The Charlie Kirk Show - The Conservative Movement’s Identity Crisis with Matt Peterson

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, conversation with my friend Matt Peterson, one of the smartest minds out there from the American Mind, AmericanMind.org.

00:00:08.000 How do we replace wise men with experts?

00:00:11.000 A very interesting take.

00:00:12.000 Also, just about the state of the country and where we are right now.

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00:02:33.000 Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show with us today.

00:02:36.000 It's a friend of mine from the wonderful American Mind and Claremont Institute, AmericanMind.org.

00:02:43.000 Also, the new founding and the firebrand pack.

00:02:46.000 We're going to get into all of that.

00:02:47.000 Matt Peterson, Matt, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:02:49.000 Hey, thanks so much for having me on.

00:02:51.000 This is great.

00:02:52.000 So there's a lot I want to explore with you.

00:02:54.000 You really caught my attention in a podcast that you were doing, the American Mind podcast, that I don't plug a lot of podcasts, but I encourage people to check out.

00:03:02.000 It's wonderful, where you were talking about how we have replaced kind of this idea of a wise or complete man with a subject matter expert.

00:03:12.000 And then you went into great detail on how even in the, even when using math to its greatest purpose, it's an approximation.

00:03:21.000 Can you kind of recount that couple minute commentary you gave?

00:03:25.000 I thought it was so wise and it opened up my eyes to a lot.

00:03:28.000 Absolutely.

00:03:29.000 Well, first, thank you for plugging the American Mind podcast.

00:03:33.000 I always wonder doing podcasts, why do people listen to this, Steph?

00:03:36.000 But every once in a while, maybe we say something valuable as we pontificate all day, right?

00:03:41.000 So we're blessed to have that composition.

00:03:43.000 So what I was trying to say was in regard to Afghanistan.

00:03:47.000 I think you see this example, but you see this happening all throughout the regime.

00:03:52.000 And really what happened over the last hundred years is that people began to think that wisdom could be replaced by the social sciences, that you could take mathematics, you could break up problems into parts and really treat the problem of human nature as if it was kind of a statistical problem.

00:04:14.000 And the rise of the social sciences, you know, behavioral science, replaced prudence or the old school virtue of trying to figure out what the best thing to do in the circumstances is.

00:04:25.000 And you see over and over again the failure now of this approach to trying to solve for the problem of human nature.

00:04:34.000 And the truth of the matter is that human beings, wisdom in human beings takes into account all kinds of knowledge, right?

00:04:43.000 Into the whole of what it means to be human.

00:04:46.000 And the wise person is ultimately the standard by which you judge and not this idea that there's some mystical algorithm or formula out there where if we break things down into so many widgets, we can make policy decisions about what should happen in Afghanistan.

00:05:00.000 Does that make any sense?

00:05:02.000 It does.

00:05:02.000 And the problem is that you have a group of people that are not wise, but they're credentialed.

00:05:08.000 And they think that there's some sort of formula that they can implement either in Afghanistan or in public health.

00:05:14.000 And so you said something that was super interesting as well.

00:05:16.000 And I've been, I stole it the last couple of days.

00:05:19.000 And it's that the boomer Facebook people, like, you know, the 65-year-old guy on Facebook has actually been wiser when it comes to the Afghanistan issue or public health or masks or any of this than the experts because they're actually using what we would call common sense or practical knowledge or practical wisdom, where our own leaders almost reject that.

00:05:39.000 And they say, no, if it doesn't fit in a very tight formula, then it can't be possibly right.

00:05:45.000 Can you expand on that a little bit?

00:05:47.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:05:48.000 I mean, look, the credentials, as I think your audience well knows, are completely bogus at this point.

00:05:55.000 I mean, when you credential someone, ultimately, you know, it's just a judgment of a few other people who set up a system and say, you're good to go or you're not.

00:06:06.000 And think about grading.

00:06:08.000 You know, if you've ever been on the bad side of getting grades that you think are unfair, welcome to human life, but you're not wrong.

00:06:16.000 There's no perfect way to grade.

00:06:18.000 You can't create a perfect numerical scale and then put everyone into it.

00:06:23.000 And if you've ever been on the other side where you grade people, you realize, well, this person actually showed up to class, but didn't really understand the concept.

00:06:30.000 This person didn't show up to class, but did understand the concept.

00:06:33.000 How should I grade?

00:06:34.000 Should I reward for this factor or that?

00:06:36.000 At the end of the day, what grading really should be is just a judgment on the purpose on the part of someone you trust.

00:06:42.000 And so credentials are the same way.

00:06:43.000 You're giving someone a piece of paper because you and a bunch of other people have decided that they earned it.

00:06:49.000 Well, there's no formula for that.

00:06:52.000 And ultimately, if the judgment of those people is good, then the credential is good. 0.99

00:06:57.000 But if those people have problems and they're actually fools and idiots and don't understand what's going on, then the credentialing is worthless. 0.99

00:07:03.000 Well, and so they all say they have PhDs that was given based on, they say it's O objective, but there was some subjectivity to it. 1.00

00:07:11.000 At some point, somebody said your dissertation was worthy of credentialing you into the club.

00:07:18.000 And so they hide behind this kind of formulaic supremacy when in reality, they themselves were let into the cool kids club by somebody saying, oh, yeah, this is a good argument or a bad argument or this makes some sense.

00:07:32.000 And so this goes kind of back to what's been generally wrong with education, which is this idea that we can program human beings, that we can fit them into kind of this mathematic formula from the top down.

00:07:47.000 Can you talk a little about that of how the decline of higher education has participated directly to this and kind of the German historicist model that, you know, with the rise of science, then we can also program human beings?

00:08:00.000 Yeah, look, the idea was in an older, really more elite kind of view of education was, you know, say history and political science or politics.

00:08:09.000 You would read history.

00:08:11.000 That was part of politics like the founders did.

00:08:13.000 And you would think about principles and human nature in kind of a broad-based way.

00:08:18.000 You had a sense of virtues or habits that would make you good or able to see clearly about what ought to be done.

00:08:24.000 And you'd study human nature in kind of this broad-based way, more like the great books programs that are few and far between, but still exist today.

00:08:31.000 What happens after the Civil War in America is that the universities and graduate degrees start to appear for the first time.

00:08:39.000 Before then, like Abraham Lincoln, he could just apprentice to become a lawyer.

00:08:43.000 He didn't have to go to law school and get the credential from a bunch of people who handed them out.

00:08:47.000 He could just work with a lawyer in town and get to the point where the judgment of his peers, like he's good.

00:08:54.000 He's good to go.

00:08:55.000 When we established the grad schools, we all of a sudden created this credentialing system.

00:08:59.000 And the problem is we base the very idea of the universities here on this German historicist model, which worshiped social science and statistics and pretended that there's no such thing as morality isn't part of science.

00:09:13.000 There's a separation between facts and morality and human nature. 0.99

00:09:18.000 And basically all of philosophy is just a bunch of garbage and the old stuff is a bunch of garbage. 0.94

00:09:24.000 We base everything on stats and experimentation.

00:09:27.000 And of course, there's some truth to that when you, it's very successful when you think about technologically where we've come, right?

00:09:34.000 We learned a lot about how to manipulate nature.

00:09:38.000 But what we lost and what we really purposely lost, we jettisoned a long time ago, is the idea that you can reason about morality or politics in a broad, kind of commonsensical way.

00:09:50.000 And here's the ridiculous thing.

00:09:52.000 Leo Strauss pointed this out after the Second World War.

00:09:55.000 Even if you're a scientist, you still rely on common sense.

00:09:59.000 So you can lie to yourself that all of a sudden that stuff doesn't matter and you can somehow make an equation out of everything.

00:10:05.000 But in reality, like we all rely on common sense.

00:10:08.000 What's dangerous is when we have people who are credentialed who think they're doing very fancy, discreet breaking up of problems into quote unquote science when the problem is something like, how do we leave Afghanistan?

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00:12:50.000 Right.

00:12:51.000 And so now I want to kind of segue into the conservative movement.

00:12:54.000 Then I want to talk about the Biden regime, which I do think is falling apart because they've been so ideological.

00:13:00.000 If they were just a little less ideological, I think they actually would have been able to navigate some of these things and not harm themselves politically.

00:13:07.000 But let's just talk about the conservative movement.

00:13:09.000 It seems that the conservative movement I grew up in was very, very focused on almost the social science emphasis, which is charts and graphs, GDP growth, you know, consumer price index, and almost lost what you and I would think is a more prudent approach of, well, is this really good for the country?

00:13:27.000 And can everything be explained in X, Y axis?

00:13:30.000 And in some ways, Donald Trump kind of blew that all up because he's like, yeah, I don't really care about your charts and graphs.

00:13:34.000 I know instinctively by talking to the welder and talking to the plumber and talking to my waiter at Mar-a-Lago, the country's going to hell and I'm going to fix it.

00:13:41.000 And so as we ask ourselves from a conservative movement standpoint, you know, kind of post-Trump or in between Trump, regardless if he's going to run, again, you know, how do we kind of de-emphasize the social science obsession and kind of get back to this more holistic approach of how to, how to govern ourselves?

00:13:58.000 Yeah, so I'm so glad you mentioned this.

00:14:00.000 It's so important.

00:14:01.000 I mean, what Trump did is bring back in a very simple way politics, I mean, which is the pursuit of justice, as the federalist papers, as Hamilton says, right?

00:14:10.000 You're going to pursue justice.

00:14:11.000 And if you lose it, if you can't attain justice, then you're going to go to a tyrant because that's ultimately the goal of politics.

00:14:20.000 And so what conservatives have done, sadly, for many decades is talk about making the federal register more efficient.

00:14:27.000 And they don't want to talk about moral claims or what's just and unjust.

00:14:31.000 The left talks about it all the time, social justice, right?

00:14:34.000 As they used to say.

00:14:35.000 And so therefore they win because they're talking about what's actually good for us.

00:14:39.000 And look, you can do all the STEM you want.

00:14:41.000 You can do all kinds of science-y stuff.

00:14:43.000 That doesn't tell you how to use the stuff you create with it, right?

00:14:46.000 I mean, as far as I can tell, the Nazis and communists sometimes were pretty good at STEM. 0.90

00:14:51.000 They had some great scientists.

00:14:53.000 Those trends ran out of time.

00:14:55.000 They didn't go to good places, though.

00:14:57.000 Exactly.

00:14:58.000 And so this is what we need to resurrect on the right.

00:15:02.000 We need to make moral claims and not be afraid to say, you know, this is wrong.

00:15:06.000 This is unjust.

00:15:07.000 And Trump would kind of do that in a basic way when he'd just say, these are our farmers.

00:15:12.000 Shouldn't we protect our people?

00:15:14.000 I mean, and that's the basic nub of justice, which is just, you know, defend friends and attack enemies, you know?

00:15:20.000 But beyond that, there's greater moral claims I think that we can make.

00:15:24.000 And we have to realize that you can't scrub the morality out of politics and you shouldn't be afraid of it.

00:15:29.000 Yeah.

00:15:29.000 And what I have to do when I travel sometimes to some of these audiences that are more secular in nature, but call themselves conservatives, is retrain them that we can make moral claims.

00:15:39.000 And now religious groups actually don't mind this as much because they really are used to, you know, differentiating good from evil or truth from lies.

00:15:48.000 But can you talk about where we went wrong in this in this regard?

00:15:53.000 Because when I spoke at a secular group recently, and again, I'm not saying secular is a pejorative, it's just how they were.

00:16:00.000 And they said, Charlie, everything sounds great, but who are you to say that some things are objectively good and objectively bad?

00:16:07.000 How do we navigate that question?

00:16:08.000 Because inevitably we get that.

00:16:10.000 Okay, so this is the great psyop of the last 150 years in higher education.

00:16:16.000 And what it was was to basically teach all of American elites that you can't reason about morality, that there's no rational basis for claims about what's good and bad.

00:16:27.000 And I know that we all think this because we're all moderns.

00:16:30.000 We've all been educated in this great, you know, American psyop, which, and it's, it's all lies.

00:16:35.000 The entire founding generation, even the most modern of them, thought that you could reason about morality.

00:16:40.000 Of course, people disagree about what's good and bad.

00:16:43.000 That's what politics is.

00:16:44.000 We disagree about what's good and bad.

00:16:46.000 But that doesn't mean that there is no good and bad.

00:16:49.000 Why is everyone arguing about it if it doesn't exist?

00:16:51.000 Why is one of the first things that a little kid does is say that's not fair?

00:16:54.000 That's not equal.

00:16:55.000 They have a sense of justice.

00:16:56.000 And so just because people argue about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

00:16:59.000 And it doesn't mean that it's not possible to look closely at human nature and figure out how we ought to act, what really makes us happy.

00:17:06.000 Granted, it's always messy. 0.99

00:17:08.000 Granted, we disagree, but it's actually a primitive and idiotic notion to say, you know what? 0.98

00:17:13.000 We can't really know anything about good and bad. 0.98

00:17:16.000 There's no rational basis to that.

00:17:17.000 It's just based on faith. 1.00

00:17:19.000 And that's idiotic. 1.00

00:17:20.000 And we've been taught that that's the educated way to think, right? 1.00

00:17:24.000 That's that we've been miseducated to think, oh, it's only faith-based claims that can say anything about good and bad.

00:17:30.000 And exactly, who are you to say it?

00:17:32.000 And the answer is, well, no, there are.

00:17:36.000 If we focus on the way human nature is, we can determine some things that will make us happy and some things that won't.

00:17:43.000 And grandma was right about this stuff.

00:17:45.000 Yes.

00:17:46.000 And there are objective goods for society and for people.

00:17:50.000 And so what happens, Matt, is then even if I can get people to agree on that, they say, well, that doesn't mean we should use state power in pursuit of those means, is that we should be able to call balls and strikes, but we need to be indifferent, non-interventionists, which I find hilarious because they also are regularly very aggressive about bombing other countries.

00:18:06.000 But anyway, it's kind of this domestic libertarianism, right?

00:18:09.000 Like we can proclaim our truth from our churches, but don't dare try to legislate morality, which of course I've lost patience with that argument.

00:18:17.000 But how do we persuade that?

00:18:18.000 Because you just did a wonderful job articulating the psyop, but I'm sure you run across this all the time, right?

00:18:22.000 The David French is like, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, I don't like drag queen story hour. 0.98

00:18:26.000 I think drag between story hour is awful, but I would represent the drag queen in court because that's what freedom of speech is all about. 1.00

00:18:33.000 Yeah, so exactly.

00:18:35.000 It's the problem that you face and we all face.

00:18:38.000 And how do you make this argument?

00:18:40.000 And I would say this.

00:18:41.000 First off, what I'm about to say does not necessitate a certain form of government.

00:18:46.000 In other words, you can still want government to be limited, right?

00:18:50.000 But to be really strong in what it does.

00:18:52.000 That's what the founders wanted.

00:18:53.000 Yes, they limited government, but they wanted a strong federal power that had power that went all the way down, right?

00:18:59.000 So you can, what I'm about to say does not, it doesn't mean we're communists or socialists or we want government to have all the power.

00:19:05.000 Or you're fascist.

00:19:06.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:19:07.000 Yes, yes.

00:19:08.000 Here's the truth.

00:19:09.000 The truth is all laws legislate morality.

00:19:13.000 There's no way out of it.

00:19:15.000 You can have traffic law.

00:19:16.000 Why do we have traffic law?

00:19:17.000 Well, that's not anything about morality.

00:19:19.000 That's just procedural.

00:19:20.000 No, it's not.

00:19:21.000 It's based upon the premise that human life is valuable and therefore we need to obey certain laws that restrict our freedom, right?

00:19:28.000 And that's what traffic law is.

00:19:29.000 All law legislates morality.

00:19:31.000 And it's ridiculous for us to pretend otherwise because law, it doesn't, it can't reach.

00:19:36.000 I mean, the left is wrong about this.

00:19:38.000 And the right is the right has been correct.

00:19:40.000 Legislating morality, I don't mean that law can get inside your soul and like physically shape you with its hand or something.

00:19:46.000 That's true.

00:19:47.000 We can't do that.

00:19:48.000 But on the other hand, it sets forth certain habits, right?

00:19:51.000 So you, it's like bumper bowling.

00:19:53.000 The law is external.

00:19:54.000 It's like bumpers on both sides of the bowling alley.

00:19:57.000 And it makes it so you kind of just have to move in one direction as opposed to another.

00:20:01.000 And it established habits, habits of life that then you hope turn into virtue.

00:20:06.000 This is what the founders thought.

00:20:08.000 They had no problem talking this way about law.

00:20:10.000 They knew that law legislated morality.

00:20:12.000 Now, does that mean law should legislate everything?

00:20:14.000 No.

00:20:15.000 Even the like medieval scholar, you know, say Thomas Aquinas would not say that all laws, we should have laws about every, you know, everything under the sun. 0.86

00:20:23.000 That's ridiculous.

00:20:24.000 But the key is law, by its nature, legislates morality because it establishes certain kinds of habits for human beings.

00:20:33.000 And you can't make the determination about what should be legal and what should not without making a moral claim.

00:20:40.000 And what's so promising is I finally find conservatives being open to accept this.

00:20:46.000 And I'll be honest, Matt, four years ago, I would have all my alarm bells would have gone off and I would have been like, road to serfdom, F.A. Hayek, you know, this is tyranny talk.

00:20:55.000 When in reality, it's the opposite.

00:20:57.000 That if you don't make these moral claims in a limited yet strong government, then all of a sudden you will get tyranny.

00:21:03.000 That's that's the that's the great irony is that if you don't get basic things right, human life is valuable, children should be protected, right?

00:21:10.000 I mean, just kind of this balance between the ancient and some of the fruits of the Enlightenment, which is free, you know, discourse and dialogue, then you're going to be stuck in some sort of a tyrannical or authoritarian government.

00:21:23.000 Yeah, it's so true.

00:21:24.000 And this is the founders, I mean, over and over again, they knew that licentiousness or freedom gone wrong would always lead to tyranny.

00:21:33.000 And so if you pretend that laws don't legislate morality, they're just neutral, what you'll get is the worst actors will change your law, just as happened in the last 30, 40 years in America.

00:21:43.000 The left will come in and change the law because you don't make moral claims and you pretend it's neutral.

00:21:48.000 And then they will create a situation in which people go, you know, the freedom gone wrong leads inevitably to tyranny.

00:21:56.000 And this used to be commonplace.

00:21:57.000 The founders said it all the time.

00:21:58.000 And it's a commonplace of Western political philosophy that if, you know, if you don't have good laws and people just become enslaved to their own desires, the next thing that happens is a tyrant takes over.

00:22:11.000 That's right.

00:22:11.000 So I want everyone to check out AmericanMind.org.

00:22:14.000 And I'm also going to plug new founding and your super PAC because this is really where the conservative movement, you can call it the new right, whatever, this is the best intellectual defense amongst other websites.

00:22:26.000 I'm not trying to outrank them, but I got to tell you, just some of the articles recently, Angelo Cotavilla's Graveyard of Narratives, I think that was on your website.

00:22:35.000 Maybe it was on American Graveyard.

00:22:36.000 That's AmericanMind.org.

00:22:37.000 Yep.

00:22:38.000 And then also the one, Michael Anton's, It's Not Happening and It's Good That It Is.

00:22:38.000 Yeah.

00:22:42.000 It's just probably one of the most beautiful pieces I've read in recent memory.

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00:22:51.000 ATT, Verizon, or T-Mobile?

00:22:53.000 What if I told you PeerTalk uses the exact same network as one of those carriers, same towers, same exact coverage, but it literally costs you half?

00:23:01.000 I know it sounds crazy.

00:23:02.000 When I first heard about PeerTalk, I thought this is too good to be true.

00:23:05.000 But then I looked at some of their customer reviews.

00:23:07.000 Sarah from Albilene says, quote, the service is amazing.

00:23:10.000 Love the price.

00:23:10.000 The speed is quick.

00:23:11.000 The reception is perfect.

00:23:13.000 Angela from Midland says, quote, the absolute test was visiting my parents who live out in the country.

00:23:17.000 I've tried to use ATT, Sprint, and Verizon.

00:23:20.000 None worked until I went into town.

00:23:21.000 Peer Talk worked excellently at their house.

00:23:23.000 I was so excited.

00:23:24.000 Eugene from Granbury said, quote, good service.

00:23:27.000 Haven't any problems in our travels at all.

00:23:28.000 Switching is so easy.

00:23:30.000 You can keep your phone and they'll just send you a new SIM card.

00:23:32.000 It's literally just a new SIM card.

00:23:34.000 So you can get the same great service you have, but half the price.

00:23:37.000 Listen to this, unlimited talk, text, and six gigs of data for just $30 a month.

00:23:42.000 The average person is saving $400 a year.

00:23:45.000 So here's the deal.

00:23:45.000 Unlimited talk, unlimited text, plus two gigs of data for just $20 a month.

00:23:50.000 All you have to do is grab your mobile phone and dial pound 250 and say keyword Charlie Kirk.

00:23:54.000 That's pound 250.

00:23:55.000 Say keyword Charlie Kirk.

00:23:56.000 And what you do, you save 50% off your first month.

00:24:01.000 So now I want to transition to the current regime.

00:24:07.000 Some people were stunned at the accelerated pace that Biden and his allies have been implementing their agenda.

00:24:13.000 For those of us that follow them closely, we're not that surprised by it.

00:24:17.000 In fact, the only thing that surprises me is how unwise they've been at some of the implementation of it.

00:24:24.000 Give us a status update of the Biden regime.

00:24:26.000 I think their regime is starting to fall apart for reasons that I wouldn't have even expected.

00:24:31.000 What's your diagnosis?

00:24:33.000 Yeah, so I think, first off, you're right.

00:24:35.000 I mean, it wasn't surprising to any of us, right, that they went in and they had all kinds of plans and they were ready to implement all kinds of crazy things that are terrible for America and the world.

00:24:44.000 And of course, this is because the left is organized and is, as we were just saying, that they know what they want to accomplish.

00:24:51.000 They don't have to pretend it's neutral.

00:24:54.000 But I do think a funny thing happened along the way to the kind of tyranny they wanted to enact.

00:24:59.000 And that is their own incompetence caught up with them, right?

00:25:03.000 You want an old doddering guy to be in charge, and you also want your technocrats to come in who have all the fancy degrees and whatever.

00:25:11.000 Here's the problem.

00:25:12.000 You know, they're not able to govern in an effective way anymore because of their own incompetence.

00:25:17.000 So yes, they're doing terrible things every day.

00:25:21.000 But what's going on is in real time in front of the American people, it's becoming increasingly apparent in every sector, right?

00:25:27.000 Whether it's whether we're talking about the virus and the virus restrictions and mandates, et cetera, that things don't make logical sense anymore, right?

00:25:36.000 Whether you're talking about Afghanistan and the insane way in which we tried to withdraw, I mean, agree that we should get out, but the way it happened, right? 1.00

00:25:44.000 I mean, when you look at that, you can't hide it anymore.

00:25:46.000 And then you look at the unpopularity of Harris and the, you know, the doddering nature of Biden as he struts about the scene, totters about the scene.

00:25:55.000 And it's just, it's becoming harder to hide.

00:25:58.000 And I think that the reaction to that is real.

00:26:03.000 And you see people now, right, who are sort of in the middle if such a thing exists, who don't pay attention to what's going on, but they're aware that something isn't right.

00:26:14.000 And I think more and more people are essentially radicalized, right?

00:26:17.000 They're thinking, wait a minute, you're really going to make me get this vaccine or I lose my job?

00:26:22.000 Well, maybe I should move, right?

00:26:25.000 And that is happening every day in every sector, I think.

00:26:29.000 Yeah, so let's talk about kind of the corporate side of it in a second.

00:26:33.000 But just from the Biden kind of kind of power ruling structure, they seem to be falling out of favor with the American people.

00:26:42.000 They don't seem to care.

00:26:43.000 How do you process that?

00:26:45.000 They're seeming indifferent to normal checks and balances.

00:26:49.000 A normal president would kind of compensate a little bit, right?

00:26:52.000 Would not maybe hedge or how do there's two ways to process it, right?

00:26:56.000 Either they just don't care and it's like, we're going to run this thing out, or they have some sort of plan up their sleeves that's pretty insidious.

00:27:04.000 And I don't even want to guess what that is.

00:27:07.000 Yeah, well, I'll just say this.

00:27:08.000 I mean, I think that the problem is that they don't regard themselves as living in a full-fledged democracy.

00:27:16.000 They regard themselves as deserving, being deserving of the throne, and that anyone who opposes them is illegitimate, right?

00:27:24.000 And this is why Trump, he was illegitimate.

00:27:26.000 He was not a legitimate president because they have the divine right of kings in their minds.

00:27:31.000 They have the mandate of heaven in their minds.

00:27:36.000 And so there's a certain sense in which they don't care.

00:27:39.000 And by the way, look at what's happened over the last 20 years.

00:27:41.000 I mean, whether you're talking about, you know, California, say, the Prop A voting against gay marriage and the courts say, no, it doesn't matter what the people think.

00:27:49.000 Right now, the recall in California is a good example.

00:27:52.000 Will it matter that there's a recall election when it's going to be fortified?

00:27:56.000 That election is going to be fortified like crazy with a month for mail-in ballots and Gavin Newsom's political machines.

00:28:01.000 There's a sense in which these people think that they have transcended the democratic form of governance and they control the media, they control the technology.

00:28:12.000 And so you can just see them, they don't care.

00:28:17.000 And they're pushing everything to 11, right?

00:28:20.000 They're using cultural and commercial capital, all of it.

00:28:24.000 They're putting all of it on the line and just moving forward and leaving democracy behind.

00:28:32.000 And so then how do we as conservatives, and we have a lot of listeners to this program that run companies and give money generously to many different causes, how do we then counter move against that?

00:28:44.000 Right.

00:28:44.000 You're right.

00:28:44.000 They go to 11.

00:28:45.000 I mean, for example, the Department of Education just came out today and they said that if you have anti-mandatory mask mandates, you're in violation of the Civil Rights Act.

00:28:54.000 I mean, and by the way, all I have to say is Christopher Caldwell was right.

00:28:58.000 That's all I have to say.

00:29:00.000 And we are, by the way, we're plugging his book every day, Age of Entitlement.

00:29:03.000 It's that good.

00:29:04.000 And I was only made aware of it thanks to the wonderful fellowship I did with you guys at the Claremont Institute.

00:29:09.000 What is the proper counter move then, Matt?

00:29:11.000 Because people feel helpless.

00:29:13.000 People say, I get it, Charlie.

00:29:14.000 I agree with you.

00:29:15.000 If I have to listen to one more podcast of you telling me that we're living through a blitzkrieg, how do I fight back?

00:29:20.000 Yeah, so there's, look, in general, I have to say, asking the question is the first step, because once you get to the point where you realize voting is not enough, you know, just listening to podcasts isn't enough.

00:29:34.000 You have to take action.

00:29:35.000 And that's what, you know, thank God there's groups like yours bringing people in so they can actually be become activists.

00:29:42.000 And so, look, a lot of it is that you have to find other, what I say is find other people, surround yourself with other people who also want to take action.

00:29:51.000 And good things will come of that.

00:29:54.000 In my own life, I feel the same way.

00:29:56.000 And this is why I realize we need a cultural and commercial movement that ultimately points in the different direction from the woke borg. 0.75

00:30:05.000 And that's where new founding comes in.

00:30:07.000 We've created a company called New Founding that will newfounding.com.

00:30:11.000 You can sign up for our newsletter, which is about not buying products and services, not using services and buying products from people who hate you.

00:30:19.000 We have a lot of plans for that.

00:30:21.000 And that's not like one company trying to dominate them all.

00:30:24.000 We want to just be the flagship of a movement where medium-sized businesses who really have no one to represent them start joining alliances, creating new associations that move in a different direction.

00:30:36.000 We have all kinds of people who are talented who are ready to leave their jobs at fancy blue chip firms and organizations and blue cities because they're being persecuted.

00:30:46.000 They want to join with investors and other people to create new companies that look just point in a different direction, that are non-discriminatory, that really want to move people towards a way of life that's very different than the ugliness you see on the covers of lifestyle publications today.

00:31:03.000 And so we need to band together as a cultural and commercial movement to actually do business together and start to make informed choices about where we spend our money.

00:31:13.000 And I think everyone wants to do this.

00:31:15.000 There's a lot of other people we're working with do this.

00:31:18.000 We're taking a step at newfounding.com to just go out there and get after it.

00:31:22.000 But we need as many people as possible to start solving some of these problems.

00:31:27.000 And I'll say, the will is there, right?

00:31:29.000 The will is there.

00:31:30.000 We're going to need some of you who are listening to this to step up and lead that idea that you have that for X, Y, and Z. You need to go out on a limb and start asking people for advice and get funding for it and just charging forward.

00:31:44.000 And I can't say enough.

00:31:45.000 This is going to have to be led by younger people. 0.95

00:31:47.000 Boomers are not going to save us, as we know. 1.00

00:31:50.000 Yeah, I would love to talk about the generational dynamics.

00:31:54.000 Professor Azarad, I think I said that correctly, said something super interesting recently.

00:31:59.000 He wrote it somewhere because I read all your guys' stuff, where he said that, I don't think we've even started to fight till recently.

00:32:07.000 Do you agree with that?

00:32:09.000 Because some boomers find that to be heretical, fallacious.

00:32:15.000 Like, oh, no, we fought with Phyllis Schlafly and we fought with Reagan and we fought with Falwell and we fought.

00:32:20.000 Is that true that now I agree, by the way, Azerad, but some older listeners say, what about all the sacrifices we made in years past?

00:32:27.000 I would argue that really wasn't fighting.

00:32:29.000 That was just like normal politicking.

00:32:31.000 This is a different level that we've never seen before.

00:32:35.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:32:36.000 Look, I'm not going to say that there weren't, there were brutal fights and sometimes there were brutal fights in the past, right?

00:32:41.000 But I think you're correct.

00:32:43.000 And David Azarad, who's a great friend, is correct as well.

00:32:48.000 Right now, something has changed.

00:32:51.000 It's not just Democrat versus Republican, right?

00:32:53.000 It's you are illegitimate, right?

00:32:55.000 That's what that's what the left is saying. 1.00

00:32:57.000 You are actually all a bunch of racist, fascist Nazis. 1.00

00:33:01.000 You don't deserve to exist. 1.00

00:33:03.000 Your president didn't deserve to exist and he shouldn't be able to speak to the American people anymore.

00:33:07.000 That's the kind of level we're at.

00:33:09.000 So to react to that, it can't be, oh, well, I'm a Republican and you're a Democrat and we have different policies.

00:33:16.000 You have to react in a much more serious way.

00:33:18.000 Essentially, like what I just described was half the country needs to and wants to act more like Mormons and Jews when it comes traditionally have acted when it comes to economics, right? 0.99

00:33:30.000 I mean, to keep their traditions alive, they have banded together against outside forces.

00:33:36.000 And I think Christians need to understand that that's the model now.

00:33:42.000 And people who just aren't, whether they're not religious or not, who just aren't down with the woke religion need to realize we have to band together in a serious way to take action against the other side.

00:33:53.000 So I absolutely think that's the case.

00:33:55.000 And that leads me to one of the other projects we're engaged in, AmericanFirebrand.com, which is a digital media super PAC that fights to win.

00:34:06.000 And there's a signup sheet now.

00:34:09.000 It's just, it's going to be launching in the next month, over the next month or so.

00:34:12.000 And AmericanFirebrand.com, I mean, Firebrand is about fighting to win and attacking the enemy and saying the things that Republicans generally won't say and rewarding candidates who say the right thing and punishing those who do not.

00:34:28.000 And I think, you know, the people need a voice and Firebrand will be that voice.

00:34:33.000 You're a voice.

00:34:35.000 We need these voices who start saying, calling out the reality that we're in and, you know, attacking the right people and rewarding those who are actually moving this forward, who understand what time it is, who know that we're in a kind of political cold war that's turning hot.

00:34:54.000 No matter how you're feeling about getting back out there, there's no denying it's an adjustment.

00:34:58.000 When the world gets too loud, something I love to do is create my own soundtrack by popping in Raycon wireless earbuds.

00:35:04.000 Sometimes you need upbeat music to pump you up before you see people or stay calm with some guided meditation.

00:35:10.000 Let me tell you right now, Raycons are the best way to listen. 1.00

00:35:12.000 Raycon have a 32-hour battery life and they start at half the price of the other premium audio brands, but they sound just as good.

00:35:19.000 At Raycon, they come with a 45-day happiness guarantee.

00:35:22.000 So you really can't lose.

00:35:24.000 Give them a try and you'll see what I mean.

00:35:25.000 Create your own soundtrack with Raycon right now.

00:35:28.000 That's byraycon.com slash kirk.

00:35:38.000 If you guys go to americanfirebrand.com, there's a great clip of the few woke men of Mark Milley talking back.

00:35:44.000 It's absolutely hilarious.

00:35:46.000 Done almost kind of South Park style, I have to say, just kind of in the sarcasm of it.

00:35:50.000 You guys, everyone should check it out.

00:35:52.000 And that really is kind of the new philosophy, isn't it?

00:35:55.000 Is that, look, the 1980s are not coming back anytime soon.

00:35:58.000 The 90s are dead.

00:36:00.000 Kind of the, as Eric Weinstein would call it, the ego, the embedded growth obligation is over.

00:36:05.000 Kind of the expectation of a brighter tomorrow and caring about people's spirit and soul and character.

00:36:11.000 The other side doesn't want that.

00:36:13.000 They're in a power struggle.

00:36:14.000 And it's about time that we start using power as well.

00:36:17.000 Isn't that the message that we also need to send to our activists to give clear marching orders to their leaders to actually be able to use political power?

00:36:24.000 And what does that look like, Matt?

00:36:26.000 Because as soon as we start talking about power and Republicans, everyone gets really scared.

00:36:31.000 What does that look like?

00:36:33.000 Yeah.

00:36:33.000 So first off, I mean, the method you described is exactly right.

00:36:37.000 Look, 70% of the Republican base plus, they are the leaders now.

00:36:41.000 They're out in front.

00:36:43.000 The base is based.

00:36:44.000 The base understands what needs to happen.

00:36:47.000 And the problem is they're depressed, they're demoralized, they're atomized, and they need to stand up.

00:36:53.000 You need to stand up and tell in an organized fashion, your leaders what they ought to be doing to represent, to represent you.

00:37:00.000 Yes.

00:37:00.000 The Republican Party needs to resolve to actually represent, defend, and defend its own people.

00:37:07.000 And the only way it's going to do that is if we stand up and tell them exactly what we want them to say and exactly what we want them to do.

00:37:15.000 So for instance, even our firebrand project, I mean, the whole idea of the super PAC is you start showing them what's actually popular with the base, right?

00:37:24.000 If a video is popular, then they know that that is something that they should be saying.

00:37:28.000 And so what do you want them to say?

00:37:30.000 Well, I think there's some obvious.

00:37:31.000 You want them to go after big tech.

00:37:33.000 Find a way.

00:37:34.000 I don't care what it is, right?

00:37:36.000 As long as it's constitutional, you find a way to go after big tech, which is absolutely destroying free speech in this country.

00:37:45.000 You threaten the corporations that are destroying this country.

00:37:49.000 You don't sit there and say, oh, no, they're a business, so we leave them alone.

00:37:52.000 They're not going to leave you alone.

00:37:54.000 They're not going to leave the American worker alone.

00:37:56.000 They're causing destruction.

00:37:58.000 You go after them.

00:37:58.000 Election integrity, an obvious one.

00:38:00.000 Everyone cares about it.

00:38:01.000 Oh, it's a conspiracy theory.

00:38:03.000 We can't say that there's any fraud ever. 0.98

00:38:06.000 That's ridiculous. 0.93

00:38:07.000 You tell them they need to do this. 0.95

00:38:09.000 Defending people who are being ill-treated.

00:38:12.000 Look, January 6th, if people went out and committed crimes, they should be prosecuted for their crimes.

00:38:18.000 But on the other hand, is this a fair process, right?

00:38:22.000 If it's not a fair process, then why are we afraid to say, like the ACLU used to say, hey, even if you don't like what they did, they deserve a fair process like everyone else.

00:38:32.000 Why is that so hard for Republican politicians to make that distinction?

00:38:36.000 So we have to push them to lead.

00:38:40.000 And if we do that, I do think that over the next year or so, we're going to see a new brand of leader emerge.

00:38:47.000 And I do think that's going to happen because the base in a way is ahead.

00:38:52.000 But in order to get there, we have to organize and we have to support each other whenever we see people who get it.

00:38:58.000 Yeah.

00:38:59.000 And also then give the base realistic expectations of what's going to happen and how things are going to change.

00:39:05.000 I recently gave a speech and it was met with mostly positive feedback, but a couple of people didn't like when I told them.

00:39:11.000 I said, many of you are not going to see the country that you once had again.

00:39:15.000 This is a 30-year project.

00:39:17.000 And people don't like hearing that, right?

00:39:18.000 They want instant gratification.

00:39:19.000 They want instant, yeah, maybe 2050.

00:39:22.000 I think that the fruit of the homeschooling movement can finally then bear out, kind of hopefully conservatives having six kids per family and them having no kids.

00:39:30.000 Like maybe then we could start to see things, but it seems that we just kind of want it now and we want it quickly.

00:39:36.000 And that's something that people don't always want to hear and kind of want to act on.

00:39:42.000 So in closing, Matt, I'm going to go through the websites again, newfounding.org or come.

00:39:47.000 Come, newfounding.com.

00:39:49.000 And then AmericanMind.org.

00:39:51.000 I look at it every morning before I do our podcasts and broadcasts.

00:39:55.000 It's a lot of fun.

00:39:57.000 And then also then, I want to, what's the firebrand?

00:40:01.000 AmericanFirebrand.com.

00:40:03.000 AmericanFirebrand.com.

00:40:05.000 So we just have like a couple minutes here.

00:40:08.000 Matt, what gives you hope about what you're seeing with the conservative movement?

00:40:12.000 You kind of touched on some of this, but specifically, what is giving you optimism as we drive forward at this moment?

00:40:19.000 Well, look, first, I mean, I am very, very cognizant that this is a bad situation we're in, right?

00:40:24.000 So there's all kinds of black pill, you know, depressing ways you can go.

00:40:28.000 But here's, so I think it's very serious.

00:40:30.000 And to get out of this is going to be a squeaker, right?

00:40:32.000 But here's the thing. 0.96

00:40:34.000 I am full of hope because of how much energy is now being expended since the election by people who are just done taking orders from losers.

00:40:45.000 I think there's a lot of us who have woken up, have evolved in the last few years.

00:40:50.000 We see what needs to be done and we're going out there.

00:40:52.000 We're building new things and we're making connections to do it.

00:40:55.000 If there's anything, it's like almost, if there's any downside to this, it's like there's confusion because so many people are trying to organize to build a new cultural, commercial, and political movement.

00:41:05.000 And so if you're out there and you feel alone and, you know, depressed, you need to realize there are people out there who are trying to make a difference, who are building new things, who see the same things you do.

00:41:16.000 And if you get with them, you will build the future.

00:41:20.000 The energy is there.

00:41:22.000 And there's more and more people who see what needs to be done and are taking the bull by the horns and going out there to do it.

00:41:28.000 And that energizes me every day.

00:41:30.000 And so what are some of the people that you're seeing that are doing it right?

00:41:33.000 Tucker Carlson, Josh Hawley.

00:41:35.000 Give people some heroes that they can start to support, right?

00:41:39.000 Claremont is one of them.

00:41:41.000 What are you seeing on the landscape that our audience has always asked me, Charlie, who are the good guys?

00:41:45.000 Who are the bad guys?

00:41:46.000 Bad guys we can focus on later.

00:41:47.000 Who are some of the specific people that you really see are moving the dial?

00:41:51.000 Well, I mean, just in terms of politicians, I like JD Vance, Blake Masters, Joe Kent, Anthony Sabatini, who is with us at the Lincoln Fellowship.

00:42:01.000 I mean, these are bright lights who are saying very, you know, very bold, belligerent things as they run for office.

00:42:08.000 In terms of organizations, I mean, I like our Friends at American Moment.

00:42:13.000 I think there's organizations like that that are new, that are trying to move in interesting directions.

00:42:20.000 And I guess I would just have to say that the thing that energizes me most, Charlie, is actually not some of the main names or big organizations.

00:42:32.000 Although, you know, you're all doing good work.

00:42:35.000 It's the people, and you have this experience as well.

00:42:37.000 So people you meet who are in business, who are quietly behind the scenes, who are starting to organize new businesses, new cultural and media movements.

00:42:49.000 That is very exciting to me.

00:42:50.000 How many people are saying, you know what, Matt?

00:42:52.000 I'd be willing to take less salary if you could put me with other competent people and I could create a new media tech or finance firm.

00:43:00.000 That to me is really where, as Azerad said, now we're really fighting, right?

00:43:05.000 Because we're going to take market share away from them.

00:43:08.000 Well, I love that.

00:43:09.000 So, all right, everybody, check out all those websites that were mentioned.

00:43:13.000 And Matt, we'll have to have you back on very soon.

00:43:15.000 It was a lot of fun.

00:43:16.000 Thank you.

00:43:16.000 Oh, that was a blast.

00:43:18.000 Thank you so much for having me on.

00:43:19.000 You bet.

00:43:22.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:43:23.000 Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:43:26.000 And if you'd like to support our program, you can do that at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:43:31.000 Also, a reminder: get involved with Turning Point USA.

00:43:33.000 Check it out right now.

00:43:34.000 Get engaged, get involved in a fight for our country, tpusa.com.

00:43:38.000 God bless you guys.

00:43:39.000 Speak to you soon.

00:43:42.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - September 04, 2021

The Conservative Movement’s Identity Crisis with Matt Peterson

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