessly, it creates radical politics and you just feel less connected to the society and the civilization that you're in.
01:05:17.000Now, that's just one of the things BlackRock is doing.
01:05:19.000They're also doing this ESG nonsense where they're coming in and they're withdrawing funding from fracking and from oil and gas exploration because it doesn't meet their environmental standards.
01:05:29.000BlackRock is more powerful than the government in some sense.
01:05:54.000I will agree that BlackRock is a huge problem to young people buying homes.
01:06:00.000And we as conservatives should be unafraid to say that.
01:06:02.000So I don't like big government and I do not like big Wall Street business coming in, swooping in and buying up homes and then renting them back to young people before they even can get off the finish line.
01:06:10.000I don't think it's right or it's fair.
01:07:02.000And I've talked openly about it in my life with the debate I had with the porn person, the transporn, whatever person that we debated recently.
01:07:11.000But look, I'll just tell you honestly, I think it's disgusting that you're coming up here and trying to create satire of life of something that destroys people's lives.
01:07:18.000And I think that's really reprehensible.
01:07:45.000So like what you said about monetary policy, about colleges, everything, it all makes sense.
01:07:50.000But there's like one thing throughout the conversation and like kind of just throughout the event where there's like a big focus on the culture around the movement being Christianity.
01:08:02.000And I have nothing against Christianity.
01:08:08.000And like, so, and I'm proud of being Jewish.
01:08:10.000So, and I, and I don't have anything against like, oh, people that are Christian in their values or whatever, but it's just that like, if you want people to kind of like fit into this movement, it seems like it's kind of like the religion of Christianity is kind of being forced on people.
01:08:26.000So I, in not forced, but you know, it's just like it's very emphasized.
01:08:30.000So is there room in this movement or like, you know, in what you're saying for there to be people of other religions that are not Christianity partners?
01:08:38.000At Turning Point, we do a young Jewish leadership summit.
01:09:27.000And so, but look, I mean, the common phrase is that the West was a combination between Jerusalem and Athens.
01:09:32.000But we live in a pluralistic society, right?
01:09:34.000You can make up your own mind on these things.
01:09:37.000But I also feel a moral obligation to also share my beliefs and my views on these things.
01:09:41.000You could disagree with them, obviously.
01:09:43.000But yeah, and just also kind of one final thing I'll say.
01:09:45.000I've gotten more questions on the topic than I actually push forward from here.
01:09:49.000If you kind of think back, the reason you keep on hearing it is because they keep on bringing it up to me and I'm not going to back down, you know, from these beliefs or where they come from.
01:10:04.000I think so far I'm the second or third person who actually 100% agrees with you other than the first guy who's looking for that beautiful Republican girl.
01:10:57.000We've got to complete the Keystone XL pipeline, approve more oil leases, expand exploration of the Permian in the Balkan and in the Marcellus Shale, the three largest deposits of oil and natural gas in America.
01:11:09.000And then finally, we should have a specific policy that we are not going to buy energy from people who hate us while we have it under our own feet.
01:11:19.000And so if that isn't persuasive to you, then I would love to hear the counter argument of why people oppose natural gas.
01:11:28.000Natural gas is clean, it's abundant, it's widespread, and it is the envy of the world.
01:11:35.000Our deposits of natural gas are the envy of the world, and we are intentionally not exploring them for reasons that can only be described as ideological, as believing that they're so harmful and so terrible that somehow the emissions of them are going to end the planet in 10 years.
01:11:52.000We have an obligation, I believe, to allow human beings to flourish now.
01:11:57.000And when you have to pay, what, $680 to fill up your Chevy, or $200, whatever, $80?
01:12:03.000Yeah, a little bit of an exaggeration.
01:12:05.000That makes your ability to flourish and actually travel and move harder.
01:12:08.000And so our U.S. natural gas has actually helped lower carbon emissions in America over the last 30 years.
01:12:15.000Carbon emissions went down because of how we expanded oil, mostly natural gas exploration in the last couple of years.
01:12:22.000It's unique in the developed world in that sense.
01:12:32.000As you know, California is unfortunately not getting any more red, and more boomers and millennials are moving out of state.
01:12:40.000However, I was just curious to know if you can see that though as an opportunity for Generation Z and us college students here to thrive here, more job opportunities, especially for future entrepreneurs.
01:12:52.000Yeah, look, I'm not someone that says you should leave California automatically, but boy, is it difficult right now to flourish in this state with income tax rate, regulation, the burden of the public service bureaucracy?
01:13:03.000How many of you plan to leave California after your graduate?
01:13:42.000It's still the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world.
01:13:44.000Even though California is probably one of the least free states, you still have a semblance of an entrepreneurial culture of being able to take risks and be able to be able to succeed.
01:14:25.000I had one question for you, and it's a really simple one.
01:14:28.000What's your thoughts on those people that call themselves conservatives, but like they sort of partake in the activities of what the liberal left is doing?
01:14:36.000I just want to know your thoughts on that.
01:14:46.000I mean, geez, Mitt Romney's not a conservative.
01:14:49.000He's a liberal that calls himself a conservative.
01:14:51.000And so, I mean, if you vote for Katanji Brown Jackson and you tell me that you're a conservative, like that dog doesn't hunt and that's not going to happen.
01:15:07.000I get more frustrated with, and this is my own personal beliefs on this topic.
01:15:13.000I get more frustrated with Republicans that betray their voters than Democrats who do what they say they're going to do and are super radical.
01:15:21.000I get more frustrated with that, personally, when I see Republicans get political power and they turn their backs on the people that actually put them there, like Mitt Romney in Utah, which is one of the most conservative states in the country.
01:16:18.000And so everyone kind of wants the kind of image of being a boss on Instagram, coroner office, you know, you get all the perks and all that.
01:16:25.000But do they really want to be there 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning, having to go crunch a deadline when it's you on the line that have to do that?
01:16:33.000Because that's what we that own business and run business have to do.
01:17:14.000And so, but we see in America, we have a lot of people that do finger pointing and not people that are willing to cast a vision, work towards it, and meaningfully try to execute on it.
01:17:23.000The greatest leader of the 20th century is Winston Churchill, period.
01:17:26.000It's why we're never surrender right here.
01:17:28.000Winston Churchill cast the vision against impossible odds.
01:17:31.000He united a people against existential and material and immediate evil.
01:17:35.000He rallied people with optimism and charm and a perseverance that was relentless when he was the minority of people thought it couldn't be done, surviving the blitz, pushing forward into Europe and liberating them from absolute existential and just unspeakable evil.
01:18:19.000Throughout your public endeavors here in public speaking and whatnot, you've become obviously a figure for the conservative movement, which I'm very happy to have you along with us.
01:18:27.000But obviously, we have those on the left, especially here in California and placing like New York, that just make assumptions and quite frankly spread lies and aren't interested in getting to know you at all or getting to know your viewpoints.
01:18:39.000I gladly state who I am, my positions, and the fact I'm a proud boy in the USPAY chapter of California.
01:18:46.000My question to you is: What do you find a little bit more effective in communicating your cause and your position?
01:18:52.000Public debate, where you're able to take someone down.
01:18:56.000I mean, you know, in the debating aspect, where you can, yes, sorry, where you can actually make your viewpoints heard in the public stage and show how you can defeat the left.
01:19:05.000Or do you find it more effective to say more of a grassroots issue where you can talk to someone that's kind of teetering the left and actually is interested, maybe not in agreeing with what you say, but also in just hearing your viewpoint.
01:19:17.000And my second part to that is, since no one else has asked it, Trump or DeSantis.
01:19:47.000You're going to get a couple smart Alex and people, you know, that try to do it, but that's part of the game, right?
01:19:51.000Sitting out on the quad for two hours and having conversations with people.
01:19:54.000But look, I will say this: that I think that when we have, there is this, and I know you didn't touch on this, but I think it's necessary to say, right?
01:20:04.000Which is that we as conservatives are feeling a lot of frustration at times.
01:20:08.000And we have to continue to be, and we try to be ambassadors of this, not to indulge into any sort of violence or any sort of, I think that's wrong.
01:20:18.000And in fact, I think it hurts our cause and it makes it harder for us to be able to win converts over.
01:20:24.000And I know you didn't touch on that, but I just want to kind of say that in the orbit of all that.
01:20:27.000But the final thing I'll say is this: is that we have to be unafraid to say things that are true, even though you might be in a room the only person saying it.
01:20:36.000I believe fundamentally that 99% of Americans believe that this idea that men can become pregnant is patently insane.
01:20:44.000But 99% of Americans are afraid to say that out loud.
01:20:47.000So it's going to take courage and it's going to take conviction to stand up and speak your mind on those things, regardless of what that backlash actually might be.
01:20:56.000And in California, this is the toughest place to do that.
01:21:38.000He really is starting to look like he's in the tradition of Churchill and Lincoln in many ways.
01:21:45.000But here's what we do know about Trump.
01:21:46.000And I got to give him credit for this.
01:21:48.000He did what he said he was going to do.
01:21:49.000And he was right with his predictions and his will to fight and his resolve.
01:21:53.000And I believe once you win a presidency once, and then you run again and narrowly get displaced after all the shenanigans that happened last time, you have earned, and I do not use that word lightly, earned, a right to be able to run again and present to the American people the I told you so, get me back in power to lower your gas prices, close your border, and end these silly wars that are popping up all across the world.
01:23:08.000There's something out there, I think, that is more attractive and beautiful.
01:23:13.000And I would say that would resonate with you a lot more than just kind of the dark and dystopian agenda that I think is being pushed a lot of times.
01:23:21.000And so I want to thank you guys again for having us tonight.