The Charlie Kirk Show - The Collapse of American Values

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today in the Charlie Kirk show, a new poll from the Wall Street Journal unfortunately confirms other trends we are seeing.

00:00:07.000 We explore that and we try to find the good news.

00:00:10.000 Some of our listeners say, stop having kids.

00:00:12.000 I disagree with that.

00:00:13.000 Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com, and subscribe to our podcast and get involved at TurningPointUSA Today at tpusa.com.

00:00:22.000 Buckle up, everybody, here.

00:00:23.000 We go.

00:00:24.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:26.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:28.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:31.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:34.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:35.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:36.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:00:43.000 Turning point USA.

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00:01:05.000 We are going to start this week on some depressing news, but it needs to be talked about.

00:01:11.000 There will be a silver lining that we'll get to.

00:01:13.000 The Wall Street Journal has published a shocking poll, a poll that every single one of you needs to think about and study because it challenges some of the, let's just say, one-liners that I hear all the time.

00:01:26.000 I hear from people, they say, Charlie, our politics are bad, our government is bad, but the people are stronger than ever.

00:01:32.000 The people are more patriotic than ever.

00:01:34.000 Let's see if that's true.

00:01:35.000 The Wall Street Journal says, quote, Americans pull back from values that once defined the United States.

00:01:41.000 WSJNORC poll finds.

00:01:43.000 Now, this poll could be super off.

00:01:45.000 However, what makes this poll credible is that they do it multiple times throughout the year so that there's something to compare it to.

00:01:53.000 So it's not just an isolated data set.

00:01:56.000 They have data from years past of sample size to show what are the trends.

00:02:01.000 And the trends should not fluctuate more than maybe five to seven and maybe 10%.

00:02:06.000 And they ask Americans, what matters to you?

00:02:09.000 What are the values that you hold?

00:02:12.000 Wall Street Journal publishes patriotism, religious faith, even having children, and other priorities that help define the national character for generations are receding in importance to Americans.

00:02:26.000 The survey conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization, finds the country sharply divided by political party over social trends such as the push for racial diversity in business and the use of gender-neutral pronouns.

00:02:42.000 So here's what's incredible.

00:02:44.000 In 1998, I was five years old.

00:02:47.000 I was five years old in 1998.

00:02:50.000 The country I grew up in, according to the Wall Street Journal, 70% of Americans in 1998, when I was five years old, believed that patriotism was very important to them.

00:03:03.000 70%.

00:03:05.000 It's a country I grew up in.

00:03:07.000 It's a country many of you remember.

00:03:08.000 70% of Americans believe in the year 1998 that patriotism was a core value.

00:03:17.000 In 2019, just a couple years ago, 61% of Americans believed that patriotism was a core value.

00:03:28.000 A nine-point drop, but not too concerning.

00:03:31.000 Nine-point, okay, we could maybe revive that a little bit.

00:03:35.000 Four years later, today, according to this Wall Street Journal poll, 38%, a minority of Americans, think patriotism is an important value.

00:03:48.000 38%.

00:03:50.000 America being identified as patriotism or patriotic has.

00:03:55.000 It's dropped 23 points in the last four years.

00:04:01.000 23 points, 42 points down since when I was raised as a five-year-old.

00:04:09.000 What's changed in the last four years?

00:04:12.000 Well, a lot has changed.

00:04:14.000 In the stock market, this is called a cataclysmic crash.

00:04:17.000 This is a canary in the coal mine.

00:04:19.000 I'm going to explore some of my theories, but it doesn't stop there.

00:04:22.000 So patriotism is down 32 points since the 1998.

00:04:28.000 It's down 23 points in the last four years.

00:04:31.000 Patriotism has gone off a cliff and, by the way, many of you have emailed me say Charlie, the country is more patriotic than ever.

00:04:37.000 It's the institutions that are broken.

00:04:39.000 This poll is showing that's not true.

00:04:41.000 This poll is showing that there's a profound sense of national decline.

00:04:45.000 We have to take a pause and we have to acknowledge, according to this data, the country has changed a lot in the last four years.

00:04:52.000 The actual fiber, the DNA of the country that we are dealing with, is completely different than it was four years ago.

00:05:00.000 How about this religion?

00:05:01.000 When I was five years old in 1998, 62% of America said that being religious was very important to you 62.

00:05:12.000 Four years ago, 48% of America felt that being religious was very important to them and now today, 39% of Americans believe religion is important to them.

00:05:25.000 It's been cut in half since 1998.

00:05:29.000 In the last 25 years, America valuing, valuing religion has been cut in half.

00:05:36.000 Now, this one's really interesting.

00:05:38.000 I learned this from the great Dennis Prager and I repeated this and almost very few people, I think, quite understood what Dennis was saying and what I was saying, because I thought it was one of the smartest things that Dennis has ever said, which is he argues that everything is a value and for years we thought we believed that the process of procreation was natural, that people would want to have children, that it's in your DNA that every person will want to replicate themselves.

00:06:07.000 That is not true.

00:06:09.000 If you have the technology available to you now, doing the act of having a child, having sex, that is natural.

00:06:16.000 Yeah, people are still well actually, they're not even doing that as much as they used to, but even that's in decline, which is remarkable when you think about it.

00:06:23.000 Kids just look at pornography and play video games all day long unfortunately, but even that that is still happening at certain rates.

00:06:30.000 But actually, procreation and the replicate, replication of the species is no guarantee.

00:06:36.000 You have to teach people that having children is a moral good.

00:06:40.000 This is the most shocking of all the numbers and if you go back to the Charlie Kirk Show archives, in the summer of 2020, we did a podcast and we were laughed at, we were scorned, nobody took us seriously and we said we are on the verge of a population collapse.

00:06:40.000 This is.

00:06:55.000 And people scoffed at us and laughed.

00:06:57.000 They said oh, what are you talking about?

00:06:58.000 We have too many people as it is.

00:07:00.000 In 1998, when I was five years old, 59 of Americans believed having children was very important to them.

00:07:11.000 In 2019, four years ago, 43.

00:07:15.000 So it was down 16 points from 1998 to 2019.

00:07:19.000 today only one out of three americans believe having children is important 70 of americans believe having children is not important 70 only 30 percent of americans believe that having children is a moral good for society it has collapsed 13 points in the last four years How about community involvement?

00:07:43.000 This one is really fascinating.

00:07:46.000 In 1998, 47% of Americans believed being involved in your community was important in 1998.

00:07:53.000 That number actually dramatically increased in 2019.

00:07:56.000 In 2019, 62% of Americans said that getting involved in your community was important was good.

00:08:02.000 Now, 27%.

00:08:04.000 We want nothing to do with our neighbor.

00:08:06.000 We want nothing to do with the community group.

00:08:08.000 We want nothing to do with the... Local Boy Scout troop.

00:08:12.000 Only 27% of Americans want to do anything involved in their community, not important to them.

00:08:17.000 Wall themselves off.

00:08:18.000 I don't want to talk to my neighbors.

00:08:19.000 I don't want to talk to my fellow citizens.

00:08:22.000 Lockdowns, rather wear masks.

00:08:24.000 And every warning we put forth on this program saying, hey, maybe the lockdowns are going to make us less human.

00:08:29.000 Maybe they're going to make us a nation of foreigners and strangers.

00:08:32.000 Maybe these masks are actually going to make us very impersonal.

00:08:35.000 It'll make us a meaner society.

00:08:37.000 It'll make us a crueler society.

00:08:39.000 Lockdowns, work from home, just the total decapitation of civil and civic society.

00:08:46.000 So it actually went up in 2019.

00:08:49.000 In 2019, when Donald Trump was president, 62% of Americans at almost a record high believe that being involved in your community was a moral good.

00:08:59.000 And now 27%, 27% believe.

00:09:05.000 A vast majority.

00:09:07.000 And this only confirms Robert Putnam's book, The Bowling Alone, which said this country's fallen apart and you guys don't realize and recognize it.

00:09:15.000 And the one, we're going to get to the final one, but there is a value that has gone up in importance to people.

00:09:21.000 There is a value that matters a lot more.

00:09:24.000 There's something that actually has increased in importance.

00:09:27.000 And I'm going to tell you what that is.

00:09:28.000 It's not patriotism.

00:09:30.000 It's not God.

00:09:31.000 It's not religion.

00:09:32.000 It's not having children.

00:09:33.000 And it's not community involvement, but it's something else.

00:09:35.000 And it's not all that good.

00:09:37.000 Something else is actually increasing in people's importance.

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00:10:46.000 The overwhelming majority of you refuse to acknowledge the poll is accurate.

00:10:51.000 You might be right, but for example, somebody says, Charlie, there's no way that this poll is correct.

00:10:57.000 For example, Charlie, you're probably terribly wrong.

00:10:59.000 You must factor in comprehension level.

00:11:01.000 For example, is patriotism important or are people really less religious?

00:11:06.000 But the poll is actually consistent with other irrefutable data trends.

00:11:10.000 For example, people are having less children.

00:11:12.000 That is a fact.

00:11:14.000 The birth rate is down.

00:11:15.000 And people going to church is down.

00:11:17.000 So this poll is actually consistent with other data.

00:11:20.000 So you might not like the poll.

00:11:22.000 I find the poll to be interesting because we have a prior data point.

00:11:28.000 And someone says, Charlie, we can't trust them because they're the Wall Street Journal poll.

00:11:32.000 Okay, that's fine, but what would the Wall Street Journal's agenda be here to just make you demoralized?

00:11:36.000 Okay, but I'm not really following it.

00:11:39.000 Sometimes you have to admit that there's bad news out there and you have to do something about it.

00:11:44.000 I'm not celebrating this.

00:11:45.000 I'm not doing this with delight or joy.

00:11:48.000 Obviously, vast majority of you, though, emailing us freedom at charliekirk.com are saying there's no way it's true.

00:11:54.000 This is not America.

00:11:55.000 We're more patriotic than ever.

00:11:56.000 In fact, one right here that says, Charlie, why are you reading this Wall Street Journal poll?

00:12:02.000 I've never seen patriotism so high and religion in my community has never been more robust.

00:12:08.000 Maybe you live in Oklahoma somewhere.

00:12:11.000 And I don't mean that negatively.

00:12:14.000 And those are anecdotes, but the fact is this, two facts, okay?

00:12:18.000 Church attendance is down and people are having less children than ever before in American history.

00:12:24.000 Those are two facts.

00:12:26.000 And this poll shows that.

00:12:29.000 This poll is consistent with other data.

00:12:31.000 Now, for example, if this poll said 75% of Americans think having children is very important and we saw the birth rate going down, one of those things wouldn't fit.

00:12:40.000 This poll actually fits with data that you cannot skew.

00:12:45.000 And the patriotism one, it's hard to find other data that fits there, so it might not be true.

00:12:51.000 But when you have a 23-point deviation in four years, there's probably something there.

00:12:57.000 Now, to your point, maybe the poll, people are misunderstanding it because they're less patriotic because they have less faith in their leaders and they're misunderstanding the question.

00:13:06.000 But let's just take the patriotic one aside.

00:13:08.000 Let's pretend that one's a bad sample size.

00:13:12.000 The children one and the religion one is supported by other independent data that cannot be skewed.

00:13:18.000 That's not a poll.

00:13:20.000 Less people, fact, less people are involved in their community than ever before.

00:13:24.000 That is a fact.

00:13:25.000 And this poll also shows that.

00:13:27.000 Less people are going to church than ever before.

00:13:30.000 That goes and shows that.

00:13:32.000 Less people are having children.

00:13:33.000 And on the opposite, we have the most depressed, most suicidal, most alcohol-addicted, most drug-addicted generation in history.

00:13:40.000 Now, bear with me because I could just see your emails.

00:13:43.000 Charlie, stop being so negative.

00:13:45.000 No, we're being honest.

00:13:46.000 This is like going to the doctor and you say, you know, you have a tumor.

00:13:49.000 Stop being so negative.

00:13:50.000 Well, okay, do you want to hear about the tumor or do you not want to hear about the tumor?

00:13:54.000 Sometimes you have to get harsh, honest news and then have a battle plan, a plan of attack to remove the tumor and have a treatment plan to revitalize the body or the nation.

00:14:07.000 Sometimes it requires plainly spoken truths that you do not want to hear.

00:14:15.000 Okay.

00:14:16.000 Now, there is one thing that according to this poll has increased in importance, that has increased in value to Americans.

00:14:26.000 It's not patriotism.

00:14:28.000 It's not religion.

00:14:29.000 It's not having children.

00:14:30.000 It's not getting involved in the community.

00:14:32.000 No, no, no.

00:14:33.000 It's money.

00:14:35.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, when I was five years old in 1998, 31% of Americans said that money was an important value.

00:14:44.000 In 2019, 41% of Americans said money is important to them.

00:14:48.000 Now, in 2023, 43% say that money is a value, said differently.

00:14:54.000 Americans, according to this poll, value money more than community involvement, having children, being religious, or being patriotic.

00:15:02.000 And I have to tell you, that is absolutely consistent with anecdotal evidence when talking with 30-something millennials.

00:15:08.000 They're not having children.

00:15:09.000 They're not going to church, but they are working a lot.

00:15:12.000 They're not saving a lot of money, but money is a vehicle of value for a lot of Americans.

00:15:17.000 And that should be a huge point of concern because this shows that America is transforming from a country into a colony.

00:15:28.000 We are not a country, first and foremost, that is an economy first.

00:15:35.000 We are a country that has an economy inside of it.

00:15:38.000 We're not an economy that happens to be inside of a country.

00:15:41.000 Neoliberals disagree.

00:15:43.000 Americans have replaced the values that once united us with hyper-identitarianism, self-hatred, and money.

00:15:52.000 That is because the American founding is not properly taught.

00:15:55.000 The byproduct of 1960s feminism and postmodernism is you matter more than everything else.

00:16:02.000 You be you.

00:16:03.000 Live and let live.

00:16:04.000 When in reality, the promise the American founding was about duty, honor, virtue, patriotism, and an ideal higher than you are.

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00:17:20.000 I'd say the emails are now split.

00:17:23.000 Half are rather angry at me that we're covering this topic altogether, saying that I'm a rhino left-winger for perpetrating the Wall Street Journal poll.

00:17:33.000 I think that's a rather silly accusation because I'm supporting it by other third-party evidence and just showing trends.

00:17:39.000 But I'd say the other half are actually supporting just what we're observing.

00:17:44.000 Again, I'm really not making any arguments.

00:17:46.000 I'm simply observing data and trying to caution and warn and say, hey, there might be a societal tumor here.

00:17:52.000 Maybe we should remove it.

00:17:54.000 In fact, I want to just kind of get to this one here.

00:17:57.000 Someone says, and yeah, this is interesting.

00:17:59.000 People say, Charlie, people are having less children because it's harder to get pregnant.

00:18:02.000 Well, that's actually not totally the case.

00:18:05.000 That is true.

00:18:05.000 There is an infertility crisis in America, and that's a serious issue, probably caused by low testosterone rates and women being on the pill far too early and far too often.

00:18:17.000 But there's another issue probably with infertility.

00:18:20.000 Outside of infertility, people don't have extra children because they say it's too expensive.

00:18:25.000 That's the number one reason they give to pollsters and other places.

00:18:28.000 But I want to dive a little bit deeper into this idea of how money has now become the chief value of Americans.

00:18:35.000 According to the Wall Street Journal poll, that money is the most important thing.

00:18:38.000 And you might say, well, Charlie, there's no data to support this.

00:18:40.000 Well, actually, there kind of is.

00:18:42.000 Black Friday is treated with more religious fervor in some households than Good Friday.

00:18:49.000 Where do you think there is more movement in America, Good Friday or Black Friday?

00:18:54.000 I think Black Friday matters a lot more to most Americans.

00:18:58.000 Do people give more to the church on Easter weekend?

00:19:03.000 Or do they go and purchase gifts more on the weekend after Thanksgiving?

00:19:08.000 So what ties the nation together?

00:19:10.000 If less and less people love the country, if more and more people are becoming secular, if less and less people are having children and less and less people are involved in their community, and money is all that ties us together, well, then we're nothing more than a colony.

00:19:26.000 And that transformation, that metamorphosis from a country into a colony is a very sad one.

00:19:32.000 Because when you're a colony, then you do not have borders.

00:19:35.000 You just open up your borders.

00:19:36.000 When you're a colony, who cares if you all speak different languages?

00:19:39.000 The language is just money.

00:19:41.000 It's how much stuff you can accumulate.

00:19:43.000 If we're honest with ourselves, in America in the last 60 years, our homes are twice as big, filled with twice as much junk, and they're half as full because we're having less children.

00:19:55.000 A colony is a categorically different thing than what ties us together as a nation.

00:20:02.000 78% of Americans, according to the latest poll, have no confidence in the direction that America is headed right now.

00:20:10.000 And again, I'm seeing your emails just flood in.

00:20:13.000 Charlie, why are you not talking?

00:20:16.000 Why are you being so negative?

00:20:18.000 I'm really not.

00:20:19.000 I'm being honest.

00:20:20.000 I'm going to talk about some of the positives here.

00:20:22.000 But if you are just so unwilling to hear a prognosis of your beloved nation that is anything more than hopium, then I can't help you.

00:20:34.000 Now, it's very important that the trends that are showing that we are seeing, does the younger generation love America?

00:20:42.000 Not enough.

00:20:43.000 Is the younger generation religious and honors God?

00:20:46.000 Not even close.

00:20:47.000 Do they want to have children?

00:20:48.000 Majority of young people do not want to have children.

00:20:50.000 According to this poll, 70% of people think that having children is not important.

00:20:55.000 And birth rates are collapsing, just so we're clear.

00:20:58.000 Only 27% of Americans think community involvement is important.

00:21:03.000 And 43% value money.

00:21:05.000 So what this poll shows is actually perfectly consistent with other independent philosophical trends that we're seeing, which is I matter more than we.

00:21:14.000 Rugged individualism matters more than the family unit, matters more than the church, matters more than duty, matters more than honor.

00:21:23.000 But it's not just that our institutions have captured.

00:21:26.000 If all of this is true, which other independent data shows, we have work to do to revitalize the core fiber of the nation.

00:21:34.000 Now, let me say one thing that now all of a sudden is a positive.

00:21:39.000 That is something that I think can actually be built up as a national rallying cry.

00:21:46.000 Every single one of these numbers, the decline in patriotism, the decline of religion, the decline in having children, the decline in community involvement shows in great number, in great detail, if you were trying to intentionally demoralize the nation, this is what you would do.

00:22:04.000 If you realize that somebody is actually trying to make you give up, then that's actually really refreshing.

00:22:11.000 Then you know you're being played with.

00:22:13.000 You have a different separate lens.

00:22:15.000 And that means that you independently should go do the moral and good and courageous thing.

00:22:20.000 Let me read you an email that I could not disagree with more.

00:22:23.000 It seems like a very sweet person, but this is a sentiment we're getting every day in our inbox.

00:22:28.000 I'm not going to say the sender of the name.

00:22:30.000 Somebody from Missouri, Charlie, just wanted to offer a personal thought.

00:22:34.000 I have five children and 23 grandkids and one great grandkid.

00:22:38.000 If I was a young woman today, I would not have any children.

00:22:41.000 I wouldn't want them growing up in a communist atmosphere.

00:22:44.000 By the way, she's proving the point of the poll.

00:22:46.000 She has 23 grandkids, and now she's saying, I wouldn't want any kids to exist, which is kind of a strange email.

00:22:52.000 Do you want your 23 grandkids to die?

00:22:54.000 That's essentially the argument she's making.

00:22:57.000 She hasn't thought it through because she seems like a sweet person, but she really hasn't thought through the implications of this email.

00:23:02.000 I'm not sure how much longer I can find a reason to stick around.

00:23:06.000 To date, I've only been able to get up every day because my family needs me and my country needs all of our voices.

00:23:11.000 Soon, though, it will be entirely hopeless.

00:23:14.000 Communism will have won and I will take myself out rather than live in what I'm sure will be literal hell on earth.

00:23:21.000 I have never felt like this any time in my life.

00:23:23.000 Now it's how I feel every day.

00:23:25.000 May God help us.

00:23:25.000 Thank you for all you do.

00:23:26.000 Total, thank you for listening to the program, but that is the wrong attitude.

00:23:31.000 And I hate to tell one of my elders who has 23 grandkids that you're the wrong attitude.

00:23:37.000 There's always solutions.

00:23:38.000 You got to change your posture.

00:23:39.000 You got to change your state.

00:23:40.000 You got to change the way you're thinking.

00:23:42.000 Find the positive.

00:23:44.000 You have agency.

00:23:46.000 And that is the other thing that I want to tell you is a beautiful thing.

00:23:50.000 You have free will.

00:23:51.000 Let's change it.

00:23:53.000 Let's find out the positives, pour into them, lift up our leaders.

00:23:57.000 Their victory is not inevitable.

00:24:00.000 That is the wrong attitude.

00:24:02.000 And let me just say something about having children.

00:24:04.000 You should have children regardless of what's going on around you.

00:24:08.000 If we are at war, you should have children.

00:24:11.000 If there are concentration camps, you should have children.

00:24:14.000 It is a moral good.

00:24:15.000 It is a moral necessity to replicate the species and to pass down your values so that others might have life.

00:24:23.000 It is never the correct choice, period, to all of a sudden say, well, I'm done.

00:24:30.000 I just, I don't want kids to exist.

00:24:33.000 Yeah, you better believe that we're entering into a Marxist, dystopian, totalitarian hellscape.

00:24:38.000 So what?

00:24:39.000 We're going to have kids.

00:24:39.000 We already have a daughter.

00:24:41.000 We're going to lean right in.

00:24:42.000 We're going to try to fix it.

00:24:43.000 We're going to try to fight it.

00:24:44.000 This is not a time to retreat and say, you know, everything is hopeless.

00:24:47.000 Yeah, look, these trends are really bad.

00:24:50.000 This is, consider me the doctor and saying, well, you got a tumor on your pancreas.

00:24:54.000 You got a tumor on your digestive tract.

00:24:57.000 You got a tumor in your brain.

00:24:58.000 You got a tumor here.

00:24:59.000 You're like, wow, that, well, let's get a plan together.

00:25:02.000 You're just going to give up.

00:25:03.000 That attitude is uniquely, it's un-American.

00:25:06.000 It's against everything that we believe in.

00:25:08.000 But oh yeah, you better believe we're up against a lot.

00:25:11.000 But the first thing that anybody in this audience can do is act in your own way in the micro that is consistent in the macro country that you want to live.

00:25:22.000 So while your neighbors might not believe in having children, do you believe in having children?

00:25:26.000 And what will you do about it?

00:25:27.000 While your neighbors might not believe in getting involved in the community, are you volunteering at a Boy Scout troop, volunteering in your church?

00:25:35.000 Are you doing what you can to help the community around you?

00:25:39.000 While your neighbors might not believe in robust patriotism, do you have a flag flying outside of your home?

00:25:46.000 And by the way, one of my favorite listeners in Chicago, for years, he would always text me and he would do what's called the flag straw poll.

00:25:54.000 This is a very interesting thing.

00:25:55.000 And every July 4th, he would drive to the neighborhood and he would just kind of take notes of how many percentage of homes would fly a flag on July 4th.

00:26:03.000 And I would do something at the house I grew up in in the suburbs of Chicago.

00:26:06.000 When I was a kid, it would be 80% of the homes.

00:26:09.000 Now it's less than 15 or 20%.

00:26:11.000 Now you might say, oh, come on, Charlie, that's just nonsense.

00:26:13.000 You can't.

00:26:14.000 It's an interesting microcosm, which happens to be consistent with the broader poll we're talking about.

00:26:21.000 But you have agency.

00:26:22.000 You got choice.

00:26:24.000 Break out of the shackles of the paralysis and the hypnosis that, well, everything is so terrible and it's falling.

00:26:30.000 What are you going to do about it?

00:26:31.000 You might not be able to win the macro war, but you can do moral, courageous action in the micro that is going to make the world a better place.

00:26:40.000 And in fact, I think one of the big mistakes conservatives have engaged in the last 30 years is we are way too macro focused and not enough micro focused.

00:26:51.000 We're focused that all of a sudden our hero is going to come on Air Force One and save us.

00:26:55.000 Meanwhile, as our families are a mess.

00:26:57.000 We don't go to church anymore.

00:26:58.000 We're not tithing to our religious institution, but we're like, hey, everything's going to be fine if we just win the White House.

00:27:04.000 That is an important ingredient.

00:27:07.000 The nation was a healthier nation when we cared less about what was happening in DC and more what was happening in our own living room.

00:27:15.000 But you know what's hard about that?

00:27:16.000 It requires you to take responsibility for the immediate, for the personal, for the family.

00:27:24.000 People say, Charlie, is all hope lost?

00:27:26.000 Do you have agency?

00:27:29.000 Do you have free will?

00:27:30.000 If the answer is yes, you are, you are one of the most blessed people ever to live.

00:27:35.000 You have breath, you have choice, and you can make things better.

00:27:40.000 You are not part of some sort of unfolding plan that will eventually destroy you.

00:27:46.000 Yes, the forces against you are overwhelming.

00:27:48.000 We don't fight because we know we're going to win.

00:27:51.000 We fight because it's the right thing to do.

00:27:53.000 Do you know what summarizes that?

00:27:55.000 One word that is hard to find in America, duty, obligation, responsibility.

00:28:01.000 Do the right thing regardless of whether or not you think things are going to work out in your favor.

00:28:06.000 You do the right thing because it is honorable and it is part of the duty to the divine and the good and the true and the beautiful.

00:28:17.000 And look, neoliberalism largely got us here.

00:28:19.000 And that's why money is a core value of Americans.

00:28:25.000 And here's just an interesting question.

00:28:26.000 If you had a loved one dying of alcoholism, would you lie to them or would you tell them the truth?

00:28:31.000 Truth is love.

00:28:33.000 And in Christianity, we believe that.

00:28:35.000 We believe love is the logos, is the divine order of the cosmos.

00:28:40.000 We believe that the spoken word is the highest form of love.

00:28:45.000 Love is not deception.

00:28:46.000 Love is not delusion.

00:28:48.000 Love is not hopium.

00:28:50.000 And so if you love the country, you should be honest that the moral fiber is deteriorating.

00:28:56.000 And so let's fix it.

00:28:57.000 Let's try to do something to turn it around.

00:29:00.000 Someone says, Charlie, I totally can sympathize with the lady from Missouri.

00:29:04.000 Folks today may not want to see their babies and kids suffer since that's where the CCP and Soros are all leading us.

00:29:09.000 Wait a second.

00:29:10.000 What?

00:29:12.000 If any of you feel this way, you have to acknowledge your children are going to suffer.

00:29:17.000 That's life.

00:29:19.000 I hate to go all Buddhist on you, but the first rule of Buddhism is that life is suffering.

00:29:26.000 Christianity believes that life involves suffering, but it's not all that suffering because suffering has meaning.

00:29:31.000 And so if you acknowledge that there is suffering, you must at least have some sort of higher purpose meaning to make sense of the suffering.

00:29:41.000 I'm shocked.

00:29:42.000 We're getting a lot of emails of people saying, I wouldn't have kids now.

00:29:46.000 I feel really sorry for my grandkids.

00:29:47.000 Why?

00:29:48.000 Do they have free will and free choice to go make a better world?

00:29:51.000 Or are they just automatons?

00:29:53.000 It's a very serious question.

00:29:55.000 Continue to email us, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:29:59.000 Some people are saying here, Charlie, I feel as if the country is slipping away.

00:30:04.000 Patriotism is declining.

00:30:07.000 What on earth can I possibly do?

00:30:10.000 Well, there's a lot you can do.

00:30:11.000 You can improve your own life.

00:30:13.000 You can improve your own decision making.

00:30:16.000 Focus on the micro more than the macro.

00:30:18.000 If millions of Americans focus on the micro instead of the macro, things would start to all of a sudden fall into place.

00:30:25.000 And by the way, just so we're clear, it is indistinguishable, the emails I'm receiving, and there's about a couple hundred of them from some of our older listeners that say, I wouldn't have kids.

00:30:34.000 You know, I feel bad for my grandkids.

00:30:36.000 I'm telling my kids not to have kids.

00:30:38.000 It is indistinguishable from Greta Thunberg.

00:30:41.000 Portions of the MAGA movement have become very similar to climate apocalypt alarmism, where they're saying, don't have kids.

00:30:50.000 The climate is going to kill us.

00:30:51.000 Don't have kids.

00:30:53.000 Here's an email here.

00:30:54.000 Charlie, I'm telling my grandkids not to have kids.

00:30:57.000 It's not worth it.

00:30:58.000 Jesus is coming soon.

00:30:59.000 Yeah, that's just not the right attitude.

00:31:01.000 Jesus might be returning in glory.

00:31:04.000 It's not the right attitude to tell people not to be fruitful and multiply.

00:31:07.000 That is a silly argument.

00:31:08.000 I don't know where that comes from.

00:31:10.000 And this is some sort of narcissism, too.

00:31:13.000 I can't, I don't like the way the world is, so therefore I don't want you to continue.

00:31:19.000 It's very strange.

00:31:20.000 I don't know where that comes from, but it's really, really bad.

00:31:22.000 It's a very bad idea.

00:31:24.000 And by the way, just as a little side note, when the vast majority of Americans no longer value community involvement, having kids, less religious and less patriotic, it's probably a good idea to put pause on foreign aid to Ukraine.

00:31:38.000 This is not a nation that should be playing footse with World War III at all.

00:31:42.000 Borders wide open, can't determine what a woman is.

00:31:46.000 Community involvement is down.

00:31:47.000 There's a profound sense of national decline.

00:31:50.000 And there's a mass demoralization campaign.

00:31:52.000 And my advice to President Trump, when I was talking to him on the phone the other day, and my advice will be to him, is be the candidate that will acknowledge the decline and excite people about revitalization.

00:32:04.000 That's it.

00:32:05.000 Decline, revitalization.

00:32:07.000 Decline, revitalization.

00:32:09.000 Because, and people might say, well, isn't that Charlie?

00:32:11.000 Make America great again?

00:32:12.000 Yes, that is actually the brilliance of the slogan.

00:32:16.000 Just focus on those two things, that the country is in decline and then build people up to a place of a moonshot, a telos, an aim.

00:32:25.000 Aim the American people towards a good greater than themselves.

00:32:29.000 Say in a couple, you know, just a little tight soundbite, what does that look like?

00:32:35.000 And say, by the way, President Trump should say, I want America, people to love America again, patriotism.

00:32:41.000 I want to have a rebirth of church attendance.

00:32:43.000 I want to have more kids.

00:32:45.000 I want more people to be involved in the community.

00:32:47.000 In fact, President Trump should say, I want a nation where we value children more than money.

00:32:52.000 Use this poll as a launching off point for a campaign on revitalization.

00:32:56.000 Because guess what?

00:32:57.000 Deep down, despite the partisanship and despite the terror that is happening in our country, most people actually want to live in a better country.

00:33:04.000 They don't want this trend.

00:33:06.000 And so run on reversing it.

00:33:10.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:33:12.000 Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:33:15.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

00:33:20.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - March 27, 2023

The Collapse of American Values

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