The Charlie Kirk Show - April 09, 2022


Gov. Spencer Cox—A Case Study in Electing a Republican Scam Artist with Pedro Gonzalez


Episode Stats


Length

31 minutes

Words per minute

177.58218

Word count

5,582

Sentence count

395

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

21

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Pedro Gonzalez joins Charlie Kirk on the Charlie Kirk Show to discuss why the Republican Party is so weak, and why Mitt Romney is so much better. Plus, why is it that we get such crummy Republicans in places like Utah and Florida?

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody, a bonus episode today on the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:02.000 Pedro Gonzalez, why are Republicans so weak?
00:00:05.000 Spencer Cox, Mitt Romney, we talk about liberalism within the Republican Party.
00:00:09.000 What drives and motivates them?
00:00:11.000 How DeSantis is so different.
00:00:12.000 At the end of this conversation, it's worthy of taking notes.
00:00:15.000 Pedro goes in in like a five-minute summary of why liberalism almost always ends in totalitarianism.
00:00:21.000 It's very interesting, compelling.
00:00:23.000 I know I learned a lot.
00:00:24.000 No advertisers on this episode.
00:00:26.000 Thanks to you.
00:00:26.000 CharlieKirk.com slash support.
00:00:28.000 If you're moved by our content and you enjoy what we do, CharlieKirk.com slash support is the place for you to be able to support our program and get behind the work we are doing.
00:00:36.000 Get involved with Turning Point USA Today.
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00:00:43.000 Come to our young women's leadership summit, tpusa.com slash YWLS.
00:00:47.000 Buckle up. 0.96
00:00:48.000 Here we go.
00:00:49.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:51.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
00:00:53.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:56.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:01:00.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:01:01.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:01:02.000 His spirit, his love of this country.
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00:01:34.000 Why is it that we get such crummy Republicans?
00:01:38.000 Utah is one of the most beautiful places in the country.
00:01:42.000 Utah has some phenomenal people.
00:01:44.000 I grew up going to Utah.
00:01:45.000 I love Utah.
00:01:47.000 Utah is one of the most conservative states in America, period.
00:01:50.000 And yet, Utah is governed by people that wouldn't even pass as Democrats in certain states.
00:01:58.000 Mitt Romney, obviously being one of them, and this governor that I didn't even know the name of before.
00:02:04.000 I'm trying to find an article here that reinforces this.
00:02:07.000 Spencer Cox.
00:02:10.000 Spencer Cox is someone I haven't done a lot of research on, but he just really irritates me and he should irritate you for his recent positions of stating his pronouns on a Zoom call, of vetoing a bill that would protect female sports, of outwardly pandering to the alphabet cartel.
00:02:31.000 And it's not just in Utah, but it's across the country.
00:02:34.000 And it really does beg the question, are Democrats running as Republicans just to try to win in Republican states?
00:02:40.000 All of this is worthy of examination.
00:02:42.000 To help us unpack this is Pedro Gonzalez, who had a great segment with Tucker Carlson about this.
00:02:47.000 And we're going to talk about it for the entire hour and really dive deep.
00:02:50.000 Pedro, welcome back.
00:02:51.000 Hey, thanks for having me back, Charlie.
00:02:53.000 So Pedro, who's Spencer Cox and why does he support grooming?
00:03:02.000 So Spencer Cox is the governor of Utah, as you noted.
00:03:06.000 And like you, I never really cared a whole lot about him.
00:03:10.000 I didn't know a whole lot about him. 0.95
00:03:13.000 I just kind of wrote him off as just another goofy, squishy Republican. 0.99
00:03:18.000 But, you know, obviously he's revealed himself to be much, much worse than your typical squish. 0.95
00:03:23.000 He's actively moving to the left. 0.97
00:03:26.000 He's actively punching to the right.
00:03:29.000 After my segment on Tucker Carlson, if you look at Spencer Cox's Twitter and you go to his liked tweets, you'll see that Cox was quietly liking people calling Tucker Putin's apologist or Putin's favorite white nationalist, although he didn't retweet any of those things and he didn't actually say anything about the segment itself and the claims that were laid out before him.
00:03:54.000 He was just kind of passive aggressively liking these people calling Tucker all these names.
00:04:01.000 So, I mean, this is the governor of a state, right?
00:04:03.000 And he's just imagine him like with the kind of the blue light of the screen on his face.
00:04:09.000 He's in a dark room liking these mean tweets aimed at Tucker.
00:04:13.000 Because, I mean, that really just defines him, this impotent, effeminate man-child who just somehow actually wound up in the governor's office.
00:04:26.000 It's just totally.
00:04:26.000 No, I mean, I want to play a tape here.
00:04:28.000 And I mean, look, I'm not really big into like the whole attacking of personal thing, but if you're going to call yourself a Republican, a father, and a man, like this is just unacceptable, right?
00:04:37.000 So he's on this Zoom call.
00:04:39.000 Okay, Cut68.
00:04:41.000 Pedro, I want your reaction to this.
00:04:44.000 Play Cut 68.
00:04:46.000 Okay.
00:04:48.000 Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.
00:04:50.000 I am Governor Spencer Cox, and I have the pleasure today of hosting the first one Utah student town hall.
00:04:58.000 And my preferred pronouns are he, him, and his.
00:05:01.000 Thank you for sharing yours with me.
00:05:03.000 Is this a guy that you want to lead you into battle?
00:05:06.000 Yes, absolutely. 0.85
00:05:08.000 And look, I also don't typically like to hurl insults beyond what I think is necessary, but that's what people, I mean, this is the ridiculous thing, right?
00:05:19.000 People like Cox will say that like, no, now there's no need for name-calling and all that. 0.82
00:05:23.000 But then they are actually the worst purveyors of name-calling. 0.96
00:05:26.000 They write off all their critics as extremists, as Trumpists, as Putinists, as racists, as white nationalists. 0.51
00:05:33.000 So I think it's called for to actually reply in kind sometimes.
00:05:37.000 But to be clear, I think Cox certainly does believe a lot of these things that he's saying.
00:05:42.000 Like it's very clear that if he didn't believe them before, he has certainly talked himself into believing these things.
00:05:50.000 But I recently wrote about this at my substack, contra.substack.com, about basically how the driving force or a tremendous driving force behind people like Cox, because there is a massive incentive structure in terms of just donations and things like that and influence.
00:06:14.000 There's a massive incentive structure to move left on issues.
00:06:18.000 What I looked at was the effect of woke capital in Utah.
00:06:25.000 We'll just start with that.
00:06:26.000 So if you look at his financial disclosures, and I talked about this on Tucker's segments, you'll see that for 2021, his biggest corporate donor was Zion's Band Corporation.
00:06:35.000 Zion's is well plugged into the whole Utah LGBT scene.
00:06:40.000 They have a good relationship.
00:06:42.000 It's not that big of a scene in Utah.
00:06:43.000 Like, I didn't know that.
00:06:45.000 I don't mean to interrupt.
00:06:46.000 I didn't know the Mormon state had like a big day scene.
00:06:48.000 I mean, that's kind of new to me.
00:06:50.000 Basically, this stuff is incubated in the big cities.
00:06:53.000 Like, this is true everywhere.
00:06:55.000 Like, this is, we, this is Austin in Texas, right?
00:06:58.000 Basically, you have these colonies that get that basically kind of become the hub of the rot.
00:07:08.000 We'll call it that.
00:07:09.000 And then from there, it spreads to the rest of the state. 0.98
00:07:12.000 This happens in red states.
00:07:14.000 Let me interrupt.
00:07:14.000 How much of this has been Utah's like pathological obsession with trying to recruit Silicon Valley tech companies to come to Salt Lake City?
00:07:22.000 Tech has been a huge part of it.
00:07:24.000 Woke capital, generally speaking, but tech specifically has been a huge part of it, which of course Cox has welcomed.
00:07:30.000 And they have massive data centers all throughout Utah.
00:07:32.000 So I've been going to Utah my whole life and it's unrecognizable.
00:07:35.000 I mean, you feel like you're flying into San Jose where you kind of have these mid-high-rise buildings, top-class architecture, aesthetically, I think, unpleasing, but for people that hate architecture, they build these, you know, these tech things.
00:07:49.000 And it's just one after the other.
00:07:50.000 And there's these kind of these satellite places.
00:07:53.000 And it's important to understand why Utah, why Utah?
00:07:55.000 Tax rate, it's okay. 0.98
00:07:58.000 They preyed upon the Mormon working force, which was low drama, family focused, and was they're really good employees. 0.99
00:08:07.000 So these tech companies were able to go like outsource some labor there. 0.83
00:08:11.000 And then they started to implement their values, their recent grads, and they've changed the fabric of Utah.
00:08:17.000 Why?
00:08:18.000 I'm going to name some other Republicans beyond Spencer Cox.
00:08:20.000 We're talking about Mitt Romney, but I'm just interested of how did this happen because they're so disconnected from their voters and disconnected from what's popular.
00:08:28.000 Pedro, you're telling us about Utah.
00:08:30.000 Yeah.
00:08:31.000 So where we left off was talking about Troy Williams and Equality Utah.
00:08:36.000 So Williams is an LGBT activist who thinks that the tech industry can help push Utah to the left on LGBT issues just as a matter of course with the amount of influence and money that tech companies coming to Utah have.
00:08:53.000 And of course, the governor, Spencer Cox, has welcomed their influence in the state.
00:08:58.000 But there's actually another problem to this. 0.64
00:09:01.000 In 2015, the LDS church and LGBT activists established the Utah Compromise.
00:09:08.000 Basically, there'll be no discrimination against LGBT people, but the church has religious exemptions that are afforded to it.
00:09:17.000 So basically, it was a kind of ceasefire, right, in the culture war.
00:09:20.000 But Williams no longer looks at it as a ceasefire for LGBT activists.
00:09:25.000 He thinks that with the help of the tech industry, his side can basically kind of override that ceasefire in a kind of organic way.
00:09:35.000 Like, look, we're just keeping up with the times.
00:09:39.000 Like, Utah is becoming an increasingly progressive state, and that's just fair play, right?
00:09:45.000 But the other aspect of this is the fact that LDS church leadership seems to be also moving left on the issue.
00:09:52.000 Dallin Oakes, who's the next in line to lead the LDS church, gave a speech last year where he suggested that he wants to move, basically pour the oil of concession over troubled waters with LGBT activists and kind of move the Mormon church into a closer friendship with LGBT activists and the state.
00:10:14.000 And he favorably quoted Williams in that speech as a kind of nod to this very key LGBT activist in Utah.
00:10:24.000 And last year, he now lives in California.
00:10:30.000 His name is Jeff Green.
00:10:31.000 This is formerly the richest man in Utah.
00:10:34.000 He's a tech billionaire. 0.63
00:10:35.000 And last year on the anniversary of Mormonism, he did two things.
00:10:39.000 He resigned from the LDS church, citing its treatment of LGBT people. 1.00
00:10:45.000 Right.
00:10:46.000 And then he announced a $600,000 pledge.
00:10:49.000 And Williams calls this tithing.
00:10:51.000 But it seems like the influence that guys like Green have, I think just because they have so much money and they have such a big platform, it seems to actually be working on the church leadership themselves.
00:11:07.000 Now, that doesn't mean that Mormonism as a whole has this problem.
00:11:11.000 Obviously, there are a lot of socially conservative Mormons out there who do not agree with the movement of the church.
00:11:17.000 But I think that just shows how powerful the influence is of woke capital, of the tech industry, and how it doesn't matter if you're living in a red state.
00:11:27.000 If you have Republicans like Spencer Cox or Mitt Romney, this stuff is going to happen.
00:11:32.000 Like in states where you, you know, supposedly you can't elect Democrats because it's too red.
00:11:36.000 You don't actually need to elect Democrats.
00:11:38.000 You just need the right kind of Republicans or the wrong kind.
00:11:42.000 And they play the voters totally.
00:11:45.000 They take advantage of them.
00:11:47.000 And so talk more about how in Utah, though, because they have had a they've had a huge business development push over the last decade.
00:11:55.000 And this is something Republicans need to be careful with because here in Arizona, we're going through the same thing.
00:12:01.000 Like, we're open for business.
00:12:02.000 We steal all these California businesses away.
00:12:05.000 But that could change your state dramatically politically.
00:12:09.000 Yeah.
00:12:09.000 Yeah, I think it's, I mean, it's a balancing act, right?
00:12:11.000 There's no easy answer for this because obviously growth and things like that, those, those can be a good thing, but then there, there are strings attached here.
00:12:21.000 And so I think one state where you actually see a remarkable pushback is in Florida, actually, with Governor DeSantis, you know, locking horns with Disney and basically putting the interests of his state and his constituents and the things that his that people who live in Florida and people who like myself might someday move to Florida, the things that we actually love about that state, right, that makes it different.
00:12:46.000 But most Republican governors are not that courageous.
00:12:50.000 I think DeSantis is truly unique in that he has a pro-growth mentality and policy and approach to things, but at the same time, he's not going to allow himself as the elected leader of Floridians to get pushed around by Disney, by woke corporations that are pushing CRT and frankly, these things that I think are accurately described as grooming.
00:13:14.000 I want to ask you about what do these people want?
00:13:16.000 What do the Spencer Cox, Mitt Romney types want?
00:13:19.000 Like, what is what is their vision for America?
00:13:21.000 I want to try to see it through their lens.
00:13:23.000 I think our audience would really benefit from that to understand, you know, what is their calculus?
00:13:29.000 Is it just pure corruption?
00:13:31.000 Or is there an ideological vein to this that really has created the modern, moderate Republican, like the governor of Indiana who vetoed the transgender deal or the governor of North Dakota, Doug Burnham, who vetoed.
00:13:44.000 This is a very interesting theme that I want to explore with you that I can't quite understand.
00:13:49.000 And then you have DeSantis.
00:13:50.000 And I just want to think this through.
00:13:52.000 What makes him different?
00:13:56.000 Pedro, quick unrelated detour.
00:13:59.000 The two men were found not guilty of the attempted kidnapping of Governor Whitmer.
00:14:03.000 What's the significance of this?
00:14:05.000 There's a deeper story here, isn't there?
00:14:07.000 Two men.
00:14:08.000 Wasn't there something like a dozen FBI informants?
00:14:12.000 You don't say.
00:14:14.000 But it actually gives me faith in the system that trials like that can fall apart.
00:14:18.000 And then the judge announced the mistrial for all the others.
00:14:21.000 Incredible.
00:14:22.000 Yeah.
00:14:23.000 Incredible only because that was such a flashpoint for a while, you know, that this was, this was, that kidnapping was our fault.
00:14:32.000 It was because of our race.
00:14:33.000 They tried to loop me into it because one of the guys there like took a selfie with somebody at some point.
00:14:38.000 And it was this whole, it was everyone tangent like within the Midwest was looped into this thing.
00:14:43.000 Yeah.
00:14:44.000 Well, I guess the FBI is not what it used to be.
00:14:47.000 And, you know, otherwise this, this maybe would have gone a different way.
00:14:50.000 Well, I think this is a benefit.
00:14:51.000 There's not a lot of social media.
00:14:53.000 I think it gave the defense, thanks to Darren Beattie's work, a better defense.
00:14:57.000 I really do.
00:14:58.000 Okay, going back to Utah.
00:14:59.000 So let me ask you.
00:15:00.000 So what does the Spencer Cox, Mitt Romney people, what do they want?
00:15:04.000 Is it really, are they all just nakedly corrupt, Pedro?
00:15:08.000 Or is there some vision for the world that they have that I can't quite resonate with?
00:15:15.000 What is it?
00:15:16.000 Well, that's good.
00:15:17.000 It's good that you can't resonate with it.
00:15:19.000 People shouldn't.
00:15:20.000 But I mean, it helps to understand it.
00:15:22.000 So yeah, setting aside the obvious cynicism because Mitt Romney, I don't think has any actual principles.
00:15:28.000 But Spencer Cox, on the other hand, I wouldn't call them principles, but I think he has things that he believes in.
00:15:33.000 And I mean, ultimately, these people call themselves centrists.
00:15:36.000 That's what you'll hear, right, from guys like Evan McMullen.
00:15:39.000 I'm a centrist.
00:15:41.000 But the thing about the center is that it's always on the left.
00:15:46.000 And maybe we can actually look the center is always right in the heart of the Democrat Party.
00:15:51.000 Yes, that's where the center is.
00:15:53.000 And the left is always moving further left.
00:15:55.000 So the center is always moving further left as well.
00:15:57.000 I mean, it's bizarre, but it's that's actually right.
00:16:00.000 That's right.
00:16:01.000 And I think maybe Chesterton, although I, you know, I really don't use the term conservative for myself, but I think this kind of helps.
00:16:09.000 So Chesterton had this great little saying that the world is divided between conservatives and progressives.
00:16:14.000 The role of progressives is to rush into ruin.
00:16:17.000 The role of conservatives is to admire the ruins.
00:16:20.000 And that even when the revolutionist might repent of the revolution that they helped bring about, the traditionalist, that is the conservative, has already enshrined the revolution as part of their great traditions.
00:16:34.000 And I think that is basically the way that I understand people like Cox, McMullen, whatever, when they say I'm a centrist, I'm a principled centrist.
00:16:43.000 What they're saying is we just want to preserve the part of the revolution that we're at right now, most of it.
00:16:50.000 We quibble with parts of it, but not the whole.
00:16:53.000 And therefore, that is what it means to be a centrist.
00:16:56.000 You just want to preserve.
00:16:59.000 And this is, I mean, in some ways, this is actually the most the wrong kind of conservatism, but in a messed up way, the epitome of conservatism, in that you're literally preserving the status quo.
00:17:10.000 And when you look around you, that's nothing good.
00:17:12.000 Yeah, look, they want a first-class ticket on the Hindenburg, right?
00:17:15.000 So like they, they want to be, they want to make sure they got a good view when it all falls apart.
00:17:19.000 That's right.
00:17:20.000 And I think, and I think that's actually a huge part of it, talking about this idea of like having a nice view.
00:17:26.000 I think they do actually really like the pats on the head that they get from people to their left.
00:17:31.000 They really do like that.
00:17:32.000 It makes them feel good about themselves.
00:17:34.000 And, but that's also why they don't really care what people like you and I have to say.
00:17:39.000 It just bounces off their heads.
00:17:41.000 This, this is true for actually a lot of mainstream conservatives.
00:17:44.000 I mean, this is why people like David French never react, who I think has a very similar soul to guys like Spencer Cox.
00:17:53.000 They never really react or care for the opinions of people to their right because you're not their audience.
00:17:58.000 Like Spencer Cox, when I'm bashing him on TV, I'm not his audience.
00:18:03.000 So it might kind of make him, you know, it might embarrass him because he's been put on the spot.
00:18:07.000 But ultimately, I'm not the one that he cares about.
00:18:11.000 And like he doesn't care if I approve of him or not.
00:18:13.000 And that's really confusing if you're a Republican because you're thinking like, well, wait, you're supposed to be responding to basically the wants and needs of Republicans, not Democrats and these frauds like Evan McMullen and Mitt Romney, right?
00:18:27.000 But yeah, it is really disorienting because they have an R in front of their name and they talk about family values, but obviously, I mean, all those things are like bizarro versions of themselves.
00:18:39.000 Yeah, and I could go governor after governor, North Dakota, Indiana, Utah.
00:18:44.000 But let me ask you, though.
00:18:45.000 So, you know, this Cox types or the Holcomb types in Indiana, you know, they want the first class ticket on the Hindenburg.
00:18:53.000 They want to see the whole thing go down.
00:18:54.000 They want to make sure they're involved.
00:18:56.000 You know, they want to see it at the dance before it all falls apart.
00:18:58.000 And I agree.
00:18:59.000 I think there's a lot that we don't recognize that they like the title.
00:19:02.000 They like the office.
00:19:03.000 They like the staff.
00:19:04.000 They like the pictures.
00:19:05.000 They like the newspaper stuff.
00:19:07.000 There's all this kind of like weird, and I'm going to use a word that might not be sociopathic, like I like to be the most important person thing.
00:19:15.000 It's really weird, narcissistic at the very least.
00:19:18.000 But then explain DeSantis what drives him because he had every reason to be like all these others, right?
00:19:25.000 Like what is in the operating system of a DeSantis in a much less conservative state versus Cox?
00:19:32.000 I think when I think of guys like DeSantis, I think of like Thumos, this classic idea of like spiritedness.
00:19:40.000 I think that's not something that you can really teach people.
00:19:43.000 Like you can't teach someone to be courageous.
00:19:44.000 You can't teach someone to be spirited and have fight in them.
00:19:48.000 And I think that that is just something that is part of DeSantis' character.
00:19:53.000 And even if you disagree with him on some policy issues, like I think I could quibble with him on like foreign policy.
00:20:00.000 But nevertheless, there's no denying that DeSantis has a lot of spirit.
00:20:05.000 And I think that that's a huge part of it.
00:20:08.000 But on the other hand, he really does react and understand his base.
00:20:14.000 He reacts to them and he knows who his base is.
00:20:17.000 And so when you combine those two things, basically a kind of populist in the very literal sense, like he responds to what is popular in his base and also has the spirit to back it up, to like to stand up to a huge corporation like Disney, to take them on.
00:20:35.000 I think that's really what it comes down to.
00:20:37.000 And maybe it's crazy that something like spiritedness is a rare quality in political leaders, but it is.
00:20:47.000 And I think that's why it's so unusual to see that because you think about it, apart from, you know, people would say somebody like Trump or something like that.
00:20:55.000 Who else can you say that about when we're talking about Republicans, political leaders?
00:21:00.000 Who else can you say?
00:21:00.000 Like that person has a lot of spirit, has a lot of fight in them.
00:21:03.000 Who?
00:21:04.000 Adam Kinzinger cries in public?
00:21:07.000 Spencer Cox, pronouns to little girls?
00:21:10.000 Like it's just, it actually is really when you take a step back and you think about it, you're like, wow, that is actually what sets DeSantis apart.
00:21:17.000 He's spirited.
00:21:19.000 So you said something I think that is going to anger a lot of people.
00:21:23.000 And I'm going to ask you, how do we go about solving it?
00:21:25.000 You're right.
00:21:26.000 Spencer Cox doesn't care what his voters think.
00:21:28.000 So then how do we get through to these people then, Pedro?
00:21:31.000 How do we get more Ron DeSantis type leaders?
00:21:35.000 I mean, that's really where we're at because we now have an example where DeSantis can, if someone can do something, then what are voters supposed to do?
00:21:44.000 Yeah, it is difficult because this is like a structural problem in the sense that there are very few ways to vet people.
00:21:55.000 And it like if you're running for office as a Republican and you have a lot of support, it's usually not because you're the kind of person that we're talking about and we're looking for and we need.
00:22:06.000 It's usually the exact opposite, right?
00:22:08.000 Like the more, sorry, go ahead.
00:22:09.000 You mean donor support?
00:22:12.000 Donor support, institutional support, right?
00:22:14.000 Like the GOP will identify people that will basically, you know, go along with the program.
00:22:20.000 So we actually, I think we need to really develop ways to vet people and to promote them who are actually kind of insurgents, like people that resemble DeSantis that we're talking about.
00:22:32.000 It's difficult.
00:22:33.000 But I think the first step to all of this is accepting that the GOP is not your buddy.
00:22:42.000 You cannot look at the R next to someone's name or hear the slogans like family values and like God and country.
00:22:49.000 Like obviously those things are good.
00:22:52.000 But the slogans are meaningless if they're not backed up by action.
00:22:55.000 And that is true for the vast majority of Republican leadership.
00:23:00.000 A lot of slogans, a lot of talk about things that are important, but zero fight and sincerity behind them.
00:23:08.000 And I think that's really the first step to all of this is understanding that like these people are not your friends.
00:23:14.000 They will turn on you at pivotal moments.
00:23:16.000 We just talked about all the vetoes and things like that.
00:23:19.000 They won't do anything unless you hold their feet to the fire.
00:23:23.000 And we need to find ways to replace them.
00:23:26.000 We can't just keep talking about getting rid of the rhinos, going rhino hunt, like draining the swamp.
00:23:30.000 We talk about that.
00:23:32.000 It actually can make you crazy if you think about how often we've used these slogans like, you know, going rhino hunting, but we never actually do it.
00:23:39.000 We never do it.
00:23:41.000 And I think part of that is actually a structural issue.
00:23:44.000 Like I said, you know, who is vetting like actual America first candidates?
00:23:48.000 Who's doing that in a way that is truly consistent with what the grassroots wants?
00:23:54.000 I can't really think of any huge organizations that are doing that.
00:23:58.000 There's a lack and there's also a need there.
00:24:00.000 So I think that's part of it.
00:24:01.000 So the first thing is seeing clearly, like Republicans are actually in many ways your worst enemies than Democrats.
00:24:07.000 I completely agree.
00:24:09.000 And then second is this institutional problem.
00:24:12.000 How do we find these people?
00:24:14.000 How do we vet them?
00:24:15.000 And how do we promote them, despite the fact that they will not have the support of like legacy GOP donors and institutions?
00:24:22.000 Yeah.
00:24:22.000 So I want to ask you a more philosophical question.
00:24:25.000 And you can only about a minute, and then we'll have a whole segment to go through it, which is the lie of liberalism.
00:24:29.000 I know this is a topic you really care about and how some Republicans are actually, you know, very sympathetic to the liberal idea.
00:24:36.000 And we talk about it on the show.
00:24:38.000 So it started with, okay, let homosexuals marry in 2015. 0.60
00:24:41.000 And then the promise was, and I'll be very honest, I believe the promise. 0.98
00:24:45.000 I was young and naive that we'd stop talking about all the gay issues, right? 0.61
00:24:48.000 Like, okay, gay marriage would make the gay issue de-emphasized. 0.56
00:24:51.000 But instead, it's the opposite, Pedro. 0.70
00:24:52.000 We're talking about this issue more than ever, and it's actually more prevalent in our society.
00:24:57.000 Yeah, it sounds like we're talking about the slippery slope.
00:25:00.000 And I think that's just true.
00:25:01.000 There's a kind of tendency in liberalism that is revolutionary.
00:25:06.000 And I think it's just really difficult for, I mean, even if you're a liberal who thought that this would stop, you know, with that, you might be shocked that it didn't.
00:25:17.000 But I think that's actually just the kind of the course of things when it comes to liberalism, precisely because it has this revolutionary tendency in it that it needs to constantly find things to liberate.
00:25:29.000 That's right.
00:25:30.000 And I mean, Caldwell articulated that better than I think anybody else, where he talks about, you know, the arc of history.
00:25:36.000 It's like, wait, what really was in the Civil Rights Act?
00:25:38.000 What were we getting?
00:25:39.000 What was in the kind of gay liberation movement?
00:25:42.000 And I want to talk, I mean, a lot of Republicans are liberal at heart, not voters, but Republican politicians where they kind of play into this.
00:25:52.000 And I think it's waking up a lot of people, Pedro.
00:25:54.000 I think that this like grooming thing is radicalizing people in a good way, like meaning bringing them to the root, bringing like, wait, hold on a second. 0.98
00:26:00.000 I thought we were done with this gay issue. 1.00
00:26:02.000 Like, no, actually, it's now more prevalent than ever before. 1.00
00:26:05.000 So, Pedro, I want to ask you about the phases of liberalism, right?
00:26:09.000 So, Caldwell talked about this, where it starts with identifying a grievance group, trying to liberate them from the alleged oppressors.
00:26:16.000 And there might be some legitimate critiques around the edges where laws could be calibrated in a prudent, minor way, but it doesn't stop there.
00:26:22.000 The next phase of liberalism, though, is then implementing by force almost a revenge campaign on the people that were wrongly labeled as being the oppressors.
00:26:31.000 What are your thoughts?
00:26:32.000 Yeah.
00:26:33.000 So I think the book that I cannot recommend enough and hugely influential on me is a book called Suicide of the West by James Burnham.
00:26:42.000 I see it right.
00:26:42.000 There's another book out there called Suicide of the West by Jonah Goldberg.
00:26:47.000 Don't read it.
00:26:48.000 It's terrible.
00:26:48.000 He just copied the name of a much better book.
00:26:51.000 Did he really do that?
00:26:54.000 Jonah Goldberg's book is literally called Suicide of the West.
00:26:57.000 And he kind of nodded.
00:26:57.000 I've never read it because I'm not going to pay for it.
00:26:59.000 He kind of nodded at James Burnham in it.
00:27:02.000 But it's like, from what I know about the book, it's like an upside down cheat version of it.
00:27:07.000 Read Suicide of the West by James Burnham, not Jonah Goldberg, James Burnham.
00:27:11.000 And in it, he talks about the problem of modern liberalism.
00:27:14.000 I think maybe this is where Caldwell is drawing it from, but I'm sure Caldwell could come up with it on his own.
00:27:20.000 But Burnham says the problem with modern liberalism is that there's a tension between individual freedoms on the one hand and egalitarian social justice on the other.
00:27:29.000 So basically, between, we'll say, individual freedoms again, and then regimentation, we'll put it that way.
00:27:38.000 So part of this means liberating people from stigma, right?
00:27:42.000 Whatever that is.
00:27:43.000 Maybe the most obvious example of this in our time is like transgenderism and stuff like that, right?
00:27:48.000 Liberating people from the stigma of pronouns, of gender bending and all that.
00:27:54.000 However, that's not enough.
00:27:55.000 It's not enough for you to be able to just use pronouns and to identify as a woman.
00:28:00.000 It needs to be, if you're a man, it needs to be affirmed in you by society.
00:28:05.000 That's exactly. 0.60
00:28:06.000 What that means is for egalitarian social justice to happen, there has to also be a kind of regimentation of society so that society affirms your new individuality as a trans person or whatever. 0.67
00:28:23.000 And so what that means is hate speech laws.
00:28:26.000 That means rules and regulations with regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
00:28:32.000 So this is the kind of tension and paradox of modern liberalism is that every time we emancipate so-called an oppressed group, there's also a whole new regime that is created to enforce the liberation of that group on the rest of us.
00:28:52.000 And Burnham says that in this conflict between individualism and regimentation, regimentation will ultimately win out every single time.
00:29:02.000 Because it's never enough to simply emancipate.
00:29:06.000 Find a synonym for regimentation.
00:29:07.000 That's not a word people use.
00:29:09.000 So what's the synonym?
00:29:10.000 Well, that's actually the term he uses for egalitarian social justice.
00:29:14.000 So like, what do you mean like the more tyrannical, the more despotic, the more regimentation?
00:29:19.000 He means like the regulation of society.
00:29:21.000 Okay, fine.
00:29:22.000 With regards to like, you know, like I said, hate speech laws.
00:29:25.000 I mean, in California, if you're a healthcare worker.
00:29:27.000 That's what it comes down to is that force will defeat liberalism.
00:29:31.000 Yeah.
00:29:32.000 Yeah.
00:29:32.000 And I mean, again, California, if you're a healthcare worker and you use the wrong pronouns for somebody, I think it's actually an offense.
00:29:42.000 There's prison time and fines involved.
00:29:44.000 That's a great example of it, right?
00:29:46.000 So we've liberated the oppressed people of this one particular group, but then the rest of society has to play along, even if it violates your conscience, right?
00:29:54.000 Like you're forcing people to do things that they just don't agree with or that they know is just not true. 0.62
00:30:00.000 Like this person in front of me is identifying as a woman, although I know that it's a biological male.
00:30:05.000 But if I don't play along, I could go to prison or get fined or something like that.
00:30:09.000 I mean, does that sound like a freer society where everyone can live their own life?
00:30:15.000 No, obviously not.
00:30:16.000 I mean, that is the lie of liberalism, is that liberalism is this kind of objective thing, right?
00:30:24.000 That we all benefit from equally.
00:30:26.000 That's just obviously not true.
00:30:28.000 There has to be an enemy for these liberation, for this crusade of liberation to happen.
00:30:35.000 There has to be an other.
00:30:37.000 That's another lie of liberalism, that liberalism eliminates the other, right?
00:30:40.000 We're all the same, man.
00:30:41.000 We're all equal.
00:30:43.000 There's really no differences between groups.
00:30:45.000 That's obviously not true.
00:30:47.000 I mean, the exponents of modern liberalism are the ones that are quickest to call you a racist, a sexist, a bigot.
00:30:53.000 They actually cannot exist.
00:30:55.000 I mean, no one can.
00:30:56.000 I mean, this is true for every situation.
00:31:00.000 They need an other.
00:31:01.000 And in this case, it just so happens to be us.
00:31:04.000 Pedro, that was amazing.
00:31:05.000 Contra and Substack, right?
00:31:07.000 Yeah.
00:31:07.000 Contra.substack.com.
00:31:09.000 It's a terrific.
00:31:10.000 I get the emails.
00:31:10.000 It's really, really smart.
00:31:11.000 We've got to have you back on.
00:31:12.000 Thank you so much, Pedro, and keep up the great work.
00:31:14.000 Appreciate it.
00:31:15.000 Thank you.
00:31:16.000 Thanks so much for listening.
00:31:17.000 Everybody, email us your thoughts.
00:31:18.000 Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.
00:31:19.000 God bless.
00:31:22.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.