The Charlie Kirk Show - Parasitic Ideas That Threaten the West with Gad Saad

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today on the podcast, Dr. Gad Saad, very interesting guy with an important book.

00:00:06.000 We talk about parasitic ideas that are destroying the West.

00:00:09.000 How do we win his dispute with Lex Friedman and more?

00:00:13.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:16.000 That is freedom at charliekirk.com.

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00:00:33.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:34.000 Here we go.

00:00:36.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:37.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:39.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:43.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:46.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:47.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:48.000 His 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.

00:00:57.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:05.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:09.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at AndrewandTodd.com.

00:01:18.000 Joining us now is one of my favorite guests, Dr. Gad Saad.

00:01:22.000 Doctor, thank you so much for joining the program.

00:01:24.000 I want to read your tweet, if that's okay, and then we can get you to riff on it.

00:01:29.000 Quote, you're not going to like this tweet, so turn away if you are likely to be triggered.

00:01:33.000 I'm a very optimistic person.

00:01:35.000 I'm a fighter for Western values and liberties.

00:01:37.000 I'm a dogged defender of science, reason, and common sense.

00:01:40.000 I must say, though, that I'm unsure that the West can recover from its multi-front civilizational suicide.

00:01:45.000 Yes, I've talked about these issues for decades and wrote a book about it in the past, but the past few weeks have crystallized the extent to which the problem has become intractable.

00:01:54.000 It will be a long and ultimately bloody demise, and the West will be the first society in recorded history to fully self-implode due to its parasitic ideological rapture.

00:02:04.000 It is a gargantuan Greek tragedy that will shape the future of humanity.

00:02:09.000 This is not hyperbole.

00:02:10.000 Your grandchildren will pay a very high price for your progressive arrogance, rooted in the pursuit of unicornia, I think I said that right, that only exists in the recesses of deeply flawed parasitized.

00:02:22.000 You have to pronounce that one for me.

00:02:23.000 That's not a word I use.

00:02:24.000 Parasitized.

00:02:25.000 Thank you.

00:02:25.000 Parasitized.

00:02:26.000 Excuse my inability to pronounce that.

00:02:28.000 Gad Saad, tell us about it.

00:02:30.000 Well, you know, I was just talking to your producer offline.

00:02:35.000 If your physician comes to you and says, hey, you have an aggressive cancer, and here are some intervention strategies that hopefully can eradicate the cancer.

00:02:44.000 And you say, no, no, no, doctor, I don't want to eradicate the cancer.

00:02:48.000 Actually, there is no cancer.

00:02:49.000 And here's what I'd like to do.

00:02:50.000 I'd like to smoke five packs of cigarettes a day.

00:02:53.000 I'd like to take a whiff of an asbestos bag.

00:02:57.000 And maybe I can sit out in an artificial sunbed all day long.

00:03:01.000 Maybe that will decrease my cancer.

00:03:03.000 Now, what I'm saying here facetiously is that not only you have a complete breakdown in the ability of Western leaders to think critically, hence the parasitic mind, but they, because of that parasitized mind, they then end up doubling down on a lot of the craziness.

00:03:20.000 So there is no way by which you could implement a policy to reverse the trends.

00:03:25.000 And that's why I wrote that tweet.

00:03:27.000 Yeah.

00:03:27.000 Well, so explain to us how would you identify the multi-front civilizational suicide?

00:03:32.000 List them out for us.

00:03:34.000 Right.

00:03:34.000 So in the parasitic mind, I basically argue that there is a bunch of idea pathogens that serve like brainworms that alter your ability to think rationally, slowly leading you into the abyss of infinite lunacy.

00:03:49.000 So what are some of those ideological mind pathogens?

00:03:53.000 So of course, postmodernism, I've talked with you about this previously in the show.

00:03:58.000 Postmodernism says that there are no objective truths, and therefore, men can be women, left could be right, peace could be war, Hamas could be the freedom fighters, whereas Israel are the Nazi genocidal regime.

00:04:11.000 There is no objective truth.

00:04:13.000 So, all bets are off epistemologically.

00:04:16.000 How about cultural relativism?

00:04:17.000 Cultural relativism is another idea pathogen that basically disarms people from being able to take clear positions about things that should be obvious to a three-day-old pigeon. 0.98

00:04:29.000 Is it okay to cut off the clitorises of five-year-old girls? 0.87

00:04:33.000 Is a society that allows that? 0.99

00:04:35.000 Is that a superior society to one that doesn't allow that?

00:04:39.000 Well, according to our super smart Western academics, well, who are you to judge the mores of another culture?

00:04:46.000 And therefore, that disarms you from making moral judgments and therefore fighting against grotesque violations of morality, radical feminism, biophobia, the inability to accept biological reality.

00:05:00.000 So, all of these idea pathogens have created this perfect multi-pronged mechanism by which people can no longer think, and therefore we end up in exactly the situation that we're in today.

00:05:14.000 So, what is interesting, and you mentioned this in your metaphor at the beginning, people refuse to acknowledge we even have a problem, and that's that's what I think is most disturbing.

00:05:25.000 It'd be one thing if we debated what the solution would be, but you have one side that acts as if the revolution has never had more spirit, and the other side that's actually properly diagnosing that our civilization is collapsing from within.

00:05:39.000 Exactly right, right?

00:05:40.000 So, again, and hence my example with you know the cancer, right?

00:05:45.000 You have to recognize, as the old cliché says, the first step is to recognize that there's a problem.

00:05:50.000 So, let's let's put it in concrete language.

00:05:53.000 For about 30 years now, I've been warning the West about exactly what we're seeing.

00:05:57.000 And I'm not saying this to be gleeful so that I can be patted out of boy, you were right, but it's because I'm so frustrated at the fact that we are finding ourselves where we are when we could have avoided all this.

00:06:07.000 So, let's take a concrete example.

00:06:09.000 If you let into your country hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who do not share any of the foundational values on which the host society is built, what do you think is going to happen? 0.96

00:06:23.000 So, let's make it more concrete.

00:06:25.000 But there are many non-partisan, in many cases, woke global surveys that, when they do surveys in countries where perpetual peace reigns, such as Pakistan and Yemen, and Lebanon, and Syria, and Algeria, and Libya, and Egypt, you find about 95 to 99% Jew hatred.

00:06:48.000 So, let me explain this for people who may not know what that means.

00:06:52.000 So, if I sample a thousand people in Egypt, between 950 to 990 of the sampled people will express great disdain and hatred towards Jews.

00:07:04.000 So, now, if you let in 100,000 of those people, is that going to result in greater safety for Jews in the host country or lesser safety? 0.93

00:07:14.000 So, it doesn't take a fancy professor such as myself to be able to connect the dots, right?

00:07:20.000 But we refuse to say that.

00:07:22.000 The reason why we refuse is because it appears gauche to most Westerners to make such a statement. 0.86

00:07:28.000 That makes you sound as though you're a bigot and a racist.

00:07:32.000 But listen, I have more Muslim friends than most people will ever meet. 0.98

00:07:36.000 And I perfectly recognize that there are mean Jews and nice Jews. 0.79

00:07:40.000 There are mean Muslims and nice Muslims. 0.84

00:07:42.000 But we're talking here about foundational values. 0.83

00:07:46.000 Does a culture that says throw gays off rooftops is that a culture that is superior to one that celebrates all year long, you know, queer identity? 0.99

00:07:57.000 You know, it doesn't take much to put the dots together.

00:08:00.000 So, let's just kind of isolate that example.

00:08:03.000 It's largely, though, you call it suicidal, which it is.

00:08:07.000 And I'm trying to understand the psychology of it and maybe, you know, help us out here, Doctor.

00:08:11.000 Because if you just take a sampling of 100 secular Jews in America, 80 to 90 percent of them would want more immigration, even from people who hate them.

00:08:22.000 So, explain that one to me.

00:08:25.000 So, I'll be I'll explain it by drawing an analogy.

00:08:28.000 So, in Quebec, the biggest foundational existential threat to Quebecers is that their language is going to die, right?

00:08:37.000 So, they view the prism of everything in life through the mean English people are going to sweep us aside with their English, and therefore we have to find any way to resist. 0.56

00:08:48.000 And so, here's what the Quebec government did many years ago: they said, Here's a great idea.

00:08:53.000 Why don't we let in hundreds of thousands of people who are perfectly antithetical to our values in Quebec, but at least they speak French? 1.00

00:09:03.000 So, when they come to behead you, at least they say bonjour before they behead you, and therefore, don't worry about it, it will all work out. 0.87

00:09:12.000 So, it's the exact same principle with the super smarmy liberal Jews that you're speaking of. 1.00

00:09:18.000 They have an identity that says we are infinitely tolerant, but you know why they're infinitely tolerant because they grew up in the upper east side of New York City where they didn't know that these things happened.

00:09:29.000 They didn't grow up where mean Middle Eastern Professor Gad Sad grew up.

00:09:34.000 But I grew up in the Middle East, and I know that what they started with me in 1975 in the Middle East will eventually find its way to the Upper East side.

00:09:44.000 Yeah, we have a good amount of time to unpack this.

00:09:48.000 So, some people say that it's just mass delusion or that it's ideal, like ideology that can then basically trump, no pun intended, reality.

00:10:01.000 That's my current working hypothesis: I underestimated how powerful ideology can be to basically overrule material reality.

00:10:14.000 Absolutely right.

00:10:15.000 And as you know, and I think you might have maybe quoted me.

00:10:17.000 I heard you on Megan Kelly talking about it.

00:10:21.000 One of the things that I argued makes all of these idea pathogens similar to each other is that they free us from the pesky shackles of reality.

00:10:30.000 I use your phrase all the time.

00:10:32.000 That's right.

00:10:33.000 Right.

00:10:34.000 And I remember when I heard you say that, I said, Hey, wait a minute, that's my phrase. 1.00

00:10:37.000 Well, what I'm saying there is: look, equity feminism is a great idea. 1.00

00:10:41.000 We should all be equal under the law. 0.99

00:10:43.000 We'd all subscribe to that idea. 0.67

00:10:45.000 The problem becomes when radical feminism says, in the pursuit of that laudable goal, let's argue that men and women are indistinguishable from each other. 0.91

00:10:54.000 Well, I could chew gum and walk at the same time. 0.89

00:10:57.000 I could be all four important social goals without raping and murdering truth.

00:11:02.000 Regrettably, most progressives are unable to do those two things at the same time.

00:11:06.000 That then requires almost a spirit to want to redefine what is already existing, not to understand the natural world, but to remake it in some image, whether it be an egalitarian image or a totalitarian one.

00:11:20.000 But, doctor, plug your book here for a second.

00:11:23.000 So, the one that I've been mostly talking about now is the parasitic mind: how infectious ideas are killing common sense.

00:11:29.000 And the most recent one, released two weeks ago, two months ago, is the sad truth about happiness: eight secrets for leading the good life.

00:11:36.000 I want to ask you about that.

00:11:37.000 We live in the most unhappy times.

00:11:40.000 People are more suicidal and less joyful than ever before.

00:11:44.000 And I can't wait to read that.

00:11:46.000 So, Dr. Saad, what do you say to the people that say the West's best days are ahead?

00:11:50.000 They've never been able to destroy the West before. 0.74

00:11:53.000 And all of this is just a temporary challenge.

00:11:56.000 I would say that that optimism is well-founded as long as we recognize the problem and are willing to implement the solutions to solve the problem.

00:12:04.000 If not, we will die eventually.

00:12:06.000 It may take 50 years, it may take 100, it may take 500, but the West will self-implode.

00:12:11.000 And I mean, just looking at, you know, all the way back to Nietzsche, who said God is dead and said your foundational values basically are gone, lamenting the death of God, that seems to be prophetic because if you were to ask somebody on the side of the street in New York City, what are the foundational values of the West?

00:12:30.000 You're going to get many different answers, right?

00:12:32.000 Some people would say, well, the foundational values of the West is LGBTQ plus stuff.

00:12:37.000 Like, wait, hold on a second.

00:12:38.000 Like, that's what makes the West great is drag queen, drag queens for kids. 1.00

00:12:43.000 Working drag queens. 1.00

00:12:44.000 No, working drag queens and thongs for kids. 1.00

00:12:47.000 I have to be more specific.

00:12:51.000 Fidelity Charitable released its latest giving report.

00:12:54.000 According to the report, its account holders in 2022 recommended $11 billion to nonprofits in the mixed Planned Parenthood.

00:13:02.000 In fact, according to the report, Planned Parenthood was just the sixth most popular nonprofit among Fidelity charitable account holders last year.

00:13:09.000 Well, it upsets me too.

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00:13:24.000 I love Donor's Trust.

00:13:25.000 I encourage you guys to look at it right now.

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00:13:32.000 Dr. Said, part of it is because we're going through an identity crisis.

00:13:35.000 If you were to ask somebody on a random street in America, as I said, what does the West stand for?

00:13:39.000 You'd get all sorts of answers.

00:13:40.000 What do you think the West actually does stand for now?

00:13:44.000 What is the identity of the West?

00:13:47.000 Currently or historically?

00:13:49.000 Well, both.

00:13:50.000 Both.

00:13:51.000 Historically, individual freedoms, individual dignity, personal responsibility, presumption of innocence, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry.

00:14:03.000 Those are the deontological foundational values that allow a society to flourish.

00:14:09.000 Once you start rejecting individualism to pursue collectivism, you end up with trouble.

00:14:15.000 I come from such a culture that was perfectly organized along tribal lines.

00:14:20.000 Everything in Lebanon is viewed through the prism of which religion you belong to.

00:14:24.000 And so it's not a good experiment to run.

00:14:27.000 It's also called Rwanda.

00:14:28.000 It's also called Syria.

00:14:29.000 It's also called Iraq.

00:14:31.000 Right?

00:14:31.000 So individual dignity.

00:14:33.000 Yes, you could be a faith-based person.

00:14:35.000 That's great.

00:14:36.000 But don't impose your will on others, hence, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech.

00:14:41.000 We don't care if your feelings are hurt.

00:14:43.000 Freedom of speech is an absolutist value.

00:14:46.000 I mean, short of inciting violence, everything goes.

00:14:49.000 Charlie, I'm Jewish. 0.92

00:14:51.000 With my personal history in the Middle East, I support the right of Holocaust deniers to spew their utter nonsense. 1.00

00:14:58.000 Because I recognize that to have free speech, you have to tolerate racists, imbeciles, falsehood spreaders. 0.99

00:14:58.000 Why? 0.99

00:15:05.000 That's the price you pay to live in a truly free society.

00:15:08.000 And we've lost that.

00:15:09.000 Currently, the number one thing that unites the West is trying to mitigate the hurt feelings of some marginalized groups.

00:15:16.000 Now, this doesn't mean that I don't believe in the goal of being a kind person.

00:15:20.000 I don't go out of my way to hurt people's feelings.

00:15:23.000 But if in the pursuit of truth, I end up hurting your feeling, so be it. 0.98

00:15:28.000 Suck it up, grow a pair, and move on.

00:15:30.000 So, Dr. Said, some people would say, more traditional conservatives, they would agree with you as the end point, but they would argue that the West's own values are temporarily enjoyable, but they're not sustainable and the values will be used against them. 0.59

00:15:45.000 For example, freedom of speech is used against itself, or let's just say the neutral public square.

00:15:53.000 And that's where we get drag queens or that's where we get grotesque LGBT type stuff. 1.00

00:15:58.000 What do you have to say to the criticism?

00:15:59.000 I'm sure you've received it by some people that would say the West is actually a victim of its own once values being turned against itself, tolerance turning into mass migration.

00:16:11.000 Exactly right.

00:16:12.000 And that's why Karl Popper's infamous or famous paradox of tolerance is a quote that I have in the parasitic mind, where basically I'm paraphrasing what he said.

00:16:22.000 He said, look, yes, of course, open free societies should tolerate all sorts of stuff, but cannot tolerate the intolerable.

00:16:30.000 In other words, imagine an experiment where those who don't believe in freedom of speech were able to overpower you.

00:16:38.000 And that's where we're going.

00:16:39.000 Yes.

00:16:41.000 And that's why I wrote that tweet, right?

00:16:43.000 So it's really nice and beautiful to be tolerant and empathetic and, you know, peace through reggae music.

00:16:49.000 But we live in the real world.

00:16:51.000 We don't live in Lex Friedman world.

00:16:53.000 And therefore, you have to be grounded in reality.

00:16:56.000 And so that's really the question right now.

00:16:56.000 Yeah.

00:16:58.000 And let me just say on the free society side, I don't like to call it the right or the left.

00:17:02.000 Just people that want a free society.

00:17:03.000 And there's all sorts of different flavors of that.

00:17:05.000 I want a free society to do too.

00:17:07.000 How do we respond when the people in the majority are actually different forms of tyranny or authoritarianism?

00:17:15.000 And they say they want a free society as long as they can get rid of us, right?

00:17:18.000 So they want freedom as long as you can get rid of the non-believers. 1.00

00:17:21.000 Is it time for us to use political power against these people?

00:17:25.000 The response is hotly debated right now.

00:17:28.000 Again, it speaks to what I wrote in the tweet, which is you can't tolerate that which seeks your ultimate demise.

00:17:36.000 And it's not you being bigoted and it's not, it's you being practical and living in the real world.

00:17:41.000 That's it.

00:17:41.000 Bottom line.

00:17:42.000 Dr. Saad, tell us about your dialogue with Lex Friedman.

00:17:46.000 Well, there wasn't much of a dialogue.

00:17:48.000 Mr. Love to Love.

00:17:50.000 I'm in love with all that's love and I'm loving love.

00:17:54.000 Basically, and who's open to having conversations with everyone?

00:17:57.000 When I critiqued his faux positivity stuff, the first thing he did was to block me.

00:18:02.000 I would have thought that someone who's so in love with love would have said, hey, why don't you come on my show and let's discuss whether my positions are incorrect or not.

00:18:10.000 But apparently he's now blocking anybody who follows me.

00:18:13.000 I don't have a beef with him.

00:18:14.000 I don't know him.

00:18:15.000 I've never met him personally, but I'm someone who is easily, as the kids say, triggered by, forgive me, I hope I can use that word, pure bull.

00:18:25.000 Okay.

00:18:25.000 That angers me because I know that bad ideas have devastating downstream negative consequences.

00:18:33.000 So if you have a platform the way that he does and he's preaching all day from, you know, above, you know, he's, he's, he's eternal.

00:18:41.000 He looks down on the mortal Palestinians and Israelis and simply says, hey, guys, come on, all religions preach love.

00:18:49.000 Why can't you find your pathway to love?

00:18:51.000 That upsets me because only a completely three-year-old pigeon speaks in that language.

00:18:58.000 And sorry, oops, I used the R word.

00:19:00.000 But right?

00:19:01.000 So that's what upsets me.

00:19:02.000 It's nothing personal.

00:19:03.000 People think that when I go after someone, I'm being mean or I'm being the Middle Eastern mean guy.

00:19:10.000 It's nothing.

00:19:11.000 I'm attacking your ideas, your positions.

00:19:14.000 We might go to dinner together and we might actually find that we really like each other.

00:19:19.000 But in the arena of the public swear, if you put out ideas, other people will consume them and either agree with them and disagree with them. 0.99

00:19:28.000 And I happen to greatly disagree with the, as the British people say, the shite that this guy espouses. 0.91

00:19:34.000 So you would summarize his position of why can't we just get along type thing while we're in the midst of a mortal combat for the West? 0.99

00:19:42.000 Would you, would you?

00:19:43.000 Right.

00:19:44.000 Where 1400 people had their eyes gouged out, children decapitated, or we may disagree as to the extent of the decapitation, as some of the queers for Palestine people have explained to me over, you know, over messages.

00:19:59.000 But, you know, women were raped, and this guy comes along and says, you know, he pulls back his lesson from kindergarten and he says, hey, guys, come on, caring is sharing.

00:20:09.000 And why can't we?

00:20:10.000 Oh, my goodness.

00:20:12.000 If only the militia in Lebanon, when we escaped because we were about to get decapitated, if only those militia had been exposed to the profundity of Lex Friedman, we could have still been living in Kumbaya in Lebanon. 0.77

00:20:26.000 So if you see me speaking now with kind of a spicy tone, it's because it's this kind of garbage thinking that gets us into its ideas don't just exist in this beautiful platonic ideal world.

00:20:38.000 They have consequences. 1.00

00:20:39.000 So when this idiot goes around spewing this stuff, it has consequences and therefore I go after him. 1.00

00:20:46.000 Understandably, I will say that there is a fair amount in the intellectual community online, this unwillingness to accept that, you know, there's a Hobbesian wrinkle to nature and it's really nasty and brutish and dare I say short. 1.00

00:21:03.000 And they tend to live in the clouds.

00:21:05.000 That's something a lot of academics kind of gravitate towards.

00:21:09.000 Again, I don't know Lex personally.

00:21:11.000 I find his show interesting at times, but it doesn't surprise me that he or people like him are saying that when we're just weeks removed from some of the most heinous violence.

00:21:22.000 And also just the reality, there's also this like fake egalitarianism or equivalent that he makes like, oh, well, both sides.

00:21:30.000 Comment on that, Dr. Said.

00:21:31.000 Yeah.

00:21:32.000 So look, it's, you know, I'm also, I'm a professor of marketing, so I understand one or two things about persuasion strategies.

00:21:38.000 So Lex thinks that the optimal way to increase his market share, and maybe he's right, because he certainly has a larger platform than most people who are in that space.

00:21:49.000 He believes that by never taking a position that might alienate someone, this is how he can straddle the fence and be a fence sitter.

00:21:58.000 But guess what?

00:21:59.000 The people who matter in life, the people who shape history, are not fence sitters, right?

00:22:05.000 People love Christopher Hitchens, not because he went around saying love is love, hug your neighbor, share an apple.

00:22:12.000 He was a honey badger, right?

00:22:15.000 And Winston Churchill didn't say love is love.

00:22:18.000 And even bad actors in history also took positions.

00:22:23.000 So the world is shaped by anything but fence sitters.

00:22:27.000 But Lex, and I'm presuming here, I'm not in his mind.

00:22:31.000 I think he thinks that the right positional strategy for him to take in order to maximize his audience is to never say something that might alienate someone.

00:22:41.000 And therefore, by always equivocating, by always appearing tempered, then I could be friends with everyone.

00:22:48.000 Look, by disposition, I'm a very, very warm, affectionate, happy person.

00:22:53.000 But I also, for better or worse, I also come to the world with a honey badger attitude.

00:22:58.000 In other words, I will never violate my sense of authenticity for some pragmatic purpose.

00:23:05.000 I will never speak from this side of my mouth and this side of my mouth because I want more followers.

00:23:10.000 And frankly, that's the reason why people gravitate to my message, because you can trust that I'm going to tell you how I see it.

00:23:18.000 Lex thinks otherwise.

00:23:19.000 Power to him.

00:23:22.000 How's your life been lately?

00:23:24.000 If it feels like mine, it's a never-ending hustle.

00:23:26.000 The constant juggling of responsibilities, the endless to-do list.

00:23:29.000 And now I'm not even talking about how it affects overall well-being, sleep, productivity, and immune system.

00:23:34.000 Stress slowly infiltrates your life, silently robbing you of magnesium, a vital mineral your body depends on.

00:23:39.000 The vicious stress-magnesium deficiency cycle.

00:23:42.000 Have you heard about it?

00:23:43.000 In terms of stress spikes, your body loses magnesium, sleep becomes elusive, energy and productivity plummet, and stress levels skyrocket.

00:23:51.000 More magnesium escapes your body.

00:23:52.000 So how do you break the cycle?

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00:24:41.000 Then I must ask, how do we get the West to wake up and how do we fight this conflict or this war?

00:24:46.000 Because you said something that someone might think is a contradiction.

00:24:50.000 You said, on one hand, you want to live in a free society that allows Holocaust deniers or whatever the ability to speak, but you also said we shouldn't tolerate that which destroys you.

00:24:58.000 How do we use prudence to identify which is which and how do we respond to the left eating itself?

00:25:05.000 So even for a deontological principle like freedom of speech, freedom of speech is, I mean, technically speaking, is not an absolute, absolutist principle, right?

00:25:15.000 There is an asterisk that says, well, yes, freedom of speech, but you can't libel and defame someone.

00:25:21.000 Yes, freedom of speech, but you can't use that when you, you know, the proverbial, you know, cry fire in a theater.

00:25:27.000 Yes, freedom of speech, but you can't say, hey, let's go at the corner of 7th and 18th. 0.99

00:25:34.000 And when the Jews are coming out of the synagogue, let's beat them up and kill them, right? 1.00

00:25:38.000 So even for something as absolutist as freedom of speech, it comes with a certain asterisk. 0.99

00:25:43.000 So the same applies for your grand question.

00:25:46.000 Yes, the way that we adjudicate ideas in a free society is through vigorous debate, but you can't tolerate an ideology that says, hey, once I get in sufficient numbers and I have enough powers, I will absolutely eradicate every single foundational tenet on which you're built.

00:26:06.000 So we can be, so it's not inconsistent.

00:26:09.000 It's not, so for any deontological statement, there's always a few asterisks that explain the boundary conditions.

00:26:16.000 So this is all good.

00:26:17.000 There's no problem there.

00:26:18.000 So then what is the battle plan then, Dr. Said?

00:26:21.000 You think deeply about this?

00:26:22.000 You're a honey badger.

00:26:23.000 You know, what are the two or three marching orders for the everyday person, the advocate for a free society?

00:26:30.000 Yeah, thank you.

00:26:31.000 So in chapter eight of the parasitic mind, I have a whole bunch of, exactly to your question, calls to action.

00:26:31.000 I love that question.

00:26:38.000 The most important of which, I think, the one that sticks in people's minds is when I say activate your inner honey badger.

00:26:44.000 And the reason, you know, we've used the word honey badger in this chat a lot, but let me just explain it for some of your viewers and listeners.

00:26:50.000 The honey badger has been officially ranked as the fiercest animal in the animal kingdom.

00:26:55.000 Well, that's a big title, right?

00:26:56.000 I mean, there are a lot of, you know, laudable competitors that would want to get that mantle.

00:27:01.000 Well, the reason why it is so fierce is because it's absolutely dogged in how it defends itself.

00:27:07.000 It is the size of a small dog, and yet lions will stay away from it because it is so fierce and ferocious.

00:27:14.000 So what does it mean when I say activate your inner honey badger?

00:27:17.000 I'm not talking about a call to violence.

00:27:19.000 I'm saying that if there are foundational principles that you think are worth saving, then be a honey badger and defend them, right?

00:27:28.000 There is nothing wrong in you saying, I don't want twerking drag queens to teach my six-year-old about queer, whatever, sex, right? 1.00

00:27:39.000 There is a time and place for anything.

00:27:41.000 So have confidence in your convictions.

00:27:43.000 But here's the beauty of a lot of these idea pathogens. 0.82

00:27:46.000 They've convinced most people that any blowback to any of their positions makes you a transphobe, a sexist, a misogynist, a toxic masculinity guy, an Islamophobe.

00:27:58.000 And people are more afraid to be labeled that than to die, right? 0.82

00:28:02.000 And therefore they keep quiet.

00:28:04.000 But the reality, though, is here's some optimistic words.

00:28:06.000 The reality is the silent majority hates this stuff.

00:28:10.000 But unfortunately, much of the silent majority have lost their testicular fortitude and they haven't been able to find their spines yet.

00:28:18.000 Once they find their testicles and they find their spine, that's when we will win the war.

00:28:23.000 Until then, we will continue to go towards the abyss of infinite lunacy. 0.88

00:28:27.000 And I think what you're getting at, Dr. Said, is, and you said this previously, one of the kind of belief limitations I have when talking to free society advocates is they say, but I think of myself as a tolerant person and therefore I don't know how to be intolerant to the other side.

00:28:27.000 I love it.

00:28:46.000 And I think you've articulated it perfectly, which is if you are, if you do not stand against the thing that wants to murder you and wants to kill you, then you will cease to exist and there will be no ideals of which you can rest your laurels on, right?

00:28:59.000 And you're also exactly.

00:29:01.000 Yeah, please.

00:29:02.000 I was just going to say, I mean, I recently have been really going after as a manifestation of lunacy and parasitic thinking, the queers for Palestine. 1.00

00:29:11.000 And so I drew an analogy and I called it the geese for foie gras, right? 0.71

00:29:15.000 I mean, think about how parasitized your mind must be to be queers for Palestine. 1.00

00:29:21.000 If your foundational identity is to be a queer person, which is, hey, great, more power to you. 0.94

00:29:27.000 Do you prefer to live in queer-friendly Tel Aviv or do you prefer to live in a place where they've got this really gravity-based conversion program where they take you to the top of the buildings and they introduce you to this beautiful liberating concept called gravity?

00:29:45.000 So imagine how misdirected you must be if your foundational identity is your queerness and you're for queers for Palestine, which specifically abhors your identity. 0.90

00:29:59.000 That's the problem we're facing.

00:30:01.000 By the way, that's why I get engaged in the public arena, because believe me, I already lead a very stressful life as a professor.

00:30:08.000 But the reason why I get engaged is because I know what's coming down in the final train station and it's not pretty.

00:30:15.000 That's what I escaped from in 1975.

00:30:18.000 Well, you and I have one thing in common.

00:30:20.000 I didn't escape anything except being from the communist state of Illinois, but I spent a lot of time on college campuses and I do also see what's coming.

00:30:26.000 I see the rank and file and I try to warn people and it doesn't always, I'm not always believed, right?

00:30:33.000 I'm like, hey, you realize five years ago, Dr. Said, I told a group of wealthy donors in Palm Beach that men can give birth will be a predominant viewpoint in the American government within a decade.

00:30:43.000 And they thought I was crazy.

00:30:45.000 In fact, these donors to Stanford, Yale, Princeton, and Harvard said, Charlie, please stop exaggerating our institutions.

00:30:53.000 This idea that men can give birth will never latch on. 0.53

00:30:56.000 This is just a fringe idea.

00:31:00.000 So you and I have that in common, Dr. Said.

00:31:02.000 My good sir, by the way, I admire greatly your work.

00:31:05.000 You truly are doing God's work, as they say.

00:31:07.000 But if I can do one Upmanship on you, I predicted that in 2002.

00:31:14.000 Yeah, I wish.

00:31:15.000 I mean, there's the nine years old.

00:31:16.000 You were nine years old.

00:31:18.000 So, so, so, so, but that, but more power to you, because what you are exhibiting there is what's called extrapolating to the boundary condition, right?

00:31:27.000 If you basically say that, hey, your, your, your genitalia does not define your biological sex, then you easily can jump epistemologically to, of course, men can bear children, and of course, men can menstruate.

00:31:40.000 So, kudos to you for being a sharp thinker.

00:31:42.000 I really want to talk about your book, Dr. Saad.

00:31:44.000 You've been so generous with your time, but I just have one final point on this that I want to is: I mentioned this earlier.

00:31:50.000 There was a story.

00:31:51.000 We didn't talk about this, though.

00:31:52.000 There was a story in New York, young lady at 3:51 a.m. with her boyfriend. 0.97

00:31:56.000 You know, a black guy goes by, slits the throat. 0.98

00:31:58.000 I don't know if you saw the story. 0.96

00:31:59.000 He was a BLM activist.

00:32:01.000 You know, she doesn't administer first aid, not part of, not necessarily part of the story.

00:32:06.000 Anyway, she refuses to give the police the race of the attacker because she didn't want to extrapolate, you know, racist thoughts.

00:32:13.000 My point is this: Dr. Saad. 0.98

00:32:15.000 There was another story out of Germany: young lady gang raped by Arab Muslims. 0.90

00:32:20.000 She goes to the police, said that she was gang raped by white Germans because she didn't want to continue anti-immigrant hatred. 0.88

00:32:26.000 Will reality itself save us?

00:32:29.000 Because I'm not so sure.

00:32:32.000 That's exactly why I wrote the tweet.

00:32:34.000 Those two examples that you said is exactly exemplars of that tweet.

00:32:38.000 I'll give you another example that is well in line with your two wonderful examples.

00:32:43.000 There was a Norwegian man who was raped by a, I think he was a Somali noble immigrant, a cultural enricher. 0.93

00:32:52.000 He raped him. 0.71

00:32:54.000 Then, when he was going to serve a very minimal prison sentence and then be deported, the Norwegian man who was sodomized felt incredibly guilty and felt wrong that this guy was now going to be deported to Somalia where he would have a rough life.

00:33:12.000 So, when your most basic foundational instincts of survival and your emotional system to seek revenge, to seek vindication, to right what's wrong is completely erased, we stand no chance.

00:33:27.000 We're doomed.

00:33:28.000 I underestimated a couple years ago, I underestimated.

00:33:32.000 So, I didn't extrapolate it, as you say, how powerful ideology can be in the face of reality.

00:33:37.000 Because in right-wing circles, there is this belief it'll get so bad, it'll fall apart, people will come back to sane policy.

00:33:46.000 I no longer believe that.

00:33:47.000 I now believe that a almost religious vision of utopia or ideology can trump reality.

00:33:54.000 So, I have a Jewish woman who wrote to me. 0.96

00:33:57.000 I talk about this in the parasitic mind. 0.52

00:33:58.000 She wrote to me asking me, What is the view of Jews in Islam? 0.80

00:34:03.000 So, I sent her a clip where an imam was saying, Oh, God, why are you mean to us? 0.70

00:34:07.000 Why didn't you give us the chance to kill the Jews rather than give that glory to Hitler? 0.98

00:34:12.000 She wrote back to me and said, You see, God, by sharing that clip, you're no different from those extremists. 0.96

00:34:18.000 So, me telling a Jewish woman, answering her question, suggested that I was no different than the Islamic guy lamenting why he didn't have the pleasure of exterminating all Jews. 0.97

00:34:30.000 She's a Jewish woman.

00:34:31.000 Her grandparents were in the Holocaust, if I remember correctly.

00:34:34.000 We're doomed.

00:34:34.000 Not only did you explain it, you sent evidence of somebody else explaining it for you, and you're the problem.

00:34:42.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

00:34:43.000 As you know, following this week's horrible events, Israel is at war.

00:34:47.000 The people of Israel are under attack from brutal terrorists, targeting innocent civilians, including women and children.

00:34:52.000 There's over a thousand casualties, as well as kidnapping and infiltration of southern Israeli towns.

00:34:56.000 Israel is now retaliating and could escalate with a ground offensive against Hamas militants.

00:35:01.000 The situation is critical, which is why I'm partnering with our friends at the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews to rush emergency relief to the hardest hit areas.

00:35:08.000 Call the special phone number 800-492-5454 to make an emergency donation.

00:35:13.000 Again, that's 800-492-5454.

00:35:16.000 Your emergency gift will help the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews save lives and provide critical essentials needed right now.

00:35:23.000 During this dark time, the need in war-torn areas will be tremendous.

00:35:26.000 The fellowship has an extensive network of staff, partner organizations, and more.

00:35:30.000 Immediately respond with life-saving security and support measures.

00:35:32.000 We ask all people to pray for safety and protection.

00:35:35.000 Call 800-235-887 as we rush urgent need right now to help Israel through the International Fellowship of Christian Jews.

00:35:44.000 Dr. Saad, by the way, consider this an invite to come speak at America Fest.

00:35:47.000 You'll love it.

00:35:48.000 It's amazing.

00:35:49.000 Oh my God, I'd love to.

00:35:50.000 Yes, so we'll get that arranged if the Canadian government allows you to leave your country.

00:35:55.000 So, by the way, that's a whole nother topic you and I can dialogue on the fall of Canada.

00:36:00.000 Dr. Saad, I want to give you ample opportunity.

00:36:02.000 Plug your book.

00:36:03.000 I have several questions about it.

00:36:04.000 Eight keys to live a good life.

00:36:06.000 Tell us about it.

00:36:08.000 So, the reason why I wrote that book, which is a big departure from the parasitic mind, was two reasons basically.

00:36:13.000 I would often receive emails from people saying, How is it that you always tackle these very serious issues?

00:36:19.000 Yet you seem to always be joking around.

00:36:21.000 You have this very spicy way of speaking.

00:36:23.000 You always seem to be happy.

00:36:25.000 What's your secret, Professor?

00:36:26.000 So, that was number one.

00:36:27.000 Number two, whenever I would post something on social media that was prescriptive in nature, where I'm giving people advice, that would be some of the stuff that I noticed would get most impact.

00:36:37.000 People would write to me and say, Oh my God, when you told me to get off the couch, that changed my life.

00:36:42.000 And I'm thinking, Really?

00:36:43.000 You needed me to tell you to get off the couch?

00:36:45.000 That was the secret to your success.

00:36:46.000 And so, then I decided, Well, why don't I have the audacity to see if I can put together a prescription of how to live a good life?

00:36:54.000 Which, of course, was quite daunting.

00:36:55.000 Because if there's anything that philosophers have written most about, is exactly that topic.

00:37:00.000 So, could I write something that was fresh, unique, distinctive?

00:37:03.000 And hopefully, if I've done a good job, I've done exactly that.

00:37:06.000 All right, you got to give us one of the eight, then, Doctor.

00:37:08.000 You got to tease us out.

00:37:09.000 Give us one that just give us one.

00:37:12.000 Choose the person that you wake up to in the morning and that you return to at the end of the night to that bed.

00:37:18.000 Make sure that that choice is a good one.

00:37:20.000 I would not be nearly the person that I am today if I didn't know that I had a very happy soulace at home, beautiful children, a fantastic supporting wife.

00:37:31.000 I wouldn't be able to tackle the things that I do in life if I didn't have that.

00:37:35.000 So, if anything else, there are certain ways by which we can try to maximize the likelihood of finding the right spouse.

00:37:40.000 So, that's that would be one secret.

00:37:42.000 I agree.

00:37:43.000 Let me ask you then a different question: What would you say is the root of the unhappiness of the West?

00:37:48.000 Well, I mean, certainly, if I were to speak about progressives, I think that actually I talk about this in the book.

00:37:54.000 I argue that there's a lot of research that shows that on average, conservatives are happier than progressives and liberals.

00:38:00.000 And my argument is because when conservatives wake up in the morning, they do believe by definition, it's in the word conserve.

00:38:08.000 They believe that there are certain foundational values that are worth conserving and fighting for.

00:38:12.000 On the other hand, progressives are always existentially happy.

00:38:16.000 The current society is evil, it's patriarchal, it's sexist, it's transphobic.

00:38:21.000 So, just around the corner, if we can make changes, will be unicornia.

00:38:26.000 And so, one is existentially happy, the other one is existentially happy.

00:38:30.000 And so, that explains in part the reason why conservatives tend to be happier than progressives.

00:38:36.000 From your research, what does, or experience even, what does gratitude have to do with a happy or unhappy life?

00:38:42.000 I would, I haven't read your book, but I would imagine you mentioned the word gratitude in your book.

00:38:47.000 Oh, big time.

00:38:48.000 As a matter of fact, in the last chapter, I tell two stories.

00:38:51.000 I'll only mention one here.

00:38:52.000 So, probably the greatest guest I've ever had on my show, that's saying a lot because I've had many incredible guests, is a gentleman that no one's heard of.

00:38:59.000 His name is David McCallum.

00:39:01.000 He spent 29 years in prison for a crime that he was eventually exonerated of.

00:39:06.000 And so, I was talking to him on the show, and I said, David, you must be Buddha.

00:39:10.000 How is it that you are able to be filled with grace?

00:39:14.000 You don't have any sense of vengefulness.

00:39:16.000 You're a much better man than I am, David, because I would want to burn the world down because of the injustice that was done to me.

00:39:22.000 So, here is his answer, which is filled with gratitude.

00:39:24.000 He said, Well, you know, my sister has been stricken with cerebral palsy and she's been bedridden for many years, and yet she finds the ability to smile every day.

00:39:34.000 So if she can smile, then really what I went through is not that bad.

00:39:38.000 So even the guy who had 29 years stolen from him was able to have the mindset of gratitude.

00:39:45.000 So of course, gratitude is terribly important in leading a good life.

00:39:51.000 That is well said.

00:39:52.000 And if you are thankful for what you have, you're inherently less angry.

00:39:56.000 And if you go to college campus, you get a diploma or a degree in ingratitude.

00:40:02.000 Dr. Saad, I hope to see you at our big event coming up.

00:40:04.000 It is eight.

00:40:05.000 Repeat the title, please.

00:40:07.000 The sad truth about happiness, eight secrets for leading the good life.

00:40:11.000 Keep doing the great work you're doing.

00:40:13.000 Thank you.

00:40:13.000 Thanks for being so generous, Dr. Saad.

00:40:15.000 We appreciate it.

00:40:15.000 Thank you.

00:40:16.000 Thank you, sir.

00:40:17.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:40:18.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:40:20.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

00:40:26.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - October 24, 2023

Parasitic Ideas That Threaten the West with Gad Saad

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