In this episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, host, speaker, author, and friend, Erica Kirk, joins host, Charlie's wife, Blake, to talk about her late husband, Andrew Kirk, and how he changed the course of their lives.
00:00:56.000The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:03:19.000Now you guys have a family and Charlie starts getting really into this idea of how to rest, how to rest well.
00:03:25.000And I could just tell you that I saw not only did I see Charlie, this take Charlie to the next level, but it also allowed everybody else to kind of go to the next level too, because our lives and everybody that he was leading, their lives became more in balance too.
00:03:40.000It was an amazing transformation for the entire team.
00:03:51.000Being in politics and just in a total echo chamber and then also just dealing with real world issues and then also just dealing with even personal life issues, all of those three combine become this absolute trifecta of this weight on you where you're just like, can I just have a second to breathe?
00:04:44.000Charlie was not legalistic about the Sabbath.
00:04:47.000He was saying, please just take the time to be, just set aside to be alone with the Lord, to be able to pray, to be able to just even journal.
00:05:23.000And he would always say, I get, he would get eight hours, eight to 10 hours of sleep a night if he could when he was at home.
00:05:32.000But not only that, he made sure that if he kept this pace and rhythm of giving himself a break, he wouldn't burn out like many other people because they thought it was cool to pull all-nighters.
00:05:44.000Actually, it's not, and it's not good for your brain health either.
00:05:46.000But he felt like he found the ultimate secret and the ultimate hack as an entrepreneur and wanted everyone else to be in on him on that.
00:05:54.000Can I just read this section that hit me so hard last night as I was reading this book?
00:07:20.000But Charlie was so good about making sure that his priorities remained his priorities.
00:07:27.000And even just hearing you read those words, Andrew, I have to tell you, like, I hear my husband's voice and spirit so much in this book.
00:07:36.000Like I said this morning when we were having an interview earlier about this, I just, he feels so alive with me still when I read these pages because I feel like he's addressing it to me personally.
00:07:50.000And again, he made sure that when he took the time to rest and go for a hike or spend some time with the kids or just be able to show the world, the rest of the world, yes, I'm Charlie Kirk.
00:09:31.000We have no idea how long we'll be here.
00:09:33.000We have no idea our expiration date and when we'll be in heaven with the Lord.
00:09:37.000But what we do know is that we have a choice.
00:09:40.000Every day we can decide to take the time that we're given to do something amazing, to go out and make a difference, to go and empower people, to serve people, or you can use that to be destructive.
00:09:52.000Charlie knew that if he took the time to have a moment to breathe, to strategize, to create solutions instead of problems, he knew how important that time was.
00:10:05.000And if he didn't have the time to give his brain the space to do that, he wouldn't be able to be an effective leader like he was and still is.
00:11:38.000You know, it was just, I always think with the Sabbath, how I just walked in in the middle of it.
00:11:44.000You guys have all testified how it transformed Charlie for the better once he adopted it.
00:11:49.000I just think of how I got in and I saw this person who was hugely effective, had so much agency, had this immense ability to change the world.
00:11:58.000But then he was also checking out for one day a week and everyone's saying, like, you have no idea how different Charlie is from how he was just two years ago.
00:12:06.000He was just, he just, he expanded his capacity.
00:12:59.000It's kind of like when you, again, I've said this before, you get only so many firsts and lasts within one thing.
00:13:09.000And for this book, that's united in one for me, meaning it's the first time I am reading my husband's last book.
00:13:19.000It's not the last time I'll read the book, but it's the first time to read his final words.
00:13:25.000And it's hard to think that it's just, it's so, it's so divine too, that of all of the books that he leaves for us, it's not a book about politics.
00:13:36.000I mean, although he does talk about some things politically within here, and he does talk about worshiping idols, and he does talk about, you know, different philosophies and theologies that have implications towards certain things.
00:13:53.000But he, of all the books to write, he writes something about honoring God.
00:14:00.000And he writes it in a way where he literally became the subject matter expert on it because he wasn't trying to preach and lecture to you.
00:14:16.000And these are the final words that I will leave you with.
00:14:19.000He went on campus knowing that communication was key, but he also knew that if the students, if whoever he was communicating with also took some time to nourish their soul, to nourish their brain, to actually give themselves a better night's sleep, to take care of themselves holistically, there would be way more of a difference made in this country.
00:14:44.000There would actually be healing in this country if people actually took those combined holistically.
00:14:50.000And to me, it's just Charlie being like, you know what?
00:14:58.000That doesn't mean that, you know, it means just take some time for the Lord and take some time to really just hold into perspective what's true and what's beautiful.
00:15:09.000Man, I almost don't want to ask a follow-up question after that.
00:15:12.000But I thought we do have, we do have three minutes here still, Erica.
00:15:17.000Obviously, Charlie was working on this at home a lot.
00:15:20.000I thought I'd ask, is there anything you've read in the book so far that stands out?
00:15:25.000Oh, I remember that conversation that led to that.
00:15:28.000Or on the flip side, is there something that you learned to your surprise while going through reading this book?
00:15:36.000Surprise side is, I mean, I knew my husband was brilliant, but the depth of understanding of this topic was amazing and how he weaves in the Bible and how he reads in,
00:15:48.000just weaves in all these different interesting facts and history of the Sabbath and then even certain laws like blue laws that we had here in this country and how we have changed as American citizens without having that rest built into our country and how that's actually impacted us as a whole, as a body.
00:16:14.000So that was kind of, because I, you know, I hear him writing about this book and everything, and he shares certain topics with me, but that was really interesting.
00:16:22.000The one thing that was really sweet, when he, when he, at the, towards the end of the book, he will give you practical ways of applying the Sabbath for yourself, whether that means you going for a hike in nature, whether that means you doing something like sunsetting your device where after 5 p.m., the phone's off, just how it used to be years ago before there were devices everywhere.
00:16:45.000And once you left the office, that was it.
00:16:47.000But what was really sweet to me is that in there there was something called a Sabbath box that you can have with your kids.
00:16:54.000And I got to see that with him and my children.
00:16:57.000I mean, they were, that was such a special bonding time for them.
00:17:56.000I can't tell you just how hard that must be.
00:18:00.000I can't imagine how hard it would be, but doing the press tour for your husband's book in his stead is just something nobody should have to do.
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00:18:34.000These are intelligent, faith-driven women who put family first and still believe in traditional values.
00:19:46.000I've been talking about it for a little while with their team because you got this birthright citizenship thing coming up and that the discussion gets very distracted very quickly.
00:19:57.000But Dr. Spalding has a very, I think, interesting focus point.
00:20:01.000So, Dr. Spalding, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:21:27.000And there's this conception of what makes us Americans.
00:21:32.000And the document that is really central to that whole thing, that whole conversation, is the Declaration of Independence, which we oftentimes will read or will hear spoken parts, the famous sections on the 4th of July.
00:21:46.000Maybe we'll know a little bit about it and its history.
00:21:49.000I wanted to write a book that tells its own story, the story of the Declaration, how we got it, how it came into being, how Jefferson ended up drafting it for the Continental Congress, how they edited it significantly to make more points about, among other things, theology, the theological implications of the Declaration, and go through it essentially as a commentary, looking at the Declaration for a general audience very closely, line by line, in a way that people can understand.
00:22:17.000Because when you understand, you can't really love your country if you don't know your country.
00:22:22.000And the thing we do need to know is the Declaration of Independence.
00:22:25.000It is the greatest and the most, I think, most eloquent statement of freedom in Western civilization, especially in the American tradition.
00:22:34.000It's a beautiful document, and we should know it.
00:23:41.000So, you know, I didn't give your bio, but you are the Kirby Professor in Constitutional Government and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College.
00:23:51.000And you have a lot of other titles, which is very academia of you.
00:23:59.000But I guess the question, the real question of our time is with how much the nation has changed, with how much technology has changed, how many new cultures have come into the country in the last 40 years, especially.
00:24:14.000Can this common creed, this shared poetry of our political stole, can it bring us together again?
00:24:23.000Great question, central question, probably the question for us to think about.
00:24:28.000But here's the way to answer that, I think, that Charlie, among others, I think was getting at when he was studying more and more about these questions, in particular, the American founding.
00:24:38.000The founding occurs in a time period that's not the modern one we are used to being surrounded by and what is taught in college campuses.
00:24:47.000It was a world in which we still had Christian moral horizons and we were still within the broad confines of what we might call a classical educational system.
00:24:57.000And in that way of thinking, the way we think about things that change, technology, methods of warfare, shipbuilding, whatever it might be, there are things that change.
00:25:09.000But the most important things to understand are the things that don't change.
00:25:13.000And the things that don't change are those things that have to do with our theological pursuits, which is why the kind of Christian roots of Western civilization are so important, but also the kind of the intellectual, moral, rational roots of our thinking about unchanging principles.
00:25:31.000And the Declaration really brings, in the American context, especially, brings both of those things together in a very deep way.
00:25:38.000And so the argument of kind of this sense of education that underlies all this is that you know the permanent things, and then these other questions become kind of prudential matters.
00:25:51.000We can think them through, but you look at them in light of something else.
00:25:57.000Today, one of the problems is we look at these things in particulars as if that's the only thing at issue here, this particular policy question.
00:26:04.000The founders looked at it differently.
00:26:06.000I think Charlie looked at it differently.
00:26:08.000I think we at Hillsdale look at it differently, which is these are all interesting questions.
00:26:13.000Let's argue and debate and deliberate, which is why it's so important to have that conversation.
00:26:20.000But we do so in light of things that don't change because you can't judge whether something immediate, new is good or bad unless you have something, a standard by which to judge it.
00:26:30.000And that's really the heart of the Declaration.
00:26:32.000It's also the heart of the kind of the Westerns, the whole Western tradition, both Christian and rational, going back to the Greeks and the Romans.
00:26:42.000Yeah, it's the Western tradition, but I think one thing that's often worth remarking upon is how really fortunate America has been.
00:26:51.000We were created in a revolution, but you can compare the French Revolution, another Western country, another historically Christian country, and their revolution was spectacularly bloody.
00:27:03.000We've had other spectacularly violent overturnings of the existing order.
00:27:08.000And in America, ours was relatively peaceful.
00:27:11.000Even our Civil War, we recovered from quickly.
00:27:13.000I was wondering if you could comment on, were there special ingredients into the American Declaration of Independence?
00:27:21.000And you're, again, that is a fabulous question itself as well, because there's an American, we call it the American Revolution, and then there's another thing called the French Revolution.
00:27:30.000They are diametrically opposed and very different.
00:27:33.000And it's important to understand the differences, which is why we call it an American Revolution, but more rightly, we refer to it as the American founding.
00:27:42.000As they were declaring their independence, having a revolution against England, but at the same time, they were starting a new nation.
00:27:50.000So it really kind of points to the roots in a way that, whereas the French Revolution was all about tearing things down.
00:27:56.000But there are a number of important differences.
00:27:59.000One is the American Revolution, American founding is influenced by the roots of Western civilization that go through, in particular, England, which means it's more religious.
00:28:12.000It also means it's more tolerant and focused on constitutionalism and the rule of law.
00:28:20.000The French Revolution really is all the bad aspects of the Enlightenment.
00:28:25.000The French thinkers, which give rise to the German thinkers and a lot of the modern progressive liberals we have today, which largely rejects, it was very anti-religious and it was anti-constitutional order.
00:28:39.000The other aspect I would add to it, which I get into some here, but is another aspect of some of my other scholarship, is the people involved.
00:28:48.000The members of the Continental Congress, and in particular, George Washington, are their particular roles, their characters, their shaping of their values and their moral sensibility.
00:29:00.000So our revolution ends in Washington making sure we have a constitutional convention, as opposed to the French Revolution ends in people getting their heads cut off, the guillotine, and Napoleon making war on the rest of the world for his own glory.
00:29:16.000So they can't be, you couldn't have two revolutions that are more different than each other than the American and the French.
00:29:23.000Yeah, I mean, the French Revolution, I have not studied it to the extent that Blake has, but it is, as you said, diametrically opposed to the American experience.
00:29:32.000By the way, there is something, you know, you hear sometimes these arguments about a case for British colonialism and a case for the British Empire, and it really is a remarkable element.
00:29:43.000Britain has shaped the world so much, we overlook how amazing Britain was, the places that created America, Australia, even Canada before it's recent.
00:29:54.000You got to admit, I don't know about that.
00:29:58.000What I will say, I'm really curious, Doctor, I want to dive into this because you're saying that the Declaration is a particular and a unique outflow of the spirit of the people of America.
00:30:11.000And so when we have you in the next segment, I want to ask you, what was the break and what was the distinction between America and Britain?
00:32:08.000So we were talking about how great British imperialism actually maybe was, because if you compare, I mean, I know that's a controversial statement.
00:32:49.000This one gets into a lot of that because I actually draw that out because that's, again, a crucial question.
00:32:54.000So America is unique and different because it draws on a lot of these traditions.
00:33:00.000I mean, Western civilization, going back to the Greeks and the Romans, going through the Christian tradition, going through England in particular, that is extremely important, creates this thing called America.
00:33:11.000And America could go places the British just could not go.
00:33:15.000The British weren't going to get rid of their king as a practical matter.
00:33:21.000But really, the turning point comes when all those things kind of combine, if you will, the Christian tradition in particular and the kind of rational Greek-Roman tradition and the British rule of law tradition.
00:33:34.000And they are forced by the king and by his regulations and taxes to come up with a new idea for the basis of their freedom.
00:33:53.000Not revolutionary in the modern sense of the French, but radical in the sense of going back to the root of things, which is what the word radical means.
00:34:44.000So we're a particular nation dedicated to universal principles.
00:34:48.000Those two things together get back to what you were earlier asking about what's unique here.
00:34:53.000A lot of countries are defined as merely because they're German or their ethnicity.
00:35:01.000And then there are a lot of modern countries like the French or kind of radical claims, these various forms of rational idealism.
00:35:09.000But the Americans have this melding, if you will, of a certain ethnicity, tradition, and history with ideas, but their ideas really go back to the earlier arguments you get from the Christian and the Greek and Roman traditions.
00:35:25.000And as a result, I would say that's why America really is, as Lincoln said, the last great hope.
00:35:30.000Doctor, we do represent Western tradition today.
00:35:34.000Yeah, no, and I wish we could keep going.
00:35:36.000We're hitting the end of our show here, but it does feel like America somehow took all the best things from all the best ideas and put them together and lifted up these universal truths.
00:35:46.000Of course, it's an American way of doing things.