00:01:02.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:10.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:09.000And you have to be somebody that wants it really bad.
00:02:13.000And I think a lot of you do, but it's not for everybody.
00:02:16.000If you get involved in politics, you have to be willing to lose all your friends.
00:02:21.000You have to be willing to be bullied, harassed, called awful names, probably publicly doxed, and be unfairly attacked for a long period of time.
00:02:30.000However, the good part about getting involved in this fight is that it's totally worth it.
00:02:35.000Is that you're actually doing something meaningful, not just rearranging numbers at some accounting firm, that you're actually defending the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world.
00:02:45.000And so the best way to, let's say, continue the drive is to be able to answer the why.
00:02:54.000And if you can't answer the why, then you shouldn't get involved in this.
00:02:57.000And the why is the most important question, which is, I want my kids to live in a free country.
00:03:02.000And when you look at things intergenerationally, all of a sudden, you stop being the most important person in the world and you start fighting for future generations that they might also enjoy this nation.
00:03:12.000And so, look, you have to know why you're getting involved in it.
00:03:16.000And you brought up a good point, which is, you know, one of the things I want to encourage everybody in this room to do is take learning very seriously.
00:03:23.000You know, for about an hour to an hour and a half every single day, I turn my phone on airplane mode and I'm listening to a book, reading a book, listening to something, taking a Hillsdale online course, by the way, which all of you could do.
00:03:34.000CharlieForhillsdale.com, all their online courses are amazing.
00:03:38.000And we partner with Hillsdale College.
00:04:39.000That lasted one semester, and a big chunk of change pulled her out because they were not doing Turning Point USA, would not honor the chapter.
00:04:50.000So the struggle now is she pulled back.
00:04:54.000She's at the community college for a short time until she can transfer in.
00:04:57.000The problem is, how do we take a stand for not vaccinated?
00:06:06.000I guess sometimes I just think, and I might get booed here, but I do think that women are overlooked because we don't have enough credentials.
00:06:15.000We haven't gotten up to this area in the workforce.
00:06:20.000So my thing to her is like, girl, get out there and get as many things as you can under your belt and with you as a tool and a strategy so that you can go out.
00:06:36.000I totally disagree, but that's actually the best answer I've ever heard.
00:06:39.000I want to not because your intent is right, which is that it's a tough world and I want my child to be able to at least have the credentials, right?
00:06:48.000And you answered it correctly, which is you didn't say that college was going to make her smarter or wiser.
00:06:54.000It was just going to be like, you know, we need the boxes checked.
00:06:56.000So look, I never tell people what to do in their own personal decisions because there's multiple millions of factors of micro decisions that I'm not able to kind of see into.
00:07:05.000But I'll just kind of give you some kind of general wisdom, which is outside of a couple colleges in America, I think college is a colossal waste of time.
00:07:18.000If you want to be an engineer, a lawyer, or a doctor, then I think there's a path for that.
00:07:24.000But a vast majority of people that go to college go to study the humanities or they go for a communications degree and all that.
00:07:31.000I'm not trying to insult you if you're studying those things, by the way, okay?
00:07:34.000You were just told to go get a piece of paper and borrow a bunch of money you don't have to study things that don't matter to find jobs that don't exist, right?
00:07:43.000And so college has this impression by upper middle class society as kind of being this rite of passage and they're going to find themselves.
00:07:53.000And that can happen with some people for sure.
00:07:55.000I think some people definitely grow in college.
00:07:58.000I will say that young women generally get a lot more out of college than young men.
00:08:03.000I think, and that's just a general rule.
00:08:06.000So your gut instinct in that way isn't totally wrong.
00:08:10.000But she's at the Young Women's Leadership Summit here, so she's probably exempt from this.
00:08:56.000You say your daughter's a go-getter and has drive.
00:08:59.000College has a tendency and has a track record of destroying that.
00:09:04.000It has a tendency to actually make you think less of your entrepreneurial instincts.
00:09:08.000It has a tendency to make you just think, go get a corporate job, because now you've got to pay off your, you know, your student loan debt.
00:09:14.000We need more entrepreneurs in our country.
00:09:38.000And I understand that upper middle class society, what I just talked about, is kind of a thought crime, right?
00:09:44.000But I'll say one last thing to parents, and I'll leave it at this, right?
00:09:47.000Which is, is it about your child's future or is it about your fear that you might have to turn to your neighbors or your relatives and say, Johnny isn't going to college?
00:09:56.000That's tough because deep down, parents talk a good game.
00:09:59.000They're like, yeah, you know, we need more welders.
00:10:04.000We need more, and everyone agrees, right?
00:10:07.000But my kid's not going to work construction.
00:10:10.000My kid's going to be an air-conditioned office with a degree looking at a screen all day long.
00:10:15.000So it's something to think about because a vast majority of young people, especially young men, when asked the question, they believe they're getting nothing out of their college degree.
00:10:22.000It's a waste of time and that they can't wait to get out of it.
00:10:25.000It's a really expensive track and trajectory that we're on.
00:10:29.000By the way, the national graduation rate is 59%.
00:10:32.000How many of you know someone that dropped out of college?
00:10:59.000And my question is, you have often talked about monopolies are bad.
00:11:06.000But if you took all government involvement out of monopolies, such as tax corruption or law supporting big tech, would there still, would monopolies still be bad?
00:11:23.000So let's talk first, why are monopolies bad?
00:11:26.000So one of the principles of the Constitution that we love is this idea of separation of powers.
00:11:34.000And so we believe that not one person, one organization, should be able to have unchecked power over another, which is where we get the principle of checks and balances.
00:11:42.000And so, and its intent, the United States Constitution was written to say that absolute power corrupts absolutely, as Sir Lord Acton would say.
00:11:51.000So therefore, we believe that there should always be checks on that kind of a power, right?
00:11:55.000So then you bring it to kind of what you're talking about as private company monopolies, which is what is the check and balance on a private company?
00:12:02.000Well, that's competition and market forces, usually.
00:12:07.000And so what's happened, though, and this is something where a lot of conservatives, in my personal opinion, we need to kind of think a little bit more openly about things, is what happens when Google becomes stronger than your government.
00:12:21.000What happens when Google becomes its own monopoly?
00:12:24.000Because we should have the premise, right, of separation of powers and checks and balances.
00:12:30.000Well, we start a competitor is what we're always told, right?
00:12:33.000Like Parlor, and then they eliminate Parlor in one night when Amazon, Google, and Apple decided it should no longer exist.
00:12:42.000Now, your question was very specific, which is, if we got rid of the cronyism and the tax loopholes and all of this, would monopolies still exist?
00:12:52.000That's, I think, a nice thought exercise for a college economics course, but it's not rooted in anything that we're even close to grasping in reality right now.
00:13:00.000So we can guess, we could say maybe, we could say it might, but here's what I do know right now, is that we as conservatives must be honest, that our liberty granted by God is under attack by both the government and private companies, both.
00:13:15.000And that's something that we have to wrestle with, right?
00:13:18.000Because, and I'll let you have a follow-up in a second, which is we as conservatives always believe that the market will then have a check on these private companies.
00:13:28.000But what happens when those private companies start to work in collusion with one another?
00:13:32.000When Google starts to look out for Apple's best interests, that look out for Facebook best interests against your best interest to silence our voice and then get our kids addicted to screens at age of seven where they do nothing but stare at Instagram and TikTok feeds all day long and we're told that somehow this is a better thing.
00:13:48.000That's the question that conservatives need to answer.
00:13:51.000So my general, let's say, argument for this is I want to try to make market forces to solve problems that government created.
00:14:03.000But when it comes to the Silicon Valley companies in particular, and you do not have a check on power, I believe that's a moral question.
00:14:38.000There's a great word that comes from a Greek word, which means basically common sense called prudence, right?
00:14:43.000So I think we can all agree that if you have 150 million active users in America, you probably should be treated a little bit differently than the local bakery or the local coffee shop.
00:14:55.000You look at that, you're like, okay, wait a second, I understand market principles, but when all of a sudden the business model of Instagram is to try to hire a bunch of neuroscientists to get eight-year-olds addicted to staring at screens all day long, I'm not going to all of a sudden be like, well, that's the market.
00:15:10.000I'm like, actually, no, that's no different than pushing opioids on kids in a lesser extent.
00:15:15.000And so that's where we have to kind of, we have to balance the beauty of the market and the ability to improve people's lives with also the human cost.
00:15:42.000And so as markets allow us to achieve that goal, I'm all for it.
00:15:46.000When all of a sudden these massive companies start to act, I think, in ways that are a little more, let's say, reckless, then we have to start to consider other options.
00:16:02.000I was fortunate enough to be a homeschool student all the way through high school.
00:16:08.000So I just graduated high school and I'll be going off to college this fall to study nursing.
00:16:13.000And I was just wondering, so for students that haven't exactly faced adversity before, what advice would you give for if I want to be part of like a students for life club or like a turning point USA chapter?
00:16:26.000What advice would you give for students that haven't handled that before?
00:16:46.000And so you just got to be ready for them.
00:16:48.000And you got to make that decision, right?
00:16:49.000I'm not going to give any kind of false impressions or kind of, but here's the cool thing: is that in life, you want to be the person that grows tougher as the circumstances grow more difficult, not that you run away from tough situations.
00:17:04.000So the cool thing is, God made us as human beings as creatures that adapt and we adapt really well.
00:17:09.000You're going to get stronger through that.
00:17:11.000And it'll be tough, and you'll be texting your friends that don't want to talk to you anymore.
00:18:09.000They're going to try to tar and feather you.
00:18:11.000You're going to have people try to say that, oh, yeah, you're making a mistake.
00:18:15.000You can look around and know that you're not alone, but you're going to be tougher because of it.
00:18:18.000And here's the other good news: you have a big organization like Turning Point USA that has your back that's going to make it easy for you to do that.
00:18:30.000Hi, my name's Maddie, and I'm from Arkansas.
00:18:33.000And I'm just wondering what your advice is to women in their mid-20s to early 30s who have desired to get married and have children early on, but they're having a hard time meeting a man to settle down with who will be a leader and initiator of the relationship.
00:20:08.000Make yourself presentable and present yourself to the world in a way where at any moment you could meet your future partner, right?
00:20:16.000And so then I'll kind of go back to the other advice I gave earlier, which is hold yourself to a high standard.
00:20:22.000Here's the thing: is that in a world where men unfortunately are oversaturated to be able to get whatever they want whenever they want it, have the self-discipline to all of a sudden be like, well, if you want me, then you're going to have to get your act together.
00:20:38.000Because you think about it, it's the opposite, right?
00:20:42.000And it's something that some women struggle with, which is like, hey, if I'm going to get in a relationship with you and I'm going to partner with you, you know, I'm going to have to, we're going to have to have some very clear guidelines and rules, such as some women make the decision that I'm saving myself from marriage.
00:21:20.000And so I was wondering, what would your advice be?
00:21:22.000Because a lot of my friends share Christian values, biblical values for things like abortion, but they're not really interested or as passionate maybe as I am because they don't want to get into the divisiveness of it.
00:21:35.000Kind of coming from the idea that Jesus is first, which I can't disagree with because that is for my life.
00:21:41.000But how can I also encourage them that this is how we can fight for spreading the truth of the gospel as well?
00:22:18.000So my life's work is involved in the second most important thing, which is to make sure you could do the most, the first thing.
00:22:24.000To make sure you could have church, to make sure that you can have religious consciousness to make sure you can live in a free society where you're able to worship your Creator and be able to spread the gospel.
00:22:34.000And so this is the tension point, which is some Christians will say that nowhere in the Bible are there examples of people trying to influence government or trying to influence secular government for God's purpose.
00:22:45.000Well, they're going to have to explain Esther, Mordecai, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Joseph, but that's a separate issue.
00:22:51.000Because all throughout the scriptures, there are heroes that we elevate of God's chosen people trying to influence secular government.
00:22:59.000And then also, I would encourage you to kind of present to them Jeremiah 29:7.
00:23:02.000People talk a lot about Jeremiah 29, 11, but Jeremiah 29:7 is a verse where it says, Demand the welfare for the nation that you are in, because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare.
00:23:47.000So hopefully they'll be able to agree on part of it.
00:23:51.000But you mentioned an interesting thing, which is they do not want to engage in the divisiveness.
00:23:57.000Well, they should read parts of Luke where Jesus said, I did not come to unite, but I came to divide, and I'm going to turn father against son, and I'm going to turn brother against brother.
00:24:06.000Look, here's the harsh part of the gospel that people don't always want to talk about, and that's right, I said harsh, which is that if you believe in the gospel, you also believe in damnation and you believe in truth.
00:24:20.000But if somehow there's been this kind of whitewashing of somehow I can't say anything that's going to offend anybody, well, you know, if you kind of dive deeper into like, hey, if you don't accept your life as Christ, it's not going to work out very well for you in eternity.
00:24:36.000What we really have to challenge your friends with, which is how exactly is the gospel not divisive?
00:24:44.000It says, I mean, whether it be the treatment of children or not accepting Jesus as the Lord and Savior, it's, you know, for God so loved the world, for he said his one and only begotten son, for whoever does not believe in him shall not perish.
00:24:59.000In the verse that many of us identify as the most hopeful verse in the Bible.
00:25:02.000But the final thing I'll say is this, is God's heart for his children, both in an earthly way and an eternal way, is for us to live in liberty and not to live under tyranny.
00:25:15.000And I believe it's also our mission here, part of our mission, to make sure that we do not live under dictatorship, authoritarianism, or centralized control.
00:26:45.000I mean, I know enough to be dangerous about it, but I found something I was good at, communication, speaking, and also something I had a passion for.
00:26:53.000So the intersection of your passion and skill is going to be your purpose.
00:26:57.000And that's something where, because sometimes you have to realize your passion is not something you're very good at.
00:27:06.000Follow your passion that you actually are above average at as well, right?
00:27:11.000That's the advice I would give to you.
00:27:13.000So this is why I'm not a fan of college, is because when you're 18, 19, and 20, that's when you should be going to ask people that are good at what they're doing and figuring out if it's actually something you're passionate about.
00:27:24.000Because you might think you're passionate about it because you took a journalism 101 course and you're like, man, this is terrible.
00:27:29.000If you find out what you don't want to do when you're 18, you've saved all that time of not going and borrowing money and taking all those classes.
00:27:41.000If you do not know what you want to do with your life, find something you're good at and something that you're passionate about, and then find somebody who's already established in that career and go look at them in the eyes and say, Can I work for you for free?
00:27:53.000I will clean the floors, I will bring you coffee.
00:28:04.000After six months, if you really apply yourself and you show up early, you will be further ahead in that particular company 99% of the time than the kids that just graduated from UT and Texas Tech, 99% of the time.
00:28:17.000Because here's what's going to happen: month four, month five, month six, someone's going to not show up to work, and an opening will happen.
00:28:24.000They'll be like, Hey, you've been doing a good job.
00:28:57.000And I was just wondering, as like a young adult, a teenager, how do I assert myself into the political world and kind of like get into it more, I guess, and become a character in it?
00:29:10.000So, start a Turning Point USA chapter, number one.
00:29:14.000Number two, go to the beautiful church in Colorado Springs.
00:29:27.000But here's the thing: look, and it's kind of a recurring theme that I'm going to kind of put forward.
00:29:33.000At Turning Point USA, there's a multitude of opportunities to get engaged, get involved, start a chapter, you become a leader, all these amazing things.
00:29:40.000But also, just speaking out and learning how to articulate your beliefs at a younger age is really important.
00:29:47.000Like the lunch table conversations or the conversations with your friends, because you're going to hear arguments that you might not have heard.
00:29:54.000At Turning Point USA and our library of podcasts and videos, there is not an argument from the left that we have not heard that we can't help you with.
00:30:02.000And as you kind of grow and you're like, wow, that's an interesting argument.
00:30:05.000I want to be, you will grow stronger, you'll grow wiser.
00:30:09.000The other side, as time moves on, they don't have those kinds of things, they do not sharpen their arguments as they get older.
00:30:16.000They just repeat the problem over and over again.
00:30:19.000Where so many of you, like as you start to dive deeper, you're like, oh, yeah, I know how to respond to that, or I know how to respond to this.
00:30:25.000And you become a better activist and a better communicator.
00:30:28.000But the younger you get involved, in my personal opinion, the better.
00:30:33.000And it's a leap of faith, but there's a great community that would love to support you in Colorado Springs.
00:30:37.000And you start that turning point chapter, it'll change your life.
00:31:01.000Ron DeSantis, President Trump, so many other people.
00:31:04.000And I just want to thank all of you the last couple days that have gone outside your comfort zone to say hello to people and introduce yourself to people that did not come here.