00:01:07.000His 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.
00:01:15.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:27.000Brought to you by Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage.
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00:01:39.000This segment and the one following is not going to be the most uplifting segment that we ever do here on the Charlie Kirk Show, but arguably one of the most important.
00:01:47.000This is a segment that you're not going to want to hear, and you might not think it's real, but I could tell you from my experience with young people, it's absolutely real.
00:01:55.000And it's a story that actually starts in the publication for Lorene Powell Jobs, The Atlantic, quote, why American teens are so sad.
00:02:05.000Four forces are propelling the rise of rates of depression amongst young people.
00:02:09.000Now, before you kind of just roll your eyes and say, oh, whatever, toughen it up, this is a huge problem with our nation's young people.
00:02:16.000I know at least two young people in my general circle, periphery, I did not know them personally, that committed suicide in the last week.
00:02:25.000Young people are, by definition, now the most alcohol-addicted, drug-addicted, depressed, sad, suicidal, anxious, medicated generation in history.
00:02:35.000Now, there's many reasons as to why this is the case.
00:02:37.000One of the reasons, of course, would be our imprudent response to the Chinese coronavirus, locking down our entire society.
00:02:49.000Now, if you're listening to this right now and you're a parent or a grandparent, an aunt or an uncle, I hope you listen to these words very carefully.
00:02:56.000Because if you have a young person in your life, they might not be telling the truth about how sad they actually are.
00:03:02.000This generation will be the most suicidal generation in history when the numbers come out.
00:03:07.000We don't know how this year is going to shake out.
00:03:09.000Theatlantic.com writes, quote, the United States is experiencing an extreme teenage mental health crisis.
00:03:15.000From 2009 to 2021, the share of American high school students who say they, quote, feel persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness rose from 26% to 44%, according to a new CDC study.
00:03:31.000This is the highest level of teenage sadness ever recorded.
00:03:34.000Now, I don't trust the CDC, and I know you don't either.
00:03:38.000But if you dive into this study, it really isn't that politicized.
00:03:42.000It was done in a pretty fair, double-blind way, but let's pretend it's not 26, 44.
00:03:53.000The government survey was over 8,000 high school students, pretty big sample size, which was conducted in the first six months of 2021, last year.
00:04:02.000It found a great deal of variation in mental health among different groups.
00:04:07.000More than one in four girls reported that they have seriously contemplated committing suicide during the pandemic, which was twice the rate of boys.
00:04:14.000Nearly half of gay teens, LGBTQ teens, say they had contemplated suicide during the pandemic, compared with 14% of their heterosexual peers.
00:04:24.000Sadness among white teens seems to be rising faster than among other groups.
00:04:30.000The Atlantic writes, quote, but the big picture here is the same across all categories.
00:04:34.000Almost every measure of mental health is getting worse for every single teenage demographic.
00:04:39.000And it's happening all across the country.
00:04:41.000Since 2009, sadness and hopelessness have increased for every race, for straight teens, for gay teens, for teens who say they've never had sex, for teens who say they have had sex with males and or females, for students in every year of high school, for all teens in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
00:05:36.000Let's just walk through and see if there's any sort of validity to these claims and what we could possibly do about it.
00:05:42.000I don't want to live in a sad country.
00:05:44.000We are living in a sad country right now.
00:05:46.000This is something that transcends political lines, by the way, or it should, even though our politics played into this significantly.
00:05:53.000Our political decisions of locking down our country, putting masks on children, have made children sadder.
00:06:00.000And a lot of parents don't know what to do about it.
00:06:03.000Well, the first problem, and I'm going to go through the Atlantic piece and where they go wrong, the first problem is the overindulgence of pleasure.
00:06:13.000The restraints that you put on your impulses, the restraints you put on what feels good, is what we call civilization.
00:06:21.000Not doing what feels good all the time is what creates mature and happy people.
00:06:27.000Unfortunately, we've created a set of circumstances and a scenario where 12, 13, and 14-year-olds do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it, whether it be sexually, whether it be with drugs, whether it be through any sort of process.
00:06:41.000They have prioritized, not processed, any sort of indulgence, I should say.
00:06:45.000They have prioritized, our society has prioritized pleasure above all.
00:07:04.000Now, the Atlantic speculates a couple things.
00:07:06.000The Atlantic speculates, they're not totally wrong here, that we have the saddest, most depressed, alcohol-addicted, and drug-addicted generation in history because of four reasons.
00:07:44.000First fallacy that we could chalk this all up to teens behaving badly is in fact, a lot of self-reported teen behaviors are moving in a positive direction.
00:09:05.000Quote, rising teenage sadness isn't a new trend, but rather the acceleration and broadening of a trend that clearly started before the pandemic.
00:09:10.000You're right, but our reaction to the pandemic was ridiculous and it was imprudent and it was dangerous and it was wrong.
00:09:18.000But I have to say that the thing that drives this more than anything else that this piece doesn't even dare touch on is the defeat and the destruction of what Friedrich Nietzsche warned us about, which is the death of God.
00:09:39.000But if the predominant culture, the predominant movie production apparatus, the predominant social media belief, when I go to Berkeley and I have 40 kids in front of me, I say, how many of you are atheists?
00:11:36.000I was seeing how much I was spending on my cell phone bill, how much turning point USA was spending on our cell phone bill.
00:11:41.000I said, I'm so sick and tired of giving these anti-American cell phone companies my hard-earned money and our amazing donor money at Turning Point USA.
00:11:49.000So I told my team, I said, go find the cell phone company that shares our values.
00:12:25.000So Patriot Mobile, they have plans to fit every budget.
00:12:28.000And their U.S.-based customer support team provides exceptional customer service.
00:12:32.000Most importantly, Patriot Mobile shares your values and supports organizations fighting for religious liberty, constitutional rights, and the sanctity of life.
00:12:56.000Well, a good way to start is, you know, make your cell phone bill, whatever.
00:13:00.000If you see it on your cell phone statement, you get your cell phone statement.
00:13:03.000You might as well just say, oh, that money's going to the DNC or that money's going to Christian conservative organizations or company like Patriot Mobile.
00:13:11.000So you get a free activation with the offer code Charlie.
00:13:14.000They also have special discounts for veterans and first responder heroes.
00:13:17.000It's patriotmobile.com/slash Charlie or call 972 Patriot.
00:13:21.000Join me and the Charlie Kirk Show in our change to Patriot Mobile and forgetting all these woke, awful, terrible cell phone companies.
00:13:28.000Portions of this program, the Charlie Kirk Show, are brought to you in part by Patriot Mobile.
00:13:41.000Every generation has a moment that they remember, whether it be the 2008 financial crisis or whether it be D-Day, or World War II, I should say, Pearl Harbor, or the Vietnam War.
00:13:54.000You look at the generation that grew up in the 80s and 90s, plenty of things they had to deal with, but nothing close to what this generation has to deal with.
00:14:02.000And social media addiction is playing a huge role in this.
00:14:05.000A lot of parents just kind of throw a screen in front of their kids and say, oh, yeah, this is fine, even though it's resulting in a huge increase in every negative trend we can imagine.
00:14:17.000Quote, across the country, we've witnessed dramatic increases in emergency department visits from all mental health emergencies, including suspected suicide attempts.
00:14:25.000The American Academy of Pediatrics said.
00:14:27.000Today's teenagers are more comfortable talking about their mental health, but rising youth sadness is no illusion.
00:14:33.000Now, of course, part of the problem, of course, is the medication that is being prescribed.
00:14:41.000Doesn't seem as if the antidepressants are making any sort of dent in any of this.
00:14:45.000It's the most medicated generation in history as well.
00:14:53.000The pandemic of closure in schools likely accelerated teen loneliness and sadness.
00:14:58.000Found that loneliness spiked in the first year of the pandemic, but it rose significantly for young people.
00:15:04.000Quote, it's well established that what protects teens from stress is close social relationships.
00:15:09.000When kids can't go to school to see their friends and peers and mentors, social isolation could lead to sadness and depression, particularly for those predisposed to feeling sad or depressed.
00:15:17.000But of course, the adults locked down the kids, didn't they?
00:15:28.000This is more important to say clearly, quote, aloneness isn't the same as loneliness, and loneliness isn't the same as depression.
00:15:33.000But more aloneless, including from heavy smartphone use, and more loneliness, including from school closures, might have combined to push up sadness among teenagers who need socialization to protect from all the pressures of a stressful world.
00:15:47.000So, what are parents supposed to do about this?
00:15:49.000Well, first of all, take the phone out of your kids' hands.
00:15:52.000Do a Sabbath at least one a day, 24 hours without a phone.
00:15:55.000If you say it's not possible, I don't believe you.
00:16:04.000They're depressants and they're bad regardless of their age, but they're especially bad when they're 15, 16, or 17.
00:16:11.000Make sure they understand what a meaningful relationship would actually be, meaning a relationship with a man or a woman or what that would be.
00:16:19.000Make sure that their eyes are being protected with what they're consuming online and that what they value is not rooted in an immediate burst of pleasure, but instead something that takes work over a long period of time.
00:16:35.000Children that understand that things that are valuable take effort and investment over a long period of time will be much happier than children that believe that things can happen instantaneously.
00:16:45.000We call that instant gratification, but let's think about it.
00:16:47.000If you raise a child to believe that things can happen at a push of a button, isn't that what you're reinforcing with a smartphone, by the way?
00:16:54.000You're reinforcing that dopamine is on demand.
00:16:58.000The brain's not supposed to be built that way.
00:17:00.000Dopamine on demand is not the way that our brain is configured.
00:17:04.000So by the time you're 15, your serotonin, your capacity to produce seropotonin, your neurotransmitters are fried by the time you're 15.
00:17:15.000Like, where am I supposed to get my happiness from?
00:17:17.000I keep on pushing these buttons because their parents who didn't know any better, who didn't listen to our warnings over the last decade, because they didn't want a parent, they wanted to be their kids' friend, their friend, hand them an iPad.
00:17:26.000And meanwhile, all they're doing is eroding their dopamine every single day.
00:17:30.000You know, the people that create these applications, the people behind Apple, the people behind Pinterest, the people behind Facebook, they don't even allow their own kids to use these devices.
00:17:38.000Because they know how dangerous they are.
00:17:40.000The same reason why the tobacco manufacturers didn't let their teenagers smoke cigarettes in the 1950s and 60s, because they knew the cigarettes actually would hurt their kids.
00:19:56.000When Good Ranchers get delivered to our home or to our office, it's something incredible.
00:20:02.000If you don't buy the meat in your house, tell the person who does to check out Good Ranchers, support the Charlie Kirk Show, support America, goodranchers.com/slash Charlie.
00:20:15.000With us right now is one of my favorite Catholics in the world, Michael Nulls, smart guy, and really came to my defense last week, which I didn't ask for.
00:20:41.000Charlie, great to be with you, as always.
00:20:44.000So let's dive into the topic that I was talking about.
00:20:47.000I said, and I didn't say it as precisely as I said it previously or afterwards, is that population density and also very tall buildings can have an unintended effect, such as creating the tragedy of the commons and a society of renters and not people that own property.
00:21:03.000In fact, population density is one of the leading predictors of whether or not someone will vote Democrat and the country going liberal.
00:21:11.000I so loved that you made this comment.
00:21:15.000I only found it because your publicists over at Media Matters decided to clip this out because they thought that what you said was stupid and crazy and so off the wall.
00:21:25.000Here's that lunatic, Charlie Kirk, talking about how big buildings turn people into libs or whatever.
00:21:32.000And I thought about it for a second and I realized not only is what you said true, it is one of the most insightful things I've ever heard you say, or really any conservative in modern memory.
00:21:43.000You're making a point that we have known since the Tower of Babel.
00:21:48.000You're making a point that we have known.
00:21:50.000Certainly Edmund Burke has articulated this.
00:21:53.000The modern conservative philosophical movement came out of a man who was an aesthetic philosopher, Edmund Burke.
00:22:00.000We know that place matters, that architecture and art matter.
00:22:04.000When you're in a place, it's either going to slightly raise your spirits or slightly lower your spirits.
00:22:13.000And it was a point that Chesterton made really, really well.
00:22:17.000In one of G.K. Chesterton's detective stories, one of the Father Brown stories, it's called The Hammer of God, I think is the name of this story.
00:22:25.000Chesterton says that people should be very cautious about praying in the tallest places, about living in the tallest places.
00:22:36.000Because from the really, really tall places, all the people look like ants.
00:22:56.000This is a crucial conservative insight into human nature and the way that societies form.
00:23:02.000And so I'm so grateful that those dolts over at Media Matters are such Philistines, so deeply uneducated, that they would popularize a great insight that you had.
00:23:27.000And I was at this event with Senator Bill Haggerty and Senator Marshall Blackburn and Governor Bill Lee, and I have respect for all of them.
00:23:35.000I was like, you guys have got to stop allowing these buildings to be built.
00:23:38.000And they would look at me like, what are you talking about?
00:23:40.000Like, this is a great thing for Nashville.
00:23:42.000I was like, of course, it's good for development, good for property values, good for jobs, good for economic progress.
00:23:47.000But what the unintended consequence they don't realize, and this has happened in Phoenix, Arizona, that Phoenix had height restrictions for a long time, which therefore incentivized, which was the suburban sprawl.
00:23:58.000The largest suburb in America is Phoenix, Arizona, all the way from Glendale out to Queen Creek.
00:24:03.000It's like 100 miles almost, not that much.
00:24:05.000It's like about 65 to 70 miles, if you will, of like suburban sprawl from one side to the other.
00:24:13.000And then now all of a sudden they're saying, well, because of environmentalist reasons, we have to now go vertical, which is now hyper-liberalizing some of these areas.
00:24:21.000Why are people not mentioning this, Michael?
00:24:23.000Well, because it's working for the libs, and so they're going to keep on doing it.
00:24:27.000And I also think it's because they actually don't really appreciate the philosophical and the aesthetic point here.
00:24:37.000Just think of it in your own experience.
00:24:40.000When you are walking around Grand Central in New York, Grand Central is a big building, the big train station, but it's not a skyscraper.
00:25:25.000And I do have this sense that the masters of the universe, the gazillionaire oligarchs who are trying to turn us all into a woke utopia, I suspect they look out of their giant glass towers and they see people below and they think, oh, here's how I can tinker.
00:25:40.000Here's how I can totally transform society.
00:26:16.000There are lots of reasons, and they're all sort of kind of related.
00:26:20.000But just to tie it in with the conversation we're having, the late conservative philosopher Roger Scruton pointed out that if you want to have a, he's a wonderful, wonderful conservative philosopher.
00:26:32.000I really recommend people watch his clips on YouTube and read his books.
00:26:35.000He observed that if you want to have a conservative society, and by definition, that means a more content society, a more comfortable society.
00:26:45.000When you're a conservative, you often like the way things are.
00:26:54.000And when you're a radical, you know, you want to upend everything, whether it's the buildings or human nature or education or everything in the middle.
00:29:12.000And you see it really in the free speech debate.
00:29:14.000Right now, when we talk about free speech or often even education, conservatives will say, listen, I don't care what you say, only that you have the right to say it.
00:29:23.000Or I don't care what you teach, only that you have the right to teach it.
00:29:27.000Or I don't care what you think, only that you have the right to think it.
00:29:30.000So they're speaking in these really abstract terms.
00:29:32.000But the reality is, free speech doesn't mean anything to people who don't have anything to say.
00:29:38.000This is the thesis of my book, Speechless, which is my only book with words in it.
00:30:19.000You don't have a right to use the girl's bathroom.
00:30:21.000You don't have a right to play on the sports team.
00:30:23.000Not just because you're going to take a trophy away from some pen swimming girl, but because it's wrong and there's truth and we can know about it and we can count on it.
00:30:32.000There is a word that the modern left would have put into the Declaration, and that would have been the pursuit of your happiness.
00:31:50.000Just go to mypillow.com and click on the new radio listener specials and get deep discounts on all my pillow products, including the towels.
00:32:23.000I want anything that will bring our extremely corrupt ruling class down a few pegs, I'm in favor of just about.
00:32:31.000But even if it doesn't work, even if the Twitter board is able to fend off the hostile takeover, Musk has already succeeded at one very important thing, which is that he has exposed the depth of the corruption in Twitter and I think broadly in our ruling class.
00:32:47.000The fact that the Twitter board of directors is willing to tank the value of their stock to actually harm the shareholders just to stop Elon Musk from letting Charlie Kirk tweet again and letting the Babylon bee tweet again really shows you how desperate they are.
00:33:03.000Two, the fact that now that Jack Dorsey is leaving Twitter, the members of the Twitter Board of Directors actually don't own very much stock at all of Twitter.
00:33:12.000And one, it opens them up to legal liabilities if the shareholders want to sue the board of directors.
00:33:17.000But two, it shows you that these people don't really care about the product.
00:33:21.000They certainly don't really use the product.
00:33:23.000They're just trying to control what we say.
00:33:25.000And then three, you've got the institutional investors here.
00:33:29.000Until Musk tried to take over Twitter, it actually never occurred to me, even me, I'm pretty plugged into all this stuff.
00:33:35.000It never occurred to me to ask who owns Twitter.
00:33:46.000And so you're looking at major institutional investors in the case of something like a BlackRock that is pushing very woke policies on America's corporations.
00:33:55.000It's called ESG, Environmental, Social, and Governments Policies.
00:33:59.000So these investors are wielding your money.
00:34:02.000They're wielding your retirement money to push and pressure these CEOs to promote leftist policies.
00:34:37.000We speak to one another, we debate, we persuade one another.
00:34:40.000So if you have a small number of oligarchs controlling 90% plus of speech in America, and don't forget, Twitter is the smallest one of all of these big tech platforms, then functionally speaking, we no longer live in a republic, but something more akin to an oligarchy.
00:34:55.000Yeah, and that's what's so ironic about this, right?
00:34:58.000Is that the richest person coming in to buy a company would actually be closest to an oligarchy, but it's less like a hostile takeover, more like a rescue mission and a liberation.
00:35:06.000And so it's, and this is what I love about it, is that I don't care if it, I don't like what's happening.
00:35:12.000I care more about whether or not we are going to win or not.
00:35:33.000But just as one final add-on, I think it's really important that Twitter finally pursue some diversity and inclusion and equity.
00:35:41.000I think if Twitter were being run by a notable African American such as Elon Musk, that would just be the cherry on top of the delicious Sunday of this takeover.