The Charlie Kirk Show - How to Win America’s Cold Civil War

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00:01:16.000 Hey, everybody.

00:01:17.000 Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:19.000 With us today is Thomas D. Klingenstein, who is the chairman of the board of the wonderful Claremont Institute, where I spent a week in Las Vegas as a Lincoln fellow with some wonderful people there.

00:01:33.000 Tom, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:36.000 Well, thank you.

00:01:36.000 Happy to be here.

00:01:37.000 So you gave a speech and also wrote an article that really caught my attention, which was the reason I wanted to have you on this program, because I have not heard anyone in recent memory put it so bluntly and concisely, and I say bluntly in a good way, where you say we're in the middle of a Cold Civil War.

00:01:56.000 And it's just the question of whether or not we want to win it.

00:02:00.000 And we need wartime generals to kind of make that happen.

00:02:03.000 Please summarize your argument, kind of why we're in a cold civil war, and then we'll go from there.

00:02:10.000 I will.

00:02:11.000 And I'll proceed it by saying, you know, to win a war, you have to know you're in one.

00:02:17.000 And I think we have a lot of particularly Republican leaders in the Senate who haven't figured that out.

00:02:25.000 Now, the enemy, the enemy I call woke communists, you know, people in the past have called it identity politics and multiculturalism.

00:02:34.000 But woke communism, I think, suggests a totalitarian regime.

00:02:40.000 And this regime has different goals than America.

00:02:45.000 This regime has a different understanding of justice.

00:02:48.000 It's something like in the Civil War, the South wanted to grow slavery, the North contracted.

00:02:54.000 Well, those were differences of ends, and ends cannot be negotiated.

00:02:59.000 So what is the end of woke communism?

00:03:01.000 Well, it's group outcome equality, right?

00:03:06.000 All groups having proportional to their representation in society, the same amount of prisoners and CEOs and, you know, school suspensions and all the rest, right?

00:03:18.000 The problem there is that America, whose understanding of justice is individual freedom, there will always be group outcome differences between men and women and also among various subcultures.

00:03:34.000 So to eliminate, the only way to eliminate those outcome differences is by force, by tyranny.

00:03:41.000 And so that's why we can have no peace with the woke communism.

00:03:48.000 And my, I guess the pitch of that speech was directed at the Republicans.

00:03:56.000 You know, their job is to explain all this.

00:04:00.000 American people, I think, many have a sense that there's something grievously wrong with America, but they might not be able to give a good accounting of it.

00:04:10.000 And that's what we need our leaders to do.

00:04:13.000 And so far, they haven't been doing it.

00:04:15.000 I totally agree.

00:04:16.000 So when I talk to the police officer or the taxicab driver or the welder, the normal man, they say, man, we're losing our country. 0.80

00:04:25.000 And if I press them, which I don't, because I don't want to be a jerk, but sometimes I do, they kind of fumble around a little bit because it's more just kind of a cascading effect, right?

00:04:34.000 They're not even able to articulate it as well as you would, not even close, but they can see it. 0.93

00:04:40.000 They can feel it.

00:04:41.000 They know it's happening.

00:04:43.000 So in your piece, which is very well organized, we're going to put the piece up at charliekirk.com.

00:04:48.000 We'll link to American Greatness to that.

00:04:51.000 You start with this question.

00:04:52.000 The first sentence of your piece is: We find ourselves in a cold civil war.

00:04:57.000 So I just want to stop there.

00:04:58.000 What some people would take exception with that type of language.

00:05:02.000 I don't.

00:05:03.000 Make the argument that we are indeed in the midst of a cold civil war.

00:05:09.000 Well, it was the argument that I, part of which I answered, I think, in the last question.

00:05:18.000 We are fighting a regime that has a different understanding of justice and a different end.

00:05:25.000 Again, the analogy I gave was slavery, right?

00:05:28.000 One side wanted to grow, one side contract.

00:05:30.000 Those are differences in ends, and ends cannot be negotiated.

00:05:34.000 Now, there are a lot, you know, what does the enemy have to do?

00:05:39.000 And this gets, I think, more closely to your question about war.

00:05:43.000 Well, it has to remake everything in American society, and it has to remake it to comport with their understanding of America and the future.

00:05:56.000 So you got to change the history, right?

00:05:58.000 So that means you got to take down statutes.

00:06:00.000 You have to teach critical race theory.

00:06:02.000 You have to teach 1619.

00:06:04.000 You have to teach America that in its race, in its DNA, is racism.

00:06:10.000 It's not freedom.

00:06:11.000 It's racism.

00:06:13.000 You have to teach Americans that America is systemically racist.

00:06:18.000 And we hear that every day.

00:06:21.000 And what that means is, or what the implication of that is, if you think America is systemically racist, if you think racism has insinuated itself into all nooks and crannies of American life, then you have to throw out the American way of life.

00:06:40.000 So some of this is just the way they're thinking and talking now.

00:06:44.000 Tech censorship is another big one, right?

00:06:48.000 If you're going to perpetrate lies like America is racist, then you have to shut up the people who challenge the lies.

00:06:56.000 And I don't think most Americans have any doubt that they're being shut out.

00:07:01.000 Even a speech I gave, you know, we had to think long and hard about what to say.

00:07:06.000 Where are we going to get censored?

00:07:07.000 We couldn't put it on YouTube, right?

00:07:09.000 This stuff is just unbelievably dangerous.

00:07:13.000 Well, and what we do on our show is we have a pre-show meeting and we literally have to go through what stories are we going to describe in a certain way to not get censored.

00:07:23.000 We have to use different words.

00:07:24.000 We have to phrase it differently.

00:07:27.000 And we're already living under that tyranny of not even political correctness, but it is a tyranny of a one-party state.

00:07:35.000 You write in this article here, and you just mention it, and I want to really zero in on this.

00:07:40.000 Every time Joe Biden accuses America of being systemically racist, he is, though he doesn't know it, calling for the overthrow of the American way of life.

00:07:49.000 Now, you mentioned this earlier in the piece, but I really want to zero in on this.

00:07:53.000 As soon as I heard that phrase American way of life, which originated from the Claremont Institute, might have been from you, I loved it.

00:08:00.000 What is the American way of life?

00:08:01.000 What's the best way you could describe it for someone listening to this right now?

00:08:06.000 Well, at root, it's a commitment to individual freedom, the right of all individuals to pursue happiness generally as they see fit.

00:08:17.000 And that underlying philosophical statement gives rise to certain attributes, right?

00:08:26.000 We're hardworking, we're self-reliant, we're colorblind, we believe in American exceptionalism.

00:08:34.000 You know, we think we're good.

00:08:35.000 You know, you were referring to the welder, the normal person who can't quite articulate what's going on.

00:08:43.000 And the way I articulate it, the simplest way I can think about it is some people think America is good and they want to preserve it.

00:08:52.000 And other people think it's bad and therefore want to throw it out.

00:08:56.000 And that, by the way, was the appeal of Trump.

00:09:01.000 Trump is unequivocally, unapologetically pro-American.

00:09:06.000 He never qualified.

00:09:08.000 You know, if you listen to his COVID, you know, everything was incredible.

00:09:12.000 You know, our doctors, our military, our this, everything was incredible.

00:09:17.000 And that, I think, is what, you know, those plumbers and welders want to hear.

00:09:23.000 And it's a message that they can get.

00:09:25.000 And I think, you know, I'm sitting in Maine and, you know, people even in Maine, out in the sticks, you know, they're pushing back against critical race theory because it teaches that America is racist.

00:09:40.000 Well, most people don't think America is racist, but our leaders have to say so.

00:09:45.000 That's part of my part of the speech is when they say we're systemically racist, we have to say absolutely not and provide some evidence as to why not.

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00:10:37.000 So you say here in the piece, education, corporate media, entertainment, big business, especially big tech are to varying degrees aligned with the Democratic Party.

00:10:46.000 So let me stop here.

00:10:47.000 We don't know that we're in a war on our side.

00:10:50.000 To what extent does the other side realize that they're on a crusade or that they're in almost a cold combat setting?

00:10:58.000 Or is it that some people at the top realize that and the underlings don't?

00:11:02.000 Or maybe it's the intellectuals in the universities who understand it.

00:11:07.000 Biden certainly doesn't understand it.

00:11:09.000 Biden doesn't understand it.

00:11:11.000 As you quoted me, when he says America is systemically racist, he doesn't know what he's saying.

00:11:17.000 He doesn't know the implication of what he's saying.

00:11:20.000 And most people on the right or left kind of go along, don't they?

00:11:25.000 Yes.

00:11:25.000 And they follow, they follow whatever is progressive and they follow the next thing.

00:11:32.000 So, you know, people drift.

00:11:34.000 Most people drift.

00:11:36.000 And I think we are drifting or we are wandering over a cliff and we need leaders.

00:11:44.000 And we need obviously people like you, you know, who have a national voice.

00:11:49.000 But it has to be more than you.

00:11:51.000 It has to be more than Tucker Carlson, who's one of the, I think, most articulate.

00:11:55.000 He gets it, but he's not running this country.

00:12:00.000 Yeah, and it needs to be thousands of people like that.

00:12:03.000 And so you continue.

00:12:05.000 I love the description woke comms or woke communism.

00:12:08.000 And I want to emphasize this because this is an important point, which is you, woke communism is built on a particular understanding of justice.

00:12:20.000 And that really is the most important question when you think of how you're going to design a government or put together the appropriation of power.

00:12:29.000 And the classics teach us a lot about this question of what is justice and is it what every man is owed to their due and what their action is?

00:12:38.000 Or is it group or is it tribal?

00:12:40.000 And so can you expand on that even more?

00:12:42.000 You mentioned it a couple of times, but that really is the critical component here, right?

00:12:46.000 The other side believes it needs to be redistributive.

00:12:49.000 Abolition of private property needs to be based on group or identity, things that cannot change, which is at direct odds with what has always been embedded in our country up until recently.

00:13:02.000 Yeah, I think you actually did as well this job as I could.

00:13:07.000 You know, I think social justice, as I said before, though I may not have mentioned the term, social justice is group outcome equality.

00:13:16.000 So all groups having the same of everything.

00:13:19.000 That's social justice. 0.98

00:13:21.000 And that can't exist with American justice, which again, individuals pursuing happiness generally as they see fit.

00:13:31.000 So because we have different understandings of justice, we have a different understanding of what constitutes a just society.

00:13:40.000 Yes.

00:13:41.000 And that, by the way, you know, Republicans tell the Democrats to follow the Constitution.

00:13:41.000 Right.

00:13:47.000 Well, that's well and good, but the Democrats don't believe in the values the Constitution seeks to protect.

00:13:53.000 And this is what happens in a war.

00:13:55.000 In a war, one side breaks the rules because they don't believe in the rules.

00:14:00.000 And then the next, and then the other side breaks it because they have to survive.

00:14:04.000 So you can see this all over the place.

00:14:06.000 We're breaking rules.

00:14:08.000 Again, because one side doesn't believe in the rules.

00:14:11.000 Sometimes I use the Kavanaugh hearings as an example.

00:14:14.000 You know, Republicans think, well, they weren't playing by the rules, but they were playing by different rules.

00:14:22.000 And, you know, they thought Kavanaugh should be assumed guilty.

00:14:27.000 And that's a function of their understanding of a just society.

00:14:31.000 And we have to look at the world through that lens.

00:14:36.000 We need people to stand up and explain to people, well, here's what was happening in that hearing.

00:14:44.000 We were seeing a regime class because we were seeing two understandings of justice.

00:14:50.000 And again, our leaders have to help us understand this kind of stuff.

00:14:56.000 I just want to reemphasize for everyone listening, the kind of binary choice of the two different ways to interpret justice.

00:15:05.000 I think it's the best way to describe really the divide in this country.

00:15:09.000 It really is.

00:15:10.000 And everything else kind of flows downstream from there.

00:15:13.000 So you say we don't have generals.

00:15:15.000 So let's pretend that a couple of the generals in the culture war are listening or you are one of them.

00:15:19.000 What needs to be done then to mount a successful counteroffensive in this cold civil war?

00:15:24.000 Obviously voices, things speaking out, but you say this wartime requires very different rhetoric, strategy, and people than peacetime.

00:15:33.000 And so I was just sitting in a meeting with a conservative group and they said, well, Charlie, our philosophy is we don't like to personalize things.

00:15:42.000 We want to take the high road.

00:15:44.000 We want to continue to build bridges because we will not stoop down to the level of the left.

00:15:50.000 What's your take on that kind of moderate Republican belief?

00:15:55.000 Are we past that?

00:15:56.000 Are we now in a combat theater?

00:15:59.000 You know, that's what is going to get us killed.

00:16:02.000 In the piece, I talked about libertarians.

00:16:05.000 And that kind of libertarian point of view.

00:16:05.000 Yes.

00:16:08.000 They say, okay, just let us live our way.

00:16:11.000 You can live your way.

00:16:12.000 But that's not what the opposition is doing.

00:16:14.000 They're saying, you got to live our way.

00:16:17.000 If you don't live our way, we'll punish you. 0.66

00:16:21.000 And so this is where we need a sense of urgency.

00:16:24.000 I can't tell you all the policy things.

00:16:27.000 You know, I got some ideas, but have no particular expertise.

00:16:30.000 But I know that we're not going to adopt the right policies unless we get serious, right?

00:16:38.000 Unless we think we're heading for a cliff.

00:16:41.000 If we don't think that, we're going to, you know, we're going to do what we have.

00:16:46.000 And again, within the Republican Party, I don't know anybody except maybe Trump, who has the necessary urgent C and then has the courage, right, to say things like the media is fake and, you know, to get rid of CRT once he figured.

00:17:06.000 No, he's not a great explainer.

00:17:08.000 And we need a great explainer, but we also need people with courage.

00:17:12.000 And, you know, people have to stand up and say America is not racist, period.

00:17:16.000 I'm not going to debate that.

00:17:19.000 And, you know, if somebody accuses you of being a racist, you know, my response, how dare you? 0.99

00:17:25.000 You know, F you. 0.98

00:17:28.000 It doesn't require a lot of explanation.

00:17:30.000 So it starts with our leaders explaining to us where we are and explaining why, for example, it's so important to get rid of critical race theory.

00:17:42.000 Now, so Tom Cotton made a big deal of that in the military.

00:17:48.000 Okay, that's good.

00:17:49.000 But that was one senator one time.

00:17:52.000 I think this has to be the platform of the Republican Party.

00:17:56.000 In fact, I think that the party should be united around woke communism or anti-woke communism, right?

00:18:06.000 In the same way, the Republican Party in earlier times cohered around communist anti-communism or anti-slavery.

00:18:15.000 And especially in the 1980s, it was really the defining characteristic of how Reagan kept the Republican Party together was anti-Soviet communism.

00:18:27.000 With the ever-increasing numbers of makes and models, it is now impossible to stock all the parts you need in a traditional storefront.

00:18:33.000 Why endure often pointless and seemingly intimidating questioning like what's your car?

00:18:38.000 And wait while the counterman orders the parts on his computer, choosing the only brand his warehouse happens to carry.

00:18:44.000 One reason to repair and maintain your cars is to save money that you can then use for other important things like mortgages or food.

00:18:50.000 Why would you choose to spend 30, 50 or 100% more for the exact same auto parts?

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00:19:48.000 And so I love that you say we must minimize the influence of libertarianism.

00:19:52.000 And libertarianism only would work if you live amongst only other libertarians.

00:19:57.000 As soon as a tyrant or a tyrannical or authoritarian party starts to rise up, then all of a sudden this kind of live and let live mentality becomes increasingly unrealistic.

00:20:09.000 And so what I want to read from your piece here, you say, how should Republicans respond?

00:20:14.000 What should we do about all this?

00:20:15.000 The essential thing, as I've tried to stress, is for Republicans to understand we are at war and then act accordingly.

00:20:21.000 Well, I want to get your thoughts on this.

00:20:23.000 Most baby boomers I talk to, they don't want to admit that because it might change their lifestyle. 0.85

00:20:29.000 Is there also a problem where it's like, no, no, no, I'm going to try to convince myself otherwise, regardless of the body of evidence and the destruction of the country around you?

00:20:40.000 I think it's true, but I think it's always true, right?

00:20:43.000 To get people really motivated to fight, that requires hardship, right?

00:20:50.000 That's difficult.

00:20:51.000 Most people don't want to confront that.

00:20:53.000 That, again, is why we need leaders.

00:20:56.000 And I don't think it's going to come from the upper classes.

00:20:59.000 It's going to come from your welder and Painter, right?

00:21:05.000 But again, I mean, Trump mobilized a huge army, right?

00:21:10.000 People are amazingly enthusiastic, but it needs direction.

00:21:16.000 They're the ones that are unhappy.

00:21:18.000 They're the ones I think that are willing to fight.

00:21:21.000 And they're the ones that could actually push this forward.

00:21:24.000 You say here, whoever the candidate is, he or she and other Republicans should tell the truth as Trump did.

00:21:30.000 They must rebut the lie, starting with the big lie.

00:21:32.000 America is racist.

00:21:33.000 And failing to rebut this lie, as virtually every Republican has, Republicans are conceding the basis premise of woke communism without saying any names. 0.63

00:21:41.000 But one of the largest think tanks in the country, Tom, came out and said last summer that America is systemically racist.

00:21:47.000 Do conservatives actually believe that?

00:21:48.000 Or is it that we just, we live in this kind of overly idealistic and utopian thing?

00:21:54.000 This is, I can make friends with the other side.

00:21:56.000 I'll just kind of be progressive conservatives.

00:21:59.000 This is also a temperamental issue, though, isn't it?

00:22:01.000 A lot of conservatives don't actually want to fight.

00:22:04.000 I think it's that.

00:22:06.000 And, you know, most people have to exist in a certain kind of social environment, and it's become taboo to say America isn't racist.

00:22:17.000 Well, that's why it's so important for politicians to do that.

00:22:22.000 Yeah, no, I agree.

00:22:24.000 I think that's really well put.

00:22:26.000 You say wartime, war is a time for assertions. 0.92

00:22:29.000 They must, as Trump began to do, defeat critical race theories.

00:22:32.000 You say, the military, businesses, and everywhere else.

00:22:35.000 We simply cannot teach our citizens, current and future, that their country is no good except to have a country for very long.

00:22:44.000 No country can survive on a diet of endless self-loathing.

00:22:48.000 We need to teach our citizens to love and cherish their country, and we need to stop wallowing in our sins of racism.

00:22:55.000 We are talking ourselves into ruin.

00:22:59.000 And I agree with all of this.

00:23:01.000 Are you starting to see any sort of movement that people are waking up to this?

00:23:05.000 And I'm just asking for you personally, how long have you believed we've been in a cold civil war?

00:23:09.000 When do you think that started?

00:23:11.000 And how long have you been saying this out loud?

00:23:14.000 Well, at least since before Trump's first term.

00:23:19.000 But I don't know how long before that.

00:23:21.000 But what I've always been concerned about, and I mean for the last 30 years, is breaking up the country by race, right? 1.00

00:23:30.000 We started out colorblind in the mid-60s, then we evolved to black separatism and pitting races against each other is just not going to end well.

00:23:42.000 So that's, you know, we just can't, you know, people say that diversity is America's greatest strength.

00:23:50.000 And they're referring to ethnic and racial diversity, but that's absolutely, excuse me, wrong.

00:23:57.000 Our greatest strength has been to transcend race.

00:24:01.000 And the one time we failed miserably, obviously, was the case of blacks. 1.00

00:24:07.000 So given our history and the history of the world, the idea that you're going to separate along racial and other group lines is just suicidal. 1.00

00:24:16.000 I can't, you know, I sit here sometimes and I think how stupid can we be? 0.98

00:24:23.000 This is the greatest country the world has ever seen. 0.99

00:24:27.000 We have given more prosperity, more freedom to more people than any other country in the world.

00:24:34.000 And yet we are gratuitously throwing it away.

00:24:39.000 This is about the biggest unforced era that I can imagine.

00:24:46.000 It's just absolutely criminal.

00:24:49.000 Well, and I think part of it is apathy.

00:24:52.000 Part of it is complacency.

00:24:54.000 And part of it is also, as Christopher Caldwell writes beautifully in his book, Age of Entitlement, that we prioritized short-term gratification over actually preserving the country.

00:25:07.000 How much of this do you actually put on the leaders and the elites for the last couple decades who seemingly seem more interested in international trade policy and mass immigration and invading a country that most Americans couldn't identify than actually being able to understand the domestic threat and making sure we still have a nation?

00:25:29.000 Right.

00:25:31.000 You know, if I could bring this to the presidential next 2024, you know, this is, you know, this is what I'm looking for is someone who understands that foreign policy, our ability to defeat China, is not going to occur unless we have confidence in ourselves.

00:26:01.000 So if you take somebody like Mike Pompeo, I don't know him very well.

00:26:05.000 I'm having dinner with him shortly.

00:26:07.000 You know, my question to him is not foreign policy, which he's obviously very good at and talks about, but how does he understand America and its problems today?

00:26:19.000 I'm looking for someone who understands where we are and then of course would be an effective fighter.

00:26:26.000 I don't mean to keep pushing Trump and I think it's way too early, but I think of all the talked about presidential candidates, I think he understands the stakes.

00:26:39.000 Again, not always so great explaining it, but he understands the stakes and he has the courage.

00:26:45.000 You know, Trump would probably be the worst president we ever had in any other time, but this time.

00:26:54.000 But he has the attributes, the commitment to America, the courage, right?

00:27:01.000 The willingness to attack political correctness, which is really a defense of America.

00:27:08.000 And that's what we need.

00:27:09.000 It'd be nice if we could combine that with somebody, you know, with a little more strategy and forethought and ability to explain.

00:27:17.000 But he has the essential things.

00:27:20.000 And I do think that the people are with you and with this kind of idea that we're in this cold civil war.

00:27:26.000 I was just in Fargo, North Dakota, with 1,500 people were there, and they were locked in, but they've been betrayed by their political class.

00:27:34.000 I mean, their senators are negotiating multi-trillion dollar infrastructure packages behind their back.

00:27:39.000 Their governor has gone totally COVID crazy, and they're wanting someone to actually fight for them.

00:27:45.000 And that's why I called Donald Trump the bodyguard of Western civilization.

00:27:50.000 He was the only one that was willing to actually defend our civilization against threats.

00:27:55.000 And you don't hire a bodyguard for cocktail party conversation, right?

00:27:59.000 You don't hire a bodyguard to go sit at the state dinner.

00:28:02.000 You hire a bodyguard to protect you against the thugs that are going to try to burn down your family, your neighborhood, your home, or your business.

00:28:09.000 And Donald Trump was good at that.

00:28:11.000 And he brought the fight straight into the streets.

00:28:13.000 And too many Republicans miss that because, again, Tom, there's this idea that Republicans always resort to, well, we must be decent.

00:28:22.000 We must try to build bridges with the other side.

00:28:24.000 The other side doesn't want to build bridges with us.

00:28:26.000 They want to defeat us.

00:28:27.000 They want to run us over. 0.99

00:28:29.000 They want to eliminate us.

00:28:30.000 As I mentioned, I sat down with this group of conservatives.

00:28:33.000 They said, it's a mistake to try to personalize things.

00:28:36.000 We need to always take the high road.

00:28:38.000 What do you have to say, though, to some conservatives that say, that's not who we are?

00:28:43.000 We're not going to go down to the levels of the left.

00:28:45.000 We're always going to just kind of just do the right thing.

00:28:48.000 And if we lose, so be it.

00:28:50.000 Do the people that we point to in history as heroes, is that what they did?

00:28:55.000 Yeah, I mean, one, first of all, I agree with all that.

00:28:59.000 You know, one easy analogy is General Grant, right?

00:29:03.000 He was a drunkard and deficient in many number of ways, but he understood we had to fight and he fought, right?

00:29:12.000 And to your, this conservative group you're talking about, I would tell them just what you're saying.

00:29:18.000 It's all very nice in a world where we kind of all agree on what justice is.

00:29:26.000 But if we don't agree, then we have to employ very much different rhetoric and strategies.

00:29:35.000 Just like, again, I come back to the Civil War.

00:29:39.000 Between the North and the South, there were only two options.

00:29:44.000 We fought or we parted, right?

00:29:48.000 And I think, you know, here, parting, we're beginning to do.

00:29:52.000 Obviously, people are talking about it.

00:29:54.000 Obviously, it's a lot more difficult.

00:29:56.000 And I don't expect a hot war.

00:30:00.000 Who knows?

00:30:00.000 I mean, the riots were a hot war and they were promoted by the Democrats as well as promoted by the cultural business complex.

00:30:11.000 So I don't know exactly how you convince a group like that.

00:30:17.000 I think what you, again, comes back to leadership.

00:30:21.000 Somebody's got to explain that this really is a war.

00:30:26.000 And in a war, we abide by different rules.

00:30:30.000 You know, I frequently say America is not racist, period.

00:30:36.000 Now, do I think there's some racism in America?

00:30:39.000 Of course.

00:30:39.000 Are there racist?

00:30:41.000 But I don't want to concede that.

00:30:43.000 Right now is a time to assert in the same way they assert that America is systemically racist.

00:30:50.000 They have no evidence for that.

00:30:53.000 We need to assert the opposite.

00:30:55.000 So I agree completely with you.

00:30:58.000 As we said earlier, live and let live.

00:31:01.000 We'll lose to do it our way or else every time.

00:31:08.000 Did you get hit with a big tax bill you weren't expecting?

00:31:11.000 With rates still being very low and home equity being high, it's the perfect time to refinance and get some cash out of your home.

00:31:17.000 If you have to take out a loan, don't go to the big banks where you know they don't share your values.

00:31:22.000 And at any time, they might kick out conservatives from using their banks.

00:31:26.000 Remember Tucker Carlson revealing that Bank of America probably unconstitutionally and maybe outside of the law, who knows, handed over depositing information, credit card transactions to the federal government to try to target conservatives.

00:31:39.000 That's right.

00:31:40.000 The big banks are siding against us.

00:31:43.000 So if you are going to try to borrow some money and you don't know what to do, then talk to a human being.

00:31:47.000 Talk to my friends, Andrew and Todd.

00:31:49.000 It's Andrew Delray and Todd Avakian at AndrewandTodd.com.

00:31:53.000 They are with Sierra Pacific Mortgage, people I know and trust and like working with them, and you should too.

00:31:58.000 Just go to andrewandodd.com and take a 30 seconds to answer a couple questions.

00:32:02.000 This gives them all the info you need.

00:32:04.000 Andrew and Todd are not brokers.

00:32:06.000 They're bankers and human beings.

00:32:07.000 It's not like talking to an automaton and you have to borrow money and give money to BLM.

00:32:13.000 Instead, Andrew and Todd are real people.

00:32:15.000 They'll joke with you.

00:32:16.000 They'll pray with you.

00:32:16.000 They'll sympathize with you.

00:32:18.000 They'll give you honest advice.

00:32:19.000 They're good people, especially when you make one of the most important decisions in your life.

00:32:24.000 Don't go to one of the woke Wall Street banks where they just, all their money goes to the destruction of America.

00:32:29.000 Go look at the contributions.

00:32:31.000 Do you know that one of the big banks says they will not give money to Republicans anymore?

00:32:34.000 Then why take out loans with them?

00:32:36.000 The answer is because you probably didn't know that there was a competitor.

00:32:38.000 You didn't know that there were a couple of Christian guys in California that want to do right by you.

00:32:43.000 I know they've done a great job with producer Andrew.

00:32:46.000 It's AndrewandTodd.com.

00:32:48.000 Super easy.

00:32:49.000 Andrewandtodd.com called 888 888 1172, 888 888 1172 and, by the way, you might be working through a loan with a big bank and you might be up to your neck in paperwork.

00:32:58.000 It's not too late to pull the cord and transfer that over to someone who loves the lord and loves the country Andrewandtodd.com, triple eight, triple eight eleven, seventy two.

00:33:05.000 Look, we're partnering with them.

00:33:07.000 You're going to hear me talk about them a lot on this program.

00:33:09.000 Let me just end with this.

00:33:10.000 With Andrew And Todd, is that a lot of you say, Charlie, I want to buy cut, I want to stop supporting companies that don't share my values.

00:33:17.000 Well then, why would you borrow maybe even six figures, maybe seven figures, with a bank that hates you?

00:33:24.000 Answer you shouldn't, Andrewandtodd.com.

00:33:27.000 Triple eight, triple eight eleven, seventy two.

00:33:28.000 Tell them Charlie, Kirk sent you.

00:33:30.000 You'll be met with a smile, a warm greeting and a real human being, Andrewandtodd.com.

00:33:37.000 Well, and this is what people don't understand is that the live and let live attitude is fine if you're in the hills of Vermont with 50 people and you have a commune, until all of a sudden someone says, you know what?

00:33:50.000 No, I actually want to call the shots.

00:33:51.000 And that's what's happened here.

00:33:53.000 Is that or here's or here's another way to look at it.

00:33:56.000 Maybe you can do this, live and let live stuff.

00:34:00.000 If all the population generally agrees on an understanding of justice yes, and what a just society looks like.

00:34:08.000 But if all of a sudden it's happened now different understandings of justice, different understanding of a just society, then you got to fight.

00:34:17.000 And in fighting you don't necessarily compromise, because if you compromise you're likely to end up on the enemy's turf, and the Republicans seem to do that all the time.

00:34:30.000 You know when the moderate Democra Uh, Republicans agreed, have a commission to study January 6th. 0.83

00:34:39.000 I couldn't imagine a dumber thing.

00:34:43.000 And that reflects, I think, of a lack of appreciation of where we are and failure to understand exactly how these moderates, Liz Cheney, for example, how they're going to be used. 0.99

00:34:57.000 I mean, I think that was about the dumbest thing I can imagine.

00:35:02.000 And so I want to ask you, and it's a very obvious question to you, but it won't be to our listeners. 0.75

00:35:07.000 What happens if we lose?

00:35:09.000 Well, it depends.

00:35:11.000 It's not so obvious what happens if we lose.

00:35:15.000 And what exactly losing looks like, I don't know.

00:35:20.000 I think if you have, you know, the extreme case is that you have really a totalitarian regime.

00:35:28.000 Some people describe what we have as kind of a soft totalitarian regime.

00:35:33.000 But in a totalitarian regime, the state uses violence, right, to make, to control all aspects of public and private life.

00:35:43.000 So we can't have the traditional family.

00:35:46.000 We can't have religion because religion supports other values. 0.92

00:35:50.000 That's right.

00:35:51.000 Right.

00:35:51.000 Obviously, education has to be destroyed.

00:35:54.000 So all the institutions that support the American way of life will be destroyed or made woke.

00:36:04.000 Right.

00:36:05.000 So that's what people understand.

00:36:07.000 And it's necessary.

00:36:09.000 The woke comms have to do this to affect their agenda. 0.73

00:36:14.000 And so people should understand that we're going to denigrate and eliminate the traditional mother, father, family, religion, education, which we've mostly eliminated.

00:36:27.000 Period.

00:36:29.000 You end the peace, which I love with Abraham Lincoln, of whom I'm a massive fan of, because Lincoln was willing and he was prudent to do what was necessary to achieve something that was deemed impossible.

00:36:42.000 You write, perhaps one of the people who voted to keep Lincoln's name on that San Francisco high school remembered that Lincoln at 30 years old, unknown beyond central Illinois, wrote about an aspirational fantasy, which was, I suspect, inspired by his heroes, George Washington and Henry Clay.

00:36:57.000 If ever I feel worthy, Lincoln once said, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country deserted by all the world, and I standing up boldly and alone, hurling defiance at our victorious oppressors here without contemplating consequences.

00:37:11.000 I swear eternal fidelity to that just cause of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love.

00:37:17.000 But if after all we shall fail, be it so, we still have the proud consolation of saying to our consciousness, conscious, we never faltered.

00:37:26.000 Elaborate on Lincoln.

00:37:27.000 What can Lincoln teach us and also Churchill in times like this?

00:37:34.000 He can teach us who we are, what we stand for.

00:37:38.000 He can educate us on specific things like the founding, right?

00:37:42.000 But basically, what he did was he explained what we were fighting for, why it was necessary to die for this cause.

00:37:55.000 A cause, by the way, necessary not just to preserve freedom in America, but freedom around the world.

00:38:03.000 Lincoln understood if democracy died here, it died everywhere for a long, long while.

00:38:10.000 Now, Prue, you know, that quote that I used, which was supposed to be motivational, right?

00:38:19.000 We're looking for a Lincoln at the moment.

00:38:24.000 We're looking for someone with the sense of urgency that Lincoln communicates.

00:38:31.000 This is what a great souled man looks like.

00:38:35.000 Now, you said something that was very important, and that is Lincoln's prudence.

00:38:41.000 He not only knew what was right, he not only knew the end goal, he knew how to get there, right?

00:38:48.000 So he, he, it's kind of like Trump in a way that I think it's prudent to favor Trump at this moment because he fits, as I said before, the current circumstances.

00:39:04.000 He may not even be prudent himself, but it may be prudent to vote for a man who fits the circumstances.

00:39:13.000 So prudence is very, very key.

00:39:17.000 And as you no doubt learned from your Lincoln fellowship, you know, prudence is the central aspect of statesmanship.

00:39:30.000 And that is something that Churchill did about 100 years after Lincoln, not even about 80 years after Lincoln, in a totally different set of circumstances, but also eerily similar, where there was only a couple options, surrender or fight.

00:39:45.000 And Lincoln had a very similar set of options in front of him.

00:39:49.000 So in closing here, any specific marching orders for what people can do?

00:39:53.000 Because you talk a lot about generals here, right?

00:39:56.000 We need a Lincoln.

00:39:57.000 We need a Churchill.

00:39:58.000 We need a general.

00:39:59.000 What about the infantry?

00:40:01.000 What can just the someone that's at like, I agree, I want to do something.

00:40:05.000 Any specific action items?

00:40:08.000 Well, one of the things we might do is get on that critical race theory bandwagon.

00:40:18.000 It's already beginning to develop.

00:40:21.000 As you know, there's a bunch of national groups, not national political, but national not-for-profit groups who are organizing people running for school boards, local council, right?

00:40:32.000 That's aptly critical.

00:40:34.000 It's happening here in Maine, not so well.

00:40:38.000 Public may be.

00:40:39.000 People are actually protesting.

00:40:40.000 They're on the streets.

00:40:43.000 And hopefully, hopefully, that will inspire their leaders to participate because education is real complicated.

00:40:53.000 It's not just school boards, a lot of other moving players.

00:40:56.000 It needs support from above.

00:40:58.000 But we need, before we get that support, then we need the CRT pushback.

00:41:06.000 We need people standing up and when they're canceled to stop apologizing.

00:41:12.000 Most people, when they get canceled, they say, oh, I was terribly wrong.

00:41:16.000 I'll never do it again.

00:41:17.000 That's nonsense.

00:41:19.000 People in their own little way, standing up at a meeting and saying, this is nonsense, and then incurring the wrath or incurring the charges of racism.

00:41:30.000 This happens one by one.

00:41:33.000 And everybody can do a little thing.

00:41:35.000 Obviously, some people can do more.

00:41:39.000 I think that's really well said.

00:41:41.000 Everybody, winning the Cold Civil War. 0.58

00:41:43.000 Check it out.

00:41:44.000 We'll have it posted on charliekirk.com.

00:41:46.000 Thank you so much for the wonderful conversation.

00:41:48.000 Again, check out the Claremont Institute or AmericanMind.org.

00:41:51.000 It was terrific.

00:41:52.000 Thank you.

00:41:55.000 Thank you so much for listening, everybody.

00:41:56.000 Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:41:59.000 And if you want to make sure you're subscribed to all of our podcasts, go to charliekirk.com slash support.

00:42:05.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:42:07.000 God bless.

00:42:10.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - September 16, 2021

How to Win America’s Cold Civil War

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