Learn English with Charlie Kirk. He is the President of Turning Point USA, the largest pro-American student organization in the country, fighting for the future of our republic. In this episode, he explains why America is the greatest country in the history of the world.
00:00:56.000The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:16.000I heard there were some characters outside, so that's always fun.
00:01:20.000So we're going to have some fun tonight.
00:01:22.000I would love to just talk a little bit about what our organization, Turning Point USA, is doing on college campuses across the country, the values that we hold near and dear, some things that I feel personally, and I'll disclaim those before I mention them.
00:01:44.000I want to hear what's going on on campus right here at University of Illinois.
00:01:48.000But these ideas that we're talking about, first and foremost, whether you agree or disagree, it's so important to be able to fight for free speech on campus today, which I've been a pretty vocal critic of college campuses, if you follow me closely enough.
00:02:02.000If you look at what's happening at UC Berkeley, Middlebury College, speakers such as myself shouted down, stages being stormed.
00:02:11.000Conservative ideas are really having a difficult time being heard on college campuses.
00:02:16.000But that's why I'm glad to be here tonight in a hopefully very peaceful, respectful environment to discuss these ideas, why we believe them, and hear your thoughts and your opinions in return.
00:02:27.000So I'm going to go through a series of these, and you can clap, you can boo, you can cheer, you can disagree.
00:02:58.000So we talk a lot about this, and I'm going to detail why.
00:03:01.000America is the greatest country in the history of the world.
00:03:03.000First and foremost, it was the first country ever to be founded on an idea, not on a racial background, not on ethnocentrism, not on any sort of lineage, but an idea, an idea very simple.
00:03:14.000An idea that we do not get our rights from government, but we get our rights naturally, whether it be from a creator or from God or from some super, supernatural being.
00:03:22.000So America is the greatest country in the world for a couple reasons.
00:03:46.000But I would make a compelling argument that America is actually the least racist country in the world.
00:03:50.000We're the most ethnically diverse, religiously diverse country in the world.
00:03:55.000We take more immigrants into our country on a multiple than any other country around the world.
00:04:01.000The next closest country that takes anywhere near as many immigrants just recently would be Germany, France, Spain, and some of the Western democracies in Europe.
00:04:10.000Now, you talk some statistics about it.
00:04:12.000America for the last 100, 150 years has been a country that has embraced not any sort of national state-run religion, not sort of any sort of central ideology, but an idea that you can come here with nothing and you can take risks and you can succeed.
00:04:32.000And only in this country, someone want to name another country where you have leaders in government, in culture, in business that are Asian Americans, African Americans, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, atheist.
00:04:44.000No other country has that sort of viewpoint diversity.
00:04:47.000No other country has that sort of religious diversity.
00:04:50.000And that is something that should be applauded.
00:04:51.000But it's not just racial diversity, that is ethnic diversity, but it's also ideological diversity.
00:04:56.000In this country, we've always had very vocal debates over political differences, over differences of how to solve ideas.
00:05:04.000We're an incredibly ideologically diverse country and a geographically diverse country too.
00:05:09.000Whether people in Texas don't always agree with people in New York and California for some reasons, some bad reasons.
00:05:14.000So the second one is our economic strength.
00:05:16.000No other country in the history of the world has been able to deliver the economic output of the United States of America in such a short period of time.
00:05:23.000And I would argue it's mostly because of our embracing of free enterprise principles and our rejection of socialist ideas.
00:05:29.000So since our inception in 1776, the same year that Adam Smith wrote the inquiry into the wealth of nations, we have seen one of the greatest success stories of economics, the greatest success stories of economics in human history.
00:05:44.000We have seen more people lifted out of poverty, the greatest standard of living increase known to man.
00:05:48.000And basically every country that's ever succeeded, even marginally, has copied our policies of individual property rights, individual initiative, free enterprise, so on and so forth.
00:05:58.000We have 5% of the world's population here in this country, 5% of the world's population, yet we create over 65% of the world's wealth.
00:06:05.000We have 75 out of 100 of the world's most valuable companies, and we have the greatest economic output of any engine.
00:06:12.000As the expression goes, the world goes as America goes, and that's because we have created the largest economic engine.
00:06:17.000It's not because we have social programs or that we distribute the most amount of goods and services.
00:06:23.000The reason, not because of our population either, India has a billion people, has 1.3 billion people.
00:06:39.000We embrace the idea that you can come here with nothing.
00:06:41.000In a short period of time, you can work your way up the ladder, what is called the American dream.
00:06:46.000Some people will disagree with that, but I believe the American dream should be protected.
00:06:51.000You can come here with nothing, risk everything, and create an amazing amount of wealth for yourself and other people in return.
00:06:57.000The third reason why America is the greatest country in the history of the world is generosity.
00:07:01.000And I'm going to break generosity into two different components.
00:07:03.000Generosity domestically and generosity internationally.
00:07:07.000So America by far is the most generous country in the history of the world by how we give just donations to international relief organizations, how we give to churches, to synagogues, to mosques, to local hospitals.
00:07:19.000Voluntarily last year, America gave over $580 billion voluntarily to charity.
00:07:24.000To put that in perspective, that's the GDP of about 13 African countries combined that people gave voluntarily to charity last year.
00:07:32.000We are by far per capita the most willing to give away our own resources, time, energy, and money away to causes that we believe in.
00:07:40.000We're by far the most economically generous.
00:07:42.000But we're also generous in another way that I think gets widely misrepresented on college campuses and gets widely misrepresented by the media.
00:07:48.000We're also generous and we step up when the world is in need.
00:07:54.000The Korean War, you saw the march of totalitarian communism on the Korean Peninsula.
00:08:00.000Only but the United States sent our own men and women to die.
00:08:04.00050,000 Americans died for the creation of a free society known as South Korea.
00:08:08.000If it wasn't for our ability to intervene on the Korean peninsula, we would not have seen a free society such as South Korea be created versus a totalitarian state of North Korea.
00:08:18.000The final reason why America is the greatest country in the history of the world is upward mobility.
00:08:21.000We still have what I believe is a meritocracy.
00:08:24.000If you make good decisions in this country, you are almost guaranteed, almost statistically guaranteed to stay out of institutional and perpetual poverty.
00:08:42.000The three things are this: graduate from high school, get married before you have kids, and get a job.
00:08:47.000You do those three things, you're almost assured to stay out of perpetual and institutional poverty in this country.
00:08:52.000So essentially, we still are a country that embraces this idea of making good choices.
00:08:56.000That also means that, yeah, if you make bad choices, you're going to live not as good a life.
00:09:00.000But thankfully, thanks to what I mentioned earlier, being the most generous country in the history of the world, we have the most diverse and deep charitable network to help people that really are at need, whether it be churches, mosques, synagogues, and local community organizations.
00:09:14.000We are still an upwardly mobile society.
00:09:16.000I'm afraid we're losing part of that, but there is a reason why there are hundreds of millions of applications to come into this country.
00:09:24.000It's because people around the world still look to America as what Ronald Reagan called the city on the hill, as the last beacon, the last great hope for freedom in this world.
00:09:38.000If that's the most important thing in the world, there's other countries that embrace that model, I would say, rather unsuccessfully.
00:09:44.000But this country is about being able to start with nothing, achieve your dreams, don't throw rocks at the top of the building, fix the elevator.
00:09:50.000Being socially and economically mobile is what makes this country unique and great.
00:09:56.000We're honored to be partnering with Alan Jackson Ministries.
00:09:59.000And today, I want to point you to their podcast.
00:10:01.000It's called Culture in Christianity, the Alan Jackson Podcast.
00:10:05.000What makes it unique is Pastor Allen's biblical perspective.
00:10:09.000He takes the truth from the Bible and applies it to issues we're facing today: gender confusion, abortion, immigration, Doge, Trump in the White House, issues in the church.
00:11:10.000Without getting into too deep of a discussion about this, the Constitution was the first political document institutionalized in government that protected what we like to call natural rights.
00:11:20.000So we can go through the amendments one by one, but the founders, in their absolute and total genius, studied human history.
00:11:27.000They studied the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the successes of the British Empire.
00:11:30.000They studied Metz, they studied Mesopotamia, they studied the Ottoman Empire, and they saw some commonalities.
00:11:35.000They actually saw no matter where you are in the world, certain things do not change.
00:11:39.000Absolute power corrupts absolutely, that the diffusion of power and representation in government is incredibly important to represent.
00:11:45.000But also that if you give too much power to a centralized government without people having the ability to have a check and balance on that, then you're going to have a big problem.
00:11:54.000So of course they designed the three branches of government that we know today, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branch.
00:11:59.000And each one of them have a check and balance on the other.
00:12:01.000You can't get in the judicial unless you're originally nominated by the executive and approved by the legislative.
00:12:07.000The people who are in the legislative were chosen by all of you in two different capacities, whether it be on the Senate side or the House side.
00:12:14.000And of course, the executive is chosen through an electoral college vote.
00:12:18.000The Constitution, if you look through the original Bill of Rights, why did the founders put every single one of those amendments in?
00:12:24.000First Amendment, be able to say what you want to say when you want to say it, as long as it doesn't harm someone else.
00:12:28.000An absolutely revolutionary concept when they drafted the Constitution.
00:12:31.000No other civilization before that protected and enumerated in their political document the ability to express yourself.
00:12:37.000The Second Amendment, we'll get into that in a second.
00:12:39.000Under a lot of heat right now, a lot of misrepresentation.
00:12:41.000Look forward to having a discussion on that.
00:12:43.000But you have to be able to protect your rights.
00:12:44.000Not only protect your rights on an individual basis, but protect your rights against a usurptatious government, which if you read history in the last 100 years, it's riddled with governments that get too much power and invade on our rights.
00:12:54.000The Fourth Amendment, the ability to not have government invade your stuff without a warrant, essentially protect against a too powerful government.
00:13:01.000Almost all the amendments that they enumerated in the original draft of the Constitution was to prevent government from being able to tell us how to live our life.
00:13:08.000And that's, again, what makes America so unique.
00:13:10.000Finally, you can go to the Fifth Amendment, the right to representation and the right to due process.
00:13:14.000And the 10th Amendment, which is my favorite amendment, which is, we actually probably didn't figure out everything.
00:13:31.000This will definitely get some response.
00:13:33.000Free enterprise capitalism is the most moral, effective, and assured way to guarantee poverty, elimination, and prosperity for all.
00:13:45.000I can start to see a couple people getting a little triggered.
00:13:50.000I appreciate you silently and respectfully enduring this because I'm a big proponent of being able to hear something and disagree with.
00:13:57.000So in short, let's define first what free enterprise capitalism is, because I think it gets a horrible misrepresentation both by academics and in the media.
00:14:07.000So free enterprise capitalism at its core is the belief that I can sell what I want to sell, buy what I want to buy, not without government coercing itself into those transactions.
00:14:17.000It's the belief that value is traded for value.
00:14:19.000It's the belief that people get equally richer when trade happens, that trade is a good thing.
00:14:43.000If something costs too much or something costs too little, it's either the consumer or the buyer telling us something about that product, and people make appropriate choices as they see fit.
00:14:52.000If you look at the World Economic Freedom Index, which I conveniently have with me, you look at the countries with the highest amount of economic freedom by total correlation, I would argue, and causation, would have the highest amount of economic freedom, also have the highest GDP per capita.
00:15:07.000Even the countries that are the self-professed socialist experiments of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are on the higher end of economic freedom.
00:15:15.000As economic freedom continues to deteriorate, you start to see people have less ability to make choices, own property, and government make decisions for them.
00:15:23.000Look no further than the failed socialist experiment of Venezuela just five years ago.
00:15:28.000That country was being heralded by none other than Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore, by the wonderful ability to provide everyone health care.
00:15:42.000They're anything but democratic or equally represented.
00:15:45.000That is democratic socialism in a nutshell.
00:15:47.000They're just about last on the Economic Freedom Index.
00:15:50.000As you get higher and higher on the ability to preserve people's ability, to preserve people's right, I would say, to buy what they want to buy and sell what they want to sell as long as I'm not harming someone else, the basic non-aggression principle that is embedded in free market capitalism.
00:16:04.000It has shown right now, despite what you might think, world poverty is at an all-time low.
00:16:09.000We have never seen world poverty as low as it is today.
00:16:12.000Less than 10% of the world's population lives in extreme poverty.
00:16:24.000I'm not saying poverty is not an issue.
00:16:26.000I'm saying the best way to address poverty is not give out a bunch of money, not to say we need to have block grants of billions of dollars of third world countries.
00:16:33.000Instead, have people trade value to people.
00:17:08.000So I hear all the time, and I want to be as respectful as I can to those that disagree with me, but there is a movement, the 77 cents on the dollar movement, right?
00:17:17.000That women earn 77 cents on the dollar than a man makes.
00:17:21.000And on its surface, that statistic is not untrue, but incredibly deceiving and not taking into effect how long those women have been in the workplace, education, and other work experiences.
00:17:31.000So breaking it down first and foremost using a more, I would say, appropriate economic index, and then actually reciting some statistics that I think will really surprise all of you.
00:17:43.000So first and foremost, when you take into account men and women equally that studied the same major, were in the workforce at the same period of time and had a similar trajectory in their own job, the wage gap nearly disappears.
00:17:58.000Recently, college graduate women from the ages of 22 to 26 in Atlanta, Memphis, New York, and San Diego, in Atlanta, women earn 21% more than men under the age of 25 in Atlanta.
00:18:10.000In Memphis, women earn 20% more than men under the age of 30.
00:18:14.000In New York, women earn 17% more than men under the age of 28.
00:18:18.000In San Diego, women earn 15% more than men under the age of 27.
00:18:31.000Because of that, we're seeing a near obliteration of this idea that we need a government bureaucracy and a government mandate to eliminate gender-based wage discrimination.
00:18:41.000Look no further than our organization, Turning Point USA.
00:18:52.000It's because they're really good at what they do, and women are better than men in certain things, and men are better than women at certain things.
00:18:59.000Women are better than men at certain things, and men are better than women in certain things.
00:19:03.000And I think that's an okay thing to say.
00:19:07.000At the U.S. average, found, this is a study, you can check it out yourself, by NPR.
00:19:11.000Now, NPR is not exactly a conservative think tank, folks, okay?
00:19:14.000NPR, that recent college graduate women earn 8% more than recent college graduate men as of February 1st of this last year.
00:19:23.000So you're seeing the gender wage pay gap absolutely disappear for recent college graduates.
00:19:28.000In fact, isn't there, there is a wage gap in favor of women.
00:19:31.000I have no problem with that because it's happening in a market-based way, because I do believe, again, that women are better than men at certain professions.
00:19:36.000And we have to let the market sort it out, as predicted, women will outearn men without government having to mandate it.
00:19:42.000might say, Charlie, but what about employers that intentionally discriminate against women?
00:19:48.000Well, there's actually a law that's already been passed.
00:19:49.000It was signed into law by John F. Kennedy in 1963, which is illegal to pay a woman or pay a man less work for equal work for a profession.
00:19:58.000So if you know an instance where that's happening, you should report them to the Better Business Bureau or report them to the Department of Labor.
00:20:04.000What the statistic and the lie that is built around this is that there's this institutional sexism built into business, which is wrong.
00:20:15.000You can see women are actually out earning men that are recently graduating college.
00:20:18.000That is a wage gap, but in the wrong direction.
00:20:23.000We're honored to be partnering with Alan Jackson Ministries.
00:20:25.000And today, I want to point you to their podcast.
00:20:28.000It's called Culture in Christianity, the Allen Jackson Podcast.
00:20:32.000What makes it unique is Pastor Allen's biblical perspective.
00:20:35.000He takes the truth from the Bible and applies it to issues we're facing today: gender confusion, abortion, immigration, Doge, Trump in the White House, issues in the church.
00:21:39.000Now, while recognizing, of course, everyone has a certain element of privilege in your ability to think, your size, your background, income, this idea that every person that has white skin has an institutional advantage and has a thing called white privilege, which I'm sure you've all heard once or twice throughout your college years, is wrong.
00:21:59.000It's built on bad data, and I think it's incredibly divisive.
00:22:02.000So I asked someone the other day, they said, you know, white privilege is a horrible thing.
00:22:07.000White people are much better off than people of minority and color.
00:22:44.000We violated their constitutional rights.
00:22:46.000Despite all that, they rose past horrible oppression, graduated high school in record rates, built businesses all throughout the West Coast, grew and grew and grew as a portion of the population.
00:22:58.000They are now the richest per capita racial group in the country.
00:23:03.000I think that's actually a great thing.
00:23:04.000I think it embodies meritocracy, which makes this country so unique and so great.
00:23:08.000But this idea of white privilege, so I had this discussion the other day, and this might sound a little aggressive, but so apologize in advance.
00:23:14.000But this guy said, all white people are very privileged.
00:23:17.000Do you really want to stand behind that?
00:23:19.000I said, and I challenged a couple of statistics, which were too easy, that there's twice as many white people living in poverty than black people, but that's not a percentage of population.
00:23:25.000So it's a little bit of a deceiving statistic, admittedly, that black people live in a lot worse poverty conditions per portion of their population.
00:23:32.000So I even self-dismissed that statistic.
00:23:34.000But I asked, I said, a very innocent question.
00:23:36.000I said, would you consider Jewish people to be white?
00:23:45.000And that's the point is that, unfortunately, Jewish people in particular are categorized as white.
00:23:50.000I wouldn't necessarily think that they have some sort of inherent privilege.
00:23:53.000In fact, there was an extermination order against them throughout all of Europe.
00:23:56.000They were drove out of their houses by thousands of miles, and millions of them led to their grave.
00:24:01.000That's not to say that they should get any more preferential treatment than any other group.
00:24:04.000There's been horrible atrocities committed throughout the 20th century.
00:24:07.000I wouldn't consider them to be a privileged class.
00:24:09.000I don't think that they're boring with a certain amount of institutional privilege more so than any other group.
00:24:14.000Now, if any of you disagree, I would love to hear that about how you believe there's institutional racism throughout our country, and we can have a discussion on that.
00:24:31.000Yeah, where you went to employ yourself up by your bootstraps?
00:24:34.000I went to high school, decided not to go to college, self-funded an organization, successfully raised $10 million in the last two years, employ 150 people, became a best-selling offer, the youngest speaker at the Republican National Convention, worked for the successful campaign of President Trump, was a member of the presidential transition team.
00:25:04.000My mom is a mental health psychiatrist.
00:25:06.000I lived an above-average privileged life.
00:25:10.000I raised it from 6,000 donors in 50 states going to different events, different people that found our initiative and our effort worthwhile.
00:25:20.000I don't receive Koch brother money because that's a question I could just hear coming out of the left of my ear from over there.
00:25:25.000But it's from patriots across the country that had successful businesses liquidated effectively.
00:25:31.000They say, here's an effort that's actually mobilizing and educating young people around values that I care about.
00:25:39.000But I know a lot of people that went to the same high school I did, that grew up with a lot more money, that are bankrupt, have student loans up the wazoo, and are living a pretty less than desirable life.
00:25:49.000If you want to use me as a poster child for privilege, go ahead.
00:26:31.000I always get the most amount of applause for that one, right?
00:26:33.000Now, again, I will admit, I did not go to college.
00:26:36.00070% of Americans did not go to college.
00:26:38.000The biggest attack I get against me is Charlie, you don't know what you're talking about because you don't have a four-year degree.
00:26:42.000If you are going to encapsulate yourself and only listen to people that have doctorates or master's degrees, then I'm sorry because there's a lot of wisdom in plumbers, electricians, and mainstream America, people that did not go through the four-year traditional route.
00:26:53.000If I had a college degree and I was saying everything I said today, you wouldn't say that.
00:26:57.000So it completely invalidates any sort of line of attack.
00:27:00.000College, as we know it today, both Republicans and Democrats have created a system that benefits the administration, benefits the endowment board, and does not benefit students.
00:27:11.000Most modernized countries, including Germany, France, Spain, Greece, Sea, I'm actually using a Bernie Sanders tactic here, talk about Europe.
00:27:18.000Most modernized countries do college in three years, not four.
00:27:22.000How many of you took a class that you probably felt was redundant or you didn't want to pay for it, but it was forced upon you?
00:28:25.000I can already start to hear complaints and comments on that one.
00:28:28.000So two more, and then we're going to have a discussion where we bring the microphones in the aisle, and then we're just going to be able to have question and answer throughout the entire time.
00:28:35.000This one is my own personal opinion, not that of Turning Point USA.
00:28:38.000I'm not going to expound on it too much, but if you'd like to challenge me, please go ahead.
00:28:42.000It might be the most controversial, least controversial, the greatest agreement, or least agreement.
00:28:46.000Three words that I believe to be true.
00:28:56.000I find the rise of atheism in this country to be curious and to be something I find to be alarming, because I believe that as a culture starts to embrace atheism, not agnosticism.
00:29:07.000I think agnosticism is a perfectly respectable intellectual belief.
00:29:10.000It means I'm still curious and searching for the truth.
00:29:13.000The problem with atheism that I personally have is that it's so certain.
00:29:16.000It's that I have come to the irrefutable conclusion that there is not a God and that I am atheist, that I believe that there is no God.
00:29:24.000So I hold the belief that God is real, whether you're Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or Jew makes no difference to me, or you could be agnostic.
00:29:31.000But I believe firmly that the rise of atheism in this country, and it is rising quickly, I think something like 13% of millennials self-identify as atheists, is disturbing and something that I think should be challenged respectfully in a forum such as this.
00:29:44.000Finally, my favorite one, and then we'll get to questions.
00:29:48.000Socialism is evil, wrong, and ineffective, and must be stopped at every turn here in this moment.
00:30:00.000So we say socialism sucks, and we believe it.
00:30:06.000Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, which people throw at me all the time, again, have more capitalist tendencies at times than the United States, despite having a very, very high tax rate.
00:30:18.000I talk more about what I would consider people that go all in for socialism, or countries that are very, very low on the World Economic Freedom Index, such as Venezuela, such as Argentina, such as Brazil, which is slipping quickly.
00:30:30.000But you can also look at the failed socialist experiments of Portugal, of Spain, of Italy, of Greece that have bankrupted their country, that have double-digit unemployment, near 40% unemployment, youth unemployment in Spain.
00:30:43.000And my favorite example, which is Cuba, not my favorite, I shouldn't say.
00:30:46.000One of my favorite examples, which is Cuba, which has wholeheartedly gone all in to the communist tradition and has suppressed human rights for over 60 years, has seen little to no economic progress compared to that of comparable Western countries and is an absolute failed socialist disaster.
00:31:03.000But even more than that, you look at the body count of those people that have under the guise of socialism.
00:31:10.000Admittedly, not all of them might have believed in the pure Marxist doctrine as enumerated in the Communist Manifesto.
00:31:17.000But nevertheless, they use socialism as a way to build a movement and as a way to amass incredible amounts of political power rooted in Marxist ideology.
00:31:26.000The USSR, which unfortunately murdered 61 million people, Mao, to the Chinese Communist Party, 35 million people.
00:31:34.000Some would say Germany, which I would argue was more fascism, but he did use the word socialism in his original term, the National Socialist Workers' Party, 20 million people.
00:31:43.000Cambonian communists killed 2 million people.
00:32:28.000That's a lot of money per patient, right?
00:32:31.000And you look, you calculate it through and through.
00:32:34.000Where free enterprise and capitalism is allowed to be experimented here domestically and around the world, we have seen an incredible flourishing of success.
00:32:42.000Socialism is evil, wrong, ineffective, and must be stopped here in this country.
00:32:46.000I remain committed to it, and that's why Bernie Sanders and I get along so well on Twitter.
00:32:50.000And we have quite a, well, it's not really a back and forth.
00:32:52.000It's more just like a one-way diatribe.
00:32:55.000By the way, I do want to say one thing, a little unexpected, a little, but I appreciate the commitment to allowing me to say my piece.
00:33:02.000For those of you that disagree with me, that means a lot.