The Charlie Kirk Show - December 24, 2020


Escaping California and Defining the Two Americas with Michael Knowles


Episode Stats

Length

50 minutes

Words per Minute

210.77075

Word Count

10,665

Sentence Count

1,073


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.
00:00:01.000 Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, a super special and exclusive conversation in person at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit.
00:00:09.000 If you want to support our program, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
00:00:13.000 Email us your questions about this episode, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:17.000 And if you want to get in the running to win a signed copy of the MAGA doctrine, all you have to do is say, Charlie, I listened to this episode, but you have to make sure you subscribe to the Charlie Kirk show.
00:00:24.000 So take out your phone, get to your podcast provider, podcaster Spotify.
00:00:28.000 Without any further ado, buckle up.
00:00:31.000 Here we go.
00:00:32.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:34.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:36.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:39.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:42.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:43.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:44.000 His 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.
00:00:53.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:02.000 That's why we are here.
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00:01:50.000 Call 877-646-5347 and get this special coin offer, but don't hang around.
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00:02:06.000 Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:02:08.000 Mr. Knowles, welcome back.
00:02:10.000 It is so good to be here.
00:02:11.000 Thank you for having me.
00:02:13.000 So where does the world stand?
00:02:15.000 The world stands on its head.
00:02:17.000 It is completely upside down.
00:02:19.000 I just got to Palm Beach for SAS.
00:02:22.000 Very excited about that.
00:02:23.000 And, you know, I have a subtle protest.
00:02:26.000 They make you wear the masks on the planes.
00:02:27.000 They will kick you off.
00:02:28.000 They'll ban you if you don't wear it.
00:02:29.000 And they'll audit you and destroy your family.
00:02:31.000 I mean, seriously, they will go and they will wreck you.
00:02:34.000 So I wear the stupid mask, but I put it below my nose.
00:02:36.000 That's at least my sort of subtle protest.
00:02:39.000 And it occurred to me how backwards this is.
00:02:41.000 If you now, within just one year this happened, if you walk around like a normal person, if you walk around not like Bubble Boy with like a bunch of filthy cloth all over your face, you are considered the conspiracy theorist.
00:02:54.000 You are considered the crazy person.
00:02:56.000 It gets back to something that you and I talk about all the time.
00:03:00.000 Things happen gradually.
00:03:02.000 Then suddenly.
00:03:02.000 Then suddenly.
00:03:03.000 I've ripped you off so much, you have no idea.
00:03:05.000 I ripped off Ernest Hemingway.
00:03:05.000 It's all right.
00:03:07.000 And actually threw Andrew Clavin.
00:03:08.000 So it's all, you know, great writers steal.
00:03:10.000 You're always re-referencing.
00:03:11.000 Always.
00:03:12.000 This is the suddenly.
00:03:15.000 We are in the suddenly.
00:03:16.000 Can you imagine, not even how crazy it got, how quickly it got so crazy.
00:03:21.000 It's been nine months.
00:03:23.000 It's 279 days of 15 days to summon.
00:03:25.000 Well, and it's become pseudo-religious, is what it is.
00:03:27.000 Yeah.
00:03:28.000 Is that if you do not wear the mask properly, you're a bad person.
00:03:31.000 And I'm a better person than you.
00:03:33.000 And it is my obligation to go find you.
00:03:36.000 If you think masks work, then fine.
00:03:37.000 Go wear a mask.
00:03:38.000 Whatever.
00:03:39.000 However, if you think it works, I mean, that's what Liberty is all about.
00:03:42.000 Wear the mask.
00:03:42.000 Right, yeah.
00:03:43.000 As Dennis Brugger says, I'm mask agnostic.
00:03:45.000 Like, I don't know if it works.
00:03:46.000 I don't know if not.
00:03:47.000 Do not mandate me to wear one.
00:03:49.000 That's where all of a sudden you are imposing.
00:03:51.000 Oh, yeah.
00:03:52.000 I was on this airplane.
00:03:53.000 I'm sleeping on the plane.
00:03:55.000 So I've got my mask on here, a little below my nose.
00:03:58.000 I've got my eye mask on above my nose.
00:04:00.000 I look like I was wearing goggles.
00:04:04.000 Yeah, I mean, I looked at least 80% of my face was covered up with cloth.
00:04:07.000 I'm lying there, I'm sleeping.
00:04:09.000 And I, sir, sir, just ignoring him.
00:04:13.000 Someone starts shaking me.
00:04:14.000 It's one of the stewards.
00:04:15.000 He says, sir, you have to pull another quarter of an inch.
00:04:19.000 You've got to pull up the mask.
00:04:20.000 I thought, if you were really afraid of coronavirus, wouldn't you maybe not touch the guy?
00:04:25.000 Don't you think that is going to spread it a little bit more?
00:04:28.000 Maybe.
00:04:29.000 The logic is a little bit different.
00:04:30.000 So I used to wear a face shield instead of a mask.
00:04:33.000 I love those, yeah.
00:04:34.000 But epidemiologically, they're way better.
00:04:37.000 I mean, you actually have a plastic barrier, and it's also a lot more comfortable.
00:04:41.000 Yeah, you can breathe.
00:04:42.000 I got in this very long, pointless, frustrating conversation with a flight attendant who woke me up when I was sleeping with my face mask on, like, sir, face mask, you have to wear a face mask, not a face shield.
00:04:55.000 I said, you understand that this face shield is a lot safer.
00:04:59.000 Yeah, this is some real stuff here.
00:05:00.000 This is strong.
00:05:02.000 You know what it is, though?
00:05:03.000 It's actually what you just got to, this idea that it's pseudo-religious or it's a new religion.
00:05:06.000 What it really is, it seems to me, is a new set of standards.
00:05:11.000 It's this issue.
00:05:12.000 I think this is what political correctness does.
00:05:14.000 This is what wokeism does.
00:05:17.000 There was an old set of standards.
00:05:19.000 I don't know, you'd dress up for church on Sunday.
00:05:21.000 You'd go behave in a certain way.
00:05:22.000 You'd speak a certain way.
00:05:23.000 You wouldn't say certain words.
00:05:24.000 You would say certain words.
00:05:25.000 There was the old set of standards.
00:05:27.000 Then the left comes in and just tries to destroy those standards and replace it with a new set of standards.
00:05:33.000 And I think the problem that we've had, this is what's kind of set us back in fighting against this, is we took the bait whereby we denied all standards altogether.
00:05:43.000 So we basically just said, do whatever you want.
00:05:45.000 Do what it's okay.
00:05:46.000 I don't have any stance about, you know, this gender theory or this crazy thing with the family, whatever.
00:05:52.000 And as a result of that, we denied the necessary existence of certain standards, and that's why we're playing by the left's rules.
00:06:00.000 And we don't even explain why the standards existed in the first place.
00:06:03.000 Exactly.
00:06:03.000 And we don't talk about how, well, maybe it's a good thing that men are men and women are women.
00:06:08.000 Just basic.
00:06:09.000 You're not allowed to say that.
00:06:10.000 No, you're kicked off of campuses for sanity.
00:06:13.000 And I mean, there are actually many conservatives, I think, who would refuse to say that.
00:06:18.000 They say, well, listen, I'm not saying there's necessarily a difference between men and women.
00:06:21.000 Well, you're exactly right.
00:06:22.000 Most conservatives, and they never actually confront me directly, but they'll say this behind my back, and they say, Charlie, you're so provocative.
00:06:29.000 I'm like, what exactly am I saying that's so provocative?
00:06:31.000 Right, right.
00:06:32.000 And so what we try to do here with this event is people are texting me like, it's so bold what you're doing.
00:06:38.000 I said, what exactly am I doing that's so bold?
00:06:41.000 I said, okay, it's kind of very much of an annoyance to deal with county government.
00:06:46.000 I get that.
00:06:47.000 That is.
00:06:48.000 But what's the bold part?
00:06:50.000 Well, Charlie, it's in the midst of a pandemic.
00:06:52.000 I got that part.
00:06:54.000 Everyone here, I think, knows that there's a pandemic.
00:06:56.000 You know what's so amazing?
00:06:58.000 What you are doing this year, it looks great, by the way.
00:07:00.000 Thank you.
00:07:01.000 There actually have been some improvements here.
00:07:03.000 But the thing, it's always been great.
00:07:04.000 What you are doing this year is the same thing you did last year.
00:07:04.000 Thank you.
00:07:08.000 It's amazing.
00:07:09.000 But now this is considered an offense against established religion.
00:07:15.000 Do you want to know the great irony?
00:07:16.000 The virus was probably here a year ago.
00:07:18.000 That's right.
00:07:20.000 You know, I don't know if I had it or if I didn't have it.
00:07:23.000 When I came to Florida, when I came to Palm Beach a year ago, around late December, I developed all the symptoms of coronavirus, did not come back as the flu, did not, which would explain, because I've ignored all these lockdown rules for the past year.
00:07:36.000 As best I can, I've ignored them.
00:07:37.000 In Los Angeles?
00:07:37.000 In Los Angeles?
00:07:38.000 You live in Nashville yet?
00:07:39.000 So I left La La Land.
00:07:40.000 I left Nussalini's feudal kingdom.
00:07:42.000 So you live in Tennessee now?
00:07:43.000 I have all my exes in Texas, so I hang my hat in Tennessee.
00:07:47.000 So you do live in Tennessee?
00:07:47.000 That's right.
00:07:48.000 I do.
00:07:49.000 It's the sweet era of freedom.
00:07:49.000 Okay.
00:07:51.000 And so I guess that's a very quick pivot tangent.
00:07:54.000 So you guys are now in Tennessee?
00:07:56.000 Oh, yeah.
00:07:57.000 We moved the whole company out to Tennessee.
00:07:59.000 And I tell you, at the time that they brought this, I really like Nashville, but they said this to me.
00:08:03.000 They said, hold on, you're telling me I got to move my entire life to Tennessee within a month.
00:08:09.000 They said, yes.
00:08:10.000 I said, that's going to be too expensive.
00:08:11.000 That's a terrible idea, guys.
00:08:12.000 LA, it'll be fine.
00:08:14.000 Within two weeks of us getting there, L.A. completely shuts down again.
00:08:18.000 They're talking about a wealth tax for people, even after they leave California.
00:08:22.000 Tennessee has a 0% income tax.
00:08:24.000 0% income tax.
00:08:25.000 California is going to have a 16% income tax soon.
00:08:27.000 It is, everybody's fleeing.
00:08:29.000 Corolla's fleeing.
00:08:30.000 Elon is fleeing.
00:08:32.000 Joe Rogan already fled.
00:08:33.000 So I want to ask you about that.
00:08:35.000 Are Democrats there noticing that all of a sudden that the 405 is maybe a lot easier to drive on?
00:08:40.000 Or do they not care?
00:08:42.000 Or is it kind of like, this is how we get rid of them type thing?
00:08:45.000 I think they're not going to care.
00:08:46.000 They're actually generally curious for the leftist who lives in Malibu.
00:08:51.000 Say, I want to get rid of all the conservatives.
00:08:53.000 They're doing a great job.
00:08:54.000 Good riddance.
00:08:54.000 Get out of here.
00:08:55.000 I think, though, they're going to notice.
00:08:57.000 I think they're going to care when all the tax receipts come due, when they realize.
00:09:01.000 I mean, just even think of Daily Wire leaving.
00:09:03.000 How many millions of dollars does that take out of California's?
00:09:06.000 Economic activity, too.
00:09:07.000 Yeah.
00:09:08.000 Not just in tax revenue.
00:09:09.000 That's right.
00:09:09.000 Of people going to the shop, of people paying their rent or their mortgage or whatever.
00:09:13.000 And that's just one company.
00:09:15.000 Think about Elon Musk leaving.
00:09:17.000 Think about all these huge companies, Joe Rogan.
00:09:19.000 Yeah.
00:09:20.000 Charles Schwab moved.
00:09:21.000 Yeah.
00:09:22.000 Oracle moved.
00:09:23.000 Which is a massive financial services company going to Texas.
00:09:23.000 Right.
00:09:26.000 Yeah.
00:09:27.000 Because why wouldn't you?
00:09:28.000 I mean, it is actually wrong to your shareholders and employees to keep your company.
00:09:33.000 And it's a weather tax.
00:09:34.000 I mean, the only reason you stay in California is the weather.
00:09:37.000 Yeah.
00:09:37.000 But, you know, that's fine.
00:09:39.000 I was actually willing to pay the weather tax.
00:09:41.000 If I'm not allowed to go to the beach or to the bars or to the restaurants, what am I there for?
00:09:46.000 I'm there to live in some shoebox apartment and pay.
00:09:49.000 So you actually believe the Democrats are finally going to eventually going to notice that they've successfully created a one-party state.
00:09:56.000 Well, so they've noticed, I think they've already noticed that.
00:09:58.000 And they've followed the kind of wrong strategy here because they've woken up to that.
00:10:03.000 What they should do is make the state more attractive to business and less punitive for conservatives.
00:10:07.000 And then maybe they'd stick around.
00:10:09.000 Instead, what they're doing, though, with this proposed wealth tax is they just want to punish them even after they leave.
00:10:14.000 They say, good riddance, but keep giving us your money.
00:10:16.000 Yes.
00:10:17.000 And that's the way they've treated us for a long time in California.
00:10:19.000 And I just don't think that's going to work.
00:10:21.000 Yeah.
00:10:21.000 I think that the California example and many others across the country kind of go to show the creation of truly two Americas, as Jonathan Edwards used to say before he did some other very, very bad things.
00:10:32.000 Yes.
00:10:33.000 But I'm very worried that, and Ben talked about this, and I know you agree that we're headed for a national divorce.
00:10:39.000 And I mean, and Rush talked about this correctly the other day, and people attacked him, but he actually was spot on.
00:10:46.000 And we've been talking about this for quite some time, but you're not allowed to talk about it, which is what do we have in common with the people of San Francisco again?
00:10:52.000 We share nothing in common.
00:10:52.000 Right.
00:10:54.000 Well, this is the biggest issue of all because you always hear Rush gets blamed or Fox or you or whoever, you know, anyway.
00:11:01.000 I talked about it freely.
00:11:02.000 That was a great day.
00:11:03.000 And yes, I mean, we all get blamed for it.
00:11:06.000 Who caused it?
00:11:07.000 Who caused it?
00:11:08.000 Well, we're not inciting it either, by the way.
00:11:10.000 We're observing it.
00:11:10.000 We're not inciting it.
00:11:11.000 We are observing it.
00:11:12.000 You know, I think the actual proc, like the cause of this whole thing is Colin Kaepernick.
00:11:19.000 He's the symbol of it.
00:11:21.000 I love this.
00:11:22.000 He is the cause.
00:11:24.000 Because we disagree on abortion.
00:11:25.000 We disagree on taxes.
00:11:26.000 We disagree on whatever, foreign wars.
00:11:28.000 We disagree on this.
00:11:29.000 We disagree on that.
00:11:31.000 Only in the last few years do we now disagree on the flag.
00:11:37.000 The flag is not.
00:11:38.000 Colin Kaepernick pretended he was protesting police brutality.
00:11:40.000 Then he started protesting the Betsy Ross flag.
00:11:42.000 Then he starts protesting.
00:11:43.000 It's obviously he's protesting the country.
00:11:45.000 The flag is a symbol, not of the cops, not of the KKK.
00:11:49.000 It's a symbol of the whole country.
00:11:51.000 When you protest the flag, you are stating in no uncertain terms, I hate the country.
00:11:57.000 And if that is, we don't have a common language, we don't have a common religion, we don't have really common anything in this country, and it's worked out fine as long as we share some civil allegiance, some loyalty to our country.
00:12:07.000 If you lose that, there's nothing keeping us together.
00:12:10.000 Not only that, they want to rewrite the history they are.
00:12:12.000 And so there's only so long this continues, and all of a sudden the people in Texas are saying, the only thing really I have in common with a Menlo Park person is a unified currency, and that's now worthless too.
00:12:24.000 So what exactly do I have in common here?
00:12:27.000 And because if you look at what the people in Menlo Park believe, the people in Berkeley, California, or the people in Calabasas or Malibu or Manhattan, you understand kind of the argument is this country is awful.
00:12:41.000 We need massive, aggressive, one-size-fits-all policy to undo racial injustices and all social injustice, regardless of what the data demonstrates.
00:12:51.000 And where does that end, by the way?
00:12:53.000 Let's say we granted the premise, okay, we're going to pass some new tax.
00:12:56.000 Actually, in California, they want reparations for slavery because they don't realize California was a free state.
00:13:02.000 The admission of California to the government.
00:13:04.000 Guilty-ridden white liberals that have way too much time on it.
00:13:08.000 Yeah, I guess.
00:13:08.000 I just think, guys, at least read a history book.
00:13:10.000 But let's say you did, okay, we're going to pass some tax.
00:13:12.000 It's going to be a reparations bill.
00:13:14.000 That's going to correct the historical injustice.
00:13:17.000 When?
00:13:19.000 At what point?
00:13:19.000 At what point?
00:13:20.000 Who gets the money and how much money?
00:13:22.000 And then we're good.
00:13:23.000 Give me a date and give me an amount.
00:13:25.000 Frankly, I'll probably give you the money.
00:13:27.000 But of course, there's no amount.
00:13:28.000 There's no date.
00:13:29.000 It just is about power and it's about hatred and it's about antipathy for the country.
00:13:34.000 And so I'm very concerned.
00:13:36.000 And I said this many months ago and really no one took it seriously.
00:13:39.000 I think people take it seriously now that there will be a fracturing.
00:13:42.000 I don't mean a civil war.
00:13:43.000 I actually don't think it might.
00:13:44.000 I don't think it'll look like that.
00:13:45.000 We're too sort of bloated and lazy.
00:13:48.000 Yeah, it's also just going to go to that.
00:13:49.000 I think people are going to be like, is there an easier way we can do this?
00:13:53.000 Where I just, I think that it's not out of the realm of conversation where a national divorce will come, where all of a sudden a couple states will say, let's sever.
00:14:00.000 Like, we're done.
00:14:01.000 Well, think about it this way.
00:14:02.000 And it's coming in the next two years.
00:14:04.000 I mean, I think the divorce analogy is a really good one because if you've got a couple and they're maybe going to go through a bad period of their marriage, maybe they're looking at divorce.
00:14:13.000 One way they can try to fix it is say, you did this and you did this, and 10 years ago, you did this to this guy, and now we need to, and it's tit for tat, and I was right and you were wrong.
00:14:21.000 That will never fix a marriage.
00:14:23.000 That is so beyond the point.
00:14:25.000 You need to have a bedrock level of love and respect and care, selflessness.
00:14:31.000 We have none of that in our country.
00:14:32.000 That's gone.
00:14:33.000 You say, well, actually, in 1860, it's neutral.
00:14:33.000 So it doesn't matter.
00:14:36.000 I don't have respect for them.
00:14:37.000 This is the problem.
00:14:37.000 Right.
00:14:39.000 When somebody comes up to you, says, I hate your country, you, by virtue of just who you are.
00:14:44.000 Your very existence is an affront to me.
00:14:46.000 You're evil.
00:14:47.000 I hate your guts.
00:14:48.000 And everyone else is a Nazi.
00:14:48.000 And you're a Nazi.
00:14:50.000 And Ronald Reagan's a Nazi and Trump's a Nazi and whoever.
00:14:52.000 Everybody's a Nazi.
00:14:54.000 If someone says that to me for long enough, I'm going to stop liking them.
00:14:59.000 I'm going to stop caring what they think of me.
00:15:02.000 I'm not going to feel that fraternal connection to them as my fellow countrymen.
00:15:09.000 Look, it's Christmas season.
00:15:11.000 A lot of you guys are emailing us, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:15:14.000 How do I give back this Christmas season?
00:15:17.000 Look, I know it's been a tough year, but those of us that are Christians, we are called to help and to assist regardless of the circumstances around us.
00:15:26.000 Whether we had a blessed year or a tough year, it's time to step up and do something.
00:15:29.000 I think we all know that.
00:15:30.000 That's why we are partnering with Angel Tree.
00:15:33.000 Angeltree is great.
00:15:34.000 They help kids whose parents are in prison.
00:15:37.000 It's not even about the fact of what their parents did.
00:15:40.000 It's the fact that the kids are alone.
00:15:42.000 And the kids, if they do not hear from their parents, they're more likely to also get involved in crime in the future.
00:15:49.000 So let's really communicate the love of Jesus Christ with a personalized note from their dad and an access to a Bible in either Spanish or English.
00:15:57.000 And that's what the Fellowship Angel Tree program does.
00:16:00.000 Last year, the Angel Tree program blessed over 300,000 children of prisoners all across America.
00:16:05.000 What's so cool is that if you give directly, it doesn't go to overhead or all that stuff.
00:16:09.000 It goes straight to the kid, especially this Christmas season.
00:16:12.000 And so let's just keep it easy.
00:16:13.000 Just go to charliekirk.com.
00:16:14.000 There's a banner on the top of it, charliekirk.com, and we are getting behind it.
00:16:18.000 We're donating a little bit of money from the Charlie Kirk show to Angel Tree because we really believe in what they're doing.
00:16:24.000 There's an Angel Tree banner there on CharlieKirk.com.
00:16:26.000 You guys can check it out and support what we are doing.
00:16:30.000 And I think that's really important because for a gift of $220, you can bless 10 children of prisoners with a personalized Christmas present and a personal note from their incarcerated parent.
00:16:42.000 Plus, every Angel Tree family is also given access to free, easy-to-read copy of the Bible in English or Spanish.
00:16:48.000 So check it out at charliekirk.com.
00:16:51.000 Very, very important.
00:16:52.000 Thank you guys so much for that.
00:16:56.000 Right.
00:16:57.000 And so then the other part of the divorce analogy that I think is appropriate is that there's mediation, there's terms, there's alimony, and then there's a closure date.
00:17:08.000 Right, right, right.
00:17:10.000 And what's really interesting, though, is that the post-World War II, we had kind of unification, if you will, East and West Germany, things were coming together.
00:17:21.000 And I think there was this desire to try and create some form of almost a forced globalist experiment.
00:17:27.000 The European Project's a great example of this.
00:17:28.000 And it was a complete and total disaster.
00:17:31.000 And I think that America always stood in defiance of that because of a unified culture.
00:17:37.000 The flag, a big part of it, literally 50 stars, unified under a shared history and language.
00:17:44.000 And now we have half the country that wants nothing to do with the other half.
00:17:49.000 And here's where it's actually going to hit a breaking point, though.
00:17:52.000 And no one's talking about this, is now that you're in Tennessee and I'm a resident of Florida and spend a lot of time in Arizona, all of a sudden we are going to be forced to bail out the states we fled.
00:18:02.000 Yeah, right.
00:18:03.000 Well, they're actually trying it right now.
00:18:04.000 No, no, no, no, but it's only going to accelerate.
00:18:06.000 So in Illinois, there's no way they're going to make it work.
00:18:09.000 No, no.
00:18:10.000 And we've been saying this for years and it's been ignored.
00:18:12.000 It's beyond worse than ever because of the lockdowns.
00:18:15.000 And so they're going to come and all of a sudden the 0% income tax Tennessee and the 0% income tax Florida with a lot of former residents of Illinois and California are going to say, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to do that.
00:18:26.000 And so just like in marriage, in a marriage that goes wrong, the financial aspect of this is going to accelerate it.
00:18:32.000 Because all of a sudden they're like, why am I going to be bailing out these states?
00:18:32.000 Yeah, I think.
00:18:36.000 There's also this philosophical issue, which is, this was part of the logic and problem of the actual Civil War, which is the minute that you secede or you kind of break up the union because you lose political power, you don't get your way, you sort of permanently undermine self-government, right?
00:18:56.000 Because the premise of self-government is we're going to have different interests in the country.
00:19:00.000 We're going to have different points of view.
00:19:02.000 Sometimes you're going to win, sometimes I'm going to win.
00:19:04.000 We will respect one another's victories and losses, and then we'll keep going on together.
00:19:10.000 If we're in a situation, and by the way, the Democrats are explicitly promising this.
00:19:14.000 They're saying if we win the Senate and the White House, we're going to pack the court, we're going to end the filibuster, add new states, you're going to have a permanent Democratic majority.
00:19:21.000 Republicans are dead as a national party.
00:19:23.000 So if you're in that sort of situation, you say, well, hold on.
00:19:26.000 I have no role now in the federal government, at least.
00:19:30.000 And yet if we pull out, the self-government is undermined because the very agreement that undergirds self-government is we'll respect each other's wins and losses.
00:19:40.000 So you're already at this crisis.
00:19:42.000 And people, I don't think, quite realize it yet.
00:19:44.000 But we are there right now.
00:19:47.000 And when you talk to people, they're like, yeah, I'd love to have the new America.
00:19:50.000 Yeah.
00:19:51.000 If you said that two years ago, they'd say, I'm calling the FBI for secession and treason.
00:19:55.000 Yeah, right.
00:19:56.000 And people don't get this.
00:19:56.000 But it's so bad.
00:19:57.000 It's going to happen.
00:19:58.000 And the problem is that Democrats are not going to want it at first because they're wholly dependent on the Republican productive class.
00:20:08.000 So if you play the thought exercise out to its furthest extent and you have two Americas, let's say like the Dakotas, Kansas, Missouri, Texas, Tennessee, and the South create a country, and then the East and West create their own country like Canada.
00:20:21.000 Yeah.
00:20:22.000 All of a sudden, you're going to have a brain drain.
00:20:23.000 No one's going to want to live in California, become like Brazil.
00:20:25.000 Yeah.
00:20:26.000 Well, there is that.
00:20:27.000 You will still have some plutocrats, probably, who can live there.
00:20:30.000 But this is kind of how it ties in with the global empire, where you call it globalism or whatever.
00:20:37.000 These guys don't need American workers.
00:20:39.000 It actually doesn't matter if there are any manufacturing factories in the new leftist stand of America because they were already outsourcing all the labor.
00:20:47.000 That's right.
00:20:47.000 So they're already part of these sort of international transnational agreements.
00:20:51.000 That is their vision for the world order.
00:20:53.000 We have a different vision of the world order that has national sovereignty, American traditions, American culture.
00:20:58.000 Did you see the meme that was going on right around the election?
00:21:01.000 It divided up Canada and America, and it carved out the liberal places and it said, this is going to be the United States of Canada.
00:21:07.000 And then in the middle of the South, it said, this is going to be Jesusland.
00:21:11.000 No, I sent it to Connor, and I was like, this is what's about to happen.
00:21:14.000 Yeah.
00:21:14.000 Well, the left made the meme.
00:21:16.000 It'll be great.
00:21:17.000 No, but I thought it was great.
00:21:18.000 Well, that's the thing.
00:21:19.000 If you have told me, do you want to live in the United States of Canada or Jesusland?
00:21:22.000 It's like, is this a trick question?
00:21:24.000 I think I'll take the Jesus land, please.
00:21:26.000 Sounds great.
00:21:26.000 Totally.
00:21:27.000 They think that's, no, these backwards people.
00:21:30.000 Oh, that awful backwards.
00:21:31.000 Now you believe in that weird guy that probably maybe or not didn't live?
00:21:37.000 Yeah, that, you know, all those long times ago.
00:21:39.000 What?
00:21:39.000 Yeah.
00:21:40.000 You probably like Gothic cathedrals and Caravaggio.
00:21:42.000 You don't even like gender theory.
00:21:44.000 You're going to celebrate Christmas.
00:21:45.000 That's right.
00:21:46.000 You better not.
00:21:47.000 That's illegal.
00:21:48.000 I realized not only is this gathering clearly violating the rules of Dr. Fauci, but it's intentionally.
00:21:54.000 That is outrageous.
00:21:55.000 And you're doing it around Christmas time, which is canceled.
00:21:59.000 So why haven't more people stood up and done stuff like this?
00:22:02.000 I mean, I'm not trying to say like we're such bold and courageous people.
00:22:05.000 No, it is courageous.
00:22:06.000 It is courageous.
00:22:07.000 But why is that?
00:22:09.000 I'll be honest, Michael, and this is something that I think has been the most disappointing realization throughout this calendar year.
00:22:15.000 We are a nation of cowards and a nation of people that are so fearful.
00:22:19.000 We forget that courage is a virtue, first of all.
00:22:22.000 Second of all, and this actually ties back into the standards conversation, we can no longer articulate what we stand for.
00:22:30.000 We say, okay, people can choose whatever they want to do, or I don't really like that.
00:22:34.000 But we can't actually articulate, as you mentioned, the moral reasoning for our points of view and our old standards.
00:22:41.000 The other one is that it's just easier.
00:22:45.000 It's easier not to.
00:22:47.000 The term I use for these conservatives who aren't willing to stand up or go out or break the rules or whatever, I call them court jester conservatives.
00:22:54.000 I have another term.
00:22:55.000 Yeah.
00:22:56.000 It's a little more Vichy French.
00:22:58.000 Vichy French.
00:22:59.000 I thought you were going to use some four-letter words or something.
00:23:00.000 That's the term I use in private when I talk about these people.
00:23:03.000 That's okay.
00:23:04.000 Yeah, the Vichy or the court jester conservatives, their job.
00:23:08.000 I'm not going to name names, okay?
00:23:10.000 Some of them might be senators from Utah.
00:23:12.000 I'm not going to name names.
00:23:14.000 No, I named them from the stage of CPAC.
00:23:16.000 Did you?
00:23:18.000 I just say the name rhymes with Rit Momney, but I'm not going to name, I don't want to call him out.
00:23:22.000 But these sort of guys, their job is to play the court jester in the kingdom of liberalism, right?
00:23:28.000 Their job is to go out and put up just enough of a fight to legitimize the liberal establishment.
00:23:35.000 And then the minute that it ever comes close to threatening anything, they roll over.
00:23:39.000 That's their job.
00:23:40.000 And there are a lot of guys who do that.
00:23:42.000 And then when you go out there and you say, Yeah, I think we're going to host zillions of young conservatives at Christmas, and I don't give a damn what Dr. Fauci thinks, you're an outrageous provocateur.
00:23:53.000 You're not part of the high-minded, noble conservative tradition of losing.
00:23:58.000 What I find, yeah, exactly.
00:23:59.000 I mean, how dare you interrupt our long and proven track record of being a failure, honorable failure.
00:24:06.000 We do it really well.
00:24:08.000 It's like the French.
00:24:09.000 And so they lose better at battle than any other country in the history, and they publish awful ideas.
00:24:15.000 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Michelle Foucault, Jacques Derrida.
00:24:18.000 Those white masks.
00:24:19.000 That is the flag of the French army.
00:24:20.000 That's correct.
00:24:20.000 They've only invented two things: the flag of surrender and the tourniquet.
00:24:25.000 And the tournament.
00:24:26.000 Wow.
00:24:26.000 That's true.
00:24:27.000 That's quite a legacy, isn't it?
00:24:29.000 And you're seeing that being emulated by too many conservatives.
00:24:33.000 And this is why I love it.
00:24:34.000 When people come out and they say, you're a fool, you're racist or a sexist or whatever is, you know, is fashionable that week.
00:24:42.000 You're uneducated.
00:24:43.000 I just think, bring it on, baby.
00:24:46.000 These terms mean absolutely nothing.
00:24:47.000 They mean nothing.
00:24:48.000 And if going along like lemmings with some preposterous sort of theories makes me educated, count me ignorant.
00:24:54.000 I'm more than happy.
00:24:56.000 So what's starting to happen, though, is I think the smart leftists are starting to realize that we actually don't care anymore.
00:25:01.000 Yeah.
00:25:01.000 And I think they're resorting to now more aggressive tactics.
00:25:04.000 They are.
00:25:04.000 I think now all of a sudden they're starting towards physical intimidation.
00:25:07.000 They're trying to use the rule of law to try and intimidate their opponents because they hate the rule of law otherwise, but they like using it for their own purposes.
00:25:18.000 And I think that some of these kind of, you know, the Vichy French conservatives, and if anyone's listening or watching, they don't get their reference, just look it up.
00:25:26.000 Not on Google, look it up, and you'll know exactly what I mean.
00:25:28.000 You know, it is funny.
00:25:29.000 And again, I'm not equating just Media Matters listening.
00:25:33.000 I'm not saying the American Democratic Party's National Socialist Workers' Party of 1930s.
00:25:37.000 I'm just saying.
00:25:37.000 Yeah.
00:25:38.000 But you're not saying that.
00:25:39.000 No, I'm joking.
00:25:40.000 I did joke.
00:25:41.000 I'm instead of saying.
00:25:43.000 No, you can't laugh.
00:25:44.000 That's not allowed.
00:25:46.000 Instead, I'm saying that the moral argument is trying to pander to the force of evil and trying to act as if I want to preserve my own life.
00:25:54.000 That's what the Vichy French did.
00:25:56.000 Right.
00:25:56.000 And by the way, I give credit to the woke people, the aggressive kind of woke life.
00:26:00.000 I actually give them credit.
00:26:01.000 I do, because I feel that the liberal consensus, first of all, is completely incoherent morally and politically.
00:26:08.000 I think that it's dishonest.
00:26:11.000 I think there are a lot of squishy conservatives who go along with that too.
00:26:14.000 You'll notice now the kind of popular term on the left for people waking up into this, it's woke, right?
00:26:20.000 Literally waking up.
00:26:21.000 And what's the one on the right?
00:26:22.000 You hear red pill or base or based.
00:26:25.000 And actually both of them.
00:26:28.000 You know, you kind of go crazy when you make folk etymologies of slang terms, but you realize red pill and woke both refer to waking up out of a dream, the matrix, right?
00:26:37.000 But also based.
00:26:38.000 Where does based come from?
00:26:39.000 Who knows?
00:26:40.000 My read on it, this is completely, I'm pulling it out of the.
00:26:42.000 Is it a mathematic or a geometric thing?
00:26:43.000 No.
00:26:44.000 Well, sort of.
00:26:44.000 That it basically, to be the base is to be the fundament, is to be grounded in reality, not up here in the abstract fantasy land.
00:26:53.000 And that there's something about that which says we have been living in a dream for at least three, four decades.
00:27:00.000 Or simulation, yes.
00:27:01.000 Yes, a sort of simulation that isn't real.
00:27:03.000 And actually, this is something Trump did really, really well.
00:27:05.000 When you hear politicians speak, you listen to them speak, typically, and you say, okay, I just heard those words.
00:27:11.000 Now I have to interpret what they mean because I know this guy's lying to me.
00:27:14.000 And he's using all these silly kind of phrases.
00:27:16.000 And no one ever believes them, but that's how they all talk.
00:27:19.000 And Trump comes in.
00:27:20.000 He doesn't do that.
00:27:21.000 Trump comes in and he says, I'm going to move that embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
00:27:25.000 You say, okay, I've heard this before.
00:27:26.000 I know what that means.
00:27:28.000 He's going to give more money to Israel, but he's not going to.
00:27:30.000 And then he goes in and does it, the fool.
00:27:32.000 He's not supposed to do it.
00:27:33.000 But then he goes on about the type of marble he's going to purchase and the type of trimmings he's going to put on the windows and how bad of a deal it was beforehand and how the real estate's going to look.
00:27:42.000 So you're like, he actually might get that done.
00:27:47.000 Good Ranchers began with the standard of bringing top quality, 100% American-born, raised, and harvested meat to families across America.
00:27:54.000 This vision was instilled into them from their grandparents that owned community grocery stores and believed in trust, charity, and family values.
00:28:00.000 Look, we've talked about Good Ranchers before.
00:28:02.000 They sent us an unbelievable box of meat.
00:28:05.000 And producer Connor, he brought it home and he said it was unbelievable.
00:28:10.000 Seriously, he started talking about it uninterrupted for quite some time.
00:28:16.000 It was perfectly marbled.
00:28:17.000 It was unbelievable.
00:28:18.000 In fact, he was sending us videos of him cooking the meat.
00:28:23.000 We haven't been able to calm him down because then they sent us a ham and it got completely out of control.
00:28:28.000 So look, Good Ranchers is a good partner.
00:28:29.000 They do a great job.
00:28:30.000 And as always, Good Ranchers is 100% American beef and chicken.
00:28:34.000 And now they have pork.
00:28:35.000 Steaks are always USADA choice and higher.
00:28:38.000 Chicken is 100% all natural, no hormones.
00:28:40.000 And it's individually wrapped, vacuum sealed, and ready to grill.
00:28:44.000 So look, I'm going to tell you this again.
00:28:45.000 Good ranchers, quality meat.
00:28:47.000 You love your country.
00:28:49.000 Then you have to buy meat from our country.
00:28:51.000 It's the envy of the world, okay?
00:28:52.000 Most of the rest of the world, they don't have meat like we have in America.
00:28:56.000 Here's what good ranchers do: you go to goodranchers.com, you browse through their beautiful website, easy to use.
00:29:01.000 So go do that.
00:29:02.000 And then all of a sudden you say, I want to order dinner for the next two weeks.
00:29:06.000 That's where Good Ranchers comes in.
00:29:07.000 They send you a box of meat and then use that promo code Charlie and they send you a free Berkshire hickory ham.
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00:29:16.000 Love America.
00:29:17.000 GoodRanchers.com, promo code Charlie, and then just email us how much you love the meat.
00:29:22.000 Thanks so much.
00:29:25.000 You know, Megan Kelly, when she said, you've called women all these bad names, you know, fat and ugly and whatever.
00:29:30.000 And the political answer is, you've completely taken that out of context.
00:29:34.000 That's why, you know, I would never.
00:29:36.000 He says, only Rosie O'Donnell.
00:29:36.000 What's he saying?
00:29:38.000 Perfect.
00:29:39.000 He won the Republican primary, right there.
00:29:39.000 You know.
00:29:41.000 He did.
00:29:41.000 And, you know, it's not the most polite thing to say.
00:29:43.000 It was the funniest thing I've ever heard in politics.
00:29:45.000 Which means it's true.
00:29:46.000 And it was extremely effective.
00:29:48.000 Because any other politician would have kind of played around in that fantasy world of jargon and political correctness.
00:29:54.000 That's right.
00:29:55.000 He says, I don't have time for that.
00:29:56.000 Whoops.
00:29:56.000 Sorry.
00:29:57.000 I think Trump accelerated a lot of the trends that have been very negative to our country.
00:30:00.000 And also, I think he's finally liberated a discourse that's been lacking in our country.
00:30:05.000 I want to ask you about this because I think that there's kind of a coming struggle on the right here.
00:30:09.000 I think there's actually more agreement here than not.
00:30:13.000 But I'm starting to see that the establishment wants to strike back and the establishment wants to kind of re-assert control over the political power of the Republican Party.
00:30:26.000 But I want to ask your opinion of kind of where do you personally fall on some of these discussions of how are we supposed to interpret corporate power at this moment?
00:30:36.000 How are we supposed to analyze who exactly in the Republican Party is really representing what's best for our country?
00:30:43.000 Should Trumpism go away?
00:30:44.000 Because there's some people that have literally given 30 consecutive days of their best attempt eulogy.
00:30:49.000 Yeah.
00:30:50.000 I know.
00:30:51.000 And they've been really doing it for about three and a half years at this point, but they ramped it up afterward.
00:30:56.000 Trumpism, if the GP.
00:30:59.000 And I don't love the term.
00:31:00.000 Yeah, well, because it's just a placeholder, right?
00:31:02.000 It's a placeholder.
00:31:03.000 But it's because of him.
00:31:04.000 Yes.
00:31:04.000 Well, this is the key to it, though, right?
00:31:06.000 The reason it's Trumpism and nobody can seem to define that term is because of Trump's, in my view, greatest political insight, which is he's anti-ideological.
00:31:17.000 Yeah, we said this yesterday with Tucker.
00:31:20.000 Yeah, this is.
00:31:20.000 Did you?
00:31:20.000 He literally said that exact word.
00:31:22.000 This is the key because, you know, the people who can write their political philosophy on a napkin and five bullet points and say, this is it.
00:31:30.000 This is all it is.
00:31:31.000 And look, the left does it.
00:31:32.000 We do it too sometimes.
00:31:33.000 I love free markets, for instance.
00:31:35.000 When we make an idol out of free markets as though this is the be-all and end-all moral maxim, we've gone crazy.
00:31:41.000 I mean, that is just ideal.
00:31:42.000 That's the movement you and I grew up in, though.
00:31:44.000 Right, it is.
00:31:45.000 In the 90s, yeah.
00:31:46.000 Yeah, no, but like the conservative movement we grew up in, we'd walk into think tanks with massive pictures of F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman.
00:31:53.000 Right.
00:31:54.000 Yes.
00:31:54.000 Right.
00:31:55.000 And there, you know, I remember when we were discussing this, gosh, what was it, a year or two ago?
00:31:59.000 And you said, oh my gosh, Michael, we've been kind of wrong about trade.
00:32:03.000 We got trade a little bit.
00:32:04.000 That's correct.
00:32:05.000 We weren't totally, but we were somewhat wrong.
00:32:07.000 Yeah, the whole conservative movement was.
00:32:09.000 I couldn't say that publicly because I would have ended up like Galileo.
00:32:12.000 Yes.
00:32:13.000 I know now, though, that has been proven.
00:32:16.000 I mean, Trump, that is one of the heliocentric theory of.
00:32:19.000 The Earth is still flat.
00:32:19.000 He didn't prove that.
00:32:20.000 That's completely.
00:32:21.000 It's still the center of the universe.
00:32:23.000 All the orbs are revolving around it.
00:32:24.000 That's correct.
00:32:25.000 We can go into the greatest.
00:32:27.000 We can, obviously.
00:32:28.000 I'll take the Catholic.
00:32:29.000 Yes, I'll take the Inquisition stance on this all the time.
00:32:31.000 But that's...
00:32:32.000 Listen, I'm no scientific.
00:32:33.000 You're going to take the anti-Galileo stance.
00:32:34.000 Oh, yeah, absolutely.
00:32:35.000 Perfectly.
00:32:36.000 I actually, you know, very easy to defend.
00:32:38.000 A note on Galileo.
00:32:39.000 This is just a sidebar.
00:32:40.000 People always, I just reread Galileo the other day, the dialogue concerning the two chief world systems.
00:32:45.000 The thing about Galileo is, I'll grant he was, other people had made systems.
00:32:48.000 You'll grant he's right.
00:32:49.000 I'll grant that he's so.
00:32:51.000 Do you know why he went to jail?
00:32:53.000 Because of heresy.
00:32:54.000 No, because he was a jerk.
00:32:56.000 Seriously.
00:32:56.000 The reason they put him in jail.
00:32:57.000 And by the way, yeah, absolutely.
00:32:59.000 If you're as big a jerk as Galileo, he, so, by the way, his jail was like at a beautiful villa with all his students.
00:33:04.000 But it is true.
00:33:05.000 What he did, if you read the thing, he's talk about bad politics.
00:33:09.000 The guy's writing his dialogue on the chief world systems.
00:33:11.000 Actually, what's funny is the main thing he's writing about, tides, he actually got wrong, but the rest of it he got right.
00:33:15.000 And so he's writing about it, and it's a dialogue between all these smart characters.
00:33:18.000 And then the character defending the Pope's position, he called him Simplicio.
00:33:24.000 He called him Simpleton.
00:33:25.000 That's impolitic.
00:33:27.000 You would not do, if you're trying to have influence.
00:33:29.000 You would use the word heretical.
00:33:30.000 Well, it's not even that it's here.
00:33:31.000 It actually wasn't heretical.
00:33:32.000 The issue is he was just a big jerk.
00:33:36.000 I mean, you know this in politics.
00:33:38.000 If you want to get something done, is it good to go out and make enemies with everybody?
00:33:42.000 No.
00:33:43.000 No.
00:33:44.000 You got to make some enemies.
00:33:45.000 But we all know Galileo's name.
00:33:46.000 Very few people know the name of the pope that he was writing about.
00:33:48.000 That is true.
00:33:48.000 Yeah.
00:33:48.000 They call him Simplicio.
00:33:50.000 But this actually, this does relate to kind of the political moment we're in right now, because whenever you're in these times of political crisis, you all go to war with each other.
00:33:59.000 This is something, conservatives love this, more so than the left does.
00:34:03.000 If you put 100 conservatives into a room, they agree on 97% of things, they will all find a way to disagree with every other one.
00:34:11.000 They will do it.
00:34:12.000 I promise you they will do it.
00:34:13.000 It's even worse with libertarians.
00:34:14.000 And libertarians, of course.
00:34:16.000 I want to get into libertarians in a second.
00:34:17.000 Yeah, I'm more than happy to.
00:34:19.000 My libertarian listenership has plummeted.
00:34:21.000 Yes.
00:34:22.000 Incredibly.
00:34:22.000 Yeah.
00:34:23.000 Because I've taken the most anti-lockdown stance ever.
00:34:25.000 I was like, this was your moment.
00:34:26.000 This is literally why you exist.
00:34:28.000 And I see these libertarians walking around with two masks on.
00:34:30.000 I'm like, you're for doing heroin on the side of a street with a prostitute and an AR-15 around your back.
00:34:37.000 And you want the country locked down.
00:34:39.000 You have the mask on.
00:34:39.000 Yes.
00:34:40.000 I know.
00:34:40.000 This is, well, this is an issue too, because, you know, we're always saying, oh, the libertarians, this, and the trads, this, and the neocons, this, and whoever, you know, all these different kids.
00:34:48.000 And the neocons.
00:34:49.000 And the neocons are a big problem.
00:34:50.000 And the libertarians sometimes are, too.
00:34:52.000 But, you know, we've got to focus on exactly what we're talking about.
00:34:56.000 Because I think there's actually quite a lot to learn from the great liberal thinker.
00:35:00.000 Now you would call them libertarian writers.
00:35:02.000 Oh, I love Hayek and Friedman.
00:35:04.000 And going back further to the liberal writers, there's something to learn from John Locke.
00:35:07.000 There's something to learn from these guys.
00:35:08.000 But now when we use that term libertarianism or something, it's like a bumper sticker.
00:35:14.000 And all bumper stickers are wrong.
00:35:16.000 So you just think, like, talk about baste.
00:35:18.000 I was just the other day reading John Locke's letter on toleration.
00:35:22.000 Right.
00:35:22.000 So John Locke, this is a definitive letter on why we should tolerate all these things.
00:35:27.000 And in it, he says, we should not tolerate atheists.
00:35:30.000 They should not basically not be permitted into the public conversation.
00:35:34.000 That's a very based John Locke.
00:35:35.000 I think a lot of people.
00:35:36.000 Sounds like a good Scottish Presbyterianism.
00:35:38.000 That's right.
00:35:39.000 Yes.
00:35:39.000 He was.
00:35:40.000 A lot of people who invoke these terms and these kind of ideas, they got to go back and read these guys.
00:35:45.000 There's a big critique of the founding fathers now saying they were kind of too liberal and had this America had the seeds of its destruction and from the very beginning.
00:35:52.000 Who says that?
00:35:53.000 You kind of hear it from the more reactionary right-wing.
00:35:57.000 It's easy to criticize Jefferson, for instance, easier than to criticize Adams.
00:36:01.000 However, go back and read these guys.
00:36:02.000 I don't know these people, but okay.
00:36:04.000 You see, they kind of crop up on Twitter, and they actually have a lot to offer.
00:36:07.000 I don't want to spend time on there anyway.
00:36:09.000 I'd love to hear this critique, though.
00:36:10.000 Well, the critique is basically liberal modernity was always headed this way.
00:36:15.000 There was no way to freeze it in 1776.
00:36:18.000 I've heard this.
00:36:18.000 Right, it's always going to be.
00:36:19.000 Frankly, there's some truth to that.
00:36:21.000 However, we should be fair to the founding fathers.
00:36:23.000 Read the words they actually wrote.
00:36:25.000 They hated licentiousness.
00:36:27.000 They had serious standards that they enforced according to the law.
00:36:32.000 They were extraordinarily sophisticated thinkers that took a lot of great ideas from classical antiquity.
00:36:36.000 And, you know, I think we become like the left when we say, as conservatives, we got to just erase that.
00:36:42.000 Erase the past 200 years.
00:36:43.000 Start over.
00:36:45.000 You can't start over.
00:36:45.000 Yeah, but even if you read Burke, Burke was understanding of the American Revolution.
00:36:50.000 Yeah, well, Burke's the man.
00:36:52.000 Of course he is.
00:36:53.000 But I would say the people that were offering that specific indictment you just said would be very much fans of Burke.
00:36:58.000 Yeah.
00:36:59.000 Or even sometimes a little more, even a little more trad than Burke.
00:37:02.000 But yeah, there are probably a lot of Burkeans there.
00:37:04.000 And so, but I think that if you are too much in the school of thought that the American founders were too neoliberal.
00:37:13.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:37:13.000 I mean, some small L-liberalism actually I think has been good for the West.
00:37:18.000 I don't know, like the whole abolitionist slavery thing.
00:37:20.000 Yeah, no, I mean, you know, and it's also women's suffrage.
00:37:23.000 You can't.
00:37:24.000 It's probably been a good thing.
00:37:25.000 Have you asked Anne Coulter about that?
00:37:26.000 She has decided views on this subject.
00:37:28.000 I am aware.
00:37:29.000 I don't share those views.
00:37:30.000 You know, the thing about the tradition is things happen.
00:37:35.000 And we try to siphon them off, and we say, okay, this four-decade period was really bad with this idea.
00:37:42.000 All we can do is build.
00:37:43.000 And so when I look around at all the...
00:37:45.000 It's very Hegelian of you.
00:37:47.000 Well, don't forget, Hegel.
00:37:49.000 History has an endpoint.
00:37:50.000 Well, you know, but Christians believe this.
00:37:52.000 They don't believe it the way that he believes it necessarily, right?
00:37:55.000 We share that in common.
00:37:56.000 And it's interesting, you know, if you think about Marx, right, Marx basically just flips Hegel on his head.
00:38:01.000 He has a very, very fixated endpoint in what it looks like.
00:38:03.000 Yeah, of course.
00:38:04.000 And if you, you know, the Marxist version is material, right?
00:38:08.000 It's all physical.
00:38:08.000 It's all about economics and class conflict, right?
00:38:12.000 But we Christians understand there is an endpoint.
00:38:14.000 There is such a thing as policy.
00:38:15.000 History has a purpose.
00:38:17.000 History has a purpose.
00:38:18.000 Well, everything has a purpose.
00:38:19.000 Physical objects have a purpose.
00:38:20.000 That's correct.
00:38:20.000 Yeah, and I just think we have, in a way, I give the left much more credit.
00:38:25.000 I think the left, even the radical left, has been much more serious than we have been.
00:38:30.000 You know, Marcuse, who is this radical leftist professor, Herbert Marcuse of Frankfurt School of critical theory.
00:38:36.000 And Angelo Davis.
00:38:37.000 Yes, he moves out to California.
00:38:39.000 He's a total numbskull.
00:38:40.000 He's the father.
00:38:40.000 He's a result of really bad immigration policy.
00:38:42.000 You know, I actually, I don't think he's a numbskull.
00:38:44.000 I think he's...
00:38:45.000 Well, I mean, his.
00:38:46.000 Here's my, it's not a real defense of Marcuse.
00:38:48.000 I mean, you know, the effect of what he said was evil and it ruined a whole generation.
00:38:52.000 He was the father of the new left.
00:38:54.000 But he was serious enough.
00:38:55.000 He gets criticized for this essay, Repressive Tolerance.
00:38:58.000 And he said, we need a liberating tolerance that basically won't tolerate right-wingers and it only tolerates left-wingers.
00:39:05.000 And people thought this was absolutely abhorrent and indefensible.
00:39:10.000 He does make a lot of sense.
00:39:12.000 By his logic, you can't tolerate intolerance.
00:39:15.000 The only thought that ought to be stopped is the thought that stops thought.
00:39:19.000 And he makes a fair point.
00:39:20.000 John Locke said you can't tolerate atheists.
00:39:23.000 John Milton, who wrote the most famous English defense of free speech, Areopageticism.
00:39:28.000 It's a utilitarianism.
00:39:29.000 Utilitarian school of thought.
00:39:31.000 So, John Milton comes out and he says, okay, we've got to have all free speech, except for Catholics.
00:39:36.000 And frankly, he had a point at that time in England.
00:39:38.000 I say this as a Catholic, but he made a real political point.
00:39:41.000 And I just think we need to be much more serious.
00:39:43.000 There's nothing infinite among the finite things of this world, by definition, right?
00:39:48.000 And so we have to be able to say, okay, here are the standards that we have.
00:39:52.000 Here's the way we want to behave.
00:39:53.000 Here's the way we want to look at society.
00:39:54.000 Here's the way we want to look at the family, the bedrock political institution.
00:39:57.000 And I think that is a result of modern liberalism.
00:39:59.000 Yeah, I would agree with that.
00:40:00.000 Yeah.
00:40:00.000 I think that without the guardrails.
00:40:03.000 Yeah.
00:40:04.000 And there's a great quote in Harvard Law School.
00:40:07.000 They're probably going to take it down very soon, which is, the law is the wise restraints that keep men free.
00:40:13.000 So you think about it, it's the exact opposite.
00:40:15.000 So the prevention of doing something actually is what keeps you free.
00:40:18.000 Right.
00:40:19.000 Well, you know, even more provocative is Lord Acton, who is a great hero to libertarians.
00:40:23.000 And he says, I'm paraphrasing slightly.
00:40:26.000 He says, Liberty is not the ability to do whatever one pleases, it is the freedom to do what one ought.
00:40:34.000 Oh my, you could imagine if you said that today in almost anywhere, on the left or the right.
00:40:40.000 Well, you couldn't say that.
00:40:41.000 That's where I think the right needs to reassume kind of our position, which is we need to be unafraid to talk about what ought is for human beings, not to say, well, it's really your own truth.
00:40:53.000 You do you.
00:40:53.000 You do you.
00:40:54.000 I don't want to yuck your yum, man, whatever, as long as it doesn't bother anybody else.
00:40:58.000 I mean, that is the irony of that sort of cowardly.
00:41:02.000 But also, that framework that you and I grew up in, which legalized weed and legalized everything.
00:41:09.000 All that's except for political speech.
00:41:12.000 All of it was turned out to be the greatest fraud I ever lived in.
00:41:16.000 Yes.
00:41:16.000 And I used to kind of believe in sort of that stuff.
00:41:18.000 We all did.
00:41:19.000 The kind of Ayn Randian.
00:41:20.000 Yeah.
00:41:21.000 No, we all did.
00:41:21.000 And I actually think Ayn Rand's a really interesting author, and I think there's a lot of things she got right.
00:41:26.000 And we can leave it there.
00:41:28.000 Yeah, well, you know, but I agree.
00:41:29.000 I went through that same phase.
00:41:30.000 I really liked her.
00:41:31.000 Yeah.
00:41:31.000 And then my point, though, is that this year showed me they're the most unserious people ever.
00:41:37.000 100%.
00:41:37.000 Because I am more into the liberty thing than every one of those people ever were.
00:41:41.000 Of course.
00:41:42.000 But real liberty.
00:41:43.000 Real liberty.
00:41:44.000 But just, for example, how about I want to go to church?
00:41:47.000 Yeah.
00:41:48.000 Not a cannabis dispensary.
00:41:49.000 No.
00:41:50.000 But Charlie, you can look at porn all that time.
00:41:52.000 You can go get an abortion and smoke a lot of pot and look at porn.
00:41:55.000 That's freedom.
00:41:56.000 You're not going to be a slave to those sins.
00:41:58.000 Yeah.
00:41:59.000 Exactly.
00:41:59.000 But if you want to dare host an event trying to pursue truth, you're a terrible and awful person.
00:42:04.000 You're not.
00:42:05.000 Well, and because it's not needed, right?
00:42:07.000 This is their argument that they usually don't say out loud: look, we need to go buy pot.
00:42:12.000 We need to look at porn.
00:42:14.000 Look, I have a natural right and need of online porn.
00:42:17.000 You don't need to go to church, do you?
00:42:20.000 It's just, come on, it's this old superstition.
00:42:22.000 Nobody really, we got to pretend for the bumpkin bitter clinger idiots, but nobody needs to.
00:42:27.000 And the irony, of course, is you need to do that more than anything else in Buddhism.
00:42:31.000 That's correct.
00:42:32.000 So I want to ask you about that.
00:42:34.000 Where have the Catholics been fighting to reopen the country?
00:42:37.000 I thought the Catholics believed that it was the literal body of Christ.
00:42:40.000 Well, talk about subsidiarity.
00:42:43.000 And I say this is provocatively.
00:42:45.000 No, I know, you make a good point.
00:42:49.000 You are not required to receive the Eucharist, the communion, the literal body and blood.
00:42:53.000 You're not required to do it every day or every week.
00:42:56.000 And you're supposed to go to confession and discern the body and all these sort of things.
00:43:00.000 However, I think you're right.
00:43:01.000 The idea that we don't need to go to these churches seems to undercut the central fact of the religion.
00:43:08.000 And what you're seeing now is, and this is true.
00:43:12.000 You see it in government, you see it in politics.
00:43:14.000 The bishops have gone really, really weak.
00:43:16.000 They shut these things down before the government.
00:43:18.000 I'm going to be honest.
00:43:19.000 I don't think they believe it's a literal body of Christ.
00:43:21.000 No, it depends.
00:43:22.000 There's no way.
00:43:22.000 You have to say that.
00:43:23.000 There is no way if you believed it was the body of Christ, you'd shut your church.
00:43:26.000 Well, impossible.
00:43:27.000 If I believed that he's actually Christ, I wouldn't even, I don't care what would be, you could be the blitz I'd be doing kingdoms.
00:43:34.000 But you know, they can still celebrate their own private masses.
00:43:36.000 It's just not public masses in some places.
00:43:38.000 But if they don't want to give it to other people?
00:43:39.000 Yeah.
00:43:40.000 Well, because the argument is, I see some of what you're saying, but it makes me think that there's no way they believe this.
00:43:46.000 But no, I think that's too harsh on them.
00:43:48.000 I think a lot of them are cowards.
00:43:50.000 To be nicer to the bishop.
00:43:51.000 That's the body of Christ.
00:43:52.000 What could you be afraid of?
00:43:53.000 Well, because there's still...
00:43:54.000 It's not a symbol.
00:43:55.000 It's literally Christian flesh.
00:43:57.000 But it doesn't mean you won't get sick and die.
00:43:59.000 It doesn't mean that the government won't come and shut down your church.
00:44:01.000 I mean, I do think there's a prudential aspect to it.
00:44:04.000 But what you've been seeing is the bishops refuse to stand up, most of them.
00:44:08.000 And so the priests secretly hold their masses, celebrate the mass.
00:44:13.000 And in some ways, you feel like you are in the French Revolution because I kid you not in Spain.
00:44:18.000 They are the spears coming down the street to cut your head off.
00:44:21.000 They'll pull the windows down.
00:44:21.000 Jacobins.
00:44:22.000 They'll do it in the private parish office.
00:44:25.000 I mean, there is a really, and by the way, people aren't wearing masks at those masses.
00:44:30.000 But there is a big divide.
00:44:32.000 And you see, I mean, this actually is where the kind of big government worries are pretty legitimate, which is that the higher you get up the ecclesial food chain these days, the more frustrations there are.
00:44:45.000 But the parish priests, in my experience, are still doing a pretty good job.
00:44:49.000 Just like in politics, very often the local people, the people who actually have some responsibility to their constituents, they're pretty serious-minded.
00:44:56.000 And you get up the food chain, and those plutocrats, whether they're in Menlo Park or they're in Washington, D.C., they just don't care.
00:45:03.000 Yeah, it's just been, it's been a very telling year.
00:45:06.000 And we're ready to be conquered because we already have been.
00:45:09.000 Yeah.
00:45:10.000 It's a devastating way to put it.
00:45:12.000 But how do you argue against it?
00:45:14.000 Yeah.
00:45:15.000 In some ways, it's exactly where we are in our country.
00:45:18.000 How can people learn more about what you're doing in my life?
00:45:20.000 I want to end on a happy note.
00:45:21.000 I'm so depressed now.
00:45:23.000 Well, because we've been talking about truth.
00:45:24.000 I know reality is a little too depressing.
00:45:26.000 We could talk about some optimistic stuff.
00:45:28.000 Well, you know, here's the one thing.
00:45:30.000 Put thousands of kids in the next room, right?
00:45:31.000 That's our country back.
00:45:32.000 That makes me feel a lot better.
00:45:33.000 And the other thing is what the left is counting on right now, especially you look at the Georgia Center races, they're talking about this.
00:45:38.000 They're banking on our despair, right?
00:45:41.000 They are banking on us just.
00:45:43.000 And that's why this is the biggest middle finger to them ever.
00:45:45.000 No, it is.
00:45:45.000 Yes.
00:45:46.000 Because what they're banking on is we're going to say, look, they cheat, they steal, they rob, they violate the Constitution of Pennsylvania.
00:45:52.000 Why do I even vote?
00:45:53.000 Why do I even show up?
00:45:55.000 And the trick of that is that the minute you don't show up, they don't even have to cheat or steal, right?
00:46:01.000 You just give it away to them.
00:46:02.000 And the thing we've got to remember is despair is a sin.
00:46:05.000 We've been talking a lot about sin and grace.
00:46:06.000 Despair is a sin.
00:46:08.000 Hope is a virtue.
00:46:09.000 It is a demand.
00:46:11.000 And courage is a virtue, too.
00:46:12.000 And I tell you, a thousand kids in the next room in complete defiance of every single established authority on a planet Earth right now.
00:46:21.000 It's literally the biggest gathering on Earth.
00:46:23.000 You know that.
00:46:24.000 This is, man, you know, I never thought of it that way.
00:46:24.000 Yeah.
00:46:27.000 You're right.
00:46:28.000 Like on the entire planet, I never thought Turning Point USA would be ever to accomplish something like this.
00:46:33.000 If that doesn't give you hope, you know, I don't know.
00:46:35.000 But also, the left is embracing wildly unpopular ideas.
00:46:38.000 I believe that if we can fix the tech issue, the distribution of information issue, then we have an inevitability we're going to win.
00:46:45.000 If we don't, then we're going to lose.
00:46:45.000 Yeah.
00:46:47.000 It's that simple.
00:46:47.000 If we can't get our message out, but we have better arguments.
00:46:50.000 We have so many amazing voices, yours, Candace, Ben.
00:46:56.000 There's so much creative energy in the conservative movement right now.
00:47:00.000 It's never been a more robust roster.
00:47:02.000 Right.
00:47:02.000 That's right.
00:47:03.000 And all we need to do is get some chutzpah.
00:47:06.000 But we also need to be able to have the channels and the means of communicating.
00:47:09.000 I mean the chutzpah to go in and not just have this narrow view of politics where we need to break up the tech companies.
00:47:09.000 Well, that's what I mean.
00:47:14.000 We got to break up the tech companies.
00:47:15.000 We absolutely do.
00:47:16.000 Politics is a lot bigger than I think we grew up thinking of it, you know, because of some flawed ideological.
00:47:24.000 It's way bigger than that.
00:47:25.000 That is very exciting that we can do it.
00:47:27.000 I was saying the other day about President Trump.
00:47:30.000 I hope he lives a good long life, but someday when the inevitable comes, he may donate his body to science.
00:47:35.000 I want him to donate his spine to the Republican Party.
00:47:38.000 He's one of the few guys in the party in my lifetime who's had one.
00:47:42.000 And I think if we take nothing else from the Trump administration than that, that's a game changer.
00:47:48.000 Second most votes of any person ever running for president.
00:47:50.000 Most ever for a Republican.
00:47:52.000 Yeah.
00:47:52.000 Unbelievable of blacks and Hispanics.
00:47:55.000 Everyone did well.
00:47:56.000 And Italians.
00:47:56.000 I speak from experience.
00:47:57.000 The Italians voted for Trump.
00:47:59.000 I think broadly.
00:48:00.000 I'm willing to.
00:48:01.000 I don't look at statistics, but I'll double-click.
00:48:02.000 I don't look at statistics.
00:48:03.000 Every Italian I know did.
00:48:04.000 Most of them.
00:48:05.000 Great.
00:48:06.000 I don't know how the Italians in New Jersey voted for Trump.
00:48:09.000 Probably pretty well.
00:48:09.000 New York, yeah.
00:48:10.000 Yeah.
00:48:10.000 But I think better.
00:48:12.000 Good enough.
00:48:13.000 I don't know if the Cuomo family, the Pelosi family.
00:48:17.000 No, I don't know.
00:48:18.000 They must have been from up north or something.
00:48:20.000 I don't know where they're from.
00:48:21.000 But I think that the reason I have hope and optimism is despite all of this nonsense is that the left is trying to build institutions that will crumble.
00:48:30.000 It's the Genesis 11 thing.
00:48:32.000 They're building their own Tower of Babel.
00:48:34.000 It will fall.
00:48:35.000 And we as conservatives are more motivated.
00:48:37.000 We're more focused.
00:48:38.000 We're better organized than we have ever been.
00:48:40.000 I know it doesn't feel that way, but because of how tough the left has been on us the last three years, we have the toughest conservative movement I've ever seen.
00:48:49.000 I'm the most serious.
00:48:50.000 Without ever scripting any of our speakers, ever.
00:48:53.000 I say, go up and say, every speech has had the same sort of undertone, which is, it's time to fight.
00:48:58.000 The left hates you.
00:48:59.000 We're going to win, and we're going to bring it to them.
00:49:01.000 I'm like, this is.
00:49:02.000 Right.
00:49:03.000 But it is funny.
00:49:04.000 I've never, I've given a zillion turning point speeches.
00:49:06.000 No one has ever said, talk about this.
00:49:09.000 No, we don't do that.
00:49:09.000 You don't do that.
00:49:10.000 And look what you get out of that.
00:49:11.000 Look at what you get out of what is, I think, naturally occurring to a lot of conservatives, right?
00:49:15.000 But I like that, though.
00:49:16.000 It's helpful because I want the students to hear and feel and see what the speakers really believe.
00:49:22.000 And also, you kind of have this tapestry of does anyone stand out?
00:49:25.000 Or, oh, wow, everyone's saying the same thing organically.
00:49:29.000 And look, we're going to win.
00:49:30.000 It's going to be a very, the next decade is going to be the toughest fight in American history, nonviolent fight.
00:49:36.000 And it will determine whether or not we have a national divorce or not or whether, you know, and look, there is a chance.
00:49:41.000 If we get, if we get the vote by mail thing done, like figured out, which is the dumbest thing we've ever allowed to do.
00:49:46.000 Yeah, I mean, if it if it remains, if that remains entrenched, we're toast.
00:49:49.000 Vote by mail and technology.
00:49:52.000 Yeah, if we fix vote by mail and tech, the left's and the Democrats' positions are so wildly unpopular, we're going to win everything.
00:50:00.000 Yeah, I think that's true.
00:50:00.000 I think that's very based.
00:50:02.000 But the issue is that when we win, we don't know how to govern.
00:50:05.000 And that's a whole different issue.
00:50:07.000 Yeah, well, and it's part of the courage issue, too, because we're afraid when the people give us power.
00:50:11.000 You don't want to lose the terrain.
00:50:12.000 That's right.
00:50:13.000 That's right.
00:50:14.000 Michael, good to see you.
00:50:15.000 Good to see you, Charlie.
00:50:16.000 I can't wait.
00:50:17.000 I'm excited to go to the largest gathering on Earth.
00:50:19.000 The planet.
00:50:20.000 On the planet.
00:50:21.000 All right.
00:50:21.000 Thanks, Michael.
00:50:22.000 Thanks.
00:50:25.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:50:26.000 Please email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:50:29.000 And if you want to support us, go to charliekirk.com slash support.
00:50:32.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:50:34.000 God bless.
00:50:35.000 Speak to you, sir.