00:00:26.000And if you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, where we play offense with a sense of urgency to win, that's right, to win the American Culture War, go to tpusa.com.
00:00:35.000And if you want to join us for the largest pro-American celebration on the planet, go to tpusa.com slash A-M-F-E-S-T, tpusa.com slash A-M-F-S-T.
00:02:18.000I have some opening remarks about CRT and what it's really doing to our country and some specific examples.
00:02:23.000Then I take questions from the audience on this special Sunday episode brought to you by Turning Point USA and also all of you that support us at charliekirk.com slash support.
00:02:47.000His 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.
00:02:56.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:03:07.000Critical race theory, or as we call it, critical racism theory.
00:03:10.000It's impacted our life dramatically in the last year.
00:03:13.000And this is something that can be called wokeism or diversity, equity, inclusion, or learning.
00:03:18.000And those of you that are obviously at University of Michigan, you have to deal with this all the time and all of its different manifestations.
00:03:23.000But it's amazing how few people actually understand this and talk about how it's an existential threat to the American way of life.
00:03:30.000And we need to talk about how critical race theory, wokeism, whatever you want to call it, right?
00:03:35.000It's a filler term, is a virus against America and civil and free society.
00:03:40.000It doesn't have a 99.5% survivability rate.
00:03:45.000Now, I'm not saying it's worse than COVID because some media person can say, they're two totally different things.
00:03:50.000This is not an infectious disease, but I'm using a metaphor intentionally by saying if we allow these ideas to go unchallenged, then everything that we have grown to know as justice and the American way of life gets immediately compromised.
00:04:59.000I always think he's very sincere, but some football coaches are better than others.
00:05:02.000Human equality does not mean equal talents, and it definitely does not make equal outcomes.
00:05:06.000It means that we're all the same sort of thing.
00:05:09.000As Aristotle would say, human beings are the speaking beings.
00:05:12.000We are the only type of being that can reason, that can make sense of the natural world through speech.
00:05:20.000Now, that sort of being should not be categorized or characterized by things we cannot change.
00:05:29.000So, this is basically the divide right now for those of us that are deciding to launch kind of a critique of critical race theory, what it is or what they say it is, and the people that are defending it, which is, do you believe society should be organized around things that people can change or things that people cannot change?
00:05:48.000Usually, America would say, okay, we want to have a preference, at least in some way or capacity, around things that you can change.
00:05:55.000How hard you work, how hard you study, whether or not you commit crimes, are you making good choices?
00:06:01.000A bad way to organize society and a moral way to organize society is that's your skin color, therefore we're going to treat you a certain way.
00:06:09.000Because you can't change that, and therefore, you are de-emphasizing human agency and choice.
00:06:15.000And one of the reasons why America still remains the most exceptional nation on the planet, despite all of our shortcomings, especially in the last nine months, is that we never really cared about who your parents were.
00:06:27.000We never really cared about where you came from.
00:07:21.000Which is, we are now going to tell you that you have a certain sort of privilege based simply on the melanin content of your skin.
00:07:28.000Now, some people say, Charlie, it's important that we have all these thought exercises and critical race theory is nothing more than a construct.
00:07:34.000So, I have here six examples of since last summer, Floyd Apalooza, when we decided to destroy our entire country and burn it all down, of how our country has profoundly changed.
00:07:46.000This is not just like proclamations or some nut job going on television.
00:07:50.000Pfizer, not exactly a fan, but Pfizer, a big company, said that it will fill leadership roles of their company with exclusively black and Hispanic people.
00:08:00.000Like they want to, and so what does that do?
00:08:02.000Well, it disenfranchises people that are not black and Hispanic.
00:08:05.000So you can either prioritize diversity or you can prioritize competency and character.
00:08:11.000I prefer competency and character, and I'm going to prove it all to you because deep down, everybody agrees, even the people that support critical race theory.
00:08:19.000Atlanta Public Schools, second example, is putting black children, black second graders, into one classroom and white second graders into another classroom.
00:08:29.000Now, I remember growing up in America and saying segregation was evil.
00:08:33.000We shouldn't segregate people based on skin color.
00:08:35.000This is not some sort of theory is what I'm trying to tell you right now.
00:09:03.000But if you're hiring based solely on skin color, then all of a sudden you're saying, you know what, we care more about melanin content than competency.
00:09:10.000When I have a pilot flying my plane, I couldn't care less about the color of their skin.
00:09:14.000I want to make sure they can land the plane.
00:09:17.000And every, even the person that, even someone who is, like, you take Patrice Cullers, whatever, or Ibermax Kendi or Robin DiAngelo or Tahani C. Coates, any one of the people that write these ridiculous pieces of literature.
00:09:31.000I mean, you guys have to read that garbage.
00:09:55.000Like, all the good, we're hiring based solely on skin color.
00:09:58.000Of course, we know the absurdity of that, right?
00:10:00.000Obviously, is that when you do things where the pressure is very high, where success, you literally need to land on a certain airstrip, like you're 50 feet to the left and 50 feet to the right, the margin of error is death.
00:10:11.000Like if you go into a doctor's office and you're like, you know, I have this tumor, I need it removed, is the first thing you're going to be like, hey, I only want doctors of color to operate on me.
00:10:20.000Like, that's, is that the new, and by the way, that's a new push by the American Medical Association saying that we need not competency to be valued, but skin color to be valued.
00:10:31.000Now, any person here in this room that has grown up in the, you know, at least the semblance of a free society in America, this comes across you as absurd and insane.
00:10:41.000Number four, Western Washington University, which is kind of a radical place.
00:10:46.000This is not the only school that's done this, by the way, has come out and they have said they have black-only dormitories now at Western Washington University.
00:10:54.000So again, I think segregation is evil.
00:10:58.000If you're defending this, then all of a sudden you want to have like a reinstitution of like American segregation based on skin color.
00:11:05.000Not to mention Columbia University, maybe they have this at Michigan, maybe not, hope not.
00:11:09.000They have graduation ceremonies based on skin color.
00:11:13.000Black-only graduation ceremony at Columbia University.
00:11:16.000Hispanic only graduation ceremony based on skin color.
00:11:19.000Now, they don't have a white-only graduation ceremony because everyone would lose their mind, right?
00:11:37.000The CDC has come out and said racism is a public health threat.
00:11:41.000Now, mind you, I haven't heard the CDC give like a long speech on how obesity is a public health threat, or diabetes is a public health threat, or what you eat is a public health threat.
00:11:51.000But racism, now we're going to get into this because one of the advantages that the people that are pushing this garbage have is they never actually have to define their terms.
00:12:39.000We have a supply and demand problem with racists in America.
00:12:42.000We have such a low amount of them and such a high demand to find them that when you find one, they get on the front page of the New York Times.
00:12:48.000It's like this incredible supply and demand problem.
00:12:51.000But if you are a racist, I hope you find Jesus Christ and repent and ask for forgiveness and apologize to the people that you've wronged.
00:12:56.000I mean, it goes without saying, right?
00:12:59.000And but it's also to say that like the people that are instituting these things actually deep down harbor those types of resentments.
00:13:06.000And then finally, Lori Lightfoot, to fight the public health crisis.
00:13:20.000But the reason I have those six examples is that, you know, as we kind of go on this tour, what I don't want to hear is that, Charlie, this is just some sort of spirited debate, right?
00:13:30.000We're just exposing young people to different ideas.
00:13:32.000How many times have you heard this as like a counter?
00:13:34.000Like, oh, we want to hear both sides of the story.
00:13:38.000Like, these are things that now impact people's lives.
00:13:42.000Like, who are we going to hire to fly our airplanes?
00:13:45.000How we're going to run our medical institutions?
00:13:48.000How are we going to house people and certain college campuses?
00:13:51.000Or how are we going to educate our children?
00:13:54.000Black-only classroom, white-only classroom at Atlanta public schools.
00:13:57.000And so let's just state things that are very obvious, which is human equality, the way that we were raised to believe it in the American sense, means that you should judge people, if at all, but we all make judgments and you should.
00:14:10.000And you should never judge people based on the color of anyone's skin, but you should judge people based on character, their soul, and their spirit.
00:14:17.000So if there's like some random axe murderer or Eric Rudolph or Ted Kaczynski or Timothy McVeigh, you don't say like, oh, they're evil because they're a certain skin color.
00:14:26.000It's like, oh, they're evil because they killed a bunch of civilians and innocent people against, you know, with just totally belligerently.
00:14:34.000However, what happens now is a mass categorization of a certain type of people and then this new phrase called whiteness, which is a very interesting thing.
00:14:44.000Like you're participating in this custom or this civilization of whiteness.
00:14:48.000Now, again, when pressed, never can really define that.
00:14:52.000But when you dive into it, the truth reveals itself.
00:15:05.000The place where reason and revelation met into one?
00:15:08.000The place where freedom of speech and dialogue and a transcendent order was instituted into a constitutional republic?
00:15:15.000Like the place where the idea of separation of powers, independent judiciary, checks and balances, the idea that a government should be of and by and for the people, this idea of Western society is actually at the root of their critique.
00:15:28.000And that's what it really is, because if you were to try to deconstruct Western civilization, they have realized, and they being the people that are supporting this garbage, which is in the predominant viewpoint of every major institution.
00:15:40.000What's interesting, though, is that I don't actually think a majority of Americans are okay with this.
00:16:25.000It's because where you guys go to school, University of Michigan, or whatever schools that are represented here, especially if you go to your master's program or you get a law degree or a PhD, those are a pipeline.
00:16:37.000It's a non-stop highway into the places of influence around the rest of the country.
00:16:42.000Where just like a normal person, a plumber from Indianapolis, Indiana, looks at this and he's like, I don't need a PhD.
00:16:52.000Like some of this stuff takes so much unnecessary sort of time and attention where all of a sudden this sort of nonsense must be taught.
00:17:02.000And what's happened then is you have the people in charge of our entire society that are then trying to implement it against us.
00:17:08.000And here's the great irony of the whole thing, is that when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s, we were promised a colorblind society.
00:17:17.000And in reality, we've got the exact opposite, is that instead of colorblindness, we now have heightened racial consciousness and awareness.
00:17:25.000Where, again, I feel like I'm 75 years old when I say this.
00:17:29.000When I was a kid in Chicago, which was like 10 years ago, when I was in high school, literally 10 years ago, if the idea that you would judge people based on their skin color would be deemed immoral and it would be intellectually sloppy and lazy and at very best, you would be asked to like completely reconsider that.
00:17:46.000Now this is considered to be tolerant.
00:17:49.000It's considered to be the status quo of kind of how you implement either ideas or public policy.
00:17:56.000And the consequences of this are very, very real, is that not just because of all these six examples that I rattled off, but America is now rapidly becoming an unsafe, and dare I say, more unpleasant place to live because of this.
00:18:13.000Is that, and again, I feel like I'm like yielding to this 50-year-old nostalgia.
00:18:18.00010 years ago, it was actually a much more pleasant, safer place to live.
00:18:22.000I'll just kind of give you some numbers.
00:18:24.000Ever since the defund police movement and abolished police movement, which is tied together with this entire argument, systemic racism, marching the streets, shooting black people without their consent, all a bunch of garbage and nonsense.
00:18:34.000But there's been a near 30% increase in murders since 2020.
00:19:14.000This is the argument that we're making.
00:19:16.000And police in so many communities are now no longer allowed to do their job because they're afraid that some activist group is going to call for their firing.
00:19:25.000Whatever interaction that happens will be widely misinterpreted and misrepresented on the news media.
00:19:30.000So the reason we did this tour and we are doing this tour is that regardless of your political affiliation, and trust me, I have plenty of opinions on every controversial topic you could possibly ask me about tonight.
00:19:41.000Feel free to ask me about technology, immigration, abortion, like whatever it is.
00:19:45.000But the point is that at the very least, we need a 70, 80% consensus that if we keep going in this direction, there will be no disagreement of opinion.
00:19:54.000That America, as we know it, will shatter into a million different pieces.
00:19:58.000That we are going to be something that resembles a South American banana republic like Brazil, where the rich people are just fine and there's nothing but persistent and perpetual racial conflict in every other quarter of the country.
00:20:09.000And what's so tragic about this is that the very communities that they say that they actually want to help, you know, black communities, actually get harmed the most by these sorts of policies.
00:20:19.000They say, this is all about representing, you know, black constituents that are being unfairly targeted by police officers.
00:20:25.000And the result is what's called the Ferguson effect, which happened after 2014, 2015, after the Michael Brown hands up, don't shoot lie, when all of a sudden police officers said, fine, if you're all of a sudden going to that we're the problem, we're getting out.
00:20:39.000You see this in New York City, where all of a sudden you retreat from just kind of very basic policing and law enforcement, then the people with money, they'll just go to Aspen on their private jet.
00:20:49.000But it's the single mother working two jobs with three kids that's trying to just survive or their kid gets shot on the way to school.
00:20:56.000And so the tragedy of this is all of a sudden we're being ruled by these intellectually weak and dare I say dangerous and immoral ideas where the very constituents they say they're trying to help actually have become disproportionately hurt by these very ideas over the last year and a half, year and a half, especially.
00:21:13.000And so there's one other thought I want to get into with this, which is how we actually build the society.
00:21:18.000Because people say, well, Charlie, what's your solution then?
00:21:20.000Well, first, I need to agree with the problem.
00:21:22.000Do I think that police officers killing unarmed black people is a major problem in our country?
00:21:29.000You look at the Washington Post, who's like ridiculously generous in their reporting towards this narrative.
00:21:34.000They said that there were 18, that's right, 1-8 unarmed black people that were killed by police officers in year 2019 or 2018.
00:21:43.000Now, even if you look at those definitions, some of them were like, oh, they were in a car trying to run over the police officer, like trying to grab the police officer's weapon.
00:21:50.000I mean, you kind of look at that, you're like, okay, if you go down, it's probably like six where the police officer really and truly acted wrong.
00:21:57.000So you go through 335 million police interactions every single year, and you're trying to tell me we need to radically redefine society and change the way we hire pilots because six police officers are jerks should go to prison.
00:22:31.000Is this the way that we should organize society or not?
00:22:34.000And like some people still commit to this idea that there is this unknown or non-definable or undefinable, I should say, racism that exists in the bones and the structure of our country.
00:22:50.000And so then it kind of conveniently goes to something that I am very comfortable talking about, which is where they've always wanted to bring this argument.
00:22:59.000Because I could show you the truth police statistics.
00:23:01.000Happy to go through that if anyone's interested.
00:23:03.000Kind of like verse by verse, chapter by chapter, where this idea of a disproportionate police force going after black people is just completely and totally untrue.
00:23:11.000When in reality, it's the opposite, when in reality, actually, police officers are more likely to be shot by black people than the other way around, 18 and a half times more likely, actually, according to the Wall Street Journal's own statistics.
00:23:23.000But in reality, here's where it really comes down to, which is a full indictment of our story as Americans.
00:23:30.000This is what they've always wanted to get to.
00:23:33.000So they use, you know, the death of George Floyd, which I'm going to go into great detail tomorrow in Minnesota.
00:23:38.000It'll be a lot of fun, to kind of talk.
00:23:40.000Like, again, I'm not saying he deserved to die.
00:24:00.000And so, and so let me just kind of extend past that where I say they use that as a segue and a gateway drug to go after our shared story experience, which is the American founding, the American framers, and our American story.
00:24:16.000And this is one of the most important topics we can talk about, which is, should we be proud of our founding or should we be scared to even mention it and always have to say this?
00:24:30.000I can't stand it when conservatives say this.
00:24:32.000Yeah, the founding fathers were brilliant, but yeah, they also owned slaves.
00:24:35.000Why is that so necessary to say, do you actually know the true context in the history?
00:24:39.000So human equality means the following.
00:24:52.000So Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Ben Franklin, I could keep going, were all born into a world that they did not create.
00:25:00.000So they were born into a world where slavery was ubiquitous.
00:25:08.000Well, the first ever anti-slavery convention in the history of the planet happened in 1775 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, chaired by Benjamin Franklin.
00:25:18.000Where all of a sudden they started to ask this question.
00:25:20.000They said, if we're going to believe in natural rights, how are we going to get rid of this thing?
00:25:24.000Is this right for all of a sudden human beings to own human beings?
00:25:28.000In 1777, right after the Declaration of Independence was signed, Vermont independently abolished slavery.
00:25:36.000Nine out of 13 of the states, by the time the Constitutional Convention met in the summer of 1787, had already independently abolished slavery.
00:25:45.000In George Washington's own private journals and musings, he said, it's not a matter of if we get rid of slavery, it's a matter of how we get rid of slavery.
00:25:53.000After the Constitutional Convention, the Northwest Ordinance came up, which is where we are right now.
00:25:58.000We're in the Northwest part of the country.
00:25:59.000You're like, what are you talking about?
00:26:00.000This actually used to be considered the Northwest Territories because of how geographically different America was.
00:26:05.000The Mississippi River was the western boundary of America until the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 or 1806, where all of a sudden all the states met together and they said, what are we going to do with this Northwest Territories?
00:26:16.000And I encourage all of you to read the Northwest Ordinance.
00:26:21.000And Article 6, or kind of Provision 6 of the Northwest Ordinance, says the following, that the Northwest Territories will be free territories, not slave territories.
00:26:31.000One of the first measures ever put forward by all 13 states unanimously agreeing.
00:26:37.000So you'd think that the new territories would be a reflection of the type of nation that you're trying to create.
00:26:43.000Yet all 13 states or 13 colonies agree, you know what?
00:26:46.000The new territories, those places need to be free.
00:26:50.000And I could go through how Thomas Jefferson contested for the abolition of slavery as governor in the 1790s.
00:26:55.000Thomas Jefferson signed the first person to sign a moratorium of new slaves being brought into the United States as one of his first actions as president in March of 1803 or 1807.
00:27:04.000I could keep going, list by list by list.
00:27:06.000But I think it's more important to realize this.
00:27:22.000That is how you should judge human beings.
00:27:24.000You should judge human beings based on what did the world look like when they entered and what was their mark on it.
00:27:28.000Not whether or not, well, me in my 2021 lens, because I'm a 19-year-old prick that goes to whatever school, I think I know the best because I'm such a good person.
00:27:38.000And that's not to say I'm defending an indefensible evil, but I'm saying who began the process of closing the door on an unspeakable sin?
00:27:50.000Like with your sign that says climate change is going to kill us all?
00:27:53.000Like how about you read a book, a thick one, and get back to me sometime soon.
00:27:57.000Go understand that somebody that existed before you said something wise and beautiful and good and true.
00:28:02.000That there are some things that don't change.
00:28:04.000And the founding fathers understood eternal wisdom and they were willing to do something about it.
00:28:10.000They were willing to all of a sudden create a new government that allowed for people to speak and not be ruled by force.
00:28:16.000And that's the kind of final point here before we get into questions, which is as we ask, like, how do we actually organize society?
00:28:23.000There's only two ways, there's two buckets where you could put every government in the world now and every government of the last 5,000 years in one of the two buckets.
00:28:32.000Is the government that you establish, is its central organizing principle, speech or force?
00:29:20.000What ends up happening is because of this regime that we see, the CRT regime, wokeism, diversity industrial complex regime, is all of a sudden they say, what?
00:30:08.000But the most important thing is all of a sudden, like, wait a second, if we still want some semblance of a civilization, then we need to build a coalition, absent political parties, absent whatever you call yourself.
00:30:18.000Like, I'm a libertarian, I'm a conservative, whatever, fine, I'm a conservative.
00:30:22.000Where all of a sudden you're like, we need to defeat this woke industrial complex forcibly and quickly, because that will destroy us all.
00:30:30.000It will destroy us from within quicker than any sort of domestic enemy ever could.
00:30:38.000And I'll close with this, which is many people that are kind of, they remember a different America.
00:30:47.000And I'm told a lot from people, or I'm asked a lot, Charlie, how did this happen?
00:30:52.000How did we get to the place that we are in?
00:30:55.000Well, put simply, post-1960s liberalism, they realized that to undermine the American nation, conflict is necessary to overflow the nation, not speech.
00:31:35.000But their complaints were like, look, there's kind of this cartel of Wall Street bankers and DC insiders that continually rig the rules against normal people.
00:31:45.000And we kind of want to talk about that.
00:31:47.000And then they started talking about Marxism and socialism and confiscating property, and they lost most of Americans.
00:31:52.000But then all of a sudden, the revolutionaries said, okay, we are not going to be able to take over America and get power for ourselves by just talking about economics.
00:32:08.000Man against woman and woman against man.
00:32:11.000Best illustrated by the Brett Kavanaugh hearings a couple years ago, where like the most boring human being on the planet was called like a serial gang rapist in front of a Senate hearing.
00:32:24.000And that fell apart because I don't think that the kind of regime realized that even liberal women have sons too, and they sometimes have husbands.
00:32:48.000Still, there's still elements of that there.
00:32:50.000But then all of a sudden, after many years of attempting and careful plotting, when everyone was cooped up, you couldn't go to the gymnasiums, we couldn't go to sporting events, schools, there was almost this activist pressure cooker in May of last year, a video that animated everyone.
00:33:06.000Then all of a sudden, we had a racial reckoning, as they call it.
00:33:10.000And I just asked the very simple question, is this prudent?
00:33:16.000Where you have, if you believe that's an injustice, you say that's one injustice, and you say now we should radically redefine the Western prescribed way of life.
00:33:23.000And so the goal was always the same, though, which is to displace power dynamics, which is to make private property less important, meritocracy less important, freedom of speech less important.
00:33:34.000Communal ownership of goods, more important.
00:33:39.000A rule of a scientific elite, more important.
00:33:42.000Where the American tradition is now being put on the ropes by an unexpected villain.
00:33:48.000And that villain is not rich versus poor, even though that's what's behind it.
00:33:51.000It's not man versus woman, even though that's a component of it.
00:33:54.000Instead, they want to start a race war in this country.
00:33:56.000And I'm telling you, don't give it to them.
00:33:58.000I'm saying do not give them what they want.
00:34:03.000Instead, it's incumbent on us to call out what this is, to realize how good we have it in this nation, understand our history, understand our values, understand where we come from, and then be able to appropriately and effectively push back against it.
00:34:34.000All right, just start lining up there, everybody, and we'll have some fun.
00:34:42.000Oh, this just broke while I was speaking.
00:34:44.000The Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose critical race theory in public schools, citing threats.
00:34:52.000The directive follows the National School Board Association's request to classify parents as domestic terrorists.
00:35:16.000This question is sort of unrelated, but I understand that you're a Christian, and I get a lot of people who tell me about like how Jesus was a socialist because he said, if your brother, you know, doesn't have food, give him some the all that, you know, basic morality.
00:35:34.000And I just wanted to know how you sort of combat that Jesus was not a communist.
00:35:44.000So socialism violates two out of the ten commandments, thou shalt not covet and thou shalt not steal, just right out of the bat.
00:35:50.000Jesus would, let's just talk about Jesus.
00:35:52.000If he was anything less than or some sort of political activist than the savior of the world and the son of God, I immediately say, time out.
00:35:59.000You're now co-opting the way, the truth, and the life for some sort of weird political agenda.
00:36:04.000And I think that should be dismissed altogether immediately.
00:36:07.000But let me just say this, that Jesus talked very clearly, and I won't spend too much time on this, but I suppose there's some interest in this, very clearly about the need for multiplication.
00:36:18.000The parable of the talents is one of the best illustrations of this.
00:36:21.000Does socialism subtract and divide or multiply and add by definition?
00:36:28.000And did Jesus ever call for state-run action to actually distribute the means of production or to try to help the poor?
00:36:36.000Did he call for you individually to help people, for you individually to give the cloak off your back to help people?
00:36:44.000And let me say this, that using prudence, which comes from a Greek word prudentia, we must look at things as they are, not how we wish them to be.
00:36:53.000Socialism is the creed of envy and a philosophy of failure.
00:36:57.000It's rooted in wanting to take away somebody's house, income, or wealth.
00:37:02.000Now, I think some Christians are saying, I want to help people.
00:37:13.000Is the best way to help people, to give them something that they did not earn or empower them to understand what earned success actually is?
00:37:21.000Jesus never, ever argued against private property itself.
00:37:26.000In fact, the idea of private property is a biblical idea.
00:37:30.000When Abraham went to go to Hebron, when he wanted to go buy a piece of land to bury himself and his lineage, a very important thing in Jewish custom, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he went and actually executed the first ever real estate purchase in the history of the world.
00:37:59.000But one of the other reasons is that no people would ever write a book that makes themselves look as bad as the Jews wrote the Old Testament.
00:38:16.000Like only if this actually happened, this was divinely inspired would they put this down.
00:38:20.000But also, this is a very important point, is that, for example, you take the Babylonians or you take the Hammurabi Code, some skeptics will say, well, the Hammurabi Code is very similar to the Jewish code.
00:38:54.000It's important because if you advocate for socialism, you have a different view of justice than the ancient Jewish Hebrew view of justice.
00:39:02.000The view of justice that those of you that are Christians have, at least earthly justice, is a man is given what he is due.
00:39:10.000You murder somebody, you pay a price for that.
00:39:12.000You steal something, you pay a price for that.
00:39:13.000The socialistic view of justice is a give a man, not what he is due, but what makes it egalitarian.
00:39:22.000One of the commandments in Leviticus says you shall never favor a rich man in a criminal trial or favor a poor person at a criminal trial.
00:39:31.000This is where we get the Western idea that justice must be blind.
00:39:35.000And the final thing I'll say about this is that throughout Jesus' ministry, which of course was ended at the hands of the state, He wanted to bring people from a place of spiritual captivity to a place of freedom and liberty only through his son and accepting Jesus Christ.
00:39:54.000The story of the Bible, put simply, is to set the captives free.
00:39:57.000God did it in Egypt with the Jews and again through Jesus Christ.
00:40:20.000My name is P.J. Serati, and I thank you very much for coming here today.
00:40:23.000Now, Amanda Bourne and I, we're founders of Michigan Students Take Charge, and we're working, just like you, to empower students across this country.
00:40:30.000Now, we are truly working to bring students together across all these issues.
00:40:34.000And, you know, you bring critical race theory and other issues, and you kind of bundle them together, and you kind of discuss them on your platform, which I love.
00:40:40.000Now, one of the issues that I have been having a very hard time with dealing with is this issue of abortion and pro-choice and freedoms that we as Americans hold.
00:40:50.000Now, I believe that this issue, this freedom of choice, this bodily choice, is the Achilles heel of our opposition.
00:40:56.000Now, I'm struggling right now because I truly believe that there is some common ground that the left and the right and us versus them can come to with this.
00:41:30.000The science of embryology tells us as soon as new DNA is formed and the sperm and egg meet, all of a sudden that human life begins the process of growing into a full and total mature human being.
00:41:42.000So the argument that is sometimes made by pro-abortion activists is that, well, it's small.
00:41:57.000So for anyone here that cares about the abortion issue, these are the four biggest things that you're going to encounter.
00:42:01.000I'm going to talk about how we might be able to reach consensus, which I'm not too optimistic about, which is the second is level of development.
00:42:07.000So first is size, then level of development, which is how far along the developmental timeline are they?
00:42:14.000So this is where all of a sudden you get some one of these arbitrary weeks.
00:42:18.000I prefer, obviously, a six-week ban than an unrestricted ban all the way through.
00:42:23.000But an 18-week old baby is equally a human being as a two-week old baby.
00:42:29.000And it's just not developed all the way along the same.
00:42:34.000So here's what's amazing about human beings, is that unlike putting together a Corvette at an assembly line, is that a human being given nutrients will grow itself.
00:42:43.000It's not something you have to put inputs in.
00:42:46.000It's not something where you have to kind of add knobs and polish it.
00:42:48.000The human being within our genetic code is development itself.
00:42:52.000The third is environment, that some pro-abortion activists will say, well, because it's in the womb, not outside the womb, therefore there's a different moral categorization and characterization.
00:43:02.000Now, we know this is not true, obviously, that just because something is a different place doesn't give it a different moral right or different moral categorization.
00:43:11.000Because someone who is 95 years old is in an old person's home or someone who is living at home, you know, in their own home, doesn't change the kind of way that we morally view them.
00:43:21.000And then finally, the one that trips up pro-life activists the most is the degree of dependency, which is how dependent is that being on another.
00:43:30.000This is the one that trips up a lot of people that are pro-life, where they say, well, all of a sudden, the pro-abortion activists will say, it's not a full and autonomous life because it's dependent on the mother, because it will not be able to survive in the state of nature without assistance.
00:43:44.000Now, any person who's dealt with a six-day-old or a 15-day old or a 20-week-old knows very simply and clearly that that sort of autonomous ability to hunt and gather, that's not going to come for like a decade, let alone for 10 days.
00:43:59.000Same can be said for people that are on feeding tubes or in comas.
00:44:03.000Should we go start pulling plugs all the time for people in comas?
00:44:06.000Now, some pro-abortion activists will say, well, Charlie, we're able to pull plugs of people in comas.
00:44:12.000There's a very strict legal and dare I say controversial process to do that that happens rarely at a low percentage where there are over 3,000 abortions a day in America.
00:44:23.000And I would actually not support the kind of cord plug pulling, kind of cord pulling that happens as, let's just say, often as it happens with people in comas.
00:44:31.000Now, one argument, and you guys will all see a debate, I put that in the air quotes because it was a total circus, that I have coming out on Thursday against a pro-abortion activist, which is where this one guy thought he was being a smart aleck debating me.
00:44:42.000He says, Well, Charlie, what's your birthday?
00:44:47.000Now, this is a ridiculous argument, right?
00:44:49.000Because we don't call it our conception day, we call it our day of birth.
00:44:52.000I don't know if you ever heard this argument before, but it's like there, it's kind of like sophistry linguistics, right?
00:44:57.000Where we believe human life begins nine months before your birth, but what's the significance of your birth?
00:45:04.000All of a sudden, the people who brought you into the world, your mother and your father, get to meet you for the first time.
00:45:11.000That's why we celebrate the birthday, that you are outside of the womb.
00:45:14.000Now, the final thing I'll say is this: which is the best logical argument against abortion, which is that if it's not your DNA, it's not your choice.
00:45:22.000That if it's a different set of DNA that's been formed, and that new, and whether it be the fingerprint, eyes, nose, breath, heartbeat.
00:45:32.000So, how do you reach consensus on this issue?
00:45:35.000I don't have good advice on that, honestly, because I tend to be someone who believes if we can, I'll give you some advice, it might not be helpful, which is if we cannot reach consensus or agreement on an issue that is so fundamentally clear as to when does life begin, do we defend those that can't defend themselves?
00:45:52.000Then, I believe all the other issues that we're fumbling and that we're clumsy with can be attributed back to that one.
00:45:58.000I would say, though, that one way that you might be able to reach consensus or agreement is just saying, Do you want more abortions or less abortions?
00:46:07.000Do you think that's a person or is that a property?
00:46:09.000Where on the animal kingdom hierarchy is a fetus?
00:46:13.000Is it a crocodile that turns into a human being, or is it a human being that remains a human being and you believe you can abolish it because of its size, level, development, environment, or degree of dependency?
00:46:23.000And I believe there's actually, I believe, the more we talk about this issue compassionately, rationally, and factually, I believe that we're winning on the pro-life issue.
00:46:33.000And I think conservatives in elected office and in advocacy should be unafraid to talk about this and not try to pander to less talking points on an issue as important as life.
00:47:08.000Yeah, I mean, I think we have to stop talking about race so much.
00:47:12.000I think that's like the first step: why are we focused so much on this?
00:47:17.000And again, we reluctantly did this as a counter move to just the arbitrage of the race conversation, because I just kind of want to put this to bed once and for all.
00:47:26.000I don't know about you, but I'm so tired of like worrying about racial quotas and the melanin content people's skin and whether or not pilots are going to be a certain skin color.
00:47:36.000And so I want to create an America where race is de-emphasized and character is elevated as the primary way that we organize society.
00:47:46.000I think that's the best possible way I can answer that.
00:47:52.000Hello, my name is Annette, and I am currently in a battle with two different superintendents at two different school districts over the word equity.
00:48:02.000And several parents I know who are here are in the middle of this battle as well.
00:48:08.000And the superintendent in my school district, I asked if you're meeting the mission statement of our school, why are you now trying to push for this instead of CRT?
00:48:19.000They're calling it DBEI, diversity, belonging, equity, and inclusivity.
00:48:23.000So, why are you pushing for the equity, especially since you know that term is evolving?
00:48:34.000So, I'm trying to catch her in a trap by saying: if you were meeting the needs of every student with our mission statement, why the push for the DBEI?
00:48:43.000She keeps saying it's important because not everyone comes from the same level playing ground.
00:48:48.000And she says, And how is equity changing?
00:49:20.000And I could give you multiple examples of how the critical race theorists themselves in their training seminars are now saying, Let's start using equity and not use CRT.
00:49:31.000And I would just ask a set of questions of the administration that they have to answer.
00:49:34.000And here, actually, you actually segue to something I forgot to ask: which is these are three questions that you can ask any of your friends to see which side that they're on on this.
00:50:37.000You see, we have to challenge the premise, and here's what you should say: I'm all for an equity conversation about whether or not people that do not have fathers in the home get the attention they need, of whether or not people that have lower incomes have the attention they need.
00:50:53.000That's not what they're talking about, they're based strictly and solely on race.
00:50:56.000I don't know the example you have in your local school district.
00:50:59.000But the thing that always trips them up is the conversation about how this actually gets fixed because they actually want to destroy it, which is, do you want to rebuild the nuclear family or not?
00:51:26.000You have men take responsibility for their actions, stay loyally married to the person they impregnate, and stay with that person.
00:51:35.000Now, I'm happy to walk you through the specifics of your school district offline, but those are things they usually do not want to talk about.
00:51:45.000And absent skin color or any of those groups, the things that I think matter the most is whether or not we are talking about rebuilding nuclear family and holding that up as an ideal.
00:52:11.000What do you think is like sort of the ultimate goal of critical race theory?
00:52:15.000Not necessarily the goal of like the 19-year-old girls screaming at people that they're a racist on the side of the street, but more of like the goal of like the big people in power are like some of the goals.
00:52:48.000It's about creating America into this racially divided, quasi-apartheid state where there's non-stop class conflict.
00:52:57.000You see, when Americans get along, the elites lose power.
00:53:02.000When we live in harmony, people with very little skill have to go find something else to do.
00:53:09.000When we're getting along, all of a sudden, white fragility goes to like 955,000 in the Amazon book charts.
00:53:16.000When we actually are looking at people as human beings, that we're all made in the image of God, then all of a sudden BLM kind of has to close up shop.
00:53:24.000There's not really an audience for that.
00:53:25.000Now you might say, well, Charlie, that's awfully Machiavellian.
00:53:33.000We have seen the fraud of this entire movement as clear as day in the media and the propagandists' unwillingness to stand by BLM against forced vaccinations.
00:53:45.000We have seen that they actually don't care about the things they say they care about, that they use this as a means to an end to try to make white suburbanites feel bad about their skin color, to go get $250 donations to BLM.com so that Patrice Cullers can go buy houses all over the country to try to mobilize people to go down and burn down Wendy's to try to boost black turnout in political elections every couple years.
00:54:06.000But when actually the black community is like, hey, we don't want to take vaccines against our will, there's a couple BLM organizers in New York that guess what?
00:54:13.000Are attacked by all the major leaders of the apparatus of the city of New York that are attacked by the regime media and said they're anti-science.
00:54:21.000I thought we have to believe black voices and brown voices that you have to sit down and shut up and white silence of violence.
00:54:25.000But instead, it's like, you know what?
00:54:27.000They don't know what they're talking about because in some way, actually, the science regime and the technocracy actually outweighs the CRT regime.
00:54:34.000That's a whole different tour we could do maybe at a different time, which is how we push back against the expert class and this cult of science that we have destroying our country, which we make this false idol out of science.
00:54:44.000I'm happy to get into that if anyone's interested.
00:54:46.000It's absolutely very disturbing in a lot of different ways.
00:54:50.000So I guess the question is, what is the goal?
00:54:56.000And so, yeah, there's this great phrase.
00:54:58.000Someone could pull it up in 1984, which is a great book, all too applicable, where O'Brien, who's kind of the villain of the entire book, turns to Winston.
00:55:10.000And there's this, I think it's like about page 285, depends what version you're reading.
00:55:42.000He himself actually ended up hating a lot of forms of socialism because he said it actually is more about hating the rich than helping the poor.
00:56:04.000It's the thrill of a boot on the neck, knowing I could remove it at any time, but I don't have to.
00:56:10.000Now I'm paraphrasing, but it's this dark couple-page lecture that O'Brien is giving to the defenseless and depleted and destroyed Winston, who has nothing.
00:57:29.000And so Winston Churchill wrote this beautiful letter after, I think it was in Afghanistan where he saw the Darvishes, which was kind of the Afghan fighting force, where they stumbled over a hill against the British Empire to go charge the British Empire.
00:57:47.000And the British Empire had machine guns and the opposition, the Darvishes, did not, and they mowed them down.
00:57:52.00015,000 dead within like 30 minutes, and maybe a couple casualties, like a couple on the British side.
00:57:58.000It was a huge victory for the British Empire.
00:58:00.000But Winston Churchill was super unsettled by this.
00:58:03.000And he wrote this long essay where he said, No longer will the winner of wars have more courage or valor.
00:58:11.000It's about technology, machinery, and science.
00:58:15.000He was realizing in real time the people in control are not going to be the people with better ideas.
00:58:21.000It's going to be the people that are able to build gizmos that can control us and keep us in lines of obedience.
00:58:54.000Too many human beings, got to get rid of them.
00:58:57.000Too much carbon dioxide because it's polluting the earth.
00:59:00.000Eventually, you're going to have to start making moral claims.
00:59:03.000Now, the morality of scientism is trust the experts.
00:59:07.000Let's give more power to an unelected group that is unaccountable, that is unknown in the fourth branch of government.
00:59:15.000Now, even if that was the case, I would be okay with that because at least you have disagreement amongst the experts.
00:59:20.000Instead, we have a biomedical, tyrannical state of one-size-fits-all science, where you're not allowed to even say ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, vitamin D, zinc, not being overweight.
00:59:37.000Instead, we have a regime that focuses on, no, no, no, you must get vaccinated, regardless of what you're seeing, a breakthrough case, you know, you must get vaccinated.
00:59:47.000And so, this cult of scientism segues beautifully to the prior question: what better way to control an entire civilization or society when all of a sudden you have an untouchable class of people that know more than you know that can never be cross-examined or criticized, no matter what.
01:00:03.000And here's what's so incredible: you kind of have the common sense people, regular middle-class Americans, a lot of you are these, that kind of turned off the CDC propaganda and were like, wait a second, okay, I see who in my local area is getting really sick from this thing.
01:00:17.000I see that younger people aren't getting that sick.
01:00:19.000Maybe there might be a better treatment.
01:00:20.000So, you just kind of started rationing, you know, kind of reasoning, a gift that God gave you.
01:00:24.000You're like, wait a second, maybe this is not worth shutting down our entire civilization.
01:00:27.000And you realize that the people who were in charge were, they never should be given the power to actually shut down an entire country or to micromanage through a technocracy.
01:00:44.000As America has become less religious, the God-sized hole in our heart has not gone away.
01:00:50.000That people need to fill that void with something.
01:00:53.000So, they fill it with believing in the salvation of Anthony Fauci or the sacrament of wearing a mask, where it's like a pseudo-religious experience.
01:01:04.000That I'm going to wear the mask, I'm going to have the incantation of making myself feel good.
01:01:09.000And this is mixed, obviously, with the cult of safetyism that is tied together with it, which is that safety should somehow be valued more than liberty, which has never been an American idea.
01:01:18.000You can't have a great or an ambitious or strong nation where you care more about being safe than having liberty.
01:01:24.000And so, I suppose I'm happy to get into the details of this, but I'll finish with this, which is that science is something that could be helpful and useful.
01:01:34.000You want to know a country that valued science more than morality, one country that did it more than anything else?
01:01:39.000The National Socialist Workers' Party in 1930s, Germany.
01:01:44.000They were a country governed by mad scientists.
01:01:48.000They had technological and scientific innovations, the likes of which humanity had never dreamed of seeing before the time.
01:01:57.000They put down highways, railways, they had chemical weapon developments, they were having interstellar-type plans, the likes of which we'd never even comprehended before.
01:02:08.000They were evil people, obviously, the most evil regime I think we've ever seen in the history of the planet.
01:02:13.000I'm not saying that's what you automatically get when you do that, but what's to stop it?
01:02:18.000Is that Socrates famously said, He said, or it was either Plato or Socrates, he said, I dread for the civilization that is run simply and solely by scientists, by subject matter experts.
01:02:31.000And it is a religion, and I pray we can have a revival of actual religion, not the religion of Fauciism.
01:03:07.000But what is the best way to talk about the ridiculousness of the argument that blue lives don't exist because that's your chosen profession?
01:03:17.000And, you know, we take off our uniforms at the end of the day.
01:03:19.000Whereas someone who is not white is always not white.
01:03:33.000But yeah, I mean, I think it would matter more that you actually can choose to be a police officer than whether or not you choose to be white, because we want to build a civilization around choice, action.
01:03:44.000It's kind of like saying, oh, yeah, you know, you could choose to go into the military and get the Congressional Medal of Honor, but you can never stop being white.
01:03:51.000Like, what kind of ridiculous accusation is that, right?
01:03:54.000Like, oh, yeah, yeah, thanks for saving, you know, the child out of the burning home, but you'll never actually stop being white.
01:04:32.000Of course, there's bad cops, there's bad everything.
01:04:35.000But the majority of cops are just normal Americans that do their job, that are being unnecessarily tyrannized, terrorized, and quite honestly, put through this tyranny of trying to destroy the rule of law as we know it in itself.
01:04:50.000And so, not really sure what to tell you about how, like, well, you put on a badge and you could choose that, therefore, blue lives don't matter.
01:04:56.000Yeah, blue lives, of course, they matter.
01:06:47.000It's kind of creepy and weird, actually, that you keep on feeling like the need to apologize for something that you did not do, merely existing.
01:06:55.000And one of the other kind of mind tricks the other side plays is they talk about this idea of systemic racism.
01:07:06.000Yeah, I mean, so, and we are told, though, that it is.
01:07:10.000The laws, the customs, the traditions, what happens and how it operates.
01:07:15.000And you kind of have this population of upper-middle-class white people that get super uncomfortable whenever the conversation of race comes up.
01:07:24.000And it's white guilt, and it's also another thing.
01:07:26.000No one actually wants to be called the R-word.
01:07:29.000And again, for someone who's wrongly and needlessly called that every single day, I just don't care, right?
01:07:33.000So we're going to say things that are true, which actually goes to a nice piece of advice to all of you, which is please live your life in a way where you're the same person in public that you are in private.
01:07:43.000Stop pretending you're somebody else to different friends.
01:07:47.000You're going to be called all these different things.
01:07:50.000Be bold, be courageous, know who you are.
01:07:53.000Know why you believe what you believe.
01:07:55.000But I could tell you that so many white people are going along with this, and it will destroy the country.
01:08:03.000And what I've learned is that most black people, they don't like walk through life every single day wondering or thinking that white people are keeping them down.
01:08:12.000I'm sure there's a poor population that does, but in general, it's like, how do I improve my life?
01:08:17.000Like, you know, normal human being things.
01:08:20.000And the biggest tool, everybody, is that we have to stop allowing whatever baseless accusation they throw at us to have any sort of merit and any sort of basis.
01:08:29.000And so white guilt is definitely a big driver of this.
01:08:32.000And it's also Americans' inability to deal with guilt in general.
01:08:35.000As America has become less Christian, then all of a sudden people say, how do I deal with things I did wrong?
01:08:41.000Here's the cool thing about Christianity.
01:08:47.000You pray, you ask Lord Jesus for forgiveness.
01:08:50.000You go to the person you wronged and you look them directly in the eye and you ask for forgiveness between interpersonal and then you are born new.
01:08:57.000Your sins are forgiven and you are born new.
01:09:00.000But in a hyper-secularized society, when you believe there is no God, there is no eternal life, there is no word of God, what do you do?
01:09:06.000You go get a BLM sticker and you put it on your Prius.
01:11:07.000To sacrifice your autonomy, to sacrifice your consciousness?
01:11:11.000Here's what I do know, though, is that courage is so lacking in our country that if you boldly go, you will be blessed and you'll be rewarded.
01:11:20.000Now, I do believe that there is a growing consensus, regardless of political party.
01:11:27.000You've noticed I haven't even made this political tonight.
01:11:29.000This is all philosophical, which is what we do at Turning Point USA, educationally, because that's actually more important, which is a growing consensus that is really simple, which is fed up with this stuff.
01:11:40.000But again, I'm going to go to the previous question.
01:11:42.000The reason why most people aren't speaking out about it is because there is a cost.
01:11:47.000You might get kicked out of the country club.
01:11:49.000Your kid might not go to the school you want to go to.
01:12:17.000This is going to be at least a decade-long struggle to remove this virus and this cancer that has now infected every major institution across the country.
01:12:27.000You can wish it away, it won't go away.
01:12:28.000You can hope it away, it won't go away.
01:12:34.000It's going to take a little bit of confrontation.
01:12:37.000It's going to take a little bit of calling it out.
01:12:39.000But I know this: that when BLM was confronted, they took a pinnacle, a pillar off of their website that said they want to destroy the Western prescribed nuclear family.
01:12:48.000I know that when we started to push against CRT, American Express and 10 other corporations today announced that they're going to remove it from their ideology training.
01:12:57.000Coca-Cola comes out and says that whiteness is an existential threat to America.
01:13:01.000They're now coming out and saying they no longer teach that and they apologize.
01:13:07.000We're going to have to now push forward and say, no, no, no, we're not going to give you our business.
01:13:11.000I'm not going to work for you anymore if you do this.
01:13:14.000And we have to realize we have the power, but it might cost you something in the immediate, but that's the only way the country will actually be saved.
01:14:20.000And I think we have morally misinterpreted the idea of empathy versus trying to have truth and trying to put grace and trying to understand right from wrong.
01:14:35.000I think that the overemphasis on empathy comes with a deterioration of looking into one's own conduct and choices.
01:14:46.000You're not going to win this argument amongst your friends, but it still should be said, which is this, which is, should everyone be given empathy?
01:16:10.000But instead of trying to all of a sudden bring ourselves in different shoes, let's look at the ideal.
01:16:15.000Let's shoot for the teleological aim, which literally means the purposeful aim of human existence.
01:16:20.000Happy to dive into why I think the overemphasis on empathy is wrong, but let me finish with this.
01:16:25.000Every single ounce that we try to say to ourselves, we need to compare ourselves to someone that might be disadvantaged, is a piece of energy and an ounce of activity that is not used on worrying about whether or not I am a good sold and properly sold individual.
01:16:40.000The ancients spent time not on comparing yourself to another, but instead on trying to elevate yourself through a transcendent order: mercy, justice, courage, contemplation, friendship, magnanimity.
01:17:43.000Probably kind of what you were talking about earlier with the whole Occupy Wall Street in Brazil and kind of the viewing the elite as this big force that's kind of pushing down on us.
01:17:58.000Yeah, I mean, there's some truth in that, but I guess the question, we could dive into this.
01:18:02.000I'm just saying, so I guess they took the blue pill, not the red pill.
01:18:06.000So here's kind of just the truth of it, right?
01:18:09.000Which is everything I believe and everything we as conservatives believe, a defense of the natural law, understanding eternal wisdom, trying to have a preference on consent to the government, separation of powers, independent judiciary, constitutional republic, our view is the harder view to persuade people.
01:18:27.000It's harder because embedded in everything I'm telling you is kind of this unspoken truth that you got to get your life together.
01:18:36.000That don't rely on the state for everything.
01:18:38.000Now, with that being said, do I think that there's actually a very valid critique about a ruling class of elites that are trying to crush your life?
01:18:44.000Yeah, I actually can kind of sympathize with that.
01:18:46.000So, I think the solution is to nationalize everything and turn this into like the mobilization of grievance politics?
01:18:52.000So, I think there's a balance that could be struck there.
01:18:56.000I'm not going to give you a great kind of like way to persuade it, but I will say this: focus on the conversations, not on the conversions.
01:19:14.000Well, everyone you support wants to make the government bigger, so let's unpack that one together.
01:19:18.000I always get a kick out of some people on the left: they say the military is evil and they kill civilians.
01:19:24.000I also want a domestic military to be like, really, that's a really interesting judgment, like to go after people's taxes.
01:19:29.000Like, either the government can't be trusted or it can be trusted.
01:19:32.000And so, but I will say this: that a lot of young people succumb to the lies of the left because they are not steeped, in my personal opinion, in wisdom.
01:19:42.000They're filled with practical knowledge and not in wisdom, which is the knowledge of things that do not change.
01:19:48.000Human beings, regardless of how much we have convinced ourselves, have not changed in our nature since the Declaration or since the writing of the Bible.
01:19:57.000This is really what divides the right and the left in the country.
01:19:59.000Not everyone here might agree at this, but it's true, which is that human nature is unchanging.
01:20:05.000The founding fathers dealt with the same problems we're dealing with, even though they didn't have TikTok, Twitter, or transcontinental airlines.
01:20:29.000And so, that's really the debate I would get into: whether or not you believe human beings are a blank slate that are malleable that could be made around the forces around them, or there's a nature to human beings.
01:20:39.000And I believe that obviously, as a Christian, there is a nature.
01:20:43.000And we better build a government accordingly.
01:20:45.000That if you give too much power to broken and fallen people, really bad things start to happen in the corporate domain or the governmental domain.
01:21:05.000And I go to a small school outside of Flint, and a lot of people there are very woke.
01:21:14.000And so, like, I've had a few times in class where, like, we were talking about racism and how I have innate rights over other people because I'm white.
01:21:25.000And I say something, and then I get called a racist and get in trouble for it.
01:21:30.000And, like, my teacher was talking about how that, oh, white people will always have the opportunity in society that black people never will.
01:21:40.000And I brought up an example of my dad, and he went to an engineering school and was top in his class and didn't get a job he wanted over the person that was 26 in his class just because they were black and they needed to fill a hiring quota.
01:21:52.000And I was called a racist and got detention for it.
01:21:54.000And I just wanted to know what you can do to voice your opinion but not get in trouble for it in schools.
01:22:05.000First of all, I want to thank you for being here tonight, and it's wrong the way that you approve it.
01:22:15.000And the work we do at Turning Point USA is to empower and to support students like you.
01:22:22.000And I hope every parent that's watching online or here in this room understand and realize what he just said.
01:22:27.000This is a profoundly different country than it was 10 years ago.
01:22:31.000That you share the story of your father who worked hard and played by the rules and you get punished or penalized or a detention for that.
01:22:38.000I'm going to ask, I'm going to answer a specific question because I'm not a politician, so I actually answer questions, which is, how can I speak out without getting punished for it, right?
01:22:51.000And so you're going to have to make a decision.
01:22:53.000And the decision is: do I want to be a strong and tough person that's going to pay a price at a young age that will be good for me as I grow and develop?
01:23:02.000Or do I want to avoid that conflict, get momentary benefit, but not be prepared for what might come next in your life?
01:23:11.000Now, this chapter in your life is going to be difficult.
01:23:30.000Because by the time you're 21 or 22, you're going to be running relay laps around every single person that calls you a racist, which is intellectually dishonest and lazy, where you actually profoundly thought through your beliefs.
01:23:42.000Where you understand why you believe what you believe?
01:23:45.000There's no easy answer, is what I'm trying to tell you.
01:23:47.000I'm not going to tell you, like, you know, you can tell everyone what you believe while you believe, you're getting straight A's.
01:24:10.000So whatever punishment they give you is just nothing compared to the friendships, compared to the relationships, and the support network that we are here to support you.
01:24:19.000Because people say, Charlie, how are we going to support the country?
01:24:46.000You could try to take that from me, but I will never stop contesting for truth.
01:24:50.000And then a more kind of applicable, just kind of applicable thing in high school.
01:24:54.000I don't say this for college kids, but I would appeal through your parents to try to have some sort of review of how they're issuing justice.
01:25:01.000Remember, the idea of justice is now being abused because that is an abuse of justice against you.
01:25:06.000That a high school kid has to go through a detention sort of quasi-Soviet show trial because you dare to question legitimate racism.
01:26:01.000So I just want to reiterate my thanks to the incredible Turning Point USA activists that helped put on this event.
01:26:07.000And I just want to say this: that this sort of regime, this educational, this educational diversity regime is one that we are going to push back against in every single way.
01:26:19.000Know what you believe and why you believe it.
01:27:17.000But if we hold the line, if we continue to proclaim truth against what they push towards us with courage, because courage is the ultimate virtue, because without courage, there are no other virtues.
01:27:29.000People say all the time, Charlie, what do you at Turning Point USA try to do?
01:27:32.000I try to spread courage like a wildfire through every single one of our students, like Anthony, like our Turning Point USA students, University of Michigan, to stand what they believe.
01:27:40.000Because if not, we're living in an open-air Soviet country the moment we stop telling people what we believe and why we believe it.
01:27:45.000But here's the amazing thing about truth: truth has a way of handling itself once you let it free.
01:27:51.000You say something that is true, it'll defend itself.
01:27:53.000You say something that is rational and reasonable against the lies, against the deception and the treachery.
01:27:58.000Then all of a sudden, things start to sort themselves out.
01:28:01.000But it's only going to happen when every single one of us proclaim the truth and we stand courageously for it, which is exactly why we have this event tonight.