00:00:34.000His 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.
00:00:42.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:26.000I know what it takes to run an organization.
00:01:28.000And I also know the difference between an organization that does a lot of talking and a lot of doing, and First Liberty does a lot of doing.
00:01:35.000And this is a great, I was first really made aware of First Liberty when I came out and saw you guys in Colorado last year.
00:01:42.000I'm invited to speak all across the country.
00:01:47.000I said, this guy really understands this issue, and he's able to prove what he's actually doing about it, not just writing a bunch of papers about it and then complaining.
00:01:55.000And I'm a big believer that we need to be people of action, not just kind of recirculating the same sort of ideas of the last 40 years.
00:02:02.000So I just want to say First Liberty is a phenomenal investment for getting behind what matters in our country.
00:02:08.000And I really believe if we lose the rule of law in America, we lose everything.
00:02:12.000And we could build out that idea further.
00:02:14.000But it's all we have that stands between the despots and free people basically is a fair and impartial judiciary, judges that know what they're doing, and the Constitution and the framework behind it.
00:02:35.000In Illinois, we have term limits, unlike California, where it's one term in office, one term in jail.
00:02:41.000So it's a little bit different than most states.
00:02:44.000My grandmother passed away in the mid-1990s, lifelong Republican.
00:02:48.000She's been voting Democrat ever since.
00:02:50.000So I keep going with my Chicago stuff.
00:02:53.000But so yeah, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago in a very somewhat liberal area, I guess you could say.
00:02:59.000And I always loved the country, obviously still do.
00:03:03.000Was inclined to always ask questions of my teachers.
00:03:07.000I started in public school in sixth grade.
00:03:10.000And it was always very clear that the agenda that, yes, even back in 2006 and 2007 in our country was to train young people to become activists to try to deconstruct our republic.
00:03:22.000And it wasn't as clear to me then, but it was very disturbing that my parents, not necessarily political, but they were always very patriotic.
00:03:30.000They'd say, you must always understand why our country is unique and exceptional.
00:03:35.000And then I would be in school and I'd be taught the exact opposite.
00:03:38.000And so I wanted to go to West Point, didn't get in.
00:03:41.000I decided to take a gap year before entering school.
00:03:44.000It's been nine and a half gap years, and so it's been sort of fun.
00:04:05.000And we have the best team at Turning Point USA.
00:04:08.000And if you're ever in Phoenix or if you want to go take a drive from here to Phoenix, I'm telling you right now, you've seen the offices, Kelly.
00:04:15.000You'll see probably 100 25, 26-year-olds that are working from 7 a.m. to midnight to save Western civilization through every vertical imaginable, planning events, on-campus activities, digital online outreach, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube.
00:04:32.000I do two podcasts a day, three hours of radio a day on about 140 radio stations.
00:04:37.000We were just from Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, Nashville.
00:04:43.000We were in Las Vegas last night, packed house.
00:05:23.000Yeah, before I get to the turning point and what you're doing on, in fact, I want to start with what role does your faith play in what you're doing?
00:05:34.000And, you know, thanks to my pastor, Rob McCoy, who I met just about a couple years ago, he kind of was a game changer for me.
00:05:42.000And so I grew up in a Bible-believing church, a good one in the suburbs of Chicago.
00:05:46.000I gave my life to Christ when I was in fifth grade.
00:05:48.000I believe in the inerrant word of scripture.
00:05:51.000I believe in the triune God, the Nicene Creed, that Jesus Christ was a real person who lived a perfect life, died on the cross for our sins, and then rose again from the dead.
00:06:03.000But I was taught wrongly that Christians don't get involved in politics.
00:06:07.000In fact, I was taught that if you dare intersect your political beliefs and your religious beliefs, that's somewhat heretical.
00:06:16.000And I never really challenged it that deeply.
00:06:19.000You know, as I started Turning Point USA, I was always told to stay away from that, just focus on fiscal issues.
00:06:26.000Christianity is not where politics should be.
00:06:29.000And I guess you could say I was naive, but I just really didn't understand the scriptures or the ideas or really where they came together.
00:06:37.000And ever since I started my podcast a couple years ago, I do two hours a day of deep reading of our federal documents or philosophy.
00:06:45.000And I started to realize as a Christian, I was fed the big lie.
00:06:49.000The big lie is that we're not supposed to get involved in politics.
00:06:53.000The big lie is this idea that America was founded by a bunch of atheistic, you know, revolutionaries.
00:07:00.000It was the black robe regimen and activist pastors in our country and churches that founded America.
00:07:06.000God is mentioned four times in the Declaration of Independence.
00:07:09.00072 of 75 signers of the Declaration, believe it's 75, you can correct me if I'm wrong, were Bible-believing, regular church-attending Christians.
00:07:17.000It was Jonathan Edwards, George Whitfield, Roger Williams, pastors that were getting into the public square.
00:07:24.000And some people say, well, the Bible says nothing about politics.
00:07:28.000In fact, what are we supposed to do with Daniel, Jeremiah, Esther, Mordecai, Nehemiah, and Joseph, just to name a few, of people that were trying to influence secular government for God's purpose?
00:07:39.000What are we supposed to do with when Jesus Christ went to the mouth of the Jordan River?
00:07:43.000I've been there at Caesarea Philippi, and he asked his disciples, who do you say that I am?
00:07:48.000And they say, well, some say that you're John the Baptist, some say you're Elijah.
00:07:51.000He famously said on this rock build my and we say church, but the real Greek word is ecclesia.
00:07:56.000And that word means political gathering, public square.
00:08:00.000They didn't use synagogue, they didn't use temple.
00:08:03.000We are called to be salt and light in every single arena.
00:08:07.000And so I think that we have been fed this lie intentionally by secular leftists and also the Johnson Amendment thing, which is completely misunderstood and misinterpreted because they know that the greatest sleeping giant in America is an active, vibrant, and alert church that understands what's really happening in our country, that we have God-granted rights, and that if the church rises up, then all of a sudden the game is completely changed for good.
00:08:31.000And I've spoken to over 50 churches in the last year, from Jack Kibbs' church to Rob McCoy's church, the Banger Main.
00:08:37.000And I can tell you that there is so much potential in the American church to rise up and take stances on these issues in the cultural and political arena, it's hard to even put into words.
00:08:48.000And I'm unafraid to talk about my faith.
00:08:50.000And I think, if properly understood, every one of my political positions is reinforced by scripture.
00:09:02.000So, let's because not everybody here knows, how did Turning Point start?
00:09:08.000You know, how, you know, it was time for you to go to college.
00:09:25.000I've written about this, and I want to be very clear.
00:09:28.000When I started this organization, which has now turned into a movement, we have 165 people on staff, $35 million operating budget, no debt.
00:09:36.000We've been so blessed beyond our wildest imaginations.
00:09:39.000I didn't know what a checking account was because I don't teach that in high school.
00:09:42.000I had no money, no connections, and no idea what I was doing.
00:09:46.000And so, but let me be very clear: only in America could someone stand up on stage now nine and a half years later and be able to tell that kind of success story.
00:09:55.000And it's because I had what it takes in America, which is really, really good mentors and people that wanted to invest and believe in the vision, like Foster Freeze and so many people.
00:10:21.000We'll see who ends up being able to succeed.
00:10:24.000And so Turning Point started kind of like that video you saw where I would just literally pull up to a college campus with a card table and be like, who's interested?
00:10:33.000And I just realized that there is this untapped resource on college and high school campuses where we're on pace to have 1,000 high school chapters by the end of the year.
00:10:43.000We have the largest events across the country, thousands and thousands of people that attend our events.
00:10:48.000As I mentioned, we're doing our campus tour right now.
00:10:51.000Candace Owens, the amazing Candace Owens, got her political start with us at Turning Point USA as our communications director, which was kind of just a really fun moment.
00:11:01.000That's all I did was partner with Candace Owens from her beginning.
00:11:04.000I think I've lived a good political career.
00:11:08.000That's just one chapter in the amazing things we've done.
00:11:35.000As soon as they're the ones that have to sign on the dotted line, like I was, I was like, I'm not ready to go borrow $85,000 to go, you know, learn how to hate America.
00:11:44.000At least for me, that wasn't, you know, and I know we're somewhat restricted on time.
00:11:49.000I could give a whole symposium on the state of the college arena in our country, which actually is my next book.
00:11:56.000And I'm writing an entire book on it because I think it's really helpful.
00:11:59.000And I think everyone knows that college is a scam because people are afraid to say it.
00:12:02.000And everyone deep down knows that they're charging way too much money and that they're teaching your kids to hate the country and that all the bad ideas because everyone's kind of afraid to say it.
00:14:13.000And I think we have to get a lot better at painting a visual of this.
00:14:18.000I want 35-year-olds that are having families to have to calm down their seven and eight-year-old because they're so fired up that they just learned about Thomas Jefferson.
00:14:29.000Instead, we're hearing stories that they're learning how many slaves Christopher Columbus had on their ships coming over as we were sharing over dinner.
00:14:37.000We need our kids to love America again.
00:14:40.000I want it to be an unthinkable statement in American political discourse in both parties to say that America is anything but the most benevolent, creative, accepting, forward-thinking, exceptional nation ever to exist in the history of the world.
00:14:55.000And again, how do we go about doing that is a variety of different ways.
00:15:00.000But I mean, my big picture goal, hopefully, is to save this gift that I believe was divinely inspired and handed down to us.
00:15:07.000And I believe we're going to be judged by our creator of whether or not we're able to preserve this constitutional republic.
00:15:14.000And at the very least, we must give it everything we possibly can and have.
00:15:18.000And we're seeing a lot of positive signs, a lot of optimistic signs, some troubling signs, but that's my day-to-day mission every single day.
00:15:24.000You know, I wanted people to know, because my son goes to Belmont University.
00:15:30.000And I was asked to come down there and speak before the debates.
00:15:35.000And so I'm going to a college event with a bunch of college students before a debate.
00:15:44.000I mean, what college students are interested in politics and this kind of thing?
00:15:54.000There's music blaring like rock music.
00:15:56.000There's five, six hundred students there.
00:15:59.000And I'm going, I looked at this and I told my marketing guy, somehow you need to give a picture of this to all these people across the country who have no idea this is going on.
00:16:16.000Yeah, and that's, to be honest, that was the first reason I wanted you to come to one of our events is because I said we've got a lot of people who, you know, they're older, they've been successful.
00:16:25.000I thought I wanted them to see somebody that's actually doing something that's young so they can have hope for the future of the country.
00:16:32.000And that's, you know, that's definitely you.
00:16:37.000So, all right, that's what you want to, what do you see as the dangers right now?
00:16:46.000And so I've done a lot of thinking about this, and I'm also on the front lines of this.
00:16:50.000And those of us that call ourselves conservatives, the paradigm is shifting.
00:16:55.000And I think you all agree with this, and you're all seeing it.
00:16:57.000I'm going to try to put these pieces together for you in real time, which is that the threat to our liberty is not just the government right now.
00:17:56.000Major League Baseball says they want to fight systemic racism.
00:17:59.000And so then they pull out of a 62% black county to Denver, a 12% black county, which is mostly upper-middle-class white, and remove a $100 million stimulus to over 3,000 black businesses in downtown Atlanta because they want to go fight systemic racism.
00:18:16.000Don't get me started on the Silicon Valley tech issue.
00:18:19.000And so what's happened here is we as conservatives, we have done a very poor job of maintaining and protecting our institutions of power.
00:18:31.000And so the institutions of power, obviously, government, media communications, universities, and most pressingly, the corporations, where now the threat to our liberty is multi-institutional.
00:18:47.000The good news is that this is an unsustainable practice by the CEO of Delta and the CEO of Coca-Cola, is that the people that actually buy these products in massive quantities are going to start saying, I'm going to purchase my values, and I'm not going to go out of my way anymore to go fly Delta or to go to a major league baseball game.
00:19:12.000Enjoy going to GoPander to the Chinese Communist Party because you think you want to go somehow communicate to the woke industrial complex.
00:19:20.000This is a hard thing for us conservatives to talk about, which is corporations are not your friend.
00:19:51.000Thankfully, we have a really good answer to it, unlike the left.
00:19:54.000I care much more about whether or not we're having children in our country than corporate profits.
00:20:00.000I care about getting the divorce rate down than the corporate tax rate for Google.
00:20:05.000I care about whether or not we're able to bring down opioid deaths in America than whether or not Mark Zuckerberg has $100 billion or $50 billion, or that Jeff Bezos is able to go to the moon.
00:20:32.000I care more about the muscular class in America than the Zoom and Skype class in America.
00:20:37.000And I think that there's something really interesting happening, which is the first party that actually, and we were talking about this at dinner, the first party that understands that there's 108 million people in America that serve you dinner and drive your Uber cars and deliver packages to your home.
00:20:56.000And let's give it up for the people, by the way, that are working in this, that put on this event.
00:21:34.000And I did an entire, I did multiple podcasts on this, which is the Russian-Chinese Cuban revolution were all generally people of the working class pushing against the bourgeoisie or the aristocracy.
00:21:46.000Now we have the aristocracy that's pushing down on the common man.
00:21:51.000Like the biggest threat to the people in control is the white Christian male that works at Wendy's.
00:22:03.000And you doubled your net worth while America was totally shuttered and 40% of small businesses went under while you went and delivered packages and funded groups that hate our values.
00:22:13.000And so this is the new kind of populist, moral-centered conservatism that you see best articulated by Tucker Carlson every night.
00:22:20.000And if we're serious about preserving liberty, we have to recognize what the threats to our liberty actually is.
00:22:26.000And I'll just make one more point on this, Kelly, which is first freedom, freedom of religion.
00:22:31.000Right now, I can name 10 pastors that have been kicked off YouTube.
00:22:38.000What's their right of redress or grievance?
00:22:41.000So First Liberty, this organization, is doing a moral good for America.
00:22:47.000And praise God, the founding fathers gave the capacity to sue Google.
00:22:52.000When Google kicks off one of my best friends, James Cadiz, who runs Calvary Chapel Signal Hill, just a couple hours from here, he's not allowed on YouTube.
00:23:34.000And so that private company in Menlo Park has way too much power over our freedoms and liberties.
00:23:40.000So I will make a limited government pro-liberty argument that we must push back against this small group of people that quite honestly do not share our values and that are trying to crush the common man and our fellow countrymen.
00:23:52.000And so that's one of my biggest issues right now.
00:23:54.000And I think that they're really worried, which is why they're doing a preemptive strike against us.
00:24:25.000It's a good thing because now the general population is totally with you.
00:24:30.000And they're just sitting there waiting for somebody to be a leader on what they believe.
00:24:35.000And why you would cave in to this small, tiny, I mean, you know, elitist minority is nuts politically.
00:24:44.000And I think people are getting with this, but there's clearly a not Christy Noam recently, a number of them who, you know, are not getting what's going on.
00:24:54.000And last night, you might have saw this on Tucker Carlson.
00:24:58.000Anyone who thinks that they can out-communicate Tucker Carlson, you got really bad media consultants.
00:25:06.000If you're in the midst of a controversy and Tucker doesn't think you're 100% correct, is going to defend, don't go on Tucker's show.
00:25:12.000I don't know if you saw this last night.
00:25:14.000The governor of Arkansas goes on his show, and his arguments were so unbelievably bad, and he just happened to also be going up against someone who is so precise with his language and has a BS meter that goes off immediately.
00:25:30.000I don't know if you saw this or not, but the governor of Arkansas decided that his big fight is going to try and veto a bill that prevents children from chemically castrating themselves, right?
00:25:40.000Like that's apparently what it means to be a conservative now in corporate America in Arkansas is we're now going to allow children to destroy themselves.
00:25:50.000And Tucker said, you know, Tucker went through and asked him what studies and what science and all this.
00:25:54.000And you could see the governor was so stunned that he would be pressed with this.
00:26:04.000I said, you are living 20 years ago when we were hypnotized to believe in this weird libertarian open border moral indifference lifestyle when our country was burning from within and we said nothing about it.
00:26:19.000This is a new conservative movement where if government's good for anything, it's probably good for making sure our children can't go put puberty blockers when they're seven years old and change God's design of male and female.
00:26:30.000That's probably what government is good for, if anything.
00:26:33.000And he was so stunned that someone would make that argument.
00:26:36.000Like, oh my gosh, you're trying to tell me that you don't see eye to eye that the government should be indifferent?
00:26:41.000The government is there to make those moral claims, especially for our children.
00:26:46.000And so this is happening very quickly.
00:26:48.000And I think a lot of politicians are quite honestly, they're owned by these corporations.
00:26:51.000And they get Their contributions from these corporations, and the governor that is just acing every single one of these tests is Governor Ron DeSantis, who's just been unbelievable at every single one of these.
00:27:01.000And he's an example of how to actually handle these issues.
00:27:06.000But here's the good news, Kelly: is that there's a disconnect between the politicians and the people, and eventually the politicians will just read the script that the people write for them.
00:27:17.000And this country, if we play our cards right, we're not just going to win, we're going to win so big in a way that the left is going to win 20% of the electorate with their constantly woke, I am a better person than you are, virtue signaling Malibu and Manhattan kind of competition where we're going to be the people that represent traditional normal American values, the countryman, the plumber, the electrician, the HVAC, the taxi driver,
00:27:46.000the person that picks up your garbage, the police officer and the firefighter, the veteran and the entrepreneur.
00:27:51.000You can go represent Larry Page and Sergey Brin and also go represent the people that are just perpetually angry.
00:28:00.000We'll go represent the rest of our country.
00:28:02.000And that realignment, I think, all of you are seeing in real time.
00:28:05.000And it's really exciting, quite honestly, because it's long past time that we get back to actually why we're conservatives and what we're doing here.
00:28:14.000Let's talk about the big tech, but I want to do it from your standpoint.
00:28:20.000I mean, a huge part of your success, your communication, is relying.
00:28:28.000I mean, you're having to do stuff with them.
00:28:31.000I mean, I know you thought about this.
00:28:33.000What happens if they decide to all pull the plug on Charlie Kirk?
00:28:59.0005% market dip is all of a sudden going to make an impact on their revenue margins.
00:29:04.000But yeah, look, this is a very serious thing that you now have a small group of people that can digitally assassinate me and that they control my livelihood.
00:29:14.000And I will say that Facebook has been the best to deal with.
00:29:17.000They do interface and they do liaison with.
00:29:19.000And I will say that they got plenty of problems and I could go through them, but they've been really good at communicating.
00:29:25.000And Google has just been impossible, quite honestly.
00:29:30.000And so this is a really interesting question.
00:29:32.000And I know you'll appreciate this, Kelly, which is that if you read the Federalist Papers, which I encourage every person to read and study, and every young person should have to study them intently, the founding fathers feared centralized power.
00:29:45.000They feared one or two people having unchecked power.
00:29:51.000The American Revolution was not about tea.
00:29:56.000It was about the consent of the governed.
00:29:58.000It was a philosophical, multi-thousand-year leap forward.
00:30:02.000And so now we come to today and we say, okay, if the IRS comes after any of us, at the very least, they send you a document called, Here's Your Taxpayer Bill of Rights.
00:30:20.000You guys have done it, but you can sue and win.
00:30:22.000But now you have these companies that are more powerful than our government, that are more sophisticated than our own government.
00:30:29.000And if they decided tomorrow Charlie Kirk does not exist on these platforms, I lose revenue, I lose employees, I lose livelihood, I lose audience, I lose all of it.
00:30:40.000And I have no ability to sue, and it will just get thrown out immediately because we're supposed to believe that's what's best in the private interest.
00:30:47.000And the legal community is changing on this.
00:30:48.000Clarence Thomas, two days ago, issued an opinion, which was kind of, in my opinion, I'd love your thoughts on this, Kelly, a guidance memo to other lawyers and judges to kind of start thinking correctly on this.
00:30:59.000And Clarence Thomas said, these are common carriers.
00:31:02.000These companies are no different than the telecom companies where they're just connecting point A to point B, and that if there's not a comparable competitor, then you're not allowed to kick any American citizen off of these.
00:31:14.000For example, there was a lawsuit that was done in Washington, like 1960s.
00:31:19.000It was cited in the opinion that he wrote, which is that someone said, oh, I don't have to let them ride on this road.
00:31:26.000You know, it was probably a racial stereotyping issue.
00:31:29.000They could always just swim in the river or they can ride a horse.
00:31:34.000And the court said, no, no, no, you must let people of all colors and races and religions drive on your road because there's not a comparable way to transport.
00:31:42.000That's the equal protection clause, or you would know the legal statute better than I would.
00:31:47.000The point is that once they kick you off Google, there is no comparable, there's no comparable outlet to be able to reach that many people.
00:31:55.000I didn't go through the different philosophical arguments here.
00:31:58.000We actually talked about this back in July, or it might have been June, at the event we had in Colorado, and I warned about what was coming.
00:32:05.000And I encourage all of you to go back and listen to that on my podcast only because I warned that these tech companies were going to directly interfere in our election.
00:32:13.000Remember, I said that was the biggest threat.
00:32:18.000Early October, one of the most bizarre, unexpected political stories just popped up, where the soon-to-be president's son hands over his laptop to a laptop repair shop man in Delaware, ends up in Rudy Giuliani's hands.
00:32:35.000He seems to be in the middle of everything.
00:32:37.000Gives it to his lawyer, Mr. Costello, interesting name for the whole situation.
00:32:43.000Hands it over to the New York Post, and the New York Post publishes stories saying, okay, there's X-rated, allegedly child pornography on here, right?
00:32:56.000There's also emails that show that Joe Biden might be a minority partner in a Chinese company.
00:33:01.000And then if you posted it on any social media site, Facebook, Twitter, any of them, they restrict your account immediately.
00:33:09.000Explain to me how that is not the work of a Democrat superback.
00:33:13.000How is that not direct election interference?
00:33:16.000They directly impacted early voting in our country, directly.
00:33:20.000In fact, I could make an argument that if big tech did not interfere, Donald Trump would have been president, even with the shenanigans of mail-in voting and all that other stuff.
00:33:28.000That they interfered with the communication flow, they manipulated with it.
00:33:32.000Because I want you to imagine if we had a real social media platform and a national discussion, be like, whoa, you're trying to tell me that Joe Biden has 10% for the big man and his former business partner, Tony Bobulinsky, is validating these emails, and that his son is saying in the email chain that he wants a corporate bonus from a Russian oligarch and the mayor of Moscow's what?
00:33:54.000That's sort of a big deal for geopolitics, isn't it?
00:33:58.000But if you even mentioned any of the contents in a laptop, you would lose your social media account.
00:35:03.000Yeah, we've, I mean, we've been actually a part of a bunch of legal groups that have been looking at this for the last few years.
00:35:10.000And, you know, there's antitrust lawsuits.
00:35:12.000There's seven of them going right now against them.
00:35:16.000There's a lot of creative examples, but it's, I mean, one of them is simply a shareholder derivative lawsuit against these corporations.
00:35:25.000Because what is the job of the corporation?
00:35:27.000It's to protect the fiduciary interests of their shareholders.
00:35:31.000And when they're doing things that are against their own financial interest, I mean, somebody's going to make a lot of money with those lawsuits eventually.
00:35:39.000But right now, we have these trillion.
00:35:42.000I mean, these companies are bigger than 90% of the countries in the world.
00:35:47.000And so I can't think of anything more dangerous, and it's something we've got to watch.
00:35:51.000I do want to get to, you know, as maybe the last area or questions, religious freedom.
00:35:58.000Since I know you'll play this on your podcast, so your listeners, if they want to find out stuff on religious freedom, go to firstliberty.org and get the information.
00:36:07.000But I want to know how you see religious freedom.
00:36:10.000I know that you've been watching what's been going on with all these churches.
00:36:15.000You've been watching what's going on with all these cases.
00:36:26.000And just to reiterate what Kelly said, we're going to be rebroadcasting this on our podcast feed.
00:36:30.000This will be listened to, God willing, by over a million people, but very minimum, hundreds of thousands of people.
00:36:36.000Young people will be hearing this conversation, which is a great thing, and they'll be made aware of the great work that First Liberty is doing.
00:36:42.000And you might find some new cases as a result of that.
00:36:45.000So look, I think that the way you framed the argument with religious liberty was so perfect and wise.
00:37:19.000It's because every time any of those ideas started to pop up, let's say in Janesville, Wisconsin, a Baptist preacher would look his congregation in the eye and say, our rights come from God, not from government.
00:37:32.000And communist socialism is an atheist, state-run religious exercise that's against us at every turn.
00:37:39.000The church is what kept us free for so long.
00:37:42.000The church has been the only hedge and firewall against tyranny.
00:37:46.000And that's exactly why they're targeting the church.
00:37:49.000That's why my friend Mike McClure, who's pastor of Calvary Chapel, San Jose, where we're having our event tomorrow night, faces $2.6 million in fines for opening his church in the last year.
00:39:06.000Absent Billy Graham, who, by the way, was an ardent anti-communist, and spoke against communism very effectively, Christianity has just withered down and down.
00:39:15.000And there's some places where it's still vibrant, but for the first time ever, less than 50% of Americans would consider themselves outward Christians.
00:39:23.000And they know that as America becomes more secular, it will become less free.
00:39:29.000And they know that the only thing that's standing in the way of their tyrannical, despotic power grab is the American church.
00:39:35.000It bothers them that people will gather and worship something that isn't done.
00:39:40.000It bothers them that there might be millions of people out there that will look to the Word of God, not to the 1619 project to interpret today's, or the New York Times or the Washington Post or whatever it might be.
00:39:54.000And so there's a direct correlation with the persecution of the church and the destruction of liberty and freedom in our country.
00:40:02.000And I make this argument all the time to atheists or secularists that come to our events, but they agree with what I say, which is that you should be contesting and fighting for an open church.
00:40:11.000But I'm going to be very honest with you that most Christians didn't want an open church this last year.
00:40:17.000Most Christians were like, oh, we should keep things closed.
00:40:20.000We're just going to go to the YouTube live stream.
00:40:23.000Mike McClure is facing $2.6 million in fines from San Jose.
00:40:27.000I'd say he's probably gotten 10 or 20 pastors reaching out to him.
00:40:31.000No massive financial assistance from national Christian organizations.
00:40:35.000Because for him, he's a rabble-rouser and a rebel who's fighting to open his church against a tyrannical government in San Jose.
00:41:02.000We've got to get it out of our discourse.
00:41:04.000It's one letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Convention, I think, in 1803.
00:41:09.000The founding fathers said very clearly, it was either Adams or Madison, said, without a moral people, a republic will crumble in a generation, I'm paraphrasing, which is without religious liberty, our ability to worship our Creator, then a republic will absolutely implode.
00:41:27.000And here's why, and I'll tie it all together.
00:42:56.000The optimistic thing is that one sentence of truth can break apart a lifetime of lies.
00:43:03.000That the only problem that we have right now, the biggest problem I should say, is we have a problem of distribution.
00:43:11.000How many people would agree that if only my neighbors, my family, my friends, my son who is on the left heard what I heard and didn't hear the nonsense every single day, things would be different.
00:43:52.000We'll end here, but when I spoke, no, When I spoke at your turning point group, I just read Live Not By Lies, which we've talked about as an excellent book.
00:44:05.000It talked about communism in these different countries.
00:44:07.000And I said to them, do you know what this book says and what all these people who live through this says is the greatest thing you can do to stop totalitarianism and communism?
00:44:19.000And I could tell they were looking like, no, what is it?
00:44:22.000It's to grow stronger in your faith so that you can stand and speak the truth despite what's coming at you.
00:44:30.000And that's exactly what you just said.
00:44:33.000If enough people, it doesn't take a majority, if enough people speak the truth, the lies can't handle it.
00:44:38.000And as you say, one truth can dispel all the darkness.
00:46:23.000You guys are in the arena in your own little part in whatever you're doing.
00:46:27.000And that's my call to action for everyone here tonight is that be personally and intimately involved with the Republican group, the women's group, starting the college chapter, speaking there, supporting kids, taking the education, whatever it might be.
00:46:51.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:46:52.000Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:46:55.000And if you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, where we play off into the sense of urgency to win America's Culture War, go to tpusa.com.