The Charlie Kirk Show - The Battle for the American Mind with Pete Hegseth

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, for the full episode, Pete Hegseth joins us with his new fabulous book, The Battle for the American Mind.

00:00:05.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:08.000 Support the Charlie Kirk Show at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:11.000 Get involved with our student action summit, tpusa.com/slash s-as.

00:00:16.000 That is tpusa.com/slash s-as. 0.77

00:00:19.000 Sort of high school chapter, sort of college chapter today.

00:00:23.000 We will see you at our student action summit.

00:00:25.000 Remember, chapters change the world.

00:00:26.000 Start a chapter today at tpusa.com slash S-A-S and support the Charlie Kirk Show at CharlieKirk.com slash support.

00:00:34.000 Pete Hegseth is here.

00:00:35.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:36.000 Here we go.

00:00:38.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:39.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:41.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:45.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:48.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:49.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:50.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:00:52.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:00:58.000 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.

00:01:07.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:11.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.

00:01:19.000 With us right now is a great American patriot.

00:01:22.000 Can't wait to dive deep into his book and why he wrote it and how we can fix these problems.

00:01:27.000 It is Pete Hegseth, and he is the author of the fabulous book, Battle for the American Mind, Uprooting a Century of Miseducation.

00:01:37.000 Pete, welcome back to the program.

00:01:38.000 Hey, Charlie, thanks for having me.

00:01:40.000 Appreciate it.

00:01:42.000 So, Pete, tell us why did you write the book and we'll go from there.

00:01:46.000 Well, I'm right.

00:01:47.000 I wrote the book for the same reason you've done what you've done for the last 10 years, a turning point.

00:01:52.000 We are at a moment in this country where we are in completely unchartered territory.

00:01:58.000 Our schools across the board, government schools, not just public, which should be known as government schools, but also elite schools, private schools, most Christian schools are teaching students to be self-loathing activists who know nothing about God and who believe America is a evil place, stolen land, and only built on the backs of slaves. 0.64

00:02:24.000 And as a result, it is an experiment that's never been tried, keeping a country while educating its citizens to hate the very country they live in and not believe that it represents anything good.

00:02:38.000 If you look at the scope of the problem right now, it's utterly demoralizing.

00:02:42.000 If you really, really take a look, because COVID-19, as you know, gave us a glimpse inside the classroom.

00:02:48.000 We call it inside the book the COVID-1619 moment.

00:02:52.000 It was the moment parents finally got a look and what they saw was not 1776.

00:02:58.000 They saw 1619 and they saw gender pronouns and they saw critical race theory dressed up as diversity, equity, inclusion.

00:03:06.000 And they were mortified because the assumption, their biases were toward the belief that the public schools, they're just fine.

00:03:14.000 Maybe there's some bias in there, but they're just fine.

00:03:17.000 And they looked for alternatives.

00:03:19.000 And Hemingway once wrote, things happen gradually and then they happen suddenly.

00:03:25.000 And what we're seeing is the sudden consolidation.

00:03:28.000 And that's what parents saw.

00:03:30.000 And we actually started this project long before, not long before, but before COVID-19 happened and this whole educational revelation occurred.

00:03:39.000 And I partnered with David Goodwin, who is the head of the Association of Classical Christian Schools.

00:03:44.000 And in that partnership, he had already done a great deal of research about what the early progressives had done to intentionally target the minds of our youngest.

00:03:54.000 This was not just at first an Ivy League academic thing.

00:03:58.000 They knew the idea of school, if they could take control of it, would eventually translate into political and social control.

00:04:08.000 One of the first things they studied was how in the world a constitutional amendment prohibiting alcohol was passed in the United States in 1919.

00:04:17.000 And Francis Willard, an avowed socialist suffragette in the 1870s, devised a curriculum that they put into the third grade classroom in an ad hoc sense across America.

00:04:29.000 And those third graders became voters.

00:04:32.000 And a generation later, not only was it passed into law, but a constitutional amendment was passed to prohibit alcohol.

00:04:38.000 The progressives in the early 20th century wrote a great deal about that accomplishment.

00:04:43.000 John Dewey and others went to work crafting a school system guised under the need for a future economy and vocational training.

00:04:50.000 But underneath it all was societal change.

00:04:53.000 And as you know, all these guys and gals, they were socialists.

00:04:57.000 They were all atheists.

00:04:59.000 They were humanists and eventually Marxists, which is how we see the consolidation today.

00:05:05.000 There's so many things I want to unpack there.

00:05:07.000 It's super smart.

00:05:08.000 And this is not just Connie Runnin Mill book.

00:05:10.000 This is a thoughtful book that has really dived deep in what we can actually do to fix American education, Battle for the American Mind, Uprooting a Century of Miseducation.

00:05:19.000 So, Pete, I want to ask you about one of the things you mentioned, which is the unprecedented approach that the modern left is taking.

00:05:28.000 It's very risky, and I think it actually presents great opportunity for those of us that love the country, which is they think they can get a citizenry to give them power while they say they hate the country they want to get power from.

00:05:40.000 This is something that the Bolsheviks didn't even try to do, where, I mean, for example, and Saul Linsky warned about this for leftists.

00:05:47.000 He said, hey, guys, if you're going to try to take over a country, burn the flag after you control everything.

00:05:53.000 Don't try to do that while you're trying to get power.

00:05:56.000 Meaning the symbols matter and the pledge matters and the national anthem matters and the statues matter.

00:06:02.000 And if you try to go to war against those things, you might make it harder for you to be able to take over all of the mechanisms of power.

00:06:10.000 The current left believes the opposite.

00:06:13.000 They think they're going to be able to get more powerful by convincing people to hate themselves and hate their nation and hate their home.

00:06:20.000 I think that presents an opportunity for those of us to actually say, no, we love this place, because I think deep down in our spirit is a yearning to actually be thankful for where you're from.

00:06:27.000 What's your thoughts on that?

00:06:29.000 I agree with you.

00:06:31.000 However, we've been living off the fumes of that appreciation truly instilled on the hearts and souls of young people through proper education.

00:06:40.000 I mean, the residue that brought about Make America Great Again, this guttural scream that like all it really was is America is good and we should love her and appreciate her was basically built on the backs of an educational system that no longer exists.

00:06:57.000 I think politically that continues to present opportunities.

00:07:00.000 You're going to see it in 22 and I think you'll see it in 24, no doubt.

00:07:04.000 But the reason they've moved to the burning of those symbols or the rejection of those symbols, by the way, they put many of those symbols in place in the first place as placeholders.

00:07:13.000 And we can get into the history, including the Pledge of Allegiance, which originally did not say under God and was written by a socialist to create allegiance to the state above allegiance to God.

00:07:24.000 And they wrote openly about that.

00:07:25.000 We revere the pledge and we should because we reveal the founding ideals of this country.

00:07:29.000 They wanted it to create, to cast the eyes to the flag in front of the classroom instead of the cross, which had traditionally been at the front of the American classroom.

00:07:38.000 So they use symbols until they don't need them anymore and then they disregard them.

00:07:43.000 Politically, Democrats still get elected by feigning or shallowly showing appreciation for what this country represents because they're old school Democrats.

00:07:52.000 There aren't many of them left.

00:07:54.000 Culturally, they've moved beyond that and certainly in the classroom.

00:07:59.000 I mean, when you dig into how in bed the just take the modern manifestation, the teachers' unions are, not just with the Democrats, but with Alinskyites to this day, as someone who is openly involved in educating educators in the NEA and AFT, to Howard Zinn, the Zinn Educational Project, which to this day is creating promotional and educational material that the unions advance.

00:08:26.000 Ibram X. Kendi, who speaks at their conferences, culturally and educationally, they have crossed that Rubicon to tearing the institution down.

00:08:38.000 But they are ahead of the political consciousness of just enough of that residue that still appreciates America.

00:08:45.000 So that creates a political liability for them that you are entirely right about.

00:08:50.000 But I think we get too distracted.

00:08:53.000 I'm not talking about you, but I think Republicans and conservatives in general by the shiny object of winning elections and thinking that will be sufficient when ultimately it's the undercurrent of what the progressives and now Marxists control that are pumping out future voters who are much more difficult to be mugged by reality.

00:09:12.000 And when you send them to college with common sense, they have some skills prepared to navigate them.

00:09:17.000 When you confuse them about their gender at the age of six or seven and implant grievances on their heart, that's a lot more difficult to undo.

00:09:25.000 And we talk about a phrase called paideia, which is an ancient Greek word long forgotten.

00:09:29.000 Our founders understood it.

00:09:30.000 The progressive left knew that word 100 years ago.

00:09:33.000 Students did because they used to read Latin and Greek.

00:09:35.000 And that it's about the enculturation and the imprint of the value of the good life on the youngest of our kids.

00:09:42.000 It has a huge impact on what societies value.

00:09:45.000 We're talking seven, eight, nine, 10-year-olds.

00:09:47.000 They understood that and targeted that.

00:09:49.000 We've never had that intentionally targeted toward atheist and anti-American sentiments.

00:09:56.000 And so politically, I see serious vulnerabilities that we're going to need to capitalize on and then do the types of thing you're doing with Turning Point Academy to take over the educational pipeline on our own.

00:10:08.000 But culturally, they are doing this because they really do control it all.

00:10:12.000 Find me one major institution other than Fox News Channel, Talk Radio, and podcasts and organizations like yours that have any influence in our culture.

00:10:21.000 There aren't any.

00:10:22.000 No, that's smart.

00:10:25.000 I think that's tough to disagree with.

00:10:27.000 I don't think their revolution is complete, though.

00:10:29.000 I think that the burning of the flag, taking down the statues, because they don't control the people.

00:10:33.000 They are so misaligned with the citizens.

00:10:36.000 And interestingly, if you go to the National Paideia Center, they have dialogues on racial dialogue.

00:10:42.000 JSON Justice, they've taken over the National American Paideia Center.

00:10:47.000 Being an entrepreneur and running a business is not for the faint of heart.

00:10:50.000 I have two jobs.

00:10:51.000 I do the Charlie Kirk show till noon, then Turning Point USA till I go to sleep and all the problems in between.

00:10:56.000 A lot of stress.

00:10:57.000 330 days on the road I spent last year.

00:10:59.000 But if you're not careful, the stress can start to take a toll on your body, raising your blood pressure, making it harder to sleep, draining you of vital energy, and making you more irritable.

00:11:08.000 That's why I recommend you supplement with magnesium daily.

00:11:11.000 About 75% of people are magnesium deficient.

00:11:14.000 That number might be higher among business owners and C-level professionals.

00:11:18.000 That's because stress depletes magnesium levels.

00:11:20.000 This can trigger a various cycle of rising stress and severe magnesium deficiency.

00:11:25.000 This deficiency can lead to higher levels of anxiety, irritability, trouble sleeping, and low energy.

00:11:30.000 It can even contribute to foot and leg cramps while you sleep.

00:11:33.000 Now, you might be wondering, does magnesium really affect all these things?

00:11:36.000 Well, the answer is yes.

00:11:37.000 In fact, magnesium is involved in more than 300 chemical processes inside your body.

00:11:41.000 So a lot of different things can start to go wrong if you're deficient.

00:11:44.000 The good news is you can experience a number of positive health benefits just by getting enough magnesium, including better sleep, more energy, healthy blood pressure, less irritability, a calmer mood, stronger bones, reduced muscle cramping, and even a few migraines.

00:11:56.000 But to experience these health benefits, you have to get the right kinds of magnesium.

00:11:59.000 Truth is, most magnesium supplements you find in health stores use the only two cheapest synthetic forms.

00:12:04.000 They're not full spectrum.

00:12:06.000 There are actually seven unique forms of magnesium.

00:12:08.000 You must get all of them if you want to experience its calming, stress-relieving effects.

00:12:11.000 That's why I recommend Magnesium Breakthrough from Buy Optimizers.

00:12:15.000 It's the only full organic, full-spectrum magnesium supplement that includes seven unique forms of magnesium for stress relief, better sleep all in one bottle.

00:12:23.000 Simply take two capsules before you go to bed, and you'll be amazed by the improvements in your mood and energy levels.

00:12:28.000 And how much rested you feel when you wake up?

00:12:30.000 How much more rested do you feel when you wake up?

00:12:31.000 For an exclusive offer for my listeners, go to magbreakthrough.com/slash Kirk and use Kirk10 during checkout to save 10% and get free shipping.

00:12:39.000 Right now, that's magbreakthrough.com/slash Kirk.

00:12:42.000 That's M-A-G-Breakthrough.com/slash Kirk.

00:12:45.000 Kirk10 for 10% off any order.

00:12:50.000 Pete, I want to talk about an issue that conservatives have.

00:12:52.000 You could call it temperamentally.

00:12:54.000 You could just call it as we are.

00:12:56.000 We don't, we're not long-term thinkers.

00:12:58.000 This is something that Dewey had, though.

00:12:59.000 This is what the German historicists believe in: long-term projects, the long march of the institutions.

00:13:06.000 You argue in your art, your book, that we need to build new things, but we also have to think generationally.

00:13:12.000 We just can't think for immediate gratification.

00:13:15.000 Why do you think conservatives have difficulty grasping that?

00:13:19.000 Do you think it's changing?

00:13:21.000 And if it's not changing, what would be required to turn that around?

00:13:24.000 It is changing.

00:13:25.000 I think our founders suffered from that.

00:13:30.000 If you could fault them for one thing, it's making a bit of the assumption that the ideas that they landed upon not would be self-perpetuated.

00:13:37.000 They knew they would not, but that they would be effectively the default.

00:13:41.000 And that has been, as we've seen our culture wars and political wars erode, I think we all felt like, well, at least the stop for the longest time, at least the fallback line is, you know, America's a good place.

00:13:54.000 Capitalism is beneficial and basic freedoms will be preserved.

00:14:00.000 Now those are under siege.

00:14:01.000 I think the wake-up call is indeed right now.

00:14:04.000 There's absolutely no doubt about it.

00:14:06.000 I also think school is a particular case.

00:14:09.000 We cannot underestimate the gravitational pull that I had, that you likely had, that most of your viewers had, to the idyllic vision of public education.

00:14:20.000 You know, you go, you go with your friends from the neighborhood and you play sports and you go to prom and you have all the Friday night lights and all the experiences that you remember.

00:14:30.000 And parents say, well, it's good enough for me.

00:14:32.000 It's good enough for my kids.

00:14:33.000 That was inevitable.

00:14:35.000 The idea of the public school system about as sacrosanct as anything about our country.

00:14:41.000 And progressives wanted it that way and they were very effective with that.

00:14:43.000 And I had that very same experience.

00:14:46.000 Unraveling that worm glow, it's just like what you're going at with higher education.

00:14:50.000 You know, hey, I'm going to keep giving to my endowment fund because I like the football team.

00:14:54.000 And I really remember those years in my early 20s where I drank a lot and spent time with friends.

00:15:00.000 They still reflexively give money to those institutions 30, 40 years later, even though those institutions are completely antithetical to what they believe in.

00:15:08.000 So the first, that's what makes this moment such an opportunity is we're finally breaking the status quo of the view of government schools.

00:15:16.000 And now we get an opportunity to, it also required rediscovering what education actually looked like.

00:15:23.000 I would say the darkest moment of education in America was the 1970s, when there was not a single classical Christian school in America.

00:15:30.000 It was completely buried and dead.

00:15:32.000 There were none.

00:15:33.000 And they were close to outlawing homeschool.

00:15:36.000 And they had attempted to outlaw through anti-Catholic legislation Catholic schools and parochial schools in Oregon.

00:15:43.000 And thankfully, the Constitution, the Supreme Court overturned it.

00:15:46.000 So they were going at complete consolidation and they were this close.

00:15:50.000 They didn't succeed ultimately.

00:15:52.000 The idea of classical Christian was revitalized around the 1980s and 90s.

00:15:57.000 Today there are almost 500 schools.

00:15:59.000 I would say the insurgency has begun.

00:16:01.000 500 brick and mortar schools with 60, 70,000 kids across the country.

00:16:06.000 You're starting Turning Point Academy.

00:16:08.000 You're going to accelerate that.

00:16:11.000 It took us 100 years, but we've now realized how central education is.

00:16:15.000 Conservatives were busy raising our families, going to church, fighting wars to keep the world safe from democracy and preserving free markets and focused on that in the political sphere as opposed to education.

00:16:28.000 And we seeded it.

00:16:29.000 So I think finally the idea of a retreat from the system and completing our creating our entirely new ecosystem is the moment and the opportunity we have.

00:16:40.000 And you know what's heartening to me to get back to your point at the end of the last segment?

00:16:44.000 I agree.

00:16:45.000 Their consolidation is not complete as far as our country, because we don't need 100% of students to go to Turning Point Academy or classical Christian schools.

00:16:57.000 We need to pump out 3%, 4%, 5%, fortified, elite, strong, courageous thinkers into the next generation.

00:17:04.000 It's always about that number that turn the tide and can demonstrate the fallacies, the falsehoods, the lies, the lack of results of what the left always delivers.

00:17:16.000 They will be the leaders.

00:17:17.000 And the American Revolution was largely fought by, what, 3%, 3% to 5% of American patriots.

00:17:22.000 And you need a remnant.

00:17:24.000 That's such a smart point that you made about public school.

00:17:27.000 Just 10 years ago, I graduated from public high school, and I started to see these ideas begin to infect the school.

00:17:33.000 It wasn't nearly what it is now.

00:17:35.000 But you're right.

00:17:36.000 Why did I go?

00:17:37.000 Because of all the trappings.

00:17:38.000 The sports teams, the packed auditoriums, you know, the football team, all my friends I grew up with, you know, nicer computers.

00:17:49.000 It was all the kind of window dressing.

00:17:52.000 And now the window dressing has remained and, in fact, probably gotten better because of increased public funding.

00:18:00.000 But the radicalism has also increased.

00:18:02.000 So parents are like, huh, I know that my child might get on puberty blockers, learn to hate the country, and also not know if he's a man or a woman, but the football team's pretty awesome.

00:18:13.000 And they have turf on the football field.

00:18:17.000 I'm sure a lot of you are wondering how you can learn about things that are good, true, and beautiful.

00:18:22.000 Well, I've talked about Hillsdale College for a while, but look, there's a video I want you to see.

00:18:27.000 It's the trailer to Hillsdale College's newest free online course, C.S. Lewis on Christianity.

00:18:33.000 We talk a lot about current events on the show, but some things are more important than today's news.

00:18:39.000 And C.S. Lewis was a master at addressing life's most important questions through vivid language that's entertaining and fascinating.

00:18:45.000 You may know Lewis as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, but he's also considered the greatest Christian apologist of the 20th century.

00:18:52.000 As a radio host, I appreciate Lewis' ability to communicate and inspire.

00:18:56.000 In fact, not people don't know this, but Mere Christianity, his book, began as a series of radio messages.

00:19:02.000 Hillsdale's free online course covers C.S. Lewis's profound insights into good and evil, prayer and the Bible, and even heaven and hell.

00:19:10.000 And did I mention his course is entirely free?

00:19:12.000 So go watch the trailer video of C.S. Lewis on Christianity and sign up for this new free online course at charlie4hillsdale.com.

00:19:21.000 That's charlieforhillsdale.com.

00:19:22.000 Look, charlieforhillsdale.com.

00:19:24.000 You guys should go there at least once a week.

00:19:26.000 You guys can get online courses, sign up for Imprimus, learn about Aristotle, learn about the Constitution, learn about the Declaration, learn about the Federalist Papers.

00:19:33.000 It's charlieforhillsdale.com.

00:19:35.000 Again, Charlie, F-O-R, Hillsdale.com.

00:19:42.000 We are a republic, not a democracy.

00:19:44.000 That's right.

00:19:45.000 Pete, what's the significance of that?

00:19:47.000 You're one of the few people that will actually be able to tell us what that means.

00:19:50.000 Well, democracy has long been one of the favorite words of the left.

00:19:55.000 In fact, when the Marxists came over from the Frankfurt School, just that one particular strand, they actually changed.

00:20:02.000 text that they had written in Germany.

00:20:04.000 And rather than saying communism or authoritarianism, they would insert the word democracy.

00:20:09.000 Democracy has long been a code word for do what we want, conform to the system we like.

00:20:16.000 And our founders were well versed in Greek, Roman, and Western history and understanding the inevitable impulse of democracies, what the tyranny of a majority may look like.

00:20:28.000 Now that we've ripped civics, history, you know, even things like geography and put them under the umbrella of social science and social studies, which was also a move of the progressives because they didn't want to ever study objective truth.

00:20:45.000 They wanted to study how you look at different pieces of different items through the prism of challenging the patriarchy and challenging the Western Christian paideia, the assumptions of what our country was founded on.

00:21:01.000 So democracy became a catch-all word for how the people respond to their relationship with government, as opposed to a republic, which is precisely what our founders chose after studying what previous governments and democracies had been.

00:21:18.000 It also is a reflection.

00:21:19.000 This is the key point, Charlie.

00:21:21.000 You know this.

00:21:22.000 The difference is a reflection in the understanding of human nature.

00:21:25.000 And that actually, if you look at the hierarchy of questions that matter the most, is there a God?

00:21:30.000 And the second one is, are we inherently good or inherently sinful?

00:21:34.000 And the Bible and Christianity answers that question.

00:21:37.000 Our founders studied it and understood you had to put in the checks and balances it required in a republic to check the impulses of human beings who have an inherent drive for power and consolidation and control.

00:21:53.000 That's a key distinction.

00:21:55.000 Every time I hear the word democracy fall off the lips of politicians all the way up to the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that is a continuation of precisely what they've wanted our kids to believe so that they can advance social control.

00:22:12.000 It's such a great explanation of it.

00:22:14.000 And this all comes down to a question of human nature.

00:22:17.000 Do you think that people are going to act, as Thomas Hobbes would say, in a nasty, brutish or short fashion?

00:22:22.000 Do you think people are naturally good?

00:22:24.000 And if you think people are naturally predisposed towards greed or anger or towards tyranny, then you should have a check and balance.

00:22:32.000 You have to get permission from the governed.

00:22:34.000 You have to have separation of powers.

00:22:35.000 These are all characteristics of the constitutional framework.

00:22:40.000 You were going to chime in about the kind of window dressings of these Marxist indoctrination factories.

00:22:47.000 It's a brilliant strategy, by the way.

00:22:49.000 You put the worst ideas imaginable, you fill it with incredibly motivated left-wing activist educators.

00:22:58.000 And then alongside of it, or all around it, I should say, you have these incredibly expensive and beautiful, you know, football stadiums and astroturf and all of that.

00:23:09.000 What are your thoughts on that?

00:23:11.000 Yeah.

00:23:12.000 And then you put massively high property taxes on the backs of taxpayers to pay for those things so they feel invested in them.

00:23:20.000 And you, I mean, effectively, parents these days know what's going on and they kind of go like this and they go, I think my kids will be okay.

00:23:27.000 I'm going to spend a little bit more time talking to them because if it was good enough for me, it's good enough for them.

00:23:32.000 And look at the shiny new gym and the iPads that they have and the new STEM program that is going to set them up for success.

00:23:39.000 STEM program is the same argument that they made, by the way, in the early 20th century about the industrial economy and the new skills needed for the new economy for workers.

00:23:49.000 Don't train their minds to be liberated through the liberal arts.

00:23:53.000 Teach them a skill for the future economy and make them useful workers.

00:23:57.000 It's that same sentiment.

00:23:59.000 STEM's fine in and of itself.

00:24:00.000 I'm not against it.

00:24:01.000 I think we need scientists and technical folks and engineers and mathematicians.

00:24:05.000 That's important.

00:24:06.000 But I also want them to understand where their freedom comes from and have a liberated mind as they go through life.

00:24:12.000 And so the same goes with even AP courses.

00:24:15.000 Oh, they've got AP courses and you can qualify for college credits.

00:24:19.000 Yeah, but they're teaching your kids that they should potentially consider changing their gender. 1.00

00:24:29.000 And then the social pressure on top of it, Charlie, we hand cell phones to kids at the age of eight, nine, 10 years old, and expect them to deal with both the authority of their teacher because teachers are the authority.

00:24:40.000 I remember that when I was 14, 15, 16, the teacher said it, it's true. 1.00

00:24:44.000 And kids are waking up to that.

00:24:46.000 You're a huge part of that, but that's the assumption.

00:24:49.000 So put them in a nice building, teachers with lots of authority with fancy devices, and then try to undo that with one morning on Sunday and Wednesday night at church.

00:24:58.000 The progressives wrote about that openly.

00:25:00.000 Good luck with your theistic training when we have 40 hours of progressive indoctrination.

00:25:07.000 We did a Fox News interview together this morning, and we got great feedback from the audience.

00:25:14.000 And you were asked a question by the great Ainslie Earhart where you said, Are you ready to give up on government schools?

00:25:22.000 And you were really blunt in your answer.

00:25:25.000 Tell our audience what you said.

00:25:28.000 I am ready to give up on government schools.

00:25:31.000 That consolidation, that portion is complete.

00:25:34.000 They control every single aspect of the pipeline.

00:25:39.000 And I salute parents that go to school board meetings.

00:25:41.000 I think that's useful.

00:25:42.000 I think it's great.

00:25:43.000 I'm glad they are.

00:25:43.000 They're waking up.

00:25:44.000 But in the book I write, you know, it's like charging a fortified machine gun nest with Nerf guns. 0.97

00:25:52.000 We salute your efforts, but you're all going to die.

00:25:55.000 My mom tried the same thing in the 80s and the 90s.

00:25:57.000 She protested.

00:25:58.000 She pulled me out of certain things, but nothing changed.

00:26:00.000 That was a self-esteem program back in the day.

00:26:03.000 The system is stacked against you.

00:26:05.000 It doesn't want to hear from you.

00:26:06.000 It doesn't care what you think.

00:26:07.000 It's kicked God out 50 years ago, and they're not teaching what you would teach them.

00:26:13.000 Find an alternative, run away.

00:26:15.000 And there are cost-effective options if you're doing it or build one like you are.

00:26:21.000 And I think building is a big part.

00:26:22.000 Retreating just into homeschooling, as useful as that is, and it's very useful, I don't think is sufficient.

00:26:29.000 We got to build alternate institutions of learning that have their own status to them, that are respected, that have their own traditions, that we then push generations through to take it back.

00:26:42.000 So, so, Pete, I didn't know this about you, and I promise I'm not going to hold this against you, but you went to Princeton, if I'm not mistaken, right?

00:26:50.000 And so I read that about you and Princeton and Harvard, which is which is awesome.

00:26:56.000 And so, part of this, though, is very impressive.

00:27:00.000 When I was reading your bio, I immediately think higher of your intellect because you have the stamp of approval of Princeton and Harvard.

00:27:09.000 Understandably, it's really hard to get into.

00:27:11.000 But can you, as someone who's gone to Princeton and Harvard, can you tell us about how that actually probably creates from a parent's perspective a push towards over-credentialing, right?

00:27:25.000 Where you got to go to Princeton, got to go to Harvard.

00:27:28.000 And so, can you, what's your thought on that as someone who's actually been to these institutions?

00:27:33.000 Because I think a lot of parents are willing to put aside, you know, this idea that men can become pregnant or all this insane stuff, the inability to answer the question of what is a woman.

00:27:43.000 If you get that piece of paper from Princeton and Harvard, you're uniquely positioned to be able to answer this question.

00:27:50.000 We have to take them off a pedestal.

00:27:52.000 We have to stop revering them as now.

00:27:55.000 Society is not going to change that.

00:27:56.000 The elite crowd is going to continue to perpetuate it.

00:27:59.000 We have to take that.

00:28:00.000 I am now actually, I shake my head and am ashamed by the sheepish fashion in which I pursued what I deemed to be the best in the eyes of the world.

00:28:11.000 And I will forgive myself because that's what I thought it was when I was there.

00:28:16.000 I now, I mean, I've already told my wife I'm mailing at a minimum my Harvard degree back and likely the Princeton one too, with return to sender written on it in dramatic fashion at the right point, because I don't want to be a part of perpetuating the elevation of those institutions as if they should be an impremature of your credibility inside our culture and elite society.

00:28:39.000 Because you've set the example and you're writing a book about it now, about how when we take them off those pedestals, it reduces their ability to set the terms of what is valued and what is important.

00:28:51.000 But I want to ask you, though, a lot of parents are struggling with this, though, because they say, it's worth it.

00:28:58.000 That piece of paper will be an admission ticket.

00:29:01.000 They go to Harvard.

00:29:02.000 They go to Princeton.

00:29:03.000 They'll be taken seriously or they go to Stanford.

00:29:07.000 Do you think that it's worth the risk?

00:29:08.000 Do you think it's worth the metaphorical Russian roulette with their values to go to these institutions?

00:29:16.000 It's not worth the risk.

00:29:18.000 I've said openly, I don't want my kids to go to college unless it's on a list of colleges about this many.

00:29:25.000 And, you know, there is hope in some of these institutions.

00:29:28.000 Robbie George at Princeton has 25 open conservative professors at the James Madison Institute.

00:29:33.000 I mean, he was one of my mentors at Princeton.

00:29:35.000 Amazing guy.

00:29:36.000 There are glimmers of hope, and you know your kids better than anyone else does.

00:29:43.000 But I think feeding into that rat line, feeding into the elite school so they can get into the elite colleges and get the paycheck, what is the paycheck worth if at that very same time your child is a Bernie Sanders style socialist or is prescribing to the belief that America is a horrible place?

00:30:01.000 Because if you didn't fortify them, I mean, really, really fortify them.

00:30:04.000 That is the group think of what they will come out with.

00:30:07.000 Sure, they might have a beach house and they'll be set up for better opportunities, but what kind of legacy do you want to leave?

00:30:13.000 And that's probably the most difficult part of this project, Charlie.

00:30:16.000 High school is one thing.

00:30:17.000 College is another.

00:30:19.000 Breaking that pipeline.

00:30:21.000 I see it with friends of mine, and I won't name any names, who are very conservative and very open about the topics we talk about, but still give in to the gravitational pull of I'm going to pay 60 grand for my first grader to go to this elite school, even though it is the wokest of the woke woke, because if they get into that elementary, it leads to this middle school and that high school.

00:30:41.000 And that means you got a ticket to the Ivy Leagues, possibly.

00:30:44.000 And what would I do if my kid wasn't in the Ivy League?

00:30:47.000 I hope we can break, we need to break that misconception down.

00:30:52.000 And it starts by people who've been to those institutions saying, it's not that cool.

00:30:56.000 And yes, I had some opportunities later in life, but if I worked my tail off, I could have had them anyway.

00:30:56.000 It's not that great.

00:31:02.000 I credit where I am today, not that it's some great achievement, to the military.

00:31:06.000 I learned everything I needed at Samara University, Baghdad University, from the guys who stood shoulder to shoulder with me.

00:31:13.000 I learned about human nature.

00:31:14.000 I learned about good and evil.

00:31:15.000 I learned about real sacrifice and I learned why America is such a special place.

00:31:20.000 I didn't learn it at Princeton, where they taught me in the first day of my class on Christianity that Jesus was likely buried in a shallow grave and eaten by dogs by their biblical scholar on the first day that I arrived.

00:31:31.000 I didn't learn it from eggheads at Princeton? 1.00

00:31:35.000 This is at Princeton.

00:31:37.000 I said, I'm going to take a school in Christianity.

00:31:40.000 Harvard was founded by John Harvard, who is a Christian.

00:31:43.000 And Princeton used to be the premier Presbyterian seminary.

00:31:47.000 And that's what they teach you their biblical scholarship.

00:31:50.000 Exactly right.

00:31:51.000 Elaine Pagels, New York Times bestseller.

00:31:54.000 She immediately said, nothing you've ever learned is true.

00:31:58.000 But it led me to Firestone Library where I did my own research.

00:32:02.000 And that's the first time I encountered the reality of how close the events were to the actual gospels written down, which compared to any other, you know what I mean.

00:32:15.000 I want to tell you guys about Legacy Box.

00:32:17.000 Legacy Box is the simplest and safest way to digitize all your aging videotapes, camcorder tapes, and more.

00:32:23.000 Look, it was a wake-up call for me when one of our team members' homes burned down.

00:32:26.000 I was like, whoa, all this family memories gone, vanished, vaporized.

00:32:31.000 Where are your family's old film reels?

00:32:33.000 It's going to be fire season in parts of California soon.

00:32:36.000 Forest fires all across America.

00:32:38.000 What happens if your vacation home burns down or your home burns down?

00:32:40.000 God forbid.

00:32:41.000 But will your memories be saved?

00:32:43.000 How are you going to pass them down to your kids?

00:32:44.000 Well, here's how Legacy Box works.

00:32:46.000 You put them all in a box, you send it off to them, they barcode it, they save it forever, and it goes in the cloud, and you're able to make your legacy permanent and preserved.

00:32:57.000 What memories do you wish you could relive or pass down to your kids?

00:33:01.000 Look, each kit includes everything you need to safely pack and send you recorded moments.

00:33:06.000 Each item is hand-digitized by a hand by 200 trained technicians right here in America.

00:33:10.000 So experience the joy and excitement of rewatching your wedding day, baby's first steps, or Christmas mornings.

00:33:15.000 We love Legacy Box.

00:33:16.000 We love using it here on the Charlie Kirk show.

00:33:18.000 Many of our Turning Point USA team members love it.

00:33:20.000 So go to the Legacy Box event.

00:33:22.000 The Legacy Box Father's Day event is happening now.

00:33:25.000 Go to legacybox.com slash Charlie and say 50%.

00:33:29.000 Legacy Box is great for your family or is a gift for your father.

00:33:32.000 That's legacybox.com slash Charlie for 50% off.

00:33:35.000 LegacyBox.com slash Charlie.

00:33:41.000 The archaeological evidence for the gospel, the life, ministry, unfair death, burial and resurrection of Christ.

00:33:50.000 It's amazing when you look into the archaeological evidence for it, from the inexplicable record of female witnesses to how close Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John was written to actual events themselves, to Josephus, the extra biblical reinforcement.

00:34:05.000 Just had to add that little, you know, little fact in there to push back against the Harvard and Princeton lady. 1.00

00:34:12.000 Your thoughts?

00:34:12.000 And I had to find that truth in the dark corner of the basement on dusty books inside an institution formerly founded, as you pointed out, to train Presbyterian ministers.

00:34:25.000 That's where you had to search to find it.

00:34:29.000 One other thing on these lead schools, though, I think many, many people in different industries in our country are realizing they don't want a bunch of highly, first of all, very woke activists who think very highly of themselves and don't think they should have to work hard, often many of which are produced by these institutions.

00:34:49.000 And not to mention the standards that have been reduced based on the attack they've made on the SAT at College Board.

00:34:55.000 I mean, Common Core has turned into the SAT.

00:34:58.000 They removed reasoning completely.

00:35:00.000 Now it's just a test you can study for alongside all the other ways in which the engineer who goes to these schools, the product they're creating has been so wildly diluted.

00:35:10.000 There will be a point where the return on investment is far less worth it when you hire someone who they allowed in the gate of these institutions.

00:35:19.000 So, in closing, here, again, it's Pete Hegset's amazing book, Battle for the American Mind: Action Steps.

00:35:24.000 You mentioned building new things.

00:35:26.000 What else?

00:35:27.000 What is the solution agenda for the American grassroots?

00:35:32.000 Okay, the first thing, and you're doing it, and I'm doing it with this book, is it's a word of the left raising awareness or getting rid of implicit bias that parents have toward their public schools.

00:35:41.000 You have to understand the depth of the problem to get to a solution.

00:35:45.000 And that's what is going to be ongoing, and we'll continue doing that.

00:35:49.000 Then, as a former counterinsurgency instructor, I turn to what's the tactic that's going to work the most.

00:35:55.000 First, it's tactical retreat.

00:35:57.000 We retreat from the government schools because we can't win in that fight.

00:36:01.000 And what's the form of warfare, ideological warfare, that's most effective when you have the have-nots against the haves or the weak against the strong?

00:36:09.000 It's insurgency.

00:36:11.000 Mao wrote about insurgency.

00:36:12.000 We studied it in the military.

00:36:13.000 It was very effective for insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

00:36:19.000 You have to, your phase one is to identify your networks and your allies and start building robust networks and institutions.

00:36:26.000 You don't pop your head up too high because you don't need to.

00:36:29.000 You start building schools.

00:36:30.000 You start exposing the corrupt nature of the educational regime, and you start encouraging people to find an alternative.

00:36:39.000 Once you've built enough of those schools and that capacity, then you really ramp up the awareness effort to the point where there's a flood.

00:36:47.000 There's such a demand that it starts, and then you start to build the ecosystem that supports it, new teachers' colleges, additional curriculum, higher education that supports it, ecosystem of everything else.

00:36:59.000 And then you get into the policy realm, which is universal educational tax credits.

00:37:05.000 The idea that the dollars follow the parents and they can go to government schools if you so choose, or to vocational schools, parochial schools, Christian schools, whatever you want.

00:37:18.000 That's how you break the back of the educational industrial complex.

00:37:21.000 They believe they have a monopoly because they have a monopoly on the money right now.

00:37:25.000 So, we've been yelling about vouchers and school choice for years ineffectively as conservatives.

00:37:30.000 We have to take the action first and not expect some policy to change it.

00:37:34.000 Because if you can have a choice to go to just a little less woke school, that's not really a choice that's going to change the trajectory of our republic.

00:37:42.000 So, we lay it out in the book through five chapters what these phases look like, what classical Christian education looks like, and other forms of education that are going to save the republic.

00:37:53.000 The Battle for the American Mind by Pete Hegseth.

00:37:56.000 Pete, thank you for being so generous with your time.

00:37:58.000 It's terrific.

00:37:59.000 I encourage everyone to pick up a copy or two.

00:38:01.000 You will learn a lot about how they were able to capture American education and how we can reclaim it.

00:38:07.000 Also, a small plug: the miseducation of America on Fox Nation is terrific.

00:38:13.000 It's great.

00:38:14.000 I've heard so much feedback from people on it.

00:38:16.000 So, Pete, I'm so pleased that you're making it.

00:38:18.000 We're on the hook for season two.

00:38:20.000 We're making another season and you're on the hook.

00:38:24.000 I will be honored.

00:38:25.000 Thank you, Pete, so much.

00:38:26.000 I'm so glad education is becoming kind of your primary crusade right now.

00:38:29.000 I love it.

00:38:30.000 Likewise, thank you.

00:38:32.000 Likewise.

00:38:35.000 Thank you so much for listening, everybody.

00:38:36.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:38:38.000 Thank you so much for listening.

00:38:40.000 God bless.

00:38:43.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - June 16, 2022

The Battle for the American Mind with Pete Hegseth

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript