00:01:09.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:40.000So, Arthur, we've been kind of framing the conversation, if you will, right now, around how a majority of the political discourse is around things that are patently insane, the woke, if you will, and that there needs to be kind of a recentering around team reality, and that only conservatives can help make that consolidation possible.
00:02:03.000But, you know, when you look at some of the polling, some of which is honest, I suspect, and you see that there's actually strikingly little support for a lot of these very radical left-wing ideologies.
00:02:16.000And then you wonder, well, how on earth is it that these remain the center conversations of the nation if there's so little public support?
00:02:26.000And then you begin to think through how much money and institutional support there is for these causes and the immense disproportion in power on the left versus the right.
00:02:39.000And then you start seeing how many conservatives over the last generation have been snoozing at the wheel.
00:02:46.000They've been fighting on some very irrelevant issues.
00:02:50.000One kind of trick that I like to think about is: if you implemented the full agenda of many of the think tanks on the mainstream right, nothing would change about America.
00:03:05.000It would all be a total domination of the left's institutions.
00:03:09.000And so, what we have not thought through is trying to win back territory in real ways, trying to repeal the immense power of those institutions.
00:03:31.000Whereas when you look at the immense, as I keep saying, institutional power of the left, they own the universities, which we refuse to defund.
00:03:49.000And nobody ever really does anything about it.
00:03:51.000It's a really interesting and thought-provoking take, which is if the agenda, if the, you know, the wishes of the think tanks were actually implemented, would the country look any different at all?
00:04:21.000Let me just keep kind of riffing on this a little bit.
00:04:24.000Look, the universities in K-12 is low-hanging fruit.
00:04:28.000And, you know, there have been some outrages, some actions on the K-12 level not long ago.
00:04:34.000But when you start to look at the funding, you start to see that states, which is where I think the main game is, are funding a lot of these state-based institutions.
00:04:45.000And, you know, we live in this dream world where we think that college improves everybody.
00:05:03.000There are alternatives that states need to start thinking through about pipelines, internship type, apprenticeship type programs, where you can learn real hard skills that actually the country very much needs.
00:05:19.000In fact, needs so much that the left says, well, that's why we have so much illegal immigration.
00:05:23.000It's good for us because we can't fill those jobs.
00:05:26.000The key is to start thinking creatively and seriously in a way that we haven't done regrettably in about a generation.
00:05:34.000And there's a lot of very interesting things to be done once you reframe your mind and start thinking about the territory that the right holds, the institutions that it has to recapture at the level of the states, so as to build themselves up and make them resilient in a real way and not just in a, I wrote an op-ed way.
00:05:55.000That's such an important point of actually building institutions and building new things that actually matter.
00:06:01.000Can you give any examples of where that is happening meaningfully of any good news or positive movement in that regard?
00:06:09.000Well, the state that everybody is now looking at, which is Florida, what DeSantis has done is he has thought through this problem and realized that the real power, the real stakes for the future of the country are at the level of the states.
00:06:27.000He today announced that he's going to figure out what the pension fund in Florida can do to remove itself from Twitter in case Elon Musk doesn't win that perfectly legitimate battle.
00:06:44.000It was actually the state of West Virginia.
00:06:46.000The treasurer said that he is removing something like $8 billion that's saved up that's managed by the state treasurer in the West Virginia Pension Fund, removing that money from BlackRock.
00:06:58.000This is a first step that I hope continues to rev up.
00:07:02.000This is a step that should lead to many states pooling all of that money, the pension plan money together and creating various EPFs to start protecting, bolstering, growing businesses that are patriotic.
00:07:33.000But what is the country you actually want to live in?
00:07:39.000Have you looked at how much of Russia is inside your 401k or IRA?
00:07:43.000Did you know my friends at PAX Financial Group have zero investments in Russia through their biblical investment strategy?
00:07:49.000Those companies were screened out long ago because they didn't pass the treat people right test.
00:07:53.000One of the most important tenets of the Christian faith is to love your neighbor, and this includes to love your employees.
00:07:58.000Based on PAX's biblical responsible investment strategy, a company, domestic or international, is excluded from an investment from your portfolio if it violates our innate God-given fundamental rights.
00:08:21.000PAX Financial is rooted in biblical wisdom.
00:08:25.000So, if you have $150,000 or more and would like to know more about biblical responsible investing at PAX Financial Group, text Charlie to number 74868.
00:08:42.000So, you just take out your phone, text the number 74868, and type in Charlie to get to know about PAX Biblical Responsible Investing, biblical responsible investing strategy.
00:08:54.000Take out your phone, text Charlie to 74868.
00:08:59.000They're about to manage some money for me.
00:09:01.000I really think highly of PAX Financial.
00:09:28.000And what we're after is political liberty.
00:09:31.000And as I said before, I don't see any other way than through the states, at least for now, that that can be safeguarded, protected, and expanded.
00:09:47.000It has not really fought a political fight in a way that it ought to have done, to the point where it has lost institutions that it thought it worshipped and it thought it owned forever.
00:09:59.000Just as an example, I mean, you know this and your listeners know this.
00:10:02.000It would have been unimaginable 20 years ago that the Fortune 500s, which the right made its main client, would have gone the other way and laughed in the face of the right after all of the innumerable endless benefits that were given to them.
00:10:18.000It's also unimaginable that they would have lost the military, which is teetering, but its leadership right now has very clearly sided with the left on anti-racism, on identity politics.
00:10:31.000These are very strong signals to the right that it has lost those elements of society.
00:10:38.000It would be one thing if we were just at this point the normal nation and, you know, we were still basically 20 years ago where the parties disagreed in marginal ways.
00:10:51.000But what the left now wants is, you know, a very different thing while it has the military in its hands, while it has, you know, a trillion dollars in of corporations in its hands.
00:11:05.000The stakes are very different and it's a very dangerous situation.
00:11:10.000And so I suppose this is the question that, you know, conservatives need to need to answer.
00:11:16.000And this is something that I think attracts me to the candidacy of JD Vance, amongst many others, which is, are we willing to use political power to try and get our desired outcome, right?
00:11:28.000Our desired outcome would be increased church attendance, a stronger family unit, middle-class wages going up, a happier country, right?
00:11:39.000These are outcomes that I think are necessary.
00:11:43.000And one of the things that really bothers me about kind of some of the libertarian think tanks out there in Washington, D.C., and if you really drill them down, they will admit they are outcome agnostic.
00:11:54.000They think that outcomes might be nice, but they're not willing to do what's necessary to get that outcome.
00:12:00.000Instead, they would rather have an ideological framework that is quote unquote consistent, even if the country might be led to serfdom or some sort of oligarchy.
00:12:10.000Can you help expand on that and riff on that a little bit?
00:12:15.000I mean, you know, these are deeply unpolitical, small-souled people that want, that are okay with tyranny, that are okay with losing the country so long as the divine doctrine, whatever they have in mind, is fulfilled.
00:12:37.000And this is a big problem of how the professionalized right has structured itself over the last generation.
00:12:44.000It's promoted these kinds of people rather than donors looking seriously under the hood and saying, what exactly am I spending my money on?
00:12:53.000And then asking questions like, what do you think this op-ed actually accomplished?
00:12:58.000You're losing institution after institution.
00:13:01.000And when you win elections, it doesn't matter because the institutional power of the left is so overwhelming that your candidate, your congressman, your president can't do anything.
00:13:11.000He'll just be basically like it was with Trump, steamrolled by the administrative state, stimmied, humiliated, leaked on, while the press carries the water.
00:13:23.000Why have those institutions grown to such a degree while the right was allegedly watching out?
00:13:30.000So it's partly a donor problem, a not looking under the hood, but it's partly just a living in a big city and not seeing that there are people out in the country suffering who are your constituents, who you should be fighting for, while you have your tidy, cared for, sinecure job.
00:13:51.000But the last point is the most important one, which is that the left lives inside the mainstream right's heart in a way that is not true in the opposite way.
00:14:05.000The right does not live in the left's heart.
00:14:10.000Sometimes it puts on hysterics, but often it just has contempt.
00:14:14.000Whereas the right deeply cares about what the left thinks, the right deeply, the professionalized right, anyways, deeply wants to be quoted in the New York Times.
00:14:38.000Yeah, well, look, it's a part of human psychology.
00:14:41.000You know, you look up to who rules you.
00:14:44.000And they all, by virtue of that, admit that those institutions actually do rule them.
00:14:50.000And so they're satisfied with, you know, a five square inch sandbox where they can play and talk about occupational licensing reform as though that's nothing against that issue.
00:15:00.000It's just not a civilizational level issue.
00:15:02.000You can have that, and then nothing changes about the trajectory of the country.
00:15:08.000And so that's, and that's, it's just also like a psychology thing, right?
00:15:11.000Which is like, I don't, I think I could save the country without having to get my hands messy, right?
00:15:16.000Is that there is, is there like a, is there a idealism that has plagued the conservative movement that somehow we're all just kind of in this, like not this continual Socratic debate with one another, when in reality, we're closer to political warfare?
00:15:33.000Yeah, it's partly just the prejudices of the last generation that, you know, ideas win the day.
00:15:41.000You know, if that was true, then a lot of the left ideas, which are, you know, being pounded into many minds, would lose.
00:15:49.000So the thesis is so easily falsified, not seeing that that was true at one point in America when the majority of the country was unabashedly on the right and conservative.
00:16:01.000And almost all of the major national institutions were that way too.
00:16:06.000So it's not just a matter of debating.
00:16:08.000It's not a matter of writing an op-ed.
00:16:11.000It's a matter of controlling institutions or working to lessen the power of the left institutions.
00:16:18.000And once you get into that paradigm of thinking, there are many, many things that can be done.
00:16:24.000I have a question here that I think is really important.
00:16:28.000And this is something that I get asked a lot, which is, you know, the duration of the fight.
00:16:33.000For whatever reason, a lot of conservatives, you know, they kind of have this timetable that this can be over in a summer.
00:16:40.000I'm sure you've experienced this phenomenon.
00:16:44.000And I think we know the answer to that.
00:16:46.000And if, of course, it's not, where does that phenomenon come from, where we just have to win one more election and we can get back to the country of our grandparents?
00:16:57.000Well, when the left said, you know, a generation ago, you have to politicize everything, they did.
00:17:04.000And they thought that we are going to take over this country, at least its major institutions and a lot of its populace, and we're going to own it.
00:17:13.000And everybody understood that they, in their own lives, have marching orders, not just at the top, not just the institution builders, not just the members of Congress, not just the journalists, but even the day-to-day people who, you know, made it a symbol of their pride to hassle people on the right, just normal people minding their business.
00:17:33.000So they have successfully politicized everything.
00:17:36.000And the right in turn has done the opposite.
00:18:03.000And so there needs to be a mindset shift.
00:18:06.000And I think it was you that might have said on Tucker Carlson's show, and I wrote it down in one of my notebooks that I have where I hear things I like.
00:18:14.000And correct me if I'm wrong, it wasn't you, but I'm 99% sure it was you that we just have now started to fight.
00:18:19.000In some ways, the clock is now starting.
00:18:30.000So look, look, we haven't really fully fought.
00:18:36.000What I keep talking about, and I hope at some point we'll get into it in more detail, on the level of the states, we haven't fought.
00:18:43.000We haven't even done the kind of psychological rejection of many of the left's concepts that live in the right's mind, many of their moral doctrines that live in the right's mind.
00:18:56.000I mean, when you go to a mainstream conservative think tank, you talk to people, they're to a great degree morally on the left side.
00:19:06.000But which is why they just defend things that they're never attacked for.
00:19:43.000And I don't mean to bring this up as like you solve that, you solve the country, far from it.
00:19:48.000But that's just one example of the extent to which there has been no fight.
00:19:53.000You haven't even taken the money away.
00:19:56.000I mean, the idea that you have right-leaning or deep-red states with these huge campuses that you, right-wing taxpayers, are funding so that they can teach your children to despise you, to despise the country.
00:20:12.000The money hasn't even been taken away from them.
00:20:16.000And then there is a whole assortment of laws that should be examined, should be thought through, that would help the middle class, help the working class, and would cut down on all of the many noxious things that the laws currently allow.
00:21:57.000Without that, what you end up having is what the left is kind of building up now, which is, you know, some strange racial hierarchy that is used to evaluate qualifications for all sorts of jobs.
00:22:13.000That's just in conflict with the rule of law.
00:22:15.000And yet, or letting mobs get away with it, or letting the elites get away with it.
00:22:20.000I mean, this is kind of one of the amazing things is that I haven't heard for any calls in Congress to investigate the very obvious, I mean, it's like known to everybody except journalists, abuses of power inside of our intel state.
00:22:39.000No serious investigations taking place, but yet that's one of these rule of law issues that protects elites, protects people behind security clearances on the one hand, allows, on the other hand, mobs to get away with it.
00:22:53.000And the middle class that is, you know, to a great degree right-leaning is crunched relentlessly by various laws, by their jobs being shipped away.
00:23:25.000And so other moral questions, though, would be this idea of is there some form of absolute truth or is truth inherently subjective?
00:23:36.000This is something that I encounter all the time.
00:23:39.000For example, when I went to Berkeley recently, I kind of sat at a table and talked to students at length, and they were insistent that truth is merely an opinion.
00:23:52.000Is that an important topic for us to be thinking about, Arthur, or is that just kind of a silly philosophical thought experiment on a college campus?
00:23:59.000Does it have civilizational implications?
00:24:02.000Yes, it does, obviously, but I'm of two minds on this.
00:24:06.000Look, we are a liberal democracy, which is to say that these things are private.
00:24:14.000However, there are public, obvious truths on which the nation was founded, like human equality, like natural rights.
00:24:24.000And so it's those truths that I'm most concerned about.
00:24:30.000And it's protecting them, it's fighting for them, and it's cutting off having the capacity to cut off the various forms of dissent from those things.
00:24:41.000I mean, you know, half of the country has already dissented from the fact that we are equal in our natural rights.
00:24:49.000The current teaching is, no, you are an oppressor group member.
00:25:17.000Well, and so, but let me kind of go a step further though, but doesn't that rejection of natural rights, it happens earlier if you believe that there isn't anything objective at all?
00:25:28.000I mean, that's an objective, like, that's a moral statement, right?
00:25:32.000That is that there is an equality of what a human being is.
00:26:43.000If it was three, four years ago, what I saw, and it could be just a very inaccurate sample size, mind you, was there was a nihilism and a darkness of a philosophy that did articulate some of that, which threw me off.
00:27:20.000But look, Charlie, the truth is, I think that the real game is about showing people the way rather than just confronting them on these big issues.
00:27:36.000Right now, they are in a psychological state of total obstinacy, total hatred.
00:27:41.000When you look at some of the just interestingly, you know, when you look at some of the Socratic, the Platonic dialogues, you see that Socrates doesn't fully engage with everybody.
00:27:51.000Sometimes the conversation just trails off because he sees that this person can't be convinced and it's not worth his time.
00:27:58.000So a lot of people will come our way, the skeptical, the open-minded, the open-hearted, once there is this play to create our own institutions and to have institutional power, because that's how things sell.
00:28:13.000I mean, you can use this as an analogy to science.
00:29:20.000It's like, what on earth does that mean?
00:29:23.000What I'm actually talking about are powerful, wealthy assets that are right-leaning, that are in the states, and that are assisted by the states.
00:29:34.000So let me give you an example of what I have in mind.
00:29:38.000I think that DeSantis should nominate basically some kind of like private equity czar who should go to blue states, scout out real productive capacity and help those companies move to Florida.
00:29:53.000I don't mean moving, you know, a wing of Goldman to Florida.
00:31:22.000All of the laws that DeSantis is working on right now on LGBTQ issues, those things look, and you know, those are our fellow citizens, and they don't want to live in such a place where their kids are educated in that way, but we do.
00:31:35.000And so they can stay in New York, they can stay in San Francisco, they can stay with their mobs, and that's fine.
00:32:39.000He sits on the Turning Point USA Advisory Board.
00:32:42.000Go to mypillow.com, promo code Kirk, mypillow.com, promo code Kirk.
00:32:49.000The question will be then: outside of the kind of governmental action, there does have to be a private sector institution buildup, right?
00:32:57.000Or you're saying that the government should aid and assist that alongside kind of the this is one of the things that I think, um, and I'd love your take on it, that is attractive and is exciting about Elon Musk's potential takeover of Twitter, right?
00:33:12.000Um, look, I don't want to live in a country where an oligarch has to save us to defend Western values, but I want to win, and therefore, my commitment to winning, I'm all for it.
00:33:25.000Yeah, well, no, I mean, state assistance, um, uh, property tax assistance, subsidy assistance that would help create the essential infrastructure that states need to wean themselves off of the woke regime that rules a major part of America.
00:33:48.000So, for example, uh, there should be protections for state banking systems, there need to be banks that are there, there need to be channels of communications that are assisted by the states.
00:34:02.000So, why doesn't Texas and Florida have its own servers when companies, people are taken offline?
00:34:14.000Um, but you see, the key is to start thinking in these ways, to start thinking about de-wokification, uh, and to start building up our own infrastructures in those states.
00:34:29.000Look, this is a bit of a controversial take.
00:34:32.000Maybe you and I disagree, maybe some of your listeners will disagree, but I think that what happened with the Canada truckers and Bitcoin should be a wake-up call.
00:34:45.000That I don't understand the technical side well enough, I have my hunches, but it in my mind has proven that this escape valve that everybody hoped would get you out of the system once and for all-untouchable money that is yours in perpetuity.
00:35:02.000Turns out it doesn't stand up well to state power.
00:35:17.000Is one of those things like we found our safety valve, we found our silver bullet, it's going to get out of it.
00:35:22.000It's like, no, you need real banking systems.
00:35:27.000And I don't know enough about the technology of Bitcoin to disagree the Bitcoin defenders, of whom some are your Claremont uh colleagues, by the way.
00:35:36.000Absolutely, I think it's James Poulos, if I'm not mistaken, is a huge advocate of Bitcoin, and he knows it better than I do.
00:35:42.000But I think you're right, and I also would say, in its ideal, Bitcoin probably had that, but we've allowed the government into the Bitcoin universe by having to declare cryptocurrency on tax forms and all these things.
00:36:45.000And Trump himself was a romantic on this too.
00:36:50.000You know, all the generals, because they're all normal patriots, like the generals that I grew up seeing when I was a boy, they're all the same.
00:37:01.000And forward means creating these kinds of genuine bulwarks, not the bulwark of an op-ed, but a real bulwark that is institutional that gives you independence.
00:38:50.000Well, look, as I said before, look at what has happened over the past 40 years.
00:38:58.000Look at how every single institution was taken from the right.
00:39:02.000Look at now what the ideology is that is being used to govern those institutions and govern the public.
00:39:09.000It is an ideology that basically says that There is a sacred, unfalsifiable class of citizens who cannot be contradicted, who to whom all things should be given.
00:39:23.000And then there's the oppressor class who has to be punished at every turn, who has to be punished through the laws, who has to be humiliated, who has to be crushed because he illegitimately ruled this country.
00:39:36.000When that's the dynamic, if you're not struggling for political liberty by understanding that you cannot have political liberty without powerful institutions on your side, then you are just living in a romantic fantasy and you will lose.
00:39:53.000And that is exactly where most conservatives live: a romantic fantasy of a country that no longer exists.
00:41:06.000And if they really did, then they would know that a lot of incredible countries have fallen in the past.
00:41:13.000And they think somehow that can't happen here, but it can.
00:41:17.000And the only thing that prevents it is smart people who think through the actual politics of this.
00:41:24.000Not the talking for the sake of, you know, one little clip because you're in Congress and all the cameras are on you or on the campaign trail, but like a real single-minded focus on building up these institutions and peeling back the other ones.
00:41:39.000That's how you get to some kind of return to normalcy ceasefire.