The Charlie Kirk Show - REWIND: Charlie Discusses The Origins of Thanksgiving

00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.

00:00:05.000 I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.

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00:01:09.000 Hello, everybody.

00:01:10.000 Happy Thanksgiving.

00:01:11.000 Honored to be with all of you.

00:01:12.000 We have a very special guest for you today, a friend of mine, a very smart man, and also part of our team at Turning Point Academy.

00:01:20.000 And I think you will all really enjoy learning about you guys.

00:01:24.000 Can start a church hybrid school, a pod school, get involved with all of our amazing training, our resources, our education summit at turningpointacademy.com.

00:01:34.000 That's turningpointacademy.com.

00:01:36.000 And Bill Federer joins us right now, who's part of our effort there.

00:01:39.000 Bill, happy Thanksgiving.

00:01:40.000 Hey, Charlie, great to be with you.

00:01:42.000 So, Bill, tell us, why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?

00:01:45.000 What is the story of Thanksgiving?

00:01:47.000 Well, a little background.

00:01:48.000 So the king of England was a globalist.

00:01:51.000 He was a one-world government guy with him at the top.

00:01:54.000 The British Empire controlled India, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, British Guyana, Canada, Barbados, Bermuda, Jamaica, and America.

00:02:01.000 And so America's founders wanted to break away from this globalist one-world government king.

00:02:06.000 And so they flipped it and made the people the king.

00:02:09.000 And so where did they get this idea that you could rule yourself without a king?

00:02:14.000 Well, it came from the pilgrims and then it came from the Calvinist Puritans that came from the Reformation.

00:02:20.000 And then they got their ideas from ancient Israel that first 400 years out of Egypt.

00:02:28.000 It's called the Hebrew Republic.

00:02:32.000 And it's the first instance in recorded history of a nation with millions of people and no king.

00:02:38.000 And it was around 1400 BC up to about 1000 BC.

00:02:42.000 And it worked because every single citizen was taught the law and they were personally accountable to God to follow the law.

00:02:49.000 So this period of history is called the Hebrew Republic.

00:02:54.000 And these Calvinist Puritan scholars studied this so intently that they were nicknamed Christian Hebraists.

00:03:02.000 So in 1517, Martin Luther starts the Reformation.

00:03:06.000 And for about a century before the Age of Enlightenment, you have these scholars in Europe studying not just the Bible in their own language, but this particular first 400-year period, this Hebrew Republic.

00:03:19.000 And that's why they taught Hebrew at Yale and Harvard.

00:03:23.000 They were amazed at coming up with a form of government without a king.

00:03:28.000 And again, it's based on this idea that you teach everybody the law and then everybody walks around aware that they're accountable to a God who's watching them, wants them to be fair and is going to hold them accountable in the future.

00:03:40.000 We don't appreciate what makes America great is, in a sense, you get to be the king of your life and all of us together are the king of the country.

00:03:49.000 It's a bottom-up individual empowered country that is totally opposite of the kings of England and the kings of Europe.

00:03:59.000 And anyway, so that's why one of the reasons we celebrate Thanksgiving is the birth of a country where the people get to be in charge of their lives.

00:04:07.000 Can you talk about how important it is to give thanks and then go through the actual story of Thanksgiving with Squanto?

00:04:15.000 And I forget some of the details, but tell us about that.

00:04:18.000 Yeah, this is really fascinating.

00:04:21.000 So the Pilgrims were a church group.

00:04:25.000 And so the King of England, Henry VIII, breaks away from Rome. 0.60

00:04:30.000 And his advisors tell him if he's serious about it, he needs to stop using the Latin Bible, get himself an English Bible.

00:04:38.000 The German princes have Martin Luther's German Bible that helped them to break away. 0.63

00:04:42.000 Well, Henry VIII says, Great, get me one. 0.87

00:04:45.000 Well, it just so happens a few years earlier, Henry VIII had William Tyndall burnt at the stake for translating the Bible into English.

00:04:52.000 And William Tyndall's last words were, Lord, open the king of England's eyes.

00:04:58.000 And now it's a couple years later.

00:04:59.000 The king wants to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, because she didn't have a son after 18 years.

00:05:05.000 And Mary Anne Boleyn, the Pope won't recognize the divorce.

00:05:09.000 Henry breaks from the Pope, gets this English Bible, spreads it around the country, dusts his hands, and says, That's it, we've broken from Rome.

00:05:18.000 But something unexpected happened.

00:05:19.000 People began to read it and began to compare what's in this Bible to this king divorcing and beheading his wives.

00:05:25.000 So a group starts that wants to purify the Church of England, and they are nicknamed the Puritans.

00:05:31.000 The king doesn't like them, but then there's another group that said it's beyond hope of purifying.

00:05:35.000 We're going to separate ourselves. 0.98

00:05:37.000 And they go by different names: Baptists, Congregationalists, eventually the Quakers. 0.99

00:05:44.000 But this one group we call the Pilgrims.

00:05:46.000 And so they were a church group that had a congregational church model, which is different than the hierarchical clergy-laity model.

00:05:57.000 And so, for most of history, you had the clergy do the ministry, and the laity was lazy and watched.

00:06:03.000 And the congregational model is everybody's involved.

00:06:06.000 The pastor helps everyone to have their relationship with God through Jesus and then coaches them to become mature Christians and then plug into the body and do something because any muscle to grow has to be exercised.

00:06:17.000 You have to get involved.

00:06:18.000 And so the king didn't like this congregational model.

00:06:22.000 And so King James said, I will make them conform or I will harry them out of the land.

00:06:28.000 And so the king of England passed the Act of Uniformity of Common Prayer.

00:06:35.000 You do not make up prayers because you could make up one that's wrong.

00:06:41.000 And so the government wrote all the possible prayers they could think of down in a book called the Book of Common Prayer.

00:06:46.000 And when you wanted to pray, you just opened it to the right page and you would read the prayer.

00:06:52.000 And if you're caught having a little group at your house and you're making up your own prayers, the government, like the FBI, will kick in the door and they will arrest you and they'll drag you off to some government hearing room.

00:07:04.000 It's called the star chamber because it had stars on the ceiling, sort of a January 6th type hearing room.

00:07:09.000 And they would interrogate you and they would make you confess to stuff you didn't do and they'd make you try to snitch on your other praying friends. 0.78

00:07:16.000 And then they would brand you on the face as a heretic and even cut off your ear. 0.77

00:07:21.000 And then they would stick you in a cell and let you rot away in there for days, weeks, months, years. 0.94

00:07:28.000 Could you imagine the government doing this to their own citizens?

00:07:32.000 And one person that was caught was named John Bunyan.

00:07:37.000 And he was having a Bible study.

00:07:39.000 He had not gotten approval of the government.

00:07:41.000 He spent 12 years wasting away in prison.

00:07:44.000 And that's when he wrote Pilgrim's Progress, this famous novel.

00:07:48.000 And anyway, so these pilgrims decide to flee.

00:07:52.000 They flee to Holland.

00:07:54.000 Holland was seven provinces breaking away from Spain.

00:07:58.000 It took them 80 years to break away from Spain.

00:08:01.000 And they did not believe exactly the same thing religiously, but they hated Spain so much they were willing to work together.

00:08:08.000 And so Holland had a little give and take with religion and also with morals.

00:08:13.000 They had a little more immorality, but nevertheless, it was the most tolerant place in Europe was Holland.

00:08:20.000 And so the pilgrims go there.

00:08:21.000 And when Spain threatens to attack, they decide to flee.

00:08:25.000 Originally, they were going to go to Guyana, South America.

00:08:28.000 They heard of the perpetual spring, but then they heard it was too close to the Spanish Main. 0.84

00:08:34.000 That's the Caribbean era.

00:08:36.000 People forget the first European settlement in North America was the French Protestants.

00:08:43.000 They were called Huguenots, and they settled around Jacksonville, Florida in 1565.

00:08:49.000 And Spain found out about it and butchered them.

00:08:53.000 And so the pilgrims didn't want to go anywhere near where Spain was.

00:08:57.000 And so they decided to settle in Jamestown, which was started 14 years earlier.

00:09:02.000 It was a king-run colony, but they figured they were 3,000 miles away and they could do their little pilgrim thing and not be noticed.

00:09:10.000 And so they set sail and they get caught in a storm.

00:09:15.000 The boat leaks.

00:09:16.000 They got to recaulk it.

00:09:17.000 They set sail again.

00:09:18.000 It leaks again.

00:09:19.000 They got to swap it out for the Littler Mayflower.

00:09:21.000 They're in freezing North Atlantic.

00:09:23.000 They've ate through a bunch of their food.

00:09:24.000 The main beam cracks.

00:09:26.000 It's a 3,000-mile journey, 66 days.

00:09:29.000 They're confined to a between deck, a little four-foot-high space.

00:09:34.000 One dies, another baby's born.

00:09:36.000 I mean, they make it to the New World and they're 500 miles away from Jamestown.

00:09:42.000 And the captain, Christopher Jones, tries to sail south, but off the coast of Cape Cod, it's really shallow.

00:09:49.000 If you've ever been there, it's one of those beaches where you could walk, you know, 200 yards out and it only comes up to your waist.

00:09:56.000 I mean, and plus it's really cold, but these ships would get stuck on the sand like a half mile out.

00:10:02.000 And in a storm, the waves would beat the ship.

00:10:05.000 And 3,000 ships have sunk off the coast of Cape Cod.

00:10:09.000 But the pilgrims almost sink.

00:10:10.000 The captain gets free, goes back to Cape Cod, and says, too dangerous to sail everyone off the boat.

00:10:17.000 And they raise their hand and say, we have a question.

00:10:20.000 Who's going to be in charge?

00:10:21.000 We were going to go to Jamestown and it's a king-run colony.

00:10:26.000 And we were going to submit to the king's government, but there's no government here.

00:10:30.000 We can't be lawless.

00:10:31.000 Who's going to be in charge?

00:10:33.000 They do something unique.

00:10:34.000 They give themselves the authority to start a government.

00:10:38.000 It's called the Mayflower Compact.

00:10:40.000 The word compact means covenant.

00:10:43.000 And it says, we, in the presence of God, covenant ourselves into a civil body politic.

00:10:49.000 So this is a church group forming itself into a civil body politic.

00:10:54.000 Again, a church group forming itself into a political group.

00:10:59.000 This is the birth of America.

00:11:00.000 A church group forming itself into it.

00:11:02.000 And they wrote that while they were still at sea, if I'm not mistaken, right?

00:11:05.000 They weren't sure of their fate.

00:11:06.000 I mean, they were blown off course.

00:11:08.000 And basically, this was a promissory note if they hit the shore.

00:11:14.000 Is that right?

00:11:15.000 And so, but this was unique.

00:11:15.000 Right.

00:11:18.000 Where did they get this idea?

00:11:19.000 From their pastor, John Robinson, who was not an Anglican king-appointed pastor.

00:11:25.000 He was one of these congregational pastors.

00:11:27.000 He was one of these Calvinist Puritans that looked back to this ancient Israel, that first 400 years out of Egypt period before King Saul.

00:11:36.000 And so they form themselves into a civil body politic, and it goes on to enact just and equal laws that shall be thought most meet, unto which we promise all due submission.

00:11:46.000 Simple, revolutionary.

00:11:48.000 It was a polarity change in the flow of power on planet Earth.

00:11:52.000 Instead of top-down, ruled by kings and sultans and czars, it's ruled bottom-up by we, just us in this little boat.

00:11:59.000 We're going to decide.

00:12:01.000 And it's the difference between a dead pyramid ruled top-down and a living tree where every root and every tiny capillary root sucks in nutrients to keep the tree alive.

00:12:11.000 Every citizen is involved in church, and every citizen is involved in the community.

00:12:16.000 And so this becomes the model for the other New England colonies and eventually the U.S. Constitution.

00:12:26.000 This is Lane Schoenberger, Chief Investment Officer and Founding Partner of YReFi.

00:12:30.000 It has been an honor and a privilege to partner with Turning Point and for Charlie to endorse us.

00:12:36.000 His endorsement means the world to us, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Turning Point for years to come.

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00:13:34.000 Yeah, so then to talk about just for a second here, Bill, they tried socialism, didn't they?

00:13:39.000 And it didn't go well.

00:13:40.000 Yeah, this is interesting.

00:13:41.000 So the Pilgrims didn't have money.

00:13:44.000 And so they approached investors in England who formed the London Company, and the company had bylaws.

00:13:51.000 And they weren't really thrilled with this.

00:13:53.000 And they were sort of at the very last minute already on the boat.

00:13:56.000 And they come with these papers and you say you got a shot.

00:13:58.000 So they sign it.

00:13:59.000 But these bylaws specified that everything would be owned in common.

00:14:05.000 Everything gained by cooking, hunting, fishing, trading, you know, shall go into ye common stock.

00:14:12.000 And everyone's are to have their meat, drink, and apparel, and all provision out of ye common stock.

00:14:18.000 Right?

00:14:19.000 So everybody works, goes into this pot, and then everybody gets paid out of it.

00:14:22.000 They tried it and they almost starved to death.

00:14:25.000 William Bradford, the governor of the Pilgrims, writes: The failure of that experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years by good and honest men, proves the emptiness of the theory of Plato and other ancients, applauded by some of latter times, that the taking away of private property and possession of it in community would make the state happy and flourishing as if they were wiser than God.

00:14:51.000 For in this instance, community of property was found to breed much confusion and discontent, retard much employment.

00:14:57.000 For the young men who were most able and fit for service objected to being forced to spend their time and strength in working for other men's wives and children without any recompense.

00:15:07.000 The stronger man or the resourceful man had no more share of food, clothes, et cetera, than the weak man, who was not able to do a quarter with the other good.

00:15:15.000 This was thought injustice.

00:15:17.000 The aged and graver men who were ranked and equalized in labor, food, clothes, etc., with the humbler and younger ones, thought it some indignity and disrespect.

00:15:25.000 And then I thought this was interesting.

00:15:27.000 He says, as for men's wives who were obliged to do service for other men, such as cooking, washing their clothes, etc., they considered it a kind of slavery, and many husbands would not brook it or allow it.

00:15:40.000 And William Bradford goes on, let none argue that this is due to human failing rather than to this communistic plan of life in itself.

00:15:47.000 He says, I answer that God had another plan of life fitter for them.

00:15:52.000 And so they began to consider how to raise more corn.

00:15:54.000 And after much debate, it was decided each man would plant corn for his own household.

00:16:00.000 What a novel idea.

00:16:01.000 Incredible.

00:16:02.000 And it says every family was assigned a parcel of land.

00:16:05.000 This was very successful.

00:16:06.000 It made hands more industrious.

00:16:08.000 The women now went willingly into the field, took their little ones with them to plant corn, while before they would allege weakness and to have compelled them would have been thought great oppression. 0.98

00:16:17.000 So here are these really religious people.

00:16:19.000 I mean, they're as good as you can get. 0.69

00:16:21.000 They tried owning everything in common, almost starved to death.

00:16:24.000 They scrap it, give you your own plot of land.

00:16:26.000 They began abundant harvests, and that's when we celebrate Thanksgiving.

00:16:29.000 Email me what you are thankful for today, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:16:33.000 And this entire conversation is really kind of brought to you by Turning Point Academy.

00:16:38.000 I want to encourage all of you, if you want to homeschool, start a church hybrid school, get involved in our Educator Summit.

00:16:44.000 You guys can check it out.

00:16:45.000 It is a movement to reclaim, revive, and restore education, virtuous education focused on truth, goodness, and beauty in the classical tradition.

00:16:54.000 Turning Point Academy at turningpointacademy.com.

00:16:58.000 Bill, continue on what you were saying and tell us about Squanto.

00:17:01.000 Yeah, so the pilgrims switched from company to covenant.

00:17:06.000 The company bylaws that says, okay, here's this system.

00:17:09.000 We're going to take it away from you and we're going to distribute it to, look, you get your own plot of land.

00:17:14.000 You grow, you become prosperous, and then you voluntarily take care of your neighbor because you're doing it as unto God.

00:17:23.000 And so you have the pilgrim pastor was John Robinson.

00:17:28.000 He says, we are knit together as a body in covenant of the Lord.

00:17:32.000 We so hold ourselves tied to all to care for each other's good.

00:17:37.000 Margaret Thatcher, she writes, your founding fathers look after one another, not only as a matter of necessity, but as a matter of duty to their God.

00:17:46.000 And then the founder of the Puritan, Massachusetts, John Winthrop, gives his famous speech in 1630.

00:17:55.000 This love among Christians is a real thing, not imaginary, as absolutely necessary to the being of the body of Christ.

00:18:02.000 We are a company professing ourselves fellow members of Christ.

00:18:05.000 We ought to account ourselves knit together by this bond of love.

00:18:09.000 We must make one another's condition our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together.

00:18:14.000 We shall find that the God of Israel is among us.

00:18:16.000 You know, people say, well, wasn't the early church socialist?

00:18:19.000 No, the early church was the early church.

00:18:21.000 Socialism is counterfeit early church.

00:18:23.000 And the difference is between the word voluntary and involuntary, right?

00:18:28.000 So you're blessed with goods, and then you voluntarily take care of your neighbor because you're doing as unto God.

00:18:34.000 Socialism, there is no God.

00:18:36.000 You get the goods from the state, and you don't own anything.

00:18:39.000 So if you don't own anything, how can you be charitable?

00:18:41.000 How can you give away what you don't have?

00:18:43.000 No, God entrusts you with stuff and then gives you opportunities to give them away.

00:18:47.000 Anyway, so that's an important aspect that we look back to the pilgrims.

00:18:52.000 But one of the stories that we have to include is Squanto.

00:18:56.000 And if I have a few minutes, I'd be happy to share that.

00:18:58.000 Continue.

00:18:59.000 So the Pilgrims were religious, but there were other groups that weren't and they were pirates.

00:19:05.000 So Spain had a monopoly on the New World for at least a century, and they had gold from Inca Peru and from Buertobello, Panama, and they'd take it to Cuba and ship it. 0.68

00:19:15.000 And these Dutch and French and English pirates would raid the gold, but they would also sail up the coast of North America, lure unsuspecting Indians on board, lock them below deck, take them over to Malaga, Spain, and sell them into slavery. 0.64

00:19:30.000 So one of the Indians that was captured was Squanto.

00:19:33.000 And the story is he was purchased by some monks in Spain who gave him his freedom.

00:19:39.000 He hitchhikes his way across Europe, gets to England.

00:19:42.000 He's there for a dozen years working, learning the language, and he finally finds some business that takes him to Newfoundland, right?

00:19:50.000 A fishing type outfit.

00:19:52.000 And then he gets the boat to drop him off at Plymouth, Massachusetts, only to find his whole tribe is dead. 0.85

00:19:59.000 Right?

00:19:59.000 They were wiped out by a plague.

00:20:01.000 William Bradford writes that three years earlier, a French ship was shipwrecked off the case, the coast of Cape Cod.

00:20:08.000 Sailors got ashore. 0.77

00:20:09.000 Indians never left, watching them and bogging them until they got the advantage, killed them all with three or four, made sport with them worse than slaves. 0.91

00:20:16.000 Anyway, one of those Frenchmen must have had an illness, and the Indians didn't have immunity, and it wipes out the tribe. 0.96

00:20:23.000 So, sort of in a reverse sense, had Squanto not been captured and kidnapped, he most certainly would have died. 0.83

00:20:31.000 But Squanto's living with the neighboring Wampanoag tribe, and then that fall is when the pilgrims show up.

00:20:38.000 Half of the pilgrims die the first winter, they wouldn't have survived another year.

00:20:43.000 Spring of 1621, walking into their camp is Squanto, and you can just picture the conversation.

00:20:50.000 I mean, he's in his loincloth and he goes up and he goes, Oh, yeah, you guys from London, I used to live there.

00:20:55.000 You know, oh, yeah, the pub down on Wharf Street or St. Paul's Chapel goes, Oh, yeah, yeah, I know that place.

00:21:01.000 And then he says, Oh, this place here, I grew up here.

00:21:03.000 I know this place like the back of my hand over that hill is a spring.

00:21:06.000 And William Bradford says he taught them how to catch fish.

00:21:09.000 He said, you know, that they weren't successful, but he says, No, there's salmon, they spawn.

00:21:14.000 This river is going to be packed.

00:21:15.000 And then he taught them how to plant corn.

00:21:17.000 They said, We tried it.

00:21:18.000 He goes, No, you got to dig a hole, put some fish in, then put the kernel of corn in to cover it up.

00:21:22.000 The fish decompose, fertilizes the soil.

00:21:25.000 You have a nice harvest.

00:21:26.000 Taught them how to take the corn and put it in a pot, shake it, and make popcorn, right?

00:21:31.000 And then he taught them how to go down to the riverbank, squeegee in the mud, and catch eels and clams and lobsters, and then how to catch beaver skins.

00:21:40.000 It took 40 years worth of beaverskins to pay off their debt for the boat ride, right? 0.86

00:21:46.000 They didn't have wasn't like Latin in South America with gold.

00:21:49.000 It wasn't like tobacco in Virginia.

00:21:53.000 It's sort of interesting that the Indians in Virginia were healthy and they smoked tobacco and peace pipes. 0.53

00:21:59.000 And so the Englishmen were like, Okay, the Indians are healthy, they smoke tobacco, tobacco must make you healthy.

00:22:05.000 And so it became a craze in London where doctors would prescribe tobacco.

00:22:09.000 And anyway, but that was Virginia's cash crop. 1.00

00:22:12.000 Massachusetts didn't have anything other than beaver skins. 0.54

00:22:15.000 And it took 40 years of beaverskins for these pilgrims to pay off those investors for their boat ride.

00:22:22.000 But Squanto was their interpreter, put them on good terms with the Indians, and they had an abundant harvest and they had their first Thanksgiving.

00:22:32.000 Now, half the pilgrims died the first winter.

00:22:35.000 So there's 102 of them.

00:22:36.000 So you're basically down to 51.

00:22:38.000 90 Indians show up.

00:22:41.000 Nearly twice as many Indians were at the first Thanksgiving than pilgrims.

00:22:45.000 And the Indians show up with deer and turkey.

00:22:48.000 And the end of the day, the Indians roll up in their blankets and go to sleep. 0.82

00:22:53.000 And the next day, they're there and Thanksgiving goes on a second day.

00:22:56.000 And they're doing foot races and arm wrestling.

00:22:59.000 And then they roll up in their blankets, go to sleep.

00:23:02.000 And the next day they're still there.

00:23:04.000 So the first Thanksgiving went on for three days.

00:23:07.000 And so it's just an interesting aspect that they were at peace with each other.

00:23:15.000 Matter of fact, a year later, the chief Massasoit gets sick and the pilgrim Edward Winslow goes and doctors him up and he recovers.

00:23:27.000 And so that turned into a 50-year peace that the pilgrims and the Indians had.

00:23:34.000 And now, a little fine print. 0.79

00:23:36.000 If you doctor an Indian chief and he dies, you die. 0.75

00:23:42.000 So sort of serious when he went in there. 1.00

00:23:45.000 But this was just a wonderful, the Pilgrims would not have survived had it not been for Squanto. 1.00

00:23:55.000 Hey, everybody, this is Andrew Colvett, executive producer of The Charlie Kirk Show. 1.00

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00:24:59.000 Yeah, so to kind of summarize all of that, what do you think, you know, Bill, are some of the one or two big lessons from all that that apply to today and, you know, that we can really kind of pry away from then and internalize for what we're living through?

00:25:14.000 Well, personally, the thought of Squanto being sold into slavery and then rescuing the pilgrims, you got the Bible story of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers, but then he goes down to Egypt and becomes right-handed to Pharaoh and he provides for the other children of Israel to survive.

00:25:32.000 So sometimes the pains that you go through in your life, the good Lord can use those to later have you be able to minister to somebody else that's going through struggles.

00:25:42.000 One of the things I point out in history is there's two threads, greed and the gospel.

00:25:48.000 And you always have people motivated by the gospel.

00:25:51.000 And they're the ones that want to be friends with the Indians.

00:25:53.000 And today, you know, they dig wells and villages and start hospitals and medical clinics and schools.

00:25:59.000 Most of the schools and universities were started by churches.

00:26:02.000 But then you always have people motivated by greed. 0.60

00:26:04.000 And they're the ones that take land from the Indians, sell people into slavery, and vote for candidates they think will help their pocketbook, even though they stand for immorality.

00:26:12.000 Those two threads go through each of our hearts every single day. 0.98

00:26:16.000 And we have to make choices.

00:26:17.000 Are we going to do what benefits us or what's better, you know, for our kids and the next generation?

00:26:22.000 That is the question, isn't it?

00:26:23.000 And so, you know, we're living through a period of time right now, Bill, where a lot of people are looking for things to be thankful for.

00:26:30.000 Can you just talk more broadly about the moral necessity to be deliberately thankful at least a day or a season every single year?

00:26:39.000 Yeah, well, the founding era, they had this understanding of a relationship with a personal God.

00:26:47.000 And so you read through the history, when things were bad, they would have days of prayer.

00:26:51.000 When things were real bad, they would have days of fasting and prayer.

00:26:55.000 And then when things turned around, they would have days of Thanksgiving.

00:26:58.000 So one time there was actually a famine and they had a day of fasting and a boat comes in the harbor with supplies.

00:27:03.000 They cancel the day of fasting and they have a day of Thanksgiving.

00:27:07.000 And then you go through the Continental Congress.

00:27:10.000 They had a day of prayer and fasting two months before they did the Declaration of Independence.

00:27:16.000 And then you have after the victory at Saratoga, they have a day of Thanksgiving.

00:27:21.000 They captured 6,000 of the British.

00:27:23.000 I mean, this British have the most powerful military in the world and we capture 6,000 of their soldiers.

00:27:28.000 So we have a national day of Thanksgiving.

00:27:31.000 Then George Washington has a day of Thanksgiving when we finally do the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

00:27:38.000 So he's thanking God for our form of government.

00:27:41.000 You come up to, oh, the War of 1812, James Madison has a day of fasting, and then after the war has a day of Thanksgiving.

00:27:49.000 But Lincoln's the one who made the day of Thanksgiving an annual event.

00:27:54.000 And then every president from Lincoln up to the present has had a national day of Thanksgiving.

00:28:00.000 But it's, you know, it's important for us to be grateful.

00:28:05.000 You know, when you are thankful, that it is something that the good Lord will bless you even more if you're thankful for what he's given you.

00:28:17.000 I tell people, you know, in a sense, just sort of simplifying, God has plan A and plan B. Plan A is he blesses us so much and we turn to him out of gratefulness.

00:28:27.000 If that doesn't work, there is plan B.

00:28:30.000 It says he withholds his blessings, right?

00:28:32.000 And he hides his face, is what it says.

00:28:35.000 And he lets us experience the consequences of our selfish decisions.

00:28:38.000 And when it gets bad, we cry out to him out of desperation and then he delivers us.

00:28:42.000 His goal is to have us turn to him, and it's a whole lot easier.

00:28:45.000 He blesses us and we turn to him out of gratefulness.

00:28:48.000 Amen.

00:28:48.000 It's beautifully said.

00:28:49.000 Everybody, email us freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:28:52.000 Also, check out Bill Federer's American Minute at AmericanMinute.com.

00:28:57.000 I also want to reinforce for those of you that might be in the car right now on Thanksgiving or watching Unreal America's Voice or listening on podcasting.

00:29:04.000 If you are upset with your child's school or if you want to have an alternative, we at Turning Point USA are really building something substantial and real, the church hybrid model, the homeschool, the pod schooling, all the resources we have for you guys at turningpointacademy.com.

00:29:20.000 You guys can fill out an inquiry form there and contact us right there.

00:29:25.000 The team at Turning Point Academy is working very hard.

00:29:28.000 We'd love to hear from you.

00:29:29.000 Bill, some people are very upset right now about the kind of rise of tyranny in America and what we have seen as the continued advance of totalitarianism and authoritarianism.

00:29:42.000 Let's kind of reflect a little bit on the last year, 2022.

00:29:45.000 Bill, what did you see that is giving you hope that historically shows us that the citizen is rising and that the authoritarianism is going to finally be put on its heels?

00:29:54.000 Well, it is a crisis that causes people to wake up.

00:29:59.000 I tell people it's in times of crises that people turn to Christ, but it's also in times of crises that leaders are raised up.

00:30:05.000 And what are the stories in the Bible that we love the most?

00:30:09.000 It's when it looks hopeless.

00:30:11.000 You got the Pharaoh charging in with his chariots and you got an 80-year-old man, Moses, that stands up, or you have a huge Goliath and it looks hopeless.

00:30:19.000 And God raises up a teenager, David.

00:30:22.000 There's Gideon. 1.00

00:30:22.000 There's 100,000 Midianites coming in. 1.00

00:30:25.000 And here, you know, Gideon with 300 defeats him. 1.00

00:30:28.000 It's almost like the good Lord likes to wait until things look hopeless and then he raises up little nobodies with faith and courage to turn things around.

00:30:35.000 And this is just our turn. 1.00

00:30:37.000 But I do see that, for example, the COVID causes parents to look over the shoulder of their kids and see what they're being taught, all this transgender type stuff. 1.00

00:30:49.000 And they're like, wait a second. 0.99

00:30:50.000 And now parents are beginning to say, maybe I do need to take more of an interest in what my kids are being taught.

00:30:57.000 You know, I use a little illustration that you are a spirit, mind, and body.

00:31:03.000 So your mind, in a sense, is like a super fancy computer.

00:31:08.000 It's more than that, but it's at least that.

00:31:10.000 And your body's like the computer case, which makes it silly for people to argue over what color the computer case is.

00:31:16.000 Imagine if I were to say blue computers are better than red computers, right?

00:31:19.000 It doesn't really matter what color the case is.

00:31:21.000 What matters what software is running on it.

00:31:24.000 And so the battle is who gets to load the software on the next generation's brains.

00:31:30.000 And is it, you know, love your enemies, do good to them that bless you, or is it cancel them, get them to lose their job?

00:31:35.000 And the other side wants to put their malware and their viruses and their corrupted files on these little kids' brains, right?

00:31:40.000 And so the battle is who gets to teach the next generation.

00:31:44.000 That's the prize.

00:31:45.000 And I think that parents are finally waking up and realizing that we need to be involved.

00:31:51.000 Amen.

00:31:52.000 Bill, tell us about, you know, historically, you write a lot about this, about how sometimes your back is up against the wall and, you know, there's the odds seem against you, but we as Americans never give up.

00:32:05.000 Talk about that.

00:32:06.000 Yeah.

00:32:06.000 Well, here when the revolution was taking place, we were breaking away from a globalist king.

00:32:11.000 The king of England could control 13 million square miles, have a billion people.

00:32:16.000 The sun never set on the British Empire.

00:32:19.000 You know, and Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, British Guyana, Canada, Barbados, Bermuda, Jamaica, and America.

00:32:25.000 Yet here we are with a ragtag group of people that decide we're going to stand up to this globalist.

00:32:31.000 We're not going to cave.

00:32:32.000 And the good Lord brings in France on our side and the Spanish help us behind the scenes.

00:32:39.000 And then the Dutch.

00:32:41.000 And so it ends up with us standing in courage that the British Empire is forced to let us go.

00:32:48.000 And we're able to have a country where the citizen, the word citizen is Greek.

00:32:53.000 It means co-king. 0.85

00:32:56.000 So you get to be a king with a little K over your life.

00:32:59.000 And all of us together are king with a little K of the country.

00:33:03.000 And you have a voluntary opportunity to surrender your life to Jesus, the king of kings.

00:33:08.000 But it's voluntary.

00:33:09.000 We're not talking dominionism or theocracy or we're shoving stuff down your throat.

00:33:13.000 No, our founders were dedicated to you having the freedom of conscience.

00:33:18.000 And it goes back to the concept that God is love and he wants you to love him.

00:33:22.000 But for love to be love, it must be voluntary.

00:33:24.000 The moment it's forced, it evaporates.

00:33:27.000 Jesus never forced anybody to follow him.

00:33:28.000 We can't force anybody to follow him.

00:33:30.000 But we want to have an atmosphere where there's the freedom for people to choose.

00:33:33.000 And we don't want kids being indoctrinated with something that's anti-faith.

00:33:39.000 But we're a country.

00:33:41.000 So you have us breaking away.

00:33:44.000 You look at the War of 1812.

00:33:47.000 The British had invested a lot of money in the Bank of the United States, and they were beginning to control our politics, sort of these globalist bankers.

00:33:57.000 And you had James Madison cancel the charter of the Bank of the United States because it had a good percentage of it was European and English investments.

00:34:08.000 And then they decided, well, they weren't happy.

00:34:10.000 They declared war on us.

00:34:12.000 And so the War of 1812 and then you look at the Civil War.

00:34:18.000 Anyway, a lot more there, but we never surrender is the lesson on this Thanksgiving.

00:34:24.000 You want to be thankful for.

00:34:24.000 Bill Federer, you're amazing.

00:34:25.000 God bless you, man.

00:34:26.000 Everyone, check out TurningPointAcademy.com.

00:34:29.000 Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

00:34:30.000 Bill, thanks again.

00:34:36.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - November 27, 2025

REWIND: Charlie Discusses The Origins of Thanksgiving

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