The Charlie Kirk Show - Revolutionary Questions in Revolutionary Times ft Dr. Larry Arnn

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:00.000 Charlie Kirk here, live from the Bitcoin.com studio.

00:00:04.000 It's in the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:05.000 Dr. Larry Arden sits down exclusively with our friends in San Diego.

00:00:09.000 Amazing conversation.

00:00:10.000 We talk about President Trump.

00:00:11.000 We talk about artificial intelligence.

00:00:13.000 We talk about education.

00:00:14.000 We talk about how the whole world is going to change because of AI and what we can do about it.

00:00:17.000 Dr. Larry Arden brings ancient wisdom to the modern problems, and I really encourage you to listen to this conversation intently and text it to your friends.

00:00:26.000 You will learn a lot in this conversation.

00:00:29.000 Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com and get involved with turningpointusa at tpusa.com.

00:00:35.000 That is tpusa.com.

00:00:36.000 Start a high school or college chapter today at tpusa.com.

00:00:41.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:42.000 Here we go.

00:00:43.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:44.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:46.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:50.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:53.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:54.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:55.000 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.

00:01:04.000 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.

00:01:12.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:16.000 Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.

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00:01:32.000 That is noblegoldinvestments.com.

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00:01:36.000 Go to noblegoldinvestments.com.

00:01:41.000 Dr. Arn, welcome.

00:01:42.000 Hey.

00:01:43.000 Charlie, the great Charlie.

00:01:45.000 Wonderful speech at lunch.

00:01:47.000 Thank you for that.

00:01:48.000 Thank you.

00:01:48.000 I want to continue a conversation you and I are having backstage about artificial intelligence.

00:01:54.000 And you said something important where you said that in the next year or two, people are going to really realize the power of this stuff and its societal and civilizational implications.

00:02:05.000 What do you mean by that?

00:02:06.000 Well, my truck drives itself.

00:02:11.000 And it's not...

00:02:12.000 Because it's anybody's writing code anymore.

00:02:16.000 They show it videos.

00:02:17.000 I mean, out of my particular truck, for example.

00:02:21.000 And it's learning.

00:02:22.000 And it's learning really fast.

00:02:24.000 And it, you know, I've driven it 1,500 miles on it driving itself at night, in the rain, in the dark.

00:02:35.000 It drives better than I do.

00:02:37.000 So that's going to happen.

00:02:40.000 Right?

00:02:40.000 But they're training robots the same way.

00:02:43.000 And that means that in a year or two, I'm going to say to a robot, like, you know, one of my job, I'll tell you how it affects my job.

00:02:58.000 I'm like Charlie.

00:02:59.000 I have a plethora of young people that I can torture. 1.00

00:03:05.000 And, you know, a lot of them come to work at the college.

00:03:08.000 I might very well be succeeded one of these days by some student of mine.

00:03:12.000 And so, you know, we just beat the tar out of them.

00:03:16.000 But what I ask them to do is not the same anymore.

00:03:19.000 I don't, like, you know, I try not to say, like, there's some things that I have academic knowledge of.

00:03:25.000 Nobody has an infinite array of those things, but there are some that I have.

00:03:29.000 And so, if I'm going to write something or say something, I look up to verify.

00:03:34.000 I learned that from Sir Martin Gilbert, the Churchill biographer.

00:03:38.000 I ask Grok now.

00:03:41.000 And it tells me.

00:03:42.000 And it reminds me enough.

00:03:45.000 If I'm going to write it and publish it, then I verify.

00:03:51.000 But see, here's the thing.

00:03:54.000 I know how to do that.

00:03:57.000 Because I didn't grow up in this age.

00:04:00.000 I know how to look stuff up.

00:04:02.000 I know to find out whether it's true or not.

00:04:05.000 Martin Gilbert used to say to me, you have a good memory.

00:04:07.000 And I have a good memory, but we do not rely upon our memories.

00:04:12.000 Well, what's this going to mean?

00:04:15.000 So the first question, an urgent question at Hillsdale College is, what's this going to mean for young people?

00:04:21.000 And next year, we're going to finalize our plans about that.

00:04:26.000 And what they are is that they're going to have to sit for two weeks, twice in their four years, with a pen and a paper, And write out everything they know.

00:04:41.000 And in other words, they still have to suffer.

00:04:45.000 With no iPad.

00:04:47.000 Right.

00:04:47.000 No device.

00:04:48.000 That's it.

00:04:49.000 In other words, an excellent human being is excellent in intellect and character.

00:04:58.000 Character has to do with the disposition toward the hard virtues, the moral virtues.

00:05:03.000 They are justice, moderation, and courage.

00:05:07.000 Courage is the hardest one.

00:05:08.000 You have to develop that.

00:05:10.000 You have to intend it.

00:05:12.000 You have to practice it.

00:05:13.000 You have to read about it, right?

00:05:15.000 And then intellectually, you need knowledge.

00:05:18.000 And we are the only beings on earth made to get knowledge.

00:05:22.000 And we long for knowledge.

00:05:24.000 Everybody.

00:05:25.000 He is, you know, when I first met Charlie, there's a rich man, a very fine man that I knew, and he brought Charlie to a lunch.

00:05:35.000 Foster Fries.

00:05:36.000 Yeah, Foster Freeze, the late Foster Freeze.

00:05:38.000 He was a golden man.

00:05:40.000 And Foster was telling everybody who'd listen how great Charlie was.

00:05:45.000 And Charlie's 19, right?

00:05:48.000 I never say that to 19-year-olds.

00:05:51.000 And I've had 11 students in my classes who've been clerks on the Supreme Court of the United States.

00:05:55.000 I don't say that about them now, right?

00:05:59.000 And so I didn't like Charlie being flattered.

00:06:03.000 And I thought, it's not good for him.

00:06:05.000 Right?

00:06:06.000 I didn't know who he was, really, but I had a turning point.

00:06:09.000 What's that?

00:06:10.000 And it was new then, I think.

00:06:11.000 It was very new.

00:06:12.000 And the point was, Charlie did, because see, I'm an excellent judge of kid flesh.

00:06:19.000 You know, it's my line of work.

00:06:21.000 And Charlie stopped.

00:06:25.000 Like, he might have been, you know, because he's a big, big deal, you know, and everybody's just doting on him.

00:06:32.000 I mean, they still do.

00:06:38.000 I went after him a little bit, and he stopped.

00:06:41.000 And he said, what should I do?

00:06:44.000 And I said, you should learn.

00:06:47.000 And he said, okay, how would I do that?

00:06:50.000 And I said, well, you'd need to go to a good college.

00:06:53.000 And he said, Hillsdale is a good college.

00:06:55.000 I said, it is not.

00:06:57.000 It's the best.

00:07:00.000 And he said, and you know, he was, I could see.

00:07:04.000 Because, you know, he's this young kid, and he's got these huge aspirations, which, you know, are all around you today, right?

00:07:13.000 The realization of them.

00:07:15.000 And he stopped.

00:07:18.000 And that means there are levels of ambition.

00:07:21.000 And there's an ambition to do a big thing.

00:07:25.000 And beyond that, there's an ambition to get it right.

00:07:29.000 And that's a higher ambition.

00:07:31.000 And young people have to... 0.77

00:07:33.000 Develop that ambition, and they have to develop the capacity to do it.

00:07:38.000 But that's just the young.

00:07:40.000 But we all need to live that way.

00:07:44.000 And so the problem with AI is that it's going to make things easy.

00:07:50.000 Right?

00:07:51.000 And so some people will use...

00:07:56.000 I mean, like Elon Musk.

00:07:58.000 That guy's crazy.

00:08:00.000 I mean, he's...

00:08:02.000 Pro-family, lots of babies, lots of wives.

00:08:07.000 As far as I can tell, they kind of live in a compound somewhere.

00:08:10.000 I don't know what that is.

00:08:11.000 But he's never going to rest.

00:08:15.000 He's that kind.

00:08:18.000 Everybody needs to be that kind.

00:08:21.000 And also, he needs, if I was going to try to elevate him, and I may meet him again.

00:08:27.000 I've met him twice.

00:08:29.000 And if I meet him again, I'm going to tell them the Cybertruck is great, and an easy life is not the purpose of life, and you show that in your life, but you ought not to say that to others.

00:08:44.000 Sorry, only to interject, the problem then of education and the society is you're right.

00:08:50.000 Things are going to become too easy, and I can see this sometimes when I go to these campuses, and a student will come up and read their phone when they want to debate me.

00:08:58.000 Have you seen this?

00:08:59.000 And that's, I usually, I used to have no issue with this.

00:09:03.000 Because four or five years ago when they did this, that means that was their writing that they would put into the phone.

00:09:08.000 Now, they're coming up with the phone and they say, well, Charlie, I have to push back and I will dissent from your view.

00:09:15.000 I'm like, hold on, all of a sudden my, I'm like, I know they didn't write this.

00:09:19.000 This is written like a large language model, an LLM.

00:09:22.000 So then I say, put down your phone and talk to me.

00:09:26.000 You were at UC San Diego, you saw this phenomenon play out.

00:09:29.000 And I don't do it as a way of intimidation.

00:09:31.000 But Dr. Arnn, this is a kid that might get good grades in class because he knows how to navigate ChatGPT.

00:09:38.000 And it's a huge problem.

00:09:40.000 If you love them, then you want them to flourish.

00:09:45.000 And that means you don't baby them, right?

00:09:48.000 It's not good for them.

00:09:50.000 If they fall down, then you should pick them up or, in my particular case, get somebody nicer than I to do it.

00:09:58.000 Yeah, and you know, I can tell you, because I have the closest experience, probably more than anybody alive, with highly motivated 18 to 21-year-olds.

00:10:10.000 And you can do anything with them, if they have agreed in advance, and if they think you love them.

00:10:18.000 And if either of those conditions is not met, there's a complete rebellion immediately.

00:10:25.000 Right.

00:10:26.000 Well, you've got to—and see, like I was saying to Charlie, you know, I'm a really weird guy.

00:10:32.000 I like Donald Trump.

00:10:34.000 And, you know, I might be the only college president who supported him three times.

00:10:40.000 But, you know, I bear the scars of that and am proud of them.

00:10:44.000 But why do I like him?

00:10:46.000 First of all, I like him first because he upstaged me in an event one time.

00:10:51.000 2015, and it was just awesome the way he did it.

00:10:54.000 And I didn't even know who he was at the time except this celebrity guy.

00:10:59.000 But second, he gravitates to people who work, and he's always calling on us to work and achieve of our own effort.

00:11:10.000 And that's love, right?

00:11:13.000 He loves people.

00:11:15.000 I believe that very much.

00:11:17.000 I do too He I'm You know Hillsdale College is doing a series of videos to commemorate the 250th in the White House.

00:11:28.000 We've released the first one.

00:11:29.000 You can find it on the White House website.

00:11:32.000 It's phenomenal.

00:11:33.000 It's cool, right?

00:11:35.000 It's a great honor to go do that.

00:11:36.000 Really well done.

00:11:37.000 And I began by saying that you have to remember that Donald Trump wants to do something again.

00:11:44.000 And that means it's an act of obedience.

00:11:47.000 It's closer to the politics of Lincoln than of Washington, who made a revolution.

00:11:53.000 Very noble.

00:11:54.000 But Lincoln wanted to do it again, you see.

00:11:59.000 And you can't do something again if you don't know what it is.

00:12:02.000 And that means that Donald Trump, for all his...

00:12:05.000 What's he like?

00:12:07.000 He's very cocky.

00:12:08.000 He's very quick.

00:12:10.000 We prefer self-confident.

00:12:12.000 Very self-confident.

00:12:17.000 Underneath that, there's obedience.

00:12:22.000 And it's like Charlie.

00:12:27.000 Charlie didn't have to learn anything.

00:12:31.000 But he gave a speech for the college a couple, three months ago or something.

00:12:36.000 And I sat there and watched it with great pleasure.

00:12:41.000 Because the things he's put together.

00:12:44.000 And, you know, he didn't know those things when I first met him.

00:12:47.000 He's done the work, an act of obedience, of giving yourself to something.

00:12:53.000 See, we all have to learn to live like that and live hard like that.

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00:14:03.000 You know, when Winston Churchill was young...

00:14:06.000 He's a little bit like Charlie.

00:14:08.000 He didn't go to college.

00:14:09.000 He was pretty smart.

00:14:15.000 He once erupted in a speech in response to a hostile question.

00:14:22.000 What is life for but to struggle and fight in noble causes?

00:14:27.000 You see, Donald Trump is like that.

00:14:29.000 Charlie's like that.

00:14:30.000 Every serious person has that in them, right?

00:14:35.000 And, you know, like when J.D. Vance, I've never met J.D. Vance, but Charlie knows him, and I was pulling for him to be the Veep last time because he sort of has a vogue going on in Hillsdale among all the hard men and women who run the place.

00:14:58.000 He goes over to Europe, and he gives two extremely unsettling speeches.

00:15:04.000 And the one that was simply unsettling was about AI.

00:15:10.000 You have to embrace it.

00:15:12.000 We have to protect our workers, but this is, you know, what?

00:15:17.000 A tool is going to overcome us?

00:15:19.000 What kind of people are we?

00:15:20.000 I like that.

00:15:22.000 The more unsettling was about defense, because what they thought he was going to do was ask them to get their defense budgets up, and he did do that for about three minutes.

00:15:32.000 But then he just...

00:15:34.000 Offended and frightened them so that they could hardly sit still in the room by saying, it's not clear we stand for the same thing anymore because you're not respecting the will of the people you govern.

00:15:49.000 Well, that's a fundamental issue, right?

00:15:53.000 And that's, I mean, look, don't mistake, we're in the middle of a struggle for the preservation of human freedom.

00:16:01.000 And AI is just...

00:16:04.000 Either it's a tool for the good in that struggle, or it is what it's becoming in China, a tool of despotism. 0.88

00:16:13.000 It's going to be one of those two things.

00:16:15.000 How can it be a tool for liberty?

00:16:18.000 Because we know the negative.

00:16:19.000 Everyone thinks about it, Terminator or mass control.

00:16:23.000 How can AI, from education, help poor kids in Atlanta better learn?

00:16:29.000 How can AI actually make us more free?

00:16:34.000 Well, first of all, you've got to send me up here to talk about that.

00:16:41.000 She's a school teacher. 0.92

00:16:45.000 First of all, the growing of the young is a particular thing, but it's also a model of what the old need. 0.98

00:16:54.000 The challenge is to build your own competence, right?

00:16:59.000 Because every one of us, right, don't you want to be a better person?

00:17:03.000 Tomorrow than you are today?

00:17:06.000 And don't you know that to do that you have to work?

00:17:10.000 And if you don't know that, then you won't be a better person tomorrow, and tomorrow will be disappointment, and the day after, and the day after.

00:17:18.000 Well, young are doing that really fast, so we have to challenge people to produce.

00:17:27.000 There is a model, I think, operating that way, I know too.

00:17:33.000 You should come visit Hillsdale College.

00:17:35.000 It's a pretty cool place.

00:17:37.000 And we torture each other and love each other.

00:17:40.000 And it's everybody's job.

00:17:43.000 You know, we have an infinite job.

00:17:48.000 Our job is to learn about God and man and save civilization.

00:17:55.000 You know, we're getting there.

00:17:59.000 But what's it like to work at Tesla?

00:18:04.000 See, I am deeply concerned for our country, and I have been for 50 years, because I see that it's a house divided, and I just happen to have got the education to understand that, think it's true.

00:18:23.000 Well, if I start noticing that a bunch of tank gazillionaires are going MAGA, I think that's a...

00:18:32.000 Very important development.

00:18:36.000 And so I started studying them.

00:18:38.000 That's why I own a Cybertruck, by the way.

00:18:40.000 I started listening to them and watching their podcast and hearing their speeches and reading what they write.

00:18:46.000 They don't write much.

00:18:49.000 And here's the phenomenon, and it's very important.

00:18:54.000 If I'm right, and I claim that I am, the philosophers and saints are the highest and statesmen are the next and the builders are the third.

00:19:02.000 Statesmen are also kind of builders.

00:19:07.000 The builders are being thwarted, and they're turning against the regulatory state that does that to them.

00:19:16.000 And so it's one reason Donald Trump got elected president, in my opinion.

00:19:22.000 And see, that's a sign of the health in the country, that it's still us.

00:19:32.000 Right?

00:19:33.000 That those guys, you know, and girls, they start doing that.

00:19:37.000 And I just think that's extremely encouraging.

00:19:40.000 And, you know, I know there's all kinds of fights in the administration, and Charlie's involved in some of them.

00:19:47.000 I divine from this and that that I hear.

00:19:51.000 I would never do such a thing.

00:19:53.000 But I am not, you know.

00:19:56.000 I want to save America.

00:19:58.000 This collection of people.

00:20:04.000 In the White House and the best in Congress, they're the most likely to do that.

00:20:10.000 I'm on their side, right?

00:20:12.000 And I, you know, I mean, I do think, you know, he wants to put a flippant computer in his brain.

00:20:21.000 I'm not crazy about that one.

00:20:23.000 No, I'm not either.

00:20:24.000 Because at some point, you can see, he's never, I'm tempted to look it up, but I'll just quote it to you.

00:20:32.000 If you want to know, you know, read who?

00:20:38.000 Read the Apostle Paul or Thomas Aquinas.

00:20:43.000 Read Aristotle.

00:20:46.000 And you'll find things in there that are so beautiful they make you want to cry.

00:20:50.000 They're just lovely to know them.

00:20:53.000 And you can, if you haven't studied your Lincoln sufficiently, if it doesn't make you burst into tears once in a while.

00:21:01.000 Because it's sublime, you know.

00:21:04.000 So that's a very high human type.

00:21:10.000 Now, Winston Churchill, same thing.

00:21:13.000 He's awesome, you know.

00:21:14.000 I promise you just read it.

00:21:18.000 So he writes this paragraph in an essay called 50 Years Hints.

00:21:25.000 It's in a book called Thoughts and Adventures.

00:21:27.000 You can buy a paperback.

00:21:28.000 50 Years Hints.

00:21:30.000 Here's the essay.

00:21:32.000 And he says, it's about the future.

00:21:35.000 Churchill liked to talk about the future, and he had a great sense of humor about it, because you can never get caught wrong about that.

00:21:43.000 And he says, I read a book the other day that said that, I'm paraphrasing, 15 or 16 millennia, hence, a generation had arisen.

00:22:02.000 They could live as long as they wanted.

00:22:06.000 They could know much more than we can know.

00:22:09.000 They could travel anywhere they wanted to, including interplanetary.

00:22:15.000 He's writing this in 1934, by the way.

00:22:18.000 Hitler took over Germany in January 1933.

00:22:22.000 This is what's going on in the world, right?

00:22:25.000 They know pleasures.

00:22:27.000 Wider than any we can know.

00:22:31.000 What would be the good of all that to them?

00:22:34.000 What would they know more than we know about the answers to the simple questions?

00:22:40.000 Why are we here?

00:22:42.000 And what are we for?

00:22:44.000 It is the persistence of these questions that gives the best hope that all will be well.

00:22:52.000 That's the human condition, see?

00:22:54.000 Animals with immortal souls.

00:22:57.000 Facing those questions.

00:22:59.000 And our living well consists in facing them well.

00:23:06.000 With the sense of God, because God is the perfect being, implied by any perfection we have above the animal, the other animals, and also implied by our imperfections.

00:23:20.000 So, if you're not doing that, You're not living well.

00:23:28.000 And machines can't live like that. 0.51

00:23:31.000 It's not their problem, right?

00:23:33.000 So we can't be replaced by them.

00:23:37.000 But we have to...

00:23:39.000 Do you know that George Washington, a very serious young man, he wrote down and memorized 112 rules of civility.

00:23:51.000 And there are things like...

00:23:54.000 Don't chew with your mouth full.

00:23:57.000 Don't stand too close to people when you talk to them.

00:24:00.000 There's 112 of them.

00:24:02.000 The last one is, labor to keep alive in your breast the celestial fire known as conscience.

00:24:10.000 You see?

00:24:11.000 And that's what education is about because that's what life is about for every one of us.

00:24:20.000 And so these tools...

00:24:23.000 We will use them.

00:24:25.000 You know, I'm in the world conquest business, just like Charlie.

00:24:29.000 I mean, you know, Hillsdale College has gotten to be very big.

00:24:32.000 It hasn't started growing yet, right?

00:24:35.000 And we're going to teach.

00:24:37.000 As I like to say, we're in the world conquest business, and teaching is our weapon.

00:24:43.000 It's lethal, you know.

00:24:45.000 But we're going to use it.

00:24:47.000 I like crazy to do that.

00:24:49.000 But in the doing of it...

00:24:51.000 We're going to be saying the advice that we give every student, including Charlie Kirk when he was 19. You have to suffer.

00:25:01.000 Learn to like it.

00:25:05.000 Gentlemen, let's get real for a second.

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00:26:22.000 So you say that we're in the midst of a struggle.

00:26:25.000 Comparable to the Civil and the Revolutionary War.

00:26:28.000 Explain that more.

00:26:29.000 Well, so in your classical philosophy, you learn that if you want to understand any being, animate or inanimate, you have to look to the four things that cause it.

00:26:41.000 Because there are four things that cause every being to be a being.

00:26:44.000 And those four things are the material cause.

00:26:50.000 This is made out of metal and glass.

00:26:54.000 The efficient cause.

00:26:55.000 Somebody made it.

00:26:56.000 Apple made it in a factory somewhere.

00:27:00.000 The formal cause.

00:27:02.000 That's what it looks like and how it operates.

00:27:05.000 It operates as that.

00:27:07.000 It's an iPad.

00:27:10.000 That's a phone.

00:27:11.000 Same kind of thing, really.

00:27:14.000 And the final cause.

00:27:16.000 What is it for?

00:27:18.000 Or to put it another way, what is the love that produced it?

00:27:22.000 The most important of the four causes is the formal and the final.

00:27:27.000 Now, apply that to America.

00:27:29.000 The final cause of America is stated in the Declaration of Independence.

00:27:33.000 And all it says, and it's very beautiful, it's the most beautiful political document of all.

00:27:40.000 It says, there's a thing that's a human, and it is entitled to be ruled only by its consent and in the direction.

00:27:52.000 Of the rights pertaining to the human being.

00:27:55.000 Every human being.

00:27:57.000 No king.

00:27:59.000 No slave.

00:28:01.000 You see, that's what's breathtaking about it.

00:28:04.000 It appeals directly to the nature of things.

00:28:08.000 Right?

00:28:09.000 And the final cause of the United States of America is to realize that for everyone.

00:28:16.000 See?

00:28:17.000 Now, that...

00:28:20.000 Final cause is contended now.

00:28:23.000 Now it's not, you know, what does modern liberalism think the final cause is?

00:28:28.000 It is to perfect the society according to whatever criteria we choose.

00:28:34.000 And that means government is no longer a thing working in line with our consent toward our rights in nature.

00:28:42.000 Now government is a thing that works upon us to transform the society.

00:28:49.000 So the final cause is in dispute.

00:28:53.000 But the formal cause is the Constitution.

00:28:56.000 It's the way the thing operates and the way it looks.

00:29:00.000 When the government of the United States does something as a government, it does it in one of three places.

00:29:07.000 And those are the first three articles of the Constitution.

00:29:10.000 Well, the formal cause has been revolutionized too.

00:29:14.000 So now the laws are not made in the Congress.

00:29:19.000 The laws are made in a controversial number.

00:29:23.000 Scholars can't agree on how many independent agencies, independent of what?

00:29:30.000 Are they independent?

00:29:31.000 You see, us?

00:29:33.000 Yeah, that's what it means.

00:29:35.000 And the government now consumes, it's up from 12% in 1930.

00:29:43.000 Now the government handles 51% of the resources in the economy.

00:29:50.000 Plus, it has centralized it radically.

00:29:55.000 That is to say, 60-some percent of the 12 percent in 1930 was in cities and counties and towns.

00:30:02.000 Now that number is 18 percent.

00:30:04.000 23 percent was in the federal government.

00:30:07.000 Now that number is 63 percent.

00:30:10.000 So we've taken money out of the economy and we've centralized control over it, and it proceeds now in a different way.

00:30:18.000 By detailed, unreadable rules.

00:30:22.000 So the form, it doesn't function the same way.

00:30:27.000 And that means that it's a fundamental dispute.

00:30:30.000 It's a house divided just as much as the house divided, is slavery a good thing or not?

00:30:36.000 Which is Lincoln's problem.

00:30:38.000 Or George Washington's problem, is the king born to rule us by right?

00:30:45.000 Or is no one so born?

00:30:47.000 And what's the question today?

00:30:49.000 The question today is, shall we be governed by our consent and toward our rights, or are we subjects of an engineering project to remake the society?

00:31:03.000 And play that out.

00:31:05.000 Do the will of the people with the unelected judges, for example.

00:31:09.000 These national injunctions.

00:31:10.000 The perfect example of this.

00:31:12.000 See, that's very fundamental.

00:31:17.000 And it's like another sign that we're in a time of a revolutionary time is that these questions come up that are as long as there's been law.

00:31:31.000 So the habeas corpus of Latin present the body.

00:31:34.000 And the basic structure of the Constitution is provided by there being three separate branches.

00:31:40.000 And in the Declaration of Independence, by the way, God appears four times.

00:31:45.000 Once is each branch, and one is the creator, the founder.

00:31:48.000 And the lesson of the Declaration is only in the hands of God would you combine all those branches.

00:31:54.000 So habeas corpus means if an executive reaches out his hand, grabs you by the neck, and says, you've got to do what I say, he's got to haul you in front of a judge who's independent of him to make the judgment in your particular case.

00:32:08.000 And that's...

00:32:09.000 Fundamental to constitutional law and English common law.

00:32:15.000 Well, somebody lets 10 million or 12 million of them in here and gives themselves security cards, a lot of them, and got a plot to let them vote and puts them on benefits, and now you can only get them out one at a time?

00:32:29.000 And the particular law that Trump has appealed to, the Alien Enemies Act, It was passed in 1798, one of four laws called the Alien and Sedition Acts, and those laws destroyed, and it's the only one of the other three had sunsets on them, but this one didn't and has never been repealed.

00:32:55.000 But that's the law that John Adams, president, fostered when Congress passed.

00:33:01.000 Alexander Hamilton, secretary of treasury, resisted it.

00:33:06.000 And in 1800, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had resisted it and started their own political party, and it destroyed the Federalist Party.

00:33:14.000 They founded the country, and then they never won another election.

00:33:19.000 And that means this is a fundamental fight.

00:33:23.000 Now, think about it, though.

00:33:25.000 Here's what's different from the old rule of law.

00:33:29.000 The power of judges...

00:33:32.000 Is to decide the case between the parties, right?

00:33:36.000 That particular thing.

00:33:38.000 So the first thing is, these district judges issuing nationwide injunctions that stop federal policy, that hardly happened at all before 1960.

00:33:49.000 It's unprecedented to be unbelievable.

00:33:52.000 Yeah, and since the 60s, and every decade since the 60s, there's been more of it, but never so much as in the last three years.

00:34:02.000 So that's not what judges do.

00:34:04.000 And that means that...

00:34:07.000 So here's what the...

00:34:11.000 So first of all, this is just a massive overreach, right, by these district judges.

00:34:17.000 And it means federal policy's got to stop.

00:34:20.000 But that means you can never get those people out.

00:34:22.000 And that means they'll be here forever.

00:34:25.000 And the next time somebody gets in who doesn't want to mind the border, we'll get a bunch more.

00:34:31.000 And that means, then, that the people is not anymore in control of who the people is.

00:34:39.000 That's correct.

00:34:40.000 See?

00:34:41.000 That's fundamental.

00:34:42.000 I mean, because you can't have consent of the governed.

00:34:44.000 You don't have a country at that point.

00:34:45.000 Unless you have a people, right, who are defined, and they're in control of who joins them.

00:34:53.000 What does a mechanic and auto shop owner in Georgia, a taco restaurant operator in Arizona, and a life-saving medical innovator in Tennessee have in common?

00:35:01.000 They're all small business owners, and they're all thriving on TikTok.

00:35:05.000 Across the U.S., over 7.5 million businesses, from family-owned shops to entrepreneurs, are using TikTok to compete and grow.

00:35:12.000 We use TikTok all the time on the Charlie Kirk show.

00:35:14.000 In fact, 74% of businesses on TikTok say TikTok has allowed them to scale their operations, increasing sales and expanding to new locations.

00:35:22.000 And that growth means jobs.

00:35:24.000 Today, there's over 7.5 million U.S. businesses on TikTok employing more than $28 million.

00:35:29.000 So...

00:35:43.000 What I think about this right now is, first of all, I think the Congress should get off its duff.

00:35:53.000 Because it can pass an ordinary law by a majority, and Donald Trump, I imagine, would sign it, that says that district judges cannot stop.

00:36:07.000 You know.

00:36:08.000 And it...

00:36:12.000 The law could be that law, right?

00:36:16.000 And in Article 3, what it says is, the judicial power shall be vested in a Supreme Court and such subordinate courts as the Congress may create.

00:36:29.000 And then it says that the jurisdiction, the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court shall be, and there's a list of things, about four things, And such appellate jurisdiction as the Congress shall define.

00:36:47.000 And that means they have complete power over that.

00:36:50.000 They should stop that right now.

00:36:52.000 And why they don't, it's a mystery to me.

00:36:57.000 And just to understand that in different words, the injunction is usually just for the district that the offense occurs in, if there will be an injunction at all.

00:37:07.000 So Abrego Garcia...

00:37:09.000 Okay, then just enjoin that in Maryland.

00:37:13.000 Instead, they do a nationwide injunction.

00:37:15.000 So something that happens in Maryland then applies to the entire country.

00:37:18.000 So they're able to judge shop to their friends that they put on.

00:37:22.000 So Biden puts a couple radicals, and then a couple judges just take turns enjoining the entire will of the people.

00:37:29.000 And that's why what Dr. Arndt is saying is the most important thing.

00:37:32.000 And we talk about this on the program all the time.

00:37:35.000 Who's actually in charge of this place?

00:37:37.000 That's a different way of putting it, isn't it?

00:37:39.000 It even goes a step further.

00:37:41.000 That's true, but go a step further.

00:37:44.000 If Abrego Garcia gets in front of a judge and the judge says, bring him home, well, first of all, that's demanding a positive action by the President of the United States, and there's a limit on how much of that they can do.

00:37:58.000 That's right.

00:37:59.000 But the second thing is, let's say the guy's in front of him in the court and says, Let him go.

00:38:06.000 Well, the government can appeal, but if he's in front of the judge, you've got to let him go.

00:38:16.000 But that doesn't mean the next court over in the same court building dealing with different cases at the district level.

00:38:25.000 That's silly.

00:38:26.000 And so you don't really need to say, just in that district.

00:38:31.000 You need to say...

00:38:33.000 For those parties that get in front of them.

00:38:36.000 That's right.

00:38:36.000 The case should be enjoined.

00:38:38.000 That's it.

00:38:39.000 Not the topic.

00:38:40.000 And see, the model for this, by the way, because this is, you know, I think this may happen this summer.

00:38:49.000 History is interesting.

00:38:51.000 So the Republican Party is born with a plan, and it cracked the code.

00:38:59.000 In the slavery crisis, because in the Constitution, the federal government has no power to interfere with slavery in the states where it exists, and ought not to have that power, by the way, because local things being local is fundamental to the constitutional system.

00:39:14.000 And so what are we going to do about it?

00:39:18.000 Because slavery is awful, right?

00:39:20.000 And so what they did forever, from 1820 until 1854, 1820 is the Missouri Compromise.

00:39:30.000 What they did was kick the can down the road.

00:39:33.000 But then Kansas and Nebraska come along.

00:39:37.000 1854.

00:39:38.000 They pass an act.

00:39:39.000 Stephen Douglas, Democrat, Lincoln's main opponent, he comes up with the idea that it's not a federal matter.

00:39:48.000 We should let it be decided in the states.

00:39:53.000 Each state, Illinois, New York, any of the territories, Decide for itself.

00:40:00.000 Well, that turns out not to work because they're trying to settle Kansas and Nebraska.

00:40:07.000 See, that restless energy in America, you know, to get some land, build something, you know, that's America, right?

00:40:17.000 And so they're going, right?

00:40:19.000 That's one of the causes of the American Revolution, by the way.

00:40:22.000 The king drew a line west of the Appalachian and said you can't have any land beyond it.

00:40:26.000 That's one of the reasons we had the American Revolution.

00:40:29.000 So, and slavery is not the kind of thing where, you know, it turns out that although the claim was by the Confederacy, the slaves like their servitude, they were always trying to get away.

00:40:45.000 And that meant you had to have a police state to keep them.

00:40:49.000 The Alabama Slave Code is in our Constitution reader, and it provides that every free white male... 0.83

00:40:55.000 Slaveholder or no has to ride posse one night a month looking for runaways.

00:41:01.000 So people start rushing to Kansas and the pro-slave guys start taking their slaves and they take guns and they're shooting people and they put in a phony constitution to make it a slave state and that stunk to high heaven so they had to repeal it.

00:41:17.000 So now what the Republican Party did was it figured out That we don't have power over slavery in the states where it exists, but we have municipal authority in the federal territories, which at that time was most of the Union, and we will forbid slavery from going there altogether.

00:41:45.000 I will tell you that I'm proud that the two people who wrote that first are named Edmund Fairfield and Austin Blair.

00:41:54.000 Later, the Civil War governor and lieutenant governor of Michigan, members of the Hillsdale College faculty.

00:42:02.000 So we were there, you know.

00:42:08.000 And that was going to crack that nut.

00:42:11.000 But then, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled five to four, led by a man named Roger Taney, the most notorious of all our Supreme Court justices, He was Chief Justice, that the federal government does not have power to do that.

00:42:30.000 And that's rather parallel to the situation today, because the Republican Party was born to do a thing, and a court says that strips the heart out of your platform.

00:42:40.000 And today, Donald Trump gets elected, saying, we're going to control the border, and we're going to send those people home.

00:42:50.000 And the courts are saying...

00:42:52.000 You can't do that.

00:42:53.000 So how do we resolve it without a war?

00:42:55.000 The answer is, you read, because it turns out to be handy that Abraham Lincoln addressed this at length and brilliantly in a series of speeches, especially the one on the Dred Scott decision.

00:43:10.000 And what he said was, it's a divided court.

00:43:16.000 The decision was that Dred Scott, who'd been taken into a free state, remains a slave.

00:43:22.000 And Lincoln said, Dred Scott remains a slave.

00:43:26.000 The highest court in the land has said so.

00:43:28.000 Sorry about it, but it's true.

00:43:31.000 On the other hand, if a divided court settles the question for all time, then the people shall have ceased to be their own rulers.

00:43:40.000 And that means that Donald Trump will probably have to find a way to go ahead.

00:43:45.000 But he shouldn't do this very much.

00:43:49.000 I heard...

00:43:51.000 An important mugger guy whom I admire, I won't say who it was, said the other day, is an example to Donald Trump that Lincoln shredded the Constitution.

00:44:04.000 Well, he didn't.

00:44:05.000 And also, he never said that.

00:44:08.000 Because we need the Constitution.

00:44:10.000 And so, Donald Trump should have a powerful constitutional argument why, in the executive authority, He can continue, maybe under this Alien Enemies Act.

00:44:25.000 But that's what the fight is about.

00:44:27.000 And remember, we all need here the rule of law.

00:44:34.000 I don't want Joe Biden, you know, I mean, Lord, it makes me mad.

00:44:39.000 Congress is talking about taxing college endowments.

00:44:43.000 Well, first of all, that's a transfer of wealth from private resources into the public, and that's the wrong direction.

00:44:48.000 And second of all, I don't want them taxing mine.

00:44:51.000 And I'm the only one that doesn't take the money from the government that has enough endowment to pay the tax right now, and they're talking about increasing it.

00:44:58.000 Well, maybe that's special pleading.

00:45:01.000 It is, partly.

00:45:02.000 But also, it is the wrong direction.

00:45:05.000 Just don't give them so much money, right?

00:45:08.000 That's what's being effective right now.

00:45:10.000 With all the money.

00:45:13.000 So the point is, however, I don't want Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or whatever the next one is with the power to take my tax exemption or to tax my endowment.

00:45:26.000 We all need the rule of law, and I support Donald Trump because I believe he is standing up for that, and he should be double sure to make that claim all the time.

00:45:40.000 Well, he's very resolute in using the executive power.

00:45:45.000 Well said.

00:45:46.000 Dr. Arnn, thank you for your time.

00:45:47.000 Everybody, Dr. Arnn, thank you.

00:45:51.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:45:53.000 Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:45:55.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - May 06, 2025

Revolutionary Questions in Revolutionary Times ft Dr. Larry Arnn

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